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

6 months to
9 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 3 4
Rank change year-on-year -3 +1 -1
Contract jobs citing Agile 8,474 6,350 6,479
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.55% 19.15% 17.06%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 18.38% 21.16% 19.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,749 4,363 4,268
10th Percentile £363 £350 £363
25th Percentile £425 £417 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £513 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.46% -6.82% -2.22%
75th Percentile £610 £625 £650
90th Percentile £700 £738 £780
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £480 £510
% change year-on-year +4.17% -5.88% -5.12%
Number of hourly rates quoted 258 137 156
10th Percentile £28.50 £25.45 £27.00
25th Percentile £51.27 £50.00 £49.69
Median hourly rate £65.00 £58.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% -10.00% -
75th Percentile £75.75 £65.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £90.75 £77.47 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £66.50 £57.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +15.65% -11.54% -

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 46,102 30,004 32,672
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.59% 90.46% 86.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,718 18,629 19,703
10th Percentile £325 £294 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,326 1,885 1,303
10th Percentile £13.58 £14.33 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.00 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +49.11% -37.13% -8.31%
75th Percentile £65.00 £43.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.52 £65.00 £73.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £22.27 £41.25
% change year-on-year +68.43% -46.02% -2.94%

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 October 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 October 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 October 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 7,114 £525 - 8,886
UK excluding London -3 3,820 £500 +4.17% 4,929
London -3 3,569 £550 - 4,523
Work from Home -3 2,566 £505 -1.46% 4,006
North of England -1 1,178 £493 +5.12% 1,361
South East -3 868 £538 +2.38% 1,016
Midlands +1 755 £470 +1.61% 641
West Midlands +2 675 £470 -6.01% 402
Yorkshire -1 502 £500 - 421
North West -2 459 £500 +12.36% 723
Scotland 0 390 £475 - 601
South West +3 387 £525 +0.48% 606
North East +1 231 £450 -10.00% 223
East of England +1 221 £495 -8.97% 379
East Midlands -23 76 £467 +18.70% 238
Wales -6 66 £425 +13.33% 127
Northern Ireland +18 23 £638 +8.51% 220
Channel Islands -4 3 £525 -17.97% 3

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
1 755 (8.91%) Confluence
2 194 (2.29%) SharePoint
3 120 (1.42%) Apache Spark
4 118 (1.39%) Apache Airflow
5 110 (1.30%) Apache
6 84 (0.99%) CMS
7 52 (0.61%) SAS
8 43 (0.51%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 32 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
10 26 (0.31%) Jupyter
11 20 (0.24%) Camunda
12 16 (0.19%) IIS
13 15 (0.18%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 12 (0.14%) nginx
14 12 (0.14%) Sitecore CMS
14 12 (0.14%) WebLogic
14 12 (0.14%) WordPress
15 11 (0.13%) Headless CMS
16 10 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
17 9 (0.11%) OpenStack
Applications
