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 20 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 3 4
Rank change year-on-year -2 +1 -1
Contract jobs citing Agile 8,450 6,356 6,576
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.48% 19.32% 17.07%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 18.34% 21.34% 19.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,718 4,361 4,387
10th Percentile £363 £355 £363
25th Percentile £425 £419 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £515 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.97% -6.36% -2.22%
75th Percentile £608 £625 £650
90th Percentile £700 £750 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £477 £519
% change year-on-year +4.74% -8.02% -2.99%
Number of hourly rates quoted 257 132 170
10th Percentile £28.50 £37.12 £26.68
25th Percentile £51.25 £52.38 £45.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £60.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +8.33% -7.69% -
75th Percentile £75.00 £65.25 £70.00
90th Percentile £90.00 £78.63 £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 46,068 29,787 33,025
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.40% 90.53% 85.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,926 18,499 20,227
10th Percentile £325 £300 £309
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,164 1,816 1,455
10th Percentile £13.81 £14.23 £14.90
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% -1.91%
75th Percentile £67.48 £44.05 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £67.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.03 £22.50 £43.00
% change year-on-year +77.91% -47.67% +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 20 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 20 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 20 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 -2 7,121 £525 - 8,567
UK excluding London -3 3,827 £500 +4.74% 4,945
London -3 3,561 £550 - 4,452
Work from Home -3 2,525 £505 -1.94% 3,964
North of England -1 1,136 £500 +9.89% 1,294
South East -2 902 £538 +2.38% 1,059
Midlands 0 735 £475 +5.56% 615
West Midlands 0 644 £475 -5.00% 405
Yorkshire -1 484 £500 +5.26% 327
North West -3 439 £500 +11.11% 782
South West +3 418 £513 -0.06% 687
Scotland 0 396 £481 +1.16% 565
North East +1 230 £450 -7.69% 188
East of England +1 229 £500 -4.76% 416
East Midlands -16 87 £498 +27.56% 210
Wales -5 67 £425 +13.33% 105
Northern Ireland +12 18 £638 +8.51% 220
Channel Islands -2 5 £525 -17.97% 3

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
1 759 (8.98%) Confluence
2 198 (2.34%) SharePoint
3 118 (1.40%) Apache Spark
4 113 (1.34%) Apache Airflow
5 100 (1.18%) Apache
6 83 (0.98%) CMS
7 69 (0.82%) SAS
8 40 (0.47%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 26 (0.31%) Microsoft Exchange
10 24 (0.28%) Jupyter
11 21 (0.25%) Camunda
12 16 (0.19%) IIS
12 16 (0.19%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 12 (0.14%) WebLogic
14 10 (0.12%) Appian
14 10 (0.12%) ArcGIS
14 10 (0.12%) WordPress
15 9 (0.11%) OpenStack
15 9 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
15 9 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 226 (2.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 141 (1.67%) Microsoft Project
3 108 (1.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 96 (1.14%) Microsoft Office
