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 12 February 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 24 17
Rank change year-on-year -4 -7 +10
Contract jobs citing Degree 2,195 1,993 3,224
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.46% 7.64% 8.57%
As % of the Qualifications category 19.01% 25.38% 27.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,285 1,104 1,799
10th Percentile £294 £250 £208
25th Percentile £400 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £517
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +1.55% -6.00%
75th Percentile £638 £653 £645
90th Percentile £738 £789 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £510 £500
% change year-on-year -1.96% +2.00% -7.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 177 115 318
10th Percentile £15.15 £23.07 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £31.02 £22.90
Median hourly rate £35.00 £43.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.60% +7.50% -11.11%
75th Percentile £60.61 £75.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £81.40 £85.00 £73.83
UK median hourly rate £33.50 £42.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year -21.18% +6.25% -9.60%

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 11,546 7,854 11,724
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.99% 30.12% 31.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,669 4,788 7,250
10th Percentile £319 £300 £298
25th Percentile £419 £417 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £521 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year -0.86% -3.58% -1.00%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £519 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.24% -2.42% -2.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 893 372 874
10th Percentile £15.77 £20.00 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.87 £25.26 £21.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £47.50 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year -47.05% +3.53% +1.96%
75th Percentile £63.75 £68.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £76.42 £82.48 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £45.21
% change year-on-year -37.13% -11.52% +0.47%

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 12 February 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 12 February 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 12 February 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 -4 1,000 £525 -4.55% 799
North of England -6 341 £421 -14.03% 397
South East -3 294 £475 -5.00% 726
Midlands -14 215 £523 +26.67% 323
North West -1 180 £388 -18.42% 234
South West +7 178 £649 +18.00% 218
West Midlands -18 151 £523 +7.18% 206
Yorkshire -9 146 £525 +5.00% 114
East of England -13 119 £550 +18.92% 244
East Midlands -6 64 £523 +46.77% 117
North East -11 16 £364 -27.20% 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
1 189 (8.61%) Confluence
2 112 (5.10%) SharePoint
3 57 (2.60%) Microsoft Exchange
4 37 (1.69%) Apache Spark
5 17 (0.77%) Apache Airflow
6 15 (0.68%) Skype for Business
7 12 (0.55%) Apache
8 8 (0.36%) CMS
9 7 (0.32%) Exchange Server 2013
9 7 (0.32%) nginx
9 7 (0.32%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 6 (0.27%) SAS
11 5 (0.23%) Ethereum
12 4 (0.18%) GeoServer
12 4 (0.18%) Smallworld
