Acceptance Criteria Contracts

Acceptance Criteria
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring Acceptance Criteria skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Acceptance Criteria over the 6 months leading up to 2 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 288 261 227
Rank change year-on-year -27 -34 -3
Contract jobs citing Acceptance Criteria 255 407 694
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.87% 0.94% 1.17%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.96% 1.08% 1.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 161 294 483
10th Percentile £340 £363 £400
25th Percentile £413 £414 £461
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -9.09% +10.00%
75th Percentile £565 £575 £605
90th Percentile £700 £625 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £468 £488 £547
% change year-on-year -4.10% -10.88% +15.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 6 8
10th Percentile £35.19 £27.23 £50.50
25th Percentile £58.58 £31.71 £55.19
Median hourly rate £65.00 £32.36 £58.75
Median % change year-on-year +100.90% -44.93% +10.85%
75th Percentile £68.75 £57.00 £65.50
90th Percentile £75.50 £65.50 £73.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £61.79 £44.25 £55.25
% change year-on-year +39.64% -19.91% +16.32%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Acceptance Criteria 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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 26,648 37,562 53,490
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.82% 86.33% 89.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,170 24,188 37,115
10th Percentile £308 £300 £325
25th Percentile £413 £413 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £650
90th Percentile £745 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.50% - +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,066 2,451 1,742
10th Percentile £14.35 £12.75 £11.00
25th Percentile £18.26 £16.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £29.00 £35.50 £36.42
Median % change year-on-year -18.31% -2.53% +45.69%
75th Percentile £61.50 £59.95 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £36.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year -24.66% +4.29% +75.00%

Acceptance Criteria
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Acceptance Criteria as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Acceptance Criteria in the UK

Acceptance Criteria
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Acceptance Criteria.

Daily rate trend for Acceptance Criteria in the UK

Acceptance Criteria
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Acceptance Criteria over the 6 months to 2 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Acceptance Criteria in the UK

Acceptance Criteria
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Acceptance Criteria.

Hourly rate trend for Acceptance Criteria in the UK

Acceptance Criteria
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Acceptance Criteria over the 6 months to 2 May 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Acceptance Criteria in the UK

Acceptance Criteria
Top 16 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Acceptance Criteria within the UK over the 6 months to 2 May 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
England -51 205 £505 - 240
London -26 125 £550 +4.76% 97
Work from Home -10 95 £475 -5.00% 132
UK excluding London -4 88 £468 -4.10% 180
South East +27 27 £500 +2.56% 43
North of England +7 21 £500 +6.39% 38
Midlands +25 15 £392 -15.35% 34
North West +21 15 £505 +1.00% 25
Scotland +8 13 £434 -6.27% 4
South West +19 8 £588 +6.82% 32
West Midlands +18 8 £472 +4.78% 21
East Midlands +17 7 £357 -28.60% 12
East of England +20 3 £331 -11.67% 12
North East 0 3 £440 -7.76% 5
Yorkshire -18 3 - - 8
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 8

