Python Contract Job Trends

Python
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Python skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 14 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 11 15
Rank change year-on-year +1 +4 -2
Contract jobs citing Python 5,206 3,842 3,964
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.94% 13.26% 9.27%
As % of the Programming Languages category 40.75% 38.95% 31.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,469 2,692 2,834
10th Percentile £363 £384 £388
25th Percentile £425 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £550 £560
Median % change year-on-year -5.45% -1.79% -6.67%
75th Percentile £625 £675 £688
90th Percentile £738 £813 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £489 £500 £511
% change year-on-year -2.25% -2.06% -7.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 130 51 96
10th Percentile £30.44 £21.25 £21.49
25th Percentile £46.25 £26.41 £38.00
Median hourly rate £55.00 £39.32 £61.25
Median % change year-on-year +39.88% -35.80% -4.85%
75th Percentile £72.43 £56.25 £71.41
90th Percentile £85.10 £71.25 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £45.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +16.67% -30.77% +13.04%

All Programming Languages
UK

Python falls under the Programming Languages category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring coding skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for coding skills 12,774 9,864 12,664
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.86% 34.04% 29.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,409 6,705 9,004
10th Percentile £352 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £414 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £530
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -1.89% -3.64%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £713 £763 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £478 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +0.63% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 559 238 486
10th Percentile £41.25 £25.07 £33.63
25th Percentile £54.55 £35.00 £46.48
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% - +1.07%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.38 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £78.96
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £64.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +0.78% +3.20% -

Python
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Python job vacancy trend in the UK

Python
Daily Rate Trend

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

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Python

Python
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Python over the 6 months to 14 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Python in the UK

Python
Hourly Rate Trend

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

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Python

Python
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Python over the 6 months to 14 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Python in the UK

Python
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 Python within the UK over the 6 months to 14 May 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 -2 4,335 £525 -4.55% 2,782
London -3 2,461 £550 -8.33% 1,274
UK excluding London -1 2,017 £489 -2.25% 1,959
Work from Home -2 1,483 £525 -4.55% 1,102
North of England +10 692 £480 -1.79% 506
South East -3 406 £513 -0.39% 596
Yorkshire 0 387 £475 -5.00% 140
Scotland +2 288 £430 -9.47% 112
Midlands -11 250 £499 +10.89% 233
North West +3 249 £500 +4.17% 276
South West 0 249 £500 -9.09% 236
West Midlands -9 193 £500 - 109
East of England -6 126 £500 - 202
North East +8 65 £475 +5.56% 94
East Midlands -12 56 £497 +17.51% 124
Northern Ireland +14 23 £463 -18.68% 41
Wales -14 22 £463 -7.50% 56

