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 3 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 29 24 18
Rank change year-on-year -5 -6 +10
Contract jobs citing Degree 2,555 2,322 3,794
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 6.12% 7.78% 8.51%
As % of the Qualifications category 18.03% 25.94% 28.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,483 1,295 2,126
10th Percentile £286 £225 £206
25th Percentile £400 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% +2.50% -6.37%
75th Percentile £635 £650 £638
90th Percentile £738 £775 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.58% -5.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 219 149 360
10th Percentile £15.50 £22.19 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £30.21 £22.33
Median hourly rate £37.50 £45.00 £39.96
Median % change year-on-year -16.67% +12.61% -11.20%
75th Percentile £69.72 £75.00 £59.94
90th Percentile £88.00 £85.00 £73.78
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.00 £45.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -22.22% +12.50% -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 14,173 8,953 13,521
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.97% 29.98% 30.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,358 5,531 8,335
10th Percentile £331 £285 £288
25th Percentile £420 £413 £423
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £517 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £614 £628 £650
90th Percentile £719 £725 £732
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £510 £525
% change year-on-year -1.96% -2.86% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,042 446 998
10th Percentile £16.17 £20.06 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.38 £24.50 £19.99
Median hourly rate £25.77 £42.21 £40.28
Median % change year-on-year -38.94% +4.79% -19.45%
75th Percentile £65.00 £67.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £81.50 £82.18 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £47.81 £40.97
% change year-on-year -47.39% +16.68% -8.96%

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 3 March 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 3 March 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 3 March 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 -5 2,217 £500 -4.76% 2,987
UK excluding London -5 1,343 £492 +3.58% 2,466
London -11 970 £515 -6.36% 854
Work from Home -5 709 £500 -4.76% 1,208
North of England -4 348 £447 -10.60% 478
South East -2 323 £475 -5.00% 812
Midlands -18 208 £500 +24.07% 378
North West -1 182 £400 -15.79% 240
South West +6 180 £650 +21.44% 304
West Midlands -20 152 £500 - 199
Yorkshire -13 149 £525 +5.00% 179
East of England -9 133 £525 +16.67% 352
Scotland -1 113 £525 +20.34% 117
East Midlands -12 56 £525 +47.47% 173
Wales -9 49 £254 -12.35% 80
North East -9 18 £364 -27.20% 63
Northern Ireland -12 17 £388 -8.82% 27

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
1 216 (8.45%) Confluence
2 121 (4.74%) SharePoint
3 69 (2.70%) Microsoft Exchange
4 56 (2.19%) Apache Spark
5 26 (1.02%) Apache Airflow
6 18 (0.70%) Apache
7 11 (0.43%) CMS
8 10 (0.39%) Skype for Business
9 8 (0.31%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 5 (0.20%) Ethereum
10 5 (0.20%) SAS
11 4 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 4 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2013
