Degree Contract Job Trends in the North West

Academic Degree
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the North West with a requirement for Degree qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months leading up to 10 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 37 24 23
Rank change year-on-year -13 -1 -2
Contract jobs citing Degree 192 161 143
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 5.09% 7.29% 6.03%
As % of the Qualifications category 17.91% 21.52% 21.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 110 97 74
10th Percentile £204 £325 £158
25th Percentile £375 £363 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £452 £475 £544
Median % change year-on-year -4.95% -12.68% +20.89%
75th Percentile £586 £580 £600
90th Percentile £625 £716 £669
England median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -4.03%
Number of hourly rates quoted 32 18 20
10th Percentile £17.25 £21.02 £24.94
25th Percentile £27.56 £27.00 £37.55
Median hourly rate £36.00 £33.50 £52.19
Median % change year-on-year +7.46% -35.81% +28.86%
75th Percentile £67.37 £71.13 £72.11
90th Percentile £178.75 £81.00 £97.75
England median hourly rate £51.00 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year +20.00% -25.89% +14.70%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
North West

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 the North West.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 1,072 748 676
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 28.42% 33.88% 28.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 677 422 385
10th Percentile £313 £313 £260
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £504
Median % change year-on-year - -0.79% -1.42%
75th Percentile £625 £619 £600
90th Percentile £697 £716 £713
England median daily rate £525 £525 £538
% change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 107 68 98
10th Percentile £17.25 £17.33 £10.95
25th Percentile £27.38 £21.02 £12.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £29.27 £16.52
Median % change year-on-year +50.19% +77.18% -61.13%
75th Percentile £66.66 £58.91 £50.13
90th Percentile £83.75 £74.36 £64.68
England median hourly rate £54.00 £25.15 £47.50
% change year-on-year +114.71% -47.05% -13.64%

Degree
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Degree relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Degree job vacancy trend in the North West

Degree
Daily Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Degree.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Degree

Degree
Daily Rate Histogram in the North West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Degree in the North West over the 6 months to 10 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Degree in the North West

Degree
Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Degree.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Degree

Degree
Hourly Rate Histogram in the North West

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Degree in the North West over the 6 months to 10 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Degree in the North West

Degree
Contract Job Locations in the North West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Degree within the North West region over the 6 months to 10 August 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
Manchester -16 90 £450 -5.26% 161
Cheshire -3 72 £484 +7.20% 58
Lancashire -6 14 £220 -59.35% 47
Cumbria -4 9 £450 - 18
Merseyside -17 7 £175 -65.00% 32
Degree
England

