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

6 months to
18 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 15 32
Rank change year-on-year +2 +17 -3
Contract jobs citing Python 240 181 146
As % of all contract jobs in the Thames Valley 10.27% 10.89% 5.31%
As % of the Programming Languages category 49.28% 38.59% 26.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 175 104 106
10th Percentile £335 £390 £381
25th Percentile £403 £481 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -13.64% - +4.76%
75th Percentile £554 £625 £638
90th Percentile £638 £646 £688
South East median daily rate £492 £550 £533
% change year-on-year -10.55% +3.29% -3.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 0 5
10th Percentile £26.58 - £53.75
25th Percentile £27.88 - £65.00
Median hourly rate £75.00 - £67.50
75th Percentile £82.00 - -
90th Percentile £84.40 - £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 487 469 550
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 20.83% 28.22% 20.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 354 299 398
10th Percentile £327 £348 £355
25th Percentile £403 £412 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% - +0.96%
75th Percentile £569 £631 £615
90th Percentile £638 £675 £675
South East median daily rate £490 £501 £525
% change year-on-year -2.10% -4.67% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 7 29
10th Percentile £22.93 £54.52 £32.89
25th Percentile £26.80 £55.87 £46.25
Median hourly rate £75.00 £56.75 £57.32
Median % change year-on-year +32.17% -1.00% -4.47%
75th Percentile £81.00 £65.62 £61.60
90th Percentile £83.60 £70.25 £67.75
South East median hourly rate £55.00 £61.50 £59.00
% change year-on-year -10.57% +4.24% +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 18 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 18 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 18 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 -5 190 £450 -18.18% 52
Buckinghamshire +8 33 £515 -6.41% 35
Oxfordshire -2 17 £575 +35.29% 46
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 (3.33%) OpenStack
2 4 (1.67%) Apache
3 2 (0.83%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.42%) Appian
4 1 (0.42%) ArcGIS
4 1 (0.42%) Confluence
4 1 (0.42%) Jupyter
Applications
1 3 (1.25%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.83%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.83%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.42%) CPLEX
Cloud Services
1 106 (44.17%) Azure
2 95 (39.58%) AWS
3 53 (22.08%) GCP
4 20 (8.33%) OpenShift
5 16 (6.67%) Azure DevOps
5 16 (6.67%) GitHub
6 13 (5.42%) Serverless
7 12 (5.00%) AWS CloudFormation
8 10 (4.17%) IaaS
9 9 (3.75%) AWS Lambda
9 9 (3.75%) Entra ID
9 9 (3.75%) GitHub Actions
10 8 (3.33%) Power Platform
11 7 (2.92%) Azure AKS
11 7 (2.92%) Azure Machine Learning
11 7 (2.92%) Azure Sentinel
12 6 (2.50%) Azure Functions
12 6 (2.50%) Azure Monitor
13 5 (2.08%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 5 (2.08%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 15 (6.25%) Network Security
2 14 (5.83%) DNS
3 11 (4.58%) BGP
3 11 (4.58%) MPLS
3 11 (4.58%) WAN
4 9 (3.75%) Firewall
4 9 (3.75%) Wireshark
5 8 (3.33%) LAN
5 8 (3.33%) TCP/IP
6 6 (2.50%) SNMP
7 5 (2.08%) TACACS
8 4 (1.67%) DHCP
