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

6 months to
6 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 24 17
Rank change year-on-year -4 -7 +10
Contract jobs citing Degree 2,270 1,989 3,249
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.24% 7.78% 8.60%
As % of the Qualifications category 18.23% 25.53% 27.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,315 1,138 1,799
10th Percentile £300 £242 £208
25th Percentile £400 £401 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £520
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +0.96% -5.45%
75th Percentile £630 £675 £645
90th Percentile £738 £800 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £513 £510
% change year-on-year -2.44% +0.49% -4.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 204 129 332
10th Percentile £15.50 £22.72 £14.01
25th Percentile £22.50 £31.25 £23.25
Median hourly rate £41.72 £53.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.02% +33.75% -11.11%
75th Percentile £79.03 £75.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £88.00 £85.00 £73.98
UK median hourly rate £39.50 £46.24 £39.92
% change year-on-year -14.58% +15.83% -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 12,449 7,790 11,734
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.21% 30.49% 31.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,265 4,840 7,238
10th Percentile £325 £285 £290
25th Percentile £422 £414 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £730 £738
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.89% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 964 394 909
10th Percentile £16.17 £20.17 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.38 £25.26 £20.00
Median hourly rate £25.77 £50.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -48.46% +25.00% -18.78%
75th Percentile £65.00 £68.42 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £82.99 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.77 £42.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year -39.36% +6.25% -20.00%

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 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 6 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 6 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 -11 993 £515 -6.36% 1,000
North of England -5 354 £447 -10.60% 494
South East -6 339 £475 -5.00% 722
Midlands -18 215 £500 +25.00% 333
North West 0 182 £400 -19.76% 253
South West +5 180 £650 +21.95% 242
West Midlands -16 158 £500 +2.56% 196
Yorkshire -12 155 £525 +5.00% 180
East of England -10 134 £525 +8.25% 268
East Midlands -8 56 £525 +47.47% 136
North East -13 18 £364 -27.20% 67
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 (8.28%) Confluence
2 110 (4.85%) SharePoint
3 60 (2.64%) Microsoft Exchange
4 37 (1.63%) Apache Spark
5 17 (0.75%) Apache Airflow
6 13 (0.57%) Apache
7 9 (0.40%) CMS
7 9 (0.40%) Skype for Business
8 8 (0.35%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 5 (0.22%) Ethereum
9 5 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
9 5 (0.22%) SAS
10 4 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 4 (0.18%) GeoServer
10 4 (0.18%) OpenStack
10 4 (0.18%) Smallworld
11 3 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
