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 25 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 22 11
Rank change year-on-year +5 -11 -3
Contract jobs citing Degree 74 64 62
As % of all contract jobs in Cheshire 9.49% 9.65% 11.50%
As % of the Qualifications category 32.74% 28.07% 51.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 53 44 39
10th Percentile £323 £279 £356
25th Percentile £424 £354 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £427 £538
Median % change year-on-year +11.18% -20.59% +7.60%
75th Percentile £588 £489 £572
90th Percentile £630 £638 £601
North West median daily rate £475 £458 £538
% change year-on-year +3.83% -14.96% +13.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 8 0
10th Percentile - £14.60 -
25th Percentile £17.25 £15.50 -
Median hourly rate £17.50 £16.00 -
Median % change year-on-year +9.38% - -
75th Percentile £66.38 £34.69 -
90th Percentile £72.75 £53.48 -
North West median hourly rate £39.50 £42.75 £48.56
% change year-on-year -7.60% -11.96% +19.90%

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 226 228 121
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Cheshire 28.97% 34.39% 22.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 133 169 75
10th Percentile £263 £305 £349
25th Percentile £417 £363 £390
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £530
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -10.38% +0.95%
75th Percentile £550 £638 £575
90th Percentile £629 £716 £638
North West median daily rate £520 £511 £500
% change year-on-year +1.70% +2.26% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 13 0
10th Percentile £17.25 - -
25th Percentile £17.56 £15.50 -
Median hourly rate £29.86 £25.15 -
Median % change year-on-year +18.74% - -
75th Percentile £72.75 £67.25 -
90th Percentile £83.75 £87.45 -
North West median hourly rate £43.96 £27.19 £46.18
% change year-on-year +61.69% -41.13% +0.65%

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 25 September 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
Hourly Rate Histogram in Cheshire

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Degree in Cheshire over the 6 months to 25 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Degree in Cheshire

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 25 September 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 +28 37 £470 +5.68% 3
Warrington -1 15 £463 +54.17% 41
Chester -12 10 £525 -16.00% 15
Crewe -9 3 £525 +47.89% 3
Northwich - 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 13 (17.57%) Confluence
2 6 (8.11%) Camunda
3 4 (5.41%) SharePoint
4 1 (1.35%) JBoss
4 1 (1.35%) Mule
4 1 (1.35%) Mule ESB
4 1 (1.35%) Skype for Business
4 1 (1.35%) WebLogic
Applications
1 22 (29.73%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (5.41%) MS Visio
3 2 (2.70%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (1.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Cloud Services
1 20 (27.03%) Azure
2 19 (25.68%) AWS
3 13 (17.57%) Microsoft 365
4 11 (14.86%) GCP
5 10 (13.51%) Entra ID
6 9 (12.16%) Azure Sentinel
7 7 (9.46%) Google Kubernetes Engine
7 7 (9.46%) Power Platform
8 6 (8.11%) AWS CloudFormation
8 6 (8.11%) OpenShift
9 4 (5.41%) AWS KMS
9 4 (5.41%) AWS Lambda
