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 23 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 242 231 199
Rank change year-on-year -11 -32 -3
Contract jobs citing XML 416 367 610
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.16% 0.99% 1.31%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 5.13% 4.58% 5.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 275 228 384
10th Percentile £342 £203 £361
25th Percentile £400 £400 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -9.09% -2.87%
75th Percentile £587 £575 £625
90th Percentile £700 £632 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £449 £528
% change year-on-year +4.40% -14.88% +5.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 0 37
10th Percentile £31.25 - £45.88
25th Percentile £40.75 - -
Median hourly rate £43.00 - £48.72
75th Percentile £43.75 - £70.00
90th Percentile £92.50 - £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.75 - £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 8,115 8,005 10,309
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 22.71% 21.67% 22.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,385 5,045 7,347
10th Percentile £350 £350 £363
25th Percentile £413 £425 £444
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £775 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 192 122 189
10th Percentile £30.80 £22.00 £35.55
25th Percentile £43.00 £37.13 £46.18
Median hourly rate £55.00 £65.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.38% +18.18% -14.73%
75th Percentile £65.00 £70.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £74.40 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.00 £65.00 £54.56
% change year-on-year -3.08% +19.13% -16.06%

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 23 November 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 23 November 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 23 November 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 -5 352 £480 -4.00% 117
UK excluding London +12 180 £469 +4.40% 99
London -8 170 £525 -0.94% 39
Work from Home +31 163 £475 -4.04% 82
North of England -23 41 £463 -15.91% 19
South East -17 40 £475 +61.02% 33
East of England +20 36 £550 - 11
North West -6 32 £450 +1.69% 10
Midlands -30 29 £429 -19.17% 22
West Midlands -18 26 £429 -23.97% 12
South West +9 17 £375 -30.23% 12
Wales +1 11 £375 +84.05%
Scotland -4 10 £500 +27.88% 5
Yorkshire -32 9 £650 +14.64% 5
East Midlands -10 3 - - 9

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 (6.97%) WebLogic
2 18 (4.33%) Apache
2 18 (4.33%) Oracle SOA Suite
3 14 (3.37%) Anypoint
4 12 (2.88%) Confluence
4 12 (2.88%) MQSeries
4 12 (2.88%) Mule
5 11 (2.64%) JBoss
6 10 (2.40%) Oracle Service Bus
7 9 (2.16%) WebSphere
8 8 (1.92%) IIS
9 7 (1.68%) Appian
9 7 (1.68%) nginx
10 4 (0.96%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (0.96%) Tomcat
11 3 (0.72%) Alfresco
11 3 (0.72%) Apache Spark
11 3 (0.72%) Documentum
11 3 (0.72%) Mule ESB
11 3 (0.72%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 18 (4.33%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (2.64%) FrameMaker
3 10 (2.40%) Microsoft Excel
4 4 (0.96%) Siemens NX
5 2 (0.48%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.48%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.24%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 11 (2.64%) Oracle BPM
2 8 (1.92%) Maximo
3 7 (1.68%) SAP HCM
3 7 (1.68%) SAP Payroll
4 5 (1.20%) BusinessWorks
5 4 (0.96%) Dynamics CRM
5 4 (0.96%) Salesforce CRM
5 4 (0.96%) SAP S/4HANA
5 4 (0.96%) Teamcenter
6 3 (0.72%) Oracle 11i
6 3 (0.72%) SAP ERP
7 2 (0.48%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.48%) Workday HCM
8 1 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
8 1 (0.24%) Oracle Cash Management
