Degree Contract Job Trends in England

Academic Degree
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in England with a requirement for Degree qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months leading up to 15 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 25 24 20
Rank change year-on-year -1 -4 +10
Contract jobs citing Degree 2,157 2,292 3,035
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.94% 7.88% 8.07%
As % of the Qualifications category 20.49% 26.12% 26.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,261 1,296 1,840
10th Percentile £309 £250 £240
25th Percentile £406 £406 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £650 £650 £650
90th Percentile £750 £800 £768
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -3.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 192 143 195
10th Percentile £15.03 £22.30 £17.18
25th Percentile £22.70 £30.46 £27.63
Median hourly rate £37.50 £43.00 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.79% -14.00% +11.11%
75th Percentile £62.50 £71.13 £70.00
90th Percentile £89.96 £85.00 £83.40
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £42.21 £50.00
% change year-on-year -17.07% -15.59% +13.64%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
England

Degree falls under the Academic Qualifications and Professional Certifications category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications in England.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 10,528 8,776 11,374
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.85% 30.18% 30.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,895 5,423 7,191
10th Percentile £313 £306 £300
25th Percentile £419 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £627 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 894 417 680
10th Percentile £16.87 £20.00 £17.69
25th Percentile £19.26 £25.26 £26.85
Median hourly rate £25.15 £48.56 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -48.21% -7.50% +16.67%
75th Percentile £56.92 £68.00 £67.81
90th Percentile £76.58 £75.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £41.25 £53.50
% change year-on-year -39.03% -22.90% +18.89%

Degree
Job Vacancy Trend in England

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

Degree job vacancy trend in England

Degree
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Degree.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Degree

Degree
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Degree in England over the 6 months to 15 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Degree in England

Degree
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Degree.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Degree

Degree
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Degree in England over the 6 months to 15 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Degree in England

Degree
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Degree within the England region over the 6 months to 15 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
London -3 1,021 £529 -3.91% 684
North of England -9 298 £450 -10.00% 477
South East +1 283 £475 -5.00% 788
Midlands -11 216 £475 -2.06% 329
South West +4 166 £637 +10.70% 241
West Midlands -14 165 £500 - 174
North West -4 161 £423 -15.50% 250
East of England -9 130 £500 +15.94% 292
Yorkshire -6 128 £475 -1.04% 179
East Midlands -8 51 £448 +18.21% 150
North East -15 10 £298 -40.31% 53
Degree
UK