13 3 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 3 (0.14%) IIS
13 3 (0.14%) MS Project Server
13 3 (0.14%) OpenStack
13 3 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 279 (12.71%) Microsoft Office
2 225 (10.25%) Microsoft Excel
3 179 (8.15%) Microsoft Project
4 121 (5.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 79 (3.60%) MS Visio
6 19 (0.87%) Chatbot
7 12 (0.55%) Spreadsheet
8 11 (0.50%) Simulink
9 10 (0.46%) Trello
10 8 (0.36%) Sketch
11 6 (0.27%) Adobe XD
11 6 (0.27%) Mozilla Thunderbird
12 4 (0.18%) FrameMaker
12 4 (0.18%) InVision
13 3 (0.14%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 2 (0.091%) Adobe After Effects
14 2 (0.091%) Navisworks
14 2 (0.091%) PTC Creo
14 2 (0.091%) Revit
15 1 (0.046%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 37 (1.69%) SAP S/4HANA
2 24 (1.09%) Dynamics CRM
2 24 (1.09%) Primavera
3 22 (1.00%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.59%) SAP WM
5 12 (0.55%) SAP EWM
6 11 (0.50%) Oracle General Ledger
7 8 (0.36%) Oracle Payables
7 8 (0.36%) SAP ERP
8 7 (0.32%) Veritas eDiscovery
9 6 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
9 6 (0.27%) Oracle EBS R12
9 6 (0.27%) Payment Gateway
10 5 (0.23%) Oracle Financials
10 5 (0.23%) Oracle Receivables
10 5 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
11 4 (0.18%) NEC Housing
11 4 (0.18%) Oracle Assets
11 4 (0.18%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 4 (0.18%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 452 (20.59%) Azure
2 263 (11.98%) AWS
3 199 (9.07%) Microsoft 365
4 158 (7.20%) Power Platform
5 142 (6.47%) GCP
6 107 (4.87%) SaaS
7 86 (3.92%) Entra ID
8 79 (3.60%) GitHub
9 75 (3.42%) Azure DevOps
10 56 (2.55%) Serverless
11 43 (1.96%) Dynamics 365
12 36 (1.64%) Power Automate
13 34 (1.55%) OCI
14 33 (1.50%) Cloud Computing
15 31 (1.41%) PaaS
16 30 (1.37%) IaaS
17 28 (1.28%) GitHub Actions
18 27 (1.23%) PowerApps
19 26 (1.18%) Google Workspace
20 23 (1.05%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 101 (4.60%) Firewall
2 61 (2.78%) DNS
3 56 (2.55%) LAN
4 53 (2.41%) WAN
5 42 (1.91%) VPN
6 40 (1.82%) Network Security
7 30 (1.37%) DHCP
8 28 (1.28%) Skype
9 27 (1.23%) HTTP
9 27 (1.23%) TCP/IP
10 26 (1.18%) Wireless
11 24 (1.09%) BGP
11 24 (1.09%) Internet
11 24 (1.09%) Unified Communications
12 21 (0.96%) OSPF
13 20 (0.91%) SSH
14 18 (0.82%) Wi-Fi
15 16 (0.73%) Structured Cabling
15 16 (0.73%) VLAN
16 14 (0.64%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 125 (5.69%) Power BI
2 82 (3.74%) PostgreSQL
3 75 (3.42%) SQL Server
4 56 (2.55%) NoSQL
5 44 (2.00%) Data Warehouse
5 44 (2.00%) Relational Database
5 44 (2.00%) Tableau
6 38 (1.73%) MySQL
7 29 (1.32%) Big Data
8 20 (0.91%) Elasticsearch
9 19 (0.87%) Metadata
10 18 (0.82%) MongoDB
11 16 (0.73%) Data Lake
12 14 (0.64%) Amazon RDS
13 13 (0.59%) Oracle Reports
14 12 (0.55%) BigQuery
14 12 (0.55%) Hadoop
15 10 (0.46%) Oracle Database
15 10 (0.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 9 (0.41%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 267 (12.16%) JIRA
2 100 (4.56%) Git
3 73 (3.33%) Jenkins
4 52 (2.37%) GitLab
5 25 (1.14%) Visual Studio
6 21 (0.96%) Liquibase
7 18 (0.82%) Postman
8 16 (0.73%) Selenium
9 13 (0.59%) Burp Suite
10 11 (0.50%) Bitbucket
10 11 (0.50%) Metasploit
11 10 (0.46%) Gradle
11 10 (0.46%) MLflow
12 9 (0.41%) CircleCI
12 9 (0.41%) Jaeger
