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 31 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 3 4
Rank change year-on-year -2 +1 -1
Contract jobs citing Agile 8,330 6,382 6,663
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.50% 19.37% 17.26%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 18.33% 21.41% 20.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,613 4,384 4,527
10th Percentile £363 £356 £363
25th Percentile £425 £420 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £520 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -5.45% -2.22%
75th Percentile £606 £625 £660
90th Percentile £700 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £488 £524
% change year-on-year +2.56% -6.88% -1.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 262 136 178
10th Percentile £28.50 £29.75 £25.90
25th Percentile £53.31 £50.00 £50.31
Median hourly rate £67.95 £58.75 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +15.65% -9.62% -
75th Percentile £76.94 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £92.28 £80.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.00 £57.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +18.26% -11.54% -

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 45,455 29,807 32,988
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.58% 90.45% 85.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,783 18,569 20,737
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,905 1,767 1,609
10th Percentile £14.10 £14.20 £14.16
25th Percentile £17.75 £17.30 £18.89
Median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +63.02% -40.82% +3.56%
75th Percentile £67.84 £47.31 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.25 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.56 £22.63 £43.00
% change year-on-year +92.49% -47.37% +14.67%

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 31 August 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 31 August 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 31 August 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 7,077 £525 - 3,772
UK excluding London -2 3,821 £500 +2.56% 2,454
London -2 3,519 £550 -0.90% 1,986
Work from Home -3 2,495 £507 -2.56% 1,855
North of England -1 1,153 £500 +8.40% 599
South East -3 924 £538 +2.38% 633
Midlands 0 726 £475 +5.56% 294
West Midlands 0 623 £475 -5.00% 195
Yorkshire 0 477 £500 +3.63% 150
North West -4 472 £500 +11.11% 342
South West +2 414 £513 -2.21% 464
Scotland 0 378 £475 - 242
North East +2 222 £450 -13.46% 111
East of England +2 213 £500 -4.76% 139
East Midlands -12 99 £463 +21.71% 97
Wales -4 69 £425 +13.33% 50
Northern Ireland +11 18 £638 +15.91% 62
Channel Islands +1 5 £525 -17.97% 1

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
1 749 (8.99%) Confluence
2 195 (2.34%) SharePoint
3 121 (1.45%) Apache Spark
4 105 (1.26%) Apache Airflow
5 98 (1.18%) Apache
6 85 (1.02%) CMS
7 72 (0.86%) SAS
8 39 (0.47%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 26 (0.31%) Microsoft Exchange
10 21 (0.25%) Jupyter
11 20 (0.24%) Camunda
12 18 (0.22%) IIS
13 10 (0.12%) Appian
14 9 (0.11%) ArcGIS
14 9 (0.11%) OpenStack
14 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 9 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
14 9 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
14 9 (0.11%) WebSphere
14 9 (0.11%) WordPress
Applications
