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 21 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 4 4
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -3
Contract jobs citing Agile 6,636 5,248 7,573
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 17.61% 16.67% 17.45%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 20.10% 18.74% 19.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,556 3,377 5,351
10th Percentile £357 £363 £400
25th Percentile £413 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £623 £672 £650
90th Percentile £734 £788 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £510 £525
% change year-on-year -1.96% -2.86% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 138 90 187
10th Percentile £23.95 £22.49 £40.00
25th Percentile £45.46 £27.75 £50.26
Median hourly rate £58.00 £55.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +5.45% -15.38% -
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £93.79 £75.25 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £62.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year -12.00% -3.85% -

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 33,018 28,000 37,979
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.63% 88.93% 87.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,947 16,996 25,071
10th Percentile £305 £306 £300
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £645
90th Percentile £720 £743 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,000 892 1,828
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.62 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.69 £21.00 £17.10
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -13.33% +17.19%
75th Percentile £57.50 £62.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £69.37 £74.99 £75.05
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.55 £30.78 £40.00
% change year-on-year -20.24% -23.05% +53.85%

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 21 January 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 21 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Agile in the UK

Agile
Top 17 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 21 January 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 0 5,695 £515 -9.65% 2,739
UK excluding London +1 3,019 £500 -1.96% 2,461
London 0 2,906 £538 -10.42% 766
Work from Home -1 2,009 £500 -9.09% 1,551
North of England +2 890 £475 -5.00% 496
South East +1 680 £525 -4.55% 858
Midlands +1 569 £475 -5.00% 325
West Midlands +2 439 £500 -4.76% 178
North West +3 407 £438 -12.50% 265
Yorkshire 0 394 £500 -1.23% 177
South West +4 374 £540 -6.09% 298
Scotland 0 344 £472 +3.17% 146
East of England -1 143 £513 +2.50% 275
East Midlands -3 131 £401 -8.86% 145
North East +4 104 £450 -5.26% 60
Wales +5 62 £413 -22.72% 87
Northern Ireland -10 14 £425 -2.86% 30

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
1 628 (9.46%) Confluence
2 143 (2.15%) SharePoint
3 94 (1.42%) SAS
4 90 (1.36%) Apache
5 81 (1.22%) Apache Spark
6 72 (1.08%) Apache Airflow
6 72 (1.08%) CMS
7 34 (0.51%) nginx
8 25 (0.38%) IIS
9 22 (0.33%) Microsoft Exchange
10 19 (0.29%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 18 (0.27%) WebLogic
12 15 (0.23%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 14 (0.21%) OpenStack
14 12 (0.18%) JBoss
15 10 (0.15%) Anypoint
