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 29 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 41 25 20
Rank change year-on-year -16 -5 +6
Contract jobs citing Degree 2,447 2,443 3,114
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.66% 7.44% 7.82%
As % of the Qualifications category 14.87% 24.03% 26.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,310 1,384 1,805
10th Percentile £206 £250 £233
25th Percentile £363 £371 £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 £465 £450 £500
% change year-on-year +3.33% -10.00% +2.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 275 208 286
10th Percentile £17.25 £17.71 £18.13
25th Percentile £27.10 £25.75 £25.35
Median hourly rate £45.00 £43.00 £51.10
Median % change year-on-year +4.65% -15.84% -2.68%
75th Percentile £82.75 £64.64 £65.00
90th Percentile £88.00 £84.11 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.25 £40.46 £57.35
% change year-on-year +11.84% -29.45% +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 16,453 10,167 11,894
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.31% 30.98% 29.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,025 6,305 7,540
10th Percentile £350 £281 £313
25th Percentile £431 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £618 £638
90th Percentile £714 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,204 773 901
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.48
25th Percentile £25.77 £19.38 £21.19
Median hourly rate £52.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +108.75% -41.51% -23.30%
75th Percentile £74.00 £56.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.16 £75.00 £76.99
UK excluding London median hourly rate £51.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +102.78% -41.51% -21.19%

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 29 July 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 29 July 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 29 July 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 2,231 £500 - 3,052
UK excluding London -12 1,344 £465 +3.33% 1,882
London -20 948 £525 -4.55% 1,504
Work from Home -22 643 £500 - 1,052
South East +3 467 £500 +5.26% 632
North of England -14 325 £450 -0.66% 408
North West -11 189 £449 -5.47% 202
Midlands -29 184 £463 +8.82% 260
East of England -6 144 £450 - 246
West Midlands -35 143 £450 - 142
Yorkshire -10 120 £500 +18.34% 129
South West -24 118 £415 -7.78% 223
Scotland -41 72 £475 +5.56% 81
East Midlands -26 39 £478 +33.52% 118
Wales -29 21 £490 +52.37% 51
North East -49 16 £450 +130.77% 80
Northern Ireland -12 15 £252 -46.95% 34

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
1 145 (5.93%) SharePoint
2 118 (4.82%) Confluence
3 63 (2.57%) Microsoft Exchange
4 33 (1.35%) Apache Spark
5 26 (1.06%) Apache Airflow
6 21 (0.86%) Apache
7 13 (0.53%) IIS
8 10 (0.41%) CMS
8 10 (0.41%) SAS
9 8 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
10 7 (0.29%) Camunda
10 7 (0.29%) SharePoint Server
11 4 (0.16%) Appian
11 4 (0.16%) ArcGIS
11 4 (0.16%) FactoryTalk
11 4 (0.16%) OpenStack
12 3 (0.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 3 (0.12%) Moodle
12 3 (0.12%) WebLogic
13 2 (0.082%) WinCC
Applications
1 270 (11.03%) Microsoft Office
2 231 (9.44%) Microsoft Excel
3 143 (5.84%) Microsoft Project
