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 4 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 24 17
Rank change year-on-year -4 -7 +10
Contract jobs citing Degree 2,248 1,954 3,240
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.25% 7.76% 8.61%
As % of the Qualifications category 18.23% 25.47% 27.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,305 1,113 1,799
10th Percentile £300 £243 £207
25th Percentile £400 £401 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £513
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +2.44% -6.82%
75th Percentile £631 £675 £645
90th Percentile £738 £800 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £513 £501
% change year-on-year -2.44% +2.40% -6.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 197 128 328
10th Percentile £15.50 £22.72 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.50 £31.13 £22.94
Median hourly rate £39.50 £53.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -25.47% +32.50% -11.11%
75th Percentile £74.68 £75.00 £60.06
90th Percentile £88.00 £85.00 £74.00
UK median hourly rate £37.54 £46.18 £39.92
% change year-on-year -18.71% +15.68% -11.29%

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 12,328 7,673 11,693
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.28% 30.48% 31.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,195 4,764 7,206
10th Percentile £325 £285 £290
25th Percentile £423 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £539
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.60% -2.00%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £729 £738
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.87% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 950 393 902
10th Percentile £16.17 £20.15 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.35 £25.26 £20.00
Median hourly rate £25.44 £50.00 £40.13
Median % change year-on-year -49.12% +24.61% -18.53%
75th Percentile £65.00 £68.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £83.06 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.77 £42.50 £40.13
% change year-on-year -39.36% +5.92% -19.75%

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 4 March 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 4 March 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 4 March 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 -11 983 £515 -6.36% 957
North of England -3 351 £447 -10.60% 522
South East -4 333 £475 -5.00% 856
Midlands -17 211 £500 +25.00% 403
North West -2 183 £400 -20.00% 257
South West +6 180 £650 +21.44% 311
West Midlands -20 155 £500 - 205
Yorkshire -14 151 £525 +5.00% 196
East of England -10 134 £525 +8.25% 363
East Midlands -12 56 £525 +47.47% 193
North East -10 18 £364 -27.20% 74
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
1 188 (8.36%) Confluence
2 112 (4.98%) SharePoint
3 60 (2.67%) Microsoft Exchange
4 38 (1.69%) Apache Spark
5 17 (0.76%) Apache Airflow
6 13 (0.58%) Apache
7 10 (0.44%) Skype for Business
8 9 (0.40%) CMS
9 8 (0.36%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 5 (0.22%) Ethereum
10 5 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
10 5 (0.22%) SAS
11 4 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 4 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2013
11 4 (0.18%) GeoServer
11 4 (0.18%) OpenStack
