Consultant Contract Job Trends in England

Consultant
UK > England

The median Consultant daily rate in England is £550, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 13 October 2026.

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

6 months to
13 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 33 28 29
Rank change year-on-year -5 +1 +5
Contract jobs requiring a Consultant 2,634 1,854 2,020
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.66% 6.64% 6.32%
As % of the Job Titles category 6.15% 7.29% 6.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,541 1,141 1,143
10th Percentile £413 £413 £408
25th Percentile £463 £492 £468
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £570 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.51% +3.64% -
75th Percentile £660 £671 £650
90th Percentile £750 £750 £765
UK median daily rate £550 £550 £550
Number of hourly rates quoted 69 26 22
10th Percentile £36.15 £28.52 £55.00
25th Percentile £45.00 £44.01 £61.53
Median hourly rate £74.00 £77.50 £62.30
Median % change year-on-year -4.52% +24.40% -2.88%
75th Percentile £85.00 £81.25 £72.59
90th Percentile £90.75 £86.63 £74.99
UK median hourly rate £74.00 £77.50 £62.30
% change year-on-year -4.52% +24.40% -5.61%

All Contract IT Job Roles
England

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in England. 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 England with a recognized job title 42,832 25,432 29,773
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.01% 91.11% 93.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,187 16,375 18,173
10th Percentile £325 £275 £300
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -3.23%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.47%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,752 1,439 1,252
10th Percentile £14.50 £13.80 £15.10
25th Percentile £20.29 £17.31 £21.25
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -6.89%
75th Percentile £67.99 £50.75 £67.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.71 £25.15 £41.27
% change year-on-year +65.84% -39.05% -8.30%

Consultant
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Consultant' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

Consultant job vacancy trend in England

Consultant
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Consultant job vacancies in England.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Consultant job vacancies in England

Consultant
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Consultant in England over the 6 months to 13 October 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Consultant in England

Consultant
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Consultant job vacancies in England.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Consultant job vacancies in England

Consultant
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Consultant in England over the 6 months to 13 October 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Consultant in England

Consultant
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 Consultant within the England region over the 6 months to 13 October 2026. 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 -3 1,285 £550 -4.35% 1,449
South East -2 385 £525 -4.55% 318
North of England -21 346 £575 -4.17% 342
North West -17 226 £585 -5.84% 186
Midlands -4 221 £501 -12.96% 160
South West +10 190 £600 +8.84% 121
West Midlands -6 160 £500 -13.04% 107
East of England -16 108 £559 +1.55% 76
Yorkshire -21 90 £550 +13.40% 76
East Midlands -9 54 £550 -3.30% 53
North East -18 29 £750 +36.36% 80
Consultant
UK

Consultant Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England

For the 6 months to 13 October 2026, Consultant 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 England region featuring Consultant in the job title.

1 597 (22.67%) Security Cleared
2 508 (19.29%) Stakeholder Management
3 493 (18.72%) SAP
4 414 (15.72%) Microsoft
5 402 (15.26%) SC Cleared
6 362 (13.74%) Migration
7 300 (11.39%) Oracle
8 292 (11.09%) Azure
9 244 (9.26%) User Acceptance Testing
10 240 (9.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 234 (8.88%) Problem-Solving
12 225 (8.54%) Cybersecurity
13 219 (8.31%) SAP S/4HANA
14 218 (8.28%) Workshop Facilitation
15 216 (8.20%) Validation
16 188 (7.14%) Analytics
17 175 (6.64%) Roadmaps
18 171 (6.49%) SQL
19 166 (6.30%) Requirements Gathering
20 165 (6.26%) ERP
21 163 (6.19%) Continuous Improvement
21 163 (6.19%) Data Migration
22 148 (5.62%) Agile
23 147 (5.58%) AI
24 145 (5.50%) AWS
25 143 (5.43%) DV Cleared
26 131 (4.97%) Power Platform
27 129 (4.90%) Knowledge Transfer
28 122 (4.63%) Business Intelligence
29 120 (4.56%) DevOps