8 4 (1.67%) OSPF
8 4 (1.67%) VoIP
8 4 (1.67%) Wireless
9 3 (1.25%) 2G
9 3 (1.25%) 5G
9 3 (1.25%) SSH
9 3 (1.25%) SSL
10 2 (0.83%) Mobile Backhaul
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (7.92%) Relational Database
2 14 (5.83%) MySQL
2 14 (5.83%) NoSQL
3 10 (4.17%) PostgreSQL
4 9 (3.75%) SQL Server
5 8 (3.33%) Data Warehouse
5 8 (3.33%) Power BI
6 6 (2.50%) Amazon RDS
6 6 (2.50%) Amazon Redshift
6 6 (2.50%) Data Lake
6 6 (2.50%) MongoDB
7 5 (2.08%) Big Data
7 5 (2.08%) Couchbase
8 4 (1.67%) Azure SQL Database
8 4 (1.67%) Hadoop
8 4 (1.67%) Tableau
9 2 (0.83%) Data Mining
9 2 (0.83%) Elasticsearch
9 2 (0.83%) Metadata
9 2 (0.83%) Parquet
Development Applications
1 19 (7.92%) Jenkins
2 16 (6.67%) Git
3 8 (3.33%) Burp Suite
3 8 (3.33%) Metasploit
4 5 (2.08%) JIRA
5 3 (1.25%) GitLab
6 2 (0.83%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.42%) Artifactory
7 1 (0.42%) Cucumber
7 1 (0.42%) JUnit
7 1 (0.42%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.42%) Selenium
7 1 (0.42%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.42%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (0.42%) Storybook
7 1 (0.42%) Visual Studio
General
1 111 (46.25%) Social Skills
2 53 (22.08%) Analytical Skills
3 31 (12.92%) Documentation Skills
4 24 (10.00%) Public Sector
5 7 (2.92%) Finance
6 4 (1.67%) Telecoms
7 3 (1.25%) Billing
7 3 (1.25%) Legal
8 2 (0.83%) Banking
8 2 (0.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 2 (0.83%) Retail
9 1 (0.42%) Advertising
9 1 (0.42%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.42%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.42%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 35 (14.58%) Senior
2 28 (11.67%) SIEM Engineer
3 18 (7.50%) Data Engineer
4 17 (7.08%) Developer
5 15 (6.25%) Architect
6 14 (5.83%) DevOps Engineer
7 13 (5.42%) Tester
8 12 (5.00%) Analyst
9 10 (4.17%) Azure Engineer
10 9 (3.75%) Technical Support
11 8 (3.33%) Cloud Engineer
11 8 (3.33%) Penetration Tester
11 8 (3.33%) Platform Engineer
12 7 (2.92%) Python Developer
12 7 (2.92%) Security Engineer
12 7 (2.92%) Senior Data Engineer
12 7 (2.92%) Site Engineer
12 7 (2.92%) Site Reliability Engineer
13 6 (2.50%) AWS Engineer
13 6 (2.50%) SOC Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (10.00%) LDAP
2 18 (7.50%) REST
3 11 (4.58%) Loki
3 11 (4.58%) PySpark
4 9 (3.75%) Kafka
4 9 (3.75%) OAuth
4 9 (3.75%) scikit-learn
5 8 (3.33%) .NET
5 8 (3.33%) GraphQL
5 8 (3.33%) NETCONF
6 7 (2.92%) PyTorch
6 7 (2.92%) React
6 7 (2.92%) TensorFlow
6 7 (2.92%) YANG
7 6 (2.50%) .NET Core
7 6 (2.50%) Node.js
8 5 (2.08%) OAuth2
8 5 (2.08%) OpenID
8 5 (2.08%) Pandas
9 4 (1.67%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 23 (9.58%) Cloud Native
1 23 (9.58%) Onboarding
2 12 (5.00%) Cyber Security Posture
2 12 (5.00%) Hybrid Cloud
3 10 (4.17%) Algorithms
3 10 (4.17%) Distributed Systems
4 8 (3.33%) Virtual Team
5 7 (2.92%) Management Information System
5 7 (2.92%) Operational Technology
5 7 (2.92%) PKI
6 6 (2.50%) Analytical Mindset
6 6 (2.50%) Data Centre
6 6 (2.50%) Enterprise Software
6 6 (2.50%) Replication
7 5 (2.08%) Linux Command Line
7 5 (2.08%) Security Operations Centre
8 3 (1.25%) IoT
8 3 (1.25%) Security Posture
9 2 (0.83%) Cyber Threat
9 2 (0.83%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 69 (28.75%) Linux