4 128 (5.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 62 (2.53%) MS Visio
6 17 (0.69%) Adobe After Effects
6 17 (0.69%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 15 (0.61%) Photoshop
8 14 (0.57%) Adobe Illustrator
9 13 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
10 8 (0.33%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.33%) Navisworks
10 8 (0.33%) Revit
10 8 (0.33%) Simulink
10 8 (0.33%) Sketch
11 6 (0.25%) Final Cut Pro
11 6 (0.25%) Trello
11 6 (0.25%) UserZoom
12 4 (0.16%) CPLEX
13 3 (0.12%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 61 (2.49%) SAP S/4HANA
2 17 (0.69%) Primavera
3 13 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
4 11 (0.45%) Salesforce CRM
5 8 (0.33%) Magento
6 7 (0.29%) HFM
7 6 (0.25%) Aladdin
7 6 (0.25%) NetSuite
7 6 (0.25%) Payment Gateway
7 6 (0.25%) SAP EWM
8 5 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.20%) Oracle Payables
8 5 (0.20%) Remedy ITSM
8 5 (0.20%) SAP MM
8 5 (0.20%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 4 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
9 4 (0.16%) Oracle Receivables
9 4 (0.16%) Workday HCM
10 3 (0.12%) NEC Housing
10 3 (0.12%) Workfront
Cloud Services
1 570 (23.29%) Azure
2 323 (13.20%) AWS
3 227 (9.28%) Power Platform
4 214 (8.75%) Microsoft 365
5 151 (6.17%) Entra ID
6 138 (5.64%) GCP
7 103 (4.21%) Azure DevOps
8 77 (3.15%) SaaS
9 67 (2.74%) GitHub
10 46 (1.88%) Dynamics 365
11 45 (1.84%) Figma
11 45 (1.84%) Power Automate
11 45 (1.84%) PowerApps
12 44 (1.80%) Snowflake
13 43 (1.76%) Serverless
14 39 (1.59%) Microsoft Copilot
14 39 (1.59%) OneDrive
15 29 (1.19%) GitHub Actions
16 27 (1.10%) IaaS
17 25 (1.02%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 113 (4.62%) Firewall
2 72 (2.94%) DNS
2 72 (2.94%) TCP/IP
3 64 (2.62%) Network Security
4 58 (2.37%) VPN
5 41 (1.68%) WAN
6 38 (1.55%) LAN
7 37 (1.51%) DHCP
8 25 (1.02%) Wireless
9 21 (0.86%) BGP
10 19 (0.78%) Ethernet
10 19 (0.78%) SSL
10 19 (0.78%) Wi-Fi
11 18 (0.74%) VLAN
12 17 (0.69%) OSPF
13 16 (0.65%) SSH
14 14 (0.57%) 3GPP
14 14 (0.57%) HTTP
14 14 (0.57%) Internet
15 13 (0.53%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 181 (7.40%) Power BI
2 111 (4.54%) SQL Server
3 61 (2.49%) PostgreSQL
4 53 (2.17%) Relational Database
5 50 (2.04%) Data Warehouse
6 41 (1.68%) Metadata
7 39 (1.59%) Tableau
8 35 (1.43%) Big Data
9 31 (1.27%) NoSQL
10 27 (1.10%) MongoDB
11 25 (1.02%) MySQL
12 23 (0.94%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 20 (0.82%) Oracle Database
14 19 (0.78%) Data Lake
15 17 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
15 17 (0.69%) Elasticsearch
15 17 (0.69%) Hadoop
16 15 (0.61%) Azure SQL Database
17 14 (0.57%) Data Mining
17 14 (0.57%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 196 (8.01%) JIRA
2 124 (5.07%) Git
3 53 (2.17%) Jenkins
4 39 (1.59%) GitLab
5 34 (1.39%) Rational DOORS
6 18 (0.74%) MLflow
7 17 (0.69%) Selenium
8 16 (0.65%) Visual Studio
9 14 (0.57%) JUnit
10 12 (0.49%) Cucumber
10 12 (0.49%) REST Assured
11 11 (0.45%) Bitbucket
11 11 (0.45%) Gradle
11 11 (0.45%) Postman
11 11 (0.45%) Subversion
12 10 (0.41%) SonarQube
12 10 (0.41%) TeamCity
13 9 (0.37%) Maven
14 8 (0.33%) Cypress.io
14 8 (0.33%) SpecFlow
General
1 1,071 (43.77%) Social Skills
2 715 (29.22%) Finance
3 541 (22.11%) Analytical Skills
4 203 (8.30%) Public Sector
5 183 (7.48%) Banking
