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

6 months to
7 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 10 15
Rank change year-on-year 0 +5 -2
Contract jobs citing Python 5,274 3,926 4,014
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.06% 13.40% 9.25%
As % of the Programming Languages category 40.86% 39.42% 31.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,521 2,753 2,875
10th Percentile £363 £384 £388
25th Percentile £425 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.73% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £625 £675 £686
90th Percentile £738 £813 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £500 £513
% change year-on-year -2.50% -2.44% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 132 54 99
10th Percentile £30.05 £21.25 £21.63
25th Percentile £45.64 £25.25 £31.25
Median hourly rate £55.00 £38.41 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +43.19% -35.98% -7.25%
75th Percentile £70.18 £55.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £84.88 £70.13 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £45.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +16.67% -28.00% +7.53%

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 12,906 9,960 12,853
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 27.06% 34.01% 29.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,501 6,764 9,145
10th Percentile £355 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £415 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £713 £775 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £488
% change year-on-year - -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 565 252 490
10th Percentile £41.73 £23.00 £31.93
25th Percentile £54.55 £34.73 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +1.46% +2.20%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £79.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £64.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +1.56% +2.40% +2.17%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 4,396 £525 -4.55% 2,787
London -3 2,492 £550 -8.33% 1,274
UK excluding London -1 2,050 £488 -2.50% 1,968
Work from Home 0 1,511 £525 -4.55% 1,124
North of England +9 681 £478 -2.95% 484
South East 0 417 £511 -2.62% 635
Yorkshire 0 380 £475 -5.00% 144
Scotland +3 297 £425 -10.53% 120
Midlands -13 262 £500 +10.01% 235
South West 0 254 £500 -9.09% 216
North West +2 249 £500 +5.26% 252
West Midlands -7 200 £500 - 111
East of England -4 131 £500 - 208
North East +10 61 £475 +2.70% 89
East Midlands -10 61 £470 +10.59% 124
Northern Ireland +17 24 £463 -15.91% 24
Wales -15 23 £475 -9.52% 65

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
1 290 (5.50%) Apache Spark
2 210 (3.98%) Apache Airflow
3 171 (3.24%) Apache
4 136 (2.58%) Confluence
5 49 (0.93%) SAS
6 48 (0.91%) SharePoint
7 32 (0.61%) Jupyter
8 24 (0.46%) OpenStack
9 21 (0.40%) nginx
10 17 (0.32%) Microsoft Exchange
11 14 (0.27%) ArcGIS
11 14 (0.27%) Palantir Foundry
12 12 (0.23%) Appian
13 8 (0.15%) Apache Superset
13 8 (0.15%) Camunda
13 8 (0.15%) CMS
14 7 (0.13%) IIS
15 6 (0.11%) WebSphere
16 5 (0.095%) CICS
16 5 (0.095%) Tomcat
Applications
1 130 (2.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 26 (0.49%) Chatbot
