API Development Contracts

API Development
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring API Development skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited API Development over the 6 months leading up to 30 April 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Apr 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 272 382 359
Rank change year-on-year +110 -23 +46
Contract jobs citing API Development 276 224 400
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.94% 0.51% 0.67%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.04% 0.60% 0.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 208 169 295
10th Percentile £354 £385 £406
25th Percentile £400 £463 £481
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £586
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% -6.14% +1.91%
75th Percentile £586 £600 £649
90th Percentile £650 £694 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £550 £525
% change year-on-year -18.18% +4.76% +5.00%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

API Development 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 26,551 37,621 53,662
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.82% 86.30% 89.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,137 24,254 37,244
10th Percentile £308 £300 £325
25th Percentile £413 £413 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £521 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.86% -4.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £650
90th Percentile £744 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.80% - +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,071 2,437 1,746
10th Percentile £14.70 £12.75 £11.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £29.00 £35.50 £37.30
Median % change year-on-year -18.31% -4.83% +49.20%
75th Percentile £62.00 £59.95 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.94 £36.50 £36.00
% change year-on-year -23.45% +1.39% +80.00%

API Development
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing API Development as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for API Development in the UK

API Development
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing API Development.

Daily rate trend for API Development in the UK

API Development
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing API Development over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Daily rate histogram for API Development in the UK

API Development
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing API Development.

Hourly rate trend for API Development in the UK

API Development
Top 17 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing API Development within the UK over the 6 months to 30 April 2025. 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 +64 204 £500 -9.09% 228
London +60 122 £550 -4.35% 101
Work from Home +38 104 £453 -13.81% 160
UK excluding London +62 99 £450 -18.18% 141
North of England +5 28 £400 -27.27% 58
South East +40 23 £450 -10.00% 26
North West +2 18 £400 -23.81% 35
Midlands +37 17 £435 -3.33% 12
Scotland +22 17 £500 +8.46% 7
West Midlands +28 14 £435 -3.33% 6
Yorkshire -1 8 £414 -24.73% 22
South West +46 7 £650 -13.09% 24
Northern Ireland - 4 £475 - 6
East Midlands +11 3 £326 -31.19% 6
East of England - 3 £575 - 4
North East - 2 £550 - 1
Wales - 2 £400 - 7