Degree
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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
1 179 (8.30%) Confluence
2 112 (5.19%) SharePoint
3 53 (2.46%) Microsoft Exchange
4 36 (1.67%) Apache Spark
5 21 (0.97%) Apache Airflow
6 16 (0.74%) nginx
7 14 (0.65%) Skype for Business
8 13 (0.60%) Apache
8 13 (0.60%) CMS
9 12 (0.56%) IIS
10 7 (0.32%) Exchange Server 2013
10 7 (0.32%) SAS
11 5 (0.23%) Luigi
12 4 (0.19%) GeoServer
12 4 (0.19%) OpenStack
12 4 (0.19%) Smallworld
12 4 (0.19%) Tomcat
13 3 (0.14%) Ethereum
13 3 (0.14%) Hyperledger
13 3 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 274 (12.70%) Microsoft Office
2 216 (10.01%) Microsoft Excel
3 176 (8.16%) Microsoft Project
4 107 (4.96%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 71 (3.29%) MS Visio
6 19 (0.88%) Chatbot
7 12 (0.56%) Trello
8 11 (0.51%) FrameMaker
8 11 (0.51%) Simulink
9 10 (0.46%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 8 (0.37%) Sketch
10 8 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
11 6 (0.28%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 4 (0.19%) InVision
13 2 (0.093%) Adobe After Effects
13 2 (0.093%) InDesign
13 2 (0.093%) Photoshop
13 2 (0.093%) PTC Creo
13 2 (0.093%) Revit
Business Applications
1 35 (1.62%) SAP S/4HANA
2 24 (1.11%) Dynamics CRM
3 19 (0.88%) Primavera
4 16 (0.74%) Remedy ITSM
5 13 (0.60%) SAP WM
6 12 (0.56%) Oracle General Ledger
6 12 (0.56%) SAP EWM
7 11 (0.51%) Oracle Payables
7 11 (0.51%) SAP ERP
8 10 (0.46%) Oracle EBS R12
9 9 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
9 9 (0.42%) Salesforce CRM
9 9 (0.42%) Workday HCM
10 8 (0.37%) Oracle Financials
11 7 (0.32%) Oracle Assets
11 7 (0.32%) Oracle E-Business Tax
12 6 (0.28%) Endur
13 5 (0.23%) Maximo
13 5 (0.23%) SAP HR
14 4 (0.19%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 426 (19.75%) Azure
2 288 (13.35%) AWS
3 177 (8.21%) Microsoft 365
4 150 (6.95%) GCP
5 148 (6.86%) Power Platform
6 90 (4.17%) GitHub
7 88 (4.08%) SaaS
8 76 (3.52%) Entra ID
9 68 (3.15%) Azure DevOps
10 67 (3.11%) Serverless
11 42 (1.95%) Dynamics 365
12 36 (1.67%) Power Automate
13 32 (1.48%) Amazon S3
14 31 (1.44%) Amazon ECS
15 30 (1.39%) GitHub Actions
16 29 (1.34%) PowerApps
17 26 (1.21%) Azure Logic Apps
18 25 (1.16%) IaaS
18 25 (1.16%) OCI
18 25 (1.16%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 97 (4.50%) Firewall
2 68 (3.15%) DNS
3 45 (2.09%) VPN
4 41 (1.90%) Network Security
5 37 (1.72%) LAN
6 35 (1.62%) DHCP
7 32 (1.48%) WAN
8 31 (1.44%) HTTP
9 29 (1.34%) TCP/IP
10 28 (1.30%) Wireless
11 26 (1.21%) Internet
12 25 (1.16%) SSH
13 22 (1.02%) Skype
14 20 (0.93%) Unified Communications
15 18 (0.83%) BGP
16 16 (0.74%) Wi-Fi
17 15 (0.70%) OSPF
18 14 (0.65%) SMTP
18 14 (0.65%) VLAN
19 12 (0.56%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 116 (5.38%) Power BI
2 92 (4.27%) PostgreSQL
3 72 (3.34%) SQL Server
4 58 (2.69%) NoSQL
5 56 (2.60%) Relational Database
6 50 (2.32%) Tableau
7 49 (2.27%) Data Warehouse
8 32 (1.48%) MySQL
9 29 (1.34%) Big Data
10 25 (1.16%) Amazon RDS
11 18 (0.83%) Metadata
12 17 (0.79%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 16 (0.74%) Data Lake
13 16 (0.74%) MongoDB
14 15 (0.70%) Oracle Database
15 14 (0.65%) RDBMS
16 12 (0.56%) Amazon Aurora
16 12 (0.56%) GIS
17 11 (0.51%) BigQuery
18 10 (0.46%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 278 (12.89%) JIRA
2 113 (5.24%) Git
3 96 (4.45%) Jenkins
4 70 (3.25%) GitLab
