API Design Contract Job Trends in England

API Design
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring API Design skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 19 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 304 355 479
Rank change year-on-year +51 +124 +8
Contract jobs citing API Design 247 150 84
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.79% 0.52% 0.22%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.88% 0.58% 0.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 150 88 63
10th Percentile £331 £400 £475
25th Percentile £403 £450 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £575 £538
Median % change year-on-year -12.61% +6.98% -14.68%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £644
90th Percentile £750 £777 £825
UK median daily rate £491 £575 £534
% change year-on-year -14.57% +7.68% -15.24%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 1 1
10th Percentile £61.15 - -
25th Percentile £63.63 £51.25 £64.25
Median hourly rate £109.00 £52.50 £65.50
Median % change year-on-year +107.62% -19.85% -
75th Percentile £119.00 £53.75 £66.75
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate £109.00 £52.50 £65.50
% change year-on-year +107.62% -19.85% -

All Process and Methodology Skills
England

API Design falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 27,932 25,643 33,123
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 88.81% 88.51% 88.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,758 15,859 22,544
10th Percentile £300 £310 £313
25th Percentile £406 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £544
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% -3.49% -1.09%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,818 849 1,407
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.62 £14.68
25th Percentile £17.88 £20.75 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +19.70%
75th Percentile £54.56 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.90 £74.89 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £43.33
% change year-on-year -22.62% -24.99% +23.80%

API Design
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing API Design relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

API Design job vacancy trend in England

API Design
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing API Design.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing API Design

API Design
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing API Design in England over the 6 months to 19 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for API Design in England

API Design
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing API Design.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing API Design

API Design
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing API Design in England over the 6 months to 19 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for API Design in England

API Design
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing API Design within the England region over the 6 months to 19 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
London +30 145 £575 -4.17% 19
North of England -25 43 £463 -11.78% 26
North West -1 31 £402 -10.67% 17
Midlands -33 12 £358 -44.92% 8
East of England -10 11 £560 -25.33% 3
South West - 11 £600 - 2
Yorkshire -44 9 £475 -13.41% 7
South East -42 8 £513 +25.31% 12
West Midlands -30 7 £381 -41.35% 8
East Midlands - 5 £358 -
North East -3 4 £538 - 3
API Design
UK

