Python Contract Job Trends in the Thames Valley

Python
South East > Thames Valley

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the Thames Valley requiring Python skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 7 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 22 18 31
Rank change year-on-year -4 +13 -9
Contract jobs citing Python 255 150 128
As % of all contract jobs in the Thames Valley 7.75% 9.03% 5.48%
As % of the Programming Languages category 40.87% 35.38% 26.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 163 88 95
10th Percentile £349 £350 £363
25th Percentile £409 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £501
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -0.20% -8.91%
75th Percentile £607 £545 £638
90th Percentile £698 £600 £650
South East median daily rate £537 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +7.45% - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 27 0 6
10th Percentile £43.81 - £46.38
25th Percentile £51.25 - -
Median hourly rate £68.22 - £65.00
75th Percentile £78.85 - -
90th Percentile £83.75 - £71.25
South East median hourly rate £67.24 £57.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +16.93% -11.54% +33.33%

All Programming Languages
Thames Valley

Python falls under the Programming Languages category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring coding skills in the Thames Valley.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for coding skills 624 424 481
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 18.96% 25.53% 20.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 413 252 324
10th Percentile £321 £325 £363
25th Percentile £401 £406 £447
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £588 £575 £608
90th Percentile £650 £661 £650
South East median daily rate £514 £500 £510
% change year-on-year +2.80% -1.96% -2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 38 3 15
10th Percentile £31.95 £22.73 £43.85
25th Percentile £43.81 £25.55 £58.49
Median hourly rate £67.61 £31.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +114.63% -51.54% +27.16%
75th Percentile £81.74 £43.25 £69.22
90th Percentile £83.66 £49.55 £83.50
South East median hourly rate £63.48 £52.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +20.91% -19.23% +18.18%

Python
Job Vacancy Trend in the Thames Valley

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Python relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the Thames Valley.

Python job vacancy trend in the Thames Valley

Python
Daily Rate Trend in the Thames Valley

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the Thames Valley citing Python.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the Thames Valley citing Python

Python
Daily Rate Histogram in the Thames Valley

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Python in the Thames Valley over the 6 months to 7 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Python in the Thames Valley

Python
Hourly Rate Trend in the Thames Valley

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the Thames Valley citing Python.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the Thames Valley citing Python

Python
Hourly Rate Histogram in the Thames Valley

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Python in the Thames Valley over the 6 months to 7 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Python in the Thames Valley

Python
Contract Job Locations in the Thames Valley

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Python within the Thames Valley region over the 6 months to 7 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
Berkshire -6 165 £525 +5.00% 87
Oxfordshire +12 50 £592 +37.28% 80
Buckinghamshire -17 40 £525 +23.53% 32
Python
South East

