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 3 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 261 254 214
Rank change year-on-year -7 -40 -10
Contract jobs citing XML 397 321 498
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.03% 1.04% 1.10%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 4.61% 4.64% 5.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 265 198 327
10th Percentile £350 £311 £375
25th Percentile £400 £400 £473
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £478 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.40% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £638 £593 £613
90th Percentile £709 £658 £744
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £525
% change year-on-year - -14.29% +6.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 2 26
10th Percentile £41.00 - £42.50
25th Percentile £42.56 £91.25 -
Median hourly rate £47.50 £92.50 £48.72
Median % change year-on-year -48.65% +89.86% -35.04%
75th Percentile £56.94 £93.75 £51.93
90th Percentile £95.00 - £75.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 - £48.72
% change year-on-year - - -25.05%

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 8,605 6,915 9,352
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 22.22% 22.40% 20.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,731 4,372 6,611
10th Percentile £358 £360 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £537 £534
Median % change year-on-year -4.61% +0.61% -7.13%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £720 £767 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 209 87 190
10th Percentile £35.00 £25.34 £25.48
25th Percentile £50.00 £38.88 £45.96
Median hourly rate £64.00 £62.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.40% +13.64% -15.38%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.75 £69.38
90th Percentile £82.10 £77.70 £76.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year - +18.18% -15.38%

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 3 February 2026.

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 3 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for XML in the UK

XML
Top 14 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 3 February 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
England -7 353 £479 -7.66% 104
London -6 190 £525 -1.87% 43
UK excluding London -28 145 £450 - 77
Work from Home +12 137 £475 +6.74% 53
North of England -35 52 £402 -23.43% 13
North West -9 41 £400 -10.06% 9
South East -27 35 £475 +35.71% 33
Midlands -43 26 £430 -24.16% 13
West Midlands -24 23 £430 -24.16% 10
East of England -1 20 £581 - 8
Yorkshire -48 11 £531 -6.31% 4
South West -13 10 £400 -9.86% 7
Scotland -4 6 £500 +11.11% 5
East Midlands -26 3 - - 3

