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 20 November 2025.

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

6 months to
20 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 19 16 38
Rank change year-on-year -3 +22 -21
Contract jobs requiring a Developer 74 53 18
As % of all contract jobs in Cheshire 10.54% 10.82% 4.56%
As % of the Job Titles category 11.82% 11.99% 5.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 66 34 14
10th Percentile £313 £308 £425
25th Percentile £353 £325 £453
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £373 £379 £487
Median % change year-on-year -1.59% -22.28% -21.13%
75th Percentile £445 £519 £532
90th Percentile £479 £551 £540
North West median daily rate £425 £448 £475
% change year-on-year -5.03% -5.79% -5.00%

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 626 442 345
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 89.17% 90.20% 87.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 474 254 223
10th Percentile £271 £323 £265
25th Percentile £358 £376 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £449 £477 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.82% -4.70% +11.11%
75th Percentile £551 £567 £553
90th Percentile £688 £639 £595
North West median daily rate £450 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% +4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 43 26 24
10th Percentile £15.50 £13.49 £17.25
25th Percentile £18.87 £15.36 £20.07
Median hourly rate £22.85 £22.09 £33.54
Median % change year-on-year +3.44% -34.14% +56.00%
75th Percentile £35.38 £35.00 £35.56
90th Percentile £67.25 £43.75 £43.50
North West median hourly rate £29.60 £31.52 £34.08
% change year-on-year -6.09% -7.51% +70.40%

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 20 November 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 20 November 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 64 £370 +4.96% 2
Warrington -11 4 £410 - 10
Chester -11 2 £475 -15.90% 8
Crewe - 2 £355 - 8
Developer
North West

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

For the 6 months to 20 November 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 44 (59.46%) Git
2 41 (55.41%) Java
3 36 (48.65%) Agile
4 30 (40.54%) Spring Boot
5 29 (39.19%) CI/CD
6 27 (36.49%) Problem-Solving
6 27 (36.49%) REST
6 27 (36.49%) Spring
7 25 (33.78%) JavaScript
7 25 (33.78%) Jenkins
7 25 (33.78%) JIRA
7 25 (33.78%) TDD
8 24 (32.43%) Test Automation
9 23 (31.08%) React
10 22 (29.73%) Unit Testing
11 21 (28.38%) AWS
11 21 (28.38%) CSS
11 21 (28.38%) HTML
11 21 (28.38%) Microservices
11 21 (28.38%) SQL
12 19 (25.68%) DevOps
13 17 (22.97%) Oracle
14 16 (21.62%) Gradle
14 16 (21.62%) QA
14 16 (21.62%) Scrum
14 16 (21.62%) User Acceptance Testing
15 15 (20.27%) Android
15 15 (20.27%) Apple iOS
15 15 (20.27%) Azure
15 15 (20.27%) Docker

