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

6 months to
30 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 26 24 14
Rank change year-on-year -2 -10 +12
Contract jobs citing Degree 384 205 493
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 6.39% 6.99% 8.78%
As % of the Qualifications category 14.13% 17.57% 19.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 204 120 247
10th Percentile £204 £248 £205
25th Percentile £350 £358 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £553 £608
90th Percentile £709 £625 £638
England median daily rate £500 £511 £500
% change year-on-year -2.08% +2.13% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 73 26 84
10th Percentile £31.25 £21.33 £17.80
25th Percentile £52.00 £34.48 £24.65
Median hourly rate £84.00 £56.75 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year +48.02% -1.05% +27.44%
75th Percentile £88.00 £75.00 £61.30
90th Percentile - - £65.00
England median hourly rate £55.00 £51.25 £40.13
% change year-on-year +7.32% +27.73% -13.24%

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 2,718 1,167 2,509
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 45.26% 39.79% 44.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,844 741 1,452
10th Percentile £316 £263 £350
25th Percentile £438 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £531 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.06% -4.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £625 £603 £650
90th Percentile £725 £675 £735
England median daily rate £525 £525 £538
% change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 276 81 219
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.50 £17.76
25th Percentile £25.77 £28.00 £27.12
Median hourly rate £55.00 £55.00 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year - -4.10% -4.42%
75th Percentile £84.00 £71.25 £69.38
90th Percentile £88.00 £78.36 £87.09
England median hourly rate £47.50 £32.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +46.15% -18.75% -27.27%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 +1 197 £489 +2.89% 181
Berkshire +5 125 £400 -15.79% 91
Hampshire +1 99 £550 +6.80% 121
Buckinghamshire -10 39 £570 +5.07% 50
Oxfordshire -4 33 £525 +16.67% 44
Surrey -19 33 £208 -43.54% 63
Kent +2 13 £445 +61.82% 25
West Sussex -18 13 £275 -14.06% 17
East Sussex -2 4 £600 - 10
Sussex - 4 £275 - 6
Home Counties - 3 - -
Middlesex - 1 £198 - 15
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 12 (3.13%) SharePoint
2 10 (2.60%) Confluence
3 5 (1.30%) Microsoft Exchange
4 3 (0.78%) Apache Spark
4 3 (0.78%) MS Project Server
5 2 (0.52%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 2 (0.52%) CMS
6 1 (0.26%) Apache
6 1 (0.26%) Apache Pulsar
6 1 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 51 (13.28%) Microsoft Office
2 39 (10.16%) Microsoft Excel
3 27 (7.03%) Microsoft Project
4 21 (5.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.78%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 11 (2.86%) SAP S/4HANA
2 7 (1.82%) Primavera
3 2 (0.52%) Payment Gateway
3 2 (0.52%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.26%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.26%) SAP Hybris
4 1 (0.26%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.26%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 74 (19.27%) Azure
2 49 (12.76%) AWS
3 25 (6.51%) Entra ID
4 24 (6.25%) Microsoft 365
5 15 (3.91%) Power Platform
6 13 (3.39%) GCP
7 11 (2.86%) SaaS
8 8 (2.08%) Azure DevOps
8 8 (2.08%) IaaS
9 7 (1.82%) GitHub
9 7 (1.82%) GitHub Actions
10 6 (1.56%) OneDrive
10 6 (1.56%) PaaS
11 4 (1.04%) Power Automate
12 3 (0.78%) Lucidchart
12 3 (0.78%) Sauce Labs
12 3 (0.78%) Serverless
13 2 (0.52%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 2 (0.52%) AWS CloudFormation
