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

6 months to
18 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 29 24 18
Rank change year-on-year -5 -6 +10
Contract jobs citing Degree 2,566 2,316 3,744
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.93% 7.90% 8.42%
As % of the Qualifications category 17.55% 25.91% 27.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,503 1,334 2,071
10th Percentile £286 £242 £210
25th Percentile £400 £400 £389
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £507
Median % change year-on-year - -1.38% -4.88%
75th Percentile £625 £640 £638
90th Percentile £738 £775 £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 224 169 369
10th Percentile £15.52 £20.40 £14.00
25th Percentile £24.19 £29.00 £21.64
Median hourly rate £45.46 £45.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +1.02% +20.00% -16.67%
75th Percentile £82.25 £71.25 £58.75
90th Percentile £88.00 £85.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.46 £43.75 £37.50
% change year-on-year +3.91% +16.67% -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 14,619 8,939 13,564
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.79% 30.49% 30.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,613 5,637 8,379
10th Percentile £333 £288 £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 £625 £650
90th Percentile £719 £715 £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 1,077 474 1,019
10th Percentile £16.17 £18.51 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.72 £24.50 £18.00
Median hourly rate £29.61 £42.50 £38.16
Median % change year-on-year -30.33% +11.39% -23.69%
75th Percentile £67.50 £67.50 £61.82
90th Percentile £84.00 £81.88 £75.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £48.82 £39.92
% change year-on-year -43.66% +22.28% -17.79%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 2,236 £500 -4.76% 2,569
UK excluding London -5 1,342 £490 +3.21% 2,052
London -13 977 £513 -6.82% 890
Work from Home -5 708 £500 -3.75% 979
South East -3 363 £475 -5.00% 667
North of England -6 343 £445 -8.38% 495
Midlands -18 209 £500 +40.06% 304
North West -4 177 £400 -17.70% 250
South West -2 155 £688 +25.00% 221
West Midlands -21 152 £500 +29.03% 174
Yorkshire -12 151 £508 +10.09% 176
East of England -6 133 £500 +1.21% 228
Scotland -1 103 £525 +19.32% 113
East Midlands -19 56 £525 +47.47% 130
Wales -10 46 £291 +1.29% 60
North East -13 16 £364 -23.37% 75
Northern Ireland -13 16 £388 +5.08% 18

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
1 212 (8.26%) Confluence
2 116 (4.52%) SharePoint
3 64 (2.49%) Microsoft Exchange
4 57 (2.22%) Apache Spark
5 27 (1.05%) Apache Airflow
6 19 (0.74%) 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%) Palantir Foundry
10 4 (0.16%) Smallworld
11 3 (0.12%) Drupal
11 3 (0.12%) MS Project Server
11 3 (0.12%) Skype for Business
11 3 (0.12%) WebSphere
Applications
1 311 (12.12%) Microsoft Office
2 235 (9.16%) Microsoft Excel
3 204 (7.95%) Microsoft Project
4 130 (5.07%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 73 (2.84%) MS Visio
6 18 (0.70%) Chatbot
7 16 (0.62%) Spreadsheet
8 12 (0.47%) 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 68 (2.65%) 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
11 4 (0.16%) NEC Housing
11 4 (0.16%) NetSuite
11 4 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 4 (0.16%) Oracle Receivables
11 4 (0.16%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 4 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
11 4 (0.16%) Shopify
11 4 (0.16%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 555 (21.63%) Azure
2 312 (12.16%) AWS
