IBM Contract Job Trends

IBM
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring knowledge or experience of IBM products and/or services. It includes a benchmarking guide to contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited IBM over the 6 months leading up to 31 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

The figures below represent the IT contractor job market in general and are not representative of contractor rates within the International Business Machines Corporation.

6 months to
31 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 290 237 216
Rank change year-on-year -53 -21 +98
Contract jobs citing IBM 343 343 501
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.89% 1.09% 1.12%
As % of the Vendors category 1.94% 2.36% 2.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 212 168 312
10th Percentile £307 £320 £406
25th Percentile £398 £413 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £468 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.40% -9.09% +4.76%
75th Percentile £570 £603 £650
90th Percentile £688 £678 £769
UK excluding London median daily rate £445 £450 £500
% change year-on-year -1.11% -10.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 21 21
10th Percentile £25.77 - £62.50
25th Percentile £51.25 £24.18 £65.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £46.18 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +40.75% -34.03% +64.01%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 -
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 £46.18 £70.00
% change year-on-year +51.58% -34.03% +68.16%

All Vendors
UK

IBM falls under the Vendor Products and Services category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring knowledge or experience of all vendor products and services.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for knowledge or experience of vendor products and services 17,661 14,540 19,631
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 45.58% 46.24% 43.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,354 8,598 12,385
10th Percentile £300 £281 £250
25th Percentile £410 £409 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.31% -0.48% -2.33%
75th Percentile £610 £625 £638
90th Percentile £700 £713 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 837 425 889
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.62 £13.00
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.00 £16.00
Median hourly rate £23.83 £28.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.91% -6.67% +1.69%
75th Percentile £51.02 £61.50 £59.95
90th Percentile £73.00 £80.06 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.46 £25.00 £30.00
% change year-on-year -14.16% -16.67% +16.37%

IBM
Job Vacancy Trend

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

IBM job vacancy trend in the UK

IBM
Daily Rate Trend

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

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing IBM

IBM
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing IBM over the 6 months to 31 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for IBM in the UK

IBM
Hourly Rate Trend

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

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing IBM

IBM
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing IBM over the 6 months to 31 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for IBM in the UK

IBM
Top 15 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing IBM within the UK over the 6 months to 31 January 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 -56 300 £475 -5.00% 68
UK excluding London -41 192 £445 -1.11% 56
London -56 109 £500 -4.76% 25
Work from Home -13 104 £484 -3.30% 32
North of England -51 56 £450 +9.09% 12
Midlands -14 49 £400 -13.04% 3
West Midlands -9 48 £400 -12.09% 3
North West -18 41 £448 +17.59% 9
East of England +6 29 £425 - 10
South East -49 24 £525 +24.26% 17
South West -31 21 £700 +16.67% 12
Scotland +6 16 £440 -2.33% 5
Yorkshire -54 15 £475 -1.04% 3
Wales -2 1 - -
East Midlands -26 1 £837 +74.27%

