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

6 months to
7 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 24 18
Rank change year-on-year -4 -6 +9
Contract jobs citing Degree 2,150 2,023 3,271
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.46% 7.72% 8.53%
As % of the Qualifications category 18.99% 25.56% 27.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,264 1,119 1,838
10th Percentile £289 £250 £208
25th Percentile £400 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £520
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +0.96% -5.45%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £644
90th Percentile £743 £788 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £507
% change year-on-year - -1.33% -6.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 175 121 320
10th Percentile £15.10 £22.72 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £30.78 £22.33
Median hourly rate £35.00 £46.18 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -24.21% +15.45% -11.11%
75th Percentile £57.75 £75.00 £60.06
90th Percentile £81.60 £85.00 £73.78
UK median hourly rate £33.50 £42.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year -21.18% +6.25% -1.23%

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 11,320 7,915 11,944
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.99% 30.22% 31.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,519 4,795 7,438
10th Percentile £313 £300 £300
25th Percentile £418 £414 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -3.67% -0.91%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -1.87% -2.78% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 889 381 879
10th Percentile £15.75 £19.97 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.87 £25.26 £21.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -49.70% +8.27% +2.62%
75th Percentile £63.75 £67.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £82.25 £77.60
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year -37.13% -13.38% +2.62%

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 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 7 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 7 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 -5 992 £517 -6.07% 975
North of England -7 327 £420 -12.50% 429
South East -3 281 £475 -5.00% 757
Midlands -14 210 £520 +22.35% 348
South West +8 175 £650 +21.95% 235
North West -3 170 £388 -18.42% 255
West Midlands -20 146 £520 +6.67% 222
Yorkshire -9 143 £516 +3.25% 121
East of England -15 117 £550 +18.92% 269
East Midlands -4 64 £523 +46.77% 126
North East -12 15 £364 -27.20% 54
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 (8.79%) Confluence
2 111 (5.16%) SharePoint
3 60 (2.79%) Microsoft Exchange
4 36 (1.67%) Apache Spark
5 17 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
6 15 (0.70%) Skype for Business
7 11 (0.51%) Apache
8 8 (0.37%) CMS
9 7 (0.33%) Exchange Server 2013
9 7 (0.33%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 6 (0.28%) nginx
10 6 (0.28%) SAS
11 5 (0.23%) Ethereum
12 4 (0.19%) GeoServer
12 4 (0.19%) 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
1 272 (12.65%) Microsoft Office
2 223 (10.37%) Microsoft Excel
3 177 (8.23%) Microsoft Project
