3rd Line Engineer Contracts 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 1 July 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
1 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 127 187 189
Rank change year-on-year +60 +2 +25
Contract jobs requiring a 3rd Line Engineer 28 21 26
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the South East 0.89% 0.37% 0.45%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.98% 0.40% 0.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 28 12 15
10th Percentile £468 £281 £275
25th Percentile £550 £295 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £375 £375
Median % change year-on-year +53.33% - -10.98%
75th Percentile £600 £391 £525
90th Percentile £623 £400 £583
England median daily rate £550 £375 £388
% change year-on-year +46.67% -3.23% -0.64%

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 2,853 5,245 5,482
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.72% 92.42% 94.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,852 3,086 3,784
10th Percentile £213 £250 £225
25th Percentile £375 £400 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £507 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.28% +1.30% -
75th Percentile £600 £625 £604
90th Percentile £661 £691 £700
England median daily rate £513 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.38% -4.55% +2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 215 538 244
10th Percentile £14.20 £12.88 £16.00
25th Percentile £15.53 £18.39 £21.18
Median hourly rate £30.00 £48.70 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -38.40% -2.60% +138.10%
75th Percentile £62.24 £70.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £80.00 £75.00
England median hourly rate £28.18 £39.55 £43.93
% change year-on-year -28.75% -9.97% +75.72%

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
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the South East

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing 3rd Line Engineer in the South East.

Daily rate trend for 3rd Line Engineer 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 July 2025.

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

3rd Line Engineer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing 3rd Line Engineer in the South East.

Hourly rate trend for 3rd Line Engineer 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 July 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 +40 19 £575 +92.95% 14
Kent +4 5 £615 +153.61%
West Sussex - 2 £308 - 3
Surrey +25 1 £525 +31.25%
Thames Valley +20 1 £375 - 7
Oxfordshire -1 1 £375 - 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 1 July 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 26 (92.86%) Windows
2 25 (89.29%) Microsoft
2 25 (89.29%) Active Directory
3 19 (67.86%) DV Cleared
3 19 (67.86%) Security Cleared
4 18 (64.29%) DHCP
4 18 (64.29%) DNS
5 17 (60.71%) VMware Infrastructure
5 17 (60.71%) VMware
6 16 (57.14%) DevOps
7 15 (53.57%) Windows Server
7 15 (53.57%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 14 (50.00%) Firewall
9 13 (46.43%) Microsoft Exchange
9 13 (46.43%) IaaS
10 12 (42.86%) PowerShell
10 12 (42.86%) PaaS
10 12 (42.86%) Ansible
10 12 (42.86%) VPN
10 12 (42.86%) Linux
10 12 (42.86%) PKI
11 11 (39.29%) ITIL
11 11 (39.29%) vCenter Server
12 9 (32.14%) SAN
13 8 (28.57%) Terminal Services
13 8 (28.57%) HP
13 8 (28.57%) Citrix
13 8 (28.57%) Nagios
13 8 (28.57%) Symantec
13 8 (28.57%) SMTP

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 13 (46.43%) Microsoft Exchange
2 5 (17.86%) SharePoint
3 4 (14.29%) Apache
3 4 (14.29%) Exchange Server 2003
3 4 (14.29%) Exchange Server 2007
3 4 (14.29%) Exchange Server 2010
3 4 (14.29%) Exchange Server 2013
3 4 (14.29%) Office Communications Server
3 4 (14.29%) SharePoint Server
3 4 (14.29%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 4 (14.29%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 13 (46.43%) IaaS
2 12 (42.86%) PaaS
3 8 (28.57%) AWS
3 8 (28.57%) GCP
3 8 (28.57%) OpenShift
4 6 (21.43%) Azure
5 4 (14.29%) Microsoft 365
6 1 (3.57%) Entra ID
6 1 (3.57%) Microsoft Copilot
6 1 (3.57%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 18 (64.29%) DHCP
1 18 (64.29%) DNS
2 14 (50.00%) Firewall
3 12 (42.86%) VPN
4 9 (32.14%) SAN
5 8 (28.57%) SMTP
6 4 (14.29%) DDNS
6 4 (14.29%) Fibre Channel
7 1 (3.57%) TCP/IP
7 1 (3.57%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (28.57%) Amazon RDS
1 8 (28.57%) Big Data
1 8 (28.57%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 4 (14.29%) MSI
1 4 (14.29%) Robot Framework
1 4 (14.29%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 7 (25.00%) Public Sector
2 1 (3.57%) Analytical Skills
2 1 (3.57%) Social Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (3.57%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 12 (42.86%) PKI
2 8 (28.57%) Clustering
2 8 (28.57%) Data Centre
3 4 (14.29%) Replication
4 1 (3.57%) CMDB
4 1 (3.57%) Hybrid Cloud
4 1 (3.57%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 26 (92.86%) Windows
2 15 (53.57%) Windows Server
3 12 (42.86%) Linux
4 7 (25.00%) Windows Server 2003
5 4 (14.29%) CentOS
5 4 (14.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 4 (14.29%) Windows Server 2019
6 2 (7.14%) Android
6 2 (7.14%) Apple iOS
6 2 (7.14%) Windows 10
7 1 (3.57%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 16 (57.14%) DevOps
2 15 (53.57%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 11 (39.29%) ITIL
4 8 (28.57%) Artificial Intelligence
4 8 (28.57%) Machine Learning
4 8 (28.57%) Software Deployment
5 5 (17.86%) Cybersecurity
5 5 (17.86%) Infrastructure as Code
5 5 (17.86%) Security Patching
6 4 (14.29%) Agile
6 4 (14.29%) Architectural Design
6 4 (14.29%) Batch Scripting
6 4 (14.29%) Content Management
6 4 (14.29%) Continuous Improvement
6 4 (14.29%) Deployment Automation
6 4 (14.29%) Enterprise Content Management
6 4 (14.29%) Enterprise Search
6 4 (14.29%) High Availability
6 4 (14.29%) Prototyping
6 4 (14.29%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 12 (42.86%) PowerShell
2 4 (14.29%) PHP
2 4 (14.29%) Python
3 3 (10.71%) SQL
Qualifications
1 19 (67.86%) DV Cleared
1 19 (67.86%) Security Cleared
2 8 (28.57%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (17.86%) SLA
System Software
1 25 (89.29%) Active Directory
2 17 (60.71%) VMware Infrastructure
3 8 (28.57%) BitLocker
3 8 (28.57%) Docker
3 8 (28.57%) Hyper-V
3 8 (28.57%) Microsoft App-V
3 8 (28.57%) Terminal Services
3 8 (28.57%) VMware ESXi
4 5 (17.86%) DFS Replication
4 5 (17.86%) vSphere
5 4 (14.29%) Brightmail
5 4 (14.29%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 12 (42.86%) Ansible
2 11 (39.29%) vCenter Server
3 8 (28.57%) Kubernetes
3 8 (28.57%) Nagios
3 8 (28.57%) Puppet
3 8 (28.57%) vMotion
4 5 (17.86%) Terraform
5 4 (14.29%) Microsoft Clustering
5 4 (14.29%) SCCM
5 4 (14.29%) WMI
6 3 (10.71%) SCOM
7 2 (7.14%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 25 (89.29%) Microsoft
2 17 (60.71%) VMware
3 8 (28.57%) Citrix
3 8 (28.57%) Google
3 8 (28.57%) HP
3 8 (28.57%) Symantec
4 3 (10.71%) SolarWinds
5 2 (7.14%) McAfee
6 1 (3.57%) ServiceNow