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 £575, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 17 September 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 127 170 187
Rank change year-on-year +43 +17 +38
Contract jobs requiring a 3rd Line Engineer 34 14 27
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the South East 0.98% 0.30% 0.48%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.08% 0.33% 0.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 31 8 11
10th Percentile - £304 £263
25th Percentile £500 £350 £284
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £375 £313
Median % change year-on-year +53.33% +20.00% -26.47%
75th Percentile £600 £419 £399
90th Percentile - £494 £525
England median daily rate £500 £393 £351
% change year-on-year +27.39% +11.98% -12.38%
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 3,138 4,241 5,295
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.12% 92.38% 94.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,031 2,534 3,585
10th Percentile £204 £250 £213
25th Percentile £363 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% +2.50% -
75th Percentile £600 £625 £613
90th Percentile £650 £688 £700
England median daily rate £508 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -3.33% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 278 317 250
10th Percentile £13.43 £16.00 £16.00
25th Percentile £15.50 £30.41 £21.05
Median hourly rate £25.15 £57.50 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -56.26% +15.00% +106.78%
75th Percentile £57.50 £75.00 £66.19
90th Percentile £71.95 £80.00 £75.67
England median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £44.75
% change year-on-year -45.54% +3.20% +71.00%

3rd Line Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

Job postings that featured 3rd Line Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the South East.

Job vacancy trend for 3rd Line Engineer 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 September 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 September 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 +33 28 £575 - 14
Thames Valley +10 2 - - 5
Kent -1 2 £615 +100.00%
Buckinghamshire +7 1 - - 2
Surrey +4 1 £525 +13.51% 1
West Sussex - 1 £375 -
Oxfordshire - 1 - - 2
3rd Line Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 17 September 2025, 3rd Line Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number 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 31 (91.18%) Windows
1 31 (91.18%) Active Directory
2 28 (82.35%) Security Cleared
3 27 (79.41%) DV Cleared
4 24 (70.59%) Microsoft
5 22 (64.71%) Windows Server
6 19 (55.88%) vCenter Server
7 17 (50.00%) DHCP
7 17 (50.00%) DNS
8 14 (41.18%) VPN
8 14 (41.18%) Microsoft Exchange
8 14 (41.18%) VMware
8 14 (41.18%) VMware Infrastructure
8 14 (41.18%) DevOps
9 13 (38.24%) PowerShell
9 13 (38.24%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 12 (35.29%) Ansible
10 12 (35.29%) Firewall
10 12 (35.29%) PKI
10 12 (35.29%) Linux
11 11 (32.35%) ITSM
11 11 (32.35%) Service Management
12 10 (29.41%) Cisco
12 10 (29.41%) IaaS
12 10 (29.41%) PaaS
12 10 (29.41%) SolarWinds
13 9 (26.47%) VMware ESXi
13 9 (26.47%) Junos
13 9 (26.47%) Cisco IOS
13 9 (26.47%) Cisco ISE

