Operational Stability Contract Job Trends

Operational Stability
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Operational Stability skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 27 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 524 494 575
Rank change year-on-year -30 +81 +180
Contract jobs citing Operational Stability 67 56 28
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.18% 0.17% 0.064%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.20% 0.19% 0.073%
Number of daily rates quoted 49 32 13
10th Percentile £325 £398 £457
25th Percentile £363 £491 £464
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £530 £515
Median % change year-on-year -15.09% +2.91% -4.63%
75th Percentile £591 £633 £600
90th Percentile £713 £770 -
UK excluding London median daily rate £465 £550 £515
% change year-on-year -15.45% +6.80% -6.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £23.13 - -
Median hourly rate £23.75 - -
75th Percentile £24.38 - -
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.75 - -

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Operational Stability falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 32,729 29,699 38,511
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 88.02% 88.28% 88.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,612 18,123 25,677
10th Percentile £300 £308 £306
25th Percentile £406 £413 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £528
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.47% -4.09%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £723 £738 £744
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,069 965 1,551
10th Percentile £14.73 £15.62 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.30 £18.93
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -23.53% +21.43%
75th Percentile £51.65 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.75 £74.63 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.58 £30.88 £44.50
% change year-on-year -23.64% -30.62% +48.33%

Operational Stability
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Operational Stability job vacancy trend in the UK

Operational Stability
Daily Rate Trend

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

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Operational Stability

Operational Stability
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Operational Stability over the 6 months to 27 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Operational Stability in the UK

Operational Stability
Hourly Rate Trend

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

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Operational Stability

Operational Stability
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 Operational Stability within the UK over the 6 months to 27 December 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 -38 52 £449 -14.98% 24
UK excluding London -41 40 £465 -15.45% 18
London -17 19 £425 -19.43% 7
Scotland +11 11 £375 -31.82% 1
South East -10 11 £558 +20.65% 4
Work from Home -5 10 £521 -13.25% 17
North of England -51 7 £400 -47.71% 6
Midlands -37 6 £425 +88.89% 5
South West -3 5 £575 +4.55% 2
North West -16 5 £395 - 2
East Midlands -18 4 £425 - 1
West Midlands -26 2 £350 +55.56% 4
Yorkshire -48 1 £500 -34.64% 4
North East - 1 £515 -

