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

6 months to
31 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 3 4
Rank change year-on-year -3 +1 -3
Contract jobs citing Agile 7,503 5,502 7,141
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.27% 18.90% 16.65%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 18.03% 20.77% 19.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,143 3,807 4,961
10th Percentile £358 £363 £375
25th Percentile £424 £430 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -4.55% -2.65%
75th Percentile £604 £644 £650
90th Percentile £719 £788 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £522
% change year-on-year - -4.26% -0.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 219 90 230
10th Percentile £37.05 £28.32 £22.33
25th Percentile £56.47 £47.53 £42.50
Median hourly rate £70.00 £62.50 £60.25
Median % change year-on-year +12.00% +3.73% -7.66%
75th Percentile £84.63 £74.38 £65.00
90th Percentile £95.00 £78.50 £70.72
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 £62.50 £60.75
% change year-on-year +12.00% +2.88% -6.54%

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 41,613 26,489 36,722
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.70% 91.00% 85.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,011 16,933 23,595
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,489 1,111 2,517
10th Percentile £14.67 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £17.96 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £28.00 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +51.79% -23.29% -0.73%
75th Percentile £67.84 £57.55 £60.00
90th Percentile £81.05 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.93% -34.02% +8.91%

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 May 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 May 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 May 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 6,406 £515 -4.10% 1,406
UK excluding London 0 3,575 £500 - 1,181
London -2 3,043 £538 -6.52% 461
Work from Home -3 2,175 £500 -4.76% 824
North of England 0 1,131 £480 +1.05% 298
South East +1 825 £550 - 371
Midlands -2 711 £475 +1.28% 188
West Midlands -1 584 £475 -5.00% 122
North West +2 518 £450 -5.26% 158
Yorkshire -2 475 £500 +3.63% 77
South West +5 422 £508 -9.29% 143
Scotland 0 337 £470 +1.08% 42
North East +1 170 £453 -4.63% 66
East of England -6 158 £525 +5.00% 101
East Midlands -5 124 £447 +6.43% 66
Wales -7 43 £319 -25.74% 45
Northern Ireland +12 24 £588 +38.24% 10
Channel Islands 0 2 - - 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
1 686 (9.14%) Confluence
2 165 (2.20%) SharePoint
3 124 (1.65%) Apache Spark
4 98 (1.31%) SAS
5 78 (1.04%) Apache Airflow
6 71 (0.95%) CMS
7 66 (0.88%) Apache
8 30 (0.40%) Microsoft Exchange
9 25 (0.33%) IIS
10 21 (0.28%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 16 (0.21%) Camunda
12 13 (0.17%) Appian
12 13 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 11 (0.15%) ArcGIS
13 11 (0.15%) JBoss
14 10 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
14 10 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
15 9 (0.12%) WebSphere
16 8 (0.11%) Jupyter
16 8 (0.11%) WebLogic
Applications
1 211 (2.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 182 (2.43%) Microsoft Project