3rd Line Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the South East by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 14 (41.18%) Microsoft Exchange
2 6 (17.65%) SharePoint
3 5 (14.71%) Exchange Server 2003
3 5 (14.71%) Exchange Server 2007
3 5 (14.71%) Exchange Server 2010
3 5 (14.71%) Exchange Server 2013
3 5 (14.71%) Office Communications Server
3 5 (14.71%) SharePoint Server
3 5 (14.71%) Skype for Business
4 4 (11.76%) Apache
Applications
1 5 (14.71%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 10 (29.41%) IaaS
1 10 (29.41%) PaaS
2 8 (23.53%) AWS
2 8 (23.53%) GCP
2 8 (23.53%) OpenShift
3 5 (14.71%) Azure
4 3 (8.82%) Microsoft 365
5 2 (5.88%) Entra ID
6 1 (2.94%) Microsoft Copilot
6 1 (2.94%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 17 (50.00%) DHCP
1 17 (50.00%) DNS
2 14 (41.18%) VPN
3 12 (35.29%) Firewall
4 9 (26.47%) Cisco Firepower
4 9 (26.47%) Cisco IOS
4 9 (26.47%) Cisco ISE
4 9 (26.47%) Junos
5 8 (23.53%) SMTP
6 7 (20.59%) SAN
7 5 (14.71%) DDNS
8 2 (5.88%) Fibre Channel
8 2 (5.88%) TCP/IP
9 1 (2.94%) Wi-Fi
9 1 (2.94%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (23.53%) Amazon RDS
1 8 (23.53%) Big Data
1 8 (23.53%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 4 (11.76%) MSI
1 4 (11.76%) Robot Framework
1 4 (11.76%) Sonatype Nexus
2 1 (2.94%) JIRA
General
1 8 (23.53%) Public Sector
2 1 (2.94%) Analytical Skills
2 1 (2.94%) Finance
2 1 (2.94%) Organisational Skills
2 1 (2.94%) Social Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (2.94%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 12 (35.29%) PKI
2 8 (23.53%) Clustering
2 8 (23.53%) Data Centre
3 5 (14.71%) Replication
4 1 (2.94%) Hybrid Cloud
4 1 (2.94%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 31 (91.18%) Windows
2 22 (64.71%) Windows Server
3 12 (35.29%) Linux
4 8 (23.53%) Windows Server 2003
5 4 (11.76%) CentOS
5 4 (11.76%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 4 (11.76%) Windows Server 2019
6 1 (2.94%) Mac OS
6 1 (2.94%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 14 (41.18%) DevOps
2 13 (38.24%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 11 (32.35%) ITSM
3 11 (32.35%) Service Management
4 9 (26.47%) ITIL
5 8 (23.53%) Artificial Intelligence
5 8 (23.53%) Machine Learning
5 8 (23.53%) Software Deployment
6 5 (14.71%) Architectural Design
6 5 (14.71%) Business Intelligence
6 5 (14.71%) Content Management
6 5 (14.71%) Enterprise Content Management
6 5 (14.71%) Enterprise Search
6 5 (14.71%) High Availability
7 4 (11.76%) Agile
7 4 (11.76%) Batch Scripting
7 4 (11.76%) Deployment Automation
7 4 (11.76%) Prototyping
7 4 (11.76%) Web Development
7 4 (11.76%) Workflow
Programming Languages
1 13 (38.24%) PowerShell
2 4 (11.76%) PHP
2 4 (11.76%) Python
3 1 (2.94%) SQL
Qualifications
1 28 (82.35%) Security Cleared
2 27 (79.41%) DV Cleared
3 9 (26.47%) Degree
4 1 (2.94%) A+ Certification
4 1 (2.94%) Cisco Certification
4 1 (2.94%) Microsoft Certification
4 1 (2.94%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (8.82%) SLA
2 1 (2.94%) GDPR
System Software
1 31 (91.18%) Active Directory
2 14 (41.18%) VMware Infrastructure
3 9 (26.47%) VMware ESXi
3 9 (26.47%) VMware NSX
4 8 (23.53%) BitLocker
4 8 (23.53%) Docker
4 8 (23.53%) Hyper-V
4 8 (23.53%) Microsoft App-V
4 8 (23.53%) Terminal Services
5 5 (14.71%) Brightmail
5 5 (14.71%) ISA Server
6 2 (5.88%) DFS Replication
6 2 (5.88%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 19 (55.88%) vCenter Server
2 12 (35.29%) Ansible
3 8 (23.53%) Kubernetes
3 8 (23.53%) Nagios
3 8 (23.53%) Puppet
3 8 (23.53%) vMotion
4 5 (14.71%) Microsoft Clustering
4 5 (14.71%) Terraform
5 4 (11.76%) WMI
6 3 (8.82%) Microsoft Intune
6 3 (8.82%) SCCM
7 1 (2.94%) SCOM
Vendors
1 24 (70.59%) Microsoft
2 14 (41.18%) VMware
3 10 (29.41%) Cisco
3 10 (29.41%) SolarWinds
4 9 (26.47%) Juniper
5 8 (23.53%) Citrix
5 8 (23.53%) Google
5 8 (23.53%) HP
5 8 (23.53%) Symantec
6 1 (2.94%) CheckPoint
6 1 (2.94%) McAfee
6 1 (2.94%) Palo Alto
6 1 (2.94%) ServiceNow