Degree Contract Job Trends in Cheshire

Academic Degree
North West > Cheshire

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in Cheshire with a requirement for Degree qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months leading up to 19 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 21 16 12
Rank change year-on-year -5 -4 -3
Contract jobs citing Degree 75 69 55
As % of all contract jobs in Cheshire 9.09% 11.22% 11.25%
As % of the Qualifications category 29.07% 39.20% 50.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 56 56 38
10th Percentile £307 £290 £158
25th Percentile £418 £333 £491
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £484 £427 £538
Median % change year-on-year +13.17% -20.59% +16.32%
75th Percentile £616 £518 £573
90th Percentile £630 £638 £622
North West median daily rate £466 £463 £550
% change year-on-year +0.70% -15.91% +22.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 5 0
10th Percentile - £30.50 -
25th Percentile £17.25 £31.25 -
Median hourly rate £17.50 £32.50 -
Median % change year-on-year -46.15% - -
75th Percentile £17.75 £34.00 -
90th Percentile - £35.65 -
North West median hourly rate £36.00 £34.50 £52.19
% change year-on-year +4.35% -33.90% +29.66%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
Cheshire

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 Cheshire.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 258 176 109
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Cheshire 31.27% 28.62% 22.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 154 133 71
10th Percentile £274 £304 £310
25th Percentile £416 £348 £390
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £438 £525
Median % change year-on-year +14.29% -16.67% +1.35%
75th Percentile £604 £520 £572
90th Percentile £638 £635 £638
North West median daily rate £512 £499 £510
% change year-on-year +2.63% -2.25% +1.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 9 0
10th Percentile £17.25 £29.03 -
25th Percentile £19.31 £31.25 -
Median hourly rate £34.02 £32.50 -
Median % change year-on-year +4.68% - -
75th Percentile £83.75 £67.25 -
90th Percentile £96.13 £70.85 -
North West median hourly rate £43.96 £30.64 £18.07
% change year-on-year +43.50% +69.58% -57.15%

Degree
Job Vacancy Trend in Cheshire

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

Degree job vacancy trend in Cheshire

Degree
Daily Rate Trend in Cheshire

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Cheshire citing Degree.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Cheshire citing Degree

Degree
Daily Rate Histogram in Cheshire

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Degree in Cheshire over the 6 months to 19 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Degree in Cheshire

Degree
Hourly Rate Trend in Cheshire

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Cheshire citing Degree.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Cheshire citing Degree

Degree
Contract Job Locations in Cheshire

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Degree within the Cheshire region over the 6 months to 19 August 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
Knutsford +18 41 £470 +11.26% 5
Chester -13 12 £525 +13.51% 9
Warrington -6 9 £463 +218.97% 28
Crewe -2 3 £525 +47.89% 5
Northwich - 2 - - 2
Degree
North West

