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

6 months to
25 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 40 25 19
Rank change year-on-year -15 -6 +9
Contract jobs citing Degree 2,446 2,275 3,566
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.81% 7.55% 8.19%
As % of the Qualifications category 15.35% 24.39% 27.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,347 1,301 1,910
10th Percentile £210 £235 £225
25th Percentile £363 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £625
90th Percentile £713 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £488
% change year-on-year - -7.69% -1.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 259 181 420
10th Percentile £16.90 £20.00 £15.61
25th Percentile £26.25 £26.32 £22.19
Median hourly rate £48.50 £47.81 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.45% +19.51% -17.15%
75th Percentile £82.31 £65.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £88.00 £82.75 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £41.00 £41.50
% change year-on-year +21.95% -1.20% -13.09%

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 15,934 9,328 12,988
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.31% 30.97% 29.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,650 5,796 8,020
10th Percentile £350 £275 £311
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £619 £638
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £507 £500 £530
% change year-on-year +1.40% -5.66% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,166 606 1,133
10th Percentile £17.46 £17.87 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.57 £20.00 £19.25
Median hourly rate £50.00 £28.58 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +74.98% -30.20% -25.73%
75th Percentile £72.54 £60.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.25 £75.25 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £27.40 £43.00
% change year-on-year +82.48% -36.28% -19.87%

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 25 June 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 25 June 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Degree in the UK

Degree
Top 17 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 25 June 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 -12 2,188 £500 - 2,242
UK excluding London -10 1,337 £450 - 1,618
London -20 935 £515 -6.36% 908
Work from Home -17 662 £500 -4.76% 761
South East -1 418 £500 +5.26% 544
North of England -10 329 £447 -0.67% 361
Midlands -23 193 £505 +41.06% 262
North West -5 182 £443 -2.64% 205
East of England -5 146 £450 -10.00% 186
West Midlands -26 144 £487 +17.94% 139
Yorkshire -10 133 £500 +11.86% 109
South West -29 119 £435 -8.42% 197
Scotland -22 91 £475 +5.56% 66
East Midlands -15 47 £550 +55.81% 123
Wales -18 30 £490 +60.40% 32
Northern Ireland -9 15 £254 -40.24% 21
North East -38 14 £450 +130.77% 53

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
1 132 (5.40%) Confluence
1 132 (5.40%) SharePoint
2 66 (2.70%) Microsoft Exchange
3 48 (1.96%) Apache Spark
4 33 (1.35%) Apache Airflow
5 22 (0.90%) Apache
6 12 (0.49%) IIS
7 9 (0.37%) CMS
7 9 (0.37%) Oracle Workflow
8 8 (0.33%) SAS
9 7 (0.29%) Camunda
10 4 (0.16%) Appian
10 4 (0.16%) OpenStack
10 4 (0.16%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 3 (0.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 3 (0.12%) Moodle