5 79 (0.93%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.34%) Chatbot
7 22 (0.26%) Trello
8 18 (0.21%) Sketch
8 18 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
9 16 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 14 (0.17%) Adobe XD
11 10 (0.12%) Notion
12 9 (0.11%) Windchill
13 8 (0.095%) UserZoom
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%) Mingle
15 2 (0.024%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 111 (1.31%) Dynamics CRM
2 100 (1.18%) SAP S/4HANA
3 32 (0.38%) Salesforce CRM
4 26 (0.31%) Workday HCM
5 23 (0.27%) Aladdin
6 19 (0.22%) Remedy ITSM
7 18 (0.21%) Payment Gateway
8 17 (0.20%) Oracle ERP
9 16 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
10 15 (0.18%) Primavera
10 15 (0.18%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
11 14 (0.17%) Adobe Campaign
11 14 (0.17%) SAP MDG
11 14 (0.17%) Shopify
12 10 (0.12%) Teamcenter
13 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS R12
13 9 (0.11%) SAP SD
13 9 (0.11%) Temenos T24
14 8 (0.095%) ContrOCC
14 8 (0.095%) Magento
Cloud Services
1 2,058 (24.36%) Azure
2 1,858 (21.99%) AWS
3 753 (8.91%) Azure DevOps
4 659 (7.80%) Power Platform
5 606 (7.17%) GitHub
6 578 (6.84%) GCP
7 400 (4.73%) Serverless
8 339 (4.01%) GitHub Actions
9 271 (3.21%) Amazon S3
10 267 (3.16%) AWS Lambda
11 215 (2.54%) Dynamics 365
12 191 (2.26%) Microsoft 365
13 180 (2.13%) Power Automate
14 176 (2.08%) Snowflake
15 172 (2.04%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 166 (1.96%) SaaS
17 160 (1.89%) PowerApps
18 149 (1.76%) Entra ID
19 138 (1.63%) AWS CloudFormation
20 137 (1.62%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 154 (1.82%) Firewall
2 107 (1.27%) DNS
3 81 (0.96%) Network Security
4 64 (0.76%) TCP/IP
5 56 (0.66%) VPN
6 41 (0.49%) WAN
7 31 (0.37%) HTTP
8 30 (0.36%) DHCP
9 29 (0.34%) Wireless
10 28 (0.33%) Broadband
10 28 (0.33%) Wi-Fi
11 26 (0.31%) BIG-IP
12 25 (0.30%) LAN
13 21 (0.25%) Internet
13 21 (0.25%) SD-WAN
14 19 (0.22%) 4G
14 19 (0.22%) 5G
14 19 (0.22%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 19 (0.22%) SSL
15 18 (0.21%) BGP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 476 (5.63%) Power BI
2 345 (4.08%) Data Warehouse
3 302 (3.57%) PostgreSQL
4 261 (3.09%) SQL Server
5 248 (2.93%) Relational Database
6 210 (2.49%) Metadata
6 210 (2.49%) MongoDB
7 205 (2.43%) NoSQL
8 186 (2.20%) Data Lake
9 120 (1.42%) Amazon RDS
10 102 (1.21%) Tableau
11 97 (1.15%) DynamoDB
12 87 (1.03%) Oracle Database
13 86 (1.02%) MySQL
14 79 (0.93%) Big Data
15 73 (0.86%) Amazon Redshift
15 73 (0.86%) BigQuery
16 57 (0.67%) Oracle Reports
17 52 (0.62%) Delta Lake
18 50 (0.59%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 1,420 (16.80%) JIRA
2 907 (10.73%) Git
3 597 (7.07%) Jenkins
4 437 (5.17%) GitLab
5 207 (2.45%) Selenium
6 165 (1.95%) JUnit
7 139 (1.64%) Postman
8 124 (1.47%) Cucumber
9 110 (1.30%) Maven
9 110 (1.30%) SonarQube
10 102 (1.21%) Gradle
11 92 (1.09%) Cypress.io
11 92 (1.09%) Mockito
12 79 (0.93%) Bitbucket
13 66 (0.78%) REST Assured
14 57 (0.67%) Zephyr
15 55 (0.65%) JMeter
16 54 (0.64%) Gatling
17 53 (0.63%) Visual Studio
18 42 (0.50%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 3,198 (37.85%) Social Skills
2 2,023 (23.94%) Finance
3 1,637 (19.37%) Public Sector
4 1,193 (14.12%) Analytical Skills
