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 8 October 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 424 257 264
Rank change year-on-year -167 +7 +47
Contract jobs citing Algorithms 279 346 338
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.51% 1.05% 0.89%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.48% 2.90% 2.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 165 224 218
10th Percentile £300 £379 £375
25th Percentile £450 £442 £459
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £650 £550 £598
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -7.95% -5.16%
75th Percentile £738 £701 £725
90th Percentile £833 £850 £863
UK excluding London median daily rate £369 £514 £495
% change year-on-year -28.18% +3.84% -10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 27 25 15
10th Percentile £59.94 £22.37 £25.60
25th Percentile £65.00 £31.25 £37.00
Median hourly rate £70.00 £67.00 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.48% +34.00% +42.86%
75th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £59.38
90th Percentile £88.75 £82.25 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £66.25 £67.00 £48.75
% change year-on-year -1.12% +37.44% +39.29%

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 18,838 11,921 11,534
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.54% 36.06% 30.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,246 7,303 6,908
10th Percentile £322 £297 £275
25th Percentile £425 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £518 £526
Median % change year-on-year +1.32% -1.49% -4.36%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £668
90th Percentile £750 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,308 618 413
10th Percentile £13.93 £14.75 £15.62
25th Percentile £17.50 £18.82 £22.50
Median hourly rate £36.00 £27.54 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +30.74% -42.03% +6.15%
75th Percentile £67.50 £52.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.56 £72.50 £75.16
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.51 £27.54 £55.75
% change year-on-year +28.94% -50.60% +9.94%

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 8 October 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 8 October 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Algorithms in the UK

Algorithms
Top 14 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 8 October 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 -115 259 £650 +18.18% 1,565
London -78 173 £696 +21.09% 954
UK excluding London -156 91 £369 -28.18% 653
Work from Home -74 77 £650 +19.68% 557
South East -73 23 £495 -1.00% 168
East of England -53 21 £250 -50.50% 162
South West -24 19 - - 59
North of England -63 16 £374 -37.49% 91
North West -34 11 £398 -0.19% 58
Scotland -32 8 £443 -1.50% 75
Yorkshire -46 5 £215 -68.11% 23
Midlands -63 5 £180 -65.35% 72
East Midlands -10 4 £180 -63.41% 25
West Midlands -60 1 - - 47

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 17 (6.09%) Apache Spark
2 10 (3.58%) Apache
3 8 (2.87%) Confluence
4 6 (2.15%) Apache Airflow
5 5 (1.79%) CMS
6 4 (1.43%) Jupyter
7 1 (0.36%) IIS
7 1 (0.36%) SAS
Applications
1 8 (2.87%) Simulink
2 6 (2.15%) CPLEX
3 3 (1.08%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.72%) Microsoft Excel
5 1 (0.36%) Adobe Premiere
5 1 (0.36%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 4 (1.43%) ProductWriter
1 4 (1.43%) SAP IBP
2 2 (0.72%) IBM Operational Decision Manager
3 1 (0.36%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 45 (16.13%) Azure
1 45 (16.13%) GCP
2 42 (15.05%) AWS
3 18 (6.45%) GitHub