3 115 (1.53%) Microsoft Office
4 110 (1.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 93 (1.24%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.36%) Sketch
7 24 (0.32%) Chatbot
8 18 (0.24%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 18 (0.24%) Adobe XD
9 15 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
10 13 (0.17%) Trello
11 10 (0.13%) Notion
12 7 (0.093%) Photoshop
13 6 (0.080%) InVision
13 6 (0.080%) UserZoom
14 4 (0.053%) Maya
15 3 (0.040%) Adobe Illustrator
15 3 (0.040%) Zeplin
16 2 (0.027%) Lectora
16 2 (0.027%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 73 (0.97%) SAP S/4HANA
2 72 (0.96%) Dynamics CRM
3 28 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
4 25 (0.33%) Aladdin
5 20 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
6 17 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
7 16 (0.21%) Primavera
7 16 (0.21%) Salesforce CRM
8 14 (0.19%) Adobe Campaign
8 14 (0.19%) Maximo
8 14 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
8 14 (0.19%) Temenos T24
9 13 (0.17%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 11 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
10 11 (0.15%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 10 (0.13%) Loan IQ
11 10 (0.13%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 9 (0.12%) Findur
12 9 (0.12%) NetSuite
12 9 (0.12%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 1,782 (23.75%) Azure
2 1,604 (21.38%) AWS
3 574 (7.65%) Azure DevOps
4 548 (7.30%) Power Platform
5 459 (6.12%) GitHub
6 445 (5.93%) GCP
7 348 (4.64%) Serverless
8 275 (3.67%) GitHub Actions
9 216 (2.88%) Amazon S3
10 203 (2.71%) AWS Lambda
11 168 (2.24%) Microsoft 365
12 157 (2.09%) SaaS
13 152 (2.03%) Figma
14 130 (1.73%) Entra ID
15 129 (1.72%) Dynamics 365
16 120 (1.60%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 119 (1.59%) Azure Data Factory
18 116 (1.55%) PowerApps
19 115 (1.53%) Amazon EC2
20 112 (1.49%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 144 (1.92%) Firewall
2 75 (1.00%) DNS
3 73 (0.97%) Network Security
4 55 (0.73%) TCP/IP
5 52 (0.69%) WAN
6 44 (0.59%) HTTP
7 39 (0.52%) VPN
8 34 (0.45%) LAN
9 29 (0.39%) SD-WAN
10 24 (0.32%) Wi-Fi
11 23 (0.31%) BIG-IP
12 21 (0.28%) DHCP
13 20 (0.27%) Ethernet
13 20 (0.27%) SSL
14 19 (0.25%) 3GPP
14 19 (0.25%) BGP
15 17 (0.23%) OSPF
16 16 (0.21%) Internet
16 16 (0.21%) MPLS
16 16 (0.21%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 416 (5.54%) Power BI
2 300 (4.00%) PostgreSQL
3 255 (3.40%) Data Warehouse
4 216 (2.88%) SQL Server
5 196 (2.61%) NoSQL
6 178 (2.37%) Relational Database
7 133 (1.77%) MongoDB
8 126 (1.68%) Tableau
9 122 (1.63%) Amazon RDS
10 113 (1.51%) Metadata
11 112 (1.49%) Data Lake
12 105 (1.40%) Big Data
13 101 (1.35%) DynamoDB
14 60 (0.80%) Oracle Reports
15 58 (0.77%) BigQuery
16 56 (0.75%) MySQL
17 51 (0.68%) Oracle Database
18 50 (0.67%) Pentaho
19 45 (0.60%) Amazon Athena
20 44 (0.59%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 1,348 (17.97%) JIRA
2 660 (8.80%) Git
3 470 (6.26%) Jenkins
4 345 (4.60%) GitLab
5 153 (2.04%) Selenium
6 148 (1.97%) Postman
7 144 (1.92%) JUnit
8 108 (1.44%) Cucumber
9 77 (1.03%) Mockito
10 76 (1.01%) Cypress.io
11 69 (0.92%) Bitbucket
11 69 (0.92%) JMeter
11 69 (0.92%) SonarQube
12 62 (0.83%) REST Assured
13 49 (0.65%) Zephyr
14 47 (0.63%) Visual Studio
15 44 (0.59%) Gradle
16 41 (0.55%) WebDriver
