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 1 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 305 262 273
Rank change year-on-year -43 +11 +11
Contract jobs citing Algorithms 361 285 371
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.81% 0.98% 0.84%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.46% 2.90% 2.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 199 162 225
10th Percentile £335 £400 £413
25th Percentile £445 £461 £484
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £590
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +1.69% -9.23%
75th Percentile £738 £676 £738
90th Percentile £990 £836 £898
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -11.36% - -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 40 20 58
10th Percentile £50.00 £22.72 £34.54
25th Percentile £53.53 £33.09 £47.63
Median hourly rate £65.00 £48.75 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +33.33% -11.36% +120.00%
75th Percentile - £74.06 £58.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £79.63 £65.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £45.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year +44.44% -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 14,648 9,824 13,414
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.79% 33.83% 30.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,210 6,291 8,593
10th Percentile £300 £300 £259
25th Percentile £409 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £773 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £497 £500
% change year-on-year -4.43% -0.60% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 684 378 890
10th Percentile £15.76 £16.95 £12.27
25th Percentile £19.34 £22.50 £15.39
Median hourly rate £43.60 £32.50 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +34.16% +18.18% +22.30%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £85.40 £83.20 £67.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.46 £32.13 £25.75
% change year-on-year +41.49% +24.78% +17.05%

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 1 April 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 1 April 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 1 April 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 -40 300 £550 -12.00% 407
London -18 169 £625 -3.85% 126
UK excluding London -81 141 £488 -11.36% 335
Work from Home -24 103 £650 +19.27% 115
South West -3 38 £500 -25.09% 56
South East -46 32 £550 +10.00% 101
East of England -26 25 £345 -46.92% 48
North of England -71 22 £504 -8.41% 56
Yorkshire -42 13 £695 - 15
Scotland -2 12 £622 +46.35% 18
North West -54 9 £200 -63.64% 28
Wales -17 5 £475 -18.73% 8
West Midlands -54 5 £525 - 21
Midlands -69 5 £525 +650.00% 48
Northern Ireland -1 2 - - 10

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 (5.26%) Apache Spark
2 17 (4.71%) Apache Airflow
3 11 (3.05%) Jupyter
4 9 (2.49%) Apache
5 2 (0.55%) Confluence
6 1 (0.28%) Ethereum
6 1 (0.28%) Palantir Foundry
6 1 (0.28%) Solana
Applications
1 16 (4.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (1.94%) Chatbot
3 5 (1.39%) Microsoft Office
4 4 (1.11%) CPLEX
4 4 (1.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (1.11%) Simulink
5 3 (0.83%) LaTeX
Business Applications
1 6 (1.66%) SAP IBP
2 4 (1.11%) Bloomberg AIM
2 4 (1.11%) Fidessa
3 3 (0.83%) ProductWriter
4 1 (0.28%) Actimize
4 1 (0.28%) SAP APO
Cloud Services
1 78 (21.61%) AWS
2 70 (19.39%) Azure
3 34 (9.42%) GCP
4 23 (6.37%) Cloud Computing
5 21 (5.82%) Power Platform
6 17 (4.71%) GitHub
