IT Strategy Contract Job Trends in England

IT/Technology Strategy
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring IT Strategy skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 29 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 349 283 273
Rank change year-on-year -66 -10 +86
Contract jobs citing IT Strategy 220 218 299
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.67% 0.82% 0.80%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.76% 0.92% 0.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 144 110 216
10th Percentile £457 £481 £400
25th Percentile £498 £532 £489
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £629 £600
Median % change year-on-year -0.64% +4.84% -7.69%
75th Percentile £754 £750 £750
90th Percentile £935 £825 £881
UK median daily rate £625 £625 £600
% change year-on-year - +4.17% -5.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 1 2
10th Percentile £71.20 - £51.88
25th Percentile £73.00 - £52.81
Median hourly rate £79.50 £37.00 £56.25
Median % change year-on-year +114.86% -34.22% +232.15%
75th Percentile £84.50 - £60.31
90th Percentile £85.40 - £61.63
UK median hourly rate £79.50 £37.00 £56.25
% change year-on-year +114.86% -34.22% +232.15%

All Process & Methodology Skills
England

IT Strategy 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 28,878 23,799 32,593
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.87% 89.45% 87.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,472 14,557 21,833
10th Percentile £305 £310 £300
25th Percentile £410 £413 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.67% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £625 £644 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,785 763 1,818
10th Percentile £15.04 £15.62 £13.99
25th Percentile £17.87 £21.00 £17.02
Median hourly rate £25.15 £34.00 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year -26.03% -6.85% +4.29%
75th Percentile £60.00 £63.75 £62.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £35.96
% change year-on-year -22.62% -9.62% +10.65%

IT Strategy
Job Vacancy Trend in England

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

IT Strategy job vacancy trend in England

IT Strategy
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing IT Strategy.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing IT Strategy

IT Strategy
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing IT Strategy in England over the 6 months to 29 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for IT Strategy in England

IT Strategy
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing IT Strategy.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing IT Strategy

IT Strategy
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 IT Strategy within the England region over the 6 months to 29 January 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 +13 118 £668 -7.54% 59
North of England -52 45 £492 -19.48% 27
North West -25 27 £534 -13.70% 13
Midlands -70 19 £525 -15.66% 9
Yorkshire -39 18 £481 -12.27% 13
West Midlands -47 13 £525 -15.66% 7
South East -59 13 £588 -6.75% 55
East of England -6 10 £650 +20.37% 11
South West -24 6 £675 +8.00% 10
East Midlands -27 6 £536 -8.06% 2
IT Strategy
UK

