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 16 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 21 18 10
Rank change year-on-year -3 -8 +1
Contract jobs citing Degree 71 65 59
As % of all contract jobs in Cheshire 8.70% 10.59% 12.09%
As % of the Qualifications category 27.52% 38.01% 52.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 54 55 42
10th Percentile £328 £311 £158
25th Percentile £420 £341 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £484 £433 £534
Median % change year-on-year +11.79% -19.01% +15.46%
75th Percentile £611 £524 £568
90th Percentile £629 £638 £612
North West median daily rate £459 £470 £550
% change year-on-year -2.39% -14.50% +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% +28.72%

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 258 171 112
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Cheshire 31.62% 27.85% 22.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 157 131 75
10th Percentile £293 £305 £158
25th Percentile £417 £349 £364
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £438 £513
Median % change year-on-year +14.29% -14.63% -1.06%
75th Percentile £604 £522 £568
90th Percentile £638 £638 £638
North West median daily rate £510 £500 £505
% change year-on-year +2.00% -0.99% +0.92%
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 £16.93
% change year-on-year +43.50% +81.00% -60.18%

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 16 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 16 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 +14 40 £465 +10.19% 3
Chester -12 10 £550 -8.33% 8
Warrington -6 8 £463 +218.97% 19
Crewe -1 3 £525 +47.89% 3
Northwich - 2 - - 3
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 (16.90%) Confluence
2 3 (4.23%) SharePoint
3 2 (2.82%) Camunda
4 1 (1.41%) JBoss
4 1 (1.41%) Mule
4 1 (1.41%) Mule ESB
4 1 (1.41%) WebLogic
Applications
1 24 (33.80%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (4.23%) MS Visio
3 2 (2.82%) Microsoft Project
Cloud Services
1 21 (29.58%) AWS
2 18 (25.35%) Azure
3 11 (15.49%) GCP
4 9 (12.68%) Microsoft 365
5 6 (8.45%) Azure Sentinel
5 6 (8.45%) Google Kubernetes Engine
6 5 (7.04%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 4 (5.63%) AWS CloudFormation
7 4 (5.63%) Entra ID
7 4 (5.63%) SaaS
8 3 (4.23%) OpenShift
8 3 (4.23%) Power Platform
9 2 (2.82%) AWS KMS
9 2 (2.82%) AWS Lambda
9 2 (2.82%) Azure AI
9 2 (2.82%) Azure DevOps
9 2 (2.82%) IBM Watson
9 2 (2.82%) Vertex AI
10 1 (1.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 1 (1.41%) AWS CloudTrail
Communications & Networking
1 17 (23.94%) Firewall
2 12 (16.90%) VPN
3 9 (12.68%) Network Security
3 9 (12.68%) Wireless
4 5 (7.04%) DNS
4 5 (7.04%) WAN
5 4 (5.63%) BGP
5 4 (5.63%) Internet
5 4 (5.63%) MPLS
5 4 (5.63%) OSPF
5 4 (5.63%) SSL
5 4 (5.63%) Wi-Fi
6 3 (4.23%) Cisco ISE
6 3 (4.23%) FTP
6 3 (4.23%) SSH
7 2 (2.82%) Cisco IOS
7 2 (2.82%) Cisco Nexus
