Agile Contract Job Trends

Agile Software Development
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Agile skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 29 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 3 4
Rank change year-on-year -2 +1 -1
Contract jobs citing Agile 8,466 6,278 6,441
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.50% 19.26% 17.00%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 18.38% 21.24% 19.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,746 4,302 4,266
10th Percentile £363 £350 £363
25th Percentile £425 £418 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £515 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.97% -6.36% -2.22%
75th Percentile £607 £625 £650
90th Percentile £700 £738 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £480 £513
% change year-on-year +4.17% -6.34% -4.21%
Number of hourly rates quoted 247 133 159
10th Percentile £27.77 £28.78 £27.00
25th Percentile £50.00 £50.00 £51.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £60.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +8.33% -7.69% -
75th Percentile £75.00 £65.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £92.51 £73.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £60.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +8.33% -7.69% -

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

Agile 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 46,073 29,551 32,512
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.35% 90.64% 85.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,867 18,364 19,652
10th Percentile £325 £294 £308
25th Percentile £425 £403 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £630 £625 £638
90th Percentile £731 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,200 1,847 1,359
10th Percentile £13.74 £14.25 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.23 £17.30 £20.06
Median hourly rate £39.75 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +58.05% -40.82% -1.16%
75th Percentile £65.88 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.00 £74.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +79.25% -48.10% +1.18%

Agile
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Agile relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Agile job vacancy trend in the UK

Agile
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Agile.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Agile

Agile
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Agile over the 6 months to 29 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Agile in the UK

Agile
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Agile.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Agile

Agile
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Agile over the 6 months to 29 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Agile in the UK

Agile
Top 18 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Agile within the UK over the 6 months to 29 September 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
England -3 7,115 £525 - 7,448
UK excluding London -3 3,835 £500 +4.17% 4,649
London -3 3,553 £550 -0.18% 3,415
Work from Home -3 2,542 £506 -1.84% 3,602
North of England -1 1,131 £500 +8.70% 1,285
South East -4 885 £538 +2.38% 896
Midlands +1 764 £473 +5.11% 616
West Midlands +1 679 £473 -5.40% 392
Yorkshire -1 489 £500 +3.09% 353
North West -3 434 £500 +11.86% 742
South West +3 408 £513 -2.21% 682
Scotland 0 397 £480 +1.11% 519
East of England +1 228 £500 -6.98% 344
North East 0 225 £450 -10.00% 195
East Midlands -20 81 £467 +17.65% 224
Wales -5 69 £425 +13.33% 115
Northern Ireland +12 21 £638 +8.51% 214
Channel Islands -1 4 £525 -17.97% 4

