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 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 15 20 33
Rank change year-on-year +5 +13 -3
Contract jobs citing Python 236 174 148
As % of all contract jobs in the Thames Valley 11.24% 8.97% 6.06%
As % of the Programming Languages category 52.10% 34.94% 27.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 158 102 110
10th Percentile £350 £400 £324
25th Percentile £413 £476 £452
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £486 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -11.59% - -
75th Percentile £563 £638 £638
90th Percentile £607 £651 £700
South East median daily rate £492 £533 £525
% change year-on-year -7.61% +1.43% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 1 1
10th Percentile £72.40 - -
25th Percentile £76.00 £27.75 -
Median hourly rate £82.00 £28.50 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +187.72% -59.29% -
75th Percentile £84.00 £29.25 -
90th Percentile £85.20 - -
South East median hourly rate £47.50 £42.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +13.10% -35.38% +22.44%

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 453 498 535
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 21.58% 25.68% 21.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 302 315 399
10th Percentile £350 £377 £350
25th Percentile £406 £416 £417
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £476 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -13.41% +4.76% -
75th Percentile £565 £638 £615
90th Percentile £609 £671 £675
South East median daily rate £483 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -3.38% -4.76% -2.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 8 12
10th Percentile £39.25 £45.08 £33.93
25th Percentile £70.00 £55.03 £48.40
Median hourly rate £75.00 £56.75 £52.15
Median % change year-on-year +32.17% +8.82% -5.19%
75th Percentile £82.00 £65.62 £58.96
90th Percentile £84.40 £68.39 £69.04
South East median hourly rate £55.00 £57.00 £57.41
% change year-on-year -3.50% -0.72% -4.32%

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 December 2025.

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
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 December 2025. 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 +2 187 £486 -11.59% 338
Buckinghamshire +18 37 £475 -13.64% 112
Oxfordshire -8 12 £525 +13.51% 121
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 12 (5.08%) OpenStack
2 5 (2.12%) Apache Spark
3 4 (1.69%) Apache
3 4 (1.69%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (0.85%) Appian
4 2 (0.85%) Jupyter
5 1 (0.42%) Confluence
5 1 (0.42%) nginx
Applications
1 3 (1.27%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.85%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.42%) CPLEX
Business Applications
1 1 (0.42%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 99 (41.95%) AWS
2 98 (41.53%) Azure
3 51 (21.61%) GCP
4 20 (8.47%) Azure DevOps
4 20 (8.47%) GitHub
4 20 (8.47%) OpenShift
5 19 (8.05%) Serverless
6 15 (6.36%) AWS Lambda
7 14 (5.93%) Power Platform
8 12 (5.08%) GitHub Actions
9 10 (4.24%) AWS CloudFormation
9 10 (4.24%) IaaS
10 7 (2.97%) Amazon S3
10 7 (2.97%) Amazon SageMaker
10 7 (2.97%) Azure AKS
10 7 (2.97%) dbt
11 6 (2.54%) AWS Step Functions
11 6 (2.54%) Azure Functions
