REST Contract Job Trends

Representational State Transfer (REST)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring REST skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 7 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 72 85 109
Rank change year-on-year +13 +24 -7
Contract jobs citing REST 1,771 942 811
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.32% 2.87% 2.08%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 17.41% 12.67% 9.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,161 664 547
10th Percentile £354 £350 £377
25th Percentile £413 £400 £429
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £508
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -3.45% -7.73%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £621
90th Percentile £700 £688 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £455 £491
% change year-on-year +4.51% -7.39% -7.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 11 18
10th Percentile £33.55 £46.25 £27.00
25th Percentile £35.00 - £37.63
Median hourly rate £55.00 £50.00 £72.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -30.56% +32.27%
75th Percentile £70.00 £55.00 £74.86
90th Percentile £77.00 - £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £50.00 £74.00
% change year-on-year +10.00% -32.43% +44.39%

All Software Libraries and Frameworks
UK

REST falls under the Software Libraries and Frameworks category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring technical specification, industry standards, software libraries and framework skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for technical specification, industry standards, software libraries and framework skills 10,172 7,434 8,558
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 19.04% 22.62% 21.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,633 5,010 5,809
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £427
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £638 £630 £669
90th Percentile £738 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £500
% change year-on-year +6.38% -6.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 265 169 244
10th Percentile £28.65 £29.85 £22.50
25th Percentile £41.35 £40.75 £43.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £54.88 £51.25
Median % change year-on-year +18.45% +7.07% -14.58%
75th Percentile £73.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.25 £81.01 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £56.25 £57.28
% change year-on-year +15.56% -1.79% -2.24%

REST
Job Vacancy Trend

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

REST job vacancy trend in the UK

REST
Daily Rate Trend

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

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

REST
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing REST over the 6 months to 7 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for REST in the UK

REST
Hourly Rate Trend

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

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

REST
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing REST over the 6 months to 7 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for REST in the UK

REST
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 REST within the UK over the 6 months to 7 August 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 +14 1,425 £515 +4.67% 772
London +25 798 £525 -4.55% 494
UK excluding London -2 690 £475 +4.51% 358
Work from Home +6 536 £500 +5.26% 376
North of England +3 197 £460 +9.85% 90
South East -13 178 £525 +10.53% 124
Yorkshire +24 108 £454 +15.96% 27
Midlands -28 103 £475 +18.75% 46
Scotland +20 95 £377 -18.49% 31
South West +17 89 £470 -14.55% 37
West Midlands -21 73 £478 +13.14% 29
North West -26 68 £550 +30.56% 55
East of England -12 35 £575 +15.00% 20
East Midlands -23 29 £459 +22.33% 17
North East -25 21 £438 -5.35% 9
Wales -19 8 £563 +25.00% 9
Northern Ireland +3 3 £650 +26.83% 8

