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 21 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 26 24 18
Rank change year-on-year -2 -6 +11
Contract jobs citing Degree 2,150 2,078 3,104
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.66% 7.80% 8.42%
As % of the Qualifications category 19.36% 25.64% 27.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,269 1,143 1,772
10th Percentile £295 £250 £213
25th Percentile £400 £402 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £663 £648
90th Percentile £750 £800 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £510 £513
% change year-on-year -1.96% -0.49% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 175 127 269
10th Percentile £14.55 £20.95 £14.04
25th Percentile £22.00 £30.23 £22.75
Median hourly rate £37.50 £42.50 £42.00
Median % change year-on-year -11.76% +1.19% +3.70%
75th Percentile £59.43 £71.13 £63.75
90th Percentile £89.50 £85.00 £75.40
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £40.00 £40.59
% change year-on-year -12.50% -1.45% +1.48%

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 11,107 8,103 11,429
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.40% 30.40% 30.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,370 4,916 7,147
10th Percentile £313 £300 £300
25th Percentile £419 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £519 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -1.13% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 874 395 773
10th Percentile £16.00 £19.98 £14.25
25th Percentile £19.00 £25.26 £21.46
Median hourly rate £25.15 £47.25 £48.40
Median % change year-on-year -46.77% -2.39% +7.56%
75th Percentile £61.42 £67.88 £66.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £82.25 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £48.70
% change year-on-year -37.13% -17.86% +8.22%

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 21 January 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 21 January 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 21 January 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 -5 1,006 £525 -4.55% 798
North of England -3 321 £449 -10.30% 608
South East 0 275 £475 -5.00% 1,213
Midlands -14 209 £503 +20.00% 470
North West +1 175 £400 -20.00% 289
South West +4 170 £650 +21.95% 431
West Midlands -16 150 £523 +12.97% 195
Yorkshire -9 136 £516 +3.25% 231
East of England -11 119 £528 +17.22% 521
East Midlands -9 59 £471 +32.30% 267
North East -16 11 £364 -27.20% 96
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
1 186 (8.65%) Confluence
2 110 (5.12%) SharePoint
3 57 (2.65%) Microsoft Exchange
4 34 (1.58%) Apache Spark
5 15 (0.70%) Apache Airflow
5 15 (0.70%) nginx
5 15 (0.70%) Skype for Business
6 13 (0.60%) Apache
7 10 (0.47%) IIS
8 8 (0.37%) CMS
9 7 (0.33%) Exchange Server 2013
9 7 (0.33%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 7 (0.33%) SAS
10 5 (0.23%) Ethereum
11 4 (0.19%) GeoServer
11 4 (0.19%) Luigi
11 4 (0.19%) Smallworld
12 3 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
12 3 (0.14%) Tomcat
12 3 (0.14%) WebSphere
Applications
1 272 (12.65%) Microsoft Office
2 219 (10.19%) Microsoft Excel
3 173 (8.05%) Microsoft Project
