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 17 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 303 262 256
Rank change year-on-year -41 -6 +32
Contract jobs citing Algorithms 357 284 389
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.83% 0.97% 0.87%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.49% 2.87% 2.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 193 158 246
10th Percentile £335 £374 £403
25th Percentile £409 £450 £488
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £595 £590
Median % change year-on-year -7.49% +0.76% -8.85%
75th Percentile £738 £675 £734
90th Percentile £1,050 £829 £870
UK excluding London median daily rate £445 £548 £569
% change year-on-year -18.72% -3.74% -1.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 37 20 56
10th Percentile £48.40 £22.72 £38.01
25th Percentile £53.53 £33.09 £47.88
Median hourly rate £65.00 £48.75 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +33.33% -11.36% +83.33%
75th Percentile - £72.19 £58.75
90th Percentile - £79.63 £66.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £45.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year +44.44% -18.18% +111.54%

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 14,310 9,887 13,470
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.15% 33.67% 30.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,007 6,263 8,623
10th Percentile £293 £287 £256
25th Percentile £408 £410 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £769
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 665 361 867
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.95 £12.50
25th Percentile £18.87 £22.22 £15.50
Median hourly rate £37.50 £32.50 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +15.38% +16.07% +24.44%
75th Percentile £68.75 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £84.60 £83.20 £67.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £31.08 £26.00
% change year-on-year +34.94% +19.54% +16.83%

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 17 March 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 17 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Algorithms in the UK

Algorithms
Top 16 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 17 March 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 -38 294 £558 -8.98% 412
London -2 169 £625 -3.85% 127
UK excluding London -84 141 £445 -18.72% 353
Work from Home -18 96 £671 +27.81% 104
South West -8 34 £500 -25.09% 59
East of England -23 29 £345 -46.92% 53
South East -42 27 £568 +13.50% 92
North of England -67 23 £508 -3.33% 59
Scotland +5 16 £402 -5.35% 20
Yorkshire -40 15 £695 - 18
North West -46 7 £180 -64.71% 30
Wales -17 6 £400 -31.57% 15
Midlands -56 4 £538 +159.04% 54
West Midlands -63 4 £538 +45.27% 25
Northern Ireland -5 2 - - 12
North East -11 1 £400 -36.00% 12

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 24 (6.72%) Apache Spark
2 16 (4.48%) Apache Airflow
3 12 (3.36%) Jupyter
4 11 (3.08%) Apache
5 2 (0.56%) Confluence
6 1 (0.28%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 18 (5.04%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (2.24%) Chatbot
3 7 (1.96%) Microsoft Office
4 6 (1.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (1.12%) Simulink
6 3 (0.84%) LaTeX
7 2 (0.56%) CPLEX
Business Applications
1 4 (1.12%) Bloomberg AIM
1 4 (1.12%) Fidessa
2 3 (0.84%) ProductWriter
3 1 (0.28%) Actimize
3 1 (0.28%) SAP IBP
Cloud Services
1 84 (23.53%) AWS
2 78 (21.85%) Azure
3 32 (8.96%) GCP
4 25 (7.00%) GitHub
5 24 (6.72%) Serverless
6 23 (6.44%) Cloud Computing
6 23 (6.44%) Power Platform
7 20 (5.60%) Amazon SageMaker