13 2 (0.52%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 27 (7.03%) Firewall
2 17 (4.43%) WAN
3 15 (3.91%) DNS
3 15 (3.91%) LAN
4 13 (3.39%) Network Security
4 13 (3.39%) TCP/IP
5 10 (2.60%) Wireless
6 9 (2.34%) BGP
6 9 (2.34%) DHCP
6 9 (2.34%) OSPF
7 6 (1.56%) HTTP
7 6 (1.56%) IPsec
7 6 (1.56%) Structured Cabling
8 4 (1.04%) RSVP
8 4 (1.04%) SSH
8 4 (1.04%) VXLAN
9 3 (0.78%) Ethernet
9 3 (0.78%) NAS
9 3 (0.78%) SAN
9 3 (0.78%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (3.91%) Relational Database
2 14 (3.65%) SQL Server
3 13 (3.39%) MySQL
3 13 (3.39%) Power BI
4 6 (1.56%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (1.04%) Tableau
6 3 (0.78%) Big Data
6 3 (0.78%) Oracle Database
7 2 (0.52%) BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
7 2 (0.52%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.52%) Elasticsearch
7 2 (0.52%) Hadoop
8 1 (0.26%) Amazon RDS
8 1 (0.26%) Data Mining
8 1 (0.26%) DynamoDB
8 1 (0.26%) Metadata
8 1 (0.26%) NoSQL
8 1 (0.26%) Oracle Reports
8 1 (0.26%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 28 (7.29%) Rational DOORS
2 17 (4.43%) JIRA
3 8 (2.08%) Burp Suite
3 8 (2.08%) Git
3 8 (2.08%) Metasploit
4 7 (1.82%) CircleCI
4 7 (1.82%) GitLab
4 7 (1.82%) Gradle
5 6 (1.56%) JUnit
6 4 (1.04%) Jenkins
7 3 (0.78%) Android Studio
7 3 (0.78%) Browser DevTools
7 3 (0.78%) Eclipse
7 3 (0.78%) Xcode
8 2 (0.52%) Balsamiq
8 2 (0.52%) Selenium
8 2 (0.52%) SonarQube
8 2 (0.52%) Visual Studio
9 1 (0.26%) Artifactory
9 1 (0.26%) Bitbucket
General
1 152 (39.58%) Social Skills
2 64 (16.67%) Finance
3 60 (15.63%) Analytical Skills
4 58 (15.10%) Aerospace
5 42 (10.94%) Public Sector
6 21 (5.47%) Documentation Skills
7 16 (4.17%) Organisational Skills
8 14 (3.65%) Law
8 14 (3.65%) Manufacturing
9 12 (3.13%) Marketing
10 10 (2.60%) Influencing Skills
11 8 (2.08%) Legal
11 8 (2.08%) Presentation Skills
12 7 (1.82%) Retail
12 7 (1.82%) Telecoms
13 6 (1.56%) Aviation
13 6 (1.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 5 (1.30%) Military
15 3 (0.78%) Banking
15 3 (0.78%) Billing
Job Titles
1 52 (13.54%) Senior
2 50 (13.02%) Analyst
3 32 (8.33%) Product Manager
4 29 (7.55%) Delivery Manager
5 28 (7.29%) Product Delivery Manager
6 27 (7.03%) IT Manager
7 26 (6.77%) Project Manager
8 24 (6.25%) Lead
8 24 (6.25%) Senior Manager
9 22 (5.73%) Systems Delivery Manager
9 22 (5.73%) Systems Manager
10 21 (5.47%) Architect
11 19 (4.95%) Technical Support
12 17 (4.43%) Category Manager
13 15 (3.91%) IT Services Manager
13 15 (3.91%) Senior Category Manager
13 15 (3.91%) Senior IT Manager
13 15 (3.91%) Senior Service Manager
14 14 (3.65%) Senior Analyst
15 12 (3.13%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (3.91%) Oracle Fusion
2 12 (3.13%) REST
3 10 (2.60%) OAuth
4 9 (2.34%) SailPoint
5 8 (2.08%) LDAP
5 8 (2.08%) OAuth2
5 8 (2.08%) OpenID
5 8 (2.08%) React
5 8 (2.08%) SAML
5 8 (2.08%) Web Services
6 7 (1.82%) RAML
7 6 (1.56%) Android Jetpack
8 5 (1.30%) CSS
8 5 (1.30%) Dagger
8 5 (1.30%) GraphQL
8 5 (1.30%) Jetpack Compose
8 5 (1.30%) Kafka
8 5 (1.30%) OkHttp
8 5 (1.30%) RxJava
8 5 (1.30%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 43 (11.20%) Product Ownership
2 31 (8.07%) Management Information System
3 26 (6.77%) Data Centre
4 25 (6.51%) Data Structures
5 23 (5.99%) Onboarding
6 19 (4.95%) Virtual Team
7 10 (2.60%) Data Protection Act
7 10 (2.60%) Security Posture
7 10 (2.60%) Self-Motivation
8 8 (2.08%) PMI
8 8 (2.08%) Robotics
9 7 (1.82%) Cloud Native
9 7 (1.82%) Legacy Code
9 7 (1.82%) Mobile App
9 7 (1.82%) Security Operations Centre
10 6 (1.56%) Analytical Mindset
10 6 (1.56%) BYOD
10 6 (1.56%) Life Science
11 5 (1.30%) CCTV
11 5 (1.30%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 73 (19.01%) Windows
2 49 (12.76%) Linux