4 117 (5.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 78 (3.63%) MS Visio
6 19 (0.88%) Chatbot
7 11 (0.51%) Simulink
7 11 (0.51%) Spreadsheet
8 10 (0.47%) Trello
9 8 (0.37%) Sketch
10 6 (0.28%) Adobe XD
10 6 (0.28%) FrameMaker
10 6 (0.28%) Mozilla Thunderbird
11 4 (0.19%) InVision
12 3 (0.14%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.093%) Adobe After Effects
13 2 (0.093%) Navisworks
13 2 (0.093%) PTC Creo
13 2 (0.093%) Revit
14 1 (0.047%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 32 (1.49%) SAP S/4HANA
2 24 (1.12%) Dynamics CRM
3 23 (1.07%) Primavera
4 20 (0.93%) Remedy ITSM
5 13 (0.60%) SAP WM
6 12 (0.56%) SAP EWM
7 11 (0.51%) Oracle General Ledger
8 8 (0.37%) Oracle Payables
8 8 (0.37%) SAP ERP
9 7 (0.33%) Veritas eDiscovery
10 6 (0.28%) Oracle EBS
10 6 (0.28%) Oracle EBS R12
10 6 (0.28%) Payment Gateway
11 5 (0.23%) Oracle Financials
11 5 (0.23%) Oracle Receivables
11 5 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
12 4 (0.19%) NEC Housing
12 4 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
12 4 (0.19%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
12 4 (0.19%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 442 (20.56%) Azure
2 255 (11.86%) AWS
3 198 (9.21%) Microsoft 365
4 155 (7.21%) Power Platform
5 139 (6.47%) GCP
6 106 (4.93%) SaaS
7 82 (3.81%) Entra ID
8 74 (3.44%) Azure DevOps
9 73 (3.40%) GitHub
10 56 (2.60%) Serverless
11 43 (2.00%) Dynamics 365
12 36 (1.67%) Power Automate
13 34 (1.58%) OCI
14 32 (1.49%) Cloud Computing
15 31 (1.44%) PaaS
16 30 (1.40%) IaaS
17 27 (1.26%) PowerApps
18 26 (1.21%) Google Workspace
19 25 (1.16%) GitHub Actions
20 24 (1.12%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 97 (4.51%) Firewall
2 61 (2.84%) DNS
3 54 (2.51%) LAN
4 51 (2.37%) WAN
5 40 (1.86%) VPN
6 38 (1.77%) Network Security
7 30 (1.40%) DHCP
8 27 (1.26%) HTTP
8 27 (1.26%) Skype
8 27 (1.26%) TCP/IP
9 25 (1.16%) Wireless
10 24 (1.12%) Internet
10 24 (1.12%) Unified Communications
11 22 (1.02%) BGP
12 20 (0.93%) OSPF
13 18 (0.84%) Wi-Fi
14 17 (0.79%) SSH
15 16 (0.74%) VLAN
16 15 (0.70%) Structured Cabling
17 14 (0.65%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 124 (5.77%) Power BI
2 79 (3.67%) PostgreSQL
3 71 (3.30%) SQL Server
4 54 (2.51%) NoSQL
5 46 (2.14%) Data Warehouse
6 45 (2.09%) Relational Database
6 45 (2.09%) Tableau
7 38 (1.77%) MySQL
8 28 (1.30%) Big Data
9 20 (0.93%) Elasticsearch
10 19 (0.88%) Metadata
11 17 (0.79%) MongoDB
12 15 (0.70%) Data Lake
13 14 (0.65%) Amazon RDS
14 13 (0.60%) Oracle Reports
15 11 (0.51%) BigQuery
15 11 (0.51%) Hadoop
16 10 (0.47%) GIS
16 10 (0.47%) Oracle Database
16 10 (0.47%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 265 (12.33%) JIRA
2 99 (4.60%) Git
3 70 (3.26%) Jenkins
4 52 (2.42%) GitLab
5 25 (1.16%) Visual Studio
6 21 (0.98%) Liquibase
7 19 (0.88%) Postman
8 16 (0.74%) Selenium
9 12 (0.56%) Burp Suite
10 10 (0.47%) Bitbucket
10 10 (0.47%) Metasploit
10 10 (0.47%) MLflow
11 9 (0.42%) Jaeger
12 8 (0.37%) Cucumber
13 7 (0.33%) Cypress.io
14 6 (0.28%) Appium
14 6 (0.28%) Gradle
14 6 (0.28%) Katalon Studio
14 6 (0.28%) Vagrant
14 6 (0.28%) XCUITest
General
1 1,115 (51.86%) Social Skills
2 706 (32.84%) Finance
3 520 (24.19%) Analytical Skills
4 250 (11.63%) Banking