Python
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
1 281 (5.40%) Apache Spark
2 207 (3.98%) Apache Airflow
3 168 (3.23%) Apache
4 137 (2.63%) Confluence
5 50 (0.96%) SAS
6 45 (0.86%) SharePoint
7 35 (0.67%) Jupyter
8 23 (0.44%) OpenStack
9 20 (0.38%) nginx
10 17 (0.33%) Microsoft Exchange
11 15 (0.29%) ArcGIS
11 15 (0.29%) Palantir Foundry
12 11 (0.21%) Appian
13 10 (0.19%) IIS
14 8 (0.15%) Apache Superset
14 8 (0.15%) CMS
15 7 (0.13%) Camunda
16 6 (0.12%) WebSphere
17 5 (0.096%) CICS
17 5 (0.096%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 124 (2.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 24 (0.46%) Chatbot
2 24 (0.46%) Microsoft Office
3 20 (0.38%) Spreadsheet
4 19 (0.36%) MS Visio
5 18 (0.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 7 (0.13%) CPLEX
7 4 (0.077%) Microsoft Project
8 3 (0.058%) LaTeX
9 1 (0.019%) OrCAD
9 1 (0.019%) SPSS
9 1 (0.019%) Weka
9 1 (0.019%) Zemax
Business Applications
1 23 (0.44%) Aladdin
2 15 (0.29%) SAP S/4HANA
3 9 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
4 7 (0.13%) Fidessa
4 7 (0.13%) SAP IBP
5 6 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
6 5 (0.096%) BambooHR
7 4 (0.077%) Bloomberg AIM
8 3 (0.058%) Dynamics CRM
9 2 (0.038%) Actimize
9 2 (0.038%) Global One
9 2 (0.038%) IntelliMatch
9 2 (0.038%) NEC Housing
9 2 (0.038%) NetSuite
9 2 (0.038%) Odoo
9 2 (0.038%) Oracle Applications
9 2 (0.038%) Oracle Assets
9 2 (0.038%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.038%) Payment Gateway
9 2 (0.038%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 1,954 (37.53%) AWS
2 1,755 (33.71%) Azure
3 750 (14.41%) GCP
4 635 (12.20%) GitHub
5 516 (9.91%) Power Platform
6 457 (8.78%) Serverless
7 374 (7.18%) Azure DevOps
8 363 (6.97%) Amazon S3
9 337 (6.47%) GitHub Actions
10 325 (6.24%) AWS Lambda
11 263 (5.05%) Azure Data Factory
12 235 (4.51%) Snowflake
13 199 (3.82%) AWS CloudFormation
14 171 (3.28%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 163 (3.13%) OpenShift
16 160 (3.07%) dbt
17 156 (3.00%) Amazon EKS
18 137 (2.63%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 128 (2.46%) Amazon ECS
20 122 (2.34%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 185 (3.55%) Firewall
2 131 (2.52%) DNS
3 110 (2.11%) Network Security
4 91 (1.75%) TCP/IP
5 84 (1.61%) BGP
6 79 (1.52%) WAN
7 76 (1.46%) VPN
8 58 (1.11%) HTTP
9 57 (1.09%) OSPF
10 46 (0.88%) SAN
11 39 (0.75%) SNMP
11 39 (0.75%) VXLAN
12 38 (0.73%) BIG-IP
12 38 (0.73%) SD-WAN
13 33 (0.63%) DHCP
13 33 (0.63%) LAN
13 33 (0.63%) MPLS
14 32 (0.61%) SSL
14 32 (0.61%) Wireshark
15 31 (0.60%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 452 (8.68%) Power BI
2 339 (6.51%) PostgreSQL
3 281 (5.40%) Data Warehouse
4 241 (4.63%) SQL Server
5 234 (4.49%) Data Lake
6 198 (3.80%) Tableau
7 186 (3.57%) Relational Database
8 170 (3.27%) NoSQL
9 164 (3.15%) Big Data
10 158 (3.03%) Metadata
11 138 (2.65%) Delta Lake
12 133 (2.55%) BigQuery
13 120 (2.31%) Amazon Athena
14 113 (2.17%) Amazon Redshift
15 106 (2.04%) MongoDB
16 90 (1.73%) MySQL
17 89 (1.71%) DynamoDB
18 86 (1.65%) Amazon RDS
19 85 (1.63%) Azure SQL Database
20 78 (1.50%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 644 (12.37%) Git
2 470 (9.03%) Jenkins
3 359 (6.90%) GitLab
4 246 (4.73%) JIRA
5 92 (1.77%) MLflow
6 70 (1.34%) Selenium
7 58 (1.11%) Postman
8 36 (0.69%) Cucumber
9 32 (0.61%) Artifactory
10 30 (0.58%) JMeter
11 28 (0.54%) SonarQube
12 27 (0.52%) Bitbucket
12 27 (0.52%) Sonatype Nexus
13 25 (0.48%) Cypress.io
