Programme Management Contract Job Trends

Programme Management (Program Management)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Programme Management skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 18 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 271 190 136
Rank change year-on-year -81 -54 +10
Contract jobs citing Programme Management 525 493 693
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.96% 1.50% 1.80%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.14% 1.65% 2.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 314 297 377
10th Percentile £397 £263 £277
25th Percentile £452 £463 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £588 £560
Median % change year-on-year -2.13% +4.91% -6.67%
75th Percentile £700 £713 £713
90th Percentile £850 £825 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £564 £550
% change year-on-year -6.87% +2.50% -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 32 22
10th Percentile £22.30 £19.82 £12.75
25th Percentile £35.84 £28.29 £18.31
Median hourly rate £53.00 £44.04 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +20.35% +25.82% -12.34%
75th Percentile £91.25 £65.25 £48.75
90th Percentile £103.70 £77.13 £87.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.00 £32.50 £23.99
% change year-on-year +127.69% +35.47% -42.44%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

Programme Management 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 45,960 29,830 33,021
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.47% 90.53% 85.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,897 18,534 20,247
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,123 1,812 1,459
10th Percentile £13.84 £14.23 £14.96
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% -1.91%
75th Percentile £67.50 £44.76 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £67.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.56 £22.50 £43.00
% change year-on-year +84.69% -47.67% +1.18%

Programme Management
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Programme Management job vacancy trend in the UK

Programme Management
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Programme Management.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Programme Management

Programme Management
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Programme Management over the 6 months to 18 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Programme Management in the UK

Programme Management
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Programme Management.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Programme Management

Programme Management
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Programme Management over the 6 months to 18 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Programme Management in the UK

Programme Management
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 Programme Management within the UK over the 6 months to 18 September 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 -75 446 £595 -0.83% 967
London -28 260 £638 +2.00% 547
UK excluding London -114 218 £525 -6.87% 493
Work from Home -42 189 £550 -12.00% 321
South East -30 60 £575 -3.77% 146
North of England -59 55 £495 -12.00% 101
Scotland -16 37 £500 +3.90% 45
Yorkshire -20 32 £495 -12.39% 40
Midlands -67 26 £575 -8.00% 58
North West -59 22 £514 -6.55% 48
South West -81 20 £669 +21.59% 64
East of England -25 19 £713 +9.62% 45
West Midlands -66 16 £525 -16.00% 43
East Midlands -14 10 £638 +15.59% 15
Northern Ireland -4 2 £775 +369.70% 31
Wales -14 2 £425 +153.73% 11
North East -48 1 £350 -39.13% 15