4 9 (3.23%) Cloud Computing
5 8 (2.87%) Amazon S3
5 8 (2.87%) OpenShift
6 7 (2.51%) AWS Lambda
6 7 (2.51%) Serverless
7 6 (2.15%) Azure DevOps
8 5 (1.79%) Amazon EKS
8 5 (1.79%) Google Gemini
9 4 (1.43%) Amazon MSK
9 4 (1.43%) Anthropic Claude
9 4 (1.43%) AWS Direct Connect
9 4 (1.43%) Cloudflare
9 4 (1.43%) GitHub Actions
9 4 (1.43%) Kong
9 4 (1.43%) Power Platform
9 4 (1.43%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 12 (4.30%) HTTP
2 5 (1.79%) Firewall
3 4 (1.43%) DNS
3 4 (1.43%) H.323
3 4 (1.43%) WebEx
4 3 (1.08%) Multicast
5 2 (0.72%) VPN
5 2 (0.72%) X.509
6 1 (0.36%) Broadband
6 1 (0.36%) DMZ
6 1 (0.36%) Ethernet
6 1 (0.36%) HTTPS
6 1 (0.36%) NetScaler
6 1 (0.36%) Radio Access Network
6 1 (0.36%) Reverse Proxy
6 1 (0.36%) S/MIME
6 1 (0.36%) SAN
6 1 (0.36%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (7.89%) NoSQL
2 17 (6.09%) MongoDB
2 17 (6.09%) PostgreSQL
3 13 (4.66%) Relational Database
4 12 (4.30%) SQL Server
5 11 (3.94%) Big Data
6 8 (2.87%) Hadoop
6 8 (2.87%) Metadata
7 5 (1.79%) BigQuery
7 5 (1.79%) RDBMS
8 4 (1.43%) Data Mining
8 4 (1.43%) DuckDB
8 4 (1.43%) KDB
8 4 (1.43%) Parquet
8 4 (1.43%) Power BI
9 3 (1.08%) Delta Lake
9 3 (1.08%) Kdb+
9 3 (1.08%) MySQL
9 3 (1.08%) Neo4j
10 2 (0.72%) Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 37 (13.26%) Git
2 19 (6.81%) GitLab
3 13 (4.66%) Jenkins
4 7 (2.51%) Claude Code
5 4 (1.43%) Bitbucket
5 4 (1.43%) JIRA
6 2 (0.72%) Gradle
6 2 (0.72%) Maven
6 2 (0.72%) MLflow
6 2 (0.72%) QUnit
7 1 (0.36%) Cucumber
7 1 (0.36%) JMeter
7 1 (0.36%) Postman
7 1 (0.36%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.36%) TeamCity
7 1 (0.36%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 65 (23.30%) Finance
2 59 (21.15%) Social Skills
3 49 (17.56%) Analytical Skills
4 36 (12.90%) Banking
5 15 (5.38%) Public Sector
6 14 (5.02%) Investment Banking
7 11 (3.94%) Aerospace
7 11 (3.94%) Front Office
8 9 (3.23%) Telecoms
9 7 (2.51%) Manufacturing
10 6 (2.15%) Automotive
11 5 (1.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 4 (1.43%) Financial Institution
12 4 (1.43%) Law
13 3 (1.08%) Documentation Skills
13 3 (1.08%) Electronics
13 3 (1.08%) Marketing
13 3 (1.08%) Military
13 3 (1.08%) Presentation Skills
13 3 (1.08%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 55 (19.71%) Developer
2 50 (17.92%) Senior
3 30 (10.75%) Data Scientist
4 21 (7.53%) Software Engineer
5 20 (7.17%) Data Engineer
6 16 (5.73%) Machine Learning Engineer
7 15 (5.38%) Architect
8 14 (5.02%) Lead
9 13 (4.66%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
10 12 (4.30%) C++ Software Engineer
10 12 (4.30%) Java Developer
10 12 (4.30%) Senior Data Engineer
10 12 (4.30%) Senior Developer
11 11 (3.94%) Python Developer
12 9 (3.23%) Engineering Manager
12 9 (3.23%) Software Engineering Manager
12 9 (3.23%) Software Manager
12 9 (3.23%) Systems Engineer
13 8 (2.87%) Algorithm Engineer
13 8 (2.87%) Quantitative Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (8.96%) Kafka
2 22 (7.89%) React
3 18 (6.45%) Pandas
4 17 (6.09%) JSON
5 16 (5.73%) PySpark
6 15 (5.38%) PyTorch
7 14 (5.02%) NumPy
8 12 (4.30%) RESTful
8 12 (4.30%) TensorFlow
9 11 (3.94%) AngularJS
9 11 (3.94%) WebSockets
9 11 (3.94%) XGBoost
10 10 (3.58%) FIX Protocol
10 10 (3.58%) LangChain
11 9 (3.23%) Redux
11 9 (3.23%) REST
11 9 (3.23%) scikit-learn
12 8 (2.87%) FastAPI
12 8 (2.87%) Terraform
12 8 (2.87%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 78 (27.96%) Data Structures
2 44 (15.77%) Distributed Systems
3 17 (6.09%) Cloud Native
4 16 (5.73%) Derivative
5 15 (5.38%) AI Agents