Agile
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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
1 750 (8.86%) Confluence
2 196 (2.32%) SharePoint
3 117 (1.38%) Apache Spark
4 114 (1.35%) Apache Airflow
5 101 (1.19%) Apache
6 85 (1.00%) CMS
7 64 (0.76%) SAS
8 43 (0.51%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 28 (0.33%) Microsoft Exchange
10 25 (0.30%) Jupyter
11 20 (0.24%) Camunda
12 15 (0.18%) IIS
13 14 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 12 (0.14%) WebLogic
15 11 (0.13%) Headless CMS
15 11 (0.13%) WordPress
16 10 (0.12%) Appian
16 10 (0.12%) ArcGIS
17 9 (0.11%) nginx
17 9 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 223 (2.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 135 (1.59%) Microsoft Project
3 104 (1.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 101 (1.19%) Microsoft Office
5 79 (0.93%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.32%) Chatbot
7 21 (0.25%) Trello
8 19 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
9 18 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 17 (0.20%) Sketch
11 13 (0.15%) Adobe XD
12 10 (0.12%) Notion
13 8 (0.094%) UserZoom
13 8 (0.094%) Windchill
14 3 (0.035%) DaVinci Resolve
14 3 (0.035%) Mingle
14 3 (0.035%) NUKE
15 2 (0.024%) CINEMA 4D
15 2 (0.024%) Gliffy
15 2 (0.024%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 112 (1.32%) Dynamics CRM
2 97 (1.15%) SAP S/4HANA
3 32 (0.38%) Salesforce CRM
4 30 (0.35%) Workday HCM
5 24 (0.28%) Aladdin
6 18 (0.21%) Payment Gateway
7 17 (0.20%) Oracle ERP
8 16 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
8 16 (0.19%) Remedy ITSM
9 15 (0.18%) Primavera
10 14 (0.17%) Adobe Campaign
10 14 (0.17%) SAP MDG
10 14 (0.17%) Shopify
10 14 (0.17%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
11 11 (0.13%) Temenos T24
12 10 (0.12%) Teamcenter
13 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS R12
14 8 (0.094%) ContrOCC
14 8 (0.094%) Magento
15 7 (0.083%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,064 (24.38%) Azure
2 1,868 (22.06%) AWS
3 753 (8.89%) Azure DevOps
4 660 (7.80%) Power Platform
5 617 (7.29%) GitHub
6 586 (6.92%) GCP
7 390 (4.61%) Serverless
8 346 (4.09%) GitHub Actions
9 271 (3.20%) Amazon S3
10 258 (3.05%) AWS Lambda
11 219 (2.59%) Dynamics 365
12 192 (2.27%) Microsoft 365
13 184 (2.17%) Power Automate
14 177 (2.09%) Snowflake
15 171 (2.02%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 166 (1.96%) SaaS
17 161 (1.90%) PowerApps
18 153 (1.81%) Entra ID
19 137 (1.62%) AWS CloudFormation
20 134 (1.58%) Figma
Communications & Networking
1 152 (1.80%) Firewall
2 107 (1.26%) DNS
3 85 (1.00%) Network Security
4 62 (0.73%) TCP/IP
5 56 (0.66%) VPN
6 39 (0.46%) WAN
7 32 (0.38%) DHCP
8 30 (0.35%) Broadband
8 30 (0.35%) HTTP
8 30 (0.35%) Wi-Fi
9 28 (0.33%) BIG-IP
9 28 (0.33%) Wireless
10 26 (0.31%) LAN
11 21 (0.25%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
11 21 (0.25%) Internet
12 20 (0.24%) 4G
12 20 (0.24%) SD-WAN
13 18 (0.21%) 5G
13 18 (0.21%) BGP
13 18 (0.21%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 476 (5.62%) Power BI
2 342 (4.04%) Data Warehouse
3 307 (3.63%) PostgreSQL
4 266 (3.14%) SQL Server
5 246 (2.91%) Relational Database
6 224 (2.65%) MongoDB
7 209 (2.47%) Metadata
8 206 (2.43%) NoSQL
9 187 (2.21%) Data Lake
10 117 (1.38%) Amazon RDS
11 102 (1.20%) Tableau
12 89 (1.05%) DynamoDB
13 87 (1.03%) Oracle Database
14 86 (1.02%) MySQL
15 79 (0.93%) BigQuery
16 72 (0.85%) Big Data
17 70 (0.83%) Amazon Redshift
18 55 (0.65%) Oracle Reports
19 52 (0.61%) Delta Lake
20 51 (0.60%) Redis
Development Applications
1 1,396 (16.49%) JIRA
2 905 (10.69%) Git
3 600 (7.09%) Jenkins
4 457 (5.40%) GitLab