Python
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the Thames Valley 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 14 (5.49%) OpenStack
2 6 (2.35%) Confluence
3 5 (1.96%) Apache Spark
4 4 (1.57%) WebSphere
4 4 (1.57%) WebSphere Application Server
5 2 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.78%) ArcGIS
5 2 (0.78%) IBM HTTP Server
5 2 (0.78%) JBoss
5 2 (0.78%) Oracle HTTP Server
5 2 (0.78%) WebSphere Portal
6 1 (0.39%) Apache
6 1 (0.39%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 8 (3.14%) CPLEX
2 5 (1.96%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (1.57%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (1.57%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (1.57%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (0.39%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 126 (49.41%) Azure
2 84 (32.94%) AWS
3 41 (16.08%) GCP
4 34 (13.33%) Entra ID
5 25 (9.80%) Azure DevOps
6 19 (7.45%) OpenShift
7 16 (6.27%) Azure Monitor
8 14 (5.49%) GitHub
9 12 (4.71%) GitHub Actions
10 11 (4.31%) Azure Key Vault
10 11 (4.31%) Power Platform
11 9 (3.53%) Azure AKS
11 9 (3.53%) SaaS
12 8 (3.14%) AWS CloudFormation
12 8 (3.14%) Azure App Service
12 8 (3.14%) Serverless
13 7 (2.75%) Azure Data Factory
14 6 (2.35%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 6 (2.35%) Azure Machine Learning
14 6 (2.35%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 19 (7.45%) Firewall
1 19 (7.45%) TCP/IP
2 17 (6.67%) BGP
2 17 (6.67%) DNS
3 14 (5.49%) MPLS
4 13 (5.10%) WAN
5 10 (3.92%) LAN
6 9 (3.53%) DHCP
6 9 (3.53%) VPN
7 7 (2.75%) SSH
7 7 (2.75%) Wireshark
8 6 (2.35%) 5G
8 6 (2.35%) Diameter Protocol
8 6 (2.35%) DNSSEC
8 6 (2.35%) LTE
8 6 (2.35%) Radio Access Network
8 6 (2.35%) SNMP
8 6 (2.35%) VoLTE
8 6 (2.35%) VoWiFi
9 5 (1.96%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (12.16%) SQL Server
2 21 (8.24%) NoSQL
3 17 (6.67%) PostgreSQL
4 11 (4.31%) Azure SQL Database
4 11 (4.31%) Power BI
5 10 (3.92%) Relational Database
6 9 (3.53%) MongoDB
7 8 (3.14%) Big Data
8 7 (2.75%) Data Warehouse
8 7 (2.75%) Tableau
9 6 (2.35%) MySQL
10 5 (1.96%) Amazon Redshift
10 5 (1.96%) Hadoop
11 4 (1.57%) Parquet
12 3 (1.18%) Metadata
13 2 (0.78%) Amazon Athena
13 2 (0.78%) Data Lake
13 2 (0.78%) DynamoDB
13 2 (0.78%) Oracle Database
13 2 (0.78%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 34 (13.33%) Git
2 16 (6.27%) Jenkins
3 10 (3.92%) GitLab
4 7 (2.75%) JIRA
5 4 (1.57%) Jaeger
6 3 (1.18%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.78%) Introscope
7 2 (0.78%) MLflow
8 1 (0.39%) JMeter
8 1 (0.39%) LoadRunner
8 1 (0.39%) NeoLoad
8 1 (0.39%) Oracle Developer 2000
8 1 (0.39%) Oracle Forms
General
1 77 (30.20%) Social Skills
2 52 (20.39%) Analytical Skills
3 43 (16.86%) Public Sector
4 39 (15.29%) Documentation Skills
5 20 (7.84%) Aerospace
6 13 (5.10%) Telecoms
7 9 (3.53%) Military
8 4 (1.57%) Finance
8 4 (1.57%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (1.18%) Marketing
9 3 (1.18%) Organisational Skills
9 3 (1.18%) Pharmaceutical
10 2 (0.78%) Advertising
10 2 (0.78%) Presentation Skills
11 1 (0.39%) Banking
11 1 (0.39%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 42 (16.47%) Developer
1 42 (16.47%) Senior
2 30 (11.76%) Python Developer
3 27 (10.59%) Data Engineer
4 22 (8.63%) Architect
5 13 (5.10%) IAM Specialist
6 11 (4.31%) Network Architect
6 11 (4.31%) Platform Engineer
7 10 (3.92%) Analyst
7 10 (3.92%) Data Scientist
7 10 (3.92%) Senior Data Engineer
8 9 (3.53%) Full-Stack Developer
9 8 (3.14%) Senior Developer
9 8 (3.14%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 7 (2.75%) DBA
10 7 (2.75%) Site Engineer
11 6 (2.35%) Azure Engineer
11 6 (2.35%) Cloud Engineer
11 6 (2.35%) Consultant
11 6 (2.35%) Lead
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (9.80%) RESTful
2 24 (9.41%) .NET
3 22 (8.63%) OAuth
4 20 (7.84%) LDAP
4 20 (7.84%) SAML
5 18 (7.06%) OpenID
5 18 (7.06%) REST
6 15 (5.88%) SailPoint
7 14 (5.49%) FastAPI
7 14 (5.49%) OAuth2
7 14 (5.49%) Web Services
8 11 (4.31%) Kafka
8 11 (4.31%) PySpark
9 10 (3.92%) Flask
9 10 (3.92%) NETCONF
9 10 (3.92%) YANG
10 9 (3.53%) Pandas
10 9 (3.53%) RabbitMQ
11 8 (3.14%) NumPy
