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 14 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 23 18 31
Rank change year-on-year -5 +13 -6
Contract jobs citing Python 260 151 129
As % of all contract jobs in the Thames Valley 7.88% 9.04% 5.57%
As % of the Programming Languages category 42.07% 36.30% 26.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 171 88 96
10th Percentile £349 £347 £363
25th Percentile £411 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £496 £503
Median % change year-on-year +5.79% -1.34% -8.55%
75th Percentile £610 £540 £638
90th Percentile £700 £600 £650
South East median daily rate £537 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +7.40% - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 0 6
10th Percentile £43.81 - £46.38
25th Percentile £51.25 - -
Median hourly rate £71.00 - £65.00
75th Percentile £79.53 - -
90th Percentile £83.75 - £71.25
South East median hourly rate £67.47 £57.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +17.34% -11.54% +30.00%

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 618 416 480
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 18.72% 24.91% 20.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 416 248 323
10th Percentile £325 £336 £363
25th Percentile £402 £406 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.80% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £590 £575 £613
90th Percentile £650 £663 £651
South East median daily rate £513 £500 £510
% change year-on-year +2.50% -1.96% -2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 37 3 16
10th Percentile £33.70 £22.73 £45.92
25th Percentile £43.81 £25.55 £58.49
Median hourly rate £71.00 £31.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +125.40% -51.54% +34.30%
75th Percentile £82.25 £43.25 £70.98
90th Percentile £83.67 £49.55 £82.50
South East median hourly rate £60.00 £54.94 £65.00
% change year-on-year +9.22% -15.48% +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 14 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 14 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 14 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 -5 173 £525 +5.00% 111
Oxfordshire +6 47 £592 +31.56% 119
Buckinghamshire -19 40 £525 +22.09% 50
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 (5.38%) OpenStack
2 6 (2.31%) Confluence
3 5 (1.92%) Apache Spark
4 4 (1.54%) WebSphere
4 4 (1.54%) WebSphere Application Server
5 2 (0.77%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.77%) IBM HTTP Server
5 2 (0.77%) JBoss
5 2 (0.77%) Oracle HTTP Server
5 2 (0.77%) WebSphere Portal
6 1 (0.38%) Apache
6 1 (0.38%) Apache Superset
6 1 (0.38%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 8 (3.08%) CPLEX
2 5 (1.92%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (1.54%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (1.54%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (1.54%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (0.38%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 132 (50.77%) Azure
2 86 (33.08%) AWS
3 39 (15.00%) GCP
4 32 (12.31%) Entra ID
5 27 (10.38%) Azure DevOps
6 21 (8.08%) OpenShift
7 18 (6.92%) GitHub
8 16 (6.15%) GitHub Actions
9 14 (5.38%) Azure Monitor
10 11 (4.23%) Azure Key Vault
10 11 (4.23%) Power Platform
11 9 (3.46%) Azure AKS
11 9 (3.46%) Serverless
12 8 (3.08%) AWS CloudFormation
12 8 (3.08%) Azure App Service
12 8 (3.08%) SaaS
13 7 (2.69%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 7 (2.69%) Azure Data Factory
