Legacy Systems Contract Job Trends

Legacy System
UK

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Legacy Systems in contract job vacancies. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Legacy Systems over the 6 months leading up to 15 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 166 215 312
Rank change year-on-year +49 +97 -13
Contract jobs citing Legacy Systems 745 362 294
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.56% 1.25% 0.69%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 4.88% 3.68% 2.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 460 239 211
10th Percentile £400 £363 £410
25th Percentile £450 £450 £454
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £506
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +8.70% -3.62%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £634
90th Percentile £752 £755 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 10 10
10th Percentile £22.88 £17.91 -
25th Percentile £32.31 £31.50 £15.39
Median hourly rate £63.75 £36.00 £15.79
Median % change year-on-year +77.08% +127.99% -72.54%
75th Percentile £80.13 £66.88 £44.36
90th Percentile £84.50 £82.25 £88.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £36.00 £15.79
% change year-on-year +80.56% +127.99% -72.54%

All Generic Skills
UK

Legacy Systems falls under the General and Transferable Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring generic IT skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 15,280 9,849 12,966
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.04% 33.89% 30.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,488 6,289 8,351
10th Percentile £313 £300 £270
25th Percentile £413 £411 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £509 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -3.14% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £670
90th Percentile £738 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £482 £482 £500
% change year-on-year - -3.60% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 726 393 901
10th Percentile £16.01 £16.79 £12.25
25th Percentile £20.00 £20.75 £15.17
Median hourly rate £42.60 £32.05 £31.50
Median % change year-on-year +32.93% +1.75% +40.09%
75th Percentile £70.00 £63.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £87.50 £83.37 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £30.93 £30.00
% change year-on-year +53.70% +3.10% +36.36%

Legacy Systems
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Legacy Systems job vacancy trend in the UK

Legacy Systems
Daily Rate Trend

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

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Legacy Systems

Legacy Systems
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Legacy Systems over the 6 months to 15 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Legacy Systems in the UK

Legacy Systems
Hourly Rate Trend

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

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Legacy Systems

Legacy Systems
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Legacy Systems over the 6 months to 15 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Legacy Systems in the UK

Legacy Systems
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 Legacy Systems within the UK over the 6 months to 15 May 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 +45 663 £525 -6.67% 235
UK excluding London +28 346 £500 -4.76% 177
London +53 331 £550 -8.33% 83
Work from Home +46 204 £503 -8.64% 115
North of England -16 85 £503 -19.52% 48
South East -9 74 £525 +31.25% 46
South West +25 73 £500 -27.27% 26
Midlands -43 62 £475 -5.00% 28
West Midlands -38 48 £475 -9.52% 11
North West -8 45 £550 -18.03% 25
Yorkshire -40 30 £500 +5.26% 16
Scotland +4 26 £425 -7.61% 7
East of England -22 18 £540 +8.00% 21
East Midlands -29 13 £478 -4.50% 17
North East -12 10 £480 -16.52% 7
Wales -1 8 £600 +84.62% 3
Northern Ireland -1 2 £675 - 2

