Project Management Contract Job Trends

Project Management
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Project Management skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 15 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 38 20 20
Rank change year-on-year -18 0 +4
Contract jobs citing Project Management 1,986 2,652 3,435
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.35% 8.33% 8.14%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.09% 9.38% 9.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,241 1,467 2,210
10th Percentile £313 £275 £320
25th Percentile £413 £410 £418
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £519 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.66% -1.14% -
75th Percentile £606 £613 £626
90th Percentile £700 £725 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
Number of hourly rates quoted 104 118 159
10th Percentile £17.00 £21.25 £20.07
25th Percentile £22.50 £26.56 £26.25
Median hourly rate £42.00 £33.27 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +26.24% -21.72% +7.46%
75th Percentile £63.75 £52.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £65.22 £65.30 £70.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.46 £33.54 £43.75
% change year-on-year +35.54% -23.34% -8.85%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

Project 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 32,585 28,260 37,041
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.84% 88.76% 87.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,582 17,185 24,531
10th Percentile £304 £306 £304
25th Percentile £406 £413 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £638 £650
90th Percentile £723 £742 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,992 898 1,578
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.62 £14.17
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.56 £18.04
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -19.75% +15.71%
75th Percentile £55.89 £62.24 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.75 £75.00 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £30.45 £43.33
% change year-on-year -21.76% -29.73% +46.88%

Project Management
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Project Management job vacancy trend in the UK

Project Management
Daily Rate Trend

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

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

Project Management
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Project Management over the 6 months to 15 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Project Management in the UK

Project Management
Hourly Rate Trend

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

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

Project Management
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Project Management over the 6 months to 15 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Project Management in the UK

Project 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 Project Management within the UK over the 6 months to 15 January 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 -19 1,715 £520 -0.95% 1,322
UK excluding London -16 1,016 £500 - 1,245
London -16 794 £525 -4.55% 297
Work from Home -12 577 £510 +1.95% 541
South East -11 263 £525 - 387
North of England -20 260 £488 +6.85% 217
Midlands -20 201 £489 -6.90% 212
North West -12 143 £492 +9.33% 110
West Midlands -19 136 £492 -10.55% 126
Yorkshire -16 108 £484 +7.50% 79
South West -27 107 £450 -6.49% 148
Scotland -9 99 £450 +5.88% 62
East Midlands -11 67 £456 +14.06% 86
East of England -35 56 £450 -10.00% 186
Wales -2 29 £308 -42.79% 44
Northern Ireland -4 19 £388 -18.42% 31
North East -26 11 £450 -21.74% 35

