Algorithms Contract Job Trends

Algorithms
UK

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Algorithms in contract job vacancies. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Algorithms over the 6 months leading up to 3 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 314 256 272
Rank change year-on-year -58 +16 +4
Contract jobs citing Algorithms 346 298 366
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.73% 1.02% 0.84%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.27% 2.99% 2.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 184 173 227
10th Percentile £198 £409 £400
25th Percentile £400 £463 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +4.35% -7.07%
75th Percentile £725 £700 £731
90th Percentile £888 £848 £875
UK excluding London median daily rate £447 £550 £500
% change year-on-year -18.73% +10.00% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 51 22 55
10th Percentile £53.53 £23.07 £33.56
25th Percentile £61.88 £34.97 £47.75
Median hourly rate £65.00 £53.75 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +20.93% -2.27% +150.00%
75th Percentile £68.75 £74.69 £58.75
90th Percentile £79.00 £78.33 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year +18.18% - +150.00%

All Generic Skills
UK

Algorithms falls under the General and Transferable Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring generic IT skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 15,237 9,961 13,216
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.15% 34.01% 30.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,496 6,365 8,485
10th Percentile £306 £300 £263
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £656
90th Percentile £738 £775 £795
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £492 £500
% change year-on-year -3.46% -1.60% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 724 398 911
10th Percentile £16.01 £16.95 £12.25
25th Percentile £20.67 £21.06 £15.17
Median hourly rate £45.46 £32.50 £30.16
Median % change year-on-year +39.88% +7.76% +34.13%
75th Percentile £70.00 £63.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £86.00 £82.71 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £31.42 £28.38
% change year-on-year +51.30% +10.73% +28.98%

Algorithms
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Algorithms relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Algorithms job vacancy trend in the UK

Algorithms
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Algorithms.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Algorithms

Algorithms
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Algorithms over the 6 months to 3 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Algorithms in the UK

Algorithms
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Algorithms.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Algorithms

Algorithms
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Algorithms over the 6 months to 3 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Algorithms in the UK

Algorithms
Top 15 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Algorithms within the UK over the 6 months to 3 May 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
England -55 292 £550 -12.00% 302
London -45 154 £625 -3.85% 115
UK excluding London -77 150 £447 -18.73% 217
Work from Home -17 97 £625 +19.05% 110
South West +8 47 £500 -25.09% 34
South East -45 37 £550 +10.00% 84
East of England -42 23 £345 -46.92% 39
North of England -66 17 £358 -34.97% 30
Scotland -15 13 £569 +33.88% 13
Yorkshire -39 12 £408 - 9
West Midlands -54 6 £463 - 6
Midlands -67 6 £463 +560.71% 20
Wales -18 5 £475 -17.39% 2
North West -52 5 £355 -35.45% 12
Northern Ireland -1 2 - - 2