6 159 (6.50%) Organisational Skills
7 106 (4.33%) Presentation Skills
8 98 (4.00%) Legal
9 96 (3.92%) Marketing
10 93 (3.80%) Aerospace
11 89 (3.64%) Manufacturing
12 85 (3.47%) Influencing Skills
13 76 (3.11%) Documentation Skills
14 75 (3.06%) Telecoms
15 60 (2.45%) Retail
16 59 (2.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 54 (2.21%) Law
18 43 (1.76%) Pharmaceutical
19 36 (1.47%) Front Office
20 34 (1.39%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 337 (13.77%) Analyst
2 280 (11.44%) Senior
3 189 (7.72%) Lead
4 185 (7.56%) Architect
5 175 (7.15%) Developer
6 155 (6.33%) Project Manager
7 150 (6.13%) Business Analyst
8 71 (2.90%) Consultant
9 70 (2.86%) Senior Manager
10 61 (2.49%) Designer
11 60 (2.45%) Solutions Architect
12 55 (2.25%) IT Support
13 54 (2.21%) IT Manager
14 53 (2.17%) Support Engineer
15 51 (2.08%) Software Engineer
16 50 (2.04%) IT Analyst
16 50 (2.04%) Product Manager
17 47 (1.92%) Administrator
17 47 (1.92%) Senior Analyst
18 45 (1.84%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 98 (4.00%) REST
2 96 (3.92%) .NET
3 68 (2.78%) React
4 48 (1.96%) Kafka
5 42 (1.72%) OAuth
5 42 (1.72%) RESTful
6 40 (1.63%) HTML
7 33 (1.35%) .NET Framework
7 33 (1.35%) CSS
7 33 (1.35%) Middleware
7 33 (1.35%) SAML
7 33 (1.35%) Spring
8 32 (1.31%) Web Services
9 31 (1.27%) AngularJS
9 31 (1.27%) OAuth2
9 31 (1.27%) Oracle Fusion
10 30 (1.23%) Spring Boot
11 29 (1.19%) JSON
11 29 (1.19%) LDAP
12 28 (1.14%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 202 (8.26%) Management Information System
2 152 (6.21%) Onboarding
3 148 (6.05%) Product Ownership
4 117 (4.78%) Self-Motivation
5 96 (3.92%) Cloud Native
6 69 (2.82%) Algorithms
6 69 (2.82%) Data Structures
7 65 (2.66%) Data Centre
8 55 (2.25%) Virtual Team
9 52 (2.13%) Security Posture
10 51 (2.08%) Operational Technology
11 44 (1.80%) Distributed Systems
11 44 (1.80%) Legacy Systems
12 42 (1.72%) Enterprise Software
13 41 (1.68%) Life Science
14 38 (1.55%) Data Protection Act
15 37 (1.51%) AI Agents
16 35 (1.43%) PMI
17 33 (1.35%) Robotics
18 32 (1.31%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 297 (12.14%) Windows
2 174 (7.11%) Linux
3 75 (3.06%) Windows Server
4 61 (2.49%) Unix
5 50 (2.04%) Windows 10
6 36 (1.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 30 (1.23%) Apple iOS
8 29 (1.19%) Android
9 28 (1.14%) Mac OS
10 12 (0.49%) Ubuntu
11 7 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
11 7 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
12 6 (0.25%) AIX
12 6 (0.25%) Solaris
12 6 (0.25%) VMS
12 6 (0.25%) Windows 7
13 4 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
14 3 (0.12%) OpenVMS
14 3 (0.12%) Rocky
14 3 (0.12%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 827 (33.80%) Computer Science
2 667 (27.26%) Agile
3 640 (26.15%) Problem-Solving
4 422 (17.25%) Stakeholder Management
5 407 (16.63%) Continuous Improvement
6 389 (15.90%) AI
7 323 (13.20%) DevOps
8 309 (12.63%) Project Management
9 302 (12.34%) Analytics
10 292 (11.93%) CI/CD
11 271 (11.07%) ITIL
12 258 (10.54%) Decision-Making
13 253 (10.34%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 247 (10.09%) Cybersecurity
15 215 (8.79%) Change Management
16 211 (8.62%) Software Engineering
17 209 (8.54%) Roadmaps
18 207 (8.46%) PRINCE2
19 203 (8.30%) Scrum