15 10 (0.15%) CICS
15 10 (0.15%) SugarCRM
16 9 (0.14%) Appian
16 9 (0.14%) Camunda
Applications
1 198 (2.98%) Microsoft Excel
2 196 (2.95%) Microsoft Project
3 174 (2.62%) Microsoft Office
4 106 (1.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 102 (1.54%) MS Visio
6 48 (0.72%) Chatbot
7 32 (0.48%) Sketch
8 28 (0.42%) Trello
9 26 (0.39%) Adobe XD
10 15 (0.23%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 12 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
12 10 (0.15%) InVision
13 8 (0.12%) Adobe Illustrator
14 7 (0.11%) Photoshop
15 6 (0.090%) Weka
15 6 (0.090%) Zeplin
16 5 (0.075%) Adobe Captivate
16 5 (0.075%) Notion
17 4 (0.060%) Autodesk Inventor
18 2 (0.030%) Autodesk Smoke
Business Applications
1 93 (1.40%) Dynamics CRM
2 69 (1.04%) SAP S/4HANA
3 27 (0.41%) Endur
4 26 (0.39%) Aladdin
5 19 (0.29%) Payment Gateway
6 17 (0.26%) NetSuite
7 16 (0.24%) Maximo
7 16 (0.24%) Salesforce CRM
8 15 (0.23%) Oracle ERP
8 15 (0.23%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 13 (0.20%) Oracle Payables
9 13 (0.20%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 11 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
11 10 (0.15%) Oracle EBS R12
11 10 (0.15%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 10 (0.15%) Primavera
11 10 (0.15%) Shopify
12 9 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
12 9 (0.14%) Temenos T24
12 9 (0.14%) VisionPLUS
Cloud Services
1 1,506 (22.69%) Azure
2 1,268 (19.11%) AWS
3 545 (8.21%) Azure DevOps
4 473 (7.13%) Power Platform
5 441 (6.65%) GitHub
6 421 (6.34%) GCP
7 360 (5.42%) Serverless
8 229 (3.45%) GitHub Actions
9 186 (2.80%) SaaS
10 175 (2.64%) AWS Lambda
11 153 (2.31%) Amazon S3
12 148 (2.23%) Dynamics 365
12 148 (2.23%) Microsoft 365
13 129 (1.94%) Figma
14 125 (1.88%) Azure Data Factory
14 125 (1.88%) Power Automate
15 122 (1.84%) PowerApps
16 118 (1.78%) AWS CloudFormation
17 114 (1.72%) Snowflake
18 105 (1.58%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 129 (1.94%) Firewall
2 56 (0.84%) TCP/IP
3 51 (0.77%) HTTP
4 50 (0.75%) DNS
5 43 (0.65%) Network Security
6 40 (0.60%) VPN
7 31 (0.47%) WAN
8 27 (0.41%) SD-WAN
9 23 (0.35%) SSH
10 19 (0.29%) Internet
11 16 (0.24%) DHCP
11 16 (0.24%) Ethernet
11 16 (0.24%) LAN
12 15 (0.23%) VSAN
13 14 (0.21%) SSL
14 13 (0.20%) BGP
15 11 (0.17%) Kerberos
16 10 (0.15%) OSPF
17 9 (0.14%) 5G
17 9 (0.14%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 333 (5.02%) Power BI
2 255 (3.84%) PostgreSQL
3 222 (3.35%) NoSQL
4 201 (3.03%) Data Warehouse
4 201 (3.03%) Relational Database
5 173 (2.61%) SQL Server
6 160 (2.41%) MongoDB
7 88 (1.33%) Data Lake
7 88 (1.33%) Tableau
8 83 (1.25%) MySQL
9 80 (1.21%) Metadata
9 80 (1.21%) Oracle Database
10 77 (1.16%) Amazon RDS
11 72 (1.08%) Big Data
12 64 (0.96%) BigQuery
13 58 (0.87%) DynamoDB
14 45 (0.68%) Azure SQL Database
15 39 (0.59%) Pentaho
15 39 (0.59%) Redis
16 38 (0.57%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 1,256 (18.93%) JIRA
2 663 (9.99%) Git
3 478 (7.20%) Jenkins
4 332 (5.00%) GitLab
5 179 (2.70%) Selenium
6 135 (2.03%) JUnit
7 127 (1.91%) Cucumber
7 127 (1.91%) Postman
8 93 (1.40%) Cypress.io
9 73 (1.10%) Bitbucket
10 61 (0.92%) Mockito
11 55 (0.83%) REST Assured
12 54 (0.81%) JMeter
13 48 (0.72%) SonarQube
14 46 (0.69%) Maven
15 40 (0.60%) SpecFlow
15 40 (0.60%) Visual Studio
16 37 (0.56%) Oracle APEX
