Master's Degree Contracts

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 14 July 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 276 237 319
Rank change year-on-year -39 +82 +80
Contract jobs citing Master's Degree 297 431 445
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.91% 1.01% 0.79%
As % of the Qualifications category 2.97% 3.37% 2.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 180 232 289
10th Percentile £331 £350 £400
25th Percentile £425 £450 £481
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £539 £550 £650
Median % change year-on-year -2.05% -15.38% +8.33%
75th Percentile £656 £700 £800
90th Percentile £800 £800 £1,000
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% +4.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 49 23
10th Percentile £30.29 £21.02 £31.30
25th Percentile £39.49 £31.60 £42.50
Median hourly rate £55.00 £55.00 £51.50
Median % change year-on-year - +6.80% +14.44%
75th Percentile £86.25 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.05 £83.75 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £55.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year -18.18% - +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 9,990 12,794 15,137
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 30.75% 29.92% 26.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,169 7,954 9,979
10th Percentile £281 £310 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.10% -4.55% +3.38%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £704 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - +5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 711 1,084 733
10th Percentile £17.87 £14.16 £15.25
25th Percentile £19.42 £20.43 £23.00
Median hourly rate £27.35 £41.50 £55.32
Median % change year-on-year -34.10% -24.98% +24.31%
75th Percentile £58.67 £65.00 £68.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.17 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £53.67
% change year-on-year -41.51% -19.87% +50.74%

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 14 July 2025.

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 14 July 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Master's Degree in the UK

Master's Degree
Top 16 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 14 July 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 -56 234 £550 - 1,706
London -20 141 £590 +7.27% 1,011
UK excluding London -11 133 £500 -4.76% 845
Work from Home -10 93 £499 -9.93% 1,155
South East +23 32 £496 -5.52% 215
Wales +24 26 £322 +97.96% 20
North of England -10 22 £475 -14.26% 170
South West +25 17 £550 -22.81% 77
East of England +9 15 £580 +65.71% 125
Scotland 0 15 £465 -11.43% 99
North West +5 14 £580 -15.02% 75
Yorkshire -9 8 £393 -25.14% 68
Midlands -9 6 £470 -10.40% 128
Northern Ireland -7 5 £588 +76.69% 29
East Midlands +3 3 £470 -5.15% 55
West Midlands -8 3 - - 72