Operational Stability
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 6 (8.96%) Confluence
2 2 (2.99%) Apache Airflow
2 2 (2.99%) SharePoint
3 1 (1.49%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (1.49%) Tomcat
Applications
1 3 (4.48%) Microsoft Project
2 2 (2.99%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (1.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 1 (1.49%) Oracle BRM
1 1 (1.49%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 18 (26.87%) Azure
2 14 (20.90%) AWS
3 7 (10.45%) Azure DevOps
4 6 (8.96%) Azure Data Factory
4 6 (8.96%) Azure Synapse Analytics
4 6 (8.96%) Power Platform
5 5 (7.46%) dbt
5 5 (7.46%) GCP
6 4 (5.97%) Azure Monitor
6 4 (5.97%) Azure Sentinel
6 4 (5.97%) IaaS
6 4 (5.97%) PaaS
7 3 (4.48%) Microsoft 365
7 3 (4.48%) SaaS
8 2 (2.99%) Nutanix
8 2 (2.99%) Slack
9 1 (1.49%) Amazon Bedrock
9 1 (1.49%) Amazon EventBridge
9 1 (1.49%) Azure AKS
9 1 (1.49%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 10 (14.93%) Firewall
2 6 (8.96%) DHCP
2 6 (8.96%) DNS
3 4 (5.97%) VPN
4 2 (2.99%) Fibre Channel
4 2 (2.99%) iSCSI
4 2 (2.99%) NAS
4 2 (2.99%) NetScaler
4 2 (2.99%) SAN
4 2 (2.99%) TCP/IP
4 2 (2.99%) VLAN
4 2 (2.99%) Wi-Fi
5 1 (1.49%) Broadband
5 1 (1.49%) GPRS
5 1 (1.49%) GSM
5 1 (1.49%) LAN
5 1 (1.49%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (8.96%) NoSQL
1 6 (8.96%) Power BI
2 5 (7.46%) MongoDB
3 4 (5.97%) SQL Server
4 3 (4.48%) Apache Cassandra
5 2 (2.99%) Relational Database
6 1 (1.49%) BigQuery
6 1 (1.49%) DynamoDB
6 1 (1.49%) MySQL
6 1 (1.49%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 8 (11.94%) JIRA
2 4 (5.97%) JUnit
3 3 (4.48%) Cucumber
3 3 (4.48%) Mockito
3 3 (4.48%) Vite
4 1 (1.49%) Git
4 1 (1.49%) GitLab
4 1 (1.49%) Gradle
General
1 18 (26.87%) Social Skills
2 12 (17.91%) Finance
3 10 (14.93%) Public Sector
4 9 (13.43%) Analytical Skills
5 8 (11.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 6 (8.96%) Retail
7 4 (5.97%) Organisational Skills
8 3 (4.48%) Presentation Skills
9 2 (2.99%) Banking
9 2 (2.99%) Military
10 1 (1.49%) Billing
10 1 (1.49%) Investment Banking
10 1 (1.49%) Law
10 1 (1.49%) Legal
10 1 (1.49%) Pharmaceutical
10 1 (1.49%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 8 (11.94%) Developer
1 8 (11.94%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 6 (8.96%) Architect
2 6 (8.96%) Data Engineer
3 5 (7.46%) Full-Stack Developer
3 5 (7.46%) Full-Stack Java Developer
3 5 (7.46%) Java Developer
3 5 (7.46%) Senior
3 5 (7.46%) Test Manager
4 4 (5.97%) Infrastructure Architect
4 4 (5.97%) Senior Manager
4 4 (5.97%) Service Manager
4 4 (5.97%) Support Engineer
5 3 (4.48%) DevOps Engineer
5 3 (4.48%) Network Engineer
5 3 (4.48%) Project Manager
5 3 (4.48%) Senior Service Assurance Manager
5 3 (4.48%) Senior Service Manager
5 3 (4.48%) Service Assurance Manager
5 3 (4.48%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (11.94%) Spring
2 7 (10.45%) Spring Boot
3 6 (8.96%) PySpark
3 6 (8.96%) REST
4 5 (7.46%) AngularJS
4 5 (7.46%) React
5 3 (4.48%) Next.js
6 2 (2.99%) Hibernate
6 2 (2.99%) J2EE
6 2 (2.99%) JPA
6 2 (2.99%) Kafka
6 2 (2.99%) Node.js
6 2 (2.99%) Spring Cloud
7 1 (1.49%) .NET
7 1 (1.49%) .NET Core
7 1 (1.49%) CSS
7 1 (1.49%) Flask
7 1 (1.49%) GraphQL
7 1 (1.49%) Pyramid
7 1 (1.49%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 7 (10.45%) Public Cloud
2 5 (7.46%) Onboarding
