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

6 months to
16 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 11 15
Rank change year-on-year +1 +4 -2
Contract jobs citing Python 5,254 3,859 3,992
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.94% 13.25% 9.38%
As % of the Programming Languages category 40.68% 38.94% 31.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,488 2,701 2,857
10th Percentile £363 £384 £400
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 £800 £805
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £500 £510
% change year-on-year -2.00% -1.96% -7.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 130 52 98
10th Percentile £30.44 £21.33 £21.11
25th Percentile £46.25 £26.46 £31.25
Median hourly rate £55.00 £39.66 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +38.68% -33.90% -6.80%
75th Percentile £72.43 £55.63 £70.94
90th Percentile £85.10 £74.25 £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 12,915 9,911 12,689
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.89% 34.02% 29.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,493 6,740 9,016
10th Percentile £355 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £533
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -2.44% -3.09%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £712 £763 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £475 £489
% change year-on-year +1.16% -2.86% -2.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 557 238 491
10th Percentile £41.25 £24.16 £32.25
25th Percentile £54.55 £34.81 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.25 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.42% -0.40% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.69 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.70 £85.00 £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year +1.97% +1.99% -

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 -1 4,379 £525 -4.55% 2,874
London -3 2,495 £550 -7.56% 1,306
UK excluding London -1 2,031 £490 -2.00% 2,040
Work from Home -2 1,490 £525 -4.55% 1,790
North of England +10 703 £482 -1.21% 516
South East -4 407 £513 -0.39% 621
Yorkshire 0 395 £479 -4.20% 140
Scotland +1 292 £430 -10.23% 119
South West 0 255 £500 -9.09% 259
North West +3 250 £500 +5.26% 285
Midlands -12 242 £495 +10.00% 240
West Midlands -10 186 £495 -1.00% 116
East of England -7 126 £500 -0.50% 217
North East +6 67 £475 +5.56% 95
East Midlands -11 55 £495 +17.16% 124
Northern Ireland +16 23 £463 -18.68% 26
Wales -14 22 £463 -7.50% 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
1 284 (5.41%) Apache Spark
2 207 (3.94%) Apache Airflow
3 169 (3.22%) Apache
4 138 (2.63%) Confluence
5 49 (0.93%) SAS
6 45 (0.86%) SharePoint
7 36 (0.69%) Jupyter
8 23 (0.44%) OpenStack
9 20 (0.38%) nginx
10 17 (0.32%) Microsoft Exchange
11 16 (0.30%) 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 (0.11%) WebSphere
18 5 (0.095%) CICS
18 5 (0.095%) Tomcat
Applications
1 126 (2.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 25 (0.48%) Chatbot
3 24 (0.46%) Microsoft Office
4 20 (0.38%) Spreadsheet
5 19 (0.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 19 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 7 (0.13%) CPLEX
7 4 (0.076%) Microsoft Project
8 3 (0.057%) LaTeX
9 1 (0.019%) OrCAD
9 1 (0.019%) SPSS
9 1 (0.019%) Weka
9 1 (0.019%) Zemax
Business Applications
1 25 (0.48%) 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 (0.095%) BambooHR
6 4 (0.076%) Bloomberg AIM
7 3 (0.057%) Dynamics CRM
7 3 (0.057%) SimCorp Dimension
7 3 (0.057%) Teamcenter
8 2 (0.038%) Actimize
8 2 (0.038%) Front Arena
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 Assets
8 2 (0.038%) Orchestrade
8 2 (0.038%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 1,974 (37.57%) AWS
2 1,761 (33.52%) Azure
3 757 (14.41%) GCP
4 640 (12.18%) GitHub
5 519 (9.88%) Power Platform
6 459 (8.74%) Serverless
7 374 (7.12%) Azure DevOps
8 363 (6.91%) Amazon S3
9 338 (6.43%) GitHub Actions
10 326 (6.20%) AWS Lambda
11 264 (5.02%) Azure Data Factory
12 237 (4.51%) Snowflake
13 200 (3.81%) AWS CloudFormation
14 170 (3.24%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 165 (3.14%) OpenShift
