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

6 months to
1 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 3 4
Rank change year-on-year -2 +1 -1
Contract jobs citing Agile 8,326 6,342 6,661
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.52% 19.37% 17.25%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 18.35% 21.41% 20.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,616 4,358 4,524
10th Percentile £363 £356 £363
25th Percentile £425 £420 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £520 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -5.45% -2.34%
75th Percentile £605 £625 £660
90th Percentile £700 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £488 £524
% change year-on-year +2.56% -6.88% -1.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 261 134 179
10th Percentile £28.50 £31.52 £25.94
25th Percentile £53.00 £50.00 £47.50
Median hourly rate £67.89 £58.75 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +15.56% -9.62% -
75th Percentile £76.75 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £95.00 £79.63 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.00 £57.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +18.26% -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 45,369 29,617 32,996
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.56% 90.44% 85.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,730 18,446 20,728
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
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 2,902 1,758 1,607
10th Percentile £14.10 £14.20 £14.16
25th Percentile £17.78 £17.30 £18.82
Median hourly rate £41.09 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +63.39% -40.82% +2.41%
75th Percentile £67.88 £47.09 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.25 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.56 £22.63 £43.00
% change year-on-year +92.49% -47.37% +14.67%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 -3 7,069 £525 - 7,140
UK excluding London -2 3,806 £500 +2.56% 4,244
London -2 3,524 £550 -0.90% 4,023
Work from Home -3 2,503 £507 -2.58% 3,612
North of England -1 1,154 £500 +8.11% 1,081
South East -3 912 £538 +2.38% 867
Midlands 0 725 £475 +5.56% 462
West Midlands 0 622 £475 -5.00% 324
Yorkshire 0 479 £500 +3.63% 261
North West -4 470 £500 +11.11% 667
South West +2 412 £513 -1.74% 691
Scotland 0 376 £475 - 528
North East +1 223 £450 -13.46% 160
East of England +2 214 £500 -4.76% 291
East Midlands -13 99 £463 +21.71% 137
Wales -4 69 £425 +13.33% 75
Northern Ireland +12 18 £638 +15.91% 276
Channel Islands +1 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
1 751 (9.02%) Confluence
2 195 (2.34%) SharePoint
3 121 (1.45%) Apache Spark
4 105 (1.26%) Apache Airflow
5 99 (1.19%) Apache
6 85 (1.02%) CMS
7 71 (0.85%) SAS
8 39 (0.47%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 26 (0.31%) Microsoft Exchange
10 21 (0.25%) Jupyter
11 20 (0.24%) Camunda
12 18 (0.22%) IIS
13 10 (0.12%) Appian
14 9 (0.11%) ArcGIS
14 9 (0.11%) OpenStack
14 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 9 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
14 9 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
14 9 (0.11%) WebSphere
14 9 (0.11%) WordPress
Applications
1 231 (2.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 159 (1.91%) Microsoft Project
