IBM Contract Job Trends in the UK excluding London

IBM
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the UK excluding London requiring knowledge or experience of IBM products and/or services. It includes a benchmarking guide to contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited IBM over the 6 months leading up to 23 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

The figures below represent the IT contractor job market in general and are not representative of contractor rates within the International Business Machines Corporation.

6 months to
23 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 206 169 194
Rank change year-on-year -37 +25 +80
Contract jobs citing IBM 210 199 226
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.15% 1.35% 1.16%
As % of the Vendors category 2.45% 2.93% 2.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 140 77 131
10th Percentile £305 £193 £411
25th Percentile £373 £360 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £474 £450 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.29% -14.29% +5.00%
75th Percentile £576 £600 £600
90th Percentile £720 £703 £703
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £550
% change year-on-year -5.00% -9.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 24 16
10th Percentile £60.50 - -
25th Percentile - £24.18 £65.00
Median hourly rate £70.00 £62.50 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +12.00% -10.71% +68.16%
75th Percentile £71.13 £68.75 -
90th Percentile £75.65 £69.63 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £70.00 £62.50 £70.00
% change year-on-year +12.00% -10.71% +64.01%

All Vendors
UK excluding London

IBM falls under the Vendor Products and Services category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring knowledge or experience of all vendor products and services in the UK excluding London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for knowledge or experience of vendor products and services 8,559 6,803 9,184
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 46.78% 46.06% 47.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,552 4,065 5,805
10th Percentile £220 £213 £208
25th Percentile £375 £375 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.10% - -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £688 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 670 363 513
10th Percentile £14.75 £15.22 £14.36
25th Percentile £17.49 £16.58 £18.00
Median hourly rate £21.72 £26.13 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year -16.87% -43.06% +103.91%
75th Percentile £43.75 £61.38 £62.50
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £74.38
UK median hourly rate £23.75 £28.00 £45.88
% change year-on-year -15.18% -38.97% +78.45%

IBM
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

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

IBM job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

IBM
Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

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

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

IBM
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing IBM in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 23 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for IBM in the UK excluding London

IBM
Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing IBM.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing IBM

IBM
Hourly Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing IBM in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 23 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for IBM in the UK excluding London

IBM
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 IBM within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 23 December 2025. 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 -37 67 £459 -12.11% 19
Midlands -9 53 £400 -11.11% 19
West Midlands +9 51 £400 -11.11% 14
North West -9 45 £453 +20.80% 9
South East -36 34 £550 +29.41% 57
East of England -6 25 £288 -32.18% 31
Yorkshire -54 22 £475 -20.83% 8
Scotland +5 16 £440 -2.28% 8
South West -27 14 £666 +11.04% 27
Northern Ireland - 4 £350 - 2
East Midlands -25 2 £400 -16.67% 4
Wales -3 1 £633 +201.19% 4
South Coast - 1 £500 -
IBM
UK

