Applications Support Contract Job Trends

Application Support
UK

The median Application Support daily rate in the UK is £450, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 18 December 2025.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 464 416 369
Rank change year-on-year -48 -47 +101
Contract jobs requiring an Applications Support 132 129 242
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.36% 0.38% 0.55%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.40% 0.41% 0.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 85 95 178
10th Percentile £205 £263 £323
25th Percentile £285 £311 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £450 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -18.18% +22.22%
75th Percentile £500 £554 £697
90th Percentile £600 £650 £786
UK excluding London median daily rate £336 £368 £450
% change year-on-year -8.70% -18.22% +20.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 0 11
10th Percentile - - £21.31
25th Percentile £22.85 - £23.25
Median hourly rate £30.00 - £57.29
75th Percentile £31.00 - £76.19
90th Percentile £36.70 - £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.85 - £57.29
% change year-on-year - - +186.43%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 33,289 31,718 41,239
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.98% 92.78% 93.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,068 19,534 27,738
10th Percentile £290 £300 £288
25th Percentile £404 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £618 £638 £644
90th Percentile £720 £738 £740
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £489 £500
% change year-on-year -2.86% -2.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,959 999 1,468
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.52 £15.14
25th Percentile £18.19 £21.22 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.47 £34.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -25.09% -23.60% +48.33%
75th Percentile £57.50 £62.84 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.46 £72.55 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year -22.62% -27.78% +80.76%

Applications Support
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Applications Support' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Applications Support job vacancy trend in the UK

Applications Support
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Applications Support job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Applications Support job vacancies in the UK

Applications Support
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Applications Support over the 6 months to 18 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Applications Support in the UK

Applications Support
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Applications Support job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Applications Support job vacancies in the UK

Applications Support
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Applications Support over the 6 months to 18 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Applications Support in the UK

Applications Support
Top 13 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Applications Support within the UK over the 6 months to 18 December 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 -47 114 £400 -7.25% 121
UK excluding London -22 70 £336 -8.70% 119
Work from Home -2 39 £450 +5.88% 100
London -37 38 £463 +2.78% 9
South East -5 28 £210 -55.79% 35
North of England -42 19 £340 -2.86% 31
South West +3 16 £500 +17.65% 15
North West -9 16 £340 -2.86% 18
East of England -19 3 £190 -39.20% 16
Midlands -42 3 - - 19
North East - 3 - - 1
East Midlands - 3 - - 12
Wales - 1 - - 3

Applications Support Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 18 December 2025, Applications Support contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Applications Support in the job title.

1 54 (40.91%) SQL
2 39 (29.55%) ITIL
3 35 (26.52%) Oracle
4 30 (22.73%) Problem-Solving
5 26 (19.70%) Continuous Improvement
6 25 (18.94%) Microsoft
7 24 (18.18%) Security Cleared
8 21 (15.91%) ERP
9 18 (13.64%) SQL Server
10 17 (12.88%) JIRA
11 16 (12.12%) Customer Service
11 16 (12.12%) Linux
12 15 (11.36%) SLA
13 14 (10.61%) CI/CD
13 14 (10.61%) Oracle Database
13 14 (10.61%) Service Management
13 14 (10.61%) Unix
14 13 (9.85%) Agile
14 13 (9.85%) Windows
15 12 (9.09%) DV Cleared
15 12 (9.09%) Incident Management
15 12 (9.09%) Service Delivery
15 12 (9.09%) Stakeholder Management
16 11 (8.33%) Ansible
16 11 (8.33%) Azure
16 11 (8.33%) Terraform
17 10 (7.58%) Change Management
17 10 (7.58%) Confluence
17 10 (7.58%) DevOps
17 10 (7.58%) Disaster Recovery