IBM
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 23 (6.71%) WebSphere
2 21 (6.12%) Confluence
3 15 (4.37%) Apache
4 12 (3.50%) JBoss
4 12 (3.50%) WebSphere Application Server
5 11 (3.21%) CICS
5 11 (3.21%) IIS
6 10 (2.92%) iPlanet
6 10 (2.92%) MQSeries
6 10 (2.92%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 8 (2.33%) SharePoint
7 8 (2.33%) WebLogic
8 5 (1.46%) ArcGIS
8 5 (1.46%) nginx
8 5 (1.46%) Tomcat
9 4 (1.17%) Anypoint
10 3 (0.87%) Apache Airflow
10 3 (0.87%) Apache Spark
10 3 (0.87%) SAS
11 2 (0.58%) FileNet
Applications
1 9 (2.62%) MS Visio
2 7 (2.04%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (1.75%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 28 (8.16%) Maximo
2 9 (2.62%) IBM Planning Analytics
3 7 (2.04%) BusinessWorks
4 4 (1.17%) Oracle 11i
4 4 (1.17%) SAP S/4HANA
5 3 (0.87%) SAP EWM
5 3 (0.87%) SAP PM
5 3 (0.87%) SAP PP
5 3 (0.87%) SAP QM
5 3 (0.87%) SAP WM
6 2 (0.58%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 2 (0.58%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
7 1 (0.29%) Cognos Controller
7 1 (0.29%) Oracle FAH
7 1 (0.29%) Oracle Payables
7 1 (0.29%) Oracle Receivables
7 1 (0.29%) SAP AFS
7 1 (0.29%) Temenos T24
7 1 (0.29%) TIBCO BusinessEvents
7 1 (0.29%) TRIRIGA
Cloud Services
1 94 (27.41%) AWS
2 60 (17.49%) Azure
3 27 (7.87%) OpenShift
4 14 (4.08%) Datadog
4 14 (4.08%) GCP
5 13 (3.79%) AWS CloudFormation
6 12 (3.50%) AWS Lambda
6 12 (3.50%) Serverless
7 11 (3.21%) Azure Sentinel
8 9 (2.62%) Azure API Management
8 9 (2.62%) SaaS
9 8 (2.33%) Azure AKS
9 8 (2.33%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 8 (2.33%) Azure Monitor
9 8 (2.33%) OCI
10 7 (2.04%) IBM Watson
10 7 (2.04%) Power Platform
11 6 (1.75%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 5 (1.46%) Azure DevOps
13 4 (1.17%) IBM Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 16 (4.66%) HTTPS
2 15 (4.37%) VSAN
3 13 (3.79%) VPN
4 12 (3.50%) SAN
5 10 (2.92%) Kerberos
6 8 (2.33%) HTTP
6 8 (2.33%) SSH
7 7 (2.04%) Fibre Channel
8 6 (1.75%) iSCSI
8 6 (1.75%) NAS
8 6 (1.75%) TCP/IP
9 5 (1.46%) LAN
9 5 (1.46%) SNA
9 5 (1.46%) WAN
10 4 (1.17%) APPN
10 4 (1.17%) DWDM
10 4 (1.17%) Firewall
10 4 (1.17%) Network Security
11 3 (0.87%) Multicast
12 2 (0.58%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (7.58%) DB2
2 25 (7.29%) SQL Server
3 24 (7.00%) Oracle Database
4 13 (3.79%) Oracle Reports
4 13 (3.79%) Relational Database
5 12 (3.50%) Data Warehouse
5 12 (3.50%) DataStage
6 11 (3.21%) NoSQL
7 10 (2.92%) GIS
7 10 (2.92%) PostgreSQL
8 7 (2.04%) Amazon RDS
8 7 (2.04%) Amazon Redshift
9 6 (1.75%) Couchbase
9 6 (1.75%) Power BI
10 5 (1.46%) Big Data
10 5 (1.46%) DynamoDB
10 5 (1.46%) IBM InfoSphere
10 5 (1.46%) Metadata
11 4 (1.17%) Elasticsearch
11 4 (1.17%) Oracle Database 10g
Development Applications
1 40 (11.66%) JIRA
2 24 (7.00%) Git
3 19 (5.54%) Jenkins
3 19 (5.54%) Rational DOORS
4 10 (2.92%) Bitbucket Server
4 10 (2.92%) CA Release Automation
4 10 (2.92%) GitLab
5 9 (2.62%) Sonatype Nexus
6 8 (2.33%) PVCS
7 6 (1.75%) SoapUI
8 4 (1.17%) Ant
8 4 (1.17%) Bitbucket
8 4 (1.17%) ERwin
8 4 (1.17%) JUnit
9 3 (0.87%) IBM UrbanCode
10 2 (0.58%) Rational Rhapsody
10 2 (0.58%) Selenium
11 1 (0.29%) ClearCase
11 1 (0.29%) Cucumber
