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

6 months to
4 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 16 38
Rank change year-on-year +3 +22 -8
Contract jobs citing Python 239 180 140
As % of all contract jobs in the Thames Valley 10.68% 10.77% 5.16%
As % of the Programming Languages category 51.29% 37.97% 25.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 175 103 105
10th Percentile £335 £400 £381
25th Percentile £403 £482 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -13.64% - +1.85%
75th Percentile £550 £638 £638
90th Percentile £637 £650 £688
South East median daily rate £488 £550 £533
% change year-on-year -11.36% +3.29% -3.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 4
10th Percentile £72.40 - £52.63
25th Percentile £76.00 - £62.19
Median hourly rate £82.00 - £67.50
75th Percentile £84.00 - £68.13
90th Percentile £85.20 - £69.25
South East median hourly rate £47.50 £67.02 £67.50
% change year-on-year -29.13% -0.71% +52.54%

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 466 474 544
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 20.83% 28.37% 20.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 342 299 398
10th Percentile £333 £350 £361
25th Percentile £403 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% - -
75th Percentile £559 £638 £615
90th Percentile £635 £675 £688
South East median daily rate £488 £505 £525
% change year-on-year -3.47% -3.81% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 8 29
10th Percentile £39.25 £54.86 £30.74
25th Percentile £70.00 £55.87 £46.25
Median hourly rate £75.00 £60.25 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +24.49% +20.49% -23.08%
75th Percentile £82.00 £67.93 £59.95
90th Percentile £84.40 £75.56 £67.50
South East median hourly rate £55.00 £61.50 £58.30
% change year-on-year -10.57% +5.49% +3.24%

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 4 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
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 4 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 -1 190 £447 -18.73% 51
Buckinghamshire +3 36 £513 -6.39% 28
Oxfordshire -3 13 £575 +9.52% 63
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 (5.02%) OpenStack
2 4 (1.67%) Apache
3 2 (0.84%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.84%) Appian
4 1 (0.42%) Confluence
4 1 (0.42%) Jupyter
Applications
1 3 (1.26%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.84%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.84%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Cloud Services
1 102 (42.68%) Azure
2 98 (41.00%) AWS
3 52 (21.76%) GCP
4 22 (9.21%) OpenShift
5 16 (6.69%) GitHub
6 13 (5.44%) Azure DevOps
6 13 (5.44%) Serverless
7 11 (4.60%) AWS CloudFormation
8 10 (4.18%) IaaS
9 9 (3.77%) AWS Lambda
9 9 (3.77%) GitHub Actions
10 8 (3.35%) Power Platform
11 7 (2.93%) Azure AKS
12 6 (2.51%) Azure Functions
13 5 (2.09%) Azure Machine Learning
13 5 (2.09%) Azure Sentinel
13 5 (2.09%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 5 (2.09%) dbt
13 5 (2.09%) Entra ID
13 5 (2.09%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 18 (7.53%) Network Security
2 14 (5.86%) BGP
2 14 (5.86%) DNS
2 14 (5.86%) MPLS
2 14 (5.86%) WAN
3 12 (5.02%) LAN
4 10 (4.18%) Firewall