17 39 (0.52%) Maven
18 36 (0.48%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 2,539 (33.84%) Social Skills
2 1,830 (24.39%) Finance
3 1,217 (16.22%) Public Sector
4 990 (13.19%) Analytical Skills
5 614 (8.18%) Banking
6 250 (3.33%) Retail
7 196 (2.61%) Influencing Skills
8 174 (2.32%) Legal
9 163 (2.17%) Documentation Skills
10 160 (2.13%) Presentation Skills
11 158 (2.11%) Front Office
12 150 (2.00%) Marketing
13 147 (1.96%) Organisational Skills
14 126 (1.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 117 (1.56%) Investment Banking
16 92 (1.23%) Manufacturing
17 89 (1.19%) Telecoms
18 85 (1.13%) Military
19 76 (1.01%) Aerospace
20 70 (0.93%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,248 (16.63%) Developer
2 1,018 (13.57%) Analyst
3 980 (13.06%) Senior
4 681 (9.08%) Business Analyst
5 634 (8.45%) Lead
6 616 (8.21%) Architect
7 592 (7.89%) Project Manager
8 326 (4.34%) Data Engineer
9 321 (4.28%) Software Engineer
10 301 (4.01%) Delivery Manager
11 291 (3.88%) Java Developer
12 265 (3.53%) Designer
13 226 (3.01%) Solutions Architect
14 222 (2.96%) Senior Manager
15 203 (2.71%) Product Manager
16 190 (2.53%) DevOps Engineer
17 188 (2.51%) Senior Developer
18 159 (2.12%) Consultant
19 157 (2.09%) Full-Stack Developer
20 155 (2.07%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 504 (6.72%) REST
2 475 (6.33%) React
3 360 (4.80%) RESTful
4 351 (4.68%) .NET
5 344 (4.58%) Node.js
6 316 (4.21%) Spring
7 293 (3.91%) Kafka
8 279 (3.72%) Spring Boot
9 278 (3.71%) AngularJS
10 246 (3.28%) HTML
11 224 (2.99%) CSS
12 154 (2.05%) SOAP
13 151 (2.01%) Playwright
14 140 (1.87%) Middleware
15 127 (1.69%) PySpark
16 126 (1.68%) JSON
16 126 (1.68%) Web Services
17 93 (1.24%) XML
18 90 (1.20%) OAuth
19 89 (1.19%) Redux
Miscellaneous
1 903 (12.04%) Product Ownership
2 481 (6.41%) Cloud Native
3 192 (2.56%) Onboarding
4 187 (2.49%) Distributed Systems
5 154 (2.05%) Legacy Systems
6 141 (1.88%) Data Protection Act
7 131 (1.75%) Management Information System
7 131 (1.75%) Self-Motivation
8 124 (1.65%) Virtual Team
9 120 (1.60%) Data Structures
10 111 (1.48%) Enterprise Software
11 109 (1.45%) NHS
12 83 (1.11%) Mobile App
13 81 (1.08%) Analytical Mindset
14 79 (1.05%) Data Centre
15 75 (1.00%) Fixed Income
16 67 (0.89%) Derivative
17 63 (0.84%) Greenfield Project
18 62 (0.83%) AI Agents
19 57 (0.76%) PMI
Operating Systems
1 366 (4.88%) Linux
2 284 (3.79%) Windows
3 127 (1.69%) Unix
4 66 (0.88%) Windows Server
5 49 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 47 (0.63%) Apple iOS
7 46 (0.61%) Android
8 17 (0.23%) Mac OS
9 14 (0.19%) Windows 10
10 12 (0.16%) Mac OS X
10 12 (0.16%) Ubuntu
10 12 (0.16%) zOS
11 10 (0.13%) VMS
12 9 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
13 8 (0.11%) AIX
14 7 (0.093%) Debian
14 7 (0.093%) Embedded Linux
15 6 (0.080%) CentOS
15 6 (0.080%) Windows Server 2016
16 5 (0.067%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,904 (25.38%) DevOps
2 1,817 (24.22%) CI/CD
3 1,651 (22.00%) Stakeholder Management
4 1,609 (21.44%) Scrum
5 1,399 (18.65%) Problem-Solving
6 1,340 (17.86%) Continuous Improvement
7 948 (12.63%) Test Automation
8 898 (11.97%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 835 (11.13%) Roadmaps
10 813 (10.84%) AI
11 751 (10.01%) Project Management
12 730 (9.73%) Analytics
13 729 (9.72%) Decision-Making