1 226 (2.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 136 (1.60%) Microsoft Project
3 102 (1.20%) Microsoft Office
4 101 (1.19%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 80 (0.94%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.30%) Chatbot
7 22 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
8 21 (0.25%) Trello
9 15 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 15 (0.18%) Sketch
10 13 (0.15%) Adobe XD
11 10 (0.12%) Notion
12 8 (0.094%) UserZoom
12 8 (0.094%) Windchill
13 3 (0.035%) DaVinci Resolve
13 3 (0.035%) Mingle
13 3 (0.035%) NUKE
13 3 (0.035%) Productboard
14 2 (0.024%) Gliffy
14 2 (0.024%) Houdini
Business Applications
1 109 (1.29%) Dynamics CRM
2 103 (1.22%) SAP S/4HANA
3 32 (0.38%) Salesforce CRM
4 30 (0.35%) Workday HCM
5 25 (0.30%) Aladdin
6 19 (0.22%) Payment Gateway
7 16 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
8 15 (0.18%) Adobe Campaign
8 15 (0.18%) Primavera
8 15 (0.18%) Remedy ITSM
8 15 (0.18%) SAP MDG
9 14 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
9 14 (0.17%) Shopify
10 12 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
11 11 (0.13%) Teamcenter
12 10 (0.12%) Temenos T24
13 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS R12
14 8 (0.094%) ContrOCC
14 8 (0.094%) Magento
15 7 (0.083%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,071 (24.44%) Azure
2 1,887 (22.27%) AWS
3 758 (8.95%) Azure DevOps
4 659 (7.78%) Power Platform
5 640 (7.55%) GitHub
6 601 (7.09%) GCP
7 398 (4.70%) Serverless
8 361 (4.26%) GitHub Actions
9 274 (3.23%) Amazon S3
10 261 (3.08%) AWS Lambda
11 220 (2.60%) Dynamics 365
12 193 (2.28%) Microsoft 365
13 178 (2.10%) Snowflake
14 176 (2.08%) Power Automate
15 171 (2.02%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 163 (1.92%) SaaS
17 159 (1.88%) PowerApps
18 147 (1.73%) Entra ID
19 142 (1.68%) AWS CloudFormation
20 137 (1.62%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 155 (1.83%) Firewall
2 110 (1.30%) DNS
3 91 (1.07%) Network Security
4 65 (0.77%) TCP/IP
5 61 (0.72%) VPN
6 37 (0.44%) WAN
7 32 (0.38%) Broadband
8 31 (0.37%) DHCP
9 29 (0.34%) HTTP
9 29 (0.34%) Wi-Fi
10 28 (0.33%) Wireless
11 27 (0.32%) BIG-IP
12 25 (0.30%) Internet
12 25 (0.30%) LAN
13 23 (0.27%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 20 (0.24%) 4G
14 20 (0.24%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
15 19 (0.22%) BGP
15 19 (0.22%) SD-WAN
15 19 (0.22%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 473 (5.58%) Power BI
2 345 (4.07%) Data Warehouse
3 308 (3.63%) PostgreSQL
4 276 (3.26%) SQL Server
5 258 (3.04%) Relational Database
6 233 (2.75%) MongoDB
7 218 (2.57%) Metadata
8 209 (2.47%) NoSQL
9 192 (2.27%) Data Lake
10 125 (1.48%) Amazon RDS
11 99 (1.17%) Tableau
12 95 (1.12%) MySQL
13 94 (1.11%) Oracle Database
14 91 (1.07%) DynamoDB
15 75 (0.89%) BigQuery
16 69 (0.81%) Amazon Redshift
16 69 (0.81%) Big Data
17 56 (0.66%) Delta Lake
18 53 (0.63%) Redis
19 52 (0.61%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 1,381 (16.30%) JIRA
2 923 (10.89%) Git
3 617 (7.28%) Jenkins
4 470 (5.55%) GitLab
5 232 (2.74%) Selenium
6 187 (2.21%) JUnit
7 154 (1.82%) Cucumber
8 146 (1.72%) Postman
9 121 (1.43%) Maven
10 108 (1.27%) Gradle
11 106 (1.25%) SonarQube
12 98 (1.16%) Mockito
13 96 (1.13%) Cypress.io
14 82 (0.97%) Bitbucket
15 76 (0.90%) REST Assured
16 66 (0.78%) Gatling
17 63 (0.74%) JMeter
18 58 (0.68%) Zephyr
19 56 (0.66%) Visual Studio
