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

6 months to
15 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 4 4
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -3
Contract jobs citing Agile 6,578 5,291 7,470
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 17.73% 16.62% 17.69%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 20.19% 18.72% 20.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,500 3,408 5,257
10th Percentile £357 £363 £400
25th Percentile £413 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -8.95% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £665 £650
90th Percentile £732 £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 137 85 171
10th Percentile £25.30 £22.22 £42.50
25th Percentile £45.46 £35.00 £51.63
Median hourly rate £58.50 £55.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.36% -15.38% -
75th Percentile £65.00 £66.00 £70.36
90th Percentile £93.81 £78.08 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £61.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year -10.57% -5.38% -

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 32,585 28,260 37,041
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.84% 88.76% 87.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,582 17,185 24,531
10th Percentile £304 £306 £304
25th Percentile £406 £413 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £638 £650
90th Percentile £723 £742 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,992 898 1,578
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.62 £14.17
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.56 £18.04
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -19.75% +15.71%
75th Percentile £55.89 £62.24 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.75 £75.00 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £30.45 £43.33
% change year-on-year -21.76% -29.73% +46.88%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 5,663 £515 -9.65% 2,653
UK excluding London +2 2,987 £500 -1.96% 2,391
London 0 2,899 £540 -10.00% 686
Work from Home -1 1,998 £510 -7.27% 1,549
North of England +3 876 £475 -5.00% 495
South East +1 684 £525 -4.55% 807
Midlands +2 562 £475 -5.00% 329
West Midlands +2 431 £500 -4.76% 187
Yorkshire 0 402 £500 - 164
North West +2 387 £435 -13.10% 267
South West +4 368 £550 -4.35% 291
Scotland +1 342 £473 +4.59% 112
East of England -1 137 £497 +10.33% 288
East Midlands -2 132 £402 -5.41% 142
North East +5 102 £450 -5.26% 70
Wales +4 62 £425 -19.81% 88
Northern Ireland -12 13 £438 -2.78% 34

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
1 618 (9.39%) Confluence
2 142 (2.16%) SharePoint
3 95 (1.44%) Apache
4 92 (1.40%) SAS
5 84 (1.28%) Apache Spark
6 80 (1.22%) Apache Airflow
7 65 (0.99%) CMS
8 31 (0.47%) nginx
9 23 (0.35%) IIS
10 21 (0.32%) Microsoft Exchange
11 19 (0.29%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 18 (0.27%) WebLogic
13 15 (0.23%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 14 (0.21%) OpenStack
15 12 (0.18%) CICS
16 11 (0.17%) Anypoint
17 10 (0.15%) JBoss
17 10 (0.15%) SugarCRM
18 8 (0.12%) Smallworld
18 8 (0.12%) WordPress
Applications
1 197 (2.99%) Microsoft Excel
2 189 (2.87%) Microsoft Project
3 175 (2.66%) Microsoft Office
4 108 (1.64%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 100 (1.52%) MS Visio