API Design
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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 (3.24%) Anypoint
2 7 (2.83%) Confluence
3 4 (1.62%) Apache
3 4 (1.62%) Mule
4 3 (1.21%) Apache Airflow
4 3 (1.21%) CMS
4 3 (1.21%) OpenStack
5 2 (0.81%) Mule ESB
6 1 (0.40%) Documentum
6 1 (0.40%) Drupal
6 1 (0.40%) nginx
6 1 (0.40%) Oracle Service Bus
6 1 (0.40%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 1 (0.40%) SharePoint
6 1 (0.40%) WebLogic
6 1 (0.40%) WordPress
Applications
1 4 (1.62%) Microsoft Excel
1 4 (1.62%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.40%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 4 (1.62%) Endur
2 2 (0.81%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.81%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.40%) Exchequer
3 1 (0.40%) Maximo
3 1 (0.40%) Oracle BPM
3 1 (0.40%) TrackWise
Cloud Services
1 103 (41.70%) AWS
2 84 (34.01%) Azure
3 50 (20.24%) GitHub
4 40 (16.19%) GCP
4 40 (16.19%) Serverless
5 28 (11.34%) SaaS
6 21 (8.50%) AWS Lambda
7 20 (8.10%) PaaS
8 19 (7.69%) Apigee
9 17 (6.88%) Amazon ECS
10 16 (6.48%) Azure AKS
10 16 (6.48%) Azure DevOps
10 16 (6.48%) GitHub Copilot
11 14 (5.67%) Azure Functions
12 12 (4.86%) Azure API Management
13 11 (4.45%) AWS Fargate
13 11 (4.45%) GitHub Actions
14 10 (4.05%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 9 (3.64%) Amazon EKS
15 9 (3.64%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 6 (2.43%) Firewall
1 6 (2.43%) HTTP
2 5 (2.02%) SSL
3 4 (1.62%) HTTPS
4 2 (0.81%) AMQP
4 2 (0.81%) DSL
4 2 (0.81%) VoIP
4 2 (0.81%) VPN
5 1 (0.40%) Asterisk PBX
5 1 (0.40%) FTP
5 1 (0.40%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (13.36%) NoSQL
2 31 (12.55%) PostgreSQL
3 19 (7.69%) Relational Database
4 16 (6.48%) DynamoDB
5 13 (5.26%) MongoDB
5 13 (5.26%) MySQL
5 13 (5.26%) SQL Server
6 11 (4.45%) Redis
7 8 (3.24%) Amazon Aurora
8 7 (2.83%) Amazon RDS
9 6 (2.43%) RDBMS
10 5 (2.02%) BigQuery
11 4 (1.62%) DocumentDB
11 4 (1.62%) Metadata
12 3 (1.21%) Airbyte
13 2 (0.81%) Amazon Redshift
13 2 (0.81%) Azure SQL Database
14 1 (0.40%) GIS
14 1 (0.40%) Oracle Database
14 1 (0.40%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 42 (17.00%) Jenkins
2 37 (14.98%) Git
3 15 (6.07%) JIRA
4 14 (5.67%) GitLab
5 9 (3.64%) Gradle
5 9 (3.64%) Postman
6 7 (2.83%) Maven
7 6 (2.43%) JUnit
7 6 (2.43%) MLflow
7 6 (2.43%) SonarQube
7 6 (2.43%) SpecFlow
8 5 (2.02%) SonarLint
9 4 (1.62%) Cypress.io
9 4 (1.62%) Jaeger
10 3 (1.21%) Cucumber
10 3 (1.21%) Spinnaker
11 2 (0.81%) Bitbucket
11 2 (0.81%) Mockito
11 2 (0.81%) REST Assured
11 2 (0.81%) Selenium
General
1 73 (29.55%) Social Skills
2 51 (20.65%) Finance
3 35 (14.17%) Public Sector
4 30 (12.15%) Analytical Skills
5 22 (8.91%) Banking
6 10 (4.05%) Documentation Skills
7 6 (2.43%) Back Office
7 6 (2.43%) Telecoms
8 4 (1.62%) Publishing
9 3 (1.21%) Automotive
9 3 (1.21%) Financial Institution
10 2 (0.81%) Influencing Skills
10 2 (0.81%) Law
10 2 (0.81%) Legal
10 2 (0.81%) Marketing
10 2 (0.81%) Retail
10 2 (0.81%) Retail Banking
11 1 (0.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.40%) Organisational Skills
11 1 (0.40%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 70 (28.34%) Developer
2 68 (27.53%) Architect
3 54 (21.86%) Senior
4 26 (10.53%) Technical Architect
5 23 (9.31%) Solutions Architect
6 22 (8.91%) Java Developer
7 20 (8.10%) Senior Developer
8 13 (5.26%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
8 13 (5.26%) Consultant
8 13 (5.26%) Lead
8 13 (5.26%) Technical Consultant
9 12 (4.86%) Senior Consultant
9 12 (4.86%) Senior Data Warehouse Specialist
9 12 (4.86%) Senior Technical Consultant
9 12 (4.86%) Senior Technical Specialist
9 12 (4.86%) Senior Unix Technical Specialist
9 12 (4.86%) Technical Specialist
10 10 (4.05%) Analyst
10 10 (4.05%) Business Analyst
10 10 (4.05%) Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 82 (33.20%) RESTful
2 52 (21.05%) Spring Boot
