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 22 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 26 23 13
Rank change year-on-year -3 -10 +12
Contract jobs citing Degree 367 234 502
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 6.79% 7.85% 8.92%
As % of the Qualifications category 14.41% 20.10% 19.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 197 124 270
10th Percentile £275 £215 £205
25th Percentile £400 £374 £336
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% - -
75th Percentile £575 £556 £608
90th Percentile £650 £650 £667
England median daily rate £500 £520 £513
% change year-on-year -3.85% +1.46% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 67 25 71
10th Percentile £25.22 £17.50 £17.80
25th Percentile £61.88 £41.25 £22.50
Median hourly rate £84.00 £56.75 £53.50
Median % change year-on-year +48.02% +6.07% +18.89%
75th Percentile £88.00 £75.00 £61.30
90th Percentile - £77.02 £67.02
England median hourly rate £45.46 £51.25 £39.96
% change year-on-year -11.30% +28.25% -11.20%

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 2,546 1,164 2,533
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 47.10% 39.05% 45.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,695 756 1,433
10th Percentile £304 £286 £263
25th Percentile £415 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £548 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.02% -0.45% +3.77%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £716
England median daily rate £520 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 262 82 185
10th Percentile £15.62 £19.98 £17.80
25th Percentile £19.74 £28.00 £24.25
Median hourly rate £45.10 £56.75 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year -20.52% -1.05% +12.45%
75th Percentile £84.00 £69.38 £66.74
90th Percentile £88.00 £78.24 £84.00
England median hourly rate £29.61 £50.00 £38.75
% change year-on-year -40.78% +29.03% -22.50%

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 22 March 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 22 March 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 22 March 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 -1 204 £450 -10.00% 199
Berkshire +1 148 £400 -17.65% 100
Hampshire +5 84 £525 +1.94% 124
Buckinghamshire +2 44 £518 -1.90% 54
Surrey -20 28 £525 +5.00% 62
West Sussex -8 17 £400 -5.88% 13
Kent -4 14 £445 +27.14% 37
Oxfordshire -11 12 £525 -25.00% 49
East Sussex +1 8 £565 -14.72% 23
Home Counties - 5 £700 -
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 18 (4.90%) Confluence
2 12 (3.27%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.36%) Apache Spark
4 4 (1.09%) GeoServer
4 4 (1.09%) Microsoft Exchange
4 4 (1.09%) Smallworld
5 3 (0.82%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 3 (0.82%) Apache
5 3 (0.82%) CMS
5 3 (0.82%) MS Project Server
6 2 (0.54%) Palantir Foundry
7 1 (0.27%) Apache Pulsar
7 1 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
7 1 (0.27%) SharePoint Server
7 1 (0.27%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 57 (15.53%) Microsoft Office
2 49 (13.35%) Microsoft Excel
3 43 (11.72%) Microsoft Project
4 20 (5.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (1.91%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.54%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.27%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 13 (3.54%) Primavera
2 6 (1.63%) SAP S/4HANA
3 5 (1.36%) SAP ERP
4 2 (0.54%) Payment Gateway
4 2 (0.54%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.54%) Teamcenter
5 1 (0.27%) Dynamics AX
5 1 (0.27%) Dynamics GP
5 1 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.27%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.27%) SAP Hybris
5 1 (0.27%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 61 (16.62%) Azure
2 47 (12.81%) AWS
3 20 (5.45%) Power Platform
4 17 (4.63%) Microsoft 365
5 15 (4.09%) GCP
6 13 (3.54%) GitHub