7 2 (2.82%) Multicast
7 2 (2.82%) VLAN
7 2 (2.82%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (4.23%) Relational Database
1 3 (4.23%) SQL Server
2 2 (2.82%) Apache Cassandra
2 2 (2.82%) MongoDB
2 2 (2.82%) NoSQL
2 2 (2.82%) PostgreSQL
2 2 (2.82%) Power BI
2 2 (2.82%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 19 (26.76%) JIRA
2 3 (4.23%) GitLab
3 2 (2.82%) Cucumber
3 2 (2.82%) Git
3 2 (2.82%) JUnit
4 1 (1.41%) Bitbucket
4 1 (1.41%) Eclipse
4 1 (1.41%) IntelliJ
4 1 (1.41%) Jenkins
4 1 (1.41%) Postman
4 1 (1.41%) Robot Framework
4 1 (1.41%) Selenium
4 1 (1.41%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 29 (40.85%) Finance
2 20 (28.17%) Social Skills
3 12 (16.90%) Analytical Skills
4 9 (12.68%) Banking
5 4 (5.63%) Legal
6 3 (4.23%) Automotive
6 3 (4.23%) Influencing Skills
7 2 (2.82%) Manufacturing
7 2 (2.82%) Presentation Skills
7 2 (2.82%) Public Sector
7 2 (2.82%) Publishing
8 1 (1.41%) Financial Institution
8 1 (1.41%) German Language
8 1 (1.41%) Investment Banking
8 1 (1.41%) Local Government
8 1 (1.41%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 15 (21.13%) Analyst
2 12 (16.90%) Security Engineer
3 8 (11.27%) Cloud Engineer
4 7 (9.86%) Business Analyst
5 6 (8.45%) Consultant
5 6 (8.45%) IT Analyst
5 6 (8.45%) IT Operations Analyst
5 6 (8.45%) Network Engineer
5 6 (8.45%) Operations Analyst
6 5 (7.04%) Cloud Security Engineer
6 5 (7.04%) IT Support
6 5 (7.04%) IT Support Analyst
6 5 (7.04%) Operational Support Analyst
6 5 (7.04%) Operations Support Analyst
6 5 (7.04%) Security Consultant
6 5 (7.04%) Senior
6 5 (7.04%) Support Analyst
7 3 (4.23%) Architect
7 3 (4.23%) Problem Analyst
7 3 (4.23%) Service Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (5.63%) 802.1X
2 2 (2.82%) LangChain
2 2 (2.82%) Microsoft Graph
2 2 (2.82%) Middleware
2 2 (2.82%) PyTorch
2 2 (2.82%) scikit-learn
3 1 (1.41%) .NET
3 1 (1.41%) ARM Templates
3 1 (1.41%) Azure Blueprints
3 1 (1.41%) HTML
3 1 (1.41%) HTML5
3 1 (1.41%) Jakarta EE
3 1 (1.41%) Jest
3 1 (1.41%) JPA
3 1 (1.41%) JSON
3 1 (1.41%) Playwright
3 1 (1.41%) REST
3 1 (1.41%) Spring
3 1 (1.41%) Web Services
3 1 (1.41%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 17 (23.94%) Management Information System
2 10 (14.08%) Cloud Native
2 10 (14.08%) Security Posture
3 8 (11.27%) PKI
4 4 (5.63%) Distributed Systems
5 3 (4.23%) Enterprise Cloud
5 3 (4.23%) Legacy Systems
5 3 (4.23%) Onboarding
5 3 (4.23%) Product Ownership
5 3 (4.23%) Tandem
6 2 (2.82%) Cloud Security Posture
6 2 (2.82%) Data Structures
6 2 (2.82%) Linux Command Line
7 1 (1.41%) Cyber Threat
7 1 (1.41%) Driving Licence
7 1 (1.41%) Enterprise Software
7 1 (1.41%) Freedom of Information
7 1 (1.41%) Infotainment
7 1 (1.41%) Operational Technology
7 1 (1.41%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 21 (29.58%) Windows
2 20 (28.17%) Linux
3 10 (14.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 6 (8.45%) Unix
5 3 (4.23%) AIX
