Programmer Contracts

Programmer
UK

The median Programmer daily rate in the UK is £534 according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months to 10 May 2024.

The first table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics including a comparison to same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
10 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 415 592 717
Rank change year-on-year +177 +125 -151
Contract jobs requiring a Programmer 168 111 122
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.39% 0.19% 0.14%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.42% 0.20% 0.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 95 42 49
10th Percentile £390 £374 £180
25th Percentile £463 £425 £338
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £534 £488 £450
Median % change year-on-year +9.44% +8.33% +11.11%
75th Percentile £539 £570 £513
90th Percentile £595 £623 £630
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £475 £438
% change year-on-year +10.53% +8.57% +25.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 38 5 9
10th Percentile £15.00 £48.05 £41.33
25th Percentile £16.25 £61.25 £51.25
Median hourly rate £19.00 £65.00 £56.00
Median % change year-on-year -70.77% +16.07% +20.43%
75th Percentile £20.07 - £68.75
90th Percentile £37.63 - £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.00 £52.33 £10.66
% change year-on-year -63.69% +390.88% -52.09%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK

The following table is for comparison with the above and includes summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. 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 the UK with a recognized job title 39,888 54,783 83,316
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.76% 94.63% 95.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,953 38,247 58,493
10th Percentile £280 £313 £313
25th Percentile £410 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £540 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.78% +2.86% +10.53%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £638
90th Percentile £750 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -2.00% +5.26% +11.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,674 1,534 2,048
10th Percentile £12.86 £14.25 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.30 £19.06 £15.75
Median hourly rate £37.34 £45.00 £23.91
Median % change year-on-year -17.02% +88.21% +6.27%
75th Percentile £61.30 £65.75 £49.25
90th Percentile £72.90 £76.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £42.50 £20.00
% change year-on-year -5.88% +112.50% +5.26%

Programmer
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured Programmer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Programmer in the UK

Programmer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Programmer.

Daily rate trend for Programmer in the UK

Programmer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Programmer over the 6 months to 10 May 2024.

Daily rate histogram for Programmer in the UK

Programmer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Programmer.

Hourly rate trend for Programmer in the UK

Programmer
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Programmer over the 6 months to 10 May 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for Programmer in the UK

Programmer
Top 13 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Programmer within the UK over the 6 months to 10 May 2024. 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 +139 145 £530 +6.00% 120
UK excluding London +123 123 £525 +10.53% 115
Midlands +95 74 £535 +7.00% 32
Work from Home +127 68 £535 +25.88% 17
West Midlands +80 66 £535 +7.00% 22
North of England +28 26 £473 -5.50% 29
Yorkshire +15 22 £473 -3.08% 8
London +72 18 £548 +5.80% 11
East of England +24 12 £300 -45.45% 9
South East +17 11 £511 +11.45% 29
East Midlands +28 8 - - 10
North West +19 2 - - 18
North East - 2 - - 3

Programmer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 10 May 2024, Programmer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Programmer in the job title.

1 67 (39.88%) Security Cleared
2 66 (39.29%) SC Cleared
2 66 (39.29%) C
3 56 (33.33%) PL/SQL
4 53 (31.55%) Visual Studio
4 53 (31.55%) PVCS
5 33 (19.64%) zOS
6 28 (16.67%) SAS
7 27 (16.07%) Social Skills
8 24 (14.29%) Mainframe
9 23 (13.69%) Problem-Solving
10 22 (13.10%) Time Sharing Option
10 22 (13.10%) JCL
10 22 (13.10%) IBM
10 22 (13.10%) ISPF
11 20 (11.90%) REXX
11 20 (11.90%) Performance Monitoring
12 19 (11.31%) Risk Management
12 19 (11.31%) OMEGAMON
13 18 (10.71%) Python
13 18 (10.71%) Broadcom
14 17 (10.12%) Splunk
14 17 (10.12%) Public Sector
14 17 (10.12%) Assembly Language
15 15 (8.93%) C++
16 13 (7.74%) RACF
16 13 (7.74%) Manufacturing
16 13 (7.74%) ACF2
17 11 (6.55%) Configuration Management
18 10 (5.95%) SQL