14 6 (2.31%) AWS Lambda
14 6 (2.31%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 19 (7.31%) Firewall
1 19 (7.31%) TCP/IP
2 18 (6.92%) DNS
3 16 (6.15%) BGP
4 13 (5.00%) MPLS
5 12 (4.62%) WAN
6 10 (3.85%) LAN
7 9 (3.46%) DHCP
8 8 (3.08%) VPN
9 6 (2.31%) 5G
9 6 (2.31%) Diameter Protocol
9 6 (2.31%) DNSSEC
9 6 (2.31%) LTE
9 6 (2.31%) Radio Access Network
9 6 (2.31%) VoLTE
9 6 (2.31%) VoWiFi
9 6 (2.31%) Wireshark
10 5 (1.92%) Network Security
10 5 (1.92%) SNMP
11 4 (1.54%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (10.38%) SQL Server
2 20 (7.69%) NoSQL
3 18 (6.92%) PostgreSQL
4 11 (4.23%) Power BI
5 10 (3.85%) Azure SQL Database
5 10 (3.85%) Relational Database
6 9 (3.46%) MongoDB
7 8 (3.08%) Big Data
8 7 (2.69%) Data Warehouse
8 7 (2.69%) MySQL
8 7 (2.69%) Tableau
9 5 (1.92%) Amazon Redshift
9 5 (1.92%) Hadoop
10 3 (1.15%) Parquet
11 2 (0.77%) Amazon Athena
11 2 (0.77%) Data Lake
11 2 (0.77%) DynamoDB
11 2 (0.77%) Metadata
11 2 (0.77%) Oracle Database
11 2 (0.77%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 36 (13.85%) Git
2 19 (7.31%) Jenkins
3 13 (5.00%) GitLab
4 7 (2.69%) JIRA
5 4 (1.54%) Jaeger
6 2 (0.77%) Introscope
6 2 (0.77%) MLflow
6 2 (0.77%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (0.38%) JMeter
7 1 (0.38%) LoadRunner
7 1 (0.38%) NeoLoad
7 1 (0.38%) Oracle Developer 2000
7 1 (0.38%) Oracle Forms
General
1 78 (30.00%) Social Skills
2 56 (21.54%) Analytical Skills
3 38 (14.62%) Public Sector
4 36 (13.85%) Documentation Skills
5 21 (8.08%) Aerospace
6 13 (5.00%) Telecoms
7 9 (3.46%) Military
8 5 (1.92%) Finance
9 4 (1.54%) Influencing Skills
10 3 (1.15%) Marketing
10 3 (1.15%) Organisational Skills
11 2 (0.77%) Advertising
11 2 (0.77%) Pharmaceutical
11 2 (0.77%) Presentation Skills
12 1 (0.38%) Banking
12 1 (0.38%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 43 (16.54%) Senior
2 42 (16.15%) Developer
3 30 (11.54%) Python Developer
4 29 (11.15%) Data Engineer
5 20 (7.69%) Architect
6 14 (5.38%) Data Scientist
7 13 (5.00%) IAM Specialist
8 12 (4.62%) Platform Engineer
9 10 (3.85%) Analyst
9 10 (3.85%) Network Architect
9 10 (3.85%) Senior Data Engineer
10 9 (3.46%) Full-Stack Developer
11 8 (3.08%) Lead
11 8 (3.08%) Senior Developer
11 8 (3.08%) Site Reliability Engineer
12 7 (2.69%) DBA
12 7 (2.69%) Site Engineer
13 6 (2.31%) Cloud Engineer
13 6 (2.31%) Consultant
13 6 (2.31%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (9.62%) RESTful
2 24 (9.23%) .NET
3 22 (8.46%) OAuth
4 20 (7.69%) LDAP
4 20 (7.69%) REST
5 19 (7.31%) SAML
6 18 (6.92%) OpenID
7 16 (6.15%) PySpark
8 15 (5.77%) OAuth2
8 15 (5.77%) SailPoint
9 14 (5.38%) FastAPI
9 14 (5.38%) Web Services
10 11 (4.23%) Kafka
11 10 (3.85%) Flask
11 10 (3.85%) NETCONF
11 10 (3.85%) YANG
12 9 (3.46%) ARM Templates
12 9 (3.46%) Pandas
12 9 (3.46%) RabbitMQ
13 8 (3.08%) Django
Miscellaneous
1 34 (13.08%) Onboarding
2 30 (11.54%) Hybrid Cloud
3 25 (9.62%) Cloud Native
4 23 (8.85%) Distributed Systems
5 18 (6.92%) Algorithms
6 13 (5.00%) Management Information System
7 11 (4.23%) Data Structures
8 7 (2.69%) Data Centre
8 7 (2.69%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 7 (2.69%) Security Posture
9 6 (2.31%) AI Agents
9 6 (2.31%) Product Ownership
10 5 (1.92%) Analytical Mindset
10 5 (1.92%) Clustering
10 5 (1.92%) Greenfield Project
11 4 (1.54%) Data Protection Act
11 4 (1.54%) Distributed Architecture
11 4 (1.54%) Enterprise Software
11 4 (1.54%) Private Cloud
12 3 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 59 (22.69%) Linux
