Agile Contract Job Trends in the North West

Agile Software Development
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North West requiring Agile skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 7 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 4 5
Rank change year-on-year -2 +1 0
Contract jobs citing Agile 495 386 333
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 13.10% 17.57% 14.02%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.79% 19.90% 16.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 349 293 207
10th Percentile £358 £356 £370
25th Percentile £400 £402 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £450 £500
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% -10.00% -6.98%
75th Percentile £600 £545 £593
90th Percentile £688 £650 £810
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 19 9
10th Percentile £26.93 £37.80 -
25th Percentile £35.06 £47.12 £37.55
Median hourly rate £59.01 £70.16 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.90% +7.94% +36.20%
75th Percentile £75.00 £78.13 £71.50
90th Percentile £85.80 £81.85 £78.20
England median hourly rate £70.00 £63.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +10.24% -2.31% -

All Process & Methodology Skills
North West

Agile 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 the North West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 3,134 1,940 2,009
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 82.95% 88.30% 84.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,826 1,257 1,219
10th Percentile £275 £284 £306
25th Percentile £400 £375 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £496 £456 £500
Median % change year-on-year +8.75% -8.80% -
75th Percentile £600 £575 £588
90th Percentile £675 £665 £675
England median daily rate £525 £513 £525
% change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 328 125 176
10th Percentile £16.01 £13.50 £10.95
25th Percentile £24.59 £18.87 £16.06
Median hourly rate £47.15 £28.43 £32.75
Median % change year-on-year +65.85% -13.19% +2.74%
75th Percentile £73.37 £58.27 £51.91
90th Percentile £85.00 £74.50 £70.90
England median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -40.82% -

Agile
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Agile relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Agile job vacancy trend in the North West

Agile
Daily Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Agile.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Agile

Agile
Daily Rate Histogram in the North West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Agile in the North West over the 6 months to 7 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Agile in the North West

Agile
Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Agile.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Agile

Agile
Hourly Rate Histogram in the North West

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Agile in the North West over the 6 months to 7 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Agile in the North West

Agile
Contract Job Locations in the North West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Agile within the North West region over the 6 months to 7 August 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
Manchester 0 336 £500 +11.11% 237
Cheshire -4 106 £469 +6.84% 48
Merseyside -2 26 £518 +18.97% 31
Lancashire -19 14 £431 -16.79% 49
Cumbria -13 5 £525 -12.50% 7
Agile
England

