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

6 months to
17 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 24 18
Rank change year-on-year -4 -6 +10
Contract jobs citing Degree 2,571 2,318 3,743
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.96% 7.89% 8.41%
As % of the Qualifications category 17.62% 25.95% 27.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,507 1,335 2,071
10th Percentile £287 £234 £210
25th Percentile £400 £400 £389
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £510 £507
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% +0.59% -4.88%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £638
90th Percentile £738 £788 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.21% -5.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 226 170 368
10th Percentile £15.53 £20.45 £14.00
25th Percentile £24.26 £29.25 £21.57
Median hourly rate £45.46 £45.59 £37.00
Median % change year-on-year -0.29% +23.22% -17.78%
75th Percentile £82.25 £71.19 £58.75
90th Percentile £88.00 £85.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.46 £45.00 £37.50
% change year-on-year +1.02% +20.00% -16.67%

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 14,590 8,931 13,563
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.79% 30.42% 30.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,589 5,638 8,379
10th Percentile £333 £285 £300
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £613 £626 £650
90th Percentile £720 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,079 472 1,018
10th Percentile £16.17 £18.52 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.83 £24.50 £18.00
Median hourly rate £29.61 £44.00 £38.45
Median % change year-on-year -32.70% +14.43% -25.33%
75th Percentile £67.50 £67.50 £61.91
90th Percentile £84.00 £82.03 £75.55
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.97 £50.00 £39.92
% change year-on-year -46.06% +25.25% -18.53%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 -4 2,239 £500 -4.76% 2,564
UK excluding London -6 1,341 £490 +3.21% 2,026
London -14 982 £513 -6.82% 905
Work from Home -4 711 £500 -3.85% 983
South East -3 362 £484 -3.25% 656
North of England -5 344 £444 -11.30% 476
Midlands -18 208 £500 +40.06% 309
North West -6 177 £400 -19.76% 244
South West -2 155 £688 +25.00% 235
Yorkshire -9 152 £504 +0.75% 167
West Midlands -20 151 £500 +28.12% 181
East of England -7 132 £500 +1.21% 221
Scotland 0 105 £513 +16.48% 107
East Midlands -14 56 £525 +47.47% 128
Wales -11 45 £282 -2.20% 60
Northern Ireland -13 16 £388 +5.08% 18
North East -14 16 £364 -23.37% 70

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
1 213 (8.28%) Confluence
2 115 (4.47%) SharePoint
3 64 (2.49%) Microsoft Exchange
4 57 (2.22%) Apache Spark
5 27 (1.05%) Apache Airflow
6 18 (0.70%) Apache
7 11 (0.43%) CMS
8 7 (0.27%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 5 (0.19%) Ethereum
9 5 (0.19%) OpenStack
9 5 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
9 5 (0.19%) SAS
10 4 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 4 (0.16%) GeoServer
10 4 (0.16%) IIS
10 4 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
10 4 (0.16%) Smallworld
11 3 (0.12%) Hyperledger
