Junior Contract Job Trends in England

Junior
UK > England

The median Junior daily rate in England is £263, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 14 January 2026.

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

6 months to
14 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 367 327 366
Rank change year-on-year -40 +39 +41
Contract jobs requiring a Junior 181 160 186
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.57% 0.60% 0.52%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.62% 0.64% 0.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 87 114 130
10th Percentile £150 £138 £130
25th Percentile £158 £191 £200
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £263 £288 £325
Median % change year-on-year -8.85% -11.38% +10.17%
75th Percentile £360 £436 £400
90th Percentile £488 £474 £519
UK median daily rate £275 £288 £325
% change year-on-year -4.35% -11.54% +10.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 3 10
10th Percentile - £16.63 £11.77
25th Percentile - £17.19 £16.37
Median hourly rate £13.25 £18.13 £22.75
Median % change year-on-year -26.92% -20.31% +62.50%
75th Percentile £15.75 £22.57 £30.71
90th Percentile £43.75 £25.23 £40.38
UK median hourly rate £14.61 £18.13 £22.75
% change year-on-year -19.42% -20.31% +62.50%

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 28,977 24,875 33,578
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.56% 92.88% 93.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,506 15,412 22,849
10th Percentile £300 £300 £275
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.67% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £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 1,753 755 1,530
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.81 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £19.06
Median hourly rate £27.50 £35.00 £43.63
Median % change year-on-year -21.43% -19.77% +24.64%
75th Percentile £61.25 £64.61 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.60 £75.00 £76.25
UK median hourly rate £26.30 £32.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -19.08% -23.53% +25.00%

Junior
Job Vacancy Trend in England

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

Junior job vacancy trend in England

Junior
Daily Rate Trend in England

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

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Junior job vacancies in England

Junior
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Junior in England over the 6 months to 14 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Junior in England

Junior
Hourly Rate Trend in England

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

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Junior job vacancies in England

Junior
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Junior in England over the 6 months to 14 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Junior in England

Junior
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 Junior within the England region over the 6 months to 14 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 -43 65 £275 -4.93% 79
South East -5 40 £165 -34.00% 93
Midlands -25 32 £170 -22.73% 31
West Midlands -27 22 £190 -39.20% 13
North of England -62 20 £305 -21.79% 60
North West -25 18 £305 -23.17% 29
East of England -3 15 £175 -39.66% 41
South West -13 10 £333 +23.72% 35
East Midlands -15 10 £135 +1.89% 18
Yorkshire -54 3 £370 +155.17% 17
North East - 1 £370 - 15
Junior
UK

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

For the 6 months to 14 January 2026, Junior 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 Junior in the job title.

1 37 (20.44%) Problem-Solving
2 30 (16.57%) Break/Fix
3 27 (14.92%) HP
4 26 (14.36%) Microsoft
5 25 (13.81%) Python
6 23 (12.71%) Agile
7 21 (11.60%) Time Management
8 20 (11.05%) Degree
9 18 (9.94%) Security Cleared
9 18 (9.94%) SQL
10 16 (8.84%) JIRA
11 15 (8.29%) SC Cleared
11 15 (8.29%) TCP/IP
12 14 (7.73%) Azure
12 14 (7.73%) Windows
13 13 (7.18%) Microsoft Office
13 13 (7.18%) Project Delivery
14 12 (6.63%) Analytics
14 12 (6.63%) CI/CD
14 12 (6.63%) DevOps
15 11 (6.08%) Ansible
15 11 (6.08%) Confluence
15 11 (6.08%) DNS
15 11 (6.08%) Project Management
16 10 (5.52%) BIG-IP
16 10 (5.52%) Blue Coat
16 10 (5.52%) Continuous Improvement
16 10 (5.52%) Customer Service
16 10 (5.52%) Data Modelling
16 10 (5.52%) F5

