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

6 months to
9 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 3 4
Rank change year-on-year -2 +1 -1
Contract jobs citing Agile 8,476 6,307 6,584
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.56% 19.26% 17.28%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 18.38% 21.30% 20.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,748 4,322 4,432
10th Percentile £363 £356 £369
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 £606 £625 £651
90th Percentile £700 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £480 £519
% change year-on-year +4.17% -7.51% -2.08%
Number of hourly rates quoted 251 133 170
10th Percentile £28.50 £31.10 £26.97
25th Percentile £52.50 £50.00 £51.56
Median hourly rate £67.50 £60.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +12.50% -7.69% -
75th Percentile £75.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £95.00 £79.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £60.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +12.50% -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 46,106 29,609 32,588
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.64% 90.43% 85.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,135 18,363 20,196
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
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 £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 2,994 1,772 1,501
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.23 £14.70
25th Percentile £17.60 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £40.03 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.17% -41.51% +1.96%
75th Percentile £67.84 £45.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.86 £22.60 £43.00
% change year-on-year +85.18% -47.44% +7.50%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 7,185 £525 - 6,612
UK excluding London -1 3,873 £500 +4.17% 3,834
London -2 3,579 £550 - 3,771
Work from Home -3 2,536 £510 -1.50% 3,258
North of England -1 1,166 £500 +9.89% 958
South East -2 926 £543 +3.33% 778
Midlands 0 745 £475 +5.56% 432
West Midlands 0 643 £475 -5.00% 308
Yorkshire -1 478 £500 +5.26% 250
North West -3 476 £500 +11.11% 584
South West +3 422 £512 -0.88% 595
Scotland 0 383 £475 - 524
North East +2 229 £450 -10.00% 130
East of England +3 219 £500 -4.76% 296
East Midlands -11 98 £463 +21.71% 123
Wales -3 69 £425 +13.33% 61
Northern Ireland +11 18 £638 +15.91% 214
Channel Islands 0 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
1 759 (8.95%) Confluence
2 198 (2.34%) SharePoint
3 124 (1.46%) Apache Spark
4 110 (1.30%) Apache Airflow
5 103 (1.22%) Apache
6 83 (0.98%) CMS
7 70 (0.83%) SAS
8 39 (0.46%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 28 (0.33%) Microsoft Exchange
10 22 (0.26%) Camunda
10 22 (0.26%) Jupyter
11 18 (0.21%) IIS
12 15 (0.18%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 10 (0.12%) Appian
13 10 (0.12%) ArcGIS
13 10 (0.12%) WebLogic
14 9 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
14 9 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
14 9 (0.11%) WordPress
15 8 (0.094%) WebSphere
Applications
1 232 (2.74%) Microsoft Excel
2 157 (1.85%) Microsoft Project
3 112 (1.32%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 102 (1.20%) Microsoft Office
