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

6 months to
4 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 10 15
Rank change year-on-year 0 +5 -2
Contract jobs citing Python 5,222 3,926 3,985
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.07% 13.40% 9.24%
As % of the Programming Languages category 40.77% 39.22% 31.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,502 2,757 2,847
10th Percentile £363 £385 £388
25th Percentile £425 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £516 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.14% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £625 £675 £681
90th Percentile £738 £818 £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 131 53 99
10th Percentile £30.00 £21.25 £21.63
25th Percentile £45.03 £25.25 £31.25
Median hourly rate £55.00 £37.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +46.67% -37.50% -7.69%
75th Percentile £69.38 £55.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £83.75 £70.50 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £45.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +16.67% -28.00% +6.38%

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 12,809 10,009 12,769
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 27.15% 34.17% 29.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,466 6,797 9,080
10th Percentile £355 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £416 £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 £774 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +0.05% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 558 250 487
10th Percentile £41.94 £22.50 £31.70
25th Percentile £54.55 £33.91 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +1.46% +1.73%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £79.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £64.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +1.56% +2.40% +1.07%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 4,357 £525 -4.55% 2,681
London -3 2,459 £550 -8.33% 1,291
UK excluding London 0 2,041 £488 -2.50% 1,811
Work from Home -1 1,491 £525 -4.55% 1,234
North of England +10 679 £480 -2.24% 444
South East -1 412 £511 -2.62% 606
Yorkshire 0 383 £475 -5.00% 124
Scotland +3 292 £425 -10.53% 98
Midlands -12 258 £500 +10.01% 217
South West -1 254 £500 -9.09% 205
North West +1 246 £500 +5.26% 240
West Midlands -8 196 £500 - 110
East of England 0 137 £500 -0.50% 210
East Midlands -12 61 £470 +10.59% 107
North East +7 59 £475 +2.70% 82
Northern Ireland +15 24 £463 -11.90% 12
Wales -13 23 £475 -9.52% 43

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
1 286 (5.48%) Apache Spark
2 207 (3.96%) Apache Airflow
3 167 (3.20%) Apache
4 140 (2.68%) Confluence
5 50 (0.96%) SAS
6 49 (0.94%) SharePoint
7 30 (0.57%) Jupyter
8 24 (0.46%) OpenStack
9 21 (0.40%) nginx
10 17 (0.33%) 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%) CICS
15 6 (0.11%) WebSphere
16 5 (0.096%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 133 (2.55%) Microsoft Excel
2 26 (0.50%) Chatbot
3 23 (0.44%) Microsoft Office
3 23 (0.44%) Spreadsheet
4 20 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 20 (0.38%) MS Visio
5 6 (0.11%) CPLEX
6 4 (0.077%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.077%) Weka
7 3 (0.057%) LaTeX
8 1 (0.019%) OrCAD
8 1 (0.019%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 22 (0.42%) Aladdin
2 13 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
3 9 (0.17%) Fidessa
3 9 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
4 7 (0.13%) Dynamics CRM
5 6 (0.11%) SAP IBP
6 5 (0.096%) BambooHR
7 4 (0.077%) Bloomberg AIM
7 4 (0.077%) Remedy ITSM
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 1,969 (37.71%) AWS
2 1,785 (34.18%) Azure
3 772 (14.78%) GCP
4 649 (12.43%) GitHub
5 536 (10.26%) Power Platform
6 473 (9.06%) Serverless
7 372 (7.12%) Azure DevOps
8 369 (7.07%) Amazon S3
9 338 (6.47%) AWS Lambda
9 338 (6.47%) GitHub Actions
10 270 (5.17%) Azure Data Factory
11 235 (4.50%) Snowflake
12 225 (4.31%) AWS CloudFormation
13 172 (3.29%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 163 (3.12%) Amazon EKS
15 162 (3.10%) OpenShift
16 155 (2.97%) dbt
17 142 (2.72%) Amazon ECS
