Job Vacancy Trend Daily Rate Trend Daily Rate Histogram Hourly Rate Trend Hourly Rate Histogram Job Locations Skill Sets
Period
to 20 April 2021

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for Master's Degree qualifications. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months to 20 April 2021 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

Note that daily and hourly rates are treated separately in these statistics. When calculating contractor rate percentiles, daily rates are never derived from quoted hourly rates or vice versa.

Master's Degree
UK
6 months to
20 Apr 2021		 Same period 2020 Same period 2019
Rank 510 495 558
Rank change year-on-year -15 +63 +33
Contract jobs citing Master's Degree 136 185 347
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.25% 0.32% 0.36%
As % of the Qualifications category 1.21% 1.44% 1.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 80 108 222
10th Percentile £310 £284 £325
25th Percentile £402 £363 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -9.52% +5.00%
75th Percentile £566 £591 £575
90th Percentile £676 £700 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £355 £475
% change year-on-year +26.85% -25.32% +25.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 11 8
10th Percentile £37.88 £42.50 £30.30
25th Percentile £45.75 £44.25 £42.94
Median hourly rate £53.00 £50.00 £52.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.00% -3.85% +71.32%
75th Percentile £57.50 £55.25 £61.88
90th Percentile £59.75 £57.50 £66.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £47.50 £51.50
% change year-on-year +21.05% -7.77% +64.80%

Master's Degree is in the Academic Qualifications and Professional Certifications category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for academic qualifications or professional certifications.

All Academic and Professional Certifications
UK
Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 11,283 12,813 18,581
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 21.07% 22.31% 19.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,403 8,224 11,621
10th Percentile £303 £256 £263
25th Percentile £400 £368 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £475 £463
Median % change year-on-year +1.05% +2.70% +2.78%
75th Percentile £575 £569 £558
90th Percentile £650 £650 £644
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £438
% change year-on-year - +2.86% +6.71%
Number of hourly rates quoted 579 517 786
10th Percentile £14.70 £14.50 £12.50
25th Percentile £20.25 £17.50 £16.59
Median hourly rate £40.00 £29.00 £29.00
Median % change year-on-year +37.93% - +31.82%
75th Percentile £52.63 £48.75 £46.99
90th Percentile £64.50 £57.50 £52.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £24.75 £27.50
% change year-on-year +51.52% -10.00% +19.57%

Master's Degree
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Master's Degree as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Master's Degree in the UK

Master's Degree
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Master's Degree.

Daily rate trend for Master's Degree in the UK

Master's Degree
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Master's Degree over the 6 months to 20 April 2021.

Daily rate histogram for Master's Degree in the UK

Master's Degree
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Master's Degree.

Hourly rate trend for Master's Degree in the UK

Master's Degree
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Master's Degree over the 6 months to 20 April 2021.

Hourly rate histogram for Master's Degree in the UK

Master's Degree
Top 14 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Master's Degree within the UK over the 6 months to 20 April 2021. 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
Job
Vacancies
England -2 110 £475 - 94
London -46 54 £532 +3.71% 37
UK excluding London +60 52 £450 +26.85% 68
Work from Home -242 24 £500 +26.18% 10
South East +41 19 £475 +54.51% 22
North of England +54 13 £475 -5.00% 15
Midlands +36 8 £400 - 11
North West +31 8 £530 +21.14% 7
West Midlands +26 8 £400 - 4
Yorkshire +29 5 £425 -29.17% 2
East of England +42 4 £196 - 2
Wales +19 4 £538 +16.22%
South West +48 2 £425 +13.33% 7
Scotland -4 2 £279 -30.31% 11

For the 6 months to 20 April 2021, IT contractor jobs citing Master's Degree also mentioned the following skills in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads with a requirement for Master's Degree.