12 5 (2.12%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 5 (2.12%) ChatGPT
Communications & Networking
1 16 (6.78%) Network Security
2 14 (5.93%) BGP
2 14 (5.93%) DNS
2 14 (5.93%) MPLS
2 14 (5.93%) WAN
3 12 (5.08%) LAN
4 11 (4.66%) Firewall
5 8 (3.39%) SNMP
5 8 (3.39%) TACACS
5 8 (3.39%) TCP/IP
6 7 (2.97%) Wireshark
7 6 (2.54%) OSPF
7 6 (2.54%) Wireless
8 4 (1.69%) DHCP
9 3 (1.27%) 2G
9 3 (1.27%) 5G
9 3 (1.27%) SSL
9 3 (1.27%) VoIP
10 2 (0.85%) LTE
10 2 (0.85%) Mobile Backhaul
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (8.90%) Relational Database
2 14 (5.93%) Power BI
3 13 (5.51%) NoSQL
4 12 (5.08%) Big Data
4 12 (5.08%) Data Warehouse
5 11 (4.66%) MySQL
6 10 (4.24%) Tableau
7 8 (3.39%) Data Lake
7 8 (3.39%) MongoDB
8 7 (2.97%) PostgreSQL
9 6 (2.54%) Amazon Athena
9 6 (2.54%) Amazon RDS
9 6 (2.54%) Amazon Redshift
9 6 (2.54%) Hadoop
10 5 (2.12%) Couchbase
10 5 (2.12%) SQL Server
11 2 (0.85%) Azure SQL Database
11 2 (0.85%) Data Mining
11 2 (0.85%) Elasticsearch
11 2 (0.85%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 20 (8.47%) Git
2 19 (8.05%) Jenkins
3 11 (4.66%) JIRA
4 7 (2.97%) Burp Suite
4 7 (2.97%) Metasploit
5 6 (2.54%) GitLab
6 2 (0.85%) Bitbucket
6 2 (0.85%) Cucumber
6 2 (0.85%) Robot Framework
6 2 (0.85%) Selenium
6 2 (0.85%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.42%) Artifactory
7 1 (0.42%) Cypress.io
7 1 (0.42%) MLflow
7 1 (0.42%) Mocha
General
1 116 (49.15%) Social Skills
2 56 (23.73%) Analytical Skills
3 26 (11.02%) Documentation Skills
4 22 (9.32%) Public Sector
5 13 (5.51%) Telecoms
6 10 (4.24%) Finance
7 7 (2.97%) Legal
8 3 (1.27%) Billing
9 2 (0.85%) Banking
9 2 (0.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 2 (0.85%) Retail
10 1 (0.42%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.42%) Digital Healthcare
10 1 (0.42%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 30 (12.71%) Senior
2 21 (8.90%) Architect
3 20 (8.47%) Developer
4 19 (8.05%) Data Engineer
4 19 (8.05%) SIEM Engineer
5 16 (6.78%) DevOps Engineer
6 15 (6.36%) Analyst
7 13 (5.51%) Data Scientist
8 12 (5.08%) Python Developer
9 10 (4.24%) Cloud Engineer
9 10 (4.24%) SOC Analyst
10 9 (3.81%) Azure Engineer
10 9 (3.81%) Site Engineer
10 9 (3.81%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 8 (3.39%) IP Specialist
11 8 (3.39%) Platform Engineer
12 7 (2.97%) AWS Engineer
12 7 (2.97%) Penetration Tester
12 7 (2.97%) Tester
13 6 (2.54%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (8.47%) REST
2 19 (8.05%) LDAP
2 19 (8.05%) scikit-learn
3 15 (6.36%) PyTorch
4 13 (5.51%) Pandas
5 12 (5.08%) NumPy
6 10 (4.24%) NETCONF
6 10 (4.24%) TensorFlow
7 9 (3.81%) GraphQL
7 9 (3.81%) OAuth
7 9 (3.81%) PySpark
7 9 (3.81%) YANG
8 8 (3.39%) Kafka
8 8 (3.39%) Loki
9 7 (2.97%) .NET
10 6 (2.54%) .NET Core
10 6 (2.54%) FastAPI
10 6 (2.54%) OAuth2
10 6 (2.54%) RESTful
11 5 (2.12%) Hugging Face
Miscellaneous
1 22 (9.32%) Cloud Native
2 18 (7.63%) Algorithms
3 17 (7.20%) Onboarding
4 15 (6.36%) Hybrid Cloud
5 12 (5.08%) Cyber Security Posture
6 9 (3.81%) Data Centre
7 8 (3.39%) Distributed Systems
7 8 (3.39%) Virtual Team
8 7 (2.97%) Analytical Mindset
8 7 (2.97%) PKI
8 7 (2.97%) Security Operations Centre
8 7 (2.97%) Security Posture
9 6 (2.54%) Management Information System
9 6 (2.54%) Replication
10 5 (2.12%) Cyber Threat
10 5 (2.12%) Operational Technology
11 4 (1.69%) Legacy Systems
11 4 (1.69%) Linux Command Line