20 201 (8.21%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 424 (17.33%) Python
2 348 (14.22%) SQL
3 166 (6.78%) Java
4 152 (6.21%) PowerShell
5 106 (4.33%) C#
6 93 (3.80%) JavaScript
7 49 (2.00%) Bash
8 44 (1.80%) C++
9 41 (1.68%) TypeScript
10 28 (1.14%) R
11 25 (1.02%) Bicep
11 25 (1.02%) PL/SQL
12 23 (0.94%) T-SQL
13 22 (0.90%) C
13 22 (0.90%) Shell Script
14 13 (0.53%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 12 (0.49%) MATLAB
16 11 (0.45%) X++
17 10 (0.41%) Apex Code
17 10 (0.41%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 479 (19.57%) Computer Science Degree
2 440 (17.98%) Security Cleared
3 290 (11.85%) SC Cleared
4 233 (9.52%) Master's Degree
5 143 (5.84%) PMI Certification
6 124 (5.07%) PMP
7 117 (4.78%) CISSP
8 110 (4.50%) Microsoft Certification
9 84 (3.43%) Cisco Certification
10 75 (3.06%) Azure Certification
10 75 (3.06%) DV Cleared
11 67 (2.74%) BPSS Clearance
12 58 (2.37%) CISM
13 55 (2.25%) PhD
14 41 (1.68%) AWS Certification
14 41 (1.68%) CCNA
15 39 (1.59%) CCNP
16 37 (1.51%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
17 36 (1.47%) CISA
18 31 (1.27%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 128 (5.23%) Data Quality
2 125 (5.11%) QA
3 118 (4.82%) NIST
4 110 (4.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 102 (4.17%) PMO
6 75 (3.06%) GDPR
7 51 (2.08%) SLA
8 50 (2.04%) Accessibility
9 28 (1.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 26 (1.06%) PCI DSS
11 25 (1.02%) GRC
12 21 (0.86%) NCSC
13 16 (0.65%) Cyber Essentials
14 13 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
15 12 (0.49%) COBIT
15 12 (0.49%) NIST 800
16 11 (0.45%) IFRS
16 11 (0.45%) P3O
17 9 (0.37%) ISO 31000
18 8 (0.33%) SOC 2
System Software
1 197 (8.05%) Active Directory
2 122 (4.99%) Docker
3 49 (2.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 25 (1.02%) Hyper-V
5 24 (0.98%) Firmware
6 16 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
7 8 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
8 7 (0.29%) BitLocker
8 7 (0.29%) Embedded Firmware
8 7 (0.29%) VMware NSX
8 7 (0.29%) vSphere
9 6 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
10 5 (0.20%) Oracle RAC
11 4 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
11 4 (0.16%) NFS
11 4 (0.16%) Terminal Services
12 3 (0.12%) OpenAM
12 3 (0.12%) RACF
12 3 (0.12%) Veritas Volume Manager
12 3 (0.12%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 137 (5.60%) Kubernetes
2 95 (3.88%) Terraform
3 77 (3.15%) Microsoft Intune
4 60 (2.45%) Ansible
5 37 (1.51%) SCCM
6 30 (1.23%) Grafana
7 27 (1.10%) Prometheus
8 20 (0.82%) Single Sign-On
9 14 (0.57%) Progress Chef
10 13 (0.53%) Jamf Pro
11 11 (0.45%) Puppet
11 11 (0.45%) vCenter Server
12 10 (0.41%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 9 (0.37%) HP ALM
13 9 (0.37%) WSUS
14 8 (0.33%) Nessus
15 6 (0.25%) Argo
15 6 (0.25%) Oracle RMAN
15 6 (0.25%) SCOM
16 5 (0.20%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 612 (25.01%) Microsoft
2 163 (6.66%) Oracle
3 140 (5.72%) SAP
4 133 (5.44%) ServiceNow
5 92 (3.76%) Google
6 69 (2.82%) Cisco
7 64 (2.62%) Databricks
7 64 (2.62%) VMware
8 57 (2.33%) Salesforce
9 55 (2.25%) Adobe
10 47 (1.92%) IBM
11 34 (1.39%) CyberArk
12 32 (1.31%) Citrix
13 31 (1.27%) Splunk
14 28 (1.14%) Palo Alto
14 28 (1.14%) Red Hat
15 21 (0.86%) Ariba
15 21 (0.86%) BeyondTrust
15 21 (0.86%) Siemens
16 19 (0.78%) HP