16 161 (3.06%) Amazon EKS
16 161 (3.06%) dbt
17 136 (2.59%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 130 (2.47%) Amazon ECS
19 126 (2.40%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 184 (3.50%) Firewall
2 135 (2.57%) DNS
3 110 (2.09%) Network Security
4 91 (1.73%) TCP/IP
5 84 (1.60%) BGP
6 79 (1.50%) WAN
7 76 (1.45%) VPN
8 60 (1.14%) HTTP
9 57 (1.08%) OSPF
10 50 (0.95%) SAN
11 39 (0.74%) SNMP
11 39 (0.74%) VXLAN
12 38 (0.72%) BIG-IP
12 38 (0.72%) SD-WAN
13 36 (0.69%) DHCP
14 33 (0.63%) LAN
14 33 (0.63%) MPLS
14 33 (0.63%) VLAN
15 32 (0.61%) SSL
15 32 (0.61%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 454 (8.64%) Power BI
2 340 (6.47%) PostgreSQL
3 281 (5.35%) Data Warehouse
4 247 (4.70%) SQL Server
5 234 (4.45%) Data Lake
6 200 (3.81%) Tableau
7 187 (3.56%) Relational Database
8 176 (3.35%) NoSQL
9 165 (3.14%) Big Data
10 157 (2.99%) Metadata
11 138 (2.63%) Delta Lake
12 136 (2.59%) BigQuery
13 121 (2.30%) Amazon Athena
14 112 (2.13%) Amazon Redshift
15 106 (2.02%) MongoDB
16 90 (1.71%) MySQL
17 89 (1.69%) Amazon RDS
18 88 (1.67%) DynamoDB
19 83 (1.58%) Azure SQL Database
20 78 (1.48%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 648 (12.33%) Git
2 477 (9.08%) Jenkins
3 358 (6.81%) GitLab
4 250 (4.76%) JIRA
5 92 (1.75%) MLflow
6 72 (1.37%) Selenium
7 59 (1.12%) Postman
8 39 (0.74%) Cucumber
9 32 (0.61%) Artifactory
10 31 (0.59%) JMeter
11 27 (0.51%) Bitbucket
11 27 (0.51%) SonarQube
11 27 (0.51%) Sonatype Nexus
12 26 (0.49%) Cypress.io
13 25 (0.48%) JUnit
14 24 (0.46%) Robot Framework
15 22 (0.42%) Maven
16 21 (0.40%) REST Assured
17 20 (0.38%) Gatling
18 19 (0.36%) SpecFlow
General
1 1,139 (21.68%) Social Skills
2 1,026 (19.53%) Finance
3 706 (13.44%) Analytical Skills
4 479 (9.12%) Public Sector
5 371 (7.06%) Banking
6 185 (3.52%) Front Office
7 136 (2.59%) Documentation Skills
8 110 (2.09%) Investment Banking
9 77 (1.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 68 (1.29%) Marketing
11 60 (1.14%) Retail
12 54 (1.03%) Pharmaceutical
12 54 (1.03%) Telecoms
13 50 (0.95%) Legal
14 46 (0.88%) Influencing Skills
15 38 (0.72%) Financial Institution
16 35 (0.67%) Military
17 34 (0.65%) Publishing
18 33 (0.63%) Manufacturing
19 30 (0.57%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 988 (18.80%) Developer
2 802 (15.26%) Data Engineer
3 762 (14.50%) Senior
4 499 (9.50%) Python Developer
5 331 (6.30%) Lead
6 330 (6.28%) Architect
7 319 (6.07%) Python Engineer
8 283 (5.39%) Analyst
9 274 (5.22%) DevOps Engineer
10 263 (5.01%) Software Engineer
11 224 (4.26%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
12 222 (4.23%) AWS Engineer
13 209 (3.98%) Data Scientist
14 172 (3.27%) Azure Engineer
15 165 (3.14%) Senior Developer
16 160 (3.05%) Senior Data Engineer
17 154 (2.93%) Platform Engineer
18 147 (2.80%) Data Analyst
19 144 (2.74%) Full-Stack Developer
20 128 (2.44%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 394 (7.50%) REST
2 366 (6.97%) React
3 354 (6.74%) PySpark
4 329 (6.26%) Kafka
5 237 (4.51%) .NET
6 233 (4.43%) Node.js
7 215 (4.09%) Pandas
8 187 (3.56%) FastAPI
9 182 (3.46%) PyTorch
9 182 (3.46%) RESTful
10 166 (3.16%) JSON
11 133 (2.53%) Django
12 130 (2.47%) Flask
13 129 (2.46%) NumPy
14 128 (2.44%) TensorFlow
15 120 (2.28%) scikit-learn
16 119 (2.26%) LangChain
17 118 (2.25%) AngularJS
18 105 (2.00%) LDAP
19 99 (1.88%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 544 (10.35%) Cloud Native
2 232 (4.42%) Distributed Systems
3 157 (2.99%) Algorithms
4 136 (2.59%) Product Ownership
5 123 (2.34%) AI Agents
5 123 (2.34%) Data Protection Act
5 123 (2.34%) Data Structures
6 120 (2.28%) Onboarding
7 118 (2.25%) Data Centre
8 114 (2.17%) Derivative
9 104 (1.98%) Equities
9 104 (1.98%) Fixed Income
10 101 (1.92%) Management Information System
11 98 (1.87%) Legacy Systems
12 91 (1.73%) Enterprise Software
13 90 (1.71%) Hybrid Cloud
14 83 (1.58%) Security Posture
15 69 (1.31%) Public Cloud
16 48 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
16 48 (0.91%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 633 (12.05%) Linux
2 297 (5.65%) Windows
3 221 (4.21%) Unix
4 93 (1.77%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 67 (1.28%) Windows Server
6 35 (0.67%) VMS
7 34 (0.65%) Ubuntu