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 8 (10.81%) Tomcat
2 6 (8.11%) Confluence
3 5 (6.76%) JBoss
4 4 (5.41%) Apache
5 3 (4.05%) nginx
6 1 (1.35%) Apache Spark
6 1 (1.35%) SharePoint
Business Applications
1 1 (1.35%) Dynamics NAV
1 1 (1.35%) IBM Planning Analytics
Cloud Services
1 21 (28.38%) AWS
2 15 (20.27%) Azure
2 15 (20.27%) GitHub
3 8 (10.81%) npm
4 5 (6.76%) OpenShift
5 4 (5.41%) Azure DevOps
5 4 (5.41%) Figma
5 4 (5.41%) Power Platform
6 3 (4.05%) Apigee
6 3 (4.05%) GCP
6 3 (4.05%) GitHub Copilot
7 2 (2.70%) Azure API Management
7 2 (2.70%) Azure Cosmos DB
7 2 (2.70%) Azure Service Bus
8 1 (1.35%) Power Automate
8 1 (1.35%) PowerApps
8 1 (1.35%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 3 (4.05%) HTTP
1 3 (4.05%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (6.76%) MySQL
1 5 (6.76%) Relational Database
1 5 (6.76%) SQL Server
2 4 (5.41%) PostgreSQL
3 2 (2.70%) Power BI
3 2 (2.70%) Power Query
4 1 (1.35%) Apache Hive
4 1 (1.35%) Big Data
4 1 (1.35%) Data Warehouse
4 1 (1.35%) Hadoop
4 1 (1.35%) Oracle Database
4 1 (1.35%) RDBMS
4 1 (1.35%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 44 (59.46%) Git
2 25 (33.78%) Jenkins
2 25 (33.78%) JIRA
3 16 (21.62%) Gradle
4 14 (18.92%) JUnit
5 12 (16.22%) GitLab
5 12 (16.22%) Xcode
6 9 (12.16%) Cucumber
6 9 (12.16%) Cypress.io
6 9 (12.16%) SonarQube
7 8 (10.81%) Maven
7 8 (10.81%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (8.11%) Grunt
8 6 (8.11%) gulp
9 4 (5.41%) Storybook
10 3 (4.05%) Bitbucket
10 3 (4.05%) ESLint
10 3 (4.05%) Postman
10 3 (4.05%) Selenium
10 3 (4.05%) Subversion
General
1 26 (35.14%) Banking
2 20 (27.03%) Finance
3 11 (14.86%) Analytical Skills
4 9 (12.16%) Social Skills
5 4 (5.41%) Public Sector
6 3 (4.05%) Organisational Skills
6 3 (4.05%) Publishing
7 1 (1.35%) Manufacturing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (40.54%) Spring Boot
2 27 (36.49%) REST
2 27 (36.49%) Spring
3 23 (31.08%) React
4 21 (28.38%) CSS
4 21 (28.38%) HTML
5 14 (18.92%) RESTful
6 13 (17.57%) Jest
6 13 (17.57%) React Native
7 12 (16.22%) Redux
8 11 (14.86%) Node.js
9 9 (12.16%) Hibernate
9 9 (12.16%) JMS
9 9 (12.16%) JSON
10 7 (9.46%) CSS3
10 7 (9.46%) HTML5
10 7 (9.46%) Kafka
10 7 (9.46%) OAuth
11 6 (8.11%) LESS
11 6 (8.11%) Sass
Miscellaneous
1 18 (24.32%) Mobile App
2 9 (12.16%) SWIFT Messaging Network
3 8 (10.81%) Cloud Native
3 8 (10.81%) Mobile Banking
4 5 (6.76%) Enterprise Software
5 2 (2.70%) Blog
5 2 (2.70%) Legacy Systems
6 1 (1.35%) Data Structures
6 1 (1.35%) Distributed Systems
6 1 (1.35%) Management Information System
6 1 (1.35%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 15 (20.27%) Android
1 15 (20.27%) Apple iOS
2 5 (6.76%) Linux
2 5 (6.76%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 36 (48.65%) Agile
2 29 (39.19%) CI/CD
3 27 (36.49%) Problem-Solving
4 25 (33.78%) TDD
5 24 (32.43%) Test Automation
6 22 (29.73%) Unit Testing
7 21 (28.38%) Microservices
8 19 (25.68%) DevOps
9 16 (21.62%) Scrum
9 16 (21.62%) User Acceptance Testing
10 14 (18.92%) Front End Development
10 14 (18.92%) Performance Optimisation
11 12 (16.22%) Code Quality
12 11 (14.86%) Containerisation
12 11 (14.86%) Requirements Gathering
12 11 (14.86%) SDLC
13 9 (12.16%) AI
13 9 (12.16%) Anti-Money Laundering
13 9 (12.16%) Design Patterns
13 9 (12.16%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 41 (55.41%) Java
2 25 (33.78%) JavaScript
3 21 (28.38%) SQL
4 12 (16.22%) Python
5 9 (12.16%) TypeScript
6 7 (9.46%) C
6 7 (9.46%) C++
6 7 (9.46%) Kotlin
6 7 (9.46%) Objective-C
6 7 (9.46%) Ruby
6 7 (9.46%) Scala
6 7 (9.46%) Swift
7 5 (6.76%) Shell Script
8 3 (4.05%) Apex Code
9 1 (1.35%) C#
9 1 (1.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 1 (1.35%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 9 (12.16%) BPSS Clearance
1 9 (12.16%) Degree
2 7 (9.46%) Computer Science Degree
2 7 (9.46%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (21.62%) QA
2 14 (18.92%) Accessibility
3 9 (12.16%) ISO 20022
3 9 (12.16%) PSD2
3 9 (12.16%) SEPA
4 3 (4.05%) Data Quality
4 3 (4.05%) WCAG
System Software
1 15 (20.27%) Docker
Systems Management
1 15 (20.27%) Kubernetes
2 1 (1.35%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 17 (22.97%) Oracle
2 11 (14.86%) Microsoft
3 6 (8.11%) Perforce
4 4 (5.41%) Salesforce
5 3 (4.05%) Splunk
5 3 (4.05%) Veracode
5 3 (4.05%) Xamarin
6 2 (2.70%) ServiceNow
7 1 (1.35%) Cloudera
7 1 (1.35%) Cognos
7 1 (1.35%) Sage
7 1 (1.35%) SAP