Programmer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 28 (16.67%) SAS
2 4 (2.38%) SharePoint
3 3 (1.79%) OpenEdge
4 2 (1.19%) Apache Spark
Business Applications
1 2 (1.19%) Global One
2 1 (0.60%) VisionPLUS
Cloud Services
1 4 (2.38%) Power Platform
1 4 (2.38%) Veeva
2 3 (1.79%) AWS
3 2 (1.19%) Azure
4 1 (0.60%) dbt
4 1 (0.60%) GCP
Communications & Networking
1 4 (2.38%) TCP/IP
2 3 (1.79%) SAN
3 1 (0.60%) HTTP
3 1 (0.60%) RTSP
3 1 (0.60%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (2.38%) Power BI
2 2 (1.19%) Apache Hive
2 2 (1.19%) Big Data
2 2 (1.19%) Data Warehouse
2 2 (1.19%) Hadoop
2 2 (1.19%) HBase
2 2 (1.19%) NoSQL
3 1 (0.60%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 53 (31.55%) PVCS
1 53 (31.55%) Visual Studio
2 3 (1.79%) Git
3 2 (1.19%) JIRA
3 2 (1.19%) Maven
3 2 (1.19%) Subversion
3 2 (1.19%) TeamCity
4 1 (0.60%) VTune
General
1 27 (16.07%) Social Skills
2 17 (10.12%) Public Sector
3 13 (7.74%) Manufacturing
4 7 (4.17%) Automotive
5 5 (2.98%) Aerospace
5 5 (2.98%) Banking
5 5 (2.98%) Electronics
6 2 (1.19%) Analytical Skills
6 2 (1.19%) Games
6 2 (1.19%) Pharmaceutical
7 1 (0.60%) Finance
7 1 (0.60%) Multimedia
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (13.10%) ISPF
2 3 (1.79%) Kafka
3 2 (1.19%) FastAPI
3 2 (1.19%) REST
3 2 (1.19%) RESTful
3 2 (1.19%) Unreal Engine
3 2 (1.19%) WebSockets
4 1 (0.60%) DirectX
4 1 (0.60%) GStreamer
4 1 (0.60%) OpenGL
4 1 (0.60%) Unity (Game Engine)
4 1 (0.60%) Vulkan
Miscellaneous
1 24 (14.29%) Mainframe
2 4 (2.38%) Self-Motivation
3 3 (1.79%) Home Automation
3 3 (1.79%) Smart Home
4 2 (1.19%) Algorithms
5 1 (0.60%) Biopharmaceutical
5 1 (0.60%) Data Centre
5 1 (0.60%) Data Protection Act
5 1 (0.60%) Device Driver
5 1 (0.60%) Embedded Systems
5 1 (0.60%) Hedge funds
5 1 (0.60%) Interactive Media
5 1 (0.60%) Ray Tracing
Operating Systems
1 33 (19.64%) zOS
2 8 (4.76%) Linux
3 5 (2.98%) Debian
3 5 (2.98%) Ubuntu
4 2 (1.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 2 (1.19%) Unix
5 1 (0.60%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 23 (13.69%) Problem-Solving
2 20 (11.90%) Performance Monitoring
3 19 (11.31%) Risk Management
4 11 (6.55%) Configuration Management
5 6 (3.57%) Agile
5 6 (3.57%) Validation
6 5 (2.98%) Preventative Maintenance
6 5 (2.98%) Quality Management
6 5 (2.98%) Unit Testing
7 4 (2.38%) Business Intelligence
7 4 (2.38%) Data Collection
7 4 (2.38%) Data Management
8 3 (1.79%) CAD
8 3 (1.79%) CI/CD
8 3 (1.79%) Customer Service
8 3 (1.79%) Data Engineering
8 3 (1.79%) Data Modelling
8 3 (1.79%) ITIL
8 3 (1.79%) Prototyping
8 3 (1.79%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
Programming Languages
1 66 (39.29%) C
2 56 (33.33%) PL/SQL
3 22 (13.10%) JCL
4 20 (11.90%) REXX
5 18 (10.71%) Python
6 17 (10.12%) Assembly Language
7 15 (8.93%) C++
8 10 (5.95%) SQL
9 9 (5.36%) R
10 5 (2.98%) C#
11 4 (2.38%) Java
11 4 (2.38%) JavaScript
11 4 (2.38%) VB
12 2 (1.19%) CLIST
12 2 (1.19%) COBOL
12 2 (1.19%) Korn
12 2 (1.19%) Micro Focus COBOL
12 2 (1.19%) Perl
12 2 (1.19%) Scala
12 2 (1.19%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 67 (39.88%) Security Cleared
2 66 (39.29%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (3.57%) CDISC
2 2 (1.19%) QA
3 1 (0.60%) GxP
System Software
1 22 (13.10%) Time Sharing Option
2 13 (7.74%) ACF2
2 13 (7.74%) RACF
3 2 (1.19%) HDFS
4 1 (0.60%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 19 (11.31%) OMEGAMON
2 2 (1.19%) Control-M
2 2 (1.19%) Hadoop YARN
3 1 (0.60%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 22 (13.10%) IBM
2 18 (10.71%) Broadcom
3 17 (10.12%) Splunk
4 7 (4.17%) Red Hat
5 6 (3.57%) Microsoft
6 4 (2.38%) CA
7 3 (1.79%) Oracle
7 3 (1.79%) VMware
8 2 (1.19%) Micro Focus
8 2 (1.19%) OpenAI
8 2 (1.19%) Sybase
9 1 (0.60%) Cisco
9 1 (0.60%) Databricks
9 1 (0.60%) Dell
9 1 (0.60%) Google
9 1 (0.60%) Palo Alto