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 19 November 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 25 22 22
Rank change year-on-year -3 0 +8
Contract jobs citing Degree 2,493 2,794 3,635
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 6.98% 7.71% 7.85%
As % of the Qualifications category 21.09% 26.28% 26.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,400 1,570 2,236
10th Percentile £275 £225 £232
25th Percentile £400 £398 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £640
90th Percentile £750 £756 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 236 143 214
10th Percentile £15.29 £20.12 £18.38
25th Percentile £22.82 £24.35 £27.75
Median hourly rate £33.50 £40.33 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -16.92% -19.35% +11.11%
75th Percentile £50.00 £63.15 £70.00
90th Percentile £87.13 £75.00 £83.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.50 £40.66 £50.00
% change year-on-year -17.61% -18.68% +12.61%

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 11,823 10,632 13,473
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.12% 29.34% 29.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,581 6,431 8,540
10th Percentile £300 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £420 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £719 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £519 £532
% change year-on-year -3.66% -2.49% +1.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,037 504 768
10th Percentile £17.65 £19.40 £17.72
25th Percentile £19.38 £24.18 £27.38
Median hourly rate £25.15 £45.00 £53.67
Median % change year-on-year -44.11% -16.15% +19.26%
75th Percentile £45.46 £67.01 £68.97
90th Percentile £73.75 £75.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £47.50 £52.50
% change year-on-year -47.05% -9.52% +16.67%

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 19 November 2025.

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 19 November 2025.

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 19 November 2025. 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 -2 2,125 £525 +3.24% 5,161
UK excluding London -1 1,235 £475 - 3,348
London -5 1,028 £550 +3.77% 2,153
Work from Home 0 729 £525 +5.00% 2,357
North of England -9 298 £450 -14.29% 617
South East +1 266 £475 +2.70% 1,139
Midlands -8 222 £475 -3.31% 483
North West -5 174 £433 -18.40% 329
West Midlands -10 169 £500 - 299
South West +1 143 £558 -3.96% 385
East of England -6 131 £505 +18.82% 464
Scotland -2 120 £450 +5.88% 210
Yorkshire -13 116 £475 -5.09% 196
East Midlands -9 53 £448 +12.00% 178
Wales -3 45 £232 -42.00% 66
Northern Ireland -4 37 £425 -10.53% 72
North East -14 9 £331 -26.40% 95

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
1 165 (6.62%) Confluence
2 127 (5.09%) SharePoint
3 70 (2.81%) Microsoft Exchange
4 49 (1.97%) Apache Spark
5 23 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
6 17 (0.68%) nginx
7 16 (0.64%) CMS
7 16 (0.64%) Skype for Business
8 13 (0.52%) IIS
9 11 (0.44%) Apache
10 7 (0.28%) Exchange Server 2013
10 7 (0.28%) Moodle
11 5 (0.20%) Luigi
11 5 (0.20%) OpenStack
11 5 (0.20%) SAS
12 4 (0.16%) Alfresco
12 4 (0.16%) GeoServer
12 4 (0.16%) Smallworld
12 4 (0.16%) Tomcat
13 3 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 288 (11.55%) Microsoft Office
