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

6 months to
12 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 24 18
Rank change year-on-year -4 -6 +9
Contract jobs citing Degree 2,238 1,924 3,230
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.14% 7.81% 8.50%
As % of the Qualifications category 18.03% 25.33% 27.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,307 1,124 1,773
10th Percentile £299 £250 £210
25th Percentile £400 £400 £385
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £513
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +2.44% -6.82%
75th Percentile £625 £675 £638
90th Percentile £738 £800 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £510 £507
% change year-on-year -1.96% +0.54% -5.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 207 142 338
10th Percentile £15.57 £22.50 £14.00
25th Percentile £25.10 £30.70 £22.37
Median hourly rate £45.46 £51.25 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -11.30% +36.67% -16.67%
75th Percentile £82.63 £75.00 £58.75
90th Percentile £88.00 £85.00 £72.46
UK median hourly rate £45.46 £45.00 £36.05
% change year-on-year +1.02% +24.84% -19.90%

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 12,412 7,595 11,871
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.07% 30.82% 31.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,222 4,799 7,330
10th Percentile £325 £283 £295
25th Percentile £422 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.42% -2.18%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £516 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.73% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 981 409 941
10th Percentile £16.30 £19.72 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.54 £25.26 £18.32
Median hourly rate £27.50 £51.50 £39.92
Median % change year-on-year -46.60% +29.01% -20.16%
75th Percentile £67.50 £68.00 £63.00
90th Percentile £84.00 £82.50 £76.53
UK median hourly rate £28.50 £42.50 £39.44
% change year-on-year -32.94% +7.77% -21.13%

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 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 12 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 12 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 -13 977 £513 -6.82% 978
South East -3 353 £488 -2.50% 826
North of England -7 346 £438 -12.50% 618
Midlands -19 209 £500 +40.45% 429
North West -2 180 £400 -19.76% 318
South West +4 163 £688 +25.00% 333
West Midlands -23 152 £498 +26.59% 233
Yorkshire -14 150 £504 +0.75% 230
East of England -8 133 £500 +2.77% 337
East Midlands -16 56 £525 +47.47% 191
North East -14 17 £364 -27.20% 76
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
1 182 (8.13%) Confluence
2 104 (4.65%) SharePoint
3 54 (2.41%) Microsoft Exchange
4 39 (1.74%) Apache Spark
5 14 (0.63%) Apache Airflow
6 13 (0.58%) Apache
7 9 (0.40%) CMS
8 7 (0.31%) 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%) Skype for Business
10 4 (0.18%) Smallworld
11 3 (0.13%) Hyperledger
11 3 (0.13%) MS Project Server
11 3 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
11 3 (0.13%) WebSphere
Applications
1 283 (12.65%) Microsoft Office
2 211 (9.43%) Microsoft Excel
