Games Contracts

Gaming
UK

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Games in contract job vacancies. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Games over the 6 months leading up to 29 June 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Jun 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 398 439 441
Rank change year-on-year +41 +2 -32
Contract jobs citing Games 143 149 257
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.47% 0.34% 0.46%
As % of the General category 0.74% 0.60% 0.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 51 90 213
10th Percentile £193 £219 £263
25th Percentile £306 £297 £319
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £400 £408 £450
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% -9.33% -10.00%
75th Percentile £450 £539 £608
90th Percentile £575 £675 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £320 £375 £426
% change year-on-year -14.67% -12.02% -14.75%
Number of hourly rates quoted 30 14 6
10th Percentile £28.60 £7.67 £25.84
25th Percentile £33.91 £18.67 £42.50
Median hourly rate £50.00 £39.92 £53.75
Median % change year-on-year +25.25% -25.73% +23.21%
75th Percentile - £47.25 £60.00
90th Percentile £88.00 £63.75 £67.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £30.51 £26.46
% change year-on-year +63.88% +15.31% -

All General Skills
UK

Games falls under the General Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring common skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for common skills 19,392 24,808 32,609
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 63.36% 57.12% 58.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,165 15,503 22,465
10th Percentile £281 £275 £313
25th Percentile £400 £413 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £638 £650 £675
90th Percentile £750 £775 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £470 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -4.08% -2.00% +2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 948 1,980 1,026
10th Percentile £13.46 £12.79 £13.41
25th Percentile £16.35 £15.62 £16.85
Median hourly rate £27.50 £31.76 £30.54
Median % change year-on-year -13.40% +3.98% +27.25%
75th Percentile £53.56 £53.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £72.50 £68.75 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.11 £31.00 £25.95
% change year-on-year -22.23% +19.46% +29.75%

Games
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for Games in the UK

Games
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for Games in the UK

Games
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Games over the 6 months to 29 June 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Games in the UK

Games
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for Games in the UK

Games
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Games over the 6 months to 29 June 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Games in the UK

Games
Top 14 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Games within the UK over the 6 months to 29 June 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 +50 133 £388 -5.02% 2,238
UK excluding London +80 90 £320 -14.67% 1,432
Midlands +28 40 £258 +14.44% 211
London +19 37 £413 -6.30% 916
West Midlands +32 36 £219 -2.78% 119
Work from Home +41 35 £358 -7.14% 1,373
South East +61 16 - - 375
East of England +29 16 £360 -4.00% 199
North of England +9 15 £475 -5.00% 402
North West +12 9 £444 -4.05% 216
Yorkshire +2 6 £600 +17.07% 148
East Midlands +2 4 £316 -24.40% 82
Scotland - 2 £400 - 70
South West +41 1 £160 -69.52% 130