4 112 (5.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 81 (3.77%) MS Visio
6 19 (0.88%) Chatbot
7 12 (0.56%) FrameMaker
7 12 (0.56%) Simulink
8 11 (0.51%) Trello
9 9 (0.42%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 9 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
10 8 (0.37%) Sketch
11 6 (0.28%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.19%) InVision
13 3 (0.14%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 2 (0.093%) Adobe After Effects
14 2 (0.093%) Navisworks
14 2 (0.093%) PTC Creo
14 2 (0.093%) Revit
15 1 (0.047%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 31 (1.44%) SAP S/4HANA
2 24 (1.12%) Dynamics CRM
3 21 (0.98%) Primavera
4 18 (0.84%) Remedy ITSM
5 15 (0.70%) Oracle General Ledger
6 13 (0.60%) SAP WM
7 12 (0.56%) Oracle Payables
7 12 (0.56%) SAP EWM
8 10 (0.47%) Oracle EBS
8 10 (0.47%) Oracle EBS R12
9 8 (0.37%) Oracle Financials
9 8 (0.37%) SAP ERP
10 7 (0.33%) Oracle Assets
10 7 (0.33%) Veritas eDiscovery
11 6 (0.28%) Oracle E-Business Tax
11 6 (0.28%) Oracle Receivables
11 6 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
11 6 (0.28%) Workday HCM
12 4 (0.19%) NEC Housing
12 4 (0.19%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 433 (20.14%) Azure
2 263 (12.23%) AWS
3 188 (8.74%) Microsoft 365
4 153 (7.12%) Power Platform
5 137 (6.37%) GCP
6 100 (4.65%) SaaS
7 84 (3.91%) GitHub
8 79 (3.67%) Entra ID
9 71 (3.30%) Azure DevOps
10 62 (2.88%) Serverless
11 44 (2.05%) Dynamics 365
12 38 (1.77%) Power Automate
13 34 (1.58%) OCI
14 31 (1.44%) IaaS
15 30 (1.40%) GitHub Actions
16 29 (1.35%) PowerApps
17 28 (1.30%) PaaS
18 27 (1.26%) Amazon S3
19 26 (1.21%) Amazon ECS
20 24 (1.12%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 96 (4.47%) Firewall
2 60 (2.79%) DNS
3 48 (2.23%) LAN
4 43 (2.00%) WAN
5 41 (1.91%) Network Security
6 40 (1.86%) VPN
7 31 (1.44%) HTTP
8 28 (1.30%) DHCP
9 26 (1.21%) Internet
9 26 (1.21%) TCP/IP
10 25 (1.16%) Skype
10 25 (1.16%) Wireless
11 22 (1.02%) SSH
12 20 (0.93%) BGP
12 20 (0.93%) Unified Communications
13 17 (0.79%) OSPF
14 16 (0.74%) VLAN
15 14 (0.65%) VoIP
15 14 (0.65%) Wi-Fi
16 12 (0.56%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 121 (5.63%) Power BI
2 77 (3.58%) PostgreSQL
2 77 (3.58%) SQL Server
3 53 (2.47%) NoSQL
4 50 (2.33%) Relational Database
5 46 (2.14%) Data Warehouse
6 43 (2.00%) Tableau
7 38 (1.77%) MySQL
8 27 (1.26%) Big Data
9 19 (0.88%) Amazon RDS
9 19 (0.88%) Elasticsearch
10 16 (0.74%) MongoDB
11 15 (0.70%) Metadata
12 14 (0.65%) Data Lake
12 14 (0.65%) Oracle Database
12 14 (0.65%) Oracle Reports
13 12 (0.56%) GIS
13 12 (0.56%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 11 (0.51%) Amazon Aurora
14 11 (0.51%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 268 (12.47%) JIRA
2 105 (4.88%) Git
3 76 (3.53%) Jenkins
4 54 (2.51%) GitLab
5 24 (1.12%) Visual Studio
6 21 (0.98%) Liquibase
7 19 (0.88%) Postman
8 17 (0.79%) Selenium
9 12 (0.56%) Burp Suite
10 11 (0.51%) JUnit
11 10 (0.47%) Bitbucket
11 10 (0.47%) Metasploit
11 10 (0.47%) Vagrant
12 9 (0.42%) CircleCI
12 9 (0.42%) Cypress.io
13 8 (0.37%) Artifactory
13 8 (0.37%) Cucumber
13 8 (0.37%) Jaeger
14 7 (0.33%) Gradle
14 7 (0.33%) SonarQube
General
1 1,121 (52.14%) Social Skills
2 696 (32.37%) Finance
3 521 (24.23%) Analytical Skills