3 212 (8.26%) Microsoft 365
4 202 (7.87%) Power Platform
5 145 (5.65%) GCP
6 117 (4.56%) Entra ID
7 108 (4.21%) SaaS
8 100 (3.90%) Azure DevOps
9 89 (3.47%) GitHub
10 52 (2.03%) Dynamics 365
11 49 (1.91%) Serverless
12 45 (1.75%) Cloud Computing
13 41 (1.60%) Power Automate
13 41 (1.60%) Snowflake
14 33 (1.29%) IaaS
14 33 (1.29%) PaaS
15 32 (1.25%) GitHub Actions
15 32 (1.25%) PowerApps
16 29 (1.13%) Microsoft Purview
17 28 (1.09%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 116 (4.52%) Firewall
2 60 (2.34%) WAN
3 59 (2.30%) DNS
3 59 (2.30%) TCP/IP
4 58 (2.26%) LAN
5 51 (1.99%) Network Security
6 41 (1.60%) VPN
7 28 (1.09%) HTTP
7 28 (1.09%) Wireless
8 27 (1.05%) BGP
8 27 (1.05%) Ethernet
9 25 (0.97%) Skype
10 23 (0.90%) Internet
11 22 (0.86%) OSPF
12 21 (0.82%) DHCP
13 20 (0.78%) Wi-Fi
14 18 (0.70%) VLAN
15 16 (0.62%) SSL
16 15 (0.58%) SAN
16 15 (0.58%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 159 (6.20%) Power BI
2 98 (3.82%) PostgreSQL
3 95 (3.70%) SQL Server
4 62 (2.42%) Data Warehouse
5 61 (2.38%) NoSQL
6 53 (2.07%) Big Data
7 48 (1.87%) Tableau
8 46 (1.79%) Relational Database
9 41 (1.60%) MySQL
10 33 (1.29%) 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
19 11 (0.43%) BigQuery
19 11 (0.43%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 304 (11.85%) JIRA
2 135 (5.26%) Git
3 74 (2.88%) Jenkins
4 60 (2.34%) 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 1,236 (48.17%) Social Skills
2 791 (30.83%) Finance
3 588 (22.92%) Analytical Skills
4 247 (9.63%) Banking
5 228 (8.89%) Public Sector
6 120 (4.68%) Presentation Skills
7 102 (3.98%) Organisational Skills
8 97 (3.78%) Marketing
9 90 (3.51%) Documentation Skills
9 90 (3.51%) Influencing Skills
10 89 (3.47%) Manufacturing
11 77 (3.00%) Legal
12 66 (2.57%) Aerospace
13 65 (2.53%) Telecoms
14 60 (2.34%) Military
15 51 (1.99%) Front Office
16 49 (1.91%) Financial Institution
17 48 (1.87%) Retail
18 46 (1.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 46 (1.79%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 366 (14.26%) Analyst
2 256 (9.98%) Senior
3 215 (8.38%) Lead
4 208 (8.11%) Architect
5 203 (7.91%) Developer
6 186 (7.25%) Project Manager
7 166 (6.47%) Business Analyst
8 98 (3.82%) Consultant
9 70 (2.73%) Solutions Architect
10 66 (2.57%) Software Engineer
11 65 (2.53%) Delivery Manager
12 61 (2.38%) Security Engineer
13 60 (2.34%) Technical Support
14 59 (2.30%) Senior Analyst
15 53 (2.07%) Data Scientist
16 47 (1.83%) Designer
16 47 (1.83%) IT Support
17 46 (1.79%) Product Manager
18 39 (1.52%) Data Engineer
19 38 (1.48%) Technical Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 108 (4.21%) REST
2 73 (2.84%) .NET
3 64 (2.49%) React
4 62 (2.42%) RESTful
5 60 (2.34%) HTML
6 51 (1.99%) Middleware
7 49 (1.91%) 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%) JSON
10 39 (1.52%) XML
11 38 (1.48%) SOAP
12 37 (1.44%) Oracle Fusion
13 36 (1.40%) OAuth
13 36 (1.40%) Spring
14 35 (1.36%) Pandas
15 32 (1.25%) Spring Boot
16 30 (1.17%) NumPy
Miscellaneous
1 211 (8.22%) Management Information System
2 166 (6.47%) Product Ownership
3 118 (4.60%) Onboarding
4 112 (4.36%) Cloud Native
5 91 (3.55%) Algorithms
6 83 (3.23%) Virtual Team
7 72 (2.81%) Data Centre
8 67 (2.61%) Distributed Systems
8 67 (2.61%) Self-Motivation
9 63 (2.46%) Data Structures
10 57 (2.22%) PMI
11 55 (2.14%) Data Protection Act
12 53 (2.07%) Analytical Mindset
13 46 (1.79%) Derivative
14 37 (1.44%) Enterprise Software
14 37 (1.44%) Security Posture
15 35 (1.36%) Legacy Systems
16 34 (1.33%) NHS
17 33 (1.29%) Equities
17 33 (1.29%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 293 (11.42%) Windows