11 1 (0.29%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 92 (26.82%) Finance
2 81 (23.62%) Social Skills
3 52 (15.16%) Banking
4 35 (10.20%) Analytical Skills
5 25 (7.29%) Public Sector
6 18 (5.25%) Documentation Skills
7 9 (2.62%) Electronics
7 9 (2.62%) Presentation Skills
8 8 (2.33%) Private Banking
9 7 (2.04%) Financial Institution
10 6 (1.75%) Aviation
11 5 (1.46%) Law
11 5 (1.46%) Retail
11 5 (1.46%) Telecoms
12 4 (1.17%) Investment Banking
12 4 (1.17%) Legal
13 3 (0.87%) Aerospace
13 3 (0.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 3 (0.87%) Manufacturing
13 3 (0.87%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 62 (18.08%) Analyst
1 62 (18.08%) Developer
2 30 (8.75%) Architect
3 24 (7.00%) Infrastructure Analyst
4 22 (6.41%) Senior
5 19 (5.54%) Data Engineer
5 19 (5.54%) Solutions Architect
5 19 (5.54%) Storage Analyst
6 17 (4.96%) Software Engineer
7 13 (3.79%) DevOps Engineer
7 13 (3.79%) Lead
8 12 (3.50%) Platform Engineer
8 12 (3.50%) webMethods Developer
9 9 (2.62%) Consultant
9 9 (2.62%) Storage Engineer
10 8 (2.33%) Azure Engineer
10 8 (2.33%) C++ Software Engineer
10 8 (2.33%) Programmer
10 8 (2.33%) Systems Programmer
10 8 (2.33%) z/OS Systems Programmer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (11.66%) XML
2 28 (8.16%) Kafka
3 22 (6.41%) SOAP
4 21 (6.12%) JMS
5 20 (5.83%) Flash
5 20 (5.83%) Middleware
6 18 (5.25%) JSON
7 14 (4.08%) OAuth
8 13 (3.79%) XSLT
9 11 (3.21%) LDAP
9 11 (3.21%) OpenID
10 10 (2.92%) SAML
11 9 (2.62%) ARM Templates
11 9 (2.62%) REST
11 9 (2.62%) Web Services
12 8 (2.33%) XSD
13 7 (2.04%) J2EE
13 7 (2.04%) OC4J
13 7 (2.04%) TIBCO EMS
13 7 (2.04%) WSDL
Miscellaneous
1 40 (11.66%) Mainframe
2 36 (10.50%) Linux Command Line
3 34 (9.91%) Replication
4 21 (6.12%) Legacy Systems
5 14 (4.08%) Data Centre
6 11 (3.21%) AS400
7 10 (2.92%) Enterprise Software
7 10 (2.92%) Hybrid Cloud
8 8 (2.33%) Algorithms
8 8 (2.33%) DataPower
8 8 (2.33%) Tandem
9 7 (2.04%) Enterprise Storage
9 7 (2.04%) Onboarding
9 7 (2.04%) VSAM
10 6 (1.75%) IBM Mainframe
10 6 (1.75%) iSeries
10 6 (1.75%) Management Information System
11 5 (1.46%) CMDB
11 5 (1.46%) Product Ownership
11 5 (1.46%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 82 (23.91%) Linux
2 53 (15.45%) Windows
3 39 (11.37%) Unix
4 30 (8.75%) zOS
5 17 (4.96%) AIX
5 17 (4.96%) Windows Server
6 10 (2.92%) Windows Server 2016
7 8 (2.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 7 (2.04%) Windows 10
8 7 (2.04%) Windows 7
8 7 (2.04%) Windows Server 2003
9 6 (1.75%) Solaris
10 4 (1.17%) Windows Server 2008
11 3 (0.87%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.58%) VMS
13 1 (0.29%) MVS
13 1 (0.29%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
13 1 (0.29%) VME
Processes & Methodologies
1 76 (22.16%) Agile
2 58 (16.91%) Problem-Solving
3 48 (13.99%) DevOps
4 47 (13.70%) CI/CD
5 46 (13.41%) Migration
6 43 (12.54%) Stakeholder Management
7 32 (9.33%) ITIL
8 29 (8.45%) Performance Tuning
9 28 (8.16%) Asset Management
10 27 (7.87%) Analytics
10 27 (7.87%) ETL
11 24 (7.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 22 (6.41%) Data Modelling
12 22 (6.41%) Test Automation
13 21 (6.12%) High Availability
13 21 (6.12%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 21 (6.12%) Workflow
