Software Delivery Contract Job Trends

Software Delivery
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Software Delivery skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 14 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 333 392 300
Rank change year-on-year +59 -92 +5
Contract jobs citing Software Delivery 259 173 340
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.71% 0.50% 0.76%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.80% 0.57% 0.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 171 132 245
10th Percentile £356 £400 £400
25th Percentile £450 £480 £495
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £534 £615
Median % change year-on-year -8.67% -13.21% +4.68%
75th Percentile £578 £641 £720
90th Percentile £638 £736 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £537 £660
% change year-on-year -11.55% -18.64% +25.71%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 2 5
10th Percentile - - £54.50
25th Percentile £61.25 - £57.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £35.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +85.71% -41.67% -14.29%
75th Percentile - - £77.50
90th Percentile - - £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 - £60.00
% change year-on-year - - +5.76%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Software Delivery 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 32,261 30,399 39,447
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 88.54% 87.91% 88.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,301 18,546 26,335
10th Percentile £300 £306 £310
25th Percentile £406 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £531
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.13% -3.45%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £744 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,097 1,021 1,510
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.53 £14.36
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.30 £18.95
Median hourly rate £25.15 £33.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -23.79% -22.35% +21.43%
75th Percentile £48.75 £63.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.00 £32.50 £44.50
% change year-on-year -29.23% -26.97% +37.98%

Software Delivery
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Software Delivery job vacancy trend in the UK

Software Delivery
Daily Rate Trend

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

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Software Delivery

Software Delivery
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Software Delivery over the 6 months to 14 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Software Delivery in the UK

Software Delivery
Hourly Rate Trend

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

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Software Delivery

Software Delivery
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 Software Delivery within the UK over the 6 months to 14 December 2025. 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 +41 220 £475 -13.64% 179
UK excluding London +14 143 £475 -11.55% 183
Work from Home +15 77 £480 -12.73% 144
London 0 77 £525 - 24
South West +33 50 £475 -20.83% 29
North of England -16 37 £488 -17.02% 48
Yorkshire -25 27 £475 -29.63% 16
Scotland -11 18 £475 -9.52% 9
Midlands -34 17 £575 +15.00% 21
South East +8 16 £480 -12.73% 49
West Midlands -31 12 £575 +15.00% 13
North West -18 6 £550 +4.76% 26
East Midlands -20 5 £475 -9.52% 7
North East -10 4 £525 -19.23% 6
East of England -21 3 £625 -1.96% 24
Wales - 1 £308 - 2
Northern Ireland - 1 £325 - 8

