PCRE Contract Job Trends

Perl Compatible Regular Expressions (PCRE, PCRE2)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring PCRE skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 23 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 657 - -
Rank change year-on-year - - -
Contract jobs citing PCRE 1 0 0
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.002% - -
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 0.010% - -
Number of daily rates quoted 0 0 0
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) - - -
UK excluding London median daily rate - - -

All Software Libraries and Frameworks
UK

PCRE falls under the Software Libraries and Frameworks category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring technical specification, industry standards, software libraries and framework skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for technical specification, industry standards, software libraries and framework skills 10,235 7,379 8,828
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 19.41% 22.59% 21.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,677 4,985 6,032
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £426
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £508 £543
Median % change year-on-year +3.45% -6.45% -1.36%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £664
90th Percentile £738 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £472 £500
% change year-on-year +5.87% -5.54% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 266 155 260
10th Percentile £29.07 £30.10 £23.70
25th Percentile £46.39 £38.52 £43.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% - -12.00%
75th Percentile £74.82 £67.25 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.00 £80.61 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £62.50 £58.30
% change year-on-year +8.00% +7.20% -0.87%

PCRE
Job Vacancy Trend

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

PCRE job vacancy trend in the UK

PCRE
Top 2 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing PCRE within the UK over the 6 months to 23 July 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
London - 1 - -
England - 1 - -

PCRE
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:

Cloud Services
1 1 (100.00%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 1 (100.00%) SSL
General
1 1 (100.00%) Analytical Skills
Job Titles
1 1 (100.00%) Administrator
1 1 (100.00%) Splunk Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (100.00%) Regular Expression
Miscellaneous
1 1 (100.00%) Hybrid Cloud
1 1 (100.00%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 1 (100.00%) Linux
1 1 (100.00%) Unix
1 1 (100.00%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 1 (100.00%) CI/CD
1 1 (100.00%) Content Development
1 1 (100.00%) Data Modelling
1 1 (100.00%) Migration
1 1 (100.00%) Problem-Solving
1 1 (100.00%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 1 (100.00%) Perl
1 1 (100.00%) PowerShell
1 1 (100.00%) Python
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (100.00%) Data Quality
Vendors
1 1 (100.00%) Splunk