3 23 (0.44%) Microsoft Office
4 21 (0.40%) Spreadsheet
5 20 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 20 (0.38%) MS Visio
6 7 (0.13%) CPLEX
7 4 (0.076%) Microsoft Project
8 3 (0.057%) LaTeX
8 3 (0.057%) Weka
9 1 (0.019%) OrCAD
9 1 (0.019%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 22 (0.42%) Aladdin
2 13 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
3 9 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
4 7 (0.13%) Fidessa
4 7 (0.13%) SAP IBP
5 6 (0.11%) Dynamics CRM
6 5 (0.095%) BambooHR
6 5 (0.095%) Remedy ITSM
7 4 (0.076%) Bloomberg AIM
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%) NEC Housing
8 2 (0.038%) NetSuite
8 2 (0.038%) Odoo
8 2 (0.038%) Oracle Applications
8 2 (0.038%) Oracle ERP
8 2 (0.038%) Payment Gateway
8 2 (0.038%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 1,997 (37.86%) AWS
2 1,800 (34.13%) Azure
3 773 (14.66%) GCP
4 658 (12.48%) GitHub
5 532 (10.09%) Power Platform
6 479 (9.08%) Serverless
7 380 (7.21%) Azure DevOps
8 378 (7.17%) Amazon S3
9 344 (6.52%) AWS Lambda
9 344 (6.52%) GitHub Actions
10 272 (5.16%) Azure Data Factory
11 239 (4.53%) Snowflake
12 225 (4.27%) AWS CloudFormation
13 172 (3.26%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 167 (3.17%) OpenShift
15 165 (3.13%) Amazon EKS
16 159 (3.01%) dbt
17 141 (2.67%) Amazon ECS
18 136 (2.58%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 125 (2.37%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 182 (3.45%) Firewall
2 132 (2.50%) DNS
3 110 (2.09%) Network Security
4 90 (1.71%) TCP/IP
5 83 (1.57%) BGP
6 77 (1.46%) VPN
6 77 (1.46%) WAN
7 58 (1.10%) HTTP
8 55 (1.04%) OSPF
9 43 (0.82%) SAN
10 40 (0.76%) SNMP
11 36 (0.68%) VXLAN
12 35 (0.66%) MPLS
12 35 (0.66%) SD-WAN
13 34 (0.64%) BIG-IP
14 33 (0.63%) LAN
15 32 (0.61%) DHCP
15 32 (0.61%) SSL
16 31 (0.59%) Wireshark
17 30 (0.57%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 459 (8.70%) Power BI
2 348 (6.60%) PostgreSQL
3 286 (5.42%) Data Warehouse
4 243 (4.61%) SQL Server
5 239 (4.53%) Data Lake
6 197 (3.74%) Tableau
7 185 (3.51%) Relational Database
8 176 (3.34%) NoSQL
9 165 (3.13%) Big Data
10 163 (3.09%) Metadata
11 141 (2.67%) Delta Lake
12 133 (2.52%) BigQuery
13 127 (2.41%) Amazon Athena
14 120 (2.28%) Amazon Redshift
15 108 (2.05%) MongoDB
16 98 (1.86%) Amazon RDS
17 93 (1.76%) DynamoDB
17 93 (1.76%) MySQL
18 91 (1.73%) Azure SQL Database
19 79 (1.50%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 654 (12.40%) Git
2 475 (9.01%) Jenkins
3 364 (6.90%) GitLab
4 249 (4.72%) JIRA
5 94 (1.78%) MLflow
6 72 (1.37%) Selenium
7 58 (1.10%) Postman
8 38 (0.72%) Cucumber
9 33 (0.63%) Bitbucket
10 30 (0.57%) Sonatype Nexus
11 29 (0.55%) Artifactory
11 29 (0.55%) JMeter
11 29 (0.55%) SonarQube
12 25 (0.47%) Cypress.io
12 25 (0.47%) JUnit
13 23 (0.44%) Robot Framework
14 22 (0.42%) Maven
15 21 (0.40%) SpecFlow
16 20 (0.38%) REST Assured
17 18 (0.34%) Gatling
General
1 1,167 (22.13%) Social Skills
2 1,030 (19.53%) Finance
3 706 (13.39%) Analytical Skills
4 490 (9.29%) Public Sector
5 366 (6.94%) Banking
6 181 (3.43%) Front Office
7 132 (2.50%) Documentation Skills
8 95 (1.80%) Investment Banking
9 75 (1.42%) Marketing
10 73 (1.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 60 (1.14%) Retail