Acceptance Criteria
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 53 (20.78%) Confluence
2 7 (2.75%) CMS
3 4 (1.57%) Oracle Workflow
3 4 (1.57%) SharePoint
4 3 (1.18%) Drupal
5 2 (0.78%) Apache Spark
5 2 (0.78%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.39%) Apache
6 1 (0.39%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 19 (7.45%) MS Visio
2 14 (5.49%) Trello
3 12 (4.71%) Microsoft Office
4 7 (2.75%) Spreadsheet
5 6 (2.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 4 (1.57%) Microsoft Excel
7 2 (0.78%) Open Workbench
8 1 (0.39%) Adobe XD
8 1 (0.39%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.39%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.39%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 3 (1.18%) Endur
1 3 (1.18%) Shopify
2 2 (0.78%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.78%) MultiFonds
2 2 (0.78%) Oracle EBS R12
3 1 (0.39%) Advent Portfolio Exchange
3 1 (0.39%) Aligne
3 1 (0.39%) Oracle Applications
3 1 (0.39%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.39%) Orchestrade
3 1 (0.39%) SAP CRM
3 1 (0.39%) SAP CX
3 1 (0.39%) SAP Hybris
3 1 (0.39%) SAP MDG
3 1 (0.39%) SAP MDM
3 1 (0.39%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.39%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 33 (12.94%) Azure
2 17 (6.67%) Azure DevOps
3 16 (6.27%) AWS
4 13 (5.10%) SaaS
5 9 (3.53%) Power Platform
6 8 (3.14%) Miro
7 7 (2.75%) GCP
8 6 (2.35%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 4 (1.57%) OCI
10 3 (1.18%) BigCommerce
10 3 (1.18%) Datadog
10 3 (1.18%) GitHub
10 3 (1.18%) Slack
11 2 (0.78%) Amazon S3
11 2 (0.78%) Dynamics 365
11 2 (0.78%) Entra ID
11 2 (0.78%) Figma
11 2 (0.78%) IaaS
11 2 (0.78%) Microsoft 365
11 2 (0.78%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.75%) DHCP
1 7 (2.75%) DNS
1 7 (2.75%) Wi-Fi
2 6 (2.35%) Wireless
3 5 (1.96%) Network Security
4 4 (1.57%) DOCSIS
4 4 (1.57%) LAN
4 4 (1.57%) TCP/IP
5 3 (1.18%) Firewall
5 3 (1.18%) SD-WAN
5 3 (1.18%) VLAN
6 2 (0.78%) VPN
6 2 (0.78%) WAN
7 1 (0.39%) 802.11
7 1 (0.39%) Intranet
7 1 (0.39%) MQTT
7 1 (0.39%) NetScaler
7 1 (0.39%) PuTTY
7 1 (0.39%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (3.14%) Data Warehouse
2 6 (2.35%) Power BI
3 5 (1.96%) Big Data
4 3 (1.18%) GIS
4 3 (1.18%) InfluxDB
4 3 (1.18%) Looker
5 2 (0.78%) Delta Lake
5 2 (0.78%) Impala
5 2 (0.78%) MongoDB
5 2 (0.78%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (0.78%) Redis
5 2 (0.78%) SQL Server
5 2 (0.78%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 2 (0.78%) Tableau
6 1 (0.39%) Amazon Athena
6 1 (0.39%) BusinessObjects
6 1 (0.39%) Crystal Reports
6 1 (0.39%) DocumentDB
6 1 (0.39%) Flink
6 1 (0.39%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 73 (28.63%) JIRA
2 11 (4.31%) Jenkins
2 11 (4.31%) Postman
3 10 (3.92%) Git
4 6 (2.35%) JMeter
4 6 (2.35%) Selenium
5 4 (1.57%) Bitbucket
5 4 (1.57%) Cucumber
5 4 (1.57%) Cypress.io
5 4 (1.57%) SonarQube
5 4 (1.57%) Team Foundation Server
6 3 (1.18%) Gatling
6 3 (1.18%) REST Assured
6 3 (1.18%) SoapUI
7 2 (0.78%) Balsamiq
7 2 (0.78%) SpecFlow
7 2 (0.78%) TeamCity
7 2 (0.78%) TestCafe
7 2 (0.78%) TestRail
7 2 (0.78%) Toad
General
1 120 (47.06%) Social Skills
2 52 (20.39%) Finance
3 51 (20.00%) Public Sector
4 38 (14.90%) Analytical Skills
5 23 (9.02%) Presentation Skills
6 18 (7.06%) Banking
7 10 (3.92%) Telecoms
8 9 (3.53%) Influencing Skills
8 9 (3.53%) Organisational Skills
9 8 (3.14%) Marketing
10 6 (2.35%) Back Office
10 6 (2.35%) Retail
11 5 (1.96%) Documentation Skills
12 4 (1.57%) Electronics
12 4 (1.57%) Financial Institution
12 4 (1.57%) Legal
13 3 (1.18%) Front Office
13 3 (1.18%) Manufacturing
13 3 (1.18%) Military
13 3 (1.18%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 123 (48.24%) Analyst
2 103 (40.39%) Business Analyst
3 28 (10.98%) Product Owner
4 27 (10.59%) Senior
5 16 (6.27%) Technical Analyst
6 15 (5.88%) Agile Business Analyst
7 13 (5.10%) Technical Business Analyst
8 12 (4.71%) Developer
8 12 (4.71%) Senior Analyst
9 10 (3.92%) Architect
9 10 (3.92%) Data Analyst
9 10 (3.92%) Product Manager
9 10 (3.92%) Senior Business Analyst