3 110 (1.32%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 100 (1.20%) Microsoft Office
5 77 (0.92%) MS Visio
6 32 (0.38%) Chatbot
7 21 (0.25%) Trello
8 16 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 16 (0.19%) Sketch
8 16 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
9 11 (0.13%) Adobe XD
10 10 (0.12%) Notion
11 8 (0.096%) UserZoom
12 6 (0.072%) Windchill
13 3 (0.036%) DaVinci Resolve
13 3 (0.036%) NUKE
14 2 (0.024%) Houdini
14 2 (0.024%) Maya
14 2 (0.024%) Mingle
14 2 (0.024%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 100 (1.20%) SAP S/4HANA
2 98 (1.18%) Dynamics CRM
3 33 (0.40%) Salesforce CRM
4 24 (0.29%) Aladdin
4 24 (0.29%) Workday HCM
5 21 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
6 20 (0.24%) Oracle ERP
7 18 (0.22%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 17 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
8 17 (0.20%) Primavera
9 14 (0.17%) Adobe Campaign
9 14 (0.17%) Shopify
10 13 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
10 13 (0.16%) Temenos T24
11 10 (0.12%) SAP MDG
12 9 (0.11%) SAP SD
13 8 (0.096%) ContrOCC
13 8 (0.096%) Findur
13 8 (0.096%) Magento
13 8 (0.096%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 2,082 (25.01%) Azure
2 1,822 (21.88%) AWS
3 766 (9.20%) Azure DevOps
4 642 (7.71%) Power Platform
5 610 (7.33%) GitHub
6 558 (6.70%) GCP
7 401 (4.82%) Serverless
8 341 (4.10%) GitHub Actions
9 262 (3.15%) AWS Lambda
10 260 (3.12%) Amazon S3
11 197 (2.37%) Dynamics 365
12 193 (2.32%) Microsoft 365
13 167 (2.01%) Snowflake
14 164 (1.97%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 164 (1.97%) SaaS
15 163 (1.96%) Power Automate
16 159 (1.91%) PowerApps
17 154 (1.85%) Entra ID
18 138 (1.66%) AWS CloudFormation
19 137 (1.65%) Figma
Communications & Networking
1 161 (1.93%) Firewall
2 99 (1.19%) DNS
3 72 (0.86%) Network Security
4 59 (0.71%) VPN
5 57 (0.68%) TCP/IP
6 50 (0.60%) WAN
7 32 (0.38%) HTTP
8 31 (0.37%) LAN
9 28 (0.34%) SD-WAN
10 25 (0.30%) DHCP
10 25 (0.30%) Wireless
11 24 (0.29%) Wi-Fi
12 23 (0.28%) BGP
12 23 (0.28%) Internet
13 22 (0.26%) Broadband
14 21 (0.25%) BIG-IP
15 20 (0.24%) SSL
16 19 (0.23%) MPLS
17 18 (0.22%) Intranet
18 17 (0.20%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 470 (5.64%) Power BI
2 337 (4.05%) Data Warehouse
3 301 (3.62%) PostgreSQL
4 256 (3.07%) SQL Server
5 229 (2.75%) Relational Database
6 204 (2.45%) NoSQL
7 193 (2.32%) MongoDB
8 182 (2.19%) Metadata
9 176 (2.11%) Data Lake
10 113 (1.36%) Amazon RDS
11 105 (1.26%) Tableau
12 100 (1.20%) DynamoDB
13 87 (1.04%) Big Data
14 80 (0.96%) MySQL
15 76 (0.91%) Amazon Redshift
15 76 (0.91%) Oracle Database
16 64 (0.77%) BigQuery
17 58 (0.70%) Oracle Reports
18 54 (0.65%) Amazon Athena
19 53 (0.64%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 1,411 (16.95%) JIRA
2 841 (10.10%) Git
3 583 (7.00%) Jenkins
4 410 (4.92%) GitLab
5 185 (2.22%) Selenium
6 149 (1.79%) JUnit
7 137 (1.65%) Postman
8 106 (1.27%) Cucumber
9 99 (1.19%) SonarQube
10 95 (1.14%) Gradle
11 89 (1.07%) Cypress.io
12 84 (1.01%) Bitbucket
12 84 (1.01%) Maven
13 81 (0.97%) Mockito
14 62 (0.74%) JMeter
14 62 (0.74%) REST Assured
15 60 (0.72%) Zephyr
16 46 (0.55%) Gatling
16 46 (0.55%) Sonatype Nexus
17 45 (0.54%) Visual Studio
General
1 3,096 (37.18%) Social Skills
2 2,024 (24.31%) Finance
3 1,566 (18.81%) Public Sector
4 1,170 (14.05%) Analytical Skills
