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

6 months to
20 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 36 24 19
Rank change year-on-year -12 -5 +3
Contract jobs citing Degree 186 154 197
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 5.04% 7.12% 7.56%
As % of the Qualifications category 18.18% 21.30% 26.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 109 91 103
10th Percentile £204 £317 £162
25th Percentile £367 £359 £319
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £447 £475 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.89% -9.52% +10.53%
75th Percentile £575 £580 £586
90th Percentile £620 £716 £656
England median daily rate £500 £500 £508
% change year-on-year - -1.57% -4.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 33 18 32
10th Percentile £17.25 £21.02 £17.29
25th Percentile £28.50 £27.19 £25.46
Median hourly rate £39.50 £32.50 £40.33
Median % change year-on-year +21.54% -19.40% +19.13%
75th Percentile £69.50 £68.87 £62.50
90th Percentile £178.75 £81.00 £91.62
England median hourly rate £48.50 £41.75 £48.00
% change year-on-year +16.17% -13.02% -10.90%

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 1,023 723 746
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 27.71% 33.43% 28.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 655 412 420
10th Percentile £331 £292 £239
25th Percentile £400 £405 £404
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £498 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.50% - -3.85%
75th Percentile £616 £613 £600
90th Percentile £700 £716 £696
England median daily rate £525 £525 £537
% change year-on-year - -2.32% -2.28%
Number of hourly rates quoted 87 67 125
10th Percentile £17.25 £17.44 £10.95
25th Percentile £28.50 £22.16 £12.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £30.00 £17.00
Median % change year-on-year +46.53% +76.47% -58.12%
75th Percentile £71.50 £59.95 £43.10
90th Percentile £92.85 £74.57 £62.50
England median hourly rate £54.00 £25.80 £43.00
% change year-on-year +109.30% -40.00% -23.61%

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 20 July 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 20 July 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 20 July 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 -17 88 £402 -16.86% 73
Cheshire -1 75 £475 +4.06% 27
Lancashire -4 13 £220 -59.35% 35
Cumbria -3 5 £450 - 10
Merseyside -18 4 £200 -54.29% 12
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 21 (11.29%) SharePoint
2 19 (10.22%) Confluence
3 6 (3.23%) Microsoft Exchange
4 3 (1.61%) SAS
5 2 (1.08%) Camunda
6 1 (0.54%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 1 (0.54%) Apache Spark
6 1 (0.54%) JBoss
6 1 (0.54%) Mule
6 1 (0.54%) Mule ESB
6 1 (0.54%) Skype for Business
6 1 (0.54%) WebLogic
Applications
1 52 (27.96%) Microsoft Office
2 16 (8.60%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (6.99%) MS Visio
4 11 (5.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 10 (5.38%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.54%) AutoCAD
6 1 (0.54%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 6 (3.23%) Primavera
1 6 (3.23%) SAP MM
2 5 (2.69%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (2.15%) Remedy ITSM
4 3 (1.61%) Payment Gateway
5 1 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
5 1 (0.54%) Infor M3
5 1 (0.54%) NEC Housing
5 1 (0.54%) SAP ERP
5 1 (0.54%) SAP PM
Cloud Services
1 43 (23.12%) Azure
2 33 (17.74%) Microsoft 365
3 29 (15.59%) AWS
4 26 (13.98%) Power Platform
5 15 (8.06%) Entra ID
6 13 (6.99%) GCP
7 11 (5.91%) Power Automate
7 11 (5.91%) PowerApps
8 8 (4.30%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 7 (3.76%) Azure DevOps