5 26 (1.21%) Liquibase
6 22 (1.02%) Postman
7 19 (0.88%) Selenium
8 15 (0.70%) Visual Studio
9 11 (0.51%) Bitbucket
9 11 (0.51%) Cucumber
9 11 (0.51%) Cypress.io
9 11 (0.51%) Vagrant
10 9 (0.42%) JUnit
11 8 (0.37%) Artifactory
11 8 (0.37%) Burp Suite
11 8 (0.37%) SpecFlow
12 7 (0.32%) SonarQube
12 7 (0.32%) TeamCity
13 6 (0.28%) Appium
13 6 (0.28%) Metasploit
General
1 1,129 (52.34%) Social Skills
2 690 (31.99%) Finance
3 534 (24.76%) Analytical Skills
4 254 (11.78%) Banking
5 135 (6.26%) Public Sector
6 93 (4.31%) Manufacturing
7 91 (4.22%) Presentation Skills
8 86 (3.99%) Organisational Skills
9 76 (3.52%) Influencing Skills
10 75 (3.48%) Marketing
11 74 (3.43%) Legal
12 71 (3.29%) Military
13 60 (2.78%) Financial Institution
14 57 (2.64%) Telecoms
15 54 (2.50%) Front Office
16 53 (2.46%) Documentation Skills
16 53 (2.46%) Investment Banking
17 46 (2.13%) Pharmaceutical
18 45 (2.09%) Aerospace
19 40 (1.85%) Law
Job Titles
1 311 (14.42%) Analyst
2 217 (10.06%) Developer
2 217 (10.06%) Senior
3 167 (7.74%) Architect
4 159 (7.37%) Lead
5 149 (6.91%) Project Manager
6 147 (6.82%) Business Analyst
7 87 (4.03%) Consultant
8 75 (3.48%) Software Engineer
9 52 (2.41%) Technical Support
10 49 (2.27%) Support Analyst
11 48 (2.23%) IT Support
11 48 (2.23%) Solutions Architect
12 47 (2.18%) Security Engineer
13 45 (2.09%) Senior Developer
14 44 (2.04%) Support Engineer
15 43 (1.99%) Data Scientist
16 40 (1.85%) IT Manager
17 37 (1.72%) Senior Software Engineer
18 32 (1.48%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 114 (5.29%) REST
2 85 (3.94%) RESTful
3 72 (3.34%) .NET
4 59 (2.74%) HTML
5 51 (2.36%) XML
6 47 (2.18%) Middleware
7 42 (1.95%) CSS
7 42 (1.95%) Elastic Stack
7 42 (1.95%) JSON
8 41 (1.90%) Kafka
9 40 (1.85%) React
10 39 (1.81%) SOAP
11 36 (1.67%) OAuth
12 31 (1.44%) AngularJS
12 31 (1.44%) TensorFlow
12 31 (1.44%) Web Services
13 30 (1.39%) Spring
14 28 (1.30%) Node.js
15 27 (1.25%) Pandas
15 27 (1.25%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 180 (8.34%) Management Information System
2 107 (4.96%) Product Ownership
3 103 (4.78%) Cloud Native
4 72 (3.34%) Onboarding
5 68 (3.15%) Algorithms
6 58 (2.69%) Analytical Mindset
6 58 (2.69%) Distributed Systems
7 56 (2.60%) Data Protection Act
8 53 (2.46%) Virtual Team
9 49 (2.27%) Data Centre
10 46 (2.13%) Derivative
10 46 (2.13%) Self-Motivation
11 40 (1.85%) Public Cloud
12 39 (1.81%) Security Posture
13 38 (1.76%) Enterprise Software
14 36 (1.67%) Legacy Systems
14 36 (1.67%) Life Science
15 32 (1.48%) PMI
16 31 (1.44%) Data Structures
17 29 (1.34%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 243 (11.27%) Windows
2 179 (8.30%) Linux
3 73 (3.38%) Unix
4 56 (2.60%) Windows Server
5 42 (1.95%) Windows 10
6 23 (1.07%) Mac OS
7 21 (0.97%) Apple iOS
8 20 (0.93%) Android
9 19 (0.88%) Ubuntu
10 17 (0.79%) VMS
11 15 (0.70%) Windows Server 2016
12 11 (0.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 10 (0.46%) Amazon Linux
14 9 (0.42%) Windows Server 2012
14 9 (0.42%) Windows Server 2019
15 5 (0.23%) Windows Server 2003
16 4 (0.19%) CentOS
17 2 (0.093%) Kali Linux
17 2 (0.093%) Robot Operating System
17 2 (0.093%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 838 (38.85%) Computer Science
2 718 (33.29%) Agile
3 671 (31.11%) Problem-Solving
4 341 (15.81%) Stakeholder Management
5 337 (15.62%) Project Management
6 328 (15.21%) DevOps
7 262 (12.15%) Change Management
8 249 (11.54%) ITIL
9 243 (11.27%) CI/CD