13 25 (0.48%) JUnit
14 23 (0.44%) Robot Framework
15 22 (0.42%) Maven
16 20 (0.38%) REST Assured
17 19 (0.36%) SpecFlow
18 18 (0.35%) Gatling
General
1 1,135 (21.80%) Social Skills
2 1,008 (19.36%) Finance
3 698 (13.41%) Analytical Skills
4 469 (9.01%) Public Sector
5 366 (7.03%) Banking
6 182 (3.50%) Front Office
7 131 (2.52%) Documentation Skills
8 105 (2.02%) Investment Banking
9 76 (1.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 67 (1.29%) Marketing
11 59 (1.13%) Retail
12 54 (1.04%) Telecoms
13 51 (0.98%) Pharmaceutical
14 50 (0.96%) Legal
15 46 (0.88%) Influencing Skills
16 37 (0.71%) Financial Institution
17 34 (0.65%) Manufacturing
18 33 (0.63%) Military
18 33 (0.63%) Publishing
19 30 (0.58%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 978 (18.79%) Developer
2 794 (15.25%) Data Engineer
3 751 (14.43%) Senior
4 487 (9.35%) Python Developer
5 336 (6.45%) Architect
6 331 (6.36%) Lead
7 307 (5.90%) Python Engineer
8 283 (5.44%) Analyst
9 270 (5.19%) DevOps Engineer
10 254 (4.88%) Software Engineer
11 219 (4.21%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
12 218 (4.19%) AWS Engineer
13 207 (3.98%) Data Scientist
14 167 (3.21%) Azure Engineer
15 161 (3.09%) Senior Developer
16 160 (3.07%) Senior Data Engineer
17 154 (2.96%) Platform Engineer
18 147 (2.82%) Data Analyst
19 142 (2.73%) Full-Stack Developer
20 128 (2.46%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 384 (7.38%) REST
2 361 (6.93%) React
3 353 (6.78%) PySpark
4 326 (6.26%) Kafka
5 237 (4.55%) .NET
6 228 (4.38%) Node.js
7 213 (4.09%) Pandas
8 185 (3.55%) FastAPI
9 183 (3.52%) RESTful
10 181 (3.48%) PyTorch
11 163 (3.13%) JSON
12 131 (2.52%) Django
13 129 (2.48%) NumPy
14 127 (2.44%) Flask
14 127 (2.44%) TensorFlow
15 120 (2.31%) scikit-learn
16 116 (2.23%) LangChain
17 114 (2.19%) AngularJS
18 108 (2.07%) LDAP
19 100 (1.92%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 534 (10.26%) Cloud Native
2 226 (4.34%) Distributed Systems
3 156 (3.00%) Algorithms
4 131 (2.52%) Product Ownership
5 121 (2.32%) AI Agents
5 121 (2.32%) Data Protection Act
6 119 (2.29%) Data Centre
7 118 (2.27%) Onboarding
8 116 (2.23%) Data Structures
9 112 (2.15%) Derivative
10 103 (1.98%) Fixed Income
11 102 (1.96%) Equities
12 101 (1.94%) Management Information System
13 96 (1.84%) Legacy Systems
14 91 (1.75%) Enterprise Software
15 90 (1.73%) Hybrid Cloud
16 84 (1.61%) Security Posture
17 69 (1.33%) Public Cloud
18 46 (0.88%) Greenfield Project
18 46 (0.88%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 634 (12.18%) Linux
2 297 (5.70%) Windows
3 217 (4.17%) Unix
4 97 (1.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 65 (1.25%) Windows Server
6 37 (0.71%) Ubuntu
7 35 (0.67%) VMS
8 26 (0.50%) AIX
9 24 (0.46%) Android
10 23 (0.44%) Solaris
11 20 (0.38%) CentOS
11 20 (0.38%) Mac OS
12 18 (0.35%) Apple iOS
13 10 (0.19%) Debian
13 10 (0.19%) zOS
14 8 (0.15%) Embedded Linux
15 7 (0.13%) Rocky
16 6 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
17 5 (0.096%) Amazon Linux
18 4 (0.077%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,910 (36.69%) CI/CD
2 1,386 (26.62%) DevOps
3 1,165 (22.38%) AI
4 1,111 (21.34%) Agile
5 1,030 (19.78%) Analytics
6 938 (18.02%) Problem-Solving
7 901 (17.31%) Infrastructure as Code
8 872 (16.75%) Data Pipeline
9 794 (15.25%) Machine Learning
10 710 (13.64%) Data Modelling
11 705 (13.54%) Containerisation
12 697 (13.39%) Data Engineering
13 689 (13.23%) ETL
14 602 (11.56%) Software Engineering
15 570 (10.95%) Data Science