Legacy Systems
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 (3.09%) SharePoint
2 17 (2.28%) Confluence
3 11 (1.48%) Microsoft Exchange
4 9 (1.21%) Apache
5 8 (1.07%) Appian
5 8 (1.07%) IIS
6 7 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
7 5 (0.67%) Apache Spark
7 5 (0.67%) nginx
7 5 (0.67%) Tomcat
8 4 (0.54%) ArcGIS
9 3 (0.40%) WebLogic
10 2 (0.27%) Camunda
10 2 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
10 2 (0.27%) ThingWorx
11 1 (0.13%) CMS
11 1 (0.13%) MQSeries
11 1 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
11 1 (0.13%) SAS
11 1 (0.13%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 32 (4.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (1.07%) Spreadsheet
3 6 (0.81%) Microsoft Office
4 5 (0.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.54%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.27%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.27%) Windchill
7 1 (0.13%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 45 (6.04%) SAP S/4HANA
2 9 (1.21%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (1.07%) Oracle ERP
4 7 (0.94%) NEC Housing
5 6 (0.81%) Salesforce CRM
6 5 (0.67%) SAP FI
6 5 (0.67%) SAP MM
7 4 (0.54%) SAP CO
7 4 (0.54%) SAP ERP
7 4 (0.54%) SAP FI/CO
7 4 (0.54%) SAP MDG
7 4 (0.54%) SAP PM
8 3 (0.40%) iTrent
8 3 (0.40%) Magento
8 3 (0.40%) Oracle EBS
8 3 (0.40%) SAP Retail
8 3 (0.40%) SystmOne
9 2 (0.27%) Shopify
9 2 (0.27%) Teamcenter
9 2 (0.27%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 181 (24.30%) Azure
2 138 (18.52%) AWS
3 51 (6.85%) Power Platform
4 35 (4.70%) Azure DevOps
5 32 (4.30%) Azure Data Factory
6 29 (3.89%) SaaS
7 26 (3.49%) Serverless
8 20 (2.68%) GCP
9 18 (2.42%) Dynamics 365
10 17 (2.28%) GitHub
11 14 (1.88%) Boomi
11 14 (1.88%) Power Automate
12 13 (1.74%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 13 (1.74%) Snowflake
13 12 (1.61%) Azure Monitor
13 12 (1.61%) Azure Service Bus
14 11 (1.48%) Anthropic Claude
14 11 (1.48%) OpenShift
15 10 (1.34%) Azure AI
15 10 (1.34%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 14 (1.88%) DNS
2 9 (1.21%) NAS
3 8 (1.07%) SAN
4 7 (0.94%) HTTP
4 7 (0.94%) Network Security
5 6 (0.81%) 4G
5 6 (0.81%) 5G
6 5 (0.67%) Firewall
7 3 (0.40%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
7 3 (0.40%) Intranet
7 3 (0.40%) SSH
7 3 (0.40%) WAN
8 2 (0.27%) 3GPP
8 2 (0.27%) Cisco Nexus
8 2 (0.27%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
8 2 (0.27%) Internet
8 2 (0.27%) VLAN
8 2 (0.27%) VoIP
8 2 (0.27%) Wi-Fi
8 2 (0.27%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 58 (7.79%) SQL Server
2 42 (5.64%) Power BI
3 26 (3.49%) Metadata
4 24 (3.22%) Oracle Database
4 24 (3.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 22 (2.95%) PostgreSQL
6 20 (2.68%) Data Lake
7 18 (2.42%) Data Warehouse
8 13 (1.74%) NoSQL
9 11 (1.48%) GIS
10 10 (1.34%) MySQL
11 8 (1.07%) Amazon Redshift
11 8 (1.07%) Azure SQL Database
11 8 (1.07%) Delta Lake
11 8 (1.07%) Pinecone
11 8 (1.07%) Relational Database
12 7 (0.94%) Elasticsearch
12 7 (0.94%) Oracle Reports
12 7 (0.94%) Pentaho
12 7 (0.94%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 47 (6.31%) JIRA
2 28 (3.76%) Git
3 11 (1.48%) Jenkins
4 9 (1.21%) MLflow
5 4 (0.54%) CircleCI