Junior 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 11 (6.08%) Confluence
2 8 (4.42%) SharePoint
3 2 (1.10%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.55%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.55%) FileNet
4 1 (0.55%) IIS
4 1 (0.55%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 13 (7.18%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (5.52%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 8 (4.42%) Microsoft Excel
4 6 (3.31%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (2.21%) MS Visio
6 3 (1.66%) Adobe Illustrator
6 3 (1.66%) Chatbot
6 3 (1.66%) InDesign
6 3 (1.66%) Photoshop
7 2 (1.10%) Adobe After Effects
7 2 (1.10%) Adobe Premiere
8 1 (0.55%) Adobe Creative Suite
Business Applications
1 5 (2.76%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (1.10%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.55%) BondVision
3 1 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.55%) Oracle BPM
3 1 (0.55%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 14 (7.73%) Azure
2 10 (5.52%) Microsoft 365
3 9 (4.97%) AWS
4 6 (3.31%) Power Platform
5 4 (2.21%) Serverless
6 3 (1.66%) Amazon Kinesis
6 3 (1.66%) Amazon S3
6 3 (1.66%) AWS Lambda
6 3 (1.66%) AWS Step Functions
6 3 (1.66%) Azure DevOps
6 3 (1.66%) Entra ID
6 3 (1.66%) Snowflake
7 2 (1.10%) Adobe Creative Cloud
7 2 (1.10%) Amazon SQS
7 2 (1.10%) Collibra
7 2 (1.10%) dbt
7 2 (1.10%) GCP
7 2 (1.10%) GitHub
7 2 (1.10%) GitHub Actions
7 2 (1.10%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 15 (8.29%) TCP/IP
2 11 (6.08%) DNS
3 10 (5.52%) BIG-IP
3 10 (5.52%) HTTP
3 10 (5.52%) SSL
3 10 (5.52%) Wireshark
4 5 (2.76%) Internet
4 5 (2.76%) VPN
4 5 (2.76%) Wireless
5 3 (1.66%) DMZ
5 3 (1.66%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
5 3 (1.66%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
6 1 (0.55%) DHCP
6 1 (0.55%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (2.76%) Power BI
2 3 (1.66%) Amazon Athena
2 3 (1.66%) Data Warehouse
2 3 (1.66%) SQL Server
3 2 (1.10%) Big Data
3 2 (1.10%) Data Lake
3 2 (1.10%) Hadoop
3 2 (1.10%) Metadata
3 2 (1.10%) PostgreSQL
4 1 (0.55%) Amazon Redshift
4 1 (0.55%) Apache Hive
4 1 (0.55%) Dremio
4 1 (0.55%) MongoDB
4 1 (0.55%) NoSQL
4 1 (0.55%) Oracle Database
4 1 (0.55%) Pinecone
4 1 (0.55%) SQL Server Analysis Services
4 1 (0.55%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 1 (0.55%) SQL Server Reporting Services
4 1 (0.55%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 16 (8.84%) JIRA
2 10 (5.52%) Fiddler
3 5 (2.76%) GitLab
4 4 (2.21%) Git
4 4 (2.21%) Jenkins
5 1 (0.55%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.55%) JUnit
5 1 (0.55%) TeamCity
5 1 (0.55%) Visual Studio
General
1 53 (29.28%) Social Skills
2 28 (15.47%) Finance
3 27 (14.92%) Organisational Skills
4 21 (11.60%) Analytical Skills
5 15 (8.29%) Banking
6 10 (5.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 5 (2.76%) Marketing
7 5 (2.76%) Military
7 5 (2.76%) Retail
8 4 (2.21%) Front Office
8 4 (2.21%) Investment Banking
8 4 (2.21%) Manufacturing
9 3 (1.66%) Back Office
9 3 (1.66%) Documentation Skills
9 3 (1.66%) Retail Banking
10 2 (1.10%) Corporate Banking
10 2 (1.10%) Legal
10 2 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
11 1 (0.55%) Aerospace
11 1 (0.55%) Public Sector
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (1.66%) ADO
1 3 (1.66%) JSON
1 3 (1.66%) XML
2 2 (1.10%) .NET