3 183 (8.18%) Microsoft Project
4 110 (4.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 70 (3.13%) MS Visio
6 18 (0.80%) Chatbot
7 15 (0.67%) Spreadsheet
8 10 (0.45%) Simulink
8 10 (0.45%) Trello
9 8 (0.36%) Sketch
10 6 (0.27%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.18%) InVision
12 2 (0.089%) Adobe After Effects
12 2 (0.089%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 2 (0.089%) PTC Creo
13 1 (0.045%) CPLEX
13 1 (0.045%) Oracle Smart View
13 1 (0.045%) Photoshop
13 1 (0.045%) Revit
13 1 (0.045%) Weka
Business Applications
1 38 (1.70%) SAP S/4HANA
2 24 (1.07%) Primavera
3 22 (0.98%) Dynamics CRM
4 20 (0.89%) Remedy ITSM
5 9 (0.40%) Oracle General Ledger
6 8 (0.36%) Veritas eDiscovery
7 7 (0.31%) Aladdin
7 7 (0.31%) Oracle Payables
7 7 (0.31%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.27%) Payment Gateway
9 5 (0.22%) Oracle ERP
9 5 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
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%) Shopify
10 4 (0.18%) Teamcenter
10 4 (0.18%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 460 (20.55%) Azure
2 267 (11.93%) AWS
3 180 (8.04%) Microsoft 365
4 163 (7.28%) Power Platform
5 136 (6.08%) GCP
6 108 (4.83%) SaaS
7 106 (4.74%) Entra ID
8 78 (3.49%) Azure DevOps
9 76 (3.40%) GitHub
10 47 (2.10%) Serverless
11 40 (1.79%) Dynamics 365
12 34 (1.52%) Power Automate
13 31 (1.39%) Cloud Computing
13 31 (1.39%) IaaS
13 31 (1.39%) PaaS
14 29 (1.30%) OCI
15 28 (1.25%) Google Workspace
16 26 (1.16%) GitHub Actions
16 26 (1.16%) Microsoft Purview
16 26 (1.16%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 100 (4.47%) Firewall
2 57 (2.55%) LAN
3 55 (2.46%) WAN
4 47 (2.10%) DNS
5 42 (1.88%) Network Security
5 42 (1.88%) TCP/IP
6 37 (1.65%) VPN
7 29 (1.30%) Wireless
8 25 (1.12%) BGP
9 23 (1.03%) Ethernet
10 22 (0.98%) Internet
11 21 (0.94%) DHCP
11 21 (0.94%) HTTP
11 21 (0.94%) Wi-Fi
12 20 (0.89%) OSPF
13 18 (0.80%) Skype
14 17 (0.76%) Unified Communications
14 17 (0.76%) VLAN
15 15 (0.67%) Structured Cabling
16 14 (0.63%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 130 (5.81%) Power BI
2 82 (3.66%) PostgreSQL
3 77 (3.44%) SQL Server
4 56 (2.50%) NoSQL
5 48 (2.14%) Data Warehouse
6 43 (1.92%) Relational Database
7 40 (1.79%) Tableau
8 35 (1.56%) MySQL
9 30 (1.34%) Big Data
10 21 (0.94%) Metadata
10 21 (0.94%) MongoDB
11 18 (0.80%) Elasticsearch
12 17 (0.76%) Data Lake
13 16 (0.71%) Hadoop
14 14 (0.63%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 12 (0.54%) Oracle Reports
16 10 (0.45%) Amazon RDS
16 10 (0.45%) BigQuery
16 10 (0.45%) Snowflake Schema
17 9 (0.40%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 261 (11.66%) JIRA
2 104 (4.65%) Git
3 65 (2.90%) Jenkins
4 50 (2.23%) GitLab
5 27 (1.21%) Rational DOORS
6 22 (0.98%) Visual Studio
7 16 (0.71%) Postman
8 15 (0.67%) Selenium
9 13 (0.58%) Burp Suite
9 13 (0.58%) MLflow
10 11 (0.49%) Bitbucket
10 11 (0.49%) Liquibase
10 11 (0.49%) Metasploit
11 10 (0.45%) 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%) PyCharm
General
1 1,105 (49.37%) Social Skills
2 697 (31.14%) Finance
3 512 (22.88%) Analytical Skills
4 231 (10.32%) Banking
5 178 (7.95%) Public Sector
6 111 (4.96%) Presentation Skills