7 15 (4.16%) Amazon SageMaker
8 14 (3.88%) Amazon ECS
9 13 (3.60%) Serverless
10 11 (3.05%) AWS Lambda
10 11 (3.05%) Dagster
11 10 (2.77%) Snowflake
12 9 (2.49%) Amazon EKS
12 9 (2.49%) Vertex AI
13 8 (2.22%) Azure Machine Learning
14 7 (1.94%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 7 (1.94%) Amazon S3
14 7 (1.94%) GitHub Actions
15 5 (1.39%) PaaS
16 4 (1.11%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 6 (1.66%) HTTP
1 6 (1.66%) Network Security
2 5 (1.39%) BIG-IP
2 5 (1.39%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
2 5 (1.39%) Firewall
2 5 (1.39%) SSL
2 5 (1.39%) VPN
3 4 (1.11%) Ethernet
3 4 (1.11%) Internet
3 4 (1.11%) S/MIME
4 3 (0.83%) DNS
4 3 (0.83%) HTTPS
4 3 (0.83%) Multicast
4 3 (0.83%) TCP/IP
5 2 (0.55%) 5G
5 2 (0.55%) Ethernet VPN
5 2 (0.55%) LTE
5 2 (0.55%) Reverse Proxy
5 2 (0.55%) SD-WAN
5 2 (0.55%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (5.26%) Power BI
2 18 (4.99%) Big Data
2 18 (4.99%) NoSQL
3 15 (4.16%) Tableau
4 14 (3.88%) PostgreSQL
4 14 (3.88%) Relational Database
5 12 (3.32%) Hadoop
6 11 (3.05%) KDB
7 7 (1.94%) Kdb+
8 6 (1.66%) RDBMS
9 5 (1.39%) MySQL
9 5 (1.39%) SQL Server
10 4 (1.11%) Amazon Athena
10 4 (1.11%) Data Lake
10 4 (1.11%) Data Warehouse
10 4 (1.11%) MongoDB
10 4 (1.11%) Pinecone
10 4 (1.11%) Weaviate
11 3 (0.83%) Delta Lake
12 2 (0.55%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 37 (10.25%) Git
2 11 (3.05%) MLflow
3 7 (1.94%) GitLab
4 6 (1.66%) Jenkins
5 5 (1.39%) PyCharm
6 3 (0.83%) Visual Studio
7 2 (0.55%) Cypress.io
7 2 (0.55%) Gradle
7 2 (0.55%) Hardhat
7 2 (0.55%) JIRA
7 2 (0.55%) JUnit
7 2 (0.55%) Maven
8 1 (0.28%) Octopus Deploy
8 1 (0.28%) Oracle Forms
8 1 (0.28%) Postman
8 1 (0.28%) REST Assured
8 1 (0.28%) Selenium
8 1 (0.28%) SoapUI
8 1 (0.28%) TeamCity
8 1 (0.28%) webpack
General
1 96 (26.59%) Social Skills
2 64 (17.73%) Analytical Skills
3 53 (14.68%) Finance
4 33 (9.14%) Front Office
5 31 (8.59%) Banking
6 21 (5.82%) Public Sector
7 9 (2.49%) Aerospace
7 9 (2.49%) Investment Banking
7 9 (2.49%) Telecoms
8 8 (2.22%) Electronics
8 8 (2.22%) Retail
9 7 (1.94%) Marketing
10 6 (1.66%) Aviation
11 5 (1.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 5 (1.39%) Manufacturing
11 5 (1.39%) Presentation Skills
12 4 (1.11%) Games
12 4 (1.11%) Law
12 4 (1.11%) Police
12 4 (1.11%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 105 (29.09%) Developer
2 59 (16.34%) Senior
3 49 (13.57%) Software Engineer
4 45 (12.47%) Data Scientist
5 31 (8.59%) Python Developer
6 28 (7.76%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
7 27 (7.48%) Algorithm Engineer
8 23 (6.37%) Senior Developer
9 22 (6.09%) C++ Developer
10 21 (5.82%) Java Developer
10 21 (5.82%) Lead
11 18 (4.99%) Quantitative Developer
12 16 (4.43%) Architect
13 11 (3.05%) C++ Quantitative Developer
13 11 (3.05%) Gen AI Engineer
13 11 (3.05%) Linux Developer
13 11 (3.05%) Low Latency C++ Developer
14 9 (2.49%) Robotics Engineer
15 8 (2.22%) Consultant
15 8 (2.22%) Senior C++ Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 49 (13.57%) TensorFlow
2 48 (13.30%) PyTorch
3 39 (10.80%) Pandas
4 36 (9.97%) scikit-learn
5 33 (9.14%) NumPy
6 22 (6.09%) FIX Protocol
7 14 (3.88%) React
8 13 (3.60%) REST
9 12 (3.32%) Kafka
9 12 (3.32%) PySpark
10 11 (3.05%) .NET
10 11 (3.05%) Matplotlib
10 11 (3.05%) Seaborn
11 10 (2.77%) RESTful
12 9 (2.49%) FastAPI
12 9 (2.49%) Hugging Face
12 9 (2.49%) XGBoost
13 8 (2.22%) Spring
13 8 (2.22%) Spring Boot
14 7 (1.94%) LangChain
Miscellaneous
1 71 (19.67%) Data Structures
2 33 (9.14%) Equities
3 32 (8.86%) Distributed Systems