Consultant Skill Set
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 58 (2.20%) SharePoint
2 41 (1.56%) Confluence
3 29 (1.10%) Microsoft Exchange
4 8 (0.30%) WebSphere
5 7 (0.27%) WebLogic
6 6 (0.23%) Apache Airflow
6 6 (0.23%) SAS
7 4 (0.15%) CMS
7 4 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
8 3 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 3 (0.11%) Apache
8 3 (0.11%) IIS
8 3 (0.11%) OpenStack
8 3 (0.11%) SAP Portal
8 3 (0.11%) TIBCO ActiveMatrix
9 2 (0.076%) Apache Spark
9 2 (0.076%) Smallworld
9 2 (0.076%) WordPress
10 1 (0.038%) Appian
10 1 (0.038%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 43 (1.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 32 (1.21%) Microsoft Office
3 25 (0.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 9 (0.34%) MS Visio
5 7 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
6 4 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
7 2 (0.076%) PTC Creo
8 1 (0.038%) Adobe Captivate
8 1 (0.038%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.038%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.038%) CPLEX
Business Applications
1 219 (8.31%) SAP S/4HANA
2 72 (2.73%) Oracle EBS
3 48 (1.82%) SAP FI
4 45 (1.71%) SAP Payroll
5 40 (1.52%) SAP PSCD
6 39 (1.48%) SAP HCM
7 38 (1.44%) Oracle ERP
7 38 (1.44%) Oracle Payables
8 37 (1.40%) Oracle Receivables
9 36 (1.37%) Oracle General Ledger
10 32 (1.21%) Dynamics CRM
10 32 (1.21%) SAP CO
11 31 (1.18%) Workday HCM
12 29 (1.10%) SAP HR
13 27 (1.03%) SAP FI/CO
14 25 (0.95%) NetSuite
14 25 (0.95%) SAP SD
15 23 (0.87%) Oracle Payroll
15 23 (0.87%) SAP BRIM
16 21 (0.80%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 292 (11.09%) Azure
2 145 (5.50%) AWS
3 131 (4.97%) Power Platform
4 120 (4.56%) Dynamics 365
5 90 (3.42%) SuccessFactors
6 86 (3.26%) GCP
7 80 (3.04%) OCI
8 74 (2.81%) Microsoft 365
9 65 (2.47%) Entra ID
10 59 (2.24%) Azure DevOps
11 51 (1.94%) Power Automate
12 42 (1.59%) SaaS
13 37 (1.40%) Microsoft Copilot
14 28 (1.06%) PowerApps
15 26 (0.99%) GitHub
16 24 (0.91%) Microsoft Purview
17 23 (0.87%) Snowflake
18 17 (0.65%) SAP Commerce Cloud
19 16 (0.61%) Azure Logic Apps
19 16 (0.61%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 61 (2.32%) Firewall
1 61 (2.32%) Network Security
2 31 (1.18%) WAN
3 28 (1.06%) BGP
4 24 (0.91%) VPN
5 17 (0.65%) DNS
6 15 (0.57%) LAN
7 13 (0.49%) SNMP
7 13 (0.49%) TCP/IP
8 12 (0.46%) IPsec
8 12 (0.46%) SAN
9 11 (0.42%) Ethernet VPN
10 10 (0.38%) 3GPP
10 10 (0.38%) 5G
10 10 (0.38%) MPLS
10 10 (0.38%) Radio Access Network
11 9 (0.34%) VXLAN
11 9 (0.34%) X.509
12 8 (0.30%) NGFW
13 7 (0.27%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 75 (2.85%) Power BI
2 31 (1.18%) Oracle BI Publisher
2 31 (1.18%) Oracle Reports
3 28 (1.06%) Data Warehouse
4 26 (0.99%) SAP BW
5 25 (0.95%) Metadata
5 25 (0.95%) SAP HANA
6 24 (0.91%) SQL Server
7 19 (0.72%) Tableau
8 17 (0.65%) BusinessObjects
9 16 (0.61%) Power Query
10 10 (0.38%) Amazon RDS
11 9 (0.34%) Oracle Database
12 8 (0.30%) DynamoDB
12 8 (0.30%) Elasticsearch
12 8 (0.30%) Relational Database
13 6 (0.23%) BigQuery
14 5 (0.19%) Looker
14 5 (0.19%) SAP Data Services
14 5 (0.19%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 76 (2.89%) JIRA
