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 15 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 11 15
Rank change year-on-year +1 +4 -2
Contract jobs citing Python 5,205 3,853 3,983
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.91% 13.26% 9.33%
As % of the Programming Languages category 40.66% 38.91% 31.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,460 2,697 2,845
10th Percentile £363 £384 £395
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% -2.15% -7.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 130 53 98
10th Percentile £30.44 £21.40 £21.11
25th Percentile £46.25 £26.50 £31.25
Median hourly rate £55.00 £40.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +37.50% -33.33% -6.80%
75th Percentile £72.43 £57.50 £70.94
90th Percentile £85.10 £75.00 £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 12,802 9,902 12,679
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.84% 34.07% 29.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,423 6,727 9,008
10th Percentile £355 £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 £711 £763 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +1.05% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 555 242 489
10th Percentile £41.25 £24.72 £32.25
25th Percentile £54.55 £35.00 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% - -
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.69 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £78.83
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £64.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +1.56% +2.40% -

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 4,337 £525 -4.55% 3,295
London -3 2,470 £550 -8.33% 1,334
UK excluding London -1 2,012 £489 -2.25% 2,564
Work from Home -2 1,476 £525 -4.55% 2,110
North of England +10 692 £481 -1.53% 691
South East -2 405 £513 -0.39% 701
Yorkshire 0 389 £475 -5.00% 234
Scotland +2 287 £430 -9.85% 194
South West +1 254 £500 -9.09% 282
North West +2 247 £500 +4.17% 336
Midlands -10 242 £495 +10.00% 333
West Midlands -11 186 £495 -1.00% 153
East of England -8 126 £500 - 237
North East +5 65 £475 +5.56% 124
East Midlands -12 55 £495 +17.16% 180
Northern Ireland +12 23 £463 -18.68% 55
Wales -10 22 £463 -7.50% 92

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
1 284 (5.46%) Apache Spark
2 207 (3.98%) Apache Airflow
3 169 (3.25%) Apache
4 138 (2.65%) Confluence
5 49 (0.94%) SAS
6 44 (0.85%) SharePoint
7 36 (0.69%) Jupyter
8 23 (0.44%) OpenStack
9 20 (0.38%) nginx
10 17 (0.33%) Microsoft Exchange
11 16 (0.31%) ArcGIS
12 15 (0.29%) Palantir Foundry
13 11 (0.21%) Appian
14 10 (0.19%) IIS
15 8 (0.15%) Apache Superset
15 8 (0.15%) CMS
16 7 (0.13%) Camunda
17 6 (0.12%) WebSphere
18 5 (0.096%) CICS
18 5 (0.096%) Tomcat
Applications
1 124 (2.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 25 (0.48%) Chatbot
3 24 (0.46%) Microsoft Office
4 20 (0.38%) Spreadsheet
5 19 (0.37%) MS Visio
6 18 (0.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 7 (0.13%) CPLEX
8 4 (0.077%) Microsoft Project
9 3 (0.058%) LaTeX
10 1 (0.019%) OrCAD
10 1 (0.019%) SPSS
10 1 (0.019%) Weka
10 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%) Remedy ITSM
4 7 (0.13%) SAP IBP
5 5 (0.096%) BambooHR
6 4 (0.077%) Bloomberg AIM
7 3 (0.058%) Dynamics CRM
7 3 (0.058%) Teamcenter
8 2 (0.038%) Actimize
8 2 (0.038%) Front Arena
8 2 (0.038%) Global One
8 2 (0.038%) IntelliMatch
8 2 (0.038%) NetSuite
8 2 (0.038%) Oracle Applications
8 2 (0.038%) Oracle Assets
8 2 (0.038%) Oracle ERP
8 2 (0.038%) Payment Gateway
8 2 (0.038%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 1,958 (37.62%) AWS
2 1,750 (33.62%) Azure
3 754 (14.49%) GCP
4 636 (12.22%) GitHub
5 516 (9.91%) Power Platform
6 457 (8.78%) Serverless
7 373 (7.17%) Azure DevOps
8 361 (6.94%) Amazon S3
9 336 (6.46%) GitHub Actions
10 324 (6.22%) AWS Lambda
11 261 (5.01%) Azure Data Factory
12 235 (4.51%) Snowflake
13 200 (3.84%) AWS CloudFormation