2 30 (12.50%) Windows
3 21 (8.75%) Unix
4 8 (3.33%) Kali Linux
4 8 (3.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 5 (2.08%) Windows Server
6 2 (0.83%) VMS
7 1 (0.42%) Debian
7 1 (0.42%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 97 (40.42%) CI/CD
2 80 (33.33%) Problem-Solving
3 79 (32.92%) DevOps
4 73 (30.42%) SIEM
5 58 (24.17%) Cybersecurity
6 35 (14.58%) Infrastructure as Code
7 33 (13.75%) DevSecOps
8 29 (12.08%) Agile
9 28 (11.67%) Containerisation
10 27 (11.25%) AI
11 25 (10.42%) Computer Science
12 24 (10.00%) Test Automation
13 23 (9.58%) Analytics
14 22 (9.17%) Data Analysis
15 21 (8.75%) Analytical Thinking
15 21 (8.75%) Machine Learning
15 21 (8.75%) Observability
15 21 (8.75%) Stakeholder Management
16 20 (8.33%) Threat Detection
17 19 (7.92%) High Availability
Programming Languages
1 103 (42.92%) PowerShell
2 51 (21.25%) SQL
3 47 (19.58%) Bash
4 27 (11.25%) JavaScript
5 23 (9.58%) Java
6 22 (9.17%) Kusto Query Language
7 12 (5.00%) Shell Script
8 10 (4.17%) Perl
9 8 (3.33%) R
10 7 (2.92%) C#
10 7 (2.92%) PHP
11 6 (2.50%) Go
12 4 (1.67%) TypeScript
13 3 (1.25%) Search Processing Language
14 2 (0.83%) Rust
15 1 (0.42%) C
15 1 (0.42%) C++
15 1 (0.42%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 1 (0.42%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 111 (46.25%) Security Cleared
2 90 (37.50%) SC Cleared
3 42 (17.50%) CISSP
4 24 (10.00%) Degree
5 22 (9.17%) CEH
5 22 (9.17%) CISM
6 18 (7.50%) GIAC
7 17 (7.08%) AWS Certification
7 17 (7.08%) Computer Science Degree
8 13 (5.42%) Cisco Certification
9 12 (5.00%) CCIE
10 10 (4.17%) JNCIE
11 9 (3.75%) DV Cleared
12 8 (3.33%) GPEN
12 8 (3.33%) OSCP
13 6 (2.50%) Azure Certification
13 6 (2.50%) GCFA
13 6 (2.50%) GCIA
13 6 (2.50%) GCIH
14 5 (2.08%) CFCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 40 (16.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 39 (16.25%) NIST
3 30 (12.50%) GDPR
4 10 (4.17%) Data Quality
5 8 (3.33%) QA
6 6 (2.50%) HIPAA
7 3 (1.25%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.42%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.42%) NCSC
System Software
1 39 (16.25%) Active Directory
2 35 (14.58%) Docker
3 20 (8.33%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (5.83%) vSphere
5 9 (3.75%) VMware NSX
6 5 (2.08%) Hyper-V
7 2 (0.83%) Virtual Machines
8 1 (0.42%) NDS
8 1 (0.42%) NetIQ eDirectory
Systems Management
1 50 (20.83%) Kubernetes
2 37 (15.42%) Terraform
3 33 (13.75%) Ansible
4 19 (7.92%) Argo
4 19 (7.92%) Grafana
4 19 (7.92%) Prometheus
5 14 (5.83%) Kibana
6 11 (4.58%) Kustomize
7 8 (3.33%) Nmap
8 6 (2.50%) vCenter Server
9 3 (1.25%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
9 3 (1.25%) Nessus
9 3 (1.25%) OpenVAS
9 3 (1.25%) Podman
9 3 (1.25%) Proxmox
9 3 (1.25%) Single Sign-On
10 2 (0.83%) Cisco CUCM
10 2 (0.83%) logstash
11 1 (0.42%) QRadar
11 1 (0.42%) Rancher
Vendors
1 30 (12.50%) Microsoft
2 28 (11.67%) BeyondTrust
2 28 (11.67%) CyberArk
3 23 (9.58%) VMware
4 16 (6.67%) Red Hat
4 16 (6.67%) Tanium
5 15 (6.25%) Splunk
6 14 (5.83%) Databricks
6 14 (5.83%) Oracle
7 13 (5.42%) FireEye
8 8 (3.33%) Cisco
8 8 (3.33%) LogRhythm
9 6 (2.50%) ArcSight
9 6 (2.50%) Fortinet
9 6 (2.50%) Google
9 6 (2.50%) Juniper
9 6 (2.50%) Pure Storage
10 5 (2.08%) Confluent
10 5 (2.08%) F5
10 5 (2.08%) IBM