XML Contract Job Trends

XML
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring XML skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 5 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 234 244 194
Rank change year-on-year +10 -50 +9
Contract jobs citing XML 425 381 573
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.16% 1.05% 1.27%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 5.17% 4.83% 5.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 283 235 361
10th Percentile £340 £203 £350
25th Percentile £400 £400 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £582 £579 £623
90th Percentile £700 £650 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £525
% change year-on-year - -14.29% +6.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 1 37
10th Percentile £31.25 - £43.53
25th Percentile £40.75 £91.25 -
Median hourly rate £43.00 £92.50 £48.72
Median % change year-on-year -53.51% +89.86% -2.56%
75th Percentile £47.50 £93.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £91.88 - £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.00 - £48.72
% change year-on-year - - +3.68%

All Software Libraries and Frameworks
UK

XML falls under the Software Libraries and Frameworks category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring technical specification, industry standards, software libraries and framework skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for technical specification, industry standards, software libraries and framework skills 8,221 7,894 9,958
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 22.53% 21.85% 22.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,461 4,981 7,083
10th Percentile £350 £350 £363
25th Percentile £413 £425 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £624 £650 £650
90th Percentile £716 £775 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 185 113 183
10th Percentile £30.10 £22.00 £32.60
25th Percentile £43.00 £38.50 £46.18
Median hourly rate £55.00 £65.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.38% +18.18% -15.38%
75th Percentile £65.00 £70.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £74.35 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 £65.00 £52.50
% change year-on-year -1.54% +23.81% -19.23%

XML
Job Vacancy Trend

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

XML job vacancy trend in the UK

XML
Daily Rate Trend

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

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing XML

XML
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing XML over the 6 months to 5 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for XML in the UK

XML
Hourly Rate Trend

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

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing XML

XML
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing XML over the 6 months to 5 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for XML in the UK

XML
Top 15 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing XML within the UK over the 6 months to 5 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 -6 361 £475 -5.00% 110
UK excluding London +2 187 £450 - 93
London -24 172 £520 -2.80% 38
Work from Home +17 164 £466 -5.96% 72
North of England -21 49 £450 -12.45% 21
South East -28 41 £438 +28.68% 29
North West +3 40 £434 -1.92% 9
East of England +17 36 £550 - 9
Midlands -27 30 £429 -19.17% 17
West Midlands -24 27 £429 -23.97% 9
South West +1 14 £375 -30.23% 13
Scotland +8 11 £500 +24.46% 3
Wales -4 10 £375 +89.87% 1
Yorkshire -31 9 £650 +14.64% 10
East Midlands -13 3 - - 8

