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 12 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 24 14
Rank change year-on-year -3 -10 +15
Contract jobs citing Degree 368 232 504
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 6.26% 7.73% 9.14%
As % of the Qualifications category 13.73% 19.08% 20.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 204 126 257
10th Percentile £204 £255 £205
25th Percentile £348 £399 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £496 £497 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.20% -0.60% -
75th Percentile £575 £588 £608
90th Percentile £654 £648 £643
England median daily rate £500 £515 £510
% change year-on-year -2.91% +0.98% -5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 64 26 85
10th Percentile £51.25 £17.50 £17.80
25th Percentile £80.50 £35.17 £26.73
Median hourly rate £84.00 £58.38 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year +43.90% +1.79% +27.44%
75th Percentile £88.00 £75.00 £61.30
90th Percentile - £76.68 £66.20
England median hourly rate £65.00 £53.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +21.50% +33.75% -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 2,681 1,216 2,459
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 45.59% 40.49% 44.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,814 775 1,427
10th Percentile £309 £300 £329
25th Percentile £431 £425 £449
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £688 £738
England median daily rate £525 £525 £538
% change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 264 80 210
10th Percentile £16.35 £19.82 £17.38
25th Percentile £24.41 £28.00 £25.70
Median hourly rate £55.00 £57.13 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year -3.72% -0.39% -1.97%
75th Percentile £84.00 £71.88 £66.94
90th Percentile £89.46 £78.52 £85.65
England median hourly rate £48.05 £40.84 £40.00
% change year-on-year +17.65% +2.10% -23.81%

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 12 May 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 12 May 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 12 May 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 +1 191 £496 +4.15% 219
Berkshire 0 124 £400 -15.79% 98
Hampshire +3 89 £550 +3.29% 121
Buckinghamshire -8 39 £582 +7.19% 59
Surrey -12 33 £208 -53.89% 62
Oxfordshire -7 28 £525 +10.53% 67
Kent +1 16 £445 +27.14% 32
West Sussex -13 12 £275 -21.43% 13
Sussex -1 4 £275 -41.02% 7
East Sussex -3 4 £600 -4.00% 16
Home Counties - 3 - -
Middlesex -3 1 £198 -73.67% 12
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 9 (2.45%) Confluence
2 8 (2.17%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.36%) Microsoft Exchange
4 3 (0.82%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 3 (0.82%) Apache Spark
4 3 (0.82%) CMS
4 3 (0.82%) MS Project Server
5 1 (0.27%) Apache
5 1 (0.27%) Apache Pulsar
5 1 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 53 (14.40%) Microsoft Office
2 45 (12.23%) Microsoft Excel
3 30 (8.15%) Microsoft Project
4 21 (5.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.82%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 12 (3.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 8 (2.17%) Primavera
3 2 (0.54%) Payment Gateway
4 1 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.27%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.27%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.27%) SAP Hybris
4 1 (0.27%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 64 (17.39%) Azure
2 45 (12.23%) AWS
3 23 (6.25%) Microsoft 365
4 19 (5.16%) Entra ID
5 17 (4.62%) Power Platform
6 12 (3.26%) SaaS
7 11 (2.99%) GCP
8 8 (2.17%) Azure DevOps
8 8 (2.17%) GitHub
8 8 (2.17%) GitHub Actions
8 8 (2.17%) IaaS
9 6 (1.63%) PaaS
10 4 (1.09%) Power Automate
11 3 (0.82%) Lucidchart
11 3 (0.82%) Sauce Labs
