Degree Contract Job Trends in the South East

Academic Degree
England > South East

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the South East with a requirement for Degree qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months leading up to 7 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 27 13
Rank change year-on-year -1 -14 +13
Contract jobs citing Degree 281 239 457
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 6.43% 6.91% 9.31%
As % of the Qualifications category 14.64% 18.12% 20.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 157 138 298
10th Percentile £204 £181 £161
25th Percentile £311 £341 £217
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - +4.17%
75th Percentile £569 £588 £608
90th Percentile £654 £686 £688
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 17 43
10th Percentile £20.79 £23.92 £30.58
25th Percentile £21.75 £34.00 £50.00
Median hourly rate £29.61 £42.88 £61.00
Median % change year-on-year -30.95% -29.70% +35.56%
75th Percentile £81.00 £75.00 £70.50
90th Percentile £89.63 £76.34 £77.50
England median hourly rate £37.58 £42.50 £50.00
% change year-on-year -11.58% -15.00% +11.11%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
South East

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 the South East.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 1,919 1,319 2,191
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 43.94% 38.15% 44.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,277 866 1,305
10th Percentile £270 £260 £213
25th Percentile £413 £408 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% +0.93%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £638
90th Percentile £715 £699 £700
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 194 75 133
10th Percentile £15.62 £20.03 £27.50
25th Percentile £19.38 £31.25 £50.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £56.75 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -55.68% -5.43% +33.33%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.17 £70.50
90th Percentile £90.09 £75.00 £78.00
England median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £52.21
% change year-on-year -45.54% -11.54% +16.01%

Degree
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Degree relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East.

Degree job vacancy trend in the South East

Degree
Daily Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Degree.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Degree

Degree
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Degree in the South East over the 6 months to 7 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Degree in the South East

Degree
Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Degree.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Degree

Degree
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South East

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Degree in the South East over the 6 months to 7 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Degree in the South East

Degree
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 Degree within the South East region over the 6 months to 7 January 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
Thames Valley +7 140 £449 -5.58% 364
Berkshire +2 100 £447 -10.60% 199
Hampshire +8 60 £478 -9.05% 166
Surrey -16 35 £500 +2.56% 98
Buckinghamshire +17 26 £423 -1.74% 68
West Sussex -3 17 £475 -5.00% 72
Oxfordshire -8 14 £488 +14.71% 101
Kent 0 9 £445 -6.81% 99
East Sussex +3 7 £565 -9.60% 68
Isle of Wight - 4 - - 33
Home Counties - 2 £700 -
Sussex -6 1 - - 9
Degree
England