Project 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
1 165 (8.31%) Confluence
2 111 (5.59%) SharePoint
3 21 (1.06%) CMS
4 13 (0.65%) Microsoft Exchange
5 8 (0.40%) Skype for Business
6 7 (0.35%) Exchange Server 2013
7 6 (0.30%) WordPress
8 5 (0.25%) nginx
8 5 (0.25%) Oracle Workflow
9 4 (0.20%) Apache
10 2 (0.10%) MS Project Server
11 1 (0.050%) Anypoint
11 1 (0.050%) Apache Airflow
11 1 (0.050%) Apache Spark
11 1 (0.050%) Moodle
11 1 (0.050%) Oracle Self-Service HR
11 1 (0.050%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 1 (0.050%) Orchard CMS
11 1 (0.050%) Umbraco
11 1 (0.050%) WebSphere
Applications
1 217 (10.93%) Microsoft Excel
2 202 (10.17%) Microsoft Project
3 167 (8.41%) Microsoft Office
4 128 (6.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 66 (3.32%) MS Visio
6 25 (1.26%) Trello
7 15 (0.76%) Spreadsheet
8 5 (0.25%) Chatbot
9 4 (0.20%) Adobe After Effects
9 4 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 4 (0.20%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.20%) Revit
10 3 (0.15%) InVision
10 3 (0.15%) Navisworks
10 3 (0.15%) Sketch
11 2 (0.10%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.10%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.10%) InDesign
11 2 (0.10%) Photoshop
11 2 (0.10%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 54 (2.72%) SAP S/4HANA
2 15 (0.76%) Primavera
3 14 (0.70%) Oracle EBS
3 14 (0.70%) Oracle ERP
4 12 (0.60%) Oracle Payables
5 11 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
6 10 (0.50%) Salesforce CRM
7 8 (0.40%) Loan IQ
7 8 (0.40%) SAP Payroll
7 8 (0.40%) Shopify
8 7 (0.35%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
8 7 (0.35%) SAP PM
9 6 (0.30%) NetSuite
9 6 (0.30%) Oracle Assets
9 6 (0.30%) Oracle Financials
9 6 (0.30%) SAP ERP
10 5 (0.25%) SAP CO
10 5 (0.25%) SAP FI
10 5 (0.25%) Workday HCM
10 5 (0.25%) Workfront
Cloud Services
1 171 (8.61%) Azure
2 109 (5.49%) Power Platform
3 99 (4.98%) AWS
4 70 (3.52%) Microsoft 365
5 46 (2.32%) Azure DevOps
6 44 (2.22%) SaaS
7 29 (1.46%) GCP
8 24 (1.21%) Asana
9 22 (1.11%) Smartsheet
10 20 (1.01%) Dynamics 365
11 17 (0.86%) GitHub
11 17 (0.86%) OpenShift
11 17 (0.86%) SuccessFactors
12 16 (0.81%) Google Workspace
13 15 (0.76%) OneDrive
14 14 (0.70%) Cloud Computing
15 11 (0.55%) Microsoft Copilot
16 10 (0.50%) Entra ID
16 10 (0.50%) Serverless
17 9 (0.45%) Figma
Communications & Networking
1 41 (2.06%) Firewall
2 24 (1.21%) WAN
3 17 (0.86%) LAN
4 16 (0.81%) DNS
5 15 (0.76%) SSH
6 14 (0.70%) Network Security
7 13 (0.65%) Structured Cabling
7 13 (0.65%) Wi-Fi
8 12 (0.60%) SD-WAN
9 10 (0.50%) HTTP
10 9 (0.45%) Skype
10 9 (0.45%) VPN
11 8 (0.40%) Internet
11 8 (0.40%) TCP/IP
12 6 (0.30%) Broadband
12 6 (0.30%) DHCP
12 6 (0.30%) SSL
13 5 (0.25%) BGP
13 5 (0.25%) VXLAN
13 5 (0.25%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 99 (4.98%) Power BI
2 30 (1.51%) Tableau
3 25 (1.26%) SQL Server
4 19 (0.96%) Metadata
5 18 (0.91%) Data Warehouse
6 12 (0.60%) SAP HANA
7 10 (0.50%) Data Lake
8 6 (0.30%) Elasticsearch
8 6 (0.30%) Electronic Patient Records
8 6 (0.30%) Oracle Reports
8 6 (0.30%) Relational Database
9 5 (0.25%) Amazon RDS
9 5 (0.25%) Power Query
10 4 (0.20%) Azure SQL Database
10 4 (0.20%) BigQuery
10 4 (0.20%) GIS
11 3 (0.15%) Big Data
11 3 (0.15%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
11 3 (0.15%) Oracle Database
11 3 (0.15%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 322 (16.21%) JIRA
