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 28 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 13 34
Rank change year-on-year -1 +21 -8
Contract jobs citing Python 248 182 147
As % of all contract jobs in the Thames Valley 9.94% 11.08% 5.34%
As % of the Programming Languages category 48.06% 40.18% 26.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 184 103 105
10th Percentile £335 £363 £381
25th Percentile £403 £452 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £476 £540 £550
Median % change year-on-year -11.81% -1.82% +4.76%
75th Percentile £552 £608 £623
90th Percentile £638 £638 £688
South East median daily rate £500 £533 £533
% change year-on-year -6.10% - -3.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 0 6
10th Percentile £27.02 - £55.63
25th Percentile £48.94 - £65.00
Median hourly rate £76.80 - £66.25
75th Percentile £82.88 - £67.50
90th Percentile £84.65 - £68.75
South East median hourly rate £47.50 £61.25 £68.75
% change year-on-year -22.45% -10.91% +55.37%

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 516 453 550
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 20.68% 27.57% 19.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 376 289 392
10th Percentile £319 £320 £351
25th Percentile £403 £409 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% - +1.94%
75th Percentile £575 £625 £613
90th Percentile £638 £675 £675
South East median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 7 30
10th Percentile £25.02 £54.52 £33.94
25th Percentile £38.41 £55.87 £46.25
Median hourly rate £75.90 £56.75 £57.81
Median % change year-on-year +33.76% -1.84% -3.65%
75th Percentile £82.19 £65.62 £61.60
90th Percentile £83.98 £70.25 £67.63
South East median hourly rate £55.00 £59.13 £59.00
% change year-on-year -6.98% +0.21% +7.27%

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 28 February 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 28 February 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 28 February 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 -6 191 £455 -14.55% 56
Buckinghamshire +11 41 £513 -6.39% 38
Oxfordshire -4 16 £575 +35.29% 45
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 6 (2.42%) OpenStack
2 4 (1.61%) Apache
3 3 (1.21%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.81%) Confluence
5 1 (0.40%) Appian
5 1 (0.40%) ArcGIS
5 1 (0.40%) Jupyter
Applications
1 4 (1.61%) MS Visio
2 3 (1.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (1.21%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (1.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.40%) CPLEX
Cloud Services
1 110 (44.35%) Azure
2 95 (38.31%) AWS
3 53 (21.37%) GCP
4 21 (8.47%) OpenShift
5 20 (8.06%) Azure DevOps
6 18 (7.26%) GitHub
7 11 (4.44%) GitHub Actions
7 11 (4.44%) IaaS
7 11 (4.44%) Power Platform
7 11 (4.44%) Serverless
8 10 (4.03%) AWS CloudFormation
8 10 (4.03%) Entra ID
9 8 (3.23%) Azure Monitor
10 7 (2.82%) Azure Functions
10 7 (2.82%) Azure Sentinel
11 6 (2.42%) AWS Lambda
11 6 (2.42%) Azure AKS
12 5 (2.02%) Azure Key Vault
12 5 (2.02%) Azure Machine Learning
12 5 (2.02%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 14 (5.65%) DNS
1 14 (5.65%) Network Security
2 10 (4.03%) BGP
2 10 (4.03%) MPLS
2 10 (4.03%) WAN
3 9 (3.63%) Firewall
3 9 (3.63%) TCP/IP
3 9 (3.63%) Wireshark
4 6 (2.42%) LAN
4 6 (2.42%) SNMP
5 5 (2.02%) TACACS
