Code Quality Contract Job Trends

Code Quality (Software Quality)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Code Quality skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 13 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 242 261 276
Rank change year-on-year +19 +15 +173
Contract jobs citing Code Quality 401 334 392
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.11% 0.94% 0.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.24% 1.07% 0.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 283 216 187
10th Percentile £356 £350 £370
25th Percentile £409 £409 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -9.09% +1.85%
75th Percentile £600 £575 £644
90th Percentile £675 £688 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £490
% change year-on-year +6.38% -4.08% +1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 5 10
10th Percentile £33.38 - £64.25
25th Percentile £44.06 £61.25 £70.31
Median hourly rate £50.00 £62.50 £75.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% -16.67% +25.00%
75th Percentile - £66.00 £78.44
90th Percentile - - £80.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £62.50 £75.00
% change year-on-year -20.00% -16.67% +25.00%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Code Quality 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 32,247 31,236 40,271
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 88.88% 87.47% 88.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,285 18,990 26,947
10th Percentile £300 £308 £310
25th Percentile £405 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.50% -3.09%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,090 1,084 1,559
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.25 £14.36
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.19 £18.94
Median hourly rate £25.13 £33.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -23.86% -22.35% +21.43%
75th Percentile £45.46 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.50 £74.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.63 £32.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -30.37% -23.53% +30.77%

Code Quality
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Code Quality relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Code Quality job vacancy trend in the UK

Code Quality
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Code Quality.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Code Quality

Code Quality
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Code Quality over the 6 months to 13 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Code Quality in the UK

Code Quality
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Code Quality.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Code Quality

Code Quality
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Code Quality over the 6 months to 13 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Code Quality in the UK

Code Quality
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 Code Quality within the UK over the 6 months to 13 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 +41 344 £500 -4.76% 285
London +24 199 £525 - 65
UK excluding London -16 162 £500 +6.38% 268
Work from Home +19 149 £511 +7.07% 103
North of England -1 69 £440 -12.00% 54
Yorkshire -16 32 £500 - 25
North West +3 30 £360 -34.55% 26
South East -8 26 £509 +7.16% 78
Midlands -24 21 £438 -7.89% 37
Scotland -21 19 £543 +20.67% 26
East Midlands -8 12 £402 +12.92% 16
South West -24 12 £575 +9.52% 34
North East -2 9 £565 +2.73% 3
West Midlands -27 9 £495 +4.21% 19
Wales +9 8 £475 +26.67% 6
East of England -14 6 £500 +56.99% 37
Northern Ireland - 1 £463 - 3