Software Delivery
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 16 (6.18%) Confluence
2 9 (3.47%) OpenStack
3 2 (0.77%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.39%) Apache
4 1 (0.39%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.39%) CICS
4 1 (0.39%) CMS
4 1 (0.39%) Traefik
Applications
1 10 (3.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 5 (1.93%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (1.54%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.77%) Trello
5 1 (0.39%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.39%) Aladdin
1 1 (0.39%) Dynamics CRM
1 1 (0.39%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
1 1 (0.39%) Temenos T24
1 1 (0.39%) VisionPLUS
Cloud Services
1 80 (30.89%) AWS
2 78 (30.12%) Azure
3 52 (20.08%) Azure DevOps
4 49 (18.92%) GitHub
5 32 (12.36%) GitHub Actions
6 25 (9.65%) CloudFront
7 23 (8.88%) AWS CloudFormation
7 23 (8.88%) GCP
8 18 (6.95%) Amazon EKS
9 14 (5.41%) Serverless
10 12 (4.63%) OpenShift
10 12 (4.63%) SaaS
11 11 (4.25%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 11 (4.25%) Amazon S3
11 11 (4.25%) AWS Lambda
11 11 (4.25%) Azure AKS
12 9 (3.47%) Pulumi
13 8 (3.09%) Amazon ECS
13 8 (3.09%) Datadog
13 8 (3.09%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.54%) Firewall
2 3 (1.16%) Broadband
2 3 (1.16%) HTTP
3 2 (0.77%) DNS
3 2 (0.77%) Network Security
3 2 (0.77%) VPN
4 1 (0.39%) 5G
4 1 (0.39%) Calico
4 1 (0.39%) Internet
4 1 (0.39%) MQTT
4 1 (0.39%) Software-Defined Networking
4 1 (0.39%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (2.70%) MongoDB
1 7 (2.70%) Power BI
2 6 (2.32%) NoSQL
3 5 (1.93%) Amazon RDS
3 5 (1.93%) DynamoDB
3 5 (1.93%) KDB
3 5 (1.93%) Kdb+
3 5 (1.93%) SQL Server
4 4 (1.54%) PostgreSQL
5 3 (1.16%) Relational Database
6 2 (0.77%) MySQL
6 2 (0.77%) Tableau
7 1 (0.39%) Apache Cassandra
7 1 (0.39%) Data Lake
7 1 (0.39%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.39%) DB2
7 1 (0.39%) Elasticsearch
7 1 (0.39%) Snowflake Schema
7 1 (0.39%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 57 (22.01%) Jenkins
2 33 (12.74%) GitLab
2 33 (12.74%) JIRA
3 28 (10.81%) Oracle APEX
4 17 (6.56%) Git
5 15 (5.79%) Sonatype Nexus
6 11 (4.25%) SonarQube
7 10 (3.86%) Maven
7 10 (3.86%) Postman
8 8 (3.09%) Artifactory
8 8 (3.09%) Bitbucket
8 8 (3.09%) Gradle
8 8 (3.09%) Selenium
9 7 (2.70%) CircleCI
9 7 (2.70%) Cucumber
9 7 (2.70%) Snyk
10 6 (2.32%) Cypress.io
10 6 (2.32%) JUnit
11 5 (1.93%) InstallShield
11 5 (1.93%) MSI
General
1 92 (35.52%) Social Skills
2 52 (20.08%) Finance
3 26 (10.04%) Public Sector
4 21 (8.11%) Banking
5 11 (4.25%) Analytical Skills
5 11 (4.25%) Front Office
5 11 (4.25%) Influencing Skills
6 9 (3.47%) Retail
7 8 (3.09%) Marketing
7 8 (3.09%) Telecoms
8 7 (2.70%) Financial Institution
8 7 (2.70%) Legal
8 7 (2.70%) Presentation Skills
9 4 (1.54%) Documentation Skills
10 3 (1.16%) Aerospace
10 3 (1.16%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (1.16%) Military
11 2 (0.77%) Law
11 2 (0.77%) Manufacturing
11 2 (0.77%) Police
Job Titles
1 62 (23.94%) Senior
2 55 (21.24%) Developer
3 35 (13.51%) DevOps Engineer
4 34 (13.13%) Senior Developer
5 29 (11.20%) Lead
6 24 (9.27%) Analyst
7 23 (8.88%) Business Analyst
8 16 (6.18%) Platform Engineer
9 15 (5.79%) Java Developer
10 10 (3.86%) Architect
10 10 (3.86%) Delivery Manager
10 10 (3.86%) Project Manager
10 10 (3.86%) Senior Platform Engineer
10 10 (3.86%) Site Engineer
10 10 (3.86%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 8 (3.09%) Technical Analyst
11 8 (3.09%) Technical Business Analyst
12 7 (2.70%) AWS Architect
12 7 (2.70%) AWS Engineer
12 7 (2.70%) Documentation Officer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (12.36%) Kafka
2 19 (7.34%) Elastic Stack
3 16 (6.18%) REST
4 15 (5.79%) Node.js
5 14 (5.41%) gRPC
6 13 (5.02%) Spring Boot
7 9 (3.47%) JSON
7 9 (3.47%) Spring
8 8 (3.09%) OAuth
8 8 (3.09%) React
9 6 (2.32%) .NET
9 6 (2.32%) YAML
10 5 (1.93%) CSS
10 5 (1.93%) FIX Protocol
