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

6 months to
17 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 357 272 262
Rank change year-on-year -85 -10 +34
Contract jobs citing Algorithms 326 310 347
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.61% 0.94% 0.90%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.82% 2.66% 2.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 195 189 234
10th Percentile £198 £384 £375
25th Percentile £394 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £556 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year +1.00% -8.33% -2.04%
75th Percentile £701 £700 £775
90th Percentile £833 £850 £853
UK excluding London median daily rate £374 £500 £490
% change year-on-year -25.15% +2.15% -2.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 33 26 32
10th Percentile £53.53 £22.28 £32.25
25th Percentile £65.00 £47.63 £38.44
Median hourly rate £70.00 £67.00 £51.25
Median % change year-on-year +4.48% +30.73% +105.00%
75th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £57.81
90th Percentile £88.75 £88.00 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £69.75 £55.00
% change year-on-year -6.81% +26.82% +147.19%

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 17,941 11,637 11,782
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.53% 35.16% 30.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,870 7,149 7,550
10th Percentile £325 £303 £300
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £638 £638 £675
90th Percentile £750 £763 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,016 570 595
10th Percentile £14.86 £15.13 £12.33
25th Percentile £19.33 £18.87 £18.27
Median hourly rate £43.50 £29.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +47.46% -34.44% +10.86%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £67.50
90th Percentile £85.00 £77.62 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £30.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year +46.53% -33.33% +10.86%

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 August 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 August 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 August 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 -77 290 £575 +4.55% 807
London -56 169 £675 +16.88% 473
UK excluding London -93 130 £374 -25.15% 408
Work from Home -44 93 £625 +25.00% 296
South East -54 41 £500 - 103
South West -24 27 - - 49
North of England -64 20 £381 -36.50% 76
East of England -38 19 £200 -61.17% 96
North West -37 14 £398 -34.35% 39
Scotland -14 11 £556 +11.10% 45
Midlands -45 10 £306 -37.75% 35
West Midlands -50 7 £463 -26.00% 18
Yorkshire -31 6 £215 -64.12% 24
East Midlands -17 3 £180 -36.51% 17
Northern Ireland +2 1 - - 6
Wales -16 1 £550 -18.52% 8

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 11 (3.37%) Apache Spark
2 9 (2.76%) Apache Airflow
3 8 (2.45%) Confluence
4 4 (1.23%) Jupyter
5 3 (0.92%) Apache
6 1 (0.31%) CMS
6 1 (0.31%) Ethereum
6 1 (0.31%) IIS
6 1 (0.31%) SAS
6 1 (0.31%) Solana
Applications
1 9 (2.76%) CPLEX
2 3 (0.92%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.92%) Simulink
2 3 (0.92%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.31%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 11 (3.37%) SAP IBP
2 6 (1.84%) ProductWriter
3 2 (0.61%) IBM Operational Decision Manager
4 1 (0.31%) Bloomberg AIM
4 1 (0.31%) Fidessa
4 1 (0.31%) SAP APO
4 1 (0.31%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 55 (16.87%) Azure
2 48 (14.72%) GCP
3 44 (13.50%) AWS