14 168 (3.23%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 163 (3.13%) OpenShift
16 158 (3.04%) Amazon EKS
16 158 (3.04%) dbt
17 136 (2.61%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 127 (2.44%) Amazon ECS
19 123 (2.36%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 185 (3.55%) Firewall
2 134 (2.57%) 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 (1.10%) OSPF
10 47 (0.90%) SAN
11 39 (0.75%) SNMP
11 39 (0.75%) VXLAN
12 38 (0.73%) BIG-IP
12 38 (0.73%) SD-WAN
13 35 (0.67%) DHCP
14 33 (0.63%) LAN
14 33 (0.63%) MPLS
15 32 (0.61%) SSL
15 32 (0.61%) VLAN
15 32 (0.61%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 452 (8.68%) Power BI
2 339 (6.51%) PostgreSQL
3 278 (5.34%) Data Warehouse
4 246 (4.73%) SQL Server
5 233 (4.48%) Data Lake
6 200 (3.84%) Tableau
7 186 (3.57%) Relational Database
8 174 (3.34%) NoSQL
9 164 (3.15%) Big Data
10 156 (3.00%) Metadata
11 138 (2.65%) Delta Lake
12 136 (2.61%) BigQuery
13 121 (2.32%) Amazon Athena
14 112 (2.15%) Amazon Redshift
15 106 (2.04%) MongoDB
16 90 (1.73%) MySQL
17 88 (1.69%) DynamoDB
18 86 (1.65%) Amazon RDS
19 83 (1.59%) Azure SQL Database
20 78 (1.50%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 645 (12.39%) Git
2 472 (9.07%) Jenkins
3 357 (6.86%) GitLab
4 248 (4.76%) JIRA
5 92 (1.77%) MLflow
6 70 (1.34%) Selenium
7 57 (1.10%) Postman
8 37 (0.71%) Cucumber
9 32 (0.61%) Artifactory
10 30 (0.58%) JMeter
11 27 (0.52%) Bitbucket
11 27 (0.52%) SonarQube
11 27 (0.52%) Sonatype Nexus
12 26 (0.50%) Cypress.io
13 25 (0.48%) JUnit
14 23 (0.44%) Robot Framework
15 22 (0.42%) Maven
16 21 (0.40%) REST Assured
17 19 (0.37%) Gatling
17 19 (0.37%) SpecFlow
General
1 1,131 (21.73%) Social Skills
2 1,012 (19.44%) Finance
3 699 (13.43%) Analytical Skills
4 470 (9.03%) Public Sector
5 367 (7.05%) Banking
6 183 (3.52%) Front Office
7 133 (2.56%) Documentation Skills
8 106 (2.04%) Investment Banking
9 75 (1.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 66 (1.27%) Marketing
11 60 (1.15%) Retail
12 54 (1.04%) Telecoms
13 52 (1.00%) Pharmaceutical
14 50 (0.96%) Legal
15 46 (0.88%) Influencing Skills
16 38 (0.73%) Financial Institution
17 34 (0.65%) Military
17 34 (0.65%) Publishing
18 33 (0.63%) Manufacturing
19 30 (0.58%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 978 (18.79%) Developer
2 797 (15.31%) Data Engineer
3 750 (14.41%) Senior
4 489 (9.39%) Python Developer
5 330 (6.34%) Architect
5 330 (6.34%) Lead
6 307 (5.90%) Python Engineer
7 282 (5.42%) Analyst
8 271 (5.21%) DevOps Engineer
9 257 (4.94%) Software Engineer
10 219 (4.21%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
10 219 (4.21%) AWS Engineer
11 209 (4.02%) Data Scientist
12 168 (3.23%) Azure Engineer
13 161 (3.09%) Senior Developer
14 159 (3.05%) Senior Data Engineer
15 154 (2.96%) Platform Engineer
16 147 (2.82%) Data Analyst
17 142 (2.73%) Full-Stack Developer
18 128 (2.46%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 388 (7.45%) REST
2 362 (6.95%) React
3 353 (6.78%) PySpark
4 325 (6.24%) Kafka
5 237 (4.55%) .NET
6 229 (4.40%) Node.js
7 214 (4.11%) Pandas
8 185 (3.55%) FastAPI
9 182 (3.50%) PyTorch
10 181 (3.48%) RESTful
11 163 (3.13%) JSON
12 131 (2.52%) Django
13 129 (2.48%) NumPy
14 128 (2.46%) Flask
14 128 (2.46%) TensorFlow
15 120 (2.31%) scikit-learn
16 117 (2.25%) LangChain
17 114 (2.19%) AngularJS
18 105 (2.02%) LDAP
19 99 (1.90%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 535 (10.28%) Cloud Native
2 226 (4.34%) Distributed Systems
3 156 (3.00%) Algorithms
4 133 (2.56%) Product Ownership
5 122 (2.34%) AI Agents
5 122 (2.34%) Data Protection Act
6 118 (2.27%) Data Centre
7 117 (2.25%) Data Structures
7 117 (2.25%) Onboarding
8 113 (2.17%) Derivative
9 103 (1.98%) Fixed Income
10 102 (1.96%) Equities
11 101 (1.94%) Management Information System
12 96 (1.84%) Legacy Systems
13 91 (1.75%) Enterprise Software
14 89 (1.71%) Hybrid Cloud
15 83 (1.59%) Security Posture
16 69 (1.33%) Public Cloud
17 47 (0.90%) Greenfield Project
17 47 (0.90%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 629 (12.08%) Linux
