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

6 months to
17 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 44 25 20
Rank change year-on-year -19 -5 +6
Contract jobs citing Degree 2,454 2,479 3,041
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.59% 7.49% 7.85%
As % of the Qualifications category 14.65% 23.95% 26.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,308 1,401 1,769
10th Percentile £205 £250 £260
25th Percentile £363 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £625
90th Percentile £719 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £500
% change year-on-year +5.56% -10.00% +0.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 274 217 264
10th Percentile £17.25 £19.12 £18.04
25th Percentile £27.23 £25.75 £25.36
Median hourly rate £41.71 £42.50 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -1.86% -19.05% +5.00%
75th Percentile £83.00 £64.52 £68.19
90th Percentile £88.00 £82.98 £76.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.71 £41.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year +0.51% -27.64% +18.79%

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 16,751 10,350 11,614
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.31% 31.27% 29.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,224 6,362 7,379
10th Percentile £350 £288 £313
25th Percentile £431 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £526
Median % change year-on-year - -0.19% -4.36%
75th Percentile £625 £619 £638
90th Percentile £715 £702 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £515 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,264 822 830
10th Percentile £17.72 £17.98 £14.84
25th Percentile £25.77 £19.38 £21.25
Median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +98.81% -41.51% -21.82%
75th Percentile £74.00 £53.95 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.72 £73.75 £75.49
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £47.50
% change year-on-year +98.81% -47.05% -7.77%

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 August 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 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Degree in the UK

Degree
Top 18 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 August 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 -15 2,251 £500 - 3,610
UK excluding London -16 1,327 £475 +5.56% 2,804
London -19 972 £525 -4.55% 1,283
Work from Home -22 654 £500 - 1,225
South East +1 475 £500 +5.26% 791
North of England -16 330 £470 +4.50% 621
North West -10 192 £459 -2.39% 305
Midlands -32 176 £450 +0.67% 420
East of England -11 132 £413 -8.33% 365
West Midlands -36 131 £450 - 224
Yorkshire -8 124 £500 +23.84% 197
South West -22 123 £415 +10.67% 368
Scotland -47 65 £475 +5.56% 179
East Midlands -26 43 £475 +33.80% 196
Northern Ireland -14 15 £252 -52.00% 61
Wales -30 14 £530 +73.50% 71
North East -47 14 £450 +130.77% 128
Channel Islands - 1 - - 1

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
1 149 (6.07%) SharePoint
2 108 (4.40%) Confluence
3 66 (2.69%) Microsoft Exchange
4 30 (1.22%) Apache Spark
5 25 (1.02%) Apache Airflow
6 21 (0.86%) Apache
7 13 (0.53%) CMS
7 13 (0.53%) IIS
8 10 (0.41%) SAS
9 8 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
10 7 (0.29%) Camunda
10 7 (0.29%) SharePoint Server
11 5 (0.20%) OpenStack
12 4 (0.16%) Appian
