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 8 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 38 23 17
Rank change year-on-year -15 -6 +11
Contract jobs citing Degree 2,410 2,288 3,666
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.08% 7.86% 8.50%
As % of the Qualifications category 15.84% 25.49% 27.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,406 1,310 1,950
10th Percentile £250 £241 £212
25th Percentile £375 £375 £385
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £503
Median % change year-on-year - -0.50% -4.29%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £634
90th Percentile £738 £766 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £500
% change year-on-year +5.56% -10.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 204 180 409
10th Percentile £17.46 £17.50 £14.04
25th Percentile £28.00 £26.83 £22.50
Median hourly rate £57.25 £53.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +8.02% +32.50% -11.11%
75th Percentile £84.00 £67.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £88.00 £85.00 £73.80
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £45.01 £41.50
% change year-on-year +44.42% +8.45% -7.78%

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 15,210 8,977 13,149
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.05% 30.85% 30.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,117 5,651 8,118
10th Percentile £348 £285 £300
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -1.14% -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £650
90th Percentile £721 £704 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £534
% change year-on-year - -6.30% +0.68%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,087 512 1,072
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.13 £13.85
25th Percentile £21.25 £21.49 £17.80
Median hourly rate £47.54 £38.27 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +24.22% -4.33% -25.93%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.00 £61.53
90th Percentile £85.36 £79.87 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £40.00 £40.94
% change year-on-year +18.75% -2.30% -17.91%

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 8 May 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 8 May 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 8 May 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 -8 2,138 £500 -2.91% 2,652
UK excluding London -7 1,304 £475 +5.56% 1,988
London -16 903 £500 -9.05% 970
Work from Home -11 657 £500 - 1,001
South East -4 365 £492 -0.40% 685
North of England -11 317 £417 -7.85% 436
Midlands -25 210 £500 +66.67% 312
North West -11 165 £400 -13.51% 224
West Midlands -23 147 £500 +66.67% 198
East of England -7 140 £450 -10.00% 194
South West -14 140 £621 +24.10% 249
Yorkshire -9 138 £474 +22.73% 154
Scotland -9 96 £500 +11.11% 95
East Midlands -10 61 £525 +47.47% 113
Wales -20 29 £358 +17.03% 46
Northern Ireland -7 14 £425 - 17
North East -24 14 £450 - 65

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
1 170 (7.05%) Confluence
2 117 (4.85%) SharePoint
3 64 (2.66%) Microsoft Exchange
4 50 (2.07%) Apache Spark
5 24 (1.00%) Apache Airflow
6 21 (0.87%) Apache
7 9 (0.37%) CMS
8 6 (0.25%) IIS
8 6 (0.25%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 6 (0.25%) Oracle Workflow
8 6 (0.25%) SAS
9 5 (0.21%) OpenStack