4 253 (11.77%) Banking
5 156 (7.26%) Public Sector
6 103 (4.79%) Presentation Skills
7 87 (4.05%) Manufacturing
7 87 (4.05%) Organisational Skills
8 75 (3.49%) Marketing
9 74 (3.44%) Influencing Skills
10 71 (3.30%) Legal
11 65 (3.02%) Military
12 58 (2.70%) Documentation Skills
12 58 (2.70%) Financial Institution
13 48 (2.23%) Front Office
14 46 (2.14%) Investment Banking
15 43 (2.00%) Telecoms
16 39 (1.81%) Law
16 39 (1.81%) Pharmaceutical
17 36 (1.67%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 308 (14.33%) Analyst
2 223 (10.37%) Senior
3 216 (10.05%) Developer
4 170 (7.91%) Lead
5 155 (7.21%) Architect
6 150 (6.98%) Business Analyst
7 147 (6.84%) Project Manager
8 81 (3.77%) Software Engineer
9 79 (3.67%) Consultant
10 59 (2.74%) Technical Support
11 54 (2.51%) Solutions Architect
12 50 (2.33%) IT Support
12 50 (2.33%) Support Analyst
13 45 (2.09%) Security Engineer
14 41 (1.91%) Senior Software Engineer
15 37 (1.72%) Senior Developer
16 35 (1.63%) Data Scientist
16 35 (1.63%) Support Engineer
16 35 (1.63%) Technical Analyst
17 34 (1.58%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 112 (5.21%) REST
2 78 (3.63%) RESTful
3 72 (3.35%) .NET
4 65 (3.02%) HTML
5 56 (2.60%) XML
6 47 (2.19%) CSS
7 45 (2.09%) Middleware
8 44 (2.05%) Elastic Stack
9 42 (1.95%) React
10 41 (1.91%) JSON
10 41 (1.91%) OAuth
11 34 (1.58%) Oracle Fusion
12 33 (1.53%) Kafka
12 33 (1.53%) SOAP
13 29 (1.35%) AngularJS
14 26 (1.21%) Node.js
14 26 (1.21%) Spring
15 24 (1.12%) Pandas
15 24 (1.12%) TensorFlow
16 23 (1.07%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 189 (8.79%) Management Information System
2 115 (5.35%) Product Ownership
3 99 (4.60%) Cloud Native
4 76 (3.53%) Onboarding
5 62 (2.88%) Distributed Systems
6 61 (2.84%) Algorithms
7 56 (2.60%) Data Centre
7 56 (2.60%) Data Protection Act
8 52 (2.42%) Virtual Team
9 50 (2.33%) Analytical Mindset
9 50 (2.33%) PMI
9 50 (2.33%) Self-Motivation
10 43 (2.00%) Derivative
11 41 (1.91%) Security Posture
12 37 (1.72%) Enterprise Software
12 37 (1.72%) Public Cloud
13 35 (1.63%) Life Science
14 33 (1.53%) Legacy Systems
15 29 (1.35%) PKI
16 28 (1.30%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 255 (11.86%) Windows
2 184 (8.56%) Linux
3 81 (3.77%) Unix
4 63 (2.93%) Windows Server
5 52 (2.42%) Windows 10
6 23 (1.07%) Android
7 21 (0.98%) Apple iOS
8 18 (0.84%) Mac OS
8 18 (0.84%) Ubuntu
8 18 (0.84%) Windows Server 2016
9 15 (0.70%) VMS
9 15 (0.70%) Windows Server 2019
10 13 (0.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 10 (0.47%) Windows Server 2012
12 9 (0.42%) Amazon Linux
13 6 (0.28%) Windows Server 2003
14 3 (0.14%) CentOS
14 3 (0.14%) Robot Operating System
14 3 (0.14%) Windows 7
15 2 (0.093%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 810 (37.67%) Computer Science
2 725 (33.72%) Agile
3 635 (29.53%) Problem-Solving
4 360 (16.74%) Stakeholder Management
5 337 (15.67%) DevOps
6 321 (14.93%) Project Management
7 273 (12.70%) Change Management
8 247 (11.49%) AI
9 244 (11.35%) CI/CD
10 238 (11.07%) Continuous Improvement
11 225 (10.47%) ITIL
12 221 (10.28%) Cybersecurity
13 219 (10.19%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 218 (10.14%) Analytics
15 209 (9.72%) Software Engineering
16 208 (9.67%) Decision-Making