5 720 (8.65%) Banking
6 379 (4.55%) Retail
7 256 (3.07%) Influencing Skills
8 234 (2.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 212 (2.55%) Organisational Skills
10 195 (2.34%) Marketing
11 179 (2.15%) Legal
12 171 (2.05%) Documentation Skills
13 148 (1.78%) Manufacturing
14 143 (1.72%) Investment Banking
15 133 (1.60%) Front Office
16 128 (1.54%) Telecoms
17 121 (1.45%) Presentation Skills
18 113 (1.36%) Aerospace
19 100 (1.20%) Military
20 90 (1.08%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,461 (17.55%) Developer
2 1,190 (14.29%) Senior
3 1,041 (12.50%) Analyst
4 805 (9.67%) Lead
5 701 (8.42%) Business Analyst
6 671 (8.06%) Architect
7 635 (7.63%) Project Manager
8 371 (4.46%) Java Developer
9 336 (4.04%) Data Engineer
10 331 (3.98%) Delivery Manager
11 310 (3.72%) Software Engineer
12 267 (3.21%) Product Manager
13 266 (3.19%) Senior Developer
14 264 (3.17%) Solutions Architect
15 260 (3.12%) Designer
16 240 (2.88%) Senior Manager
17 236 (2.83%) DevOps Engineer
18 187 (2.25%) Product Owner
19 182 (2.19%) Consultant
20 161 (1.93%) Scrum Master
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 708 (8.50%) Terraform
2 705 (8.47%) REST
3 480 (5.77%) React
4 442 (5.31%) Spring
5 440 (5.28%) RESTful
6 409 (4.91%) .NET
7 395 (4.74%) Spring Boot
8 366 (4.40%) Kafka
9 298 (3.58%) Node.js
10 291 (3.50%) HTML
11 264 (3.17%) CSS
12 242 (2.91%) AngularJS
13 189 (2.27%) JSON
14 174 (2.09%) SOAP
15 156 (1.87%) Playwright
16 142 (1.71%) Web Services
17 139 (1.67%) PySpark
18 136 (1.63%) Middleware
19 132 (1.59%) OAuth
20 100 (1.20%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 1,157 (13.90%) Product Ownership
2 663 (7.96%) Cloud Native
3 275 (3.30%) Onboarding
4 232 (2.79%) Distributed Systems
5 224 (2.69%) Enterprise Software
5 224 (2.69%) Legacy Systems
6 160 (1.92%) Data Structures
7 149 (1.79%) NHS
8 148 (1.78%) Management Information System
9 145 (1.74%) Self-Motivation
10 143 (1.72%) Data Protection Act
11 124 (1.49%) Virtual Team
12 121 (1.45%) Mobile App
13 108 (1.30%) AI Agents
14 96 (1.15%) Analytical Mindset
15 95 (1.14%) Data Centre
16 68 (0.82%) CMDB
17 62 (0.74%) Hybrid Cloud
18 61 (0.73%) Greenfield Project
19 55 (0.66%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 360 (4.32%) Linux
2 245 (2.94%) Windows
3 123 (1.48%) Unix
4 68 (0.82%) Android
5 66 (0.79%) Apple iOS
6 65 (0.78%) Windows Server
7 54 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 19 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
9 14 (0.17%) VMS
10 13 (0.16%) Embedded Linux
11 12 (0.14%) zOS
12 11 (0.13%) Ubuntu
13 9 (0.11%) AIX
14 8 (0.096%) Amazon Linux
14 8 (0.096%) Mac OS
15 6 (0.072%) Windows 10
16 4 (0.048%) Mac OS X
16 4 (0.048%) Rocky
16 4 (0.048%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
16 4 (0.048%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,382 (28.61%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,286 (27.46%) DevOps
3 2,251 (27.04%) CI/CD
4 1,871 (22.47%) Scrum
5 1,768 (21.23%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,553 (18.65%) Problem-Solving
7 1,257 (15.10%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,144 (13.74%) AI
9 1,090 (13.09%) Test Automation
10 1,016 (12.20%) Roadmaps
11 911 (10.94%) Analytics
12 880 (10.57%) Software Engineering
13 871 (10.46%) Microservices
14 857 (10.29%) Decision-Making
15 813 (9.76%) Migration