Programme Management
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 27 (5.14%) Confluence
2 8 (1.52%) SharePoint
3 7 (1.33%) CMS
4 5 (0.95%) IIS
5 2 (0.38%) Oracle Service Bus
5 2 (0.38%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 1 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 1 (0.19%) Apache
6 1 (0.19%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.19%) Apache Spark
6 1 (0.19%) Apache Superset
6 1 (0.19%) nginx
6 1 (0.19%) SAS
6 1 (0.19%) SharePoint 2013
6 1 (0.19%) Tomcat
Applications
1 30 (5.71%) Microsoft Project
2 28 (5.33%) Microsoft Excel
3 24 (4.57%) Microsoft Office
4 21 (4.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.76%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.19%) Notion
8 1 (0.19%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 27 (5.14%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.95%) Oracle ERP
2 5 (0.95%) SAP MDG
3 4 (0.76%) Magento
4 3 (0.57%) SAP MDG-F
4 3 (0.57%) SAP SD
5 2 (0.38%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.38%) SAP BRIM
5 2 (0.38%) SAP ERP
5 2 (0.38%) SAP EWM
5 2 (0.38%) SAP IBP
5 2 (0.38%) SAP MM
6 1 (0.19%) Aladdin
6 1 (0.19%) Finacle
6 1 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.19%) SAP Convergent Charging
6 1 (0.19%) SAP MDG-S
6 1 (0.19%) Temenos T24
6 1 (0.19%) Workday HCM
6 1 (0.19%) Workfront
Cloud Services
1 43 (8.19%) Azure
2 23 (4.38%) AWS
3 20 (3.81%) Power Platform
3 20 (3.81%) SaaS
4 12 (2.29%) Azure DevOps
5 10 (1.90%) Entra ID
5 10 (1.90%) Google Workspace
6 9 (1.71%) GCP
6 9 (1.71%) Smartsheet
7 8 (1.52%) OCI
8 5 (0.95%) Dynamics 365
8 5 (0.95%) Microsoft 365
9 4 (0.76%) Snowflake
10 2 (0.38%) Anthropic Claude
10 2 (0.38%) ChatGPT
10 2 (0.38%) ClickUp
10 2 (0.38%) Google Drive
10 2 (0.38%) Microsoft Copilot
10 2 (0.38%) OneDrive
10 2 (0.38%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 7 (1.33%) Network Security
2 5 (0.95%) HTTPS
2 5 (0.95%) TCP/IP
3 4 (0.76%) DNS
3 4 (0.76%) Firewall
3 4 (0.76%) LAN
3 4 (0.76%) WAN
4 3 (0.57%) DHCP
4 3 (0.57%) IPv4
4 3 (0.57%) IPv6
4 3 (0.57%) VLAN
4 3 (0.57%) VPN
5 2 (0.38%) FTP
5 2 (0.38%) Software-Defined Networking
6 1 (0.19%) Ethernet VPN
6 1 (0.19%) HTTP
6 1 (0.19%) IKE
6 1 (0.19%) SD-WAN
6 1 (0.19%) VXLAN
6 1 (0.19%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (3.05%) Power BI
2 4 (0.76%) Data Warehouse
3 3 (0.57%) Big Data
3 3 (0.57%) PostgreSQL
3 3 (0.57%) SAP HANA
4 2 (0.38%) Electronic Patient Records
4 2 (0.38%) Qlik Sense
5 1 (0.19%) Data Lake
5 1 (0.19%) Db2
5 1 (0.19%) Elasticsearch
5 1 (0.19%) Metadata
5 1 (0.19%) MongoDB
5 1 (0.19%) SQL Server Analysis Services
5 1 (0.19%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 1 (0.19%) SQL Server Reporting Services
5 1 (0.19%) Tableau
5 1 (0.19%) Trino
Development Applications
1 46 (8.76%) JIRA
2 6 (1.14%) Git
3 4 (0.76%) Jenkins
3 4 (0.76%) Subversion
4 2 (0.38%) Atlassian Bamboo
4 2 (0.38%) Bitbucket
General
1 260 (49.52%) Finance
2 211 (40.19%) Social Skills
3 87 (16.57%) Analytical Skills
4 68 (12.95%) Public Sector
5 58 (11.05%) Influencing Skills
6 50 (9.52%) Organisational Skills
7 45 (8.57%) Retail
8 38 (7.24%) Banking
9 33 (6.29%) Legal
10 26 (4.95%) Marketing
11 22 (4.19%) Manufacturing
11 22 (4.19%) Presentation Skills
12 15 (2.86%) Aerospace
12 15 (2.86%) Telecoms
13 14 (2.67%) Local Government
14 12 (2.29%) Documentation Skills
15 11 (2.10%) Pharmaceutical
16 10 (1.90%) Investment Banking
17 9 (1.71%) Front Office
17 9 (1.71%) Law
Job Titles
1 120 (22.86%) Project Manager
2 96 (18.29%) Programme Manager
3 91 (17.33%) Lead
4 64 (12.19%) Senior
5 47 (8.95%) Senior Manager
6 34 (6.48%) Technical Manager
7 25 (4.76%) Analyst
7 25 (4.76%) Senior Project Manager
7 25 (4.76%) Transformation Manager
8 23 (4.38%) Consultant
9 19 (3.62%) Delivery Manager
10 18 (3.43%) SAP Manager
11 17 (3.24%) Transformation Programme Manager
12 14 (2.67%) Business Analyst
12 14 (2.67%) IT Manager
13 13 (2.48%) Architect
13 13 (2.48%) Digital Programme Manager
13 13 (2.48%) PMO Manager
13 13 (2.48%) Technical Project Manager
14 12 (2.29%) PMO Lead
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (2.67%) Oracle Fusion
2 10 (1.90%) REST
3 6 (1.14%) Middleware
3 6 (1.14%) XML
4 5 (0.95%) SailPoint
