Master's Degree Contract Job Trends

Master's Degree
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for Master's Degree qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months leading up to 9 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 352 269 239
Rank change year-on-year -83 -30 +72
Contract jobs citing Master's Degree 287 280 418
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.60% 0.96% 0.97%
As % of the Qualifications category 1.88% 3.10% 3.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 169 180 246
10th Percentile £327 £313 £350
25th Percentile £400 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -12.00%
75th Percentile £688 £678 £697
90th Percentile £775 £826 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £447 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -14.86% -4.55% +10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 12 46
10th Percentile £30.41 £44.31 £24.58
25th Percentile £35.00 £45.00 £41.31
Median hourly rate £51.44 £62.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -17.70% +13.64% +22.22%
75th Percentile £64.00 £83.63 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.40 £86.97 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £60.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year -12.50% +9.09% +22.22%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
UK

Master's 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 15,288 9,021 13,089
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.03% 30.93% 30.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,172 5,683 8,089
10th Percentile £349 £288 £300
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £619 £623 £650
90th Percentile £725 £701 £739
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £535
% change year-on-year - -6.54% +0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,088 513 1,071
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.13 £13.85
25th Percentile £21.25 £21.50 £17.80
Median hourly rate £47.54 £39.32 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +20.91% -1.70% -25.93%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.62 £61.55
90th Percentile £85.36 £79.74 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £40.00 £40.94
% change year-on-year +18.75% -2.30% -18.12%

Master's Degree
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Master's Degree relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Master's Degree job vacancy trend in the UK

Master's Degree
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Master's Degree.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Master's Degree

Master's Degree
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Master's Degree over the 6 months to 9 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Master's Degree in the UK

Master's Degree
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Master's Degree.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Master's Degree

Master's Degree
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Master's Degree over the 6 months to 9 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Master's Degree in the UK

Master's 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 Master's Degree within the UK over the 6 months to 9 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 -87 237 £519 -9.73% 356
London -59 139 £575 -9.80% 195
UK excluding London -114 109 £447 -14.86% 196
Work from Home -45 84 £525 - 170
North of England -43 34 £402 -30.65% 33
Midlands -34 30 £450 -41.94% 30
West Midlands -39 20 £525 -32.26% 21
North West -29 17 £375 -35.34% 16
Yorkshire -40 16 £600 +84.62% 13
Scotland +8 15 £537 -2.36% 20
South East -76 15 £600 +20.00% 57
East Midlands -24 10 £347 -22.37% 9
East of England -47 8 £400 -38.46% 25
Wales -35 5 £282 -7.56% 7
South West -51 5 £625 +12.36% 28
Northern Ireland 0 1 £600 +1.91% 4
North East - 1 - - 6