8 26 (0.49%) AIX
9 24 (0.46%) Android
10 23 (0.44%) Solaris
11 20 (0.38%) Mac OS
12 18 (0.34%) Apple iOS
13 17 (0.32%) CentOS
14 10 (0.19%) zOS
15 9 (0.17%) Debian
16 7 (0.13%) Embedded Linux
16 7 (0.13%) Rocky
17 6 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
18 5 (0.095%) Amazon Linux
19 4 (0.076%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,926 (36.66%) CI/CD
2 1,395 (26.55%) DevOps
3 1,185 (22.55%) AI
4 1,125 (21.41%) Agile
5 1,035 (19.70%) Analytics
6 946 (18.01%) Problem-Solving
7 905 (17.22%) Infrastructure as Code
8 882 (16.79%) Data Pipeline
9 804 (15.30%) Machine Learning
10 715 (13.61%) Data Modelling
11 709 (13.49%) Containerisation
12 700 (13.32%) Data Engineering
13 694 (13.21%) ETL
14 621 (11.82%) Software Engineering
15 570 (10.85%) Data Science
16 549 (10.45%) Observability
17 523 (9.95%) Business Intelligence
17 523 (9.95%) Test Automation
18 451 (8.58%) LLM
19 417 (7.94%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 1,742 (33.16%) SQL
2 761 (14.48%) Java
3 647 (12.31%) PowerShell
4 574 (10.93%) Bash
5 484 (9.21%) JavaScript
6 353 (6.72%) TypeScript
7 351 (6.68%) C#
8 205 (3.90%) Go
9 175 (3.33%) R
10 158 (3.01%) C++
11 141 (2.68%) Scala
12 108 (2.06%) Shell Script
13 83 (1.58%) Ruby
14 79 (1.50%) Perl
15 75 (1.43%) Bicep
16 57 (1.08%) T-SQL
17 56 (1.07%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 56 (1.07%) PL/SQL
18 53 (1.01%) C
19 49 (0.93%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,202 (22.88%) Security Cleared
2 968 (18.42%) SC Cleared
3 382 (7.27%) Degree
4 166 (3.16%) Computer Science Degree
5 147 (2.80%) DV Cleared
6 128 (2.44%) BPSS Clearance
7 103 (1.96%) Azure Certification
8 93 (1.77%) AWS Certification
9 86 (1.64%) CISSP
10 81 (1.54%) Master's Degree
11 70 (1.33%) Cisco Certification
12 58 (1.10%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 49 (0.93%) CCNP
14 44 (0.84%) CISM
15 37 (0.70%) PhD
16 31 (0.59%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 30 (0.57%) Microsoft Certification
18 28 (0.53%) ISTQB
19 21 (0.40%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
19 21 (0.40%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 519 (9.88%) Data Quality
2 233 (4.43%) QA
3 157 (2.99%) GDPR
4 105 (2.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 101 (1.92%) NIST
6 77 (1.47%) Accessibility
7 35 (0.67%) SLA
8 29 (0.55%) PCI DSS
8 29 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 24 (0.46%) HIPAA
10 20 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
11 18 (0.34%) WCAG
12 17 (0.32%) 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 (0.11%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 788 (15.00%) Docker
2 155 (2.95%) Active Directory
3 96 (1.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 71 (1.35%) Virtual Machines
5 39 (0.74%) VMware NSX
6 36 (0.69%) vSphere
7 34 (0.65%) Hyper-V
8 33 (0.63%) Firmware
9 17 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
10 14 (0.27%) KVM
11 13 (0.25%) HDFS
11 13 (0.25%) NFS
12 11 (0.21%) Squid
13 9 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
13 9 (0.17%) SRDF
14 8 (0.15%) Ceph
14 8 (0.15%) Virtual Desktop
15 4 (0.076%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
15 4 (0.076%) Postfix
16 3 (0.057%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 1,074 (20.44%) Terraform
2 944 (17.97%) Kubernetes
3 534 (10.16%) Ansible
4 339 (6.45%) Grafana
5 273 (5.20%) Prometheus
6 73 (1.39%) Puppet
7 61 (1.16%) Argo
8 53 (1.01%) Istio
9 48 (0.91%) vRealize
10 40 (0.76%) Kibana
11 34 (0.65%) Progress Chef
12 31 (0.59%) vCenter Server
13 28 (0.53%) Nessus
14 27 (0.51%) Nagios
15 24 (0.46%) Control-M
15 24 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
15 24 (0.46%) ZABBIX
16 21 (0.40%) NetBackup
17 19 (0.36%) Tivoli
18 18 (0.34%) Netcool
Vendors
1 592 (11.27%) Microsoft
2 568 (10.81%) Databricks
3 265 (5.04%) Google
4 232 (4.42%) Oracle
5 220 (4.19%) Splunk
6 178 (3.39%) VMware
7 121 (2.30%) Red Hat
8 119 (2.26%) OpenAI
9 114 (2.17%) Cisco
10 98 (1.87%) ServiceNow
11 88 (1.67%) CyberArk
12 81 (1.54%) BeyondTrust
13 75 (1.43%) Dynatrace
14 68 (1.29%) IBM
15 66 (1.26%) F5
15 66 (1.26%) Palo Alto
16 65 (1.24%) Informatica
17 57 (1.08%) Foundry
18 50 (0.95%) SAP
19 42 (0.80%) Arista