11 3 (0.12%) Skype for Business
11 3 (0.12%) WebSphere
Applications
1 312 (12.14%) Microsoft Office
2 236 (9.18%) Microsoft Excel
3 204 (7.93%) Microsoft Project
4 130 (5.06%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 73 (2.84%) MS Visio
6 18 (0.70%) Chatbot
7 16 (0.62%) Spreadsheet
8 14 (0.54%) Simulink
9 10 (0.39%) Trello
10 7 (0.27%) Sketch
11 6 (0.23%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 3 (0.12%) InVision
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%) FrameMaker
Business Applications
1 69 (2.68%) SAP S/4HANA
2 26 (1.01%) Dynamics CRM
3 25 (0.97%) Primavera
4 20 (0.78%) Remedy ITSM
5 11 (0.43%) SAP ERP
6 9 (0.35%) Oracle General Ledger
7 8 (0.31%) Veritas eDiscovery
8 7 (0.27%) Aladdin
8 7 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
8 7 (0.27%) Oracle Payables
9 6 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
10 5 (0.19%) Dynamics GP
10 5 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
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%) Shopify
11 4 (0.16%) Teamcenter
11 4 (0.16%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 555 (21.59%) Azure
2 311 (12.10%) AWS
3 212 (8.25%) Microsoft 365
4 203 (7.90%) Power Platform
5 146 (5.68%) GCP
6 117 (4.55%) Entra ID
7 109 (4.24%) SaaS
8 101 (3.93%) Azure DevOps
9 88 (3.42%) GitHub
10 52 (2.02%) Dynamics 365
11 49 (1.91%) Serverless
12 45 (1.75%) Cloud Computing
13 41 (1.59%) Power Automate
13 41 (1.59%) Snowflake
14 33 (1.28%) GitHub Actions
15 32 (1.24%) IaaS
15 32 (1.24%) PaaS
15 32 (1.24%) PowerApps
16 29 (1.13%) Microsoft Purview
17 28 (1.09%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 117 (4.55%) Firewall
2 61 (2.37%) WAN
3 59 (2.29%) DNS
3 59 (2.29%) LAN
3 59 (2.29%) TCP/IP
4 51 (1.98%) Network Security
5 41 (1.59%) VPN
6 30 (1.17%) Ethernet
7 29 (1.13%) HTTP
8 28 (1.09%) BGP
8 28 (1.09%) Wireless
9 25 (0.97%) Skype
10 23 (0.89%) Internet
10 23 (0.89%) OSPF
11 21 (0.82%) DHCP
12 20 (0.78%) Wi-Fi
13 19 (0.74%) VLAN
14 16 (0.62%) SSL
15 15 (0.58%) SAN
15 15 (0.58%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 160 (6.22%) Power BI
2 98 (3.81%) PostgreSQL
3 95 (3.70%) SQL Server
4 62 (2.41%) Data Warehouse
5 61 (2.37%) NoSQL
6 53 (2.06%) Big Data
7 49 (1.91%) Tableau
8 46 (1.79%) Relational Database
9 41 (1.59%) MySQL
10 34 (1.32%) Metadata
11 31 (1.21%) Data Lake
12 30 (1.17%) Hadoop
13 25 (0.97%) MongoDB
14 18 (0.70%) Elasticsearch
15 17 (0.66%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 15 (0.58%) GIS
17 13 (0.51%) Geospatial Data
18 12 (0.47%) Amazon RDS
18 12 (0.47%) Oracle Reports
19 11 (0.43%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 305 (11.86%) JIRA
2 133 (5.17%) Git
3 75 (2.92%) Jenkins
4 59 (2.29%) GitLab
5 29 (1.13%) Rational DOORS
6 27 (1.05%) Visual Studio
7 22 (0.86%) Selenium
8 18 (0.70%) MLflow
9 15 (0.58%) Postman
10 13 (0.51%) Burp Suite
11 11 (0.43%) Bitbucket
11 11 (0.43%) Metasploit
12 10 (0.39%) Gradle
12 10 (0.39%) Liquibase
13 9 (0.35%) Cypress.io
13 9 (0.35%) Jaeger
14 8 (0.31%) CircleCI
14 8 (0.31%) Cucumber
15 7 (0.27%) JMeter
15 7 (0.27%) JUnit
General
1 1,239 (48.19%) Social Skills
2 795 (30.92%) Finance
3 591 (22.99%) Analytical Skills
4 248 (9.65%) Banking
5 228 (8.87%) Public Sector