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 23 (5.79%) WebLogic
2 19 (4.79%) Oracle SOA Suite
3 16 (4.03%) Confluence
4 12 (3.02%) Apache
5 10 (2.52%) WebSphere
6 9 (2.27%) Appian
6 9 (2.27%) JBoss
7 7 (1.76%) MQSeries
8 6 (1.51%) Oracle Workflow
9 5 (1.26%) Anypoint
10 4 (1.01%) Mule
10 4 (1.01%) Oracle Service Bus
11 3 (0.76%) Apache Spark
11 3 (0.76%) Documentum
12 2 (0.50%) BizTalk Server
12 2 (0.50%) nginx
12 2 (0.50%) SharePoint
13 1 (0.25%) Apache Airflow
13 1 (0.25%) Mule ESB
13 1 (0.25%) Oracle Self-Service HR
Applications
1 6 (1.51%) FrameMaker
1 6 (1.51%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (1.01%) Microsoft Excel
3 2 (0.50%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.50%) EngageOne
3 2 (0.50%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.25%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.25%) Siemens NX
4 1 (0.25%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 9 (2.27%) Oracle ERP
1 9 (2.27%) SAP Payroll
2 7 (1.76%) BusinessWorks
2 7 (1.76%) SAP HCM
2 7 (1.76%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (1.51%) Oracle Payables
3 6 (1.51%) Oracle Receivables
4 5 (1.26%) Dynamics CRM
4 5 (1.26%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 5 (1.26%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 5 (1.26%) Payment Gateway
5 4 (1.01%) Maximo
5 4 (1.01%) Oracle 11i
5 4 (1.01%) Oracle General Ledger
6 3 (0.76%) Salesforce CRM
6 3 (0.76%) Workday HCM
7 2 (0.50%) NEC Housing
7 2 (0.50%) Oracle Assets
7 2 (0.50%) Oracle Cash Management
7 2 (0.50%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 90 (22.67%) Azure
2 69 (17.38%) AWS
3 27 (6.80%) OCI
4 23 (5.79%) Azure DevOps
4 23 (5.79%) Power Platform
5 21 (5.29%) GCP
6 20 (5.04%) GitHub
6 20 (5.04%) SaaS
7 18 (4.53%) Cloud Computing
8 15 (3.78%) PaaS
9 14 (3.53%) Dynamics 365
9 14 (3.53%) Tricentis Tosca
10 13 (3.27%) Apigee
10 13 (3.27%) Boomi
10 13 (3.27%) IaaS
10 13 (3.27%) Serverless
11 12 (3.02%) Azure Logic Apps
12 11 (2.77%) Power Automate
13 9 (2.27%) GitHub Actions
14 8 (2.02%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 35 (8.82%) HTTPS
2 27 (6.80%) HTTP
3 10 (2.52%) Firewall
3 10 (2.52%) SSL
4 3 (0.76%) FTP
4 3 (0.76%) NFC
4 3 (0.76%) PPP
5 2 (0.50%) 5G
5 2 (0.50%) BGP
5 2 (0.50%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
5 2 (0.50%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
5 2 (0.50%) FIX Connectivity
5 2 (0.50%) MPLS
5 2 (0.50%) VPN
6 1 (0.25%) DNS
6 1 (0.25%) Network Security
6 1 (0.25%) Radio Access Network
6 1 (0.25%) SMS
6 1 (0.25%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 46 (11.59%) Relational Database
2 39 (9.82%) SQL Server
3 22 (5.54%) Data Warehouse
3 22 (5.54%) MongoDB
4 21 (5.29%) PostgreSQL
5 15 (3.78%) RDBMS
6 14 (3.53%) NoSQL
6 14 (3.53%) Oracle Database
6 14 (3.53%) Oracle Reports
7 13 (3.27%) Power BI
8 12 (3.02%) Metadata
9 10 (2.52%) MySQL
9 10 (2.52%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 9 (2.27%) DataStage
11 8 (2.02%) Apache Cassandra
12 7 (1.76%) Data Lake
12 7 (1.76%) DB2
12 7 (1.76%) Elasticsearch
13 6 (1.51%) Amazon Redshift
13 6 (1.51%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 53 (13.35%) JIRA
2 47 (11.84%) Git
2 47 (11.84%) Postman
3 33 (8.31%) Jenkins
4 28 (7.05%) Selenium
5 21 (5.29%) Cucumber
6 20 (5.04%) JUnit
7 12 (3.02%) Eclipse
8 11 (2.77%) SoapUI
9 9 (2.27%) GitLab
9 9 (2.27%) IntelliJ
9 9 (2.27%) SpecFlow
9 9 (2.27%) TestRail
9 9 (2.27%) Zephyr
10 8 (2.02%) SonarQube
11 7 (1.76%) Maven
11 7 (1.76%) Robot Framework
11 7 (1.76%) Toad
12 5 (1.26%) Bitbucket
13 4 (1.01%) Firebug
General
1 134 (33.75%) Social Skills
2 89 (22.42%) Finance
3 68 (17.13%) Analytical Skills
4 42 (10.58%) Public Sector
5 40 (10.08%) Banking
6 21 (5.29%) Documentation Skills
7 12 (3.02%) Investment Banking
8 11 (2.77%) Telecoms
9 9 (2.27%) Influencing Skills
9 9 (2.27%) Legal
9 9 (2.27%) Publishing
10 8 (2.02%) Financial Institution
10 8 (2.02%) Private Banking
11 7 (1.76%) Manufacturing
11 7 (1.76%) Retail
12 6 (1.51%) Aerospace
13 5 (1.26%) Military
14 4 (1.01%) Back Office
14 4 (1.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 3 (0.76%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 131 (33.00%) Developer
2 60 (15.11%) Analyst
3 33 (8.31%) Consultant
4 30 (7.56%) Senior
5 26 (6.55%) Business Analyst
6 21 (5.29%) Architect
7 19 (4.79%) Lead
8 18 (4.53%) Integration Developer
9 17 (4.28%) Software Engineer
10 16 (4.03%) webMethods Developer
11 15 (3.78%) Data Engineer
12 12 (3.02%) Java Developer
