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

6 months to
3 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 3 4
Rank change year-on-year -2 +1 -1
Contract jobs citing Agile 8,341 6,284 6,601
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.56% 19.33% 17.24%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 18.38% 21.38% 20.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,652 4,313 4,479
10th Percentile £363 £356 £365
25th Percentile £425 £420 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £520 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -5.45% -2.22%
75th Percentile £610 £625 £656
90th Percentile £700 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £488 £520
% change year-on-year +2.56% -6.25% -1.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 256 131 178
10th Percentile £28.50 £30.25 £26.30
25th Percentile £52.50 £50.00 £50.31
Median hourly rate £67.60 £60.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +12.67% -7.69% -
75th Percentile £75.25 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £95.00 £80.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.89 £58.75 £65.00
% change year-on-year +15.56% -9.62% -

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 45,377 29,398 32,720
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.63% 90.44% 85.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,769 18,279 20,543
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% -3.49%
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 2,906 1,760 1,592
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.20 £14.16
25th Percentile £17.73 £17.30 £18.69
Median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +63.02% -40.82% +2.41%
75th Percentile £67.84 £47.03 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.58 £22.63 £43.00
% change year-on-year +88.14% -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 3 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 3 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 3 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 7,080 £525 - 7,309
UK excluding London -2 3,809 £500 +2.56% 4,307
London -2 3,533 £550 -1.35% 4,121
Work from Home -3 2,497 £507 -2.60% 3,584
North of England -1 1,150 £500 +8.70% 1,071
South East -3 913 £538 +2.38% 864
Midlands 0 728 £475 +5.56% 475
West Midlands 0 625 £475 -5.00% 342
Yorkshire 0 474 £500 +4.60% 261
North West -4 470 £500 +11.11% 673
South West +2 416 £513 -2.21% 724
Scotland 0 374 £475 - 543
North East +2 223 £450 -11.76% 144
East of England +2 214 £500 -4.76% 329
East Midlands -14 99 £463 +21.71% 132
Wales -4 70 £425 +13.33% 69
Northern Ireland +11 18 £638 +15.91% 256
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
1 753 (9.03%) Confluence
2 194 (2.33%) SharePoint
3 123 (1.47%) Apache Spark
4 107 (1.28%) Apache Airflow
5 103 (1.23%) Apache
6 83 (1.00%) CMS
7 70 (0.84%) SAS
8 39 (0.47%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 27 (0.32%) Microsoft Exchange
10 21 (0.25%) Camunda
10 21 (0.25%) Jupyter
11 18 (0.22%) IIS
12 10 (0.12%) Appian
12 10 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 9 (0.11%) ArcGIS
13 9 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
13 9 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
13 9 (0.11%) WebSphere
13 9 (0.11%) WordPress
14 8 (0.096%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 232 (2.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 159 (1.91%) Microsoft Project
