fastlane Contract Job Trends in the UK excluding London

fastlane
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the UK excluding London requiring fastlane skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 5 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 400 - 402
Rank change year-on-year - - +75
Contract jobs citing fastlane 4 0 3
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.020% - 0.014%
As % of the Development Applications category 0.15% - 0.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 1 0 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - £483
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 - £515
Median % change year-on-year - - +8.19%
75th Percentile - - £548
90th Percentile - - -
UK median daily rate £425 £544 £515
% change year-on-year -21.84% +5.58% -4.19%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 0 1
10th Percentile £59.65 - -
25th Percentile £61.38 - £71.25
Median hourly rate £65.50 - £72.50
75th Percentile £68.38 - £73.75
90th Percentile £69.35 - -
UK median hourly rate £65.50 - £72.50
% change year-on-year - - -14.71%

All Development Application Skills
UK excluding London

fastlane falls under the Development Applications category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring development application skills in the UK excluding London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for development application skills 2,632 1,807 2,378
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 13.47% 13.29% 11.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,798 1,085 1,611
10th Percentile £325 £325 £356
25th Percentile £400 £400 £418
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £477 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.42% -4.60% -4.76%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £591
90th Percentile £652 £650 £661
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 131 57 187
10th Percentile £39.00 £45.71 £46.18
25th Percentile £52.50 £54.63 £55.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -3.85% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £77.02
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.15 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% -3.85% +5.69%

fastlane
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

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

fastlane job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

fastlane
Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

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

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

fastlane
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 fastlane within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 5 February 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 - 3 - - 1
North West - 3 - - 1
South West - 1 £500 - 1
fastlane
UK

fastlane
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:

Cloud Services
1 2 (50.00%) Firebase
2 1 (25.00%) GitHub
2 1 (25.00%) GitHub Actions
2 1 (25.00%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 1 (25.00%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (25.00%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 3 (75.00%) XCTest
2 2 (50.00%) GitLab
2 2 (50.00%) Xcode
3 1 (25.00%) Android Studio
3 1 (25.00%) CocoaPods
3 1 (25.00%) Crashlytics
3 1 (25.00%) Gradle
3 1 (25.00%) IntelliJ
3 1 (25.00%) XCUITest
Job Titles
1 3 (75.00%) Developer
1 3 (75.00%) iOS Developer
2 1 (25.00%) Android Developer
2 1 (25.00%) Backend Developer
2 1 (25.00%) iOS Android Developer
2 1 (25.00%) iOS Software Engineer
2 1 (25.00%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (100.00%) SwiftUI
2 3 (75.00%) UIKit
3 2 (50.00%) GraphQL
3 2 (50.00%) REST
4 1 (25.00%) Android Jetpack
4 1 (25.00%) Core Data
4 1 (25.00%) Jetpack Compose
4 1 (25.00%) JSON
4 1 (25.00%) JSON Schema
4 1 (25.00%) OkHttp
4 1 (25.00%) OpenTelemetry
4 1 (25.00%) Retrofit
4 1 (25.00%) Spring
4 1 (25.00%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 2 (50.00%) Mobile App
2 1 (25.00%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 4 (100.00%) Apple iOS
2 1 (25.00%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 3 (75.00%) MVVM
1 3 (75.00%) TDD
1 3 (75.00%) Unit Testing
2 2 (50.00%) A/B Testing
2 2 (50.00%) CI/CD
2 2 (50.00%) Clean Code
2 2 (50.00%) Continuous Improvement
2 2 (50.00%) Data-Driven Decision Making
2 2 (50.00%) iOS Development
2 2 (50.00%) Server-Driven UI
2 2 (50.00%) User Experience
3 1 (25.00%) Architectural Design
3 1 (25.00%) Architectural Patterns
3 1 (25.00%) Code Quality
3 1 (25.00%) Data Encryption
3 1 (25.00%) Decision-Making
3 1 (25.00%) Design Patterns
3 1 (25.00%) Dynamic Application Security Testing
3 1 (25.00%) Multi-Factor Authentication
3 1 (25.00%) Static Application Security Testing
Programming Languages
1 4 (100.00%) Swift
2 3 (75.00%) Objective-C
3 2 (50.00%) Java
3 2 (50.00%) Kotlin
4 1 (25.00%) C
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (50.00%) Accessibility
2 1 (25.00%) QA
Systems Management
1 1 (25.00%) Grafana
1 1 (25.00%) Kubernetes