8 1 (0.24%) Oracle FAH
8 1 (0.24%) Oracle Payables
8 1 (0.24%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 1 (0.24%) Oracle Receivables
8 1 (0.24%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 102 (24.52%) Azure
2 72 (17.31%) AWS
3 34 (8.17%) GitHub
4 33 (7.93%) Azure DevOps
5 20 (4.81%) GCP
6 19 (4.57%) Power Platform
7 16 (3.85%) SaaS
7 16 (3.85%) Serverless
8 14 (3.37%) Power Automate
8 14 (3.37%) Tricentis Tosca
9 13 (3.13%) Azure Logic Apps
10 12 (2.88%) SuccessFactors
11 11 (2.64%) Amazon S3
11 11 (2.64%) Cloud Computing
12 10 (2.40%) AWS Lambda
13 9 (2.16%) Boomi
13 9 (2.16%) Dynamics 365
13 9 (2.16%) Nutanix
14 7 (1.68%) Amazon SQS
14 7 (1.68%) AtomSphere
Communications & Networking
1 33 (7.93%) HTTPS
2 28 (6.73%) HTTP
3 11 (2.64%) Firewall
4 10 (2.40%) SSL
5 8 (1.92%) NFC
5 8 (1.92%) PPP
6 7 (1.68%) AMQP
6 7 (1.68%) DSL
7 4 (0.96%) VPN
8 3 (0.72%) BGP
8 3 (0.72%) MPLS
9 2 (0.48%) DNS
9 2 (0.48%) Ethernet VPN
9 2 (0.48%) FTP
9 2 (0.48%) LAN
10 1 (0.24%) 5G
10 1 (0.24%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
10 1 (0.24%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
10 1 (0.24%) Radio Access Network
10 1 (0.24%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 55 (13.22%) Relational Database
2 49 (11.78%) SQL Server
3 19 (4.57%) MongoDB
4 17 (4.09%) MySQL
4 17 (4.09%) PostgreSQL
5 16 (3.85%) Data Warehouse
5 16 (3.85%) Oracle Database
6 11 (2.64%) DataStage
7 10 (2.40%) DB2
7 10 (2.40%) Power BI
8 9 (2.16%) Amazon Redshift
8 9 (2.16%) Big Data
9 8 (1.92%) Amazon QuickSight
9 8 (1.92%) Apache Cassandra
9 8 (1.92%) Metadata
10 7 (1.68%) Elasticsearch
10 7 (1.68%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 6 (1.44%) Amazon RDS
11 6 (1.44%) MariaDB
11 6 (1.44%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 68 (16.35%) Git
2 57 (13.70%) JIRA
3 39 (9.38%) Jenkins
4 29 (6.97%) Postman
5 27 (6.49%) Selenium
6 25 (6.01%) JUnit
7 22 (5.29%) Cucumber
8 21 (5.05%) GitLab
9 19 (4.57%) Eclipse
10 11 (2.64%) IntelliJ
11 10 (2.40%) Maven
12 9 (2.16%) Browser DevTools
12 9 (2.16%) Firebug
12 9 (2.16%) PVCS
12 9 (2.16%) SoapUI
13 8 (1.92%) SonarQube
13 8 (1.92%) Valgrind
14 7 (1.68%) Robot Framework
14 7 (1.68%) TestRail
14 7 (1.68%) Zephyr
General
1 138 (33.17%) Social Skills
2 78 (18.75%) Analytical Skills
3 77 (18.51%) Finance
4 41 (9.86%) Public Sector
5 36 (8.65%) Banking
6 14 (3.37%) Publishing
7 13 (3.13%) Influencing Skills
8 11 (2.64%) Documentation Skills
8 11 (2.64%) Telecoms
9 10 (2.40%) Aerospace
9 10 (2.40%) Back Office
10 9 (2.16%) Manufacturing
11 8 (1.92%) Private Banking
12 7 (1.68%) Investment Banking
13 6 (1.44%) Digital Healthcare
13 6 (1.44%) Financial Institution
13 6 (1.44%) Retail
14 5 (1.20%) Automotive
14 5 (1.20%) Front Office
15 4 (0.96%) Legal
Job Titles
1 140 (33.65%) Developer
2 60 (14.42%) Analyst
3 45 (10.82%) Consultant
4 42 (10.10%) Senior
5 25 (6.01%) Software Engineer
6 23 (5.53%) Business Analyst
7 19 (4.57%) Architect
8 18 (4.33%) Data Engineer
9 17 (4.09%) Integration Developer
10 16 (3.85%) Java Developer
10 16 (3.85%) Lead
10 16 (3.85%) Support Engineer
10 16 (3.85%) webMethods Developer
11 14 (3.37%) Author
11 14 (3.37%) Technical Author
12 13 (3.13%) Applications Engineer
12 13 (3.13%) Senior Developer
13 12 (2.88%) Tester
14 11 (2.64%) SAP Consultant
15 10 (2.40%) Oracle Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 221 (53.13%) JSON
2 150 (36.06%) SOAP
3 143 (34.38%) REST
4 52 (12.50%) Web Services
5 51 (12.26%) OAuth
6 50 (12.02%) HTML
7 38 (9.13%) RESTful
8 34 (8.17%) Spring
9 33 (7.93%) JMS
9 33 (7.93%) XSLT
10 31 (7.45%) OAuth2
11 28 (6.73%) XSD
12 24 (5.77%) .NET
12 24 (5.77%) Swagger
13 23 (5.53%) Kafka
14 22 (5.29%) Hibernate
15 21 (5.05%) CSS
16 20 (4.81%) J2EE
17 18 (4.33%) AngularJS
17 18 (4.33%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 23 (5.53%) Cloud Native