1 136 (100.00%) Degree
2 85 (62.50%) Computer Science
3 48 (35.29%) Computer Science Degree
4 47 (34.56%) Agile Software Development
5 43 (31.62%) Java
6 41 (30.15%) Finance
7 37 (27.21%) Analytical Skills
8 36 (26.47%) Problem-Solving
9 33 (24.26%) Python
10 28 (20.59%) Azure
11 27 (19.85%) SQL
12 26 (19.12%) Algorithms
13 25 (18.38%) Continuous Integration
14 24 (17.65%) AWS
15 23 (16.91%) Linux
15 23 (16.91%) Microservices
16 22 (16.18%) Open Source
16 22 (16.18%) Git (software)
17 21 (15.44%) DevOps
18 19 (13.97%) Middleware
18 19 (13.97%) OO
18 19 (13.97%) Scrum
18 19 (13.97%) Jenkins
19 17 (12.50%) Apache
19 17 (12.50%) Data Science
20 16 (11.76%) JavaScript
20 16 (11.76%) Oracle
20 16 (11.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
20 16 (11.76%) High Availability
20 16 (11.76%) Mathematics

Master's Degree
Co-occurring IT Skills by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same job type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 17 (12.50%) Apache
2 9 (6.62%) Red Hat Fuse
3 8 (5.88%) Apache Spark
4 6 (4.41%) DNN
4 6 (4.41%) SAS
5 5 (3.68%) Apache Qpid
5 5 (3.68%) Tomcat
6 2 (1.47%) CMS
6 2 (1.47%) Confluence
6 2 (1.47%) Elasticsearch
7 1 (0.74%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 1 (0.74%) Apache Pig
7 1 (0.74%) Cloud Foundry
7 1 (0.74%) Drupal
7 1 (0.74%) NServiceBus
7 1 (0.74%) SharePoint
7 1 (0.74%) WebSphere
Applications
1 16 (11.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 13 (9.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (9.56%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (5.15%) MS Visio
4 4 (2.94%) AutoCAD
4 4 (2.94%) Microsoft Project
4 4 (2.94%) Revit
5 1 (0.74%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 4 (2.94%) SAP SD
2 2 (1.47%) SAP APO
3 1 (0.74%) Salesforce.com CRM
3 1 (0.74%) SAP ERP
3 1 (0.74%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.74%) TrackWise
Cloud Services
1 28 (20.59%) Azure
2 24 (17.65%) AWS
3 11 (8.09%) GitHub
4 9 (6.62%) GCP
5 5 (3.68%) Power Platform
6 3 (2.21%) OpenShift
6 3 (2.21%) PaaS
6 3 (2.21%) SaaS
7 2 (1.47%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 2 (1.47%) Amazon EC2
7 2 (1.47%) AWS CloudFormation
7 2 (1.47%) Azure Cosmos DB
7 2 (1.47%) IaaS
8 1 (0.74%) Amazon ECS
8 1 (0.74%) Amazon EKS
8 1 (0.74%) Apigee
8 1 (0.74%) AWS CloudTrail
8 1 (0.74%) OneDrive
8 1 (0.74%) Pulumi
8 1 (0.74%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 7 (5.15%) VPN
2 5 (3.68%) BGP
2 5 (3.68%) Internet
2 5 (3.68%) MPLS
2 5 (3.68%) Multicast
2 5 (3.68%) OSPF
3 4 (2.94%) Network Security
4 3 (2.21%) Firewall
4 3 (2.21%) LAN
4 3 (2.21%) WAN
5 2 (1.47%) 5G
5 2 (1.47%) HTTP
5 2 (1.47%) SAN
5 2 (1.47%) Wireless
6 1 (0.74%) 3GPP
6 1 (0.74%) DNS
6 1 (0.74%) Remote Desktop
6 1 (0.74%) SD-WAN
6 1 (0.74%) VSAN
6 1 (0.74%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (11.03%) Relational Database
2 10 (7.35%) SQL Server
3 8 (5.88%) Big Data
4 7 (5.15%) Hadoop
5 6 (4.41%) Data Warehouse
5 6 (4.41%) PostgreSQL
6 5 (3.68%) NoSQL
6 5 (3.68%) Power BI
7 4 (2.94%) HBase
8 3 (2.21%) Apache Hive
8 3 (2.21%) Spotfire