11 3 (0.13%) Hyperledger
11 3 (0.13%) MS Project Server
11 3 (0.13%) WebSphere
Applications
1 286 (12.60%) Microsoft Office
2 212 (9.34%) Microsoft Excel
3 184 (8.11%) Microsoft Project
4 114 (5.02%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 77 (3.39%) MS Visio
6 18 (0.79%) Chatbot
7 14 (0.62%) Spreadsheet
8 11 (0.48%) Simulink
9 10 (0.44%) Trello
10 8 (0.35%) Sketch
11 6 (0.26%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.18%) InVision
13 2 (0.088%) Adobe After Effects
13 2 (0.088%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.088%) 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 33 (1.45%) SAP S/4HANA
2 26 (1.15%) Primavera
3 24 (1.06%) Dynamics CRM
4 20 (0.88%) Remedy ITSM
5 9 (0.40%) Oracle General Ledger
6 8 (0.35%) SAP ERP
6 8 (0.35%) Veritas eDiscovery
7 7 (0.31%) Oracle Payables
8 6 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
8 6 (0.26%) SAP EWM
8 6 (0.26%) SAP WM
9 5 (0.22%) Oracle ERP
10 4 (0.18%) Fidessa
10 4 (0.18%) NEC Housing
10 4 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
10 4 (0.18%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 4 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
10 4 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
10 4 (0.18%) Teamcenter
10 4 (0.18%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 461 (20.31%) Azure
2 268 (11.81%) AWS
3 191 (8.41%) Microsoft 365
4 161 (7.09%) Power Platform
5 137 (6.04%) GCP
6 110 (4.85%) SaaS
7 104 (4.58%) Entra ID
8 76 (3.35%) GitHub
9 74 (3.26%) Azure DevOps
10 51 (2.25%) Serverless
11 42 (1.85%) Dynamics 365
12 35 (1.54%) Power Automate
13 31 (1.37%) Cloud Computing
13 31 (1.37%) IaaS
13 31 (1.37%) OCI
13 31 (1.37%) PaaS
14 28 (1.23%) Google Workspace
15 27 (1.19%) GitHub Actions
15 27 (1.19%) PowerApps
16 26 (1.15%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 101 (4.45%) Firewall
2 58 (2.56%) LAN
3 55 (2.42%) WAN
4 53 (2.33%) DNS
5 43 (1.89%) TCP/IP
6 42 (1.85%) Network Security
7 38 (1.67%) VPN
8 29 (1.28%) Wireless
9 25 (1.10%) DHCP
10 24 (1.06%) BGP
10 24 (1.06%) Internet
11 23 (1.01%) Ethernet
11 23 (1.01%) HTTP
11 23 (1.01%) Skype
12 22 (0.97%) Unified Communications
12 22 (0.97%) Wi-Fi
13 20 (0.88%) OSPF
14 17 (0.75%) VLAN
15 15 (0.66%) SSH
15 15 (0.66%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 125 (5.51%) Power BI
2 85 (3.74%) PostgreSQL
3 82 (3.61%) SQL Server
4 57 (2.51%) NoSQL
5 49 (2.16%) Data Warehouse
6 45 (1.98%) Relational Database
7 40 (1.76%) Tableau
8 36 (1.59%) MySQL
9 27 (1.19%) Big Data
10 21 (0.93%) MongoDB
11 20 (0.88%) Elasticsearch
12 19 (0.84%) Metadata
13 16 (0.70%) Data Lake
14 15 (0.66%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 14 (0.62%) Hadoop
16 12 (0.53%) Oracle Reports
17 11 (0.48%) Oracle Database
18 10 (0.44%) Amazon RDS
18 10 (0.44%) BigQuery
18 10 (0.44%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 266 (11.72%) JIRA
2 101 (4.45%) Git
3 70 (3.08%) Jenkins
4 54 (2.38%) GitLab
5 22 (0.97%) Visual Studio
6 19 (0.84%) Rational DOORS
7 18 (0.79%) Postman
8 15 (0.66%) Liquibase
8 15 (0.66%) Selenium
9 13 (0.57%) Burp Suite
10 11 (0.48%) Bitbucket
10 11 (0.48%) Metasploit
10 11 (0.48%) MLflow
11 10 (0.44%) Gradle
12 9 (0.40%) Jaeger
13 8 (0.35%) CircleCI
13 8 (0.35%) Cucumber
14 7 (0.31%) Cypress.io