5 4 (0.54%) GitLab
5 4 (0.54%) Selenium
6 3 (0.40%) Oracle Forms
6 3 (0.40%) Subversion
6 3 (0.40%) Zephyr
7 2 (0.27%) Claude Code
7 2 (0.27%) Cucumber
7 2 (0.27%) JUnit
7 2 (0.27%) Mocha
7 2 (0.27%) Mockito
7 2 (0.27%) MSTest
7 2 (0.27%) REST Assured
7 2 (0.27%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 2 (0.27%) tSQLt
8 1 (0.13%) SoapUI
General
1 224 (30.07%) Finance
2 208 (27.92%) Social Skills
3 109 (14.63%) Public Sector
4 96 (12.89%) Analytical Skills
5 47 (6.31%) Banking
6 28 (3.76%) Documentation Skills
7 18 (2.42%) Manufacturing
8 16 (2.15%) Billing
8 16 (2.15%) Local Government
9 14 (1.88%) Retail
10 13 (1.74%) Military
11 12 (1.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 12 (1.61%) Legal
11 12 (1.61%) Presentation Skills
12 10 (1.34%) Marketing
12 10 (1.34%) Organisational Skills
13 8 (1.07%) Telecoms
14 7 (0.94%) Police
15 6 (0.81%) Back Office
15 6 (0.81%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 115 (15.44%) Architect
2 88 (11.81%) Lead
3 82 (11.01%) Analyst
4 61 (8.19%) Developer
5 59 (7.92%) Senior
6 44 (5.91%) Business Analyst
6 44 (5.91%) Data Engineer
7 41 (5.50%) Consultant
7 41 (5.50%) Project Manager
8 32 (4.30%) Data Analyst
9 27 (3.62%) Product Manager
10 26 (3.49%) Solutions Architect
11 22 (2.95%) Technical Architect
12 19 (2.55%) Data Architect
13 17 (2.28%) Software Engineer
14 16 (2.15%) Migration Manager
14 16 (2.15%) Project Officer
15 15 (2.01%) Azure Engineer
15 15 (2.01%) Tester
16 14 (1.88%) Migration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 56 (7.52%) .NET
2 33 (4.43%) REST
3 24 (3.22%) React
4 23 (3.09%) RESTful
5 19 (2.55%) .NET Framework
6 18 (2.42%) Middleware
7 16 (2.15%) Kafka
7 16 (2.15%) Oracle Fusion
8 15 (2.01%) OAuth
9 12 (1.61%) .NET Core
9 12 (1.61%) CSS
9 12 (1.61%) FastAPI
9 12 (1.61%) OpenAPI
9 12 (1.61%) Swagger
10 11 (1.48%) HTML
10 11 (1.48%) JWT
11 10 (1.34%) Django
11 10 (1.34%) JSON
11 10 (1.34%) Spring
11 10 (1.34%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 73 (9.80%) Cloud Native
2 45 (6.04%) Data Structures
3 32 (4.30%) Product Ownership
4 29 (3.89%) Management Information System
5 28 (3.76%) Distributed Systems
6 25 (3.36%) Legacy Applications
7 21 (2.82%) Greenfield Project
8 18 (2.42%) Mainframe
9 16 (2.15%) Onboarding
10 12 (1.61%) Data Centre
11 11 (1.48%) Hybrid Cloud
12 10 (1.34%) Legacy Code
12 10 (1.34%) Low-Code
12 10 (1.34%) Virtual Team
13 8 (1.07%) LIMS
13 8 (1.07%) Operational Technology
13 8 (1.07%) Reference Data
14 7 (0.94%) Algorithms
14 7 (0.94%) NHS
14 7 (0.94%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 48 (6.44%) Windows
2 43 (5.77%) Linux
3 28 (3.76%) Windows Server
4 22 (2.95%) Unix
5 10 (1.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 9 (1.21%) Solaris
7 5 (0.67%) HPUX
7 5 (0.67%) Windows Server 2008
7 5 (0.67%) Windows Server 2016
7 5 (0.67%) Windows Server 2019
8 4 (0.54%) AIX
8 4 (0.54%) Oracle Linux
8 4 (0.54%) SUSE
8 4 (0.54%) VMS
9 3 (0.40%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.27%) Debian
11 1 (0.13%) Android
11 1 (0.13%) Apple iOS
11 1 (0.13%) OpenVMS
11 1 (0.13%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 345 (46.31%) Migration
2 180 (24.16%) Data Migration
3 155 (20.81%) Stakeholder Management
4 140 (18.79%) Agile