9 10 (3.92%) Tester
10 9 (3.53%) Project Manager
10 9 (3.53%) Service Manager
11 8 (3.14%) Consultant
11 8 (3.14%) Service Transition Manager
11 8 (3.14%) Transition Manager
12 7 (2.75%) Senior Product Owner
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (1.96%) Playwright
2 4 (1.57%) .NET
2 4 (1.57%) ADO
2 4 (1.57%) Elastic Stack
2 4 (1.57%) Gherkin
2 4 (1.57%) Kafka
2 4 (1.57%) Oracle Fusion
2 4 (1.57%) RESTful
3 3 (1.18%) pytest
3 3 (1.18%) React
3 3 (1.18%) VML
4 2 (0.78%) CSS
4 2 (0.78%) FastAPI
4 2 (0.78%) NETCONF
4 2 (0.78%) REST
4 2 (0.78%) SOAP
5 1 (0.39%) ASP.NET
5 1 (0.39%) DOM
5 1 (0.39%) Spring
5 1 (0.39%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 73 (28.63%) Product Ownership
2 10 (3.92%) Data Protection Act
3 9 (3.53%) Management Information System
4 8 (3.14%) Onboarding
5 7 (2.75%) Legacy Systems
5 7 (2.75%) PMI
6 4 (1.57%) CMDB
6 4 (1.57%) Embedded Systems
6 4 (1.57%) IoT
7 3 (1.18%) Cyber Threat
7 3 (1.18%) Data Structures
7 3 (1.18%) Freedom of Information
7 3 (1.18%) Freedom of Information Act
7 3 (1.18%) Mobile App
7 3 (1.18%) Video\Live Streaming
8 2 (0.78%) Analytical Mindset
8 2 (0.78%) Greenfield Project
8 2 (0.78%) Mobile Banking
8 2 (0.78%) Self-Motivation
8 2 (0.78%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 9 (3.53%) Linux
2 3 (1.18%) Windows
3 2 (0.78%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 2 (0.78%) Rocky
3 2 (0.78%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 165 (64.71%) Agile
2 144 (56.47%) User Stories
3 65 (25.49%) Scrum
4 64 (25.10%) Problem-Solving
5 63 (24.71%) Stakeholder Management
6 56 (21.96%) Business Analysis
7 47 (18.43%) Workshop Facilitation
8 46 (18.04%) Sprint Planning
9 42 (16.47%) Requirements Gathering
10 39 (15.29%) User Experience
11 38 (14.90%) Product Backlog
11 38 (14.90%) Roadmaps
12 35 (13.73%) Sprint Retrospective
13 34 (13.33%) DevOps
13 34 (13.33%) User Acceptance Testing
14 33 (12.94%) Analytics
15 31 (12.16%) Backlog Prioritisation
16 29 (11.37%) Decision-Making
16 29 (11.37%) Test Automation
17 28 (10.98%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 12 (4.71%) Java
1 12 (4.71%) Python
2 9 (3.53%) SQL
3 7 (2.75%) JavaScript
4 5 (1.96%) C#
5 3 (1.18%) C
5 3 (1.18%) C++
5 3 (1.18%) Go
5 3 (1.18%) Shell Script
6 2 (0.78%) PL/SQL
6 2 (0.78%) RPG
6 2 (0.78%) TypeScript
7 1 (0.39%) ABAP
7 1 (0.39%) JSX
7 1 (0.39%) VB
Qualifications
1 40 (15.69%) Security Cleared
2 25 (9.80%) Degree
3 23 (9.02%) SC Cleared
4 8 (3.14%) DV Cleared
4 8 (3.14%) PMI Certification
5 7 (2.75%) CBAP
6 5 (1.96%) CSPO
7 4 (1.57%) Computer Science Degree
8 3 (1.18%) AWS Certification
8 3 (1.18%) IIBA
9 2 (0.78%) CWNA
9 2 (0.78%) SAFe Agilist
10 1 (0.39%) BPSS Clearance
10 1 (0.39%) CCNP
10 1 (0.39%) Cisco Certification
10 1 (0.39%) CWDP
10 1 (0.39%) ISEB
10 1 (0.39%) ISTQB
10 1 (0.39%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 1 (0.39%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 36 (14.12%) QA
2 15 (5.88%) Accessibility
3 6 (2.35%) PMO
4 4 (1.57%) Data Quality
5 2 (0.78%) Actionable Recommendations
5 2 (0.78%) Disclosure Scotland
5 2 (0.78%) GDPR
6 1 (0.39%) COPPA
6 1 (0.39%) GxP
6 1 (0.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (0.39%) NIST
6 1 (0.39%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 1 (0.39%) SLA
6 1 (0.39%) Software Quality Assurance
6 1 (0.39%) WCAG
System Software
1 3 (1.18%) Docker
2 2 (0.78%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 4 (1.57%) Ansible
2 3 (1.18%) Grafana
2 3 (1.18%) Kubernetes
2 3 (1.18%) Terraform
3 2 (0.78%) SCCM
4 1 (0.39%) HP ALM
4 1 (0.39%) HP Quality Center
4 1 (0.39%) Kibana
4 1 (0.39%) Prometheus
4 1 (0.39%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 24 (9.41%) Microsoft
2 12 (4.71%) Salesforce
2 12 (4.71%) SAP
3 9 (3.53%) Oracle
4 7 (2.75%) Splunk
5 5 (1.96%) ServiceNow
6 4 (1.57%) Adobe
6 4 (1.57%) Cisco
6 4 (1.57%) Sitecore
7 3 (1.18%) Databricks
7 3 (1.18%) Ekahau
7 3 (1.18%) Palantir
8 2 (0.78%) Atlassian
8 2 (0.78%) Citrix
8 2 (0.78%) Google
8 2 (0.78%) Meraki
8 2 (0.78%) Virgin Media
9 1 (0.39%) Informatica
9 1 (0.39%) Juniper
9 1 (0.39%) Siemens