XML
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 29 (6.82%) WebLogic
2 18 (4.24%) Oracle SOA Suite
3 17 (4.00%) Apache
4 14 (3.29%) Anypoint
5 12 (2.82%) Mule
6 11 (2.59%) Confluence
6 11 (2.59%) MQSeries
7 10 (2.35%) JBoss
7 10 (2.35%) Oracle Service Bus
8 9 (2.12%) WebSphere
9 8 (1.88%) IIS
10 7 (1.65%) Appian
10 7 (1.65%) nginx
11 4 (0.94%) Microsoft Exchange
11 4 (0.94%) Tomcat
12 3 (0.71%) Apache Spark
12 3 (0.71%) Documentum
12 3 (0.71%) Mule ESB
12 3 (0.71%) Oracle Workflow
13 1 (0.24%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 18 (4.24%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (2.59%) FrameMaker
3 10 (2.35%) Microsoft Excel
4 4 (0.94%) Siemens NX
5 2 (0.47%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.47%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.24%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 11 (2.59%) Oracle BPM
2 8 (1.88%) Maximo
3 7 (1.65%) SAP HCM
3 7 (1.65%) SAP Payroll
4 5 (1.18%) BusinessWorks
5 4 (0.94%) Dynamics CRM
5 4 (0.94%) Oracle 11i
5 4 (0.94%) Salesforce CRM
5 4 (0.94%) SAP S/4HANA
5 4 (0.94%) Teamcenter
6 3 (0.71%) SAP ERP
7 2 (0.47%) NetSuite
7 2 (0.47%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.47%) Workday HCM
8 1 (0.24%) Endur
8 1 (0.24%) Exchequer
8 1 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
8 1 (0.24%) Oracle Payables
8 1 (0.24%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 1 (0.24%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 101 (23.76%) Azure
2 69 (16.24%) AWS
3 32 (7.53%) Azure DevOps
4 29 (6.82%) GitHub
5 22 (5.18%) GCP
6 19 (4.47%) Power Platform
7 18 (4.24%) Serverless
8 16 (3.76%) SaaS
9 14 (3.29%) Power Automate
9 14 (3.29%) Tricentis Tosca
10 13 (3.06%) Cloud Computing
11 12 (2.82%) Azure Logic Apps
11 12 (2.82%) SuccessFactors
12 11 (2.59%) Amazon S3
12 11 (2.59%) Dynamics 365
13 9 (2.12%) AWS Lambda
13 9 (2.12%) Boomi
13 9 (2.12%) GitHub Actions
13 9 (2.12%) Nutanix
14 8 (1.88%) Apigee
Communications & Networking
1 34 (8.00%) HTTPS
2 32 (7.53%) HTTP
3 11 (2.59%) Firewall
4 10 (2.35%) SSL
5 7 (1.65%) AMQP
5 7 (1.65%) DSL
5 7 (1.65%) NFC
5 7 (1.65%) PPP
6 4 (0.94%) VPN
7 3 (0.71%) BGP
7 3 (0.71%) MPLS
8 2 (0.47%) Ethernet VPN
8 2 (0.47%) FTP
9 1 (0.24%) 5G
9 1 (0.24%) DNS
9 1 (0.24%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
9 1 (0.24%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
9 1 (0.24%) NAS
9 1 (0.24%) Radio Access Network
9 1 (0.24%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 59 (13.88%) Relational Database
2 48 (11.29%) SQL Server
3 23 (5.41%) MongoDB
3 23 (5.41%) PostgreSQL
4 18 (4.24%) Oracle Database
5 16 (3.76%) Data Warehouse
5 16 (3.76%) MySQL
6 13 (3.06%) DataStage
6 13 (3.06%) RDBMS
7 11 (2.59%) NoSQL
7 11 (2.59%) Oracle Reports
8 10 (2.35%) Power BI
9 9 (2.12%) Amazon Redshift
9 9 (2.12%) DB2
9 9 (2.12%) Metadata
10 8 (1.88%) Amazon QuickSight
10 8 (1.88%) Apache Cassandra
10 8 (1.88%) Big Data