3 111 (1.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 101 (1.21%) Microsoft Office
5 76 (0.91%) MS Visio
6 31 (0.37%) Chatbot
7 23 (0.28%) Trello
8 16 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 16 (0.19%) Sketch
8 16 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
9 11 (0.13%) Adobe XD
10 10 (0.12%) Notion
11 8 (0.096%) UserZoom
12 6 (0.072%) Windchill
13 3 (0.036%) DaVinci Resolve
13 3 (0.036%) NUKE
14 2 (0.024%) Houdini
14 2 (0.024%) Maya
14 2 (0.024%) Mingle
14 2 (0.024%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 100 (1.20%) Dynamics CRM
1 100 (1.20%) SAP S/4HANA
2 34 (0.41%) Salesforce CRM
3 24 (0.29%) Aladdin
3 24 (0.29%) Workday HCM
4 21 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
5 19 (0.23%) Oracle ERP
6 17 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
6 17 (0.20%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 16 (0.19%) Primavera
8 14 (0.17%) Adobe Campaign
8 14 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
8 14 (0.17%) Shopify
9 13 (0.16%) Temenos T24
10 10 (0.12%) SAP MDG
11 9 (0.11%) SAP SD
11 9 (0.11%) Teamcenter
12 8 (0.096%) ContrOCC
12 8 (0.096%) Findur
12 8 (0.096%) Magento
Cloud Services
1 2,078 (24.91%) Azure
2 1,840 (22.06%) AWS
3 762 (9.14%) Azure DevOps
4 645 (7.73%) Power Platform
5 614 (7.36%) GitHub
6 562 (6.74%) GCP
7 401 (4.81%) Serverless
8 346 (4.15%) GitHub Actions
9 266 (3.19%) AWS Lambda
10 262 (3.14%) Amazon S3
11 198 (2.37%) Dynamics 365
12 192 (2.30%) Microsoft 365
13 168 (2.01%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 168 (2.01%) Snowflake
14 165 (1.98%) Power Automate
15 163 (1.95%) SaaS
16 158 (1.89%) PowerApps
17 155 (1.86%) Entra ID
18 138 (1.65%) AWS CloudFormation
18 138 (1.65%) Figma
Communications & Networking
1 160 (1.92%) Firewall
2 100 (1.20%) DNS
3 75 (0.90%) Network Security
4 58 (0.70%) VPN
5 57 (0.68%) TCP/IP
6 48 (0.58%) WAN
7 33 (0.40%) HTTP
8 30 (0.36%) LAN
9 27 (0.32%) DHCP
10 26 (0.31%) SD-WAN
11 25 (0.30%) Wireless
12 24 (0.29%) Wi-Fi
13 22 (0.26%) Broadband
13 22 (0.26%) Internet
13 22 (0.26%) SSL
14 21 (0.25%) BGP
14 21 (0.25%) BIG-IP
15 18 (0.22%) Intranet
16 17 (0.20%) MPLS
17 15 (0.18%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 471 (5.65%) Power BI
2 337 (4.04%) Data Warehouse
3 305 (3.66%) PostgreSQL
4 257 (3.08%) SQL Server
5 231 (2.77%) Relational Database
6 202 (2.42%) NoSQL
7 195 (2.34%) MongoDB
8 186 (2.23%) Metadata
9 177 (2.12%) Data Lake
10 115 (1.38%) Amazon RDS
11 104 (1.25%) Tableau
12 99 (1.19%) DynamoDB
13 86 (1.03%) Big Data
14 81 (0.97%) MySQL
15 78 (0.94%) Oracle Database
16 73 (0.88%) Amazon Redshift
17 66 (0.79%) BigQuery
18 58 (0.70%) Oracle Reports
19 54 (0.65%) Delta Lake
20 53 (0.64%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 1,419 (17.01%) JIRA
2 854 (10.24%) Git
3 583 (6.99%) Jenkins
4 416 (4.99%) GitLab
5 190 (2.28%) Selenium
6 156 (1.87%) JUnit
7 135 (1.62%) Postman
8 108 (1.29%) Cucumber
9 105 (1.26%) SonarQube
10 98 (1.17%) Gradle
11 92 (1.10%) Maven
12 89 (1.07%) Cypress.io
12 89 (1.07%) Mockito
13 84 (1.01%) Bitbucket
14 64 (0.77%) REST Assured
15 60 (0.72%) JMeter
15 60 (0.72%) Zephyr
16 46 (0.55%) Gatling
16 46 (0.55%) Sonatype Nexus
17 43 (0.52%) Visual Studio
General
1 3,099 (37.15%) Social Skills
2 2,022 (24.24%) Finance
3 1,578 (18.92%) Public Sector