10 4 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 3 (0.12%) Moodle
11 3 (0.12%) MS Project Server
12 2 (0.083%) Drupal
12 2 (0.083%) Ethereum
12 2 (0.083%) nginx
12 2 (0.083%) WebSphere
12 2 (0.083%) WinCC
Applications
1 304 (12.61%) Microsoft Office
2 236 (9.79%) Microsoft Excel
3 192 (7.97%) Microsoft Project
4 142 (5.89%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 63 (2.61%) MS Visio
6 14 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.46%) Simulink
8 10 (0.41%) Trello
9 8 (0.33%) Adobe After Effects
9 8 (0.33%) Adobe Illustrator
9 8 (0.33%) Navisworks
9 8 (0.33%) Photoshop
9 8 (0.33%) Revit
10 6 (0.25%) Adobe XD
10 6 (0.25%) Sketch
11 4 (0.17%) Chatbot
12 3 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.083%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.083%) FrameMaker
13 2 (0.083%) InVision
Business Applications
1 72 (2.99%) SAP S/4HANA
2 22 (0.91%) Dynamics CRM
3 17 (0.71%) Primavera
4 14 (0.58%) Remedy ITSM
5 10 (0.41%) Oracle Payables
6 9 (0.37%) Oracle General Ledger
7 8 (0.33%) Aladdin
7 8 (0.33%) Veritas eDiscovery
8 7 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
8 7 (0.29%) SAP EWM
9 6 (0.25%) NetSuite
9 6 (0.25%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 6 (0.25%) Oracle Receivables
9 6 (0.25%) Payment Gateway
10 5 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
10 5 (0.21%) Shopify
11 4 (0.17%) Fidessa
11 4 (0.17%) NEC Housing
11 4 (0.17%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 4 (0.17%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 503 (20.87%) Azure
2 285 (11.83%) AWS
3 204 (8.46%) Microsoft 365
4 193 (8.01%) Power Platform
5 108 (4.48%) Entra ID
6 99 (4.11%) SaaS
7 96 (3.98%) GCP
8 89 (3.69%) Azure DevOps
9 58 (2.41%) GitHub
10 44 (1.83%) Dynamics 365
11 34 (1.41%) Power Automate
12 33 (1.37%) Google Workspace
13 32 (1.33%) IaaS
13 32 (1.33%) PaaS
14 31 (1.29%) Snowflake
15 30 (1.24%) Figma
16 28 (1.16%) Cloud Computing
17 27 (1.12%) GitHub Actions
17 27 (1.12%) PowerApps
17 27 (1.12%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 110 (4.56%) Firewall
2 63 (2.61%) TCP/IP
3 58 (2.41%) DNS
4 56 (2.32%) WAN
5 53 (2.20%) LAN
6 49 (2.03%) Network Security
7 36 (1.49%) VPN
8 27 (1.12%) BGP
8 27 (1.12%) Wireless
9 25 (1.04%) Ethernet
10 24 (1.00%) OSPF
11 22 (0.91%) Skype
12 19 (0.79%) HTTP
13 18 (0.75%) DHCP
14 17 (0.71%) SAN
15 16 (0.66%) Wi-Fi
16 12 (0.50%) IPsec
16 12 (0.50%) SSL
16 12 (0.50%) VLAN
16 12 (0.50%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 160 (6.64%) Power BI
2 99 (4.11%) SQL Server
3 63 (2.61%) PostgreSQL
4 60 (2.49%) Data Warehouse
5 52 (2.16%) Relational Database
6 49 (2.03%) Big Data
7 40 (1.66%) Metadata
8 37 (1.54%) Tableau
9 34 (1.41%) NoSQL
10 32 (1.33%) MySQL
11 28 (1.16%) Hadoop
12 23 (0.95%) Data Lake
13 21 (0.87%) MongoDB
14 18 (0.75%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 15 (0.62%) Elasticsearch
16 13 (0.54%) Oracle Database
17 12 (0.50%) Oracle Reports
17 12 (0.50%) Power Query
17 12 (0.50%) Snowflake Schema
18 10 (0.41%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 275 (11.41%) JIRA
2 113 (4.69%) Git
3 45 (1.87%) Jenkins
4 44 (1.83%) GitLab
5 31 (1.29%) Rational DOORS
6 20 (0.83%) Visual Studio
7 19 (0.79%) MLflow
8 18 (0.75%) Selenium
9 12 (0.50%) Burp Suite
9 12 (0.50%) Gradle
10 11 (0.46%) Metasploit
11 10 (0.41%) Postman
12 9 (0.37%) Cypress.io
12 9 (0.37%) Jaeger
