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

6 months to
7 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 24 17
Rank change year-on-year -3 -7 +10
Contract jobs citing Degree 2,264 2,011 3,291
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.22% 7.82% 8.61%
As % of the Qualifications category 18.20% 25.50% 27.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,317 1,150 1,823
10th Percentile £300 £250 £208
25th Percentile £400 £400 £383
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £517
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +1.55% -6.00%
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% -4.15%
Number of hourly rates quoted 203 140 337
10th Percentile £15.50 £22.50 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.63 £30.57 £22.75
Median hourly rate £42.50 £51.25 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -17.07% +28.13% -11.11%
75th Percentile £79.93 £75.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £88.00 £85.00 £73.85
UK median hourly rate £41.12 £45.00 £37.50
% change year-on-year -8.63% +20.00% -16.67%

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 12,440 7,887 11,894
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.16% 30.68% 31.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,257 4,905 7,335
10th Percentile £325 £285 £291
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 -1.90% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 968 415 929
10th Percentile £16.17 £20.00 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.43 £25.26 £19.50
Median hourly rate £25.77 £52.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -50.91% +31.25% -18.37%
75th Percentile £65.06 £68.09 £63.75
90th Percentile £82.48 £82.92 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £26.22 £43.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -39.02% +7.50% -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 7 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 7 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 7 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 -11 989 £515 -6.36% 949
North of England -5 353 £447 -10.60% 489
South East -2 340 £475 -5.00% 723
Midlands -20 216 £500 +26.10% 346
North West -3 182 £400 -19.52% 251
South West +3 178 £650 +21.44% 250
West Midlands -18 159 £500 +8.11% 200
Yorkshire -11 154 £525 +5.00% 179
East of England -10 135 £525 +8.25% 266
East Midlands -14 56 £525 +47.47% 143
North East -11 18 £364 -27.20% 65
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 (8.22%) Confluence
2 108 (4.77%) SharePoint
3 58 (2.56%) Microsoft Exchange
4 37 (1.63%) Apache Spark
5 17 (0.75%) Apache Airflow
6 13 (0.57%) Apache
7 9 (0.40%) CMS
8 7 (0.31%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 7 (0.31%) Skype for Business
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%) Hyperledger
11 3 (0.13%) MS Project Server
11 3 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
11 3 (0.13%) WebSphere
Applications
1 285 (12.59%) Microsoft Office
2 211 (9.32%) Microsoft Excel
3 183 (8.08%) Microsoft Project
4 112 (4.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 76 (3.36%) MS Visio
6 18 (0.80%) Chatbot
7 15 (0.66%) Spreadsheet
8 11 (0.49%) Simulink
9 10 (0.44%) Trello
10 8 (0.35%) Sketch
11 6 (0.27%) 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%) CPLEX
14 1 (0.044%) Photoshop
14 1 (0.044%) Revit
14 1 (0.044%) Stateflow
14 1 (0.044%) Weka
Business Applications
1 34 (1.50%) SAP S/4HANA
2 26 (1.15%) Primavera
3 23 (1.02%) 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%) Aladdin
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 5 (0.22%) Oracle ERP
9 5 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
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%) Teamcenter
10 4 (0.18%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 462 (20.41%) Azure
2 271 (11.97%) AWS
3 188 (8.30%) Microsoft 365
4 165 (7.29%) Power Platform