6 1 (1.41%) Android
6 1 (1.41%) Apple iOS
6 1 (1.41%) CentOS
6 1 (1.41%) Ubuntu
6 1 (1.41%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 30 (42.25%) Agile
2 28 (39.44%) Change Management
3 23 (32.39%) ITIL
4 20 (28.17%) Computer Science
4 20 (28.17%) DevOps
5 19 (26.76%) Problem-Solving
6 16 (22.54%) Scrum
7 15 (21.13%) Roadmaps
8 14 (19.72%) CI/CD
8 14 (19.72%) SIEM
8 14 (19.72%) Stakeholder Management
9 13 (18.31%) Cloud Security
9 13 (18.31%) Incident Management
10 12 (16.90%) AI
10 12 (16.90%) Cryptography
11 11 (15.49%) Project Delivery
12 10 (14.08%) Service Management
13 9 (12.68%) Cybersecurity
13 9 (12.68%) ITSM
13 9 (12.68%) Product Roadmap
Programming Languages
1 24 (33.80%) Python
2 19 (26.76%) PowerShell
3 13 (18.31%) Bash
4 10 (14.08%) Java
5 6 (8.45%) SQL
6 4 (5.63%) Bicep
7 3 (4.23%) Shell Script
8 2 (2.82%) Perl
8 2 (2.82%) Search Processing Language
9 1 (1.41%) JavaScript
9 1 (1.41%) Kusto Query Language
9 1 (1.41%) PL/SQL
9 1 (1.41%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 17 (23.94%) CISSP
2 13 (18.31%) Computer Science Degree
3 8 (11.27%) AWS Certification
3 8 (11.27%) Cisco Certification
4 7 (9.86%) Azure Certification
4 7 (9.86%) CCNP
5 6 (8.45%) ITIL Certification
6 4 (5.63%) Security Cleared
7 3 (4.23%) CCNA
7 3 (4.23%) CEH
7 3 (4.23%) CISM
7 3 (4.23%) CompTIA Security+
7 3 (4.23%) SC Cleared
8 2 (2.82%) CCIE
8 2 (2.82%) GIAC
8 2 (2.82%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
8 2 (2.82%) Microsoft Certification
8 2 (2.82%) OSCP
8 2 (2.82%) PMI Certification
8 2 (2.82%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (12.68%) NIST
2 5 (7.04%) GDPR
2 5 (7.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 4 (5.63%) SLA
4 3 (4.23%) PCI DSS
5 2 (2.82%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 2 (2.82%) GRC
5 2 (2.82%) HIPAA
5 2 (2.82%) QA
6 1 (1.41%) Cyber Essentials
6 1 (1.41%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 1 (1.41%) Data Quality
6 1 (1.41%) ISO 20022
6 1 (1.41%) PSD2
6 1 (1.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 1 (1.41%) SEPA
System Software
1 9 (12.68%) Docker
2 3 (4.23%) Active Directory
2 3 (4.23%) NFS
2 3 (4.23%) Veritas Volume Manager
3 2 (2.82%) Firmware
3 2 (2.82%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 12 (16.90%) Kubernetes
2 10 (14.08%) Progress Chef
2 10 (14.08%) Terraform
3 7 (9.86%) Ansible
4 3 (4.23%) Cisco Prime
4 3 (4.23%) PowerBroker
4 3 (4.23%) Tivoli
4 3 (4.23%) Tivoli Storage Manager
5 1 (1.41%) CASB
5 1 (1.41%) Microsoft Intune
5 1 (1.41%) QRadar
Vendors
1 13 (18.31%) Cisco
2 12 (16.90%) Splunk
3 11 (15.49%) Microsoft
3 11 (15.49%) ServiceNow
4 9 (12.68%) Google
4 9 (12.68%) Red Hat
5 6 (8.45%) Bomgar
5 6 (8.45%) ForeScout
5 6 (8.45%) Fortinet
6 5 (7.04%) CyberArk
6 5 (7.04%) IBM
6 5 (7.04%) Oracle
7 4 (5.63%) Thales
8 3 (4.23%) Broadcom
8 3 (4.23%) Gemalto
8 3 (4.23%) Veritas
9 2 (2.82%) Aruba
9 2 (2.82%) F5
9 2 (2.82%) Juniper
9 2 (2.82%) Salesforce