12 9 (0.37%) JUnit
12 9 (0.37%) TeamCity
13 7 (0.29%) Bitbucket
13 7 (0.29%) CircleCI
13 7 (0.29%) Maven
14 6 (0.25%) Cucumber
General
1 1,122 (46.56%) Social Skills
2 734 (30.46%) Finance
3 518 (21.49%) Analytical Skills
4 215 (8.92%) Banking
5 206 (8.55%) Public Sector
6 130 (5.39%) Organisational Skills
7 126 (5.23%) Presentation Skills
8 98 (4.07%) Marketing
9 87 (3.61%) Documentation Skills
10 78 (3.24%) Legal
11 73 (3.03%) Influencing Skills
12 72 (2.99%) Aerospace
13 68 (2.82%) Telecoms
14 67 (2.78%) Manufacturing
15 58 (2.41%) Military
16 53 (2.20%) Law
17 48 (1.99%) Retail
18 40 (1.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 40 (1.66%) Pharmaceutical
19 38 (1.58%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 334 (13.86%) Analyst
2 247 (10.25%) Senior
3 215 (8.92%) Architect
4 191 (7.93%) Lead
5 182 (7.55%) Project Manager
6 171 (7.10%) Developer
7 157 (6.51%) Business Analyst
8 77 (3.20%) Consultant
9 67 (2.78%) Senior Analyst
9 67 (2.78%) Solutions Architect
10 63 (2.61%) Delivery Manager
11 58 (2.41%) Technical Support
12 57 (2.37%) Designer
13 50 (2.07%) Security Engineer
14 48 (1.99%) Software Engineer
15 47 (1.95%) Product Manager
16 46 (1.91%) Data Scientist
17 43 (1.78%) Data Engineer
17 43 (1.78%) Senior Manager
17 43 (1.78%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 95 (3.94%) REST
2 79 (3.28%) .NET
3 59 (2.45%) React
4 57 (2.37%) Middleware
5 51 (2.12%) HTML
6 46 (1.91%) Kafka
6 46 (1.91%) RESTful
7 41 (1.70%) Oracle Fusion
8 39 (1.62%) CSS
9 37 (1.54%) XML
10 36 (1.49%) SOAP
10 36 (1.49%) Spring Boot
11 33 (1.37%) PyTorch
11 33 (1.37%) Spring
12 30 (1.24%) JSON
12 30 (1.24%) Pandas
13 29 (1.20%) .NET Framework
14 27 (1.12%) TensorFlow
15 26 (1.08%) OAuth
16 25 (1.04%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 186 (7.72%) Management Information System
2 172 (7.14%) Product Ownership
3 133 (5.52%) Onboarding
4 84 (3.49%) Cloud Native
5 74 (3.07%) Self-Motivation
6 66 (2.74%) Virtual Team
7 64 (2.66%) Data Centre
8 62 (2.57%) Algorithms
9 61 (2.53%) Data Structures
10 56 (2.32%) PMI
11 52 (2.16%) Data Protection Act
12 51 (2.12%) Distributed Systems
13 40 (1.66%) Analytical Mindset
14 39 (1.62%) Operational Technology
15 38 (1.58%) Robotics
16 32 (1.33%) Security Posture
17 31 (1.29%) Derivative
17 31 (1.29%) Enterprise Software
17 31 (1.29%) Legacy Systems
18 30 (1.24%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 279 (11.58%) Windows
2 181 (7.51%) Linux
3 73 (3.03%) Windows Server
4 67 (2.78%) Unix
5 59 (2.45%) Windows 10
6 32 (1.33%) Android
7 23 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 22 (0.91%) Mac OS
9 16 (0.66%) Apple iOS
10 12 (0.50%) Windows Server 2019
11 11 (0.46%) Ubuntu
11 11 (0.46%) Windows Server 2016
12 7 (0.29%) Windows 7
12 7 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.21%) AIX
13 5 (0.21%) Debian
13 5 (0.21%) VMS
14 4 (0.17%) Rocky
14 4 (0.17%) Solaris
15 3 (0.12%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 843 (34.98%) Computer Science
2 706 (29.29%) Agile
3 626 (25.98%) Problem-Solving
4 382 (15.85%) Stakeholder Management
5 348 (14.44%) Continuous Improvement
6 336 (13.94%) AI
7 332 (13.78%) Project Management
8 319 (13.24%) DevOps
9 278 (11.54%) CI/CD
10 260 (10.79%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 257 (10.66%) Analytics
12 250 (10.37%) Decision-Making
13 238 (9.88%) Migration