10 230 (10.66%) Continuous Improvement
11 228 (10.57%) AI
12 221 (10.25%) Analytics
12 221 (10.25%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 218 (10.11%) Decision-Making
14 216 (10.01%) Cybersecurity
15 213 (9.87%) Software Engineering
16 193 (8.95%) Migration
17 181 (8.39%) Risk Management
18 180 (8.34%) Project Delivery
19 169 (7.83%) PRINCE2
Programming Languages
1 413 (19.15%) Python
2 318 (14.74%) SQL
3 165 (7.65%) Java
4 120 (5.56%) PowerShell
5 108 (5.01%) JavaScript
6 81 (3.76%) C#
7 76 (3.52%) C++
8 53 (2.46%) Go
9 52 (2.41%) TypeScript
10 44 (2.04%) Bash
11 30 (1.39%) R
12 22 (1.02%) Perl
13 19 (0.88%) C
14 18 (0.83%) PL/SQL
14 18 (0.83%) T-SQL
15 16 (0.74%) Kusto Query Language
16 15 (0.70%) Kotlin
16 15 (0.70%) Ruby
17 14 (0.65%) MATLAB
18 13 (0.60%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 574 (26.61%) Computer Science Degree
2 355 (16.46%) Security Cleared
3 319 (14.79%) Master's Degree
4 282 (13.07%) SC Cleared
5 131 (6.07%) PMI Certification
6 123 (5.70%) PMP
7 107 (4.96%) CISSP
8 86 (3.99%) Microsoft Certification
9 68 (3.15%) CISM
10 65 (3.01%) PhD
11 63 (2.92%) Azure Certification
12 56 (2.60%) Cisco Certification
13 55 (2.55%) TOGAF Certification
14 53 (2.46%) AWS Certification
15 46 (2.13%) DV Cleared
16 41 (1.90%) HND
17 36 (1.67%) CCNP
18 35 (1.62%) CCNA
18 35 (1.62%) HNC
19 34 (1.58%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 132 (6.12%) QA
2 109 (5.05%) GDPR
3 89 (4.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 83 (3.85%) Data Quality
5 71 (3.29%) NIST
6 69 (3.20%) PMO
7 37 (1.72%) Accessibility
8 35 (1.62%) SLA
9 32 (1.48%) PCI DSS
10 27 (1.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 24 (1.11%) GRC
12 17 (0.79%) NCSC
13 16 (0.74%) WCAG
14 15 (0.70%) Def Stans
14 15 (0.70%) HIPAA
15 14 (0.65%) COBIT
15 14 (0.65%) NIST 800
16 11 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials
16 11 (0.51%) P3O
17 10 (0.46%) Basel III
System Software
1 160 (7.42%) Docker
2 128 (5.93%) Active Directory
3 42 (1.95%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (1.02%) Firmware
5 12 (0.56%) Hyper-V
6 10 (0.46%) DFS Replication
6 10 (0.46%) Dovecot
6 10 (0.46%) Postfix
6 10 (0.46%) Squid
7 9 (0.42%) Virtual Machines
8 7 (0.32%) VMware NSX
8 7 (0.32%) vSphere
9 5 (0.23%) Microsoft Virtual Server
9 5 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
9 5 (0.23%) Virtual Servers
10 3 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
11 2 (0.093%) BitLocker
11 2 (0.093%) XenApp
12 1 (0.046%) GPFS
12 1 (0.046%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 144 (6.68%) Kubernetes
2 126 (5.84%) Terraform
3 80 (3.71%) Ansible
4 58 (2.69%) Grafana
5 48 (2.23%) Microsoft Intune
6 47 (2.18%) Prometheus
7 45 (2.09%) SCCM
8 30 (1.39%) OPNET
9 20 (0.93%) Puppet
10 14 (0.65%) SCOM
11 12 (0.56%) Nessus
12 10 (0.46%) Kibana
12 10 (0.46%) Proxmox
13 9 (0.42%) QRadar
13 9 (0.42%) WSUS
14 8 (0.37%) Nmap
14 8 (0.37%) Single Sign-On
15 7 (0.32%) Argo
15 7 (0.32%) CSIRT
16 6 (0.28%) vRealize
Vendors
1 453 (21.00%) Microsoft
2 137 (6.35%) Oracle
3 126 (5.84%) ServiceNow
4 121 (5.61%) SAP
5 92 (4.27%) Google
5 92 (4.27%) Splunk
6 64 (2.97%) Salesforce
7 62 (2.87%) Cisco
8 51 (2.36%) Atlassian
9 49 (2.27%) Remedy
9 49 (2.27%) VMware
10 38 (1.76%) Databricks
11 34 (1.58%) IBM
12 29 (1.34%) Citrix
13 26 (1.21%) Adobe
14 25 (1.16%) Palo Alto
15 22 (1.02%) Workday
16 21 (0.97%) Red Hat
17 16 (0.74%) CheckPoint
17 16 (0.74%) HP