Degree Contract Job Trends

Academic Degree
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for Degree qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months leading up to 24 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 43 25 20
Rank change year-on-year -18 -5 +5
Contract jobs citing Degree 2,454 2,457 3,022
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.58% 7.45% 7.78%
As % of the Qualifications category 14.65% 23.78% 26.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,295 1,383 1,743
10th Percentile £204 £250 £263
25th Percentile £363 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £625
90th Percentile £729 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £490
% change year-on-year +5.56% -8.16% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 275 214 255
10th Percentile £16.78 £17.59 £18.05
25th Percentile £26.25 £25.75 £25.43
Median hourly rate £38.72 £42.50 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -8.89% -19.05% +5.00%
75th Percentile £82.75 £61.69 £68.38
90th Percentile £88.00 £81.00 £76.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.72 £41.25 £57.35
% change year-on-year -6.13% -28.07% +16.38%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
UK

Degree falls under the Academic Qualifications and Professional Certifications category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 16,746 10,332 11,618
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.22% 31.32% 29.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,194 6,383 7,325
10th Percentile £350 £289 £313
25th Percentile £434 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £622 £638
90th Percentile £716 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £515 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,268 827 784
10th Percentile £17.42 £17.99 £14.65
25th Percentile £25.77 £19.23 £21.34
Median hourly rate £49.25 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +95.83% -41.51% -21.82%
75th Percentile £72.54 £53.63 £66.81
90th Percentile £87.96 £73.75 £76.77
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.00 £25.15 £48.09
% change year-on-year +90.85% -47.70% -7.32%

Degree
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Degree relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Degree job vacancy trend in the UK

Degree
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Degree.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Degree

Degree
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Degree over the 6 months to 24 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Degree in the UK

Degree
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Degree.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Degree

Degree
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Degree over the 6 months to 24 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Degree in the UK

Degree
Top 18 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Degree within the UK over the 6 months to 24 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 -16 2,252 £500 - 2,737
UK excluding London -15 1,321 £475 +5.56% 2,252
London -21 976 £525 -4.55% 855
Work from Home -21 657 £500 - 911
South East +4 470 £510 +7.37% 665
North of England -13 328 £453 +1.34% 504
North West -13 194 £450 -3.02% 256
Midlands -28 181 £450 - 369
West Midlands -31 135 £450 - 194
East of England -11 130 £350 -22.22% 306
South West -24 123 £415 -7.78% 314
Yorkshire -2 120 £500 +27.23% 162
Scotland -53 64 £475 +5.56% 104
East Midlands -21 44 £475 +22.11% 174
Northern Ireland -13 15 £252 -53.12% 15
Wales -31 14 £530 +73.50% 53
North East -42 14 £450 +130.77% 96
Channel Islands - 1 - - 2