3 4 (5.97%) Cloud Native
4 2 (2.99%) Algorithms
4 2 (2.99%) NHS
4 2 (2.99%) Operational Technology
4 2 (2.99%) Private Cloud
4 2 (2.99%) Replication
4 2 (2.99%) SCADA
5 1 (1.49%) AI Agents
5 1 (1.49%) Data Centre
5 1 (1.49%) Data Protection Act
5 1 (1.49%) Data Structures
5 1 (1.49%) Enterprise Software
5 1 (1.49%) Greenfield Project
5 1 (1.49%) IPTV
5 1 (1.49%) Life Science
5 1 (1.49%) Management Information System
5 1 (1.49%) SWIFT Messaging Network
5 1 (1.49%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 10 (14.93%) Windows
2 9 (13.43%) Windows Server
3 4 (5.97%) Windows Server 2019
4 3 (4.48%) Linux
5 2 (2.99%) Unix
5 2 (2.99%) Windows Server 2012
6 1 (1.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (1.49%) Ubuntu
6 1 (1.49%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 19 (28.36%) DevOps
2 18 (26.87%) Agile
3 16 (23.88%) Change Management
4 15 (22.39%) Infrastructure as Code
5 12 (17.91%) Mentoring
5 12 (17.91%) Software Engineering
6 11 (16.42%) CI/CD
6 11 (16.42%) Problem-Solving
7 10 (14.93%) Continuous Improvement
7 10 (14.93%) Data Governance
7 10 (14.93%) Microservices
7 10 (14.93%) SDLC
8 9 (13.43%) Stakeholder Management
8 9 (13.43%) Visualisation
9 8 (11.94%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 8 (11.94%) ITIL
9 8 (11.94%) Migration
9 8 (11.94%) Problem Management
10 7 (10.45%) Data Engineering
10 7 (10.45%) Data Science
Programming Languages
1 12 (17.91%) Python
2 11 (16.42%) SQL
3 10 (14.93%) Java
4 6 (8.96%) PowerShell
5 4 (5.97%) Bicep
5 4 (5.97%) JavaScript
6 2 (2.99%) TypeScript
7 1 (1.49%) Bash
7 1 (1.49%) C#
7 1 (1.49%) PL/SQL
7 1 (1.49%) Shell Script
7 1 (1.49%) VBA
Qualifications
1 20 (29.85%) Security Cleared
2 10 (14.93%) Azure Certification
3 9 (13.43%) SC Cleared
4 5 (7.46%) Degree
5 4 (5.97%) DV Cleared
6 3 (4.48%) PMI Certification
6 3 (4.48%) PMP
7 2 (2.99%) MCSE
7 2 (2.99%) Microsoft Certification
8 1 (1.49%) AWS Certification
8 1 (1.49%) Master's Degree
8 1 (1.49%) MCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (8.96%) GDPR
2 4 (5.97%) IFRS
2 4 (5.97%) IFRS 17
2 4 (5.97%) QA
3 1 (1.49%) Actionable Recommendations
3 1 (1.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (1.49%) SLA
System Software
1 13 (19.40%) VMware Infrastructure
2 11 (16.42%) Active Directory
3 9 (13.43%) Docker
4 5 (7.46%) vSphere
5 4 (5.97%) Hyper-V
6 2 (2.99%) NFS
6 2 (2.99%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (2.99%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (1.49%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 16 (23.88%) Terraform
2 10 (14.93%) Kubernetes
3 4 (5.97%) Grafana
4 3 (4.48%) Microsoft Intune
4 3 (4.48%) SCCM
5 2 (2.99%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 2 (2.99%) Dell DRAC
5 2 (2.99%) FortiGate
5 2 (2.99%) Prometheus
5 2 (2.99%) vCenter Server
6 1 (1.49%) Ansible
6 1 (1.49%) Cisco CUCM
6 1 (1.49%) HP ALM
6 1 (1.49%) Puppet
6 1 (1.49%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (1.49%) VxRail
Vendors
1 14 (20.90%) Microsoft
2 13 (19.40%) VMware
3 5 (7.46%) Oracle
4 4 (5.97%) NetApp
4 4 (5.97%) Veeam
5 3 (4.48%) Dell
5 3 (4.48%) Splunk
6 2 (2.99%) Aruba
6 2 (2.99%) AVEVA
6 2 (2.99%) Dynatrace
6 2 (2.99%) F5
6 2 (2.99%) Fortinet
6 2 (2.99%) Google
7 1 (1.49%) Cisco
7 1 (1.49%) EMC
7 1 (1.49%) HP
7 1 (1.49%) NVIDIA
7 1 (1.49%) Red Hat
7 1 (1.49%) SimCorp
7 1 (1.49%) Virgin Media