5 137 (6.05%) GCP
6 109 (4.81%) SaaS
7 104 (4.59%) Entra ID
8 75 (3.31%) Azure DevOps
8 75 (3.31%) GitHub
9 52 (2.30%) Serverless
10 41 (1.81%) Dynamics 365
11 35 (1.55%) Power Automate
12 31 (1.37%) Cloud Computing
12 31 (1.37%) IaaS
12 31 (1.37%) OCI
12 31 (1.37%) PaaS
13 28 (1.24%) Google Workspace
14 27 (1.19%) GitHub Actions
14 27 (1.19%) PowerApps
15 26 (1.15%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 100 (4.42%) Firewall
2 57 (2.52%) LAN
3 54 (2.39%) WAN
4 51 (2.25%) DNS
5 42 (1.86%) Network Security
5 42 (1.86%) TCP/IP
6 37 (1.63%) VPN
7 28 (1.24%) Wireless
8 24 (1.06%) BGP
8 24 (1.06%) Internet
9 23 (1.02%) DHCP
9 23 (1.02%) Ethernet
10 22 (0.97%) HTTP
10 22 (0.97%) Wi-Fi
11 21 (0.93%) Skype
12 20 (0.88%) OSPF
12 20 (0.88%) Unified Communications
13 17 (0.75%) VLAN
14 15 (0.66%) SSH
14 15 (0.66%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 129 (5.70%) Power BI
2 85 (3.75%) PostgreSQL
3 80 (3.53%) SQL Server
4 57 (2.52%) NoSQL
5 50 (2.21%) Data Warehouse
6 45 (1.99%) Relational Database
7 41 (1.81%) Tableau
8 36 (1.59%) MySQL
9 26 (1.15%) Big Data
10 21 (0.93%) MongoDB
11 20 (0.88%) Elasticsearch
12 19 (0.84%) Metadata
13 16 (0.71%) Data Lake
14 15 (0.66%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 14 (0.62%) Hadoop
16 12 (0.53%) Oracle Reports
16 12 (0.53%) Snowflake Schema
17 11 (0.49%) Amazon RDS
17 11 (0.49%) Oracle Database
18 10 (0.44%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 264 (11.66%) JIRA
2 102 (4.51%) Git
3 70 (3.09%) Jenkins
4 54 (2.39%) GitLab
5 22 (0.97%) Visual Studio
6 20 (0.88%) Rational DOORS
7 17 (0.75%) Postman
8 15 (0.66%) Liquibase
8 15 (0.66%) Selenium
9 13 (0.57%) Burp Suite
10 12 (0.53%) MLflow
11 11 (0.49%) Bitbucket
11 11 (0.49%) Metasploit
12 10 (0.44%) Gradle
13 9 (0.40%) Jaeger
14 8 (0.35%) CircleCI
14 8 (0.35%) Cucumber
15 7 (0.31%) Cypress.io
15 7 (0.31%) JUnit
16 5 (0.22%) TeamCity
General
1 1,130 (49.91%) Social Skills
2 707 (31.23%) Finance
3 521 (23.01%) Analytical Skills
4 240 (10.60%) Banking
5 179 (7.91%) Public Sector
6 113 (4.99%) Presentation Skills
7 96 (4.24%) Organisational Skills
8 85 (3.75%) Marketing
9 79 (3.49%) Influencing Skills
10 77 (3.40%) Manufacturing
11 75 (3.31%) Documentation Skills
12 67 (2.96%) Legal
13 58 (2.56%) Aerospace
14 56 (2.47%) Military
15 54 (2.39%) Financial Institution
16 47 (2.08%) Front Office
17 44 (1.94%) Law
18 41 (1.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 41 (1.81%) Retail
19 39 (1.72%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 318 (14.05%) Analyst
2 227 (10.03%) Senior
3 189 (8.35%) Lead
4 185 (8.17%) Developer
5 176 (7.77%) Architect
6 160 (7.07%) Project Manager
7 157 (6.93%) Business Analyst
8 86 (3.80%) Consultant
9 75 (3.31%) Software Engineer
10 65 (2.87%) Technical Support
11 59 (2.61%) Solutions Architect
12 55 (2.43%) Delivery Manager
13 49 (2.16%) Security Engineer
14 46 (2.03%) Senior Analyst
15 44 (1.94%) Data Scientist
16 41 (1.81%) IT Support
17 38 (1.68%) Technical Analyst
18 36 (1.59%) Product Manager
19 35 (1.55%) Senior Business Analyst
19 35 (1.55%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 108 (4.77%) REST
2 65 (2.87%) RESTful
3 63 (2.78%) .NET
4 54 (2.39%) React
5 52 (2.30%) HTML
6 46 (2.03%) Middleware
7 41 (1.81%) Elastic Stack
7 41 (1.81%) Kafka
8 40 (1.77%) CSS
9 37 (1.63%) Oracle Fusion
9 37 (1.63%) XML
10 36 (1.59%) OAuth
11 35 (1.55%) JSON
11 35 (1.55%) SOAP
12 30 (1.33%) PyTorch
12 30 (1.33%) Spring
12 30 (1.33%) TensorFlow
13 28 (1.24%) Pandas
13 28 (1.24%) Spring Boot
14 27 (1.19%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 191 (8.44%) Management Information System
2 145 (6.40%) Product Ownership
3 105 (4.64%) Onboarding
4 103 (4.55%) Cloud Native
5 71 (3.14%) Virtual Team
6 68 (3.00%) Distributed Systems
7 65 (2.87%) Data Centre
8 64 (2.83%) Algorithms
9 62 (2.74%) Self-Motivation
10 53 (2.34%) Data Protection Act
11 51 (2.25%) Analytical Mindset
12 46 (2.03%) PMI
12 46 (2.03%) Security Posture