REST
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 75 (4.23%) Confluence
2 56 (3.16%) SharePoint
3 27 (1.52%) Apache
4 21 (1.19%) Anypoint
5 20 (1.13%) Apache Spark
6 18 (1.02%) Apache Airflow
7 16 (0.90%) OpenStack
8 15 (0.85%) SharePoint Server
9 13 (0.73%) Mule
10 12 (0.68%) Microsoft Exchange
11 11 (0.62%) Camunda
11 11 (0.62%) IIS
12 10 (0.56%) Oracle Workflow
12 10 (0.56%) WebSphere
13 6 (0.34%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 6 (0.34%) Documentum
13 6 (0.34%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 5 (0.28%) Appian
14 5 (0.28%) CICS
14 5 (0.28%) WebLogic
Applications
1 8 (0.45%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (0.40%) Spreadsheet
3 6 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
4 4 (0.23%) Chatbot
4 4 (0.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.23%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.17%) Trello
6 2 (0.11%) Adobe XD
6 2 (0.11%) Sketch
7 1 (0.056%) CINEMA 4D
7 1 (0.056%) EngageOne
7 1 (0.056%) Houdini
7 1 (0.056%) InDesign
7 1 (0.056%) Maya
7 1 (0.056%) NUKE
7 1 (0.056%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 21 (1.19%) Remedy ITSM
2 19 (1.07%) SAP S/4HANA
3 18 (1.02%) NetSuite
4 16 (0.90%) Oracle EBS
5 10 (0.56%) Dynamics CRM
6 9 (0.51%) Oracle Payables
6 9 (0.51%) Oracle Receivables
6 9 (0.51%) Payment Gateway
7 8 (0.45%) Shopify
8 7 (0.40%) Elite 3E
8 7 (0.40%) Oracle ERP
8 7 (0.40%) Remedy AR System
9 6 (0.34%) SAP MDG
9 6 (0.34%) SAP PSCD
10 4 (0.23%) Maximo
10 4 (0.23%) Oracle Retail
10 4 (0.23%) Quorum
10 4 (0.23%) R3 Corda
10 4 (0.23%) Ripple
11 3 (0.17%) Distributed Ledger
Cloud Services
1 627 (35.40%) Azure
2 538 (30.38%) AWS
3 273 (15.42%) GitHub
4 200 (11.29%) Azure DevOps
5 191 (10.78%) GCP
6 176 (9.94%) GitHub Actions
7 145 (8.19%) Serverless
8 119 (6.72%) Entra ID
9 115 (6.49%) Power Platform
10 78 (4.40%) Amazon S3
10 78 (4.40%) AWS Lambda
11 74 (4.18%) SaaS
12 72 (4.07%) Amazon SQS
13 58 (3.27%) Azure Service Bus
13 58 (3.27%) PowerApps
14 56 (3.16%) Power Automate
15 53 (2.99%) Microsoft 365
16 49 (2.77%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 48 (2.71%) Boomi
18 46 (2.60%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 60 (3.39%) HTTP
2 22 (1.24%) SNMP
3 15 (0.85%) TCP/IP
4 14 (0.79%) HTTPS
4 14 (0.79%) WAN
5 13 (0.73%) BGP
5 13 (0.73%) DNS
5 13 (0.73%) Network Security
6 11 (0.62%) MPLS
7 9 (0.51%) Firewall
8 7 (0.40%) FTP
8 7 (0.40%) SAN
9 6 (0.34%) 5G
9 6 (0.34%) LAN
9 6 (0.34%) NAS
9 6 (0.34%) SD-WAN
9 6 (0.34%) SSH
9 6 (0.34%) SSL
10 5 (0.28%) Cisco Nexus
10 5 (0.28%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 218 (12.31%) PostgreSQL
2 138 (7.79%) Relational Database
3 130 (7.34%) SQL Server
4 83 (4.69%) NoSQL
4 83 (4.69%) Power BI
5 76 (4.29%) MongoDB
6 55 (3.11%) MySQL
7 51 (2.88%) Redis
8 47 (2.65%) DynamoDB
9 45 (2.54%) Amazon RDS
10 37 (2.09%) Azure SQL Database
11 32 (1.81%) Amazon Aurora
12 29 (1.64%) Data Warehouse
13 27 (1.52%) Metadata
14 26 (1.47%) Data Lake
15 25 (1.41%) Elasticsearch
16 19 (1.07%) Big Data
17 18 (1.02%) BigQuery
17 18 (1.02%) Oracle Reports
18 17 (0.96%) Oracle BI Publisher
Development Applications
1 361 (20.38%) Git
2 217 (12.25%) Jenkins
3 163 (9.20%) JIRA
4 109 (6.15%) GitLab
5 90 (5.08%) JUnit
6 64 (3.61%) Postman
7 63 (3.56%) Maven
8 54 (3.05%) Selenium
9 48 (2.71%) Gradle
