Subject Matter Expert Contract Job Trends

Subject Matter Expert
UK

The median Subject Matter Expert daily rate in the UK is £500, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 23 December 2025.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

 6 months to
23 Dec 2025		 Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 564 525 585
Rank change year-on-year -39 +60 +179
Contract jobs requiring a Subject Matter Expert 28 18 22
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.076% 0.053% 0.051%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.083% 0.057% 0.054%
Number of daily rates quoted 21 8 13
10th Percentile - £575 -
25th Percentile £413 £602 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £610 £563
Median % change year-on-year -18.03% +8.44% -2.17%
75th Percentile £650 £618 £588
90th Percentile £900 £624 £640
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £610 £400
% change year-on-year -30.33% +52.50% +45.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 2
10th Percentile - - £60.15
25th Percentile - - £60.38
Median hourly rate - - £60.77
75th Percentile - - £61.15
90th Percentile - - £61.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £60.00

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 33,704 31,327 40,582
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.07% 92.78% 93.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,320 19,249 27,284
10th Percentile £293 £300 £285
25th Percentile £404 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £640
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,988 974 1,449
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.56 £15.16
25th Percentile £18.19 £21.05 £19.25
Median hourly rate £25.33 £33.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -23.23% -26.67% +48.76%
75th Percentile £57.50 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.00 £73.32 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £45.88
% change year-on-year -22.62% -29.16% +83.52%

Subject Matter Expert
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Subject Matter Expert' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Subject Matter Expert job vacancy trend in the UK

Subject Matter Expert
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Subject Matter Expert job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Subject Matter Expert job vacancies in the UK

Subject Matter Expert
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Subject Matter Expert over the 6 months to 23 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Subject Matter Expert in the UK

Subject Matter Expert
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Subject Matter Expert job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Subject Matter Expert job vacancies in the UK

Subject Matter Expert
Top 11 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Subject Matter Expert within the UK over the 6 months to 23 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 -24 27 £494 -19.10% 9
UK excluding London -42 17 £425 -30.33% 8
South East -10 10 £425 -30.33%
London +3 9 £880 - 1
Work from Home 0 6 £500 -16.67% 6
North of England -43 6 £500 - 7
Yorkshire -41 4 £500 - 7
Midlands -37 3 - -
North East - 2 - -
East Midlands - 2 - -
West Midlands -28 1 - -

Subject Matter Expert Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 23 December 2025, Subject Matter Expert contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Subject Matter Expert in the job title.

1 8 (28.57%) ESRI
1 8 (28.57%) GIS
2 7 (25.00%) Analytics
3 6 (21.43%) Performance Monitoring
3 6 (21.43%) Root Cause Analysis
4 5 (17.86%) AI
4 5 (17.86%) Anomaly Detection
4 5 (17.86%) Application Performance Monitoring
4 5 (17.86%) Dynatrace
4 5 (17.86%) Migration
4 5 (17.86%) Synthetic Monitoring
5 4 (14.29%) Full-Stack Development
5 4 (14.29%) Observability
5 4 (14.29%) Problem-Solving
5 4 (14.29%) Site Reliability Engineering
6 3 (10.71%) API Integration
6 3 (10.71%) Continuous Improvement
6 3 (10.71%) Cybersecurity
6 3 (10.71%) Fintech
6 3 (10.71%) GDPR
6 3 (10.71%) Incident Response
6 3 (10.71%) Information Security
6 3 (10.71%) Kubernetes
6 3 (10.71%) OpenShift
6 3 (10.71%) Privileged Access Management
6 3 (10.71%) Product Roadmap
6 3 (10.71%) Python
6 3 (10.71%) Roadmaps
6 3 (10.71%) SC Cleared
6 3 (10.71%) Security Cleared