5 8 (3.35%) TCP/IP
5 8 (3.35%) Wireshark
6 7 (2.93%) SNMP
6 7 (2.93%) TACACS
7 5 (2.09%) OSPF
7 5 (2.09%) Wireless
8 4 (1.67%) DHCP
9 3 (1.26%) 2G
9 3 (1.26%) 5G
9 3 (1.26%) SSL
9 3 (1.26%) VoIP
10 2 (0.84%) LTE
10 2 (0.84%) Mobile Backhaul
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (7.53%) Relational Database
2 14 (5.86%) MySQL
3 12 (5.02%) NoSQL
4 8 (3.35%) Data Warehouse
4 8 (3.35%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (3.35%) Power BI
5 6 (2.51%) Amazon RDS
5 6 (2.51%) Amazon Redshift
5 6 (2.51%) Data Lake
6 5 (2.09%) Big Data
6 5 (2.09%) Couchbase
6 5 (2.09%) MongoDB
6 5 (2.09%) SQL Server
7 4 (1.67%) Hadoop
7 4 (1.67%) Tableau
8 2 (0.84%) Azure SQL Database
8 2 (0.84%) Data Mining
8 2 (0.84%) Elasticsearch
9 1 (0.42%) Apache Cassandra
9 1 (0.42%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 19 (7.95%) Jenkins
2 15 (6.28%) Git
3 8 (3.35%) Burp Suite
3 8 (3.35%) Metasploit
4 6 (2.51%) JIRA
5 4 (1.67%) GitLab
6 2 (0.84%) Bitbucket
6 2 (0.84%) Cucumber
6 2 (0.84%) Robot Framework
6 2 (0.84%) Selenium
6 2 (0.84%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.42%) Artifactory
7 1 (0.42%) JUnit
7 1 (0.42%) Storybook
7 1 (0.42%) Visual Studio
General
1 116 (48.54%) Social Skills
2 56 (23.43%) Analytical Skills
3 30 (12.55%) Documentation Skills
4 20 (8.37%) Public Sector
5 7 (2.93%) Finance
6 5 (2.09%) Telecoms
7 3 (1.26%) Billing
7 3 (1.26%) Legal
8 2 (0.84%) Banking
8 2 (0.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 2 (0.84%) Retail
9 1 (0.42%) Advertising
9 1 (0.42%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.42%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 31 (12.97%) Senior
2 28 (11.72%) SIEM Engineer
3 17 (7.11%) Data Engineer
4 16 (6.69%) Architect
4 16 (6.69%) Developer
5 15 (6.28%) DevOps Engineer
6 13 (5.44%) Tester
7 12 (5.02%) Analyst
8 9 (3.77%) Azure Engineer
8 9 (3.77%) Cloud Engineer
8 9 (3.77%) Technical Support
9 8 (3.35%) IP Specialist
9 8 (3.35%) Penetration Tester
9 8 (3.35%) Platform Engineer
10 7 (2.93%) AWS Engineer
10 7 (2.93%) Senior Data Engineer
10 7 (2.93%) Site Engineer
10 7 (2.93%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 6 (2.51%) IP Architect
11 6 (2.51%) SOC Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (10.04%) LDAP
2 18 (7.53%) REST
3 11 (4.60%) Loki
3 11 (4.60%) NETCONF
4 10 (4.18%) PySpark
4 10 (4.18%) YANG
5 8 (3.35%) .NET
5 8 (3.35%) GraphQL
6 7 (2.93%) Kafka
6 7 (2.93%) OAuth
6 7 (2.93%) scikit-learn
7 6 (2.51%) .NET Core
7 6 (2.51%) Node.js
7 6 (2.51%) React
8 5 (2.09%) PyTorch
8 5 (2.09%) TensorFlow
9 4 (1.67%) Jinja
9 4 (1.67%) OAuth2
9 4 (1.67%) OpenID
9 4 (1.67%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 23 (9.62%) Cloud Native
2 18 (7.53%) Onboarding
3 15 (6.28%) Cyber Security Posture
3 15 (6.28%) Hybrid Cloud
4 10 (4.18%) Distributed Systems
5 9 (3.77%) Algorithms
6 8 (3.35%) Data Centre
6 8 (3.35%) Virtual Team
7 7 (2.93%) Operational Technology
7 7 (2.93%) PKI
8 6 (2.51%) Analytical Mindset
8 6 (2.51%) Enterprise Software
8 6 (2.51%) Replication
9 5 (2.09%) Linux Command Line
9 5 (2.09%) Security Operations Centre
10 3 (1.26%) IoT
10 3 (1.26%) Management Information System
10 3 (1.26%) Security Posture
11 2 (0.84%) AI Agents
11 2 (0.84%) Distributed Architecture