4 1,178 (14.12%) Analytical Skills
5 727 (8.72%) Banking
6 378 (4.53%) Retail
7 254 (3.05%) Influencing Skills
8 245 (2.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 214 (2.57%) Organisational Skills
10 194 (2.33%) Marketing
11 179 (2.15%) Legal
12 173 (2.07%) Documentation Skills
13 148 (1.77%) Manufacturing
14 144 (1.73%) Investment Banking
15 135 (1.62%) Front Office
16 130 (1.56%) Telecoms
17 118 (1.41%) Presentation Skills
18 110 (1.32%) Aerospace
19 102 (1.22%) Military
20 97 (1.16%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,469 (17.61%) Developer
2 1,204 (14.43%) Senior
3 1,039 (12.46%) Analyst
4 806 (9.66%) Lead
5 697 (8.36%) Business Analyst
6 673 (8.07%) Architect
7 635 (7.61%) Project Manager
8 372 (4.46%) Java Developer
9 338 (4.05%) Data Engineer
10 330 (3.96%) Delivery Manager
11 309 (3.70%) Software Engineer
12 277 (3.32%) Senior Developer
13 266 (3.19%) Solutions Architect
14 263 (3.15%) Product Manager
15 257 (3.08%) Designer
16 240 (2.88%) Senior Manager
17 237 (2.84%) DevOps Engineer
18 188 (2.25%) Product Owner
19 182 (2.18%) Consultant
20 161 (1.93%) Scrum Master
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 707 (8.48%) REST
2 704 (8.44%) Terraform
3 480 (5.75%) React
4 446 (5.35%) Spring
5 442 (5.30%) RESTful
6 404 (4.84%) .NET
7 401 (4.81%) Spring Boot
8 369 (4.42%) Kafka
9 295 (3.54%) Node.js
10 294 (3.52%) HTML
11 265 (3.18%) CSS
12 243 (2.91%) AngularJS
13 190 (2.28%) JSON
14 178 (2.13%) SOAP
15 159 (1.91%) Playwright
16 144 (1.73%) Web Services
17 140 (1.68%) PySpark
18 136 (1.63%) Middleware
19 133 (1.59%) OAuth
20 103 (1.23%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 1,158 (13.88%) Product Ownership
2 674 (8.08%) Cloud Native
3 274 (3.28%) Onboarding
4 228 (2.73%) Distributed Systems
5 227 (2.72%) Enterprise Software
6 221 (2.65%) Legacy Systems
7 160 (1.92%) Data Structures
8 149 (1.79%) NHS
9 148 (1.77%) Self-Motivation
10 146 (1.75%) Management Information System
11 141 (1.69%) Data Protection Act
12 126 (1.51%) Virtual Team
13 121 (1.45%) Mobile App
14 109 (1.31%) AI Agents
15 96 (1.15%) Analytical Mindset
16 92 (1.10%) Data Centre
17 68 (0.82%) CMDB
18 62 (0.74%) Greenfield Project
19 61 (0.73%) Hybrid Cloud
20 56 (0.67%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 370 (4.44%) Linux
2 250 (3.00%) Windows
3 129 (1.55%) Unix
4 69 (0.83%) Android
5 68 (0.82%) Windows Server
6 67 (0.80%) Apple iOS
7 55 (0.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 19 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
9 15 (0.18%) VMS
10 13 (0.16%) Embedded Linux
11 12 (0.14%) zOS
12 11 (0.13%) Ubuntu
13 9 (0.11%) AIX
14 8 (0.096%) Amazon Linux
14 8 (0.096%) Mac OS
15 6 (0.072%) Windows 10
16 4 (0.048%) Rocky
16 4 (0.048%) Solaris
16 4 (0.048%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
16 4 (0.048%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,396 (28.73%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,286 (27.41%) DevOps
3 2,264 (27.14%) CI/CD
4 1,885 (22.60%) Scrum
5 1,777 (21.30%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,562 (18.73%) Problem-Solving
7 1,248 (14.96%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,152 (13.81%) AI
9 1,108 (13.28%) Test Automation
10 1,023 (12.26%) Roadmaps
11 912 (10.93%) Analytics
12 894 (10.72%) Software Engineering
13 876 (10.50%) Microservices
14 862 (10.33%) Decision-Making
15 818 (9.81%) User Stories
