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 2 March 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
2 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 280 238 219
Rank change year-on-year -42 -19 +75
Contract jobs citing IBM 375 326 472
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.91% 1.08% 1.06%
As % of the Vendors category 2.04% 2.32% 2.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 229 180 297
10th Percentile £313 £320 £400
25th Percentile £399 £400 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £499 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -9.32% +4.76%
75th Percentile £569 £600 £650
90th Percentile £688 £709 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £445 £460 £500
% change year-on-year -3.26% -8.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 30 21 27
10th Percentile £25.77 - £62.50
25th Percentile £52.19 £24.18 £65.00
Median hourly rate £70.00 £62.50 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +12.00% -10.71% +34.58%
75th Percentile £82.63 £68.75 -
90th Percentile £88.00 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 £62.50 £70.00
% change year-on-year +12.00% -10.71% +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 18,390 14,075 19,347
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 44.43% 46.63% 43.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,788 8,582 12,105
10th Percentile £305 £281 £255
25th Percentile £413 £406 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £514
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% +1.17% -2.47%
75th Percentile £603 £625 £626
90th Percentile £700 £713 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
Number of hourly rates quoted 923 435 981
10th Percentile £15.22 £15.62 £12.74
25th Percentile £18.15 £21.25 £15.10
Median hourly rate £24.00 £30.00 £25.50
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% +17.65% -27.14%
75th Percentile £58.75 £63.75 £55.00
90th Percentile £74.68 £81.80 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.63 £27.43 £25.00
% change year-on-year -17.48% +9.70% -21.65%

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 2 March 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 2 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for IBM in the UK

IBM
Top 16 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 2 March 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 -53 328 £475 -1.04% 138
UK excluding London -30 206 £445 -3.26% 121
London -49 124 £498 -0.50% 33
Work from Home -19 118 £488 +2.63% 76
North of England -50 61 £470 +10.59% 27
North West -14 46 £469 +23.10% 20
Midlands -33 46 £397 -15.11% 18
West Midlands -27 44 £394 -14.40% 9
South East -39 36 £500 +33.33% 41
East of England -9 28 £318 -31.14% 11
South West -24 21 £606 +1.04% 12
Scotland +17 17 £450 -12.20% 10
Yorkshire -67 14 £487 +1.46% 5
East Midlands -32 2 £837 +74.27% 8
Wales -5 1 - - 3
North East -19 1 £375 -10.45% 2

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 24 (6.40%) WebSphere
2 21 (5.60%) Confluence
3 16 (4.27%) CICS
4 12 (3.20%) WebLogic
5 11 (2.93%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 9 (2.40%) MQSeries
7 8 (2.13%) Apache
