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

6 months to
5 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 400 256 253
Rank change year-on-year -144 -3 +58
Contract jobs citing Algorithms 282 342 342
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.52% 1.04% 0.90%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.51% 2.88% 2.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 170 222 222
10th Percentile £300 £378 £375
25th Percentile £450 £443 £459
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year +13.64% -8.33% -4.00%
75th Percentile £737 £688 £725
90th Percentile £826 £850 £862
UK excluding London median daily rate £378 £525 £495
% change year-on-year -28.07% +6.06% -10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 25 16
10th Percentile £61.17 £22.37 £25.60
25th Percentile £65.00 £31.25 £41.63
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 £60.31
90th Percentile £88.75 £82.25 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.75 £67.00 £50.00
% change year-on-year +2.61% +34.00% +42.86%

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 18,736 11,873 11,592
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.45% 35.97% 30.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,178 7,277 6,954
10th Percentile £320 £299 £275
25th Percentile £425 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £527
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -1.28% -4.23%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £670
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 1,289 615 422
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.78 £15.51
25th Percentile £17.72 £18.82 £22.50
Median hourly rate £36.00 £28.13 £49.75
Median % change year-on-year +28.00% -43.47% +11.17%
75th Percentile £67.50 £52.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.25 £72.50 £75.16
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.91 £29.27 £57.35
% change year-on-year +22.69% -48.96% +13.09%

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 -134 262 £625 +13.64% 1,682
London -79 170 £675 +17.39% 949
UK excluding London -153 97 £378 -28.07% 817
Work from Home -69 77 £650 +22.07% 700
South East -66 24 £525 +5.00% 188
East of England -43 22 £225 -57.14% 180
South West -21 21 - - 90
North of England -74 17 £378 -36.80% 127
North West -36 11 £398 -16.21% 75
Scotland -29 8 £443 -1.50% 103
Yorkshire -45 6 £270 -59.98% 37
Midlands -55 6 £180 -65.35% 95
East Midlands -8 4 £180 -63.41% 38
West Midlands -63 2 £400 -25.58% 57

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 16 (5.67%) Apache Spark
2 10 (3.55%) Apache
3 8 (2.84%) Confluence
4 6 (2.13%) Apache Airflow
5 5 (1.77%) CMS
6 4 (1.42%) Jupyter
7 1 (0.35%) IIS
7 1 (0.35%) SAS
Applications
1 8 (2.84%) Simulink
2 6 (2.13%) CPLEX
3 3 (1.06%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.71%) Microsoft Excel
5 1 (0.35%) Adobe Premiere
5 1 (0.35%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 4 (1.42%) ProductWriter
1 4 (1.42%) SAP IBP
2 2 (0.71%) IBM Operational Decision Manager
3 1 (0.35%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 46 (16.31%) Azure
2 44 (15.60%) GCP
3 39 (13.83%) AWS
4 18 (6.38%) GitHub
5 9 (3.19%) Cloud Computing
6 8 (2.84%) Amazon S3
6 8 (2.84%) OpenShift
7 7 (2.48%) AWS Lambda
7 7 (2.48%) Serverless
8 6 (2.13%) Azure DevOps
9 5 (1.77%) Amazon EKS
9 5 (1.77%) Google Gemini
9 5 (1.77%) Power Platform
10 4 (1.42%) Amazon MSK
10 4 (1.42%) Anthropic Claude