12 2 (0.082%) ArcGIS
12 2 (0.082%) Cloud Foundry
12 2 (0.082%) Skype for Business
12 2 (0.082%) WinCC
Applications
1 281 (11.49%) Microsoft Office
2 229 (9.36%) Microsoft Excel
3 142 (5.81%) Microsoft Project
4 138 (5.64%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 66 (2.70%) MS Visio
6 17 (0.70%) Adobe After Effects
7 14 (0.57%) Adobe Illustrator
7 14 (0.57%) Photoshop
7 14 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
8 13 (0.53%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 10 (0.41%) Simulink
10 8 (0.33%) Navisworks
10 8 (0.33%) Revit
11 7 (0.29%) Sketch
11 7 (0.29%) Trello
12 6 (0.25%) Chatbot
12 6 (0.25%) Final Cut Pro
13 5 (0.20%) UserZoom
14 3 (0.12%) CATIA
14 3 (0.12%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 65 (2.66%) SAP S/4HANA
2 16 (0.65%) Primavera
3 10 (0.41%) Dynamics CRM
4 9 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
5 8 (0.33%) Veritas eDiscovery
6 7 (0.29%) Aladdin
6 7 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
6 7 (0.29%) SAP EWM
7 6 (0.25%) NetSuite
7 6 (0.25%) Oracle Payables
7 6 (0.25%) SAP MM
8 5 (0.20%) Magento
8 5 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
8 5 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
9 4 (0.16%) HFM
9 4 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
9 4 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
9 4 (0.16%) Oracle General Ledger
9 4 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 4 (0.16%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 551 (22.53%) Azure
2 324 (13.25%) AWS
3 208 (8.50%) Microsoft 365
4 200 (8.18%) Power Platform
5 138 (5.64%) Entra ID
6 121 (4.95%) GCP
7 97 (3.97%) Azure DevOps
8 85 (3.48%) SaaS
9 62 (2.53%) GitHub
10 44 (1.80%) Figma
11 39 (1.59%) Snowflake
12 38 (1.55%) Dynamics 365
13 37 (1.51%) Serverless
14 34 (1.39%) Power Automate
14 34 (1.39%) PowerApps
15 33 (1.35%) PaaS
16 31 (1.27%) GitHub Actions
16 31 (1.27%) OneDrive
17 29 (1.19%) IaaS
18 27 (1.10%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 118 (4.82%) Firewall
2 77 (3.15%) TCP/IP
3 76 (3.11%) DNS
4 64 (2.62%) Network Security
5 51 (2.09%) WAN
6 47 (1.92%) VPN
7 46 (1.88%) LAN
8 34 (1.39%) DHCP
9 29 (1.19%) BGP
10 26 (1.06%) Wireless
11 25 (1.02%) OSPF
12 21 (0.86%) Wi-Fi
13 20 (0.82%) Ethernet
14 15 (0.61%) 3GPP
14 15 (0.61%) HTTP
14 15 (0.61%) SAN
14 15 (0.61%) SSL
14 15 (0.61%) VLAN
15 13 (0.53%) IPsec
15 13 (0.53%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 171 (6.99%) Power BI
2 109 (4.46%) SQL Server
3 63 (2.58%) PostgreSQL
4 54 (2.21%) Data Warehouse
5 49 (2.00%) Big Data
6 48 (1.96%) Relational Database
7 43 (1.76%) Metadata
8 39 (1.59%) Tableau
9 37 (1.51%) NoSQL
10 28 (1.14%) Hadoop
10 28 (1.14%) MySQL
11 27 (1.10%) MongoDB
12 22 (0.90%) Data Lake
13 18 (0.74%) Elasticsearch
13 18 (0.74%) Oracle Database
13 18 (0.74%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 17 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
15 13 (0.53%) Snowflake Schema
16 12 (0.49%) Power Query
17 11 (0.45%) GIS
Development Applications
1 224 (9.16%) JIRA
2 121 (4.95%) Git
3 50 (2.04%) Jenkins
4 43 (1.76%) GitLab
5 31 (1.27%) Rational DOORS
6 21 (0.86%) Visual Studio
7 20 (0.82%) MLflow
8 18 (0.74%) Selenium
9 15 (0.61%) Postman
10 13 (0.53%) Cucumber
10 13 (0.53%) REST Assured
11 11 (0.45%) JUnit
12 10 (0.41%) Gradle
13 9 (0.37%) Bitbucket
13 9 (0.37%) Cypress.io
13 9 (0.37%) SonarQube
