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 28 October 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 245 223 183
Rank change year-on-year -22 -40 +9
Contract jobs citing XML 397 414 664
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.17% 1.13% 1.40%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 5.08% 5.15% 6.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 260 248 409
10th Percentile £340 £212 £373
25th Percentile £413 £400 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £494 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.25% -9.09% -3.34%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £626
90th Percentile £695 £630 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £530
% change year-on-year +5.56% -15.09% +6.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 4 34
10th Percentile £31.25 - £45.88
25th Percentile £38.38 - -
Median hourly rate £43.00 £43.00 £48.72
Median % change year-on-year - -11.74% -2.56%
75th Percentile £43.75 - £70.00
90th Percentile £93.13 - £78.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £43.00 £48.72
% change year-on-year -1.16% -11.74% +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 7,819 8,045 10,612
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 23.05% 21.98% 22.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,176 5,093 7,606
10th Percentile £350 £350 £363
25th Percentile £413 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £543 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.00% -1.27% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £670
90th Percentile £725 £779 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 183 133 191
10th Percentile £30.05 £25.15 £36.25
25th Percentile £41.25 £42.50 £46.18
Median hourly rate £54.00 £65.00 £55.56
Median % change year-on-year -16.92% +16.99% -14.52%
75th Percentile £65.00 £70.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £74.00 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £61.25 £65.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year -5.77% +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 28 October 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 28 October 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for XML in the UK

XML
Top 16 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 28 October 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 -30 329 £500 - 179
UK excluding London -10 173 £475 +5.56% 130
London -31 162 £530 +3.41% 84
Work from Home +19 161 £481 -2.93% 117
South East -12 43 £475 +26.67% 56
North of England -28 38 £500 -9.09% 40
East of England +4 32 £550 +10.00% 6
North West -10 29 £488 +9.55% 31
Midlands -33 23 £425 -15.00% 17
West Midlands -25 19 £427 -23.95% 9
South West +22 17 £375 -6.25% 7
Wales +9 15 £375 +89.87% 2
Scotland -3 9 £475 +21.48% 4
Yorkshire -37 8 £675 +19.05% 5
East Midlands -11 4 £270 -33.54% 8
North East -5 1 £200 -65.22% 4

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 21 (5.29%) WebLogic
2 18 (4.53%) Apache
3 14 (3.53%) Confluence
3 14 (3.53%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 13 (3.27%) MQSeries
5 12 (3.02%) Anypoint
6 11 (2.77%) IIS
6 11 (2.77%) Mule
7 10 (2.52%) Oracle Service Bus
8 9 (2.27%) JBoss
8 9 (2.27%) WebSphere
9 7 (1.76%) Appian
9 7 (1.76%) nginx
10 4 (1.01%) Alfresco
10 4 (1.01%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (1.01%) Tomcat
11 3 (0.76%) Camunda
11 3 (0.76%) Mule ESB
12 2 (0.50%) CICS
12 2 (0.50%) Documentum
Applications
1 17 (4.28%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (2.77%) FrameMaker
3 7 (1.76%) Siemens NX
4 6 (1.51%) Microsoft Excel
5 3 (0.76%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.50%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.25%) MadCap Flare
Business Applications
1 11 (2.77%) Oracle BPM
2 7 (1.76%) Maximo
2 7 (1.76%) Teamcenter
3 4 (1.01%) Salesforce CRM
3 4 (1.01%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.76%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 3 (0.76%) SAP ERP
