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 20 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 26 24 20
Rank change year-on-year -2 -4 +10
Contract jobs citing Degree 2,167 2,303 2,997
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.88% 7.97% 8.06%
As % of the Qualifications category 20.28% 26.27% 26.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,265 1,310 1,820
10th Percentile £309 £250 £238
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 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £501 £525
% change year-on-year -0.10% -4.67% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 193 145 195
10th Percentile £15.05 £20.80 £17.05
25th Percentile £23.50 £30.25 £27.50
Median hourly rate £37.50 £43.00 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.79% -14.00% +11.11%
75th Percentile £60.61 £71.25 £70.00
90th Percentile £89.93 £85.00 £83.40
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £42.50 £50.00
% change year-on-year -17.65% -15.00% +13.77%

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 10,686 8,766 11,308
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.94% 30.35% 30.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,971 5,409 7,165
10th Percentile £313 £306 £300
25th Percentile £419 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £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 915 411 677
10th Percentile £16.51 £19.30 £17.08
25th Percentile £19.38 £25.25 £26.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -45.54% -12.04% +16.67%
75th Percentile £56.00 £67.50 £67.56
90th Percentile £75.95 £75.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £52.50
% change year-on-year -37.13% -23.81% +16.67%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 -1 1,012 £527 -4.18% 873
North of England -9 305 £450 -10.00% 404
South East +2 286 £475 -5.00% 760
Midlands -10 223 £491 +6.16% 265
West Midlands -14 167 £500 - 135
South West +3 165 £637 +15.73% 237
North West -1 165 £420 -16.00% 216
Yorkshire -10 131 £475 -1.04% 143
East of England -12 128 £500 +14.29% 271
East Midlands -6 56 £450 +23.12% 130
North East -14 10 £298 -40.31% 50
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
1 181 (8.35%) Confluence
2 107 (4.94%) SharePoint
3 48 (2.22%) Microsoft Exchange
4 36 (1.66%) Apache Spark
5 20 (0.92%) 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 (0.55%) IIS
10 7 (0.32%) Exchange Server 2013
10 7 (0.32%) SAS
11 4 (0.18%) GeoServer
11 4 (0.18%) Luigi
11 4 (0.18%) Smallworld
11 4 (0.18%) Tomcat
12 3 (0.14%) Ethereum
12 3 (0.14%) Hyperledger
12 3 (0.14%) OpenStack
12 3 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 268 (12.37%) Microsoft Office
2 216 (9.97%) Microsoft Excel
3 172 (7.94%) Microsoft Project
4 107 (4.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 71 (3.28%) MS Visio
6 19 (0.88%) Chatbot
7 12 (0.55%) Trello
8 11 (0.51%) FrameMaker
9 10 (0.46%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 10 (0.46%) Simulink
10 8 (0.37%) Sketch
10 8 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