5 162 (7.53%) Public Sector
6 103 (4.79%) Presentation Skills
7 86 (4.00%) Manufacturing
7 86 (4.00%) Organisational Skills
8 81 (3.77%) Marketing
9 68 (3.16%) Influencing Skills
10 67 (3.12%) Documentation Skills
11 61 (2.84%) Legal
12 59 (2.74%) Military
13 57 (2.65%) Financial Institution
14 47 (2.19%) Front Office
15 44 (2.05%) Telecoms
16 41 (1.91%) Investment Banking
17 36 (1.67%) Retail
18 35 (1.63%) Law
19 34 (1.58%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 321 (14.93%) Analyst
2 226 (10.51%) Senior
3 197 (9.16%) Developer
4 179 (8.33%) Lead
5 164 (7.63%) Architect
6 155 (7.21%) Business Analyst
7 152 (7.07%) Project Manager
8 80 (3.72%) Software Engineer
9 79 (3.67%) Consultant
10 63 (2.93%) Technical Support
11 60 (2.79%) Solutions Architect
12 50 (2.33%) IT Support
13 45 (2.09%) Support Analyst
14 43 (2.00%) Security Engineer
15 42 (1.95%) Senior Software Engineer
16 39 (1.81%) Senior Analyst
17 36 (1.67%) Technical Analyst
18 35 (1.63%) Data Scientist
18 35 (1.63%) Delivery Manager
19 34 (1.58%) Senior Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 108 (5.02%) REST
2 70 (3.26%) RESTful
3 66 (3.07%) .NET
4 54 (2.51%) HTML
5 46 (2.14%) Elastic Stack
5 46 (2.14%) Middleware
6 44 (2.05%) React
7 42 (1.95%) XML
8 41 (1.91%) CSS
9 37 (1.72%) Kafka
9 37 (1.72%) OAuth
9 37 (1.72%) Oracle Fusion
10 35 (1.63%) JSON
11 34 (1.58%) SOAP
12 28 (1.30%) Spring
13 27 (1.26%) Node.js
13 27 (1.26%) Spring Boot
14 26 (1.21%) AngularJS
14 26 (1.21%) PyTorch
14 26 (1.21%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 182 (8.47%) Management Information System
2 111 (5.16%) Product Ownership
3 99 (4.60%) Cloud Native
4 84 (3.91%) Onboarding
5 66 (3.07%) Distributed Systems
6 60 (2.79%) Algorithms
7 58 (2.70%) Data Centre
8 54 (2.51%) Data Protection Act
8 54 (2.51%) Virtual Team
9 52 (2.42%) Self-Motivation
10 47 (2.19%) Analytical Mindset
10 47 (2.19%) PMI
11 42 (1.95%) Derivative
12 41 (1.91%) Security Posture
13 40 (1.86%) Enterprise Software
14 36 (1.67%) Public Cloud
15 33 (1.53%) Life Science
16 30 (1.40%) Legacy Systems
17 28 (1.30%) Equities
18 25 (1.16%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 261 (12.14%) Windows
2 175 (8.14%) Linux
3 79 (3.67%) Unix
4 63 (2.93%) Windows Server
5 57 (2.65%) Windows 10
6 18 (0.84%) Windows Server 2016
7 17 (0.79%) Android
8 15 (0.70%) Apple iOS
8 15 (0.70%) Mac OS
8 15 (0.70%) Ubuntu
8 15 (0.70%) Windows Server 2019
9 14 (0.65%) VMS
10 12 (0.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 10 (0.47%) Windows Server 2012
12 6 (0.28%) Amazon Linux
12 6 (0.28%) Windows Server 2003
13 4 (0.19%) Windows 7
14 3 (0.14%) CentOS
14 3 (0.14%) Robot Operating System
15 2 (0.093%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 793 (36.88%) Computer Science
2 713 (33.16%) Agile
3 636 (29.58%) Problem-Solving
4 374 (17.40%) Stakeholder Management
5 334 (15.53%) DevOps
6 323 (15.02%) Project Management
7 273 (12.70%) AI
8 270 (12.56%) Change Management
9 242 (11.26%) CI/CD
10 239 (11.12%) Analytics
11 230 (10.70%) Continuous Improvement
12 226 (10.51%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 217 (10.09%) Cybersecurity
13 217 (10.09%) Migration
14 214 (9.95%) Decision-Making
15 212 (9.86%) Risk Management
16 211 (9.81%) ITIL
