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

6 months to
7 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 41 24 20
Rank change year-on-year -17 -4 +6
Contract jobs citing Degree 2,489 2,467 3,064
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.66% 7.51% 7.85%
As % of the Qualifications category 14.84% 24.11% 26.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,325 1,397 1,780
10th Percentile £206 £250 £254
25th Percentile £366 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £625
90th Percentile £713 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £500
% change year-on-year +5.44% -10.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 277 210 273
10th Percentile £17.15 £17.50 £18.35
25th Percentile £26.25 £25.75 £25.36
Median hourly rate £42.50 £42.50 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year - -19.05% -
75th Percentile £83.00 £63.19 £67.50
90th Percentile £88.00 £82.96 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.71 £40.73 £57.35
% change year-on-year +2.41% -28.98% +14.70%

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 16,769 10,234 11,695
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.39% 31.14% 29.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,216 6,336 7,417
10th Percentile £350 £287 £313
25th Percentile £431 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £620 £638
90th Percentile £715 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £514 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.80% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,252 784 856
10th Percentile £17.72 £17.87 £14.48
25th Percentile £25.75 £19.38 £21.25
Median hourly rate £51.75 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +105.77% -41.51% -22.77%
75th Percentile £73.75 £54.15 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.00 £73.75 £77.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +98.81% -44.11% -15.65%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 -13 2,279 £500 - 4,784
UK excluding London -13 1,372 £475 +5.44% 2,705
London -21 964 £525 -4.55% 2,432
Work from Home -20 651 £500 - 1,567
South East +2 484 £500 +5.26% 821
North of England -14 339 £453 +0.67% 558
North West -13 196 £450 -5.26% 287
Midlands -33 180 £450 +3.21% 385
East of England -9 142 £425 -5.56% 403
West Midlands -38 137 £450 - 220
Yorkshire -8 127 £500 +20.12% 170
South West -23 125 £415 -7.78% 306
Scotland -40 71 £484 +7.50% 171
East Midlands -25 41 £475 +32.68% 165
Wales -25 17 £530 +71.67% 76
North East -45 16 £450 +130.77% 108
Northern Ireland -11 15 £252 -46.95% 47
Channel Islands - 1 - -

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
1 147 (5.91%) SharePoint
2 118 (4.74%) Confluence
3 63 (2.53%) Microsoft Exchange
4 30 (1.21%) Apache Spark
5 25 (1.00%) Apache Airflow
6 19 (0.76%) Apache
7 13 (0.52%) IIS
8 11 (0.44%) CMS
9 10 (0.40%) SAS
10 8 (0.32%) Oracle Workflow
11 7 (0.28%) Camunda
11 7 (0.28%) SharePoint Server
12 5 (0.20%) OpenStack
13 4 (0.16%) Appian
13 4 (0.16%) ArcGIS
13 4 (0.16%) FactoryTalk
14 3 (0.12%) Moodle
14 3 (0.12%) WebLogic
15 2 (0.080%) HCL Notes
15 2 (0.080%) nginx
Applications
1 273 (10.97%) Microsoft Office
2 245 (9.84%) Microsoft Excel
3 143 (5.75%) Microsoft Project
4 127 (5.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 64 (2.57%) MS Visio