9 2 (1.47%) Apache Cassandra
9 2 (1.47%) HDInsight
9 2 (1.47%) Lumira
9 2 (1.47%) MongoDB
9 2 (1.47%) MySQL
9 2 (1.47%) RDBMS
9 2 (1.47%) Redis
9 2 (1.47%) SAP BW
9 2 (1.47%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 22 (16.18%) Git (software)
2 19 (13.97%) Jenkins
3 10 (7.35%) GitLab
4 8 (5.88%) Gradle
5 7 (5.15%) CMake
5 7 (5.15%) Maven
6 4 (2.94%) JIRA
6 4 (2.94%) JUnit
7 3 (2.21%) Appium
7 3 (2.21%) Selenium
7 3 (2.21%) Subversion
7 3 (2.21%) Visual Studio Team System
8 2 (1.47%) Ant
8 2 (1.47%) IntelliJ
8 2 (1.47%) JMeter
8 2 (1.47%) SonarQube
8 2 (1.47%) Sonatype Nexus
8 2 (1.47%) Visual Studio
8 2 (1.47%) webpack
8 2 (1.47%) Zephyr
General
1 41 (30.15%) Finance
2 15 (11.03%) Banking
3 10 (7.35%) Public Sector
4 8 (5.88%) Marketing
5 7 (5.15%) Telecoms
6 4 (2.94%) Pharmaceutical
7 3 (2.21%) Games
7 3 (2.21%) Law
8 2 (1.47%) Automotive
8 2 (1.47%) French Language
8 2 (1.47%) Front Office
8 2 (1.47%) German Language
8 2 (1.47%) Investment Banking
8 2 (1.47%) Legal
8 2 (1.47%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.74%) Dutch Language
9 1 (0.74%) General Ledger
9 1 (0.74%) Italian Language
9 1 (0.74%) Publishing
9 1 (0.74%) Retail
Job Titles
1 21 (15.44%) Architect
2 15 (11.03%) Developer
3 10 (7.35%) Consultant
4 8 (5.88%) Analyst
4 8 (5.88%) Designer
5 7 (5.15%) DevOps Engineer
5 7 (5.15%) Java Developer
6 6 (4.41%) Azure DevOps
6 6 (4.41%) Azure Engineer
6 6 (4.41%) Project Manager
6 6 (4.41%) Senior Developer
7 5 (3.68%) Azure DevOps Engineer
7 5 (3.68%) Data Engineer
7 5 (3.68%) Data Scientist
7 5 (3.68%) Senior Java Developer
7 5 (3.68%) Solutions Architect
8 4 (2.94%) Cloud Architect
8 4 (2.94%) Network Designer
8 4 (2.94%) SAP Consultant
8 4 (2.94%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (13.97%) Middleware
2 13 (9.56%) HTML
2 13 (9.56%) REST
3 12 (8.82%) AngularJS
3 12 (8.82%) HTML5
3 12 (8.82%) Spring
4 11 (8.09%) Apache Camel
4 11 (8.09%) YAML
5 10 (7.35%) jQuery
6 9 (6.62%) Ajax
6 9 (6.62%) GWT
6 9 (6.62%) Hibernate
6 9 (6.62%) JDBC
6 9 (6.62%) JMS
6 9 (6.62%) JSF
6 9 (6.62%) OSGi
7 7 (5.15%) Kafka
8 6 (4.41%) React
8 6 (4.41%) RESTful
8 6 (4.41%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 37 (27.21%) Analytical Skills
2 26 (19.12%) Algorithms
3 11 (8.09%) Enterprise Software
4 10 (7.35%) Data Structures
5 9 (6.62%) Clustering
5 9 (6.62%) Management Information System
6 8 (5.88%) NHS
7 7 (5.15%) Data Centre
8 6 (4.41%) Augmented Reality
9 5 (3.68%) Greenfield Project
10 4 (2.94%) Equities
10 4 (2.94%) User Experience
11 3 (2.21%) Analytical Mindset
11 3 (2.21%) Video Conferencing
11 3 (2.21%) Virtual Team
12 2 (1.47%) Enterprise Cloud
12 2 (1.47%) Mobile App
12 2 (1.47%) Organisational Skills
12 2 (1.47%) Self-Motivation
12 2 (1.47%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 23 (16.91%) Linux
2 13 (9.56%) Windows
3 9 (6.62%) Android
4 2 (1.47%) Apple iOS
4 2 (1.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 2 (1.47%) Unix
5 1 (0.74%) AIX
5 1 (0.74%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.74%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 85 (62.50%) Computer Science