12 12 (3.02%) Tester
13 11 (2.77%) DBA
13 11 (2.77%) SAP Consultant
13 11 (2.77%) Senior Developer
14 10 (2.52%) Administrator
14 10 (2.52%) Integration Specialist
14 10 (2.52%) Solutions Architect
15 9 (2.27%) Technical Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 220 (55.42%) JSON
2 144 (36.27%) SOAP
3 142 (35.77%) REST
4 50 (12.59%) OAuth
5 49 (12.34%) XSLT
6 44 (11.08%) Web Services
7 35 (8.82%) HTML
8 33 (8.31%) JMS
9 26 (6.55%) JWT
9 26 (6.55%) Oracle Fusion
10 25 (6.30%) Middleware
10 25 (6.30%) RESTful
11 24 (6.05%) .NET
12 21 (5.29%) Spring
12 21 (5.29%) XSD
13 18 (4.53%) J2EE
13 18 (4.53%) Swagger
14 17 (4.28%) CSS
14 17 (4.28%) Hibernate
15 16 (4.03%) EDI
Miscellaneous
1 17 (4.28%) Data Structures
2 14 (3.53%) Replication
3 12 (3.02%) Management Information System
4 11 (2.77%) Public Cloud
5 10 (2.52%) Onboarding
6 9 (2.27%) Cloud Native
6 9 (2.27%) Enterprise Software
7 8 (2.02%) Algorithms
7 8 (2.02%) AS400
7 8 (2.02%) Legacy Systems
7 8 (2.02%) Virtual Team
8 7 (1.76%) Data Protection Act
8 7 (1.76%) Distributed Systems
8 7 (1.76%) Fixed Income
8 7 (1.76%) Product Ownership
8 7 (1.76%) Self-Motivation
9 6 (1.51%) Low-Code
9 6 (1.51%) SWIFT Messaging Network
10 5 (1.26%) Derivative
10 5 (1.26%) Digital Wallet
Operating Systems
1 47 (11.84%) Linux
2 28 (7.05%) Unix
3 17 (4.28%) Windows
4 5 (1.26%) AIX
5 4 (1.01%) Ubuntu
6 3 (0.76%) Android
7 1 (0.25%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.25%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 134 (33.75%) Agile
1 134 (33.75%) DevOps
2 96 (24.18%) Problem-Solving
3 80 (20.15%) CI/CD
4 59 (14.86%) Validation
5 57 (14.36%) Test Automation
6 53 (13.35%) ERP
7 49 (12.34%) ETL
7 49 (12.34%) Scrum
8 46 (11.59%) Data Modelling
8 46 (11.59%) Migration
9 43 (10.83%) Deployment Automation
10 42 (10.58%) Microservices
11 37 (9.32%) Integration Patterns
12 34 (8.56%) Requirements Gathering
12 34 (8.56%) SDLC
13 33 (8.31%) Computer Science
14 32 (8.06%) API Management
14 32 (8.06%) Data Migration
14 32 (8.06%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 146 (36.78%) SQL
2 111 (27.96%) Java
3 60 (15.11%) Python
4 59 (14.86%) C#
5 53 (13.35%) JavaScript
6 19 (4.79%) PowerShell
7 18 (4.53%) PL/SQL
8 16 (4.03%) XPath
9 10 (2.52%) C++
9 10 (2.52%) Shell Script
10 9 (2.27%) Scala
11 8 (2.02%) ABAP
11 8 (2.02%) RPG
12 7 (1.76%) Groovy
12 7 (1.76%) Korn
12 7 (1.76%) T-SQL
13 5 (1.26%) Perl
14 4 (1.01%) BeanShell
14 4 (1.01%) Kotlin
15 3 (0.76%) VBA
Qualifications
1 113 (28.46%) Security Cleared
2 90 (22.67%) SC Cleared
3 45 (11.34%) Degree
4 25 (6.30%) Computer Science Degree
5 15 (3.78%) BPSS Clearance
6 11 (2.77%) ISTQB
7 9 (2.27%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 7 (1.76%) AWS Certification
9 6 (1.51%) HNC
9 6 (1.51%) HND
9 6 (1.51%) Master's Degree
9 6 (1.51%) PMI Certification
10 5 (1.26%) CCNP
10 5 (1.26%) Cisco Certification
10 5 (1.26%) DV Cleared
10 5 (1.26%) ISEB
10 5 (1.26%) PMP
11 3 (0.76%) CEH
11 3 (0.76%) GIAC
11 3 (0.76%) GWAPT
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (6.05%) QA
2 18 (4.53%) Data Quality
3 7 (1.76%) GDPR
4 6 (1.51%) PCI DSS
5 5 (1.26%) PSD2
6 4 (1.01%) GAAP
7 3 (0.76%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 3 (0.76%) FATCA
7 3 (0.76%) HL7
7 3 (0.76%) ISO 8583
7 3 (0.76%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 2 (0.50%) Basel III
8 2 (0.50%) EMIR
8 2 (0.50%) GxP
8 2 (0.50%) IFRS
8 2 (0.50%) IFRS 17
8 2 (0.50%) IFRS 9
8 2 (0.50%) SEPA
9 1 (0.25%) 21 CFR Part 11
9 1 (0.25%) SLA
System Software
1 38 (9.57%) Docker
2 3 (0.76%) Active Directory
2 3 (0.76%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 13 (3.27%) Ansible
1 13 (3.27%) Kubernetes
2 10 (2.52%) Control-M
2 10 (2.52%) Puppet
3 8 (2.02%) logstash
4 7 (1.76%) Kibana
4 7 (1.76%) TIBCO Hawk
5 5 (1.26%) ITRS Geneos
6 2 (0.50%) CloudHub
6 2 (0.50%) Fluentd
6 2 (0.50%) FortiGate
6 2 (0.50%) QRadar
6 2 (0.50%) Terraform
7 1 (0.25%) CEMLI
7 1 (0.25%) Docker Swarm
7 1 (0.25%) HP ALM
7 1 (0.25%) Podman
7 1 (0.25%) Progress Chef
7 1 (0.25%) Prometheus
7 1 (0.25%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 104 (26.20%) Oracle
2 53 (13.35%) SAP
3 40 (10.08%) IBM
3 40 (10.08%) Microsoft
4 31 (7.81%) webMethods
5 16 (4.03%) MuleSoft
5 16 (4.03%) Workday
6 12 (3.02%) ServiceNow
6 12 (3.02%) Software AG
6 12 (3.02%) TIBCO
7 11 (2.77%) Informatica
7 11 (2.77%) Splunk
8 10 (2.52%) Axway
9 9 (2.27%) Cisco
10 8 (2.02%) Google
10 8 (2.02%) Red Hat
10 8 (2.02%) Talend
11 7 (1.76%) Pega
11 7 (1.76%) Salesforce
11 7 (1.76%) Veracode