11 6 (0.28%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 4 (0.18%) InVision
13 2 (0.092%) Adobe After Effects
13 2 (0.092%) Camtasia
13 2 (0.092%) Navisworks
13 2 (0.092%) PTC Creo
13 2 (0.092%) Revit
Business Applications
1 37 (1.71%) SAP S/4HANA
2 25 (1.15%) Dynamics CRM
3 18 (0.83%) Primavera
4 16 (0.74%) Remedy ITSM
5 13 (0.60%) SAP WM
6 12 (0.55%) SAP EWM
7 11 (0.51%) Oracle General Ledger
7 11 (0.51%) SAP ERP
8 10 (0.46%) Oracle Payables
9 9 (0.42%) Oracle EBS R12
10 8 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
10 8 (0.37%) Salesforce CRM
11 7 (0.32%) Oracle Financials
11 7 (0.32%) Workday HCM
12 6 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
12 6 (0.28%) Oracle E-Business Tax
13 5 (0.23%) Endur
13 5 (0.23%) Maximo
13 5 (0.23%) SAP HR
14 4 (0.18%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 429 (19.80%) Azure
2 291 (13.43%) AWS
3 173 (7.98%) Microsoft 365
4 150 (6.92%) Power Platform
5 149 (6.88%) GCP
6 93 (4.29%) SaaS
7 92 (4.25%) GitHub
8 75 (3.46%) Entra ID
9 70 (3.23%) Azure DevOps
10 67 (3.09%) Serverless
11 45 (2.08%) Dynamics 365
12 37 (1.71%) Power Automate
13 32 (1.48%) Amazon S3
14 30 (1.38%) Amazon ECS
14 30 (1.38%) GitHub Actions
14 30 (1.38%) PowerApps
15 26 (1.20%) Azure Logic Apps
15 26 (1.20%) OCI
16 25 (1.15%) IaaS
17 24 (1.11%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 100 (4.61%) Firewall
2 66 (3.05%) DNS
3 44 (2.03%) VPN
4 43 (1.98%) LAN
5 41 (1.89%) Network Security
6 35 (1.62%) WAN
7 34 (1.57%) DHCP
8 31 (1.43%) HTTP
9 29 (1.34%) TCP/IP
10 28 (1.29%) Wireless
11 26 (1.20%) Internet
11 26 (1.20%) SSH
12 22 (1.02%) Skype
13 20 (0.92%) Unified Communications
14 19 (0.88%) BGP
15 16 (0.74%) OSPF
15 16 (0.74%) Wi-Fi
16 15 (0.69%) VLAN
17 14 (0.65%) SMTP
17 14 (0.65%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 117 (5.40%) Power BI
2 89 (4.11%) PostgreSQL
3 72 (3.32%) SQL Server
4 57 (2.63%) Relational Database
5 56 (2.58%) NoSQL
6 51 (2.35%) Data Warehouse
7 50 (2.31%) Tableau
8 33 (1.52%) MySQL
9 29 (1.34%) Big Data
10 25 (1.15%) Amazon RDS
11 17 (0.78%) Data Lake
11 17 (0.78%) Metadata
12 16 (0.74%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 15 (0.69%) MongoDB
13 15 (0.69%) Oracle Database
14 14 (0.65%) RDBMS
15 12 (0.55%) Amazon Aurora
15 12 (0.55%) GIS
16 11 (0.51%) BigQuery
16 11 (0.51%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 276 (12.74%) JIRA
2 112 (5.17%) Git
3 93 (4.29%) Jenkins
4 68 (3.14%) GitLab
5 26 (1.20%) Liquibase
6 23 (1.06%) Postman
7 19 (0.88%) Selenium
8 16 (0.74%) Visual Studio
9 11 (0.51%) Bitbucket
9 11 (0.51%) Cucumber
9 11 (0.51%) Cypress.io
9 11 (0.51%) JUnit
9 11 (0.51%) Vagrant
10 8 (0.37%) Artifactory
10 8 (0.37%) Burp Suite
10 8 (0.37%) SpecFlow
11 7 (0.32%) CircleCI
11 7 (0.32%) SonarQube
12 6 (0.28%) Gradle
12 6 (0.28%) Katalon Studio
General
1 1,132 (52.24%) Social Skills
2 688 (31.75%) Finance
3 537 (24.78%) Analytical Skills
4 250 (11.54%) Banking
5 138 (6.37%) Public Sector
6 96 (4.43%) Manufacturing
7 90 (4.15%) Presentation Skills
