Distributed Systems Contract Job Trends

Distributed Systems
UK

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Distributed Systems in contract job vacancies. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Distributed Systems over the 6 months leading up to 13 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 191 274 341
Rank change year-on-year +83 +67 +67
Contract jobs citing Distributed Systems 704 281 252
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.41% 0.95% 0.58%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 4.33% 2.78% 1.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 414 149 182
10th Percentile £368 £345 £361
25th Percentile £425 £450 £432
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £569
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% -3.30% -8.27%
75th Percentile £650 £750 £711
90th Percentile £780 £828 £875
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £440
% change year-on-year -3.06% +11.36% -20.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 7 1
10th Percentile £52.50 £45.70 -
25th Percentile £56.75 £52.50 £52.50
Median hourly rate £75.00 £55.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.36% - -34.59%
75th Percentile £85.00 £67.50 £57.50
90th Percentile £95.00 £85.50 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £76.00 £55.00 -
% change year-on-year +38.18% - -

All Generic Skills
UK

Distributed Systems falls under the General and Transferable Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring generic IT skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 16,252 10,120 13,071
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.49% 34.29% 29.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,979 6,363 8,322
10th Percentile £315 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £630 £650 £660
90th Percentile £750 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 821 435 942
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.84 £12.25
25th Percentile £20.82 £20.21 £15.39
Median hourly rate £41.00 £33.05 £35.58
Median % change year-on-year +24.05% -7.10% +58.75%
75th Percentile £70.00 £62.24 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.40 £82.40 £71.81
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £32.43 £35.00
% change year-on-year +35.55% -7.34% +59.09%

Distributed Systems
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Distributed Systems relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Distributed Systems job vacancy trend in the UK

Distributed Systems
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Distributed Systems.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Distributed Systems

Distributed Systems
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Distributed Systems over the 6 months to 13 June 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Distributed Systems in the UK

Distributed Systems
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Distributed Systems.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Distributed Systems

Distributed Systems
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Distributed Systems over the 6 months to 13 June 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Distributed Systems in the UK

Distributed Systems
Top 17 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Distributed Systems within the UK over the 6 months to 13 June 2026. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 6 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England +82 615 £550 -9.84% 276
London +57 358 £600 -11.11% 155
UK excluding London +48 249 £475 -3.06% 172
Work from Home +50 218 £475 -9.52% 165
North of England +13 81 £500 +3.95% 52
South East -11 64 £393 +25.76% 56
Midlands -14 57 £425 -15.00% 8
Yorkshire -14 40 £525 +66.67% 11
West Midlands -27 38 £425 -15.00% 5
North West -6 35 £525 -2.23% 30
Scotland -30 20 £402 -21.06% 11
East Midlands -3 18 £425 - 3
East of England - 16 £550 - 12
South West -14 9 £601 +14.48% 24
North East - 6 £388 - 11
Northern Ireland +4 3 - - 6
Wales - 1 £475 - 4