2 230 (9.23%) Microsoft Excel
3 159 (6.38%) Microsoft Project
4 121 (4.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 70 (2.81%) MS Visio
6 22 (0.88%) Chatbot
7 17 (0.68%) Simulink
8 14 (0.56%) Trello
9 13 (0.52%) Spreadsheet
10 11 (0.44%) FrameMaker
11 10 (0.40%) Mozilla Thunderbird
12 6 (0.24%) Navisworks
12 6 (0.24%) Revit
12 6 (0.24%) Sketch
13 5 (0.20%) Adobe Captivate
13 5 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 5 (0.20%) AutoCAD
13 5 (0.20%) Maya
14 3 (0.12%) InDesign
14 3 (0.12%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 67 (2.69%) SAP S/4HANA
2 25 (1.00%) Dynamics CRM
3 21 (0.84%) Primavera
4 13 (0.52%) SAP ERP
4 13 (0.52%) SAP WM
5 12 (0.48%) SAP EWM
6 11 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
7 9 (0.36%) Dynamics GP
7 9 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
7 9 (0.36%) Oracle EBS R12
7 9 (0.36%) Salesforce CRM
7 9 (0.36%) Workday HCM
8 8 (0.32%) Oracle General Ledger
9 7 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
10 6 (0.24%) Endur
10 6 (0.24%) Maximo
10 6 (0.24%) Oracle BPM
10 6 (0.24%) SAP MDG
10 6 (0.24%) SAP PLM
10 6 (0.24%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 482 (19.33%) Azure
2 323 (12.96%) AWS
3 190 (7.62%) Microsoft 365
4 172 (6.90%) Power Platform
5 159 (6.38%) GCP
6 102 (4.09%) GitHub
7 96 (3.85%) SaaS
8 83 (3.33%) Entra ID
9 72 (2.89%) Azure DevOps
10 71 (2.85%) Serverless
11 43 (1.72%) Dynamics 365
12 39 (1.56%) Amazon S3
12 39 (1.56%) Cloud Computing
13 36 (1.44%) Power Automate
14 35 (1.40%) Azure Sentinel
15 31 (1.24%) Amazon ECS
16 30 (1.20%) GitHub Actions
16 30 (1.20%) Microsoft Purview
16 30 (1.20%) PowerApps
17 29 (1.16%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 110 (4.41%) Firewall
2 90 (3.61%) DNS
3 57 (2.29%) VPN
4 51 (2.05%) Network Security
5 44 (1.76%) DHCP
6 38 (1.52%) TCP/IP
7 36 (1.44%) HTTP
7 36 (1.44%) WAN
8 35 (1.40%) LAN
9 32 (1.28%) Wireless
10 30 (1.20%) Internet
11 27 (1.08%) Skype
11 27 (1.08%) Unified Communications
12 26 (1.04%) VoIP
13 25 (1.00%) SSH
13 25 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
14 24 (0.96%) BGP
15 21 (0.84%) Cisco IOS
16 19 (0.76%) VLAN
17 18 (0.72%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 132 (5.29%) Power BI
2 102 (4.09%) PostgreSQL
3 80 (3.21%) SQL Server
4 73 (2.93%) NoSQL
5 60 (2.41%) Relational Database
6 58 (2.33%) Tableau
7 55 (2.21%) Data Warehouse
8 32 (1.28%) Big Data
8 32 (1.28%) MySQL
9 31 (1.24%) Amazon RDS
10 30 (1.20%) Data Lake
11 24 (0.96%) Metadata
12 19 (0.76%) Hadoop
12 19 (0.76%) MongoDB
13 17 (0.68%) Redis
13 17 (0.68%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 15 (0.60%) Oracle Database
15 14 (0.56%) RDBMS
16 12 (0.48%) BigQuery
16 12 (0.48%) GIS
Development Applications
1 267 (10.71%) JIRA
2 123 (4.93%) Git
3 108 (4.33%) Jenkins
4 78 (3.13%) GitLab
5 29 (1.16%) Liquibase
6 26 (1.04%) Postman
7 21 (0.84%) Selenium
8 14 (0.56%) Bitbucket
8 14 (0.56%) Visual Studio
9 11 (0.44%) JUnit
9 11 (0.44%) Vagrant
10 10 (0.40%) Cypress.io
10 10 (0.40%) SpecFlow
11 9 (0.36%) Artifactory
11 9 (0.36%) Cucumber
12 8 (0.32%) MLflow
12 8 (0.32%) Subversion
13 7 (0.28%) IntelliJ
13 7 (0.28%) JMeter
13 7 (0.28%) TeamCity
General
1 1,293 (51.87%) Social Skills
2 793 (31.81%) Finance
