Degree Contract Job Trends in the West Midlands

Academic Degree
England > West Midlands

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the West Midlands with a requirement for Degree qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months leading up to 29 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 27 13 17
Rank change year-on-year -14 +4 +18
Contract jobs citing Degree 160 168 149
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 6.99% 10.16% 8.20%
As % of the Qualifications category 19.16% 33.53% 26.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 84 94 95
10th Percentile £303 £157 £363
25th Percentile £450 £375 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -13.04% +29.21%
75th Percentile £591 £609 £626
90th Percentile £708 £714 £675
England median daily rate £503 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.24% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 11 7
10th Percentile - £15.22 £16.09
25th Percentile £14.00 £18.13 £17.31
Median hourly rate £35.00 £23.60 £18.50
Median % change year-on-year +48.31% +27.57% -23.71%
75th Percentile £40.25 £46.88 £23.98
90th Percentile £40.46 £52.50 £25.96
England median hourly rate £37.58 £42.88 £46.29
% change year-on-year -12.36% -7.36% +2.86%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
West Midlands

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 in the West Midlands.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 835 501 556
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 36.49% 30.29% 30.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 577 332 343
10th Percentile £292 £208 £300
25th Percentile £417 £404 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.35% -0.95% +5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £612 £600
90th Percentile £673 £700 £675
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 49 19 30
10th Percentile £14.00 £17.55 £17.46
25th Percentile £18.20 £19.25 £23.00
Median hourly rate £21.46 £29.00 £34.75
Median % change year-on-year -26.00% -16.55% +73.75%
75th Percentile £25.15 £39.38 £67.50
90th Percentile £44.02 £52.50 £70.75
England median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £51.89
% change year-on-year -45.54% -11.00% +15.31%

Degree
Job Vacancy Trend in the West Midlands

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Degree relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands.

Degree job vacancy trend in the West Midlands

Degree
Daily Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Degree.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Degree

Degree
Daily Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Degree in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 29 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Degree in the West Midlands

Degree
Hourly Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Degree.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Degree

Degree
Hourly Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Degree in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 29 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Degree in the West Midlands

Degree
Contract Job Locations in the West Midlands

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Degree within the West Midlands region over the 6 months to 29 December 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
Birmingham -10 54 £525 +5.00% 100
Warwickshire +1 49 £500 -13.98% 26
Coventry -11 17 £569 +42.19% 64
Shropshire -38 13 £425 -25.04% 117
Solihull +4 5 £600 +33.63% 10
Staffordshire -1 5 £300 - 65
Worcestershire -29 3 £475 -13.64% 63
Degree
England