6 13 (3.54%) GitHub Actions
7 9 (2.45%) Azure DevOps
7 9 (2.45%) Entra ID
8 5 (1.36%) SaaS
9 4 (1.09%) IaaS
9 4 (1.09%) PowerApps
10 3 (0.82%) Amazon EKS
10 3 (0.82%) Amazon S3
10 3 (0.82%) AWS CloudFormation
10 3 (0.82%) Lucidchart
10 3 (0.82%) Power Automate
11 2 (0.54%) Amazon EC2
11 2 (0.54%) PaaS
11 2 (0.54%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 29 (7.90%) Firewall
2 17 (4.63%) WAN
3 15 (4.09%) Network Security
3 15 (4.09%) Wireless
4 14 (3.81%) LAN
5 10 (2.72%) BGP
5 10 (2.72%) OSPF
6 9 (2.45%) DNS
6 9 (2.45%) IPsec
6 9 (2.45%) Structured Cabling
7 8 (2.18%) HTTP
7 8 (2.18%) TCP/IP
8 7 (1.91%) Unified Communications
9 4 (1.09%) WebEx
10 3 (0.82%) Ethernet
10 3 (0.82%) SAN
10 3 (0.82%) SSH
11 2 (0.54%) Internet
11 2 (0.54%) NAS
11 2 (0.54%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (4.90%) Power BI
2 13 (3.54%) Relational Database
3 11 (3.00%) PostgreSQL
3 11 (3.00%) SQL Server
4 10 (2.72%) MySQL
5 7 (1.91%) Big Data
6 6 (1.63%) BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
6 6 (1.63%) NoSQL
7 5 (1.36%) Apache Cassandra
7 5 (1.36%) Couchbase
7 5 (1.36%) Data Warehouse
8 4 (1.09%) Geospatial Data
8 4 (1.09%) GIS
8 4 (1.09%) Hadoop
8 4 (1.09%) Metadata
8 4 (1.09%) QGIS
9 3 (0.82%) Oracle Database
9 3 (0.82%) Tableau
10 2 (0.54%) Amazon RDS
10 2 (0.54%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 29 (7.90%) JIRA
2 28 (7.63%) Rational DOORS
3 15 (4.09%) Git
4 13 (3.54%) Burp Suite
5 11 (3.00%) Metasploit
6 10 (2.72%) GitLab
7 9 (2.45%) Jenkins
8 7 (1.91%) CircleCI
8 7 (1.91%) Gradle
9 5 (1.36%) JUnit
10 3 (0.82%) Selenium
11 2 (0.54%) Balsamiq
11 2 (0.54%) Cypress.io
11 2 (0.54%) Visual Studio
11 2 (0.54%) WebDriver
12 1 (0.27%) Maven
12 1 (0.27%) MLflow
12 1 (0.27%) Postman
12 1 (0.27%) SoapUI
12 1 (0.27%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 140 (38.15%) Social Skills
2 69 (18.80%) Analytical Skills
3 48 (13.08%) Aerospace
4 47 (12.81%) Finance
5 26 (7.08%) Public Sector
6 18 (4.90%) Influencing Skills
6 18 (4.90%) Manufacturing
7 15 (4.09%) Documentation Skills
8 13 (3.54%) Organisational Skills
9 11 (3.00%) Presentation Skills
10 10 (2.72%) Marketing
11 8 (2.18%) Legal
12 7 (1.91%) Law
12 7 (1.91%) Retail
12 7 (1.91%) Telecoms
13 4 (1.09%) Advertising
13 4 (1.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 4 (1.09%) Military
14 3 (0.82%) Billing
15 2 (0.54%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 45 (12.26%) Analyst
2 34 (9.26%) Senior
3 33 (8.99%) Product Manager
4 32 (8.72%) Delivery Manager
5 28 (7.63%) Product Delivery Manager
5 28 (7.63%) Project Manager
6 22 (5.99%) Systems Delivery Manager
6 22 (5.99%) Systems Manager
7 21 (5.72%) Lead
8 18 (4.90%) Architect
9 17 (4.63%) Developer
10 14 (3.81%) Technical Support
11 13 (3.54%) Penetration Tester
11 13 (3.54%) Project Planner
11 13 (3.54%) Tester
12 12 (3.27%) SC Cleared Project Manager
13 11 (3.00%) Consultant
14 10 (2.72%) Security Engineer
15 9 (2.45%) Network Engineer
16 7 (1.91%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (3.81%) REST
2 8 (2.18%) Kafka
3 7 (1.91%) RAML
4 6 (1.63%) RabbitMQ
5 5 (1.36%) Android Jetpack
5 5 (1.36%) Dagger
5 5 (1.36%) Jetpack Compose
5 5 (1.36%) OkHttp
5 5 (1.36%) React
5 5 (1.36%) RxJava
5 5 (1.36%) WireMock
6 4 (1.09%) ADO
7 3 (0.82%) HTML
7 3 (0.82%) Spring
7 3 (0.82%) Web Services
8 2 (0.54%) HTML5
8 2 (0.54%) JSR 170
8 2 (0.54%) NumPy
8 2 (0.54%) OSGi
8 2 (0.54%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 41 (11.17%) Product Ownership
2 38 (10.35%) Management Information System
3 24 (6.54%) Data Structures
4 21 (5.72%) Data Centre
5 17 (4.63%) Virtual Team
6 12 (3.27%) Security Operations Centre
6 12 (3.27%) Security Posture
7 11 (3.00%) Analytical Mindset
7 11 (3.00%) Data Protection Act
7 11 (3.00%) Onboarding
8 10 (2.72%) PMI
9 9 (2.45%) Self-Motivation
10 8 (2.18%) BYOD
11 7 (1.91%) Algorithms
11 7 (1.91%) Legacy Code
12 6 (1.63%) Cloud Native
12 6 (1.63%) Driving Licence