IBM
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 23 (10.95%) Confluence
2 15 (7.14%) WebSphere
3 13 (6.19%) Apache
3 13 (6.19%) IIS
4 11 (5.24%) ArcGIS
4 11 (5.24%) JBoss
4 11 (5.24%) SharePoint
4 11 (5.24%) WebSphere Application Server
5 10 (4.76%) iPlanet
6 6 (2.86%) CICS
7 4 (1.90%) Anypoint
8 3 (1.43%) FileNet
8 3 (1.43%) SAS
9 1 (0.48%) Tomcat
Applications
1 8 (3.81%) Microsoft Office
1 8 (3.81%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.95%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 27 (12.86%) Maximo
2 2 (0.95%) SAP EWM
2 2 (0.95%) SAP PM
2 2 (0.95%) SAP PP
2 2 (0.95%) SAP QM
2 2 (0.95%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.95%) SAP WM
Cloud Services
1 63 (30.00%) AWS
2 40 (19.05%) Azure
3 18 (8.57%) OpenShift
4 14 (6.67%) Datadog
5 9 (4.29%) AWS CloudFormation
6 8 (3.81%) GCP
7 6 (2.86%) AWS Lambda
7 6 (2.86%) OCI
7 6 (2.86%) Serverless
8 4 (1.90%) Amazon S3
8 4 (1.90%) GitHub
8 4 (1.90%) PaaS
8 4 (1.90%) Power Platform
8 4 (1.90%) SaaS
9 3 (1.43%) Amazon ECS
9 3 (1.43%) Azure AKS
9 3 (1.43%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 3 (1.43%) Azure Monitor
9 3 (1.43%) Azure Sentinel
10 2 (0.95%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 13 (6.19%) VSAN
2 11 (5.24%) SSH
3 10 (4.76%) Kerberos
4 8 (3.81%) SAN
5 7 (3.33%) HTTPS
6 6 (2.86%) Fibre Channel
6 6 (2.86%) iSCSI
6 6 (2.86%) NAS
7 3 (1.43%) VPN
8 2 (0.95%) DWDM
8 2 (0.95%) Firewall
8 2 (0.95%) SDH
9 1 (0.48%) LAN
9 1 (0.48%) SMS
9 1 (0.48%) SSL
9 1 (0.48%) TCP/IP
9 1 (0.48%) VLAN
9 1 (0.48%) VoIP
9 1 (0.48%) WAN
9 1 (0.48%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (7.62%) Oracle Database
2 12 (5.71%) Amazon RDS
3 9 (4.29%) DB2
3 9 (4.29%) SQL Server
4 7 (3.33%) GIS
4 7 (3.33%) NoSQL
4 7 (3.33%) PostgreSQL
5 6 (2.86%) Amazon Redshift
5 6 (2.86%) Couchbase
5 6 (2.86%) Oracle Reports
6 5 (2.38%) DataStage
7 4 (1.90%) Data Warehouse
7 4 (1.90%) IBM InfoSphere
7 4 (1.90%) Relational Database
8 3 (1.43%) Amazon Athena
8 3 (1.43%) Cognos Framework Manager
8 3 (1.43%) Cognos Report Studio
9 2 (0.95%) Adabas
9 2 (0.95%) Cognos Transformer
9 2 (0.95%) OLAP Cube
Development Applications
1 35 (16.67%) JIRA
2 21 (10.00%) Git
3 18 (8.57%) Jenkins
4 17 (8.10%) Rational DOORS
5 10 (4.76%) Bitbucket Server
5 10 (4.76%) CA Release Automation
6 9 (4.29%) Sonatype Nexus
7 7 (3.33%) GitLab
8 6 (2.86%) PVCS
9 4 (1.90%) Rational Rhapsody
10 3 (1.43%) ERwin
11 2 (0.95%) Bitbucket
11 2 (0.95%) Selenium
11 2 (0.95%) SoapUI
12 1 (0.48%) ClearCase
General
1 53 (25.24%) Social Skills
2 43 (20.48%) Finance
3 23 (10.95%) Analytical Skills
4 14 (6.67%) Documentation Skills
4 14 (6.67%) Presentation Skills
5 12 (5.71%) Banking
5 12 (5.71%) Public Sector
6 8 (3.81%) Aerospace
6 8 (3.81%) Electronics
7 3 (1.43%) Law
7 3 (1.43%) Legal
7 3 (1.43%) Telecoms
8 2 (0.95%) Manufacturing
8 2 (0.95%) Pharmaceutical
