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

6 months to
21 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 12 35
Rank change year-on-year -1 +23 -7
Contract jobs citing Python 246 187 145
As % of all contract jobs in the Thames Valley 10.24% 11.18% 5.24%
As % of the Programming Languages category 49.00% 39.87% 26.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 178 107 105
10th Percentile £335 £384 £381
25th Percentile £403 £456 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -13.64% - +4.76%
75th Percentile £556 £625 £625
90th Percentile £638 £643 £688
South East median daily rate £492 £550 £530
% change year-on-year -10.55% +3.77% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 0 5
10th Percentile £27.02 - £53.75
25th Percentile £48.94 - £65.00
Median hourly rate £76.80 - £67.50
75th Percentile £82.88 - -
90th Percentile £84.65 - £69.00
South East median hourly rate £47.50 £61.25 £67.50
% change year-on-year -22.45% -9.26% +55.17%

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 502 469 551
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 20.90% 28.03% 19.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 365 299 396
10th Percentile £323 £335 £354
25th Percentile £403 £409 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% - -
75th Percentile £569 £625 £615
90th Percentile £638 £675 £675
South East median daily rate £490 £503 £525
% change year-on-year -2.49% -4.29% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 7 29
10th Percentile £25.02 £54.52 £32.89
25th Percentile £38.41 £55.87 £46.25
Median hourly rate £75.90 £56.75 £57.32
Median % change year-on-year +33.76% -1.00% -11.82%
75th Percentile £82.19 £65.62 £61.60
90th Percentile £83.98 £70.25 £67.75
South East median hourly rate £55.00 £60.50 £59.00
% change year-on-year -9.09% +2.54% +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 21 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 21 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 21 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 -4 192 £450 -18.18% 54
Buckinghamshire +10 38 £513 -6.82% 39
Oxfordshire -4 16 £575 +21.05% 44
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 8 (3.25%) OpenStack
2 4 (1.63%) Apache
3 3 (1.22%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.81%) Confluence
5 1 (0.41%) Appian
5 1 (0.41%) ArcGIS
5 1 (0.41%) Jupyter
Applications
1 3 (1.22%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.81%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.41%) CPLEX
Cloud Services
1 108 (43.90%) Azure
2 96 (39.02%) AWS
3 52 (21.14%) GCP
4 21 (8.54%) OpenShift
5 18 (7.32%) Azure DevOps
6 17 (6.91%) GitHub
7 12 (4.88%) AWS CloudFormation
7 12 (4.88%) Serverless
8 11 (4.47%) IaaS
8 11 (4.47%) Power Platform
9 10 (4.07%) Entra ID
9 10 (4.07%) GitHub Actions
10 8 (3.25%) AWS Lambda
11 7 (2.85%) Azure AKS
11 7 (2.85%) Azure Monitor
11 7 (2.85%) Azure Sentinel
12 6 (2.44%) Azure Functions
12 6 (2.44%) Azure Machine Learning
13 5 (2.03%) dbt
13 5 (2.03%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 15 (6.10%) Network Security
2 14 (5.69%) DNS
3 11 (4.47%) BGP
3 11 (4.47%) MPLS
3 11 (4.47%) WAN
4 9 (3.66%) Firewall
4 9 (3.66%) Wireshark
5 8 (3.25%) LAN
5 8 (3.25%) TCP/IP
6 6 (2.44%) SNMP
