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

6 months to
22 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 22 16 29
Rank change year-on-year -6 +13 -4
Contract jobs citing Python 249 155 128
As % of all contract jobs in the Thames Valley 7.73% 9.33% 5.72%
As % of the Programming Languages category 41.71% 36.64% 27.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 164 89 99
10th Percentile £349 £353 £363
25th Percentile £416 £440 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £505
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -0.99% -8.18%
75th Percentile £609 £550 £638
90th Percentile £693 £600 £650
South East median daily rate £537 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +7.40% - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 0 4
10th Percentile £43.81 - £38.93
25th Percentile £51.25 - £55.69
Median hourly rate £71.00 - £65.00
75th Percentile £77.50 - £68.13
90th Percentile £83.70 - £73.75
South East median hourly rate £67.47 £57.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +17.34% -4.17% +20.00%

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 597 423 459
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 18.53% 25.47% 20.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 402 253 315
10th Percentile £325 £350 £368
25th Percentile £405 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% -9.09% +4.76%
75th Percentile £592 £575 £616
90th Percentile £650 £660 £655
South East median daily rate £514 £500 £513
% change year-on-year +2.80% -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 35 3 12
10th Percentile £33.70 £22.73 £37.87
25th Percentile £43.81 £25.55 £58.49
Median hourly rate £68.22 £31.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +116.56% -51.54% +61.05%
75th Percentile £77.50 £43.25 £75.53
90th Percentile £83.37 £49.55 £86.50
South East median hourly rate £60.00 £55.00 £67.02
% change year-on-year +9.09% -17.93% +21.85%

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 22 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 22 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 22 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 -1 169 £525 +5.00% 87
Oxfordshire +8 46 £596 +32.44% 85
Buckinghamshire -28 34 £525 +16.93% 47
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 (5.62%) OpenStack
2 5 (2.01%) Confluence
3 4 (1.61%) Apache Spark
3 4 (1.61%) WebSphere
3 4 (1.61%) WebSphere Application Server
4 2 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (0.80%) IBM HTTP Server
4 2 (0.80%) JBoss
4 2 (0.80%) Oracle HTTP Server
4 2 (0.80%) WebSphere Portal
5 1 (0.40%) Apache
5 1 (0.40%) Apache Superset
5 1 (0.40%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 8 (3.21%) CPLEX
2 6 (2.41%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (1.61%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (1.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (1.61%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (0.40%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 129 (51.81%) Azure
2 83 (33.33%) AWS
3 38 (15.26%) GCP
4 31 (12.45%) Entra ID
5 27 (10.84%) Azure DevOps
6 20 (8.03%) OpenShift
7 18 (7.23%) GitHub
8 16 (6.43%) GitHub Actions
9 13 (5.22%) Azure Monitor
10 10 (4.02%) Azure Key Vault
11 9 (3.61%) Power Platform
11 9 (3.61%) Serverless
12 8 (3.21%) AWS CloudFormation
12 8 (3.21%) Azure AKS
12 8 (3.21%) SaaS
13 7 (2.81%) Azure App Service
13 7 (2.81%) Azure Data Factory
14 6 (2.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 6 (2.41%) AWS Lambda