6 47 (0.71%) Chatbot
7 32 (0.49%) Sketch
8 29 (0.44%) Trello
9 26 (0.40%) Adobe XD
10 15 (0.23%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 12 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
12 10 (0.15%) InVision
13 9 (0.14%) Adobe Illustrator
14 8 (0.12%) Photoshop
15 6 (0.091%) Weka
16 5 (0.076%) Adobe Captivate
16 5 (0.076%) Notion
16 5 (0.076%) Zeplin
17 4 (0.061%) Autodesk Inventor
18 2 (0.030%) Autodesk Smoke
Business Applications
1 96 (1.46%) Dynamics CRM
2 74 (1.12%) SAP S/4HANA
3 29 (0.44%) Endur
4 26 (0.40%) Aladdin
5 20 (0.30%) Payment Gateway
6 17 (0.26%) NetSuite
6 17 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
7 16 (0.24%) Maximo
8 15 (0.23%) Oracle ERP
8 15 (0.23%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 14 (0.21%) Oracle Payables
10 13 (0.20%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 11 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
12 10 (0.15%) Oracle Receivables
12 10 (0.15%) Primavera
12 10 (0.15%) VisionPLUS
13 9 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
13 9 (0.14%) Oracle EBS R12
13 9 (0.14%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
14 8 (0.12%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,478 (22.47%) Azure
2 1,262 (19.19%) AWS
3 526 (8.00%) Azure DevOps
4 471 (7.16%) Power Platform
5 449 (6.83%) GitHub
6 418 (6.35%) GCP
7 359 (5.46%) Serverless
8 231 (3.51%) GitHub Actions
9 186 (2.83%) SaaS
10 176 (2.68%) AWS Lambda
11 150 (2.28%) Amazon S3
12 148 (2.25%) Dynamics 365
13 146 (2.22%) Microsoft 365
14 129 (1.96%) Figma
15 124 (1.89%) Azure Data Factory
16 122 (1.85%) Power Automate
16 122 (1.85%) PowerApps
17 120 (1.82%) Snowflake
18 111 (1.69%) AWS CloudFormation
19 104 (1.58%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 129 (1.96%) Firewall
2 56 (0.85%) TCP/IP
3 51 (0.78%) HTTP
4 50 (0.76%) DNS
5 41 (0.62%) Network Security
6 39 (0.59%) VPN
7 31 (0.47%) WAN
8 27 (0.41%) SD-WAN
9 22 (0.33%) SSH
10 19 (0.29%) Internet
11 17 (0.26%) Ethernet
12 16 (0.24%) DHCP
12 16 (0.24%) LAN
13 15 (0.23%) SSL
13 15 (0.23%) VSAN
14 12 (0.18%) BGP
15 11 (0.17%) Kerberos
16 10 (0.15%) OSPF
17 9 (0.14%) Broadband
18 8 (0.12%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 334 (5.08%) Power BI
2 257 (3.91%) PostgreSQL
3 222 (3.37%) NoSQL
4 205 (3.12%) Relational Database
5 202 (3.07%) Data Warehouse
6 169 (2.57%) SQL Server
7 161 (2.45%) MongoDB
8 94 (1.43%) Tableau
9 90 (1.37%) Data Lake
10 84 (1.28%) MySQL
11 82 (1.25%) Metadata
12 80 (1.22%) Oracle Database
13 75 (1.14%) Amazon RDS
14 74 (1.12%) Big Data
15 63 (0.96%) BigQuery
16 57 (0.87%) DynamoDB
17 46 (0.70%) Azure SQL Database
18 43 (0.65%) Redis
19 40 (0.61%) Hadoop
20 37 (0.56%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 1,229 (18.68%) JIRA
2 674 (10.25%) Git
3 482 (7.33%) Jenkins
4 332 (5.05%) GitLab
5 177 (2.69%) Selenium
6 134 (2.04%) JUnit
7 127 (1.93%) Postman
8 126 (1.92%) Cucumber
9 89 (1.35%) Cypress.io
10 76 (1.16%) Bitbucket
11 60 (0.91%) Mockito
12 55 (0.84%) JMeter
13 50 (0.76%) REST Assured
14 49 (0.74%) SonarQube
15 44 (0.67%) Maven
16 42 (0.64%) Visual Studio
17 40 (0.61%) SpecFlow
18 38 (0.58%) Liquibase
19 37 (0.56%) Oracle APEX
20 35 (0.53%) Gradle
General
1 2,610 (39.68%) Social Skills
2 1,705 (25.92%) Finance
3 999 (15.19%) Public Sector