12 6 (1.63%) Legacy Systems
13 5 (1.36%) Cyberattack
13 5 (1.36%) Handset
Operating Systems
1 56 (15.26%) Windows
2 32 (8.72%) Linux
3 15 (4.09%) Unix
4 7 (1.91%) Android
4 7 (1.91%) Windows 10
4 7 (1.91%) Windows Server
5 5 (1.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 3 (0.82%) Apple iOS
6 3 (0.82%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.54%) Kali Linux
7 2 (0.54%) Mac OS
7 2 (0.54%) OpenVMS
7 2 (0.54%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 154 (41.96%) Computer Science
2 116 (31.61%) Agile
3 75 (20.44%) Problem-Solving
4 68 (18.53%) Continuous Improvement
4 68 (18.53%) PRINCE2
5 66 (17.98%) Cybersecurity
6 58 (15.80%) Project Management
7 50 (13.62%) Stakeholder Management
8 43 (11.72%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 41 (11.17%) Systems Engineering
10 40 (10.90%) Information Security
11 38 (10.35%) Change Control
11 38 (10.35%) Programme Management
12 37 (10.08%) AI
13 35 (9.54%) ITIL
14 33 (8.99%) Scaled Agile Framework
15 32 (8.72%) DevOps
16 30 (8.17%) Decision-Making
16 30 (8.17%) Migration
17 28 (7.63%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 37 (10.08%) Python
2 24 (6.54%) SQL
3 20 (5.45%) Java
4 15 (4.09%) JavaScript
5 11 (3.00%) PowerShell
6 9 (2.45%) Perl
7 7 (1.91%) Go
7 7 (1.91%) Kotlin
8 5 (1.36%) Bash
8 5 (1.36%) Shell Script
9 3 (0.82%) C#
9 3 (0.82%) Korn
10 2 (0.54%) R
11 1 (0.27%) Bicep
11 1 (0.27%) C++
11 1 (0.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 1 (0.27%) PL/SQL
11 1 (0.27%) Swift
11 1 (0.27%) TypeScript
11 1 (0.27%) VB
Qualifications
1 164 (44.69%) Security Cleared
2 112 (30.52%) SC Cleared
3 80 (21.80%) Computer Science Degree
4 31 (8.45%) Master's Degree
5 25 (6.81%) CISSP
6 22 (5.99%) PMI Certification
6 22 (5.99%) PMP
7 16 (4.36%) Cisco Certification
7 16 (4.36%) DV Cleared
8 15 (4.09%) CISM
8 15 (4.09%) CREST Certified
9 14 (3.81%) CCNP
10 12 (3.27%) Postgraduate
11 11 (3.00%) CHECK Team Member
11 11 (3.00%) Cyber Scheme
12 10 (2.72%) CCNA
13 9 (2.45%) PhD
14 8 (2.18%) BPSS Clearance
15 7 (1.91%) CompTIA Security+
16 6 (1.63%) CompTIA CySA+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 41 (11.17%) PMO
2 36 (9.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 28 (7.63%) NIST
4 27 (7.36%) GDPR
5 24 (6.54%) QA
6 20 (5.45%) PCI DSS
7 13 (3.54%) Data Quality
8 12 (3.27%) NCSC
9 9 (2.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 5 (1.36%) Accessibility
10 5 (1.36%) Government Security Classifications
10 5 (1.36%) ISO/IEC 20000
10 5 (1.36%) NIST 800
10 5 (1.36%) SLA
11 3 (0.82%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.82%) DO-254
11 3 (0.82%) HIPAA
11 3 (0.82%) IEC 61508
11 3 (0.82%) ISO 26262
11 3 (0.82%) P3O
System Software
1 15 (4.09%) Active Directory
1 15 (4.09%) Docker
2 2 (0.54%) Firmware
2 2 (0.54%) Oracle RAC
2 2 (0.54%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (0.27%) Citrix Hypervisor
3 1 (0.27%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 16 (4.36%) Kubernetes
2 13 (3.54%) Nmap
3 9 (2.45%) Terraform
4 5 (1.36%) Ansible
4 5 (1.36%) Grafana
5 4 (1.09%) Microsoft Intune
6 3 (0.82%) Nessus
6 3 (0.82%) Prometheus
6 3 (0.82%) Puppet
7 2 (0.54%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
7 2 (0.54%) Oracle RMAN
7 2 (0.54%) SCCM
8 1 (0.27%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 1 (0.27%) HP ALM
8 1 (0.27%) Istio
8 1 (0.27%) linkerd
8 1 (0.27%) Nagios
8 1 (0.27%) Podman
8 1 (0.27%) SCOM
8 1 (0.27%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 67 (18.26%) Microsoft
2 26 (7.08%) SAP
3 25 (6.81%) IBM
4 21 (5.72%) Oracle
5 16 (4.36%) Cisco
6 12 (3.27%) CheckPoint
6 12 (3.27%) Palo Alto
7 11 (3.00%) Aruba
8 10 (2.72%) ServiceNow
8 10 (2.72%) Splunk
9 7 (1.91%) PayPal
10 6 (1.63%) Atlassian
10 6 (1.63%) Google
11 5 (1.36%) BeyondTrust
11 5 (1.36%) CyberArk
12 4 (1.09%) ESRI
12 4 (1.09%) Intergraph
12 4 (1.09%) Red Hat
12 4 (1.09%) Salesforce
12 4 (1.09%) Tenable