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 18 November 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 25 22 22
Rank change year-on-year -3 0 +8
Contract jobs citing Degree 2,472 2,779 3,631
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 6.98% 7.71% 7.77%
As % of the Qualifications category 21.13% 26.27% 26.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,387 1,559 2,250
10th Percentile £274 £225 £233
25th Percentile £400 £395 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £645
90th Percentile £750 £756 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 236 143 216
10th Percentile £15.25 £20.12 £18.17
25th Percentile £22.70 £24.35 £26.97
Median hourly rate £33.50 £40.33 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -16.92% -19.35% +11.11%
75th Percentile £50.00 £63.15 £70.00
90th Percentile £87.13 £75.00 £83.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.50 £40.66 £50.00
% change year-on-year -17.61% -18.68% +11.11%

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 11,698 10,580 13,570
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.05% 29.35% 29.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,504 6,391 8,625
10th Percentile £300 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £420 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £719 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £518 £534
% change year-on-year -3.38% -3.09% +1.71%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,020 501 770
10th Percentile £17.50 £19.30 £17.72
25th Percentile £19.28 £24.18 £27.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £45.00 £53.58
Median % change year-on-year -44.11% -16.02% +19.07%
75th Percentile £44.81 £67.00 £68.75
90th Percentile £71.00 £75.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £47.50 £52.50
% change year-on-year -47.05% -9.52% +16.67%

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 18 November 2025.

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 18 November 2025.

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 18 November 2025. 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 -3 2,105 £525 +3.75% 5,231
UK excluding London -1 1,220 £475 - 3,431
London -4 1,024 £550 +3.77% 2,134
Work from Home 0 723 £515 +3.00% 2,609
North of England -10 294 £450 -14.29% 673
South East +2 259 £475 - 1,125
Midlands -10 219 £475 -4.04% 517
North West -7 172 £438 -17.45% 347
West Midlands -11 166 £500 - 325
South West +2 142 £550 -4.84% 395
East of England -6 130 £505 +18.82% 464
Scotland -3 120 £450 +5.88% 210
Yorkshire -11 114 £475 -5.09% 230
East Midlands -7 53 £448 +12.00% 186
Wales -5 45 £232 -42.00% 64
Northern Ireland -3 38 £425 -10.53% 74
North East -14 9 £331 -26.40% 99

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
1 162 (6.55%) Confluence
2 124 (5.02%) SharePoint
3 70 (2.83%) Microsoft Exchange
4 49 (1.98%) Apache Spark
5 23 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
6 17 (0.69%) nginx
7 16 (0.65%) Skype for Business
8 15 (0.61%) CMS
9 13 (0.53%) IIS
10 11 (0.44%) Apache
11 7 (0.28%) Exchange Server 2013
11 7 (0.28%) Moodle
12 5 (0.20%) Luigi
12 5 (0.20%) OpenStack
12 5 (0.20%) SAS
13 4 (0.16%) Alfresco
13 4 (0.16%) GeoServer
13 4 (0.16%) Smallworld
13 4 (0.16%) Tomcat
14 3 (0.12%) Ethereum