12 2 (0.54%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 2 (0.54%) AWS CloudFormation
12 2 (0.54%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
12 2 (0.54%) Serverless
12 2 (0.54%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 32 (8.70%) Firewall
2 20 (5.43%) WAN
3 17 (4.62%) LAN
4 13 (3.53%) Wireless
5 12 (3.26%) BGP
5 12 (3.26%) OSPF
6 11 (2.99%) Network Security
7 9 (2.45%) DNS
7 9 (2.45%) IPsec
7 9 (2.45%) Structured Cabling
8 8 (2.17%) TCP/IP
9 6 (1.63%) HTTP
10 4 (1.09%) RSVP
10 4 (1.09%) SSH
11 3 (0.82%) DHCP
11 3 (0.82%) Ethernet
11 3 (0.82%) NAS
11 3 (0.82%) Radio Access Network
11 3 (0.82%) SAN
11 3 (0.82%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (4.08%) Power BI
1 15 (4.08%) Relational Database
2 14 (3.80%) MySQL
2 14 (3.80%) SQL Server
3 5 (1.36%) BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
3 5 (1.36%) PostgreSQL
4 3 (0.82%) Big Data
4 3 (0.82%) Oracle Database
4 3 (0.82%) Tableau
5 2 (0.54%) Data Warehouse
5 2 (0.54%) Hadoop
6 1 (0.27%) Amazon RDS
6 1 (0.27%) Data Mining
6 1 (0.27%) DynamoDB
6 1 (0.27%) Metadata
6 1 (0.27%) NoSQL
6 1 (0.27%) Oracle Reports
6 1 (0.27%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 28 (7.61%) Rational DOORS
2 19 (5.16%) JIRA
3 11 (2.99%) Burp Suite
3 11 (2.99%) Metasploit
4 7 (1.90%) CircleCI
4 7 (1.90%) Git
4 7 (1.90%) Gradle
5 6 (1.63%) GitLab
5 6 (1.63%) JUnit
6 5 (1.36%) Jenkins
7 3 (0.82%) Android Studio
7 3 (0.82%) Browser DevTools
7 3 (0.82%) Eclipse
7 3 (0.82%) Selenium
7 3 (0.82%) Xcode
8 2 (0.54%) Balsamiq
8 2 (0.54%) Visual Studio
8 2 (0.54%) WebDriver
9 1 (0.27%) Cypress.io
9 1 (0.27%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 130 (35.33%) Social Skills
2 62 (16.85%) Analytical Skills
3 57 (15.49%) Aerospace
4 55 (14.95%) Finance
5 35 (9.51%) Public Sector
6 23 (6.25%) Documentation Skills
7 17 (4.62%) Manufacturing
7 17 (4.62%) Organisational Skills
8 15 (4.08%) Law
9 14 (3.80%) Influencing Skills
10 12 (3.26%) Marketing
11 8 (2.17%) Legal
11 8 (2.17%) Presentation Skills
12 7 (1.90%) Telecoms
13 6 (1.63%) Aviation
13 6 (1.63%) Retail
14 5 (1.36%) Military
15 3 (0.82%) Avionics
15 3 (0.82%) Billing
15 3 (0.82%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 45 (12.23%) Analyst
2 36 (9.78%) Senior
3 33 (8.97%) Product Manager
4 31 (8.42%) Delivery Manager
5 28 (7.61%) Product Delivery Manager
5 28 (7.61%) Project Manager
6 25 (6.79%) Lead
7 22 (5.98%) Systems Delivery Manager
7 22 (5.98%) Systems Manager
8 20 (5.43%) Technical Support
9 19 (5.16%) Architect
10 15 (4.08%) IT Manager
11 12 (3.26%) SC Cleared Project Manager
11 12 (3.26%) Senior Analyst
12 11 (2.99%) Financial Analyst
12 11 (2.99%) Network Engineer
12 11 (2.99%) Penetration Tester
12 11 (2.99%) Senior Manager
12 11 (2.99%) Tester
13 10 (2.72%) Senior Financial Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (2.99%) REST
2 8 (2.17%) React
3 7 (1.90%) OAuth
3 7 (1.90%) RAML
3 7 (1.90%) SailPoint
3 7 (1.90%) Web Services
4 6 (1.63%) Android Jetpack
4 6 (1.63%) LDAP
4 6 (1.63%) OAuth2
4 6 (1.63%) SAML
5 5 (1.36%) ADO
5 5 (1.36%) AngularJS
5 5 (1.36%) CSS
5 5 (1.36%) Dagger
5 5 (1.36%) GraphQL
5 5 (1.36%) Jetpack Compose
5 5 (1.36%) OkHttp
5 5 (1.36%) OpenID
5 5 (1.36%) RxJava
5 5 (1.36%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 41 (11.14%) Product Ownership
2 32 (8.70%) Management Information System
3 24 (6.52%) Data Structures
4 23 (6.25%) Data Centre
5 20 (5.43%) Onboarding
5 20 (5.43%) Virtual Team
6 12 (3.26%) Security Posture
7 10 (2.72%) Data Protection Act
7 10 (2.72%) PMI
8 9 (2.45%) Analytical Mindset
9 8 (2.17%) Robotics
9 8 (2.17%) Security Operations Centre
10 7 (1.90%) Legacy Code
10 7 (1.90%) Mobile App
10 7 (1.90%) Self-Motivation
11 6 (1.63%) BYOD
11 6 (1.63%) Cloud Native
12 5 (1.36%) CCTV
12 5 (1.36%) Cyberattack
12 5 (1.36%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 68 (18.48%) Windows
2 46 (12.50%) Linux
