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

6 months to
1 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 19 16 10
Rank change year-on-year -3 -6 +1
Contract jobs citing Degree 71 64 58
As % of all contract jobs in Cheshire 9.06% 10.72% 12.08%
As % of the Qualifications category 28.29% 39.75% 51.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 52 54 41
10th Percentile £318 £283 £158
25th Percentile £417 £338 £365
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £479 £452 £533
Median % change year-on-year +6.09% -15.29% +18.44%
75th Percentile £604 £566 £569
90th Percentile £626 £638 £615
North West median daily rate £449 £475 £538
% change year-on-year -5.42% -11.63% +14.67%
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 £37.75 £33.50 £48.56
% change year-on-year +12.69% -31.01% +19.77%

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 251 161 112
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Cheshire 32.02% 26.97% 23.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 146 126 77
10th Percentile £313 £268 £158
25th Percentile £417 £350 £390
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £450 £513
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% -12.20% +2.50%
75th Percentile £610 £534 £569
90th Percentile £640 £638 £638
North West median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 7 1
10th Percentile £17.25 £28.06 -
25th Percentile £23.44 £30.63 -
Median hourly rate £36.26 £32.50 £14.00
Median % change year-on-year +11.57% +132.14% -65.00%
75th Percentile £83.75 £35.38 -
90th Percentile £98.86 £56.15 -
North West median hourly rate £43.96 £29.27 £17.53
% change year-on-year +50.19% +66.95% -58.75%