17 36 (0.54%) Gradle
18 33 (0.50%) Liquibase
General
1 2,630 (39.63%) Social Skills
2 1,701 (25.63%) Finance
3 1,003 (15.11%) Analytical Skills
4 1,002 (15.10%) Public Sector
5 672 (10.13%) Banking
6 191 (2.88%) Documentation Skills
6 191 (2.88%) Influencing Skills
7 174 (2.62%) Presentation Skills
8 168 (2.53%) Retail
9 146 (2.20%) Marketing
10 139 (2.09%) Front Office
11 129 (1.94%) Telecoms
12 127 (1.91%) Investment Banking
13 120 (1.81%) Military
14 119 (1.79%) Organisational Skills
15 117 (1.76%) Legal
16 88 (1.33%) Financial Institution
17 85 (1.28%) Manufacturing
18 78 (1.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 52 (0.78%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 1,151 (17.34%) Developer
2 891 (13.43%) Analyst
3 844 (12.72%) Senior
4 654 (9.86%) Business Analyst
5 540 (8.14%) Lead
6 503 (7.58%) Project Manager
7 472 (7.11%) Architect
8 279 (4.20%) Software Engineer
9 246 (3.71%) Java Developer
10 202 (3.04%) Data Engineer
11 192 (2.89%) Senior Developer
12 186 (2.80%) Consultant
13 180 (2.71%) Designer
14 167 (2.52%) DevOps Engineer
15 161 (2.43%) Delivery Manager
16 153 (2.31%) Product Owner
17 147 (2.22%) Full-Stack Developer
18 144 (2.17%) Solutions Architect
19 137 (2.06%) Product Manager
20 131 (1.97%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 571 (8.60%) REST
2 406 (6.12%) React
3 384 (5.79%) RESTful
4 338 (5.09%) Node.js
5 307 (4.63%) .NET
6 295 (4.45%) Kafka
7 283 (4.26%) HTML
8 271 (4.08%) Spring
9 250 (3.77%) CSS
10 241 (3.63%) Spring Boot
11 220 (3.32%) AngularJS
12 194 (2.92%) SOAP
13 189 (2.85%) JSON
14 164 (2.47%) Playwright
15 145 (2.19%) XML
16 114 (1.72%) Web Services
17 103 (1.55%) Middleware
18 96 (1.45%) PySpark
19 95 (1.43%) FastAPI
20 90 (1.36%) Jest
Miscellaneous
1 704 (10.61%) Product Ownership
2 418 (6.30%) Cloud Native
3 164 (2.47%) Onboarding
4 135 (2.03%) Management Information System
5 127 (1.91%) Distributed Systems
6 126 (1.90%) Virtual Team
7 123 (1.85%) Legacy Systems
8 118 (1.78%) Mobile App
9 108 (1.63%) Data Protection Act
9 108 (1.63%) Self-Motivation
10 104 (1.57%) Data Structures
11 100 (1.51%) Analytical Mindset
12 98 (1.48%) PMI
13 93 (1.40%) Public Cloud
14 84 (1.27%) Enterprise Software
15 82 (1.24%) PKI
16 76 (1.15%) NHS
17 71 (1.07%) CMDB
18 70 (1.05%) Derivative
19 69 (1.04%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 450 (6.78%) Linux
2 307 (4.63%) Windows
3 163 (2.46%) Unix
4 80 (1.21%) Windows Server
5 64 (0.96%) Android
6 59 (0.89%) Apple iOS
7 34 (0.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 25 (0.38%) Windows 10
9 21 (0.32%) Mac OS X
10 18 (0.27%) VMS
11 15 (0.23%) Mac OS
12 12 (0.18%) Windows 7
13 11 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
14 10 (0.15%) Windows Server 2019
15 8 (0.12%) Ubuntu
15 8 (0.12%) zOS
16 5 (0.075%) Debian
17 4 (0.060%) Windows Server 2012
18 3 (0.045%) AIX
19 2 (0.030%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,765 (26.60%) DevOps
2 1,586 (23.90%) Problem-Solving
3 1,522 (22.94%) CI/CD
4 1,435 (21.62%) Scrum
5 1,346 (20.28%) Stakeholder Management
6 982 (14.80%) Continuous Improvement
7 856 (12.90%) Test Automation
8 762 (11.48%) Project Management
8 762 (11.48%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 684 (10.31%) Roadmaps
10 679 (10.23%) Microservices
11 645 (9.72%) Analytics
12 644 (9.70%) Waterfall
13 615 (9.27%) Software Engineering
