Refactoring Contract Job Trends

Refactoring
UK

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

6 months to
14 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 490 472 502
Rank change year-on-year -18 +30 +35
Contract jobs citing Refactoring 176 82 61
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.33% 0.25% 0.16%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.39% 0.28% 0.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 121 49 42
10th Percentile £363 £366 £406
25th Percentile £424 £460 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% -4.35% +21.05%
75th Percentile £671 £700 £628
90th Percentile £775 £813 £729
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £488 £534
% change year-on-year -0.92% -8.67% +42.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 2 0
Median hourly rate - £53.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £53.00 -

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

Refactoring falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 45,698 29,594 32,877
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.42% 90.53% 85.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,784 18,388 20,318
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £403 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £726 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,048 1,782 1,485
10th Percentile £13.85 £14.23 £14.84
25th Percentile £17.44 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.50 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £66.95 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.00 £22.50 £43.00
% change year-on-year +82.22% -47.67% +7.50%

Refactoring
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Refactoring job vacancy trend in the UK

Refactoring
Daily Rate Trend

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

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

Refactoring
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Refactoring over the 6 months to 14 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Refactoring in the UK

Refactoring
Hourly Rate Trend

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

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

Refactoring
Top 16 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Refactoring within the UK over the 6 months to 14 September 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 -45 141 £514 -7.85% 352
London -25 99 £525 -20.75% 250
Work from Home -31 65 £562 +15.28% 678
UK excluding London -78 45 £483 -0.92% 215
North of England -72 15 £436 -5.22% 24
Midlands -41 8 £616 +59.87% 9
South East -49 8 £513 -10.87% 21
Scotland -20 7 £477 -8.37% 105
Yorkshire -31 7 £425 -19.05% 9
North West -48 7 £447 +27.71% 14
West Midlands -41 6 £656 - 2
South West -44 3 £650 - 49
East Midlands -15 2 £413 +7.14% 7
Wales - 2 £650 -
East of England -30 1 £550 -4.35% 7
North East -43 1 £480 +4.35% 1