Applications
1 283 (11.45%) Microsoft Office
2 225 (9.10%) Microsoft Excel
3 156 (6.31%) Microsoft Project
4 118 (4.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 69 (2.79%) MS Visio
6 22 (0.89%) Chatbot
7 17 (0.69%) Simulink
8 14 (0.57%) Trello
9 13 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
10 11 (0.44%) FrameMaker
11 10 (0.40%) Mozilla Thunderbird
12 6 (0.24%) Navisworks
12 6 (0.24%) Revit
12 6 (0.24%) Sketch
13 5 (0.20%) Adobe Captivate
13 5 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 5 (0.20%) AutoCAD
13 5 (0.20%) Maya
14 3 (0.12%) InDesign
14 3 (0.12%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 66 (2.67%) SAP S/4HANA
2 25 (1.01%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.81%) Primavera
4 13 (0.53%) SAP WM
5 12 (0.49%) SAP ERP
5 12 (0.49%) SAP EWM
6 11 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
7 9 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
7 9 (0.36%) Oracle EBS R12
7 9 (0.36%) Salesforce CRM
7 9 (0.36%) Workday HCM
8 8 (0.32%) Dynamics GP
8 8 (0.32%) Oracle General Ledger
9 7 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
10 6 (0.24%) Endur
10 6 (0.24%) FLEXCUBE
10 6 (0.24%) Oracle BPM
10 6 (0.24%) Oracle Financials
10 6 (0.24%) SAP MDG
10 6 (0.24%) SAP PLM
Cloud Services
1 480 (19.42%) Azure
2 319 (12.90%) AWS
3 187 (7.56%) Microsoft 365
4 171 (6.92%) Power Platform
5 159 (6.43%) GCP
6 102 (4.13%) GitHub
7 95 (3.84%) SaaS
8 82 (3.32%) Entra ID
9 71 (2.87%) Azure DevOps
9 71 (2.87%) Serverless
10 43 (1.74%) Dynamics 365
11 39 (1.58%) Cloud Computing
12 38 (1.54%) Amazon S3
13 35 (1.42%) Azure Sentinel
14 34 (1.38%) Power Automate
15 30 (1.21%) Amazon ECS
15 30 (1.21%) GitHub Actions
15 30 (1.21%) Microsoft Purview
16 29 (1.17%) PowerApps
16 29 (1.17%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 109 (4.41%) Firewall
2 90 (3.64%) DNS
3 57 (2.31%) VPN
4 51 (2.06%) Network Security
5 44 (1.78%) DHCP
6 38 (1.54%) TCP/IP
7 36 (1.46%) HTTP
7 36 (1.46%) WAN
8 35 (1.42%) LAN
9 32 (1.29%) Wireless
10 30 (1.21%) Internet
11 27 (1.09%) Skype
11 27 (1.09%) Unified Communications
12 26 (1.05%) VoIP
13 25 (1.01%) SSH
13 25 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
14 24 (0.97%) BGP
15 21 (0.85%) Cisco IOS
16 19 (0.77%) VLAN
17 18 (0.73%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 132 (5.34%) Power BI
2 101 (4.09%) PostgreSQL
3 79 (3.20%) SQL Server
4 73 (2.95%) NoSQL
5 59 (2.39%) Relational Database
6 58 (2.35%) Tableau
7 55 (2.22%) Data Warehouse
8 32 (1.29%) Big Data
8 32 (1.29%) MySQL
9 30 (1.21%) Amazon RDS
9 30 (1.21%) Data Lake
10 23 (0.93%) Metadata
11 19 (0.77%) Hadoop
11 19 (0.77%) MongoDB
12 17 (0.69%) Redis
12 17 (0.69%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 15 (0.61%) Oracle Database
14 14 (0.57%) RDBMS
15 12 (0.49%) BigQuery
15 12 (0.49%) GIS
Development Applications
1 263 (10.64%) JIRA
2 121 (4.89%) Git
3 108 (4.37%) Jenkins
4 78 (3.16%) GitLab
5 29 (1.17%) Liquibase
6 26 (1.05%) Postman
7 20 (0.81%) Selenium
8 14 (0.57%) Bitbucket
8 14 (0.57%) Visual Studio
9 11 (0.44%) JUnit
9 11 (0.44%) Vagrant
10 10 (0.40%) Cypress.io
10 10 (0.40%) SpecFlow
11 9 (0.36%) Artifactory
11 9 (0.36%) Cucumber
12 8 (0.32%) MLflow
12 8 (0.32%) Subversion
13 7 (0.28%) IntelliJ
13 7 (0.28%) JMeter
13 7 (0.28%) TeamCity