8 15 (4.20%) AWS Lambda
9 14 (3.92%) Amazon ECS
10 12 (3.36%) Azure AKS
10 12 (3.36%) GitHub Copilot
10 12 (3.36%) PaaS
11 11 (3.08%) Amazon S3
11 11 (3.08%) Dagster
11 11 (3.08%) Snowflake
12 10 (2.80%) Amazon EKS
13 9 (2.52%) Azure Functions
13 9 (2.52%) Vertex AI
14 8 (2.24%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.40%) VPN
2 4 (1.12%) Ethernet
2 4 (1.12%) Internet
2 4 (1.12%) S/MIME
3 3 (0.84%) Network Security
4 2 (0.56%) 2G
4 2 (0.56%) 5G
4 2 (0.56%) BGP
4 2 (0.56%) BIG-IP
4 2 (0.56%) Ethernet VPN
4 2 (0.56%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
4 2 (0.56%) Firewall
4 2 (0.56%) IPsec
4 2 (0.56%) LTE
4 2 (0.56%) Mobile Backhaul
4 2 (0.56%) MPLS
4 2 (0.56%) OSPF
4 2 (0.56%) Reverse Proxy
4 2 (0.56%) SD-WAN
4 2 (0.56%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (5.88%) Power BI
2 20 (5.60%) Big Data
3 18 (5.04%) NoSQL
4 17 (4.76%) Tableau
5 14 (3.92%) Hadoop
5 14 (3.92%) PostgreSQL
5 14 (3.92%) Relational Database
6 10 (2.80%) KDB
6 10 (2.80%) Kdb+
7 7 (1.96%) Data Lake
7 7 (1.96%) Data Warehouse
8 5 (1.40%) MySQL
8 5 (1.40%) RDBMS
8 5 (1.40%) SQL Server
9 4 (1.12%) Amazon Athena
9 4 (1.12%) Pinecone
9 4 (1.12%) Weaviate
10 3 (0.84%) Delta Lake
11 2 (0.56%) Neo4j
11 2 (0.56%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 40 (11.20%) Git
2 14 (3.92%) MLflow
3 9 (2.52%) Jenkins
4 7 (1.96%) GitLab
5 5 (1.40%) PyCharm
6 3 (0.84%) QUnit
6 3 (0.84%) TeamCity
6 3 (0.84%) Visual Studio
7 2 (0.56%) Cypress.io
7 2 (0.56%) GoCD
7 2 (0.56%) Gradle
7 2 (0.56%) JIRA
7 2 (0.56%) JUnit
7 2 (0.56%) Maven
7 2 (0.56%) SonarQube
7 2 (0.56%) Sonatype Nexus
8 1 (0.28%) Octopus Deploy
8 1 (0.28%) REST Assured
8 1 (0.28%) SoapUI
8 1 (0.28%) webpack
General
1 97 (27.17%) Social Skills
2 60 (16.81%) Analytical Skills
3 57 (15.97%) Finance
4 34 (9.52%) Front Office
5 31 (8.68%) Banking
6 20 (5.60%) Public Sector
7 9 (2.52%) Retail
8 8 (2.24%) Aerospace
9 7 (1.96%) Electronics
9 7 (1.96%) Investment Banking
9 7 (1.96%) Marketing
10 6 (1.68%) Manufacturing
10 6 (1.68%) Telecoms
11 5 (1.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 5 (1.40%) Influencing Skills
11 5 (1.40%) Law
11 5 (1.40%) Legal
11 5 (1.40%) Presentation Skills
12 4 (1.12%) Aviation
12 4 (1.12%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 102 (28.57%) Developer
2 61 (17.09%) Senior
3 48 (13.45%) Data Scientist
4 43 (12.04%) Software Engineer
5 30 (8.40%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
6 26 (7.28%) Python Developer
7 25 (7.00%) Lead
8 23 (6.44%) Algorithm Engineer
8 23 (6.44%) Senior Developer
9 20 (5.60%) C++ Developer
9 20 (5.60%) Quantitative Developer
10 16 (4.48%) Java Developer
11 15 (4.20%) Architect
12 12 (3.36%) C++ Quantitative Developer
12 12 (3.36%) Data Engineer
12 12 (3.36%) Linux Developer
12 12 (3.36%) Low Latency C++ Developer
13 11 (3.08%) Gen AI Engineer
14 9 (2.52%) Machine Learning Engineer
14 9 (2.52%) Robotics Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 61 (17.09%) TensorFlow
2 58 (16.25%) PyTorch
3 42 (11.76%) scikit-learn
4 41 (11.48%) Pandas
5 35 (9.80%) NumPy
6 19 (5.32%) .NET
7 17 (4.76%) FIX Protocol
8 16 (4.48%) RESTful
9 15 (4.20%) Model Context Protocol
10 14 (3.92%) React
11 13 (3.64%) A2A Protocol
11 13 (3.64%) PySpark
11 13 (3.64%) Semantic Kernel
12 12 (3.36%) Kafka
12 12 (3.36%) REST
13 11 (3.08%) Matplotlib
13 11 (3.08%) Seaborn
14 9 (2.52%) FastAPI
14 9 (2.52%) Hugging Face
14 9 (2.52%) XGBoost
Miscellaneous
1 70 (19.61%) Data Structures
2 29 (8.12%) Equities
3 24 (6.72%) Cloud Native
3 24 (6.72%) Distributed Systems
4 22 (6.16%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 19 (5.32%) Derivative