12 4 (0.16%) ArcGIS
12 4 (0.16%) FactoryTalk
12 4 (0.16%) Oracle Service Bus
12 4 (0.16%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 3 (0.12%) HCL Notes
13 3 (0.12%) Moodle
Applications
1 245 (9.98%) Microsoft Office
2 238 (9.70%) Microsoft Excel
3 135 (5.50%) Microsoft Project
4 121 (4.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 58 (2.36%) MS Visio
6 18 (0.73%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 17 (0.69%) Adobe After Effects
8 15 (0.61%) Photoshop
9 14 (0.57%) Adobe Illustrator
10 10 (0.41%) Spreadsheet
11 8 (0.33%) Chatbot
11 8 (0.33%) Navisworks
11 8 (0.33%) Revit
11 8 (0.33%) Simulink
11 8 (0.33%) Sketch
12 7 (0.29%) Windchill
13 6 (0.24%) Final Cut Pro
13 6 (0.24%) UserZoom
14 5 (0.20%) Trello
15 4 (0.16%) CPLEX
Business Applications
1 53 (2.16%) SAP S/4HANA
2 18 (0.73%) Primavera
3 16 (0.65%) Dynamics CRM
4 11 (0.45%) Salesforce CRM
5 9 (0.37%) Oracle ERP
6 8 (0.33%) Magento
7 7 (0.29%) HFM
8 6 (0.24%) NetSuite
8 6 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.24%) Oracle Payables
8 6 (0.24%) SAP EWM
9 5 (0.20%) Aladdin
9 5 (0.20%) NEC Housing
9 5 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
9 5 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
9 5 (0.20%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 5 (0.20%) Workday HCM
10 4 (0.16%) SAP MM
11 3 (0.12%) OpenText MBPM
11 3 (0.12%) Oracle BPM
Cloud Services
1 563 (22.94%) Azure
2 318 (12.96%) AWS
3 225 (9.17%) Microsoft 365
3 225 (9.17%) Power Platform
4 152 (6.19%) Entra ID
5 139 (5.66%) GCP
6 102 (4.16%) Azure DevOps
7 87 (3.55%) SaaS
8 62 (2.53%) GitHub
9 51 (2.08%) Dynamics 365
10 50 (2.04%) PowerApps
11 49 (2.00%) Power Automate
12 48 (1.96%) Serverless
13 46 (1.87%) Snowflake
14 43 (1.75%) OneDrive
15 42 (1.71%) Figma
16 40 (1.63%) Microsoft Copilot
17 28 (1.14%) IaaS
18 27 (1.10%) Azure Data Factory
19 26 (1.06%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 116 (4.73%) Firewall
2 83 (3.38%) DNS
3 68 (2.77%) Network Security
4 67 (2.73%) TCP/IP
5 63 (2.57%) VPN
6 43 (1.75%) DHCP
7 40 (1.63%) WAN
8 37 (1.51%) LAN
9 30 (1.22%) Wireless
10 22 (0.90%) Wi-Fi
11 20 (0.81%) BGP
11 20 (0.81%) VLAN
12 19 (0.77%) HTTP
13 18 (0.73%) Internet
13 18 (0.73%) SSL
14 16 (0.65%) OSPF
15 15 (0.61%) 3GPP
15 15 (0.61%) SSH
16 14 (0.57%) 5G
16 14 (0.57%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 177 (7.21%) Power BI
2 103 (4.20%) SQL Server
3 56 (2.28%) Relational Database
4 54 (2.20%) PostgreSQL
5 50 (2.04%) Data Warehouse
6 42 (1.71%) Metadata
7 34 (1.39%) Tableau
8 31 (1.26%) NoSQL
9 28 (1.14%) Big Data
10 25 (1.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 24 (0.98%) MySQL
11 24 (0.98%) Oracle Database
12 23 (0.94%) MongoDB
13 17 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
13 17 (0.69%) Data Lake
13 17 (0.69%) Data Mining
14 16 (0.65%) Azure SQL Database
15 15 (0.61%) Elasticsearch
16 14 (0.57%) Power Query
17 12 (0.49%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 181 (7.38%) JIRA
2 130 (5.30%) Git
3 55 (2.24%) Jenkins
4 46 (1.87%) GitLab
5 36 (1.47%) Rational DOORS
6 20 (0.81%) Selenium
7 17 (0.69%) Visual Studio
8 13 (0.53%) JUnit
9 12 (0.49%) MLflow
9 12 (0.49%) REST Assured
9 12 (0.49%) SonarQube
10 11 (0.45%) Cucumber
10 11 (0.45%) Postman
10 11 (0.45%) Subversion
11 10 (0.41%) Bitbucket
11 10 (0.41%) TeamCity
12 9 (0.37%) Sonatype Nexus
13 8 (0.33%) Cypress.io