11 4 (0.18%) Smallworld
12 3 (0.13%) Hyperledger
12 3 (0.13%) MS Project Server
12 3 (0.13%) WebSphere
Applications
1 289 (12.86%) Microsoft Office
2 212 (9.43%) Microsoft Excel
3 182 (8.10%) Microsoft Project
4 115 (5.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 76 (3.38%) MS Visio
6 18 (0.80%) Chatbot
7 14 (0.62%) Spreadsheet
8 11 (0.49%) Simulink
9 9 (0.40%) Trello
10 8 (0.36%) Sketch
11 6 (0.27%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.18%) InVision
13 2 (0.089%) Adobe After Effects
13 2 (0.089%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.089%) PTC Creo
14 1 (0.044%) Adobe Illustrator
14 1 (0.044%) CPLEX
14 1 (0.044%) FrameMaker
14 1 (0.044%) Photoshop
14 1 (0.044%) Stateflow
Business Applications
1 34 (1.51%) SAP S/4HANA
2 26 (1.16%) Primavera
3 24 (1.07%) Dynamics CRM
4 20 (0.89%) Remedy ITSM
5 9 (0.40%) Oracle General Ledger
6 8 (0.36%) SAP ERP
6 8 (0.36%) Veritas eDiscovery
7 7 (0.31%) Oracle Payables
8 6 (0.27%) Payment Gateway
8 6 (0.27%) SAP EWM
8 6 (0.27%) SAP WM
9 4 (0.18%) Fidessa
9 4 (0.18%) NEC Housing
9 4 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
9 4 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
9 4 (0.18%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 4 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
9 4 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
9 4 (0.18%) Teamcenter
9 4 (0.18%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 459 (20.42%) Azure
2 268 (11.92%) AWS
3 191 (8.50%) Microsoft 365
4 159 (7.07%) Power Platform
5 140 (6.23%) GCP
6 110 (4.89%) SaaS
7 100 (4.45%) Entra ID
8 76 (3.38%) GitHub
9 73 (3.25%) Azure DevOps
10 51 (2.27%) Serverless
11 41 (1.82%) Dynamics 365
12 35 (1.56%) Power Automate
13 31 (1.38%) Cloud Computing
13 31 (1.38%) IaaS
13 31 (1.38%) OCI
13 31 (1.38%) PaaS
14 28 (1.25%) Google Workspace
15 27 (1.20%) GitHub Actions
15 27 (1.20%) PowerApps
16 25 (1.11%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 102 (4.54%) Firewall
2 59 (2.62%) LAN
3 56 (2.49%) WAN
4 54 (2.40%) DNS
5 45 (2.00%) TCP/IP
6 43 (1.91%) Network Security
7 40 (1.78%) VPN
8 29 (1.29%) Wireless
9 26 (1.16%) DHCP
10 24 (1.07%) BGP
10 24 (1.07%) Skype
11 23 (1.02%) Ethernet
11 23 (1.02%) HTTP
11 23 (1.02%) Internet
12 22 (0.98%) Unified Communications
12 22 (0.98%) Wi-Fi
13 20 (0.89%) OSPF
14 18 (0.80%) VLAN
15 16 (0.71%) SSH
16 15 (0.67%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 123 (5.47%) Power BI
2 84 (3.74%) PostgreSQL
3 80 (3.56%) SQL Server
4 58 (2.58%) NoSQL
5 47 (2.09%) Data Warehouse
6 42 (1.87%) Relational Database
7 40 (1.78%) Tableau
8 37 (1.65%) MySQL
9 28 (1.25%) Big Data
10 21 (0.93%) MongoDB
11 20 (0.89%) Elasticsearch
12 18 (0.80%) Metadata
13 16 (0.71%) Data Lake
14 14 (0.62%) Hadoop
14 14 (0.62%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 12 (0.53%) Oracle Reports
16 11 (0.49%) BigQuery
16 11 (0.49%) Oracle Database
17 10 (0.44%) RDBMS
18 9 (0.40%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 265 (11.79%) JIRA
2 101 (4.49%) Git
3 68 (3.02%) Jenkins
4 53 (2.36%) GitLab
5 23 (1.02%) Visual Studio
6 18 (0.80%) Postman
7 16 (0.71%) Liquibase
8 15 (0.67%) Rational DOORS
8 15 (0.67%) Selenium
9 13 (0.58%) Burp Suite
10 11 (0.49%) Bitbucket
10 11 (0.49%) Metasploit
10 11 (0.49%) MLflow
11 10 (0.44%) Gradle
12 9 (0.40%) Jaeger
13 8 (0.36%) CircleCI
13 8 (0.36%) Cucumber