11 7 (1.65%) Elasticsearch
11 7 (1.65%) MariaDB
Development Applications
1 64 (15.06%) Git
2 60 (14.12%) JIRA
3 42 (9.88%) Jenkins
4 33 (7.76%) Postman
5 29 (6.82%) Selenium
6 24 (5.65%) Cucumber
6 24 (5.65%) JUnit
7 18 (4.24%) Eclipse
7 18 (4.24%) GitLab
8 11 (2.59%) IntelliJ
9 10 (2.35%) Browser DevTools
9 10 (2.35%) Firebug
10 9 (2.12%) Maven
10 9 (2.12%) PVCS
10 9 (2.12%) SoapUI
10 9 (2.12%) SpecFlow
10 9 (2.12%) TestRail
10 9 (2.12%) Zephyr
11 8 (1.88%) SonarQube
12 7 (1.65%) Robot Framework
General
1 144 (33.88%) Social Skills
2 79 (18.59%) Analytical Skills
2 79 (18.59%) Finance
3 45 (10.59%) Public Sector
4 36 (8.47%) Banking
5 14 (3.29%) Publishing
6 13 (3.06%) Influencing Skills
7 12 (2.82%) Documentation Skills
8 11 (2.59%) Telecoms
9 10 (2.35%) Aerospace
9 10 (2.35%) Back Office
10 9 (2.12%) Manufacturing
11 8 (1.88%) Private Banking
12 7 (1.65%) Investment Banking
13 6 (1.41%) Digital Healthcare
13 6 (1.41%) Financial Institution
13 6 (1.41%) Retail
14 5 (1.18%) Automotive
14 5 (1.18%) Front Office
14 5 (1.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 141 (33.18%) Developer
2 59 (13.88%) Analyst
3 48 (11.29%) Consultant
4 38 (8.94%) Senior
5 23 (5.41%) Business Analyst
6 22 (5.18%) Software Engineer
7 19 (4.47%) Architect
8 18 (4.24%) Integration Developer
9 17 (4.00%) Data Engineer
9 17 (4.00%) Support Engineer
10 16 (3.76%) Java Developer
10 16 (3.76%) Lead
10 16 (3.76%) webMethods Developer
11 14 (3.29%) Author
11 14 (3.29%) Technical Author
12 13 (3.06%) Applications Engineer
12 13 (3.06%) Tester
13 12 (2.82%) Oracle Consultant
13 12 (2.82%) Senior Developer
14 11 (2.59%) SAP Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 227 (53.41%) JSON
2 151 (35.53%) SOAP
3 143 (33.65%) REST
4 53 (12.47%) OAuth
5 51 (12.00%) Web Services
6 44 (10.35%) HTML
7 38 (8.94%) RESTful
8 36 (8.47%) XSLT
9 33 (7.76%) JMS
10 32 (7.53%) OAuth2
11 31 (7.29%) Spring
12 28 (6.59%) XSD
13 26 (6.12%) Kafka
14 24 (5.65%) .NET
14 24 (5.65%) Swagger
15 22 (5.18%) Hibernate
16 21 (4.94%) CSS
17 19 (4.47%) J2EE
17 19 (4.47%) JWT
18 17 (4.00%) OpenAPI
Miscellaneous
1 22 (5.18%) Cloud Native
2 19 (4.47%) Virtual Team
3 18 (4.24%) Data Structures
4 16 (3.76%) Replication
5 14 (3.29%) Distributed Systems
6 10 (2.35%) Data Protection Act
7 9 (2.12%) Legacy Systems
7 9 (2.12%) Onboarding
7 9 (2.12%) Self-Motivation
7 9 (2.12%) SWIFT Messaging Network
8 8 (1.88%) AS400
8 8 (1.88%) Enterprise Software
9 7 (1.65%) Algorithms
9 7 (1.65%) Hybrid Cloud
9 7 (1.65%) Smartcard
10 6 (1.41%) Low-Code
10 6 (1.41%) Management Information System
10 6 (1.41%) Mobile App
10 6 (1.41%) Product Ownership
11 5 (1.18%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 42 (9.88%) Linux
2 30 (7.06%) Windows
3 27 (6.35%) Unix
4 8 (1.88%) Ubuntu
5 6 (1.41%) Windows Server
6 5 (1.18%) AIX
7 3 (0.71%) Android
8 2 (0.47%) CentOS
9 1 (0.24%) Apple iOS
9 1 (0.24%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 166 (39.06%) Agile