11 4 (0.16%) GeoServer
11 4 (0.16%) IIS
11 4 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
11 4 (0.16%) Smallworld
12 3 (0.12%) nginx
12 3 (0.12%) OpenStack
12 3 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 313 (12.25%) Microsoft Office
2 234 (9.16%) Microsoft Excel
3 200 (7.83%) Microsoft Project
4 128 (5.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 77 (3.01%) MS Visio
6 18 (0.70%) Chatbot
7 16 (0.63%) Simulink
8 14 (0.55%) Spreadsheet
9 9 (0.35%) Sketch
9 9 (0.35%) Trello
10 7 (0.27%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.16%) InVision
12 3 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.078%) Adobe After Effects
13 2 (0.078%) Adobe Illustrator
13 2 (0.078%) InDesign
13 2 (0.078%) Photoshop
13 2 (0.078%) PTC Creo
14 1 (0.039%) CPLEX
14 1 (0.039%) Stateflow
Business Applications
1 64 (2.50%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (1.10%) Dynamics CRM
3 27 (1.06%) Primavera
4 20 (0.78%) Remedy ITSM
5 12 (0.47%) SAP ERP
6 9 (0.35%) Oracle General Ledger
7 8 (0.31%) Veritas eDiscovery
8 7 (0.27%) Oracle Payables
8 7 (0.27%) SAP EWM
9 6 (0.23%) Oracle ERP
9 6 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
9 6 (0.23%) SAP WM
10 5 (0.20%) Dynamics GP
10 5 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
11 4 (0.16%) Dynamics AX
11 4 (0.16%) NEC Housing
11 4 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 4 (0.16%) Oracle Receivables
11 4 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
11 4 (0.16%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 543 (21.25%) Azure
2 301 (11.78%) AWS
3 215 (8.41%) Microsoft 365
4 197 (7.71%) Power Platform
5 150 (5.87%) GCP
6 114 (4.46%) SaaS
7 105 (4.11%) Entra ID
8 94 (3.68%) Azure DevOps
9 88 (3.44%) GitHub
10 54 (2.11%) Dynamics 365
11 53 (2.07%) Serverless
12 43 (1.68%) Cloud Computing
13 40 (1.57%) Power Automate
14 34 (1.33%) Snowflake
15 33 (1.29%) GitHub Actions
16 32 (1.25%) IaaS
16 32 (1.25%) PaaS
17 31 (1.21%) OCI
18 30 (1.17%) PowerApps
19 28 (1.10%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 118 (4.62%) Firewall
2 65 (2.54%) DNS
3 64 (2.50%) TCP/IP
4 62 (2.43%) WAN
5 61 (2.39%) LAN
6 51 (2.00%) Network Security
7 44 (1.72%) VPN
8 32 (1.25%) Skype
9 31 (1.21%) Ethernet
9 31 (1.21%) HTTP
10 29 (1.14%) Wireless
11 26 (1.02%) BGP
11 26 (1.02%) DHCP
11 26 (1.02%) Internet
11 26 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
12 23 (0.90%) OSPF
13 22 (0.86%) Unified Communications
14 21 (0.82%) VLAN
15 18 (0.70%) SSL
16 17 (0.67%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 151 (5.91%) Power BI
2 100 (3.91%) PostgreSQL
3 98 (3.84%) SQL Server
4 62 (2.43%) NoSQL
5 61 (2.39%) Data Warehouse
6 49 (1.92%) Big Data
7 48 (1.88%) Tableau
8 47 (1.84%) Relational Database
9 44 (1.72%) MySQL
10 34 (1.33%) Metadata
11 31 (1.21%) Data Lake
12 28 (1.10%) Hadoop
13 24 (0.94%) MongoDB
14 20 (0.78%) Elasticsearch
15 16 (0.63%) GIS
15 16 (0.63%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 13 (0.51%) BigQuery
17 12 (0.47%) Geospatial Data
17 12 (0.47%) Oracle Reports
18 11 (0.43%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 301 (11.78%) JIRA
2 122 (4.77%) Git
3 76 (2.97%) Jenkins
4 60 (2.35%) GitLab
5 28 (1.10%) Visual Studio
6 21 (0.82%) Selenium
7 18 (0.70%) Postman
8 16 (0.63%) Liquibase
9 13 (0.51%) Burp Suite
9 13 (0.51%) Rational DOORS
10 12 (0.47%) Bitbucket
10 12 (0.47%) MLflow
11 11 (0.43%) Metasploit
12 10 (0.39%) Gradle