13 8 (0.36%) Cucumber
14 7 (0.32%) Cypress.io
14 7 (0.32%) JUnit
15 6 (0.27%) Appium
15 6 (0.27%) Vagrant
General
1 1,131 (51.53%) Social Skills
2 717 (32.67%) Finance
3 524 (23.87%) Analytical Skills
4 250 (11.39%) Banking
5 168 (7.65%) Public Sector
6 105 (4.78%) Presentation Skills
7 91 (4.15%) Organisational Skills
8 89 (4.05%) Manufacturing
9 82 (3.74%) Marketing
10 73 (3.33%) Documentation Skills
11 70 (3.19%) Influencing Skills
12 59 (2.69%) Legal
12 59 (2.69%) Military
13 55 (2.51%) Financial Institution
14 48 (2.19%) Front Office
15 45 (2.05%) Telecoms
16 41 (1.87%) Investment Banking
17 38 (1.73%) Retail
18 37 (1.69%) Pharmaceutical
19 35 (1.59%) Law
Job Titles
1 323 (14.72%) Analyst
2 232 (10.57%) Senior
3 195 (8.88%) Developer
4 185 (8.43%) Lead
5 171 (7.79%) Architect
6 156 (7.11%) Business Analyst
6 156 (7.11%) Project Manager
7 83 (3.78%) Consultant
8 82 (3.74%) Software Engineer
9 65 (2.96%) Technical Support
10 60 (2.73%) Solutions Architect
11 50 (2.28%) IT Support
12 46 (2.10%) Security Engineer
13 44 (2.00%) Support Analyst
14 42 (1.91%) Senior Analyst
14 42 (1.91%) Senior Software Engineer
15 38 (1.73%) Data Scientist
16 36 (1.64%) Technical Analyst
17 35 (1.59%) Delivery Manager
17 35 (1.59%) Senior Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 107 (4.87%) REST
2 69 (3.14%) RESTful
3 66 (3.01%) .NET
4 54 (2.46%) HTML
5 50 (2.28%) React
6 46 (2.10%) Elastic Stack
6 46 (2.10%) Middleware
7 41 (1.87%) CSS
8 39 (1.78%) XML
9 37 (1.69%) Oracle Fusion
10 36 (1.64%) Kafka
10 36 (1.64%) OAuth
11 34 (1.55%) SOAP
12 33 (1.50%) JSON
13 29 (1.32%) PyTorch
13 29 (1.32%) Spring
13 29 (1.32%) TensorFlow
14 28 (1.28%) AngularJS
14 28 (1.28%) Node.js
15 27 (1.23%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 184 (8.38%) Management Information System
2 110 (5.01%) Product Ownership
3 98 (4.46%) Cloud Native
4 92 (4.19%) Onboarding
5 67 (3.05%) Distributed Systems
6 61 (2.78%) Algorithms
7 60 (2.73%) Data Centre
7 60 (2.73%) Virtual Team
8 54 (2.46%) Data Protection Act
8 54 (2.46%) Self-Motivation
9 48 (2.19%) Analytical Mindset
10 44 (2.00%) PMI
11 43 (1.96%) Security Posture
12 42 (1.91%) Derivative
13 40 (1.82%) Enterprise Software
14 36 (1.64%) Public Cloud
15 35 (1.59%) Life Science
16 30 (1.37%) Legacy Systems
17 28 (1.28%) Equities
18 26 (1.18%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 272 (12.39%) Windows
2 183 (8.34%) Linux
3 82 (3.74%) Unix
4 68 (3.10%) Windows Server
5 58 (2.64%) Windows 10
6 22 (1.00%) Android
7 19 (0.87%) Windows Server 2016
8 18 (0.82%) Apple iOS
9 17 (0.77%) Ubuntu
10 16 (0.73%) Mac OS
10 16 (0.73%) Windows Server 2019
11 14 (0.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 14 (0.64%) VMS
12 11 (0.50%) Windows Server 2012
13 6 (0.27%) Amazon Linux
13 6 (0.27%) Windows Server 2003
14 4 (0.18%) Windows 7
15 3 (0.14%) CentOS
15 3 (0.14%) Robot Operating System
16 2 (0.091%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 804 (36.63%) Computer Science
2 722 (32.89%) Agile
3 644 (29.34%) Problem-Solving
4 377 (17.18%) Stakeholder Management
5 337 (15.35%) DevOps
6 324 (14.76%) Project Management
7 283 (12.89%) AI
8 273 (12.44%) Change Management
9 249 (11.34%) CI/CD
10 244 (11.12%) Analytics
11 232 (10.57%) Continuous Improvement
12 230 (10.48%) Cybersecurity
13 222 (10.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 221 (10.07%) Migration