14 602 (9.07%) AI
15 581 (8.76%) Migration
16 570 (8.59%) User Stories
17 561 (8.45%) Containerisation
18 529 (7.97%) Data Modelling
19 527 (7.94%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,139 (17.16%) Python
2 1,071 (16.14%) SQL
3 816 (12.30%) Java
4 636 (9.58%) JavaScript
5 416 (6.27%) TypeScript
6 391 (5.89%) C#
7 230 (3.47%) PowerShell
8 126 (1.90%) Bash
9 110 (1.66%) C++
10 99 (1.49%) Shell Script
11 97 (1.46%) PL/SQL
12 92 (1.39%) Go
12 92 (1.39%) Scala
13 56 (0.84%) Ruby
14 48 (0.72%) Apex Code
15 46 (0.69%) Bicep
16 39 (0.59%) Kotlin
16 39 (0.59%) PHP
17 36 (0.54%) T-SQL
18 35 (0.53%) R
Qualifications
1 1,565 (23.58%) Security Cleared
2 1,193 (17.98%) SC Cleared
3 792 (11.93%) Degree
4 282 (4.25%) PMI Certification
5 238 (3.59%) BPSS Clearance
5 238 (3.59%) DV Cleared
6 231 (3.48%) PMP
7 228 (3.44%) Computer Science Degree
8 129 (1.94%) Master's Degree
9 107 (1.61%) Azure Certification
10 76 (1.15%) AWS Certification
11 70 (1.05%) ISTQB
12 62 (0.93%) CISSP
13 57 (0.86%) CBAP
14 47 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
15 45 (0.68%) Microsoft Certification
16 39 (0.59%) CISM
17 36 (0.54%) IIBA
18 31 (0.47%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 30 (0.45%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 619 (9.33%) QA
2 360 (5.42%) Accessibility
3 278 (4.19%) Data Quality
4 206 (3.10%) GDPR
5 178 (2.68%) PMO
6 116 (1.75%) WCAG
7 82 (1.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 82 (1.24%) NIST
8 40 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 38 (0.57%) GRC
10 37 (0.56%) SLA
11 36 (0.54%) PSD2
12 34 (0.51%) PCI DSS
13 29 (0.44%) ISO 20022
14 27 (0.41%) Actionable Recommendations
14 27 (0.41%) NCSC
15 23 (0.35%) Basel III
16 21 (0.32%) Disclosure Scotland
17 20 (0.30%) SEPA
18 18 (0.27%) EU AI Act
System Software
1 772 (11.63%) Docker
2 129 (1.94%) Active Directory
3 93 (1.40%) VMware Infrastructure
4 45 (0.68%) vSphere
5 33 (0.50%) Virtual Machines
6 23 (0.35%) GPFS
7 21 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
8 20 (0.30%) Hyper-V
9 17 (0.26%) NFS
10 15 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
11 9 (0.14%) Virtual Desktop
12 6 (0.090%) Lustre
12 6 (0.090%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 5 (0.075%) KVM
14 4 (0.060%) Firmware
14 4 (0.060%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.060%) vCloud
14 4 (0.060%) VMware NSX
15 3 (0.045%) ISA Server
15 3 (0.045%) Squid
Systems Management
1 755 (11.38%) Kubernetes
2 474 (7.14%) Terraform
3 232 (3.50%) Ansible
4 186 (2.80%) Grafana
5 132 (1.99%) Prometheus
6 52 (0.78%) Single Sign-On
7 44 (0.66%) Argo
8 38 (0.57%) vRealize
9 34 (0.51%) Puppet
10 32 (0.48%) SCCM
11 30 (0.45%) OPNET
12 24 (0.36%) Kibana
13 19 (0.29%) Packer
14 18 (0.27%) WMI
15 17 (0.26%) Control-M
15 17 (0.26%) Microsoft Intune
16 16 (0.24%) Nessus
17 15 (0.23%) Consul
18 14 (0.21%) HP ALM
18 14 (0.21%) VxRail
Vendors
1 873 (13.16%) Microsoft
2 483 (7.28%) Oracle
3 304 (4.58%) ServiceNow
4 239 (3.60%) SAP
5 232 (3.50%) Salesforce
6 192 (2.89%) Databricks
7 181 (2.73%) Google
8 146 (2.20%) VMware
9 116 (1.75%) Atlassian
9 116 (1.75%) Splunk
10 86 (1.30%) Cisco
11 82 (1.24%) Adobe
12 74 (1.12%) IBM
13 56 (0.84%) MuleSoft
14 53 (0.80%) Workday
15 49 (0.74%) Remedy
16 47 (0.71%) Talend
17 45 (0.68%) Red Hat
18 38 (0.57%) Denodo
19 37 (0.56%) HP