6 119 (4.63%) Presentation Skills
7 102 (3.97%) Organisational Skills
8 97 (3.77%) Marketing
9 90 (3.50%) Influencing Skills
10 89 (3.46%) Documentation Skills
10 89 (3.46%) Manufacturing
11 78 (3.03%) Legal
12 67 (2.61%) Aerospace
13 63 (2.45%) Telecoms
14 60 (2.33%) Military
15 51 (1.98%) Front Office
16 49 (1.91%) Financial Institution
17 48 (1.87%) Retail
18 47 (1.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 46 (1.79%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 368 (14.31%) Analyst
2 254 (9.88%) Senior
3 214 (8.32%) Lead
4 208 (8.09%) Architect
5 203 (7.90%) Developer
6 185 (7.20%) Project Manager
7 168 (6.53%) Business Analyst
8 99 (3.85%) Consultant
9 70 (2.72%) Solutions Architect
10 65 (2.53%) Delivery Manager
10 65 (2.53%) Software Engineer
11 62 (2.41%) Security Engineer
12 60 (2.33%) Technical Support
13 59 (2.29%) Senior Analyst
14 53 (2.06%) Data Scientist
15 47 (1.83%) IT Support
16 46 (1.79%) Designer
16 46 (1.79%) Product Manager
17 38 (1.48%) Data Engineer
17 38 (1.48%) Technical Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 110 (4.28%) REST
2 73 (2.84%) .NET
3 65 (2.53%) React
4 64 (2.49%) RESTful
5 61 (2.37%) HTML
6 51 (1.98%) Middleware
7 50 (1.94%) CSS
8 48 (1.87%) Kafka
9 40 (1.56%) PyTorch
9 40 (1.56%) TensorFlow
10 39 (1.52%) Elastic Stack
10 39 (1.52%) SOAP
10 39 (1.52%) XML
11 38 (1.48%) JSON
12 37 (1.44%) Oracle Fusion
13 36 (1.40%) OAuth
14 35 (1.36%) Spring
15 33 (1.28%) Pandas
16 31 (1.21%) Spring Boot
17 29 (1.13%) NumPy
Miscellaneous
1 211 (8.21%) Management Information System
2 163 (6.34%) Product Ownership
3 119 (4.63%) Onboarding
4 112 (4.36%) Cloud Native
5 91 (3.54%) Algorithms
6 81 (3.15%) Virtual Team
7 72 (2.80%) Data Centre
8 68 (2.64%) Self-Motivation
9 67 (2.61%) Distributed Systems
10 63 (2.45%) Data Structures
11 57 (2.22%) PMI
12 56 (2.18%) Data Protection Act
13 53 (2.06%) Analytical Mindset
14 47 (1.83%) Derivative
15 37 (1.44%) Security Posture
16 36 (1.40%) Enterprise Software
16 36 (1.40%) Legacy Systems
17 34 (1.32%) NHS
18 33 (1.28%) Equities
18 33 (1.28%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 295 (11.47%) Windows
2 188 (7.31%) Linux
3 74 (2.88%) Unix
4 73 (2.84%) Windows Server
5 56 (2.18%) Windows 10
6 28 (1.09%) Android
7 24 (0.93%) Mac OS
8 21 (0.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 15 (0.58%) Apple iOS
10 13 (0.51%) Ubuntu
10 13 (0.51%) Windows Server 2012
11 12 (0.47%) Windows Server 2016
12 10 (0.39%) Windows Server 2019
13 8 (0.31%) Windows Server 2003
14 6 (0.23%) VMS
15 5 (0.19%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.16%) AIX
17 3 (0.12%) CentOS
17 3 (0.12%) Debian
17 3 (0.12%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 959 (37.30%) Computer Science
2 805 (31.31%) Agile
3 711 (27.65%) Problem-Solving
4 429 (16.69%) Stakeholder Management
5 379 (14.74%) DevOps
6 367 (14.27%) AI
7 347 (13.50%) Continuous Improvement
8 344 (13.38%) Project Management
9 313 (12.17%) CI/CD
10 291 (11.32%) Analytics
11 284 (11.05%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 282 (10.97%) Change Management
13 277 (10.77%) Cybersecurity
14 269 (10.46%) Decision-Making
15 262 (10.19%) ITIL
15 262 (10.19%) Migration
16 233 (9.06%) Project Delivery