1 232 (2.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 161 (1.93%) Microsoft Project
3 110 (1.32%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 101 (1.21%) Microsoft Office
5 78 (0.94%) MS Visio
6 32 (0.38%) Chatbot
7 21 (0.25%) Trello
8 17 (0.20%) Sketch
9 16 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 16 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
10 11 (0.13%) Adobe XD
11 10 (0.12%) Notion
12 8 (0.096%) UserZoom
13 6 (0.072%) Windchill
14 3 (0.036%) DaVinci Resolve
14 3 (0.036%) NUKE
15 2 (0.024%) CINEMA 4D
15 2 (0.024%) Houdini
15 2 (0.024%) Maya
15 2 (0.024%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 100 (1.20%) SAP S/4HANA
2 97 (1.16%) Dynamics CRM
3 33 (0.40%) Salesforce CRM
4 24 (0.29%) Aladdin
4 24 (0.29%) Workday HCM
5 21 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
6 20 (0.24%) Oracle ERP
7 19 (0.23%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 18 (0.22%) Primavera
9 17 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
10 14 (0.17%) Adobe Campaign
10 14 (0.17%) Shopify
11 13 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
11 13 (0.16%) Temenos T24
12 10 (0.12%) SAP MDG
13 9 (0.11%) SAP SD
14 8 (0.096%) ContrOCC
14 8 (0.096%) Findur
14 8 (0.096%) Magento
14 8 (0.096%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 2,076 (24.92%) Azure
2 1,816 (21.80%) AWS
3 764 (9.17%) Azure DevOps
4 644 (7.73%) Power Platform
5 605 (7.26%) GitHub
6 557 (6.69%) GCP
7 398 (4.78%) Serverless
8 338 (4.06%) GitHub Actions
9 260 (3.12%) AWS Lambda
10 257 (3.09%) Amazon S3
11 197 (2.36%) Dynamics 365
12 193 (2.32%) Microsoft 365
13 167 (2.00%) Snowflake
14 164 (1.97%) Power Automate
14 164 (1.97%) SaaS
15 162 (1.94%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 159 (1.91%) PowerApps
17 154 (1.85%) Entra ID
18 138 (1.66%) Figma
19 135 (1.62%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 162 (1.94%) Firewall
2 101 (1.21%) DNS
3 73 (0.88%) Network Security
4 59 (0.71%) VPN
5 57 (0.68%) TCP/IP
6 51 (0.61%) WAN
7 32 (0.38%) HTTP
7 32 (0.38%) LAN
8 28 (0.34%) SD-WAN
9 25 (0.30%) DHCP
9 25 (0.30%) Wireless
10 24 (0.29%) Wi-Fi
11 23 (0.28%) BGP
11 23 (0.28%) Internet
12 22 (0.26%) Broadband
13 21 (0.25%) BIG-IP
14 20 (0.24%) SSL
15 19 (0.23%) MPLS
16 18 (0.22%) Intranet
17 17 (0.20%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 471 (5.65%) Power BI
2 336 (4.03%) Data Warehouse
3 300 (3.60%) PostgreSQL
4 253 (3.04%) SQL Server
5 227 (2.73%) Relational Database
6 202 (2.42%) NoSQL
7 192 (2.30%) MongoDB
8 179 (2.15%) Metadata
9 174 (2.09%) Data Lake
10 113 (1.36%) Amazon RDS
11 105 (1.26%) Tableau
12 98 (1.18%) DynamoDB
13 87 (1.04%) Big Data
14 77 (0.92%) MySQL
15 76 (0.91%) Amazon Redshift
16 75 (0.90%) Oracle Database
17 64 (0.77%) BigQuery
18 58 (0.70%) Oracle Reports
19 54 (0.65%) Amazon Athena
20 50 (0.60%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 1,411 (16.94%) JIRA
2 834 (10.01%) Git
3 580 (6.96%) Jenkins
4 410 (4.92%) GitLab
5 184 (2.21%) Selenium
6 148 (1.78%) JUnit
7 137 (1.64%) Postman
8 104 (1.25%) Cucumber
9 96 (1.15%) SonarQube
10 95 (1.14%) Gradle
11 89 (1.07%) Cypress.io
12 85 (1.02%) Bitbucket
13 81 (0.97%) Maven
14 80 (0.96%) Mockito
15 62 (0.74%) REST Assured
16 61 (0.73%) JMeter
17 60 (0.72%) Zephyr
18 45 (0.54%) Gatling
18 45 (0.54%) Sonatype Nexus
18 45 (0.54%) Visual Studio
General
1 3,080 (36.97%) Social Skills
2 2,023 (24.29%) Finance
