Smart City Contract Job Trends

Smart Cities
UK

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Smart City in contract job vacancies. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Smart City over the 6 months leading up to 21 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 615 515 -
Rank change year-on-year -100 - -
Contract jobs citing Smart City 4 3 0
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.009% 0.010% -
As % of the Miscellaneous category 0.027% 0.030% -
Number of daily rates quoted 2 2 0
10th Percentile £666 £441 -
25th Percentile £672 £462 -
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £688 £502 -
Median % change year-on-year +37.09% - -
75th Percentile £697 £548 -
90th Percentile £699 £572 -
UK excluding London median daily rate - - -

All Generic Skills
UK

Smart City falls under the General and Transferable Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring generic IT skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 14,558 9,892 13,416
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.21% 33.73% 30.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,159 6,283 8,598
10th Percentile £300 £287 £255
25th Percentile £408 £409 £411
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.29% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 682 368 866
10th Percentile £15.60 £16.95 £12.50
25th Percentile £18.87 £22.44 £15.42
Median hourly rate £37.10 £32.50 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +14.15% +18.18% +22.22%
75th Percentile £68.75 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £85.00 £83.20 £67.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £31.76 £26.00
% change year-on-year +32.05% +22.15% +18.18%

Smart City
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Smart City job vacancy trend in the UK

Smart City
Daily Rate Trend

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

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Smart City

Smart City
Hourly Rate Trend

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

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Smart City

Smart City
Top 2 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Smart City within the UK over the 6 months to 21 March 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
London -55 2 - - 4
England -107 2 - - 5

Smart City
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 2 (50.00%) OpenStack
Cloud Services
1 2 (50.00%) AWS
1 2 (50.00%) Azure
Communications & Networking
1 2 (50.00%) 3GPP
1 2 (50.00%) 4G
1 2 (50.00%) 5G
1 2 (50.00%) LTE
1 2 (50.00%) Radio Access Network
2 1 (25.00%) HTTP
General
1 2 (50.00%) Electronics
1 2 (50.00%) Legal
1 2 (50.00%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 2 (50.00%) Architect
1 2 (50.00%) Artificial Intelligence Consultant
1 2 (50.00%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (50.00%) ONNX
1 2 (50.00%) PyTorch
1 2 (50.00%) TensorFlow
2 1 (25.00%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 2 (50.00%) Cloud Native
1 2 (50.00%) CUDA
1 2 (50.00%) Industry 4.0
1 2 (50.00%) IoT
1 2 (50.00%) Synthetic Data
2 1 (25.00%) Private Cloud
Processes & Methodologies
1 2 (50.00%) AI
1 2 (50.00%) Analytics
1 2 (50.00%) CI/CD
1 2 (50.00%) Computer Science
1 2 (50.00%) Computer Vision
1 2 (50.00%) Digital Twin
1 2 (50.00%) Edge AI
1 2 (50.00%) Microservices
1 2 (50.00%) Network Architecture
1 2 (50.00%) Network Virtualisation
1 2 (50.00%) Prototyping
1 2 (50.00%) Rapid Prototyping
1 2 (50.00%) Sensor Fusion
1 2 (50.00%) Technical Leadership
1 2 (50.00%) Use Case
1 2 (50.00%) Video Analytics
2 1 (25.00%) Containerisation
2 1 (25.00%) Edge Computing
2 1 (25.00%) Infrastructure as Code
2 1 (25.00%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 2 (50.00%) C++
1 2 (50.00%) Python
Qualifications
1 2 (50.00%) AWS Certification
1 2 (50.00%) Azure Certification
1 2 (50.00%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (25.00%) SLA
System Software
1 2 (50.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 2 (50.00%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 2 (50.00%) Ericsson
1 2 (50.00%) Huawei
1 2 (50.00%) Nokia
1 2 (50.00%) NVIDIA
1 2 (50.00%) Samsung