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 19 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
19 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 290 227 199
Rank change year-on-year -63 -28 +106
Contract jobs citing IBM 333 343 517
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.90% 1.09% 1.20%
As % of the Vendors category 1.96% 2.38% 2.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 209 162 321
10th Percentile £311 £319 £407
25th Percentile £400 £413 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £471 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.80% -9.09% +4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £625 £650
90th Percentile £700 £687 £756
UK excluding London median daily rate £441 £450 £500
% change year-on-year -1.94% -10.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 23 18
10th Percentile £25.71 - £63.88
25th Percentile £46.76 £24.18 £65.00
Median hourly rate £67.50 £62.50 £68.63
Median % change year-on-year +8.00% -8.93% +64.85%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £71.85 - £73.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 £62.50 £70.00
% change year-on-year +12.00% -10.71% +72.52%

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 16,982 14,415 19,091
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 45.93% 45.79% 44.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,952 8,524 12,023
10th Percentile £300 £287 £253
25th Percentile £410 £409 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £700 £713 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
Number of hourly rates quoted 799 429 770
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.62 £13.29
25th Percentile £17.96 £19.97 £16.70
Median hourly rate £23.83 £27.50 £36.25
Median % change year-on-year -13.36% -24.14% +27.19%
75th Percentile £48.75 £61.50 £60.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £80.00 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.50 £25.00 £36.00
% change year-on-year -14.00% -30.56% +44.00%

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 19 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 19 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for IBM in the UK

IBM
Top 14 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 19 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 -54 298 £475 -5.00% 177
UK excluding London -35 187 £441 -1.94% 176
London -36 107 £525 -0.71% 26
Work from Home -9 101 £496 -0.80% 107
North of England -45 53 £450 +5.88% 33
Midlands -11 51 £400 -13.04% 13
West Midlands +1 50 £400 -12.09% 3
North West -16 37 £450 +18.11% 14
East of England +7 29 £318 -25.06% 37
South East -42 24 £525 +25.00% 53
South West -25 21 £700 +16.67% 27
Yorkshire -54 16 £463 -11.48% 14
Scotland +7 13 £430 -4.50% 9
East Midlands -30 1 £837 +74.27% 10

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 (7.21%) Confluence
2 23 (6.91%) WebSphere
3 13 (3.90%) Apache
4 12 (3.60%) JBoss
4 12 (3.60%) WebSphere Application Server
5 11 (3.30%) IIS
5 11 (3.30%) SharePoint
6 10 (3.00%) CICS
6 10 (3.00%) iPlanet
6 10 (3.00%) MQSeries