2 147 (34.59%) DevOps
3 100 (23.53%) CI/CD
4 96 (22.59%) Problem-Solving
5 75 (17.65%) Test Automation
6 56 (13.18%) Scrum
7 55 (12.94%) Validation
8 51 (12.00%) Microservices
9 49 (11.53%) Migration
10 47 (11.06%) Deployment Automation
11 44 (10.35%) ETL
12 40 (9.41%) API Management
12 40 (9.41%) SDLC
13 39 (9.18%) Data Modelling
14 36 (8.47%) Data Migration
15 35 (8.24%) Computer Science
16 34 (8.00%) Software Engineering
17 32 (7.53%) Continuous Improvement
18 30 (7.06%) Mentoring
18 30 (7.06%) Workflow
Programming Languages
1 169 (39.76%) SQL
2 143 (33.65%) Java
3 75 (17.65%) JavaScript
3 75 (17.65%) Python
4 59 (13.88%) C#
5 27 (6.35%) PL/SQL
6 22 (5.18%) PowerShell
7 16 (3.76%) XPath
8 14 (3.29%) T-SQL
9 13 (3.06%) C++
10 9 (2.12%) ABAP
10 9 (2.12%) DataWeave
10 9 (2.12%) Scala
11 8 (1.88%) RPG
11 8 (1.88%) Shell Script
11 8 (1.88%) VBA
12 7 (1.65%) Groovy
13 5 (1.18%) Korn
13 5 (1.18%) Perl
14 4 (0.94%) C
Qualifications
1 113 (26.59%) Security Cleared
2 93 (21.88%) SC Cleared
3 55 (12.94%) Degree
4 30 (7.06%) Computer Science Degree
5 12 (2.82%) BPSS Clearance
5 12 (2.82%) HNC
5 12 (2.82%) HND
5 12 (2.82%) ISTQB
6 10 (2.35%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 8 (1.88%) ISEB
8 7 (1.65%) AWS Certification
8 7 (1.65%) DV Cleared
9 4 (0.94%) PMI Certification
10 3 (0.71%) CEH
10 3 (0.71%) GIAC
10 3 (0.71%) GWAPT
10 3 (0.71%) Master's Degree
10 3 (0.71%) OCP
10 3 (0.71%) Oracle Certification
10 3 (0.71%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (7.53%) Data Quality
2 31 (7.29%) QA
3 7 (1.65%) SEPA
4 3 (0.71%) HL7
4 3 (0.71%) ISO 20022
4 3 (0.71%) SLA
5 2 (0.47%) EMIR
5 2 (0.47%) GDPR
5 2 (0.47%) GxP
6 1 (0.24%) 21 CFR Part 11
6 1 (0.24%) Accessibility
6 1 (0.24%) AIFMD
6 1 (0.24%) DICOM
6 1 (0.24%) GAAP
6 1 (0.24%) GMP
6 1 (0.24%) IFRS
6 1 (0.24%) ISO 9001
6 1 (0.24%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 1 (0.24%) WCAG
System Software
1 54 (12.71%) Docker
2 3 (0.71%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.24%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 26 (6.12%) Kubernetes
2 18 (4.24%) Ansible
3 10 (2.35%) Control-M
4 9 (2.12%) Puppet
5 8 (1.88%) logstash
5 8 (1.88%) Terraform
6 7 (1.65%) Kibana
7 5 (1.18%) ITRS Geneos
7 5 (1.18%) TIBCO Hawk
8 4 (0.94%) vCenter Server
9 2 (0.47%) CloudHub
9 2 (0.47%) Fluentd
9 2 (0.47%) Podman
9 2 (0.47%) QRadar
10 1 (0.24%) CEMLI
10 1 (0.24%) FortiGate
10 1 (0.24%) HP ALM
10 1 (0.24%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 94 (22.12%) Oracle
2 56 (13.18%) Microsoft
3 53 (12.47%) SAP
4 40 (9.41%) IBM
5 31 (7.29%) webMethods
6 19 (4.47%) MuleSoft
7 16 (3.76%) ServiceNow
8 13 (3.06%) Workday
9 12 (2.82%) Software AG
9 12 (2.82%) Splunk
10 10 (2.35%) Axway
10 10 (2.35%) Cisco
10 10 (2.35%) Salesforce
10 10 (2.35%) TIBCO
11 9 (2.12%) Blue Prism
12 7 (1.65%) Pega
12 7 (1.65%) Veracode
13 5 (1.18%) Computacenter
13 5 (1.18%) Google
13 5 (1.18%) VMware