Developer Contract Job Trends in Cheshire

Developer
North West > Cheshire

The median Developer daily rate in Cheshire is £373, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 5 January 2026.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 17 37
Rank change year-on-year -10 +20 -18
Contract jobs requiring a Developer 47 41 22
As % of all contract jobs in Cheshire 7.51% 9.32% 5.24%
As % of the Job Titles category 8.47% 10.51% 5.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 42 19 18
10th Percentile £326 £309 £311
25th Percentile £358 £366 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £373 £500 £487
Median % change year-on-year -25.50% +2.67% -2.60%
75th Percentile £443 £543 £539
90th Percentile £492 £558 £569
North West median daily rate £446 £450 £475
% change year-on-year -0.89% -5.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 2 0
Median hourly rate - £86.00 -
North West median hourly rate £65.50 £75.50 £77.50
% change year-on-year -13.25% -2.58% +121.43%

All Contract IT Job Roles
Cheshire

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in Cheshire. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in Cheshire with a recognized job title 555 390 373
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 88.66% 88.64% 88.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 401 230 242
10th Percentile £285 £299 £265
25th Percentile £356 £356 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% +11.11%
75th Percentile £551 £575 £550
90th Percentile £688 £654 £597
North West median daily rate £450 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% +3.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 35 18 29
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.32 £16.20
25th Percentile £18.94 £16.00 £17.14
Median hourly rate £22.85 £22.09 £23.61
Median % change year-on-year +3.44% -6.44% +43.09%
75th Percentile £34.13 £24.19 £37.25
90th Percentile £73.85 £86.00 £40.75
North West median hourly rate £40.00 £24.50 £35.50
% change year-on-year +63.27% -30.99% +52.95%

Developer
Job Vacancy Trend in Cheshire

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Developer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in Cheshire.

Developer job vacancy trend in Cheshire

Developer
Daily Rate Trend in Cheshire

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Developer job vacancies in Cheshire.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Developer job vacancies in Cheshire

Developer
Daily Rate Histogram in Cheshire

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Developer in Cheshire over the 6 months to 5 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Developer in Cheshire

Developer
Hourly Rate Trend in Cheshire

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Developer job vacancies in Cheshire.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Developer job vacancies in Cheshire

Developer
Contract Job Locations in Cheshire

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Developer within the Cheshire region over the 6 months to 5 January 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
Knutsford +1 39 £370 +3.93%
Warrington -4 4 £410 - 26
Chester -21 2 £475 -14.00% 23
Crewe - 1 - - 7
Developer
North West

Developer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Cheshire

For the 6 months to 5 January 2026, Developer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the Cheshire region featuring Developer in the job title.

1 27 (57.45%) CI/CD
1 27 (57.45%) Git
2 25 (53.19%) Agile
3 24 (51.06%) Java
4 19 (40.43%) Problem-Solving
4 19 (40.43%) Spring
4 19 (40.43%) Spring Boot
5 18 (38.30%) Azure
5 18 (38.30%) Docker
5 18 (38.30%) Kubernetes
5 18 (38.30%) Test Automation
6 17 (36.17%) AWS
7 16 (34.04%) Unit Testing
8 15 (31.91%) DevOps
8 15 (31.91%) Oracle
9 14 (29.79%) Code Quality
9 14 (29.79%) Containerisation
9 14 (29.79%) JIRA
9 14 (29.79%) REST
10 12 (25.53%) JavaScript
10 12 (25.53%) RESTful
11 11 (23.40%) Android
11 11 (23.40%) QA
11 11 (23.40%) SQL
11 11 (23.40%) TypeScript
12 10 (21.28%) Accessibility
12 10 (21.28%) Anti-Money Laundering
12 10 (21.28%) Apple iOS
12 10 (21.28%) GitHub
12 10 (21.28%) ISO 20022