5 4 (0.76%) JSON
5 4 (0.76%) VML
6 3 (0.57%) OAuth
6 3 (0.57%) RESTful
6 3 (0.57%) Web Services
7 2 (0.38%) ADO
7 2 (0.38%) ModSecurity
7 2 (0.38%) OAuth2
7 2 (0.38%) SOAP
7 2 (0.38%) Terraform
7 2 (0.38%) XSD
7 2 (0.38%) XSLT
8 1 (0.19%) Azure Blueprints
8 1 (0.19%) LDAP
8 1 (0.19%) SAP Basis
Miscellaneous
1 26 (4.95%) Product Ownership
2 25 (4.76%) Management Information System
3 23 (4.38%) Onboarding
4 18 (3.43%) Data Protection Act
5 16 (3.05%) Operational Technology
6 14 (2.67%) Legacy Systems
7 11 (2.10%) Enterprise Software
8 10 (1.90%) PMI
9 8 (1.52%) NHS
9 8 (1.52%) Virtual Team
10 7 (1.33%) FMCG
11 6 (1.14%) Data Centre
11 6 (1.14%) Greenfield Project
11 6 (1.14%) Learning Management System
12 5 (0.95%) AI Agents
12 5 (0.95%) Distributed Systems
12 5 (0.95%) Life Science
12 5 (0.95%) Marketing Technology
13 4 (0.76%) Analytical Mindset
13 4 (0.76%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 9 (1.71%) Windows
2 3 (0.57%) Linux
2 3 (0.57%) zOS
3 2 (0.38%) Unix
4 1 (0.19%) Alpine Linux
4 1 (0.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.19%) Solaris
4 1 (0.19%) Ubuntu
4 1 (0.19%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.19%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 265 (50.48%) Stakeholder Management
2 171 (32.57%) Agile
3 158 (30.10%) Project Management
4 121 (23.05%) Decision-Making
5 115 (21.90%) Continuous Improvement
6 111 (21.14%) PRINCE2
7 108 (20.57%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 99 (18.86%) Roadmaps
9 95 (18.10%) Change Management
10 87 (16.57%) Programme Governance
11 83 (15.81%) Problem-Solving
12 82 (15.62%) Risk Management
13 81 (15.43%) Project Delivery
14 79 (15.05%) Programme Delivery
15 68 (12.95%) AI
16 59 (11.24%) Migration
17 55 (10.48%) Business Case
18 52 (9.90%) Matrix Organization
19 47 (8.95%) Technology Transformation
20 46 (8.76%) Waterfall
Programming Languages
1 5 (0.95%) SQL
2 4 (0.76%) Java
3 3 (0.57%) PowerShell
3 3 (0.57%) Python
4 1 (0.19%) ABAP
4 1 (0.19%) Bash
4 1 (0.19%) BeanShell
4 1 (0.19%) Bicep
4 1 (0.19%) Korn
4 1 (0.19%) PL/SQL
4 1 (0.19%) VBA
Qualifications
1 81 (15.43%) Degree
2 80 (15.24%) Security Cleared
3 76 (14.48%) PMP
4 62 (11.81%) PMI Certification
5 59 (11.24%) SC Cleared
6 14 (2.67%) BPSS Clearance
7 13 (2.48%) DV Cleared
8 12 (2.29%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
9 11 (2.10%) CISM
9 11 (2.10%) CISSP
10 10 (1.90%) Master's Degree
11 7 (1.33%) Computer Science Degree
12 6 (1.14%) TOGAF Certification
13 5 (0.95%) MBA
13 5 (0.95%) PgMP
14 4 (0.76%) HND
14 4 (0.76%) ITIL Certification
14 4 (0.76%) Six Sigma Green Belt
15 3 (0.57%) APMP
15 3 (0.57%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 101 (19.24%) PMO
2 22 (4.19%) QA
3 16 (3.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 14 (2.67%) Data Quality
5 12 (2.29%) GDPR
6 8 (1.52%) GRC
7 7 (1.33%) NIST
8 6 (1.14%) HIPAA
9 5 (0.95%) NCSC
9 5 (0.95%) PCI DSS
9 5 (0.95%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 4 (0.76%) MiFID
10 4 (0.76%) P3O
10 4 (0.76%) SLA
11 3 (0.57%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials
11 3 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 3 (0.57%) EMIR
11 3 (0.57%) SOC 2
12 2 (0.38%) NIST 800
System Software
1 6 (1.14%) Active Directory
2 3 (0.57%) VMware Infrastructure
3 2 (0.38%) Docker
3 2 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.19%) ISA Server
4 1 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
4 1 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
4 1 (0.19%) VMware NSX
4 1 (0.19%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 6 (1.14%) Ansible
2 3 (0.57%) Microsoft Intune
3 2 (0.38%) Kubernetes
4 1 (0.19%) Control-M
4 1 (0.19%) MOM
4 1 (0.19%) Oracle RMAN
4 1 (0.19%) SCCM
4 1 (0.19%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 73 (13.90%) Microsoft
2 50 (9.52%) SAP
3 22 (4.19%) Oracle
4 19 (3.62%) ServiceNow
5 13 (2.48%) Google
6 11 (2.10%) Salesforce
7 8 (1.52%) Atlassian
8 6 (1.14%) Databricks
8 6 (1.14%) IBM
9 5 (0.95%) Zscaler
10 3 (0.57%) Bloomberg
10 3 (0.57%) Charles River
10 3 (0.57%) VMware
10 3 (0.57%) Workday
11 2 (0.38%) Ariba
11 2 (0.38%) CA Agile Central
11 2 (0.38%) Dell
11 2 (0.38%) FIS
11 2 (0.38%) Siebel
11 2 (0.38%) Temenos