7 8 (2.13%) nginx
7 8 (2.13%) SharePoint
8 7 (1.87%) Tomcat
9 6 (1.60%) JBoss
9 6 (1.60%) WebSphere Application Server
10 5 (1.33%) ArcGIS
10 5 (1.33%) IIS
10 5 (1.33%) iPlanet
11 4 (1.07%) Anypoint
12 3 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
12 3 (0.80%) Apache Spark
12 3 (0.80%) CMS
13 2 (0.53%) FileNet
Applications
1 10 (2.67%) MS Visio
2 7 (1.87%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (1.87%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.53%) PlantUML
4 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.27%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 27 (7.20%) Maximo
2 9 (2.40%) IBM Planning Analytics
3 7 (1.87%) BusinessWorks
3 7 (1.87%) SAP S/4HANA
4 4 (1.07%) Oracle 11i
5 3 (0.80%) SAP EWM
5 3 (0.80%) SAP PM
5 3 (0.80%) SAP PP
5 3 (0.80%) SAP QM
5 3 (0.80%) SAP R/3
5 3 (0.80%) SAP WM
6 2 (0.53%) Oracle Payables
6 2 (0.53%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 2 (0.53%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
7 1 (0.27%) Cognos Controller
7 1 (0.27%) Oracle Receivables
7 1 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
7 1 (0.27%) Teamcenter
7 1 (0.27%) Temenos T24
7 1 (0.27%) TIBCO BusinessEvents
Cloud Services
1 95 (25.33%) AWS
2 68 (18.13%) Azure
3 22 (5.87%) OpenShift
4 14 (3.73%) Datadog
5 12 (3.20%) AWS Lambda
5 12 (3.20%) GCP
5 12 (3.20%) Serverless
6 11 (2.93%) IBM Watson
7 10 (2.67%) AWS CloudFormation
7 10 (2.67%) Azure Sentinel
8 9 (2.40%) Azure API Management
8 9 (2.40%) SaaS
9 8 (2.13%) Azure AKS
9 8 (2.13%) Azure DevOps
9 8 (2.13%) Azure Monitor
10 7 (1.87%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 7 (1.87%) Azure ExpressRoute
10 7 (1.87%) OCI
10 7 (1.87%) Power Platform
11 6 (1.60%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 16 (4.27%) VSAN
2 14 (3.73%) Firewall
3 12 (3.20%) SAN
4 11 (2.93%) HTTPS
5 10 (2.67%) HTTP
6 9 (2.40%) VPN
7 8 (2.13%) SSH
8 7 (1.87%) Fibre Channel
9 6 (1.60%) NAS
10 5 (1.33%) iSCSI
10 5 (1.33%) Kerberos
10 5 (1.33%) SNA
10 5 (1.33%) TCP/IP
11 4 (1.07%) APPN
11 4 (1.07%) DWDM
12 2 (0.53%) MPLS
12 2 (0.53%) Multicast
12 2 (0.53%) Network Security
12 2 (0.53%) WAN
12 2 (0.53%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (7.47%) DB2
2 24 (6.40%) SQL Server
3 21 (5.60%) Oracle Database
4 19 (5.07%) DataStage
5 13 (3.47%) Oracle Reports
6 12 (3.20%) PostgreSQL
6 12 (3.20%) Relational Database
7 10 (2.67%) Data Warehouse
7 10 (2.67%) GIS
8 8 (2.13%) NoSQL
9 7 (1.87%) Big Data
10 6 (1.60%) Amazon Redshift
10 6 (1.60%) IBM InfoSphere
10 6 (1.60%) Power BI
11 5 (1.33%) Amazon RDS
11 5 (1.33%) DynamoDB
11 5 (1.33%) Elasticsearch
12 4 (1.07%) Amazon Aurora
12 4 (1.07%) Couchbase
12 4 (1.07%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 42 (11.20%) JIRA
2 30 (8.00%) Rational DOORS
3 21 (5.60%) Git
4 15 (4.00%) Jenkins
5 11 (2.93%) GitLab
6 8 (2.13%) Ant
6 8 (2.13%) PVCS
7 7 (1.87%) SoapUI
8 5 (1.33%) Bitbucket Server
8 5 (1.33%) CA Release Automation
8 5 (1.33%) IBM UrbanCode
8 5 (1.33%) JUnit
8 5 (1.33%) Sonatype Nexus
9 4 (1.07%) ERwin
10 3 (0.80%) Bitbucket
10 3 (0.80%) Liquibase
10 3 (0.80%) PowerDesigner
11 2 (0.53%) Selenium
11 2 (0.53%) Visual Studio
12 1 (0.27%) XPEDITER