4 15 (4.60%) GitHub
5 10 (3.07%) Cloud Computing
6 8 (2.45%) Power Platform
7 7 (2.15%) Amazon EKS
7 7 (2.15%) AWS Lambda
7 7 (2.15%) Azure DevOps
7 7 (2.15%) Serverless
8 5 (1.53%) Dagster
8 5 (1.53%) Google Gemini
8 5 (1.53%) Snowflake
8 5 (1.53%) Vertex AI
9 4 (1.23%) Amazon MSK
9 4 (1.23%) Anthropic Claude
9 4 (1.23%) Azure Machine Learning
9 4 (1.23%) dbt
9 4 (1.23%) GitHub Actions
9 4 (1.23%) Kong
Communications & Networking
1 17 (5.21%) HTTP
2 7 (2.15%) DNS
2 7 (2.15%) Firewall
3 6 (1.84%) Multicast
4 4 (1.23%) HTTPS
4 4 (1.23%) SSL
5 3 (0.92%) BIG-IP
5 3 (0.92%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
5 3 (0.92%) Network Security
5 3 (0.92%) TCP/IP
6 1 (0.31%) Broadband
6 1 (0.31%) DMZ
6 1 (0.31%) Ethernet
6 1 (0.31%) Reverse Proxy
6 1 (0.31%) S/MIME
6 1 (0.31%) SAN
6 1 (0.31%) VPN
6 1 (0.31%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (6.13%) NoSQL
2 18 (5.52%) MongoDB
3 16 (4.91%) PostgreSQL
4 14 (4.29%) Relational Database
5 11 (3.37%) SQL Server
6 9 (2.76%) Big Data
7 8 (2.45%) Power BI
8 7 (2.15%) Hadoop
8 7 (2.15%) KDB
8 7 (2.15%) Tableau
9 6 (1.84%) RDBMS
10 4 (1.23%) Data Mining
10 4 (1.23%) DuckDB
11 3 (0.92%) MySQL
11 3 (0.92%) Neo4j
11 3 (0.92%) Redis
11 3 (0.92%) Spark SQL
12 2 (0.61%) Couchbase
12 2 (0.61%) Data Lake
12 2 (0.61%) Kdb+
Development Applications
1 38 (11.66%) Git
2 17 (5.21%) GitLab
3 10 (3.07%) Jenkins
4 7 (2.15%) Claude Code
5 5 (1.53%) MLflow
6 4 (1.23%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.61%) Gradle
7 2 (0.61%) JIRA
7 2 (0.61%) JMeter
7 2 (0.61%) Postman
7 2 (0.61%) TeamCity
8 1 (0.31%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.31%) Hardhat
8 1 (0.31%) Maven
8 1 (0.31%) Octopus Deploy
8 1 (0.31%) Oracle Forms
8 1 (0.31%) Visual Studio Code
8 1 (0.31%) webpack
General
1 67 (20.55%) Social Skills
2 61 (18.71%) Finance
3 55 (16.87%) Analytical Skills
4 34 (10.43%) Banking
5 16 (4.91%) Investment Banking
5 16 (4.91%) Public Sector
6 15 (4.60%) Front Office
7 12 (3.68%) Aerospace
8 9 (2.76%) Telecoms
9 8 (2.45%) Manufacturing
10 6 (1.84%) Automotive
10 6 (1.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 5 (1.53%) Electronics
11 5 (1.53%) Law
12 4 (1.23%) Advertising
12 4 (1.23%) Financial Institution
13 3 (0.92%) Aviation
13 3 (0.92%) Marketing
13 3 (0.92%) Military
13 3 (0.92%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 83 (25.46%) Developer
2 50 (15.34%) Senior
3 35 (10.74%) Data Scientist
3 35 (10.74%) Software Engineer
4 20 (6.13%) Java Developer
5 19 (5.83%) Python Developer
6 18 (5.52%) Algorithm Engineer
7 16 (4.91%) Consultant
8 14 (4.29%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
9 13 (3.99%) C++ Software Engineer
10 12 (3.68%) Data Engineer
10 12 (3.68%) Lead
10 12 (3.68%) Senior Developer
11 11 (3.37%) Architect
11 11 (3.37%) Quantitative Developer
12 10 (3.07%) Full-Stack Engineer
12 10 (3.07%) SAP Consultant
13 9 (2.76%) Engineering Manager
13 9 (2.76%) Machine Learning Engineer
13 9 (2.76%) Software Engineering Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (9.20%) Kafka
2 27 (8.28%) PyTorch
3 26 (7.98%) Pandas
3 26 (7.98%) React
4 21 (6.44%) NumPy
4 21 (6.44%) TensorFlow
5 18 (5.52%) FIX Protocol
5 18 (5.52%) JSON
6 16 (4.91%) scikit-learn
7 14 (4.29%) RESTful
8 12 (3.68%) PySpark
8 12 (3.68%) Spring
8 12 (3.68%) WebSockets
9 11 (3.37%) FastAPI
9 11 (3.37%) Redux
9 11 (3.37%) Spring Boot
10 10 (3.07%) AngularJS
10 10 (3.07%) Hugging Face
11 9 (2.76%) RabbitMQ
11 9 (2.76%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 88 (26.99%) Data Structures