17 203 (9.44%) Software Engineering
18 194 (9.02%) Project Delivery
19 179 (8.33%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 391 (18.19%) Python
2 341 (15.86%) SQL
3 148 (6.88%) Java
4 117 (5.44%) PowerShell
5 106 (4.93%) JavaScript
6 78 (3.63%) C#
6 78 (3.63%) C++
7 50 (2.33%) TypeScript
8 44 (2.05%) Go
9 39 (1.81%) Bash
10 25 (1.16%) PL/SQL
10 25 (1.16%) R
11 23 (1.07%) Perl
12 21 (0.98%) C
13 19 (0.88%) T-SQL
14 15 (0.70%) Rust
15 13 (0.60%) MATLAB
16 12 (0.56%) Kusto Query Language
17 11 (0.51%) Kotlin
17 11 (0.51%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 546 (25.40%) Computer Science Degree
2 387 (18.00%) Security Cleared
3 347 (16.14%) Master's Degree
4 306 (14.23%) SC Cleared
5 137 (6.37%) PMI Certification
6 120 (5.58%) PMP
7 103 (4.79%) CISSP
8 85 (3.95%) Microsoft Certification
9 68 (3.16%) CISM
10 65 (3.02%) PhD
11 62 (2.88%) Azure Certification
12 59 (2.74%) TOGAF Certification
13 55 (2.56%) BPSS Clearance
14 54 (2.51%) Cisco Certification
15 46 (2.14%) DV Cleared
16 42 (1.95%) AWS Certification
17 39 (1.81%) CCNP
18 37 (1.72%) CBAP
19 35 (1.63%) MBA
20 31 (1.44%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 150 (6.98%) QA
2 113 (5.26%) GDPR
3 85 (3.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 85 (3.95%) PMO
4 68 (3.16%) Data Quality
5 55 (2.56%) NIST
6 40 (1.86%) PCI DSS
7 34 (1.58%) Accessibility
8 31 (1.44%) SLA
9 29 (1.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 26 (1.21%) GRC
11 14 (0.65%) Basel III
11 14 (0.65%) Cyber Essentials
11 14 (0.65%) WCAG
12 12 (0.56%) Def Stans
12 12 (0.56%) IFRS
12 12 (0.56%) NCSC
13 11 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
13 11 (0.51%) HIPAA
13 11 (0.51%) IFRS 17
System Software
1 163 (7.58%) Docker
2 143 (6.65%) Active Directory
3 43 (2.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (0.84%) Hyper-V
5 14 (0.65%) Firmware
6 7 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
7 6 (0.28%) DFS Replication
7 6 (0.28%) Dovecot
7 6 (0.28%) Microsoft Virtual Server
7 6 (0.28%) Postfix
7 6 (0.28%) Squid
7 6 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
7 6 (0.28%) Virtual Servers
8 5 (0.23%) XenApp
9 4 (0.19%) VMware NSX
9 4 (0.19%) vSphere
9 4 (0.19%) XenDesktop
10 3 (0.14%) BitLocker
10 3 (0.14%) KVM
10 3 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 160 (7.44%) Kubernetes
2 113 (5.26%) Terraform
3 73 (3.40%) Ansible
4 67 (3.12%) Microsoft Intune
5 54 (2.51%) Grafana
6 51 (2.37%) SCCM
7 47 (2.19%) Prometheus
8 30 (1.40%) OPNET
9 22 (1.02%) Puppet
10 16 (0.74%) Kibana
10 16 (0.74%) Single Sign-On
11 15 (0.70%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 13 (0.60%) SCOM
13 12 (0.56%) Nmap
14 9 (0.42%) Kiali
14 9 (0.42%) WSUS
15 7 (0.33%) Argo
15 7 (0.33%) Nessus
16 6 (0.28%) Proxmox
17 4 (0.19%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 458 (21.30%) Microsoft
2 158 (7.35%) Oracle
3 123 (5.72%) SAP
4 110 (5.12%) ServiceNow
5 97 (4.51%) Google
6 88 (4.09%) Splunk
7 66 (3.07%) Cisco
8 54 (2.51%) Remedy
9 53 (2.47%) Atlassian
10 51 (2.37%) Salesforce
11 47 (2.19%) VMware
12 41 (1.91%) Databricks
13 36 (1.67%) Citrix
14 27 (1.26%) Palo Alto
15 22 (1.02%) IBM
15 22 (1.02%) Informatica
15 22 (1.02%) MuleSoft
16 20 (0.93%) Adobe
17 18 (0.84%) CheckPoint
17 18 (0.84%) Red Hat