Master's 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 23 (8.01%) Apache Spark
1 23 (8.01%) Confluence
2 17 (5.92%) Apache Airflow
3 7 (2.44%) Apache
4 2 (0.70%) OpenStack
4 2 (0.70%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.70%) Oracle Workflow
4 2 (0.70%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.70%) WebSphere
5 1 (0.35%) Apache Solr
5 1 (0.35%) Camunda
5 1 (0.35%) Palantir Foundry
5 1 (0.35%) SAS
5 1 (0.35%) Tomcat
Applications
1 15 (5.23%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (4.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 9 (3.14%) Microsoft Office
3 9 (3.14%) Microsoft Project
4 7 (2.44%) MS Visio
5 4 (1.39%) Adobe XD
5 4 (1.39%) Sketch
6 2 (0.70%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.70%) CPLEX
6 2 (0.70%) Trello
7 1 (0.35%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (0.35%) Camtasia
7 1 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.35%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 8 (2.79%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (1.74%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (1.05%) Oracle General Ledger
3 3 (1.05%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 3 (1.05%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 2 (0.70%) Oracle FAH
4 2 (0.70%) Oracle Payables
4 2 (0.70%) Oracle Receivables
4 2 (0.70%) Workfront
5 1 (0.35%) Oracle Assets
5 1 (0.35%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.35%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.35%) Oracle Financials
5 1 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
5 1 (0.35%) SAP EHS
5 1 (0.35%) SAP FI-GL
5 1 (0.35%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 67 (23.34%) Azure
2 56 (19.51%) AWS
3 32 (11.15%) Power Platform
4 24 (8.36%) GCP
5 20 (6.97%) SaaS
6 14 (4.88%) GitHub
7 11 (3.83%) GitHub Actions
7 11 (3.83%) Serverless
8 10 (3.48%) IaaS
9 9 (3.14%) Amazon SageMaker
9 9 (3.14%) Azure DevOps
10 8 (2.79%) Amazon ECS
10 8 (2.79%) Amazon S3
10 8 (2.79%) AWS Lambda
10 8 (2.79%) Azure Machine Learning
11 7 (2.44%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 7 (2.44%) PaaS
11 7 (2.44%) Snowflake
12 6 (2.09%) Dagster
12 6 (2.09%) Figma
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.39%) 3GPP
2 3 (1.05%) HTTPS
2 3 (1.05%) NAS
2 3 (1.05%) SAN
3 2 (0.70%) HTTP
3 2 (0.70%) Intelligent Network
3 2 (0.70%) LAN
3 2 (0.70%) SSH
3 2 (0.70%) WAN
3 2 (0.70%) Wireless
4 1 (0.35%) BGP
4 1 (0.35%) DNS
4 1 (0.35%) Firewall
4 1 (0.35%) IPsec
4 1 (0.35%) Network Security
4 1 (0.35%) OSPF
4 1 (0.35%) TCP/IP
4 1 (0.35%) VLAN
4 1 (0.35%) VPN
4 1 (0.35%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (11.15%) Power BI
2 25 (8.71%) Big Data
3 22 (7.67%) Data Warehouse
4 13 (4.53%) Metadata
4 13 (4.53%) NoSQL
4 13 (4.53%) SQL Server
5 11 (3.83%) Data Lake
5 11 (3.83%) Hadoop
6 10 (3.48%) PostgreSQL
6 10 (3.48%) Tableau
7 6 (2.09%) MySQL
7 6 (2.09%) Relational Database
8 5 (1.74%) BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
8 5 (1.74%) MongoDB
9 4 (1.39%) Redis
9 4 (1.39%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 3 (1.05%) Amazon Redshift
10 3 (1.05%) Apache Hive
11 2 (0.70%) Elasticsearch
11 2 (0.70%) Neo4j
Development Applications
1 32 (11.15%) JIRA
2 30 (10.45%) Git
3 16 (5.57%) MLflow
4 9 (3.14%) Jenkins
5 5 (1.74%) GitLab
6 2 (0.70%) TeamCity
6 2 (0.70%) Vite
7 1 (0.35%) Artifactory
7 1 (0.35%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.35%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.35%) ER Studio
7 1 (0.35%) ERwin
7 1 (0.35%) Hudson
7 1 (0.35%) Liquibase
7 1 (0.35%) Maven
7 1 (0.35%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.35%) Subversion
7 1 (0.35%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (0.35%) VersionOne
7 1 (0.35%) Zephyr
General
1 139 (48.43%) Social Skills
2 112 (39.02%) Finance
3 83 (28.92%) Analytical Skills
4 58 (20.21%) Banking
5 30 (10.45%) Presentation Skills
6 15 (5.23%) Marketing
7 14 (4.88%) Public Sector
8 11 (3.83%) Corporate Banking
8 11 (3.83%) Legal
9 9 (3.14%) Influencing Skills
9 9 (3.14%) Investment Banking
10 8 (2.79%) Retail Banking
11 7 (2.44%) Retail
11 7 (2.44%) Telecoms
12 6 (2.09%) Front Office
13 5 (1.74%) Aviation
13 5 (1.74%) Games
13 5 (1.74%) Pharmaceutical
14 4 (1.39%) Documentation Skills
14 4 (1.39%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 57 (19.86%) Architect
2 36 (12.54%) Lead
3 27 (9.41%) Senior
4 25 (8.71%) Project Manager
4 25 (8.71%) Solutions Architect
5 23 (8.01%) Analyst
6 21 (7.32%) Data Scientist
7 15 (5.23%) Data Architect
8 14 (4.88%) Integration Architect
9 13 (4.53%) Developer
10 11 (3.83%) Consultant
11 10 (3.48%) Business Analyst
11 10 (3.48%) Cloud Architect
12 9 (3.14%) Cloud Solutions Architect