IT Strategy
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 7 (3.18%) Confluence
1 7 (3.18%) SAS
2 5 (2.27%) Jupyter
2 5 (2.27%) SharePoint
3 4 (1.82%) CMS
4 3 (1.36%) Microsoft Exchange
5 2 (0.91%) Apache
5 2 (0.91%) WebLogic
6 1 (0.45%) Apache Spark
6 1 (0.45%) OpenStack
Applications
1 2 (0.91%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.45%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.91%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.91%) SAP MM
1 2 (0.91%) Workday HCM
2 1 (0.45%) Distributed Ledger
2 1 (0.45%) Endur
2 1 (0.45%) ION Anvil
2 1 (0.45%) SAP CO
2 1 (0.45%) SAP FI
2 1 (0.45%) SAP FI/CO
2 1 (0.45%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 67 (30.45%) Azure
2 63 (28.64%) AWS
3 35 (15.91%) GCP
4 13 (5.91%) Entra ID
4 13 (5.91%) SaaS
5 12 (5.45%) Microsoft 365
6 8 (3.64%) Power Platform
7 5 (2.27%) AWS CloudFormation
7 5 (2.27%) Dynamics 365
8 4 (1.82%) Azure ExpressRoute
8 4 (1.82%) Cloud Computing
9 3 (1.36%) Azure Pipelines
9 3 (1.36%) OneDrive
9 3 (1.36%) Serverless
9 3 (1.36%) Snowflake
9 3 (1.36%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 2 (0.91%) AWS Direct Connect
10 2 (0.91%) Azure Cosmos DB
10 2 (0.91%) Azure Monitor
10 2 (0.91%) iPaaS
Communications & Networking
1 17 (7.73%) Firewall
2 7 (3.18%) DHCP
2 7 (3.18%) DNS
2 7 (3.18%) Network Security
3 6 (2.73%) Wi-Fi
4 5 (2.27%) VPN
5 4 (1.82%) SD-WAN
5 4 (1.82%) WAN
6 3 (1.36%) BGP
6 3 (1.36%) Cisco ASA
6 3 (1.36%) IPv4
6 3 (1.36%) IPv6
6 3 (1.36%) LAN
6 3 (1.36%) MPLS
6 3 (1.36%) OSPF
6 3 (1.36%) TCP/IP
6 3 (1.36%) VLAN
6 3 (1.36%) VXLAN
6 3 (1.36%) Wireless
6 3 (1.36%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (3.64%) Data Warehouse
2 6 (2.73%) Power BI
3 5 (2.27%) NoSQL
3 5 (2.27%) Relational Database
4 4 (1.82%) Data Lake
5 3 (1.36%) Metadata
5 3 (1.36%) SQL Server
6 2 (0.91%) NonStop SQL
7 1 (0.45%) Big Data
7 1 (0.45%) DynamoDB
7 1 (0.45%) Looker
7 1 (0.45%) Metadata Repository
7 1 (0.45%) MongoDB
7 1 (0.45%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 8 (3.64%) Jaeger
1 8 (3.64%) JIRA
2 6 (2.73%) Git
3 4 (1.82%) Jenkins
4 2 (0.91%) GoCD
4 2 (0.91%) SonarQube
4 2 (0.91%) Sonatype Nexus
4 2 (0.91%) TeamCity
5 1 (0.45%) GitLab
5 1 (0.45%) Postman
General
1 78 (35.45%) Finance
2 71 (32.27%) Social Skills
3 35 (15.91%) Analytical Skills
4 24 (10.91%) Public Sector
5 18 (8.18%) Influencing Skills
6 17 (7.73%) Financial Institution
7 15 (6.82%) Banking
8 11 (5.00%) Telecoms
9 10 (4.55%) Legal
10 6 (2.73%) Aerospace
11 5 (2.27%) Marketing
12 4 (1.82%) Back Office
12 4 (1.82%) Retail
13 3 (1.36%) Documentation Skills
13 3 (1.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 3 (1.36%) Presentation Skills
14 2 (0.91%) Publishing
15 1 (0.45%) Corporate Banking
15 1 (0.45%) Local Government
15 1 (0.45%) Military
Job Titles
1 97 (44.09%) Architect
2 36 (16.36%) Solutions Architect
3 25 (11.36%) Senior
4 22 (10.00%) Lead
5 18 (8.18%) Security Architect
6 17 (7.73%) Analyst
7 13 (5.91%) Enterprise Architect
7 13 (5.91%) Product Owner
8 11 (5.00%) Developer
9 10 (4.55%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
9 10 (4.55%) Consultant
9 10 (4.55%) Lead Architect
10 8 (3.64%) Full-Stack Engineer
10 8 (3.64%) Technical Architect
11 7 (3.18%) Project Manager
12 6 (2.73%) Business Analyst
12 6 (2.73%) Head of IT
12 6 (2.73%) Senior Architect
12 6 (2.73%) Senior Full-Stack Engineer
12 6 (2.73%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (5.00%) Middleware
1 11 (5.00%) REST
2 10 (4.55%) Kafka
3 8 (3.64%) OpenTelemetry
3 8 (3.64%) Spring Boot
4 5 (2.27%) .NET
4 5 (2.27%) NumPy
4 5 (2.27%) Pandas
4 5 (2.27%) Plotly
4 5 (2.27%) Web Services
5 4 (1.82%) SailPoint
6 3 (1.36%) OAuth
6 3 (1.36%) Oracle Fusion
6 3 (1.36%) React
6 3 (1.36%) scikit-learn
6 3 (1.36%) SciPy
6 3 (1.36%) Statsmodels
7 2 (0.91%) .NET Core
7 2 (0.91%) AngularJS
7 2 (0.91%) LangGraph
Miscellaneous
1 31 (14.09%) Product Ownership
2 17 (7.73%) Management Information System
3 11 (5.00%) Distributed Systems