Algorithms
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 19 (5.49%) Apache Airflow
1 19 (5.49%) Apache Spark
2 9 (2.60%) Apache
3 6 (1.73%) Jupyter
4 1 (0.29%) Confluence
4 1 (0.29%) Ethereum
4 1 (0.29%) Palantir Foundry
4 1 (0.29%) Solana
Applications
1 12 (3.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.45%) CPLEX
2 5 (1.45%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (1.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (1.16%) Simulink
4 3 (0.87%) Chatbot
4 3 (0.87%) LaTeX
Business Applications
1 10 (2.89%) SAP IBP
2 5 (1.45%) ProductWriter
3 4 (1.16%) Bloomberg AIM
3 4 (1.16%) Fidessa
4 1 (0.29%) SAP APO
Cloud Services
1 69 (19.94%) AWS
2 48 (13.87%) Azure
3 28 (8.09%) GCP
4 16 (4.62%) Amazon ECS
4 16 (4.62%) Power Platform
5 13 (3.76%) Amazon SageMaker
5 13 (3.76%) AWS Lambda
5 13 (3.76%) Dagster
5 13 (3.76%) Serverless
6 11 (3.18%) Amazon EKS
6 11 (3.18%) Cloud Computing
7 9 (2.60%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 9 (2.60%) Amazon S3
7 9 (2.60%) GitHub
8 7 (2.02%) GitHub Actions
8 7 (2.02%) Vertex AI
9 6 (1.73%) Snowflake
10 4 (1.16%) AWS CloudFormation
10 4 (1.16%) Azure Machine Learning
10 4 (1.16%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 12 (3.47%) HTTP
2 5 (1.45%) BIG-IP
2 5 (1.45%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
2 5 (1.45%) Firewall
2 5 (1.45%) Network Security
2 5 (1.45%) SSL
3 4 (1.16%) Ethernet
3 4 (1.16%) S/MIME
3 4 (1.16%) VPN
4 3 (0.87%) DNS
4 3 (0.87%) HTTPS
4 3 (0.87%) Multicast
4 3 (0.87%) TCP/IP
5 2 (0.58%) Ethernet VPN
5 2 (0.58%) IPsec
5 2 (0.58%) MPLS
5 2 (0.58%) OSPF
5 2 (0.58%) Reverse Proxy
5 2 (0.58%) SD-WAN
5 2 (0.58%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (4.91%) Big Data
2 16 (4.62%) Power BI
3 13 (3.76%) Hadoop
3 13 (3.76%) Tableau
4 12 (3.47%) NoSQL
5 10 (2.89%) PostgreSQL
6 8 (2.31%) Relational Database
7 7 (2.02%) KDB
7 7 (2.02%) SQL Server
8 6 (1.73%) Data Lake
9 5 (1.45%) MongoDB
10 4 (1.16%) Amazon Athena
10 4 (1.16%) Data Warehouse
10 4 (1.16%) Pinecone
10 4 (1.16%) Weaviate
11 3 (0.87%) Delta Lake
11 3 (0.87%) Kdb+
12 2 (0.58%) Power Query
12 2 (0.58%) RDBMS
12 2 (0.58%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 30 (8.67%) Git
2 13 (3.76%) MLflow
3 12 (3.47%) GitLab
4 3 (0.87%) Visual Studio
5 2 (0.58%) Gradle
5 2 (0.58%) Jenkins
5 2 (0.58%) JUnit
5 2 (0.58%) Maven
5 2 (0.58%) TeamCity
6 1 (0.29%) Ant
6 1 (0.29%) Cypress.io
6 1 (0.29%) Hardhat
6 1 (0.29%) JIRA
6 1 (0.29%) Octopus Deploy
6 1 (0.29%) Postman
6 1 (0.29%) PyCharm
6 1 (0.29%) REST Assured
6 1 (0.29%) Selenium
6 1 (0.29%) SoapUI
6 1 (0.29%) webpack
General
1 70 (20.23%) Social Skills
2 57 (16.47%) Analytical Skills
3 47 (13.58%) Finance
4 30 (8.67%) Banking
5 27 (7.80%) Front Office
6 17 (4.91%) Public Sector
7 13 (3.76%) Investment Banking
8 9 (2.60%) Aerospace
9 6 (1.73%) Aviation
9 6 (1.73%) Electronics
9 6 (1.73%) Telecoms
10 5 (1.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 5 (1.45%) Law
10 5 (1.45%) Retail
11 4 (1.16%) Documentation Skills
11 4 (1.16%) Games
11 4 (1.16%) Police
11 4 (1.16%) Presentation Skills
12 3 (0.87%) Legal
12 3 (0.87%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 87 (25.14%) Developer
2 60 (17.34%) Software Engineer
3 52 (15.03%) Senior
4 40 (11.56%) Data Scientist
5 31 (8.96%) Algorithm Engineer
6 29 (8.38%) Python Developer
7 20 (5.78%) Java Developer
8 19 (5.49%) Architect
9 18 (5.20%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
10 17 (4.91%) C++ Developer
11 15 (4.34%) Quantitative Developer
12 14 (4.05%) Lead
13 13 (3.76%) Senior Developer
14 12 (3.47%) C++ Software Engineer
14 12 (3.47%) Consultant
15 9 (2.60%) Robotics Engineer
15 9 (2.60%) SAP Consultant
15 9 (2.60%) Senior Software Engineer
16 8 (2.31%) Data Engineer
16 8 (2.31%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (11.27%) PyTorch
2 34 (9.83%) TensorFlow
3 31 (8.96%) Pandas
3 31 (8.96%) scikit-learn
4 27 (7.80%) NumPy
5 23 (6.65%) FIX Protocol
6 14 (4.05%) Kafka