Refactoring
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 7 (3.98%) Apache Airflow
2 6 (3.41%) nginx
2 6 (3.41%) SAS
2 6 (3.41%) Tomcat
3 5 (2.84%) Confluence
3 5 (2.84%) IIS
3 5 (2.84%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 4 (2.27%) WebLogic
5 3 (1.70%) Apache
5 3 (1.70%) Apache Spark
5 3 (1.70%) SharePoint
6 2 (1.14%) JBoss
7 1 (0.57%) CICS
7 1 (0.57%) Red Hat Fuse
7 1 (0.57%) WebSphere
7 1 (0.57%) WordPress
Business Applications
1 3 (1.70%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 59 (33.52%) AWS
2 38 (21.59%) Azure
2 38 (21.59%) GitHub
3 25 (14.20%) GitHub Actions
4 19 (10.80%) Serverless
5 15 (8.52%) AWS Lambda
5 15 (8.52%) GCP
6 12 (6.82%) Amazon ECS
6 12 (6.82%) Salesforce Service Cloud
7 11 (6.25%) Amazon S3
8 10 (5.68%) Snowflake
9 9 (5.11%) GitHub Copilot
9 9 (5.11%) SaaS
10 7 (3.98%) Amazon EC2
10 7 (3.98%) AWS Step Functions
10 7 (3.98%) Azure DevOps
10 7 (3.98%) Cloud Run
10 7 (3.98%) dbt
10 7 (3.98%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 7 (3.98%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 6 (3.41%) HTTP
2 2 (1.14%) Firewall
2 2 (1.14%) Internet
2 2 (1.14%) Intranet
2 2 (1.14%) Reverse Proxy
3 1 (0.57%) DNS
3 1 (0.57%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (9.66%) PostgreSQL
2 14 (7.95%) MongoDB
2 14 (7.95%) Redis
3 13 (7.39%) SQL Server
4 11 (6.25%) NoSQL
5 9 (5.11%) DynamoDB
5 9 (5.11%) MySQL
5 9 (5.11%) Relational Database
6 6 (3.41%) Amazon Aurora
7 5 (2.84%) Amazon RDS
7 5 (2.84%) Delta Lake
7 5 (2.84%) Elasticsearch
7 5 (2.84%) Oracle Database
8 4 (2.27%) Amazon Athena
8 4 (2.27%) Amazon Redshift
8 4 (2.27%) Data Warehouse
8 4 (2.27%) Metadata
8 4 (2.27%) RDBMS
8 4 (2.27%) SAS Enterprise Guide
8 4 (2.27%) SAS Visual Analytics
Development Applications
1 33 (18.75%) Git
2 26 (14.77%) Jenkins
3 14 (7.95%) JIRA
4 13 (7.39%) GitLab
5 9 (5.11%) Postman
6 8 (4.55%) TeamCity
7 7 (3.98%) JMeter
8 6 (3.41%) Claude Code
9 4 (2.27%) Artifactory
9 4 (2.27%) Bitbucket
9 4 (2.27%) SonarQube
10 3 (1.70%) Cucumber
10 3 (1.70%) eggPlant
10 3 (1.70%) JUnit
10 3 (1.70%) LoadRunner
10 3 (1.70%) Mockito
10 3 (1.70%) Octopus Deploy
10 3 (1.70%) SoapUI
10 3 (1.70%) Vite
11 2 (1.14%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 51 (28.98%) Finance
2 40 (22.73%) Social Skills
3 31 (17.61%) Public Sector
4 30 (17.05%) Banking
5 21 (11.93%) Analytical Skills
6 15 (8.52%) Front Office
7 11 (6.25%) Investment Banking
8 7 (3.98%) Documentation Skills
9 5 (2.84%) Retail
10 4 (2.27%) Influencing Skills
11 2 (1.14%) Law
11 2 (1.14%) Marketing
11 2 (1.14%) Military
11 2 (1.14%) Organisational Skills
11 2 (1.14%) Police
12 1 (0.57%) Billing
12 1 (0.57%) Local Government
12 1 (0.57%) Manufacturing
12 1 (0.57%) Retail Banking
12 1 (0.57%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 67 (38.07%) Developer
2 42 (23.86%) Senior
3 30 (17.05%) Architect
4 17 (9.66%) Lead
5 13 (7.39%) Java Developer
5 13 (7.39%) Technical Architect
6 12 (6.82%) .NET Developer
6 12 (6.82%) Lead Developer
7 11 (6.25%) Software Engineer
8 10 (5.68%) Senior Developer
9 8 (4.55%) C# Developer
9 8 (4.55%) Full-Stack Engineer
10 7 (3.98%) Data Architect
10 7 (3.98%) Node.js Developer
10 7 (3.98%) Salesforce Architect
11 6 (3.41%) AWS Engineer
11 6 (3.41%) Java Engineer
11 6 (3.41%) Platform Engineer
11 6 (3.41%) Salesforce Technical Architect
12 5 (2.84%) Lambda Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 46 (26.14%) REST
2 36 (20.45%) .NET
3 27 (15.34%) Terraform
4 21 (11.93%) React
5 18 (10.23%) RESTful
6 14 (7.95%) ASP.NET
6 14 (7.95%) Kafka
6 14 (7.95%) Node.js
6 14 (7.95%) Spring
6 14 (7.95%) Spring Boot
7 12 (6.82%) Lightning Web Components
8 10 (5.68%) .NET Framework
8 10 (5.68%) Jest
8 10 (5.68%) OpenAPI
8 10 (5.68%) SOAP
8 10 (5.68%) Swagger
8 10 (5.68%) XML
9 8 (4.55%) HTML
9 8 (4.55%) Middleware
9 8 (4.55%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 24 (13.64%) Cloud Native