13 44 (1.94%) Derivative
14 42 (1.86%) Data Structures
15 36 (1.59%) Enterprise Software
16 31 (1.37%) Equities
16 31 (1.37%) Public Cloud
17 30 (1.33%) Life Science
18 28 (1.24%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 262 (11.57%) Windows
2 172 (7.60%) Linux
3 76 (3.36%) Unix
4 65 (2.87%) Windows Server
5 56 (2.47%) Windows 10
6 20 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 19 (0.84%) Android
8 14 (0.62%) Apple iOS
8 14 (0.62%) Mac OS
8 14 (0.62%) Ubuntu
9 13 (0.57%) Windows Server 2012
9 13 (0.57%) Windows Server 2016
10 11 (0.49%) 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
1 828 (36.57%) Computer Science
2 734 (32.42%) Agile
3 632 (27.92%) Problem-Solving
4 391 (17.27%) Stakeholder Management
5 343 (15.15%) DevOps
6 322 (14.22%) AI
7 303 (13.38%) Project Management
8 274 (12.10%) Continuous Improvement
9 264 (11.66%) Change Management
10 261 (11.53%) CI/CD
11 249 (11.00%) Analytics
12 242 (10.69%) Decision-Making
13 238 (10.51%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 236 (10.42%) Cybersecurity
15 231 (10.20%) ITIL
16 226 (9.98%) Risk Management
17 219 (9.67%) Migration
18 205 (9.05%) Software Engineering
19 204 (9.01%) Project Delivery
20 194 (8.57%) PRINCE2
Programming Languages
1 404 (17.84%) Python
2 336 (14.84%) SQL
3 154 (6.80%) Java
4 124 (5.48%) PowerShell
5 98 (4.33%) JavaScript
6 72 (3.18%) C#
7 68 (3.00%) C++
8 50 (2.21%) TypeScript
9 43 (1.90%) Bash
10 40 (1.77%) 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 (0.71%) Shell Script
16 15 (0.66%) C
16 15 (0.66%) Rust
17 13 (0.57%) Kotlin
18 12 (0.53%) MATLAB
19 10 (0.44%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 540 (23.85%) Computer Science Degree
2 433 (19.13%) Security Cleared
3 340 (15.02%) Master's Degree
4 322 (14.22%) SC Cleared
5 135 (5.96%) PMI Certification
6 122 (5.39%) PMP
7 118 (5.21%) CISSP
8 87 (3.84%) Microsoft Certification
9 77 (3.40%) CISM
10 72 (3.18%) PhD
11 63 (2.78%) TOGAF Certification
12 61 (2.69%) Cisco Certification
13 58 (2.56%) BPSS Clearance
14 55 (2.43%) Azure Certification
15 47 (2.08%) DV Cleared
16 40 (1.77%) CCNP
17 35 (1.55%) MBA
18 34 (1.50%) AWS Certification
19 32 (1.41%) CBAP
20 30 (1.33%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 151 (6.67%) QA
2 118 (5.21%) GDPR
3 103 (4.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 100 (4.42%) PMO
5 83 (3.67%) NIST
6 73 (3.22%) Data Quality
7 48 (2.12%) PCI DSS
8 38 (1.68%) SLA
9 35 (1.55%) Accessibility
10 31 (1.37%) GRC
11 28 (1.24%) 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%) Def Stans
16 12 (0.53%) IFRS 17
16 12 (0.53%) SOC 2
System Software
1 158 (6.98%) Docker
2 149 (6.58%) Active Directory
3 44 (1.94%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (0.80%) Hyper-V
5 16 (0.71%) Firmware
6 8 (0.35%) 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%) Microsoft Virtual Server
9 4 (0.18%) Virtual Machines
9 4 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
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
1 166 (7.33%) Kubernetes
2 106 (4.68%) Terraform
3 75 (3.31%) Ansible
4 69 (3.05%) Microsoft Intune
5 47 (2.08%) Grafana
6 43 (1.90%) SCCM
7 39 (1.72%) Prometheus
8 30 (1.33%) OPNET
9 21 (0.93%) Puppet
10 17 (0.75%) Single Sign-On
11 16 (0.71%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 16 (0.71%) Kibana
12 13 (0.57%) Nmap
13 11 (0.49%) SCOM
14 9 (0.40%) Kiali
15 8 (0.35%) Argo
15 8 (0.35%) WSUS
16 6 (0.27%) vCenter Server
17 5 (0.22%) HP ALM
17 5 (0.22%) vRealize
Vendors
1 478 (21.11%) Microsoft
2 154 (6.80%) Oracle
3 117 (5.17%) ServiceNow
4 116 (5.12%) SAP
5 101 (4.46%) Google
6 76 (3.36%) Splunk
7 73 (3.22%) Cisco
8 54 (2.39%) Remedy
9 53 (2.34%) Atlassian
10 47 (2.08%) Databricks
11 46 (2.03%) VMware
12 45 (1.99%) Salesforce
13 40 (1.77%) Citrix
14 36 (1.59%) Palo Alto
15 35 (1.55%) IBM
16 25 (1.10%) CheckPoint
17 23 (1.02%) Red Hat
18 22 (0.97%) Informatica
19 21 (0.93%) Aruba
20 20 (0.88%) Siemens