5 2 (0.50%) NetSuite
5 2 (0.50%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.50%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.50%) Workday HCM
6 1 (0.25%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.25%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.25%) Payment Gateway
6 1 (0.25%) SAP EHS
6 1 (0.25%) SAP EWM
6 1 (0.25%) SAP HCM
6 1 (0.25%) SAP MDG
6 1 (0.25%) SAP MRS
6 1 (0.25%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 95 (23.93%) Azure
2 62 (15.62%) AWS
3 35 (8.82%) Azure DevOps
4 32 (8.06%) GitHub
5 17 (4.28%) SaaS
6 16 (4.03%) Serverless
7 14 (3.53%) Power Automate
8 13 (3.27%) GCP
8 13 (3.27%) Power Platform
9 11 (2.77%) Amazon S3
9 11 (2.77%) Azure Logic Apps
10 10 (2.52%) AWS Lambda
10 10 (2.52%) Azure Service Bus
10 10 (2.52%) Entra ID
11 9 (2.27%) Cloud Computing
11 9 (2.27%) Nutanix
11 9 (2.27%) Tricentis Tosca
12 8 (2.02%) Boomi
13 7 (1.76%) Amazon SQS
13 7 (1.76%) AtomSphere
Communications & Networking
1 28 (7.05%) HTTPS
2 22 (5.54%) HTTP
3 10 (2.52%) SSL
4 9 (2.27%) NFC
4 9 (2.27%) PPP
5 8 (2.02%) Firewall
6 7 (1.76%) AMQP
6 7 (1.76%) DSL
7 3 (0.76%) BGP
7 3 (0.76%) LAN
7 3 (0.76%) MPLS
7 3 (0.76%) VPN
8 2 (0.50%) DNS
8 2 (0.50%) Ethernet VPN
8 2 (0.50%) Internet
8 2 (0.50%) SMS
9 1 (0.25%) 5G
9 1 (0.25%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
9 1 (0.25%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
9 1 (0.25%) Radio Access Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 51 (12.85%) SQL Server
2 46 (11.59%) Relational Database
3 17 (4.28%) MongoDB
4 16 (4.03%) Data Warehouse
5 15 (3.78%) MySQL
5 15 (3.78%) Oracle Database
6 13 (3.27%) PostgreSQL
7 11 (2.77%) DB2
8 9 (2.27%) Amazon RDS
8 9 (2.27%) Amazon Redshift
8 9 (2.27%) Redis
9 8 (2.02%) Amazon QuickSight
9 8 (2.02%) Apache Cassandra
9 8 (2.02%) DataStage
9 8 (2.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 7 (1.76%) Elasticsearch
11 6 (1.51%) Big Data
11 6 (1.51%) MariaDB
11 6 (1.51%) Power BI
12 5 (1.26%) HPCC
Development Applications
1 59 (14.86%) Git
2 55 (13.85%) JIRA
3 39 (9.82%) Jenkins
4 25 (6.30%) Postman
4 25 (6.30%) Selenium
5 22 (5.54%) GitLab
5 22 (5.54%) JUnit
6 18 (4.53%) Cucumber
6 18 (4.53%) Eclipse
7 12 (3.02%) SoapUI
8 11 (2.77%) Browser DevTools
9 9 (2.27%) Firebug
9 9 (2.27%) IntelliJ
9 9 (2.27%) Valgrind
10 8 (2.02%) Maven
10 8 (2.02%) PVCS
10 8 (2.02%) SonarQube
11 7 (1.76%) Gradle
11 7 (1.76%) Robot Framework
12 5 (1.26%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 124 (31.23%) Social Skills
2 72 (18.14%) Finance
3 66 (16.62%) Analytical Skills
4 41 (10.33%) Banking
5 35 (8.82%) Public Sector
6 14 (3.53%) Publishing
7 11 (2.77%) Influencing Skills
7 11 (2.77%) Telecoms
8 10 (2.52%) Aerospace
9 9 (2.27%) Back Office
10 8 (2.02%) Investment Banking
10 8 (2.02%) Manufacturing
11 7 (1.76%) Financial Institution
11 7 (1.76%) Private Banking
12 6 (1.51%) Digital Healthcare
12 6 (1.51%) Documentation Skills
13 5 (1.26%) Automotive
13 5 (1.26%) Front Office
13 5 (1.26%) General Ledger
14 4 (1.01%) Legal
Job Titles
1 138 (34.76%) Developer
2 57 (14.36%) Analyst
3 44 (11.08%) Senior
4 36 (9.07%) Consultant
5 25 (6.30%) Software Engineer
6 23 (5.79%) Business Analyst
7 20 (5.04%) Architect
8 19 (4.79%) Integration Developer
9 16 (4.03%) Applications Engineer
9 16 (4.03%) Lead
9 16 (4.03%) Support Engineer
10 15 (3.78%) Data Engineer
10 15 (3.78%) Senior Developer
11 14 (3.53%) Author
11 14 (3.53%) Technical Author
12 13 (3.27%) Java Developer
12 13 (3.27%) Tester
12 13 (3.27%) webMethods Developer
13 11 (2.77%) Development Engineer
14 10 (2.52%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 212 (53.40%) JSON
2 138 (34.76%) SOAP
3 136 (34.26%) REST
4 57 (14.36%) HTML
5 48 (12.09%) Web Services
6 43 (10.83%) OAuth
7 33 (8.31%) RESTful
8 31 (7.81%) Spring
9 28 (7.05%) OAuth2
10 27 (6.80%) CSS
11 25 (6.30%) .NET
11 25 (6.30%) JMS
12 23 (5.79%) Swagger
13 22 (5.54%) React
13 22 (5.54%) XSLT