2 293 (5.63%) Windows
3 218 (4.19%) Unix
4 92 (1.77%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 66 (1.27%) Windows Server
6 35 (0.67%) VMS
7 34 (0.65%) Ubuntu
8 26 (0.50%) AIX
9 24 (0.46%) Android
10 23 (0.44%) Solaris
11 20 (0.38%) Mac OS
12 18 (0.35%) Apple iOS
13 17 (0.33%) CentOS
14 10 (0.19%) zOS
15 9 (0.17%) Debian
16 7 (0.13%) Embedded Linux
16 7 (0.13%) Rocky
17 6 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
18 5 (0.096%) Amazon Linux
19 4 (0.077%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,911 (36.71%) CI/CD
2 1,387 (26.65%) DevOps
3 1,170 (22.48%) AI
4 1,114 (21.40%) Agile
5 1,028 (19.75%) Analytics
6 939 (18.04%) Problem-Solving
7 899 (17.27%) Infrastructure as Code
8 872 (16.75%) Data Pipeline
9 795 (15.27%) Machine Learning
10 708 (13.60%) Data Modelling
11 704 (13.53%) Containerisation
12 695 (13.35%) Data Engineering
13 688 (13.22%) ETL
14 607 (11.66%) Software Engineering
15 569 (10.93%) Data Science
16 542 (10.41%) Observability
17 521 (10.01%) Business Intelligence
18 518 (9.95%) Test Automation
19 446 (8.57%) LLM
20 414 (7.95%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 1,729 (33.22%) SQL
2 749 (14.39%) Java
3 641 (12.32%) PowerShell
4 572 (10.99%) Bash
5 477 (9.16%) JavaScript
6 350 (6.72%) C#
7 348 (6.69%) TypeScript
8 203 (3.90%) Go
9 175 (3.36%) R
10 155 (2.98%) C++
11 141 (2.71%) Scala
12 107 (2.06%) Shell Script
13 82 (1.58%) Ruby
14 77 (1.48%) Perl
15 75 (1.44%) Bicep
16 56 (1.08%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 56 (1.08%) PL/SQL
16 56 (1.08%) T-SQL
17 53 (1.02%) C
18 49 (0.94%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,194 (22.94%) Security Cleared
2 962 (18.48%) SC Cleared
3 378 (7.26%) Degree
4 166 (3.19%) Computer Science Degree
5 144 (2.77%) DV Cleared
6 128 (2.46%) BPSS Clearance
7 103 (1.98%) Azure Certification
8 93 (1.79%) AWS Certification
9 86 (1.65%) CISSP
10 81 (1.56%) 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
1 514 (9.88%) Data Quality
2 232 (4.46%) QA
3 157 (3.02%) GDPR
4 104 (2.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 100 (1.92%) NIST
6 76 (1.46%) Accessibility
7 35 (0.67%) SLA
8 29 (0.56%) PCI DSS
8 29 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 24 (0.46%) HIPAA
10 20 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
11 18 (0.35%) WCAG
12 17 (0.33%) NCSC
13 12 (0.23%) ISO 20022
13 12 (0.23%) SOC 2
14 11 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials
15 9 (0.17%) GRC
16 8 (0.15%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 8 (0.15%) MiFID
17 6 (0.12%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 781 (15.00%) Docker
2 154 (2.96%) Active Directory
3 95 (1.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 71 (1.36%) Virtual Machines
5 39 (0.75%) VMware NSX
6 35 (0.67%) vSphere
7 33 (0.63%) Firmware
7 33 (0.63%) Hyper-V
8 17 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
9 14 (0.27%) KVM
10 13 (0.25%) HDFS
11 12 (0.23%) NFS
12 11 (0.21%) Squid
13 9 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
13 9 (0.17%) SRDF
14 8 (0.15%) Ceph
15 7 (0.13%) Virtual Desktop
16 4 (0.077%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
16 4 (0.077%) Postfix
17 3 (0.058%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 1,066 (20.48%) Terraform
2 931 (17.89%) Kubernetes
3 533 (10.24%) Ansible
4 336 (6.46%) Grafana
5 273 (5.24%) Prometheus
6 73 (1.40%) Puppet
7 61 (1.17%) Argo
8 53 (1.02%) 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 (0.37%) Tivoli
17 18 (0.35%) Netcool
Vendors
1 586 (11.26%) Microsoft
2 564 (10.84%) Databricks
3 265 (5.09%) Google
4 232 (4.46%) Oracle
5 220 (4.23%) Splunk
6 178 (3.42%) VMware
7 120 (2.31%) Red Hat
8 118 (2.27%) OpenAI
9 114 (2.19%) Cisco
10 96 (1.84%) ServiceNow
11 87 (1.67%) CyberArk
12 80 (1.54%) BeyondTrust
13 74 (1.42%) Dynatrace
14 68 (1.31%) IBM
15 66 (1.27%) F5
15 66 (1.27%) Palo Alto
16 65 (1.25%) Informatica
17 57 (1.10%) Foundry
18 50 (0.96%) SAP
19 42 (0.81%) Arista