10 4 (1.42%) AWS Direct Connect
10 4 (1.42%) Cloudflare
10 4 (1.42%) GitHub Actions
10 4 (1.42%) Kong
10 4 (1.42%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 12 (4.26%) HTTP
2 5 (1.77%) Firewall
3 4 (1.42%) DNS
3 4 (1.42%) H.323
3 4 (1.42%) WebEx
4 3 (1.06%) Multicast
5 2 (0.71%) VPN
5 2 (0.71%) X.509
6 1 (0.35%) Broadband
6 1 (0.35%) DMZ
6 1 (0.35%) Ethernet
6 1 (0.35%) HTTPS
6 1 (0.35%) NetScaler
6 1 (0.35%) Radio Access Network
6 1 (0.35%) Reverse Proxy
6 1 (0.35%) S/MIME
6 1 (0.35%) SAN
6 1 (0.35%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (7.09%) NoSQL
2 17 (6.03%) MongoDB
2 17 (6.03%) PostgreSQL
3 13 (4.61%) Relational Database
3 13 (4.61%) SQL Server
4 11 (3.90%) Big Data
5 8 (2.84%) Hadoop
6 6 (2.13%) Metadata
7 5 (1.77%) BigQuery
7 5 (1.77%) Power BI
7 5 (1.77%) RDBMS
8 4 (1.42%) Data Mining
8 4 (1.42%) DuckDB
8 4 (1.42%) KDB
8 4 (1.42%) Parquet
9 3 (1.06%) Kdb+
9 3 (1.06%) MySQL
9 3 (1.06%) Neo4j
9 3 (1.06%) Spark SQL
10 2 (0.71%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 36 (12.77%) Git
2 19 (6.74%) GitLab
3 13 (4.61%) Jenkins
4 7 (2.48%) Claude Code
5 4 (1.42%) Bitbucket
5 4 (1.42%) JIRA
6 2 (0.71%) Gradle
6 2 (0.71%) Maven
6 2 (0.71%) MLflow
6 2 (0.71%) QUnit
7 1 (0.35%) Cucumber
7 1 (0.35%) JMeter
7 1 (0.35%) Postman
7 1 (0.35%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.35%) TeamCity
7 1 (0.35%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 64 (22.70%) Finance
2 57 (20.21%) Social Skills
3 48 (17.02%) Analytical Skills
4 35 (12.41%) Banking
5 15 (5.32%) Public Sector
6 13 (4.61%) Investment Banking
7 11 (3.90%) Aerospace
8 9 (3.19%) Front Office
8 9 (3.19%) Telecoms
9 7 (2.48%) Manufacturing
10 6 (2.13%) Automotive
11 5 (1.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 4 (1.42%) Financial Institution
12 4 (1.42%) Law
12 4 (1.42%) Publishing
13 3 (1.06%) Documentation Skills
13 3 (1.06%) Electronics
13 3 (1.06%) Marketing
13 3 (1.06%) Military
13 3 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 56 (19.86%) Developer
2 49 (17.38%) Senior
3 30 (10.64%) Data Scientist
4 23 (8.16%) Software Engineer
5 19 (6.74%) Data Engineer
6 16 (5.67%) Machine Learning Engineer
7 15 (5.32%) Architect
7 15 (5.32%) Lead
8 13 (4.61%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
8 13 (4.61%) Java Developer
9 12 (4.26%) Senior Developer
10 11 (3.90%) C++ Software Engineer
10 11 (3.90%) Python Developer
10 11 (3.90%) Senior Data Engineer
11 10 (3.55%) Algorithm Engineer
12 9 (3.19%) Engineering Manager
12 9 (3.19%) Software Engineering Manager
12 9 (3.19%) Software Manager
12 9 (3.19%) Systems Engineer
13 8 (2.84%) Quantitative Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (8.87%) Kafka
2 22 (7.80%) React
3 18 (6.38%) Pandas
4 17 (6.03%) JSON
5 16 (5.67%) PyTorch
6 15 (5.32%) PySpark
7 14 (4.96%) NumPy
8 12 (4.26%) RESTful
8 12 (4.26%) TensorFlow
9 11 (3.90%) AngularJS
9 11 (3.90%) WebSockets
9 11 (3.90%) XGBoost
10 10 (3.55%) FIX Protocol
10 10 (3.55%) LangChain
10 10 (3.55%) scikit-learn
11 9 (3.19%) Redux
11 9 (3.19%) REST
12 8 (2.84%) FastAPI
12 8 (2.84%) Terraform
12 8 (2.84%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 77 (27.30%) Data Structures
2 44 (15.60%) Distributed Systems
3 17 (6.03%) AI Agents
3 17 (6.03%) Cloud Native
4 16 (5.67%) Derivative
5 13 (4.61%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 10 (3.55%) Robotics
7 9 (3.19%) Product Ownership
8 6 (2.13%) Credit Risk
8 6 (2.13%) Enterprise Software