Degree
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 17 (6.05%) Confluence
2 13 (4.63%) SharePoint
3 6 (2.14%) Microsoft Exchange
4 4 (1.42%) Apache
4 4 (1.42%) Apache Spark
4 4 (1.42%) GeoServer
4 4 (1.42%) Smallworld
5 2 (0.71%) nginx
6 1 (0.36%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 1 (0.36%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.36%) CMS
6 1 (0.36%) Gunicorn
6 1 (0.36%) IIS
6 1 (0.36%) MS Project Server
6 1 (0.36%) SharePoint Server
6 1 (0.36%) Skype for Business
6 1 (0.36%) Tomcat
Applications
1 52 (18.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 48 (17.08%) Microsoft Office
3 33 (11.74%) Microsoft Project
4 20 (7.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (2.49%) Chatbot
6 4 (1.42%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.36%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 9 (3.20%) Primavera
2 5 (1.78%) SAP ERP
3 3 (1.07%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.36%) Dynamics AX
4 1 (0.36%) Dynamics GP
4 1 (0.36%) Oracle EBS R12
4 1 (0.36%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.36%) Oracle Receivables
4 1 (0.36%) Payment Gateway
4 1 (0.36%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.36%) SAP HR
4 1 (0.36%) SAP PM
4 1 (0.36%) SAP WM
4 1 (0.36%) Teamcenter
4 1 (0.36%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 44 (15.66%) Azure
2 34 (12.10%) AWS
3 18 (6.41%) Microsoft 365
4 17 (6.05%) Power Platform
5 11 (3.91%) GitHub
6 10 (3.56%) GCP
7 9 (3.20%) GitHub Actions
8 7 (2.49%) Azure DevOps
8 7 (2.49%) SaaS
9 6 (2.14%) Entra ID
10 5 (1.78%) IaaS
11 4 (1.42%) Lucidchart
12 3 (1.07%) Amazon ECS
12 3 (1.07%) Amazon S3
12 3 (1.07%) AWS CloudFormation
12 3 (1.07%) OCI
13 2 (0.71%) Amazon EC2
13 2 (0.71%) Azure Sentinel
13 2 (0.71%) PaaS
13 2 (0.71%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 25 (8.90%) Firewall
2 18 (6.41%) Wireless
3 12 (4.27%) Network Security
4 10 (3.56%) WAN
5 9 (3.20%) DNS
6 8 (2.85%) LAN
7 7 (2.49%) TCP/IP
8 6 (2.14%) BGP
8 6 (2.14%) IPsec
8 6 (2.14%) OSPF
8 6 (2.14%) Structured Cabling
8 6 (2.14%) Unified Communications
8 6 (2.14%) VPN
9 4 (1.42%) DHCP
9 4 (1.42%) WebEx
10 3 (1.07%) HTTP
10 3 (1.07%) VoIP
10 3 (1.07%) Wi-Fi
11 2 (0.71%) Internet
12 1 (0.36%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (5.69%) Relational Database
2 15 (5.34%) Power BI
3 10 (3.56%) MySQL
3 10 (3.56%) PostgreSQL
4 6 (2.14%) Big Data
4 6 (2.14%) BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
4 6 (2.14%) Data Warehouse
5 5 (1.78%) Apache Cassandra
5 5 (1.78%) Couchbase
5 5 (1.78%) Metadata
5 5 (1.78%) NoSQL
5 5 (1.78%) SQL Server
6 4 (1.42%) Geospatial Data
6 4 (1.42%) GIS
6 4 (1.42%) Hadoop
6 4 (1.42%) QGIS
6 4 (1.42%) Tableau
7 3 (1.07%) Amazon RDS
8 2 (0.71%) Redis
9 1 (0.36%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 29 (10.32%) JIRA
2 18 (6.41%) Git
3 12 (4.27%) Burp Suite
4 10 (3.56%) Metasploit
5 8 (2.85%) GitLab
6 7 (2.49%) Jenkins
7 4 (1.42%) Selenium
7 4 (1.42%) Visual Studio
8 3 (1.07%) CircleCI
8 3 (1.07%) Gradle
8 3 (1.07%) JUnit
8 3 (1.07%) Rational DOORS
9 2 (0.71%) Cypress.io
9 2 (0.71%) Subversion
9 2 (0.71%) WebDriver
10 1 (0.36%) Appium
10 1 (0.36%) Artifactory
10 1 (0.36%) HP UFT
10 1 (0.36%) SoapUI
10 1 (0.36%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 141 (50.18%) Social Skills
2 80 (28.47%) Analytical Skills
3 42 (14.95%) Finance
4 24 (8.54%) Manufacturing
5 18 (6.41%) Organisational Skills
6 14 (4.98%) Public Sector
7 12 (4.27%) Legal
8 11 (3.91%) Influencing Skills
9 9 (3.20%) Documentation Skills
10 8 (2.85%) Aerospace
11 7 (2.49%) Law
11 7 (2.49%) Marketing
12 5 (1.78%) Military
12 5 (1.78%) Telecoms
13 4 (1.42%) Presentation Skills
13 4 (1.42%) Retail
14 3 (1.07%) Advertising
14 3 (1.07%) Aviation
14 3 (1.07%) Banking
14 3 (1.07%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 38 (13.52%) Analyst
2 26 (9.25%) Senior
3 23 (8.19%) Developer
4 18 (6.41%) Project Manager
5 13 (4.63%) Lead
5 13 (4.63%) Tester
6 12 (4.27%) Architect
6 12 (4.27%) Penetration Tester
7 10 (3.56%) Network Engineer
7 10 (3.56%) Project Planner
7 10 (3.56%) Technical Support
8 8 (2.85%) IT Analyst
8 8 (2.85%) SC Cleared Project Manager
9 7 (2.49%) Business Analyst
9 7 (2.49%) Data Scientist
9 7 (2.49%) Trainer
10 6 (2.14%) Administrator
10 6 (2.14%) Delivery Manager
10 6 (2.14%) IT Manager
10 6 (2.14%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (4.27%) REST
2 7 (2.49%) HTML
3 6 (2.14%) Kafka
3 6 (2.14%) RabbitMQ
4 5 (1.78%) RESTful
5 4 (1.42%) CSS
5 4 (1.42%) Pandas