20 39 (0.46%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 3,272 (38.61%) Social Skills
2 2,074 (24.47%) Finance
3 1,705 (20.12%) Public Sector
4 1,215 (14.34%) Analytical Skills
5 765 (9.03%) Banking
6 366 (4.32%) Retail
7 313 (3.69%) Influencing Skills
8 275 (3.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 216 (2.55%) Organisational Skills
10 189 (2.23%) Marketing
11 171 (2.02%) Legal
12 162 (1.91%) Documentation Skills
13 160 (1.89%) Manufacturing
14 145 (1.71%) Investment Banking
15 140 (1.65%) Front Office
16 128 (1.51%) Aerospace
16 128 (1.51%) Presentation Skills
17 127 (1.50%) Military
17 127 (1.50%) Telecoms
18 122 (1.44%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,477 (17.43%) Developer
2 1,256 (14.82%) Senior
3 1,019 (12.03%) Analyst
4 838 (9.89%) Lead
5 686 (8.10%) Business Analyst
6 649 (7.66%) Architect
7 622 (7.34%) Project Manager
8 374 (4.41%) Java Developer
9 336 (3.97%) Data Engineer
10 321 (3.79%) Delivery Manager
11 305 (3.60%) Software Engineer
12 296 (3.49%) Product Manager
13 287 (3.39%) Senior Developer
14 253 (2.99%) Designer
15 245 (2.89%) Solutions Architect
16 236 (2.78%) DevOps Engineer
17 234 (2.76%) Senior Manager
18 203 (2.40%) Product Owner
19 181 (2.14%) Consultant
20 153 (1.81%) User Researcher
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 785 (9.26%) REST
2 696 (8.21%) Terraform
3 493 (5.82%) React
4 486 (5.74%) Spring
5 479 (5.65%) RESTful
6 434 (5.12%) Spring Boot
7 410 (4.84%) .NET
8 403 (4.76%) Kafka
9 321 (3.79%) Node.js
10 316 (3.73%) HTML
11 275 (3.25%) CSS
12 231 (2.73%) AngularJS
13 197 (2.32%) JSON
14 192 (2.27%) Playwright
15 182 (2.15%) SOAP
16 176 (2.08%) Web Services
17 161 (1.90%) OAuth
18 141 (1.66%) Middleware
19 131 (1.55%) PySpark
20 113 (1.33%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 1,200 (14.16%) Product Ownership
2 754 (8.90%) Cloud Native
3 298 (3.52%) Onboarding
4 260 (3.07%) Distributed Systems
5 259 (3.06%) Enterprise Software
6 232 (2.74%) Legacy Systems
7 165 (1.95%) Management Information System
8 157 (1.85%) Data Structures
9 150 (1.77%) Self-Motivation
10 142 (1.68%) Data Protection Act
11 133 (1.57%) AI Agents
11 133 (1.57%) Virtual Team
12 126 (1.49%) NHS
13 124 (1.46%) Mobile App
14 109 (1.29%) Data Centre
15 97 (1.14%) Analytical Mindset
16 75 (0.89%) Hybrid Cloud
17 72 (0.85%) Public Cloud
18 63 (0.74%) CMDB
19 58 (0.68%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 397 (4.68%) Linux
2 264 (3.12%) Windows
3 124 (1.46%) Unix
4 77 (0.91%) Android
5 69 (0.81%) Windows Server
6 66 (0.78%) Apple iOS
7 50 (0.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 23 (0.27%) VMS
9 20 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
10 13 (0.15%) Ubuntu
11 12 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
12 10 (0.12%) zOS
13 9 (0.11%) AIX
13 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
14 6 (0.071%) Mac OS
15 5 (0.059%) Mac OS X
16 4 (0.047%) CentOS
17 3 (0.035%) Rocky
17 3 (0.035%) Solaris
17 3 (0.035%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,692 (31.77%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,430 (28.68%) CI/CD
3 2,293 (27.06%) DevOps
4 1,910 (22.54%) Scrum
5 1,859 (21.94%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,630 (19.24%) Problem-Solving
7 1,266 (14.94%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,237 (14.60%) Test Automation
9 1,219 (14.39%) AI
10 1,114 (13.15%) Roadmaps
11 968 (11.42%) Software Engineering
12 947 (11.18%) Microservices
