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

6 months to
16 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 26 22 22
Rank change year-on-year -4 0 +8
Contract jobs citing Degree 2,473 2,818 3,661
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 7.00% 7.70% 7.76%
As % of the Qualifications category 21.17% 26.27% 26.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,386 1,582 2,267
10th Percentile £268 £225 £233
25th Percentile £400 £388 £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% +1.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 237 147 217
10th Percentile £15.25 £20.12 £18.20
25th Percentile £22.84 £24.10 £27.00
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 £85.95 £75.00 £83.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.50 £40.66 £50.00
% change year-on-year -17.61% -18.68% +11.86%

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 11,681 10,728 13,695
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.08% 29.33% 29.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,488 6,492 8,730
10th Percentile £300 £312 £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 £716 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £520 £535
% change year-on-year -3.85% -2.71% +1.81%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,018 509 773
10th Percentile £17.43 £19.23 £17.72
25th Percentile £19.26 £24.18 £27.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £45.00 £53.50
Median % change year-on-year -44.11% -15.89% +18.89%
75th Percentile £44.94 £67.02 £68.75
90th Percentile £71.00 £75.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £47.50 £52.05
% change year-on-year -47.05% -8.75% +15.67%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 -1 2,104 £525 +4.48% 5,228
UK excluding London -1 1,222 £475 - 3,401
London -4 1,025 £550 +4.27% 2,182
Work from Home 0 722 £505 +1.00% 7,501
North of England -8 291 £450 -14.29% 650
South East +1 260 £475 +1.33% 1,125
Midlands -9 220 £475 -4.33% 507
North West -6 170 £450 -15.09% 342
West Midlands -8 169 £500 - 319
South West +5 141 £550 -5.34% 402
East of England -6 131 £505 +18.82% 452
Scotland -2 122 £450 +5.88% 211
Yorkshire -11 113 £476 -5.00% 208
East Midlands -4 51 £447 +11.75% 182
Wales -2 45 £232 -42.00% 62
Northern Ireland -3 39 £425 -10.53% 80
North East -19 9 £331 -26.40% 104

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
1 158 (6.39%) Confluence
2 126 (5.10%) SharePoint
3 71 (2.87%) Microsoft Exchange
4 53 (2.14%) 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%) Apache
9 13 (0.53%) IIS
10 7 (0.28%) Exchange Server 2013
10 7 (0.28%) Moodle
11 5 (0.20%) Luigi
11 5 (0.20%) OpenStack
11 5 (0.20%) SAS
12 4 (0.16%) Alfresco
12 4 (0.16%) GeoServer
12 4 (0.16%) Smallworld
12 4 (0.16%) Tomcat
13 3 (0.12%) Ethereum
Applications
1 279 (11.28%) Microsoft Office
2 226 (9.14%) Microsoft Excel
3 152 (6.15%) Microsoft Project
4 119 (4.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 69 (2.79%) MS Visio
6 22 (0.89%) Chatbot
7 18 (0.73%) Simulink
8 13 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
8 13 (0.53%) Trello
9 11 (0.44%) FrameMaker
10 10 (0.40%) Mozilla Thunderbird
11 6 (0.24%) Navisworks
11 6 (0.24%) Revit
11 6 (0.24%) Sketch
12 5 (0.20%) Adobe Captivate
12 5 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 5 (0.20%) AutoCAD
12 5 (0.20%) Maya
13 3 (0.12%) InDesign
13 3 (0.12%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 64 (2.59%) SAP S/4HANA
2 24 (0.97%) 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%) SAP MDG
10 6 (0.24%) SAP PLM
10 6 (0.24%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 477 (19.29%) Azure
2 320 (12.94%) AWS
3 188 (7.60%) Microsoft 365
4 171 (6.91%) Power Platform
5 160 (6.47%) GCP
6 100 (4.04%) GitHub
7 94 (3.80%) SaaS
8 83 (3.36%) Entra ID
9 71 (2.87%) Azure DevOps
10 70 (2.83%) Serverless
11 43 (1.74%) Dynamics 365
12 39 (1.58%) Amazon S3
