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 1 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 260 186 138
Rank change year-on-year -74 -48 +11
Contract jobs citing Programme Management 542 515 683
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.99% 1.56% 1.81%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.17% 1.72% 2.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 320 312 371
10th Percentile £400 £171 £278
25th Percentile £463 £439 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £575 £550
Median % change year-on-year - +4.55% -6.78%
75th Percentile £700 £700 £700
90th Percentile £850 £812 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £550 £525
% change year-on-year -2.27% +4.76% -7.08%
Number of hourly rates quoted 27 36 18
10th Percentile £20.90 £18.58 £14.84
25th Percentile £31.38 £26.01 £22.50
Median hourly rate £45.00 £41.01 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.73% +17.17% -15.66%
75th Percentile £76.25 £65.25 £47.58
90th Percentile £103.10 £81.88 £81.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £28.05 £23.99
% change year-on-year +122.86% +16.90% -46.69%

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 46,382 29,970 32,481
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.48% 90.66% 85.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,008 18,622 19,630
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 £630 £625 £638
90th Percentile £733 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,245 1,858 1,349
10th Percentile £13.70 £14.32 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.19 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £39.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +55.07% -40.82% -
75th Percentile £65.60 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.64 £65.00 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.50 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +77.01% -48.10% +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 1 October 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 1 October 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 1 October 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 -86 457 £588 - 787
London -28 261 £631 +2.64% 463
UK excluding London -107 229 £538 -2.27% 389
Work from Home -44 190 £550 -12.00% 294
South East -33 64 £575 -3.77% 99
North of England -70 57 £494 -10.18% 60
Scotland -17 36 £500 - 36
Yorkshire -22 35 £494 -10.18% 23
Midlands -66 31 £588 -2.08% 58
West Midlands -52 21 £588 -4.08% 38
North West -59 21 £514 -4.81% 28
East of England -21 20 £700 +12.00% 34
South West -84 20 £669 +21.59% 67
East Midlands -18 10 £638 +42.46% 20
Northern Ireland 0 2 £775 +369.70% 27
Wales -15 2 £425 +153.73% 12
North East -41 1 £350 -38.46% 9

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 26 (4.80%) Confluence
2 7 (1.29%) CMS
3 6 (1.11%) IIS
3 6 (1.11%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.37%) Apache
4 2 (0.37%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (0.37%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.37%) Apache Superset
4 2 (0.37%) Oracle Service Bus
4 2 (0.37%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 1 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.18%) SAS
Applications
1 29 (5.35%) Microsoft Excel
2 27 (4.98%) Microsoft Project
3 26 (4.80%) Microsoft Office
4 23 (4.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.74%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.55%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.37%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.18%) Notion
8 1 (0.18%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 24 (4.43%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.11%) Oracle ERP