Games
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 21 (14.69%) IBM Domino
1 21 (14.69%) Microsoft Exchange
2 4 (2.80%) CMS
3 3 (2.10%) Headless CMS
4 2 (1.40%) Strapi
5 1 (0.70%) Apache
5 1 (0.70%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.70%) WordPress
Applications
1 20 (13.99%) Maya
2 11 (7.69%) NUKE
3 6 (4.20%) Adobe Captivate
3 6 (4.20%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (4.20%) Simulink
4 5 (3.50%) Microsoft Excel
5 3 (2.10%) Photoshop
6 1 (0.70%) SOLIDWORKS
6 1 (0.70%) SPSS
6 1 (0.70%) Stata
6 1 (0.70%) Trello
6 1 (0.70%) ZBrush
Business Applications
1 2 (1.40%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 26 (18.18%) Microsoft 365
2 11 (7.69%) Azure
3 6 (4.20%) Entra ID
4 5 (3.50%) AWS
4 5 (3.50%) Power Platform
5 3 (2.10%) Azure DevOps
5 3 (2.10%) Dynamics 365
6 2 (1.40%) Amazon SageMaker
6 2 (1.40%) Anthropic Claude
6 2 (1.40%) Azure AI
6 2 (1.40%) Vertex AI
7 1 (0.70%) Amazon S3
7 1 (0.70%) Asana
7 1 (0.70%) Azure Data Factory
7 1 (0.70%) Azure Monitor
7 1 (0.70%) Canva
7 1 (0.70%) Cloud Computing
7 1 (0.70%) GCP
7 1 (0.70%) Storyblok
Communications & Networking
1 22 (15.38%) Firewall
2 21 (14.69%) Cisco IOS
3 6 (4.20%) Ethernet
4 5 (3.50%) LAN
4 5 (3.50%) TCP/IP
4 5 (3.50%) WAN
4 5 (3.50%) Wi-Fi
5 2 (1.40%) Broadband
5 2 (1.40%) MQTT
6 1 (0.70%) Network Security
6 1 (0.70%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (3.50%) Power BI
1 5 (3.50%) Tableau
2 2 (1.40%) GIS
2 2 (1.40%) Pinecone
2 2 (1.40%) Redis
2 2 (1.40%) Weaviate
3 1 (0.70%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 10 (6.99%) Git
2 3 (2.10%) Plastic SCM
3 2 (1.40%) JIRA
4 1 (0.70%) GitLab
4 1 (0.70%) TeamCity
General
1 40 (27.97%) Social Skills
2 25 (17.48%) Analytical Skills
3 17 (11.89%) Automotive
4 8 (5.59%) Manufacturing
4 8 (5.59%) Retail
5 6 (4.20%) Aerospace
5 6 (4.20%) Documentation Skills
5 6 (4.20%) Electronics
5 6 (4.20%) Finance
6 5 (3.50%) Marketing
6 5 (3.50%) Polish Language
6 5 (3.50%) Publishing
7 3 (2.10%) Legal
7 3 (2.10%) Organisational Skills
8 2 (1.40%) Banking
8 2 (1.40%) French Language
8 2 (1.40%) German Language
8 2 (1.40%) Italian Language
8 2 (1.40%) Japanese Language
8 2 (1.40%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 35 (24.48%) Senior
2 21 (14.69%) Platform Engineer
3 13 (9.09%) Developer
4 12 (8.39%) Lead
5 11 (7.69%) Analyst
6 9 (6.29%) Designer
7 7 (4.90%) Games Designer
7 7 (4.90%) Games Engineer
8 6 (4.20%) Senior Designer
8 6 (4.20%) Technical Designer
9 5 (3.50%) Animator
9 5 (3.50%) Senior Games Designer
10 4 (2.80%) 2nd Line Engineer
10 4 (2.80%) Compliance Executive
10 4 (2.80%) Data Analyst
10 4 (2.80%) FPGA Engineer
10 4 (2.80%) Games Developer
10 4 (2.80%) Senior Developer
11 3 (2.10%) Business Analyst
11 3 (2.10%) Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (20.28%) Unreal Engine
2 20 (13.99%) CSS
2 20 (13.99%) HTML
3 18 (12.59%) Django
4 13 (9.09%) Unity (Game Engine)
5 7 (4.90%) Godot
6 6 (4.20%) V-Ray
7 3 (2.10%) RESTful
8 2 (1.40%) Elastic Stack
8 2 (1.40%) Framer.js
8 2 (1.40%) Google JAX
