Developer Contract Job Trends in Cheshire

Developer
North West > Cheshire

The median Developer daily rate in Cheshire is £375, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 6 December 2025.

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

6 months to
6 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 20 17 41
Rank change year-on-year -3 +24 -22
Contract jobs requiring a Developer 68 47 18
As % of all contract jobs in Cheshire 10.03% 9.85% 4.68%
As % of the Job Titles category 11.28% 11.06% 5.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 63 26 14
10th Percentile £313 £308 £425
25th Percentile £357 £323 £453
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £375 £391 £487
Median % change year-on-year -4.09% -19.71% -11.45%
75th Percentile £447 £538 £532
90th Percentile £484 £552 £540
North West median daily rate £425 £450 £475
% change year-on-year -5.56% -5.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 2 0
Median hourly rate - £86.00 -
North West median hourly rate £60.69 £65.00 £75.00
% change year-on-year -6.63% -13.33% +102.70%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
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 603 425 333
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 88.94% 89.10% 86.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 451 245 219
10th Percentile £273 £323 £262
25th Percentile £358 £375 £422
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £486 £500
Median % change year-on-year -7.41% -2.80% +11.11%
75th Percentile £551 £572 £550
90th Percentile £688 £639 £588
North West median daily rate £450 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% +2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 41 25 24
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.18 £17.14
25th Percentile £19.00 £16.00 £17.72
Median hourly rate £23.50 £22.09 £28.31
Median % change year-on-year +6.38% -21.96% +48.97%
75th Percentile £36.75 £35.00 £35.00
90th Percentile £67.25 £69.10 £40.00
North West median hourly rate £29.60 £27.13 £35.00
% change year-on-year +9.12% -22.50% +74.43%

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 6 December 2025.

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 6 December 2025. 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 +4 59 £375 +8.70% 3
Warrington -12 4 £410 - 14
Chester -14 2 £475 -15.90% 8
Crewe - 1 - - 16
Developer
North West

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

For the 6 months to 6 December 2025, 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 41 (60.29%) Java
2 40 (58.82%) Git
3 34 (50.00%) Agile
4 33 (48.53%) Spring Boot
5 32 (47.06%) CI/CD
6 30 (44.12%) Spring
7 28 (41.18%) REST
8 27 (39.71%) Problem-Solving
9 24 (35.29%) JIRA
9 24 (35.29%) Microservices
9 24 (35.29%) Test Automation
10 22 (32.35%) AWS
10 22 (32.35%) TDD
11 21 (30.88%) SQL
12 20 (29.41%) React
12 20 (29.41%) Unit Testing
13 19 (27.94%) DevOps
13 19 (27.94%) Jenkins
13 19 (27.94%) Oracle
14 18 (26.47%) Docker
14 18 (26.47%) JavaScript
14 18 (26.47%) Kubernetes
15 17 (25.00%) QA
15 17 (25.00%) RESTful
15 17 (25.00%) User Acceptance Testing
16 16 (23.53%) Azure
16 16 (23.53%) GitHub
17 14 (20.59%) Containerisation
17 14 (20.59%) CSS
17 14 (20.59%) HTML