14 7 (0.31%) JUnit
15 5 (0.22%) TeamCity
General
1 1,134 (49.96%) Social Skills
2 714 (31.45%) Finance
3 526 (23.17%) Analytical Skills
4 239 (10.53%) Banking
5 180 (7.93%) Public Sector
6 114 (5.02%) Presentation Skills
7 96 (4.23%) Organisational Skills
8 86 (3.79%) Marketing
9 79 (3.48%) Manufacturing
10 77 (3.39%) Influencing Skills
11 76 (3.35%) Documentation Skills
12 68 (3.00%) Legal
13 56 (2.47%) Aerospace
13 56 (2.47%) Military
14 54 (2.38%) Financial Institution
15 45 (1.98%) Front Office
16 44 (1.94%) Law
17 42 (1.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 41 (1.81%) Retail
19 40 (1.76%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 318 (14.01%) Analyst
2 230 (10.13%) Senior
3 189 (8.33%) Lead
4 187 (8.24%) Developer
5 177 (7.80%) Architect
6 160 (7.05%) Project Manager
7 157 (6.92%) Business Analyst
8 85 (3.74%) Consultant
9 76 (3.35%) Software Engineer
10 65 (2.86%) Technical Support
11 60 (2.64%) Solutions Architect
12 54 (2.38%) Delivery Manager
13 49 (2.16%) Security Engineer
14 46 (2.03%) Senior Analyst
15 43 (1.89%) Data Scientist
16 42 (1.85%) IT Support
17 37 (1.63%) Technical Analyst
18 36 (1.59%) Senior Software Engineer
19 35 (1.54%) Senior Business Analyst
19 35 (1.54%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 109 (4.80%) REST
2 66 (2.91%) .NET
3 65 (2.86%) RESTful
4 54 (2.38%) React
5 51 (2.25%) HTML
6 46 (2.03%) Middleware
7 42 (1.85%) Kafka
8 41 (1.81%) Elastic Stack
9 39 (1.72%) CSS
10 38 (1.67%) Oracle Fusion
11 37 (1.63%) XML
12 36 (1.59%) OAuth
13 35 (1.54%) JSON
14 34 (1.50%) SOAP
15 29 (1.28%) PyTorch
15 29 (1.28%) Spring
15 29 (1.28%) TensorFlow
16 28 (1.23%) Pandas
16 28 (1.23%) Spring Boot
17 27 (1.19%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 192 (8.46%) Management Information System
2 141 (6.21%) Product Ownership
3 105 (4.63%) Onboarding
4 100 (4.41%) Cloud Native
5 71 (3.13%) Virtual Team
6 67 (2.95%) Distributed Systems
7 65 (2.86%) Data Centre
8 64 (2.82%) Algorithms
9 62 (2.73%) Self-Motivation
10 53 (2.33%) Data Protection Act
11 51 (2.25%) Analytical Mindset
12 46 (2.03%) PMI
12 46 (2.03%) Security Posture
13 42 (1.85%) Derivative
14 41 (1.81%) Data Structures
15 38 (1.67%) Enterprise Software
16 31 (1.37%) Public Cloud
17 30 (1.32%) Life Science
18 29 (1.28%) Equities
18 29 (1.28%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 265 (11.67%) Windows
2 173 (7.62%) Linux
3 77 (3.39%) Unix
4 66 (2.91%) Windows Server
5 58 (2.56%) Windows 10
6 20 (0.88%) Android
6 20 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 15 (0.66%) Apple iOS
7 15 (0.66%) Mac OS
8 14 (0.62%) Ubuntu
8 14 (0.62%) Windows Server 2016
9 13 (0.57%) Windows Server 2012
10 12 (0.53%) Windows Server 2019
11 8 (0.35%) VMS
12 7 (0.31%) Windows Server 2003
13 5 (0.22%) Windows 7
14 4 (0.18%) AIX
15 3 (0.13%) CentOS
15 3 (0.13%) Debian
15 3 (0.13%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 826 (36.39%) Computer Science
2 733 (32.29%) Agile
3 637 (28.06%) Problem-Solving
4 389 (17.14%) Stakeholder Management
5 339 (14.93%) DevOps
6 317 (13.96%) AI
7 306 (13.48%) Project Management
8 269 (11.85%) Continuous Improvement
9 266 (11.72%) Change Management
10 254 (11.19%) CI/CD
11 250 (11.01%) Analytics
12 241 (10.62%) Decision-Making
