Technical Debt Contracts

Technical Debt
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring Technical Debt skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Technical Debt over the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 438 482 566
Rank change year-on-year +44 +84 -10
Contract jobs citing Technical Debt 82 100 152
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.28% 0.23% 0.25%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.31% 0.27% 0.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 43 72 107
10th Percentile £137 £404 £422
25th Percentile £392 £471 £487
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £525 £638
Median % change year-on-year +9.52% -17.65% +4.98%
75th Percentile £738 £659 £713
90th Percentile £750 £750 £746
UK excluding London median daily rate £497 £509 £508
% change year-on-year -2.41% +0.25% -13.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 3 2
10th Percentile £42.15 £24.34 £54.25
25th Percentile £67.50 £24.59 £56.88
Median hourly rate £90.42 £25.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +261.66% -60.00% -19.35%
75th Percentile £102.00 - £66.88
90th Percentile - - £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £96.21 - £55.00

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Technical Debt 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 26,594 37,597 53,655
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.84% 86.31% 89.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,149 24,227 37,238
10th Percentile £308 £300 £325
25th Percentile £413 £413 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £650
90th Percentile £743 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.50% - +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,071 2,443 1,746
10th Percentile £14.41 £12.75 £11.00
25th Percentile £18.21 £16.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £29.00 £35.65 £37.30
Median % change year-on-year -18.65% -4.42% +49.20%
75th Percentile £60.38 £59.98 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £37.34 £36.00
% change year-on-year -26.35% +3.72% +80.00%

Technical Debt
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Technical Debt as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Technical Debt in the UK

Technical Debt
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Technical Debt.

Daily rate trend for Technical Debt in the UK

Technical Debt
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Technical Debt over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Technical Debt in the UK

Technical Debt
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Technical Debt.

Hourly rate trend for Technical Debt in the UK

Technical Debt
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Technical Debt over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Technical Debt in the UK

Technical Debt
Top 13 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Technical Debt within the UK over the 6 months to 1 May 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 +45 73 £575 +4.55% 152
London +37 41 £700 +16.67% 73
Work from Home +42 38 £425 -25.11% 93
UK excluding London +50 37 £497 -2.41% 101
North of England +18 19 £145 -74.78% 26
Yorkshire +16 11 £140 -76.67% 10
South East +47 8 £550 -1.12% 33
North West +8 8 £606 +7.78% 15
Scotland +9 7 £460 +0.71% 9
South West +42 1 £725 +48.72% 13
East of England +30 1 £675 - 12
Midlands +17 1 £525 +25.30% 12
West Midlands +14 1 £525 -30.00% 5