13 8 (0.33%) Maven
13 8 (0.33%) SpecFlow
General
1 1,077 (43.89%) Social Skills
2 716 (29.18%) Finance
3 575 (23.43%) Analytical Skills
4 198 (8.07%) Public Sector
5 179 (7.29%) Banking
6 154 (6.28%) Organisational Skills
7 114 (4.65%) Aerospace
8 98 (3.99%) Marketing
9 97 (3.95%) Legal
10 96 (3.91%) Manufacturing
11 90 (3.67%) Presentation Skills
12 87 (3.55%) Telecoms
13 86 (3.50%) Influencing Skills
14 75 (3.06%) Documentation Skills
15 64 (2.61%) Retail
16 52 (2.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 49 (2.00%) Law
18 48 (1.96%) Pharmaceutical
19 41 (1.67%) Front Office
20 38 (1.55%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 334 (13.61%) Analyst
2 280 (11.41%) Senior
3 193 (7.86%) Lead
4 178 (7.25%) Developer
5 163 (6.64%) Architect
6 154 (6.28%) Business Analyst
7 134 (5.46%) Project Manager
8 75 (3.06%) Consultant
9 71 (2.89%) Senior Manager
10 68 (2.77%) IT Support
11 64 (2.61%) Support Engineer
12 58 (2.36%) Designer
13 56 (2.28%) Product Manager
14 54 (2.20%) Solutions Architect
15 53 (2.16%) IT Analyst
15 53 (2.16%) IT Manager
16 50 (2.04%) Delivery Manager
17 48 (1.96%) Software Engineer
18 47 (1.92%) Administrator
19 45 (1.83%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 105 (4.28%) REST
2 97 (3.95%) .NET
3 59 (2.40%) React
4 53 (2.16%) Kafka
5 48 (1.96%) RESTful
6 47 (1.92%) OAuth
7 46 (1.87%) HTML
8 41 (1.67%) Oracle Fusion
9 35 (1.43%) CSS
9 35 (1.43%) Middleware
9 35 (1.43%) OAuth2
9 35 (1.43%) Web Services
10 34 (1.39%) SAML
11 32 (1.30%) OpenID
12 31 (1.26%) .NET Framework
12 31 (1.26%) XML
13 28 (1.14%) JSON
13 28 (1.14%) LDAP
13 28 (1.14%) SOAP
14 27 (1.10%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 205 (8.35%) Management Information System
2 143 (5.83%) Product Ownership
3 140 (5.70%) Onboarding
4 110 (4.48%) Self-Motivation
5 94 (3.83%) Cloud Native
6 77 (3.14%) Data Structures
7 69 (2.81%) Algorithms
8 64 (2.61%) Data Centre
9 53 (2.16%) Security Posture
10 50 (2.04%) Operational Technology
11 48 (1.96%) Virtual Team
12 47 (1.92%) Distributed Systems
13 46 (1.87%) Enterprise Software
14 45 (1.83%) Legacy Systems
15 41 (1.67%) Life Science
16 36 (1.47%) AI Agents
16 36 (1.47%) Data Protection Act
17 34 (1.39%) SCADA
18 33 (1.34%) PMI
19 31 (1.26%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 293 (11.94%) Windows
2 175 (7.13%) Linux
3 69 (2.81%) Windows Server
4 59 (2.40%) Unix
5 51 (2.08%) Windows 10
6 34 (1.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 30 (1.22%) Mac OS
8 29 (1.18%) Apple iOS
9 25 (1.02%) Android
10 11 (0.45%) Ubuntu
11 6 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
12 5 (0.20%) Windows 7
13 4 (0.16%) Debian
13 4 (0.16%) Rocky
13 4 (0.16%) Solaris
13 4 (0.16%) VMS
13 4 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
14 3 (0.12%) MVS
14 3 (0.12%) OpenVMS
14 3 (0.12%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 845 (34.43%) Computer Science
2 661 (26.94%) Agile
3 639 (26.04%) Problem-Solving
4 456 (18.58%) Stakeholder Management
5 434 (17.69%) Continuous Improvement
6 372 (15.16%) AI
7 326 (13.28%) DevOps
8 317 (12.92%) Project Management
9 302 (12.31%) Analytics
10 293 (11.94%) CI/CD
11 290 (11.82%) ITIL
12 258 (10.51%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 240 (9.78%) Decision-Making
14 239 (9.74%) Cybersecurity
15 225 (9.17%) Change Management
16 214 (8.72%) Software Engineering