6 4 (1.61%) DHCP
6 4 (1.61%) VoIP
7 3 (1.21%) OSPF
7 3 (1.21%) SSH
7 3 (1.21%) SSL
7 3 (1.21%) Wireless
8 2 (0.81%) 2G
8 2 (0.81%) LTE
8 2 (0.81%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (7.66%) Relational Database
2 17 (6.85%) MySQL
3 14 (5.65%) PostgreSQL
4 13 (5.24%) NoSQL
5 12 (4.84%) SQL Server
6 11 (4.44%) Power BI
7 10 (4.03%) Data Warehouse
8 7 (2.82%) Azure SQL Database
8 7 (2.82%) Tableau
9 6 (2.42%) Big Data
9 6 (2.42%) MongoDB
10 5 (2.02%) Amazon RDS
10 5 (2.02%) Hadoop
11 4 (1.61%) Data Lake
12 3 (1.21%) Amazon Redshift
12 3 (1.21%) Couchbase
12 3 (1.21%) Parquet
13 2 (0.81%) Data Mining
13 2 (0.81%) Elasticsearch
13 2 (0.81%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 23 (9.27%) Git
2 19 (7.66%) Jenkins
3 8 (3.23%) Burp Suite
3 8 (3.23%) Metasploit
4 6 (2.42%) JIRA
5 3 (1.21%) GitLab
6 2 (0.81%) Jaeger
7 1 (0.40%) Artifactory
7 1 (0.40%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.40%) Cucumber
7 1 (0.40%) JUnit
7 1 (0.40%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.40%) Selenium
7 1 (0.40%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.40%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (0.40%) Storybook
7 1 (0.40%) Visual Studio
General
1 112 (45.16%) Social Skills
2 56 (22.58%) Analytical Skills
3 30 (12.10%) Documentation Skills
4 28 (11.29%) Public Sector
5 6 (2.42%) Finance
6 4 (1.61%) Telecoms
7 3 (1.21%) Billing
7 3 (1.21%) Legal
8 2 (0.81%) Advertising
8 2 (0.81%) Aerospace
8 2 (0.81%) Banking
8 2 (0.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 2 (0.81%) Retail
9 1 (0.40%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.40%) Marketing
9 1 (0.40%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 40 (16.13%) Senior
2 28 (11.29%) SIEM Engineer
3 24 (9.68%) Developer
4 16 (6.45%) Data Engineer
5 15 (6.05%) Architect
5 15 (6.05%) DevOps Engineer
6 13 (5.24%) Analyst
6 13 (5.24%) Tester
7 11 (4.44%) Azure Engineer
8 10 (4.03%) Python Developer
8 10 (4.03%) Site Reliability Engineer
9 9 (3.63%) Site Engineer
9 9 (3.63%) Technical Support
10 8 (3.23%) Cloud Engineer
10 8 (3.23%) Penetration Tester
10 8 (3.23%) Platform Engineer
10 8 (3.23%) Security Engineer
11 7 (2.82%) Senior Data Engineer
11 7 (2.82%) Senior Developer
11 7 (2.82%) SOC Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (9.68%) LDAP
2 19 (7.66%) REST
3 16 (6.45%) .NET
4 13 (5.24%) Loki
5 11 (4.44%) OAuth
6 10 (4.03%) PySpark
7 9 (3.63%) React
8 8 (3.23%) GraphQL
8 8 (3.23%) NETCONF
9 7 (2.82%) .NET Core
9 7 (2.82%) Kafka
9 7 (2.82%) Node.js
9 7 (2.82%) RESTful
9 7 (2.82%) scikit-learn
9 7 (2.82%) YANG
10 6 (2.42%) OAuth2
10 6 (2.42%) OpenID
10 6 (2.42%) Pandas
10 6 (2.42%) PyTorch
10 6 (2.42%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 23 (9.27%) Cloud Native
1 23 (9.27%) Onboarding
2 16 (6.45%) Distributed Systems
3 14 (5.65%) Hybrid Cloud
4 11 (4.44%) Cyber Security Posture
5 10 (4.03%) Algorithms
6 8 (3.23%) Analytical Mindset
6 8 (3.23%) Operational Technology
6 8 (3.23%) Virtual Team
7 7 (2.82%) Enterprise Software
7 7 (2.82%) Management Information System
7 7 (2.82%) PKI
8 6 (2.42%) Data Centre
8 6 (2.42%) Replication
8 6 (2.42%) Security Operations Centre
8 6 (2.42%) Security Posture
9 5 (2.02%) Linux Command Line
10 3 (1.21%) Clustering
10 3 (1.21%) Distributed Architecture
10 3 (1.21%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 71 (28.63%) Linux