13 8 (2.79%) Data Engineer
14 7 (2.44%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
14 7 (2.44%) Finance Manager
14 7 (2.44%) Senior Data Scientist
15 6 (2.09%) Data Analyst
15 6 (2.09%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (6.97%) Middleware
2 16 (5.57%) REST
3 15 (5.23%) NumPy
3 15 (5.23%) Pandas
3 15 (5.23%) PyTorch
4 14 (4.88%) RESTful
5 13 (4.53%) Kafka
6 11 (3.83%) scikit-learn
7 10 (3.48%) TensorFlow
8 9 (3.14%) LangChain
9 8 (2.79%) .NET
10 7 (2.44%) PySpark
10 7 (2.44%) React
10 7 (2.44%) Seaborn
10 7 (2.44%) SOAP
11 6 (2.09%) Model Context Protocol
11 6 (2.09%) Web Services
12 5 (1.74%) LDAP
12 5 (1.74%) Node.js
12 5 (1.74%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 38 (13.24%) Management Information System
2 21 (7.32%) Product Ownership
3 18 (6.27%) Algorithms
4 16 (5.57%) PMI
5 13 (4.53%) Cloud Native
5 13 (4.53%) Distributed Computing
6 12 (4.18%) AI Agents
6 12 (4.18%) Distributed Systems
7 11 (3.83%) Analytical Mindset
8 10 (3.48%) Self-Motivation
9 7 (2.44%) Derivative
9 7 (2.44%) Onboarding
10 6 (2.09%) Data Protection Act
10 6 (2.09%) Legacy Systems
10 6 (2.09%) Life Science
10 6 (2.09%) Marketing Technology
10 6 (2.09%) Mobile App
10 6 (2.09%) Operational Technology
10 6 (2.09%) Security Posture
11 5 (1.74%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 10 (3.48%) Windows
2 8 (2.79%) Linux
3 5 (1.74%) Windows Server
4 4 (1.39%) VMS
5 1 (0.35%) Embedded Linux
5 1 (0.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.35%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 150 (52.26%) Computer Science
2 99 (34.49%) Agile
3 74 (25.78%) Problem-Solving
4 71 (24.74%) AI
5 63 (21.95%) Stakeholder Management
6 62 (21.60%) Machine Learning
7 56 (19.51%) Analytics
7 56 (19.51%) Data Science
8 55 (19.16%) CI/CD
9 54 (18.82%) DevOps
9 54 (18.82%) Roadmaps
10 49 (17.07%) Decision-Making
10 49 (17.07%) Project Management
11 45 (15.68%) Continuous Improvement
12 42 (14.63%) Technical Leadership
13 41 (14.29%) ETL
14 39 (13.59%) Business Intelligence
15 38 (13.24%) Microservices
15 38 (13.24%) Software Engineering
16 37 (12.89%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 84 (29.27%) Python
2 67 (23.34%) SQL
3 25 (8.71%) Java
4 16 (5.57%) C++
5 10 (3.48%) JavaScript
6 8 (2.79%) C#
7 6 (2.09%) R
8 5 (1.74%) Go
8 5 (1.74%) Lua
9 4 (1.39%) Shell Script
10 3 (1.05%) Bash
10 3 (1.05%) Scala
11 2 (0.70%) MATLAB
11 2 (0.70%) PowerShell
11 2 (0.70%) TypeScript
12 1 (0.35%) ABAP
12 1 (0.35%) Apex Code
12 1 (0.35%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.35%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 287 (100.00%) Degree
2 98 (34.15%) Computer Science Degree
3 39 (13.59%) MBA
4 35 (12.20%) Security Cleared
5 34 (11.85%) PhD
6 30 (10.45%) PMI Certification
7 25 (8.71%) PMP
8 19 (6.62%) SC Cleared
9 18 (6.27%) CISSP
10 13 (4.53%) CISM
11 11 (3.83%) BPSS Clearance
12 9 (3.14%) AWS Certification
13 8 (2.79%) SAFe Agilist
14 7 (2.44%) Azure Certification
14 7 (2.44%) CISA
15 6 (2.09%) CRISC
16 5 (1.74%) CEH
17 4 (1.39%) IBM Certification
17 4 (1.39%) Microsoft Certified Professional
17 4 (1.39%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (9.41%) QA
2 23 (8.01%) Data Quality
3 18 (6.27%) GDPR
4 14 (4.88%) NIST
5 10 (3.48%) Basel III
5 10 (3.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 9 (3.14%) IFRS
6 9 (3.14%) IFRS 17
7 7 (2.44%) PMO
8 6 (2.09%) SLA
9 5 (1.74%) Accessibility
9 5 (1.74%) PCI DSS
10 3 (1.05%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 3 (1.05%) DICOM
10 3 (1.05%) GRC
10 3 (1.05%) HIPAA
10 3 (1.05%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 3 (1.05%) SOC 2
11 2 (0.70%) GAAP
11 2 (0.70%) WCAG
System Software
1 31 (10.80%) Docker
2 4 (1.39%) VMware Infrastructure
3 3 (1.05%) Active Directory
4 2 (0.70%) vSphere
5 1 (0.35%) HDFS
5 1 (0.35%) Hyper-V
5 1 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 28 (9.76%) Kubernetes
2 16 (5.57%) Terraform
3 9 (3.14%) Ansible
4 3 (1.05%) Grafana
4 3 (1.05%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.70%) Control-M
5 2 (0.70%) Kibana
5 2 (0.70%) logstash
5 2 (0.70%) PowerCLI
5 2 (0.70%) vCenter Server
5 2 (0.70%) vRealize
5 2 (0.70%) vRealize Orchestrator
6 1 (0.35%) Argo
6 1 (0.35%) CASB
6 1 (0.35%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 56 (19.51%) Microsoft
2 26 (9.06%) SAP
3 22 (7.67%) Oracle
4 20 (6.97%) Databricks
5 15 (5.23%) Google
6 12 (4.18%) Software AG
7 9 (3.14%) Informatica
7 9 (3.14%) Talend
8 8 (2.79%) Adobe
8 8 (2.79%) Salesforce
9 7 (2.44%) MuleSoft
9 7 (2.44%) ServiceNow
9 7 (2.44%) VMware
10 6 (2.09%) IBM
11 4 (1.39%) BiZZdesign
12 3 (1.05%) Veritas
13 2 (0.70%) Bloomberg
13 2 (0.70%) Cisco
13 2 (0.70%) HubSpot
13 2 (0.70%) Rapid7