6 17 (0.68%) Adobe After Effects
6 17 (0.68%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 15 (0.60%) Photoshop
8 14 (0.56%) Adobe Illustrator
9 12 (0.48%) Spreadsheet
10 8 (0.32%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.32%) Navisworks
10 8 (0.32%) Revit
10 8 (0.32%) Sketch
11 7 (0.28%) Simulink
12 6 (0.24%) Final Cut Pro
12 6 (0.24%) UserZoom
13 5 (0.20%) Trello
14 4 (0.16%) CPLEX
14 4 (0.16%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 59 (2.37%) SAP S/4HANA
2 18 (0.72%) Primavera
3 16 (0.64%) Dynamics CRM
4 11 (0.44%) Salesforce CRM
5 8 (0.32%) Magento
6 7 (0.28%) HFM
7 6 (0.24%) Aladdin
7 6 (0.24%) NetSuite
7 6 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
7 6 (0.24%) SAP EWM
8 5 (0.20%) NEC Housing
8 5 (0.20%) Oracle Payables
8 5 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
8 5 (0.20%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 5 (0.20%) Workday HCM
9 4 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
9 4 (0.16%) Oracle Receivables
9 4 (0.16%) Remedy ITSM
9 4 (0.16%) SAP MM
10 3 (0.12%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 564 (22.66%) Azure
2 322 (12.94%) AWS
3 224 (9.00%) Power Platform
4 219 (8.80%) Microsoft 365
5 153 (6.15%) Entra ID
6 133 (5.34%) GCP
7 106 (4.26%) Azure DevOps
8 81 (3.25%) SaaS
9 71 (2.85%) GitHub
10 50 (2.01%) Dynamics 365
11 47 (1.89%) PowerApps
11 47 (1.89%) Snowflake
12 46 (1.85%) Power Automate
13 45 (1.81%) Figma
14 44 (1.77%) Serverless
15 40 (1.61%) OneDrive
16 39 (1.57%) Microsoft Copilot
17 29 (1.17%) GitHub Actions
18 28 (1.12%) IaaS
19 26 (1.04%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 119 (4.78%) Firewall
2 79 (3.17%) DNS
3 78 (3.13%) TCP/IP
4 69 (2.77%) Network Security
5 62 (2.49%) VPN
6 43 (1.73%) WAN
7 40 (1.61%) DHCP
7 40 (1.61%) LAN
8 27 (1.08%) Wireless
9 22 (0.88%) BGP
10 21 (0.84%) Wi-Fi
11 19 (0.76%) SSL
11 19 (0.76%) VLAN
12 18 (0.72%) Ethernet
12 18 (0.72%) HTTP
12 18 (0.72%) SSH
13 17 (0.68%) OSPF
14 16 (0.64%) Internet
15 15 (0.60%) MPLS
16 14 (0.56%) 3GPP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 177 (7.11%) Power BI
2 108 (4.34%) SQL Server
3 55 (2.21%) PostgreSQL
4 54 (2.17%) Relational Database
5 47 (1.89%) Data Warehouse
6 41 (1.65%) Metadata
7 34 (1.37%) NoSQL
7 34 (1.37%) Tableau
8 30 (1.21%) Big Data
9 26 (1.04%) MongoDB
10 25 (1.00%) MySQL
11 23 (0.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 22 (0.88%) Oracle Database
13 17 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
13 17 (0.68%) Data Mining
14 16 (0.64%) Data Lake
14 16 (0.64%) Elasticsearch
15 15 (0.60%) Azure SQL Database
16 14 (0.56%) Power Query
17 12 (0.48%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 194 (7.79%) JIRA
2 130 (5.22%) Git
3 58 (2.33%) Jenkins
4 46 (1.85%) GitLab
5 35 (1.41%) Rational DOORS
6 18 (0.72%) Selenium
7 17 (0.68%) Visual Studio
8 15 (0.60%) MLflow
9 14 (0.56%) JUnit
10 12 (0.48%) REST Assured
11 11 (0.44%) Cucumber
11 11 (0.44%) Gradle
11 11 (0.44%) Postman
11 11 (0.44%) Subversion
12 10 (0.40%) Bitbucket
12 10 (0.40%) SonarQube
12 10 (0.40%) TeamCity
13 9 (0.36%) Maven
13 9 (0.36%) Sonatype Nexus
14 8 (0.32%) Cypress.io
General
1 1,097 (44.07%) Social Skills
2 729 (29.29%) Finance
3 566 (22.74%) Analytical Skills
4 202 (8.12%) Public Sector
5 180 (7.23%) Banking
6 163 (6.55%) Organisational Skills
