AI Agents Contract Job Trends in the UK excluding London

AI Agents (Agentic AI)
UK > UK excluding London

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term AI Agents in contract job vacancies in the UK excluding London. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited AI Agents over the 6 months leading up to 6 October 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 250 349 -
Rank change year-on-year +99 - -
Contract jobs citing AI Agents 248 22 0
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.88% 0.14% -
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.78% 0.40% -
Number of daily rates quoted 152 12 0
10th Percentile £401 £322 -
25th Percentile £488 £417 -
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £560 -
Median % change year-on-year -6.25% - -
75th Percentile £628 £672 -
90th Percentile £825 £754 -
UK median daily rate £575 £525 £750
% change year-on-year +9.52% -30.00% +36.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 0 0
10th Percentile £55.30 - -
25th Percentile £57.50 - -
Median hourly rate £60.00 - -
75th Percentile £77.00 - -
90th Percentile £81.70 - -
UK median hourly rate £60.00 £44.90 -
% change year-on-year +33.65% - -

All Generic Skills
UK excluding London

AI Agents falls under the General and Transferable Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring generic IT skills in the UK excluding London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 8,936 5,436 5,039
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 31.69% 34.80% 28.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,025 3,261 2,792
10th Percentile £275 £225 £205
25th Percentile £404 £363 £360
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £600 £576 £600
90th Percentile £694 £664 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £518 £526
% change year-on-year +1.38% -1.55% -4.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,030 448 332
10th Percentile £13.51 £13.72 £15.11
25th Percentile £17.19 £17.45 £22.47
Median hourly rate £37.50 £29.14 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year +28.71% -49.20% +13.09%
75th Percentile £67.50 £56.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £72.65 £75.16
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £28.13 £47.50
% change year-on-year +33.33% -40.79% +5.56%

AI Agents
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing AI Agents relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

AI Agents job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

AI Agents
Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing AI Agents.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing AI Agents

AI Agents
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing AI Agents in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 6 October 2026.

Daily rate histogram for AI Agents in the UK excluding London

AI Agents
Hourly Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing AI Agents in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 6 October 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for AI Agents in the UK excluding London

AI Agents
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing AI Agents within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 6 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
North of England +22 104 £541 +21.63% 219
South East -6 53 £575 -4.17% 225
North West -1 52 £500 +13.64% 142
Yorkshire - 52 £550 - 48
South West -5 32 £500 -15.25% 54
Midlands -13 29 £575 - 79
West Midlands - 25 £575 - 54
Scotland -13 17 £600 +10.09% 156
East of England -14 12 £600 - 104
East Midlands -5 4 £605 +5.22% 25
Northern Ireland - 2 £650 - 50
Wales - 1 £298 - 18
AI Agents
UK