13 9 (0.37%) TeamCity
14 8 (0.33%) Maven
14 8 (0.33%) Subversion
15 6 (0.25%) Burp Suite
General
1 1,111 (45.42%) Social Skills
2 741 (30.29%) Finance
3 510 (20.85%) Analytical Skills
4 206 (8.42%) Public Sector
5 198 (8.09%) Banking
6 146 (5.97%) Organisational Skills
7 122 (4.99%) Presentation Skills
8 105 (4.29%) Marketing
9 92 (3.76%) Legal
10 90 (3.68%) Aerospace
11 87 (3.56%) Documentation Skills
12 84 (3.43%) Manufacturing
13 78 (3.19%) Influencing Skills
14 75 (3.07%) Telecoms
15 58 (2.37%) Retail
16 52 (2.13%) Law
17 49 (2.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 40 (1.64%) Front Office
19 38 (1.55%) Pharmaceutical
20 34 (1.39%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 356 (14.55%) Analyst
2 277 (11.32%) Senior
3 196 (8.01%) Architect
4 183 (7.48%) Lead
5 163 (6.66%) Developer
6 160 (6.54%) Business Analyst
6 160 (6.54%) Project Manager
7 73 (2.98%) Consultant
8 71 (2.90%) Solutions Architect
9 67 (2.74%) Designer
10 64 (2.62%) Senior Analyst
11 63 (2.58%) Senior Manager
12 57 (2.33%) Technical Support
13 54 (2.21%) Software Engineer
14 51 (2.09%) Security Engineer
15 49 (2.00%) IT Support
15 49 (2.00%) Product Manager
16 48 (1.96%) Administrator
17 47 (1.92%) Data Scientist
17 47 (1.92%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 98 (4.01%) REST
2 92 (3.76%) .NET
3 68 (2.78%) React
4 51 (2.09%) Kafka
5 45 (1.84%) Middleware
6 42 (1.72%) HTML
7 41 (1.68%) RESTful
8 40 (1.64%) OAuth
9 39 (1.59%) Oracle Fusion
10 38 (1.55%) .NET Framework
11 32 (1.31%) CSS
12 31 (1.27%) Spring Boot
13 30 (1.23%) Spring
13 30 (1.23%) Web Services
14 29 (1.19%) JSON
15 28 (1.14%) SAML
15 28 (1.14%) SOAP
15 28 (1.14%) XML
16 26 (1.06%) AngularJS
16 26 (1.06%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 205 (8.38%) Management Information System
2 146 (5.97%) Onboarding
3 141 (5.76%) Product Ownership
4 107 (4.37%) Self-Motivation
5 94 (3.84%) Cloud Native
6 74 (3.03%) Data Centre
7 64 (2.62%) Data Structures
8 61 (2.49%) Algorithms
9 59 (2.41%) Virtual Team
10 50 (2.04%) Security Posture
11 49 (2.00%) Distributed Systems
12 48 (1.96%) Data Protection Act
13 47 (1.92%) Operational Technology
14 42 (1.72%) PMI
15 41 (1.68%) Legacy Systems
16 35 (1.43%) Life Science
16 35 (1.43%) Robotics
17 34 (1.39%) Enterprise Software
18 32 (1.31%) Analytical Mindset
19 29 (1.19%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 312 (12.76%) Windows
2 180 (7.36%) Linux
3 75 (3.07%) Windows Server
4 69 (2.82%) Unix
5 55 (2.25%) Windows 10
6 36 (1.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 30 (1.23%) Mac OS
8 29 (1.19%) Apple iOS
9 28 (1.14%) Android
10 11 (0.45%) Windows Server 2019
11 10 (0.41%) Ubuntu
12 8 (0.33%) Windows Server 2012
13 7 (0.29%) AIX
13 7 (0.29%) Windows 7
14 5 (0.20%) VMS
14 5 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
15 4 (0.16%) Debian
15 4 (0.16%) Rocky
15 4 (0.16%) Solaris
16 3 (0.12%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 813 (33.24%) Computer Science
2 684 (27.96%) Agile
3 644 (26.33%) Problem-Solving
4 401 (16.39%) Stakeholder Management
5 382 (15.62%) Continuous Improvement
6 380 (15.54%) AI
7 335 (13.70%) DevOps
8 298 (12.18%) Project Management
9 292 (11.94%) CI/CD
10 288 (11.77%) Analytics
11 263 (10.75%) Decision-Making
12 258 (10.55%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 244 (9.98%) Cybersecurity
14 238 (9.73%) ITIL
15 225 (9.20%) Change Management