12 54 (1.02%) Pharmaceutical
12 54 (1.02%) Telecoms
13 52 (0.99%) Legal
14 47 (0.89%) Influencing Skills
15 37 (0.70%) Financial Institution
15 37 (0.70%) Manufacturing
16 34 (0.64%) Publishing
17 31 (0.59%) Military
17 31 (0.59%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,007 (19.09%) Developer
2 795 (15.07%) Data Engineer
3 766 (14.52%) Senior
4 501 (9.50%) Python Developer
5 352 (6.67%) Architect
6 341 (6.47%) Lead
7 300 (5.69%) Python Engineer
8 278 (5.27%) Analyst
9 271 (5.14%) DevOps Engineer
10 254 (4.82%) Software Engineer
11 225 (4.27%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
12 221 (4.19%) AWS Engineer
13 213 (4.04%) Data Scientist
14 171 (3.24%) Senior Developer
15 162 (3.07%) Azure Engineer
16 158 (3.00%) Senior Data Engineer
17 156 (2.96%) Platform Engineer
18 146 (2.77%) Data Analyst
19 143 (2.71%) Full-Stack Developer
20 132 (2.50%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 395 (7.49%) REST
2 358 (6.79%) React
3 357 (6.77%) PySpark
4 339 (6.43%) Kafka
5 253 (4.80%) Node.js
6 239 (4.53%) .NET
7 223 (4.23%) Pandas
8 191 (3.62%) PyTorch
9 188 (3.56%) FastAPI
10 182 (3.45%) RESTful
11 163 (3.09%) JSON
12 137 (2.60%) NumPy
13 136 (2.58%) TensorFlow
14 132 (2.50%) Flask
15 127 (2.41%) scikit-learn
16 126 (2.39%) Django
17 124 (2.35%) LangChain
18 120 (2.28%) AngularJS
19 110 (2.09%) LDAP
20 101 (1.92%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 547 (10.37%) Cloud Native
2 223 (4.23%) Distributed Systems
3 162 (3.07%) Algorithms
4 144 (2.73%) Product Ownership
5 124 (2.35%) AI Agents
6 119 (2.26%) Data Protection Act
7 117 (2.22%) Onboarding
8 113 (2.14%) Data Structures
9 111 (2.10%) Data Centre
10 110 (2.09%) Derivative
11 108 (2.05%) Fixed Income
12 107 (2.03%) Equities
13 99 (1.88%) Management Information System
14 94 (1.78%) Legacy Systems
15 91 (1.73%) Enterprise Software
15 91 (1.73%) Hybrid Cloud
16 84 (1.59%) Security Posture
17 71 (1.35%) Public Cloud
18 46 (0.87%) Distributed Computing
18 46 (0.87%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 646 (12.25%) Linux
2 293 (5.56%) Windows
3 210 (3.98%) Unix
4 97 (1.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 63 (1.19%) Windows Server
6 37 (0.70%) Ubuntu
6 37 (0.70%) VMS
7 27 (0.51%) Android
8 24 (0.46%) AIX
9 22 (0.42%) Solaris
10 21 (0.40%) Mac OS
11 20 (0.38%) CentOS
12 17 (0.32%) 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 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
17 5 (0.095%) Windows 7
18 4 (0.076%) Amazon Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,938 (36.75%) CI/CD
2 1,405 (26.64%) DevOps
3 1,188 (22.53%) AI
4 1,154 (21.88%) Agile
5 1,064 (20.17%) Analytics
6 965 (18.30%) Problem-Solving
7 925 (17.54%) Infrastructure as Code
8 882 (16.72%) Data Pipeline
9 820 (15.55%) Machine Learning
10 735 (13.94%) Containerisation
11 710 (13.46%) Data Modelling
12 704 (13.35%) Data Engineering
13 693 (13.14%) ETL
14 615 (11.66%) Software Engineering
15 590 (11.19%) Data Science
16 544 (10.31%) Test Automation
17 541 (10.26%) Observability
18 534 (10.13%) Business Intelligence
19 441 (8.36%) LLM
20 420 (7.96%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 1,738 (32.95%) SQL
2 777 (14.73%) Java
3 648 (12.29%) PowerShell
4 569 (10.79%) Bash