12 39 (1.58%) Cloud Computing
13 35 (1.42%) Azure Sentinel
14 34 (1.37%) Power Automate
15 30 (1.21%) GitHub Actions
15 30 (1.21%) Microsoft Purview
16 29 (1.17%) Amazon ECS
16 29 (1.17%) PowerApps
17 28 (1.13%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 109 (4.41%) Firewall
2 90 (3.64%) DNS
3 57 (2.30%) VPN
4 52 (2.10%) Network Security
5 43 (1.74%) DHCP
6 38 (1.54%) TCP/IP
7 37 (1.50%) HTTP
8 36 (1.46%) WAN
9 35 (1.42%) LAN
10 32 (1.29%) Wireless
11 30 (1.21%) Internet
12 28 (1.13%) Unified Communications
13 27 (1.09%) Skype
13 27 (1.09%) VoIP
14 25 (1.01%) SSH
14 25 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
15 24 (0.97%) BGP
16 21 (0.85%) Cisco IOS
17 19 (0.77%) Ethernet
17 19 (0.77%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 132 (5.34%) Power BI
2 99 (4.00%) PostgreSQL
3 80 (3.23%) SQL Server
4 74 (2.99%) NoSQL
5 58 (2.35%) Relational Database
5 58 (2.35%) Tableau
6 56 (2.26%) Data Warehouse
7 32 (1.29%) Big Data
8 30 (1.21%) Amazon RDS
8 30 (1.21%) MySQL
9 29 (1.17%) Data Lake
10 23 (0.93%) Metadata
11 19 (0.77%) Hadoop
11 19 (0.77%) MongoDB
12 18 (0.73%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 17 (0.69%) Redis
14 15 (0.61%) Oracle Database
15 14 (0.57%) RDBMS
16 12 (0.49%) BigQuery
16 12 (0.49%) GIS
Development Applications
1 258 (10.43%) JIRA
2 120 (4.85%) Git
3 109 (4.41%) Jenkins
4 76 (3.07%) GitLab
5 29 (1.17%) Liquibase
6 26 (1.05%) Postman
7 20 (0.81%) Selenium
8 14 (0.57%) Visual Studio
9 13 (0.53%) Bitbucket
10 12 (0.49%) JUnit
11 11 (0.44%) Vagrant
12 10 (0.40%) Artifactory
12 10 (0.40%) Cucumber
12 10 (0.40%) Cypress.io
12 10 (0.40%) SpecFlow
13 9 (0.36%) MLflow
14 8 (0.32%) Subversion
15 7 (0.28%) IntelliJ
15 7 (0.28%) JMeter
15 7 (0.28%) TeamCity
General
1 1,280 (51.76%) Social Skills
2 787 (31.82%) Finance
3 595 (24.06%) Analytical Skills
4 273 (11.04%) Banking
5 163 (6.59%) Public Sector
6 124 (5.01%) Manufacturing
7 106 (4.29%) Presentation Skills
8 97 (3.92%) Marketing
9 93 (3.76%) Organisational Skills
10 86 (3.48%) Influencing Skills
11 85 (3.44%) Legal
12 76 (3.07%) Telecoms
13 67 (2.71%) Financial Institution
14 64 (2.59%) Investment Banking
15 62 (2.51%) Front Office
15 62 (2.51%) Pharmaceutical
16 55 (2.22%) Documentation Skills
17 53 (2.14%) Aerospace
18 49 (1.98%) Military
19 42 (1.70%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 375 (15.16%) Analyst
2 243 (9.83%) Senior
3 242 (9.79%) Developer
4 185 (7.48%) Lead
5 159 (6.43%) Architect
6 151 (6.11%) Business Analyst
6 151 (6.11%) Project Manager
7 108 (4.37%) Consultant
8 82 (3.32%) Software Engineer
9 64 (2.59%) IT Support
9 64 (2.59%) Support Analyst
10 52 (2.10%) Security Engineer
10 52 (2.10%) Solutions Architect
11 48 (1.94%) Support Engineer
12 47 (1.90%) Data Scientist
12 47 (1.90%) Technical Support
13 45 (1.82%) Data Analyst
13 45 (1.82%) Senior Developer
14 43 (1.74%) Data Engineer
15 42 (1.70%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 134 (5.42%) REST
2 88 (3.56%) RESTful
3 76 (3.07%) HTML
4 70 (2.83%) .NET
5 60 (2.43%) CSS
6 58 (2.35%) Kafka
7 51 (2.06%) XML
8 48 (1.94%) JSON
9 42 (1.70%) Web Services
10 41 (1.66%) Elastic Stack
10 41 (1.66%) Middleware
10 41 (1.66%) React
10 41 (1.66%) SOAP
11 38 (1.54%) TensorFlow
12 36 (1.46%) OAuth
13 35 (1.42%) AngularJS
14 33 (1.33%) Node.js
14 33 (1.33%) Spring
15 32 (1.29%) PyTorch
16 30 (1.21%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 202 (8.17%) Management Information System
2 99 (4.00%) Cloud Native
2 99 (4.00%) Product Ownership
3 94 (3.80%) Algorithms
4 72 (2.91%) Onboarding
5 68 (2.75%) Data Protection Act
6 64 (2.59%) Virtual Team
7 63 (2.55%) Distributed Systems
8 57 (2.30%) Data Centre
9 56 (2.26%) Analytical Mindset
10 50 (2.02%) Public Cloud
11 49 (1.98%) Derivative
12 44 (1.78%) Life Science
12 44 (1.78%) Self-Motivation
13 42 (1.70%) Legacy Systems
14 39 (1.58%) Mobile App
14 39 (1.58%) PKI
15 37 (1.50%) Security Posture