13 238 (10.48%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 237 (10.44%) Cybersecurity
15 232 (10.22%) ITIL
16 226 (9.96%) Risk Management
17 219 (9.65%) Migration
18 204 (8.99%) Project Delivery
18 204 (8.99%) Software Engineering
19 193 (8.50%) PRINCE2
Programming Languages
1 401 (17.67%) Python
2 335 (14.76%) SQL
3 155 (6.83%) Java
4 124 (5.46%) PowerShell
5 98 (4.32%) JavaScript
6 75 (3.30%) C#
7 70 (3.08%) C++
8 50 (2.20%) TypeScript
9 43 (1.89%) Bash
10 40 (1.76%) Go
11 26 (1.15%) PL/SQL
12 25 (1.10%) R
13 19 (0.84%) Perl
14 17 (0.75%) T-SQL
15 16 (0.70%) Shell Script
16 15 (0.66%) C
16 15 (0.66%) Rust
17 14 (0.62%) Kotlin
18 12 (0.53%) MATLAB
19 10 (0.44%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 539 (23.74%) Computer Science Degree
2 432 (19.03%) Security Cleared
3 341 (15.02%) Master's Degree
4 325 (14.32%) SC Cleared
5 135 (5.95%) PMI Certification
6 122 (5.37%) PMP
7 116 (5.11%) CISSP
8 89 (3.92%) Microsoft Certification
9 76 (3.35%) CISM
10 71 (3.13%) PhD
11 63 (2.78%) TOGAF Certification
12 62 (2.73%) Cisco Certification
13 58 (2.56%) BPSS Clearance
14 56 (2.47%) Azure Certification
15 47 (2.07%) DV Cleared
16 41 (1.81%) CCNP
17 35 (1.54%) AWS Certification
17 35 (1.54%) MBA
18 32 (1.41%) CBAP
19 31 (1.37%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 153 (6.74%) QA
2 118 (5.20%) GDPR
3 103 (4.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 101 (4.45%) PMO
5 83 (3.66%) NIST
6 72 (3.17%) Data Quality
7 48 (2.11%) PCI DSS
8 38 (1.67%) SLA
9 35 (1.54%) Accessibility
10 31 (1.37%) GRC
11 28 (1.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 20 (0.88%) NCSC
13 15 (0.66%) WCAG
14 14 (0.62%) Basel III
14 14 (0.62%) Cyber Essentials
14 14 (0.62%) IFRS
15 13 (0.57%) Actionable Recommendations
16 12 (0.53%) HIPAA
16 12 (0.53%) IFRS 17
16 12 (0.53%) SOC 2
System Software
1 158 (6.96%) Docker
2 151 (6.65%) Active Directory
3 45 (1.98%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (0.79%) Hyper-V
5 16 (0.70%) Firmware
6 8 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
7 6 (0.26%) vSphere
8 5 (0.22%) Microsoft Virtual Server
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%) Virtual Machines
9 4 (0.18%) VMware NSX
10 3 (0.13%) BitLocker
10 3 (0.13%) HDFS
10 3 (0.13%) KVM
11 2 (0.088%) Oracle RAC
12 1 (0.044%) NetIQ eDirectory
12 1 (0.044%) Squid
Systems Management
1 165 (7.27%) Kubernetes
2 106 (4.67%) Terraform
3 75 (3.30%) Ansible
4 71 (3.13%) Microsoft Intune
5 47 (2.07%) Grafana
6 45 (1.98%) SCCM
7 39 (1.72%) Prometheus
8 30 (1.32%) OPNET
9 21 (0.93%) Puppet
10 17 (0.75%) Single Sign-On
11 16 (0.70%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 16 (0.70%) Kibana
12 13 (0.57%) Nmap
13 11 (0.48%) SCOM
14 9 (0.40%) Kiali
14 9 (0.40%) WSUS
15 8 (0.35%) Argo
16 6 (0.26%) vCenter Server
17 5 (0.22%) HP ALM
17 5 (0.22%) SCVMM
Vendors
1 482 (21.23%) Microsoft
2 155 (6.83%) Oracle
3 118 (5.20%) ServiceNow
4 117 (5.15%) SAP
5 102 (4.49%) Google
6 78 (3.44%) Splunk
7 75 (3.30%) Cisco
8 54 (2.38%) Remedy
9 53 (2.33%) Atlassian
10 47 (2.07%) VMware
11 46 (2.03%) Databricks
12 45 (1.98%) Salesforce
13 40 (1.76%) Citrix
14 36 (1.59%) Palo Alto
15 35 (1.54%) IBM
16 25 (1.10%) CheckPoint
17 23 (1.01%) Red Hat
18 22 (0.97%) Informatica
19 21 (0.93%) Aruba
20 20 (0.88%) Siemens