2 21 (1.06%) Git
3 10 (0.50%) Jenkins
4 8 (0.40%) GitLab
5 4 (0.20%) Selenium
5 4 (0.20%) SpecFlow
6 3 (0.15%) Axure RP
6 3 (0.15%) Bitbucket
6 3 (0.15%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.050%) Ant
7 1 (0.050%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 1 (0.050%) CircleCI
7 1 (0.050%) JUnit
7 1 (0.050%) Oracle Forms
7 1 (0.050%) SoapUI
7 1 (0.050%) TestDirector
7 1 (0.050%) Toad
7 1 (0.050%) Travis CI
7 1 (0.050%) Tricentis qTest
7 1 (0.050%) Visual Studio
General
1 970 (48.84%) Social Skills
2 711 (35.80%) Finance
3 338 (17.02%) Analytical Skills
4 205 (10.32%) Public Sector
5 178 (8.96%) Banking
6 177 (8.91%) Organisational Skills
7 91 (4.58%) Retail
8 89 (4.48%) Legal
9 86 (4.33%) Marketing
10 81 (4.08%) Manufacturing
11 73 (3.68%) Influencing Skills
12 52 (2.62%) Telecoms
13 45 (2.27%) Investment Banking
14 44 (2.22%) Presentation Skills
15 42 (2.11%) Local Government
16 35 (1.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 31 (1.56%) Front Office
18 27 (1.36%) Documentation Skills
19 26 (1.31%) Financial Institution
20 25 (1.26%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 736 (37.06%) Project Manager
2 252 (12.69%) Analyst
3 168 (8.46%) Lead
4 153 (7.70%) Senior
5 132 (6.65%) Business Analyst
6 103 (5.19%) IT Manager
7 97 (4.88%) Senior Manager
8 91 (4.58%) IT Project Manager
9 85 (4.28%) Consultant
10 77 (3.88%) Senior Project Manager
11 61 (3.07%) Technical Manager
12 55 (2.77%) Delivery Manager
13 53 (2.67%) Infrastructure Manager
14 49 (2.47%) Programme Manager
15 47 (2.37%) Coordinator
16 44 (2.22%) Infrastructure Project Manager
16 44 (2.22%) SAP Manager
17 42 (2.11%) Developer
17 42 (2.11%) Technical Project Manager
18 38 (1.91%) Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (1.21%) Oracle Fusion
2 18 (0.91%) Middleware
3 14 (0.70%) REST
4 13 (0.65%) .NET
4 13 (0.65%) SOAP
5 12 (0.60%) EDI
6 10 (0.50%) ADO
6 10 (0.50%) HTML
6 10 (0.50%) XML
7 9 (0.45%) AngularJS
8 8 (0.40%) React
8 8 (0.40%) Web Services
9 7 (0.35%) LDAP
9 7 (0.35%) RESTful
10 6 (0.30%) CSS
10 6 (0.30%) Elastic Stack
10 6 (0.30%) LangChain
11 5 (0.25%) .NET Framework
11 5 (0.25%) Entity Framework
12 4 (0.20%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 115 (5.79%) Onboarding
2 112 (5.64%) Management Information System
3 65 (3.27%) PMI
4 60 (3.02%) Data Centre
5 59 (2.97%) Data Protection Act
6 54 (2.72%) Product Ownership
7 49 (2.47%) Virtual Team
8 48 (2.42%) Self-Motivation
9 38 (1.91%) Legacy Systems
10 26 (1.31%) Enterprise Software
10 26 (1.31%) NHS
11 24 (1.21%) Analytical Mindset
12 20 (1.01%) CMDB
13 19 (0.96%) Operational Technology
14 16 (0.81%) SCADA
14 16 (0.81%) Social Media
15 14 (0.70%) Life Science
16 13 (0.65%) Cloud Native
16 13 (0.65%) Public Cloud
17 12 (0.60%) Web Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 75 (3.78%) Windows
2 15 (0.76%) Linux
3 14 (0.70%) Unix
3 14 (0.70%) Windows Server
4 12 (0.60%) Windows 10
5 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2019
6 2 (0.10%) AIX
6 2 (0.10%) Apple iOS
6 2 (0.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.10%) Windows Server 2016
7 1 (0.050%) Android
7 1 (0.050%) Solaris
7 1 (0.050%) VMS
7 1 (0.050%) Windows Server 2012
7 1 (0.050%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 748 (37.66%) Agile
2 642 (32.33%) Stakeholder Management
3 489 (24.62%) Problem-Solving
4 481 (24.22%) Project Delivery
5 414 (20.85%) PRINCE2