6 13 (4.66%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 10 (3.58%) Product Ownership
8 9 (3.23%) Robotics
9 8 (2.87%) Onboarding
10 6 (2.15%) Credit Risk
10 6 (2.15%) Enterprise Software
10 6 (2.15%) Fixed Income
10 6 (2.15%) IoT
11 4 (1.43%) Clustering
11 4 (1.43%) Distributed Architecture
11 4 (1.43%) Embedded Systems
11 4 (1.43%) Exotic Derivative
11 4 (1.43%) OTC Derivatives
11 4 (1.43%) Reference Data
11 4 (1.43%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 10 (3.58%) Linux
2 6 (2.15%) Unix
3 3 (1.08%) Windows
4 2 (0.72%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.36%) Android
5 1 (0.36%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 105 (37.63%) Machine Learning
2 101 (36.20%) AI
3 69 (24.73%) Software Engineering
4 65 (23.30%) Computer Science
5 64 (22.94%) CI/CD
6 61 (21.86%) Data Science
6 61 (21.86%) Problem-Solving
7 49 (17.56%) Data Pipeline
8 48 (17.20%) Analytics
9 43 (15.41%) Validation
10 39 (13.98%) Agile
11 38 (13.62%) Mathematics
12 32 (11.47%) Low Latency
13 30 (10.75%) Observability
14 29 (10.39%) DevOps
15 27 (9.68%) Continuous Improvement
16 26 (9.32%) Performance Optimisation
17 25 (8.96%) Containerisation
17 25 (8.96%) LLM
18 23 (8.24%) Deep Learning
Programming Languages
1 123 (44.09%) Python
2 72 (25.81%) Java
3 66 (23.66%) SQL
4 41 (14.70%) C++
5 31 (11.11%) JavaScript
6 29 (10.39%) C#
7 21 (7.53%) TypeScript
8 15 (5.38%) PowerShell
9 13 (4.66%) Rust
10 12 (4.30%) MATLAB
11 8 (2.87%) R
12 7 (2.51%) C
13 6 (2.15%) Shell Script
14 5 (1.79%) Scala
15 3 (1.08%) Embedded C++
15 3 (1.08%) Go
15 3 (1.08%) SPARQL
16 2 (0.72%) Kotlin
17 1 (0.36%) SystemVerilog
17 1 (0.36%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 64 (22.94%) Degree
2 44 (15.77%) Security Cleared
3 31 (11.11%) SC Cleared
4 21 (7.53%) Computer Science Degree
5 20 (7.17%) Master's Degree
6 14 (5.02%) PhD
7 10 (3.58%) BPSS Clearance
8 9 (3.23%) DBS Check
9 6 (2.15%) DV Cleared
10 4 (1.43%) CCNP
10 4 (1.43%) CCNP Voice
10 4 (1.43%) Cisco Certification
11 3 (1.08%) CISM
11 3 (1.08%) CISSP
12 2 (0.72%) Numerate Degree
13 1 (0.36%) AWS Certification
13 1 (0.36%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 1 (0.36%) Azure Certification
13 1 (0.36%) HNC
13 1 (0.36%) HND
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (8.96%) Data Quality
2 6 (2.15%) NIST
3 5 (1.79%) Accessibility
3 5 (1.79%) Basel III
3 5 (1.79%) QA
4 4 (1.43%) GDPR
5 3 (1.08%) Automotive SPICE
5 3 (1.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.72%) HIPAA
6 2 (0.72%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
6 2 (0.72%) MISRA
6 2 (0.72%) PCI DSS
6 2 (0.72%) SOC 2
7 1 (0.36%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.36%) Disclosure Scotland
7 1 (0.36%) DO-254
7 1 (0.36%) JSP 440
7 1 (0.36%) NCSC
System Software
1 27 (9.68%) Docker
2 4 (1.43%) VMware Infrastructure
3 3 (1.08%) Active Directory
4 2 (0.72%) Apache ZooKeeper
5 1 (0.36%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 31 (11.11%) Kubernetes
2 13 (4.66%) Ansible
3 4 (1.43%) Argo
3 4 (1.43%) Cisco CUCM
3 4 (1.43%) Kubeflow
4 3 (1.08%) Functional Safety
5 2 (0.72%) Grafana
5 2 (0.72%) Istio
5 2 (0.72%) Podman
6 1 (0.36%) Kibana
6 1 (0.36%) logstash
6 1 (0.36%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 18 (6.45%) Microsoft
2 13 (4.66%) Databricks
3 8 (2.87%) Google
4 7 (2.51%) OpenAI
5 5 (1.79%) Dynatrace
5 5 (1.79%) SAP
5 5 (1.79%) Solace
5 5 (1.79%) Splunk
6 4 (1.43%) Cisco
6 4 (1.43%) ForgeRock
6 4 (1.43%) IFS
6 4 (1.43%) VMware
7 3 (1.08%) IBM
7 3 (1.08%) Oracle
7 3 (1.08%) Salesforce
8 2 (0.72%) Bloomberg
8 2 (0.72%) Duck Creek
8 2 (0.72%) FactSet
8 2 (0.72%) Guidewire
8 2 (0.72%) Reuters