6 16 (4.48%) Fixed Income
7 14 (3.92%) Robotics
8 11 (3.08%) Equity Derivative
9 10 (2.80%) Product Ownership
10 9 (2.52%) PKI
11 8 (2.24%) Distributed Computing
12 7 (1.96%) Clustering
12 7 (1.96%) Data Protection Act
13 6 (1.68%) Legacy Systems
13 6 (1.68%) Mobile App
14 5 (1.40%) FPGA
14 5 (1.40%) Greenfield Project
14 5 (1.40%) Onboarding
15 4 (1.12%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 24 (6.72%) Linux
2 10 (2.80%) Unix
3 4 (1.12%) Android
4 3 (0.84%) Apple iOS
4 3 (0.84%) Windows
5 1 (0.28%) Embedded Linux
5 1 (0.28%) Robot Operating System
5 1 (0.28%) Solaris
5 1 (0.28%) VMS
5 1 (0.28%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 174 (48.74%) Machine Learning
2 115 (32.21%) AI
3 100 (28.01%) Data Science
4 96 (26.89%) Computer Science
5 90 (25.21%) Problem-Solving
6 83 (23.25%) CI/CD
7 75 (21.01%) Software Engineering
8 68 (19.05%) Agile
9 66 (18.49%) Analytics
10 62 (17.37%) Data Pipeline
10 62 (17.37%) LLM
11 56 (15.69%) Mathematics
12 53 (14.85%) Data Engineering
13 52 (14.57%) Statistics
14 44 (12.32%) Data Analysis
15 43 (12.04%) Containerisation
15 43 (12.04%) Test Automation
15 43 (12.04%) Visualisation
16 41 (11.48%) Deep Learning
17 40 (11.20%) Natural Language Processing
Programming Languages
1 201 (56.30%) Python
2 71 (19.89%) SQL
3 51 (14.29%) Java
4 35 (9.80%) C++
5 26 (7.28%) MATLAB
6 22 (6.16%) C#
7 18 (5.04%) R
8 17 (4.76%) TypeScript
9 16 (4.48%) Ada
10 12 (3.36%) JavaScript
10 12 (3.36%) PowerShell
11 10 (2.80%) Bash
11 10 (2.80%) Kotlin
12 9 (2.52%) Go
13 5 (1.40%) C
14 4 (1.12%) SystemVerilog
14 4 (1.12%) Tcl
15 3 (0.84%) SPARQL
16 2 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 2 (0.56%) Scala
Qualifications
1 91 (25.49%) Degree
2 46 (12.89%) Security Cleared
3 28 (7.84%) Master's Degree
4 27 (7.56%) Computer Science Degree
5 25 (7.00%) SC Cleared
6 15 (4.20%) PhD
7 14 (3.92%) Microsoft Certified Professional
8 13 (3.64%) Numerate Degree
9 7 (1.96%) DBS Check
10 6 (1.68%) BPSS Clearance
10 6 (1.68%) DV Cleared
11 4 (1.12%) CISM
11 4 (1.12%) CISSP
11 4 (1.12%) GIAC
11 4 (1.12%) HNC
11 4 (1.12%) HND
12 3 (0.84%) Cisco Certification
13 2 (0.56%) CCIE
13 2 (0.56%) CESG Certified Professional
13 2 (0.56%) CHECK Team Leader
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (4.20%) NIST
1 15 (4.20%) QA
2 12 (3.36%) EU AI Act
3 9 (2.52%) Data Quality
4 7 (1.96%) Accessibility
5 4 (1.12%) Actionable Recommendations
5 4 (1.12%) DO-254
5 4 (1.12%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 3 (0.84%) SLA
7 2 (0.56%) JSP 440
7 2 (0.56%) NCSC
7 2 (0.56%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.56%) RMADS
8 1 (0.28%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.28%) GDPR
System Software
1 45 (12.61%) Docker
2 8 (2.24%) Firmware
3 1 (0.28%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.28%) Oracle RAC
3 1 (0.28%) Squid
Systems Management
1 28 (7.84%) Kubernetes
2 21 (5.88%) Terraform
3 8 (2.24%) Grafana
4 3 (0.84%) Ansible
4 3 (0.84%) Single Sign-On
5 2 (0.56%) Kibana
5 2 (0.56%) Kubeflow
5 2 (0.56%) logstash
5 2 (0.56%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.56%) rkt
6 1 (0.28%) Data Guard
6 1 (0.28%) HP Fortify
6 1 (0.28%) ITRS Geneos
6 1 (0.28%) Oracle ZFS
Vendors
1 32 (8.96%) Microsoft
2 23 (6.44%) Databricks
3 14 (3.92%) Foundry
4 11 (3.08%) Google
5 10 (2.80%) IBM
6 6 (1.68%) MathWorks
6 6 (1.68%) Thales
7 5 (1.40%) Solace
8 4 (1.12%) Actel
8 4 (1.12%) Altera
8 4 (1.12%) AppDynamics
8 4 (1.12%) Bloomberg
8 4 (1.12%) Charles River
8 4 (1.12%) Intel
8 4 (1.12%) ION Trading
8 4 (1.12%) Microsemi
8 4 (1.12%) OpenAI
8 4 (1.12%) Oracle
8 4 (1.12%) Splunk
8 4 (1.12%) Xilinx