16 223 (9.12%) Migration
17 221 (9.04%) Roadmaps
18 200 (8.18%) Software Engineering
19 191 (7.81%) Project Delivery
20 188 (7.69%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 413 (16.88%) Python
2 364 (14.88%) SQL
3 170 (6.95%) Java
4 131 (5.36%) PowerShell
5 99 (4.05%) C#
6 94 (3.84%) JavaScript
7 47 (1.92%) C++
8 41 (1.68%) Bash
9 33 (1.35%) TypeScript
10 26 (1.06%) R
11 24 (0.98%) PL/SQL
11 24 (0.98%) Shell Script
12 17 (0.70%) T-SQL
13 16 (0.65%) C
14 14 (0.57%) Perl
15 13 (0.53%) Go
15 13 (0.53%) Rust
16 12 (0.49%) MATLAB
17 11 (0.45%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 10 (0.41%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 491 (20.07%) Computer Science Degree
2 427 (17.46%) Security Cleared
3 288 (11.77%) SC Cleared
4 259 (10.59%) Master's Degree
5 143 (5.85%) PMI Certification
6 128 (5.23%) CISSP
7 122 (4.99%) PMP
8 92 (3.76%) Microsoft Certification
9 83 (3.39%) Cisco Certification
10 69 (2.82%) BPSS Clearance
11 66 (2.70%) CISM
12 61 (2.49%) DV Cleared
13 58 (2.37%) Azure Certification
14 49 (2.00%) PhD
15 42 (1.72%) CCNP
16 40 (1.64%) AWS Certification
17 39 (1.59%) CCNA
18 37 (1.51%) CBAP
19 36 (1.47%) TOGAF Certification
20 33 (1.35%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 133 (5.44%) QA
2 122 (4.99%) Data Quality
3 117 (4.78%) NIST
4 115 (4.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 104 (4.25%) PMO
6 95 (3.88%) GDPR
7 50 (2.04%) SLA
8 49 (2.00%) Accessibility
9 39 (1.59%) PCI DSS
10 30 (1.23%) GRC
11 29 (1.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 22 (0.90%) NCSC
13 20 (0.82%) Cyber Essentials
14 17 (0.70%) IFRS
15 14 (0.57%) Actionable Recommendations
16 13 (0.53%) HIPAA
17 12 (0.49%) COBIT
17 12 (0.49%) NIST 800
18 11 (0.45%) SOC 2
19 9 (0.37%) P3O
System Software
1 186 (7.60%) Active Directory
2 136 (5.56%) Docker
3 43 (1.76%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (1.23%) Hyper-V
5 21 (0.86%) Firmware
6 10 (0.41%) VMware ESXi
7 9 (0.37%) BitLocker
7 9 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
8 7 (0.29%) VMware NSX
9 6 (0.25%) vSphere
10 4 (0.16%) Embedded Firmware
10 4 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
10 4 (0.16%) Terminal Services
11 3 (0.12%) KVM
11 3 (0.12%) NFS
11 3 (0.12%) Veritas Volume Manager
11 3 (0.12%) Virtual Desktop
11 3 (0.12%) VMware Workstation
11 3 (0.12%) XenApp
11 3 (0.12%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 146 (5.97%) Kubernetes
2 86 (3.52%) Terraform
3 79 (3.23%) Microsoft Intune
4 64 (2.62%) Ansible
5 38 (1.55%) Grafana
6 36 (1.47%) Prometheus
7 35 (1.43%) SCCM
8 23 (0.94%) Single Sign-On
9 20 (0.82%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 15 (0.61%) Jamf Pro
11 14 (0.57%) Progress Chef
11 14 (0.57%) Puppet
12 11 (0.45%) vCenter Server
13 9 (0.37%) HP ALM
13 9 (0.37%) WSUS
14 8 (0.33%) Nessus
15 7 (0.29%) Functional Safety
16 6 (0.25%) Kibana
17 5 (0.20%) Nmap
17 5 (0.20%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 572 (23.39%) Microsoft
2 168 (6.87%) Oracle
3 141 (5.76%) SAP
4 117 (4.78%) ServiceNow
5 98 (4.01%) Google
6 68 (2.78%) Cisco
7 62 (2.53%) Databricks
8 52 (2.13%) VMware
9 49 (2.00%) Adobe
10 46 (1.88%) Salesforce
11 43 (1.76%) IBM
12 42 (1.72%) Citrix
12 42 (1.72%) Splunk
13 35 (1.43%) Palo Alto
14 28 (1.14%) CyberArk
15 27 (1.10%) CheckPoint
16 24 (0.98%) Red Hat
17 20 (0.82%) Ariba
17 20 (0.82%) Informatica
17 20 (0.82%) Siemens