3 4 (0.74%) Magento
4 3 (0.55%) SAP MDG
4 3 (0.55%) SAP SD
5 2 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.37%) SAP BRIM
5 2 (0.37%) SAP EWM
5 2 (0.37%) SAP IBP
5 2 (0.37%) SAP MM
5 2 (0.37%) Teamcenter
6 1 (0.18%) Aladdin
6 1 (0.18%) Finacle
6 1 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.18%) SAP Convergent Charging
6 1 (0.18%) SAP FI/CO
6 1 (0.18%) SAP MDG-F
6 1 (0.18%) SAP MDG-S
6 1 (0.18%) Workday HCM
6 1 (0.18%) Workfront
Cloud Services
1 46 (8.49%) Azure
2 26 (4.80%) AWS
3 22 (4.06%) Power Platform
4 19 (3.51%) SaaS
5 13 (2.40%) Google Workspace
6 12 (2.21%) GCP
7 11 (2.03%) Azure DevOps
8 10 (1.85%) Entra ID
9 8 (1.48%) OCI
9 8 (1.48%) Smartsheet
10 6 (1.11%) Microsoft 365
11 5 (0.92%) Dynamics 365
12 4 (0.74%) Snowflake
12 4 (0.74%) SuccessFactors
13 2 (0.37%) Anthropic Claude
13 2 (0.37%) Asana
13 2 (0.37%) Google Drive
13 2 (0.37%) Microsoft Copilot
13 2 (0.37%) OneDrive
13 2 (0.37%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 7 (1.29%) Network Security
2 5 (0.92%) HTTPS
2 5 (0.92%) TCP/IP
3 4 (0.74%) DNS
3 4 (0.74%) Firewall
3 4 (0.74%) LAN
3 4 (0.74%) WAN
4 3 (0.55%) DHCP
4 3 (0.55%) IPv4
4 3 (0.55%) IPv6
4 3 (0.55%) VLAN
4 3 (0.55%) VPN
5 2 (0.37%) FTP
5 2 (0.37%) Software-Defined Networking
6 1 (0.18%) Ethernet VPN
6 1 (0.18%) IPsec
6 1 (0.18%) SD-WAN
6 1 (0.18%) Unified Communications
6 1 (0.18%) VXLAN
6 1 (0.18%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (3.14%) Power BI
2 5 (0.92%) Qlik Sense
3 4 (0.74%) Big Data
3 4 (0.74%) Data Warehouse
4 3 (0.55%) Metadata
4 3 (0.55%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (0.37%) Tableau
5 2 (0.37%) Trino
6 1 (0.18%) Data Lake
6 1 (0.18%) Db2
6 1 (0.18%) Electronic Patient Records
6 1 (0.18%) MongoDB
6 1 (0.18%) Oracle Reports
6 1 (0.18%) SAP HANA
6 1 (0.18%) SQL Server Analysis Services
6 1 (0.18%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 1 (0.18%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 41 (7.56%) JIRA
2 6 (1.11%) Git
3 4 (0.74%) Jenkins
3 4 (0.74%) Subversion
4 2 (0.37%) Atlassian Bamboo
4 2 (0.37%) Bitbucket
General
1 273 (50.37%) Finance
2 219 (40.41%) Social Skills
3 85 (15.68%) Analytical Skills
4 70 (12.92%) Public Sector
5 64 (11.81%) Influencing Skills
6 50 (9.23%) Organisational Skills
7 41 (7.56%) Retail
8 40 (7.38%) Banking
9 34 (6.27%) Legal
10 29 (5.35%) Manufacturing
11 26 (4.80%) Marketing
11 26 (4.80%) Presentation Skills
12 20 (3.69%) Aerospace
13 15 (2.77%) Local Government
14 14 (2.58%) Telecoms
15 12 (2.21%) Documentation Skills
16 11 (2.03%) Pharmaceutical
17 10 (1.85%) Investment Banking
18 9 (1.66%) Front Office
19 8 (1.48%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 128 (23.62%) Project Manager
2 97 (17.90%) Programme Manager
3 93 (17.16%) Lead
4 62 (11.44%) Senior
5 45 (8.30%) Senior Manager
6 30 (5.54%) Transformation Manager
7 29 (5.35%) Technical Manager
8 27 (4.98%) Senior Project Manager
9 24 (4.43%) Analyst
9 24 (4.43%) Consultant
10 21 (3.87%) Delivery Manager
10 21 (3.87%) IT Manager
11 20 (3.69%) Transformation Programme Manager
12 14 (2.58%) Digital Programme Manager
12 14 (2.58%) IT Project Manager
12 14 (2.58%) SAP Manager
13 13 (2.40%) Architect
13 13 (2.40%) Business Analyst
14 12 (2.21%) Technical Project Manager
15 11 (2.03%) PMO Lead
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (2.58%) Oracle Fusion
2 10 (1.85%) REST
3 5 (0.92%) Middleware
3 5 (0.92%) SailPoint
4 4 (0.74%) JSON
4 4 (0.74%) VML
4 4 (0.74%) XML
5 3 (0.55%) OAuth
5 3 (0.55%) RESTful
5 3 (0.55%) Web Services
6 2 (0.37%) ADO
6 2 (0.37%) ModSecurity
6 2 (0.37%) OAuth2
6 2 (0.37%) SOAP
6 2 (0.37%) Terraform
6 2 (0.37%) XSD
6 2 (0.37%) XSLT
7 1 (0.18%) LDAP
7 1 (0.18%) SAP Basis