Subject Matter Expert Skill Set
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 1 (3.57%) Confluence
Cloud Services
1 3 (10.71%) OpenShift
2 2 (7.14%) Azure
2 2 (7.14%) Entra ID
3 1 (3.57%) AWS
3 1 (3.57%) Azure Logic Apps
3 1 (3.57%) GCP
3 1 (3.57%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 2 (7.14%) Firewall
2 1 (3.57%) DHCP
2 1 (3.57%) DNS
2 1 (3.57%) Fibre Channel
2 1 (3.57%) iSCSI
2 1 (3.57%) Kerberos
2 1 (3.57%) LAN
2 1 (3.57%) NAS
2 1 (3.57%) Network Security
2 1 (3.57%) SAN
2 1 (3.57%) SSH
2 1 (3.57%) WAN
2 1 (3.57%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (28.57%) GIS
Development Applications
1 2 (7.14%) Jenkins
2 1 (3.57%) JIRA
General
1 6 (21.43%) Finance
2 4 (14.29%) Social Skills
3 3 (10.71%) Legal
4 1 (3.57%) Banking
4 1 (3.57%) Manufacturing
4 1 (3.57%) Public Sector
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (7.14%) Keycloak
2 1 (3.57%) LDAP
2 1 (3.57%) OAuth
2 1 (3.57%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 4 (14.29%) Hybrid Cloud
2 2 (7.14%) Blockchain
2 2 (7.14%) Mobile App
2 2 (7.14%) Reference Data
2 2 (7.14%) Replication
3 1 (3.57%) Algorithms
3 1 (3.57%) Data Centre
3 1 (3.57%) Enterprise Storage
3 1 (3.57%) Fat Client
3 1 (3.57%) Industry 4.0
3 1 (3.57%) Operational Technology
3 1 (3.57%) Security Posture
3 1 (3.57%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 1 (3.57%) Linux
1 1 (3.57%) Windows
1 1 (3.57%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 7 (25.00%) Analytics
2 6 (21.43%) Performance Monitoring
2 6 (21.43%) Root Cause Analysis
3 5 (17.86%) AI
3 5 (17.86%) Anomaly Detection
3 5 (17.86%) Application Performance Monitoring
3 5 (17.86%) Migration
3 5 (17.86%) Synthetic Monitoring
4 4 (14.29%) Full-Stack Development
4 4 (14.29%) Observability
4 4 (14.29%) Problem-Solving
4 4 (14.29%) Site Reliability Engineering
5 3 (10.71%) API Integration
5 3 (10.71%) Cybersecurity
5 3 (10.71%) Fintech
5 3 (10.71%) Incident Response
5 3 (10.71%) Privileged Access Management
5 3 (10.71%) Product Roadmap
5 3 (10.71%) Roadmaps
5 3 (10.71%) Target Operating Model
Programming Languages
1 3 (10.71%) Python
2 2 (7.14%) Bash
3 1 (3.57%) Kusto Query Language
3 1 (3.57%) MATLAB
3 1 (3.57%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 3 (10.71%) SC Cleared
1 3 (10.71%) Security Cleared
2 2 (7.14%) Degree
2 2 (7.14%) Master's Degree
3 1 (3.57%) CISM
3 1 (3.57%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (10.71%) GDPR
2 2 (7.14%) Data Quality
2 2 (7.14%) NIST
3 1 (3.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 2 (7.14%) Active Directory
2 1 (3.57%) Hyper-V
2 1 (3.57%) NFS
2 1 (3.57%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 3 (10.71%) Kubernetes
2 2 (7.14%) Ansible
2 2 (7.14%) Argo
2 2 (7.14%) Istio
2 2 (7.14%) Terraform
3 1 (3.57%) Active Directory Federation Services
3 1 (3.57%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 8 (28.57%) ESRI
2 5 (17.86%) Dynatrace
3 2 (7.14%) CyberArk
3 2 (7.14%) Microsoft
3 2 (7.14%) Red Hat
4 1 (3.57%) BiZZdesign
4 1 (3.57%) Cisco
4 1 (3.57%) Citrix
4 1 (3.57%) EMC
4 1 (3.57%) IBM
4 1 (3.57%) Infoblox
4 1 (3.57%) NetApp
4 1 (3.57%) Okta
4 1 (3.57%) Palo Alto
4 1 (3.57%) Qualys
4 1 (3.57%) Siemens
4 1 (3.57%) VMware
Subject Matter Expert jobs