13 9 (0.35%) Cypress.io
13 9 (0.35%) Jaeger
14 8 (0.31%) CircleCI
14 8 (0.31%) Cucumber
14 8 (0.31%) JMeter
15 7 (0.27%) JUnit
General
1 1,273 (49.82%) Social Skills
2 799 (31.27%) Finance
3 583 (22.82%) Analytical Skills
4 256 (10.02%) Banking
5 221 (8.65%) Public Sector
6 122 (4.77%) Presentation Skills
7 112 (4.38%) Organisational Skills
8 100 (3.91%) Marketing
9 95 (3.72%) Manufacturing
10 85 (3.33%) Documentation Skills
11 82 (3.21%) Influencing Skills
12 70 (2.74%) Legal
13 59 (2.31%) Military
14 55 (2.15%) Telecoms
15 53 (2.07%) Financial Institution
16 49 (1.92%) Aerospace
17 47 (1.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 46 (1.80%) Electronics
18 46 (1.80%) Retail
19 45 (1.76%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 367 (14.36%) Analyst
2 254 (9.94%) Senior
3 212 (8.30%) Lead
4 208 (8.14%) Developer
5 203 (7.95%) Architect
6 176 (6.89%) Project Manager
7 164 (6.42%) Business Analyst
8 104 (4.07%) Consultant
9 80 (3.13%) Software Engineer
10 73 (2.86%) Solutions Architect
11 65 (2.54%) Technical Support
12 58 (2.27%) Security Engineer
13 55 (2.15%) IT Support
14 51 (2.00%) Senior Analyst
15 48 (1.88%) Delivery Manager
16 47 (1.84%) Data Scientist
17 44 (1.72%) Designer
18 39 (1.53%) Data Engineer
18 39 (1.53%) Support Analyst
19 37 (1.45%) Technical Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 119 (4.66%) REST
2 77 (3.01%) .NET
3 71 (2.78%) RESTful
4 68 (2.66%) HTML
5 65 (2.54%) React
6 55 (2.15%) CSS
7 53 (2.07%) Middleware
8 47 (1.84%) Kafka
9 44 (1.72%) Elastic Stack
10 40 (1.57%) Oracle Fusion
10 40 (1.57%) SOAP
11 39 (1.53%) JSON
11 39 (1.53%) XML
12 36 (1.41%) OAuth
12 36 (1.41%) PyTorch
12 36 (1.41%) TensorFlow
13 32 (1.25%) Spring
14 30 (1.17%) AngularJS
14 30 (1.17%) Spring Boot
15 28 (1.10%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 213 (8.34%) Management Information System
2 144 (5.64%) Product Ownership
3 113 (4.42%) Onboarding
4 112 (4.38%) Cloud Native
5 86 (3.37%) Algorithms
6 78 (3.05%) Virtual Team
7 70 (2.74%) Self-Motivation
8 69 (2.70%) Distributed Systems
9 66 (2.58%) Data Centre
10 60 (2.35%) Data Protection Act
11 55 (2.15%) Analytical Mindset
12 51 (2.00%) PMI
13 46 (1.80%) Data Structures
14 45 (1.76%) Security Posture
15 43 (1.68%) Derivative
15 43 (1.68%) Enterprise Software
16 37 (1.45%) Legacy Systems
17 36 (1.41%) Public Cloud
18 34 (1.33%) NHS
19 33 (1.29%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 305 (11.94%) Windows
2 201 (7.87%) Linux
3 83 (3.25%) Unix
4 73 (2.86%) Windows Server
5 58 (2.27%) Windows 10
6 30 (1.17%) Android
7 24 (0.94%) Mac OS
8 21 (0.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 18 (0.70%) Apple iOS
10 15 (0.59%) Windows Server 2016
11 14 (0.55%) Ubuntu
12 13 (0.51%) Windows Server 2012
12 13 (0.51%) Windows Server 2019
13 9 (0.35%) VMS
14 8 (0.31%) Windows Server 2003
15 5 (0.20%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.16%) AIX
17 3 (0.12%) CentOS
17 3 (0.12%) Debian
17 3 (0.12%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 923 (36.13%) Computer Science
2 792 (31.00%) Agile
3 734 (28.73%) Problem-Solving
4 424 (16.59%) Stakeholder Management
5 380 (14.87%) DevOps
6 340 (13.31%) AI
7 335 (13.11%) Project Management
8 307 (12.02%) Continuous Improvement
9 299 (11.70%) CI/CD
10 288 (11.27%) Analytics
11 287 (11.23%) Change Management
12 276 (10.80%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 272 (10.65%) Cybersecurity