7 107 (4.30%) Aerospace
8 105 (4.22%) Presentation Skills
9 100 (4.02%) Legal
10 96 (3.86%) Marketing
11 93 (3.74%) Manufacturing
12 88 (3.54%) Influencing Skills
13 85 (3.42%) Telecoms
14 78 (3.13%) Documentation Skills
15 64 (2.57%) Retail
16 62 (2.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 54 (2.17%) Law
18 49 (1.97%) Pharmaceutical
19 38 (1.53%) Front Office
19 38 (1.53%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 337 (13.54%) Analyst
2 283 (11.37%) Senior
3 188 (7.55%) Lead
4 178 (7.15%) Architect
4 178 (7.15%) Developer
5 156 (6.27%) Business Analyst
6 147 (5.91%) Project Manager
7 73 (2.93%) Senior Manager
8 72 (2.89%) Consultant
9 61 (2.45%) Designer
10 59 (2.37%) IT Support
11 58 (2.33%) Support Engineer
12 57 (2.29%) Solutions Architect
13 54 (2.17%) IT Manager
13 54 (2.17%) Product Manager
14 51 (2.05%) IT Analyst
15 50 (2.01%) Software Engineer
16 48 (1.93%) Administrator
16 48 (1.93%) Systems Engineer
17 46 (1.85%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 105 (4.22%) REST
2 99 (3.98%) .NET
3 63 (2.53%) React
4 47 (1.89%) RESTful
5 45 (1.81%) Kafka
6 44 (1.77%) HTML
7 43 (1.73%) OAuth
8 36 (1.45%) CSS
8 36 (1.45%) Oracle Fusion
9 35 (1.41%) Middleware
10 33 (1.33%) .NET Framework
10 33 (1.33%) SAML
11 32 (1.29%) Web Services
12 31 (1.25%) OAuth2
13 29 (1.17%) AngularJS
13 29 (1.17%) JSON
13 29 (1.17%) LDAP
14 28 (1.12%) OpenID
15 27 (1.08%) Spring
15 27 (1.08%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 204 (8.20%) Management Information System
2 152 (6.11%) Onboarding
3 151 (6.07%) Product Ownership
4 113 (4.54%) Self-Motivation
5 93 (3.74%) Cloud Native
6 74 (2.97%) Data Structures
7 68 (2.73%) Algorithms
8 66 (2.65%) Data Centre
9 54 (2.17%) Virtual Team
10 53 (2.13%) Security Posture
11 51 (2.05%) Operational Technology
12 45 (1.81%) Legacy Systems
13 42 (1.69%) Distributed Systems
14 41 (1.65%) Enterprise Software
15 40 (1.61%) Life Science
16 37 (1.49%) AI Agents
17 34 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
17 34 (1.37%) PMI
18 33 (1.33%) Robotics
18 33 (1.33%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 300 (12.05%) Windows
2 181 (7.27%) Linux
3 76 (3.05%) Windows Server
4 61 (2.45%) Unix
5 51 (2.05%) Windows 10
6 37 (1.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 30 (1.21%) Apple iOS
8 29 (1.17%) Android
9 27 (1.08%) Mac OS
10 13 (0.52%) Ubuntu
11 7 (0.28%) Windows Server 2012
11 7 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
12 6 (0.24%) AIX
12 6 (0.24%) Solaris
12 6 (0.24%) Windows 7
13 4 (0.16%) Debian
13 4 (0.16%) Rocky
13 4 (0.16%) VMS
13 4 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
14 3 (0.12%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 839 (33.71%) Computer Science
2 670 (26.92%) Agile
3 650 (26.11%) Problem-Solving
4 447 (17.96%) Stakeholder Management
5 422 (16.95%) Continuous Improvement
6 391 (15.71%) AI
7 330 (13.26%) DevOps
8 316 (12.70%) Project Management
9 305 (12.25%) Analytics
10 296 (11.89%) CI/CD
11 281 (11.29%) ITIL
12 261 (10.49%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 258 (10.37%) Decision-Making
14 254 (10.20%) Cybersecurity
15 222 (8.92%) Change Management
16 217 (8.72%) Software Engineering
17 216 (8.68%) PRINCE2
18 210 (8.44%) Roadmaps
19 206 (8.28%) Project Delivery