Master's Degree
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

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

Application Platforms
1 30 (10.10%) Apache Spark
2 15 (5.05%) Confluence
3 5 (1.68%) Apache Airflow
3 5 (1.68%) SAS
4 4 (1.35%) Jupyter
5 2 (0.67%) Apache
5 2 (0.67%) Camunda
5 2 (0.67%) CMS
6 1 (0.34%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 1 (0.34%) Drupal
6 1 (0.34%) IBM Domino
6 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.34%) Moodle
6 1 (0.34%) Oracle Service Bus
6 1 (0.34%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 1 (0.34%) Oracle Workflow
6 1 (0.34%) SharePoint
6 1 (0.34%) Sitecore CMS
6 1 (0.34%) WordPress
Applications
1 22 (7.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 15 (5.05%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (4.04%) Microsoft Excel
4 9 (3.03%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.67%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.67%) Camtasia
5 2 (0.67%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.67%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.34%) CATIA
6 1 (0.34%) InVision
6 1 (0.34%) Photoshop
6 1 (0.34%) Simulink
6 1 (0.34%) Sketch
6 1 (0.34%) Trello
Business Applications
1 12 (4.04%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (1.01%) Endur
2 3 (1.01%) SAP Oil and Gas
3 1 (0.34%) Bankmaster
3 1 (0.34%) Dynamics AX
3 1 (0.34%) ENOVIA
3 1 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.34%) SAP CO
3 1 (0.34%) SAP FI
3 1 (0.34%) SAP FI/CO
3 1 (0.34%) SAP GRC
3 1 (0.34%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 78 (26.26%) AWS
2 65 (21.89%) Azure
3 45 (15.15%) GCP
4 20 (6.73%) Power Platform
5 10 (3.37%) GitHub
6 8 (2.69%) Snowflake
7 6 (2.02%) Amazon SageMaker
7 6 (2.02%) Serverless
8 5 (1.68%) Amazon S3
8 5 (1.68%) Cloud Computing
8 5 (1.68%) Entra ID
9 4 (1.35%) Amazon ECS
9 4 (1.35%) Azure DevOps
9 4 (1.35%) Azure Machine Learning
9 4 (1.35%) dbt
9 4 (1.35%) OpenShift
9 4 (1.35%) Vertex AI
10 3 (1.01%) Microsoft 365
11 2 (0.67%) Canva
11 2 (0.67%) Miro
Communications & Networking
1 16 (5.39%) Firewall
2 8 (2.69%) Network Security
3 6 (2.02%) 4G
3 6 (2.02%) 5G
3 6 (2.02%) MPLS
3 6 (2.02%) VPN
4 5 (1.68%) VLAN
5 4 (1.35%) BGP
5 4 (1.35%) LTE
5 4 (1.35%) OSPF
5 4 (1.35%) Wireless
6 3 (1.01%) Radio Access Network
7 2 (0.67%) 2G
7 2 (0.67%) 3G
7 2 (0.67%) Cisco ISE
7 2 (0.67%) DOCSIS
7 2 (0.67%) DSL
7 2 (0.67%) GPON
7 2 (0.67%) VoIP
7 2 (0.67%) xDSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (8.08%) Big Data
2 23 (7.74%) Tableau
3 20 (6.73%) Hadoop
3 20 (6.73%) Power BI
4 15 (5.05%) Data Warehouse
4 15 (5.05%) NoSQL
5 11 (3.70%) Data Lake
6 9 (3.03%) Relational Database
7 8 (2.69%) PostgreSQL
8 7 (2.36%) Apache Hive
8 7 (2.36%) MySQL
9 6 (2.02%) Data Mining
10 5 (1.68%) MongoDB
11 4 (1.35%) Amazon Athena
11 4 (1.35%) Amazon RDS
12 3 (1.01%) Metadata
12 3 (1.01%) Redis
13 2 (0.67%) BigQuery
13 2 (0.67%) SAP HANA
13 2 (0.67%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 28 (9.43%) JIRA
2 19 (6.40%) Git
3 12 (4.04%) Jenkins
4 9 (3.03%) GitLab
5 8 (2.69%) MLflow
6 7 (2.36%) Selenium
7 6 (2.02%) Bitbucket
8 5 (1.68%) Artifactory
9 4 (1.35%) Liquibase
9 4 (1.35%) SpecFlow
10 2 (0.67%) ERwin
10 2 (0.67%) Visual Studio
11 1 (0.34%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 1 (0.34%) Axure RP
11 1 (0.34%) Metasploit
11 1 (0.34%) MSTest
11 1 (0.34%) NUnit
11 1 (0.34%) PowerDesigner
11 1 (0.34%) ReSharper
11 1 (0.34%) TeamCity
General
1 143 (48.15%) Social Skills
2 111 (37.37%) Analytical Skills
2 111 (37.37%) Finance
3 36 (12.12%) Public Sector
4 34 (11.45%) Banking
5 28 (9.43%) Presentation Skills
6 21 (7.07%) Telecoms
7 18 (6.06%) Manufacturing
8 15 (5.05%) Front Office
8 15 (5.05%) Marketing
8 15 (5.05%) Pharmaceutical
9 14 (4.71%) Financial Institution
10 12 (4.04%) Legal
11 10 (3.37%) Influencing Skills
11 10 (3.37%) Organisational Skills
12 7 (2.36%) Electronics
13 6 (2.02%) Digital Health
14 5 (1.68%) Aerospace
14 5 (1.68%) Welsh Language
15 4 (1.35%) French Language
Job Titles
1 35 (11.78%) Senior
2 31 (10.44%) Analyst
3 29 (9.76%) Architect
3 29 (9.76%) Developer
4 26 (8.75%) Lead
5 15 (5.05%) Machine Learning Engineer
6 13 (4.38%) Designer
6 13 (4.38%) Project Manager
7 11 (3.70%) Software Engineer
8 10 (3.37%) Data Analyst
8 10 (3.37%) Data Engineer
8 10 (3.37%) Data Science Developer
8 10 (3.37%) Solutions Architect
9 9 (3.03%) Business Analyst
9 9 (3.03%) Data Scientist
9 9 (3.03%) Python Engineer
9 9 (3.03%) Virtualisation Engineer
10 7 (2.36%) Cloud Architect
10 7 (2.36%) Consultant