2 41 (15.77%) Windows
3 30 (11.54%) Unix
4 14 (5.38%) Windows Server
5 11 (4.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.77%) Oracle Linux
6 2 (0.77%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
7 1 (0.38%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 87 (33.46%) CI/CD
1 87 (33.46%) DevOps
2 67 (25.77%) Analytics
3 65 (25.00%) Problem-Solving
4 49 (18.85%) Runbook
5 48 (18.46%) Infrastructure as Code
6 44 (16.92%) Agile
7 39 (15.00%) SIEM
8 38 (14.62%) Computer Science
9 34 (13.08%) ITSM
10 33 (12.69%) Data Pipeline
10 33 (12.69%) Data Science
10 33 (12.69%) Platform Engineering
11 32 (12.31%) Change Control
11 32 (12.31%) Data Engineering
11 32 (12.31%) Machine Learning
12 30 (11.54%) AI
13 27 (10.38%) Cybersecurity
13 27 (10.38%) RBAC
14 26 (10.00%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 107 (41.15%) PowerShell
2 64 (24.62%) SQL
3 51 (19.62%) Bash
4 24 (9.23%) Go
5 19 (7.31%) C#
6 13 (5.00%) Java
7 10 (3.85%) Bicep
8 6 (2.31%) Kusto Query Language
9 5 (1.92%) Shell Script
9 5 (1.92%) T-SQL
10 4 (1.54%) Perl
11 3 (1.15%) JavaScript
11 3 (1.15%) PL/SQL
11 3 (1.15%) R
11 3 (1.15%) Scala
12 2 (0.77%) Jython
13 1 (0.38%) Groovy
13 1 (0.38%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 125 (48.08%) Security Cleared
2 111 (42.69%) SC Cleared
3 43 (16.54%) Degree
4 20 (7.69%) Cisco Certification
5 16 (6.15%) CISSP
6 15 (5.77%) Azure Certification
7 12 (4.62%) CCIE
8 11 (4.23%) DV Cleared
9 10 (3.85%) AWS Certification
9 10 (3.85%) BPSS Clearance
9 10 (3.85%) JNCIE
9 10 (3.85%) Microsoft Certification
10 8 (3.08%) Computer Science Degree
11 7 (2.69%) CISM
11 7 (2.69%) RHCE
12 6 (2.31%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 4 (1.54%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 3 (1.15%) CompTIA Security+
14 3 (1.15%) Master's Degree
14 3 (1.15%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 44 (16.92%) NIST
2 42 (16.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 27 (10.38%) Data Quality
4 14 (5.38%) GDPR
5 8 (3.08%) QA
6 6 (2.31%) SLA
7 5 (1.92%) NCSC
7 5 (1.92%) PCI DSS
8 4 (1.54%) GRC
9 2 (0.77%) Cyber Essentials
9 2 (0.77%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 1 (0.38%) Disclosure Scotland
10 1 (0.38%) JTAG
System Software
1 50 (19.23%) Active Directory
2 22 (8.46%) Docker
3 6 (2.31%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (1.54%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.77%) Slurm Workload Manager
5 2 (0.77%) Virtual Desktop
5 2 (0.77%) VMware NSX
6 1 (0.38%) Oracle RAC
6 1 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 57 (21.92%) Kubernetes
2 53 (20.38%) Terraform
3 40 (15.38%) Ansible
4 9 (3.46%) Grafana
5 8 (3.08%) Prometheus
6 6 (2.31%) Istio
6 6 (2.31%) Single Sign-On
7 5 (1.92%) Rancher
8 4 (1.54%) Progress Chef
8 4 (1.54%) Puppet
9 2 (0.77%) CA Wily
9 2 (0.77%) CASB
9 2 (0.77%) Tivoli
10 1 (0.38%) Amdocs OSS
10 1 (0.38%) Data Guard
10 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Intune
10 1 (0.38%) Oracle RMAN
10 1 (0.38%) SCOM
10 1 (0.38%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 69 (26.54%) Microsoft
2 30 (11.54%) CyberArk
3 27 (10.38%) BeyondTrust
4 25 (9.62%) Databricks
5 18 (6.92%) Oracle
6 15 (5.77%) Google
7 14 (5.38%) Red Hat
8 10 (3.85%) Cisco
8 10 (3.85%) VMware
9 8 (3.08%) Nokia
10 7 (2.69%) F5
11 6 (2.31%) BT
11 6 (2.31%) Ericsson
11 6 (2.31%) Huawei
11 6 (2.31%) Infoblox
12 5 (1.92%) Juniper
12 5 (1.92%) Splunk
13 4 (1.54%) Fortinet
13 4 (1.54%) IBM
14 3 (1.15%) SolarWinds