17 232 (9.02%) PRINCE2
18 231 (8.98%) Risk Management
19 230 (8.95%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 452 (17.58%) Python
2 384 (14.94%) SQL
3 177 (6.88%) Java
4 130 (5.06%) PowerShell
5 101 (3.93%) JavaScript
6 81 (3.15%) C#
7 73 (2.84%) C++
8 54 (2.10%) TypeScript
9 47 (1.83%) Bash
10 40 (1.56%) Go
11 32 (1.24%) R
12 26 (1.01%) PL/SQL
13 21 (0.82%) Shell Script
14 19 (0.74%) Perl
15 15 (0.58%) MATLAB
15 15 (0.58%) Rust
15 15 (0.58%) T-SQL
16 14 (0.54%) SystemVerilog
17 13 (0.51%) C
17 13 (0.51%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 602 (23.42%) Computer Science Degree
2 493 (19.18%) Security Cleared
3 386 (15.01%) Master's Degree
4 350 (13.61%) SC Cleared
5 157 (6.11%) PMI Certification
6 136 (5.29%) CISSP
7 135 (5.25%) PMP
8 92 (3.58%) Microsoft Certification
9 84 (3.27%) CISM
10 78 (3.03%) PhD
11 70 (2.72%) TOGAF Certification
12 63 (2.45%) Azure Certification
12 63 (2.45%) BPSS Clearance
13 62 (2.41%) Cisco Certification
14 59 (2.29%) DV Cleared
15 40 (1.56%) MBA
16 39 (1.52%) CCNP
17 35 (1.36%) CBAP
18 34 (1.32%) AWS Certification
19 31 (1.21%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 167 (6.50%) QA
2 139 (5.41%) GDPR
3 111 (4.32%) PMO
4 108 (4.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 100 (3.89%) NIST
6 99 (3.85%) Data Quality
7 52 (2.02%) PCI DSS
8 45 (1.75%) Accessibility
9 43 (1.67%) SLA
10 31 (1.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 22 (0.86%) NCSC
12 21 (0.82%) GRC
13 19 (0.74%) Actionable Recommendations
14 18 (0.70%) WCAG
15 16 (0.62%) Cyber Essentials
16 15 (0.58%) HIPAA
17 14 (0.54%) IFRS
18 13 (0.51%) Basel III
19 12 (0.47%) COBIT
19 12 (0.47%) DO-254
System Software
1 185 (7.20%) Docker
2 163 (6.34%) Active Directory
3 44 (1.71%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.78%) Hyper-V
5 19 (0.74%) Firmware
6 9 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
7 6 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
7 6 (0.23%) vSphere
8 5 (0.19%) Virtual Machines
8 5 (0.19%) XenApp
8 5 (0.19%) XenDesktop
9 4 (0.16%) BitLocker
9 4 (0.16%) VMware NSX
10 3 (0.12%) KVM
11 2 (0.078%) HDFS
11 2 (0.078%) Microsoft Virtual Server
11 2 (0.078%) NDS
11 2 (0.078%) NetIQ eDirectory
11 2 (0.078%) Oracle RAC
11 2 (0.078%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 185 (7.20%) Kubernetes
2 107 (4.16%) Terraform
3 73 (2.84%) Ansible
4 66 (2.57%) Microsoft Intune
5 50 (1.94%) Grafana
6 42 (1.63%) Prometheus
7 39 (1.52%) SCCM
8 30 (1.17%) OPNET
9 19 (0.74%) Puppet
9 19 (0.74%) Single Sign-On
10 16 (0.62%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 14 (0.54%) Kibana
12 13 (0.51%) Nmap
13 11 (0.43%) SCOM
14 9 (0.35%) Kiali
15 8 (0.31%) Argo
16 7 (0.27%) HP ALM
16 7 (0.27%) Progress Chef
16 7 (0.27%) vCenter Server
17 6 (0.23%) WSUS
Vendors
1 551 (21.43%) Microsoft
2 162 (6.30%) Oracle
3 157 (6.11%) SAP
4 118 (4.59%) ServiceNow
5 115 (4.47%) Google
6 83 (3.23%) Splunk
7 82 (3.19%) Cisco
8 64 (2.49%) Databricks
9 55 (2.14%) Atlassian
10 54 (2.10%) Remedy
11 49 (1.91%) IBM
11 49 (1.91%) Salesforce
11 49 (1.91%) VMware
12 44 (1.71%) Citrix
13 41 (1.59%) Palo Alto
14 30 (1.17%) CheckPoint
15 28 (1.09%) Informatica
16 26 (1.01%) Red Hat
17 25 (0.97%) BiZZdesign
18 22 (0.86%) Adobe