5 76 (0.90%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.35%) Chatbot
7 24 (0.28%) Trello
8 17 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 17 (0.20%) Sketch
9 15 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
10 12 (0.14%) Adobe XD
11 10 (0.12%) Notion
12 8 (0.094%) UserZoom
13 6 (0.071%) Windchill
14 3 (0.035%) DaVinci Resolve
14 3 (0.035%) NUKE
14 3 (0.035%) Photoshop
15 2 (0.024%) CINEMA 4D
15 2 (0.024%) Houdini
15 2 (0.024%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 100 (1.18%) SAP S/4HANA
2 98 (1.16%) Dynamics CRM
3 34 (0.40%) Salesforce CRM
4 25 (0.29%) Workday HCM
5 21 (0.25%) Aladdin
5 21 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
6 18 (0.21%) Oracle ERP
6 18 (0.21%) Payment Gateway
7 17 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
7 17 (0.20%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 16 (0.19%) Primavera
9 14 (0.17%) Adobe Campaign
9 14 (0.17%) Shopify
10 13 (0.15%) Temenos T24
11 10 (0.12%) SAP MDG
12 9 (0.11%) SAP SD
12 9 (0.11%) Teamcenter
13 8 (0.094%) Findur
13 8 (0.094%) Magento
13 8 (0.094%) Oracle EBS R12
Cloud Services
1 2,101 (24.79%) Azure
2 1,872 (22.09%) AWS
3 767 (9.05%) Azure DevOps
4 645 (7.61%) Power Platform
5 627 (7.40%) GitHub
6 576 (6.80%) GCP
7 408 (4.81%) Serverless
8 356 (4.20%) GitHub Actions
9 274 (3.23%) AWS Lambda
10 271 (3.20%) Amazon S3
11 198 (2.34%) Dynamics 365
11 198 (2.34%) Microsoft 365
12 172 (2.03%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 167 (1.97%) Snowflake
14 166 (1.96%) Power Automate
15 163 (1.92%) SaaS
16 158 (1.86%) PowerApps
17 156 (1.84%) Entra ID
18 143 (1.69%) AWS CloudFormation
19 139 (1.64%) Figma
Communications & Networking
1 162 (1.91%) Firewall
2 106 (1.25%) DNS
3 81 (0.96%) Network Security
4 58 (0.68%) VPN
5 57 (0.67%) TCP/IP
6 47 (0.55%) WAN
7 32 (0.38%) HTTP
8 29 (0.34%) LAN
9 27 (0.32%) DHCP
10 26 (0.31%) SD-WAN
10 26 (0.31%) Wireless
11 25 (0.29%) Wi-Fi
12 24 (0.28%) BIG-IP
13 23 (0.27%) Broadband
14 22 (0.26%) Internet
14 22 (0.26%) SSL
15 20 (0.24%) BGP
16 18 (0.21%) Intranet
17 16 (0.19%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 16 (0.19%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 469 (5.53%) Power BI
2 341 (4.02%) Data Warehouse
3 308 (3.63%) PostgreSQL
4 261 (3.08%) SQL Server
5 241 (2.84%) Relational Database
6 204 (2.41%) NoSQL
7 202 (2.38%) MongoDB
8 197 (2.32%) Metadata
9 180 (2.12%) Data Lake
10 120 (1.42%) Amazon RDS
11 104 (1.23%) Tableau
12 101 (1.19%) DynamoDB
13 86 (1.01%) Big Data
14 85 (1.00%) MySQL
15 81 (0.96%) Oracle Database
16 73 (0.86%) Amazon Redshift
17 68 (0.80%) BigQuery
18 57 (0.67%) Oracle Reports
19 56 (0.66%) Delta Lake
20 53 (0.63%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 1,437 (16.95%) JIRA
2 880 (10.38%) Git
3 596 (7.03%) Jenkins
4 424 (5.00%) GitLab
5 201 (2.37%) Selenium
6 165 (1.95%) JUnit
7 137 (1.62%) Postman
8 112 (1.32%) Cucumber
9 105 (1.24%) SonarQube
10 101 (1.19%) Gradle
11 97 (1.14%) Maven
12 92 (1.09%) Mockito
13 91 (1.07%) Cypress.io
14 84 (0.99%) Bitbucket
15 66 (0.78%) REST Assured
16 60 (0.71%) JMeter
16 60 (0.71%) Zephyr
17 46 (0.54%) Gatling
17 46 (0.54%) Sonatype Nexus
18 43 (0.51%) Visual Studio
General
1 3,147 (37.13%) Social Skills
2 2,041 (24.08%) Finance
3 1,613 (19.03%) Public Sector
4 1,197 (14.12%) Analytical Skills
5 736 (8.68%) Banking
6 381 (4.50%) Retail