Developer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Cheshire 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 2 (4.26%) Apache Spark
1 2 (4.26%) Confluence
2 1 (2.13%) Apache
2 1 (2.13%) JBoss
2 1 (2.13%) SharePoint
2 1 (2.13%) Tomcat
Business Applications
1 1 (2.13%) Dynamics NAV
Cloud Services
1 18 (38.30%) Azure
2 17 (36.17%) AWS
3 10 (21.28%) GitHub
4 5 (10.64%) npm
5 4 (8.51%) Apigee
5 4 (8.51%) Azure DevOps
5 4 (8.51%) Figma
5 4 (8.51%) GCP
5 4 (8.51%) GitHub Copilot
6 3 (6.38%) Power Platform
7 2 (4.26%) Azure API Management
7 2 (4.26%) Azure Cosmos DB
7 2 (4.26%) Azure Service Bus
8 1 (2.13%) OpenShift
8 1 (2.13%) Power Automate
8 1 (2.13%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 4 (8.51%) HTTP
1 4 (8.51%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (12.77%) MySQL
1 6 (12.77%) Relational Database
2 5 (10.64%) PostgreSQL
3 2 (4.26%) Big Data
3 2 (4.26%) Data Warehouse
3 2 (4.26%) Hadoop
3 2 (4.26%) SQL Server
4 1 (2.13%) Apache Hive
4 1 (2.13%) DataStage
4 1 (2.13%) NoSQL
4 1 (2.13%) Power BI
4 1 (2.13%) Power Query
4 1 (2.13%) RDBMS
4 1 (2.13%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 27 (57.45%) Git
2 14 (29.79%) JIRA
3 8 (17.02%) Gradle
3 8 (17.02%) Jenkins
3 8 (17.02%) Xcode
4 6 (12.77%) Cypress.io
5 4 (8.51%) GitLab
5 4 (8.51%) Postman
5 4 (8.51%) Storybook
6 3 (6.38%) ESLint
6 3 (6.38%) Grunt
6 3 (6.38%) gulp
6 3 (6.38%) SonarQube
7 2 (4.26%) git-flow
8 1 (2.13%) Android Studio
8 1 (2.13%) JUnit
8 1 (2.13%) Maven
8 1 (2.13%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 17 (36.17%) Banking
2 15 (31.91%) Finance
3 5 (10.64%) Public Sector
3 5 (10.64%) Social Skills
4 3 (6.38%) Publishing
5 2 (4.26%) Analytical Skills
6 1 (2.13%) Manufacturing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (40.43%) Spring
1 19 (40.43%) Spring Boot
2 14 (29.79%) REST
3 12 (25.53%) RESTful
4 10 (21.28%) JMS
4 10 (21.28%) React Native
5 9 (19.15%) JSON
5 9 (19.15%) React
6 8 (17.02%) CSS
6 8 (17.02%) Hibernate
6 8 (17.02%) HTML
6 8 (17.02%) OAuth
6 8 (17.02%) Redux
7 7 (14.89%) Jest
8 5 (10.64%) CSS3
8 5 (10.64%) HTML5
8 5 (10.64%) Node.js
9 4 (8.51%) D3.js
9 4 (8.51%) JAX-RS
9 4 (8.51%) Spring MVC
Miscellaneous
1 10 (21.28%) Mobile App
1 10 (21.28%) SWIFT Messaging Network
2 9 (19.15%) Cloud Native
3 3 (6.38%) Mobile Banking
4 2 (4.26%) Blog
5 1 (2.13%) Data Structures
5 1 (2.13%) Distributed Systems
5 1 (2.13%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 11 (23.40%) Android
2 10 (21.28%) Apple iOS
3 2 (4.26%) Unix
4 1 (2.13%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 27 (57.45%) CI/CD
2 25 (53.19%) Agile
3 19 (40.43%) Problem-Solving
4 18 (38.30%) Test Automation
5 16 (34.04%) Unit Testing
6 15 (31.91%) DevOps
7 14 (29.79%) Code Quality
7 14 (29.79%) Containerisation
8 10 (21.28%) Anti-Money Laundering
8 10 (21.28%) Microservices
8 10 (21.28%) TDD
8 10 (21.28%) User Acceptance Testing
9 9 (19.15%) Front End Development
10 8 (17.02%) API Design
10 8 (17.02%) Computer Science
10 8 (17.02%) Requirements Gathering
10 8 (17.02%) SDLC
11 7 (14.89%) Clean Code
11 7 (14.89%) Integration Testing
11 7 (14.89%) Performance Optimisation
Programming Languages
1 24 (51.06%) Java
2 12 (25.53%) JavaScript
3 11 (23.40%) SQL
3 11 (23.40%) TypeScript
4 4 (8.51%) Python
5 3 (6.38%) C
5 3 (6.38%) C++
5 3 (6.38%) Kotlin
5 3 (6.38%) Objective-C
5 3 (6.38%) Ruby
5 3 (6.38%) Scala
5 3 (6.38%) Swift
6 2 (4.26%) Shell Script
7 1 (2.13%) C#
7 1 (2.13%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 9 (19.15%) Degree
2 8 (17.02%) Computer Science Degree
3 7 (14.89%) Security Cleared
4 5 (10.64%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (23.40%) QA
2 10 (21.28%) Accessibility
2 10 (21.28%) ISO 20022
2 10 (21.28%) PSD2
2 10 (21.28%) SEPA
3 3 (6.38%) WCAG
System Software
1 18 (38.30%) Docker
Systems Management
1 18 (38.30%) Kubernetes
2 1 (2.13%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 15 (31.91%) Oracle
2 4 (8.51%) Splunk
3 3 (6.38%) Perforce
3 3 (6.38%) Xamarin
4 1 (2.13%) Ab Initio
4 1 (2.13%) Cloudera
4 1 (2.13%) Informatica
4 1 (2.13%) Microsoft
4 1 (2.13%) Sage
4 1 (2.13%) SAP