14 7 (0.31%) Cypress.io
14 7 (0.31%) JUnit
15 5 (0.22%) TeamCity
General
1 1,132 (50.36%) Social Skills
2 706 (31.41%) Finance
3 521 (23.18%) Analytical Skills
4 238 (10.59%) Banking
5 178 (7.92%) Public Sector
6 114 (5.07%) Presentation Skills
7 95 (4.23%) Organisational Skills
8 84 (3.74%) Marketing
9 77 (3.43%) Manufacturing
10 76 (3.38%) Documentation Skills
11 74 (3.29%) Influencing Skills
12 68 (3.02%) Legal
13 56 (2.49%) Military
14 52 (2.31%) Financial Institution
15 49 (2.18%) Aerospace
16 44 (1.96%) Front Office
16 44 (1.96%) Law
17 42 (1.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 42 (1.87%) Retail
18 39 (1.73%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 318 (14.15%) Analyst
2 229 (10.19%) Senior
3 187 (8.32%) Developer
4 184 (8.19%) Lead
5 175 (7.78%) Architect
6 157 (6.98%) Project Manager
7 153 (6.81%) Business Analyst
8 85 (3.78%) Consultant
9 76 (3.38%) Software Engineer
10 65 (2.89%) Technical Support
11 60 (2.67%) Solutions Architect
12 50 (2.22%) Delivery Manager
13 47 (2.09%) Security Engineer
14 45 (2.00%) Senior Analyst
15 43 (1.91%) IT Support
16 42 (1.87%) Data Scientist
17 37 (1.65%) Technical Analyst
18 36 (1.60%) Senior Software Engineer
18 36 (1.60%) Support Analyst
19 35 (1.56%) Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 109 (4.85%) REST
2 66 (2.94%) .NET
2 66 (2.94%) RESTful
3 53 (2.36%) React
4 51 (2.27%) HTML
5 48 (2.14%) Middleware
6 42 (1.87%) Elastic Stack
6 42 (1.87%) Kafka
7 38 (1.69%) CSS
7 38 (1.69%) Oracle Fusion
8 37 (1.65%) XML
9 36 (1.60%) OAuth
10 35 (1.56%) JSON
10 35 (1.56%) SOAP
11 29 (1.29%) PyTorch
11 29 (1.29%) Spring
11 29 (1.29%) TensorFlow
12 28 (1.25%) Pandas
12 28 (1.25%) Spring Boot
13 26 (1.16%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 189 (8.41%) Management Information System
2 136 (6.05%) Product Ownership
3 104 (4.63%) Onboarding
4 100 (4.45%) Cloud Native
5 68 (3.02%) Distributed Systems
5 68 (3.02%) Virtual Team
6 65 (2.89%) Data Centre
7 63 (2.80%) Algorithms
8 62 (2.76%) Self-Motivation
9 52 (2.31%) Data Protection Act
10 51 (2.27%) Analytical Mindset
11 45 (2.00%) Security Posture
12 44 (1.96%) PMI
13 42 (1.87%) Derivative
14 38 (1.69%) Enterprise Software
15 37 (1.65%) Data Structures
16 32 (1.42%) Public Cloud
17 30 (1.33%) Life Science
18 29 (1.29%) Equities
18 29 (1.29%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 267 (11.88%) Windows
2 176 (7.83%) Linux
3 78 (3.47%) Unix
4 66 (2.94%) Windows Server
5 58 (2.58%) Windows 10
6 20 (0.89%) Android
6 20 (0.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 15 (0.67%) Apple iOS
7 15 (0.67%) Mac OS
7 15 (0.67%) Windows Server 2016
8 14 (0.62%) Ubuntu
9 13 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
9 13 (0.58%) Windows Server 2019
10 9 (0.40%) VMS
11 7 (0.31%) Windows Server 2003
12 5 (0.22%) Windows 7
13 4 (0.18%) AIX
14 3 (0.13%) CentOS
14 3 (0.13%) Debian
14 3 (0.13%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 817 (36.34%) Computer Science
2 727 (32.34%) Agile
3 636 (28.29%) Problem-Solving
4 386 (17.17%) Stakeholder Management
5 340 (15.12%) DevOps
6 309 (13.75%) AI
7 303 (13.48%) Project Management
8 264 (11.74%) Change Management
9 263 (11.70%) Continuous Improvement
10 255 (11.34%) CI/CD
11 245 (10.90%) Analytics
12 241 (10.72%) Decision-Making
13 232 (10.32%) Cybersecurity
13 232 (10.32%) ITIL