General
1 102 (27.20%) Finance
2 93 (24.80%) Social Skills
3 52 (13.87%) Banking
4 37 (9.87%) Analytical Skills
5 32 (8.53%) Public Sector
6 16 (4.27%) Documentation Skills
7 12 (3.20%) Aerospace
8 10 (2.67%) Influencing Skills
9 9 (2.40%) Electronics
9 9 (2.40%) Financial Institution
9 9 (2.40%) Retail
10 8 (2.13%) Presentation Skills
10 8 (2.13%) Private Banking
11 7 (1.87%) Legal
12 6 (1.60%) Aviation
12 6 (1.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 5 (1.33%) Law
13 5 (1.33%) Telecoms
14 4 (1.07%) Investment Banking
14 4 (1.07%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 66 (17.60%) Analyst
2 53 (14.13%) Developer
3 40 (10.67%) Architect
4 25 (6.67%) Infrastructure Analyst
5 23 (6.13%) Senior
6 22 (5.87%) Solutions Architect
7 21 (5.60%) Storage Analyst
8 16 (4.27%) Data Engineer
8 16 (4.27%) Software Engineer
9 15 (4.00%) Lead
10 13 (3.47%) DevOps Engineer
11 9 (2.40%) Azure Engineer
11 9 (2.40%) Delivery Manager
12 8 (2.13%) Administrator
12 8 (2.13%) Consultant
12 8 (2.13%) Designer
12 8 (2.13%) Platform Engineer
12 8 (2.13%) Product Delivery Manager
12 8 (2.13%) Product Manager
12 8 (2.13%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (9.33%) XML
2 30 (8.00%) Middleware
3 27 (7.20%) Kafka
4 20 (5.33%) SOAP
5 19 (5.07%) Flash
6 16 (4.27%) JMS
7 15 (4.00%) JSON
8 14 (3.73%) XSLT
9 10 (2.67%) OAuth
9 10 (2.67%) REST
9 10 (2.67%) Web Services
10 8 (2.13%) ARM Templates
10 8 (2.13%) J2EE
10 8 (2.13%) WSDL
10 8 (2.13%) XSD
11 7 (1.87%) OC4J
11 7 (1.87%) scikit-learn
11 7 (1.87%) TIBCO EMS
12 6 (1.60%) IBM Integration Bus
12 6 (1.60%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 52 (13.87%) Mainframe
2 38 (10.13%) Linux Command Line
3 28 (7.47%) Replication
4 22 (5.87%) Data Centre
4 22 (5.87%) Legacy Systems
5 15 (4.00%) VSAM
6 12 (3.20%) Data Structures
7 11 (2.93%) AS400
8 10 (2.67%) Product Ownership
9 9 (2.40%) Algorithms
9 9 (2.40%) DataPower
9 9 (2.40%) Enterprise Software
9 9 (2.40%) Hybrid Cloud
10 8 (2.13%) BYOD
10 8 (2.13%) Cloud Native
10 8 (2.13%) Tandem
11 7 (1.87%) Legacy Applications
11 7 (1.87%) Management Information System
12 6 (1.60%) CMDB
12 6 (1.60%) iSeries
Operating Systems
1 86 (22.93%) Linux
2 52 (13.87%) Windows
3 46 (12.27%) Unix
4 35 (9.33%) zOS
5 27 (7.20%) AIX
6 19 (5.07%) Windows Server
7 15 (4.00%) Solaris
8 12 (3.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 12 (3.20%) Windows Server 2016
9 7 (1.87%) Windows 10
9 7 (1.87%) Windows 7
9 7 (1.87%) Windows Server 2003
9 7 (1.87%) Windows Server 2008
9 7 (1.87%) Windows Server 2019
10 1 (0.27%) Android
10 1 (0.27%) Apple iOS
10 1 (0.27%) MVS
10 1 (0.27%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
10 1 (0.27%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 85 (22.67%) Agile
2 57 (15.20%) Problem-Solving
3 51 (13.60%) CI/CD
3 51 (13.60%) Migration
4 47 (12.53%) DevOps
5 46 (12.27%) Stakeholder Management
6 36 (9.60%) Roadmaps
7 32 (8.53%) Continuous Improvement
7 32 (8.53%) ITIL
8 31 (8.27%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 29 (7.73%) Asset Management
10 28 (7.47%) ETL
11 27 (7.20%) Analytics
11 27 (7.20%) Performance Tuning
12 25 (6.67%) Computer Science
13 24 (6.40%) Data Modelling