Technical Debt
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 8 (9.76%) Apache Spark
2 2 (2.44%) Jupyter
3 1 (1.22%) Confluence
3 1 (1.22%) GeoServer
3 1 (1.22%) WebSphere
Applications
1 1 (1.22%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (1.22%) Dynamics CRM
1 1 (1.22%) IBM Planning Analytics
1 1 (1.22%) SAP ERP
1 1 (1.22%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 20 (24.39%) Azure
2 19 (23.17%) AWS
3 10 (12.20%) GCP
4 7 (8.54%) SaaS
5 6 (7.32%) Azure DevOps
5 6 (7.32%) Power Platform
6 4 (4.88%) Entra ID
6 4 (4.88%) Microsoft 365
6 4 (4.88%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
6 4 (4.88%) Salesforce Service Cloud
7 2 (2.44%) Azure Stack
7 2 (2.44%) Cloud Composer
7 2 (2.44%) GitHub
7 2 (2.44%) GitHub Actions
7 2 (2.44%) IaaS
7 2 (2.44%) PaaS
8 1 (1.22%) BigCommerce
8 1 (1.22%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 1 (1.22%) Nutanix
8 1 (1.22%) Rubrik
Communications & Networking
1 4 (4.88%) TCP/IP
2 3 (3.66%) DHCP
2 3 (3.66%) DNS
3 2 (2.44%) Intrusion Detection
4 1 (1.22%) Ethernet
4 1 (1.22%) Kerberos
4 1 (1.22%) NAS
4 1 (1.22%) NetScaler
4 1 (1.22%) SAN
4 1 (1.22%) VLAN
4 1 (1.22%) VSAN
4 1 (1.22%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (12.20%) SQL Server
2 9 (10.98%) Data Warehouse
3 7 (8.54%) Big Data
3 7 (8.54%) Data Mining
4 6 (7.32%) Power BI
5 5 (6.10%) BigQuery
5 5 (6.10%) Looker
5 5 (6.10%) MongoDB
6 3 (3.66%) NoSQL
6 3 (3.66%) Oracle Database
7 2 (2.44%) Hadoop
7 2 (2.44%) Impala
7 2 (2.44%) Redis
8 1 (1.22%) Apache Hive
8 1 (1.22%) Azure SQL Database
8 1 (1.22%) GIS
8 1 (1.22%) OLAP
8 1 (1.22%) PostgreSQL
8 1 (1.22%) RDBMS
8 1 (1.22%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 9 (10.98%) Git
2 6 (7.32%) Visual Studio Code
3 5 (6.10%) Jenkins
3 5 (6.10%) JIRA
4 4 (4.88%) Cypress.io
5 2 (2.44%) Artifactory
5 2 (2.44%) Bitbucket
5 2 (2.44%) Moq
5 2 (2.44%) Selenium
5 2 (2.44%) SonarQube
5 2 (2.44%) SpecFlow
5 2 (2.44%) Visual Studio
6 1 (1.22%) Eclipse
6 1 (1.22%) TeamCity
General
1 27 (32.93%) Social Skills
2 25 (30.49%) Finance
3 6 (7.32%) Public Sector
3 6 (7.32%) Retail
4 5 (6.10%) Analytical Skills
4 5 (6.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 4 (4.88%) Banking
5 4 (4.88%) Law
6 3 (3.66%) Presentation Skills
7 2 (2.44%) Financial Institution
7 2 (2.44%) Influencing Skills
7 2 (2.44%) Manufacturing
7 2 (2.44%) Military
8 1 (1.22%) Investment Banking
8 1 (1.22%) Organisational Skills
8 1 (1.22%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 15 (18.29%) Architect
1 15 (18.29%) Developer
2 11 (13.41%) Lead
3 10 (12.20%) Analyst
3 10 (12.20%) Senior
4 8 (9.76%) Data Analyst
5 7 (8.54%) Machine Learning Engineer
5 7 (8.54%) Technical Architect
6 6 (7.32%) Consultant
7 5 (6.10%) Enterprise Architect
7 5 (6.10%) Junior
7 5 (6.10%) Junior Analyst
7 5 (6.10%) Junior Data Analyst
7 5 (6.10%) Python Engineer
7 5 (6.10%) Senior Developer
8 4 (4.88%) Big Data Engineer
8 4 (4.88%) Server Engineer
8 4 (4.88%) Site Engineer
8 4 (4.88%) Site Reliability Engineer
9 3 (3.66%) Software Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (9.76%) React
2 7 (8.54%) Ray
3 6 (7.32%) .NET
3 6 (7.32%) AngularJS
4 5 (6.10%) ASP.NET
4 5 (6.10%) CSS
4 5 (6.10%) HTML
4 5 (6.10%) Kafka
4 5 (6.10%) RESTful
5 4 (4.88%) Lightning Web Components
5 4 (4.88%) YAML
6 3 (3.66%) JSON
6 3 (3.66%) XML
7 2 (2.44%) .NET Framework
7 2 (2.44%) ADO
7 2 (2.44%) Bootstrap
7 2 (2.44%) FastAPI
7 2 (2.44%) Middleware
7 2 (2.44%) pytest