Code Quality
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 15 (3.74%) Confluence
2 10 (2.49%) Apache Spark
3 6 (1.50%) Apache
3 6 (1.50%) CMS
4 5 (1.25%) Apache Airflow
5 4 (1.00%) JBoss
6 3 (0.75%) Appian
6 3 (0.75%) Drupal
7 2 (0.50%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 2 (0.50%) Mule
7 2 (0.50%) SAS
7 2 (0.50%) WordPress
8 1 (0.25%) Anypoint
8 1 (0.25%) Apache Superset
8 1 (0.25%) CICS
8 1 (0.25%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.25%) MQSeries
8 1 (0.25%) WebLogic
8 1 (0.25%) WebSphere
Applications
1 3 (0.75%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.50%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.50%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 4 (1.00%) Dynamics CRM
1 4 (1.00%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.25%) Magento
2 1 (0.25%) SAP PLM
2 1 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.25%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 152 (37.91%) AWS
2 130 (32.42%) Azure
3 75 (18.70%) GitHub
4 59 (14.71%) GCP
5 56 (13.97%) Serverless
6 45 (11.22%) GitHub Actions
7 37 (9.23%) Azure DevOps
8 36 (8.98%) AWS Lambda
9 21 (5.24%) Amazon S3
10 20 (4.99%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 19 (4.74%) Amazon SQS
12 15 (3.74%) Amazon ECS
12 15 (3.74%) AWS CloudFormation
12 15 (3.74%) OpenShift
13 14 (3.49%) SaaS
14 13 (3.24%) Amazon EKS
14 13 (3.24%) Azure AKS
15 12 (2.99%) Amazon EC2
16 11 (2.74%) GitHub Copilot
17 10 (2.49%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 8 (2.00%) HTTP
2 6 (1.50%) DNS
3 5 (1.25%) OpenLDAP
4 2 (0.50%) HTTPS
4 2 (0.50%) VPN
5 1 (0.25%) Firewall
5 1 (0.25%) WireGuard
Database & Business Intelligence
1 54 (13.47%) PostgreSQL
2 49 (12.22%) Relational Database
3 29 (7.23%) NoSQL
4 24 (5.99%) MongoDB
5 22 (5.49%) MySQL
6 12 (2.99%) Redis
7 11 (2.74%) Big Data
8 10 (2.49%) RDBMS
8 10 (2.49%) SQL Server
9 9 (2.24%) DynamoDB
10 8 (2.00%) Data Warehouse
11 7 (1.75%) Amazon RDS
12 6 (1.50%) Azure SQL Database
12 6 (1.50%) Data Lake
12 6 (1.50%) Elasticsearch
13 5 (1.25%) DB2
13 5 (1.25%) DocumentDB
13 5 (1.25%) Oracle Database
14 4 (1.00%) Amazon Aurora
14 4 (1.00%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 139 (34.66%) Git
2 63 (15.71%) Jenkins
3 44 (10.97%) JIRA
4 37 (9.23%) GitLab
5 33 (8.23%) SonarQube
6 21 (5.24%) JUnit
7 19 (4.74%) Cypress.io
7 19 (4.74%) Selenium
8 15 (3.74%) Cucumber
9 14 (3.49%) Bitbucket
9 14 (3.49%) Postman
10 12 (2.99%) Maven
11 9 (2.24%) Mockito
12 8 (2.00%) Xcode
13 7 (1.75%) Sonatype Nexus
13 7 (1.75%) TeamCity
13 7 (1.75%) Visual Studio Code
14 6 (1.50%) REST Assured
14 6 (1.50%) Visual Studio
15 5 (1.25%) Subversion
General
1 139 (34.66%) Social Skills
2 66 (16.46%) Public Sector
3 62 (15.46%) Finance
4 40 (9.98%) Analytical Skills
5 21 (5.24%) Banking
6 8 (2.00%) Telecoms
7 7 (1.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 7 (1.75%) Retail
8 6 (1.50%) Pharmaceutical
8 6 (1.50%) Publishing
9 5 (1.25%) Investment Banking
9 5 (1.25%) Presentation Skills
10 4 (1.00%) Aerospace
10 4 (1.00%) Front Office
10 4 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
11 3 (0.75%) Documentation Skills
11 3 (0.75%) Marketing
11 3 (0.75%) Military
12 2 (0.50%) Automotive
12 2 (0.50%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 166 (41.40%) Developer
2 85 (21.20%) Senior
3 51 (12.72%) Java Developer
4 38 (9.48%) Lead
5 37 (9.23%) Senior Developer
6 34 (8.48%) Software Engineer
7 30 (7.48%) Full-Stack Developer
8 26 (6.48%) Python Engineer
9 19 (4.74%) Python Developer
10 18 (4.49%) DevOps Engineer
11 14 (3.49%) .NET Developer
11 14 (3.49%) Architect
11 14 (3.49%) Senior Java Developer
12 13 (3.24%) React Developer
13 12 (2.99%) Senior Software Engineer
13 12 (2.99%) Technical Leader
14 11 (2.74%) Consultant
14 11 (2.74%) Data Engineer
15 10 (2.49%) Senior Consultant
15 10 (2.49%) Senior Unix Technical Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 79 (19.70%) React
2 70 (17.46%) RESTful
3 69 (17.21%) Spring
4 59 (14.71%) REST
5 58 (14.46%) Node.js
6 51 (12.72%) Spring Boot
7 48 (11.97%) .NET
8 45 (11.22%) CSS
8 45 (11.22%) HTML
9 44 (10.97%) AngularJS
10 37 (9.23%) Kafka