9 1 (0.48%) Marketing
9 1 (0.48%) Police
9 1 (0.48%) Retail
9 1 (0.48%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 49 (23.33%) Analyst
2 22 (10.48%) Architect
3 21 (10.00%) Infrastructure Analyst
4 20 (9.52%) Developer
5 17 (8.10%) Consultant
6 16 (7.62%) Solutions Architect
7 13 (6.19%) Platform Engineer
7 13 (6.19%) Senior
8 12 (5.71%) Storage Analyst
9 10 (4.76%) Management Consultant
9 10 (4.76%) Software Engineer
10 8 (3.81%) DevOps Engineer
11 7 (3.33%) Data Engineer
12 6 (2.86%) Maximo Consultant
12 6 (2.86%) Software Manager
12 6 (2.86%) Storage Engineer
12 6 (2.86%) Support Analyst
12 6 (2.86%) Technical Analyst
12 6 (2.86%) Technical Support
12 6 (2.86%) Technical Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (6.19%) LDAP
1 13 (6.19%) OAuth
2 12 (5.71%) Flash
2 12 (5.71%) OpenID
2 12 (5.71%) SAML
3 11 (5.24%) Kafka
4 7 (3.33%) ISPF
4 7 (3.33%) Middleware
5 6 (2.86%) XML
6 5 (2.38%) JSON
6 5 (2.38%) SOAP
7 3 (1.43%) ARM Templates
7 3 (1.43%) CSS
7 3 (1.43%) EDI
7 3 (1.43%) HTML
7 3 (1.43%) JMS
7 3 (1.43%) RabbitMQ
7 3 (1.43%) Web Services
8 2 (0.95%) REST
8 2 (0.95%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 26 (12.38%) Linux Command Line
1 26 (12.38%) Replication
2 18 (8.57%) Mainframe
3 15 (7.14%) Legacy Systems
4 11 (5.24%) Tandem
5 10 (4.76%) IBM Mainframe
6 8 (3.81%) Data Centre
7 7 (3.33%) Data Protection Act
8 6 (2.86%) Enterprise Storage
9 5 (2.38%) CMDB
10 4 (1.90%) AS400
10 4 (1.90%) Enterprise Software
10 4 (1.90%) VSAM
11 3 (1.43%) Clustering
11 3 (1.43%) Hybrid Cloud
11 3 (1.43%) Legacy Applications
12 2 (0.95%) Distributed Architecture
12 2 (0.95%) Distributed Systems
12 2 (0.95%) Onboarding
12 2 (0.95%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 50 (23.81%) Linux
2 35 (16.67%) Windows
3 30 (14.29%) Unix
4 12 (5.71%) Windows Server
4 12 (5.71%) zOS
5 6 (2.86%) AIX
5 6 (2.86%) Windows 10
5 6 (2.86%) Windows 7
5 6 (2.86%) Windows Server 2003
5 6 (2.86%) Windows Server 2016
6 3 (1.43%) MVS
7 2 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.48%) Solaris
8 1 (0.48%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 1 (0.48%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 51 (24.29%) Agile
2 40 (19.05%) Migration
3 35 (16.67%) Stakeholder Management
4 34 (16.19%) CI/CD
4 34 (16.19%) DevOps
5 33 (15.71%) Problem-Solving
6 27 (12.86%) Asset Management
7 24 (11.43%) Incident Response
8 21 (10.00%) Data Protection
9 20 (9.52%) ITIL
10 19 (9.05%) Containerisation
11 17 (8.10%) Change Management
11 17 (8.10%) Computer Science
12 16 (7.62%) Platform Engineering
13 15 (7.14%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 15 (7.14%) Roadmaps
13 15 (7.14%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 14 (6.67%) Release Management
15 13 (6.19%) High Availability
15 13 (6.19%) Identity Access Management
Programming Languages
1 21 (10.00%) SQL
2 20 (9.52%) Python