9 4 (5.41%) Azure DevOps
9 4 (5.41%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 3 (4.05%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 3 (4.05%) Amazon ECS
10 3 (4.05%) Amazon EKS
10 3 (4.05%) AWS CloudTrail
10 3 (4.05%) Azure Monitor
10 3 (4.05%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 17 (22.97%) Firewall
2 12 (16.22%) VPN
3 9 (12.16%) Network Security
3 9 (12.16%) Wireless
4 5 (6.76%) DNS
4 5 (6.76%) WAN
5 4 (5.41%) BGP
5 4 (5.41%) Internet
5 4 (5.41%) MPLS
5 4 (5.41%) OSPF
5 4 (5.41%) SSL
5 4 (5.41%) Wi-Fi
6 3 (4.05%) Cisco ISE
6 3 (4.05%) FTP
6 3 (4.05%) SSH
7 2 (2.70%) Cisco Nexus
7 2 (2.70%) DWDM
7 2 (2.70%) L2TP
7 2 (2.70%) Multicast
7 2 (2.70%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (8.11%) SQL Server
2 2 (2.70%) Power BI
2 2 (2.70%) Relational Database
3 1 (1.35%) Apache Cassandra
3 1 (1.35%) MongoDB
3 1 (1.35%) NoSQL
3 1 (1.35%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (1.35%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 19 (25.68%) JIRA
2 7 (9.46%) GitLab
3 6 (8.11%) JUnit
4 5 (6.76%) Jenkins
4 5 (6.76%) Sonatype Nexus
5 4 (5.41%) Bitbucket Server
5 4 (5.41%) Gradle
5 4 (5.41%) Maven
5 4 (5.41%) Mockito
5 4 (5.41%) REST Assured
5 4 (5.41%) SonarQube
6 2 (2.70%) Cucumber
6 2 (2.70%) Git
7 1 (1.35%) Bitbucket
7 1 (1.35%) Eclipse
7 1 (1.35%) IntelliJ
7 1 (1.35%) Postman
7 1 (1.35%) Robot Framework
7 1 (1.35%) Selenium
General
1 26 (35.14%) Finance
2 20 (27.03%) Social Skills
3 11 (14.86%) Analytical Skills
4 10 (13.51%) Banking
5 3 (4.05%) Automotive
5 3 (4.05%) Legal
5 3 (4.05%) Pharmaceutical
6 2 (2.70%) Influencing Skills
6 2 (2.70%) Manufacturing
7 1 (1.35%) German Language
7 1 (1.35%) Local Government
7 1 (1.35%) Marketing
7 1 (1.35%) Organisational Skills
7 1 (1.35%) Presentation Skills
7 1 (1.35%) Publishing
7 1 (1.35%) Social Housing
Job Titles
1 15 (20.27%) Security Engineer
2 12 (16.22%) Analyst
2 12 (16.22%) Cloud Engineer
3 7 (9.46%) Cloud Security Engineer
3 7 (9.46%) Senior
4 6 (8.11%) Developer
4 6 (8.11%) IT Analyst
4 6 (8.11%) IT Operations Analyst
4 6 (8.11%) Network Engineer
4 6 (8.11%) Operations Analyst
5 5 (6.76%) Business Analyst
5 5 (6.76%) IT Support
5 5 (6.76%) IT Support Analyst
5 5 (6.76%) Operational Support Analyst
5 5 (6.76%) Operations Support Analyst
5 5 (6.76%) Support Analyst
5 5 (6.76%) Support Engineer
6 4 (5.41%) Consultant
6 4 (5.41%) Cybersecurity Engineer
7 3 (4.05%) Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (14.86%) Terraform
2 5 (6.76%) HTML
2 5 (6.76%) JPA
2 5 (6.76%) Kafka
2 5 (6.76%) React
2 5 (6.76%) Spring Boot
3 4 (5.41%) 802.1X
3 4 (5.41%) CSS
3 4 (5.41%) Hibernate
3 4 (5.41%) Redux
4 3 (4.05%) ARM Templates
4 3 (4.05%) Azure Blueprints
5 2 (2.70%) LangChain
5 2 (2.70%) Microsoft Graph
5 2 (2.70%) Middleware
5 2 (2.70%) PyTorch
5 2 (2.70%) scikit-learn
6 1 (1.35%) Jakarta EE
6 1 (1.35%) Web Services
6 1 (1.35%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 15 (20.27%) Management Information System
2 11 (14.86%) Security Posture
3 10 (13.51%) Cloud Native
4 8 (10.81%) PKI
5 6 (8.11%) Data Structures
6 4 (5.41%) Distributed Systems
6 4 (5.41%) Onboarding
7 3 (4.05%) Cloud Security Posture
7 3 (4.05%) Enterprise Cloud
7 3 (4.05%) Legacy Systems
7 3 (4.05%) Tandem
8 1 (1.35%) Client/Server