10 41 (2.32%) Cucumber
10 41 (2.32%) Cypress.io
10 41 (2.32%) Mockito
11 29 (1.64%) REST Assured
12 25 (1.41%) Claude Code
13 24 (1.36%) JMeter
13 24 (1.36%) SonarQube
14 16 (0.90%) Bitbucket
15 15 (0.85%) CircleCI
16 13 (0.73%) Gatling
16 13 (0.73%) MSI
General
1 393 (22.19%) Social Skills
2 329 (18.58%) Finance
3 201 (11.35%) Analytical Skills
4 192 (10.84%) Public Sector
5 125 (7.06%) Banking
6 72 (4.07%) Retail
7 52 (2.94%) Telecoms
8 32 (1.81%) Documentation Skills
9 26 (1.47%) Marketing
10 25 (1.41%) Publishing
11 19 (1.07%) Investment Banking
12 17 (0.96%) Billing
12 17 (0.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 17 (0.96%) Law
13 15 (0.85%) Manufacturing
14 14 (0.79%) Legal
15 13 (0.73%) Pharmaceutical
16 11 (0.62%) Financial Institution
17 10 (0.56%) Military
18 9 (0.51%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 741 (41.84%) Developer
2 282 (15.92%) Architect
3 273 (15.42%) Senior
4 148 (8.36%) Java Developer
5 132 (7.45%) Senior Developer
6 109 (6.15%) Lead
7 96 (5.42%) Full-Stack Developer
8 88 (4.97%) Solutions Architect
9 86 (4.86%) Software Engineer
10 83 (4.69%) Consultant
11 61 (3.44%) Python Developer
12 56 (3.16%) .NET Developer
13 52 (2.94%) Full-Stack Engineer
14 43 (2.43%) ServiceNow Architect
15 42 (2.37%) ServiceNow Developer
16 40 (2.26%) Test Engineer
17 39 (2.20%) Java Engineer
18 38 (2.15%) Lead Developer
19 37 (2.09%) React Developer
20 36 (2.03%) Integration Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 441 (24.90%) SOAP
2 265 (14.96%) React
3 235 (13.27%) Spring
4 230 (12.99%) .NET
5 226 (12.76%) RESTful
6 222 (12.54%) JSON
7 210 (11.86%) Spring Boot
8 189 (10.67%) Kafka
9 173 (9.77%) Node.js
10 170 (9.60%) OAuth
11 166 (9.37%) HTML
12 157 (8.87%) XML
13 156 (8.81%) Web Services
14 155 (8.75%) CSS
15 130 (7.34%) Middleware
16 122 (6.89%) AngularJS
17 108 (6.10%) GraphQL
18 91 (5.14%) OAuth2
19 84 (4.74%) .NET Core
20 81 (4.57%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 247 (13.95%) Cloud Native
2 153 (8.64%) Product Ownership
3 141 (7.96%) Distributed Systems
4 98 (5.53%) CMDB
5 93 (5.25%) Enterprise Software
6 71 (4.01%) Onboarding
7 55 (3.11%) Legacy Systems
8 54 (3.05%) AI Agents
8 54 (3.05%) Mobile App
9 41 (2.32%) Data Structures
10 40 (2.26%) Self-Motivation
11 38 (2.15%) Data Protection Act
12 37 (2.09%) Management Information System
13 34 (1.92%) Low-Code
14 27 (1.52%) Virtual Team
15 20 (1.13%) Hybrid Cloud
16 19 (1.07%) Security Posture
17 17 (0.96%) PKI
18 15 (0.85%) NHS
19 14 (0.79%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 117 (6.61%) Windows
2 108 (6.10%) Linux
3 45 (2.54%) Unix
4 31 (1.75%) Android
4 31 (1.75%) Windows Server
5 18 (1.02%) AIX
6 16 (0.90%) Apple iOS
7 13 (0.73%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 8 (0.45%) Ubuntu
9 7 (0.40%) zOS
10 4 (0.23%) Mac OS
11 3 (0.17%) VMS
12 1 (0.056%) CentOS
12 1 (0.056%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 789 (44.55%) CI/CD
2 658 (37.15%) Agile
3 582 (32.86%) DevOps
4 469 (26.48%) Microservices
5 349 (19.71%) Problem-Solving
6 325 (18.35%) Test Automation
7 289 (16.32%) Event-Driven
8 273 (15.42%) AI
9 249 (14.06%) Scrum
10 233 (13.16%) Containerisation
10 233 (13.16%) Software Engineering
11 220 (12.42%) Integration Patterns
12 217 (12.25%) Data Modelling
13 213 (12.03%) Full-Stack Development