Degree
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North West 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 27 (14.06%) SharePoint
2 15 (7.81%) Confluence
3 12 (6.25%) Microsoft Exchange
4 6 (3.13%) SharePoint Server
5 3 (1.56%) SAS
6 2 (1.04%) Camunda
7 1 (0.52%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 1 (0.52%) Apache Spark
7 1 (0.52%) JBoss
7 1 (0.52%) Mule
7 1 (0.52%) Mule ESB
7 1 (0.52%) Skype for Business
7 1 (0.52%) WebLogic
Applications
1 46 (23.96%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (7.81%) Microsoft Excel
3 11 (5.73%) MS Visio
4 9 (4.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (3.65%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.52%) AutoCAD
6 1 (0.52%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 4 (2.08%) Primavera
1 4 (2.08%) SAP MM
1 4 (2.08%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.52%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.52%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.52%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 54 (28.13%) Azure
2 38 (19.79%) Microsoft 365
3 34 (17.71%) AWS
4 33 (17.19%) Power Platform
5 17 (8.85%) Power Automate
5 17 (8.85%) PowerApps
6 16 (8.33%) GCP
7 13 (6.77%) Entra ID
8 11 (5.73%) Microsoft Copilot
8 11 (5.73%) OneDrive
9 9 (4.69%) Azure DevOps
9 9 (4.69%) Azure Sentinel
9 9 (4.69%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 8 (4.17%) Azure AI
10 8 (4.17%) Azure Monitor
11 7 (3.65%) AWS CloudFormation
11 7 (3.65%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 6 (3.13%) SaaS
13 3 (1.56%) Figma
13 3 (1.56%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 27 (14.06%) Firewall
2 14 (7.29%) VPN
3 13 (6.77%) Wireless
4 11 (5.73%) Network Security
5 10 (5.21%) SSL
6 9 (4.69%) WAN
7 8 (4.17%) Wi-Fi
8 7 (3.65%) DNS
9 6 (3.13%) LAN
9 6 (3.13%) VLAN
10 4 (2.08%) BGP
10 4 (2.08%) Internet
10 4 (2.08%) MPLS
10 4 (2.08%) OSPF
10 4 (2.08%) TCP/IP
11 3 (1.56%) Cisco ISE
11 3 (1.56%) FTP
11 3 (1.56%) SSH
12 2 (1.04%) Cisco Nexus
12 2 (1.04%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (10.94%) Power BI
2 12 (6.25%) SQL Server
3 8 (4.17%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 7 (3.65%) MySQL
5 3 (1.56%) Data Vault
5 3 (1.56%) Relational Database
6 2 (1.04%) Amazon Redshift
6 2 (1.04%) Apache Cassandra
6 2 (1.04%) EDRMS
6 2 (1.04%) Metadata
6 2 (1.04%) MongoDB
6 2 (1.04%) NoSQL
6 2 (1.04%) Oracle Database
6 2 (1.04%) PostgreSQL
6 2 (1.04%) Power Query
6 2 (1.04%) RDBMS
7 1 (0.52%) Big Data
7 1 (0.52%) Data Mining
7 1 (0.52%) SAP BW
7 1 (0.52%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 21 (10.94%) JIRA
2 5 (2.60%) Git
2 5 (2.60%) GitLab
3 3 (1.56%) Jenkins
4 2 (1.04%) ClearCase
4 2 (1.04%) Cucumber
4 2 (1.04%) JUnit
4 2 (1.04%) Postman
5 1 (0.52%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.52%) Eclipse
5 1 (0.52%) IntelliJ
5 1 (0.52%) Robot Framework
5 1 (0.52%) Selenium
5 1 (0.52%) SoapUI
5 1 (0.52%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 69 (35.94%) Social Skills
2 54 (28.13%) Finance
3 43 (22.40%) Analytical Skills
4 14 (7.29%) Manufacturing
5 12 (6.25%) Public Sector
6 10 (5.21%) Banking
7 9 (4.69%) Legal
8 7 (3.65%) Influencing Skills
8 7 (3.65%) Organisational Skills
9 6 (3.13%) Telecoms
10 5 (2.60%) Documentation Skills
11 3 (1.56%) Automotive
11 3 (1.56%) Marketing
11 3 (1.56%) Presentation Skills
12 2 (1.04%) Aerospace
12 2 (1.04%) Agriculture
12 2 (1.04%) Aviation
12 2 (1.04%) Environmental Health
12 2 (1.04%) French Language
12 2 (1.04%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 33 (17.19%) Analyst
2 15 (7.81%) Security Engineer
2 15 (7.81%) Senior
3 14 (7.29%) IT Analyst
4 12 (6.25%) Business Analyst
4 12 (6.25%) Developer
5 11 (5.73%) IT Support
5 11 (5.73%) IT Support Analyst
5 11 (5.73%) Support Analyst
6 10 (5.21%) Cloud Engineer
6 10 (5.21%) Consultant
6 10 (5.21%) Lead
6 10 (5.21%) Network Engineer
7 9 (4.69%) Security Consultant
8 8 (4.17%) Cloud Security Engineer
9 7 (3.65%) Architect
9 7 (3.65%) Operations Analyst
10 6 (3.13%) IT Operations Analyst
10 6 (3.13%) Senior Developer
10 6 (3.13%) SQL DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (4.17%) 802.1X
2 7 (3.65%) REST
3 6 (3.13%) HTML
4 5 (2.60%) SOAP
4 5 (2.60%) XML
5 4 (2.08%) .NET
5 4 (2.08%) CSS
5 4 (2.08%) Microsoft Graph
6 3 (1.56%) Lightning Web Components
6 3 (1.56%) Middleware