7 2 (2.44%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 11 (13.41%) Product Ownership
2 7 (8.54%) Distributed Computing
3 6 (7.32%) Public Cloud
4 4 (4.88%) Tandem
5 3 (3.66%) Data Protection Act
5 3 (3.66%) Distributed Systems
6 2 (2.44%) BYOD
6 2 (2.44%) Cloud Native
6 2 (2.44%) Legacy Systems
6 2 (2.44%) PKI
6 2 (2.44%) Self-Motivation
7 1 (1.22%) Analytical Mindset
7 1 (1.22%) Clustering
7 1 (1.22%) Cyber Defence
7 1 (1.22%) Data Structures
7 1 (1.22%) Digital Signage
7 1 (1.22%) Legacy Code
7 1 (1.22%) Management Information System
7 1 (1.22%) Reinsurance
7 1 (1.22%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 16 (19.51%) Linux
2 13 (15.85%) Windows
3 9 (10.98%) Windows Server
4 5 (6.10%) Amazon Linux
5 3 (3.66%) Unix
6 2 (2.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (1.22%) Apple iOS
7 1 (1.22%) Mac OS
7 1 (1.22%) Oracle Linux
7 1 (1.22%) Solaris
7 1 (1.22%) Windows 10
7 1 (1.22%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 34 (41.46%) Agile
2 23 (28.05%) Roadmaps
3 18 (21.95%) CI/CD
4 17 (20.73%) DevOps
4 17 (20.73%) Problem-Solving
5 16 (19.51%) Technical Leadership
6 15 (18.29%) Software Engineering
7 14 (17.07%) Test Automation
8 13 (15.85%) Decision-Making
8 13 (15.85%) ETL
8 13 (15.85%) Stakeholder Management
9 11 (13.41%) User Experience
10 10 (12.20%) Design Patterns
10 10 (12.20%) Microservices
11 9 (10.98%) Code Quality
11 9 (10.98%) Data Governance
11 9 (10.98%) Infrastructure as Code
11 9 (10.98%) ITIL
11 9 (10.98%) Scrum
11 9 (10.98%) Service-Level Objective
Programming Languages
1 20 (24.39%) Python
2 17 (20.73%) Java
3 11 (13.41%) SQL
4 9 (10.98%) JavaScript
5 8 (9.76%) C#
6 7 (8.54%) C
6 7 (8.54%) C++
6 7 (8.54%) Shell Script
7 5 (6.10%) TypeScript
8 4 (4.88%) Apex Code
9 2 (2.44%) PowerShell
9 2 (2.44%) VB
10 1 (1.22%) Bash
10 1 (1.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 1 (1.22%) Scala
10 1 (1.22%) VBA
Qualifications
1 14 (17.07%) Degree
2 13 (15.85%) Security Cleared
3 9 (10.98%) SC Cleared
4 4 (4.88%) Azure Certification
4 4 (4.88%) Master's Degree
5 3 (3.66%) PhD
6 2 (2.44%) AWS Certification
6 2 (2.44%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 2 (2.44%) Computer Science Degree
6 2 (2.44%) TOGAF Certification
7 1 (1.22%) CSPO
7 1 (1.22%) DV Cleared
7 1 (1.22%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (9.76%) Data Quality
2 6 (7.32%) QA
3 3 (3.66%) Accessibility
3 3 (3.66%) Government Security Classifications
3 3 (3.66%) HMG Security Policy Framework
4 2 (2.44%) GDPR
5 1 (1.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 1 (1.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 6 (7.32%) VMware Infrastructure
2 4 (4.88%) Active Directory
3 3 (3.66%) Docker
4 1 (1.22%) Virtual Desktop
4 1 (1.22%) VMware ESXi
4 1 (1.22%) VMware NSX
4 1 (1.22%) XenApp
4 1 (1.22%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 9 (10.98%) Kubernetes
2 5 (6.10%) Terraform
3 4 (4.88%) Ansible
4 1 (1.22%) EMC NetWorker
4 1 (1.22%) Grafana
4 1 (1.22%) Netcool
4 1 (1.22%) Prometheus
4 1 (1.22%) Tivoli
4 1 (1.22%) Tivoli Storage Manager
Vendors
1 16 (19.51%) Microsoft
2 10 (12.20%) Oracle
2 10 (12.20%) VMware
3 9 (10.98%) Google
4 6 (7.32%) Salesforce
5 5 (6.10%) Red Hat
6 4 (4.88%) Cisco
6 4 (4.88%) SAP
7 3 (3.66%) ServiceNow
8 2 (2.44%) IBM
9 1 (1.22%) Adobe
9 1 (1.22%) Apple
9 1 (1.22%) Citrix
9 1 (1.22%) EMC
9 1 (1.22%) OpenText
9 1 (1.22%) Pega
9 1 (1.22%) Qualys
9 1 (1.22%) Serena
9 1 (1.22%) Sitecore
9 1 (1.22%) Sybase