Subject Matter Expert Contract Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Subject Matter Expert
UK > UK excluding London

The median Subject Matter Expert daily rate in the UK excluding London is £425, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 27 December 2025.

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

6 months to
27 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 386 337 398
Rank change year-on-year -49 +61 +93
Contract jobs requiring a Subject Matter Expert 18 15 7
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.098% 0.10% 0.036%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.11% 0.11% 0.038%
Number of daily rates quoted 14 7 1
10th Percentile - £567 -
25th Percentile £413 £601 -
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £610 £400
Median % change year-on-year -30.33% +52.50% -3.03%
75th Percentile £497 £618 -
90th Percentile £525 - -
UK median daily rate £500 £610 £563
% change year-on-year -18.03% +8.44% -2.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 1
Median hourly rate - - £60.00
UK median hourly rate - - £60.77

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK excluding London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the UK excluding London. 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 the UK excluding London with a recognized job title 16,619 13,612 18,391
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.26% 92.38% 93.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,198 8,120 11,936
10th Percentile £213 £213 £213
25th Percentile £373 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £678 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,674 773 1,298
10th Percentile £13.95 £15.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.24 £18.26
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £45.55
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -28.64% +82.18%
75th Percentile £60.00 £64.10 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £71.25 £76.53
UK median hourly rate £26.00 £32.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year -20.00% -27.78% +46.96%

Subject Matter Expert
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Subject Matter Expert' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Subject Matter Expert job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Subject Matter Expert
Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Subject Matter Expert job vacancies in the UK excluding London.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Subject Matter Expert job vacancies in the UK excluding London

Subject Matter Expert
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Subject Matter Expert in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 27 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Subject Matter Expert in the UK excluding London

Subject Matter Expert
Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Subject Matter Expert job vacancies in the UK excluding London.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Subject Matter Expert job vacancies in the UK excluding London

Subject Matter Expert
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 Subject Matter Expert within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 27 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
South East -13 10 £425 -30.33% 1
North of England -45 7 £500 - 6
Yorkshire -40 5 £500 - 6
Midlands -38 3 - -
North East - 2 - -
East Midlands - 2 - -
West Midlands -26 1 - -
Subject Matter Expert
UK

Subject Matter Expert Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London

For the 6 months to 27 December 2025, Subject Matter Expert 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 UK excluding London region featuring Subject Matter Expert in the job title.

1 8 (44.44%) ESRI
1 8 (44.44%) GIS
2 5 (27.78%) Migration
3 3 (16.67%) Incident Response
3 3 (16.67%) Kubernetes
3 3 (16.67%) OpenShift
3 3 (16.67%) Privileged Access Management
4 2 (11.11%) Ansible
4 2 (11.11%) Argo
4 2 (11.11%) Bash
4 2 (11.11%) CI/CD
4 2 (11.11%) Continuous Improvement
4 2 (11.11%) CyberArk
4 2 (11.11%) Cybersecurity
4 2 (11.11%) Data Migration
4 2 (11.11%) Data Quality
4 2 (11.11%) Decision-Making
4 2 (11.11%) GDPR
4 2 (11.11%) GitOps
4 2 (11.11%) Information Security
4 2 (11.11%) Infrastructure as Code
4 2 (11.11%) Istio
4 2 (11.11%) Jenkins
4 2 (11.11%) Keycloak
4 2 (11.11%) NIST
4 2 (11.11%) Python
4 2 (11.11%) Red Hat
4 2 (11.11%) Risk Management
4 2 (11.11%) SC Cleared
4 2 (11.11%) Security Cleared

Subject Matter Expert Skill Set
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 1 (5.56%) Confluence
Cloud Services
1 3 (16.67%) OpenShift
2 1 (5.56%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 1 (5.56%) Fibre Channel
1 1 (5.56%) Firewall
1 1 (5.56%) iSCSI
1 1 (5.56%) NAS
1 1 (5.56%) Network Security
1 1 (5.56%) SAN
1 1 (5.56%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (44.44%) GIS
Development Applications
1 2 (11.11%) Jenkins
2 1 (5.56%) JIRA
General
1 1 (5.56%) Finance
1 1 (5.56%) Public Sector
1 1 (5.56%) Social Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (11.11%) Keycloak
Miscellaneous
1 2 (11.11%) Reference Data
2 1 (5.56%) Enterprise Storage
2 1 (5.56%) Operational Technology
2 1 (5.56%) Replication
2 1 (5.56%) Security Posture
Processes & Methodologies
1 5 (27.78%) Migration
2 3 (16.67%) Incident Response
2 3 (16.67%) Privileged Access Management
3 2 (11.11%) CI/CD
3 2 (11.11%) Continuous Improvement
3 2 (11.11%) Cybersecurity
3 2 (11.11%) Data Migration
3 2 (11.11%) Decision-Making
3 2 (11.11%) GitOps
3 2 (11.11%) Information Security
3 2 (11.11%) Infrastructure as Code
3 2 (11.11%) Risk Management
3 2 (11.11%) Technical Leadership
3 2 (11.11%) User Acceptance Testing
3 2 (11.11%) Validation
3 2 (11.11%) Vulnerability Remediation
3 2 (11.11%) Workflow
4 1 (5.56%) Containerisation
4 1 (5.56%) Problem-Solving
4 1 (5.56%) SOAR
Programming Languages
1 2 (11.11%) Bash
1 2 (11.11%) Python
2 1 (5.56%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 2 (11.11%) SC Cleared
1 2 (11.11%) Security Cleared
2 1 (5.56%) CISM
2 1 (5.56%) CISSP
2 1 (5.56%) Degree
2 1 (5.56%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (11.11%) Data Quality
1 2 (11.11%) GDPR
1 2 (11.11%) NIST
System Software
1 1 (5.56%) Active Directory
1 1 (5.56%) NFS
Systems Management
1 3 (16.67%) Kubernetes
2 2 (11.11%) Ansible
2 2 (11.11%) Argo
2 2 (11.11%) Istio
2 2 (11.11%) Terraform
Vendors
1 8 (44.44%) ESRI
2 2 (11.11%) CyberArk
2 2 (11.11%) Red Hat
3 1 (5.56%) BiZZdesign
3 1 (5.56%) EMC
3 1 (5.56%) IBM
3 1 (5.56%) Microsoft
3 1 (5.56%) NetApp
3 1 (5.56%) Qualys
3 1 (5.56%) Veritas