2 19 (10.80%) Distributed Systems
3 14 (7.95%) Legacy Applications
3 14 (7.95%) Legacy Systems
3 14 (7.95%) Product Ownership
4 11 (6.25%) AI Agents
4 11 (6.25%) Legacy Code
5 10 (5.68%) Algorithms
6 9 (5.11%) Data Structures
7 8 (4.55%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 7 (3.98%) Enterprise Software
9 6 (3.41%) Enterprise Cloud
9 6 (3.41%) Mobile App
10 5 (2.84%) Analytical Mindset
10 5 (2.84%) Data Protection Act
10 5 (2.84%) Onboarding
10 5 (2.84%) Replication
11 4 (2.27%) Distributed Computing
12 3 (1.70%) Derivative
12 3 (1.70%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 17 (9.66%) Linux
2 11 (6.25%) Windows
3 9 (5.11%) Unix
4 7 (3.98%) Android
5 5 (2.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 5 (2.84%) Solaris
6 4 (2.27%) Windows Server 2008
7 3 (1.70%) Windows Server
8 2 (1.14%) Apple iOS
8 2 (1.14%) Windows Server 2016
8 2 (1.14%) Windows Server 2019
9 1 (0.57%) VMS
9 1 (0.57%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 91 (51.70%) CI/CD
2 53 (30.11%) DevOps
3 47 (26.70%) Microservices
4 46 (26.14%) AI
5 42 (23.86%) Test Automation
6 41 (23.30%) Agile
7 38 (21.59%) Migration
8 36 (20.45%) Code Quality
8 36 (20.45%) Containerisation
9 32 (18.18%) Software Engineering
10 31 (17.61%) Event-Driven
11 30 (17.05%) Validation
12 27 (15.34%) TDD
13 26 (14.77%) Clean Code
14 25 (14.20%) Secure Coding
15 24 (13.64%) Observability
15 24 (13.64%) Performance Optimisation
16 23 (13.07%) Infrastructure as Code
17 21 (11.93%) Continuous Improvement
17 21 (11.93%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 55 (31.25%) SQL
2 50 (28.41%) Java
3 42 (23.86%) Python
4 28 (15.91%) C#
5 18 (10.23%) Kotlin
5 18 (10.23%) TypeScript
6 13 (7.39%) Apex Code
7 11 (6.25%) JavaScript
8 9 (5.11%) PL/SQL
9 8 (4.55%) Bash
10 6 (3.41%) PowerShell
11 4 (2.27%) Bicep
11 4 (2.27%) Shell Script
12 3 (1.70%) Perl
12 3 (1.70%) VB.NET
13 2 (1.14%) C
13 2 (1.14%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 2 (1.14%) PHP
13 2 (1.14%) ProC
13 2 (1.14%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 45 (25.57%) Security Cleared
2 38 (21.59%) SC Cleared
3 12 (6.82%) Degree
4 10 (5.68%) BPSS Clearance
5 5 (2.84%) Computer Science Degree
6 4 (2.27%) SAS Certification
7 3 (1.70%) AWS Certification
8 2 (1.14%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
8 2 (1.14%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 2 (1.14%) ISEB
8 2 (1.14%) ISTQB
8 2 (1.14%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 1 (0.57%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
9 1 (0.57%) DV Cleared
9 1 (0.57%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (12.50%) QA
2 8 (4.55%) Accessibility
3 3 (1.70%) Data Quality
4 2 (1.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (1.14%) WCAG
5 1 (0.57%) Disclosure Scotland
5 1 (0.57%) GDPR
5 1 (0.57%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.57%) SOC 2
System Software
1 36 (20.45%) Docker
2 6 (3.41%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (2.84%) Active Directory
4 4 (2.27%) Virtual Machines
4 4 (2.27%) VMware ESXi
5 3 (1.70%) Oracle RAC
6 1 (0.57%) Time Sharing Option
6 1 (0.57%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 33 (18.75%) Kubernetes
2 6 (3.41%) Ansible
3 4 (2.27%) Grafana
3 4 (2.27%) Prometheus
4 3 (1.70%) Control-M
4 3 (1.70%) HP Fortify
4 3 (1.70%) Oracle RMAN
5 2 (1.14%) Kibana
5 2 (1.14%) Puppet
5 2 (1.14%) Salt
6 1 (0.57%) Argo
6 1 (0.57%) Podman
6 1 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 21 (11.93%) Oracle
2 14 (7.95%) Databricks
3 13 (7.39%) Microsoft
3 13 (7.39%) Salesforce
4 10 (5.68%) IBM
5 8 (4.55%) Google
5 8 (4.55%) OpenAI
5 8 (4.55%) Solace
6 7 (3.98%) VMware
7 6 (3.41%) Red Hat
8 4 (2.27%) OpenText
8 4 (2.27%) Sitecore
9 3 (1.70%) BMC
9 3 (1.70%) Remedy
9 3 (1.70%) SAP
10 2 (1.14%) EnterpriseDB
10 2 (1.14%) Fortinet
10 2 (1.14%) Sybase
11 1 (0.57%) MuleSoft
11 1 (0.57%) Talend