14 722 (9.62%) Microservices
15 718 (9.57%) Data Modelling
16 711 (9.48%) Migration
17 699 (9.32%) Waterfall
18 693 (9.24%) Software Engineering
19 646 (8.61%) User Stories
20 574 (7.65%) Sprint Planning
Programming Languages
1 1,155 (15.39%) SQL
2 1,154 (15.38%) Python
3 889 (11.85%) Java
4 652 (8.69%) JavaScript
5 441 (5.88%) TypeScript
6 428 (5.70%) C#
7 197 (2.63%) PowerShell
8 118 (1.57%) Bash
9 89 (1.19%) Go
10 88 (1.17%) Scala
11 82 (1.09%) C++
12 77 (1.03%) PL/SQL
13 75 (1.00%) Apex Code
14 54 (0.72%) Shell Script
15 48 (0.64%) Kotlin
16 47 (0.63%) Bicep
17 46 (0.61%) T-SQL
18 37 (0.49%) Ruby
19 36 (0.48%) Data Analysis Expressions
20 32 (0.43%) R
Qualifications
1 2,049 (27.31%) Security Cleared
2 1,584 (21.11%) SC Cleared
3 673 (8.97%) Degree
4 328 (4.37%) BPSS Clearance
5 323 (4.30%) DV Cleared
6 230 (3.07%) PMP
7 226 (3.01%) PMI Certification
8 151 (2.01%) Computer Science Degree
9 92 (1.23%) Master's Degree
10 91 (1.21%) ISTQB
11 87 (1.16%) Azure Certification
12 80 (1.07%) CISSP
13 78 (1.04%) AWS Certification
14 65 (0.87%) Cisco Certification
15 57 (0.76%) CISM
16 43 (0.57%) CBAP
16 43 (0.57%) IIBA
16 43 (0.57%) Microsoft Certification
17 35 (0.47%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
17 35 (0.47%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 653 (8.70%) QA
2 452 (6.02%) Accessibility
3 398 (5.30%) Data Quality
4 217 (2.89%) GDPR
5 212 (2.83%) PMO
6 156 (2.08%) WCAG
7 105 (1.40%) NIST
8 103 (1.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 70 (0.93%) SLA
10 57 (0.76%) NCSC
11 56 (0.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 54 (0.72%) PCI DSS
13 49 (0.65%) GRC
14 31 (0.41%) Actionable Recommendations
15 22 (0.29%) ISO 20022
16 19 (0.25%) Disclosure Scotland
16 19 (0.25%) GxP
17 18 (0.24%) Basel III
17 18 (0.24%) PSD2
18 16 (0.21%) HL7
System Software
1 683 (9.10%) Docker
2 124 (1.65%) Active Directory
3 74 (0.99%) VMware Infrastructure
4 26 (0.35%) vSphere
5 21 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
6 19 (0.25%) NFS
7 16 (0.21%) Hyper-V
8 15 (0.20%) GPFS
9 13 (0.17%) VMware NSX
10 11 (0.15%) Postfix
10 11 (0.15%) Virtual Machines
11 10 (0.13%) Firmware
11 10 (0.13%) vCloud
11 10 (0.13%) Virtual Desktop
12 7 (0.093%) RACF
13 6 (0.080%) Embedded Firmware
14 5 (0.067%) Oracle RAC
14 5 (0.067%) Squid
14 5 (0.067%) Time Sharing Option
15 4 (0.053%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 710 (9.46%) Kubernetes
2 541 (7.21%) Terraform
3 213 (2.84%) Ansible
4 182 (2.43%) Grafana
5 127 (1.69%) Prometheus
6 54 (0.72%) Argo
7 46 (0.61%) Single Sign-On
8 31 (0.41%) Microsoft Intune
9 25 (0.33%) Kibana
10 24 (0.32%) SCCM
10 24 (0.32%) vRealize
11 23 (0.31%) Progress Chef
12 22 (0.29%) Control-M
13 20 (0.27%) HP ALM
13 20 (0.27%) vCenter Server
14 19 (0.25%) Puppet
15 17 (0.23%) Nessus
15 17 (0.23%) Packer
16 16 (0.21%) IBM Guardium
17 15 (0.20%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 864 (11.52%) Microsoft
2 442 (5.89%) Oracle
3 343 (4.57%) ServiceNow
4 266 (3.55%) Salesforce
5 235 (3.13%) SAP
6 203 (2.71%) Databricks
7 162 (2.16%) Google
8 116 (1.55%) VMware
9 93 (1.24%) Adobe
10 85 (1.13%) IBM
11 76 (1.01%) Talend
12 72 (0.96%) Splunk
13 71 (0.95%) Cisco
13 71 (0.95%) Red Hat
14 68 (0.91%) Atlassian
15 67 (0.89%) Informatica
16 54 (0.72%) Denodo
17 53 (0.71%) Workday
18 50 (0.67%) MuleSoft
19 39 (0.52%) Dynatrace