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 27 October 2025.

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

6 months to
27 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 22 13 33
Rank change year-on-year -9 +20 -15
Contract jobs requiring a Developer 66 57 17
As % of all contract jobs in Cheshire 9.59% 11.13% 4.09%
As % of the Job Titles category 10.77% 11.97% 4.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 58 39 13
10th Percentile £314 £308 £337
25th Percentile £350 £323 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £375 £374 £475
Median % change year-on-year +0.27% -21.26% -21.97%
75th Percentile £449 £472 £540
90th Percentile £488 £548 £562
North West median daily rate £425 £438 £475
% change year-on-year -2.86% -7.89% -7.09%

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 613 476 369
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 89.10% 92.97% 88.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 468 278 242
10th Percentile £270 £323 £265
25th Percentile £358 £375 £414
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £447 £470 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.89% -6.00% +11.11%
75th Percentile £538 £568 £565
90th Percentile £688 £642 £605
North West median daily rate £450 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 35 25 27
10th Percentile £12.82 £13.49 £16.68
25th Percentile £15.50 £15.36 £20.07
Median hourly rate £25.15 £22.09 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.85% -33.06% +51.52%
75th Percentile £35.38 £35.00 £36.13
90th Percentile £67.25 £43.75 £42.00
North West median hourly rate £27.00 £35.00 £34.08
% change year-on-year -22.86% +2.70% +46.83%

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 27 October 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 27 October 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 +3 57 £375 +7.14% 8
Warrington -10 4 £410 +49.09% 28
Chester -11 2 £475 -15.90% 7
Crewe - 1 £355 - 4
Developer
North West

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

For the 6 months to 27 October 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 39 (59.09%) Git
2 37 (56.06%) Java
3 28 (42.42%) Agile
4 26 (39.39%) REST
5 25 (37.88%) Spring Boot
6 24 (36.36%) JavaScript
6 24 (36.36%) JIRA
6 24 (36.36%) Problem-Solving
7 23 (34.85%) Jenkins
7 23 (34.85%) TDD
8 22 (33.33%) Spring
9 21 (31.82%) CSS
9 21 (31.82%) HTML
10 20 (30.30%) AWS
10 20 (30.30%) React
10 20 (30.30%) Unit Testing
11 19 (28.79%) CI/CD
11 19 (28.79%) SQL
12 18 (27.27%) Microservices
13 17 (25.76%) DevOps
13 17 (25.76%) Gradle
13 17 (25.76%) Test Automation
14 16 (24.24%) Scrum
15 15 (22.73%) JUnit
16 14 (21.21%) Oracle
16 14 (21.21%) Performance Optimisation
16 14 (21.21%) User Acceptance Testing
17 13 (19.70%) Azure
17 13 (19.70%) Front End Development
17 13 (19.70%) Python

