3rd Line Engineer Contract Job Trends in the South East

Third Line Engineer
England > South East

The median Third Line Engineer daily rate in the South East is £500, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 17 October 2025.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 138 168 187
Rank change year-on-year +30 +19 +47
Contract jobs requiring a 3rd Line Engineer 29 12 27
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 0.80% 0.28% 0.49%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.90% 0.30% 0.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 26 7 7
10th Percentile - £343 £234
25th Percentile - £363 £263
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £375 £300
Median % change year-on-year +33.33% +25.00% -28.14%
75th Percentile £600 £456 £331
90th Percentile - £500 £368
England median daily rate £450 £400 £350
% change year-on-year +12.50% +14.29% -12.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 0
Median hourly rate £89.63 - -
England median hourly rate £30.00 £42.09 -
% change year-on-year -28.72% - -

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
South East

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the South East. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the South East with a recognized job title 3,232 3,941 5,248
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 89.45% 92.27% 94.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,090 2,360 3,543
10th Percentile £204 £250 £210
25th Percentile £375 £400 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £506 £510
Median % change year-on-year -1.23% -0.74% +2.00%
75th Percentile £597 £625 £615
90th Percentile £663 £688 £700
England median daily rate £513 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -2.38% -2.78% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 306 234 256
10th Percentile £13.00 £16.00 £16.00
25th Percentile £15.91 £27.00 £21.79
Median hourly rate £21.32 £58.43 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -63.51% +11.30% +81.00%
75th Percentile £50.00 £74.59 £68.62
90th Percentile £71.00 £77.75 £76.53
England median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year -41.51% -6.89% +66.53%

3rd Line Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring '3rd Line Engineer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East.

3rd Line Engineer job vacancy trend in the South East

3rd Line Engineer
Daily Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for 3rd Line Engineer job vacancies in the South East.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for 3rd Line Engineer job vacancies in the South East

3rd Line Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing 3rd Line Engineer in the South East over the 6 months to 17 October 2025.

Daily rate histogram for 3rd Line Engineer in the South East

3rd Line Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for 3rd Line Engineer job vacancies in the South East.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for 3rd Line Engineer job vacancies in the South East

3rd Line Engineer
Contract Job Locations in the South East

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing 3rd Line Engineer within the South East region over the 6 months to 17 October 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
Hampshire +26 24 £500 +17.65% 11
Thames Valley +1 3 £450 +20.00% 8
Buckinghamshire +7 2 £450 - 2
Surrey +7 1 £525 -
Kent -3 1 £615 +89.23% 2
Oxfordshire - 1 - - 2
3rd Line Engineer
England

3rd Line Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East

For the 6 months to 17 October 2025, 3rd Line Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the South East region featuring 3rd Line Engineer in the job title.

1 26 (89.66%) Active Directory
1 26 (89.66%) Windows
2 25 (86.21%) Security Cleared
3 24 (82.76%) DV Cleared
4 20 (68.97%) Windows Server
5 17 (58.62%) vCenter Server
6 15 (51.72%) Cisco
6 15 (51.72%) ITSM
6 15 (51.72%) Service Management
7 14 (48.28%) Cisco Firepower
7 14 (48.28%) Cisco IOS
7 14 (48.28%) Cisco ISE
7 14 (48.28%) Juniper
7 14 (48.28%) Junos
7 14 (48.28%) Microsoft
7 14 (48.28%) SolarWinds
7 14 (48.28%) VMware NSX
8 8 (27.59%) DHCP
8 8 (27.59%) DNS
8 8 (27.59%) PowerShell
9 7 (24.14%) DevOps
9 7 (24.14%) Microsoft Exchange
9 7 (24.14%) VMware
9 7 (24.14%) VMware Infrastructure
10 6 (20.69%) Ansible
10 6 (20.69%) ITIL
10 6 (20.69%) Linux
10 6 (20.69%) VPN
11 5 (17.24%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 5 (17.24%) SharePoint