3 50 (20.24%) Node.js
4 46 (18.62%) Spring
5 42 (17.00%) REST
6 35 (14.17%) GraphQL
7 33 (13.36%) OAuth
8 29 (11.74%) Kafka
9 27 (10.93%) OAuth2
10 26 (10.53%) .NET
10 26 (10.53%) React
11 23 (9.31%) Playwright
12 22 (8.91%) AngularJS
13 21 (8.50%) JWT
14 19 (7.69%) JSON
15 18 (7.29%) Swagger
16 16 (6.48%) Hibernate
16 16 (6.48%) Middleware
16 16 (6.48%) XML
17 15 (6.07%) Vitest
Miscellaneous
1 48 (19.43%) Cloud Native
2 22 (8.91%) Distributed Systems
3 20 (8.10%) Product Ownership
4 11 (4.45%) Algorithms
5 9 (3.64%) Mobile App
6 8 (3.24%) Legacy Systems
7 6 (2.43%) N-Tier
7 6 (2.43%) Onboarding
8 5 (2.02%) Management Information System
9 4 (1.62%) Analytical Mindset
9 4 (1.62%) Greenfield Project
9 4 (1.62%) Grid Computing
10 3 (1.21%) Low-Code
10 3 (1.21%) Security Posture
10 3 (1.21%) Virtual Team
11 2 (0.81%) Digital Wallet
11 2 (0.81%) Enterprise Software
11 2 (0.81%) Hybrid Cloud
12 1 (0.40%) IoT
12 1 (0.40%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 21 (8.50%) Linux
2 7 (2.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 7 (2.83%) Ubuntu
3 3 (1.21%) Apple iOS
4 2 (0.81%) Android
4 2 (0.81%) Unix
4 2 (0.81%) Windows
5 1 (0.40%) CentOS
5 1 (0.40%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 136 (55.06%) CI/CD
2 123 (49.80%) Agile
3 120 (48.58%) Microservices
4 96 (38.87%) DevOps
5 85 (34.41%) Problem-Solving
6 77 (31.17%) Containerisation
7 69 (27.94%) Test Automation
8 52 (21.05%) AI
8 52 (21.05%) Mentoring
9 46 (18.62%) Event-Driven
10 40 (16.19%) API Management
11 39 (15.79%) Software Engineering
12 37 (14.98%) Event-Driven Architecture
12 37 (14.98%) Machine Learning
13 34 (13.77%) Infrastructure as Code
14 33 (13.36%) API Integration
14 33 (13.36%) Technical Leadership
15 31 (12.55%) Full-Stack Development
15 31 (12.55%) Observability
16 29 (11.74%) Design Patterns
Programming Languages
1 78 (31.58%) Java
2 61 (24.70%) Python
3 46 (18.62%) SQL
4 38 (15.38%) TypeScript
5 22 (8.91%) C#
6 17 (6.88%) JavaScript
7 13 (5.26%) Kotlin
8 5 (2.02%) Bicep
9 4 (1.62%) Bash
9 4 (1.62%) PowerShell
9 4 (1.62%) Ruby
9 4 (1.62%) Rust
10 2 (0.81%) DataWeave
10 2 (0.81%) Korn
10 2 (0.81%) Objective-C
10 2 (0.81%) PL/SQL
10 2 (0.81%) Scala
10 2 (0.81%) Shell Script
10 2 (0.81%) Swift
11 1 (0.40%) Go
Qualifications
1 58 (23.48%) Security Cleared
2 41 (16.60%) Degree
3 37 (14.98%) SC Cleared
4 23 (9.31%) Computer Science Degree
5 12 (4.86%) MCP
6 11 (4.45%) AWS Certification
7 10 (4.05%) Azure Certification
8 7 (2.83%) BPSS Clearance
8 7 (2.83%) TOGAF Certification
9 3 (1.21%) AWS Certified Developer
10 2 (0.81%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 1 (0.40%) CBAP
11 1 (0.40%) CSPO
11 1 (0.40%) IIBA
11 1 (0.40%) Numerate Degree
11 1 (0.40%) SAP Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (4.45%) EU AI Act
2 10 (4.05%) NIST
2 10 (4.05%) QA
3 9 (3.64%) GDPR
4 7 (2.83%) Accessibility
5 4 (1.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 3 (1.21%) PSD2
7 2 (0.81%) Cyber Essentials
7 2 (0.81%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.81%) WCAG
8 1 (0.40%) ISO 20022
8 1 (0.40%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 86 (34.82%) Docker
2 1 (0.40%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 96 (38.87%) Kubernetes
2 46 (18.62%) Terraform
3 13 (5.26%) Ansible
4 7 (2.83%) SCOM
5 6 (2.43%) Prometheus
6 5 (2.02%) Grafana
7 4 (1.62%) Kiali
8 3 (1.21%) Istio
9 2 (0.81%) CloudHub
9 2 (0.81%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.40%) Cilium
10 1 (0.40%) Podman
10 1 (0.40%) Puppet
Vendors
1 30 (12.15%) Microsoft
2 15 (6.07%) MuleSoft
3 13 (5.26%) Oracle
4 11 (4.45%) Foundry
5 9 (3.64%) Salesforce
5 9 (3.64%) Splunk
6 8 (3.24%) Databricks
6 8 (3.24%) Google
7 6 (2.43%) Gigya
8 4 (1.62%) Axway
8 4 (1.62%) SAP
8 4 (1.62%) ServiceNow
8 4 (1.62%) webMethods
9 3 (1.21%) Atlassian
9 3 (1.21%) Confluent
9 3 (1.21%) Dynatrace
9 3 (1.21%) Hitachi
9 3 (1.21%) OpenAI
10 2 (0.81%) NVIDIA
10 2 (0.81%) Pega