8 2 (1.40%) Hugging Face
8 2 (1.40%) JAX
8 2 (1.40%) Kafka
8 2 (1.40%) Next.js
8 2 (1.40%) OpenTelemetry
8 2 (1.40%) PyTorch
8 2 (1.40%) RabbitMQ
8 2 (1.40%) React
8 2 (1.40%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 25 (17.48%) Animation
2 17 (11.89%) Virtual Reality
3 9 (6.29%) Algorithms
4 8 (5.59%) Onboarding
5 6 (4.20%) FPGA
5 6 (4.20%) Mobile Games
5 6 (4.20%) PCIe
5 6 (4.20%) Verilog
6 4 (2.80%) Data Protection Act
6 4 (2.80%) Self-Motivation
7 3 (2.10%) Augmented Reality
7 3 (2.10%) Online Games
8 2 (1.40%) AI Agents
8 2 (1.40%) Autonomous Agent
8 2 (1.40%) Data Structures
8 2 (1.40%) Distributed Systems
8 2 (1.40%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 1 (0.70%) Hackathon
9 1 (0.70%) Mixed Reality
9 1 (0.70%) Sports Betting
Operating Systems
1 22 (15.38%) Android
1 22 (15.38%) Windows
2 21 (14.69%) Mac OS
3 1 (0.70%) Linux
3 1 (0.70%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 22 (15.38%) E-Commerce
2 19 (13.29%) Artificial Intelligence
2 19 (13.29%) Problem-Solving
3 18 (12.59%) Agile
3 18 (12.59%) Game Development
4 14 (9.79%) User Experience
5 13 (9.09%) Visualisation
6 12 (8.39%) Analytical Thinking
7 11 (7.69%) Customer Service
7 11 (7.69%) Machine Learning
8 9 (6.29%) Cybersecurity
8 9 (6.29%) Decision-Making
8 9 (6.29%) Stakeholder Management
9 7 (4.90%) CI/CD
9 7 (4.90%) Computer Science
10 6 (4.20%) Business Intelligence
10 6 (4.20%) Cryptography
10 6 (4.20%) DevOps
10 6 (4.20%) Physics
10 6 (4.20%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 27 (18.88%) Python
2 25 (17.48%) SQL
3 23 (16.08%) Java
3 23 (16.08%) PowerShell
4 22 (15.38%) C++
5 17 (11.89%) Tcl
6 11 (7.69%) TypeScript
7 7 (4.90%) C#
7 7 (4.90%) JavaScript
8 6 (4.20%) MATLAB
8 6 (4.20%) SystemVerilog
9 2 (1.40%) Go
9 2 (1.40%) R
10 1 (0.70%) Bicep
10 1 (0.70%) PHP
Qualifications
1 15 (10.49%) Degree
2 11 (7.69%) Security Cleared
3 7 (4.90%) SC Cleared
4 6 (4.20%) HNC
4 6 (4.20%) HND
5 5 (3.50%) BPSS Clearance
6 1 (0.70%) Computer Science Degree
6 1 (0.70%) ISEB
6 1 (0.70%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 1 (0.70%) Master's Degree
6 1 (0.70%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (8.39%) QA
2 6 (4.20%) DO-254
3 3 (2.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 3 (2.10%) Software Quality Assurance
4 1 (0.70%) Accessibility
4 1 (0.70%) Actionable Recommendations
4 1 (0.70%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.70%) GRC
4 1 (0.70%) ISO 22301
4 1 (0.70%) NIST
System Software
1 27 (18.88%) Active Directory
2 6 (4.20%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 22 (15.38%) SCCM
2 21 (14.69%) Microsoft Intune
3 2 (1.40%) Prometheus
4 1 (0.70%) Terraform
Vendors
1 35 (24.48%) Microsoft
2 21 (14.69%) Cisco
2 21 (14.69%) Meraki
2 21 (14.69%) Splunk
3 7 (4.90%) Adobe
3 7 (4.90%) Databricks
4 6 (4.20%) Actel
4 6 (4.20%) Altera
4 6 (4.20%) Autodesk
4 6 (4.20%) Intel
4 6 (4.20%) Microsemi
4 6 (4.20%) Xilinx
5 2 (1.40%) BT
5 2 (1.40%) Google
5 2 (1.40%) OpenAI
5 2 (1.40%) Perforce
6 1 (0.70%) HP
6 1 (0.70%) Salesforce
6 1 (0.70%) ServiceNow