5 124 (16.64%) Validation
6 114 (15.30%) Data Modelling
6 114 (15.30%) Problem-Solving
7 113 (15.17%) CI/CD
8 110 (14.77%) Roadmaps
9 107 (14.36%) DevOps
10 98 (13.15%) ERP
10 98 (13.15%) User Acceptance Testing
11 83 (11.14%) ETL
12 80 (10.74%) Continuous Improvement
13 78 (10.47%) Analytics
14 63 (8.46%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 59 (7.92%) AI
16 53 (7.11%) Business Intelligence
17 52 (6.98%) Decision-Making
18 50 (6.71%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 148 (19.87%) SQL
2 96 (12.89%) Python
3 43 (5.77%) C#
4 42 (5.64%) Java
5 32 (4.30%) PowerShell
6 20 (2.68%) TypeScript
7 19 (2.55%) PL/SQL
8 16 (2.15%) JavaScript
9 13 (1.74%) Bicep
10 12 (1.61%) Perl
11 8 (1.07%) T-SQL
12 7 (0.94%) Shell Script
13 4 (0.54%) Ada
13 4 (0.54%) Bash
13 4 (0.54%) MATLAB
13 4 (0.54%) Ruby
13 4 (0.54%) VB
14 3 (0.40%) Apex Code
14 3 (0.40%) R
14 3 (0.40%) VBA
Qualifications
1 138 (18.52%) Security Cleared
2 116 (15.57%) SC Cleared
3 34 (4.56%) Degree
4 18 (2.42%) BPSS Clearance
5 14 (1.88%) Azure Certification
6 13 (1.74%) DV Cleared
7 10 (1.34%) TOGAF Certification
8 9 (1.21%) CIMA
8 9 (1.21%) CISSP
9 8 (1.07%) ACCA
9 8 (1.07%) Microsoft Certification
10 7 (0.94%) Computer Science Degree
11 6 (0.81%) Master's Degree
12 5 (0.67%) AWS Certification
12 5 (0.67%) PMI Certification
12 5 (0.67%) PMP
13 4 (0.54%) CompTIA Security+
13 4 (0.54%) RHCE
14 3 (0.40%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 3 (0.40%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 116 (15.57%) Data Quality
2 47 (6.31%) QA
3 45 (6.04%) GDPR
4 17 (2.28%) Accessibility
4 17 (2.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 12 (1.61%) PMO
6 7 (0.94%) NIST
7 6 (0.81%) PCI DSS
8 5 (0.67%) GRC
8 5 (0.67%) NCSC
9 4 (0.54%) BS7666
9 4 (0.54%) HL7
9 4 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 3 (0.40%) DICOM
10 3 (0.40%) Disclosure Scotland
10 3 (0.40%) ISO 20022
10 3 (0.40%) SEPA
11 2 (0.27%) ISO 8583
12 1 (0.13%) SNOMED CT
12 1 (0.13%) WCAG
System Software
1 41 (5.50%) Docker
2 18 (2.42%) Active Directory
3 15 (2.01%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (1.07%) Hyper-V
5 5 (0.67%) Oracle RAC
5 5 (0.67%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.27%) NFS
6 2 (0.27%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 44 (5.91%) Kubernetes
2 30 (4.03%) Terraform
3 21 (2.82%) Grafana
4 15 (2.01%) Ansible
5 11 (1.48%) Prometheus
6 7 (0.94%) Oracle RMAN
7 6 (0.81%) NetBackup
8 4 (0.54%) Kibana
9 3 (0.40%) HP ALM
10 2 (0.27%) Avamar
10 2 (0.27%) EMC VPLEX
10 2 (0.27%) FortiGate
10 2 (0.27%) Microsoft Intune
10 2 (0.27%) Podman
10 2 (0.27%) vMotion
11 1 (0.13%) Amdocs OSS
11 1 (0.13%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 1 (0.13%) Packer
11 1 (0.13%) SELinux
11 1 (0.13%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 92 (12.35%) Microsoft
1 92 (12.35%) Oracle
2 78 (10.47%) SAP
3 44 (5.91%) Salesforce
4 36 (4.83%) Databricks
5 29 (3.89%) Workday
6 18 (2.42%) VMware
7 14 (1.88%) Talend
8 13 (1.74%) OpenAI
9 12 (1.61%) IBM
10 11 (1.48%) MuleSoft
11 9 (1.21%) Automation Anywhere
11 9 (1.21%) Red Hat
11 9 (1.21%) UiPath
12 8 (1.07%) ServiceNow
13 7 (0.94%) Avaloq
13 7 (0.94%) Denodo
13 7 (0.94%) HP
13 7 (0.94%) Informatica
13 7 (0.94%) NEC