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 6 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 36 25 19
Rank change year-on-year -11 -6 +9
Contract jobs citing Degree 2,149 1,819 3,022
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.10% 7.52% 8.18%
As % of the Qualifications category 16.02% 23.97% 26.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,195 1,081 1,635
10th Percentile £213 £235 £233
25th Percentile £381 £379 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.09%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £638
90th Percentile £726 £775 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 212 135 373
10th Percentile £20.36 £17.93 £14.25
25th Percentile £28.50 £27.67 £24.00
Median hourly rate £55.75 £52.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.19% +31.25% -18.35%
75th Percentile £84.00 £73.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £88.00 £85.00 £73.50
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £51.80 £40.00
% change year-on-year +1.36% +29.49% -20.00%

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 13,415 7,589 11,291
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.81% 31.39% 30.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,002 4,788 6,981
10th Percentile £350 £278 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £721 £713 £743
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £530
% change year-on-year +0.96% -1.89% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,013 453 1,004
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.33 £22.50 £18.93
Median hourly rate £51.44 £32.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +58.28% -18.75% -27.27%
75th Percentile £73.46 £65.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £85.25 £80.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £32.05 £40.00
% change year-on-year +56.01% -19.88% -27.27%

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 6 June 2026.

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 6 June 2026.

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 6 June 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
London -18 910 £515 -6.36% 1,479
South East -1 386 £500 +5.26% 698
North of England -13 329 £447 -2.67% 494
Midlands -20 209 £505 +41.06% 300
North West -7 179 £417 -10.47% 259
West Midlands -30 149 £478 +15.88% 186
East of England -5 139 £450 -10.00% 267
Yorkshire -11 135 £488 +9.06% 172
South West -17 122 £477 +0.42% 292
East Midlands -14 58 £537 +50.84% 114
North East -29 15 £450 +130.77% 71
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
1 116 (5.40%) SharePoint
2 106 (4.93%) Confluence
3 64 (2.98%) Microsoft Exchange
4 35 (1.63%) Apache Spark
5 25 (1.16%) Apache Airflow
6 18 (0.84%) Apache
7 10 (0.47%) IIS
8 7 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
8 7 (0.33%) SAS
9 6 (0.28%) Camunda
9 6 (0.28%) CMS
9 6 (0.28%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 4 (0.19%) Appian
10 4 (0.19%) OpenStack
11 3 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 3 (0.14%) Moodle
11 3 (0.14%) MS Project Server
12 2 (0.093%) ArcGIS
12 2 (0.093%) Skype for Business
12 2 (0.093%) WebSphere
Applications
1 243 (11.31%) Microsoft Office
2 199 (9.26%) Microsoft Excel
3 121 (5.63%) Microsoft Project