Distributed Systems
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 30 (4.26%) Apache Spark
2 23 (3.27%) Confluence
3 12 (1.70%) Apache
4 8 (1.14%) SharePoint
5 4 (0.57%) Apache Airflow
5 4 (0.57%) Apache Pulsar
6 3 (0.43%) OpenStack
7 2 (0.28%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.14%) Camunda
Applications
1 4 (0.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.43%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.28%) CPLEX
4 1 (0.14%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 8 (1.14%) Oracle EBS
2 5 (0.71%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.14%) ION MarketView
3 1 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 342 (48.58%) AWS
2 196 (27.84%) Azure
3 116 (16.48%) GitHub
4 113 (16.05%) GCP
5 84 (11.93%) GitHub Actions
6 55 (7.81%) Serverless
7 48 (6.82%) Amazon S3
8 46 (6.53%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 44 (6.25%) Azure DevOps
10 41 (5.82%) Amazon SQS
11 39 (5.54%) Amazon EKS
12 35 (4.97%) AWS Lambda
13 31 (4.40%) Amazon ECS
14 28 (3.98%) AWS CloudFormation
15 26 (3.69%) Amazon EC2
16 24 (3.41%) Azure AKS
17 19 (2.70%) Datadog
18 18 (2.56%) OpenShift
18 18 (2.56%) Route 53
19 17 (2.41%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 26 (3.69%) HTTP
2 11 (1.56%) Firewall
3 7 (0.99%) DNS
3 7 (0.99%) Multicast
4 6 (0.85%) Network Security
5 5 (0.71%) HTTPS
6 4 (0.57%) BGP
6 4 (0.57%) Ethernet VPN
6 4 (0.57%) Internet
6 4 (0.57%) OSPF
6 4 (0.57%) Reverse Proxy
6 4 (0.57%) Software-Defined Networking
6 4 (0.57%) SSH
6 4 (0.57%) VXLAN
7 3 (0.43%) 3GPP
7 3 (0.43%) NAS
7 3 (0.43%) SAN
7 3 (0.43%) WAN
8 2 (0.28%) SNMP
8 2 (0.28%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 101 (14.35%) PostgreSQL
2 63 (8.95%) NoSQL
3 49 (6.96%) DynamoDB
4 43 (6.11%) MongoDB
5 39 (5.54%) Apache Cassandra
5 39 (5.54%) Relational Database
6 34 (4.83%) Amazon RDS
7 26 (3.69%) Amazon Aurora
8 25 (3.55%) Data Lake
8 25 (3.55%) Redis
9 23 (3.27%) Big Data
10 21 (2.98%) MySQL
11 18 (2.56%) BigQuery
12 17 (2.41%) Data Warehouse
13 16 (2.27%) SQL Server
14 15 (2.13%) Elasticsearch
15 11 (1.56%) Power BI
16 10 (1.42%) Metadata
17 9 (1.28%) Amazon Redshift
17 9 (1.28%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 106 (15.06%) Git
2 98 (13.92%) Jenkins
3 66 (9.38%) GitLab
4 43 (6.11%) JUnit
5 30 (4.26%) JIRA
6 22 (3.13%) Maven
7 21 (2.98%) Cucumber
7 21 (2.98%) Mockito
8 20 (2.84%) JMeter
9 18 (2.56%) Selenium
10 15 (2.13%) SonarQube
11 14 (1.99%) DbUnit
12 13 (1.85%) Jaeger
12 13 (1.85%) jMock
12 13 (1.85%) WebDriver
13 12 (1.70%) Gatling
14 11 (1.56%) Bitbucket Server
15 8 (1.14%) Cypress.io
15 8 (1.14%) Gradle
16 6 (0.85%) LoadRunner
General
1 198 (28.13%) Social Skills
2 151 (21.45%) Finance
3 81 (11.51%) Analytical Skills
4 76 (10.80%) Banking
5 67 (9.52%) Public Sector
6 28 (3.98%) Front Office
6 28 (3.98%) Influencing Skills
7 21 (2.98%) Investment Banking
8 17 (2.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 13 (1.85%) Financial Institution
9 13 (1.85%) Telecoms
10 9 (1.28%) Legal
11 8 (1.14%) Documentation Skills
11 8 (1.14%) Marketing
12 7 (0.99%) Law
13 6 (0.85%) Retail
14 5 (0.71%) Billing
15 4 (0.57%) Manufacturing
15 4 (0.57%) Organisational Skills
15 4 (0.57%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 186 (26.42%) Senior
2 175 (24.86%) Developer
3 126 (17.90%) Architect
4 77 (10.94%) Java Developer
5 71 (10.09%) Software Engineer
6 60 (8.52%) Senior Developer
7 51 (7.24%) Technical Architect
8 49 (6.96%) Lead
9 37 (5.26%) Java Engineer
10 34 (4.83%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 30 (4.26%) Data Engineer
12 27 (3.84%) AWS Engineer
12 27 (3.84%) Full-Stack Engineer
13 25 (3.55%) Site Engineer
13 25 (3.55%) Solutions Architect
14 24 (3.41%) Python Engineer
15 21 (2.98%) Senior Software Engineer
16 19 (2.70%) Tester
17 17 (2.41%) Python Developer
17 17 (2.41%) Senior Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 184 (26.14%) Kafka
2 108 (15.34%) Spring
3 105 (14.91%) RESTful
4 104 (14.77%) REST
5 85 (12.07%) Spring Boot
6 57 (8.10%) .NET
7 54 (7.67%) Node.js
8 47 (6.68%) React
9 46 (6.53%) OpenTelemetry
10 37 (5.26%) RabbitMQ
11 36 (5.11%) gRPC
12 35 (4.97%) OAuth
13 32 (4.55%) OAuth2
14 29 (4.12%) AngularJS
15 26 (3.69%) Hibernate
16 24 (3.41%) GraphQL
17 23 (3.27%) Web Services
18 22 (3.13%) Spring Cloud
19 21 (2.98%) JPA
19 21 (2.98%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 219 (31.11%) Cloud Native