5 4 (1.42%) scikit-learn
6 3 (1.07%) Android Jetpack
6 3 (1.07%) Dagger
6 3 (1.07%) Jetpack Compose
6 3 (1.07%) Material Design
6 3 (1.07%) NumPy
6 3 (1.07%) OkHttp
6 3 (1.07%) RAML
6 3 (1.07%) RxJava
6 3 (1.07%) Web Services
6 3 (1.07%) WireMock
6 3 (1.07%) XML
7 2 (0.71%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 27 (9.61%) Management Information System
2 14 (4.98%) Analytical Mindset
3 13 (4.63%) Data Centre
4 12 (4.27%) Security Posture
5 9 (3.20%) Data Protection Act
5 9 (3.20%) Driving Licence
5 9 (3.20%) Security Operations Centre
5 9 (3.20%) Virtual Team
6 8 (2.85%) Self-Motivation
7 7 (2.49%) Mobile App
7 7 (2.49%) Product Ownership
8 6 (2.14%) Algorithms
8 6 (2.14%) Life Science
8 6 (2.14%) PMI
9 5 (1.78%) Handset
9 5 (1.78%) Legacy Systems
10 4 (1.42%) Cloud Native
10 4 (1.42%) Digital Media
10 4 (1.42%) Renewable Energy
11 3 (1.07%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 47 (16.73%) Windows
2 25 (8.90%) Linux
3 10 (3.56%) Unix
4 7 (2.49%) Android
4 7 (2.49%) Mac OS
5 5 (1.78%) Apple iOS
6 4 (1.42%) Windows 10
7 2 (0.71%) Kali Linux
7 2 (0.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.36%) Ubuntu
8 1 (0.36%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 98 (34.88%) Computer Science
2 84 (29.89%) Problem-Solving
3 68 (24.20%) Agile
4 42 (14.95%) Project Management
5 41 (14.59%) Cybersecurity
6 39 (13.88%) Stakeholder Management
7 34 (12.10%) ITIL
8 32 (11.39%) Continuous Improvement
9 30 (10.68%) PRINCE2
10 29 (10.32%) Line Management
11 27 (9.61%) DevOps
12 25 (8.90%) Information Security
13 24 (8.54%) Change Management
13 24 (8.54%) Migration
14 23 (8.19%) Decision-Making
15 21 (7.47%) Business Intelligence
16 19 (6.76%) AI
17 18 (6.41%) Penetration Testing
17 18 (6.41%) Project Delivery
17 18 (6.41%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 40 (14.23%) Python
2 26 (9.25%) SQL
3 23 (8.19%) Java
4 16 (5.69%) JavaScript
5 10 (3.56%) Perl
6 6 (2.14%) Go
6 6 (2.14%) Kotlin
6 6 (2.14%) PowerShell
7 5 (1.78%) C#
8 4 (1.42%) Shell Script
9 3 (1.07%) Bash
9 3 (1.07%) C
9 3 (1.07%) Objective-C
9 3 (1.07%) Swift
10 2 (0.71%) Ada
10 2 (0.71%) Assembly Language
10 2 (0.71%) MATLAB
10 2 (0.71%) R
11 1 (0.36%) C++
11 1 (0.36%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 79 (28.11%) Security Cleared
2 77 (27.40%) Computer Science Degree
3 69 (24.56%) SC Cleared
4 29 (10.32%) Master's Degree
5 20 (7.12%) CISSP
6 18 (6.41%) PMI Certification
6 18 (6.41%) PMP
7 16 (5.69%) Cisco Certification
8 14 (4.98%) CREST Certified
9 13 (4.63%) DV Cleared
10 11 (3.91%) CCNP
10 11 (3.91%) Postgraduate
11 10 (3.56%) A+ Certification
11 10 (3.56%) CHECK Team Member
11 10 (3.56%) CISM
11 10 (3.56%) Cyber Scheme
11 10 (3.56%) Microsoft Certification
12 9 (3.20%) CCNA
12 9 (3.20%) PhD
13 6 (2.14%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 38 (13.52%) PMO
2 27 (9.61%) GDPR
3 25 (8.90%) QA
4 22 (7.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 14 (4.98%) PCI DSS
6 13 (4.63%) NIST
7 9 (3.20%) Data Quality
8 6 (2.14%) SLA
9 4 (1.42%) HIPAA
9 4 (1.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 3 (1.07%) Accessibility
10 3 (1.07%) NCSC
10 3 (1.07%) P3O
11 2 (0.71%) Actionable Recommendations
11 2 (0.71%) ISO 9001
11 2 (0.71%) ISO/IEC 19770
11 2 (0.71%) RMADS
12 1 (0.36%) Def Stans
12 1 (0.36%) GxP
12 1 (0.36%) JSP 440
System Software
1 12 (4.27%) Docker
2 11 (3.91%) Active Directory
3 6 (2.14%) Firmware
4 2 (0.71%) VMware ESXi
5 1 (0.36%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.36%) VMware NSX
5 1 (0.36%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 12 (4.27%) Nmap
2 9 (3.20%) Kubernetes
3 6 (2.14%) Terraform
4 5 (1.78%) Ansible
5 3 (1.07%) Puppet
6 2 (0.71%) Grafana
6 2 (0.71%) Microsoft Intune
6 2 (0.71%) SCCM
6 2 (0.71%) vCenter Server
7 1 (0.36%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 1 (0.36%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
7 1 (0.36%) FortiGate
7 1 (0.36%) Nagios
7 1 (0.36%) Nessus
7 1 (0.36%) Podman
7 1 (0.36%) SCOM
7 1 (0.36%) vRealize
7 1 (0.36%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 63 (22.42%) Microsoft
2 22 (7.83%) SAP
3 17 (6.05%) Oracle
4 15 (5.34%) Cisco
5 14 (4.98%) ServiceNow
6 12 (4.27%) Palo Alto
7 11 (3.91%) CheckPoint
8 8 (2.85%) Splunk
9 7 (2.49%) Aruba
9 7 (2.49%) PayPal
10 5 (1.78%) Atlassian
10 5 (1.78%) EMC
11 4 (1.42%) Cellebrite
11 4 (1.42%) ESRI
11 4 (1.42%) Google
11 4 (1.42%) Informatica
11 4 (1.42%) Intergraph
11 4 (1.42%) Salesforce
12 3 (1.07%) Apple
12 3 (1.07%) Snow