API Development
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 18 (6.52%) Confluence
2 14 (5.07%) Anypoint
3 9 (3.26%) Mule
4 6 (2.17%) JBoss
4 6 (2.17%) Tomcat
4 6 (2.17%) WebLogic
4 6 (2.17%) WebSphere
5 3 (1.09%) Mule ESB
6 1 (0.36%) Camunda
6 1 (0.36%) CICS
6 1 (0.36%) Cloud Foundry
6 1 (0.36%) CMS
6 1 (0.36%) Documentum
6 1 (0.36%) FileNet
6 1 (0.36%) Headless CMS
6 1 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.36%) Umbraco
Applications
1 2 (0.72%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (0.72%) Trello
2 1 (0.36%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 4 (1.45%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (1.09%) NetSuite
3 1 (0.36%) BASE24
3 1 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.36%) NEC Housing
3 1 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.36%) Oracle EBS R12
3 1 (0.36%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 114 (41.30%) AWS
2 98 (35.51%) Azure
3 37 (13.41%) Serverless
4 32 (11.59%) GCP
5 25 (9.06%) GitHub
6 16 (5.80%) Azure DevOps
7 15 (5.43%) AWS Lambda
8 13 (4.71%) Amazon S3
8 13 (4.71%) GitHub Actions
9 11 (3.99%) Power Platform
10 8 (2.90%) Apigee
10 8 (2.90%) Azure Cosmos DB
10 8 (2.90%) Azure Functions
10 8 (2.90%) Azure Logic Apps
10 8 (2.90%) Azure Monitor
11 7 (2.54%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 7 (2.54%) Amazon EKS
11 7 (2.54%) Amazon SageMaker
11 7 (2.54%) Azure Service Bus
11 7 (2.54%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 9 (3.26%) HTTP
2 3 (1.09%) Firewall
3 2 (0.72%) 3GPP
3 2 (0.72%) 4G
3 2 (0.72%) 5G
3 2 (0.72%) Wireless
4 1 (0.36%) ATM
4 1 (0.36%) BGP
4 1 (0.36%) DNS
4 1 (0.36%) Software-Defined Networking
4 1 (0.36%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 52 (18.84%) NoSQL
2 43 (15.58%) PostgreSQL
3 41 (14.86%) MongoDB
4 19 (6.88%) SQL Server
5 18 (6.52%) Relational Database
6 16 (5.80%) MySQL
7 7 (2.54%) DB2
7 7 (2.54%) DynamoDB
7 7 (2.54%) Power BI
7 7 (2.54%) RDBMS
8 6 (2.17%) Oracle Database
9 5 (1.81%) BigQuery
9 5 (1.81%) Redis
10 4 (1.45%) Amazon Aurora
10 4 (1.45%) Amazon RDS
10 4 (1.45%) Apache Cassandra
10 4 (1.45%) Azure SQL Database
11 3 (1.09%) Amazon Athena
11 3 (1.09%) Data Warehouse
12 2 (0.72%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 54 (19.57%) Git
2 30 (10.87%) JIRA
3 25 (9.06%) Jenkins
4 17 (6.16%) Bitbucket
5 10 (3.62%) GitLab
6 8 (2.90%) Subversion
7 7 (2.54%) CircleCI
7 7 (2.54%) Maven
7 7 (2.54%) Postman
7 7 (2.54%) webpack
8 6 (2.17%) Cypress.io
8 6 (2.17%) Selenium
9 5 (1.81%) Babel
9 5 (1.81%) Gradle
9 5 (1.81%) JUnit
9 5 (1.81%) NUnit
9 5 (1.81%) Oracle APEX
10 4 (1.45%) HP UFT
10 4 (1.45%) IntelliJ
10 4 (1.45%) NetBeans
General
1 62 (22.46%) Social Skills
2 58 (21.01%) Public Sector
3 35 (12.68%) Finance
4 21 (7.61%) Analytical Skills
5 10 (3.62%) Banking
6 8 (2.90%) Advertising
6 8 (2.90%) Retail
7 7 (2.54%) Telecoms
8 6 (2.17%) Back Office
8 6 (2.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 4 (1.45%) Games
9 4 (1.45%) Marketing
10 3 (1.09%) Billing
11 2 (0.72%) Investment Banking
11 2 (0.72%) Local Government
11 2 (0.72%) Presentation Skills
11 2 (0.72%) Retail Banking
12 1 (0.36%) Corporate Banking
12 1 (0.36%) Danish Language
12 1 (0.36%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 182 (65.94%) Developer
2 37 (13.41%) Senior
3 36 (13.04%) Java Developer
4 31 (11.23%) Full-Stack Developer
5 23 (8.33%) .NET Developer
6 20 (7.25%) SC Cleared Java Developer
7 18 (6.52%) Senior Developer
7 18 (6.52%) Software Engineer
8 17 (6.16%) Architect
8 17 (6.16%) Lead
8 17 (6.16%) Python Developer
9 15 (5.43%) Lead Developer
10 13 (4.71%) MuleSoft Developer
10 13 (4.71%) React Developer
11 12 (4.35%) Full-Stack Engineer
12 11 (3.99%) Azure Developer
13 9 (3.26%) Applications Developer
13 9 (3.26%) Support Engineer
14 8 (2.90%) AWS Developer
14 8 (2.90%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 82 (29.71%) RESTful
2 80 (28.99%) React
3 52 (18.84%) Spring