2 31 (12.50%) Windows
3 17 (6.85%) Unix
4 10 (4.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 8 (3.23%) Kali Linux
6 5 (2.02%) Windows Server
7 2 (0.81%) VMS
8 1 (0.40%) Debian
8 1 (0.40%) Mac OS
8 1 (0.40%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 102 (41.13%) CI/CD
2 85 (34.27%) DevOps
3 83 (33.47%) Problem-Solving
4 73 (29.44%) SIEM
5 56 (22.58%) Cybersecurity
6 36 (14.52%) Infrastructure as Code
7 35 (14.11%) Agile
8 33 (13.31%) DevSecOps
9 29 (11.69%) AI
9 29 (11.69%) Analytics
10 26 (10.48%) Containerisation
10 26 (10.48%) Observability
11 25 (10.08%) Computer Science
12 24 (9.68%) Test Automation
13 23 (9.27%) Machine Learning
13 23 (9.27%) Stakeholder Management
14 22 (8.87%) Data Analysis
15 21 (8.47%) Analytical Thinking
15 21 (8.47%) Incident Response
15 21 (8.47%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 109 (43.95%) PowerShell
2 56 (22.58%) SQL
3 53 (21.37%) Bash
4 27 (10.89%) JavaScript
5 24 (9.68%) Kusto Query Language
6 23 (9.27%) Java
7 15 (6.05%) Go
8 13 (5.24%) C#
9 10 (4.03%) Perl
9 10 (4.03%) Shell Script
10 7 (2.82%) PHP
10 7 (2.82%) R
11 4 (1.61%) TypeScript
12 3 (1.21%) T-SQL
13 2 (0.81%) Rust
14 1 (0.40%) C
14 1 (0.40%) C++
14 1 (0.40%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 1 (0.40%) Ruby
14 1 (0.40%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 125 (50.40%) Security Cleared
2 103 (41.53%) SC Cleared
3 41 (16.53%) CISSP
4 25 (10.08%) Degree
5 22 (8.87%) CISM
6 21 (8.47%) CEH
7 17 (6.85%) GIAC
8 16 (6.45%) Computer Science Degree
9 15 (6.05%) AWS Certification
10 12 (4.84%) Cisco Certification
10 12 (4.84%) DV Cleared
11 11 (4.44%) CCIE
12 9 (3.63%) JNCIE
13 8 (3.23%) Azure Certification
13 8 (3.23%) GPEN
13 8 (3.23%) OSCP
14 6 (2.42%) GCFA
14 6 (2.42%) GCIA
14 6 (2.42%) GCIH
15 5 (2.02%) CFCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 40 (16.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 39 (15.73%) NIST
3 33 (13.31%) GDPR
4 11 (4.44%) Data Quality
5 8 (3.23%) QA
6 4 (1.61%) HIPAA
7 3 (1.21%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.81%) GRC
9 1 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.40%) NCSC
9 1 (0.40%) SOC 2
System Software
1 40 (16.13%) Active Directory
2 34 (13.71%) Docker
3 19 (7.66%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (5.65%) vSphere
5 8 (3.23%) VMware NSX
6 5 (2.02%) Hyper-V
7 2 (0.81%) Virtual Machines
8 1 (0.40%) NDS
8 1 (0.40%) NetIQ eDirectory
Systems Management
1 54 (21.77%) Kubernetes
2 35 (14.11%) Terraform
3 30 (12.10%) Ansible
4 22 (8.87%) Grafana
4 22 (8.87%) Prometheus
5 19 (7.66%) Argo
6 13 (5.24%) Kibana
7 11 (4.44%) Kustomize
8 8 (3.23%) Nmap
9 6 (2.42%) vCenter Server
10 5 (2.02%) Rancher
11 3 (1.21%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
11 3 (1.21%) Nessus
11 3 (1.21%) OpenVAS
11 3 (1.21%) Podman
11 3 (1.21%) Proxmox
11 3 (1.21%) Single Sign-On
12 2 (0.81%) Cisco CUCM
12 2 (0.81%) Istio
12 2 (0.81%) logstash
Vendors
1 36 (14.52%) Microsoft
2 28 (11.29%) BeyondTrust
2 28 (11.29%) CyberArk
3 22 (8.87%) VMware
4 18 (7.26%) Red Hat
5 15 (6.05%) Tanium
6 14 (5.65%) Databricks
6 14 (5.65%) Oracle
7 12 (4.84%) FireEye
7 12 (4.84%) Splunk
8 8 (3.23%) Cisco
8 8 (3.23%) LogRhythm
9 6 (2.42%) F5
9 6 (2.42%) Fortinet
9 6 (2.42%) Google
9 6 (2.42%) Juniper
9 6 (2.42%) Pure Storage
10 5 (2.02%) ArcSight
11 4 (1.61%) AppDynamics
11 4 (1.61%) Dynatrace