16 36 (1.46%) Data Structures
16 36 (1.46%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 263 (10.63%) Windows
2 197 (7.97%) Linux
3 78 (3.15%) Unix
4 54 (2.18%) Windows Server
5 35 (1.42%) Windows 10
6 28 (1.13%) Android
6 28 (1.13%) Mac OS
7 26 (1.05%) Apple iOS
8 19 (0.77%) Ubuntu
9 17 (0.69%) VMS
10 11 (0.44%) Windows Server 2016
11 10 (0.40%) Amazon Linux
11 10 (0.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 10 (0.40%) Windows Server 2012
12 9 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
13 6 (0.24%) CentOS
14 5 (0.20%) Windows Server 2003
15 2 (0.081%) Kali Linux
15 2 (0.081%) Mac OS X
16 1 (0.040%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 994 (40.19%) Computer Science
2 764 (30.89%) Problem-Solving
3 744 (30.08%) Agile
4 393 (15.89%) Project Management
5 359 (14.52%) Stakeholder Management
6 335 (13.55%) DevOps
7 288 (11.65%) Change Management
8 283 (11.44%) ITIL
9 261 (10.55%) Analytics
10 256 (10.35%) CI/CD
11 249 (10.07%) Cybersecurity
12 246 (9.95%) Continuous Improvement
13 242 (9.79%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 239 (9.66%) AI
15 230 (9.30%) Migration
16 227 (9.18%) Software Engineering
17 211 (8.53%) Project Delivery
18 204 (8.25%) Decision-Making
19 185 (7.48%) Risk Management
20 181 (7.32%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 482 (19.49%) Python
2 360 (14.56%) SQL
3 199 (8.05%) Java
4 121 (4.89%) JavaScript
5 120 (4.85%) PowerShell
6 78 (3.15%) C++
7 75 (3.03%) C#
8 63 (2.55%) Go
9 48 (1.94%) TypeScript
10 44 (1.78%) Bash
11 38 (1.54%) R
12 23 (0.93%) MATLAB
12 23 (0.93%) 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 17 (0.69%) T-SQL
18 15 (0.61%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 645 (26.08%) Computer Science Degree
2 366 (14.80%) Master's Degree
3 334 (13.51%) Security Cleared
4 259 (10.47%) SC Cleared
5 137 (5.54%) PMI Certification
6 125 (5.05%) PMP
7 118 (4.77%) CISSP
8 96 (3.88%) Microsoft Certification
9 86 (3.48%) PhD
10 75 (3.03%) Cisco Certification
11 72 (2.91%) Azure Certification
12 69 (2.79%) AWS Certification
13 68 (2.75%) CISM
14 53 (2.14%) HND
15 48 (1.94%) BPSS Clearance
16 46 (1.86%) CCNP
17 44 (1.78%) DV Cleared
18 42 (1.70%) HNC
19 40 (1.62%) CCNA
20 34 (1.37%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 133 (5.38%) QA
2 123 (4.97%) GDPR
3 104 (4.21%) Data Quality
4 95 (3.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 87 (3.52%) NIST
6 60 (2.43%) PMO
7 48 (1.94%) Accessibility
8 36 (1.46%) SLA
9 32 (1.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 30 (1.21%) 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
15 16 (0.65%) WCAG
16 15 (0.61%) Def Stans
16 15 (0.61%) P3O
17 13 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
18 12 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 165 (6.67%) Docker
2 160 (6.47%) Active Directory
3 44 (1.78%) VMware Infrastructure
4 29 (1.17%) Firmware
5 15 (0.61%) 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
1 144 (5.82%) Kubernetes
2 119 (4.81%) Terraform
3 87 (3.52%) Ansible
4 63 (2.55%) Grafana
5 55 (2.22%) Prometheus
6 52 (2.10%) Microsoft Intune
7 45 (1.82%) SCCM
8 16 (0.65%) Puppet
9 13 (0.53%) Nessus
10 12 (0.49%) QRadar
10 12 (0.49%) SCOM
10 12 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
11 10 (0.40%) Proxmox
11 10 (0.40%) WSUS
12 7 (0.28%) AirWatch
12 7 (0.28%) Argo
12 7 (0.28%) CSIRT
13 6 (0.24%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 6 (0.24%) Kibana
13 6 (0.24%) RSA Archer
Vendors
1 538 (21.75%) Microsoft
2 157 (6.35%) SAP
3 130 (5.26%) Oracle
4 120 (4.85%) ServiceNow
5 96 (3.88%) Google
6 92 (3.72%) Cisco
7 90 (3.64%) Splunk
8 69 (2.79%) Salesforce
9 55 (2.22%) VMware
10 36 (1.46%) IBM
11 34 (1.37%) Atlassian
11 34 (1.37%) Databricks
12 31 (1.25%) Citrix
13 28 (1.13%) Adobe
14 25 (1.01%) Workday
15 24 (0.97%) Palo Alto
15 24 (0.97%) Remedy
16 21 (0.85%) Apple
17 19 (0.77%) Red Hat
18 16 (0.65%) Fortinet