14 270 (10.57%) Decision-Making
15 260 (10.18%) Migration
16 255 (9.98%) ITIL
17 234 (9.16%) Project Delivery
18 233 (9.12%) Software Engineering
19 231 (9.04%) Risk Management
20 211 (8.26%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 447 (17.50%) Python
2 381 (14.91%) SQL
3 177 (6.93%) Java
4 132 (5.17%) PowerShell
5 111 (4.34%) JavaScript
6 88 (3.44%) C#
7 77 (3.01%) C++
8 54 (2.11%) TypeScript
9 49 (1.92%) Bash
10 47 (1.84%) Go
11 31 (1.21%) R
12 26 (1.02%) PL/SQL
13 21 (0.82%) Perl
14 19 (0.74%) Shell Script
15 18 (0.70%) MATLAB
16 17 (0.67%) T-SQL
17 16 (0.63%) C
18 15 (0.59%) Kotlin
18 15 (0.59%) Rust
18 15 (0.59%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 598 (23.41%) Computer Science Degree
2 466 (18.24%) Security Cleared
3 399 (15.62%) Master's Degree
4 355 (13.89%) SC Cleared
5 145 (5.68%) PMI Certification
6 128 (5.01%) CISSP
6 128 (5.01%) PMP
7 92 (3.60%) Microsoft Certification
8 85 (3.33%) CISM
9 76 (2.97%) PhD
10 75 (2.94%) TOGAF Certification
11 73 (2.86%) BPSS Clearance
12 64 (2.50%) Azure Certification
13 63 (2.47%) Cisco Certification
14 56 (2.19%) DV Cleared
15 41 (1.60%) CCNP
16 40 (1.57%) MBA
17 39 (1.53%) AWS Certification
18 33 (1.29%) CBAP
19 32 (1.25%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 169 (6.61%) QA
2 135 (5.28%) GDPR
3 106 (4.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 106 (4.15%) PMO
4 97 (3.80%) Data Quality
5 87 (3.41%) NIST
6 50 (1.96%) PCI DSS
7 46 (1.80%) Accessibility
8 37 (1.45%) SLA
9 34 (1.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 31 (1.21%) GRC
11 19 (0.74%) Actionable Recommendations
12 18 (0.70%) WCAG
13 17 (0.67%) HIPAA
14 16 (0.63%) NCSC
15 15 (0.59%) Cyber Essentials
16 14 (0.55%) Basel III
16 14 (0.55%) IFRS
17 13 (0.51%) DO-254
18 12 (0.47%) COBIT
System Software
1 189 (7.40%) Docker
2 164 (6.42%) Active Directory
3 46 (1.80%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.82%) Firmware
5 20 (0.78%) Hyper-V
6 8 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
7 7 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
8 5 (0.20%) Microsoft Virtual Server
8 5 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
8 5 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
8 5 (0.20%) vSphere
8 5 (0.20%) XenApp
8 5 (0.20%) XenDesktop
9 4 (0.16%) NDS
9 4 (0.16%) NetIQ eDirectory
9 4 (0.16%) VMware NSX
10 3 (0.12%) BitLocker
10 3 (0.12%) HDFS
10 3 (0.12%) KVM
11 1 (0.039%) GPFS
Systems Management
1 186 (7.28%) Kubernetes
2 112 (4.38%) Terraform
3 76 (2.97%) Ansible
4 70 (2.74%) Microsoft Intune
5 50 (1.96%) Grafana
6 47 (1.84%) SCCM
7 42 (1.64%) Prometheus
8 30 (1.17%) OPNET
9 22 (0.86%) Puppet
10 16 (0.63%) Kibana
10 16 (0.63%) Single Sign-On
11 15 (0.59%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 13 (0.51%) Nmap
13 11 (0.43%) SCOM
14 9 (0.35%) Kiali
14 9 (0.35%) WSUS
15 7 (0.27%) Argo
15 7 (0.27%) Progress Chef
16 6 (0.23%) Functional Safety
17 5 (0.20%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 550 (21.53%) Microsoft
2 170 (6.65%) Oracle
3 165 (6.46%) SAP
4 118 (4.62%) ServiceNow
5 111 (4.34%) Google
6 95 (3.72%) Splunk
7 84 (3.29%) Cisco
8 56 (2.19%) Atlassian
9 54 (2.11%) Remedy
10 53 (2.07%) Databricks
11 51 (2.00%) VMware
12 50 (1.96%) Salesforce
13 42 (1.64%) Citrix
14 38 (1.49%) Palo Alto
15 35 (1.37%) IBM
16 29 (1.14%) CheckPoint
17 27 (1.06%) Informatica
18 25 (0.98%) BiZZdesign
18 25 (0.98%) Red Hat
19 22 (0.86%) Adobe