16 813 (9.75%) Migration
17 784 (9.40%) Project Management
18 782 (9.38%) Data Modelling
19 737 (8.84%) Sprint Planning
20 730 (8.75%) Waterfall
Programming Languages
1 1,375 (16.48%) SQL
2 1,252 (15.01%) Python
3 1,075 (12.89%) Java
4 697 (8.36%) JavaScript
5 428 (5.13%) C#
6 404 (4.84%) TypeScript
7 228 (2.73%) PowerShell
8 183 (2.19%) Bash
9 118 (1.41%) PL/SQL
10 103 (1.23%) Scala
11 102 (1.22%) Apex Code
12 85 (1.02%) Bicep
12 85 (1.02%) Kotlin
13 53 (0.64%) C++
13 53 (0.64%) Shell Script
14 50 (0.60%) Go
15 49 (0.59%) T-SQL
16 44 (0.53%) Groovy
17 39 (0.47%) C
18 34 (0.41%) Korn
Qualifications
1 2,448 (29.35%) Security Cleared
2 1,950 (23.38%) SC Cleared
3 660 (7.91%) Degree
4 435 (5.22%) BPSS Clearance
5 373 (4.47%) DV Cleared
6 254 (3.05%) PMP
7 251 (3.01%) PMI Certification
8 153 (1.83%) Computer Science Degree
9 122 (1.46%) AWS Certification
10 118 (1.41%) Azure Certification
11 106 (1.27%) ISTQB
12 92 (1.10%) Microsoft Certification
13 74 (0.89%) Master's Degree
14 71 (0.85%) CISSP
15 59 (0.71%) Cisco Certification
16 52 (0.62%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
17 42 (0.50%) ITIL Certification
18 38 (0.46%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
19 37 (0.44%) IIBA
20 31 (0.37%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 835 (10.01%) QA
2 517 (6.20%) Accessibility
3 486 (5.83%) Data Quality
4 261 (3.13%) PMO
5 196 (2.35%) WCAG
6 186 (2.23%) GDPR
7 81 (0.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 81 (0.97%) NIST
8 71 (0.85%) GRC
9 68 (0.82%) NCSC
10 57 (0.68%) SLA
11 37 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 35 (0.42%) PCI DSS
13 32 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
14 25 (0.30%) GxP
15 23 (0.28%) Disclosure Scotland
15 23 (0.28%) ISO 20022
16 19 (0.23%) HL7
17 12 (0.14%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 12 (0.14%) P3O
System Software
1 832 (9.97%) Docker
2 164 (1.97%) Active Directory
3 83 (1.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 26 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
4 26 (0.31%) VMware ESXi
5 23 (0.28%) Hyper-V
6 20 (0.24%) vSphere
7 19 (0.23%) VMware NSX
8 17 (0.20%) IAG
9 15 (0.18%) Firmware
9 15 (0.18%) Virtual Machines
10 11 (0.13%) Embedded Firmware
10 11 (0.13%) NFS
11 7 (0.084%) GPFS
12 6 (0.072%) Postfix
12 6 (0.072%) Time Sharing Option
13 5 (0.060%) Ceph
13 5 (0.060%) Squid
14 3 (0.036%) Microsoft App-V
14 3 (0.036%) vCloud
Systems Management
1 866 (10.38%) Kubernetes
2 255 (3.06%) Ansible
3 212 (2.54%) Grafana
4 155 (1.86%) Prometheus
5 71 (0.85%) Argo
6 38 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
7 33 (0.40%) Kibana
8 31 (0.37%) Microsoft Intune
9 30 (0.36%) Control-M
10 26 (0.31%) Progress Chef
11 24 (0.29%) Puppet
12 23 (0.28%) SCCM
12 23 (0.28%) vCenter Server
13 20 (0.24%) Packer
14 17 (0.20%) Jamf Pro
15 14 (0.17%) HP ALM
15 14 (0.17%) WMI
16 12 (0.14%) Istio
16 12 (0.14%) Kustomize
17 9 (0.11%) SCOM
Vendors
1 1,069 (12.82%) Microsoft
2 505 (6.05%) Oracle
3 374 (4.48%) ServiceNow
4 336 (4.03%) Salesforce
5 266 (3.19%) SAP
6 262 (3.14%) Google
7 257 (3.08%) Databricks
8 113 (1.35%) Splunk
9 108 (1.29%) VMware
10 97 (1.16%) IBM
11 96 (1.15%) Adobe
12 92 (1.10%) Red Hat
13 81 (0.97%) Dynatrace
14 80 (0.96%) MuleSoft
15 77 (0.92%) Talend
16 73 (0.88%) Informatica
17 64 (0.77%) Atlassian
18 57 (0.68%) Workday
19 52 (0.62%) Denodo
20 49 (0.59%) Cisco