General
1 1,280 (51.78%) Social Skills
2 790 (31.96%) Finance
3 601 (24.31%) Analytical Skills
4 274 (11.08%) Banking
5 163 (6.59%) Public Sector
6 123 (4.98%) Manufacturing
7 105 (4.25%) Presentation Skills
8 95 (3.84%) Marketing
9 93 (3.76%) Organisational Skills
10 87 (3.52%) Influencing Skills
11 85 (3.44%) Legal
12 76 (3.07%) Telecoms
13 67 (2.71%) Financial Institution
14 65 (2.63%) Investment Banking
15 63 (2.55%) Pharmaceutical
16 61 (2.47%) Front Office
17 55 (2.22%) Documentation Skills
18 53 (2.14%) Aerospace
18 53 (2.14%) Military
19 41 (1.66%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 375 (15.17%) Analyst
2 241 (9.75%) Developer
2 241 (9.75%) Senior
3 185 (7.48%) Lead
4 163 (6.59%) Architect
5 152 (6.15%) Business Analyst
6 150 (6.07%) Project Manager
7 107 (4.33%) Consultant
8 82 (3.32%) Software Engineer
9 64 (2.59%) IT Support
9 64 (2.59%) Support Analyst
10 53 (2.14%) Solutions Architect
11 52 (2.10%) Security Engineer
12 48 (1.94%) Support Engineer
13 47 (1.90%) Data Scientist
13 47 (1.90%) Technical Support
14 45 (1.82%) Senior Developer
15 44 (1.78%) Data Analyst
16 43 (1.74%) Data Engineer
17 42 (1.70%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 133 (5.38%) REST
2 89 (3.60%) RESTful
3 75 (3.03%) HTML
4 70 (2.83%) .NET
5 59 (2.39%) CSS
6 57 (2.31%) Kafka
7 52 (2.10%) XML
8 49 (1.98%) JSON
9 42 (1.70%) SOAP
9 42 (1.70%) Web Services
10 41 (1.66%) Elastic Stack
10 41 (1.66%) Middleware
11 40 (1.62%) React
12 39 (1.58%) TensorFlow
13 37 (1.50%) OAuth
14 34 (1.38%) Node.js
15 33 (1.33%) AngularJS
15 33 (1.33%) PyTorch
16 32 (1.29%) Spring
17 28 (1.13%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 203 (8.21%) Management Information System
2 103 (4.17%) Product Ownership
3 97 (3.92%) Cloud Native
4 92 (3.72%) Algorithms
5 73 (2.95%) Onboarding
6 67 (2.71%) Data Protection Act
7 64 (2.59%) Virtual Team
8 62 (2.51%) Distributed Systems
9 59 (2.39%) Analytical Mindset
10 58 (2.35%) Data Centre
11 50 (2.02%) Public Cloud
12 49 (1.98%) Derivative
13 44 (1.78%) Life Science
13 44 (1.78%) Self-Motivation
14 42 (1.70%) Legacy Systems
15 39 (1.58%) Mobile App
15 39 (1.58%) PKI
16 38 (1.54%) Enterprise Software
17 36 (1.46%) Security Posture
18 35 (1.42%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 265 (10.72%) Windows
2 197 (7.97%) Linux
3 78 (3.16%) Unix
4 55 (2.22%) Windows Server
5 35 (1.42%) Windows 10
6 28 (1.13%) Mac OS
7 27 (1.09%) Android
8 26 (1.05%) Apple iOS
9 19 (0.77%) Ubuntu
10 17 (0.69%) VMS
11 11 (0.44%) Windows Server 2016
12 10 (0.40%) Amazon Linux
12 10 (0.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 10 (0.40%) Windows Server 2012
13 9 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
14 6 (0.24%) CentOS
15 5 (0.20%) Windows Server 2003
16 2 (0.081%) Kali Linux
16 2 (0.081%) Mac OS X
17 1 (0.040%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 990 (40.05%) Computer Science
2 763 (30.87%) Problem-Solving
3 751 (30.38%) Agile
4 393 (15.90%) Project Management
5 362 (14.64%) Stakeholder Management
6 336 (13.59%) DevOps
7 293 (11.85%) Change Management
8 288 (11.65%) ITIL
9 258 (10.44%) Analytics
10 257 (10.40%) CI/CD
11 250 (10.11%) Continuous Improvement
12 249 (10.07%) Cybersecurity
13 245 (9.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 243 (9.83%) AI