5 214 (2.53%) Selenium
6 178 (2.10%) JUnit
7 136 (1.61%) Cucumber
7 136 (1.61%) Postman
8 114 (1.35%) Maven
9 105 (1.24%) Gradle
10 104 (1.23%) SonarQube
11 96 (1.13%) Mockito
12 91 (1.07%) Cypress.io
13 78 (0.92%) Bitbucket
14 70 (0.83%) REST Assured
15 62 (0.73%) Gatling
16 58 (0.69%) JMeter
16 58 (0.69%) Zephyr
17 55 (0.65%) Visual Studio
18 40 (0.47%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 3,232 (38.18%) Social Skills
2 2,039 (24.08%) Finance
3 1,676 (19.80%) Public Sector
4 1,173 (13.86%) Analytical Skills
5 747 (8.82%) Banking
6 367 (4.33%) Retail
7 300 (3.54%) Influencing Skills
8 276 (3.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 214 (2.53%) Organisational Skills
10 191 (2.26%) Marketing
11 173 (2.04%) Legal
12 159 (1.88%) Documentation Skills
12 159 (1.88%) Manufacturing
13 142 (1.68%) Front Office
14 139 (1.64%) Investment Banking
15 129 (1.52%) Military
16 126 (1.49%) Presentation Skills
17 121 (1.43%) Telecoms
18 119 (1.41%) Aerospace
19 112 (1.32%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,489 (17.59%) Developer
2 1,239 (14.64%) Senior
3 1,033 (12.20%) Analyst
4 826 (9.76%) Lead
5 693 (8.19%) Business Analyst
6 671 (7.93%) Architect
7 612 (7.23%) Project Manager
8 377 (4.45%) Java Developer
9 332 (3.92%) Data Engineer
10 327 (3.86%) Delivery Manager
11 305 (3.60%) Software Engineer
12 285 (3.37%) Senior Developer
13 284 (3.35%) Product Manager
14 268 (3.17%) Designer
15 252 (2.98%) Solutions Architect
16 238 (2.81%) Senior Manager
17 234 (2.76%) DevOps Engineer
18 197 (2.33%) Product Owner
19 183 (2.16%) Consultant
20 157 (1.85%) Scrum Master
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 751 (8.87%) REST
2 699 (8.26%) Terraform
3 488 (5.76%) React
4 474 (5.60%) Spring
5 460 (5.43%) RESTful
6 422 (4.98%) Spring Boot
7 409 (4.83%) .NET
8 382 (4.51%) Kafka
9 311 (3.67%) Node.js
10 308 (3.64%) HTML
11 276 (3.26%) CSS
12 227 (2.68%) AngularJS
13 201 (2.37%) JSON
14 191 (2.26%) SOAP
15 178 (2.10%) Playwright
16 167 (1.97%) Web Services
17 157 (1.85%) OAuth
18 141 (1.67%) Middleware
19 130 (1.54%) PySpark
20 114 (1.35%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 1,191 (14.07%) Product Ownership
2 724 (8.55%) Cloud Native
3 301 (3.56%) Onboarding
4 246 (2.91%) Distributed Systems
5 240 (2.83%) Enterprise Software
6 229 (2.70%) Legacy Systems
7 160 (1.89%) Management Information System
8 151 (1.78%) Data Structures
9 147 (1.74%) Self-Motivation
10 133 (1.57%) Data Protection Act
11 132 (1.56%) NHS
11 132 (1.56%) Virtual Team
12 125 (1.48%) AI Agents
13 124 (1.46%) Mobile App
14 107 (1.26%) Data Centre
15 87 (1.03%) Analytical Mindset
16 70 (0.83%) Public Cloud
17 69 (0.82%) Hybrid Cloud
18 64 (0.76%) CMDB
19 59 (0.70%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 391 (4.62%) Linux
2 260 (3.07%) Windows
3 132 (1.56%) Unix
4 74 (0.87%) Android
5 71 (0.84%) Windows Server
6 66 (0.78%) Apple iOS
7 48 (0.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 20 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
9 19 (0.22%) VMS
10 13 (0.15%) zOS
11 12 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
12 10 (0.12%) Ubuntu
13 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
14 8 (0.094%) AIX
15 7 (0.083%) Mac OS
16 6 (0.071%) Mac OS X
17 5 (0.059%) CentOS
18 3 (0.035%) Rocky
18 3 (0.035%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
18 3 (0.035%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,629 (31.05%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,384 (28.16%) CI/CD
3 2,294 (27.10%) DevOps
4 1,921 (22.69%) Scrum
5 1,845 (21.79%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,590 (18.78%) Problem-Solving