14 6 (2.41%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 19 (7.63%) Firewall
1 19 (7.63%) TCP/IP
2 18 (7.23%) DNS
3 16 (6.43%) BGP
4 13 (5.22%) MPLS
5 12 (4.82%) WAN
6 10 (4.02%) LAN
7 9 (3.61%) DHCP
8 8 (3.21%) VPN
9 6 (2.41%) 5G
9 6 (2.41%) Diameter Protocol
9 6 (2.41%) DNSSEC
9 6 (2.41%) LTE
9 6 (2.41%) Radio Access Network
9 6 (2.41%) VoLTE
9 6 (2.41%) VoWiFi
9 6 (2.41%) Wireshark
10 5 (2.01%) Network Security
10 5 (2.01%) SNMP
11 4 (1.61%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (10.04%) SQL Server
2 19 (7.63%) NoSQL
3 16 (6.43%) PostgreSQL
4 10 (4.02%) Relational Database
5 9 (3.61%) MongoDB
5 9 (3.61%) Power BI
6 8 (3.21%) Azure SQL Database
7 7 (2.81%) Big Data
8 5 (2.01%) Amazon Redshift
8 5 (2.01%) Data Warehouse
8 5 (2.01%) MySQL
9 4 (1.61%) Hadoop
9 4 (1.61%) Tableau
10 2 (0.80%) Amazon Athena
10 2 (0.80%) Data Lake
10 2 (0.80%) DynamoDB
10 2 (0.80%) Metadata
10 2 (0.80%) Oracle Database
10 2 (0.80%) Parquet
10 2 (0.80%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 32 (12.85%) Git
2 19 (7.63%) Jenkins
3 14 (5.62%) GitLab
4 7 (2.81%) JIRA
5 3 (1.20%) Jaeger
6 2 (0.80%) Introscope
6 2 (0.80%) JMeter
6 2 (0.80%) MLflow
6 2 (0.80%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (0.40%) Burp Suite
7 1 (0.40%) LoadRunner
7 1 (0.40%) NeoLoad
7 1 (0.40%) Oracle Developer 2000
7 1 (0.40%) Oracle Forms
7 1 (0.40%) Selenium
General
1 77 (30.92%) Social Skills
2 54 (21.69%) Analytical Skills
3 36 (14.46%) Documentation Skills
3 36 (14.46%) Public Sector
4 21 (8.43%) Aerospace
5 13 (5.22%) Telecoms
6 9 (3.61%) Military
7 5 (2.01%) Finance
8 4 (1.61%) Influencing Skills
8 4 (1.61%) Organisational Skills
9 2 (0.80%) Marketing
9 2 (0.80%) Pharmaceutical
9 2 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
10 1 (0.40%) Advertising
10 1 (0.40%) Banking
10 1 (0.40%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 39 (15.66%) Senior
2 38 (15.26%) Developer
3 30 (12.05%) Data Engineer
4 29 (11.65%) Python Developer
5 19 (7.63%) Architect
6 13 (5.22%) Data Scientist
6 13 (5.22%) IAM Specialist
7 11 (4.42%) Platform Engineer
7 11 (4.42%) Senior Data Engineer
8 10 (4.02%) Analyst
8 10 (4.02%) Network Architect
9 8 (3.21%) Full-Stack Developer
9 8 (3.21%) Lead
10 7 (2.81%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 6 (2.41%) Azure Engineer
11 6 (2.41%) Cloud Engineer
11 6 (2.41%) Consultant
11 6 (2.41%) DevSecOps Engineer
11 6 (2.41%) Site Engineer
11 6 (2.41%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 52 (20.88%) Terraform
2 22 (8.84%) RESTful
3 21 (8.43%) OAuth
4 20 (8.03%) LDAP
5 19 (7.63%) .NET
5 19 (7.63%) REST
6 18 (7.23%) SAML
7 17 (6.83%) OpenID
7 17 (6.83%) PySpark
8 15 (6.02%) OAuth2
8 15 (6.02%) SailPoint
9 14 (5.62%) FastAPI
9 14 (5.62%) Web Services
10 11 (4.42%) Kafka
11 10 (4.02%) Flask
11 10 (4.02%) NETCONF
11 10 (4.02%) YANG
12 9 (3.61%) ARM Templates
12 9 (3.61%) Pandas
12 9 (3.61%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 30 (12.05%) Hybrid Cloud
1 30 (12.05%) Onboarding
2 24 (9.64%) Cloud Native
3 19 (7.63%) Distributed Systems
4 17 (6.83%) Algorithms
5 13 (5.22%) Management Information System
6 11 (4.42%) Data Structures
7 7 (2.81%) Data Centre
7 7 (2.81%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 7 (2.81%) Product Ownership
8 6 (2.41%) AI Agents
8 6 (2.41%) Security Posture
9 5 (2.01%) Greenfield Project
10 4 (1.61%) Analytical Mindset
10 4 (1.61%) Clustering
10 4 (1.61%) Distributed Architecture
10 4 (1.61%) Private Cloud
11 3 (1.20%) Data Protection Act