7 258 (3.04%) Influencing Skills
8 251 (2.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 219 (2.58%) Organisational Skills
10 195 (2.30%) Marketing
11 187 (2.21%) Legal
12 175 (2.06%) Documentation Skills
13 150 (1.77%) Manufacturing
14 143 (1.69%) Investment Banking
15 135 (1.59%) Front Office
16 131 (1.55%) Telecoms
17 117 (1.38%) Presentation Skills
18 113 (1.33%) Aerospace
19 108 (1.27%) Military
20 100 (1.18%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,492 (17.60%) Developer
2 1,228 (14.49%) Senior
3 1,052 (12.41%) Analyst
4 823 (9.71%) Lead
5 707 (8.34%) Business Analyst
6 682 (8.05%) Architect
7 636 (7.50%) Project Manager
8 377 (4.45%) Java Developer
9 343 (4.05%) Data Engineer
10 340 (4.01%) Delivery Manager
11 308 (3.63%) Software Engineer
12 282 (3.33%) Senior Developer
13 271 (3.20%) Product Manager
14 270 (3.19%) Solutions Architect
15 261 (3.08%) Designer
16 244 (2.88%) Senior Manager
17 235 (2.77%) DevOps Engineer
18 194 (2.29%) Product Owner
19 185 (2.18%) Consultant
20 168 (1.98%) Scrum Master
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 726 (8.57%) REST
2 710 (8.38%) Terraform
3 484 (5.71%) React
4 453 (5.34%) Spring
5 452 (5.33%) RESTful
6 410 (4.84%) .NET
7 407 (4.80%) Spring Boot
8 379 (4.47%) Kafka
9 300 (3.54%) HTML
10 297 (3.50%) Node.js
11 271 (3.20%) CSS
12 247 (2.91%) AngularJS
13 192 (2.27%) JSON
14 179 (2.11%) SOAP
15 161 (1.90%) Playwright
16 147 (1.73%) Web Services
17 138 (1.63%) PySpark
18 137 (1.62%) Middleware
19 136 (1.60%) OAuth
20 105 (1.24%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 1,181 (13.93%) Product Ownership
2 689 (8.13%) Cloud Native
3 281 (3.32%) Onboarding
4 232 (2.74%) Distributed Systems
4 232 (2.74%) Enterprise Software
5 221 (2.61%) Legacy Systems
6 161 (1.90%) Data Structures
7 152 (1.79%) Management Information System
8 150 (1.77%) Self-Motivation
9 148 (1.75%) NHS
10 142 (1.68%) Data Protection Act
11 130 (1.53%) Virtual Team
12 121 (1.43%) Mobile App
13 114 (1.34%) AI Agents
14 97 (1.14%) Analytical Mindset
15 96 (1.13%) Data Centre
16 68 (0.80%) CMDB
17 63 (0.74%) Greenfield Project
17 63 (0.74%) Hybrid Cloud
18 62 (0.73%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 373 (4.40%) Linux
2 253 (2.98%) Windows
3 132 (1.56%) Unix
4 70 (0.83%) Android
5 69 (0.81%) Windows Server
6 67 (0.79%) Apple iOS
7 54 (0.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 20 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
9 15 (0.18%) VMS
10 13 (0.15%) Embedded Linux
10 13 (0.15%) zOS
11 11 (0.13%) Ubuntu
12 8 (0.094%) Amazon Linux
12 8 (0.094%) Mac OS
13 7 (0.083%) AIX
14 6 (0.071%) Windows 10
15 5 (0.059%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
16 4 (0.047%) Rocky
16 4 (0.047%) Solaris
16 4 (0.047%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,458 (29.00%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,309 (27.24%) DevOps
3 2,305 (27.19%) CI/CD
4 1,926 (22.72%) Scrum
5 1,806 (21.31%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,603 (18.91%) Problem-Solving
7 1,260 (14.87%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,168 (13.78%) AI
9 1,138 (13.43%) Test Automation
10 1,040 (12.27%) Roadmaps
11 916 (10.81%) Analytics
12 913 (10.77%) Software Engineering
13 897 (10.58%) Microservices
14 882 (10.41%) Decision-Making
15 827 (9.76%) User Stories