16 208 (9.67%) Risk Management
17 206 (9.58%) Migration
18 190 (8.84%) Project Delivery
19 176 (8.19%) PRINCE2
Programming Languages
1 398 (18.51%) Python
2 331 (15.40%) SQL
3 153 (7.12%) Java
4 125 (5.81%) PowerShell
5 117 (5.44%) JavaScript
6 84 (3.91%) C#
7 81 (3.77%) C++
8 52 (2.42%) TypeScript
9 43 (2.00%) Go
10 42 (1.95%) Bash
11 26 (1.21%) R
12 25 (1.16%) PL/SQL
13 24 (1.12%) Perl
14 20 (0.93%) C
14 20 (0.93%) T-SQL
15 18 (0.84%) Kotlin
16 16 (0.74%) MATLAB
17 14 (0.65%) Kusto Query Language
17 14 (0.65%) Rust
18 12 (0.56%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 562 (26.14%) Computer Science Degree
2 378 (17.58%) Security Cleared
3 325 (15.12%) Master's Degree
4 294 (13.67%) SC Cleared
5 150 (6.98%) PMI Certification
6 132 (6.14%) PMP
7 108 (5.02%) CISSP
8 86 (4.00%) Microsoft Certification
9 71 (3.30%) CISM
10 63 (2.93%) Azure Certification
10 63 (2.93%) PhD
11 57 (2.65%) TOGAF Certification
12 54 (2.51%) Cisco Certification
13 49 (2.28%) BPSS Clearance
13 49 (2.28%) DV Cleared
14 42 (1.95%) AWS Certification
15 37 (1.72%) CCNP
15 37 (1.72%) HND
16 33 (1.53%) MCSE
17 32 (1.49%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 147 (6.84%) QA
2 111 (5.16%) GDPR
3 90 (4.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 82 (3.81%) PMO
5 64 (2.98%) Data Quality
5 64 (2.98%) NIST
6 39 (1.81%) PCI DSS
7 36 (1.67%) Accessibility
8 33 (1.53%) SLA
9 31 (1.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 28 (1.30%) GRC
11 15 (0.70%) Cyber Essentials
11 15 (0.70%) WCAG
12 13 (0.60%) Basel III
12 13 (0.60%) HIPAA
12 13 (0.60%) NCSC
13 12 (0.56%) Def Stans
13 12 (0.56%) P3O
14 11 (0.51%) IFRS
15 10 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 167 (7.77%) Docker
2 135 (6.28%) Active Directory
3 40 (1.86%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (0.84%) Firmware
5 17 (0.79%) Hyper-V
6 9 (0.42%) DFS Replication
6 9 (0.42%) Dovecot
6 9 (0.42%) Postfix
6 9 (0.42%) Squid
7 7 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
8 6 (0.28%) Microsoft Virtual Server
8 6 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
8 6 (0.28%) Virtual Servers
9 5 (0.23%) XenApp
10 4 (0.19%) VMware NSX
10 4 (0.19%) vSphere
10 4 (0.19%) XenDesktop
11 3 (0.14%) BitLocker
11 3 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
12 2 (0.093%) KVM
Systems Management
1 156 (7.26%) Kubernetes
2 117 (5.44%) Terraform
3 75 (3.49%) Ansible
4 59 (2.74%) Microsoft Intune
5 56 (2.60%) Grafana
6 48 (2.23%) SCCM
7 47 (2.19%) Prometheus
8 30 (1.40%) OPNET
9 24 (1.12%) Puppet
10 15 (0.70%) Kibana
11 14 (0.65%) Single Sign-On
12 13 (0.60%) SCOM
13 12 (0.56%) Nmap
14 11 (0.51%) Nessus
15 10 (0.47%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 9 (0.42%) Proxmox
16 9 (0.42%) QRadar
16 9 (0.42%) WSUS
17 8 (0.37%) Kiali
18 7 (0.33%) Argo
Vendors
1 448 (20.84%) Microsoft
2 163 (7.58%) Oracle
3 114 (5.30%) ServiceNow
4 113 (5.26%) SAP
5 94 (4.37%) Splunk
6 91 (4.23%) Google
7 62 (2.88%) Cisco
8 51 (2.37%) Atlassian
8 51 (2.37%) Remedy
8 51 (2.37%) Salesforce
9 44 (2.05%) VMware
10 37 (1.72%) Databricks
11 35 (1.63%) Citrix
12 26 (1.21%) IBM
13 25 (1.16%) Palo Alto
14 21 (0.98%) MuleSoft
14 21 (0.98%) Red Hat
15 20 (0.93%) Adobe
16 17 (0.79%) CheckPoint
16 17 (0.79%) Informatica