Weighted Shortest Job First Contract Job Trends

Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Weighted Shortest Job First skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 14 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 624 - 596
Rank change year-on-year - - +137
Contract jobs citing Weighted Shortest Job First 2 0 1
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.005% - 0.002%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.005% - 0.003%
Number of daily rates quoted 2 0 1
10th Percentile £452 - -
25th Percentile £460 - £763
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £474 - £775
75th Percentile £487 - £788
90th Percentile £495 - -
UK excluding London median daily rate £447 - -

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

Weighted Shortest Job First 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 37,150 26,655 38,571
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.07% 90.32% 86.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,527 17,023 25,087
10th Percentile £313 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £612 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -2.04% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,218 906 2,334
10th Percentile £14.88 £15.39 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.00 £16.06
Median hourly rate £30.00 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -7.69% - -7.14%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £31.65
% change year-on-year -15.38% +2.69% -9.57%

Weighted Shortest Job First
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Weighted Shortest Job First relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Weighted Shortest Job First job vacancy trend in the UK

Weighted Shortest Job First
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Weighted Shortest Job First.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Weighted Shortest Job First

Weighted Shortest Job First
Top 5 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Weighted Shortest Job First within the UK over the 6 months to 14 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
Work from Home - 1 £500 -
UK excluding London - 1 £447 -
North of England - 1 £447 -
North West - 1 £447 -
England - 1 £447 -

Weighted Shortest Job First
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:

Cloud Services
1 2 (100.00%) AWS
1 2 (100.00%) Azure
2 1 (50.00%) Azure DevOps
2 1 (50.00%) GCP
2 1 (50.00%) Snowflake
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (50.00%) Amazon Redshift
1 1 (50.00%) BigQuery
1 1 (50.00%) Data Warehouse
1 1 (50.00%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 1 (50.00%) JIRA
General
1 2 (100.00%) Finance
1 2 (100.00%) Public Sector
2 1 (50.00%) Analytical Skills
2 1 (50.00%) Banking
2 1 (50.00%) Social Skills
Job Titles
1 1 (50.00%) Data Manager
1 1 (50.00%) Product Manager
1 1 (50.00%) Release Engineer
1 1 (50.00%) Release Train Engineer
Miscellaneous
1 2 (100.00%) Product Ownership
2 1 (50.00%) Analytical Mindset
2 1 (50.00%) Onboarding
Processes & Methodologies
1 2 (100.00%) Agile
1 2 (100.00%) Scaled Agile Framework
1 2 (100.00%) Scrum
1 2 (100.00%) Stakeholder Management
2 1 (50.00%) Architecture Governance
2 1 (50.00%) Backlog Management
2 1 (50.00%) Burndown Charts
2 1 (50.00%) CI/CD
2 1 (50.00%) Conflict Resolution
2 1 (50.00%) Data Science
2 1 (50.00%) MLOps
2 1 (50.00%) MoSCoW
2 1 (50.00%) Product Backlog
2 1 (50.00%) Product Requirements
2 1 (50.00%) Release Train
2 1 (50.00%) Servant Leadership
2 1 (50.00%) Strategic Roadmap
2 1 (50.00%) User Research
2 1 (50.00%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
2 1 (50.00%) UX Research
Qualifications
1 1 (50.00%) CSPO
1 1 (50.00%) Degree
1 1 (50.00%) PMI Certification
1 1 (50.00%) PMP
1 1 (50.00%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (50.00%) Data Quality
1 1 (50.00%) GRC
1 1 (50.00%) QA
Vendors
1 1 (50.00%) Databricks