Degree
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Cheshire 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 12 (16.00%) Confluence
2 3 (4.00%) SharePoint
3 2 (2.67%) Camunda
4 1 (1.33%) JBoss
4 1 (1.33%) Mule
4 1 (1.33%) Mule ESB
4 1 (1.33%) Skype for Business
4 1 (1.33%) WebLogic
Applications
1 27 (36.00%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (4.00%) MS Visio
3 2 (2.67%) Microsoft Project
Cloud Services
1 22 (29.33%) AWS
2 19 (25.33%) Azure
3 12 (16.00%) GCP
4 9 (12.00%) Microsoft 365
5 7 (9.33%) Google Kubernetes Engine
6 6 (8.00%) Azure Sentinel
7 5 (6.67%) AWS CloudFormation
7 5 (6.67%) Entra ID
7 5 (6.67%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 4 (5.33%) SaaS
9 3 (4.00%) AWS KMS
9 3 (4.00%) AWS Lambda
9 3 (4.00%) Azure DevOps
9 3 (4.00%) OpenShift
9 3 (4.00%) Power Platform
10 2 (2.67%) Amazon ECS
10 2 (2.67%) Amazon EKS
10 2 (2.67%) Azure Monitor
10 2 (2.67%) Serverless
10 2 (2.67%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 18 (24.00%) Firewall
2 12 (16.00%) VPN
3 10 (13.33%) Network Security
4 9 (12.00%) Wireless
5 5 (6.67%) DNS
5 5 (6.67%) WAN
6 4 (5.33%) BGP
6 4 (5.33%) Internet
6 4 (5.33%) MPLS
6 4 (5.33%) OSPF
6 4 (5.33%) SSL
6 4 (5.33%) Wi-Fi
7 3 (4.00%) Cisco ISE
7 3 (4.00%) FTP
7 3 (4.00%) SSH
8 2 (2.67%) Cisco IOS
8 2 (2.67%) Cisco Nexus
8 2 (2.67%) Multicast
8 2 (2.67%) VLAN
8 2 (2.67%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (4.00%) Relational Database
1 3 (4.00%) SQL Server
2 2 (2.67%) Apache Cassandra
2 2 (2.67%) MongoDB
2 2 (2.67%) NoSQL
2 2 (2.67%) PostgreSQL
2 2 (2.67%) Power BI
2 2 (2.67%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 19 (25.33%) JIRA
2 3 (4.00%) GitLab
3 2 (2.67%) Cucumber
3 2 (2.67%) Git
3 2 (2.67%) JUnit
4 1 (1.33%) Bitbucket
4 1 (1.33%) Eclipse
4 1 (1.33%) IntelliJ
4 1 (1.33%) Jenkins
4 1 (1.33%) Postman
4 1 (1.33%) Robot Framework
4 1 (1.33%) Selenium
4 1 (1.33%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 30 (40.00%) Finance
2 21 (28.00%) Social Skills
3 14 (18.67%) Analytical Skills
4 9 (12.00%) Banking
5 4 (5.33%) Legal
6 3 (4.00%) Automotive
6 3 (4.00%) Influencing Skills
7 2 (2.67%) Manufacturing
7 2 (2.67%) Presentation Skills
7 2 (2.67%) Public Sector
7 2 (2.67%) Publishing
8 1 (1.33%) Financial Institution
8 1 (1.33%) German Language
8 1 (1.33%) Investment Banking
8 1 (1.33%) Local Government
8 1 (1.33%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 15 (20.00%) Analyst
2 13 (17.33%) Security Engineer
3 9 (12.00%) Cloud Engineer
4 7 (9.33%) Business Analyst
5 6 (8.00%) Cloud Security Engineer
5 6 (8.00%) Consultant
5 6 (8.00%) IT Analyst
5 6 (8.00%) IT Operations Analyst
5 6 (8.00%) Network Engineer
5 6 (8.00%) Operations Analyst
6 5 (6.67%) IT Support
6 5 (6.67%) IT Support Analyst
6 5 (6.67%) Operational Support Analyst
6 5 (6.67%) Operations Support Analyst
6 5 (6.67%) Security Consultant
6 5 (6.67%) Senior
6 5 (6.67%) Support Analyst
6 5 (6.67%) Support Engineer
7 3 (4.00%) Architect
7 3 (4.00%) Service Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (5.33%) 802.1X
2 2 (2.67%) ARM Templates
2 2 (2.67%) Azure Blueprints
2 2 (2.67%) LangChain
2 2 (2.67%) Microsoft Graph
2 2 (2.67%) Middleware
2 2 (2.67%) PyTorch
2 2 (2.67%) scikit-learn
3 1 (1.33%) .NET
3 1 (1.33%) HTML
3 1 (1.33%) HTML5
3 1 (1.33%) Jakarta EE
3 1 (1.33%) Jest
3 1 (1.33%) JPA
3 1 (1.33%) JSON
3 1 (1.33%) Playwright
3 1 (1.33%) REST
3 1 (1.33%) Spring
3 1 (1.33%) Web Services
3 1 (1.33%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 18 (24.00%) Management Information System
2 11 (14.67%) Cloud Native
2 11 (14.67%) Security Posture