12 3 (1.27%) Enterprise Software
12 3 (1.27%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 60 (25.42%) Linux
2 24 (10.17%) Windows
3 15 (6.36%) Unix
4 8 (3.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 7 (2.97%) Kali Linux
6 1 (0.42%) Debian
6 1 (0.42%) Ubuntu
6 1 (0.42%) VMS
6 1 (0.42%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 100 (42.37%) CI/CD
2 83 (35.17%) DevOps
3 82 (34.75%) Problem-Solving
4 61 (25.85%) SIEM
5 52 (22.03%) Cybersecurity
6 34 (14.41%) Agile
7 32 (13.56%) Infrastructure as Code
8 30 (12.71%) Machine Learning
9 29 (12.29%) DevSecOps
10 28 (11.86%) Incident Response
11 27 (11.44%) AI
11 27 (11.44%) Containerisation
12 26 (11.02%) Computer Science
13 25 (10.59%) Data Modelling
14 24 (10.17%) Visualisation
15 22 (9.32%) Analytical Thinking
15 22 (9.32%) Data Engineering
15 22 (9.32%) High Availability
16 21 (8.90%) Data Science
16 21 (8.90%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 85 (36.02%) PowerShell
2 57 (24.15%) SQL
3 44 (18.64%) Bash
4 26 (11.02%) Java
5 20 (8.47%) JavaScript
6 14 (5.93%) Shell Script
7 13 (5.51%) Kusto Query Language
8 12 (5.08%) R
9 6 (2.54%) C#
9 6 (2.54%) Go
9 6 (2.54%) Perl
9 6 (2.54%) PHP
10 4 (1.69%) C
10 4 (1.69%) C++
10 4 (1.69%) Search Processing Language
11 2 (0.85%) Rust
12 1 (0.42%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.42%) Ruby
12 1 (0.42%) Scala
Qualifications
1 89 (37.71%) Security Cleared
2 71 (30.08%) SC Cleared
3 42 (17.80%) CISSP
4 30 (12.71%) Degree
5 22 (9.32%) CEH
6 20 (8.47%) Computer Science Degree
6 20 (8.47%) GIAC
7 19 (8.05%) AWS Certification
8 18 (7.63%) CISM
9 16 (6.78%) Cisco Certification
10 15 (6.36%) CCIE
11 14 (5.93%) JNCIE
12 10 (4.24%) GCFA
12 10 (4.24%) GCIA
12 10 (4.24%) GCIH
12 10 (4.24%) Master's Degree
13 8 (3.39%) CFCE
14 7 (2.97%) GPEN
14 7 (2.97%) OSCP
15 6 (2.54%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 38 (16.10%) GDPR
2 35 (14.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 34 (14.41%) NIST
4 15 (6.36%) Data Quality
5 10 (4.24%) HIPAA
5 10 (4.24%) QA
6 5 (2.12%) EU AI Act
7 4 (1.69%) SOC 2
8 2 (0.85%) GRC
9 1 (0.42%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 30 (12.71%) Docker
2 29 (12.29%) Active Directory
3 23 (9.75%) VMware Infrastructure
4 15 (6.36%) vSphere
5 13 (5.51%) VMware NSX
6 4 (1.69%) Hyper-V
7 2 (0.85%) Virtual Machines
8 1 (0.42%) NDS
8 1 (0.42%) NetIQ eDirectory
Systems Management
1 50 (21.19%) Kubernetes
2 41 (17.37%) Terraform
3 40 (16.95%) Ansible
4 15 (6.36%) Argo
5 13 (5.51%) Grafana
6 12 (5.08%) Prometheus
7 11 (4.66%) Kibana
8 8 (3.39%) Kustomize
9 7 (2.97%) Nmap
10 6 (2.54%) vCenter Server
11 5 (2.12%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
12 4 (1.69%) QRadar
13 3 (1.27%) Podman
13 3 (1.27%) Proxmox
13 3 (1.27%) Single Sign-On
14 2 (0.85%) logstash
15 1 (0.42%) Cisco CUCM
15 1 (0.42%) Cisco UCCE
15 1 (0.42%) vRealize
15 1 (0.42%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 33 (13.98%) Microsoft
2 26 (11.02%) VMware
3 21 (8.90%) Splunk
4 19 (8.05%) BeyondTrust
4 19 (8.05%) CyberArk
5 18 (7.63%) Databricks
6 17 (7.20%) Red Hat
7 12 (5.08%) ArcSight
8 11 (4.66%) Cisco
8 11 (4.66%) Tanium
9 10 (4.24%) FireEye
10 9 (3.81%) LogRhythm
11 8 (3.39%) CrowdStrike
11 8 (3.39%) F5
11 8 (3.39%) Fortinet
11 8 (3.39%) Google
11 8 (3.39%) Juniper
11 8 (3.39%) Oracle
12 6 (2.54%) Pure Storage
12 6 (2.54%) Virgin Media