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 1 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 1 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 42 £459 +8.77% 6
Chester -9 12 £550 +18.92% 11
Warrington -4 7 £475 +185.71% 10
Northwich - 2 - - 1
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 (18.31%) Confluence
2 5 (7.04%) 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 26 (36.62%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (4.23%) Microsoft Project
2 3 (4.23%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (2.82%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 20 (28.17%) AWS
2 16 (22.54%) Azure
3 10 (14.08%) GCP
3 10 (14.08%) Microsoft 365
4 6 (8.45%) Google Kubernetes Engine
5 5 (7.04%) Entra ID
5 5 (7.04%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 4 (5.63%) AWS CloudFormation
6 4 (5.63%) Azure Sentinel
6 4 (5.63%) SaaS
7 3 (4.23%) OpenShift
7 3 (4.23%) Power Platform
8 2 (2.82%) AWS Lambda
8 2 (2.82%) Azure AI
8 2 (2.82%) Azure DevOps
8 2 (2.82%) IBM Watson
8 2 (2.82%) Vertex AI
9 1 (1.41%) AWS KMS
9 1 (1.41%) AWS Step Functions
9 1 (1.41%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 17 (23.94%) Firewall
2 14 (19.72%) 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%) Skype
7 2 (2.82%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (4.23%) Power BI
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%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 20 (28.17%) JIRA
2 3 (4.23%) GitLab
3 2 (2.82%) Cucumber
3 2 (2.82%) JUnit
4 1 (1.41%) Bitbucket
4 1 (1.41%) Eclipse
4 1 (1.41%) Git
4 1 (1.41%) IntelliJ
4 1 (1.41%) Jenkins
4 1 (1.41%) Postman
4 1 (1.41%) Selenium
4 1 (1.41%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 33 (46.48%) Finance
2 21 (29.58%) Social Skills
3 12 (16.90%) Analytical Skills
4 11 (15.49%) Banking
5 4 (5.63%) Legal
6 3 (4.23%) Organisational Skills
6 3 (4.23%) Public Sector
7 2 (2.82%) Influencing Skills
7 2 (2.82%) Presentation Skills
7 2 (2.82%) Publishing
8 1 (1.41%) Corporate Banking
8 1 (1.41%) Financial Institution
8 1 (1.41%) Investment Banking
8 1 (1.41%) Local Government
8 1 (1.41%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 13 (18.31%) Analyst
2 11 (15.49%) Security Engineer
3 7 (9.86%) Cloud Engineer
4 6 (8.45%) Consultant
4 6 (8.45%) IT Analyst
4 6 (8.45%) IT Operations Analyst
4 6 (8.45%) Network Engineer
4 6 (8.45%) Operations Analyst
5 5 (7.04%) Business Analyst
5 5 (7.04%) Cloud Security Engineer
5 5 (7.04%) IT Support
5 5 (7.04%) IT Support Analyst
5 5 (7.04%) Operational Support Analyst
5 5 (7.04%) Operations Support Analyst
5 5 (7.04%) Project Manager
5 5 (7.04%) Security Consultant
5 5 (7.04%) Support Analyst
6 3 (4.23%) Incident and Problem Analyst
6 3 (4.23%) Senior
6 3 (4.23%) Service Transition 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 16 (22.54%) Management Information System
2 10 (14.08%) Cloud Native
2 10 (14.08%) Security Posture
3 7 (9.86%) PKI
4 4 (5.63%) Distributed Systems
4 4 (5.63%) Product Ownership
5 3 (4.23%) Enterprise Cloud
5 3 (4.23%) Legacy Systems
5 3 (4.23%) Onboarding
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%) Client/Server
7 1 (1.41%) Cyber Threat
7 1 (1.41%) Freedom of Information
7 1 (1.41%) Operational Technology
7 1 (1.41%) PMI
7 1 (1.41%) SWIFT Messaging Network
7 1 (1.41%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 22 (30.99%) Windows
2 19 (26.76%) Linux
3 9 (12.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 6 (8.45%) Unix
5 3 (4.23%) AIX
6 2 (2.82%) Windows 10
7 1 (1.41%) Android
7 1 (1.41%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 31 (43.66%) Agile
2 28 (39.44%) Change Management
3 23 (32.39%) ITIL
4 20 (28.17%) DevOps
5 18 (25.35%) Computer Science
5 18 (25.35%) Problem-Solving
6 17 (23.94%) Roadmaps
6 17 (23.94%) Scrum
7 14 (19.72%) CI/CD
7 14 (19.72%) SIEM
8 13 (18.31%) Incident Management
9 12 (16.90%) AI
9 12 (16.90%) Cloud Security
9 12 (16.90%) Stakeholder Management
10 11 (15.49%) Cryptography
10 11 (15.49%) ITSM
10 11 (15.49%) Project Delivery
11 10 (14.08%) Generative AI
11 10 (14.08%) Service Management
12 9 (12.68%) Product Roadmap
Programming Languages
1 22 (30.99%) Python
2 17 (23.94%) PowerShell
3 12 (16.90%) Bash
4 10 (14.08%) Java
5 6 (8.45%) SQL
6 4 (5.63%) Bicep
7 2 (2.82%) Perl
7 2 (2.82%) Search Processing Language
7 2 (2.82%) Shell Script
8 1 (1.41%) JavaScript
8 1 (1.41%) Kusto Query Language
8 1 (1.41%) PL/SQL
8 1 (1.41%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 16 (22.54%) CISSP
2 12 (16.90%) Computer Science Degree
3 8 (11.27%) AWS Certification
4 7 (9.86%) CCNP
4 7 (9.86%) Cisco Certification
5 6 (8.45%) Azure Certification
5 6 (8.45%) ITIL Certification
6 5 (7.04%) Security Cleared
7 3 (4.23%) CCNA
7 3 (4.23%) CEH
7 3 (4.23%) CompTIA Security+
7 3 (4.23%) PMI Certification
7 3 (4.23%) PMP
7 3 (4.23%) SC Cleared
8 2 (2.82%) CCIE
8 2 (2.82%) CISM
8 2 (2.82%) Master's Degree
8 2 (2.82%) OSCP
8 2 (2.82%) SAFe Agilist
9 1 (1.41%) CRISC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (11.27%) NIST
2 5 (7.04%) GDPR
3 4 (5.63%) SLA
4 3 (4.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
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%) Basel III
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%) NFS
2 3 (4.23%) Veritas Volume Manager
3 2 (2.82%) Firmware
3 2 (2.82%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (1.41%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 12 (16.90%) Kubernetes
2 10 (14.08%) Progress Chef
3 9 (12.68%) Terraform
4 6 (8.45%) Ansible
5 3 (4.23%) Cisco Prime
5 3 (4.23%) PowerBroker
5 3 (4.23%) Tivoli
5 3 (4.23%) Tivoli Storage Manager
6 1 (1.41%) CASB
6 1 (1.41%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 15 (21.13%) Cisco
2 13 (18.31%) Microsoft
3 11 (15.49%) ServiceNow
3 11 (15.49%) Splunk
4 9 (12.68%) Red Hat
5 8 (11.27%) Google
6 6 (8.45%) Bomgar
6 6 (8.45%) ForeScout
6 6 (8.45%) Fortinet
7 5 (7.04%) CyberArk
7 5 (7.04%) IBM
7 5 (7.04%) Oracle
8 4 (5.63%) Remedy
9 3 (4.23%) Broadcom
9 3 (4.23%) Gemalto
9 3 (4.23%) Thales
9 3 (4.23%) Veritas
10 2 (2.82%) Arista
10 2 (2.82%) F5
10 2 (2.82%) Zscaler