7 1,270 (15.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,213 (14.33%) AI
9 1,183 (13.97%) Test Automation
10 1,064 (12.57%) Roadmaps
11 943 (11.14%) Software Engineering
12 921 (10.88%) Analytics
13 916 (10.82%) Decision-Making
14 909 (10.74%) Microservices
15 828 (9.78%) User Stories
16 819 (9.67%) Migration
17 787 (9.30%) Data Modelling
18 754 (8.91%) Project Management
19 744 (8.79%) Infrastructure as Code
20 729 (8.61%) Waterfall
Programming Languages
1 1,413 (16.69%) SQL
2 1,256 (14.84%) Python
3 1,121 (13.24%) Java
4 732 (8.65%) JavaScript
5 435 (5.14%) C#
6 430 (5.08%) TypeScript
7 222 (2.62%) PowerShell
8 194 (2.29%) Bash
9 123 (1.45%) Scala
10 117 (1.38%) PL/SQL
11 93 (1.10%) Bicep
12 88 (1.04%) Apex Code
12 88 (1.04%) Kotlin
13 67 (0.79%) Go
14 62 (0.73%) C++
15 55 (0.65%) Shell Script
16 49 (0.58%) T-SQL
17 40 (0.47%) C
18 38 (0.45%) Groovy
19 34 (0.40%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 2,533 (29.92%) Security Cleared
2 2,025 (23.92%) SC Cleared
3 680 (8.03%) Degree
4 515 (6.08%) BPSS Clearance
5 392 (4.63%) DV Cleared
6 271 (3.20%) PMP
7 267 (3.15%) PMI Certification
8 158 (1.87%) Computer Science Degree
9 133 (1.57%) AWS Certification
10 128 (1.51%) Azure Certification
11 105 (1.24%) ISTQB
12 97 (1.15%) Microsoft Certification
13 75 (0.89%) CISSP
14 67 (0.79%) Master's Degree
15 57 (0.67%) Cisco Certification
16 51 (0.60%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
17 40 (0.47%) ITIL Certification
18 38 (0.45%) IIBA
19 33 (0.39%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
20 27 (0.32%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 884 (10.44%) QA
2 563 (6.65%) Accessibility
3 509 (6.01%) Data Quality
4 243 (2.87%) PMO
5 205 (2.42%) WCAG
6 181 (2.14%) GDPR
7 75 (0.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 74 (0.87%) NCSC
9 73 (0.86%) GRC
10 70 (0.83%) NIST
11 49 (0.58%) SLA
12 43 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
13 31 (0.37%) PCI DSS
14 30 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 29 (0.34%) ISO 20022
16 25 (0.30%) Disclosure Scotland
17 18 (0.21%) GxP
18 14 (0.17%) HL7
19 13 (0.15%) HIPAA
19 13 (0.15%) SEPA
System Software
1 864 (10.21%) Docker
2 168 (1.98%) Active Directory
3 89 (1.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 31 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
5 29 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
6 27 (0.32%) vSphere
7 23 (0.27%) Hyper-V
8 22 (0.26%) VMware NSX
9 20 (0.24%) Virtual Machines
10 15 (0.18%) IAG
11 13 (0.15%) Firmware
12 9 (0.11%) Embedded Firmware
13 8 (0.094%) NFS
13 8 (0.094%) Time Sharing Option
14 6 (0.071%) GPFS
15 5 (0.059%) Postfix
15 5 (0.059%) RACF
16 4 (0.047%) Ceph
17 3 (0.035%) Squid
17 3 (0.035%) UAG
Systems Management
1 900 (10.63%) Kubernetes
2 237 (2.80%) Ansible
3 227 (2.68%) Grafana
4 153 (1.81%) Prometheus
5 57 (0.67%) Argo
6 56 (0.66%) Kibana
7 37 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
8 30 (0.35%) Control-M
9 28 (0.33%) vCenter Server
10 25 (0.30%) Microsoft Intune
11 22 (0.26%) Progress Chef
12 21 (0.25%) Packer
12 21 (0.25%) Puppet
13 19 (0.22%) SCCM
14 17 (0.20%) Jamf Pro
14 17 (0.20%) WMI
15 16 (0.19%) Istio
16 15 (0.18%) HP ALM
17 13 (0.15%) Kustomize
18 12 (0.14%) SCOM
Vendors
1 1,091 (12.89%) Microsoft
2 504 (5.95%) Oracle
3 367 (4.33%) ServiceNow
4 315 (3.72%) Salesforce
5 282 (3.33%) Google
6 266 (3.14%) SAP
7 261 (3.08%) Databricks
8 130 (1.54%) Splunk
9 109 (1.29%) VMware
10 104 (1.23%) Adobe
11 91 (1.07%) IBM
12 84 (0.99%) Dynatrace
13 78 (0.92%) MuleSoft
14 77 (0.91%) Red Hat
15 74 (0.87%) Informatica
16 72 (0.85%) Talend
17 65 (0.77%) Workday
18 60 (0.71%) Atlassian
19 50 (0.59%) Denodo
20 47 (0.56%) Cisco