13 232 (10.32%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 222 (9.88%) Risk Management
15 217 (9.65%) Migration
16 203 (9.03%) Project Delivery
16 203 (9.03%) Software Engineering
17 184 (8.19%) PRINCE2
Programming Languages
1 399 (17.75%) Python
2 331 (14.72%) SQL
3 156 (6.94%) Java
4 123 (5.47%) PowerShell
5 99 (4.40%) JavaScript
6 75 (3.34%) C#
7 71 (3.16%) C++
8 48 (2.14%) TypeScript
9 43 (1.91%) Bash
10 41 (1.82%) Go
11 26 (1.16%) PL/SQL
12 25 (1.11%) R
13 19 (0.85%) Perl
14 17 (0.76%) T-SQL
15 16 (0.71%) C
15 16 (0.71%) Shell Script
16 15 (0.67%) Rust
17 14 (0.62%) Kotlin
18 13 (0.58%) MATLAB
19 10 (0.44%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 537 (23.89%) Computer Science Degree
2 423 (18.82%) Security Cleared
3 343 (15.26%) Master's Degree
4 326 (14.50%) SC Cleared
5 133 (5.92%) PMI Certification
6 121 (5.38%) PMP
7 114 (5.07%) CISSP
8 87 (3.87%) Microsoft Certification
9 75 (3.34%) CISM
10 70 (3.11%) PhD
11 63 (2.80%) TOGAF Certification
12 61 (2.71%) Cisco Certification
13 57 (2.54%) BPSS Clearance
14 56 (2.49%) Azure Certification
15 47 (2.09%) DV Cleared
16 41 (1.82%) CCNP
17 36 (1.60%) AWS Certification
18 35 (1.56%) MBA
19 32 (1.42%) CBAP
20 31 (1.38%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 153 (6.81%) QA
2 118 (5.25%) GDPR
3 101 (4.49%) PMO
4 100 (4.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 79 (3.51%) NIST
6 72 (3.20%) Data Quality
7 48 (2.14%) PCI DSS
8 37 (1.65%) SLA
9 35 (1.56%) Accessibility
10 31 (1.38%) GRC
11 28 (1.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 20 (0.89%) NCSC
13 15 (0.67%) WCAG
14 14 (0.62%) Basel III
14 14 (0.62%) Cyber Essentials
14 14 (0.62%) IFRS
15 12 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
15 12 (0.53%) HIPAA
15 12 (0.53%) IFRS 17
15 12 (0.53%) SOC 2
System Software
1 159 (7.07%) Docker
2 150 (6.67%) Active Directory
3 46 (2.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 19 (0.85%) Hyper-V
5 16 (0.71%) Firmware
6 8 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
7 6 (0.27%) vSphere
8 5 (0.22%) Microsoft Virtual Server
8 5 (0.22%) Virtual Machines
8 5 (0.22%) Virtual Servers
8 5 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
8 5 (0.22%) XenApp
8 5 (0.22%) XenDesktop
9 4 (0.18%) VMware NSX
10 3 (0.13%) BitLocker
10 3 (0.13%) HDFS
10 3 (0.13%) KVM
11 2 (0.089%) Oracle RAC
12 1 (0.044%) NetIQ eDirectory
12 1 (0.044%) Squid
Systems Management
1 166 (7.38%) Kubernetes
2 107 (4.76%) Terraform
3 76 (3.38%) Ansible
4 71 (3.16%) Microsoft Intune
5 49 (2.18%) Grafana
6 45 (2.00%) SCCM
7 41 (1.82%) Prometheus
8 30 (1.33%) OPNET
9 21 (0.93%) Puppet
10 17 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
11 16 (0.71%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 16 (0.71%) Kibana
12 13 (0.58%) Nmap
13 11 (0.49%) SCOM
14 9 (0.40%) Kiali
14 9 (0.40%) WSUS
15 8 (0.36%) Argo
16 6 (0.27%) vCenter Server
17 5 (0.22%) HP ALM
17 5 (0.22%) SCVMM
Vendors
1 478 (21.26%) Microsoft
2 154 (6.85%) Oracle
3 117 (5.20%) SAP
3 117 (5.20%) ServiceNow
4 101 (4.49%) Google
5 80 (3.56%) Splunk
6 75 (3.34%) Cisco
7 54 (2.40%) Remedy
8 53 (2.36%) Atlassian
9 48 (2.14%) VMware
10 44 (1.96%) Salesforce
11 43 (1.91%) Databricks
12 40 (1.78%) Citrix
13 36 (1.60%) Palo Alto
14 32 (1.42%) IBM
15 25 (1.11%) CheckPoint
16 23 (1.02%) Red Hat
17 22 (0.98%) Informatica
18 21 (0.93%) Aruba
19 20 (0.89%) Siemens