10 7 (2.36%) Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (9.76%) TensorFlow
2 22 (7.41%) PyTorch
3 17 (5.72%) Pandas
4 16 (5.39%) NumPy
5 13 (4.38%) REST
5 13 (4.38%) scikit-learn
6 10 (3.37%) LangChain
6 10 (3.37%) Matplotlib
6 10 (3.37%) PySpark
6 10 (3.37%) Seaborn
7 9 (3.03%) Flash
7 9 (3.03%) HTML
7 9 (3.03%) React
7 9 (3.03%) RESTful
8 8 (2.69%) Hugging Face
8 8 (2.69%) Kafka
9 7 (2.36%) CSS
9 7 (2.36%) OAuth
10 5 (1.68%) AngularJS
10 5 (1.68%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 37 (12.46%) Algorithms
2 18 (6.06%) Cloud Native
2 18 (6.06%) Distributed Systems
3 15 (5.05%) Distributed Computing
4 14 (4.71%) Data Structures
4 14 (4.71%) Life Science
5 13 (4.38%) Derivative
6 12 (4.04%) Product Ownership
7 11 (3.70%) Management Information System
7 11 (3.70%) NHS
8 9 (3.03%) Clustering
9 8 (2.69%) Hedge funds
9 8 (2.69%) Hybrid Cloud
9 8 (2.69%) Market Risk
10 7 (2.36%) Credit Risk
10 7 (2.36%) Data Protection Act
10 7 (2.36%) Equity Derivative
11 6 (2.02%) Legacy Systems
11 6 (2.02%) Renewable Energy
11 6 (2.02%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 16 (5.39%) Linux
2 9 (3.03%) Windows
3 4 (1.35%) Windows 10
4 3 (1.01%) Mac OS
5 2 (0.67%) Unix
6 1 (0.34%) Android
6 1 (0.34%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.34%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 150 (50.51%) Computer Science
2 97 (32.66%) Agile
2 97 (32.66%) Problem-Solving
3 62 (20.88%) Artificial Intelligence
3 62 (20.88%) Machine Learning
4 59 (19.87%) Analytics
5 44 (14.81%) DevOps
6 43 (14.48%) Data Science
7 42 (14.14%) Decision-Making
7 42 (14.14%) Mathematics
7 42 (14.14%) Project Management
8 38 (12.79%) Data Analysis
9 36 (12.12%) Roadmaps
9 36 (12.12%) Software Engineering
10 34 (11.45%) CI/CD
10 34 (11.45%) Technical Leadership
11 33 (11.11%) Generative AI
12 31 (10.44%) LLM
12 31 (10.44%) Stakeholder Management
12 31 (10.44%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 118 (39.73%) Python
2 47 (15.82%) SQL
3 39 (13.13%) Java
4 30 (10.10%) C++
5 16 (5.39%) R
6 13 (4.38%) C
7 9 (3.03%) C#
7 9 (3.03%) JavaScript
8 6 (2.02%) Rust
9 4 (1.35%) Go
9 4 (1.35%) Shell Script
9 4 (1.35%) SystemVerilog
10 3 (1.01%) Bash
10 3 (1.01%) MATLAB
10 3 (1.01%) PHP
10 3 (1.01%) PowerShell
11 2 (0.67%) Ruby
11 2 (0.67%) VB
12 1 (0.34%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.34%) VBA
Qualifications
1 297 (100.00%) Degree
2 84 (28.28%) Computer Science Degree
3 64 (21.55%) PhD
4 22 (7.41%) PMI Certification
5 19 (6.40%) Cisco Certification
5 19 (6.40%) PMP
5 19 (6.40%) Security Cleared
6 16 (5.39%) AWS Certification
7 14 (4.71%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 14 (4.71%) CCNA
7 14 (4.71%) SC Cleared
8 13 (4.38%) MBA
9 10 (3.37%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 9 (3.03%) Microsoft Certification
11 8 (2.69%) Azure Certification
11 8 (2.69%) CISSP
12 4 (1.35%) CCIE
12 4 (1.35%) CCNP
12 4 (1.35%) ISEB
12 4 (1.35%) SAP Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 38 (12.79%) Data Quality
2 21 (7.07%) QA
3 13 (4.38%) GDPR
4 8 (2.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 8 (2.69%) PMO
5 7 (2.36%) NIST
6 6 (2.02%) GRC
6 6 (2.02%) HIPAA
7 4 (1.35%) Accessibility
7 4 (1.35%) MiFID
8 2 (0.67%) 21 CFR Part 11
8 2 (0.67%) Basel III
8 2 (0.67%) NIST 800
8 2 (0.67%) OASIS TOSCA
9 1 (0.34%) COBIT
9 1 (0.34%) FINRA
9 1 (0.34%) HAZOP
9 1 (0.34%) PCI DSS
9 1 (0.34%) PMBOK
9 1 (0.34%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 19 (6.40%) Docker
2 14 (4.71%) VMware Infrastructure
3 9 (3.03%) VMware ESXi
3 9 (3.03%) VMware NSX
4 5 (1.68%) Active Directory
5 4 (1.35%) Firmware
6 1 (0.34%) Lustre
6 1 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
6 1 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 27 (9.09%) Kubernetes
2 11 (3.70%) Terraform
3 9 (3.03%) vCenter Server
4 8 (2.69%) Ansible
4 8 (2.69%) Grafana
5 7 (2.36%) Prometheus
6 3 (1.01%) Kustomize
6 3 (1.01%) SCCM
7 2 (0.67%) Amdocs OSS
7 2 (0.67%) Kubeflow
7 2 (0.67%) Microsoft Intune
7 2 (0.67%) NSN NetAct
7 2 (0.67%) Single Sign-On
8 1 (0.34%) CASB
8 1 (0.34%) Karpenter
8 1 (0.34%) Podman
8 1 (0.34%) QRadar
Vendors
1 29 (9.76%) SAP
2 28 (9.43%) Microsoft
3 23 (7.74%) Google
4 20 (6.73%) Cisco
5 14 (4.71%) VMware
6 10 (3.37%) Atlassian
7 9 (3.03%) Databricks
8 8 (2.69%) Oracle
9 7 (2.36%) Ariba
9 7 (2.36%) F5
9 7 (2.36%) Splunk
10 5 (1.68%) Adobe
10 5 (1.68%) Salesforce
10 5 (1.68%) Workday
11 4 (1.35%) Fortinet
11 4 (1.35%) IBM
11 4 (1.35%) OpenAI
12 3 (1.01%) Ericsson
12 3 (1.01%) Huawei
12 3 (1.01%) Nokia