15 215 (9.79%) Decision-Making
16 213 (9.70%) ITIL
16 213 (9.70%) Risk Management
17 205 (9.34%) Software Engineering
18 195 (8.88%) Project Delivery
19 179 (8.15%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 403 (18.36%) Python
2 344 (15.67%) SQL
3 152 (6.92%) Java
4 122 (5.56%) PowerShell
5 108 (4.92%) JavaScript
6 77 (3.51%) C#
7 76 (3.46%) C++
8 52 (2.37%) TypeScript
9 45 (2.05%) Go
10 40 (1.82%) Bash
11 25 (1.14%) PL/SQL
12 24 (1.09%) R
13 22 (1.00%) Perl
14 19 (0.87%) C
14 19 (0.87%) T-SQL
15 15 (0.68%) Kotlin
15 15 (0.68%) Rust
16 14 (0.64%) MATLAB
17 12 (0.55%) Kusto Query Language
17 12 (0.55%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 552 (25.15%) Computer Science Degree
2 394 (17.95%) Security Cleared
3 349 (15.90%) Master's Degree
4 313 (14.26%) SC Cleared
5 136 (6.20%) PMI Certification
6 121 (5.51%) PMP
7 106 (4.83%) CISSP
8 84 (3.83%) Microsoft Certification
9 71 (3.23%) CISM
10 68 (3.10%) PhD
11 61 (2.78%) Azure Certification
12 59 (2.69%) BPSS Clearance
12 59 (2.69%) TOGAF Certification
13 57 (2.60%) Cisco Certification
14 45 (2.05%) DV Cleared
15 41 (1.87%) AWS Certification
15 41 (1.87%) CCNP
16 35 (1.59%) CBAP
16 35 (1.59%) MBA
17 31 (1.41%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 149 (6.79%) QA
2 116 (5.28%) GDPR
3 92 (4.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 87 (3.96%) PMO
5 69 (3.14%) Data Quality
6 62 (2.82%) NIST
7 42 (1.91%) PCI DSS
8 36 (1.64%) Accessibility
9 31 (1.41%) SLA
10 29 (1.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 26 (1.18%) GRC
12 17 (0.77%) Cyber Essentials
13 15 (0.68%) WCAG
14 14 (0.64%) Basel III
14 14 (0.64%) NCSC
15 13 (0.59%) IFRS
16 12 (0.55%) Def Stans
16 12 (0.55%) IFRS 17
17 11 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
17 11 (0.50%) HIPAA
System Software
1 164 (7.47%) Docker
2 145 (6.61%) Active Directory
3 44 (2.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 19 (0.87%) Hyper-V
5 14 (0.64%) Firmware
6 7 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
7 6 (0.27%) DFS Replication
7 6 (0.27%) Dovecot
7 6 (0.27%) Microsoft Virtual Server
7 6 (0.27%) Postfix
7 6 (0.27%) Squid
7 6 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
7 6 (0.27%) Virtual Servers
7 6 (0.27%) XenApp
8 5 (0.23%) XenDesktop
9 4 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
9 4 (0.18%) VMware NSX
9 4 (0.18%) vSphere
10 3 (0.14%) BitLocker
10 3 (0.14%) KVM
Systems Management
1 162 (7.38%) Kubernetes
2 114 (5.19%) Terraform
3 73 (3.33%) Ansible
4 69 (3.14%) Microsoft Intune
5 54 (2.46%) Grafana
6 52 (2.37%) SCCM
7 47 (2.14%) Prometheus
8 30 (1.37%) OPNET
9 22 (1.00%) Puppet
10 16 (0.73%) Kibana
10 16 (0.73%) Single Sign-On
11 15 (0.68%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 13 (0.59%) Nmap
12 13 (0.59%) SCOM
13 9 (0.41%) Kiali
13 9 (0.41%) WSUS
14 8 (0.36%) Nessus
15 7 (0.32%) Argo
16 6 (0.27%) Proxmox
17 5 (0.23%) SCVMM
Vendors
1 461 (21.00%) Microsoft
2 158 (7.20%) Oracle
3 129 (5.88%) SAP
4 109 (4.97%) ServiceNow
5 99 (4.51%) Google
6 88 (4.01%) Splunk
7 70 (3.19%) Cisco
8 56 (2.55%) Remedy
9 53 (2.41%) Atlassian
10 51 (2.32%) Salesforce
11 48 (2.19%) VMware
12 44 (2.00%) Databricks
13 38 (1.73%) Citrix
14 29 (1.32%) Palo Alto
15 22 (1.00%) IBM
15 22 (1.00%) Informatica
15 22 (1.00%) MuleSoft
16 21 (0.96%) CheckPoint
17 20 (0.91%) Adobe
18 19 (0.87%) Red Hat