13 24 (6.40%) Test Automation
14 23 (6.13%) Validation
15 21 (5.60%) UML
15 21 (5.60%) Workflow
Programming Languages
1 67 (17.87%) SQL
2 45 (12.00%) Python
3 39 (10.40%) Java
4 18 (4.80%) PL/SQL
5 16 (4.27%) Shell Script
6 15 (4.00%) COBOL
6 15 (4.00%) JCL
6 15 (4.00%) REXX
7 12 (3.20%) C
8 11 (2.93%) PowerShell
9 10 (2.67%) Bash
10 9 (2.40%) Bicep
10 9 (2.40%) C++
10 9 (2.40%) CLIST
11 8 (2.13%) JavaScript
11 8 (2.13%) RPG
11 8 (2.13%) XPath
12 7 (1.87%) Embedded C
12 7 (1.87%) Embedded C++
12 7 (1.87%) Korn
Qualifications
1 87 (23.20%) Security Cleared
2 52 (13.87%) SC Cleared
3 34 (9.07%) Degree
4 16 (4.27%) BPSS Clearance
5 15 (4.00%) Azure Certification
5 15 (4.00%) Computer Science Degree
6 12 (3.20%) DV Cleared
7 11 (2.93%) CISM
7 11 (2.93%) CISSP
8 8 (2.13%) AWS Certification
8 8 (2.13%) Microsoft Certification
9 7 (1.87%) IBM Certification
9 7 (1.87%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
9 7 (1.87%) Master's Degree
10 5 (1.33%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
11 4 (1.07%) ISTQB
11 4 (1.07%) ITIL Certification
11 4 (1.07%) PMI Certification
11 4 (1.07%) PMP
12 3 (0.80%) PRINCE2 Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (5.07%) QA
2 16 (4.27%) Data Quality
3 11 (2.93%) SLA
4 10 (2.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 9 (2.40%) NIST
6 7 (1.87%) NIST 800
7 4 (1.07%) ISO 20022
7 4 (1.07%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 4 (1.07%) SEPA
8 2 (0.53%) Basel III
8 2 (0.53%) GDPR
8 2 (0.53%) GRC
8 2 (0.53%) ISO 15022
8 2 (0.53%) ISO/IEC 19770
8 2 (0.53%) NCSC
8 2 (0.53%) PCI DSS
9 1 (0.27%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.27%) IFRS
9 1 (0.27%) IFRS 17
9 1 (0.27%) IFRS 9
System Software
1 43 (11.47%) VMware Infrastructure
2 28 (7.47%) vSphere
3 23 (6.13%) NFS
4 21 (5.60%) VMware ESXi
5 20 (5.33%) GPFS
6 19 (5.07%) Docker
7 16 (4.27%) Virtual Machines
8 10 (2.67%) RACF
9 6 (1.60%) Hyper-V
9 6 (1.60%) Job Entry Subsystem
9 6 (1.60%) KVM
10 5 (1.33%) Active Directory
10 5 (1.33%) Tivoli Directory Server
11 4 (1.07%) Oracle RAC
12 3 (0.80%) Firmware
12 3 (0.80%) Time Sharing Option
12 3 (0.80%) VMware NSX
13 1 (0.27%) Ceph
13 1 (0.27%) Lustre
13 1 (0.27%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
Systems Management
1 31 (8.27%) Terraform
2 28 (7.47%) vRealize
3 22 (5.87%) Kubernetes
4 19 (5.07%) Ansible
5 15 (4.00%) VxRail
6 8 (2.13%) Control-M
6 8 (2.13%) IBM BigFix
7 7 (1.87%) TIBCO Hawk
8 6 (1.60%) OMEGAMON
8 6 (1.60%) Tivoli
8 6 (1.60%) vCenter Server
9 5 (1.33%) CA Single Sign-On
9 5 (1.33%) CA Wily
9 5 (1.33%) Progress Chef
9 5 (1.33%) Single Sign-On
9 5 (1.33%) Tivoli NetView
9 5 (1.33%) Tivoli Storage Manager
10 4 (1.07%) Oracle RMAN
11 3 (0.80%) Grafana
11 3 (0.80%) zSecure
Vendors
1 78 (20.80%) Oracle
2 54 (14.40%) VMware
3 43 (11.47%) Cisco
4 39 (10.40%) Microsoft
5 37 (9.87%) ServiceNow
6 23 (6.13%) Dell
7 22 (5.87%) SAP
8 20 (5.33%) HP
9 19 (5.07%) AppDynamics
10 16 (4.27%) Red Hat
11 15 (4.00%) Google
12 14 (3.73%) Commvault
12 14 (3.73%) SolarWinds
13 11 (2.93%) Broadcom
14 10 (2.67%) EMC
14 10 (2.67%) Splunk
15 8 (2.13%) Citrix
15 8 (2.13%) Cognos
15 8 (2.13%) Informatica
15 8 (2.13%) Software AG