8 86 (3.97%) Organisational Skills
9 79 (3.65%) Marketing
10 75 (3.46%) Influencing Skills
10 75 (3.46%) Legal
11 68 (3.14%) Military
12 62 (2.86%) Financial Institution
13 57 (2.63%) Telecoms
14 56 (2.58%) Documentation Skills
15 51 (2.35%) Front Office
15 51 (2.35%) Investment Banking
16 45 (2.08%) Pharmaceutical
17 44 (2.03%) Aerospace
18 41 (1.89%) Law
Job Titles
1 312 (14.40%) Analyst
2 214 (9.88%) Developer
2 214 (9.88%) Senior
3 169 (7.80%) Architect
4 159 (7.34%) Lead
5 147 (6.78%) Business Analyst
6 146 (6.74%) Project Manager
7 85 (3.92%) Consultant
8 78 (3.60%) Software Engineer
9 52 (2.40%) Technical Support
10 49 (2.26%) Support Analyst
11 48 (2.22%) Solutions Architect
12 47 (2.17%) Security Engineer
13 46 (2.12%) IT Support
14 43 (1.98%) Data Scientist
14 43 (1.98%) Senior Developer
14 43 (1.98%) Support Engineer
15 39 (1.80%) Senior Software Engineer
16 37 (1.71%) IT Manager
17 34 (1.57%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 117 (5.40%) REST
2 83 (3.83%) RESTful
3 70 (3.23%) .NET
4 61 (2.81%) HTML
5 53 (2.45%) XML
6 47 (2.17%) Middleware
7 45 (2.08%) CSS
7 45 (2.08%) Elastic Stack
8 44 (2.03%) JSON
9 41 (1.89%) React
10 40 (1.85%) Kafka
11 39 (1.80%) SOAP
12 36 (1.66%) OAuth
13 32 (1.48%) AngularJS
14 31 (1.43%) TensorFlow
15 29 (1.34%) Spring
16 27 (1.25%) Node.js
16 27 (1.25%) Pandas
16 27 (1.25%) PyTorch
16 27 (1.25%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 181 (8.35%) Management Information System
2 109 (5.03%) Product Ownership
3 104 (4.80%) Cloud Native
4 72 (3.32%) Onboarding
5 68 (3.14%) Algorithms
6 60 (2.77%) Distributed Systems
7 58 (2.68%) Analytical Mindset
8 56 (2.58%) Data Protection Act
9 54 (2.49%) Virtual Team
10 50 (2.31%) Data Centre
11 46 (2.12%) Self-Motivation
12 44 (2.03%) Derivative
13 39 (1.80%) Enterprise Software
13 39 (1.80%) Public Cloud
13 39 (1.80%) Security Posture
14 38 (1.75%) Legacy Systems
15 36 (1.66%) Life Science
16 32 (1.48%) PMI
17 30 (1.38%) Data Structures
17 30 (1.38%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 243 (11.21%) Windows
2 183 (8.44%) Linux
3 77 (3.55%) Unix
4 56 (2.58%) Windows Server
5 42 (1.94%) Windows 10
6 24 (1.11%) Mac OS
7 21 (0.97%) Android
8 20 (0.92%) Apple iOS
9 18 (0.83%) Ubuntu
10 17 (0.78%) VMS
11 15 (0.69%) 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 3 (0.14%) CentOS
16 3 (0.14%) Robot Operating System
17 2 (0.092%) Kali Linux
17 2 (0.092%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 840 (38.76%) Computer Science
2 716 (33.04%) Agile
3 669 (30.87%) Problem-Solving
4 350 (16.15%) Stakeholder Management
5 333 (15.37%) Project Management
6 332 (15.32%) DevOps
7 264 (12.18%) Change Management
8 244 (11.26%) CI/CD
8 244 (11.26%) ITIL
9 232 (10.71%) Continuous Improvement
10 230 (10.61%) AI
11 223 (10.29%) Decision-Making
12 222 (10.24%) Cybersecurity
13 220 (10.15%) Analytics
14 218 (10.06%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 215 (9.92%) Software Engineering
16 198 (9.14%) Migration
17 187 (8.63%) Risk Management