Degree
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the West Midlands 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 17 (10.63%) Confluence
2 11 (6.88%) nginx
3 3 (1.88%) SharePoint
4 2 (1.25%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.63%) ArcGIS
5 1 (0.63%) CMS
5 1 (0.63%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 16 (10.00%) Microsoft Project
2 10 (6.25%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (6.25%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 8 (5.00%) Microsoft Excel
4 6 (3.75%) MS Visio
5 4 (2.50%) Adobe XD
5 4 (2.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (2.50%) Sketch
6 3 (1.88%) Trello
7 1 (0.63%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (0.63%) Adobe Illustrator
7 1 (0.63%) InDesign
7 1 (0.63%) Navisworks
7 1 (0.63%) Photoshop
7 1 (0.63%) Revit
Business Applications
1 6 (3.75%) Primavera
2 4 (2.50%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (1.88%) SAP HR
3 3 (1.88%) SAP PM
4 2 (1.25%) Dynamics NAV
4 2 (1.25%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.63%) Maximo
5 1 (0.63%) Oracle Financials
5 1 (0.63%) Oracle General Ledger
5 1 (0.63%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 39 (24.38%) AWS
2 30 (18.75%) Azure
3 20 (12.50%) GCP
4 16 (10.00%) Serverless
5 14 (8.75%) AWS KMS
5 14 (8.75%) Microsoft 365
6 13 (8.13%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 11 (6.88%) Amazon EC2
7 11 (6.88%) Amazon ECS
7 11 (6.88%) Amazon S3
8 10 (6.25%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 10 (6.25%) Amazon ELB
8 10 (6.25%) Route 53
9 8 (5.00%) Power Platform
10 6 (3.75%) Dynamics 365
11 5 (3.13%) Figma
12 4 (2.50%) Datadog
12 4 (2.50%) Entra ID
12 4 (2.50%) Power Automate
12 4 (2.50%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 16 (10.00%) Firewall
2 14 (8.75%) DNS
3 10 (6.25%) FTP
3 10 (6.25%) HTTP
3 10 (6.25%) IMAP
3 10 (6.25%) OpenLDAP
3 10 (6.25%) SMTP
3 10 (6.25%) SSH
4 7 (4.38%) LAN
5 6 (3.75%) VLAN
6 5 (3.13%) MPLS
6 5 (3.13%) WAN
6 5 (3.13%) Wireless
7 4 (2.50%) BGP
7 4 (2.50%) OSPF
7 4 (2.50%) SD-WAN
7 4 (2.50%) Unified Communications
7 4 (2.50%) VPN
7 4 (2.50%) WLAN
8 3 (1.88%) IPv4
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (13.75%) PostgreSQL
2 14 (8.75%) NoSQL
3 12 (7.50%) Amazon RDS
3 12 (7.50%) Elasticsearch
4 10 (6.25%) Amazon Aurora
5 4 (2.50%) Power BI
6 3 (1.88%) Relational Database
6 3 (1.88%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 2 (1.25%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (1.25%) EDMS
7 2 (1.25%) SQL Server
8 1 (0.63%) Amazon Athena
8 1 (0.63%) Data Mining
8 1 (0.63%) Geospatial Data
8 1 (0.63%) GIS
8 1 (0.63%) MySQL
8 1 (0.63%) RDBMS
8 1 (0.63%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 26 (16.25%) JIRA
2 25 (15.63%) Jenkins
3 16 (10.00%) Git
4 15 (9.38%) GitLab
5 10 (6.25%) Liquibase
5 10 (6.25%) Vagrant
6 2 (1.25%) Selenium
7 1 (0.63%) AdminStudio
7 1 (0.63%) Artifactory
7 1 (0.63%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.63%) Cypress.io
7 1 (0.63%) Gradle
7 1 (0.63%) InstallShield
7 1 (0.63%) JUnit
7 1 (0.63%) Maven
7 1 (0.63%) MSI
7 1 (0.63%) Oracle Forms
7 1 (0.63%) PVCS
7 1 (0.63%) SoapUI
7 1 (0.63%) SonarQube
General
1 108 (67.50%) Social Skills
2 35 (21.88%) Analytical Skills
3 33 (20.63%) Finance
4 17 (10.63%) Public Sector
5 14 (8.75%) Presentation Skills
6 10 (6.25%) Banking
6 10 (6.25%) Financial Institution
6 10 (6.25%) Influencing Skills
7 7 (4.38%) Automotive
7 7 (4.38%) Legal
8 6 (3.75%) Marketing
9 4 (2.50%) Documentation Skills
10 3 (1.88%) Manufacturing
10 3 (1.88%) Organisational Skills
10 3 (1.88%) Telecoms
11 2 (1.25%) Law
12 1 (0.63%) Aerospace
12 1 (0.63%) Digital Healthcare
12 1 (0.63%) Military
12 1 (0.63%) Retail
Job Titles
1 17 (10.63%) AWS Engineer
2 16 (10.00%) Cloud Engineer
3 15 (9.38%) Analyst
3 15 (9.38%) Architect
4 14 (8.75%) Project Manager
5 13 (8.13%) DevOps Engineer
6 12 (7.50%) Senior
7 11 (6.88%) Lead
7 11 (6.88%) Site Engineer
7 11 (6.88%) Site Reliability Engineer
7 11 (6.88%) Splunk Engineer
8 10 (6.25%) AWS DevOps
8 10 (6.25%) AWS DevOps Engineer
8 10 (6.25%) AWS Platform Engineer
8 10 (6.25%) Cloud Platform Engineer
8 10 (6.25%) GCP Engineer
8 10 (6.25%) Platform Engineer
8 10 (6.25%) Technical Support
9 9 (5.63%) Software Engineer
10 8 (5.00%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (16.88%) Elastic Stack
2 23 (14.38%) REST
3 20 (12.50%) RESTful
4 10 (6.25%) LDAP
5 7 (4.38%) HTML
5 7 (4.38%) SOAP