8 6 (2.13%) Fixed Income
8 6 (2.13%) IoT
8 6 (2.13%) Onboarding
9 4 (1.42%) Clustering
9 4 (1.42%) Distributed Architecture
9 4 (1.42%) Embedded Systems
9 4 (1.42%) Exotic Derivative
9 4 (1.42%) OTC Derivatives
9 4 (1.42%) Reference Data
9 4 (1.42%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 9 (3.19%) Linux
2 6 (2.13%) Unix
3 3 (1.06%) Windows
4 2 (0.71%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.35%) Android
5 1 (0.35%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 105 (37.23%) Machine Learning
2 102 (36.17%) AI
3 72 (25.53%) Software Engineering
4 65 (23.05%) Computer Science
5 61 (21.63%) CI/CD
6 60 (21.28%) Data Science
7 58 (20.57%) Problem-Solving
8 47 (16.67%) Analytics
8 47 (16.67%) Data Pipeline
9 42 (14.89%) Validation
10 37 (13.12%) Mathematics
11 36 (12.77%) Agile
12 31 (10.99%) Low Latency
13 29 (10.28%) DevOps
14 28 (9.93%) Observability
15 26 (9.22%) Continuous Improvement
15 26 (9.22%) LLM
16 25 (8.87%) Containerisation
17 24 (8.51%) Data Modelling
17 24 (8.51%) Performance Optimisation
Programming Languages
1 122 (43.26%) Python
2 72 (25.53%) Java
3 64 (22.70%) SQL
4 40 (14.18%) C++
5 31 (10.99%) JavaScript
6 29 (10.28%) C#
7 21 (7.45%) TypeScript
8 15 (5.32%) PowerShell
9 13 (4.61%) MATLAB
9 13 (4.61%) Rust
10 8 (2.84%) C
10 8 (2.84%) R
11 6 (2.13%) Shell Script
12 5 (1.77%) Scala
13 3 (1.06%) Embedded C++
13 3 (1.06%) Go
13 3 (1.06%) Kotlin
13 3 (1.06%) SPARQL
14 2 (0.71%) Ada
15 1 (0.35%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 64 (22.70%) Degree
2 44 (15.60%) Security Cleared
3 31 (10.99%) SC Cleared
4 21 (7.45%) Computer Science Degree
5 20 (7.09%) Master's Degree
6 14 (4.96%) PhD
7 10 (3.55%) BPSS Clearance
8 9 (3.19%) DBS Check
9 6 (2.13%) DV Cleared
10 4 (1.42%) CCNP
10 4 (1.42%) CCNP Voice
10 4 (1.42%) Cisco Certification
11 3 (1.06%) CISM
11 3 (1.06%) CISSP
12 2 (0.71%) Numerate Degree
13 1 (0.35%) AWS Certification
13 1 (0.35%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 1 (0.35%) Azure Certification
13 1 (0.35%) HNC
13 1 (0.35%) HND
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (7.80%) Data Quality
2 6 (2.13%) NIST
3 5 (1.77%) Accessibility
3 5 (1.77%) Basel III
3 5 (1.77%) QA
4 4 (1.42%) GDPR
5 3 (1.06%) Automotive SPICE
5 3 (1.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.71%) HIPAA
6 2 (0.71%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
6 2 (0.71%) MISRA
6 2 (0.71%) PCI DSS
6 2 (0.71%) SOC 2
7 1 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.35%) Disclosure Scotland
7 1 (0.35%) DO-254
7 1 (0.35%) JSP 440
7 1 (0.35%) NCSC
System Software
1 26 (9.22%) Docker
2 4 (1.42%) VMware Infrastructure
3 3 (1.06%) Active Directory
4 2 (0.71%) Apache ZooKeeper
5 1 (0.35%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 31 (10.99%) Kubernetes
2 13 (4.61%) Ansible
3 4 (1.42%) Argo
3 4 (1.42%) Cisco CUCM
3 4 (1.42%) Kubeflow
4 3 (1.06%) Functional Safety
5 2 (0.71%) Grafana
5 2 (0.71%) Istio
6 1 (0.35%) Kibana
6 1 (0.35%) logstash
6 1 (0.35%) Podman
6 1 (0.35%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 19 (6.74%) Microsoft
2 11 (3.90%) Databricks
3 8 (2.84%) Google
4 7 (2.48%) OpenAI
5 5 (1.77%) Dynatrace
5 5 (1.77%) SAP
5 5 (1.77%) Solace
5 5 (1.77%) Splunk
6 4 (1.42%) Cisco
6 4 (1.42%) ForgeRock
6 4 (1.42%) IBM
6 4 (1.42%) IFS
6 4 (1.42%) VMware
7 3 (1.06%) Oracle
7 3 (1.06%) Salesforce
8 2 (0.71%) Duck Creek
8 2 (0.71%) Guidewire
8 2 (0.71%) MathWorks
9 1 (0.35%) Microsemi
9 1 (0.35%) YouTube