3 607 (24.35%) Analytical Skills
4 276 (11.07%) Banking
5 162 (6.50%) Public Sector
6 123 (4.93%) Manufacturing
7 105 (4.21%) Presentation Skills
8 96 (3.85%) Marketing
8 96 (3.85%) Organisational Skills
9 87 (3.49%) Influencing Skills
10 86 (3.45%) Legal
11 76 (3.05%) Telecoms
12 67 (2.69%) Financial Institution
13 65 (2.61%) Investment Banking
14 63 (2.53%) Pharmaceutical
15 61 (2.45%) Front Office
16 59 (2.37%) Documentation Skills
17 54 (2.17%) Military
18 53 (2.13%) Aerospace
19 41 (1.64%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 379 (15.20%) Analyst
2 242 (9.71%) Senior
3 241 (9.67%) Developer
4 185 (7.42%) Lead
5 165 (6.62%) Architect
6 156 (6.26%) Business Analyst
7 153 (6.14%) Project Manager
8 108 (4.33%) Consultant
9 82 (3.29%) Software Engineer
10 64 (2.57%) IT Support
10 64 (2.57%) Support Analyst
11 53 (2.13%) Solutions Architect
12 52 (2.09%) Security Engineer
13 49 (1.97%) Support Engineer
14 47 (1.89%) Data Scientist
14 47 (1.89%) Technical Support
15 45 (1.81%) Senior Developer
16 44 (1.76%) Data Analyst
17 43 (1.72%) Data Engineer
18 42 (1.68%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 135 (5.42%) REST
2 90 (3.61%) RESTful
3 77 (3.09%) HTML
4 70 (2.81%) .NET
5 61 (2.45%) CSS
6 57 (2.29%) Kafka
7 53 (2.13%) XML
8 50 (2.01%) JSON
9 44 (1.76%) SOAP
10 42 (1.68%) Web Services
11 41 (1.64%) Elastic Stack
11 41 (1.64%) Middleware
11 41 (1.64%) React
12 39 (1.56%) TensorFlow
13 38 (1.52%) OAuth
14 34 (1.36%) AngularJS
14 34 (1.36%) Node.js
15 33 (1.32%) PyTorch
16 32 (1.28%) Spring
17 28 (1.12%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 204 (8.18%) Management Information System
2 104 (4.17%) Product Ownership
3 98 (3.93%) Cloud Native
4 92 (3.69%) Algorithms
5 75 (3.01%) Onboarding
6 69 (2.77%) Data Protection Act
7 64 (2.57%) Virtual Team
8 62 (2.49%) Distributed Systems
9 60 (2.41%) Analytical Mindset
10 58 (2.33%) Data Centre
11 50 (2.01%) Public Cloud
12 49 (1.97%) Derivative
13 44 (1.76%) Life Science
13 44 (1.76%) Self-Motivation
14 42 (1.68%) Legacy Systems
15 41 (1.64%) PKI
16 39 (1.56%) Mobile App
17 38 (1.52%) Enterprise Software
18 36 (1.44%) Security Posture
19 35 (1.40%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 267 (10.71%) Windows
2 199 (7.98%) Linux
3 78 (3.13%) Unix
4 57 (2.29%) Windows Server
5 35 (1.40%) Windows 10
6 28 (1.12%) Mac OS
7 27 (1.08%) Android
8 26 (1.04%) Apple iOS
9 19 (0.76%) Ubuntu
10 17 (0.68%) VMS
11 11 (0.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 11 (0.44%) Windows Server 2016
12 10 (0.40%) Amazon Linux
12 10 (0.40%) Windows Server 2012
13 9 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
14 6 (0.24%) CentOS
15 5 (0.20%) Windows Server 2003
16 2 (0.080%) Kali Linux
16 2 (0.080%) Mac OS X
16 2 (0.080%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 997 (39.99%) Computer Science
2 767 (30.77%) Problem-Solving
3 760 (30.49%) Agile
4 401 (16.09%) Project Management
5 369 (14.80%) Stakeholder Management
6 339 (13.60%) DevOps
7 295 (11.83%) Change Management
8 292 (11.71%) ITIL
9 260 (10.43%) CI/CD
10 259 (10.39%) Analytics
11 253 (10.15%) Continuous Improvement
12 251 (10.07%) Cybersecurity
13 246 (9.87%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 245 (9.83%) AI
15 231 (9.27%) Migration
16 228 (9.15%) Software Engineering