20 201 (8.08%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 431 (17.32%) Python
2 347 (13.94%) SQL
3 161 (6.47%) Java
3 161 (6.47%) PowerShell
4 108 (4.34%) C#
5 96 (3.86%) JavaScript
6 56 (2.25%) Bash
7 47 (1.89%) C++
8 41 (1.65%) TypeScript
9 27 (1.08%) R
10 25 (1.00%) Bicep
11 24 (0.96%) PL/SQL
11 24 (0.96%) Shell Script
11 24 (0.96%) T-SQL
12 22 (0.88%) C
13 13 (0.52%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 11 (0.44%) MATLAB
14 11 (0.44%) X++
15 10 (0.40%) Kotlin
15 10 (0.40%) Scala
Qualifications
1 493 (19.81%) Computer Science Degree
2 448 (18.00%) Security Cleared
3 292 (11.73%) SC Cleared
4 217 (8.72%) Master's Degree
5 144 (5.79%) PMI Certification
6 125 (5.02%) PMP
7 122 (4.90%) CISSP
8 116 (4.66%) Microsoft Certification
9 88 (3.54%) Cisco Certification
10 76 (3.05%) Azure Certification
11 75 (3.01%) DV Cleared
12 66 (2.65%) BPSS Clearance
13 60 (2.41%) CISM
14 52 (2.09%) PhD
15 44 (1.77%) CCNA
16 42 (1.69%) CCNP
17 41 (1.65%) AWS Certification
18 39 (1.57%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 37 (1.49%) CISA
20 31 (1.25%) A+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 130 (5.22%) Data Quality
2 126 (5.06%) QA
3 119 (4.78%) NIST
4 112 (4.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 101 (4.06%) PMO
6 74 (2.97%) GDPR
7 52 (2.09%) SLA
8 51 (2.05%) Accessibility
9 31 (1.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 27 (1.08%) PCI DSS
11 25 (1.00%) GRC
12 22 (0.88%) NCSC
13 16 (0.64%) Cyber Essentials
14 13 (0.52%) COBIT
14 13 (0.52%) IFRS
15 12 (0.48%) Actionable Recommendations
15 12 (0.48%) NIST 800
16 11 (0.44%) P3O
17 9 (0.36%) ISO 31000
18 8 (0.32%) SOC 2
System Software
1 197 (7.91%) Active Directory
2 120 (4.82%) Docker
3 52 (2.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 25 (1.00%) Hyper-V
5 24 (0.96%) Firmware
6 17 (0.68%) Virtual Machines
7 8 (0.32%) Embedded Firmware
7 8 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
7 8 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
8 7 (0.28%) BitLocker
8 7 (0.28%) VMware NSX
8 7 (0.28%) vSphere
9 6 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
10 4 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
10 4 (0.16%) NFS
10 4 (0.16%) Terminal Services
11 3 (0.12%) ACF2
11 3 (0.12%) RACF
11 3 (0.12%) Veritas Volume Manager
11 3 (0.12%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 130 (5.22%) Kubernetes
2 96 (3.86%) Terraform
3 80 (3.21%) Microsoft Intune
4 65 (2.61%) Ansible
5 38 (1.53%) SCCM
6 29 (1.17%) Grafana
7 26 (1.04%) Prometheus
8 20 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
9 18 (0.72%) Progress Chef
10 13 (0.52%) Jamf Pro
11 12 (0.48%) Puppet
12 11 (0.44%) vCenter Server
13 9 (0.36%) WSUS
14 8 (0.32%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 8 (0.32%) Nessus
15 7 (0.28%) HP ALM
15 7 (0.28%) Oracle RMAN
15 7 (0.28%) SCOM
16 6 (0.24%) Argo
17 5 (0.20%) CASB
Vendors
1 636 (25.55%) Microsoft
2 165 (6.63%) Oracle
3 139 (5.58%) ServiceNow
4 136 (5.46%) SAP
5 90 (3.62%) Google
6 72 (2.89%) Cisco
7 67 (2.69%) VMware
8 64 (2.57%) Databricks
9 59 (2.37%) Salesforce
10 56 (2.25%) Adobe
11 48 (1.93%) IBM
12 36 (1.45%) Splunk
13 34 (1.37%) CyberArk
14 31 (1.25%) Citrix
15 30 (1.21%) Palo Alto
16 29 (1.17%) Red Hat
17 22 (0.88%) BeyondTrust
17 22 (0.88%) Siemens
18 21 (0.84%) Ariba
19 20 (0.80%) Apple