14 211 (11.91%) Observability
15 192 (10.84%) Continuous Improvement
16 191 (10.78%) Infrastructure as Code
17 186 (10.50%) Event-Driven Architecture
18 182 (10.28%) ITSM
19 179 (10.11%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 488 (27.56%) Java
2 429 (24.22%) Python
3 426 (24.05%) SQL
4 404 (22.81%) JavaScript
5 260 (14.68%) TypeScript
6 223 (12.59%) C#
7 133 (7.51%) PowerShell
8 57 (3.22%) Kotlin
9 49 (2.77%) Bash
10 47 (2.65%) Apex Code
11 42 (2.37%) Bicep
12 33 (1.86%) Go
13 27 (1.52%) Groovy
14 26 (1.47%) PL/SQL
15 21 (1.19%) SOQL
16 19 (1.07%) Search Processing Language
16 19 (1.07%) Shell Script
17 17 (0.96%) Scala
18 15 (0.85%) SOSL
19 14 (0.79%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 428 (24.17%) Security Cleared
2 327 (18.46%) SC Cleared
3 105 (5.93%) Degree
4 78 (4.40%) BPSS Clearance
5 73 (4.12%) DV Cleared
6 63 (3.56%) Computer Science Degree
7 27 (1.52%) Azure Certification
8 24 (1.36%) AWS Certification
9 19 (1.07%) Master's Degree
10 14 (0.79%) Cisco Certification
11 11 (0.62%) CISSP
12 10 (0.56%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 10 (0.56%) CISM
13 9 (0.51%) CCIE
13 9 (0.51%) Microsoft Certification
14 8 (0.45%) ISTQB
14 8 (0.45%) TOGAF Certification
15 7 (0.40%) MBA
15 7 (0.40%) PMI Certification
15 7 (0.40%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 159 (8.98%) QA
2 101 (5.70%) Accessibility
3 58 (3.27%) Data Quality
4 40 (2.26%) GDPR
5 39 (2.20%) WCAG
6 21 (1.19%) GRC
7 16 (0.90%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 15 (0.85%) NCSC
8 15 (0.85%) PCI DSS
9 13 (0.73%) ISO 20022
9 13 (0.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 11 (0.62%) HIPAA
10 11 (0.62%) HL7
10 11 (0.62%) SLA
11 10 (0.56%) NIST
12 8 (0.45%) GMP
12 8 (0.45%) GxP
13 7 (0.40%) 21 CFR Part 11
13 7 (0.40%) ISO/IEC 17025
14 6 (0.34%) PMO
System Software
1 326 (18.41%) Docker
2 78 (4.40%) Active Directory
3 12 (0.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (0.51%) Postfix
4 9 (0.51%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (0.23%) VMware NSX
6 2 (0.11%) EMC RecoverPoint
6 2 (0.11%) Hyper-V
6 2 (0.11%) Job Entry Subsystem
6 2 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
6 2 (0.11%) RACF
6 2 (0.11%) Varnish
6 2 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.11%) vSphere
7 1 (0.056%) Ceph
7 1 (0.056%) Firmware
7 1 (0.056%) IAG
7 1 (0.056%) iptables
7 1 (0.056%) Snort
7 1 (0.056%) UAG
Systems Management
1 345 (19.48%) Kubernetes
2 198 (11.18%) Terraform
3 89 (5.03%) Ansible
4 78 (4.40%) Grafana
5 44 (2.48%) Prometheus
6 26 (1.47%) Single Sign-On
7 19 (1.07%) Nagios
7 19 (1.07%) ZABBIX
8 18 (1.02%) Netcool
9 17 (0.96%) Tivoli
10 15 (0.85%) OpenView
10 15 (0.85%) Tivoli Monitoring
11 9 (0.51%) Control-M
11 9 (0.51%) NetBackup
12 8 (0.45%) Microsoft Intune
13 7 (0.40%) Puppet
14 6 (0.34%) Istio
14 6 (0.34%) Kibana
15 4 (0.23%) vCenter Server
16 3 (0.17%) Bosun
Vendors
1 252 (14.23%) Microsoft
2 224 (12.65%) ServiceNow
3 207 (11.69%) Oracle
4 121 (6.83%) Salesforce
5 86 (4.86%) Google
6 75 (4.23%) MuleSoft
7 71 (4.01%) SAP
8 68 (3.84%) Splunk
9 46 (2.60%) IBM
10 43 (2.43%) BMC
11 36 (2.03%) Databricks
12 28 (1.58%) Workday
13 24 (1.36%) OpenAI
14 21 (1.19%) HP
14 21 (1.19%) Remedy
14 21 (1.19%) SolarWinds
15 20 (1.13%) Atlassian
15 20 (1.13%) Dynatrace
16 19 (1.07%) CyberArk
17 17 (0.96%) Adobe