Applications Support Skill Set
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 10 (7.58%) Confluence
2 4 (3.03%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.76%) MQSeries
3 1 (0.76%) Tomcat
Applications
1 2 (1.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.76%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 8 (6.06%) Oracle EBS
2 4 (3.03%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (2.27%) Kondor
4 2 (1.52%) Elite 3E
5 1 (0.76%) ContrOCC
5 1 (0.76%) JDE EnterpriseOne
5 1 (0.76%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.76%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 11 (8.33%) Azure
2 7 (5.30%) npm
3 5 (3.79%) Power Platform
3 5 (3.79%) SaaS
4 4 (3.03%) Azure DevOps
4 4 (3.03%) OpenShift
5 3 (2.27%) AWS
6 2 (1.52%) Entra ID
7 1 (0.76%) dbt
7 1 (0.76%) Dynamics 365
7 1 (0.76%) Snowflake
7 1 (0.76%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 7 (5.30%) AMQP
2 2 (1.52%) Wi-Fi
3 1 (0.76%) Firewall
3 1 (0.76%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (13.64%) SQL Server
2 14 (10.61%) Oracle Database
3 10 (7.58%) Relational Database
4 6 (4.55%) PostgreSQL
5 5 (3.79%) Power BI
6 4 (3.03%) GIS
6 4 (3.03%) RDBMS
7 3 (2.27%) InfluxDB
8 1 (0.76%) Elasticsearch
8 1 (0.76%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 17 (12.88%) JIRA
2 7 (5.30%) Git
2 7 (5.30%) Maven
3 3 (2.27%) Jenkins
4 1 (0.76%) GitLab
4 1 (0.76%) Postman
4 1 (0.76%) SoapUI
General
1 52 (39.39%) Social Skills
2 33 (25.00%) Finance
3 12 (9.09%) Local Government
4 11 (8.33%) Analytical Skills
5 9 (6.82%) Public Sector
6 5 (3.79%) Back Office
6 5 (3.79%) Banking
6 5 (3.79%) Military
7 3 (2.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 3 (2.27%) Law
8 2 (1.52%) Automotive
8 2 (1.52%) Front Office
8 2 (1.52%) Legal
9 1 (0.76%) Financial Institution
9 1 (0.76%) Investment Banking
9 1 (0.76%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.76%) Organisational Skills
9 1 (0.76%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (4.55%) .NET
2 3 (2.27%) JSON
2 3 (2.27%) XML
3 2 (1.52%) FIX Protocol
3 2 (1.52%) REST
4 1 (0.76%) .NET Framework
4 1 (0.76%) EDI
4 1 (0.76%) Elastic Stack
4 1 (0.76%) Kafka
4 1 (0.76%) Middleware
4 1 (0.76%) Node.js
4 1 (0.76%) OpenTelemetry
4 1 (0.76%) PySpark
4 1 (0.76%) RESTful
4 1 (0.76%) SOAP
4 1 (0.76%) Ultra Messaging
4 1 (0.76%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 10 (7.58%) Data Centre
2 4 (3.03%) Data Protection Act
2 4 (3.03%) Management Information System
3 3 (2.27%) Distributed Systems
3 3 (2.27%) Enterprise Software
3 3 (2.27%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 3 (2.27%) Legacy Systems
3 3 (2.27%) SWIFT Messaging Network
4 2 (1.52%) Equities
4 2 (1.52%) FPGA
4 2 (1.52%) Housing Association
4 2 (1.52%) Legacy Applications
4 2 (1.52%) Product Ownership
4 2 (1.52%) Verilog
4 2 (1.52%) VHDL
5 1 (0.76%) Algorithms
5 1 (0.76%) Credit Risk
5 1 (0.76%) Derivative
5 1 (0.76%) Market Risk
5 1 (0.76%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 16 (12.12%) Linux
2 14 (10.61%) Unix
3 13 (9.85%) Windows
4 4 (3.03%) CentOS
4 4 (3.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (3.03%) Windows Server
5 2 (1.52%) Windows 10
5 2 (1.52%) Windows 7
6 1 (0.76%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.76%) Mac OS X
6 1 (0.76%) Windows Server 2003
6 1 (0.76%) Windows Server 2008
6 1 (0.76%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 39 (29.55%) ITIL
2 30 (22.73%) Problem-Solving
3 26 (19.70%) Continuous Improvement
4 21 (15.91%) ERP
5 16 (12.12%) Customer Service
6 14 (10.61%) CI/CD
6 14 (10.61%) Service Management
7 13 (9.85%) Agile
8 12 (9.09%) Incident Management
8 12 (9.09%) Service Delivery
8 12 (9.09%) Stakeholder Management
9 10 (7.58%) Change Management
9 10 (7.58%) DevOps
9 10 (7.58%) Disaster Recovery
10 9 (6.82%) CRM
11 8 (6.06%) Microservices
11 8 (6.06%) Performance Metrics
11 8 (6.06%) Problem Management
11 8 (6.06%) Root Cause Analysis
11 8 (6.06%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 54 (40.91%) SQL
2 9 (6.82%) Python
3 8 (6.06%) Java
4 2 (1.52%) C#
4 2 (1.52%) PowerShell
4 2 (1.52%) VB.NET
5 1 (0.76%) Bash
5 1 (0.76%) Shell Script
5 1 (0.76%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 24 (18.18%) Security Cleared
2 12 (9.09%) DV Cleared
3 7 (5.30%) BPSS Clearance
4 6 (4.55%) Degree
5 5 (3.79%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
6 4 (3.03%) HND
6 4 (3.03%) SC Cleared
7 1 (0.76%) Azure Certification
7 1 (0.76%) Computer Science Degree
7 1 (0.76%) ITIL Certification
7 1 (0.76%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (11.36%) SLA
2 2 (1.52%) Data Quality
2 2 (1.52%) QA
System Software
1 5 (3.79%) Docker
2 3 (2.27%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 11 (8.33%) Ansible
1 11 (8.33%) Terraform
2 8 (6.06%) Grafana
3 3 (2.27%) SCCM
4 2 (1.52%) Kibana
4 2 (1.52%) Microsoft Intune
5 1 (0.76%) AirWatch
5 1 (0.76%) ITRS Geneos
5 1 (0.76%) Jamf Pro
5 1 (0.76%) Kubernetes
5 1 (0.76%) logstash
5 1 (0.76%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 35 (26.52%) Oracle
2 25 (18.94%) Microsoft
3 7 (5.30%) ServiceNow
4 5 (3.79%) Splunk
5 4 (3.03%) Atlassian
5 4 (3.03%) Bloomberg
6 3 (2.27%) InterSystems
7 2 (1.52%) Aderant
7 2 (1.52%) Dynatrace
7 2 (1.52%) iManage
7 2 (1.52%) Intapp
7 2 (1.52%) Intel
7 2 (1.52%) Lattice Semiconductor
7 2 (1.52%) Liquidlogic
7 2 (1.52%) Salesforce
7 2 (1.52%) SAP
7 2 (1.52%) Xilinx
8 1 (0.76%) Meraki
8 1 (0.76%) MuleSoft
8 1 (0.76%) Solace