XPath Contract Job Trends

XPath (XML Path Language)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs citing XPath skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 31 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

	6 months to 31 Oct 2026	Same period 2025	Same period 2024
Rank	671	554	549
Rank change year-on-year	-117	-5	+55
Contract jobs citing XPath	21	12	4
As % of all contract jobs in the UK	0.039%	0.035%	0.011%
As % of the Programming Languages category	0.14%	0.11%	0.034%
Number of daily rates quoted	18	7	1
10^th Percentile	£526	-	-
25^th Percentile	£529	£350	£425
Median daily rate (50^th Percentile)	£600	£375	£450
Median % change year-on-year	+60.00%	-16.67%	-19.75%
75^th Percentile	£659	£434	£475
90^th Percentile	£983	£481	-
UK excluding London median daily rate	£600	£419	-
% change year-on-year	+43.28%	-	-

All Programming Languages
UK

XPath falls under the Programming Languages category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies citing coding skills.

	6 months to 31 Oct 2026	Same period 2025	Same period 2024
Contract vacancies citing coding skills	14,562	11,142	11,711
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK	26.72%	32.46%	32.02%
Number of daily rates quoted	9,491	7,305	7,577
10^th Percentile	£363	£340	£350
25^th Percentile	£425	£413	£425
Median daily rate (50^th Percentile)	£525	£505	£525
Median % change year-on-year	+3.96%	-3.81%	-4.55%
75^th Percentile	£625	£618	£645
90^th Percentile	£725	£725	£750
UK excluding London median daily rate	£500	£475	£490
% change year-on-year	+5.26%	-3.06%	-2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted	589	314	293
10^th Percentile	£21.01	£29.00	£25.26
25^th Percentile	£42.00	£42.25	£40.58
Median hourly rate	£65.00	£60.61	£62.50
Median % change year-on-year	+7.24%	-3.02%	-
75^th Percentile	£71.00	£67.75	£70.00
90^th Percentile	£83.32	£78.03	£75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate	£65.00	£65.00	£65.00

XPath Job Vacancy Trend

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

XPath Daily Rate Trend

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

XPath Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing XPath over the 6 months to 31 October 2026.

Daily rate histogram for XPath in the UK

XPath Hourly Rate Trend

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

XPath Top 6 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing XPath within the UK over the 6 months to 31 October 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	Job Ads Past 6 Months	Median Daily Rate Past 6 Months	Median Daily Rate % Change on Same Period Last Year
Work from Home	-46	13	£600	+50.00%
England	-101	11	£625	+72.41%
London	-82	7	£650	+85.71%
UK excluding London	-85	3	£600	+43.28%
South East	-	2	£600	-
Scotland	-	1	£475	-

XPath Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 31 October 2026, contractor job vacancies citing XPath also mentioned the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads citing XPath.

Rank	Skill	Share	Job Ads
1	XSLT	81.0%	17
2	XML	76.2%	16
3	.NET	57.1%	12
3	SQL	57.1%	12
3	SQL Server	57.1%	12
3	T-SQL	57.1%	12
3	VB.NET	57.1%	12
8	Azure	47.6%	10
9	JSON	42.9%	9
9	Oracle	42.9%	9
9	REST	42.9%	9
9	Windows	42.9%	9
13	Security Cleared	38.1%	8
13	SOAP	38.1%	8
13	Web Services	38.1%	8
16	ASP.NET	33.3%	7
16	Azure DevOps	33.3%	7
16	C#	33.3%	7
16	DevOps	33.3%	7
16	Git	33.3%	7
16	HTML	33.3%	7
16	IIS	33.3%	7
16	MS Access	33.3%	7
16	PL/SQL	33.3%	7
16	VBA	33.3%	7
16	WinForms	33.3%	7
27	ASP.NET Web API	28.6%	6
27	Jenkins	28.6%	6
27	Microsoft Office	28.6%	6
27	Problem-Solving	28.6%	6

XPath Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities by Category

The table below expands on the one above by listing co-occurrences one category at a time. It covers the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences in each category.

Programming Languages

Rank	Skill	Share	Job Ads
1	SQL	57.1%	12
1	T-SQL	57.1%	12
1	VB.NET	57.1%	12
4	C#	33.3%	7
4	PL/SQL	33.3%	7
4	VBA	33.3%	7
7	VBScript	23.8%	5
8	JavaScript	9.5%	2
8	Kusto Query Language	9.5%	2
8	PowerShell	9.5%	2
11	Python	4.8%	1