2 53 (16.26%) Distributed Systems
3 21 (6.44%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 18 (5.52%) Derivative
5 14 (4.29%) Cloud Native
6 13 (3.99%) AI Agents
6 13 (3.99%) Robotics
7 12 (3.68%) Product Ownership
8 9 (2.76%) Equities
9 8 (2.45%) IoT
10 6 (1.84%) Enterprise Software
11 5 (1.53%) Data Protection Act
11 5 (1.53%) Fixed Income
12 4 (1.23%) Augmented Reality
12 4 (1.23%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 4 (1.23%) Embedded Systems
12 4 (1.23%) Exotic Derivative
12 4 (1.23%) Onboarding
12 4 (1.23%) OTC Derivatives
12 4 (1.23%) Virtual Reality
Operating Systems
1 5 (1.53%) Linux
2 2 (0.61%) Windows
3 1 (0.31%) Android
3 1 (0.31%) Robot Operating System
3 1 (0.31%) Unix
3 1 (0.31%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 110 (33.74%) Machine Learning
2 97 (29.75%) AI
3 90 (27.61%) Software Engineering
4 88 (26.99%) Computer Science
5 69 (21.17%) Problem-Solving
6 64 (19.63%) CI/CD
7 54 (16.56%) Data Science
8 48 (14.72%) Mathematics
9 47 (14.42%) Analytics
10 41 (12.58%) Agile
11 40 (12.27%) Low Latency
12 35 (10.74%) Containerisation
12 35 (10.74%) Multithreading
13 34 (10.43%) Validation
14 33 (10.12%) LLM
15 31 (9.51%) Data Pipeline
15 31 (9.51%) Microservices
16 29 (8.90%) Observability
17 28 (8.59%) Data Analysis
18 27 (8.28%) Performance Optimisation
Programming Languages
1 141 (43.25%) Python
2 80 (24.54%) Java
3 65 (19.94%) SQL
4 40 (12.27%) C++
5 38 (11.66%) C#
6 31 (9.51%) JavaScript
7 24 (7.36%) TypeScript
8 18 (5.52%) PowerShell
9 14 (4.29%) MATLAB
9 14 (4.29%) R
10 13 (3.99%) Rust
11 8 (2.45%) Ada
12 5 (1.53%) C
12 5 (1.53%) Go
12 5 (1.53%) Kotlin
13 4 (1.23%) Scala
13 4 (1.23%) SPARQL
14 3 (0.92%) Embedded C++
15 1 (0.31%) Shell Script
15 1 (0.31%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 69 (21.17%) Degree
2 39 (11.96%) Security Cleared
3 26 (7.98%) Computer Science Degree
3 26 (7.98%) SC Cleared
4 17 (5.21%) Master's Degree
5 14 (4.29%) BPSS Clearance
6 13 (3.99%) PhD
7 12 (3.68%) DBS Check
8 4 (1.23%) Numerate Degree
9 2 (0.61%) DV Cleared
10 1 (0.31%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 1 (0.31%) CEH
10 1 (0.31%) Cisco Certification
10 1 (0.31%) CISSP
10 1 (0.31%) HNC
10 1 (0.31%) HND
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (4.60%) Data Quality
2 8 (2.45%) Accessibility
3 6 (1.84%) QA
4 4 (1.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 4 (1.23%) NIST
5 3 (0.92%) Automotive SPICE
5 3 (0.92%) PCI DSS
6 2 (0.61%) Actionable Recommendations
6 2 (0.61%) Disclosure Scotland
6 2 (0.61%) GDPR
6 2 (0.61%) HIPAA
6 2 (0.61%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
6 2 (0.61%) MISRA
6 2 (0.61%) SOC 2
7 1 (0.31%) DO-254
7 1 (0.31%) JSP 440
7 1 (0.31%) NCSC
System Software
1 34 (10.43%) Docker
2 2 (0.61%) Active Directory
2 2 (0.61%) Apache ZooKeeper
3 1 (0.31%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 25 (7.67%) Kubernetes
2 9 (2.76%) Ansible
3 5 (1.53%) Kubeflow
4 4 (1.23%) Argo
4 4 (1.23%) Grafana
5 3 (0.92%) Functional Safety
5 3 (0.92%) Terraform
6 2 (0.61%) Istio
7 1 (0.31%) Kibana
7 1 (0.31%) logstash
7 1 (0.31%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 17 (5.21%) Databricks
2 16 (4.91%) Microsoft
3 12 (3.68%) SAP
4 8 (2.45%) Google
4 8 (2.45%) OpenAI
4 8 (2.45%) Solace
5 7 (2.15%) IBM
6 6 (1.84%) Splunk
7 5 (1.53%) Dynatrace
7 5 (1.53%) MathWorks
8 4 (1.23%) ForgeRock
8 4 (1.23%) IFS
8 4 (1.23%) Oracle
9 3 (0.92%) F5
10 2 (0.61%) Duck Creek
10 2 (0.61%) Guidewire
10 2 (0.61%) Siemens
11 1 (0.31%) Infor
11 1 (0.31%) Sitecore
11 1 (0.31%) Xilinx