AI Agents
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 6 (2.42%) ArcGIS
1 6 (2.42%) SharePoint
2 2 (0.81%) Apache
2 2 (0.81%) Apache Airflow
2 2 (0.81%) Apache Spark
2 2 (0.81%) Confluence
3 1 (0.40%) Jupyter
Applications
1 16 (6.45%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.81%) Dynamics GP
2 1 (0.40%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 83 (33.47%) Azure
2 67 (27.02%) AWS
3 45 (18.15%) GCP
4 40 (16.13%) Power Platform
5 37 (14.92%) Microsoft Copilot
6 31 (12.50%) GitHub
7 30 (12.10%) Copilot Studio
8 26 (10.48%) Azure AI
9 23 (9.27%) Anthropic Claude
10 20 (8.06%) Serverless
11 17 (6.85%) Vertex AI
12 15 (6.05%) Amazon Bedrock
12 15 (6.05%) PowerApps
13 14 (5.65%) Google Gemini
13 14 (5.65%) Microsoft 365
13 14 (5.65%) Power Automate
14 12 (4.84%) AWS Lambda
14 12 (4.84%) GitHub Copilot
15 9 (3.63%) Amazon SageMaker
15 9 (3.63%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.61%) Broadband
2 2 (0.81%) Network Security
3 1 (0.40%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (6.45%) Power BI
2 14 (5.65%) PostgreSQL
3 11 (4.44%) BigQuery
4 8 (3.23%) Data Lake
5 6 (2.42%) GIS
5 6 (2.42%) Redis
6 4 (1.61%) Metadata
7 3 (1.21%) Chroma
7 3 (1.21%) NoSQL
7 3 (1.21%) Pinecone
7 3 (1.21%) Tableau
8 2 (0.81%) Data Warehouse
8 2 (0.81%) MongoDB
8 2 (0.81%) Neo4j
8 2 (0.81%) Semantic Layer
8 2 (0.81%) Snowflake Schema
8 2 (0.81%) SQL Server
8 2 (0.81%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 2 (0.81%) ZAP BI
9 1 (0.40%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 16 (6.45%) Git
2 8 (3.23%) GitLab
2 8 (3.23%) JIRA
3 7 (2.82%) Jenkins
4 6 (2.42%) Claude Code
5 4 (1.61%) Visual Studio Code
6 3 (1.21%) Cucumber
6 3 (1.21%) MLflow
7 2 (0.81%) Applitools
7 2 (0.81%) JMeter
7 2 (0.81%) Newman
7 2 (0.81%) Postman
7 2 (0.81%) REST Assured
7 2 (0.81%) Visual Studio
8 1 (0.40%) Selenium
General
1 68 (27.42%) Finance
2 60 (24.19%) Social Skills
3 30 (12.10%) Banking
4 18 (7.26%) Analytical Skills
5 16 (6.45%) Public Sector
6 8 (3.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 8 (3.23%) Japanese Language
7 6 (2.42%) Organisational Skills
8 5 (2.02%) Telecoms
9 4 (1.61%) Billing
9 4 (1.61%) Legal
10 3 (1.21%) Financial Institution
11 2 (0.81%) Military
12 1 (0.40%) Automotive
12 1 (0.40%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.40%) Italian Language
12 1 (0.40%) Law
12 1 (0.40%) Marketing
12 1 (0.40%) Pharmaceutical
12 1 (0.40%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 66 (26.61%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
2 44 (17.74%) Architect
3 36 (14.52%) Senior
4 35 (14.11%) Lead
5 31 (12.50%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
6 25 (10.08%) Agentic Artificial Intelligence Engineer
7 18 (7.26%) Developer
8 14 (5.65%) Lead Architect
9 12 (4.84%) Software Engineer
9 12 (4.84%) Voice Architect
10 10 (4.03%) Analyst
10 10 (4.03%) Full-Stack Engineer
10 10 (4.03%) Project Manager
11 9 (3.63%) Consultant
12 7 (2.82%) Artificial Intelligence Consultant
12 7 (2.82%) Solutions Architect
13 6 (2.42%) Artificial Intelligence Analyst
13 6 (2.42%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
13 6 (2.42%) Automation Engineer
13 6 (2.42%) Data Science Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (12.90%) REST
2 30 (12.10%) LangGraph
3 28 (11.29%) LangChain
4 24 (9.68%) Terraform
5 21 (8.47%) Semantic Kernel