7 91 (4.07%) Organisational Skills
8 79 (3.53%) Documentation Skills
8 79 (3.53%) Marketing
9 77 (3.44%) Influencing Skills
10 73 (3.26%) Manufacturing
11 71 (3.17%) Legal
12 63 (2.82%) Aerospace
13 57 (2.55%) Military
14 51 (2.28%) Financial Institution
15 48 (2.14%) Front Office
16 45 (2.01%) Law
16 45 (2.01%) Retail
17 42 (1.88%) Telecoms
18 41 (1.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 316 (14.12%) Analyst
2 221 (9.87%) Senior
3 188 (8.40%) Lead
4 182 (8.13%) Developer
5 175 (7.82%) Architect
6 161 (7.19%) Project Manager
7 154 (6.88%) Business Analyst
8 81 (3.62%) Consultant
9 65 (2.90%) Software Engineer
10 62 (2.77%) Delivery Manager
10 62 (2.77%) Technical Support
11 58 (2.59%) Solutions Architect
12 50 (2.23%) Security Engineer
13 48 (2.14%) Senior Analyst
14 44 (1.97%) Data Scientist
14 44 (1.97%) Product Manager
15 39 (1.74%) Technical Analyst
16 38 (1.70%) IT Support
17 34 (1.52%) Senior Business Analyst
18 33 (1.47%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 102 (4.56%) REST
2 62 (2.77%) .NET
3 61 (2.73%) RESTful
4 53 (2.37%) React
5 51 (2.28%) HTML
6 46 (2.06%) Middleware
7 41 (1.83%) Kafka
8 40 (1.79%) CSS
9 38 (1.70%) Elastic Stack
10 37 (1.65%) XML
11 36 (1.61%) OAuth
12 35 (1.56%) JSON
12 35 (1.56%) Oracle Fusion
13 34 (1.52%) SOAP
14 32 (1.43%) Spring
15 31 (1.39%) PyTorch
15 31 (1.39%) TensorFlow
16 28 (1.25%) Spring Boot
17 27 (1.21%) Pandas
18 26 (1.16%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 187 (8.36%) Management Information System
2 148 (6.61%) Product Ownership
3 106 (4.74%) Onboarding
4 101 (4.51%) Cloud Native
5 72 (3.22%) Virtual Team
6 67 (2.99%) Data Centre
7 66 (2.95%) Distributed Systems
8 64 (2.86%) Algorithms
9 59 (2.64%) Self-Motivation
10 50 (2.23%) Data Structures
11 49 (2.19%) Analytical Mindset
12 48 (2.14%) Data Protection Act
12 48 (2.14%) PMI
13 45 (2.01%) Derivative
14 42 (1.88%) Security Posture
15 35 (1.56%) Enterprise Software
16 32 (1.43%) Life Science
17 31 (1.39%) Equities
18 28 (1.25%) NHS
18 28 (1.25%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 259 (11.57%) Windows
2 165 (7.37%) Linux
3 71 (3.17%) Unix
4 66 (2.95%) Windows Server
5 56 (2.50%) Windows 10
6 20 (0.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 18 (0.80%) Android
8 15 (0.67%) Mac OS
9 13 (0.58%) Ubuntu
9 13 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
10 12 (0.54%) Apple iOS
10 12 (0.54%) Windows Server 2016
11 10 (0.45%) Windows Server 2019
12 7 (0.31%) Windows Server 2003
13 6 (0.27%) VMS
14 5 (0.22%) Windows 7
15 4 (0.18%) AIX
16 3 (0.13%) CentOS
16 3 (0.13%) Debian
16 3 (0.13%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 831 (37.13%) Computer Science
2 734 (32.80%) Agile
3 608 (27.17%) Problem-Solving
4 381 (17.02%) Stakeholder Management
5 338 (15.10%) DevOps
6 324 (14.48%) AI
7 303 (13.54%) Project Management
8 285 (12.73%) Continuous Improvement
9 259 (11.57%) CI/CD
10 254 (11.35%) Change Management
11 248 (11.08%) Analytics
12 239 (10.68%) Decision-Making
13 237 (10.59%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 236 (10.55%) Cybersecurity
15 228 (10.19%) ITIL
16 222 (9.92%) Risk Management
17 218 (9.74%) Migration