13 936 (11.05%) Analytics
14 935 (11.03%) Decision-Making
15 845 (9.97%) User Stories
16 812 (9.58%) Migration
17 780 (9.20%) Data Modelling
18 760 (8.97%) Infrastructure as Code
19 759 (8.96%) Project Management
20 719 (8.48%) Waterfall
Programming Languages
1 1,444 (17.04%) SQL
2 1,273 (15.02%) Python
3 1,143 (13.49%) Java
4 739 (8.72%) JavaScript
5 446 (5.26%) TypeScript
6 433 (5.11%) C#
7 228 (2.69%) PowerShell
8 206 (2.43%) Bash
9 122 (1.44%) Scala
10 119 (1.40%) PL/SQL
11 92 (1.09%) Bicep
11 92 (1.09%) Kotlin
12 82 (0.97%) Apex Code
13 70 (0.83%) Go
14 64 (0.76%) C++
15 58 (0.68%) Shell Script
16 48 (0.57%) T-SQL
17 43 (0.51%) Groovy
18 41 (0.48%) C
19 34 (0.40%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 2,527 (29.82%) Security Cleared
2 2,034 (24.00%) SC Cleared
3 688 (8.12%) Degree
4 522 (6.16%) BPSS Clearance
5 385 (4.54%) DV Cleared
6 280 (3.30%) PMP
7 278 (3.28%) PMI Certification
8 167 (1.97%) Computer Science Degree
9 142 (1.68%) AWS Certification
10 128 (1.51%) Azure Certification
11 107 (1.26%) ISTQB
12 97 (1.14%) Microsoft Certification
13 76 (0.90%) CISSP
14 68 (0.80%) Master's Degree
15 56 (0.66%) Cisco Certification
16 46 (0.54%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
17 39 (0.46%) ITIL Certification
18 37 (0.44%) IIBA
19 35 (0.41%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
20 28 (0.33%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 892 (10.53%) QA
2 575 (6.79%) Accessibility
3 523 (6.17%) Data Quality
4 240 (2.83%) PMO
5 205 (2.42%) WCAG
6 166 (1.96%) GDPR
7 79 (0.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 74 (0.87%) NCSC
9 69 (0.81%) GRC
10 66 (0.78%) NIST
11 45 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
11 45 (0.53%) SLA
12 33 (0.39%) PCI DSS
13 30 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 28 (0.33%) ISO 20022
15 26 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
16 14 (0.17%) HL7
16 14 (0.17%) P3O
17 13 (0.15%) GxP
17 13 (0.15%) HIPAA
System Software
1 885 (10.44%) Docker
2 170 (2.01%) Active Directory
3 91 (1.07%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (0.38%) Virtual Desktop
5 30 (0.35%) VMware ESXi
6 27 (0.32%) vSphere
7 23 (0.27%) Hyper-V
8 22 (0.26%) VMware NSX
9 21 (0.25%) Virtual Machines
10 14 (0.17%) IAG
11 13 (0.15%) Firmware
12 9 (0.11%) Embedded Firmware
13 7 (0.083%) Time Sharing Option
14 6 (0.071%) NFS
15 5 (0.059%) GPFS
16 4 (0.047%) Ceph
16 4 (0.047%) Postfix
16 4 (0.047%) RACF
17 3 (0.035%) Squid
17 3 (0.035%) UAG
Systems Management
1 933 (11.01%) Kubernetes
2 239 (2.82%) Grafana
3 235 (2.77%) Ansible
4 157 (1.85%) Prometheus
5 62 (0.73%) Kibana
6 56 (0.66%) Argo
7 37 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
8 28 (0.33%) Control-M
8 28 (0.33%) vCenter Server
9 25 (0.30%) Microsoft Intune
10 23 (0.27%) Progress Chef
10 23 (0.27%) Puppet
11 21 (0.25%) Packer
12 20 (0.24%) SCCM
13 17 (0.20%) WMI
14 15 (0.18%) Istio
14 15 (0.18%) Jamf Pro
15 14 (0.17%) HP ALM
16 13 (0.15%) Kustomize
17 12 (0.14%) SCOM
Vendors
1 1,107 (13.06%) Microsoft
2 504 (5.95%) Oracle
3 339 (4.00%) ServiceNow
4 306 (3.61%) Salesforce
5 284 (3.35%) Google
6 277 (3.27%) SAP
7 270 (3.19%) Databricks
8 131 (1.55%) Splunk
9 110 (1.30%) VMware
10 100 (1.18%) Adobe
11 89 (1.05%) IBM
12 87 (1.03%) Dynatrace
13 81 (0.96%) Red Hat
14 79 (0.93%) MuleSoft
15 75 (0.89%) Informatica
16 70 (0.83%) Talend
17 63 (0.74%) Atlassian
18 62 (0.73%) Workday
19 46 (0.54%) Cisco
20 44 (0.52%) Denodo