14 21 (5.29%) Kafka
14 21 (5.29%) XSD
15 20 (5.04%) AngularJS
16 18 (4.53%) Hibernate
17 16 (4.03%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 22 (5.54%) Cloud Native
2 21 (5.29%) Virtual Team
3 14 (3.53%) Data Protection Act
3 14 (3.53%) Distributed Systems
4 12 (3.02%) Self-Motivation
5 10 (2.52%) Replication
5 10 (2.52%) SWIFT Messaging Network
6 9 (2.27%) Onboarding
6 9 (2.27%) Smartcard
7 8 (2.02%) Data Structures
7 8 (2.02%) Product Ownership
8 7 (1.76%) AS400
9 6 (1.51%) Algorithms
10 5 (1.26%) Clustering
10 5 (1.26%) Derivative
10 5 (1.26%) Enterprise Software
10 5 (1.26%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 5 (1.26%) Hybrid Cloud
10 5 (1.26%) Legacy Systems
10 5 (1.26%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 42 (10.58%) Linux
2 30 (7.56%) Windows
3 26 (6.55%) Unix
4 9 (2.27%) Ubuntu
4 9 (2.27%) Windows Server
5 6 (1.51%) Android
6 5 (1.26%) Apple iOS
7 2 (0.50%) AIX
7 2 (0.50%) CentOS
7 2 (0.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.25%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 157 (39.55%) Agile
2 141 (35.52%) DevOps
3 102 (25.69%) CI/CD
4 88 (22.17%) Problem-Solving
5 79 (19.90%) Test Automation
6 56 (14.11%) Scrum
7 45 (11.34%) Microservices
8 44 (11.08%) Migration
9 42 (10.58%) Deployment Automation
9 42 (10.58%) ETL
9 42 (10.58%) Validation
10 35 (8.82%) Software Engineering
11 34 (8.56%) SDLC
12 32 (8.06%) API Management
13 31 (7.81%) Continuous Improvement
13 31 (7.81%) Mentoring
13 31 (7.81%) Workflow
14 28 (7.05%) OO
14 28 (7.05%) User Experience
15 26 (6.55%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 155 (39.04%) SQL
2 132 (33.25%) Java
3 84 (21.16%) JavaScript
4 79 (19.90%) Python
5 57 (14.36%) C#
6 27 (6.80%) PowerShell
7 24 (6.05%) PL/SQL
8 18 (4.53%) C++
9 16 (4.03%) T-SQL
10 10 (2.52%) RPG
11 9 (2.27%) C
11 9 (2.27%) Groovy
12 8 (2.02%) DataWeave
12 8 (2.02%) TypeScript
13 7 (1.76%) Scala
13 7 (1.76%) VBA
14 6 (1.51%) ABAP
14 6 (1.51%) XPath
15 4 (1.01%) BeanShell
15 4 (1.01%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 103 (25.94%) Security Cleared
2 89 (22.42%) SC Cleared
3 45 (11.34%) Degree
4 22 (5.54%) Computer Science Degree
5 13 (3.27%) ISTQB
6 12 (3.02%) HNC
6 12 (3.02%) HND
7 10 (2.52%) DV Cleared
8 8 (2.02%) BPSS Clearance
8 8 (2.02%) ISEB
8 8 (2.02%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 7 (1.76%) AWS Certification
10 4 (1.01%) PMI Certification
11 3 (0.76%) CEH
11 3 (0.76%) GIAC
11 3 (0.76%) GWAPT
11 3 (0.76%) PMP
12 2 (0.50%) Cisco Certification
12 2 (0.50%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
12 2 (0.50%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 36 (9.07%) QA
2 32 (8.06%) Data Quality
3 9 (2.27%) SEPA
4 6 (1.51%) EMIR
5 4 (1.01%) HL7
5 4 (1.01%) MiFID
6 3 (0.76%) Accessibility
6 3 (0.76%) GAAP
6 3 (0.76%) ISO 20022
6 3 (0.76%) SLA
6 3 (0.76%) WCAG
7 2 (0.50%) GxP
8 1 (0.25%) 21 CFR Part 11
8 1 (0.25%) AIFMD
8 1 (0.25%) DICOM
8 1 (0.25%) GDPR
8 1 (0.25%) GMP
8 1 (0.25%) IFRS
8 1 (0.25%) ISO 9001
8 1 (0.25%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 52 (13.10%) Docker
2 7 (1.76%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.25%) Apache ZooKeeper
3 1 (0.25%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 25 (6.30%) Kubernetes
2 22 (5.54%) Ansible
3 12 (3.02%) Control-M
4 9 (2.27%) Terraform
5 7 (1.76%) Kibana
5 7 (1.76%) Puppet
6 6 (1.51%) logstash
7 5 (1.26%) ITRS Geneos
8 4 (1.01%) vCenter Server
9 2 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.25%) CloudHub
10 1 (0.25%) FortiGate
10 1 (0.25%) Podman
Vendors
1 66 (16.62%) Oracle
2 59 (14.86%) Microsoft
3 40 (10.08%) SAP
4 31 (7.81%) IBM
5 24 (6.05%) webMethods
6 19 (4.79%) ServiceNow
7 14 (3.53%) Salesforce
8 13 (3.27%) MuleSoft
9 12 (3.02%) Workday
10 11 (2.77%) Cisco
11 10 (2.52%) Axway
12 9 (2.27%) Blue Prism
12 9 (2.27%) Dynatrace
12 9 (2.27%) Software AG
13 7 (1.76%) Pega
13 7 (1.76%) Splunk
13 7 (1.76%) Veracode
14 6 (1.51%) Solace
15 5 (1.26%) TIBCO
15 5 (1.26%) VMware