7 5 (2.03%) TACACS
8 4 (1.63%) DHCP
8 4 (1.63%) OSPF
8 4 (1.63%) VoIP
8 4 (1.63%) Wireless
9 3 (1.22%) SSH
9 3 (1.22%) SSL
10 2 (0.81%) 2G
10 2 (0.81%) LTE
10 2 (0.81%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (7.72%) Relational Database
2 16 (6.50%) MySQL
3 15 (6.10%) NoSQL
4 12 (4.88%) PostgreSQL
5 11 (4.47%) Power BI
5 11 (4.47%) SQL Server
6 10 (4.07%) Data Warehouse
7 7 (2.85%) Amazon RDS
7 7 (2.85%) Tableau
8 6 (2.44%) Azure SQL Database
8 6 (2.44%) Big Data
8 6 (2.44%) MongoDB
9 5 (2.03%) Amazon Redshift
9 5 (2.03%) Couchbase
9 5 (2.03%) Data Lake
9 5 (2.03%) Hadoop
10 3 (1.22%) Parquet
11 2 (0.81%) Data Mining
11 2 (0.81%) Elasticsearch
11 2 (0.81%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 20 (8.13%) Git
1 20 (8.13%) Jenkins
2 8 (3.25%) Burp Suite
2 8 (3.25%) Metasploit
3 6 (2.44%) JIRA
4 3 (1.22%) GitLab
5 1 (0.41%) Artifactory
5 1 (0.41%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.41%) Cucumber
5 1 (0.41%) Jaeger
5 1 (0.41%) JUnit
5 1 (0.41%) Robot Framework
5 1 (0.41%) Selenium
5 1 (0.41%) SonarQube
5 1 (0.41%) Sonatype Nexus
5 1 (0.41%) Storybook
5 1 (0.41%) Visual Studio
General
1 113 (45.93%) Social Skills
2 56 (22.76%) Analytical Skills
3 31 (12.60%) Documentation Skills
4 26 (10.57%) Public Sector
5 6 (2.44%) Finance
6 4 (1.63%) Telecoms
7 3 (1.22%) Billing
7 3 (1.22%) 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 (0.41%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.41%) Marketing
9 1 (0.41%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 38 (15.45%) Senior
2 28 (11.38%) SIEM Engineer
3 21 (8.54%) Developer
4 17 (6.91%) Data Engineer
5 16 (6.50%) Architect
6 14 (5.69%) Analyst
6 14 (5.69%) DevOps Engineer
7 13 (5.28%) Tester
8 10 (4.07%) Azure Engineer
9 9 (3.66%) Platform Engineer
9 9 (3.66%) Technical Support
10 8 (3.25%) Cloud Engineer
10 8 (3.25%) Penetration Tester
10 8 (3.25%) Python Developer
10 8 (3.25%) Site Engineer
10 8 (3.25%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 7 (2.85%) Data Analyst
11 7 (2.85%) Security Engineer
11 7 (2.85%) Senior Data Engineer
11 7 (2.85%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (9.76%) LDAP
2 19 (7.72%) REST
3 13 (5.28%) .NET
4 12 (4.88%) Loki
5 10 (4.07%) OAuth
5 10 (4.07%) PySpark
6 9 (3.66%) Kafka
7 8 (3.25%) GraphQL
7 8 (3.25%) NETCONF
7 8 (3.25%) React
7 8 (3.25%) scikit-learn
8 7 (2.85%) .NET Core
8 7 (2.85%) PyTorch
8 7 (2.85%) TensorFlow
8 7 (2.85%) YANG
9 6 (2.44%) Node.js
9 6 (2.44%) OpenID
10 5 (2.03%) OAuth2
10 5 (2.03%) Pandas
10 5 (2.03%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 24 (9.76%) Cloud Native
2 23 (9.35%) Onboarding
3 14 (5.69%) Distributed Systems
4 13 (5.28%) Hybrid Cloud
5 12 (4.88%) Cyber Security Posture
6 11 (4.47%) Algorithms
7 8 (3.25%) Virtual Team
8 7 (2.85%) Analytical Mindset
8 7 (2.85%) Enterprise Software
8 7 (2.85%) Management Information System
8 7 (2.85%) Operational Technology
8 7 (2.85%) PKI
8 7 (2.85%) Replication
9 6 (2.44%) Data Centre
10 5 (2.03%) Linux Command Line
10 5 (2.03%) Security Operations Centre
11 4 (1.63%) Security Posture
12 3 (1.22%) IoT
13 2 (0.81%) Data Structures
13 2 (0.81%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 69 (28.05%) Linux
2 30 (12.20%) Windows
3 19 (7.72%) Unix