4 50 (18.12%) .NET
5 47 (17.03%) Spring Boot
6 46 (16.67%) REST
7 44 (15.94%) Node.js
8 43 (15.58%) Kafka
9 31 (11.23%) HTML
10 27 (9.78%) CSS
11 26 (9.42%) OAuth
11 26 (9.42%) Web Services
12 25 (9.06%) SOAP
13 24 (8.70%) JSON
13 24 (8.70%) Swagger
14 23 (8.33%) .NET Core
14 23 (8.33%) OpenAPI
15 20 (7.25%) AngularJS
16 19 (6.88%) RAML
17 16 (5.80%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 17 (6.16%) Product Ownership
2 13 (4.71%) Cloud Native
3 9 (3.26%) Enterprise Software
4 8 (2.90%) Public Cloud
5 7 (2.54%) Data Structures
5 7 (2.54%) Team-Oriented Environment
6 6 (2.17%) Data Protection Act
6 6 (2.17%) Private Cloud
7 4 (1.45%) Distributed Systems
7 4 (1.45%) Greenfield Project
7 4 (1.45%) Hedge funds
7 4 (1.45%) Virtual Team
8 3 (1.09%) Low-Code
8 3 (1.09%) Mainframe
8 3 (1.09%) Management Information System
9 2 (0.72%) Legacy Systems
9 2 (0.72%) Mobile App
9 2 (0.72%) NHS
9 2 (0.72%) Onboarding
9 2 (0.72%) Renewable Energy
Operating Systems
1 7 (2.54%) Linux
2 3 (1.09%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 2 (0.72%) Android
4 1 (0.36%) AIX
4 1 (0.36%) VMS
4 1 (0.36%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 157 (56.88%) Agile
2 117 (42.39%) CI/CD
3 106 (38.41%) DevOps
4 86 (31.16%) Microservices
5 79 (28.62%) Problem-Solving
6 62 (22.46%) Full-Stack Development
7 42 (15.22%) API Integration
7 42 (15.22%) Containerisation
7 42 (15.22%) Test Automation
8 34 (12.32%) Software Engineering
9 31 (11.23%) API Design
9 31 (11.23%) Code Quality
10 29 (10.51%) Front End Development
10 29 (10.51%) Scrum
11 26 (9.42%) Clean Code
12 25 (9.06%) Event-Driven
12 25 (9.06%) SOLID
12 25 (9.06%) User Experience
13 24 (8.70%) API Management
13 24 (8.70%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 102 (36.96%) Java
2 95 (34.42%) JavaScript
3 93 (33.70%) SQL
4 86 (31.16%) Python
5 42 (15.22%) C#
6 40 (14.49%) TypeScript
7 22 (7.97%) PHP
8 11 (3.99%) Go
8 11 (3.99%) Kotlin
9 10 (3.62%) DataWeave
10 9 (3.26%) PL/SQL
11 7 (2.54%) Scala
12 5 (1.81%) Bash
12 5 (1.81%) PowerShell
12 5 (1.81%) Ruby
13 4 (1.45%) Shell Script
14 3 (1.09%) C++
15 2 (0.72%) Apex Code
15 2 (0.72%) R
15 2 (0.72%) Rust
Qualifications
1 53 (19.20%) Security Cleared
2 50 (18.12%) SC Cleared
3 21 (7.61%) Degree
4 17 (6.16%) AWS Certified Developer
5 15 (5.43%) Computer Science Degree
6 7 (2.54%) DV Cleared
7 6 (2.17%) BPSS Clearance
8 5 (1.81%) AWS Certification
9 3 (1.09%) Master's Degree
10 2 (0.72%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 2 (0.72%) CEH
10 2 (0.72%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (0.72%) CISSP
10 2 (0.72%) Microsoft Certification
11 1 (0.36%) Azure Certification
11 1 (0.36%) OCP
11 1 (0.36%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (4.71%) Accessibility
2 9 (3.26%) QA
3 3 (1.09%) GDPR
3 3 (1.09%) PCI DSS
4 2 (0.72%) Disclosure Scotland
4 2 (0.72%) HIPAA
5 1 (0.36%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.36%) NCSC
5 1 (0.36%) SOC 2
5 1 (0.36%) WCAG
System Software
1 53 (19.20%) Docker
2 8 (2.90%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.36%) VirtualBox
3 1 (0.36%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 70 (25.36%) Kubernetes
2 30 (10.87%) Terraform
3 6 (2.17%) CloudHub
3 6 (2.17%) Kibana
3 6 (2.17%) Prometheus
4 5 (1.81%) Grafana
4 5 (1.81%) Puppet
5 4 (1.45%) Progress Chef
6 3 (1.09%) Ansible
6 3 (1.09%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.36%) CA Endevor
7 1 (0.36%) MIIS
7 1 (0.36%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
Vendors
1 33 (11.96%) Microsoft
1 33 (11.96%) Oracle
2 17 (6.16%) MuleSoft
3 14 (5.07%) Google
4 13 (4.71%) Salesforce
5 9 (3.26%) SAP
6 8 (2.90%) ServiceNow
7 4 (1.45%) CA Agile Central
7 4 (1.45%) Splunk
8 3 (1.09%) Zend
9 2 (0.72%) Atlassian
9 2 (0.72%) Cisco
9 2 (0.72%) ForgeRock
9 2 (0.72%) OpenAI
9 2 (0.72%) PagerDuty
9 2 (0.72%) Ping Identity
9 2 (0.72%) VMware
10 1 (0.36%) Okta
10 1 (0.36%) OutSystems
10 1 (0.36%) Typelevel