7 1 (0.18%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 31 (5.72%) Management Information System
2 25 (4.61%) Product Ownership
3 23 (4.24%) Operational Technology
4 22 (4.06%) Onboarding
5 18 (3.32%) Data Protection Act
6 13 (2.40%) Enterprise Software
7 12 (2.21%) Legacy Systems
8 10 (1.85%) Virtual Team
9 9 (1.66%) Industry 4.0
9 9 (1.66%) NHS
9 9 (1.66%) PMI
10 7 (1.29%) Data Centre
11 6 (1.11%) AI Agents
11 6 (1.11%) Distributed Systems
11 6 (1.11%) FMCG
11 6 (1.11%) Greenfield Project
12 5 (0.92%) Learning Management System
12 5 (0.92%) Life Science
12 5 (0.92%) Marketing Technology
12 5 (0.92%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 8 (1.48%) Windows
2 3 (0.55%) Linux
2 3 (0.55%) zOS
3 2 (0.37%) Unix
4 1 (0.18%) Alpine Linux
4 1 (0.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.18%) Ubuntu
4 1 (0.18%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 280 (51.66%) Stakeholder Management
2 177 (32.66%) Agile
3 162 (29.89%) Project Management
4 126 (23.25%) Decision-Making
5 119 (21.96%) PRINCE2
6 111 (20.48%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 108 (19.93%) Continuous Improvement
8 104 (19.19%) Roadmaps
9 96 (17.71%) Change Management
10 90 (16.61%) Programme Governance
11 85 (15.68%) Problem-Solving
11 85 (15.68%) Project Delivery
11 85 (15.68%) Risk Management
12 83 (15.31%) Programme Delivery
13 73 (13.47%) AI
14 57 (10.52%) Cybersecurity
15 53 (9.78%) Technology Transformation
16 52 (9.59%) Migration
16 52 (9.59%) Scrum
17 51 (9.41%) Business Case
Programming Languages
1 4 (0.74%) Java
1 4 (0.74%) SQL
2 3 (0.55%) PowerShell
2 3 (0.55%) Python
3 1 (0.18%) ABAP
3 1 (0.18%) Bash
3 1 (0.18%) BeanShell
3 1 (0.18%) Bicep
3 1 (0.18%) Korn
3 1 (0.18%) VBA
Qualifications
1 91 (16.79%) Degree
2 86 (15.87%) Security Cleared
3 85 (15.68%) PMP
4 68 (12.55%) PMI Certification
5 63 (11.62%) SC Cleared
6 16 (2.95%) BPSS Clearance
7 14 (2.58%) DV Cleared
8 12 (2.21%) CISM
8 12 (2.21%) CISSP
8 12 (2.21%) Master's Degree
9 11 (2.03%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
10 7 (1.29%) Computer Science Degree
10 7 (1.29%) MBA
10 7 (1.29%) TOGAF Certification
11 6 (1.11%) PgMP
12 4 (0.74%) HND
12 4 (0.74%) ITIL Certification
12 4 (0.74%) Six Sigma Green Belt
13 3 (0.55%) APMP
13 3 (0.55%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 101 (18.63%) PMO
2 25 (4.61%) QA
3 17 (3.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 14 (2.58%) Data Quality
5 13 (2.40%) GDPR
6 10 (1.85%) GRC
7 8 (1.48%) NIST
8 6 (1.11%) HIPAA
8 6 (1.11%) PCI DSS
9 5 (0.92%) NCSC
9 5 (0.92%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 4 (0.74%) MiFID
10 4 (0.74%) P3O
11 3 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials
11 3 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 3 (0.55%) EMIR
11 3 (0.55%) ISO 9001
11 3 (0.55%) SLA
11 3 (0.55%) SOC 2
System Software
1 6 (1.11%) Active Directory
2 2 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
2 2 (0.37%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (0.18%) Docker
3 1 (0.18%) ISA Server
3 1 (0.18%) VMware NSX
3 1 (0.18%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 6 (1.11%) Ansible
2 3 (0.55%) Microsoft Intune
3 2 (0.37%) Kubernetes
4 1 (0.18%) Control-M
4 1 (0.18%) MOM
4 1 (0.18%) SCCM
4 1 (0.18%) Single Sign-On
4 1 (0.18%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
Vendors
1 79 (14.58%) Microsoft
2 49 (9.04%) SAP
3 21 (3.87%) Oracle
4 19 (3.51%) ServiceNow
5 13 (2.40%) Google
6 11 (2.03%) Salesforce
7 8 (1.48%) Atlassian
8 6 (1.11%) Databricks
9 5 (0.92%) IBM
9 5 (0.92%) Palantir
9 5 (0.92%) Zscaler
10 3 (0.55%) Ariba
10 3 (0.55%) Bloomberg
10 3 (0.55%) Charles River
10 3 (0.55%) Workday
11 2 (0.37%) CA Agile Central
11 2 (0.37%) FIS
11 2 (0.37%) SimCorp
11 2 (0.37%) VMware
11 2 (0.37%) Wrike