6 10 (3.00%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 7 (2.10%) WebLogic
8 6 (1.80%) ArcGIS
9 4 (1.20%) Anypoint
10 3 (0.90%) FileNet
10 3 (0.90%) SAS
11 2 (0.60%) nginx
11 2 (0.60%) Tomcat
Applications
1 10 (3.00%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (2.70%) MS Visio
3 6 (1.80%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.30%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.30%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 34 (10.21%) Maximo
2 8 (2.40%) IBM Planning Analytics
3 7 (2.10%) BusinessWorks
4 4 (1.20%) Oracle 11i
5 3 (0.90%) SAP EWM
5 3 (0.90%) SAP PM
5 3 (0.90%) SAP PP
5 3 (0.90%) SAP QM
5 3 (0.90%) SAP S/4HANA
5 3 (0.90%) SAP WM
6 2 (0.60%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 2 (0.60%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 2 (0.60%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 1 (0.30%) Cognos Controller
7 1 (0.30%) Oracle Applications
7 1 (0.30%) Oracle FAH
7 1 (0.30%) Oracle Payables
7 1 (0.30%) Oracle Receivables
7 1 (0.30%) Temenos T24
7 1 (0.30%) TRIRIGA
Cloud Services
1 90 (27.03%) AWS
2 60 (18.02%) Azure
3 32 (9.61%) OpenShift
4 14 (4.20%) Datadog
5 13 (3.90%) GCP
6 12 (3.60%) AWS CloudFormation
6 12 (3.60%) AWS Lambda
6 12 (3.60%) Serverless
7 10 (3.00%) Azure Sentinel
8 9 (2.70%) Azure API Management
9 8 (2.40%) Azure AKS
9 8 (2.40%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 8 (2.40%) Azure Monitor
9 8 (2.40%) OCI
9 8 (2.40%) SaaS
10 7 (2.10%) Power Platform
11 6 (1.80%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 5 (1.50%) Azure DevOps
13 4 (1.20%) IBM Watson
14 3 (0.90%) IBM Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 16 (4.80%) HTTPS
2 15 (4.50%) VSAN
3 12 (3.60%) SAN
4 11 (3.30%) SSH
4 11 (3.30%) VPN
5 10 (3.00%) Kerberos
6 7 (2.10%) Fibre Channel
7 6 (1.80%) iSCSI
7 6 (1.80%) NAS
7 6 (1.80%) TCP/IP
8 5 (1.50%) HTTP
8 5 (1.50%) SNA
9 4 (1.20%) APPN
9 4 (1.20%) Network Security
10 3 (0.90%) Firewall
10 3 (0.90%) LAN
10 3 (0.90%) WAN
11 2 (0.60%) DNS
11 2 (0.60%) DWDM
11 2 (0.60%) SDH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (7.21%) Oracle Database
2 23 (6.91%) DB2
3 20 (6.01%) SQL Server
4 13 (3.90%) Relational Database
5 12 (3.60%) Oracle Reports
6 11 (3.30%) DataStage
7 10 (3.00%) PostgreSQL
8 8 (2.40%) Data Warehouse
8 8 (2.40%) NoSQL
9 7 (2.10%) Amazon RDS
9 7 (2.10%) Amazon Redshift
9 7 (2.10%) GIS
10 6 (1.80%) Couchbase
10 6 (1.80%) Metadata
11 5 (1.50%) DynamoDB
11 5 (1.50%) IBM InfoSphere
11 5 (1.50%) Power BI
12 4 (1.20%) Oracle Database 10g
13 3 (0.90%) Cognos Framework Manager
13 3 (0.90%) Cognos Report Studio
Development Applications
1 43 (12.91%) JIRA
2 24 (7.21%) Git
3 20 (6.01%) Rational DOORS
4 19 (5.71%) Jenkins
5 10 (3.00%) Bitbucket Server
5 10 (3.00%) CA Release Automation
5 10 (3.00%) GitLab
6 9 (2.70%) Sonatype Nexus
7 8 (2.40%) PVCS
8 6 (1.80%) SoapUI
9 5 (1.50%) ERwin
10 4 (1.20%) Ant
10 4 (1.20%) Bitbucket
10 4 (1.20%) JUnit
11 3 (0.90%) IBM UrbanCode
12 2 (0.60%) PowerDesigner
12 2 (0.60%) Rational Rhapsody
12 2 (0.60%) Selenium
13 1 (0.30%) ClearCase
13 1 (0.30%) Eclipse
General
1 88 (26.43%) Finance