2 27 (1.03%) Git
3 14 (0.53%) Jenkins
4 11 (0.42%) GitLab
5 9 (0.34%) Oracle Forms
6 7 (0.27%) PowerBuilder
7 5 (0.19%) SonarQube
8 4 (0.15%) Browser DevTools
8 4 (0.15%) Cypress.io
8 4 (0.15%) Hudson
8 4 (0.15%) Sonatype Nexus
9 3 (0.11%) JDeveloper
9 3 (0.11%) LoadRunner
9 3 (0.11%) Maven
9 3 (0.11%) Snyk
9 3 (0.11%) Zephyr
10 2 (0.076%) Burp Suite
10 2 (0.076%) MLflow
10 2 (0.076%) Postman
10 2 (0.076%) TestRail
General
1 591 (22.44%) Social Skills
2 572 (21.72%) Finance
3 205 (7.78%) Public Sector
4 194 (7.37%) Analytical Skills
5 114 (4.33%) Manufacturing
6 98 (3.72%) Banking
7 78 (2.96%) Legal
8 67 (2.54%) Documentation Skills
9 64 (2.43%) Telecoms
10 62 (2.35%) Billing
11 54 (2.05%) Retail
12 53 (2.01%) General Ledger
13 45 (1.71%) Presentation Skills
14 41 (1.56%) Marketing
15 33 (1.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 32 (1.21%) Influencing Skills
17 25 (0.95%) Law
18 24 (0.91%) Local Government
18 24 (0.91%) Pharmaceutical
19 17 (0.65%) Financial Institution
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 95 (3.61%) Oracle Fusion
2 60 (2.28%) REST
3 56 (2.13%) Terraform
4 37 (1.40%) SAP Fiori
5 35 (1.33%) Middleware
6 30 (1.14%) SOAP
7 29 (1.10%) Web Services
8 22 (0.84%) XML
9 21 (0.80%) SailPoint
10 18 (0.68%) OAuth
11 17 (0.65%) LDAP
12 14 (0.53%) ADO
12 14 (0.53%) HTML
12 14 (0.53%) SAPUI5
13 13 (0.49%) JSON
13 13 (0.49%) NETCONF
13 13 (0.49%) YANG
14 12 (0.46%) CSS
14 12 (0.46%) SAML
15 11 (0.42%) .NET
Miscellaneous
1 118 (4.48%) Onboarding
2 51 (1.94%) CMDB
3 48 (1.82%) Operational Technology
4 42 (1.59%) Data Centre
5 38 (1.44%) Data Structures
6 34 (1.29%) Product Ownership
7 27 (1.03%) Enterprise Software
8 26 (0.99%) Security Posture
9 25 (0.95%) Cloud Native
10 23 (0.87%) AI Agents
10 23 (0.87%) Legacy Systems
11 22 (0.84%) Data Protection Act
12 21 (0.80%) Replication
13 19 (0.72%) Public Cloud
14 18 (0.68%) Management Information System
15 17 (0.65%) Greenfield Project
16 15 (0.57%) Hybrid Cloud
16 15 (0.57%) PKI
17 13 (0.49%) Analytical Mindset
17 13 (0.49%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 84 (3.19%) Windows
2 62 (2.35%) Linux
3 25 (0.95%) Unix
4 24 (0.91%) Windows Server
5 15 (0.57%) Solaris
6 10 (0.38%) VMS
6 10 (0.38%) Windows 10
7 8 (0.30%) AIX
7 8 (0.30%) Android
7 8 (0.30%) Apple iOS
8 7 (0.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 4 (0.15%) Windows Server 2016
10 1 (0.038%) Data ONTAP
10 1 (0.038%) macOS
10 1 (0.038%) SUSE
10 1 (0.038%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (0.038%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 508 (19.29%) Stakeholder Management
2 362 (13.74%) Migration
3 244 (9.26%) User Acceptance Testing
4 240 (9.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
5 234 (8.88%) Problem-Solving
6 225 (8.54%) Cybersecurity
7 218 (8.28%) Workshop Facilitation
8 216 (8.20%) Validation
9 188 (7.14%) Analytics
10 175 (6.64%) Roadmaps
11 166 (6.30%) Requirements Gathering
12 165 (6.26%) ERP
13 163 (6.19%) Continuous Improvement
13 163 (6.19%) Data Migration
14 148 (5.62%) Agile
15 147 (5.58%) AI
16 129 (4.90%) Knowledge Transfer
17 122 (4.63%) Business Intelligence
18 120 (4.56%) DevOps