9 7 (3.76%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 6 (3.23%) Azure Monitor
11 5 (2.69%) Azure Sentinel
11 5 (2.69%) Microsoft Copilot
11 5 (2.69%) OneDrive
12 4 (2.15%) AWS CloudFormation
12 4 (2.15%) Figma
12 4 (2.15%) SaaS
13 3 (1.61%) Amazon S3
13 3 (1.61%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 24 (12.90%) Firewall
2 17 (9.14%) VPN
3 12 (6.45%) Wireless
4 9 (4.84%) DNS
5 8 (4.30%) SSL
5 8 (4.30%) WAN
5 8 (4.30%) Wi-Fi
6 7 (3.76%) Network Security
7 6 (3.23%) LAN
7 6 (3.23%) VLAN
8 5 (2.69%) Skype
9 4 (2.15%) BGP
9 4 (2.15%) Internet
9 4 (2.15%) MPLS
9 4 (2.15%) OSPF
9 4 (2.15%) TCP/IP
10 3 (1.61%) Cisco ISE
10 3 (1.61%) FTP
10 3 (1.61%) SSH
11 2 (1.08%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (10.75%) Power BI
2 10 (5.38%) SQL Server
3 6 (3.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 5 (2.69%) MySQL
5 3 (1.61%) Amazon Redshift
5 3 (1.61%) Data Vault
5 3 (1.61%) Hadoop
5 3 (1.61%) Relational Database
5 3 (1.61%) Tableau
6 2 (1.08%) Apache Cassandra
6 2 (1.08%) MongoDB
6 2 (1.08%) NoSQL
6 2 (1.08%) Oracle Database
6 2 (1.08%) PostgreSQL
6 2 (1.08%) Power Query
6 2 (1.08%) RDBMS
7 1 (0.54%) Big Data
7 1 (0.54%) Data Mining
7 1 (0.54%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.54%) SAP BW
Development Applications
1 28 (15.05%) JIRA
2 7 (3.76%) Git
3 5 (2.69%) Postman
4 2 (1.08%) ClearCase
4 2 (1.08%) Cucumber
4 2 (1.08%) GitLab
4 2 (1.08%) JUnit
5 1 (0.54%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.54%) Eclipse
5 1 (0.54%) IntelliJ
5 1 (0.54%) MLflow
5 1 (0.54%) Selenium
5 1 (0.54%) SoapUI
5 1 (0.54%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 69 (37.10%) Social Skills
2 59 (31.72%) Finance
3 43 (23.12%) Analytical Skills
4 16 (8.60%) Manufacturing
5 15 (8.06%) Banking
6 14 (7.53%) Public Sector
7 9 (4.84%) Documentation Skills
7 9 (4.84%) Legal
8 8 (4.30%) Influencing Skills
9 7 (3.76%) Organisational Skills
9 7 (3.76%) Telecoms
10 4 (2.15%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (1.61%) Marketing
12 2 (1.08%) Aerospace
12 2 (1.08%) Agriculture
12 2 (1.08%) Aviation
12 2 (1.08%) Environmental Health
12 2 (1.08%) French Language
12 2 (1.08%) Pharmaceutical
12 2 (1.08%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 38 (20.43%) Analyst
2 15 (8.06%) IT Analyst
3 14 (7.53%) Business Analyst
4 13 (6.99%) Security Engineer
4 13 (6.99%) Support Analyst
5 12 (6.45%) IT Support
5 12 (6.45%) IT Support Analyst
5 12 (6.45%) Senior
6 10 (5.38%) Consultant
7 9 (4.84%) Architect
7 9 (4.84%) Network Engineer
7 9 (4.84%) Security Consultant
8 8 (4.30%) Developer
8 8 (4.30%) Project Manager
9 7 (3.76%) Cloud Engineer
9 7 (3.76%) Operations Analyst
10 6 (3.23%) Designer
10 6 (3.23%) IT Operations Analyst
10 6 (3.23%) Microsoft 365 Engineer
10 6 (3.23%) UX Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (4.84%) XML
2 8 (4.30%) 802.1X
3 7 (3.76%) HTML
3 7 (3.76%) REST
4 6 (3.23%) JSON
5 5 (2.69%) .NET
5 5 (2.69%) SOAP
6 4 (2.15%) CSS
6 4 (2.15%) Microsoft Graph
7 3 (1.61%) LangChain
7 3 (1.61%) Middleware
7 3 (1.61%) PySpark
7 3 (1.61%) PyTorch
7 3 (1.61%) Swagger
8 2 (1.08%) AngularJS
8 2 (1.08%) Kafka
8 2 (1.08%) Oracle Fusion
8 2 (1.08%) Web Services
8 2 (1.08%) WinForms
8 2 (1.08%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 31 (16.67%) Management Information System
2 16 (8.60%) Security Posture
3 14 (7.53%) Cloud Native
4 13 (6.99%) Onboarding
5 8 (4.30%) Product Ownership
6 7 (3.76%) PKI
7 6 (3.23%) Enterprise Cloud
8 5 (2.69%) Life Science
9 4 (2.15%) Data Structures
9 4 (2.15%) Distributed Systems
9 4 (2.15%) Legacy Systems
9 4 (2.15%) Self-Motivation
10 3 (1.61%) AI Agents