1 88 (26.43%) Social Skills
2 51 (15.32%) Banking
3 35 (10.51%) Analytical Skills
4 23 (6.91%) Public Sector
5 17 (5.11%) Documentation Skills
6 10 (3.00%) Electronics
6 10 (3.00%) Presentation Skills
7 8 (2.40%) Private Banking
8 7 (2.10%) Financial Institution
9 5 (1.50%) Aviation
9 5 (1.50%) Law
10 4 (1.20%) Legal
10 4 (1.20%) Retail
10 4 (1.20%) Telecoms
11 3 (0.90%) Aerospace
11 3 (0.90%) Investment Banking
11 3 (0.90%) Manufacturing
11 3 (0.90%) Pharmaceutical
12 2 (0.60%) Corporate Banking
Job Titles
1 65 (19.52%) Analyst
2 61 (18.32%) Developer
3 34 (10.21%) Architect
4 24 (7.21%) Infrastructure Analyst
5 23 (6.91%) Solutions Architect
6 22 (6.61%) Senior
7 19 (5.71%) Storage Analyst
8 17 (5.11%) Software Engineer
9 16 (4.80%) Data Engineer
10 13 (3.90%) DevOps Engineer
11 12 (3.60%) Lead
11 12 (3.60%) webMethods Developer
12 10 (3.00%) Platform Engineer
13 9 (2.70%) Storage Engineer
14 8 (2.40%) Azure Engineer
14 8 (2.40%) C++ Software Engineer
14 8 (2.40%) Consultant
14 8 (2.40%) Programmer
14 8 (2.40%) Systems Programmer
14 8 (2.40%) z/OS Systems Programmer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (12.01%) XML
2 28 (8.41%) Kafka
3 22 (6.61%) SOAP
4 20 (6.01%) Flash
5 19 (5.71%) JMS
6 18 (5.41%) JSON
7 17 (5.11%) Middleware
8 14 (4.20%) OAuth
9 13 (3.90%) XSLT
10 11 (3.30%) LDAP
10 11 (3.30%) OpenID
11 10 (3.00%) SAML
12 9 (2.70%) ARM Templates
12 9 (2.70%) Web Services
13 8 (2.40%) XSD
14 7 (2.10%) J2EE
14 7 (2.10%) OC4J
14 7 (2.10%) REST
14 7 (2.10%) TIBCO EMS
14 7 (2.10%) WSDL
Miscellaneous
1 39 (11.71%) Mainframe
2 34 (10.21%) Replication
3 33 (9.91%) Linux Command Line
4 19 (5.71%) Legacy Systems
5 14 (4.20%) Data Centre
6 11 (3.30%) Tandem
7 10 (3.00%) AS400
7 10 (3.00%) Hybrid Cloud
8 9 (2.70%) Enterprise Software
9 8 (2.40%) Cloud Native
9 8 (2.40%) DataPower
10 7 (2.10%) Algorithms
10 7 (2.10%) Enterprise Storage
10 7 (2.10%) IBM Mainframe
10 7 (2.10%) Onboarding
11 6 (1.80%) iSeries
11 6 (1.80%) Management Information System
11 6 (1.80%) VSAM
12 5 (1.50%) CMDB
12 5 (1.50%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 73 (21.92%) Linux
2 50 (15.02%) Windows
3 38 (11.41%) Unix
4 29 (8.71%) zOS
5 13 (3.90%) AIX
6 10 (3.00%) Windows Server
7 7 (2.10%) Windows 10
7 7 (2.10%) Windows 7
7 7 (2.10%) Windows Server 2003
7 7 (2.10%) Windows Server 2016
8 5 (1.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 2 (0.60%) Solaris
9 2 (0.60%) VMS
10 1 (0.30%) MVS
10 1 (0.30%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
10 1 (0.30%) VME
10 1 (0.30%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 73 (21.92%) Agile
2 53 (15.92%) Problem-Solving
3 48 (14.41%) Migration
4 47 (14.11%) DevOps
5 46 (13.81%) Stakeholder Management
6 41 (12.31%) CI/CD
7 33 (9.91%) ITIL
8 29 (8.71%) Performance Tuning
9 28 (8.41%) Asset Management
10 24 (7.21%) Analytics
10 24 (7.21%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 23 (6.91%) Data Modelling
12 22 (6.61%) Data Protection
13 21 (6.31%) ETL
13 21 (6.31%) High Availability
13 21 (6.31%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 20 (6.01%) Roadmaps
14 20 (6.01%) Validation