18 138 (2.64%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 124 (2.37%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 179 (3.43%) Firewall
2 128 (2.45%) DNS
3 106 (2.03%) Network Security
4 89 (1.70%) TCP/IP
5 82 (1.57%) BGP
6 74 (1.42%) VPN
7 73 (1.40%) WAN
8 57 (1.09%) HTTP
9 54 (1.03%) OSPF
10 44 (0.84%) SAN
11 40 (0.77%) SNMP
12 35 (0.67%) MPLS
12 35 (0.67%) VXLAN
13 33 (0.63%) BIG-IP
13 33 (0.63%) LAN
14 31 (0.59%) SD-WAN
15 30 (0.57%) VLAN
15 30 (0.57%) Wireshark
16 29 (0.56%) DHCP
16 29 (0.56%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 458 (8.77%) Power BI
2 342 (6.55%) PostgreSQL
3 284 (5.44%) Data Warehouse
4 243 (4.65%) SQL Server
5 238 (4.56%) Data Lake
6 199 (3.81%) Tableau
7 181 (3.47%) Relational Database
8 180 (3.45%) NoSQL
9 164 (3.14%) Big Data
10 159 (3.04%) Metadata
11 136 (2.60%) Delta Lake
12 134 (2.57%) BigQuery
13 122 (2.34%) Amazon Athena
14 118 (2.26%) Amazon Redshift
15 106 (2.03%) MongoDB
16 99 (1.90%) Amazon RDS
17 95 (1.82%) MySQL
18 92 (1.76%) Azure SQL Database
18 92 (1.76%) DynamoDB
19 80 (1.53%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 648 (12.41%) Git
2 466 (8.92%) Jenkins
3 359 (6.87%) GitLab
4 254 (4.86%) JIRA
5 94 (1.80%) MLflow
6 72 (1.38%) Selenium
7 56 (1.07%) Postman
8 38 (0.73%) Cucumber
9 33 (0.63%) Bitbucket
10 32 (0.61%) Sonatype Nexus
11 29 (0.56%) Artifactory
11 29 (0.56%) SonarQube
12 27 (0.52%) JMeter
13 26 (0.50%) Cypress.io
14 25 (0.48%) JUnit
15 24 (0.46%) Maven
16 23 (0.44%) Robot Framework
17 21 (0.40%) SpecFlow
18 20 (0.38%) REST Assured
19 18 (0.34%) Gatling
General
1 1,164 (22.29%) Social Skills
2 1,010 (19.34%) Finance
3 707 (13.54%) Analytical Skills
4 493 (9.44%) Public Sector
5 363 (6.95%) Banking
6 175 (3.35%) Front Office
7 135 (2.59%) Documentation Skills
8 90 (1.72%) Investment Banking
9 75 (1.44%) Marketing
10 72 (1.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 59 (1.13%) Retail
12 54 (1.03%) Pharmaceutical
13 53 (1.01%) Telecoms
14 50 (0.96%) Legal
15 47 (0.90%) Influencing Skills
16 37 (0.71%) Financial Institution
17 35 (0.67%) Manufacturing
18 33 (0.63%) Publishing
19 31 (0.59%) Military
19 31 (0.59%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,006 (19.26%) Developer
2 783 (14.99%) Data Engineer
3 755 (14.46%) Senior
4 495 (9.48%) Python Developer
5 350 (6.70%) Architect
6 339 (6.49%) Lead
7 295 (5.65%) Python Engineer
8 277 (5.30%) Analyst
9 266 (5.09%) DevOps Engineer
10 252 (4.83%) Software Engineer
11 223 (4.27%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
12 221 (4.23%) AWS Engineer
13 217 (4.16%) Data Scientist
14 171 (3.27%) Senior Developer
15 156 (2.99%) Platform Engineer
15 156 (2.99%) Senior Data Engineer
16 154 (2.95%) Azure Engineer
17 144 (2.76%) Data Analyst
17 144 (2.76%) Full-Stack Developer
18 122 (2.34%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 397 (7.60%) REST
2 356 (6.82%) React
3 348 (6.66%) PySpark
4 333 (6.38%) Kafka
5 258 (4.94%) Node.js
6 235 (4.50%) .NET
7 227 (4.35%) Pandas
8 196 (3.75%) PyTorch
9 185 (3.54%) FastAPI
10 180 (3.45%) RESTful
11 163 (3.12%) JSON
12 143 (2.74%) TensorFlow
13 141 (2.70%) NumPy
14 133 (2.55%) scikit-learn
15 131 (2.51%) Flask
16 124 (2.37%) LangChain
17 121 (2.32%) Django
18 120 (2.30%) AngularJS
19 110 (2.11%) LDAP
20 102 (1.95%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 532 (10.19%) Cloud Native
2 218 (4.17%) Distributed Systems
3 161 (3.08%) Algorithms
4 142 (2.72%) Product Ownership
5 123 (2.36%) AI Agents
6 122 (2.34%) Data Protection Act
7 113 (2.16%) Onboarding
8 112 (2.14%) Data Structures
9 108 (2.07%) Fixed Income
10 107 (2.05%) Derivative
11 106 (2.03%) Equities
12 105 (2.01%) Data Centre
13 97 (1.86%) Management Information System
14 91 (1.74%) Enterprise Software
14 91 (1.74%) Legacy Systems
15 90 (1.72%) Hybrid Cloud
16 82 (1.57%) Security Posture
17 71 (1.36%) Public Cloud
18 46 (0.88%) Virtual Team
19 45 (0.86%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 636 (12.18%) Linux
2 287 (5.50%) Windows
3 204 (3.91%) Unix
4 93 (1.78%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 61 (1.17%) Windows Server
6 37 (0.71%) VMS
7 36 (0.69%) Ubuntu
8 28 (0.54%) Android
9 24 (0.46%) AIX
10 21 (0.40%) Solaris
11 20 (0.38%) Mac OS