11 33 (8.23%) Jest
12 30 (7.48%) GraphQL
13 26 (6.48%) Next.js
14 24 (5.99%) pytest
15 22 (5.49%) FastAPI
15 22 (5.49%) Hibernate
15 22 (5.49%) HTML5
16 19 (4.74%) Playwright
17 17 (4.24%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 49 (12.22%) Cloud Native
2 28 (6.98%) Product Ownership
3 24 (5.99%) Distributed Systems
4 15 (3.74%) Onboarding
5 14 (3.49%) Mobile App
6 13 (3.24%) Virtual Team
7 12 (2.99%) Algorithms
8 11 (2.74%) Self-Motivation
9 10 (2.49%) Data Structures
9 10 (2.49%) Public Cloud
10 8 (2.00%) Legacy Applications
10 8 (2.00%) Management Information System
11 7 (1.75%) Data Protection Act
11 7 (1.75%) Greenfield Project
11 7 (1.75%) Legacy Systems
12 6 (1.50%) Wiki
13 5 (1.25%) Client/Server
14 4 (1.00%) AI Agents
15 3 (0.75%) Derivative
15 3 (0.75%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 22 (5.49%) Linux
2 12 (2.99%) Windows
3 10 (2.49%) Apple iOS
4 9 (2.24%) Android
5 8 (2.00%) Unix
6 5 (1.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 2 (0.50%) Mac OS
8 1 (0.25%) Alpine Linux
8 1 (0.25%) Solaris
8 1 (0.25%) tvOS
8 1 (0.25%) Ubuntu
8 1 (0.25%) VMS
8 1 (0.25%) watchOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 216 (53.87%) Agile
2 211 (52.62%) CI/CD
3 152 (37.91%) DevOps
4 147 (36.66%) Problem-Solving
5 129 (32.17%) Microservices
6 106 (26.43%) Test Automation
7 97 (24.19%) Containerisation
8 87 (21.70%) Software Engineering
9 61 (15.21%) Mentoring
9 61 (15.21%) Scrum
10 60 (14.96%) Full-Stack Development
11 57 (14.21%) Unit Testing
12 56 (13.97%) Infrastructure as Code
13 55 (13.72%) TDD
14 51 (12.72%) AI
15 50 (12.47%) API Development
15 50 (12.47%) Continuous Integration
16 49 (12.22%) SDLC
17 46 (11.47%) Clean Code
18 42 (10.47%) Front End Development
Programming Languages
1 131 (32.67%) Python
2 125 (31.17%) Java
3 93 (23.19%) TypeScript
4 80 (19.95%) JavaScript
5 73 (18.20%) SQL
6 44 (10.97%) C#
7 15 (3.74%) Go
7 15 (3.74%) Ruby
8 11 (2.74%) C++
9 10 (2.49%) PHP
10 9 (2.24%) Shell Script
11 8 (2.00%) Apex Code
11 8 (2.00%) PowerShell
12 7 (1.75%) Bash
12 7 (1.75%) Kotlin
13 6 (1.50%) Objective-C
13 6 (1.50%) Swift
14 5 (1.25%) Scala
15 4 (1.00%) Groovy
15 4 (1.00%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 81 (20.20%) Security Cleared
2 68 (16.96%) SC Cleared
3 42 (10.47%) Degree
4 31 (7.73%) Computer Science Degree
5 19 (4.74%) BPSS Clearance
6 9 (2.24%) Azure Certification
7 5 (1.25%) AWS Certification
7 5 (1.25%) ISTQB
8 4 (1.00%) Master's Degree
9 3 (0.75%) OCP
9 3 (0.75%) Oracle Certification
9 3 (0.75%) Postgraduate
10 2 (0.50%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 2 (0.50%) MCP
10 2 (0.50%) Microsoft Certification
11 1 (0.25%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 55 (13.72%) QA
2 34 (8.48%) Accessibility
3 12 (2.99%) Software Quality Assurance
4 11 (2.74%) WCAG
5 6 (1.50%) Data Quality
6 4 (1.00%) Disclosure Scotland
6 4 (1.00%) GDPR
7 2 (0.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.50%) SLA
8 1 (0.25%) 21 CFR Part 11
8 1 (0.25%) Def Stans
8 1 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 126 (31.42%) Docker
2 10 (2.49%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.25%) Firmware
3 1 (0.25%) HDFS
3 1 (0.25%) Oracle RAC
3 1 (0.25%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 133 (33.17%) Kubernetes
2 54 (13.47%) Terraform
3 14 (3.49%) Ansible
4 11 (2.74%) Grafana
5 9 (2.24%) Argo
5 9 (2.24%) Single Sign-On
6 8 (2.00%) Prometheus
7 6 (1.50%) Kibana
8 4 (1.00%) Progress Chef
9 3 (0.75%) Control-M
10 2 (0.50%) rkt
11 1 (0.25%) CloudHub
11 1 (0.25%) Consul
11 1 (0.25%) HP Quality Center
11 1 (0.25%) Microsoft Intune
11 1 (0.25%) Puppet
11 1 (0.25%) Rsyslog
11 1 (0.25%) SCCM
11 1 (0.25%) SCOM
11 1 (0.25%) vRealize
Vendors
1 43 (10.72%) Microsoft
2 24 (5.99%) Google
3 19 (4.74%) Oracle
3 19 (4.74%) Salesforce
4 16 (3.99%) Databricks
5 15 (3.74%) Red Hat
6 10 (2.49%) Splunk
7 8 (2.00%) CA Agile Central
8 7 (1.75%) GoldenSource
9 6 (1.50%) Atlassian
9 6 (1.50%) Dynatrace
9 6 (1.50%) SAP
10 5 (1.25%) ServiceNow
10 5 (1.25%) Sybase
11 4 (1.00%) Adobe
11 4 (1.00%) AppDynamics
11 4 (1.00%) IBM
11 4 (1.00%) Xamarin
12 3 (0.75%) Amplitude
12 3 (0.75%) OpenAI