6 357 (17.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 331 (16.67%) Change Management
8 269 (13.54%) Migration
9 248 (12.49%) Continuous Improvement
10 230 (11.58%) Waterfall
11 213 (10.73%) Decision-Making
12 210 (10.57%) Risk Management
13 184 (9.26%) Scrum
14 167 (8.41%) Budget Management
15 162 (8.16%) ITIL
16 155 (7.80%) Project Governance
17 152 (7.65%) DevOps
18 149 (7.50%) ERP
19 137 (6.90%) Cybersecurity
20 136 (6.85%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 88 (4.43%) SQL
2 43 (2.17%) Python
3 17 (0.86%) Java
4 15 (0.76%) JavaScript
5 12 (0.60%) C#
6 10 (0.50%) ABAP
7 8 (0.40%) PowerShell
8 6 (0.30%) Perl
9 5 (0.25%) PL/SQL
9 5 (0.25%) VBA
10 4 (0.20%) C++
10 4 (0.20%) Go
10 4 (0.20%) R
10 4 (0.20%) Ruby
10 4 (0.20%) T-SQL
11 3 (0.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 3 (0.15%) Korn
11 3 (0.15%) VB
12 2 (0.10%) Kusto Query Language
12 2 (0.10%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 363 (18.28%) Degree
2 271 (13.65%) PMP
3 264 (13.29%) PMI Certification
4 261 (13.14%) Security Cleared
5 187 (9.42%) SC Cleared
6 57 (2.87%) DV Cleared
7 45 (2.27%) Master's Degree
8 40 (2.01%) APMP
9 39 (1.96%) BPSS Clearance
10 31 (1.56%) Computer Science Degree
11 28 (1.41%) PRINCE2 Certification
12 27 (1.36%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
13 21 (1.06%) CISSP
14 20 (1.01%) MBA
15 19 (0.96%) CISM
16 12 (0.60%) CBAP
17 10 (0.50%) A+ Certification
17 10 (0.50%) IIBA
17 10 (0.50%) ITIL Certification
18 9 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 223 (11.23%) PMO
2 121 (6.09%) QA
3 59 (2.97%) GDPR
4 58 (2.92%) Data Quality
5 48 (2.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 29 (1.46%) NIST
7 23 (1.16%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 16 (0.81%) PCI DSS
9 15 (0.76%) Accessibility
9 15 (0.76%) GRC
10 13 (0.65%) P3O
11 12 (0.60%) Disclosure Scotland
12 11 (0.55%) SLA
13 9 (0.45%) Basel III
14 7 (0.35%) GxP
14 7 (0.35%) ISO 19650
14 7 (0.35%) ISO 9001
14 7 (0.35%) WCAG
15 5 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
15 5 (0.25%) MiFID
System Software
1 40 (2.01%) Active Directory
2 14 (0.70%) Docker
3 11 (0.55%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (0.15%) Virtual Desktop
5 3 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.10%) Firmware
7 1 (0.050%) Embedded Firmware
7 1 (0.050%) PowerHA
7 1 (0.050%) RACF
7 1 (0.050%) VMware NSX
7 1 (0.050%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 16 (0.81%) Kubernetes
2 14 (0.70%) Terraform
3 13 (0.65%) SCCM
4 11 (0.55%) Ansible
5 9 (0.45%) Microsoft Intune
5 9 (0.45%) Single Sign-On
6 6 (0.30%) Kibana
7 5 (0.25%) logstash
8 4 (0.20%) Consul
8 4 (0.20%) FortiGate
8 4 (0.20%) Packer
9 3 (0.15%) Grafana
9 3 (0.15%) Puppet
9 3 (0.15%) RSA Archer
10 1 (0.050%) Cisco UCCE
10 1 (0.050%) Cisco UCCX
10 1 (0.050%) SCOM
10 1 (0.050%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
10 1 (0.050%) Tivoli Storage Manager
10 1 (0.050%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 315 (15.86%) Microsoft
2 174 (8.76%) SAP
3 87 (4.38%) ServiceNow
4 83 (4.18%) Oracle
5 65 (3.27%) Salesforce
6 38 (1.91%) Google
7 30 (1.51%) Cisco
8 26 (1.31%) Adobe
9 25 (1.26%) Workday
10 21 (1.06%) Atlassian
10 21 (1.06%) Planview
11 18 (0.91%) Databricks
11 18 (0.91%) IBM
11 18 (0.91%) VMware
12 12 (0.60%) Ariba
12 12 (0.60%) CyberArk
12 12 (0.60%) Palo Alto
13 9 (0.45%) Juniper
14 8 (0.40%) CheckPoint
14 8 (0.40%) Sage