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 9 (13.64%) Tomcat
2 6 (9.09%) Confluence
2 6 (9.09%) JBoss
3 4 (6.06%) Apache
4 3 (4.55%) nginx
5 1 (1.52%) Apache Spark
5 1 (1.52%) CICS
5 1 (1.52%) Mule
5 1 (1.52%) SharePoint
Business Applications
1 1 (1.52%) Dynamics NAV
1 1 (1.52%) IBM Planning Analytics
Cloud Services
1 20 (30.30%) AWS
2 13 (19.70%) Azure
3 12 (18.18%) GitHub
4 6 (9.09%) npm
4 6 (9.09%) OpenShift
5 4 (6.06%) Azure DevOps
5 4 (6.06%) Figma
6 3 (4.55%) Power Platform
7 2 (3.03%) Azure API Management
7 2 (3.03%) Azure Cosmos DB
7 2 (3.03%) Azure Service Bus
8 1 (1.52%) Amazon ECS
8 1 (1.52%) AWS CloudFormation
8 1 (1.52%) AWS Lambda
8 1 (1.52%) AWS Step Functions
8 1 (1.52%) Power Automate
8 1 (1.52%) PowerApps
8 1 (1.52%) Salesforce Service Cloud
8 1 (1.52%) Serverless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (6.06%) SQL Server
2 2 (3.03%) Hadoop
2 2 (3.03%) MySQL
3 1 (1.52%) Apache Hive
3 1 (1.52%) Big Data
3 1 (1.52%) Data Warehouse
3 1 (1.52%) DB2
3 1 (1.52%) MariaDB
3 1 (1.52%) MongoDB
3 1 (1.52%) Oracle Database
3 1 (1.52%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (1.52%) Power BI
3 1 (1.52%) Power Query
3 1 (1.52%) RDBMS
3 1 (1.52%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 39 (59.09%) Git
2 24 (36.36%) JIRA
3 23 (34.85%) Jenkins
4 17 (25.76%) Gradle
5 15 (22.73%) JUnit
6 11 (16.67%) Xcode
7 10 (15.15%) SonarQube
8 9 (13.64%) Cucumber
8 9 (13.64%) GitLab
8 9 (13.64%) Maven
8 9 (13.64%) Sonatype Nexus
9 6 (9.09%) Cypress.io
9 6 (9.09%) Grunt
9 6 (9.09%) gulp
10 4 (6.06%) Bitbucket
10 4 (6.06%) Storybook
11 3 (4.55%) Gerrit
11 3 (4.55%) Mockito
11 3 (4.55%) Selenium
11 3 (4.55%) Subversion
General
1 23 (34.85%) Banking
2 18 (27.27%) Finance
3 11 (16.67%) Analytical Skills
4 9 (13.64%) Social Skills
5 3 (4.55%) Organisational Skills
6 1 (1.52%) Public Sector
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (39.39%) REST
2 25 (37.88%) Spring Boot
3 22 (33.33%) Spring
4 21 (31.82%) CSS
4 21 (31.82%) HTML
5 20 (30.30%) React
6 11 (16.67%) Node.js
7 10 (15.15%) RESTful
8 9 (13.64%) Jest
8 9 (13.64%) Redux
9 8 (12.12%) Kafka
10 7 (10.61%) CSS3
10 7 (10.61%) HTML5
10 7 (10.61%) JMS
10 7 (10.61%) React Native
10 7 (10.61%) SOAP
10 7 (10.61%) Spring Cloud
11 6 (9.09%) Ajax
11 6 (9.09%) jQuery
11 6 (9.09%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 15 (22.73%) Mobile App
2 8 (12.12%) Mobile Banking
3 7 (10.61%) Cloud Native
3 7 (10.61%) SWIFT Messaging Network
4 5 (7.58%) Enterprise Software
5 2 (3.03%) Legacy Systems
6 1 (1.52%) Distributed Systems
6 1 (1.52%) Mainframe
6 1 (1.52%) Management Information System
6 1 (1.52%) Virtual Team
6 1 (1.52%) VSAM
Operating Systems
1 12 (18.18%) Apple iOS
2 11 (16.67%) Android
3 7 (10.61%) Linux
4 6 (9.09%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 28 (42.42%) Agile
2 24 (36.36%) Problem-Solving
3 23 (34.85%) TDD
4 20 (30.30%) Unit Testing
5 19 (28.79%) CI/CD
6 18 (27.27%) Microservices
7 17 (25.76%) DevOps
7 17 (25.76%) Test Automation
8 16 (24.24%) Scrum
9 14 (21.21%) Performance Optimisation
9 14 (21.21%) User Acceptance Testing
10 13 (19.70%) Front End Development
11 9 (13.64%) Migration
11 9 (13.64%) SDLC
12 8 (12.12%) BDD
12 8 (12.12%) Continuous Deployment
12 8 (12.12%) Design Patterns
12 8 (12.12%) Requirements Gathering
12 8 (12.12%) User Experience
12 8 (12.12%) UX Design
Programming Languages
1 37 (56.06%) Java
2 24 (36.36%) JavaScript
3 19 (28.79%) SQL
4 13 (19.70%) Python
5 7 (10.61%) C
5 7 (10.61%) C++
5 7 (10.61%) Kotlin
5 7 (10.61%) Objective-C
5 7 (10.61%) Ruby
5 7 (10.61%) Scala
5 7 (10.61%) Swift
6 6 (9.09%) Shell Script
6 6 (9.09%) TypeScript
7 3 (4.55%) Apex Code
8 1 (1.52%) C#
8 1 (1.52%) COBOL
8 1 (1.52%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 1 (1.52%) JCL
Qualifications
1 8 (12.12%) BPSS Clearance
2 4 (6.06%) Security Cleared
3 3 (4.55%) Degree
4 1 (1.52%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (19.70%) QA
2 11 (16.67%) Accessibility
3 7 (10.61%) ISO 20022
3 7 (10.61%) PSD2
3 7 (10.61%) SEPA
4 3 (4.55%) Data Quality
System Software
1 7 (10.61%) Docker
Systems Management
1 7 (10.61%) Kubernetes
2 1 (1.52%) Progress Chef
2 1 (1.52%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 14 (21.21%) Oracle
2 11 (16.67%) Microsoft
3 6 (9.09%) Perforce
4 4 (6.06%) Salesforce
5 3 (4.55%) Veracode
6 2 (3.03%) ServiceNow
7 1 (1.52%) Checkmarx
7 1 (1.52%) Cloudera
7 1 (1.52%) Cognos