6 5 (3.13%) AngularJS
7 4 (2.50%) CSS
7 4 (2.50%) CSS3
7 4 (2.50%) HTML5
7 4 (2.50%) Middleware
7 4 (2.50%) React
7 4 (2.50%) SailPoint
7 4 (2.50%) SAP PI
8 3 (1.88%) .NET
8 3 (1.88%) GraphQL
8 3 (1.88%) Lightning Web Components
8 3 (1.88%) OAuth
8 3 (1.88%) Visualforce
9 2 (1.25%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 17 (10.63%) Management Information System
2 15 (9.38%) Distributed Systems
3 14 (8.75%) Public Cloud
4 12 (7.50%) Cloud Native
5 10 (6.25%) Replication
6 8 (5.00%) Onboarding
6 8 (5.00%) SCADA
7 5 (3.13%) Analytical Mindset
7 5 (3.13%) Driving Licence
8 4 (2.50%) Data Centre
8 4 (2.50%) Data Protection Act
8 4 (2.50%) Operational Technology
8 4 (2.50%) Product Ownership
9 3 (1.88%) Educational Technology
9 3 (1.88%) Handset
9 3 (1.88%) Learning Management System
9 3 (1.88%) Linux Command Line
9 3 (1.88%) Mobile App
9 3 (1.88%) Security Operations Centre
9 3 (1.88%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 41 (25.63%) Linux
2 17 (10.63%) Windows
3 12 (7.50%) Unix
4 10 (6.25%) Amazon Linux
4 10 (6.25%) Ubuntu
4 10 (6.25%) VMS
5 4 (2.50%) Windows 10
6 2 (1.25%) Mac OS
6 2 (1.25%) Windows Server
7 1 (0.63%) AIX
7 1 (0.63%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 61 (38.13%) Agile
2 54 (33.75%) Computer Science
3 51 (31.88%) Problem-Solving
4 48 (30.00%) DevOps
5 42 (26.25%) Change Management
6 35 (21.88%) CI/CD
7 33 (20.63%) Containerisation
8 26 (16.25%) Cybersecurity
9 25 (15.63%) Stakeholder Management
10 24 (15.00%) Project Management
11 22 (13.75%) Migration
12 20 (12.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 19 (11.88%) Root Cause Analysis
14 18 (11.25%) Incident Response
15 17 (10.63%) Continuous Improvement
15 17 (10.63%) Infrastructure as Code
16 16 (10.00%) PRINCE2
16 16 (10.00%) Scrum
17 15 (9.38%) Data Modelling
17 15 (9.38%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 45 (28.13%) Python
2 26 (16.25%) SQL
3 17 (10.63%) PowerShell
4 16 (10.00%) Go
5 13 (8.13%) Bash
6 10 (6.25%) Groovy
7 8 (5.00%) Java
7 8 (5.00%) JavaScript
8 4 (2.50%) BeanShell
9 3 (1.88%) Apex Code
9 3 (1.88%) C#
10 1 (0.63%) C++
10 1 (0.63%) R
10 1 (0.63%) Scala
10 1 (0.63%) Shell Script
10 1 (0.63%) TypeScript
10 1 (0.63%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 43 (26.88%) Computer Science Degree
2 23 (14.38%) Master's Degree
3 22 (13.75%) Security Cleared
4 17 (10.63%) AWS Certification
4 17 (10.63%) SC Cleared
5 14 (8.75%) Azure Certification
6 12 (7.50%) PMI Certification
6 12 (7.50%) PMP
7 10 (6.25%) CISSP
8 8 (5.00%) CCNP
8 8 (5.00%) Cisco Certification
9 6 (3.75%) CISM
10 5 (3.13%) Microsoft Certification
10 5 (3.13%) PRINCE2 Certification
11 4 (2.50%) BPSS Clearance
11 4 (2.50%) CCIE
12 3 (1.88%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 3 (1.88%) CCIE Security
12 3 (1.88%) CCSP
12 3 (1.88%) CREST Certified
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (4.38%) GDPR
2 6 (3.75%) Data Quality
2 6 (3.75%) NIST
2 6 (3.75%) QA
3 5 (3.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 4 (2.50%) Accessibility
4 4 (2.50%) ISO 19650
5 3 (1.88%) PCI DSS
5 3 (1.88%) PMO
6 2 (1.25%) ISO 9001
6 2 (1.25%) SLA
6 2 (1.25%) WCAG
7 1 (0.63%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.63%) PERC
7 1 (0.63%) SOC 2
System Software
1 38 (23.75%) Docker
2 10 (6.25%) DFS Replication
2 10 (6.25%) Dovecot
2 10 (6.25%) Postfix
2 10 (6.25%) Squid
3 8 (5.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 7 (4.38%) Active Directory
5 3 (1.88%) VMware NSX
5 3 (1.88%) vSphere
6 2 (1.25%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.63%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 31 (19.38%) Terraform
2 30 (18.75%) Ansible
2 30 (18.75%) Kubernetes
3 25 (15.63%) Grafana
3 25 (15.63%) Prometheus
4 12 (7.50%) Kibana
4 12 (7.50%) Puppet
5 10 (6.25%) Nessus
5 10 (6.25%) Proxmox
6 3 (1.88%) vRealize
6 3 (1.88%) VxRail
7 2 (1.25%) SCCM
8 1 (0.63%) logstash
8 1 (0.63%) Microsoft Intune
8 1 (0.63%) Podman
8 1 (0.63%) Progress Chef
8 1 (0.63%) Single Sign-On
8 1 (0.63%) WSUS
Vendors
1 26 (16.25%) Microsoft
1 26 (16.25%) Splunk
2 16 (10.00%) ServiceNow
3 12 (7.50%) SAP
4 11 (6.88%) Cisco
5 10 (6.25%) Jaspersoft
6 8 (5.00%) VMware
7 7 (4.38%) Google
7 7 (4.38%) SolarWinds
8 6 (3.75%) Adobe
9 5 (3.13%) IBM
9 5 (3.13%) Oracle
10 4 (2.50%) Commvault
10 4 (2.50%) F5
10 4 (2.50%) MuleSoft
11 3 (1.88%) AppDynamics
11 3 (1.88%) Databricks
11 3 (1.88%) HP
11 3 (1.88%) Meraki
11 3 (1.88%) Palo Alto