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 1 December 2025.

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

6 months to
1 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 149 173 179
Rank change year-on-year +24 +6 +46
Contract jobs requiring a 3rd Line Engineer 37 6 32
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 0.89% 0.15% 0.61%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.99% 0.16% 0.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 34 4 11
10th Percentile - £328 £250
25th Percentile - £350 £284
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £400 £450
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% -11.11% -
75th Percentile - £463 £494
90th Percentile £600 £508 £500
England median daily rate £500 £400 £325
% change year-on-year +25.00% +23.08% -13.33%
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 3,737 3,700 4,936
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.00% 92.78% 94.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,386 2,263 3,233
10th Percentile £208 £238 £207
25th Percentile £393 £400 £390
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £513
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% - +2.50%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £613
90th Percentile £675 £686 £688
England median daily rate £503 £525 £535
% change year-on-year -4.12% -1.78% -2.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 378 187 250
10th Percentile £13.75 £18.15 £16.23
25th Percentile £16.17 £24.18 £24.06
Median hourly rate £25.00 £52.50 £51.24
Median % change year-on-year -52.38% +2.46% +36.63%
75th Percentile £57.50 £70.00 £65.96
90th Percentile £81.00 £75.00 £76.53
England median hourly rate £25.15 £37.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year -32.93% -16.67% +38.46%

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 1 December 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 1 December 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 +28 33 £500 +17.65% 19
Thames Valley +2 3 £450 +20.00% 16
Buckinghamshire - 2 £450 - 9
Kent +1 1 £615 +89.23%
Oxfordshire - 1 - - 1
3rd Line Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 1 December 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 34 (91.89%) Security Cleared
2 33 (89.19%) DV Cleared
3 28 (75.68%) Windows
4 26 (70.27%) Active Directory
5 23 (62.16%) ITSM
5 23 (62.16%) vCenter Server
6 22 (59.46%) Windows Server
7 20 (54.05%) Cisco
8 19 (51.35%) Cisco Firepower
8 19 (51.35%) Cisco IOS
8 19 (51.35%) Cisco ISE
8 19 (51.35%) Juniper
8 19 (51.35%) Junos
8 19 (51.35%) SolarWinds
8 19 (51.35%) VMware NSX
9 18 (48.65%) Service Management
10 9 (24.32%) Microsoft
11 8 (21.62%) DNS
11 8 (21.62%) ITIL
11 8 (21.62%) VMware
12 7 (18.92%) Agile
12 7 (18.92%) PowerShell
13 6 (16.22%) Change Management
13 6 (16.22%) VMware Infrastructure
14 5 (13.51%) DHCP
14 5 (13.51%) Firewall
14 5 (13.51%) Problem-Solving
15 4 (10.81%) Business Intelligence
15 4 (10.81%) Linux
15 4 (10.81%) Microsoft Exchange

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 4 (10.81%) Microsoft Exchange
1 4 (10.81%) SharePoint
2 3 (8.11%) Exchange Server 2003
2 3 (8.11%) Exchange Server 2007
2 3 (8.11%) Exchange Server 2010
2 3 (8.11%) Exchange Server 2013
2 3 (8.11%) Office Communications Server
2 3 (8.11%) SharePoint Server
2 3 (8.11%) Skype for Business
3 2 (5.41%) Apache
Applications
1 3 (8.11%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 3 (8.11%) Azure
2 2 (5.41%) Entra ID
2 2 (5.41%) Microsoft 365
3 1 (2.70%) IaaS
3 1 (2.70%) Microsoft Purview
3 1 (2.70%) PaaS
3 1 (2.70%) Power Platform
3 1 (2.70%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 19 (51.35%) Cisco Firepower
1 19 (51.35%) Cisco IOS
1 19 (51.35%) Cisco ISE
1 19 (51.35%) Junos
2 8 (21.62%) DNS
3 5 (13.51%) DHCP
3 5 (13.51%) Firewall
4 4 (10.81%) SAN
4 4 (10.81%) VPN
5 3 (8.11%) DDNS
5 3 (8.11%) NX-OS
6 1 (2.70%) Fibre Channel
6 1 (2.70%) TCP/IP
6 1 (2.70%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (2.70%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 2 (5.41%) MSI
1 2 (5.41%) Robot Framework
1 2 (5.41%) Sonatype Nexus
2 1 (2.70%) JIRA
General
1 4 (10.81%) Analytical Skills
1 4 (10.81%) Social Skills
2 3 (8.11%) Public Sector
3 1 (2.70%) Finance
3 1 (2.70%) Organisational Skills
Miscellaneous
1 7 (18.92%) PKI
2 3 (8.11%) Replication
3 2 (5.41%) Analytical Mindset
4 1 (2.70%) Onboarding
4 1 (2.70%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 28 (75.68%) Windows
2 22 (59.46%) Windows Server
3 4 (10.81%) Linux
4 3 (8.11%) Windows Server 2003
4 3 (8.11%) Windows Server 2019
5 2 (5.41%) CentOS
5 2 (5.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (2.70%) Mac OS
6 1 (2.70%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 23 (62.16%) ITSM
2 18 (48.65%) Service Management
3 8 (21.62%) ITIL
4 7 (18.92%) Agile
5 6 (16.22%) Change Management
6 5 (13.51%) Problem-Solving
7 4 (10.81%) Business Intelligence
8 3 (8.11%) Architectural Design
8 3 (8.11%) Content Management
8 3 (8.11%) Creative Thinking
8 3 (8.11%) DevOps
8 3 (8.11%) Enterprise Content Management
8 3 (8.11%) Enterprise Search
8 3 (8.11%) High Availability
8 3 (8.11%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 3 (8.11%) Network Virtualisation
9 2 (5.41%) Continuous Improvement
9 2 (5.41%) Deployment Automation
9 2 (5.41%) Prototyping
9 2 (5.41%) Web Development
Programming Languages
1 7 (18.92%) PowerShell
2 2 (5.41%) PHP
2 2 (5.41%) Python
Qualifications
1 34 (91.89%) Security Cleared
2 33 (89.19%) DV Cleared
3 1 (2.70%) A+ Certification
3 1 (2.70%) Cisco Certification
3 1 (2.70%) Degree
3 1 (2.70%) Microsoft Certification
3 1 (2.70%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (5.41%) SLA
2 1 (2.70%) GDPR
System Software
1 26 (70.27%) Active Directory
2 19 (51.35%) VMware NSX
3 6 (16.22%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (8.11%) Brightmail
4 3 (8.11%) Firmware
4 3 (8.11%) ISA Server
5 1 (2.70%) DFS Replication
5 1 (2.70%) VMware ESXi
5 1 (2.70%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 23 (62.16%) vCenter Server
2 4 (10.81%) SCCM
3 3 (8.11%) Microsoft Clustering
3 3 (8.11%) SCOM
3 3 (8.11%) Terraform
4 2 (5.41%) Ansible
4 2 (5.41%) Microsoft Intune
4 2 (5.41%) WMI
Vendors
1 20 (54.05%) Cisco
2 19 (51.35%) Juniper
2 19 (51.35%) SolarWinds
3 9 (24.32%) Microsoft
4 8 (21.62%) VMware
5 3 (8.11%) Broadcom
6 1 (2.70%) CheckPoint
6 1 (2.70%) Palo Alto
6 1 (2.70%) ServiceNow