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 5 (7.35%) JBoss
1 5 (7.35%) Tomcat
2 3 (4.41%) Confluence
3 2 (2.94%) Apache Spark
4 1 (1.47%) Apache
4 1 (1.47%) SharePoint
Business Applications
1 1 (1.47%) Dynamics NAV
Cloud Services
1 22 (32.35%) AWS
2 16 (23.53%) Azure
2 16 (23.53%) GitHub
3 8 (11.76%) npm
4 5 (7.35%) OpenShift
5 4 (5.88%) Apigee
5 4 (5.88%) Azure DevOps
5 4 (5.88%) Figma
5 4 (5.88%) GCP
5 4 (5.88%) GitHub Copilot
6 3 (4.41%) Power Platform
7 2 (2.94%) Azure API Management
7 2 (2.94%) Azure Cosmos DB
7 2 (2.94%) Azure Service Bus
8 1 (1.47%) Power Automate
8 1 (1.47%) PowerApps
8 1 (1.47%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 4 (5.88%) HTTP
1 4 (5.88%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (8.82%) MySQL
1 6 (8.82%) Relational Database
2 5 (7.35%) PostgreSQL
2 5 (7.35%) SQL Server
3 2 (2.94%) Big Data
3 2 (2.94%) Data Warehouse
3 2 (2.94%) Hadoop
4 1 (1.47%) Apache Hive
4 1 (1.47%) DataStage
4 1 (1.47%) NoSQL
4 1 (1.47%) Oracle Database
4 1 (1.47%) Power BI
4 1 (1.47%) Power Query
4 1 (1.47%) RDBMS
4 1 (1.47%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 40 (58.82%) Git
2 24 (35.29%) JIRA
3 19 (27.94%) Jenkins
4 14 (20.59%) JUnit
5 13 (19.12%) GitLab
6 12 (17.65%) Gradle
7 9 (13.24%) Cucumber
7 9 (13.24%) Cypress.io
7 9 (13.24%) SonarQube
8 8 (11.76%) Maven
8 8 (11.76%) Sonatype Nexus
8 8 (11.76%) Xcode
9 6 (8.82%) Grunt
9 6 (8.82%) gulp
10 4 (5.88%) Postman
10 4 (5.88%) Storybook
11 3 (4.41%) Bitbucket
11 3 (4.41%) ESLint
11 3 (4.41%) Mockito
11 3 (4.41%) Selenium
General
1 21 (30.88%) Banking
2 20 (29.41%) Finance
3 10 (14.71%) Analytical Skills
4 8 (11.76%) Social Skills
5 5 (7.35%) Public Sector
6 3 (4.41%) Organisational Skills
6 3 (4.41%) Publishing
7 1 (1.47%) Manufacturing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (48.53%) Spring Boot
2 30 (44.12%) Spring
3 28 (41.18%) REST
4 20 (29.41%) React
5 17 (25.00%) RESTful
6 14 (20.59%) CSS
6 14 (20.59%) HTML
7 13 (19.12%) Jest
8 12 (17.65%) Redux
9 11 (16.18%) Hibernate
9 11 (16.18%) Node.js
10 10 (14.71%) JMS
10 10 (14.71%) JSON
10 10 (14.71%) React Native
11 8 (11.76%) OAuth
12 7 (10.29%) Kafka
13 6 (8.82%) Ajax
13 6 (8.82%) CSS3
13 6 (8.82%) LESS
13 6 (8.82%) Sass
Miscellaneous
1 10 (14.71%) Mobile App
1 10 (14.71%) SWIFT Messaging Network
2 9 (13.24%) Cloud Native
3 4 (5.88%) Enterprise Software
4 3 (4.41%) Mobile Banking
5 2 (2.94%) Blog
5 2 (2.94%) Legacy Systems
6 1 (1.47%) Data Structures
6 1 (1.47%) Distributed Systems
6 1 (1.47%) Management Information System
6 1 (1.47%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 11 (16.18%) Android
2 10 (14.71%) Apple iOS
3 6 (8.82%) Unix
4 5 (7.35%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 34 (50.00%) Agile
2 32 (47.06%) CI/CD
3 27 (39.71%) Problem-Solving
4 24 (35.29%) Microservices
4 24 (35.29%) Test Automation
5 22 (32.35%) TDD
6 20 (29.41%) Unit Testing
7 19 (27.94%) DevOps
8 17 (25.00%) User Acceptance Testing
9 14 (20.59%) Containerisation
10 13 (19.12%) Code Quality
10 13 (19.12%) Performance Optimisation
11 12 (17.65%) Requirements Gathering
11 12 (17.65%) Scrum
11 12 (17.65%) SDLC
12 10 (14.71%) Anti-Money Laundering
12 10 (14.71%) Front End Development
13 9 (13.24%) AI
13 9 (13.24%) Design Patterns
13 9 (13.24%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 41 (60.29%) Java
2 21 (30.88%) SQL
3 18 (26.47%) JavaScript
4 9 (13.24%) TypeScript
5 8 (11.76%) Python
6 6 (8.82%) Shell Script
7 3 (4.41%) Apex Code
7 3 (4.41%) C
7 3 (4.41%) C++
7 3 (4.41%) Kotlin
7 3 (4.41%) Objective-C
7 3 (4.41%) Ruby
7 3 (4.41%) Scala
7 3 (4.41%) Swift
8 1 (1.47%) C#
8 1 (1.47%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 10 (14.71%) Degree
2 9 (13.24%) BPSS Clearance
2 9 (13.24%) Computer Science Degree
3 8 (11.76%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (25.00%) QA
2 13 (19.12%) Accessibility
3 10 (14.71%) ISO 20022
3 10 (14.71%) PSD2
3 10 (14.71%) SEPA
4 3 (4.41%) Data Quality
4 3 (4.41%) WCAG
System Software
1 18 (26.47%) Docker
Systems Management
1 18 (26.47%) Kubernetes
2 1 (1.47%) Single Sign-On
2 1 (1.47%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 19 (27.94%) Oracle
2 10 (14.71%) Microsoft
3 6 (8.82%) Perforce
4 4 (5.88%) Salesforce
4 4 (5.88%) Splunk
5 3 (4.41%) Veracode
5 3 (4.41%) Xamarin
6 2 (2.94%) ServiceNow
7 1 (1.47%) Ab Initio
7 1 (1.47%) Cloudera
7 1 (1.47%) Informatica
7 1 (1.47%) Sage
7 1 (1.47%) SAP