2 189 (7.37%) Linux
3 74 (2.88%) Unix
4 72 (2.81%) Windows Server
5 56 (2.18%) Windows 10
6 29 (1.13%) Android
7 24 (0.94%) Mac OS
8 22 (0.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 16 (0.62%) Apple iOS
10 14 (0.55%) Ubuntu
11 13 (0.51%) Windows Server 2012
12 12 (0.47%) Windows Server 2016
13 10 (0.39%) Windows Server 2019
14 8 (0.31%) Windows Server 2003
15 6 (0.23%) VMS
16 5 (0.19%) Windows 7
17 4 (0.16%) AIX
17 4 (0.16%) Debian
18 3 (0.12%) CentOS
18 3 (0.12%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 958 (37.33%) Computer Science
2 803 (31.29%) Agile
3 710 (27.67%) Problem-Solving
4 429 (16.72%) Stakeholder Management
5 378 (14.73%) DevOps
6 366 (14.26%) AI
7 349 (13.60%) Continuous Improvement
8 344 (13.41%) Project Management
9 314 (12.24%) CI/CD
10 288 (11.22%) Analytics
11 283 (11.03%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 281 (10.95%) Change Management
13 275 (10.72%) Cybersecurity
14 268 (10.44%) Decision-Making
15 261 (10.17%) ITIL
16 256 (9.98%) Migration
17 234 (9.12%) Project Delivery
18 232 (9.04%) PRINCE2
19 230 (8.96%) Software Engineering
20 229 (8.92%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 451 (17.58%) Python
2 383 (14.93%) SQL
3 177 (6.90%) Java
4 129 (5.03%) PowerShell
5 101 (3.94%) JavaScript
6 82 (3.20%) C#
7 73 (2.84%) C++
8 54 (2.10%) TypeScript
9 47 (1.83%) Bash
10 41 (1.60%) Go
11 32 (1.25%) R
12 26 (1.01%) PL/SQL
13 21 (0.82%) Shell Script
14 19 (0.74%) Perl
15 15 (0.58%) Rust
15 15 (0.58%) T-SQL
16 13 (0.51%) C
16 13 (0.51%) Kotlin
16 13 (0.51%) MATLAB
17 12 (0.47%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 602 (23.46%) Computer Science Degree
2 490 (19.10%) Security Cleared
3 385 (15.00%) Master's Degree
4 348 (13.56%) SC Cleared
5 156 (6.08%) PMI Certification
6 136 (5.30%) CISSP
7 134 (5.22%) PMP
8 91 (3.55%) Microsoft Certification
9 84 (3.27%) CISM
10 78 (3.04%) PhD
11 71 (2.77%) TOGAF Certification
12 63 (2.46%) BPSS Clearance
13 62 (2.42%) Azure Certification
14 61 (2.38%) Cisco Certification
15 58 (2.26%) DV Cleared
16 39 (1.52%) MBA
17 38 (1.48%) CCNP
18 35 (1.36%) CBAP
19 34 (1.33%) AWS Certification
20 31 (1.21%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 167 (6.51%) QA
2 137 (5.34%) GDPR
3 111 (4.33%) PMO
4 108 (4.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 100 (3.90%) NIST
6 98 (3.82%) Data Quality
7 52 (2.03%) PCI DSS
8 46 (1.79%) Accessibility
9 43 (1.68%) SLA
10 31 (1.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 23 (0.90%) NCSC
12 21 (0.82%) GRC
13 19 (0.74%) Actionable Recommendations
14 18 (0.70%) WCAG
15 17 (0.66%) Cyber Essentials
16 15 (0.58%) HIPAA
17 14 (0.55%) IFRS
18 13 (0.51%) Basel III
19 12 (0.47%) COBIT
19 12 (0.47%) SOC 2
System Software
1 187 (7.29%) Docker
2 160 (6.24%) Active Directory
3 44 (1.71%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.78%) Hyper-V
5 17 (0.66%) 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
1 186 (7.25%) Kubernetes
2 107 (4.17%) Terraform
3 73 (2.84%) Ansible
4 67 (2.61%) Microsoft Intune
5 50 (1.95%) Grafana
6 42 (1.64%) 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 (0.55%) 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
1 547 (21.32%) Microsoft
2 161 (6.27%) Oracle
3 157 (6.12%) SAP
4 118 (4.60%) ServiceNow
5 115 (4.48%) Google
6 82 (3.20%) Splunk
7 81 (3.16%) Cisco
8 63 (2.46%) Databricks
9 55 (2.14%) Atlassian
10 54 (2.10%) Remedy
11 49 (1.91%) IBM
12 48 (1.87%) VMware
13 47 (1.83%) Salesforce
14 44 (1.71%) Citrix
15 40 (1.56%) Palo Alto
16 31 (1.21%) CheckPoint
17 28 (1.09%) Informatica
18 26 (1.01%) Red Hat
19 25 (0.97%) BiZZdesign
20 23 (0.90%) Adobe