3 1,569 (18.84%) Public Sector
4 1,165 (13.99%) Analytical Skills
5 725 (8.70%) Banking
6 379 (4.55%) Retail
7 256 (3.07%) Influencing Skills
8 233 (2.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 213 (2.56%) Organisational Skills
10 195 (2.34%) Marketing
11 180 (2.16%) Legal
12 170 (2.04%) Documentation Skills
13 148 (1.78%) Manufacturing
14 144 (1.73%) Investment Banking
15 133 (1.60%) Front Office
16 128 (1.54%) Telecoms
17 120 (1.44%) Presentation Skills
18 115 (1.38%) Aerospace
19 98 (1.18%) Military
20 90 (1.08%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,460 (17.53%) Developer
2 1,184 (14.21%) Senior
3 1,044 (12.53%) Analyst
4 810 (9.72%) Lead
5 697 (8.37%) Business Analyst
6 674 (8.09%) Architect
7 633 (7.60%) Project Manager
8 371 (4.45%) Java Developer
9 335 (4.02%) Data Engineer
10 333 (4.00%) Delivery Manager
11 309 (3.71%) Software Engineer
12 269 (3.23%) Product Manager
13 264 (3.17%) Designer
13 264 (3.17%) Senior Developer
13 264 (3.17%) Solutions Architect
14 238 (2.86%) Senior Manager
15 234 (2.81%) DevOps Engineer
16 189 (2.27%) Product Owner
17 182 (2.18%) Consultant
18 162 (1.94%) Scrum Master
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 705 (8.46%) Terraform
2 700 (8.40%) REST
3 477 (5.73%) React
4 441 (5.29%) Spring
5 439 (5.27%) RESTful
6 407 (4.89%) .NET
7 394 (4.73%) Spring Boot
8 364 (4.37%) Kafka
9 298 (3.58%) Node.js
10 290 (3.48%) HTML
11 262 (3.15%) CSS
12 240 (2.88%) AngularJS
13 188 (2.26%) JSON
14 173 (2.08%) SOAP
15 155 (1.86%) Playwright
16 139 (1.67%) Web Services
17 138 (1.66%) PySpark
18 136 (1.63%) Middleware
19 129 (1.55%) OAuth
20 101 (1.21%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 1,164 (13.97%) Product Ownership
2 658 (7.90%) Cloud Native
3 271 (3.25%) Onboarding
4 232 (2.79%) Distributed Systems
5 225 (2.70%) Legacy Systems
6 220 (2.64%) Enterprise Software
7 162 (1.94%) Data Structures
8 150 (1.80%) NHS
9 146 (1.75%) Management Information System
10 144 (1.73%) Self-Motivation
11 143 (1.72%) Data Protection Act
12 124 (1.49%) Virtual Team
13 121 (1.45%) Mobile App
14 106 (1.27%) AI Agents
15 96 (1.15%) Data Centre
16 95 (1.14%) Analytical Mindset
17 67 (0.80%) CMDB
18 62 (0.74%) Greenfield Project
18 62 (0.74%) Hybrid Cloud
19 54 (0.65%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 366 (4.39%) Linux
2 248 (2.98%) Windows
3 124 (1.49%) Unix
4 68 (0.82%) Android
5 66 (0.79%) Apple iOS
6 65 (0.78%) Windows Server
7 55 (0.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 19 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
9 13 (0.16%) Embedded Linux
9 13 (0.16%) VMS
10 12 (0.14%) zOS
11 11 (0.13%) Ubuntu
12 9 (0.11%) AIX
13 8 (0.096%) Amazon Linux
14 7 (0.084%) Mac OS
15 6 (0.072%) Windows 10
16 5 (0.060%) Mac OS X
17 4 (0.048%) CentOS
17 4 (0.048%) Solaris
17 4 (0.048%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,375 (28.51%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,285 (27.43%) DevOps
3 2,240 (26.89%) CI/CD
4 1,870 (22.45%) Scrum
5 1,761 (21.14%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,548 (18.58%) Problem-Solving
7 1,260 (15.13%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,142 (13.71%) AI
9 1,087 (13.05%) Test Automation
10 1,010 (12.12%) Roadmaps
11 904 (10.85%) Analytics
12 874 (10.49%) Software Engineering
13 873 (10.48%) Microservices
14 857 (10.29%) Decision-Making
15 812 (9.75%) Migration