19 114 (4.33%) Workflow
Programming Languages
1 171 (6.49%) SQL
2 91 (3.45%) Python
3 54 (2.05%) ABAP
3 54 (2.05%) PowerShell
4 33 (1.25%) JavaScript
5 26 (0.99%) Java
6 21 (0.80%) Bash
6 21 (0.80%) PL/SQL
7 19 (0.72%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 16 (0.61%) C#
9 12 (0.46%) Kusto Query Language
10 8 (0.30%) T-SQL
11 7 (0.27%) Korn
11 7 (0.27%) Search Processing Language
11 7 (0.27%) TypeScript
12 5 (0.19%) Groovy
13 4 (0.15%) Bicep
13 4 (0.15%) Perl
13 4 (0.15%) R
13 4 (0.15%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 597 (22.67%) Security Cleared
2 402 (15.26%) SC Cleared
3 143 (5.43%) DV Cleared
4 85 (3.23%) BPSS Clearance
5 57 (2.16%) CISSP
5 57 (2.16%) Degree
6 49 (1.86%) CISM
7 37 (1.40%) Cisco Certification
8 27 (1.03%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 23 (0.87%) CCSP
10 18 (0.68%) AWS Certification
11 14 (0.53%) ACCA
12 13 (0.49%) CIMA
12 13 (0.49%) CRISC
13 10 (0.38%) CompTIA Security+
13 10 (0.38%) PMP
14 9 (0.34%) DBS Check
15 8 (0.30%) CCIE
15 8 (0.30%) CISA
16 7 (0.27%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 103 (3.91%) Data Quality
2 92 (3.49%) NIST
3 69 (2.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 68 (2.58%) GRC
5 42 (1.59%) QA
6 41 (1.56%) NCSC
7 32 (1.21%) GDPR
8 26 (0.99%) SLA
9 25 (0.95%) PMO
10 16 (0.61%) PCI DSS
11 15 (0.57%) Accessibility
11 15 (0.57%) Actionable Recommendations
12 10 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 9 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials
14 8 (0.30%) NIST 800
15 7 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 7 (0.27%) GxP
16 6 (0.23%) Def Stans
16 6 (0.23%) ISO 22301
16 6 (0.23%) WCAG
System Software
1 73 (2.77%) Active Directory
2 28 (1.06%) VMware Infrastructure
3 24 (0.91%) VMware NSX
4 15 (0.57%) Docker
4 15 (0.57%) vSphere
5 11 (0.42%) VMware ESXi
6 10 (0.38%) Hyper-V
7 9 (0.34%) Firmware
8 8 (0.30%) IAG
9 7 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
10 6 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
11 4 (0.15%) Embedded Firmware
12 2 (0.076%) NFS
12 2 (0.076%) PowerHA
13 1 (0.038%) Corosync
13 1 (0.038%) Oracle RAC
13 1 (0.038%) oVirt
13 1 (0.038%) ProxySG
13 1 (0.038%) RHEV
13 1 (0.038%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 44 (1.67%) Kubernetes
2 26 (0.99%) Ansible
3 23 (0.87%) Microsoft Intune
4 20 (0.76%) SCCM
5 11 (0.42%) FortiGate
5 11 (0.42%) vRealize
6 10 (0.38%) Grafana
6 10 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
6 10 (0.38%) vCenter Server
7 6 (0.23%) Nagios
7 6 (0.23%) VxRail
7 6 (0.23%) ZABBIX
8 5 (0.19%) logstash
8 5 (0.19%) Prometheus
9 4 (0.15%) CEMLI
9 4 (0.15%) Control-M
9 4 (0.15%) Kibana
9 4 (0.15%) Netcool
9 4 (0.15%) Tivoli
10 3 (0.11%) Tivoli Monitoring
Vendors
1 493 (18.72%) SAP
2 414 (15.72%) Microsoft
3 300 (11.39%) Oracle
4 115 (4.37%) ServiceNow
5 63 (2.39%) Workday
6 52 (1.97%) VMware
7 39 (1.48%) Databricks
7 39 (1.48%) Salesforce
8 27 (1.03%) Splunk
9 26 (0.99%) CyberArk
9 26 (0.99%) Palo Alto
10 25 (0.95%) Google
11 22 (0.84%) BMC
12 21 (0.80%) Cisco
13 17 (0.65%) Ariba
13 17 (0.65%) IBM
13 17 (0.65%) Zscaler
14 16 (0.61%) Adobe
14 16 (0.61%) Murex
14 16 (0.61%) OpenText