4 119 (5.54%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 53 (2.47%) MS Visio
6 14 (0.65%) Adobe Illustrator
6 14 (0.65%) Photoshop
7 12 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
8 11 (0.51%) Adobe After Effects
9 10 (0.47%) Simulink
10 8 (0.37%) Navisworks
10 8 (0.37%) Revit
11 6 (0.28%) Trello
12 5 (0.23%) Adobe XD
12 5 (0.23%) Chatbot
12 5 (0.23%) Sketch
12 5 (0.23%) UserZoom
13 4 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 2 (0.093%) CPLEX
14 2 (0.093%) FrameMaker
Business Applications
1 52 (2.42%) SAP S/4HANA
2 12 (0.56%) Dynamics CRM
2 12 (0.56%) Primavera
3 10 (0.47%) Payment Gateway
4 9 (0.42%) Remedy ITSM
5 8 (0.37%) Oracle Payables
5 8 (0.37%) Veritas eDiscovery
6 7 (0.33%) Aladdin
7 6 (0.28%) Oracle General Ledger
7 6 (0.28%) Oracle Receivables
7 6 (0.28%) SAP EWM
8 5 (0.23%) Oracle ERP
8 5 (0.23%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 4 (0.19%) HFM
9 4 (0.19%) Magento
9 4 (0.19%) NetSuite
9 4 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
9 4 (0.19%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
9 4 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
10 3 (0.14%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 466 (21.68%) Azure
2 278 (12.94%) AWS
3 186 (8.66%) Microsoft 365
4 165 (7.68%) Power Platform
5 118 (5.49%) Entra ID
6 97 (4.51%) GCP
7 78 (3.63%) SaaS
8 70 (3.26%) Azure DevOps
9 52 (2.42%) GitHub
10 37 (1.72%) Figma
11 33 (1.54%) PaaS
12 32 (1.49%) Google Workspace
13 29 (1.35%) IaaS
13 29 (1.35%) Power Automate
13 29 (1.35%) Snowflake
14 28 (1.30%) Dynamics 365
14 28 (1.30%) OneDrive
14 28 (1.30%) PowerApps
14 28 (1.30%) Serverless
15 22 (1.02%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 96 (4.47%) Firewall
2 58 (2.70%) DNS
3 57 (2.65%) TCP/IP
4 54 (2.51%) Network Security
5 51 (2.37%) WAN
6 50 (2.33%) LAN
7 38 (1.77%) VPN
8 29 (1.35%) DHCP
9 24 (1.12%) Wireless
10 23 (1.07%) BGP
11 21 (0.98%) Ethernet
12 20 (0.93%) OSPF
13 18 (0.84%) Wi-Fi
14 15 (0.70%) Skype
15 14 (0.65%) SAN
15 14 (0.65%) VXLAN
16 12 (0.56%) 3GPP
16 12 (0.56%) SSH
17 11 (0.51%) VoIP
18 10 (0.47%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 136 (6.33%) Power BI
2 98 (4.56%) SQL Server
3 49 (2.28%) PostgreSQL
3 49 (2.28%) Relational Database
4 45 (2.09%) Data Warehouse
5 36 (1.68%) Tableau
6 32 (1.49%) NoSQL
7 29 (1.35%) Big Data
8 28 (1.30%) Metadata
9 22 (1.02%) MongoDB
9 22 (1.02%) MySQL
10 19 (0.88%) Oracle Database
11 18 (0.84%) Elasticsearch
12 16 (0.74%) Hadoop
13 14 (0.65%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 13 (0.60%) Amazon RDS
14 13 (0.60%) Data Lake
15 12 (0.56%) Snowflake Schema
16 11 (0.51%) SQL Server Reporting Services
17 10 (0.47%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 183 (8.52%) JIRA
2 97 (4.51%) Git
3 41 (1.91%) GitLab
3 41 (1.91%) Jenkins
4 31 (1.44%) Rational DOORS
5 19 (0.88%) Visual Studio
6 18 (0.84%) MLflow
7 16 (0.74%) Selenium
8 14 (0.65%) Gradle
9 13 (0.60%) JUnit
10 12 (0.56%) Cucumber
10 12 (0.56%) Postman
11 11 (0.51%) TeamCity
12 10 (0.47%) REST Assured
12 10 (0.47%) SonarQube
13 9 (0.42%) Jaeger
14 8 (0.37%) Maven
15 7 (0.33%) Burp Suite
15 7 (0.33%) CircleCI
15 7 (0.33%) Subversion
General
1 994 (46.25%) Social Skills
2 667 (31.04%) Finance
3 427 (19.87%) Analytical Skills