6 3 (1.56%) PySpark
7 2 (1.04%) AngularJS
7 2 (1.04%) JSON
7 2 (1.04%) Kafka
7 2 (1.04%) LangChain
7 2 (1.04%) PyTorch
7 2 (1.04%) React
7 2 (1.04%) scikit-learn
7 2 (1.04%) WinForms
7 2 (1.04%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 32 (16.67%) Management Information System
2 18 (9.38%) Security Posture
3 14 (7.29%) Cloud Native
4 12 (6.25%) Onboarding
5 8 (4.17%) Enterprise Cloud
6 7 (3.65%) PKI
6 7 (3.65%) Product Ownership
7 5 (2.60%) Clustering
7 5 (2.60%) Replication
8 4 (2.08%) Data Structures
8 4 (2.08%) Distributed Systems
8 4 (2.08%) Legacy Systems
8 4 (2.08%) Life Science
9 3 (1.56%) Graphic Design
9 3 (1.56%) Self-Motivation
9 3 (1.56%) Tandem
10 2 (1.04%) Algorithms
10 2 (1.04%) Analytical Mindset
10 2 (1.04%) Linux Command Line
10 2 (1.04%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 40 (20.83%) Windows
2 25 (13.02%) Linux
3 13 (6.77%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 9 (4.69%) Windows 10
5 6 (3.13%) Unix
5 6 (3.13%) Windows Server
6 3 (1.56%) AIX
7 1 (0.52%) Android
7 1 (0.52%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.52%) VMS
7 1 (0.52%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 58 (30.21%) Agile
2 46 (23.96%) Problem-Solving
3 43 (22.40%) ITIL
4 42 (21.88%) Computer Science
5 34 (17.71%) Change Management
5 34 (17.71%) DevOps
6 30 (15.63%) CI/CD
7 26 (13.54%) Roadmaps
8 24 (12.50%) Scrum
8 24 (12.50%) Stakeholder Management
9 22 (11.46%) AI
9 22 (11.46%) Continuous Improvement
10 21 (10.94%) Cloud Security
11 19 (9.90%) Analytics
11 19 (9.90%) Service Management
11 19 (9.90%) SIEM
12 18 (9.38%) Business Intelligence
12 18 (9.38%) Data Analysis
12 18 (9.38%) Decision-Making
12 18 (9.38%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 46 (23.96%) Python
2 32 (16.67%) PowerShell
3 28 (14.58%) SQL
4 20 (10.42%) Java
5 16 (8.33%) Bash
6 8 (4.17%) Bicep
7 6 (3.13%) T-SQL
8 5 (2.60%) JavaScript
9 4 (2.08%) C#
9 4 (2.08%) Search Processing Language
10 3 (1.56%) Apex Code
10 3 (1.56%) Kusto Query Language
10 3 (1.56%) VB
11 2 (1.04%) Perl
11 2 (1.04%) Scala
11 2 (1.04%) Shell Script
11 2 (1.04%) TypeScript
11 2 (1.04%) VB6
12 1 (0.52%) Groovy
12 1 (0.52%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 33 (17.19%) Computer Science Degree
2 26 (13.54%) CISSP
3 22 (11.46%) Microsoft Certification
4 20 (10.42%) Security Cleared
5 18 (9.38%) SC Cleared
6 16 (8.33%) Azure Certification
7 13 (6.77%) BPSS Clearance
8 12 (6.25%) Cisco Certification
9 11 (5.73%) AWS Certification
10 10 (5.21%) CCNP
11 8 (4.17%) CCNA
11 8 (4.17%) ITIL Certification
12 6 (3.13%) A+ Certification
12 6 (3.13%) CISM
12 6 (3.13%) DBS Check
12 6 (3.13%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
12 6 (3.13%) Network+ Certification
13 4 (2.08%) CEH
13 4 (2.08%) CompTIA Security+
14 3 (1.56%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (4.69%) NIST
2 7 (3.65%) GDPR
2 7 (3.65%) QA
3 5 (2.60%) Data Quality
3 5 (2.60%) GRC
3 5 (2.60%) PCI DSS
3 5 (2.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 5 (2.60%) SLA
4 4 (2.08%) Accessibility
5 3 (1.56%) IFRS
5 3 (1.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (1.04%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 2 (1.04%) GAAP
6 2 (1.04%) HIPAA
7 1 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.52%) IFRS 17
7 1 (0.52%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.52%) PMO
7 1 (0.52%) PSD2
7 1 (0.52%) SEPA
System Software
1 15 (7.81%) Active Directory
2 13 (6.77%) Docker
3 7 (3.65%) Virtual Machines
4 3 (1.56%) NFS
4 3 (1.56%) Veritas Volume Manager
5 2 (1.04%) Firmware
6 1 (0.52%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 19 (9.90%) Kubernetes
1 19 (9.90%) Terraform
2 15 (7.81%) Progress Chef
3 9 (4.69%) Ansible
4 6 (3.13%) SCOM
5 3 (1.56%) CASB
5 3 (1.56%) Cisco Prime
5 3 (1.56%) PowerBroker
5 3 (1.56%) Tivoli
5 3 (1.56%) Tivoli Storage Manager
6 2 (1.04%) SCCM
7 1 (0.52%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 66 (34.38%) Microsoft
2 22 (11.46%) ServiceNow
3 16 (8.33%) SAP
4 15 (7.81%) Cisco
4 15 (7.81%) Red Hat
5 14 (7.29%) Splunk
6 13 (6.77%) Google
7 11 (5.73%) Oracle
8 7 (3.65%) Databricks
9 6 (3.13%) Aruba
9 6 (3.13%) Bomgar
9 6 (3.13%) ForeScout
9 6 (3.13%) Fortinet
10 5 (2.60%) CyberArk
10 5 (2.60%) IBM
10 5 (2.60%) Salesforce
10 5 (2.60%) UiPath
11 4 (2.08%) Adobe
11 4 (2.08%) Ekahau
11 4 (2.08%) Palo Alto