4 992 (15.08%) Analytical Skills
5 675 (10.26%) Banking
6 189 (2.87%) Documentation Skills
7 186 (2.83%) Influencing Skills
8 169 (2.57%) Presentation Skills
9 167 (2.54%) Retail
10 152 (2.31%) Marketing
11 139 (2.11%) Front Office
12 132 (2.01%) Investment Banking
13 130 (1.98%) Telecoms
14 121 (1.84%) Military
14 121 (1.84%) Organisational Skills
15 116 (1.76%) Legal
16 89 (1.35%) Financial Institution
17 88 (1.34%) Manufacturing
18 80 (1.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 52 (0.79%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 1,145 (17.41%) Developer
2 878 (13.35%) Analyst
3 853 (12.97%) Senior
4 641 (9.74%) Business Analyst
5 527 (8.01%) Lead
6 495 (7.53%) Project Manager
7 470 (7.15%) Architect
8 292 (4.44%) Software Engineer
9 244 (3.71%) Java Developer
10 201 (3.06%) Senior Developer
11 192 (2.92%) Data Engineer
12 190 (2.89%) Consultant
13 170 (2.58%) Designer
14 169 (2.57%) DevOps Engineer
15 154 (2.34%) Product Owner
16 153 (2.33%) Delivery Manager
17 144 (2.19%) Solutions Architect
18 142 (2.16%) Full-Stack Developer
19 131 (1.99%) Product Manager
20 130 (1.98%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 566 (8.60%) REST
2 409 (6.22%) React
3 385 (5.85%) RESTful
4 341 (5.18%) Node.js
5 311 (4.73%) .NET
6 297 (4.52%) Kafka
7 285 (4.33%) HTML
8 260 (3.95%) Spring
9 254 (3.86%) CSS
10 228 (3.47%) Spring Boot
11 219 (3.33%) AngularJS
12 200 (3.04%) SOAP
13 193 (2.93%) JSON
14 157 (2.39%) Playwright
15 147 (2.23%) XML
16 118 (1.79%) Web Services
17 103 (1.57%) Middleware
18 97 (1.47%) FastAPI
19 93 (1.41%) GraphQL
19 93 (1.41%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 692 (10.52%) Product Ownership
2 403 (6.13%) Cloud Native
3 163 (2.48%) Onboarding
4 141 (2.14%) Management Information System
5 127 (1.93%) Distributed Systems
5 127 (1.93%) Legacy Systems
6 121 (1.84%) Virtual Team
7 117 (1.78%) Mobile App
8 105 (1.60%) Data Structures
8 105 (1.60%) Self-Motivation
9 101 (1.54%) Data Protection Act
10 100 (1.52%) Analytical Mindset
11 97 (1.47%) PMI
12 96 (1.46%) Public Cloud
13 84 (1.28%) PKI
14 79 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
15 78 (1.19%) Algorithms
16 77 (1.17%) Greenfield Project
17 76 (1.16%) NHS
18 71 (1.08%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 452 (6.87%) Linux
2 301 (4.58%) Windows
3 164 (2.49%) Unix
4 81 (1.23%) Windows Server
5 66 (1.00%) Android
6 58 (0.88%) Apple iOS
7 34 (0.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 24 (0.36%) Windows 10
9 21 (0.32%) Mac OS X
10 17 (0.26%) VMS
11 14 (0.21%) Mac OS
12 11 (0.17%) Windows 7
12 11 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
13 10 (0.15%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.14%) zOS
15 7 (0.11%) Ubuntu
16 5 (0.076%) Debian
17 3 (0.046%) AIX
17 3 (0.046%) Windows Server 2012
18 2 (0.030%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,737 (26.41%) DevOps
2 1,572 (23.90%) Problem-Solving
3 1,509 (22.94%) CI/CD
4 1,416 (21.53%) Scrum
5 1,312 (19.95%) Stakeholder Management
6 959 (14.58%) Continuous Improvement
7 834 (12.68%) Test Automation
8 759 (11.54%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 748 (11.37%) Project Management
10 683 (10.38%) Roadmaps
11 674 (10.25%) Microservices
12 635 (9.65%) Analytics
13 634 (9.64%) Waterfall
14 625 (9.50%) Software Engineering