14 20 (5.83%) Continuous Improvement
15 19 (5.54%) Software Engineering
15 19 (5.54%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 61 (17.78%) SQL
2 43 (12.54%) Python
3 36 (10.50%) Java
4 22 (6.41%) Shell Script
5 16 (4.66%) JCL
6 15 (4.37%) PL/SQL
7 14 (4.08%) REXX
8 13 (3.79%) C
9 11 (3.21%) Groovy
10 10 (2.92%) C++
10 10 (2.92%) COBOL
10 10 (2.92%) JavaScript
11 9 (2.62%) CLIST
12 8 (2.33%) Bicep
12 8 (2.33%) PowerShell
12 8 (2.33%) RPG
13 7 (2.04%) Assembly Language
13 7 (2.04%) Embedded C
13 7 (2.04%) Embedded C++
13 7 (2.04%) Perl
Qualifications
1 72 (20.99%) Security Cleared
2 47 (13.70%) SC Cleared
3 27 (7.87%) Degree
4 16 (4.66%) Computer Science Degree
5 15 (4.37%) Azure Certification
6 13 (3.79%) AWS Certification
6 13 (3.79%) DV Cleared
7 12 (3.50%) BPSS Clearance
8 11 (3.21%) CISM
8 11 (3.21%) CISSP
9 9 (2.62%) Microsoft Certification
10 8 (2.33%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
11 7 (2.04%) IBM Certification
11 7 (2.04%) Master's Degree
12 5 (1.46%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 4 (1.17%) ITIL Certification
13 4 (1.17%) PMI Certification
13 4 (1.17%) PMP
14 3 (0.87%) ISTQB
14 3 (0.87%) PRINCE2 Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (4.66%) QA
2 13 (3.79%) Data Quality
3 10 (2.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 9 (2.62%) NIST
4 9 (2.62%) SLA
5 8 (2.33%) NIST 800
6 4 (1.17%) Basel III
6 4 (1.17%) ISO 20022
6 4 (1.17%) PCI DSS
6 4 (1.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 4 (1.17%) SEPA
7 3 (0.87%) GDPR
8 2 (0.58%) ISO/IEC 19770
9 1 (0.29%) Def Stans
9 1 (0.29%) GAAP
9 1 (0.29%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.29%) IEC 61508
9 1 (0.29%) ISO 15022
9 1 (0.29%) MISRA
9 1 (0.29%) MISRA C
System Software
1 43 (12.54%) VMware Infrastructure
2 31 (9.04%) vSphere
3 25 (7.29%) NFS
4 21 (6.12%) GPFS
4 21 (6.12%) VMware ESXi
5 18 (5.25%) Docker
6 13 (3.79%) Virtual Machines
7 12 (3.50%) Active Directory
8 11 (3.21%) RACF
9 8 (2.33%) Tivoli Directory Server
10 7 (2.04%) Job Entry Subsystem
11 4 (1.17%) Hyper-V
11 4 (1.17%) KVM
11 4 (1.17%) Time Sharing Option
12 3 (0.87%) VMware NSX
13 2 (0.58%) Oracle RAC
14 1 (0.29%) Firmware
14 1 (0.29%) SRDF
14 1 (0.29%) Veritas Cluster Server
14 1 (0.29%) Xen
Systems Management
1 30 (8.75%) vRealize
2 29 (8.45%) Terraform
3 22 (6.41%) Kubernetes
4 18 (5.25%) Ansible
5 14 (4.08%) VxRail
6 10 (2.92%) CA Single Sign-On
6 10 (2.92%) CA Wily
7 9 (2.62%) Progress Chef
8 8 (2.33%) Control-M
8 8 (2.33%) Tivoli
9 7 (2.04%) TIBCO Hawk
10 6 (1.75%) OMEGAMON
11 5 (1.46%) IBM BigFix
11 5 (1.46%) Single Sign-On
11 5 (1.46%) Tivoli NetView
11 5 (1.46%) Tivoli Storage Manager
12 4 (1.17%) QRadar
13 3 (0.87%) vCenter Server
13 3 (0.87%) zSecure
14 2 (0.58%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 82 (23.91%) Oracle
2 49 (14.29%) VMware
3 48 (13.99%) Microsoft
4 46 (13.41%) Cisco
5 35 (10.20%) ServiceNow
6 24 (7.00%) AppDynamics
7 22 (6.41%) SAP
8 21 (6.12%) Dell
9 18 (5.25%) HP
10 16 (4.66%) Broadcom
11 15 (4.37%) Red Hat
11 15 (4.37%) Splunk
12 14 (4.08%) Commvault
12 14 (4.08%) Google
12 14 (4.08%) SolarWinds
13 13 (3.79%) Software AG
13 13 (3.79%) webMethods
14 11 (3.21%) EMC
15 10 (2.92%) Cognos
16 9 (2.62%) Citrix