11 3 (1.20%) Distributed Computing
11 3 (1.20%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 57 (22.89%) Linux
2 41 (16.47%) Windows
3 30 (12.05%) Unix
4 14 (5.62%) Windows Server
5 10 (4.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.80%) Oracle Linux
6 2 (0.80%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
7 1 (0.40%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 85 (34.14%) DevOps
2 83 (33.33%) CI/CD
3 63 (25.30%) Analytics
3 63 (25.30%) Problem-Solving
4 48 (19.28%) Runbook
5 47 (18.88%) Infrastructure as Code
6 41 (16.47%) Agile
7 37 (14.86%) Computer Science
7 37 (14.86%) SIEM
8 34 (13.65%) ITSM
9 33 (13.25%) Data Pipeline
9 33 (13.25%) Platform Engineering
10 32 (12.85%) Change Control
10 32 (12.85%) Data Science
11 31 (12.45%) Data Engineering
12 29 (11.65%) AI
12 29 (11.65%) Machine Learning
13 27 (10.84%) Cybersecurity
14 26 (10.44%) RBAC
15 25 (10.04%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 101 (40.56%) PowerShell
2 58 (23.29%) SQL
3 48 (19.28%) Bash
4 20 (8.03%) Go
5 15 (6.02%) C#
6 14 (5.62%) Java
7 10 (4.02%) Bicep
8 5 (2.01%) Shell Script
9 4 (1.61%) Perl
10 3 (1.20%) JavaScript
10 3 (1.20%) Kusto Query Language
10 3 (1.20%) PL/SQL
10 3 (1.20%) Scala
10 3 (1.20%) T-SQL
11 2 (0.80%) Jython
11 2 (0.80%) R
12 1 (0.40%) Groovy
12 1 (0.40%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 116 (46.59%) Security Cleared
2 102 (40.96%) SC Cleared
3 41 (16.47%) Degree
4 21 (8.43%) Cisco Certification
5 17 (6.83%) CISSP
6 14 (5.62%) Azure Certification
7 12 (4.82%) CCIE
8 10 (4.02%) AWS Certification
8 10 (4.02%) BPSS Clearance
8 10 (4.02%) JNCIE
8 10 (4.02%) Microsoft Certification
9 9 (3.61%) DV Cleared
10 8 (3.21%) Computer Science Degree
11 7 (2.81%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 7 (2.81%) CISM
12 6 (2.41%) RHCE
13 4 (1.61%) CEH
13 4 (1.61%) CompTIA Security+
13 4 (1.61%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 3 (1.20%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 45 (18.07%) NIST
2 43 (17.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 27 (10.84%) Data Quality
4 13 (5.22%) GDPR
5 7 (2.81%) QA
6 6 (2.41%) NCSC
6 6 (2.41%) SLA
7 4 (1.61%) PCI DSS
8 3 (1.20%) Cyber Essentials
8 3 (1.20%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 3 (1.20%) GRC
9 1 (0.40%) Disclosure Scotland
9 1 (0.40%) JTAG
System Software
1 49 (19.68%) Active Directory
2 22 (8.84%) Docker
3 6 (2.41%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (1.61%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.80%) Slurm Workload Manager
5 2 (0.80%) Virtual Desktop
5 2 (0.80%) VMware NSX
6 1 (0.40%) Oracle RAC
6 1 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 56 (22.49%) Kubernetes
2 41 (16.47%) Ansible
3 8 (3.21%) Grafana
4 7 (2.81%) Prometheus
5 6 (2.41%) Single Sign-On
6 5 (2.01%) Istio
7 4 (1.61%) Progress Chef
7 4 (1.61%) Puppet
7 4 (1.61%) Rancher
8 2 (0.80%) CA Wily
8 2 (0.80%) CASB
8 2 (0.80%) Tivoli
9 1 (0.40%) Amdocs OSS
9 1 (0.40%) Data Guard
9 1 (0.40%) Microsoft Intune
9 1 (0.40%) Oracle RMAN
9 1 (0.40%) SCOM
9 1 (0.40%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 67 (26.91%) Microsoft
2 30 (12.05%) CyberArk
3 27 (10.84%) BeyondTrust
4 26 (10.44%) Databricks
5 18 (7.23%) Oracle
6 15 (6.02%) Google
7 13 (5.22%) Red Hat
8 10 (4.02%) Cisco
8 10 (4.02%) VMware
9 8 (3.21%) Nokia
10 7 (2.81%) F5
11 6 (2.41%) BT
11 6 (2.41%) Ericsson
11 6 (2.41%) Huawei
11 6 (2.41%) Infoblox
12 5 (2.01%) Juniper
12 5 (2.01%) Splunk
13 4 (1.61%) Fortinet
13 4 (1.61%) IBM
14 3 (1.20%) SolarWinds