3 31 (8.42%) Unix
4 12 (3.26%) Android
4 12 (3.26%) Windows Server
5 7 (1.90%) Windows 10
6 4 (1.09%) Apple iOS
6 4 (1.09%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 2 (0.54%) OpenVMS
7 2 (0.54%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.54%) Windows Server 2012
8 1 (0.27%) Mac OS
8 1 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 156 (42.39%) Computer Science
2 86 (23.37%) Agile
3 77 (20.92%) Continuous Improvement
4 67 (18.21%) Cybersecurity
5 64 (17.39%) Problem-Solving
6 53 (14.40%) Project Management
7 52 (14.13%) Change Control
7 52 (14.13%) PRINCE2
8 49 (13.32%) Stakeholder Management
9 45 (12.23%) Information Security
10 44 (11.96%) Systems Engineering
11 43 (11.68%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 35 (9.51%) ITSM
13 33 (8.97%) ITIL
14 32 (8.70%) AI
14 32 (8.70%) Decision-Making
14 32 (8.70%) Programme Management
14 32 (8.70%) Scaled Agile Framework
15 30 (8.15%) CI/CD
16 27 (7.34%) Model-Based Systems Engineering
Programming Languages
1 44 (11.96%) Python
2 25 (6.79%) Java
3 22 (5.98%) PowerShell
4 21 (5.71%) SQL
5 18 (4.89%) JavaScript
6 13 (3.53%) Perl
7 8 (2.17%) Kotlin
8 5 (1.36%) Bash
9 4 (1.09%) Shell Script
10 3 (0.82%) C
10 3 (0.82%) C#
10 3 (0.82%) C++
10 3 (0.82%) Korn
11 2 (0.54%) Ada
11 2 (0.54%) Go
11 2 (0.54%) R
12 1 (0.27%) Bicep
12 1 (0.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.27%) Swift
12 1 (0.27%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 171 (46.47%) Security Cleared
2 112 (30.43%) SC Cleared
3 67 (18.21%) Computer Science Degree
4 22 (5.98%) Cisco Certification
5 20 (5.43%) CISSP
6 18 (4.89%) PMI Certification
6 18 (4.89%) PMP
7 16 (4.35%) CCNP
7 16 (4.35%) DV Cleared
8 15 (4.08%) Master's Degree
9 12 (3.26%) CISM
9 12 (3.26%) CREST Certified
10 11 (2.99%) CHECK Team Member
10 11 (2.99%) CompTIA Security+
10 11 (2.99%) Cyber Scheme
10 11 (2.99%) Postgraduate
11 10 (2.72%) ACCA
11 10 (2.72%) CIMA
12 9 (2.45%) CCNA
12 9 (2.45%) CESG Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 48 (13.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 40 (10.87%) NIST
3 31 (8.42%) PMO
4 23 (6.25%) QA
5 22 (5.98%) GDPR
6 18 (4.89%) PCI DSS
7 14 (3.80%) NCSC
8 8 (2.17%) Data Quality
8 8 (2.17%) NIST 800
9 7 (1.90%) Cyber Essentials
9 7 (1.90%) SLA
10 6 (1.63%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 5 (1.36%) Government Security Classifications
11 5 (1.36%) ISO/IEC 20000
12 4 (1.09%) Accessibility
12 4 (1.09%) ISO 31000
13 3 (0.82%) DO-254
13 3 (0.82%) IEC 61508
13 3 (0.82%) ISO 26262
13 3 (0.82%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 32 (8.70%) Active Directory
2 9 (2.45%) Docker
3 7 (1.90%) Firmware
4 6 (1.63%) VMware Infrastructure
5 4 (1.09%) Embedded Firmware
6 2 (0.54%) Oracle RAC
6 2 (0.54%) VMware NSX
7 1 (0.27%) Citrix Hypervisor
7 1 (0.27%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.27%) UAG
7 1 (0.27%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 11 (2.99%) Kubernetes
1 11 (2.99%) Nmap
2 8 (2.17%) Terraform
3 4 (1.09%) Ansible
3 4 (1.09%) Grafana
4 3 (0.82%) Microsoft Intune
4 3 (0.82%) Prometheus
4 3 (0.82%) Single Sign-On
5 2 (0.54%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 2 (0.54%) Nessus
5 2 (0.54%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
5 2 (0.54%) Oracle RMAN
5 2 (0.54%) Puppet
5 2 (0.54%) vCenter Server
6 1 (0.27%) Dell DRAC
6 1 (0.27%) HP ALM
6 1 (0.27%) Kubeflow
6 1 (0.27%) Nagios
6 1 (0.27%) Podman
6 1 (0.27%) SCCM
Vendors
1 70 (19.02%) Microsoft
2 29 (7.88%) Oracle
3 27 (7.34%) SAP
4 25 (6.79%) IBM
5 17 (4.62%) Cisco
6 13 (3.53%) Palo Alto
7 12 (3.26%) CheckPoint
8 11 (2.99%) Aruba
9 10 (2.72%) Splunk
10 9 (2.45%) BeyondTrust
10 9 (2.45%) CyberArk
10 9 (2.45%) ServiceNow
11 8 (2.17%) VMware
12 5 (1.36%) Salesforce
12 5 (1.36%) Workday
13 4 (1.09%) Dell
13 4 (1.09%) Red Hat
13 4 (1.09%) Tenable
14 3 (0.82%) Ariba
14 3 (0.82%) Siemens