6 20 (8.06%) .NET
7 19 (7.66%) Model Context Protocol
8 17 (6.85%) React
9 14 (5.65%) Kafka
10 10 (4.03%) Spring
10 10 (4.03%) Spring Boot
11 8 (3.23%) CrewAI
11 8 (3.23%) JSON
11 8 (3.23%) OAuth
12 7 (2.82%) .NET Framework
12 7 (2.82%) A2A Protocol
12 7 (2.82%) GraphQL
12 7 (2.82%) Microsoft Graph
13 6 (2.42%) CSS
13 6 (2.42%) Next.js
Miscellaneous
1 26 (10.48%) Cloud Native
2 19 (7.66%) IVR
3 18 (7.26%) Autonomous Agent
4 12 (4.84%) Enterprise Software
4 12 (4.84%) Greenfield Project
5 7 (2.82%) Low-Code
5 7 (2.82%) Product Ownership
6 6 (2.42%) Data Protection Act
6 6 (2.42%) Distributed Systems
6 6 (2.42%) Hybrid Cloud
7 5 (2.02%) Onboarding
7 5 (2.02%) Public Cloud
8 4 (1.61%) Blockchain
8 4 (1.61%) Life Science
8 4 (1.61%) Social Media
9 3 (1.21%) Virtual Team
10 2 (0.81%) Algorithms
10 2 (0.81%) BYOD
10 2 (0.81%) Distributed Applications
10 2 (0.81%) Distributed Computing
Operating Systems
1 2 (0.81%) Linux
1 2 (0.81%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 231 (93.15%) AI
2 112 (45.16%) LLM
3 88 (35.48%) Generative AI
4 71 (28.63%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
5 68 (27.42%) Machine Learning
6 65 (26.21%) CI/CD
7 56 (22.58%) Stakeholder Management
8 51 (20.56%) Software Engineering
9 45 (18.15%) Prompt Engineering
10 44 (17.74%) Observability
11 43 (17.34%) Agile
12 39 (15.73%) Roadmaps
12 39 (15.73%) Workflow
13 36 (14.52%) Analytics
14 35 (14.11%) Conversational UI
15 34 (13.71%) Event-Driven
16 31 (12.50%) DevOps
17 30 (12.10%) Validation
18 29 (11.69%) Use Case
19 28 (11.29%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 64 (25.81%) Python
2 30 (12.10%) SQL
3 28 (11.29%) C#
4 25 (10.08%) Java
5 20 (8.06%) TypeScript
6 16 (6.45%) JavaScript
7 5 (2.02%) PowerShell
8 3 (1.21%) Apex Code
8 3 (1.21%) Go
9 2 (0.81%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 2 (0.81%) X++
10 1 (0.40%) Bash
10 1 (0.40%) Bicep
10 1 (0.40%) C++
10 1 (0.40%) Gremlin
10 1 (0.40%) LookML
Qualifications
1 10 (4.03%) Security Cleared
2 9 (3.63%) Degree
2 9 (3.63%) Microsoft Certified Professional
3 7 (2.82%) SC Cleared
4 5 (2.02%) Master's Degree
5 3 (1.21%) Azure Certification
5 3 (1.21%) Computer Science Degree
6 1 (0.40%) AWS Certification
6 1 (0.40%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 1 (0.40%) BPSS Clearance
6 1 (0.40%) CBAP
6 1 (0.40%) CEH
6 1 (0.40%) CISM
6 1 (0.40%) CISSP
6 1 (0.40%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (7.66%) Data Quality
2 16 (6.45%) QA
3 5 (2.02%) Accessibility
4 4 (1.61%) GDPR
5 3 (1.21%) Actionable Recommendations
6 2 (0.81%) GxP
6 2 (0.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.81%) NIST
6 2 (0.81%) SLA
7 1 (0.40%) GRC
7 1 (0.40%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 19 (7.66%) Docker
2 2 (0.81%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 37 (14.92%) Kubernetes
2 4 (1.61%) Kustomize
2 4 (1.61%) Single Sign-On
3 3 (1.21%) Microsoft Intune
4 1 (0.40%) Istio
Vendors
1 59 (23.79%) Microsoft
2 33 (13.31%) OpenAI
3 22 (8.87%) Google
4 21 (8.47%) Foundry
5 13 (5.24%) ServiceNow
6 10 (4.03%) Databricks
7 7 (2.82%) Salesforce
8 3 (1.21%) Mistral
8 3 (1.21%) OutSystems
9 2 (0.81%) Autodesk
9 2 (0.81%) Blue Prism
9 2 (0.81%) F5
9 2 (0.81%) Oracle
10 1 (0.40%) Dynatrace
10 1 (0.40%) Genesys
10 1 (0.40%) HubSpot
10 1 (0.40%) IBM
10 1 (0.40%) Informatica
10 1 (0.40%) New Relic
10 1 (0.40%) Splunk