2 47 (34.56%) Agile Software Development
3 36 (26.47%) Problem-Solving
4 25 (18.38%) Continuous Integration
5 23 (16.91%) Microservices
6 22 (16.18%) Open Source
7 21 (15.44%) DevOps
8 19 (13.97%) OO
8 19 (13.97%) Scrum
9 17 (12.50%) Data Science
10 16 (11.76%) High Availability
10 16 (11.76%) Mathematics
11 15 (11.03%) Machine Learning
11 15 (11.03%) Risk Management
12 14 (10.29%) Analytics
12 14 (10.29%) Project Management
13 13 (9.56%) Project Delivery
14 12 (8.82%) Software Delivery
14 12 (8.82%) Software Engineering
15 11 (8.09%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 43 (31.62%) Java
2 33 (24.26%) Python
3 27 (19.85%) SQL
4 16 (11.76%) JavaScript
5 13 (9.56%) C++
6 11 (8.09%) PowerShell
7 9 (6.62%) Bash Shell
7 9 (6.62%) Java 8
8 8 (5.88%) PL/SQL
9 6 (4.41%) C#
9 6 (4.41%) R
10 5 (3.68%) Scala
11 4 (2.94%) TypeScript
12 3 (2.21%) C
12 3 (2.21%) Go
13 2 (1.47%) Objective-C
13 2 (1.47%) Ruby
13 2 (1.47%) Shell Script
13 2 (1.47%) VBScript
13 2 (1.47%) XPath
Qualifications
1 136 (100.00%) Degree
2 48 (35.29%) Computer Science Degree
3 10 (7.35%) PhD
4 6 (4.41%) CISSP
4 6 (4.41%) Security Cleared
5 5 (3.68%) JNCIP
5 5 (3.68%) JNCIS
5 5 (3.68%) SC Cleared
6 4 (2.94%) BICSI Certification
6 4 (2.94%) BICSI RCDD
6 4 (2.94%) GIAC
6 4 (2.94%) MBA
7 3 (2.21%) ISEB
8 2 (1.47%) CIMA
8 2 (1.47%) CISM
8 2 (1.47%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 2 (1.47%) PMI Certification
8 2 (1.47%) PMP
8 2 (1.47%) SANS
9 1 (0.74%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (8.09%) QA
2 5 (3.68%) MiFID
3 4 (2.94%) GDPR
4 3 (2.21%) PMO
5 2 (1.47%) COBIT
5 2 (1.47%) Data Quality
5 2 (1.47%) GAAP
5 2 (1.47%) GxP
5 2 (1.47%) IFRS
5 2 (1.47%) NIST
5 2 (1.47%) NIST 800
6 1 (0.74%) Basel III
6 1 (0.74%) GMP
6 1 (0.74%) HL7
6 1 (0.74%) ISO 9000
6 1 (0.74%) ISO/IEC 20000
6 1 (0.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (0.74%) PSD2
6 1 (0.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 1 (0.74%) Solvency II
System Software
1 9 (6.62%) Docker
2 4 (2.94%) Apache ZooKeeper
3 3 (2.21%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (1.47%) Active Directory
4 2 (1.47%) Apache Flume
4 2 (1.47%) VMware ESXi
4 2 (1.47%) vSphere
5 1 (0.74%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 8 (5.88%) Ansible
2 6 (4.41%) Kubernetes
3 4 (2.94%) Opscode Chef
4 3 (2.21%) Puppet
5 2 (1.47%) Grafana
5 2 (1.47%) Hadoop YARN
5 2 (1.47%) Istio
5 2 (1.47%) Knative
6 1 (0.74%) Consul
6 1 (0.74%) Control-M
6 1 (0.74%) CSIRT
6 1 (0.74%) PowerCLI
6 1 (0.74%) Rundeck
6 1 (0.74%) Salt
6 1 (0.74%) SCCM
6 1 (0.74%) SCOrch
6 1 (0.74%) Terraform
6 1 (0.74%) vRealize
6 1 (0.74%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 16 (11.76%) Oracle
2 14 (10.29%) Microsoft
3 12 (8.82%) SAP
4 6 (4.41%) Cisco
4 6 (4.41%) Juniper
5 5 (3.68%) ADVA
5 5 (3.68%) Google
5 5 (3.68%) Red Hat
6 4 (2.94%) VMware
7 3 (2.21%) IBM
7 3 (2.21%) Intel
7 3 (2.21%) SnapLogic
7 3 (2.21%) TIBCO
8 2 (1.47%) HP
8 2 (1.47%) Solace
8 2 (1.47%) Sophos
8 2 (1.47%) Splunk
8 2 (1.47%) Symantec
8 2 (1.47%) Trend Micro
8 2 (1.47%) Twitter