Agile
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North West 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 59 (11.92%) Confluence
2 14 (2.83%) SharePoint
3 9 (1.82%) Apache Spark
4 4 (0.81%) Apache
4 4 (0.81%) SAS
5 2 (0.40%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.40%) Camunda
5 2 (0.40%) Microsoft Exchange
5 2 (0.40%) Mule
5 2 (0.40%) Mule ESB
6 1 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 1 (0.20%) Anypoint
6 1 (0.20%) CMS
6 1 (0.20%) JBoss
6 1 (0.20%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.20%) NetWeaver
6 1 (0.20%) WebLogic
Applications
1 16 (3.23%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (2.63%) MS Visio
3 9 (1.82%) Microsoft Project
4 8 (1.62%) Microsoft Office
5 5 (1.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 2 (0.40%) Trello
7 1 (0.20%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.20%) Siemens NX
7 1 (0.20%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 8 (1.62%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.81%) Shopify
3 1 (0.20%) Dynamics AX
3 1 (0.20%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.20%) SAP ERP
3 1 (0.20%) SAP PM
3 1 (0.20%) SAP QM
3 1 (0.20%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 130 (26.26%) AWS
2 117 (23.64%) Azure
3 37 (7.47%) GCP
4 26 (5.25%) Power Platform
5 22 (4.44%) Azure DevOps
6 21 (4.24%) Serverless
7 20 (4.04%) GitHub
8 17 (3.43%) AWS CloudFormation
9 15 (3.03%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 12 (2.42%) GitHub Actions
11 11 (2.22%) Amazon ECS
11 11 (2.22%) Entra ID
11 11 (2.22%) Microsoft 365
11 11 (2.22%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 10 (2.02%) Amazon EKS
12 10 (2.02%) AWS Lambda
12 10 (2.02%) Figma
13 9 (1.82%) SaaS
14 8 (1.62%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 8 (1.62%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 25 (5.05%) Firewall
2 16 (3.23%) DNS
3 11 (2.22%) Network Security
4 3 (0.61%) VPN
5 2 (0.40%) BGP
5 2 (0.40%) DHCP
5 2 (0.40%) MPLS
5 2 (0.40%) NGFW
5 2 (0.40%) OSPF
5 2 (0.40%) VSAN
5 2 (0.40%) WAN
6 1 (0.20%) Cisco Nexus
6 1 (0.20%) DNSSEC
6 1 (0.20%) Ethernet VPN
6 1 (0.20%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
6 1 (0.20%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
6 1 (0.20%) LAN
6 1 (0.20%) SD-WAN
6 1 (0.20%) Software-Defined Networking
6 1 (0.20%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 39 (7.88%) MongoDB
2 22 (4.44%) PostgreSQL
2 22 (4.44%) SQL Server
3 21 (4.24%) NoSQL
3 21 (4.24%) Relational Database
4 20 (4.04%) Power BI
5 14 (2.83%) MySQL
5 14 (2.83%) RDBMS
6 10 (2.02%) Data Warehouse
7 8 (1.62%) Data Vault
7 8 (1.62%) DynamoDB
8 7 (1.41%) Data Lake
8 7 (1.41%) Hadoop
8 7 (1.41%) Oracle Database
8 7 (1.41%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 6 (1.21%) Big Data
10 5 (1.01%) Amazon Redshift
11 4 (0.81%) Metadata
11 4 (0.81%) Oracle Reports
11 4 (0.81%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 81 (16.36%) JIRA
2 42 (8.48%) Git
3 24 (4.85%) GitLab
4 15 (3.03%) Jenkins
4 15 (3.03%) Mockito
5 12 (2.42%) Claude Code
6 11 (2.22%) Cucumber
6 11 (2.22%) Selenium
7 9 (1.82%) Postman
8 8 (1.62%) JUnit
9 6 (1.21%) REST Assured
10 5 (1.01%) Cypress.io
11 4 (0.81%) Sonatype Nexus
12 3 (0.61%) ClearCase
12 3 (0.61%) Zephyr
13 2 (0.40%) Bitbucket
13 2 (0.40%) SonarQube
13 2 (0.40%) WebDriver
14 1 (0.20%) Gradle
14 1 (0.20%) Robot Framework
General
1 166 (33.54%) Social Skills
2 165 (33.33%) Finance
3 72 (14.55%) Banking
3 72 (14.55%) Public Sector
4 47 (9.49%) Analytical Skills
5 44 (8.89%) Retail
6 30 (6.06%) Manufacturing
7 14 (2.83%) Influencing Skills
8 12 (2.42%) Investment Banking
9 10 (2.02%) Documentation Skills
9 10 (2.02%) Legal
9 10 (2.02%) Presentation Skills
10 9 (1.82%) Military
11 8 (1.62%) Marketing
12 7 (1.41%) Organisational Skills
12 7 (1.41%) Retail Banking
13 6 (1.21%) Automotive
14 5 (1.01%) Aerospace
15 3 (0.61%) Financial Institution
15 3 (0.61%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 83 (16.77%) Analyst
2 77 (15.56%) Developer
3 71 (14.34%) Senior
4 56 (11.31%) Business Analyst
5 48 (9.70%) Project Manager
6 40 (8.08%) Java Developer
7 36 (7.27%) Lead
8 35 (7.07%) Architect
9 26 (5.25%) Software Engineer
10 24 (4.85%) Security Engineer
10 24 (4.85%) Senior Developer
11 23 (4.65%) Solutions Architect
12 19 (3.84%) Data Engineer
13 18 (3.64%) Product Manager
14 17 (3.43%) Systems Analyst
15 15 (3.03%) IT Manager
15 15 (3.03%) Senior Java Developer
16 14 (2.83%) Cloud Engineer
17 13 (2.63%) Consultant
17 13 (2.63%) IT Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (9.09%) Kafka
2 30 (6.06%) Spring
2 30 (6.06%) Spring Boot
3 28 (5.66%) React
3 28 (5.66%) REST
4 27 (5.45%) Node.js
5 25 (5.05%) .NET
6 19 (3.84%) JSON
7 18 (3.64%) RESTful
8 14 (2.83%) AngularJS
8 14 (2.83%) Middleware