4 193 (8.98%) Banking
5 178 (8.28%) Public Sector
6 119 (5.54%) Organisational Skills
7 109 (5.07%) Presentation Skills
8 88 (4.09%) Marketing
9 83 (3.86%) Legal
10 81 (3.77%) Aerospace
11 74 (3.44%) Documentation Skills
11 74 (3.44%) Manufacturing
12 68 (3.16%) Influencing Skills
13 55 (2.56%) Law
13 55 (2.56%) Telecoms
14 52 (2.42%) Retail
15 40 (1.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 37 (1.72%) Front Office
17 35 (1.63%) Investment Banking
18 31 (1.44%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 312 (14.52%) Analyst
2 251 (11.68%) Senior
3 165 (7.68%) Architect
4 164 (7.63%) Lead
5 151 (7.03%) Developer
6 143 (6.65%) Business Analyst
7 142 (6.61%) Project Manager
8 59 (2.75%) Senior Analyst
8 59 (2.75%) Solutions Architect
9 56 (2.61%) Consultant
9 56 (2.61%) Software Engineer
9 56 (2.61%) Technical Support
10 55 (2.56%) Senior Manager
11 53 (2.47%) Delivery Manager
12 52 (2.42%) Designer
13 47 (2.19%) Product Manager
14 42 (1.95%) Security Engineer
15 41 (1.91%) IT Manager
15 41 (1.91%) Support Engineer
15 41 (1.91%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 98 (4.56%) REST
2 76 (3.54%) .NET
3 58 (2.70%) React
4 49 (2.28%) Kafka
5 48 (2.23%) Oracle Fusion
6 46 (2.14%) Middleware
7 41 (1.91%) HTML
8 39 (1.81%) RESTful
9 33 (1.54%) .NET Framework
10 32 (1.49%) CSS
10 32 (1.49%) Spring Boot
11 29 (1.35%) OAuth
11 29 (1.35%) XML
12 27 (1.26%) AngularJS
12 27 (1.26%) Spring
13 26 (1.21%) Web Services
14 25 (1.16%) SOAP
15 24 (1.12%) JSON
16 22 (1.02%) Pandas
16 22 (1.02%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 154 (7.17%) Management Information System
2 126 (5.86%) Onboarding
3 125 (5.82%) Product Ownership
4 84 (3.91%) Self-Motivation
5 79 (3.68%) Cloud Native
6 65 (3.02%) Data Centre
7 55 (2.56%) Virtual Team
8 50 (2.33%) Distributed Systems
9 48 (2.23%) Data Structures
10 45 (2.09%) Algorithms
11 44 (2.05%) PMI
12 41 (1.91%) Data Protection Act
13 38 (1.77%) Robotics
14 37 (1.72%) Security Posture
15 35 (1.63%) Operational Technology
16 33 (1.54%) Legacy Systems
17 31 (1.44%) Analytical Mindset
17 31 (1.44%) Derivative
18 29 (1.35%) Life Science
19 28 (1.30%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 288 (13.40%) Windows
2 174 (8.10%) Linux
3 73 (3.40%) Unix
4 68 (3.16%) Windows Server
5 58 (2.70%) Windows 10
6 31 (1.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 27 (1.26%) Android
7 27 (1.26%) Mac OS
8 25 (1.16%) Apple iOS
9 12 (0.56%) Windows Server 2019
10 8 (0.37%) Ubuntu
10 8 (0.37%) Windows Server 2012
11 7 (0.33%) AIX
11 7 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
12 6 (0.28%) Windows 7
13 4 (0.19%) Debian
13 4 (0.19%) Rocky
13 4 (0.19%) Solaris
13 4 (0.19%) VMS
14 3 (0.14%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 740 (34.43%) Computer Science
2 595 (27.69%) Agile
3 544 (25.31%) Problem-Solving
4 340 (15.82%) Stakeholder Management
5 329 (15.31%) Continuous Improvement
6 322 (14.98%) AI
7 294 (13.68%) DevOps
8 262 (12.19%) Project Management
9 249 (11.59%) CI/CD
10 229 (10.66%) Analytics
11 224 (10.42%) Decision-Making
12 215 (10.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 205 (9.54%) Cybersecurity
14 200 (9.31%) Change Management
15 198 (9.21%) Migration
16 191 (8.89%) Roadmaps
17 189 (8.79%) ITIL