Degree
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
1 150 (6.11%) SharePoint
2 108 (4.40%) Confluence
3 60 (2.44%) Microsoft Exchange
4 27 (1.10%) Apache Spark
5 25 (1.02%) Apache Airflow
6 19 (0.77%) Apache
7 13 (0.53%) CMS
7 13 (0.53%) IIS
8 10 (0.41%) SAS
9 8 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
10 7 (0.29%) Camunda
10 7 (0.29%) SharePoint Server
11 5 (0.20%) OpenStack
12 4 (0.16%) Appian
12 4 (0.16%) ArcGIS
12 4 (0.16%) FactoryTalk
12 4 (0.16%) Oracle Service Bus
12 4 (0.16%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 3 (0.12%) Moodle
13 3 (0.12%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 247 (10.07%) Microsoft Excel
2 245 (9.98%) Microsoft Office
3 135 (5.50%) Microsoft Project
4 126 (5.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 58 (2.36%) MS Visio
6 18 (0.73%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 17 (0.69%) Adobe After Effects
8 15 (0.61%) Photoshop
9 14 (0.57%) Adobe Illustrator
10 10 (0.41%) Spreadsheet
11 8 (0.33%) Chatbot
11 8 (0.33%) Navisworks
11 8 (0.33%) Revit
11 8 (0.33%) Simulink
11 8 (0.33%) Sketch
11 8 (0.33%) Windchill
12 6 (0.24%) Final Cut Pro
12 6 (0.24%) UserZoom
13 4 (0.16%) CPLEX
13 4 (0.16%) Trello
Business Applications
1 49 (2.00%) SAP S/4HANA
2 18 (0.73%) Primavera
3 16 (0.65%) Dynamics CRM
4 12 (0.49%) Salesforce CRM
5 9 (0.37%) Oracle ERP
6 8 (0.33%) Magento
7 7 (0.29%) HFM
7 7 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.24%) NetSuite
8 6 (0.24%) Oracle Payables
8 6 (0.24%) SAP EWM
9 5 (0.20%) Aladdin
9 5 (0.20%) NEC Housing
9 5 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
9 5 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
9 5 (0.20%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 5 (0.20%) Workday HCM
10 4 (0.16%) SAP MM
11 3 (0.12%) Dynamics GP
11 3 (0.12%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 554 (22.58%) Azure
2 315 (12.84%) AWS
3 221 (9.01%) Microsoft 365
3 221 (9.01%) Power Platform
4 147 (5.99%) Entra ID
5 137 (5.58%) GCP
6 107 (4.36%) Azure DevOps
7 83 (3.38%) SaaS
8 62 (2.53%) GitHub
9 53 (2.16%) Dynamics 365
10 50 (2.04%) Serverless
11 47 (1.92%) PowerApps
12 46 (1.87%) Power Automate
13 45 (1.83%) Snowflake
14 41 (1.67%) Figma
14 41 (1.67%) OneDrive
15 37 (1.51%) Microsoft Copilot
16 27 (1.10%) IaaS
17 26 (1.06%) AWS Lambda
17 26 (1.06%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 115 (4.69%) Firewall
2 84 (3.42%) DNS
3 67 (2.73%) Network Security
4 66 (2.69%) TCP/IP
5 63 (2.57%) VPN
6 45 (1.83%) DHCP
7 40 (1.63%) WAN
8 38 (1.55%) LAN
9 30 (1.22%) Wireless
10 21 (0.86%) BGP
10 21 (0.86%) VLAN
10 21 (0.86%) Wi-Fi
11 18 (0.73%) Internet
12 17 (0.69%) 3GPP
12 17 (0.69%) SSH
12 17 (0.69%) SSL
13 16 (0.65%) HTTP
13 16 (0.65%) MPLS
13 16 (0.65%) OSPF
14 15 (0.61%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 174 (7.09%) Power BI
2 101 (4.12%) SQL Server
3 55 (2.24%) Relational Database
4 52 (2.12%) PostgreSQL
5 48 (1.96%) Data Warehouse
6 44 (1.79%) Metadata
7 34 (1.39%) Tableau
8 31 (1.26%) NoSQL
9 26 (1.06%) Big Data
9 26 (1.06%) Oracle Database
10 24 (0.98%) MySQL
11 22 (0.90%) MongoDB
12 21 (0.86%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 19 (0.77%) Elasticsearch
14 16 (0.65%) Amazon RDS
14 16 (0.65%) Data Mining
15 15 (0.61%) Azure SQL Database
16 14 (0.57%) Data Lake
17 12 (0.49%) Power Query
17 12 (0.49%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 184 (7.50%) JIRA
2 133 (5.42%) Git
3 56 (2.28%) Jenkins
4 44 (1.79%) GitLab
5 34 (1.39%) Rational DOORS
6 23 (0.94%) Selenium
7 17 (0.69%) Visual Studio