2 19 (4.57%) Virtual Team
3 15 (3.61%) Replication
4 14 (3.37%) Distributed Systems
5 11 (2.64%) Data Protection Act
5 11 (2.64%) Data Structures
6 10 (2.40%) Self-Motivation
7 9 (2.16%) Legacy Systems
7 9 (2.16%) Onboarding
7 9 (2.16%) SWIFT Messaging Network
8 8 (1.92%) AS400
8 8 (1.92%) Enterprise Software
8 8 (1.92%) Smartcard
9 7 (1.68%) Algorithms
9 7 (1.68%) Product Ownership
10 6 (1.44%) Low-Code
10 6 (1.44%) Mobile App
11 5 (1.20%) Derivative
11 5 (1.20%) Hybrid Cloud
12 4 (0.96%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 42 (10.10%) Linux
2 31 (7.45%) Windows
3 29 (6.97%) Unix
4 8 (1.92%) Ubuntu
5 6 (1.44%) Windows Server
6 3 (0.72%) AIX
6 3 (0.72%) Android
7 2 (0.48%) CentOS
8 1 (0.24%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.24%) Mac OS
8 1 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 160 (38.46%) Agile
2 142 (34.13%) DevOps
3 100 (24.04%) CI/CD
4 93 (22.36%) Problem-Solving
5 75 (18.03%) Test Automation
6 54 (12.98%) Scrum
7 53 (12.74%) Validation
8 52 (12.50%) Microservices
9 49 (11.78%) Migration
10 47 (11.30%) Deployment Automation
11 43 (10.34%) ETL
12 39 (9.38%) API Management
13 38 (9.13%) Data Modelling
14 37 (8.89%) SDLC
14 37 (8.89%) Software Engineering
15 35 (8.41%) Data Migration
16 33 (7.93%) Computer Science
16 33 (7.93%) Continuous Improvement
17 30 (7.21%) Workflow
18 28 (6.73%) OO
Programming Languages
1 166 (39.90%) SQL
2 144 (34.62%) Java
3 76 (18.27%) JavaScript
3 76 (18.27%) Python
4 58 (13.94%) C#
5 25 (6.01%) PL/SQL
6 22 (5.29%) PowerShell
7 17 (4.09%) C++
8 14 (3.37%) T-SQL
8 14 (3.37%) XPath
9 9 (2.16%) ABAP
9 9 (2.16%) DataWeave
9 9 (2.16%) RPG
9 9 (2.16%) Scala
10 8 (1.92%) C
10 8 (1.92%) VBA
11 7 (1.68%) Groovy
11 7 (1.68%) Shell Script
12 4 (0.96%) BeanShell
13 3 (0.72%) Korn
Qualifications
1 110 (26.44%) Security Cleared
2 92 (22.12%) SC Cleared
3 52 (12.50%) Degree
4 28 (6.73%) Computer Science Degree
5 13 (3.13%) ISTQB
6 12 (2.88%) HNC
6 12 (2.88%) HND
7 10 (2.40%) BPSS Clearance
7 10 (2.40%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 9 (2.16%) ISEB
9 8 (1.92%) DV Cleared
10 7 (1.68%) AWS Certification
11 4 (0.96%) PMI Certification
12 3 (0.72%) CEH
12 3 (0.72%) GIAC
12 3 (0.72%) GWAPT
12 3 (0.72%) Master's Degree
12 3 (0.72%) PMP
13 2 (0.48%) Cisco Certification
13 2 (0.48%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (7.45%) Data Quality
1 31 (7.45%) QA
2 7 (1.68%) SEPA
3 3 (0.72%) HL7
3 3 (0.72%) ISO 20022
3 3 (0.72%) SLA
4 2 (0.48%) EMIR
4 2 (0.48%) GDPR
4 2 (0.48%) GxP
5 1 (0.24%) 21 CFR Part 11
5 1 (0.24%) Accessibility
5 1 (0.24%) AIFMD
5 1 (0.24%) DICOM
5 1 (0.24%) GAAP
5 1 (0.24%) GMP
5 1 (0.24%) IFRS
5 1 (0.24%) ISO 9001
5 1 (0.24%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 1 (0.24%) WCAG
System Software
1 55 (13.22%) Docker
2 3 (0.72%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.24%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 27 (6.49%) Kubernetes
2 18 (4.33%) Ansible
3 10 (2.40%) Control-M
4 9 (2.16%) Puppet
5 8 (1.92%) logstash
5 8 (1.92%) Terraform
6 7 (1.68%) Kibana
7 5 (1.20%) ITRS Geneos
7 5 (1.20%) TIBCO Hawk
8 4 (0.96%) vCenter Server
9 2 (0.48%) CloudHub
9 2 (0.48%) Fluentd
9 2 (0.48%) QRadar
9 2 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.24%) CEMLI
10 1 (0.24%) FortiGate
10 1 (0.24%) HP ALM
10 1 (0.24%) Podman
Vendors
1 79 (18.99%) Oracle
2 57 (13.70%) Microsoft
3 52 (12.50%) SAP
4 38 (9.13%) IBM
5 31 (7.45%) webMethods
6 19 (4.57%) MuleSoft
7 17 (4.09%) ServiceNow
8 12 (2.88%) Salesforce
8 12 (2.88%) Software AG
8 12 (2.88%) Splunk
8 12 (2.88%) Workday
9 11 (2.64%) Cisco
10 10 (2.40%) Axway
10 10 (2.40%) TIBCO
11 9 (2.16%) Blue Prism
12 7 (1.68%) Pega
12 7 (1.68%) Veracode
13 5 (1.20%) Databricks
13 5 (1.20%) EMC
13 5 (1.20%) Solace