5 482 (9.14%) JavaScript
6 354 (6.71%) TypeScript
7 352 (6.67%) C#
8 204 (3.87%) Go
9 180 (3.41%) R
10 155 (2.94%) C++
11 145 (2.75%) Scala
12 106 (2.01%) Shell Script
13 90 (1.71%) Ruby
14 80 (1.52%) Perl
15 79 (1.50%) Bicep
16 56 (1.06%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 54 (1.02%) C
17 54 (1.02%) PL/SQL
18 51 (0.97%) T-SQL
19 48 (0.91%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 1,212 (22.98%) Security Cleared
2 983 (18.64%) SC Cleared
3 379 (7.19%) Degree
4 173 (3.28%) Computer Science Degree
5 145 (2.75%) DV Cleared
6 137 (2.60%) BPSS Clearance
7 107 (2.03%) Azure Certification
8 101 (1.92%) AWS Certification
9 91 (1.73%) CISSP
10 86 (1.63%) Master's Degree
11 71 (1.35%) Cisco Certification
12 60 (1.14%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 50 (0.95%) CCNP
13 50 (0.95%) CISM
14 38 (0.72%) PhD
15 34 (0.64%) Microsoft Certification
16 32 (0.61%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 27 (0.51%) ISTQB
18 23 (0.44%) CCIE
19 22 (0.42%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 512 (9.71%) Data Quality
2 229 (4.34%) QA
3 165 (3.13%) GDPR
4 113 (2.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 107 (2.03%) NIST
6 80 (1.52%) Accessibility
7 34 (0.64%) SLA
8 32 (0.61%) PCI DSS
8 32 (0.61%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 26 (0.49%) HIPAA
10 20 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
11 18 (0.34%) NCSC
11 18 (0.34%) WCAG
12 12 (0.23%) ISO 20022
13 11 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials
13 11 (0.21%) PMO
13 11 (0.21%) SOC 2
14 9 (0.17%) GRC
15 8 (0.15%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 8 (0.15%) MiFID
System Software
1 815 (15.45%) Docker
2 158 (3.00%) Active Directory
3 100 (1.90%) VMware Infrastructure
4 70 (1.33%) Virtual Machines
5 42 (0.80%) VMware NSX
6 38 (0.72%) vSphere
7 33 (0.63%) Firmware
7 33 (0.63%) Hyper-V
8 17 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
9 14 (0.27%) KVM
10 13 (0.25%) HDFS
11 10 (0.19%) NFS
12 9 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
12 9 (0.17%) SRDF
13 8 (0.15%) Ceph
14 7 (0.13%) Postfix
14 7 (0.13%) Virtual Desktop
15 6 (0.11%) Squid
16 5 (0.095%) Lustre
17 4 (0.076%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
Systems Management
1 1,098 (20.82%) Terraform
2 958 (18.16%) Kubernetes
3 533 (10.11%) Ansible
4 344 (6.52%) Grafana
5 281 (5.33%) Prometheus
6 78 (1.48%) Puppet
7 69 (1.31%) Argo
8 52 (0.99%) Istio
9 47 (0.89%) vRealize
10 42 (0.80%) Kibana
11 35 (0.66%) Progress Chef
12 33 (0.63%) vCenter Server
13 27 (0.51%) Nagios
13 27 (0.51%) Nessus
14 24 (0.46%) Control-M
14 24 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
14 24 (0.46%) ZABBIX
15 21 (0.40%) Rancher
16 20 (0.38%) NetBackup
17 19 (0.36%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 612 (11.60%) Microsoft
2 567 (10.75%) Databricks
3 266 (5.04%) Google
4 229 (4.34%) Oracle
5 227 (4.30%) Splunk
6 183 (3.47%) VMware
7 121 (2.29%) Red Hat
8 120 (2.28%) OpenAI
9 118 (2.24%) Cisco
10 94 (1.78%) CyberArk
10 94 (1.78%) ServiceNow
11 83 (1.57%) BeyondTrust
12 70 (1.33%) Dynatrace
13 67 (1.27%) IBM
13 67 (1.27%) Informatica
14 64 (1.21%) F5
14 64 (1.21%) Palo Alto
15 60 (1.14%) Foundry
16 48 (0.91%) SAP
17 41 (0.78%) Fortinet