16 540 (10.37%) Observability
17 521 (10.01%) Business Intelligence
18 519 (9.97%) Test Automation
19 442 (8.49%) LLM
20 415 (7.97%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 1,725 (33.13%) SQL
2 745 (14.31%) Java
3 648 (12.45%) PowerShell
4 569 (10.93%) Bash
5 474 (9.10%) JavaScript
6 352 (6.76%) C#
7 349 (6.70%) TypeScript
8 200 (3.84%) Go
9 174 (3.34%) R
10 156 (3.00%) C++
11 140 (2.69%) Scala
12 107 (2.06%) Shell Script
13 82 (1.58%) Ruby
14 77 (1.48%) Perl
15 76 (1.46%) Bicep
16 57 (1.09%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 57 (1.09%) T-SQL
17 55 (1.06%) PL/SQL
18 53 (1.02%) C
19 49 (0.94%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,196 (22.97%) Security Cleared
2 967 (18.57%) SC Cleared
3 372 (7.15%) Degree
4 165 (3.17%) Computer Science Degree
5 141 (2.71%) DV Cleared
6 130 (2.50%) BPSS Clearance
7 104 (2.00%) Azure Certification
8 92 (1.77%) AWS Certification
9 86 (1.65%) CISSP
10 80 (1.54%) Master's Degree
11 70 (1.34%) Cisco Certification
12 58 (1.11%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 49 (0.94%) CCNP
14 44 (0.85%) CISM
15 37 (0.71%) PhD
16 31 (0.60%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 30 (0.58%) Microsoft Certification
18 28 (0.54%) ISTQB
19 21 (0.40%) CCIE
19 21 (0.40%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 513 (9.85%) Data Quality
2 232 (4.46%) QA
3 156 (3.00%) GDPR
4 104 (2.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 101 (1.94%) NIST
6 76 (1.46%) Accessibility
7 35 (0.67%) SLA
8 29 (0.56%) PCI DSS
9 28 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 24 (0.46%) HIPAA
11 20 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
12 18 (0.35%) WCAG
13 17 (0.33%) NCSC
14 12 (0.23%) ISO 20022
14 12 (0.23%) SOC 2
15 11 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials
16 9 (0.17%) GRC
17 8 (0.15%) California Consumer Privacy Act
17 8 (0.15%) MiFID
18 7 (0.13%) PMO
System Software
1 782 (15.02%) Docker
2 155 (2.98%) Active Directory
3 97 (1.86%) VMware Infrastructure
4 71 (1.36%) Virtual Machines
5 39 (0.75%) VMware NSX
6 35 (0.67%) vSphere
7 34 (0.65%) Firmware
8 33 (0.63%) Hyper-V
9 17 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
10 14 (0.27%) KVM
11 13 (0.25%) HDFS
12 11 (0.21%) Squid
13 10 (0.19%) NFS
14 9 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
14 9 (0.17%) SRDF
15 8 (0.15%) Ceph
16 7 (0.13%) Postfix
16 7 (0.13%) Virtual Desktop
17 4 (0.077%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
18 3 (0.058%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 1,067 (20.50%) Terraform
2 929 (17.84%) Kubernetes
3 534 (10.26%) Ansible
4 336 (6.45%) Grafana
5 273 (5.24%) Prometheus
6 73 (1.40%) Puppet
7 60 (1.15%) Argo
8 52 (1.00%) Istio
9 48 (0.92%) vRealize
10 40 (0.77%) Kibana
11 34 (0.65%) Progress Chef
12 31 (0.60%) vCenter Server
13 27 (0.52%) Nagios
13 27 (0.52%) Nessus
14 24 (0.46%) Control-M
14 24 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
14 24 (0.46%) ZABBIX
15 20 (0.38%) NetBackup
16 19 (0.36%) Rancher
16 19 (0.36%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 588 (11.29%) Microsoft
2 565 (10.85%) Databricks
3 263 (5.05%) Google
4 230 (4.42%) Oracle
5 223 (4.28%) Splunk
6 180 (3.46%) VMware
7 118 (2.27%) Red Hat
8 117 (2.25%) OpenAI
9 115 (2.21%) Cisco
10 93 (1.79%) ServiceNow
11 88 (1.69%) CyberArk
12 80 (1.54%) BeyondTrust
13 72 (1.38%) Dynatrace
14 69 (1.33%) IBM
15 66 (1.27%) F5
15 66 (1.27%) Palo Alto
16 65 (1.25%) Informatica
17 58 (1.11%) Foundry
18 50 (0.96%) SAP
19 42 (0.81%) Arista