3 8 (10.67%) PKI
4 4 (5.33%) Distributed Systems
5 3 (4.00%) Cloud Security Posture
5 3 (4.00%) Enterprise Cloud
5 3 (4.00%) Legacy Systems
5 3 (4.00%) Onboarding
5 3 (4.00%) Product Ownership
5 3 (4.00%) Tandem
6 2 (2.67%) Data Structures
6 2 (2.67%) Linux Command Line
7 1 (1.33%) Cyber Threat
7 1 (1.33%) Driving Licence
7 1 (1.33%) Enterprise Software
7 1 (1.33%) Freedom of Information
7 1 (1.33%) Infotainment
7 1 (1.33%) Operational Technology
7 1 (1.33%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 23 (30.67%) Linux
2 22 (29.33%) Windows
3 11 (14.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 6 (8.00%) Unix
5 3 (4.00%) AIX
6 1 (1.33%) Android
6 1 (1.33%) Apple iOS
6 1 (1.33%) CentOS
6 1 (1.33%) Ubuntu
6 1 (1.33%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 31 (41.33%) Agile
2 29 (38.67%) Change Management
3 24 (32.00%) ITIL
4 23 (30.67%) Computer Science
5 21 (28.00%) DevOps
5 21 (28.00%) Problem-Solving
6 17 (22.67%) Scrum
7 15 (20.00%) CI/CD
7 15 (20.00%) Incident Management
7 15 (20.00%) Roadmaps
7 15 (20.00%) SIEM
8 14 (18.67%) AI
8 14 (18.67%) Cloud Security
8 14 (18.67%) Stakeholder Management
9 12 (16.00%) Cryptography
10 11 (14.67%) Project Delivery
11 10 (13.33%) Cybersecurity
11 10 (13.33%) Generative AI
11 10 (13.33%) ITSM
11 10 (13.33%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 27 (36.00%) Python
2 22 (29.33%) PowerShell
3 14 (18.67%) Bash
4 13 (17.33%) Java
5 8 (10.67%) SQL
6 5 (6.67%) Bicep
7 3 (4.00%) Shell Script
8 2 (2.67%) Perl
8 2 (2.67%) Search Processing Language
9 1 (1.33%) JavaScript
9 1 (1.33%) Kusto Query Language
9 1 (1.33%) PL/SQL
9 1 (1.33%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 18 (24.00%) CISSP
2 13 (17.33%) Computer Science Degree
3 9 (12.00%) AWS Certification
4 8 (10.67%) Azure Certification
4 8 (10.67%) Cisco Certification
5 7 (9.33%) CCNP
5 7 (9.33%) ITIL Certification
6 5 (6.67%) Security Cleared
7 3 (4.00%) CCNA
7 3 (4.00%) CEH
7 3 (4.00%) CISM
7 3 (4.00%) CompTIA Security+
7 3 (4.00%) Microsoft Certification
7 3 (4.00%) SC Cleared
8 2 (2.67%) CCIE
8 2 (2.67%) GIAC
8 2 (2.67%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
8 2 (2.67%) OSCP
8 2 (2.67%) PMI Certification
8 2 (2.67%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (12.00%) NIST
2 5 (6.67%) GDPR
2 5 (6.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 4 (5.33%) SLA
4 3 (4.00%) PCI DSS
5 2 (2.67%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 2 (2.67%) GRC
5 2 (2.67%) HIPAA
5 2 (2.67%) QA
6 1 (1.33%) Cyber Essentials
6 1 (1.33%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 1 (1.33%) Data Quality
6 1 (1.33%) ISO 20022
6 1 (1.33%) PSD2
6 1 (1.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 1 (1.33%) SEPA
System Software
1 10 (13.33%) Docker
2 4 (5.33%) Active Directory
3 3 (4.00%) NFS
3 3 (4.00%) Veritas Volume Manager
4 2 (2.67%) Firmware
4 2 (2.67%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 13 (17.33%) Kubernetes
2 11 (14.67%) Progress Chef
2 11 (14.67%) Terraform
3 7 (9.33%) Ansible
4 3 (4.00%) Cisco Prime
4 3 (4.00%) PowerBroker
4 3 (4.00%) Tivoli
4 3 (4.00%) Tivoli Storage Manager
5 1 (1.33%) CASB
5 1 (1.33%) Microsoft Intune
5 1 (1.33%) QRadar
Vendors
1 14 (18.67%) Microsoft
1 14 (18.67%) Splunk
2 13 (17.33%) Cisco
3 11 (14.67%) ServiceNow
4 10 (13.33%) Google
4 10 (13.33%) Red Hat
5 6 (8.00%) Bomgar
5 6 (8.00%) ForeScout
5 6 (8.00%) Fortinet
6 5 (6.67%) CyberArk
6 5 (6.67%) IBM
6 5 (6.67%) Oracle
7 4 (5.33%) Thales
8 3 (4.00%) Broadcom
8 3 (4.00%) Gemalto
8 3 (4.00%) Veritas
9 2 (2.67%) Aruba
9 2 (2.67%) F5
9 2 (2.67%) Juniper
9 2 (2.67%) Salesforce