4 9 (3.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 8 (3.25%) Kali Linux
6 5 (2.03%) Windows Server
7 2 (0.81%) VMS
8 1 (0.41%) Debian
8 1 (0.41%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 99 (40.24%) CI/CD
2 84 (34.15%) Problem-Solving
3 82 (33.33%) DevOps
4 71 (28.86%) SIEM
5 56 (22.76%) Cybersecurity
6 36 (14.63%) Infrastructure as Code
7 34 (13.82%) Agile
8 33 (13.41%) DevSecOps
9 28 (11.38%) AI
9 28 (11.38%) Analytics
10 27 (10.98%) Containerisation
11 26 (10.57%) Computer Science
12 25 (10.16%) Test Automation
13 23 (9.35%) Machine Learning
13 23 (9.35%) Observability
14 22 (8.94%) Analytical Thinking
14 22 (8.94%) Stakeholder Management
15 21 (8.54%) Data Analysis
15 21 (8.54%) High Availability
16 20 (8.13%) Threat Detection
Programming Languages
1 105 (42.68%) PowerShell
2 56 (22.76%) SQL
3 49 (19.92%) Bash
4 28 (11.38%) JavaScript
5 23 (9.35%) Java
6 22 (8.94%) Kusto Query Language
7 12 (4.88%) Shell Script
8 11 (4.47%) C#
9 10 (4.07%) Go
9 10 (4.07%) Perl
10 8 (3.25%) R
11 7 (2.85%) PHP
12 4 (1.63%) TypeScript
13 2 (0.81%) Rust
13 2 (0.81%) T-SQL
14 1 (0.41%) C
14 1 (0.41%) C++
14 1 (0.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 1 (0.41%) Ruby
14 1 (0.41%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 119 (48.37%) Security Cleared
2 98 (39.84%) SC Cleared
3 42 (17.07%) CISSP
4 26 (10.57%) Degree
5 22 (8.94%) CEH
5 22 (8.94%) CISM
6 18 (7.32%) GIAC
7 17 (6.91%) AWS Certification
7 17 (6.91%) Computer Science Degree
8 13 (5.28%) Cisco Certification
9 12 (4.88%) CCIE
10 11 (4.47%) DV Cleared
11 10 (4.07%) JNCIE
12 8 (3.25%) GPEN
12 8 (3.25%) OSCP
13 7 (2.85%) Azure Certification
14 6 (2.44%) GCFA
14 6 (2.44%) GCIA
14 6 (2.44%) GCIH
15 5 (2.03%) CFCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 40 (16.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 39 (15.85%) NIST
3 31 (12.60%) GDPR
4 11 (4.47%) Data Quality
5 9 (3.66%) QA
6 4 (1.63%) HIPAA
7 1 (0.41%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.41%) GRC
7 1 (0.41%) NCSC
7 1 (0.41%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.41%) SOC 2
System Software
1 40 (16.26%) Active Directory
2 34 (13.82%) Docker
3 20 (8.13%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (5.69%) vSphere
5 9 (3.66%) VMware NSX
6 5 (2.03%) Hyper-V
7 2 (0.81%) Virtual Machines
8 1 (0.41%) NDS
8 1 (0.41%) NetIQ eDirectory
Systems Management
1 51 (20.73%) Kubernetes
2 36 (14.63%) Terraform
3 31 (12.60%) Ansible
4 20 (8.13%) Grafana
4 20 (8.13%) Prometheus
5 19 (7.72%) Argo
6 14 (5.69%) Kibana
7 11 (4.47%) Kustomize
8 8 (3.25%) Nmap
9 6 (2.44%) vCenter Server
10 3 (1.22%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
10 3 (1.22%) Nessus
10 3 (1.22%) OpenVAS
10 3 (1.22%) Podman
10 3 (1.22%) Proxmox
10 3 (1.22%) Single Sign-On
11 2 (0.81%) Cisco CUCM
11 2 (0.81%) logstash
11 2 (0.81%) Rancher
12 1 (0.41%) QRadar
Vendors
1 33 (13.41%) Microsoft
2 28 (11.38%) BeyondTrust
2 28 (11.38%) CyberArk
3 23 (9.35%) VMware
4 17 (6.91%) Red Hat
5 16 (6.50%) Tanium
6 14 (5.69%) Databricks
6 14 (5.69%) Oracle
7 13 (5.28%) FireEye
7 13 (5.28%) Splunk
8 8 (3.25%) Cisco
8 8 (3.25%) LogRhythm
9 6 (2.44%) ArcSight
9 6 (2.44%) Fortinet
9 6 (2.44%) Google
9 6 (2.44%) Juniper
9 6 (2.44%) Pure Storage
10 5 (2.03%) Confluent
10 5 (2.03%) F5
10 5 (2.03%) IBM