8 13 (0.53%) JUnit
9 12 (0.49%) REST Assured
9 12 (0.49%) SonarQube
10 11 (0.45%) Cucumber
10 11 (0.45%) MLflow
10 11 (0.45%) Postman
10 11 (0.45%) Subversion
11 10 (0.41%) Bitbucket
12 9 (0.37%) Maven
12 9 (0.37%) Sonatype Nexus
12 9 (0.37%) TeamCity
13 8 (0.33%) Cypress.io
13 8 (0.33%) SpecFlow
General
1 1,088 (44.34%) Social Skills
2 726 (29.58%) Finance
3 584 (23.80%) Analytical Skills
4 195 (7.95%) Public Sector
5 189 (7.70%) Banking
6 156 (6.36%) Organisational Skills
7 113 (4.60%) Aerospace
8 98 (3.99%) Manufacturing
9 97 (3.95%) Legal
10 96 (3.91%) Marketing
11 93 (3.79%) Influencing Skills
12 90 (3.67%) Telecoms
13 88 (3.59%) Presentation Skills
14 76 (3.10%) Documentation Skills
15 63 (2.57%) Retail
16 52 (2.12%) Law
17 50 (2.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 49 (2.00%) Pharmaceutical
19 42 (1.71%) Front Office
20 41 (1.67%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 335 (13.65%) Analyst
2 279 (11.37%) Senior
3 195 (7.95%) Lead
4 180 (7.33%) Developer
5 166 (6.76%) Architect
6 156 (6.36%) Business Analyst
7 127 (5.18%) Project Manager
8 72 (2.93%) Consultant
9 68 (2.77%) Senior Manager
9 68 (2.77%) Support Engineer
10 67 (2.73%) IT Support
11 57 (2.32%) Designer
12 55 (2.24%) Solutions Architect
13 54 (2.20%) Product Manager
14 53 (2.16%) IT Analyst
15 51 (2.08%) IT Manager
16 47 (1.92%) Delivery Manager
17 46 (1.87%) Administrator
17 46 (1.87%) Software Engineer
18 43 (1.75%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 110 (4.48%) REST
2 101 (4.12%) Terraform
3 100 (4.07%) .NET
4 63 (2.57%) React
5 53 (2.16%) Kafka
6 51 (2.08%) HTML
7 49 (2.00%) RESTful
8 46 (1.87%) OAuth
9 42 (1.71%) Oracle Fusion
10 40 (1.63%) CSS
11 37 (1.51%) Middleware
12 36 (1.47%) Web Services
13 35 (1.43%) OAuth2
14 34 (1.39%) .NET Framework
15 33 (1.34%) SAML
16 32 (1.30%) XML
17 31 (1.26%) OpenID
18 30 (1.22%) SOAP
19 29 (1.18%) JSON
20 28 (1.14%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 204 (8.31%) Management Information System
2 144 (5.87%) Product Ownership
3 142 (5.79%) Onboarding
4 109 (4.44%) Self-Motivation
5 90 (3.67%) Cloud Native
6 79 (3.22%) Data Structures
7 68 (2.77%) Algorithms
8 63 (2.57%) Data Centre
9 51 (2.08%) Operational Technology
10 48 (1.96%) Distributed Systems
10 48 (1.96%) Security Posture
11 46 (1.87%) Enterprise Software
12 43 (1.75%) Legacy Systems
13 42 (1.71%) Virtual Team
14 41 (1.67%) Life Science
15 37 (1.51%) AI Agents
16 34 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
17 32 (1.30%) PMI
17 32 (1.30%) SCADA
18 31 (1.26%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 293 (11.94%) Windows
2 179 (7.29%) Linux
3 69 (2.81%) Windows Server
4 60 (2.44%) Unix
5 50 (2.04%) Windows 10
6 32 (1.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 30 (1.22%) Mac OS
8 29 (1.18%) Apple iOS
9 26 (1.06%) Android
10 10 (0.41%) Ubuntu
11 6 (0.24%) Windows 7
12 5 (0.20%) VMS
12 5 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
13 4 (0.16%) Solaris
13 4 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
14 3 (0.12%) CentOS
14 3 (0.12%) Debian
14 3 (0.12%) MVS
14 3 (0.12%) OpenVMS
14 3 (0.12%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 845 (34.43%) Computer Science
2 659 (26.85%) Agile
3 647 (26.37%) Problem-Solving
4 467 (19.03%) Stakeholder Management
5 443 (18.05%) Continuous Improvement
6 378 (15.40%) AI
7 326 (13.28%) DevOps
8 316 (12.88%) Project Management
9 300 (12.22%) CI/CD
10 298 (12.14%) Analytics
11 284 (11.57%) ITIL
12 263 (10.72%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 238 (9.70%) Decision-Making