18 183 (8.44%) Project Delivery
19 167 (7.71%) PRINCE2
Programming Languages
1 414 (19.10%) Python
2 325 (15.00%) SQL
3 162 (7.48%) Java
4 120 (5.54%) PowerShell
5 112 (5.17%) JavaScript
6 83 (3.83%) C#
7 81 (3.74%) C++
8 53 (2.45%) TypeScript
9 50 (2.31%) Go
10 46 (2.12%) Bash
11 29 (1.34%) R
12 23 (1.06%) Perl
13 19 (0.88%) C
14 18 (0.83%) PL/SQL
14 18 (0.83%) T-SQL
15 16 (0.74%) Kotlin
15 16 (0.74%) Kusto Query Language
16 14 (0.65%) MATLAB
16 14 (0.65%) Ruby
17 13 (0.60%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 579 (26.72%) Computer Science Degree
2 365 (16.84%) Security Cleared
3 322 (14.86%) Master's Degree
4 287 (13.24%) SC Cleared
5 129 (5.95%) PMI Certification
6 121 (5.58%) PMP
7 110 (5.08%) CISSP
8 87 (4.01%) Microsoft Certification
9 72 (3.32%) CISM
10 66 (3.05%) PhD
11 64 (2.95%) Azure Certification
12 61 (2.81%) Cisco Certification
13 56 (2.58%) TOGAF Certification
14 54 (2.49%) AWS Certification
15 46 (2.12%) DV Cleared
16 41 (1.89%) HND
17 40 (1.85%) CCNP
18 35 (1.62%) BPSS Clearance
18 35 (1.62%) CCNA
18 35 (1.62%) HNC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 132 (6.09%) QA
2 111 (5.12%) GDPR
3 91 (4.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 82 (3.78%) Data Quality
5 70 (3.23%) NIST
5 70 (3.23%) PMO
6 37 (1.71%) Accessibility
7 35 (1.62%) SLA
8 33 (1.52%) PCI DSS
9 27 (1.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 24 (1.11%) GRC
11 15 (0.69%) Def Stans
11 15 (0.69%) NCSC
11 15 (0.69%) WCAG
12 14 (0.65%) HIPAA
13 13 (0.60%) COBIT
14 12 (0.55%) NIST 800
15 11 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials
16 10 (0.46%) P3O
17 9 (0.42%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
System Software
1 161 (7.43%) Docker
2 126 (5.81%) Active Directory
3 41 (1.89%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.92%) Firmware
5 11 (0.51%) 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 6 (0.28%) VMware NSX
8 6 (0.28%) 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 (0.092%) XenApp
12 1 (0.046%) NDS
12 1 (0.046%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
12 1 (0.046%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 146 (6.74%) Kubernetes
2 125 (5.77%) Terraform
3 79 (3.65%) Ansible
4 58 (2.68%) Grafana
5 48 (2.22%) Prometheus
6 47 (2.17%) Microsoft Intune
7 45 (2.08%) SCCM
8 30 (1.38%) OPNET
9 20 (0.92%) Puppet
10 14 (0.65%) SCOM
11 12 (0.55%) Nessus
12 11 (0.51%) Kibana
13 10 (0.46%) Proxmox
13 10 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
14 9 (0.42%) QRadar
14 9 (0.42%) WSUS
15 8 (0.37%) Nmap
16 7 (0.32%) Argo
16 7 (0.32%) CSIRT
17 6 (0.28%) vRealize
Vendors
1 450 (20.77%) Microsoft
2 137 (6.32%) Oracle
3 126 (5.81%) SAP
4 121 (5.58%) ServiceNow
5 95 (4.38%) Google
5 95 (4.38%) Splunk
6 66 (3.05%) Cisco
7 63 (2.91%) Salesforce
8 51 (2.35%) Atlassian
9 49 (2.26%) Remedy
10 47 (2.17%) VMware
11 38 (1.75%) Databricks
12 34 (1.57%) IBM
13 29 (1.34%) Citrix
14 28 (1.29%) Palo Alto
15 25 (1.15%) Adobe
16 21 (0.97%) Red Hat
17 19 (0.88%) CheckPoint
17 19 (0.88%) Workday
18 17 (0.78%) MuleSoft