3 15 (7.14%) Shell Script
4 12 (5.71%) JCL
5 11 (5.24%) Groovy
6 10 (4.76%) C++
7 8 (3.81%) C
8 7 (3.33%) CLIST
8 7 (3.33%) Java
8 7 (3.33%) REXX
9 6 (2.86%) JavaScript
10 5 (2.38%) Embedded C
10 5 (2.38%) Embedded C++
11 3 (1.43%) Bicep
11 3 (1.43%) COBOL
11 3 (1.43%) PowerShell
12 2 (0.95%) Bash
12 2 (0.95%) Natural
12 2 (0.95%) PL/1
12 2 (0.95%) VB
Qualifications
1 36 (17.14%) Security Cleared
2 28 (13.33%) SC Cleared
3 20 (9.52%) Degree
4 17 (8.10%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (4.76%) AWS Certification
6 8 (3.81%) BPSS Clearance
7 7 (3.33%) CISSP
8 5 (2.38%) CISM
8 5 (2.38%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 3 (1.43%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 3 (1.43%) Azure Certification
9 3 (1.43%) DV Cleared
9 3 (1.43%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
9 3 (1.43%) Microsoft Certification
9 3 (1.43%) PMI Certification
9 3 (1.43%) PMP
9 3 (1.43%) PRINCE2 Certification
10 2 (0.95%) CBAP
10 2 (0.95%) CSPO
11 1 (0.48%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (3.33%) QA
2 6 (2.86%) Data Quality
3 5 (2.38%) GDPR
4 4 (1.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 4 (1.90%) PCI DSS
5 3 (1.43%) NIST
5 3 (1.43%) NIST 800
6 2 (0.95%) HIPAA
6 2 (0.95%) ISO 20022
6 2 (0.95%) ISO/IEC 19770
6 2 (0.95%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 1 (0.48%) Basel III
7 1 (0.48%) Def Stans
7 1 (0.48%) IEC 61508
7 1 (0.48%) MISRA
7 1 (0.48%) MISRA C
7 1 (0.48%) SEPA
System Software
1 33 (15.71%) VMware Infrastructure
2 26 (12.38%) vSphere
3 18 (8.57%) NFS
4 13 (6.19%) Docker
4 13 (6.19%) GPFS
4 13 (6.19%) VMware ESXi
5 12 (5.71%) Active Directory
6 8 (3.81%) Tivoli Directory Server
7 7 (3.33%) Time Sharing Option
7 7 (3.33%) Virtual Machines
8 2 (0.95%) RACF
9 1 (0.48%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.48%) KVM
9 1 (0.48%) SRDF
9 1 (0.48%) Veritas Cluster Server
9 1 (0.48%) Xen
Systems Management
1 25 (11.90%) vRealize
2 19 (9.05%) Terraform
3 15 (7.14%) Kubernetes
4 13 (6.19%) VxRail
5 10 (4.76%) CA Single Sign-On
5 10 (4.76%) CA Wily
6 9 (4.29%) Progress Chef
7 8 (3.81%) Tivoli
8 7 (3.33%) Ansible
9 5 (2.38%) CA Endevor
9 5 (2.38%) OMEGAMON
9 5 (2.38%) Single Sign-On
10 2 (0.95%) Argo
10 2 (0.95%) QRadar
10 2 (0.95%) Tivoli Identity Manager
10 2 (0.95%) zSecure
11 1 (0.48%) Puppet
11 1 (0.48%) SCCM
11 1 (0.48%) Tivoli Storage Manager
11 1 (0.48%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 44 (20.95%) Oracle
2 43 (20.48%) Microsoft
3 36 (17.14%) VMware
4 30 (14.29%) Cisco
5 24 (11.43%) AppDynamics
6 20 (9.52%) ServiceNow
7 15 (7.14%) HP
8 14 (6.67%) Commvault
8 14 (6.67%) Dell
8 14 (6.67%) SolarWinds
9 12 (5.71%) Splunk
10 10 (4.76%) Broadcom
10 10 (4.76%) IBM Sterling
11 9 (4.29%) Citrix
12 7 (3.33%) ESRI
13 6 (2.86%) ANSYS
13 6 (2.86%) EMC
13 6 (2.86%) NetApp
13 6 (2.86%) Red Hat
13 6 (2.86%) SAP