18 204 (9.12%) Project Delivery
19 201 (8.98%) PRINCE2
19 201 (8.98%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 394 (17.61%) Python
2 327 (14.61%) SQL
3 155 (6.93%) Java
4 121 (5.41%) PowerShell
5 92 (4.11%) JavaScript
6 70 (3.13%) C#
7 67 (2.99%) C++
8 49 (2.19%) TypeScript
9 41 (1.83%) Bash
10 36 (1.61%) Go
11 26 (1.16%) PL/SQL
12 24 (1.07%) R
13 18 (0.80%) Perl
14 16 (0.71%) Shell Script
15 15 (0.67%) Rust
15 15 (0.67%) T-SQL
16 14 (0.63%) C
17 12 (0.54%) Kotlin
18 11 (0.49%) MATLAB
19 10 (0.45%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 536 (23.95%) Computer Science Degree
2 436 (19.48%) Security Cleared
3 326 (14.57%) Master's Degree
4 318 (14.21%) SC Cleared
5 135 (6.03%) PMI Certification
6 120 (5.36%) CISSP
7 119 (5.32%) PMP
8 86 (3.84%) Microsoft Certification
9 75 (3.35%) CISM
10 70 (3.13%) PhD
11 62 (2.77%) Cisco Certification
12 61 (2.73%) TOGAF Certification
13 56 (2.50%) Azure Certification
13 56 (2.50%) BPSS Clearance
14 48 (2.14%) DV Cleared
15 41 (1.83%) CCNP
16 35 (1.56%) MBA
17 32 (1.43%) AWS Certification
17 32 (1.43%) CBAP
18 30 (1.34%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 149 (6.66%) QA
2 121 (5.41%) GDPR
3 103 (4.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 102 (4.56%) PMO
5 87 (3.89%) NIST
6 71 (3.17%) Data Quality
7 48 (2.14%) PCI DSS
8 39 (1.74%) SLA
9 37 (1.65%) Accessibility
10 26 (1.16%) GRC
10 26 (1.16%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 21 (0.94%) NCSC
12 15 (0.67%) WCAG
13 14 (0.63%) Basel III
13 14 (0.63%) Cyber Essentials
13 14 (0.63%) IFRS
14 12 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
14 12 (0.54%) HIPAA
14 12 (0.54%) IFRS 17
14 12 (0.54%) SOC 2
System Software
1 153 (6.84%) Docker
2 144 (6.43%) Active Directory
3 42 (1.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 17 (0.76%) Hyper-V
5 15 (0.67%) Firmware
6 8 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
7 6 (0.27%) vSphere
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%) KVM
10 3 (0.13%) Microsoft Virtual Server
10 3 (0.13%) Virtual Machines
10 3 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
11 2 (0.089%) HDFS
11 2 (0.089%) Oracle RAC
12 1 (0.045%) GPFS
12 1 (0.045%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 166 (7.42%) Kubernetes
2 101 (4.51%) Terraform
3 70 (3.13%) Ansible
4 65 (2.90%) Microsoft Intune
5 46 (2.06%) Grafana
6 39 (1.74%) SCCM
7 38 (1.70%) Prometheus
8 30 (1.34%) OPNET
9 19 (0.85%) Puppet
9 19 (0.85%) Single Sign-On
10 16 (0.71%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 14 (0.63%) Kibana
12 13 (0.58%) Nmap
13 11 (0.49%) SCOM
14 9 (0.40%) Kiali
15 8 (0.36%) Argo
16 7 (0.31%) WSUS
17 6 (0.27%) vCenter Server
18 5 (0.22%) HP ALM
18 5 (0.22%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 472 (21.09%) Microsoft
2 145 (6.48%) Oracle
3 114 (5.09%) SAP
4 113 (5.05%) ServiceNow
5 103 (4.60%) Google
6 75 (3.35%) Cisco
7 70 (3.13%) Splunk
8 54 (2.41%) Remedy
9 53 (2.37%) Atlassian
10 48 (2.14%) Databricks
11 44 (1.97%) VMware
12 43 (1.92%) Salesforce
13 42 (1.88%) IBM
14 40 (1.79%) Citrix
15 38 (1.70%) Palo Alto
16 26 (1.16%) CheckPoint
17 23 (1.03%) Red Hat
18 22 (0.98%) Aruba
18 22 (0.98%) Informatica
19 21 (0.94%) Adobe