7 13 (3.76%) REST
8 12 (3.47%) React
9 11 (3.18%) Hugging Face
9 11 (3.18%) PySpark
9 11 (3.18%) Seaborn
10 10 (2.89%) FastAPI
10 10 (2.89%) Spring
10 10 (2.89%) Spring Boot
11 9 (2.60%) Matplotlib
12 8 (2.31%) LangChain
13 7 (2.02%) .NET
14 6 (1.73%) Middleware
14 6 (1.73%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 61 (17.63%) Data Structures
2 30 (8.67%) Distributed Systems
3 25 (7.23%) Equities
4 20 (5.78%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 18 (5.20%) Robotics
6 17 (4.91%) Derivative
7 10 (2.89%) Cloud Native
7 10 (2.89%) PKI
7 10 (2.89%) Product Ownership
8 8 (2.31%) Data Protection Act
8 8 (2.31%) Fixed Income
9 7 (2.02%) AI Agents
9 7 (2.02%) Equity Derivative
10 6 (1.73%) Legacy Systems
11 5 (1.45%) FPGA
12 4 (1.16%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 4 (1.16%) Hybrid Cloud
12 4 (1.16%) IoT
12 4 (1.16%) Smartcard
12 4 (1.16%) Verilog
Operating Systems
1 14 (4.05%) Linux
2 6 (1.73%) Unix
3 1 (0.29%) Android
3 1 (0.29%) Embedded Linux
3 1 (0.29%) Robot Operating System
3 1 (0.29%) Solaris
3 1 (0.29%) VMS
3 1 (0.29%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 139 (40.17%) Machine Learning
2 93 (26.88%) AI
3 87 (25.14%) Software Engineering
4 76 (21.97%) CI/CD
5 75 (21.68%) Computer Science
6 69 (19.94%) Data Science
7 61 (17.63%) Analytics
8 59 (17.05%) Problem-Solving
9 46 (13.29%) Mathematics
10 41 (11.85%) Agile
10 41 (11.85%) Data Pipeline
11 40 (11.56%) Containerisation
12 37 (10.69%) Data Analysis
12 37 (10.69%) LLM
12 37 (10.69%) Low Latency
13 36 (10.40%) Multithreading
14 35 (10.12%) Statistics
15 33 (9.54%) Visualisation
16 31 (8.96%) Data Engineering
17 28 (8.09%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 162 (46.82%) Python
2 60 (17.34%) Java
2 60 (17.34%) SQL
3 40 (11.56%) C++
4 35 (10.12%) C#
5 31 (8.96%) MATLAB
6 21 (6.07%) Ada
7 17 (4.91%) TypeScript
8 16 (4.62%) R
9 11 (3.18%) Kotlin
10 9 (2.60%) C
10 9 (2.60%) PowerShell
11 7 (2.02%) JavaScript
11 7 (2.02%) Rust
12 6 (1.73%) Go
13 4 (1.16%) Bash
13 4 (1.16%) SystemVerilog
13 4 (1.16%) Tcl
14 2 (0.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 1 (0.29%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 65 (18.79%) Degree
2 44 (12.72%) Security Cleared
3 23 (6.65%) SC Cleared
4 18 (5.20%) Master's Degree
5 17 (4.91%) Computer Science Degree
6 15 (4.34%) BPSS Clearance
7 10 (2.89%) PhD
8 9 (2.60%) Numerate Degree
9 6 (1.73%) DV Cleared
10 5 (1.45%) CISSP
10 5 (1.45%) DBS Check
11 4 (1.16%) CISM
11 4 (1.16%) GIAC
11 4 (1.16%) HNC
11 4 (1.16%) HND
12 3 (0.87%) Cisco Certification
13 2 (0.58%) CCDP
13 2 (0.58%) CCIE
13 2 (0.58%) CESG Certified Professional
13 2 (0.58%) CHECK Team Leader
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (3.47%) QA
2 9 (2.60%) Accessibility
2 9 (2.60%) Data Quality
3 5 (1.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 5 (1.45%) NIST
4 4 (1.16%) Actionable Recommendations
4 4 (1.16%) DO-254
5 3 (0.87%) Disclosure Scotland
5 3 (0.87%) PCI DSS
5 3 (0.87%) SLA
6 2 (0.58%) JSP 440
6 2 (0.58%) NCSC
6 2 (0.58%) RMADS
7 1 (0.29%) GDPR
System Software
1 37 (10.69%) Docker
2 8 (2.31%) Firmware
3 1 (0.29%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
3 1 (0.29%) Squid
Systems Management
1 21 (6.07%) Kubernetes
2 10 (2.89%) Grafana
3 8 (2.31%) Terraform
4 3 (0.87%) Ansible
4 3 (0.87%) Kubeflow
4 3 (0.87%) Single Sign-On
5 2 (0.58%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.29%) Data Guard
6 1 (0.29%) HP Fortify
6 1 (0.29%) Istio
6 1 (0.29%) Kibana
6 1 (0.29%) logstash
6 1 (0.29%) Oracle ZFS
Vendors
1 21 (6.07%) Databricks
2 15 (4.34%) Microsoft
3 14 (4.05%) IBM
4 10 (2.89%) Google
4 10 (2.89%) MathWorks
4 10 (2.89%) SAP
5 7 (2.02%) Solace
6 6 (1.73%) Thales
7 5 (1.45%) F5
7 5 (1.45%) IFS
7 5 (1.45%) Oracle
8 4 (1.16%) Actel
8 4 (1.16%) Altera
8 4 (1.16%) AppDynamics
8 4 (1.16%) Bloomberg
8 4 (1.16%) Charles River
8 4 (1.16%) Intel
8 4 (1.16%) ION Trading
8 4 (1.16%) Splunk
8 4 (1.16%) Xilinx