18 182 (8.47%) Software Engineering
19 181 (8.42%) Risk Management
20 168 (7.82%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 355 (16.52%) Python
2 326 (15.17%) SQL
3 160 (7.45%) Java
4 120 (5.58%) PowerShell
5 88 (4.09%) JavaScript
6 86 (4.00%) C#
7 48 (2.23%) C++
8 42 (1.95%) Bash
9 28 (1.30%) TypeScript
10 23 (1.07%) PL/SQL
10 23 (1.07%) R
11 18 (0.84%) C
12 17 (0.79%) Shell Script
13 16 (0.74%) Rust
14 15 (0.70%) T-SQL
15 13 (0.60%) Go
15 13 (0.60%) Perl
16 12 (0.56%) Kotlin
17 11 (0.51%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 10 (0.47%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 462 (21.50%) Computer Science Degree
2 392 (18.24%) Security Cleared
3 263 (12.24%) SC Cleared
4 215 (10.00%) Master's Degree
5 127 (5.91%) PMI Certification
6 109 (5.07%) CISSP
6 109 (5.07%) PMP
7 79 (3.68%) Cisco Certification
8 78 (3.63%) Microsoft Certification
9 57 (2.65%) CISM
10 56 (2.61%) BPSS Clearance
11 54 (2.51%) DV Cleared
12 50 (2.33%) Azure Certification
13 43 (2.00%) CCNP
14 41 (1.91%) PhD
15 34 (1.58%) CCNA
16 32 (1.49%) CBAP
16 32 (1.49%) MBA
17 30 (1.40%) AWS Certification
18 29 (1.35%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 127 (5.91%) QA
2 108 (5.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 106 (4.93%) NIST
4 95 (4.42%) PMO
5 93 (4.33%) GDPR
6 87 (4.05%) Data Quality
7 48 (2.23%) SLA
8 43 (2.00%) Accessibility
9 38 (1.77%) PCI DSS
10 28 (1.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 23 (1.07%) GRC
12 19 (0.88%) NCSC
13 16 (0.74%) IFRS
14 15 (0.70%) Cyber Essentials
15 12 (0.56%) NIST 800
16 11 (0.51%) SOC 2
17 10 (0.47%) COBIT
17 10 (0.47%) HIPAA
18 9 (0.42%) Actionable Recommendations
19 8 (0.37%) P3O
System Software
1 157 (7.31%) Active Directory
2 120 (5.58%) Docker
3 38 (1.77%) VMware Infrastructure
4 28 (1.30%) Hyper-V
5 23 (1.07%) Firmware
6 9 (0.42%) VMware ESXi
7 8 (0.37%) BitLocker
7 8 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
8 6 (0.28%) vSphere
9 4 (0.19%) Embedded Firmware
9 4 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
9 4 (0.19%) VMware NSX
9 4 (0.19%) XenApp
9 4 (0.19%) XenDesktop
10 3 (0.14%) KVM
10 3 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
10 3 (0.14%) NFS
10 3 (0.14%) Terminal Services
10 3 (0.14%) Veritas Volume Manager
10 3 (0.14%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 139 (6.47%) Kubernetes
2 80 (3.72%) Terraform
3 68 (3.16%) Microsoft Intune
4 61 (2.84%) Ansible
5 37 (1.72%) Grafana
6 34 (1.58%) Prometheus
6 34 (1.58%) SCCM
7 21 (0.98%) Single Sign-On
8 16 (0.74%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 15 (0.70%) Puppet
10 13 (0.60%) Progress Chef
11 12 (0.56%) Jamf Pro
12 10 (0.47%) vCenter Server
13 9 (0.42%) Kiali
13 9 (0.42%) Kibana
13 9 (0.42%) WSUS
14 8 (0.37%) Nessus
15 7 (0.33%) HP ALM
16 6 (0.28%) Nmap
17 5 (0.23%) Control-M
Vendors
1 495 (23.03%) Microsoft
2 161 (7.49%) Oracle
3 120 (5.58%) SAP
4 100 (4.65%) ServiceNow
5 82 (3.82%) Google
6 68 (3.16%) Cisco
7 50 (2.33%) Databricks
8 45 (2.09%) Splunk
9 43 (2.00%) Citrix
9 43 (2.00%) VMware
10 40 (1.86%) Salesforce
11 38 (1.77%) Adobe
12 35 (1.63%) IBM
13 31 (1.44%) Palo Alto
14 28 (1.30%) CheckPoint
15 24 (1.12%) Red Hat
16 23 (1.07%) CyberArk
17 21 (0.98%) Aruba
17 21 (0.98%) Siemens
18 19 (0.88%) Ariba