17 211 (8.60%) Roadmaps
18 209 (8.52%) PRINCE2
19 207 (8.44%) Project Delivery
20 204 (8.31%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 421 (17.16%) Python
2 347 (14.14%) SQL
3 165 (6.72%) PowerShell
4 163 (6.64%) Java
5 109 (4.44%) C#
6 100 (4.07%) JavaScript
7 55 (2.24%) Bash
8 50 (2.04%) C++
9 40 (1.63%) TypeScript
10 26 (1.06%) PL/SQL
11 25 (1.02%) Bicep
11 25 (1.02%) R
11 25 (1.02%) Shell Script
12 24 (0.98%) T-SQL
13 23 (0.94%) C
14 15 (0.61%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 12 (0.49%) MATLAB
16 11 (0.45%) Apex Code
16 11 (0.45%) Scala
16 11 (0.45%) X++
Qualifications
1 496 (20.21%) Computer Science Degree
2 457 (18.62%) Security Cleared
3 301 (12.27%) SC Cleared
4 214 (8.72%) Master's Degree
5 140 (5.70%) PMI Certification
6 121 (4.93%) Microsoft Certification
7 120 (4.89%) PMP
8 115 (4.69%) CISSP
9 86 (3.50%) Cisco Certification
10 78 (3.18%) Azure Certification
11 75 (3.06%) DV Cleared
12 63 (2.57%) BPSS Clearance
13 56 (2.28%) CISM
14 51 (2.08%) PhD
15 43 (1.75%) CCNA
16 40 (1.63%) AWS Certification
16 40 (1.63%) CCNP
16 40 (1.63%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
17 34 (1.39%) CISA
18 33 (1.34%) A+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 132 (5.38%) Data Quality
2 130 (5.30%) QA
3 111 (4.52%) NIST
4 105 (4.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 93 (3.79%) PMO
6 71 (2.89%) GDPR
7 50 (2.04%) Accessibility
8 48 (1.96%) SLA
9 30 (1.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 23 (0.94%) GRC
10 23 (0.94%) PCI DSS
11 21 (0.86%) NCSC
12 15 (0.61%) Cyber Essentials
13 12 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
13 12 (0.49%) COBIT
13 12 (0.49%) NIST 800
14 11 (0.45%) IFRS
14 11 (0.45%) P3O
15 8 (0.33%) ISO 19650
15 8 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 202 (8.23%) Active Directory
2 119 (4.85%) Docker
3 55 (2.24%) VMware Infrastructure
4 25 (1.02%) Firmware
5 24 (0.98%) Hyper-V
6 17 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
7 10 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
8 8 (0.33%) BitLocker
8 8 (0.33%) Embedded Firmware
9 7 (0.29%) VMware ESXi
9 7 (0.29%) VMware NSX
9 7 (0.29%) vSphere
10 6 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
11 4 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
11 4 (0.16%) NFS
11 4 (0.16%) Terminal Services
12 3 (0.12%) ACF2
12 3 (0.12%) OpenAM
12 3 (0.12%) RACF
12 3 (0.12%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 129 (5.26%) Kubernetes
2 99 (4.03%) Terraform
3 82 (3.34%) Microsoft Intune
4 66 (2.69%) Ansible
5 41 (1.67%) SCCM
6 29 (1.18%) Grafana
7 27 (1.10%) Prometheus
8 20 (0.81%) Single Sign-On
9 18 (0.73%) Progress Chef
10 14 (0.57%) Puppet
11 13 (0.53%) Jamf Pro
12 10 (0.41%) vCenter Server
13 9 (0.37%) WSUS
14 8 (0.33%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 7 (0.29%) Argo
15 7 (0.29%) Control-M
15 7 (0.29%) HP ALM
15 7 (0.29%) Oracle RMAN
15 7 (0.29%) SCOM
16 6 (0.24%) Nessus
Vendors
1 635 (25.88%) Microsoft
2 173 (7.05%) Oracle
3 144 (5.87%) ServiceNow
4 137 (5.58%) SAP
5 92 (3.75%) Google
6 71 (2.89%) VMware
7 70 (2.85%) Cisco
8 65 (2.65%) Salesforce
9 63 (2.57%) Databricks
10 59 (2.40%) Adobe
11 53 (2.16%) IBM
12 41 (1.67%) Splunk
13 31 (1.26%) CyberArk
14 28 (1.14%) Palo Alto
14 28 (1.14%) Red Hat
15 27 (1.10%) Citrix
16 22 (0.90%) Apple
17 20 (0.81%) Ariba
17 20 (0.81%) BeyondTrust
18 18 (0.73%) HP