8 1 (1.35%) Driving Licence
8 1 (1.35%) Enterprise Software
8 1 (1.35%) Freedom of Information
8 1 (1.35%) Infotainment
8 1 (1.35%) Life Science
8 1 (1.35%) Linux Command Line
8 1 (1.35%) Taxonomies
8 1 (1.35%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 20 (27.03%) Linux
1 20 (27.03%) Windows
2 11 (14.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 6 (8.11%) Unix
4 3 (4.05%) AIX
5 1 (1.35%) Android
5 1 (1.35%) Apple iOS
5 1 (1.35%) CentOS
5 1 (1.35%) Ubuntu
5 1 (1.35%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 29 (39.19%) Agile
2 25 (33.78%) Change Management
2 25 (33.78%) Computer Science
3 20 (27.03%) DevOps
3 20 (27.03%) Problem-Solving
4 19 (25.68%) ITIL
4 19 (25.68%) Scrum
5 17 (22.97%) CI/CD
6 14 (18.92%) Incident Management
7 13 (17.57%) AI
7 13 (17.57%) Cloud Security
7 13 (17.57%) Cybersecurity
7 13 (17.57%) SIEM
8 12 (16.22%) Roadmaps
8 12 (16.22%) Stakeholder Management
9 11 (14.86%) Incident Response
10 10 (13.51%) Cryptography
10 10 (13.51%) Project Delivery
10 10 (13.51%) User Stories
11 9 (12.16%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 25 (33.78%) Python
2 23 (31.08%) PowerShell
3 16 (21.62%) Java
4 13 (17.57%) Bash
5 11 (14.86%) SQL
6 6 (8.11%) Bicep
7 5 (6.76%) JavaScript
8 2 (2.70%) Perl
8 2 (2.70%) Search Processing Language
8 2 (2.70%) Shell Script
9 1 (1.35%) Kusto Query Language
9 1 (1.35%) PL/SQL
9 1 (1.35%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 17 (22.97%) Computer Science Degree
2 15 (20.27%) CISSP
3 9 (12.16%) AWS Certification
4 8 (10.81%) Azure Certification
4 8 (10.81%) Cisco Certification
5 7 (9.46%) CCNP
5 7 (9.46%) Microsoft Certification
6 5 (6.76%) Security Cleared
7 4 (5.41%) ITIL Certification
8 3 (4.05%) CCNA
8 3 (4.05%) CISM
9 2 (2.70%) BPSS Clearance
9 2 (2.70%) CCIE
9 2 (2.70%) CEH
9 2 (2.70%) Chartered Engineer
9 2 (2.70%) HNC
9 2 (2.70%) HND
9 2 (2.70%) IIBA
9 2 (2.70%) OSCP
9 2 (2.70%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (9.46%) NIST
2 5 (6.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 4 (5.41%) GDPR
4 3 (4.05%) Cyber Essentials
4 3 (4.05%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 2 (2.70%) IEC 61508
5 2 (2.70%) PCI DSS
5 2 (2.70%) SLA
6 1 (1.35%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 1 (1.35%) Data Quality
6 1 (1.35%) HIPAA
6 1 (1.35%) QA
6 1 (1.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 9 (12.16%) Docker
2 8 (10.81%) Active Directory
3 3 (4.05%) NFS
3 3 (4.05%) Veritas Volume Manager
4 2 (2.70%) Firmware
4 2 (2.70%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 11 (14.86%) Kubernetes
1 11 (14.86%) Progress Chef
2 7 (9.46%) Ansible
3 3 (4.05%) Cisco Prime
3 3 (4.05%) PowerBroker
3 3 (4.05%) Tivoli
3 3 (4.05%) Tivoli Storage Manager
4 2 (2.70%) Functional Safety
4 2 (2.70%) Microsoft Intune
5 1 (1.35%) CASB
5 1 (1.35%) QRadar
Vendors
1 16 (21.62%) Microsoft
2 12 (16.22%) Splunk
3 11 (14.86%) Cisco
4 10 (13.51%) Google
4 10 (13.51%) Red Hat
5 9 (12.16%) IBM
6 7 (9.46%) ServiceNow
7 6 (8.11%) Bomgar
8 5 (6.76%) ForeScout
8 5 (6.76%) Oracle
8 5 (6.76%) Veracode
9 4 (5.41%) CyberArk
9 4 (5.41%) Fortinet
9 4 (5.41%) Thales
10 3 (4.05%) Broadcom
10 3 (4.05%) Gemalto
10 3 (4.05%) Veritas
11 2 (2.70%) F5
11 2 (2.70%) Ribbon
11 2 (2.70%) Salesforce