14 232 (9.45%) Cybersecurity
15 223 (9.09%) Change Management
16 222 (9.05%) Software Engineering
17 213 (8.68%) PRINCE2
18 210 (8.56%) Roadmaps
19 209 (8.52%) Scrum
20 202 (8.23%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 423 (17.24%) Python
2 352 (14.34%) SQL
3 167 (6.81%) Java
4 165 (6.72%) PowerShell
5 112 (4.56%) C#
6 103 (4.20%) JavaScript
7 57 (2.32%) Bash
8 52 (2.12%) C++
9 44 (1.79%) TypeScript
10 28 (1.14%) Bicep
11 26 (1.06%) PL/SQL
11 26 (1.06%) Shell Script
12 24 (0.98%) C
12 24 (0.98%) T-SQL
13 23 (0.94%) R
14 13 (0.53%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 12 (0.49%) Apex Code
15 12 (0.49%) MATLAB
15 12 (0.49%) X++
16 11 (0.45%) Scala
Qualifications
1 502 (20.46%) Computer Science Degree
2 460 (18.74%) Security Cleared
3 303 (12.35%) SC Cleared
4 217 (8.84%) Master's Degree
5 137 (5.58%) PMI Certification
6 118 (4.81%) Microsoft Certification
7 117 (4.77%) PMP
8 106 (4.32%) CISSP
9 85 (3.46%) Cisco Certification
10 76 (3.10%) Azure Certification
11 74 (3.02%) DV Cleared
12 65 (2.65%) BPSS Clearance
13 51 (2.08%) PhD
14 50 (2.04%) CISM
15 43 (1.75%) CCNA
16 42 (1.71%) CCNP
17 41 (1.67%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
18 40 (1.63%) AWS Certification
19 33 (1.34%) A+ Certification
19 33 (1.34%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 137 (5.58%) QA
2 135 (5.50%) Data Quality
3 104 (4.24%) NIST
4 99 (4.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 88 (3.59%) PMO
6 63 (2.57%) GDPR
7 50 (2.04%) SLA
8 49 (2.00%) Accessibility
9 26 (1.06%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 23 (0.94%) GRC
11 22 (0.90%) NCSC
12 18 (0.73%) PCI DSS
13 16 (0.65%) Cyber Essentials
14 13 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
14 13 (0.53%) IFRS
15 11 (0.45%) COBIT
15 11 (0.45%) P3O
16 10 (0.41%) NIST 800
17 8 (0.33%) GxP
17 8 (0.33%) ISO 19650
System Software
1 198 (8.07%) Active Directory
2 119 (4.85%) Docker
3 54 (2.20%) VMware Infrastructure
4 27 (1.10%) Firmware
5 23 (0.94%) Hyper-V
6 17 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
7 10 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
8 8 (0.33%) BitLocker
8 8 (0.33%) Embedded Firmware
9 7 (0.29%) VMware ESXi
9 7 (0.29%) VMware NSX
10 6 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
10 6 (0.24%) vSphere
11 4 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
11 4 (0.16%) NFS
11 4 (0.16%) Terminal Services
12 3 (0.12%) ACF2
12 3 (0.12%) RACF
12 3 (0.12%) Veritas Volume Manager
12 3 (0.12%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 127 (5.18%) Kubernetes
2 81 (3.30%) Microsoft Intune
3 65 (2.65%) Ansible
4 38 (1.55%) SCCM
5 31 (1.26%) Grafana
6 28 (1.14%) Prometheus
7 19 (0.77%) Single Sign-On
8 18 (0.73%) Progress Chef
9 15 (0.61%) Puppet
10 13 (0.53%) Jamf Pro
11 9 (0.37%) vCenter Server
12 8 (0.33%) WSUS
13 7 (0.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 7 (0.29%) Argo
13 7 (0.29%) Control-M
13 7 (0.29%) HP ALM
13 7 (0.29%) Oracle RMAN
13 7 (0.29%) SCOM
14 6 (0.24%) Cisco Prime
15 5 (0.20%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 628 (25.59%) Microsoft
2 179 (7.29%) Oracle
3 139 (5.66%) ServiceNow
4 134 (5.46%) SAP
5 91 (3.71%) Google
6 73 (2.97%) Cisco
7 70 (2.85%) VMware
8 69 (2.81%) Salesforce
9 61 (2.49%) Databricks
10 59 (2.40%) Adobe
11 53 (2.16%) IBM
12 45 (1.83%) Splunk
13 31 (1.26%) CyberArk
14 28 (1.14%) Palo Alto
15 27 (1.10%) Red Hat
16 26 (1.06%) Citrix
17 22 (0.90%) Apple
18 21 (0.86%) BeyondTrust
19 20 (0.81%) Ariba
20 18 (0.73%) HP