4 24 (6.65%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 19 (5.26%) Derivative
6 16 (4.43%) Robotics
7 15 (4.16%) Cloud Native
8 11 (3.05%) Equity Derivative
9 10 (2.77%) Fixed Income
9 10 (2.77%) PKI
10 9 (2.49%) Data Protection Act
10 9 (2.49%) Product Ownership
11 7 (1.94%) Clustering
12 6 (1.66%) Legacy Systems
13 5 (1.39%) FPGA
13 5 (1.39%) Greenfield Project
13 5 (1.39%) IoT
13 5 (1.39%) Onboarding
14 4 (1.11%) Hybrid Cloud
14 4 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 17 (4.71%) Linux
2 7 (1.94%) Unix
3 3 (0.83%) Windows
4 2 (0.55%) Android
5 1 (0.28%) Apple iOS
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
1 159 (44.04%) Machine Learning
2 110 (30.47%) AI
3 93 (25.76%) Computer Science
4 84 (23.27%) Data Science
5 80 (22.16%) CI/CD
5 80 (22.16%) Problem-Solving
6 77 (21.33%) Software Engineering
7 65 (18.01%) Analytics
8 57 (15.79%) Agile
9 55 (15.24%) Mathematics
10 51 (14.13%) LLM
11 49 (13.57%) Data Pipeline
11 49 (13.57%) Statistics
12 48 (13.30%) Data Engineering
13 40 (11.08%) Containerisation
14 39 (10.80%) Data Analysis
14 39 (10.80%) Natural Language Processing
15 38 (10.53%) Test Automation
16 37 (10.25%) Generative AI
16 37 (10.25%) Low Latency
Programming Languages
1 191 (52.91%) Python
2 65 (18.01%) SQL
3 58 (16.07%) Java
4 38 (10.53%) C++
5 29 (8.03%) MATLAB
6 27 (7.48%) C#
7 19 (5.26%) Ada
8 18 (4.99%) TypeScript
9 16 (4.43%) R
10 14 (3.88%) PowerShell
11 12 (3.32%) JavaScript
12 11 (3.05%) Kotlin
13 10 (2.77%) Bash
14 7 (1.94%) C
14 7 (1.94%) Go
15 4 (1.11%) SystemVerilog
15 4 (1.11%) Tcl
16 3 (0.83%) SPARQL
17 2 (0.55%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 2 (0.55%) Scala
Qualifications
1 88 (24.38%) Degree
2 47 (13.02%) Security Cleared
3 25 (6.93%) Computer Science Degree
3 25 (6.93%) Master's Degree
4 24 (6.65%) SC Cleared
5 16 (4.43%) PhD
6 13 (3.60%) Numerate Degree
7 11 (3.05%) BPSS Clearance
8 8 (2.22%) DBS Check
9 6 (1.66%) DV Cleared
9 6 (1.66%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 5 (1.39%) CISSP
11 4 (1.11%) Cisco Certification
11 4 (1.11%) CISM
11 4 (1.11%) GIAC
11 4 (1.11%) HNC
11 4 (1.11%) HND
12 2 (0.55%) CCIE
12 2 (0.55%) CESG Certified Professional
12 2 (0.55%) CHECK Team Leader
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (4.16%) QA
2 9 (2.49%) Data Quality
2 9 (2.49%) NIST
3 7 (1.94%) Accessibility
4 5 (1.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 4 (1.11%) Actionable Recommendations
5 4 (1.11%) DO-254
5 4 (1.11%) EU AI Act
6 3 (0.83%) PCI DSS
6 3 (0.83%) SLA
7 2 (0.55%) JSP 440
7 2 (0.55%) NCSC
7 2 (0.55%) RMADS
8 1 (0.28%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.28%) GDPR
System Software
1 38 (10.53%) Docker
2 8 (2.22%) Firmware
3 1 (0.28%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.28%) Oracle RAC
3 1 (0.28%) Squid
Systems Management
1 22 (6.09%) Kubernetes
2 16 (4.43%) Terraform
3 8 (2.22%) Grafana
4 3 (0.83%) Ansible
4 3 (0.83%) Kubeflow
4 3 (0.83%) Single Sign-On
5 2 (0.55%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.28%) Data Guard
6 1 (0.28%) HP Fortify
6 1 (0.28%) Kibana
6 1 (0.28%) logstash
6 1 (0.28%) Oracle ZFS
Vendors
1 25 (6.93%) Databricks
2 22 (6.09%) Microsoft
3 12 (3.32%) IBM
4 10 (2.77%) Google
5 8 (2.22%) MathWorks
5 8 (2.22%) SAP
6 6 (1.66%) Foundry
6 6 (1.66%) Solace
6 6 (1.66%) Thales
7 5 (1.39%) F5
7 5 (1.39%) Oracle
8 4 (1.11%) Actel
8 4 (1.11%) Altera
8 4 (1.11%) AppDynamics
8 4 (1.11%) Bloomberg
8 4 (1.11%) Charles River
8 4 (1.11%) Intel
8 4 (1.11%) ION Trading
8 4 (1.11%) Splunk
8 4 (1.11%) Xilinx