16 804 (9.65%) User Stories
17 781 (9.38%) Project Management
18 773 (9.28%) Data Modelling
19 731 (8.78%) Waterfall
20 723 (8.68%) Sprint Planning
Programming Languages
1 1,363 (16.36%) SQL
2 1,233 (14.80%) Python
3 1,062 (12.75%) Java
4 692 (8.31%) JavaScript
5 428 (5.14%) C#
6 397 (4.77%) TypeScript
7 229 (2.75%) PowerShell
8 177 (2.12%) Bash
9 117 (1.40%) PL/SQL
10 102 (1.22%) Apex Code
11 100 (1.20%) Scala
12 86 (1.03%) Bicep
13 84 (1.01%) Kotlin
14 53 (0.64%) C++
15 48 (0.58%) Go
16 47 (0.56%) T-SQL
17 46 (0.55%) Shell Script
18 42 (0.50%) Groovy
19 39 (0.47%) C
20 35 (0.42%) Korn
Qualifications
1 2,446 (29.36%) Security Cleared
2 1,939 (23.28%) SC Cleared
3 666 (8.00%) Degree
4 431 (5.17%) BPSS Clearance
5 378 (4.54%) DV Cleared
6 253 (3.04%) PMP
7 247 (2.97%) PMI Certification
8 151 (1.81%) Computer Science Degree
9 121 (1.45%) AWS Certification
10 118 (1.42%) Azure Certification
11 106 (1.27%) ISTQB
12 88 (1.06%) Microsoft Certification
13 77 (0.92%) Master's Degree
14 68 (0.82%) CISSP
15 64 (0.77%) Cisco Certification
16 52 (0.62%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
17 42 (0.50%) ITIL Certification
18 39 (0.47%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
19 35 (0.42%) IIBA
20 32 (0.38%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 828 (9.94%) QA
2 518 (6.22%) Accessibility
3 480 (5.76%) Data Quality
4 258 (3.10%) PMO
5 189 (2.27%) WCAG
6 186 (2.23%) GDPR
7 82 (0.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 82 (0.98%) NIST
8 73 (0.88%) NCSC
9 69 (0.83%) GRC
10 58 (0.70%) SLA
11 37 (0.44%) PCI DSS
11 37 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 32 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
13 25 (0.30%) GxP
14 23 (0.28%) Disclosure Scotland
15 20 (0.24%) ISO 20022
16 19 (0.23%) HL7
17 14 (0.17%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 12 (0.14%) P3O
System Software
1 825 (9.90%) Docker
2 161 (1.93%) Active Directory
3 86 (1.03%) VMware Infrastructure
4 27 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
5 26 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
6 23 (0.28%) Hyper-V
7 22 (0.26%) vSphere
8 19 (0.23%) VMware NSX
9 17 (0.20%) IAG
10 15 (0.18%) Firmware
11 13 (0.16%) Virtual Machines
12 12 (0.14%) NFS
13 11 (0.13%) Embedded Firmware
14 8 (0.096%) GPFS
15 6 (0.072%) Postfix
15 6 (0.072%) Time Sharing Option
16 5 (0.060%) Ceph
16 5 (0.060%) Squid
17 4 (0.048%) vCloud
18 3 (0.036%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 859 (10.31%) Kubernetes
2 259 (3.11%) Ansible
3 200 (2.40%) Grafana
4 150 (1.80%) Prometheus
5 71 (0.85%) Argo
6 38 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
7 31 (0.37%) Control-M
7 31 (0.37%) Microsoft Intune
8 30 (0.36%) Kibana
9 26 (0.31%) Progress Chef
10 25 (0.30%) vCenter Server
11 24 (0.29%) Puppet
12 22 (0.26%) Packer
12 22 (0.26%) SCCM
13 17 (0.20%) Jamf Pro
14 14 (0.17%) HP ALM
14 14 (0.17%) WMI
15 13 (0.16%) Istio
16 12 (0.14%) Kustomize
17 10 (0.12%) vRealize
Vendors
1 1,068 (12.82%) Microsoft
2 501 (6.01%) Oracle
3 373 (4.48%) ServiceNow
4 337 (4.05%) Salesforce
5 267 (3.21%) SAP
6 256 (3.07%) Google
7 247 (2.97%) Databricks
8 111 (1.33%) Splunk
8 111 (1.33%) VMware
9 104 (1.25%) IBM
10 96 (1.15%) Adobe
11 91 (1.09%) Red Hat
12 81 (0.97%) Dynatrace
12 81 (0.97%) MuleSoft
13 77 (0.92%) Talend
14 74 (0.89%) Informatica
15 65 (0.78%) Atlassian
16 58 (0.70%) Workday
17 53 (0.64%) Denodo
18 51 (0.61%) Cisco