4 10 (4.55%) Onboarding
5 9 (4.09%) Cloud Native
6 8 (3.64%) Data Centre
7 7 (3.18%) Credit Risk
7 7 (3.18%) Enterprise Software
8 6 (2.73%) Cyber Threat
8 6 (2.73%) Legacy Systems
8 6 (2.73%) Public Cloud
9 5 (2.27%) Data Protection Act
9 5 (2.27%) Operational Technology
9 5 (2.27%) PKI
9 5 (2.27%) Security Posture
9 5 (2.27%) Taxonomies
9 5 (2.27%) Virtual Team
10 4 (1.82%) Algorithms
10 4 (1.82%) Mobile App
10 4 (1.82%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 16 (7.27%) Windows
2 15 (6.82%) Linux
3 8 (3.64%) Mac OS
3 8 (3.64%) Windows 10
4 2 (0.91%) Unix
4 2 (0.91%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.45%) Android
5 1 (0.45%) Apple iOS
5 1 (0.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.45%) Solaris
5 1 (0.45%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 142 (64.55%) Technology Strategy
2 77 (35.00%) Roadmaps
3 62 (28.18%) Enterprise Architecture
4 58 (26.36%) Stakeholder Management
5 57 (25.91%) Business Strategy
6 53 (24.09%) Agile
7 46 (20.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 43 (19.55%) Cybersecurity
9 38 (17.27%) Decision-Making
10 36 (16.36%) Analytics
11 35 (15.91%) Problem-Solving
12 32 (14.55%) CI/CD
12 32 (14.55%) Continuous Improvement
12 32 (14.55%) Identity Access Management
13 29 (13.18%) DevOps
13 29 (13.18%) TOGAF
14 26 (11.82%) Microservices
14 26 (11.82%) Technical Leadership
15 25 (11.36%) Data Modelling
16 23 (10.45%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 23 (10.45%) Python
2 22 (10.00%) SQL
3 15 (6.82%) Java
3 15 (6.82%) PowerShell
4 12 (5.45%) Bash
5 10 (4.55%) R
5 10 (4.55%) Rust
6 5 (2.27%) C#
7 3 (1.36%) JavaScript
8 2 (0.91%) C
8 2 (0.91%) C++
8 2 (0.91%) Go
9 1 (0.45%) Bicep
9 1 (0.45%) Kotlin
9 1 (0.45%) Objective-C
9 1 (0.45%) Perl
9 1 (0.45%) Swift
9 1 (0.45%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 35 (15.91%) Security Cleared
2 29 (13.18%) Degree
3 27 (12.27%) SC Cleared
4 13 (5.91%) AWS Certification
5 12 (5.45%) Computer Science Degree
6 10 (4.55%) Azure Certification
7 8 (3.64%) BPSS Clearance
8 7 (3.18%) CISSP
9 6 (2.73%) Cisco Certification
9 6 (2.73%) TOGAF Certification
10 4 (1.82%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 4 (1.82%) CCNP
10 4 (1.82%) DV Cleared
11 3 (1.36%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 3 (1.36%) CCIE
11 3 (1.36%) CCIE Security
11 3 (1.36%) CCSP
11 3 (1.36%) CISM
11 3 (1.36%) Microsoft Certification
11 3 (1.36%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (9.55%) GDPR
2 15 (6.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 10 (4.55%) NIST
4 6 (2.73%) Cyber Essentials
5 5 (2.27%) EU AI Act
6 4 (1.82%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 4 (1.82%) Def Stans
6 4 (1.82%) PCI DSS
7 3 (1.36%) NCSC
8 2 (0.91%) COBIT
8 2 (0.91%) Data Quality
8 2 (0.91%) HIPAA
8 2 (0.91%) QA
8 2 (0.91%) SLA
9 1 (0.45%) GAMP
9 1 (0.45%) ISO 9001
9 1 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 20000
9 1 (0.45%) MiFID
9 1 (0.45%) RMADS
9 1 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 18 (8.18%) Docker
2 17 (7.73%) Active Directory
2 17 (7.73%) VMware Infrastructure
3 7 (3.18%) Hyper-V
4 3 (1.36%) VMware NSX
5 1 (0.45%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 20 (9.09%) Kubernetes
2 12 (5.45%) Terraform
3 9 (4.09%) Ansible
3 9 (4.09%) Microsoft Intune
3 9 (4.09%) SCCM
4 8 (3.64%) Grafana
4 8 (3.64%) Kiali
4 8 (3.64%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.91%) rkt
6 1 (0.45%) Red Hat Satellite
6 1 (0.45%) SCOM
6 1 (0.45%) SCOrch
6 1 (0.45%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 34 (15.45%) Microsoft
2 27 (12.27%) VMware
3 16 (7.27%) Splunk
4 11 (5.00%) Oracle
4 11 (5.00%) Salesforce
5 9 (4.09%) Google
6 8 (3.64%) Citrix
6 8 (3.64%) CyberArk
6 8 (3.64%) Darktrace
6 8 (3.64%) SAP
7 7 (3.18%) Pega
8 4 (1.82%) Cisco
8 4 (1.82%) Dataiku
8 4 (1.82%) Dynatrace
9 3 (1.36%) F5
9 3 (1.36%) Fortinet
9 3 (1.36%) Meraki
9 3 (1.36%) Palo Alto
9 3 (1.36%) SolarWinds
9 3 (1.36%) Temenos