17 218 (8.74%) Project Delivery
18 204 (8.18%) Decision-Making
19 187 (7.50%) Risk Management
20 181 (7.26%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 484 (19.41%) Python
2 362 (14.52%) SQL
3 200 (8.02%) Java
4 123 (4.93%) JavaScript
4 123 (4.93%) PowerShell
5 79 (3.17%) C++
6 77 (3.09%) C#
7 63 (2.53%) Go
8 48 (1.93%) TypeScript
9 46 (1.85%) Bash
10 38 (1.52%) R
11 23 (0.92%) Perl
12 22 (0.88%) MATLAB
13 21 (0.84%) C
13 21 (0.84%) Ruby
14 20 (0.80%) Kusto Query Language
15 19 (0.76%) Shell Script
16 18 (0.72%) PL/SQL
17 16 (0.64%) T-SQL
18 15 (0.60%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 653 (26.19%) Computer Science Degree
2 367 (14.72%) Master's Degree
3 344 (13.80%) Security Cleared
4 268 (10.75%) SC Cleared
5 140 (5.62%) PMI Certification
6 128 (5.13%) PMP
7 118 (4.73%) CISSP
8 98 (3.93%) Microsoft Certification
9 84 (3.37%) PhD
10 74 (2.97%) Cisco Certification
11 72 (2.89%) Azure Certification
12 69 (2.77%) AWS Certification
13 68 (2.73%) CISM
14 51 (2.05%) HND
15 47 (1.89%) BPSS Clearance
16 46 (1.85%) CCNP
17 44 (1.76%) DV Cleared
18 41 (1.64%) HNC
19 40 (1.60%) CCNA
20 35 (1.40%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 137 (5.50%) QA
2 123 (4.93%) GDPR
3 102 (4.09%) Data Quality
4 95 (3.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 87 (3.49%) NIST
6 64 (2.57%) PMO
7 46 (1.85%) Accessibility
8 34 (1.36%) SLA
9 32 (1.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 29 (1.16%) PCI DSS
11 26 (1.04%) GRC
12 23 (0.92%) HIPAA
13 21 (0.84%) NCSC
14 19 (0.76%) COBIT
15 16 (0.64%) NIST 800
16 15 (0.60%) Def Stans
16 15 (0.60%) P3O
16 15 (0.60%) WCAG
17 13 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
18 12 (0.48%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 166 (6.66%) Docker
2 162 (6.50%) Active Directory
3 46 (1.85%) VMware Infrastructure
4 28 (1.12%) Firmware
5 16 (0.64%) Hyper-V
6 13 (0.52%) Virtual Machines
7 10 (0.40%) DFS Replication
7 10 (0.40%) Dovecot
7 10 (0.40%) Postfix
7 10 (0.40%) Squid
7 10 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
8 9 (0.36%) XenApp
9 7 (0.28%) VMware NSX
10 6 (0.24%) Virtual Servers
10 6 (0.24%) vSphere
11 5 (0.20%) Microsoft Virtual Server
12 4 (0.16%) NDS
12 4 (0.16%) NetIQ eDirectory
12 4 (0.16%) Virtual Desktop
13 2 (0.080%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 143 (5.74%) Kubernetes
2 120 (4.81%) Terraform
3 88 (3.53%) Ansible
4 64 (2.57%) Grafana
5 55 (2.21%) Prometheus
6 52 (2.09%) Microsoft Intune
7 47 (1.89%) SCCM
8 17 (0.68%) Puppet
9 14 (0.56%) SCOM
10 13 (0.52%) Nessus
11 12 (0.48%) QRadar
12 11 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
13 10 (0.40%) OPNET
13 10 (0.40%) Proxmox
13 10 (0.40%) WSUS
14 7 (0.28%) AirWatch
14 7 (0.28%) Argo
14 7 (0.28%) CSIRT
15 6 (0.24%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 6 (0.24%) Kibana
Vendors
1 545 (21.86%) Microsoft
2 164 (6.58%) SAP
3 132 (5.29%) Oracle
4 126 (5.05%) ServiceNow
5 96 (3.85%) Google
6 91 (3.65%) Cisco
7 90 (3.61%) Splunk
8 71 (2.85%) Salesforce
9 57 (2.29%) VMware
10 41 (1.64%) Atlassian
11 37 (1.48%) IBM
12 35 (1.40%) Databricks
13 31 (1.24%) Citrix
14 30 (1.20%) Adobe
15 29 (1.16%) Remedy
16 26 (1.04%) Workday
17 23 (0.92%) Palo Alto
18 20 (0.80%) Apple
18 20 (0.80%) Red Hat
19 16 (0.64%) Fortinet