16 808 (9.70%) User Stories
17 783 (9.40%) Project Management
18 781 (9.38%) Data Modelling
19 731 (8.78%) Waterfall
20 725 (8.71%) Sprint Planning
Programming Languages
1 1,376 (16.53%) SQL
2 1,240 (14.89%) Python
3 1,066 (12.80%) Java
4 694 (8.34%) JavaScript
5 430 (5.16%) C#
6 398 (4.78%) TypeScript
7 226 (2.71%) PowerShell
8 179 (2.15%) Bash
9 118 (1.42%) PL/SQL
10 103 (1.24%) Apex Code
11 101 (1.21%) Scala
12 86 (1.03%) Bicep
13 83 (1.00%) Kotlin
14 53 (0.64%) C++
15 50 (0.60%) T-SQL
16 48 (0.58%) Go
16 48 (0.58%) Shell Script
17 43 (0.52%) Groovy
18 39 (0.47%) C
19 35 (0.42%) Korn
Qualifications
1 2,430 (29.19%) Security Cleared
2 1,935 (23.24%) SC Cleared
3 661 (7.94%) Degree
4 433 (5.20%) BPSS Clearance
5 370 (4.44%) DV Cleared
6 253 (3.04%) PMP
7 246 (2.95%) PMI Certification
8 153 (1.84%) Computer Science Degree
9 123 (1.48%) AWS Certification
10 118 (1.42%) Azure Certification
11 105 (1.26%) ISTQB
12 87 (1.04%) Microsoft Certification
13 76 (0.91%) Master's Degree
14 67 (0.80%) CISSP
15 60 (0.72%) Cisco Certification
16 52 (0.62%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
17 41 (0.49%) ITIL Certification
18 38 (0.46%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
19 35 (0.42%) IIBA
20 31 (0.37%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 828 (9.94%) QA
2 518 (6.22%) Accessibility
3 481 (5.78%) Data Quality
4 259 (3.11%) PMO
5 190 (2.28%) WCAG
6 185 (2.22%) GDPR
7 81 (0.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 79 (0.95%) NIST
9 68 (0.82%) GRC
9 68 (0.82%) NCSC
10 58 (0.70%) SLA
11 37 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 35 (0.42%) PCI DSS
13 32 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
14 25 (0.30%) GxP
15 23 (0.28%) Disclosure Scotland
16 20 (0.24%) ISO 20022
17 19 (0.23%) HL7
18 12 (0.14%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 12 (0.14%) P3O
System Software
1 829 (9.96%) Docker
2 159 (1.91%) Active Directory
3 82 (0.98%) VMware Infrastructure
4 26 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
4 26 (0.31%) VMware ESXi
5 23 (0.28%) Hyper-V
6 20 (0.24%) vSphere
7 19 (0.23%) VMware NSX
8 17 (0.20%) IAG
9 15 (0.18%) Firmware
10 14 (0.17%) Virtual Machines
11 11 (0.13%) Embedded Firmware
11 11 (0.13%) NFS
12 7 (0.084%) GPFS
13 6 (0.072%) Postfix
13 6 (0.072%) Time Sharing Option
14 5 (0.060%) Ceph
14 5 (0.060%) Squid
15 3 (0.036%) Microsoft App-V
15 3 (0.036%) vCloud
Systems Management
1 864 (10.38%) Kubernetes
2 257 (3.09%) Ansible
3 204 (2.45%) Grafana
4 152 (1.83%) Prometheus
5 71 (0.85%) Argo
6 38 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
7 31 (0.37%) Control-M
7 31 (0.37%) Microsoft Intune
8 30 (0.36%) Kibana
9 25 (0.30%) Progress Chef
10 24 (0.29%) Puppet
11 23 (0.28%) vCenter Server
12 22 (0.26%) SCCM
13 21 (0.25%) Packer
14 17 (0.20%) Jamf Pro
15 14 (0.17%) HP ALM
15 14 (0.17%) WMI
16 13 (0.16%) Istio
17 12 (0.14%) Kustomize
18 8 (0.096%) vRealize
Vendors
1 1,065 (12.79%) Microsoft
2 504 (6.05%) Oracle
3 370 (4.44%) ServiceNow
4 339 (4.07%) Salesforce
5 269 (3.23%) SAP
6 258 (3.10%) Google
7 255 (3.06%) Databricks
8 113 (1.36%) Splunk
9 106 (1.27%) VMware
10 100 (1.20%) IBM
11 96 (1.15%) Adobe
12 91 (1.09%) Red Hat
13 81 (0.97%) Dynatrace
13 81 (0.97%) MuleSoft
14 76 (0.91%) Talend
15 74 (0.89%) Informatica
16 65 (0.78%) Atlassian
17 58 (0.70%) Workday
18 52 (0.62%) Denodo
19 49 (0.59%) Cisco