15 19 (5.71%) Software Engineering
15 19 (5.71%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 49 (14.71%) SQL
2 34 (10.21%) Python
3 29 (8.71%) Java
4 22 (6.61%) Shell Script
5 15 (4.50%) JCL
6 13 (3.90%) C
7 12 (3.60%) PL/SQL
7 12 (3.60%) REXX
8 11 (3.30%) Groovy
9 10 (3.00%) C++
9 10 (3.00%) JavaScript
10 9 (2.70%) COBOL
11 8 (2.40%) Bicep
11 8 (2.40%) CLIST
11 8 (2.40%) RPG
12 7 (2.10%) Embedded C
12 7 (2.10%) Embedded C++
12 7 (2.10%) Korn
12 7 (2.10%) Perl
12 7 (2.10%) XPath
Qualifications
1 68 (20.42%) Security Cleared
2 44 (13.21%) SC Cleared
3 26 (7.81%) Degree
4 17 (5.11%) Computer Science Degree
5 14 (4.20%) Azure Certification
6 13 (3.90%) DV Cleared
7 12 (3.60%) AWS Certification
8 11 (3.30%) BPSS Clearance
8 11 (3.30%) CISM
8 11 (3.30%) CISSP
9 9 (2.70%) Microsoft Certification
10 8 (2.40%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
11 5 (1.50%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
12 4 (1.20%) PMI Certification
12 4 (1.20%) PMP
13 3 (0.90%) IBM Certification
13 3 (0.90%) ISTQB
13 3 (0.90%) ITIL Certification
13 3 (0.90%) Master's Degree
13 3 (0.90%) PRINCE2 Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (4.20%) QA
2 10 (3.00%) Data Quality
2 10 (3.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 9 (2.70%) NIST
4 8 (2.40%) NIST 800
5 7 (2.10%) SLA
6 5 (1.50%) ISO 20022
7 4 (1.20%) Basel III
7 4 (1.20%) GDPR
7 4 (1.20%) PCI DSS
7 4 (1.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 4 (1.20%) SEPA
8 2 (0.60%) IFRS
8 2 (0.60%) IFRS 9
8 2 (0.60%) ISO/IEC 19770
9 1 (0.30%) Def Stans
9 1 (0.30%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.30%) ISO 15022
9 1 (0.30%) MISRA
9 1 (0.30%) MISRA C
System Software
1 41 (12.31%) VMware Infrastructure
2 31 (9.31%) vSphere
3 25 (7.51%) NFS
4 21 (6.31%) GPFS
5 18 (5.41%) VMware ESXi
6 15 (4.50%) Docker
7 12 (3.60%) Active Directory
8 10 (3.00%) RACF
8 10 (3.00%) Virtual Machines
9 8 (2.40%) Tivoli Directory Server
10 5 (1.50%) Job Entry Subsystem
11 4 (1.20%) Time Sharing Option
12 1 (0.30%) Ceph
12 1 (0.30%) Hyper-V
12 1 (0.30%) KVM
12 1 (0.30%) Lustre
12 1 (0.30%) SRDF
12 1 (0.30%) Veritas Cluster Server
12 1 (0.30%) VMware NSX
12 1 (0.30%) Xen
Systems Management
1 30 (9.01%) vRealize
2 28 (8.41%) Terraform
3 27 (8.11%) Kubernetes
4 14 (4.20%) Ansible
4 14 (4.20%) VxRail
5 10 (3.00%) CA Single Sign-On
5 10 (3.00%) CA Wily
6 9 (2.70%) Progress Chef
7 8 (2.40%) Control-M
7 8 (2.40%) Tivoli
8 7 (2.10%) TIBCO Hawk
9 6 (1.80%) OMEGAMON
10 5 (1.50%) Single Sign-On
10 5 (1.50%) Tivoli NetView
10 5 (1.50%) Tivoli Storage Manager
11 4 (1.20%) QRadar
12 3 (0.90%) zSecure
13 2 (0.60%) Argo
13 2 (0.60%) EMC NetWorker
13 2 (0.60%) IBM BigFix
Vendors
1 77 (23.12%) Oracle
2 50 (15.02%) Microsoft
3 43 (12.91%) VMware
4 42 (12.61%) Cisco
5 34 (10.21%) ServiceNow
6 24 (7.21%) AppDynamics
7 21 (6.31%) SAP
8 20 (6.01%) Dell
9 18 (5.41%) HP
10 14 (4.20%) Broadcom
10 14 (4.20%) Commvault
10 14 (4.20%) SolarWinds
11 13 (3.90%) Red Hat
12 12 (3.60%) Google
12 12 (3.60%) Software AG
12 12 (3.60%) Splunk
12 12 (3.60%) webMethods
13 10 (3.00%) EMC
14 9 (2.70%) Citrix
14 9 (2.70%) Cognos