12 18 (0.34%) CentOS
13 16 (0.31%) Apple iOS
14 10 (0.19%) Debian
14 10 (0.19%) zOS
15 8 (0.15%) Embedded Linux
16 6 (0.11%) Rocky
16 6 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
17 5 (0.096%) Amazon Linux
17 5 (0.096%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,906 (36.50%) CI/CD
2 1,382 (26.46%) DevOps
3 1,181 (22.62%) AI
4 1,148 (21.98%) Agile
5 1,062 (20.34%) Analytics
6 961 (18.40%) Problem-Solving
7 905 (17.33%) Infrastructure as Code
8 870 (16.66%) Data Pipeline
9 822 (15.74%) Machine Learning
10 724 (13.86%) Containerisation
11 704 (13.48%) Data Modelling
12 697 (13.35%) Data Engineering
13 684 (13.10%) ETL
14 604 (11.57%) Software Engineering
15 593 (11.36%) Data Science
16 540 (10.34%) Test Automation
17 535 (10.25%) Observability
18 533 (10.21%) Business Intelligence
19 439 (8.41%) LLM
20 410 (7.85%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 1,720 (32.94%) SQL
2 772 (14.78%) Java
3 635 (12.16%) PowerShell
4 554 (10.61%) Bash
5 481 (9.21%) JavaScript
6 349 (6.68%) C#
6 349 (6.68%) TypeScript
7 204 (3.91%) Go
8 182 (3.49%) R
9 156 (2.99%) C++
10 143 (2.74%) Scala
11 105 (2.01%) Shell Script
12 91 (1.74%) Ruby
13 78 (1.49%) Bicep
13 78 (1.49%) Perl
14 56 (1.07%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 54 (1.03%) C
16 53 (1.01%) PL/SQL
17 50 (0.96%) Kusto Query Language
18 49 (0.94%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 1,203 (23.04%) Security Cleared
2 977 (18.71%) SC Cleared
3 385 (7.37%) Degree
4 175 (3.35%) Computer Science Degree
5 141 (2.70%) BPSS Clearance
5 141 (2.70%) DV Cleared
6 103 (1.97%) Azure Certification
7 98 (1.88%) AWS Certification
8 89 (1.70%) CISSP
9 86 (1.65%) Master's Degree
10 70 (1.34%) Cisco Certification
11 58 (1.11%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 51 (0.98%) CISM
13 50 (0.96%) CCNP
14 38 (0.73%) PhD
15 35 (0.67%) Microsoft Certification
16 30 (0.57%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 26 (0.50%) ISTQB
18 23 (0.44%) CCIE
19 22 (0.42%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 507 (9.71%) Data Quality
2 224 (4.29%) QA
3 166 (3.18%) GDPR
4 111 (2.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 105 (2.01%) NIST
6 81 (1.55%) Accessibility
7 34 (0.65%) PCI DSS
8 33 (0.63%) SLA
9 31 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 26 (0.50%) HIPAA
11 19 (0.36%) Actionable Recommendations
12 18 (0.34%) NCSC
12 18 (0.34%) WCAG
13 12 (0.23%) ISO 20022
14 11 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials
14 11 (0.21%) PMO
14 11 (0.21%) SOC 2
15 9 (0.17%) GRC
16 8 (0.15%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 8 (0.15%) MiFID
System Software
1 813 (15.57%) Docker
2 153 (2.93%) Active Directory
3 95 (1.82%) VMware Infrastructure
4 68 (1.30%) Virtual Machines
5 42 (0.80%) VMware NSX
6 38 (0.73%) vSphere
7 33 (0.63%) Firmware
8 32 (0.61%) Hyper-V
9 17 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
10 13 (0.25%) HDFS
10 13 (0.25%) KVM
11 9 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
11 9 (0.17%) SRDF
12 8 (0.15%) Ceph
12 8 (0.15%) NFS
13 6 (0.11%) Lustre
13 6 (0.11%) Postfix
13 6 (0.11%) Squid
14 5 (0.096%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 5 (0.096%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 1,080 (20.68%) Terraform
2 951 (18.21%) Kubernetes
3 519 (9.94%) Ansible
4 338 (6.47%) Grafana
5 275 (5.27%) Prometheus
6 76 (1.46%) Puppet
7 70 (1.34%) Argo
8 51 (0.98%) Istio
9 47 (0.90%) vRealize
10 42 (0.80%) Kibana
11 33 (0.63%) Progress Chef
11 33 (0.63%) vCenter Server
12 27 (0.52%) Nagios
12 27 (0.52%) Nessus
13 24 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
14 23 (0.44%) Control-M
14 23 (0.44%) ZABBIX
15 21 (0.40%) Rancher
16 20 (0.38%) NetBackup
17 19 (0.36%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 611 (11.70%) Microsoft
2 564 (10.80%) Databricks
3 271 (5.19%) Google
4 226 (4.33%) Oracle
5 218 (4.17%) Splunk
6 178 (3.41%) VMware
7 119 (2.28%) Cisco
7 119 (2.28%) OpenAI
7 119 (2.28%) Red Hat
8 96 (1.84%) ServiceNow
9 92 (1.76%) CyberArk
10 79 (1.51%) BeyondTrust
11 68 (1.30%) IBM
12 67 (1.28%) Informatica
13 65 (1.24%) Dynatrace
14 62 (1.19%) F5
14 62 (1.19%) Foundry
15 60 (1.15%) Palo Alto
16 47 (0.90%) SAP
17 41 (0.79%) Salesforce