16 823 (9.71%) Migration
17 798 (9.41%) Data Modelling
18 792 (9.34%) Project Management
19 758 (8.94%) Sprint Planning
20 743 (8.77%) Waterfall
Programming Languages
1 1,396 (16.47%) SQL
2 1,270 (14.98%) Python
3 1,086 (12.81%) Java
4 712 (8.40%) JavaScript
5 431 (5.08%) C#
6 415 (4.90%) TypeScript
7 229 (2.70%) PowerShell
8 187 (2.21%) Bash
9 121 (1.43%) PL/SQL
10 107 (1.26%) Scala
11 101 (1.19%) Apex Code
12 87 (1.03%) Bicep
12 87 (1.03%) Kotlin
13 55 (0.65%) C++
14 54 (0.64%) Go
15 52 (0.61%) Shell Script
16 50 (0.59%) T-SQL
17 44 (0.52%) Groovy
18 40 (0.47%) C
19 34 (0.40%) Korn
Qualifications
1 2,503 (29.53%) Security Cleared
2 1,996 (23.55%) SC Cleared
3 669 (7.89%) Degree
4 459 (5.42%) BPSS Clearance
5 384 (4.53%) DV Cleared
6 261 (3.08%) PMP
7 256 (3.02%) PMI Certification
8 152 (1.79%) Computer Science Degree
9 124 (1.46%) AWS Certification
10 119 (1.40%) Azure Certification
11 108 (1.27%) ISTQB
12 92 (1.09%) Microsoft Certification
13 74 (0.87%) Master's Degree
14 70 (0.83%) CISSP
15 59 (0.70%) Cisco Certification
16 52 (0.61%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
17 42 (0.50%) ITIL Certification
18 38 (0.45%) IIBA
18 38 (0.45%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
19 29 (0.34%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 857 (10.11%) QA
2 531 (6.26%) Accessibility
3 496 (5.85%) Data Quality
4 263 (3.10%) PMO
5 198 (2.34%) WCAG
6 188 (2.22%) GDPR
7 81 (0.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 81 (0.96%) NIST
8 71 (0.84%) GRC
9 70 (0.83%) NCSC
10 56 (0.66%) SLA
11 36 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 34 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
12 34 (0.40%) PCI DSS
13 25 (0.29%) GxP
13 25 (0.29%) ISO 20022
14 23 (0.27%) Disclosure Scotland
15 19 (0.22%) HL7
16 12 (0.14%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 12 (0.14%) P3O
System Software
1 847 (9.99%) Docker
2 168 (1.98%) Active Directory
3 82 (0.97%) VMware Infrastructure
4 26 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
4 26 (0.31%) VMware ESXi
5 24 (0.28%) Hyper-V
6 19 (0.22%) VMware NSX
6 19 (0.22%) vSphere
7 17 (0.20%) IAG
8 16 (0.19%) Virtual Machines
9 15 (0.18%) Firmware
10 11 (0.13%) Embedded Firmware
11 10 (0.12%) NFS
12 7 (0.083%) Time Sharing Option
13 6 (0.071%) Ceph
13 6 (0.071%) GPFS
13 6 (0.071%) Postfix
14 5 (0.059%) Squid
15 3 (0.035%) Microsoft App-V
15 3 (0.035%) vCloud
Systems Management
1 884 (10.43%) Kubernetes
2 254 (3.00%) Ansible
3 212 (2.50%) Grafana
4 155 (1.83%) Prometheus
5 69 (0.81%) Argo
6 38 (0.45%) Single Sign-On
7 32 (0.38%) Kibana
8 31 (0.37%) Microsoft Intune
9 30 (0.35%) Control-M
10 25 (0.29%) Progress Chef
11 24 (0.28%) SCCM
11 24 (0.28%) vCenter Server
12 23 (0.27%) Puppet
13 20 (0.24%) Packer
14 17 (0.20%) Jamf Pro
15 15 (0.18%) WMI
16 14 (0.17%) HP ALM
17 13 (0.15%) Kustomize
18 11 (0.13%) Istio
19 10 (0.12%) SCOM
Vendors
1 1,082 (12.77%) Microsoft
2 514 (6.06%) Oracle
3 376 (4.44%) ServiceNow
4 331 (3.91%) Salesforce
5 269 (3.17%) Google
6 267 (3.15%) SAP
7 258 (3.04%) Databricks
8 114 (1.34%) Splunk
9 107 (1.26%) VMware
10 100 (1.18%) Adobe
11 96 (1.13%) IBM
12 92 (1.09%) Red Hat
13 81 (0.96%) Dynatrace
14 80 (0.94%) MuleSoft
15 78 (0.92%) Talend
16 77 (0.91%) Informatica
17 64 (0.76%) Atlassian
18 58 (0.68%) Workday
19 52 (0.61%) Denodo
20 48 (0.57%) Cisco