5 737 (8.72%) Banking
6 376 (4.45%) Retail
7 286 (3.38%) Influencing Skills
8 266 (3.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 214 (2.53%) Organisational Skills
10 194 (2.30%) Marketing
11 177 (2.09%) Legal
12 167 (1.98%) Documentation Skills
13 154 (1.82%) Manufacturing
14 144 (1.70%) Front Office
14 144 (1.70%) Investment Banking
15 123 (1.46%) Telecoms
16 122 (1.44%) Aerospace
16 122 (1.44%) Military
16 122 (1.44%) Presentation Skills
17 104 (1.23%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,497 (17.72%) Developer
2 1,236 (14.63%) Senior
3 1,043 (12.34%) Analyst
4 829 (9.81%) Lead
5 701 (8.30%) Business Analyst
6 672 (7.95%) Architect
7 611 (7.23%) Project Manager
8 390 (4.62%) Java Developer
9 337 (3.99%) Data Engineer
10 328 (3.88%) Delivery Manager
11 309 (3.66%) Software Engineer
12 284 (3.36%) Senior Developer
13 279 (3.30%) Product Manager
14 262 (3.10%) Solutions Architect
15 260 (3.08%) Designer
16 241 (2.85%) Senior Manager
17 237 (2.80%) DevOps Engineer
18 191 (2.26%) Product Owner
19 190 (2.25%) Consultant
20 156 (1.85%) Scrum Master
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 747 (8.84%) REST
2 700 (8.28%) Terraform
3 478 (5.66%) React
4 466 (5.51%) Spring
5 456 (5.40%) RESTful
6 421 (4.98%) Spring Boot
7 399 (4.72%) .NET
8 381 (4.51%) Kafka
9 309 (3.66%) Node.js
10 305 (3.61%) HTML
11 277 (3.28%) CSS
12 242 (2.86%) AngularJS
13 198 (2.34%) JSON
14 185 (2.19%) SOAP
15 170 (2.01%) Playwright
16 165 (1.95%) Web Services
17 147 (1.74%) OAuth
18 137 (1.62%) Middleware
19 133 (1.57%) PySpark
20 108 (1.28%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 1,182 (13.99%) Product Ownership
2 705 (8.34%) Cloud Native
3 287 (3.40%) Onboarding
4 240 (2.84%) Distributed Systems
5 233 (2.76%) Enterprise Software
6 225 (2.66%) Legacy Systems
7 160 (1.89%) Management Information System
8 156 (1.85%) Self-Motivation
9 152 (1.80%) Data Structures
10 140 (1.66%) NHS
11 137 (1.62%) Data Protection Act
12 132 (1.56%) Virtual Team
13 124 (1.47%) AI Agents
14 120 (1.42%) Mobile App
15 102 (1.21%) Data Centre
16 90 (1.07%) Analytical Mindset
17 67 (0.79%) CMDB
18 66 (0.78%) Hybrid Cloud
19 65 (0.77%) Public Cloud
20 59 (0.70%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 386 (4.57%) Linux
2 259 (3.07%) Windows
3 134 (1.59%) Unix
4 72 (0.85%) Android
5 69 (0.82%) Windows Server
6 66 (0.78%) Apple iOS
7 49 (0.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 21 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
9 19 (0.22%) VMS
10 13 (0.15%) Embedded Linux
10 13 (0.15%) zOS
11 10 (0.12%) Ubuntu
12 8 (0.095%) Amazon Linux
12 8 (0.095%) Mac OS
13 7 (0.083%) AIX
14 5 (0.059%) Mac OS X
15 4 (0.047%) CentOS
15 4 (0.047%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
16 3 (0.036%) Windows 10
16 3 (0.036%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,556 (30.25%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,356 (27.88%) CI/CD
3 2,288 (27.08%) DevOps
4 1,912 (22.63%) Scrum
5 1,826 (21.61%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,610 (19.05%) Problem-Solving
7 1,266 (14.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,194 (14.13%) AI
9 1,178 (13.94%) Test Automation
10 1,040 (12.31%) Roadmaps
11 933 (11.04%) Software Engineering
12 926 (10.96%) Analytics
13 901 (10.66%) Decision-Making
14 897 (10.62%) Microservices