10 3 (1.61%) Clustering
10 3 (1.61%) Digital Wallet
10 3 (1.61%) Graphic Design
10 3 (1.61%) Replication
10 3 (1.61%) Tandem
11 2 (1.08%) Algorithms
11 2 (1.08%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 43 (23.12%) Windows
2 24 (12.90%) Linux
3 13 (6.99%) Windows 10
4 12 (6.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 7 (3.76%) Unix
6 4 (2.15%) Windows Server
7 3 (1.61%) AIX
8 2 (1.08%) VMS
9 1 (0.54%) Android
9 1 (0.54%) Apple iOS
9 1 (0.54%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 63 (33.87%) Agile
2 47 (25.27%) Problem-Solving
3 43 (23.12%) ITIL
4 41 (22.04%) Computer Science
5 33 (17.74%) Change Management
5 33 (17.74%) DevOps
6 29 (15.59%) Roadmaps
7 27 (14.52%) Stakeholder Management
8 25 (13.44%) Scrum
9 24 (12.90%) AI
9 24 (12.90%) CI/CD
10 23 (12.37%) Continuous Improvement
11 20 (10.75%) Analytics
12 19 (10.22%) Decision-Making
12 19 (10.22%) Project Management
13 18 (9.68%) Customer Service
13 18 (9.68%) Data Analysis
13 18 (9.68%) Generative AI
13 18 (9.68%) Project Delivery
13 18 (9.68%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 43 (23.12%) Python
2 27 (14.52%) PowerShell
3 26 (13.98%) SQL
4 19 (10.22%) Java
5 14 (7.53%) Bash
6 5 (2.69%) Bicep
6 5 (2.69%) C#
6 5 (2.69%) JavaScript
7 4 (2.15%) T-SQL
8 3 (1.61%) VB
9 2 (1.08%) C++
9 2 (1.08%) Perl
9 2 (1.08%) R
9 2 (1.08%) Scala
9 2 (1.08%) Shell Script
9 2 (1.08%) TypeScript
9 2 (1.08%) VB6
10 1 (0.54%) Groovy
10 1 (0.54%) MATLAB
10 1 (0.54%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 33 (17.74%) Computer Science Degree
2 23 (12.37%) Security Cleared
3 22 (11.83%) CISSP
4 20 (10.75%) Microsoft Certification
5 18 (9.68%) SC Cleared
6 14 (7.53%) Azure Certification
7 12 (6.45%) Cisco Certification
8 10 (5.38%) AWS Certification
8 10 (5.38%) BPSS Clearance
8 10 (5.38%) CCNP
9 8 (4.30%) CCNA
10 7 (3.76%) A+ Certification
10 7 (3.76%) Network+ Certification
11 6 (3.23%) CISM
11 6 (3.23%) ITIL Certification
12 5 (2.69%) DBS Check
12 5 (2.69%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
12 5 (2.69%) Master's Degree
12 5 (2.69%) PMI Certification
12 5 (2.69%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (5.38%) NIST
2 7 (3.76%) GRC
2 7 (3.76%) QA
3 6 (3.23%) GDPR
3 6 (3.23%) SLA
4 5 (2.69%) Accessibility
4 5 (2.69%) Data Quality
4 5 (2.69%) PCI DSS
5 4 (2.15%) PSD2
6 3 (1.61%) IFRS
6 3 (1.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (1.08%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 2 (1.08%) GAAP
7 2 (1.08%) HIPAA
7 2 (1.08%) ISO 8583
7 2 (1.08%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.54%) ISO 20022
8 1 (0.54%) PMO
8 1 (0.54%) SEPA
System Software
1 17 (9.14%) Active Directory
2 13 (6.99%) Docker
3 5 (2.69%) Virtual Machines
4 3 (1.61%) NFS
4 3 (1.61%) Veritas Volume Manager
5 2 (1.08%) Firmware
6 1 (0.54%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 17 (9.14%) Kubernetes
1 17 (9.14%) Terraform
2 11 (5.91%) Progress Chef
3 7 (3.76%) Ansible
4 4 (2.15%) SCOM
5 3 (1.61%) Cisco Prime
5 3 (1.61%) PowerBroker
5 3 (1.61%) Tivoli
5 3 (1.61%) Tivoli Storage Manager
6 2 (1.08%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 2 (1.08%) SCCM
7 1 (0.54%) CA Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.54%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 63 (33.87%) Microsoft
2 21 (11.29%) ServiceNow
3 19 (10.22%) SAP
4 18 (9.68%) Cisco
5 14 (7.53%) Red Hat
6 12 (6.45%) Google
7 10 (5.38%) Oracle
7 10 (5.38%) Splunk
8 8 (4.30%) Databricks
9 7 (3.76%) Remedy
10 6 (3.23%) Aruba
10 6 (3.23%) Bomgar
10 6 (3.23%) ForeScout
10 6 (3.23%) Fortinet
11 5 (2.69%) CyberArk
11 5 (2.69%) IBM
11 5 (2.69%) UiPath
12 4 (2.15%) Adobe
12 4 (2.15%) CheckPoint
12 4 (2.15%) Citrix