15 588 (8.94%) AI
16 575 (8.74%) Migration
17 559 (8.50%) Containerisation
18 557 (8.47%) User Stories
19 517 (7.86%) Data Modelling
20 514 (7.81%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,147 (17.44%) Python
2 1,067 (16.22%) SQL
3 812 (12.34%) Java
4 635 (9.65%) JavaScript
5 424 (6.45%) TypeScript
6 389 (5.91%) C#
7 225 (3.42%) PowerShell
8 128 (1.95%) Bash
9 115 (1.75%) C++
10 101 (1.54%) PL/SQL
11 98 (1.49%) Go
12 97 (1.47%) Shell Script
13 92 (1.40%) Scala
14 56 (0.85%) Ruby
15 51 (0.78%) Apex Code
16 47 (0.71%) Bicep
17 43 (0.65%) Kotlin
18 40 (0.61%) PHP
19 38 (0.58%) T-SQL
20 35 (0.53%) R
Qualifications
1 1,540 (23.41%) Security Cleared
2 1,176 (17.88%) SC Cleared
3 785 (11.93%) Degree
4 280 (4.26%) PMI Certification
5 233 (3.54%) DV Cleared
6 226 (3.44%) BPSS Clearance
6 226 (3.44%) Computer Science Degree
6 226 (3.44%) PMP
7 133 (2.02%) Master's Degree
8 105 (1.60%) Azure Certification
9 78 (1.19%) AWS Certification
10 66 (1.00%) ISTQB
11 61 (0.93%) CISSP
12 56 (0.85%) CBAP
13 47 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
14 45 (0.68%) Microsoft Certification
15 37 (0.56%) CISM
16 33 (0.50%) IIBA
17 31 (0.47%) CSPO
18 30 (0.46%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 616 (9.36%) QA
2 353 (5.37%) Accessibility
3 273 (4.15%) Data Quality
4 215 (3.27%) GDPR
5 178 (2.71%) PMO
6 114 (1.73%) WCAG
7 80 (1.22%) NIST
8 78 (1.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 40 (0.61%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 39 (0.59%) SLA
11 36 (0.55%) GRC
11 36 (0.55%) PCI DSS
12 32 (0.49%) PSD2
13 27 (0.41%) ISO 20022
14 26 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
14 26 (0.40%) NCSC
15 22 (0.33%) Basel III
15 22 (0.33%) Disclosure Scotland
16 19 (0.29%) MiFID
17 18 (0.27%) SEPA
System Software
1 759 (11.54%) Docker
2 131 (1.99%) Active Directory
3 88 (1.34%) VMware Infrastructure
4 43 (0.65%) vSphere
5 32 (0.49%) Virtual Machines
6 21 (0.32%) GPFS
7 19 (0.29%) Hyper-V
8 18 (0.27%) VMware ESXi
9 15 (0.23%) NFS
9 15 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
10 9 (0.14%) Virtual Desktop
11 6 (0.091%) Lustre
11 6 (0.091%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 5 (0.076%) KVM
13 4 (0.061%) Microsoft App-V
13 4 (0.061%) vCloud
13 4 (0.061%) VMware NSX
14 3 (0.046%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 3 (0.046%) ISA Server
14 3 (0.046%) Squid
Systems Management
1 748 (11.37%) Kubernetes
2 478 (7.27%) Terraform
3 240 (3.65%) Ansible
4 187 (2.84%) Grafana
5 133 (2.02%) Prometheus
6 54 (0.82%) Single Sign-On
7 44 (0.67%) Argo
8 36 (0.55%) vRealize
9 35 (0.53%) Puppet
10 31 (0.47%) SCCM
11 30 (0.46%) OPNET
12 28 (0.43%) Kibana
13 18 (0.27%) WMI
14 17 (0.26%) Control-M
14 17 (0.26%) Packer
15 16 (0.24%) Microsoft Intune
15 16 (0.24%) Nessus
16 14 (0.21%) Progress Chef
16 14 (0.21%) VxRail
17 13 (0.20%) Consul
Vendors
1 869 (13.21%) Microsoft
2 474 (7.21%) Oracle
3 303 (4.61%) ServiceNow
4 248 (3.77%) SAP
5 242 (3.68%) Salesforce
6 187 (2.84%) Databricks
7 186 (2.83%) Google
8 142 (2.16%) VMware
9 120 (1.82%) Atlassian
10 118 (1.79%) Splunk
11 83 (1.26%) Cisco
12 81 (1.23%) Adobe
13 72 (1.09%) IBM
14 58 (0.88%) MuleSoft
15 57 (0.87%) Workday
16 50 (0.76%) Remedy
17 45 (0.68%) Red Hat
17 45 (0.68%) Talend
18 36 (0.55%) Denodo
19 35 (0.53%) HP