9 12 (2.42%) ActiveMQ
9 12 (2.42%) HTML
9 12 (2.42%) JAX-RS
9 12 (2.42%) XML
10 10 (2.02%) CSS
11 8 (1.62%) Next.js
12 6 (1.21%) AWS CDK
12 6 (1.21%) Jakarta EE
13 5 (1.01%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 62 (12.53%) Product Ownership
2 54 (10.91%) Cloud Native
3 27 (5.45%) Management Information System
4 24 (4.85%) Security Posture
5 17 (3.43%) Enterprise Cloud
6 16 (3.23%) Distributed Systems
6 16 (3.23%) Onboarding
7 15 (3.03%) Legacy Systems
8 13 (2.63%) Data Structures
8 13 (2.63%) Enterprise Software
8 13 (2.63%) Mobile App
9 12 (2.42%) Data Protection Act
10 9 (1.82%) Credit Risk
11 8 (1.62%) Algorithms
12 7 (1.41%) Analytical Mindset
13 5 (1.01%) NHS
14 4 (0.81%) Graphic Design
14 4 (0.81%) Life Science
14 4 (0.81%) Linux Command Line
14 4 (0.81%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 43 (8.69%) Linux
2 18 (3.64%) Windows
3 17 (3.43%) Unix
4 16 (3.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 7 (1.41%) Mac OS X
6 2 (0.40%) AIX
6 2 (0.40%) Mac OS
6 2 (0.40%) Windows Server
7 1 (0.20%) Android
7 1 (0.20%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 139 (28.08%) Stakeholder Management
2 130 (26.26%) CI/CD
3 121 (24.44%) DevOps
4 100 (20.20%) Scrum
5 99 (20.00%) Continuous Improvement
6 75 (15.15%) Microservices
6 75 (15.15%) Waterfall
7 74 (14.95%) Roadmaps
8 68 (13.74%) AI
9 64 (12.93%) Test Automation
10 62 (12.53%) Software Engineering
11 60 (12.12%) Problem-Solving
12 59 (11.92%) Change Management
12 59 (11.92%) SDLC
13 55 (11.11%) Decision-Making
13 55 (11.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 51 (10.30%) Analytics
14 51 (10.30%) Migration
14 51 (10.30%) Workshop Facilitation
15 46 (9.29%) User Stories
Programming Languages
1 95 (19.19%) Java
2 67 (13.54%) SQL
3 65 (13.13%) Python
4 36 (7.27%) PowerShell
5 30 (6.06%) C#
6 25 (5.05%) Bash
6 25 (5.05%) JavaScript
7 16 (3.23%) TypeScript
8 11 (2.22%) Bicep
9 3 (0.61%) Scala
9 3 (0.61%) Shell Script
9 3 (0.61%) VB
9 3 (0.61%) VB6
10 2 (0.40%) BeanShell
10 2 (0.40%) C++
10 2 (0.40%) PL/SQL
10 2 (0.40%) PROC SQL
10 2 (0.40%) T-SQL
11 1 (0.20%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 1 (0.20%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 62 (12.53%) Security Cleared
2 60 (12.12%) Degree
3 45 (9.09%) SC Cleared
4 34 (6.87%) BPSS Clearance
5 20 (4.04%) CISSP
6 17 (3.43%) AWS Certification
7 16 (3.23%) Azure Certification
8 12 (2.42%) PMI Certification
9 11 (2.22%) PMP
10 9 (1.82%) Cisco Certification
11 6 (1.21%) Computer Science Degree
11 6 (1.21%) ITIL Certification
12 5 (1.01%) CCNA
13 3 (0.61%) CISM
13 3 (0.61%) IIBA
13 3 (0.61%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 2 (0.40%) CCIE
14 2 (0.40%) CCSP
14 2 (0.40%) CEH
14 2 (0.40%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 41 (8.28%) QA
2 28 (5.66%) Data Quality
3 24 (4.85%) Accessibility
4 10 (2.02%) PMO
5 7 (1.41%) NIST
6 6 (1.21%) GDPR
7 4 (0.81%) PCI DSS
7 4 (0.81%) SLA
7 4 (0.81%) WCAG
8 3 (0.61%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 3 (0.61%) GRC
8 3 (0.61%) GxP
8 3 (0.61%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.40%) COBIT
9 2 (0.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 2 (0.40%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
9 2 (0.40%) P3O
9 2 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 2 (0.40%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.20%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 47 (9.49%) Docker
2 7 (1.41%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.61%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.40%) GPFS
4 2 (0.40%) NFS
4 2 (0.40%) Oracle RAC
4 2 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
4 2 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
4 2 (0.40%) vSphere
5 1 (0.20%) VMware NSX
5 1 (0.20%) zsh
Systems Management
1 58 (11.72%) Terraform
2 53 (10.71%) Kubernetes
3 15 (3.03%) Ansible
3 15 (3.03%) Progress Chef
4 4 (0.81%) Grafana
5 3 (0.61%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.40%) Apache Ranger
6 2 (0.40%) CASB
6 2 (0.40%) Data Guard
6 2 (0.40%) Oracle RMAN
6 2 (0.40%) Single Sign-On
6 2 (0.40%) vRealize
6 2 (0.40%) VxRail
7 1 (0.20%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 1 (0.20%) Argo
7 1 (0.20%) CA Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.20%) HP ALM
7 1 (0.20%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.20%) Puppet
Vendors
1 59 (11.92%) Microsoft
2 23 (4.65%) Oracle
2 23 (4.65%) ServiceNow
3 18 (3.64%) Google
4 16 (3.23%) Salesforce
5 15 (3.03%) SAP
6 14 (2.83%) Infoblox
6 14 (2.83%) Red Hat
7 12 (2.42%) Databricks
8 7 (1.41%) Cisco
9 6 (1.21%) IBM
10 5 (1.01%) UiPath
11 4 (0.81%) Atlassian
11 4 (0.81%) CyberArk
12 3 (0.61%) Fortinet
12 3 (0.61%) VMware
13 2 (0.40%) F5
13 2 (0.40%) Infor
13 2 (0.40%) Informatica
13 2 (0.40%) Varonis