14 235 (9.75%) Change Management
15 232 (9.63%) Cybersecurity
16 219 (9.09%) ITIL
17 205 (8.51%) PRINCE2
18 204 (8.46%) Risk Management
19 203 (8.42%) Project Delivery
20 202 (8.38%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 378 (15.68%) Python
2 359 (14.90%) SQL
3 170 (7.05%) Java
4 112 (4.65%) PowerShell
5 93 (3.86%) C#
6 79 (3.28%) JavaScript
7 66 (2.74%) C++
8 41 (1.70%) Bash
9 36 (1.49%) TypeScript
10 32 (1.33%) R
11 23 (0.95%) PL/SQL
12 18 (0.75%) Shell Script
13 16 (0.66%) C
13 16 (0.66%) Perl
13 16 (0.66%) T-SQL
14 15 (0.62%) Go
15 14 (0.58%) Kotlin
15 14 (0.58%) Rust
16 12 (0.50%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 11 (0.46%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 536 (22.24%) Computer Science Degree
2 468 (19.42%) Security Cleared
3 330 (13.69%) SC Cleared
4 288 (11.95%) Master's Degree
5 157 (6.51%) PMI Certification
6 134 (5.56%) PMP
7 107 (4.44%) CISSP
8 81 (3.36%) Microsoft Certification
9 72 (2.99%) Cisco Certification
10 69 (2.86%) TOGAF Certification
11 65 (2.70%) CISM
12 63 (2.61%) BPSS Clearance
13 57 (2.37%) DV Cleared
14 48 (1.99%) Azure Certification
14 48 (1.99%) PhD
15 40 (1.66%) CCNP
16 39 (1.62%) MBA
17 35 (1.45%) CBAP
18 34 (1.41%) CCNA
19 30 (1.24%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 162 (6.72%) QA
2 113 (4.69%) PMO
3 110 (4.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 107 (4.44%) NIST
5 106 (4.40%) GDPR
6 104 (4.32%) Data Quality
7 51 (2.12%) SLA
8 44 (1.83%) Accessibility
9 42 (1.74%) PCI DSS
10 28 (1.16%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 25 (1.04%) GRC
12 20 (0.83%) NCSC
13 17 (0.71%) Cyber Essentials
14 14 (0.58%) COBIT
14 14 (0.58%) IFRS
15 13 (0.54%) Basel III
16 12 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
16 12 (0.50%) NIST 800
16 12 (0.50%) SOC 2
17 11 (0.46%) HIPAA
System Software
1 153 (6.35%) Active Directory
2 140 (5.81%) Docker
3 37 (1.54%) VMware Infrastructure
4 27 (1.12%) Hyper-V
5 23 (0.95%) Firmware
6 8 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
7 7 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
7 7 (0.29%) vSphere
8 5 (0.21%) BitLocker
8 5 (0.21%) XenApp
8 5 (0.21%) XenDesktop
9 4 (0.17%) Embedded Firmware
9 4 (0.17%) Virtual Machines
10 3 (0.12%) KVM
10 3 (0.12%) VMware NSX
11 2 (0.083%) HDFS
11 2 (0.083%) Oracle RAC
12 1 (0.041%) Citrix Hypervisor
12 1 (0.041%) Terminal Services
12 1 (0.041%) Veritas Volume Manager
Systems Management
1 149 (6.18%) Kubernetes
2 77 (3.20%) Terraform
3 63 (2.61%) Ansible
4 59 (2.45%) Microsoft Intune
5 39 (1.62%) Grafana
5 39 (1.62%) SCCM
6 30 (1.24%) OPNET
6 30 (1.24%) Prometheus
7 18 (0.75%) Single Sign-On
8 17 (0.71%) Puppet
9 15 (0.62%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 12 (0.50%) Kibana
11 11 (0.46%) Nmap
11 11 (0.46%) WSUS
12 9 (0.37%) Kiali
12 9 (0.37%) vCenter Server
13 8 (0.33%) HP ALM
13 8 (0.33%) Nessus
14 7 (0.29%) Progress Chef
14 7 (0.29%) SCOM
Vendors
1 546 (22.66%) Microsoft
2 161 (6.68%) Oracle
3 147 (6.10%) SAP
4 123 (5.10%) ServiceNow
5 82 (3.40%) Google
6 75 (3.11%) Cisco
7 65 (2.70%) Splunk
8 57 (2.37%) Databricks
9 49 (2.03%) Remedy
10 45 (1.87%) VMware
11 43 (1.78%) Citrix
12 42 (1.74%) Atlassian
12 42 (1.74%) Salesforce
13 39 (1.62%) IBM
14 35 (1.45%) Adobe
14 35 (1.45%) Palo Alto
15 33 (1.37%) CheckPoint
16 23 (0.95%) Aruba
16 23 (0.95%) Informatica
17 21 (0.87%) CyberArk