10 5 (1.93%) HTML
10 5 (1.93%) Playwright
10 5 (1.93%) XML
11 4 (1.54%) JWT
11 4 (1.54%) SOAP
11 4 (1.54%) VML
Miscellaneous
1 31 (11.97%) Distributed Systems
2 16 (6.18%) Product Ownership
3 11 (4.25%) Algorithms
4 7 (2.70%) Cloud Native
4 7 (2.70%) Legacy Systems
4 7 (2.70%) Management Information System
5 6 (2.32%) Onboarding
6 5 (1.93%) Enterprise Software
6 5 (1.93%) Fixed Income
6 5 (1.93%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 5 (1.93%) Legacy Applications
6 5 (1.93%) Private Cloud
7 4 (1.54%) AI Agents
7 4 (1.54%) e-Learning
7 4 (1.54%) Learning Management System
8 3 (1.16%) Autonomous Agent
8 3 (1.16%) Data Protection Act
9 2 (0.77%) NHS
9 2 (0.77%) PKI
9 2 (0.77%) PMI
Operating Systems
1 32 (12.36%) Linux
2 21 (8.11%) Unix
3 16 (6.18%) Windows
4 5 (1.93%) Windows 10
5 3 (1.16%) Windows Server
6 2 (0.77%) Mac OS X
7 1 (0.39%) Android
7 1 (0.39%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 143 (55.21%) Agile
2 118 (45.56%) DevOps
3 117 (45.17%) CI/CD
4 68 (26.25%) Infrastructure as Code
5 67 (25.87%) Scrum
6 49 (18.92%) Software Engineering
7 41 (15.83%) Containerisation
7 41 (15.83%) Test Automation
8 38 (14.67%) Continuous Improvement
9 36 (13.90%) Collaborative Working
10 34 (13.13%) Microservices
10 34 (13.13%) Observability
11 33 (12.74%) Problem-Solving
11 33 (12.74%) Requirements Analysis
12 32 (12.36%) Stakeholder Management
13 31 (11.97%) SDLC
13 31 (11.97%) Validation
14 28 (10.81%) Web Application Development
15 27 (10.42%) Mentoring
16 25 (9.65%) Clean Code
Programming Languages
1 59 (22.78%) Java
1 59 (22.78%) Python
2 44 (16.99%) SQL
3 38 (14.67%) JavaScript
4 30 (11.58%) PL/SQL
5 25 (9.65%) Go
6 14 (5.41%) Bash
7 12 (4.63%) Shell Script
8 11 (4.25%) PowerShell
8 11 (4.25%) TypeScript
9 10 (3.86%) C#
10 5 (1.93%) Rust
10 5 (1.93%) VBScript
11 4 (1.54%) C++
12 2 (0.77%) Ruby
12 2 (0.77%) Solidity
13 1 (0.39%) JCL
13 1 (0.39%) Korn
13 1 (0.39%) Scala
13 1 (0.39%) XPath
Qualifications
1 84 (32.43%) Security Cleared
2 66 (25.48%) SC Cleared
3 16 (6.18%) Degree
4 7 (2.70%) AWS Certification
4 7 (2.70%) DV Cleared
5 5 (1.93%) BPSS Clearance
5 5 (1.93%) PMI Certification
6 4 (1.54%) CSPO
7 3 (1.16%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
7 3 (1.16%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 3 (1.16%) CCSK
7 3 (1.16%) CISM
7 3 (1.16%) CISSP
7 3 (1.16%) PMP
8 2 (0.77%) CEH
8 2 (0.77%) Computer Science Degree
8 2 (0.77%) ITIL Certification
8 2 (0.77%) MCSA
8 2 (0.77%) Microsoft Certification
8 2 (0.77%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (11.97%) QA
2 5 (1.93%) Accessibility
3 4 (1.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 3 (1.16%) NIST
4 3 (1.16%) PCI DSS
4 3 (1.16%) PMO
5 2 (0.77%) Data Quality
5 2 (0.77%) Def Stans
5 2 (0.77%) Disclosure Scotland
5 2 (0.77%) GDPR
5 2 (0.77%) SOC 2
6 1 (0.39%) HL7
6 1 (0.39%) WCAG
System Software
1 57 (22.01%) Docker
2 7 (2.70%) Active Directory
3 5 (1.93%) Microsoft App-V
4 2 (0.77%) Virtual Servers
5 1 (0.39%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.39%) VMware NSX
5 1 (0.39%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 81 (31.27%) Terraform
2 58 (22.39%) Grafana
3 57 (22.01%) Kubernetes
4 47 (18.15%) Prometheus
5 33 (12.74%) Ansible
6 9 (3.47%) Puppet
7 6 (2.32%) Argo
7 6 (2.32%) Progress Chef
8 5 (1.93%) Podman
8 5 (1.93%) SCCM
9 3 (1.16%) Istio
9 3 (1.16%) Kiali
10 2 (0.77%) Suricata
11 1 (0.39%) CA Endevor
11 1 (0.39%) ITRS Geneos
11 1 (0.39%) Kibana
11 1 (0.39%) linkerd
11 1 (0.39%) logstash
11 1 (0.39%) Packer
11 1 (0.39%) Rundeck
Vendors
1 34 (13.13%) Oracle
2 16 (6.18%) Microsoft
3 9 (3.47%) Google
3 9 (3.47%) Splunk
4 8 (3.09%) Salesforce
4 8 (3.09%) ServiceNow
5 5 (1.93%) Sonatype
5 5 (1.93%) VMware
6 4 (1.54%) IBM
6 4 (1.54%) Red Hat
7 2 (0.77%) Atlassian
7 2 (0.77%) Avaloq
7 2 (0.77%) MuleSoft
7 2 (0.77%) SAP
8 1 (0.39%) Checkmarx
8 1 (0.39%) Concur
8 1 (0.39%) CyberArk
8 1 (0.39%) Databricks
8 1 (0.39%) Veracode
8 1 (0.39%) Xamarin