15 227 (9.18%) Migration
15 227 (9.18%) Software Engineering
16 213 (8.62%) Project Delivery
17 203 (8.21%) Decision-Making
18 186 (7.52%) Risk Management
19 180 (7.28%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 481 (19.46%) Python
2 359 (14.52%) SQL
3 199 (8.05%) Java
4 122 (4.94%) PowerShell
5 120 (4.85%) JavaScript
6 79 (3.20%) C++
7 77 (3.11%) C#
8 63 (2.55%) Go
9 48 (1.94%) TypeScript
10 44 (1.78%) Bash
11 38 (1.54%) R
12 22 (0.89%) MATLAB
12 22 (0.89%) Perl
13 21 (0.85%) C
13 21 (0.85%) Ruby
14 20 (0.81%) Kusto Query Language
15 19 (0.77%) Shell Script
16 18 (0.73%) PL/SQL
17 16 (0.65%) T-SQL
18 15 (0.61%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 646 (26.13%) Computer Science Degree
2 365 (14.77%) Master's Degree
3 336 (13.59%) Security Cleared
4 261 (10.56%) SC Cleared
5 137 (5.54%) PMI Certification
6 125 (5.06%) PMP
7 118 (4.77%) CISSP
8 97 (3.92%) Microsoft Certification
9 84 (3.40%) PhD
10 74 (2.99%) Cisco Certification
11 72 (2.91%) Azure Certification
12 69 (2.79%) AWS Certification
13 68 (2.75%) CISM
14 51 (2.06%) HND
15 47 (1.90%) BPSS Clearance
16 46 (1.86%) CCNP
17 44 (1.78%) DV Cleared
18 41 (1.66%) HNC
19 40 (1.62%) CCNA
20 34 (1.38%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 133 (5.38%) QA
2 122 (4.94%) GDPR
3 102 (4.13%) Data Quality
4 95 (3.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 87 (3.52%) NIST
6 61 (2.47%) PMO
7 46 (1.86%) Accessibility
8 34 (1.38%) SLA
9 32 (1.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 29 (1.17%) PCI DSS
11 26 (1.05%) GRC
12 23 (0.93%) HIPAA
13 21 (0.85%) NCSC
14 19 (0.77%) COBIT
15 16 (0.65%) NIST 800
16 15 (0.61%) Def Stans
16 15 (0.61%) P3O
16 15 (0.61%) WCAG
17 13 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
18 12 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 165 (6.67%) Docker
2 161 (6.51%) Active Directory
3 45 (1.82%) VMware Infrastructure
4 28 (1.13%) Firmware
5 16 (0.65%) Hyper-V
6 13 (0.53%) Virtual Machines
7 10 (0.40%) DFS Replication
7 10 (0.40%) Dovecot
7 10 (0.40%) Postfix
7 10 (0.40%) Squid
8 9 (0.36%) VMware ESXi
8 9 (0.36%) XenApp
9 7 (0.28%) VMware NSX
10 6 (0.24%) Virtual Servers
10 6 (0.24%) vSphere
11 5 (0.20%) Microsoft Virtual Server
12 4 (0.16%) NDS
12 4 (0.16%) NetIQ eDirectory
13 3 (0.12%) Virtual Desktop
14 2 (0.081%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 143 (5.78%) Kubernetes
2 119 (4.81%) Terraform
3 86 (3.48%) Ansible
4 63 (2.55%) Grafana
5 55 (2.22%) Prometheus
6 51 (2.06%) Microsoft Intune
7 46 (1.86%) SCCM
8 16 (0.65%) Puppet
9 13 (0.53%) Nessus
9 13 (0.53%) SCOM
10 12 (0.49%) QRadar
11 11 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
12 10 (0.40%) Proxmox
12 10 (0.40%) WSUS
13 9 (0.36%) OPNET
14 7 (0.28%) AirWatch
14 7 (0.28%) Argo
14 7 (0.28%) CSIRT
15 6 (0.24%) Kibana
15 6 (0.24%) RSA Archer
Vendors
1 538 (21.76%) Microsoft
2 160 (6.47%) SAP
3 132 (5.34%) Oracle
4 124 (5.02%) ServiceNow
5 95 (3.84%) Google
6 91 (3.68%) Cisco
7 90 (3.64%) Splunk
8 70 (2.83%) Salesforce
9 56 (2.27%) VMware
10 38 (1.54%) Atlassian
11 36 (1.46%) IBM
12 35 (1.42%) Databricks
13 31 (1.25%) Citrix
14 28 (1.13%) Adobe
14 28 (1.13%) Remedy
15 26 (1.05%) Workday
16 23 (0.93%) Palo Alto
17 20 (0.81%) Apple
18 19 (0.77%) Red Hat
19 16 (0.65%) Fortinet