2 2 (1.10%) LangChain
2 2 (1.10%) LangGraph
3 1 (0.55%) .NET Core
3 1 (0.55%) ActiveMQ
3 1 (0.55%) CrewAI
3 1 (0.55%) CSS
3 1 (0.55%) Django
3 1 (0.55%) Faiss
3 1 (0.55%) Gherkin
3 1 (0.55%) Gradio
3 1 (0.55%) HTML
3 1 (0.55%) Oracle Fusion
3 1 (0.55%) React
3 1 (0.55%) REST
3 1 (0.55%) Streamlit
3 1 (0.55%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 16 (8.84%) Mobile App
2 10 (5.52%) Data Centre
2 10 (5.52%) Management Information System
3 6 (3.31%) Onboarding
4 5 (2.76%) Self-Motivation
5 4 (2.21%) Cloud Native
6 3 (1.66%) Data Protection Act
6 3 (1.66%) Social Media
7 2 (1.10%) Analytical Mindset
7 2 (1.10%) Data Structures
7 2 (1.10%) Fixed Income
7 2 (1.10%) Graphic Design
7 2 (1.10%) Low-Code
7 2 (1.10%) Operational Technology
7 2 (1.10%) Product Ownership
7 2 (1.10%) SCADA
8 1 (0.55%) Autonomous Agent
8 1 (0.55%) Distributed Systems
8 1 (0.55%) Legacy Systems
8 1 (0.55%) Sports Betting
Operating Systems
1 14 (7.73%) Windows
2 4 (2.21%) Linux
3 3 (1.66%) Windows 10
4 2 (1.10%) Mac OS
5 1 (0.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.55%) Unix
5 1 (0.55%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 37 (20.44%) Problem-Solving
2 30 (16.57%) Break/Fix
3 23 (12.71%) Agile
4 21 (11.60%) Time Management
5 13 (7.18%) Project Delivery
6 12 (6.63%) Analytics
6 12 (6.63%) CI/CD
6 12 (6.63%) DevOps
7 11 (6.08%) Project Management
8 10 (5.52%) Continuous Improvement
8 10 (5.52%) Customer Service
8 10 (5.52%) Data Modelling
8 10 (5.52%) Load Balancing
8 10 (5.52%) Migration
8 10 (5.52%) Stakeholder Management
9 9 (4.97%) Scrum
10 8 (4.42%) Data Transformation
10 8 (4.42%) ITIL
10 8 (4.42%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 7 (3.87%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 25 (13.81%) Python
2 18 (9.94%) SQL
3 6 (3.31%) Java
4 3 (1.66%) Bash
4 3 (1.66%) PowerShell
5 2 (1.10%) JavaScript
5 2 (1.10%) PHP
5 2 (1.10%) Rust
5 2 (1.10%) T-SQL
6 1 (0.55%) C#
6 1 (0.55%) Go
6 1 (0.55%) Korn
6 1 (0.55%) R
6 1 (0.55%) TypeScript
6 1 (0.55%) VBA
Qualifications
1 20 (11.05%) Degree
2 18 (9.94%) Security Cleared
3 15 (8.29%) SC Cleared
4 8 (4.42%) DV Cleared
5 4 (2.21%) Computer Science Degree
5 4 (2.21%) PMI Certification
5 4 (2.21%) PMP
6 3 (1.66%) BPSS Clearance
7 2 (1.10%) HNC
8 1 (0.55%) A+ Certification
8 1 (0.55%) DBS Check
8 1 (0.55%) Master's Degree
8 1 (0.55%) MBA
8 1 (0.55%) MCP
8 1 (0.55%) Microsoft Certification
8 1 (0.55%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (4.97%) PMO
2 7 (3.87%) Data Quality
3 5 (2.76%) QA
4 2 (1.10%) SLA
5 1 (0.55%) Accessibility
5 1 (0.55%) Basel III
5 1 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials
5 1 (0.55%) PMBOK
System Software
1 7 (3.87%) Active Directory
1 7 (3.87%) VMware NSX
2 1 (0.55%) Docker
Systems Management
1 11 (6.08%) Ansible
2 4 (2.21%) Terraform
3 2 (1.10%) Jamf Pro
3 2 (1.10%) Microsoft Intune
4 1 (0.55%) Ambari
4 1 (0.55%) Kubernetes
4 1 (0.55%) Puppet
4 1 (0.55%) SCCM
4 1 (0.55%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 27 (14.92%) HP
2 26 (14.36%) Microsoft
3 10 (5.52%) Blue Coat
3 10 (5.52%) F5
3 10 (5.52%) McAfee
4 8 (4.42%) VMware
5 7 (3.87%) Cisco
6 6 (3.31%) Oracle
7 5 (2.76%) Remedy
8 4 (2.21%) Netskope
8 4 (2.21%) SAP
9 3 (1.66%) Adobe
9 3 (1.66%) Fortinet
9 3 (1.66%) Google
9 3 (1.66%) NetApp
10 2 (1.10%) Databricks
10 2 (1.10%) IFS
10 2 (1.10%) ION Trading
10 2 (1.10%) Workday
11 1 (0.55%) Instagram