2 41 (5.82%) Distributed Architecture
3 40 (5.68%) Algorithms
4 36 (5.11%) Legacy Systems
5 25 (3.55%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 24 (3.41%) Data Structures
7 23 (3.27%) Product Ownership
8 22 (3.13%) Data Protection Act
8 22 (3.13%) Enterprise Software
9 21 (2.98%) Equities
9 21 (2.98%) Onboarding
10 18 (2.56%) Derivative
11 15 (2.13%) Fixed Income
11 15 (2.13%) Virtual Team
12 14 (1.99%) Management Information System
13 13 (1.85%) Hybrid Cloud
14 11 (1.56%) Clustering
15 10 (1.42%) Security Posture
16 9 (1.28%) AI Agents
16 9 (1.28%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 67 (9.52%) Linux
2 16 (2.27%) Windows
3 7 (0.99%) Unix
4 2 (0.28%) Debian
4 2 (0.28%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.14%) Android
5 1 (0.14%) Apple iOS
5 1 (0.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.14%) VMS
5 1 (0.14%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 380 (53.98%) CI/CD
2 373 (52.98%) Microservices
3 220 (31.25%) DevOps
4 213 (30.26%) Observability
5 199 (28.27%) Agile
6 193 (27.41%) Event-Driven
7 182 (25.85%) Software Engineering
8 171 (24.29%) Containerisation
9 146 (20.74%) Event-Driven Architecture
10 144 (20.45%) Infrastructure as Code
11 130 (18.47%) Problem-Solving
12 119 (16.90%) Test Automation
13 104 (14.77%) AI
14 91 (12.93%) Data Modelling
15 86 (12.22%) Site Reliability Engineering
16 83 (11.79%) Technical Leadership
17 77 (10.94%) API Design
18 75 (10.65%) TDD
19 73 (10.37%) Mentoring
20 69 (9.80%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 288 (40.91%) Java
2 266 (37.78%) Python
3 137 (19.46%) SQL
4 95 (13.49%) Go
5 64 (9.09%) TypeScript
6 60 (8.52%) C#
7 32 (4.55%) Bash
8 31 (4.40%) JavaScript
9 26 (3.69%) C++
9 26 (3.69%) Ruby
10 25 (3.55%) PowerShell
11 24 (3.41%) Kotlin
12 23 (3.27%) Rust
13 10 (1.42%) Bicep
13 10 (1.42%) Scala
14 9 (1.28%) PHP
15 3 (0.43%) Shell Script
16 2 (0.28%) Groovy
16 2 (0.28%) Korn
16 2 (0.28%) R
Qualifications
1 139 (19.74%) Security Cleared
2 119 (16.90%) SC Cleared
3 49 (6.96%) Degree
4 22 (3.13%) Computer Science Degree
5 20 (2.84%) BPSS Clearance
6 18 (2.56%) AWS Certification
7 15 (2.13%) DV Cleared
7 15 (2.13%) Master's Degree
8 9 (1.28%) Azure Certification
9 8 (1.14%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (0.43%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 3 (0.43%) Numerate Degree
10 3 (0.43%) PhD
11 2 (0.28%) Microsoft Certification
12 1 (0.14%) AWS Certified Developer
12 1 (0.14%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
12 1 (0.14%) CISM
12 1 (0.14%) CISSP
12 1 (0.14%) PMI Certification
12 1 (0.14%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 45 (6.39%) QA
2 25 (3.55%) Data Quality
3 12 (1.70%) PCI DSS
4 11 (1.56%) Accessibility
5 10 (1.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 8 (1.14%) GDPR
7 7 (0.99%) NIST
8 6 (0.85%) GRC
9 3 (0.43%) Actionable Recommendations
9 3 (0.43%) NCSC
9 3 (0.43%) SLA
9 3 (0.43%) SOC 2
10 2 (0.28%) Disclosure Scotland
10 2 (0.28%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.28%) HL7
11 1 (0.14%) DICOM
11 1 (0.14%) ISO 20022
11 1 (0.14%) ISO 22301
11 1 (0.14%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.14%) WCAG
System Software
1 205 (29.12%) Docker
2 11 (1.56%) Postfix
3 5 (0.71%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (0.57%) Apache ZooKeeper
5 3 (0.43%) vSphere
6 2 (0.28%) Active Directory
6 2 (0.28%) HDFS
7 1 (0.14%) NFS
Systems Management
1 257 (36.51%) Kubernetes
2 125 (17.76%) Terraform
3 97 (13.78%) Grafana
4 74 (10.51%) Prometheus
5 40 (5.68%) Ansible
6 11 (1.56%) Kibana
7 10 (1.42%) Istio
8 7 (0.99%) Kiali
9 4 (0.57%) Kustomize
9 4 (0.57%) linkerd
9 4 (0.57%) Puppet
10 3 (0.43%) Argo
10 3 (0.43%) PowerCLI
10 3 (0.43%) Progress Chef
10 3 (0.43%) Rancher
10 3 (0.43%) vCenter Server
10 3 (0.43%) vRealize
10 3 (0.43%) vRealize Orchestrator
11 2 (0.28%) Cilium
11 2 (0.28%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 49 (6.96%) Microsoft
2 28 (3.98%) Splunk
3 23 (3.27%) Oracle
4 18 (2.56%) Dynatrace
5 16 (2.27%) Atlassian
6 14 (1.99%) Databricks
6 14 (1.99%) Google
6 14 (1.99%) OpenAI
7 13 (1.85%) Jaspersoft
8 10 (1.42%) Salesforce
9 9 (1.28%) ServiceNow
10 8 (1.14%) Okta
11 7 (0.99%) IBM
12 6 (0.85%) Solace
13 5 (0.71%) AppDynamics
13 5 (0.71%) VMware
14 4 (0.57%) ION Trading
14 4 (0.57%) SAP
14 4 (0.57%) Sybase
15 3 (0.43%) Cisco