3rd Line Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East 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 7 (24.14%) Microsoft Exchange
2 5 (17.24%) SharePoint
3 4 (13.79%) Apache
4 3 (10.34%) Exchange Server 2003
4 3 (10.34%) Exchange Server 2007
4 3 (10.34%) Exchange Server 2010
4 3 (10.34%) Exchange Server 2013
4 3 (10.34%) Office Communications Server
4 3 (10.34%) SharePoint Server
4 3 (10.34%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 3 (10.34%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 4 (13.79%) Azure
2 3 (10.34%) Entra ID
2 3 (10.34%) IaaS
2 3 (10.34%) Microsoft 365
2 3 (10.34%) PaaS
3 2 (6.90%) AWS
3 2 (6.90%) GCP
3 2 (6.90%) OpenShift
4 1 (3.45%) Microsoft Copilot
4 1 (3.45%) Microsoft Purview
4 1 (3.45%) OneDrive
4 1 (3.45%) Power Platform
4 1 (3.45%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 14 (48.28%) Cisco Firepower
1 14 (48.28%) Cisco IOS
1 14 (48.28%) Cisco ISE
1 14 (48.28%) Junos
2 8 (27.59%) DHCP
2 8 (27.59%) DNS
3 6 (20.69%) VPN
4 4 (13.79%) Firewall
4 4 (13.79%) SAN
5 3 (10.34%) DDNS
6 2 (6.90%) SMTP
6 2 (6.90%) TCP/IP
7 1 (3.45%) Fibre Channel
7 1 (3.45%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (6.90%) Amazon RDS
1 2 (6.90%) Big Data
1 2 (6.90%) Elasticsearch
2 1 (3.45%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 4 (13.79%) MSI
1 4 (13.79%) Robot Framework
1 4 (13.79%) Sonatype Nexus
2 1 (3.45%) JIRA
General
1 3 (10.34%) Public Sector
2 1 (3.45%) Analytical Skills
2 1 (3.45%) Finance
2 1 (3.45%) Organisational Skills
2 1 (3.45%) Social Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (3.45%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 6 (20.69%) PKI
2 3 (10.34%) Replication
3 2 (6.90%) Clustering
3 2 (6.90%) Data Centre
4 1 (3.45%) Hybrid Cloud
4 1 (3.45%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 26 (89.66%) Windows
2 20 (68.97%) Windows Server
3 6 (20.69%) Linux
4 4 (13.79%) CentOS
4 4 (13.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (13.79%) Windows Server 2019
5 3 (10.34%) Windows Server 2003
6 1 (3.45%) Mac OS
6 1 (3.45%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 15 (51.72%) ITSM
1 15 (51.72%) Service Management
2 7 (24.14%) DevOps
3 6 (20.69%) ITIL
4 5 (17.24%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 4 (13.79%) Agile
5 4 (13.79%) Batch Scripting
5 4 (13.79%) Business Intelligence
5 4 (13.79%) Continuous Improvement
5 4 (13.79%) Deployment Automation
5 4 (13.79%) Prototyping
5 4 (13.79%) Test Automation
5 4 (13.79%) Web Development
5 4 (13.79%) Workflow
6 3 (10.34%) Architectural Design
6 3 (10.34%) Content Management
6 3 (10.34%) Enterprise Content Management
6 3 (10.34%) Enterprise Search
6 3 (10.34%) High Availability
7 2 (6.90%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 8 (27.59%) PowerShell
2 4 (13.79%) PHP
2 4 (13.79%) Python
Qualifications
1 25 (86.21%) Security Cleared
2 24 (82.76%) DV Cleared
3 3 (10.34%) Degree
4 1 (3.45%) A+ Certification
4 1 (3.45%) Cisco Certification
4 1 (3.45%) Microsoft Certification
4 1 (3.45%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (6.90%) SLA
2 1 (3.45%) GDPR
System Software
1 26 (89.66%) Active Directory
2 14 (48.28%) VMware NSX
3 7 (24.14%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (10.34%) Brightmail
4 3 (10.34%) ISA Server
4 3 (10.34%) VMware ESXi
5 2 (6.90%) BitLocker
5 2 (6.90%) Docker
5 2 (6.90%) Hyper-V
5 2 (6.90%) Microsoft App-V
5 2 (6.90%) Terminal Services
6 1 (3.45%) DFS Replication
6 1 (3.45%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 17 (58.62%) vCenter Server
2 6 (20.69%) Ansible
3 5 (17.24%) Terraform
4 4 (13.79%) WMI
5 3 (10.34%) Microsoft Clustering
5 3 (10.34%) Microsoft Intune
6 2 (6.90%) Kubernetes
6 2 (6.90%) Nagios
6 2 (6.90%) Puppet
6 2 (6.90%) SCCM
6 2 (6.90%) vMotion
Vendors
1 15 (51.72%) Cisco
2 14 (48.28%) Juniper
2 14 (48.28%) Microsoft
2 14 (48.28%) SolarWinds
3 7 (24.14%) VMware
4 2 (6.90%) Citrix
4 2 (6.90%) Google
4 2 (6.90%) HP
4 2 (6.90%) Symantec
5 1 (3.45%) CheckPoint
5 1 (3.45%) Palo Alto
5 1 (3.45%) ServiceNow