Operating Systems
1 65 (27.20%) Linux
2 25 (10.46%) Windows
3 18 (7.53%) Unix
4 8 (3.35%) Kali Linux
4 8 (3.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.42%) Debian
5 1 (0.42%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.42%) VMS
5 1 (0.42%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 98 (41.00%) CI/CD
2 78 (32.64%) DevOps
2 78 (32.64%) Problem-Solving
3 69 (28.87%) SIEM
4 60 (25.10%) Cybersecurity
5 35 (14.64%) Infrastructure as Code
6 33 (13.81%) DevSecOps
7 29 (12.13%) Agile
8 27 (11.30%) AI
9 25 (10.46%) Analytical Thinking
9 25 (10.46%) Test Automation
10 24 (10.04%) Computer Science
10 24 (10.04%) Containerisation
11 22 (9.21%) Threat Detection
12 21 (8.79%) Incident Response
12 21 (8.79%) Observability
13 19 (7.95%) Data Analysis
13 19 (7.95%) Data Modelling
13 19 (7.95%) High Availability
13 19 (7.95%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 100 (41.84%) PowerShell
2 50 (20.92%) Bash
3 48 (20.08%) SQL
4 29 (12.13%) JavaScript
5 23 (9.62%) Java
6 19 (7.95%) Kusto Query Language
7 14 (5.86%) Shell Script
8 10 (4.18%) Perl
9 8 (3.35%) R
10 7 (2.93%) C#
10 7 (2.93%) PHP
11 6 (2.51%) Go
12 4 (1.67%) Search Processing Language
13 3 (1.26%) TypeScript
14 2 (0.84%) Rust
15 1 (0.42%) C
15 1 (0.42%) C++
15 1 (0.42%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 1 (0.42%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 106 (44.35%) Security Cleared
2 87 (36.40%) SC Cleared
3 45 (18.83%) CISSP
4 25 (10.46%) CEH
5 23 (9.62%) Degree
6 22 (9.21%) CISM
7 21 (8.79%) GIAC
8 20 (8.37%) Computer Science Degree
9 19 (7.95%) AWS Certification
10 16 (6.69%) Cisco Certification
11 15 (6.28%) CCIE
12 14 (5.86%) JNCIE
13 8 (3.35%) GPEN
13 8 (3.35%) OSCP
14 7 (2.93%) DV Cleared
15 6 (2.51%) GCFA
15 6 (2.51%) GCIA
15 6 (2.51%) GCIH
16 5 (2.09%) CFCE
17 4 (1.67%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (14.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 34 (14.23%) NIST
2 30 (12.55%) GDPR
3 10 (4.18%) Data Quality
4 9 (3.77%) QA
5 7 (2.93%) HIPAA
6 4 (1.67%) SOC 2
7 1 (0.42%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 34 (14.23%) Active Directory
2 32 (13.39%) Docker
3 22 (9.21%) VMware Infrastructure
4 15 (6.28%) vSphere
5 12 (5.02%) VMware NSX
6 4 (1.67%) Hyper-V
7 2 (0.84%) Virtual Machines
8 1 (0.42%) NDS
8 1 (0.42%) NetIQ eDirectory
Systems Management
1 49 (20.50%) Kubernetes
2 38 (15.90%) Ansible
2 38 (15.90%) Terraform
3 18 (7.53%) Argo
3 18 (7.53%) Grafana
3 18 (7.53%) Prometheus
4 14 (5.86%) Kibana
5 11 (4.60%) Kustomize
6 8 (3.35%) Nmap
7 6 (2.51%) vCenter Server
8 4 (1.67%) QRadar
9 3 (1.26%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
9 3 (1.26%) Podman
9 3 (1.26%) Proxmox
9 3 (1.26%) Single Sign-On
10 2 (0.84%) logstash
10 2 (0.84%) Nessus
10 2 (0.84%) OpenVAS
11 1 (0.42%) Cisco CUCM
11 1 (0.42%) Cisco UCCE
Vendors
1 28 (11.72%) Microsoft
2 25 (10.46%) VMware
3 24 (10.04%) BeyondTrust
3 24 (10.04%) CyberArk
4 19 (7.95%) Splunk
5 17 (7.11%) Red Hat
6 16 (6.69%) Tanium
7 13 (5.44%) Databricks
7 13 (5.44%) FireEye
8 11 (4.60%) Oracle
9 10 (4.18%) Cisco
10 9 (3.77%) ArcSight
11 7 (2.93%) F5
11 7 (2.93%) Fortinet
11 7 (2.93%) Juniper
11 7 (2.93%) LogRhythm
12 6 (2.51%) Pure Storage
13 5 (2.09%) Confluent
13 5 (2.09%) Google
13 5 (2.09%) IBM