11 8 (3.14%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 37 (14.51%) Onboarding
2 30 (11.76%) Hybrid Cloud
3 24 (9.41%) Cloud Native
4 23 (9.02%) Distributed Systems
5 18 (7.06%) Algorithms
6 17 (6.67%) Management Information System
7 11 (4.31%) Data Structures
8 8 (3.14%) Data Centre
9 7 (2.75%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 6 (2.35%) Greenfield Project
10 6 (2.35%) Product Ownership
11 5 (1.96%) Analytical Mindset
11 5 (1.96%) Clustering
11 5 (1.96%) Security Posture
12 4 (1.57%) AI Agents
12 4 (1.57%) Data Protection Act
12 4 (1.57%) Distributed Architecture
12 4 (1.57%) Enterprise Software
12 4 (1.57%) Private Cloud
13 3 (1.18%) Distributed Computing
Operating Systems
1 62 (24.31%) Linux
2 46 (18.04%) Windows
3 34 (13.33%) Unix
4 18 (7.06%) Windows Server
5 11 (4.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.78%) Oracle Linux
6 2 (0.78%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
7 1 (0.39%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.39%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 85 (33.33%) DevOps
2 79 (30.98%) CI/CD
3 69 (27.06%) Analytics
4 66 (25.88%) Problem-Solving
5 50 (19.61%) Runbook
6 43 (16.86%) SIEM
7 42 (16.47%) Computer Science
8 41 (16.08%) Agile
8 41 (16.08%) Infrastructure as Code
9 37 (14.51%) ITSM
10 35 (13.73%) Change Control
11 32 (12.55%) Data Pipeline
12 31 (12.16%) Machine Learning
13 30 (11.76%) Data Engineering
13 30 (11.76%) Platform Engineering
14 29 (11.37%) Cybersecurity
14 29 (11.37%) Data Science
15 26 (10.20%) AI
15 26 (10.20%) High Availability
15 26 (10.20%) Information Security
Programming Languages
1 107 (41.96%) PowerShell
2 60 (23.53%) SQL
3 48 (18.82%) Bash
4 24 (9.41%) Go
5 19 (7.45%) C#
6 13 (5.10%) Java
7 9 (3.53%) Bicep
8 6 (2.35%) Kusto Query Language
9 5 (1.96%) Shell Script
9 5 (1.96%) T-SQL
10 4 (1.57%) JavaScript
10 4 (1.57%) Perl
11 3 (1.18%) PL/SQL
11 3 (1.18%) R
11 3 (1.18%) Scala
12 2 (0.78%) Jython
13 1 (0.39%) Groovy
13 1 (0.39%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 128 (50.20%) Security Cleared
2 111 (43.53%) SC Cleared
3 46 (18.04%) Degree
4 20 (7.84%) Cisco Certification
5 16 (6.27%) Azure Certification
6 15 (5.88%) CISSP
7 13 (5.10%) CCIE
8 12 (4.71%) BPSS Clearance
8 12 (4.71%) DV Cleared
9 11 (4.31%) AWS Certification
9 11 (4.31%) Microsoft Certification
10 10 (3.92%) JNCIE
11 8 (3.14%) Computer Science Degree
12 7 (2.75%) CISM
12 7 (2.75%) RHCE
13 5 (1.96%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 4 (1.57%) CCNP
14 4 (1.57%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 3 (1.18%) CCNA
15 3 (1.18%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 48 (18.82%) NIST
2 47 (18.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 26 (10.20%) Data Quality
4 13 (5.10%) GDPR
5 7 (2.75%) QA
6 6 (2.35%) SLA
7 5 (1.96%) NCSC
7 5 (1.96%) PCI DSS
8 4 (1.57%) GRC
9 1 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials
9 1 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 1 (0.39%) JTAG
System Software
1 55 (21.57%) Active Directory
2 21 (8.24%) Docker
3 7 (2.75%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (1.96%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.78%) Slurm Workload Manager
5 2 (0.78%) Virtual Desktop
5 2 (0.78%) VMware NSX
6 1 (0.39%) Oracle RAC
6 1 (0.39%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 53 (20.78%) Kubernetes
2 47 (18.43%) Terraform
3 38 (14.90%) Ansible
4 9 (3.53%) Grafana
5 8 (3.14%) Prometheus
6 6 (2.35%) Istio
6 6 (2.35%) Single Sign-On
7 5 (1.96%) Rancher
8 4 (1.57%) Progress Chef
8 4 (1.57%) Puppet
9 3 (1.18%) CASB
10 2 (0.78%) CA Wily
10 2 (0.78%) Tivoli
11 1 (0.39%) Amdocs OSS
11 1 (0.39%) Cisco CUCM
11 1 (0.39%) Data Guard
11 1 (0.39%) Microsoft Intune
11 1 (0.39%) Nessus
11 1 (0.39%) Oracle RMAN
11 1 (0.39%) SCOM
Vendors
1 65 (25.49%) Microsoft
2 32 (12.55%) CyberArk
3 31 (12.16%) BeyondTrust
4 23 (9.02%) Databricks
5 21 (8.24%) Oracle
6 16 (6.27%) Google
7 14 (5.49%) Red Hat
8 11 (4.31%) Cisco
8 11 (4.31%) VMware
9 8 (3.14%) Nokia
10 7 (2.75%) F5
11 6 (2.35%) BT
11 6 (2.35%) Ericsson
11 6 (2.35%) Huawei
11 6 (2.35%) Infoblox
11 6 (2.35%) Juniper
12 5 (1.96%) Fortinet
12 5 (1.96%) Splunk
13 4 (1.57%) IBM
13 4 (1.57%) SolarWinds