15 822 (9.73%) User Stories
16 809 (9.57%) Migration
17 796 (9.42%) Data Modelling
18 755 (8.93%) Project Management
19 742 (8.78%) Infrastructure as Code
20 729 (8.63%) Waterfall
Programming Languages
1 1,394 (16.50%) SQL
2 1,272 (15.05%) Python
3 1,106 (13.09%) Java
4 728 (8.62%) JavaScript
5 429 (5.08%) C#
6 424 (5.02%) TypeScript
7 228 (2.70%) PowerShell
8 190 (2.25%) Bash
9 119 (1.41%) Scala
10 118 (1.40%) PL/SQL
11 94 (1.11%) Apex Code
12 90 (1.07%) Bicep
13 88 (1.04%) Kotlin
14 63 (0.75%) C++
14 63 (0.75%) Go
15 52 (0.62%) Shell Script
16 47 (0.56%) T-SQL
17 43 (0.51%) Groovy
18 42 (0.50%) C
19 33 (0.39%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 2,522 (29.85%) Security Cleared
2 2,013 (23.82%) SC Cleared
3 669 (7.92%) Degree
4 488 (5.78%) BPSS Clearance
5 393 (4.65%) DV Cleared
6 265 (3.14%) PMP
7 260 (3.08%) PMI Certification
8 156 (1.85%) Computer Science Degree
9 133 (1.57%) AWS Certification
10 127 (1.50%) Azure Certification
11 109 (1.29%) ISTQB
12 99 (1.17%) Microsoft Certification
13 75 (0.89%) CISSP
14 70 (0.83%) Master's Degree
15 58 (0.69%) Cisco Certification
16 51 (0.60%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
17 42 (0.50%) ITIL Certification
18 37 (0.44%) IIBA
19 36 (0.43%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
20 28 (0.33%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 867 (10.26%) QA
2 540 (6.39%) Accessibility
3 517 (6.12%) Data Quality
4 255 (3.02%) PMO
5 202 (2.39%) WCAG
6 182 (2.15%) GDPR
7 75 (0.89%) NIST
8 74 (0.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 72 (0.85%) GRC
9 72 (0.85%) NCSC
10 48 (0.57%) SLA
11 40 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
12 32 (0.38%) PCI DSS
12 32 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 28 (0.33%) ISO 20022
14 24 (0.28%) Disclosure Scotland
15 20 (0.24%) GxP
16 16 (0.19%) HL7
17 13 (0.15%) SEPA
18 12 (0.14%) P3O
System Software
1 854 (10.11%) Docker
2 168 (1.99%) Active Directory
3 88 (1.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
5 28 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
6 26 (0.31%) vSphere
7 22 (0.26%) Hyper-V
7 22 (0.26%) VMware NSX
8 19 (0.22%) Virtual Machines
9 17 (0.20%) IAG
10 15 (0.18%) Firmware
11 11 (0.13%) Embedded Firmware
12 8 (0.095%) NFS
12 8 (0.095%) Time Sharing Option
13 6 (0.071%) GPFS
13 6 (0.071%) Postfix
14 5 (0.059%) RACF
15 4 (0.047%) Ceph
15 4 (0.047%) Squid
16 3 (0.036%) UAG
Systems Management
1 896 (10.60%) Kubernetes
2 244 (2.89%) Ansible
3 222 (2.63%) Grafana
4 151 (1.79%) Prometheus
5 66 (0.78%) Argo
6 47 (0.56%) Kibana
7 38 (0.45%) Single Sign-On
8 30 (0.36%) Control-M
9 29 (0.34%) vCenter Server
10 25 (0.30%) Microsoft Intune
11 23 (0.27%) Progress Chef
12 22 (0.26%) Packer
12 22 (0.26%) Puppet
13 20 (0.24%) SCCM
14 17 (0.20%) Jamf Pro
15 15 (0.18%) HP ALM
15 15 (0.18%) WMI
16 13 (0.15%) Istio
16 13 (0.15%) Kustomize
17 12 (0.14%) SCOM
Vendors
1 1,086 (12.85%) Microsoft
2 506 (5.99%) Oracle
3 377 (4.46%) ServiceNow
4 322 (3.81%) Salesforce
5 279 (3.30%) Google
6 267 (3.16%) SAP
7 261 (3.09%) Databricks
8 128 (1.51%) Splunk
9 111 (1.31%) VMware
10 102 (1.21%) Adobe
11 88 (1.04%) IBM
12 87 (1.03%) Red Hat
13 82 (0.97%) Dynatrace
14 80 (0.95%) MuleSoft
15 79 (0.93%) Informatica
16 77 (0.91%) Talend
17 63 (0.75%) Atlassian
18 61 (0.72%) Workday
19 53 (0.63%) Denodo
20 46 (0.54%) Cisco