3 32 (8.33%) Unix
4 13 (3.39%) Android
5 12 (3.13%) Windows Server
6 10 (2.60%) Apple iOS
7 8 (2.08%) Windows 10
8 6 (1.56%) Mac OS
9 4 (1.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 2 (0.52%) OpenVMS
10 2 (0.52%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.52%) Windows Server 2012
11 1 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 157 (40.89%) Computer Science
2 89 (23.18%) Agile
3 79 (20.57%) Continuous Improvement
4 73 (19.01%) Problem-Solving
5 67 (17.45%) Cybersecurity
6 56 (14.58%) Information Security
7 53 (13.80%) Change Control
8 50 (13.02%) PRINCE2
9 49 (12.76%) Decision-Making
9 49 (12.76%) Stakeholder Management
10 48 (12.50%) Project Management
11 45 (11.72%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 44 (11.46%) Systems Engineering
13 41 (10.68%) ITSM
14 40 (10.42%) AI
14 40 (10.42%) ITIL
15 33 (8.59%) Scaled Agile Framework
16 32 (8.33%) CI/CD
16 32 (8.33%) Programme Management
17 29 (7.55%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 48 (12.50%) Python
2 25 (6.51%) PowerShell
3 22 (5.73%) Java
4 21 (5.47%) SQL
5 17 (4.43%) JavaScript
6 12 (3.13%) Perl
7 8 (2.08%) Kotlin
8 6 (1.56%) Shell Script
9 5 (1.30%) Bash
10 3 (0.78%) C
10 3 (0.78%) C++
10 3 (0.78%) Korn
11 2 (0.52%) Ada
11 2 (0.52%) C#
11 2 (0.52%) Go
11 2 (0.52%) R
11 2 (0.52%) Rust
12 1 (0.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.26%) Swift
12 1 (0.26%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 169 (44.01%) Security Cleared
2 108 (28.13%) SC Cleared
3 67 (17.45%) Computer Science Degree
4 21 (5.47%) Cisco Certification
4 21 (5.47%) CISSP
5 17 (4.43%) DV Cleared
6 15 (3.91%) PMI Certification
6 15 (3.91%) PMP
7 14 (3.65%) CCNP
7 14 (3.65%) Master's Degree
8 13 (3.39%) CISM
9 11 (2.86%) CompTIA Security+
10 10 (2.60%) ACCA
10 10 (2.60%) BPSS Clearance
10 10 (2.60%) CIMA
11 9 (2.34%) CESG Certified Professional
12 8 (2.08%) CCNA
12 8 (2.08%) CHECK Team Member
12 8 (2.08%) CREST Certified
12 8 (2.08%) Cyber Scheme
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 47 (12.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 42 (10.94%) NIST
3 25 (6.51%) PMO
4 19 (4.95%) GDPR
4 19 (4.95%) QA
5 15 (3.91%) PCI DSS
6 14 (3.65%) NCSC
7 9 (2.34%) Data Quality
8 8 (2.08%) NIST 800
9 7 (1.82%) Cyber Essentials
9 7 (1.82%) SLA
10 6 (1.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 5 (1.30%) Government Security Classifications
11 5 (1.30%) ISO/IEC 20000
12 4 (1.04%) Accessibility
12 4 (1.04%) ISO 31000
13 3 (0.78%) DO-254
13 3 (0.78%) IEC 61508
13 3 (0.78%) ISO 26262
13 3 (0.78%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 37 (9.64%) Active Directory
2 11 (2.86%) Docker
3 8 (2.08%) VMware Infrastructure
4 7 (1.82%) Firmware
5 4 (1.04%) Embedded Firmware
6 3 (0.78%) VMware NSX
7 2 (0.52%) Hyper-V
7 2 (0.52%) Oracle RAC
8 1 (0.26%) Citrix Hypervisor
8 1 (0.26%) UAG
8 1 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 13 (3.39%) Kubernetes
2 9 (2.34%) Microsoft Intune
3 8 (2.08%) Nmap
3 8 (2.08%) Terraform
4 6 (1.56%) Grafana
5 5 (1.30%) Jamf Pro
5 5 (1.30%) Prometheus
6 4 (1.04%) Ansible
6 4 (1.04%) Single Sign-On
7 3 (0.78%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 3 (0.78%) Puppet
8 2 (0.52%) Nessus
8 2 (0.52%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
8 2 (0.52%) Oracle RMAN
8 2 (0.52%) Podman
8 2 (0.52%) vCenter Server
9 1 (0.26%) Dell DRAC
9 1 (0.26%) HP ALM
9 1 (0.26%) Istio
9 1 (0.26%) linkerd
Vendors
1 75 (19.53%) Microsoft
2 40 (10.42%) Oracle
3 34 (8.85%) SAP
4 25 (6.51%) IBM
5 17 (4.43%) ServiceNow
6 16 (4.17%) Cisco
7 15 (3.91%) Ariba
8 11 (2.86%) BeyondTrust
8 11 (2.86%) CyberArk
8 11 (2.86%) Palo Alto
9 10 (2.60%) CheckPoint
9 10 (2.60%) Splunk
9 10 (2.60%) VMware
10 9 (2.34%) Aruba
11 6 (1.56%) Salesforce
12 5 (1.30%) Dell
12 5 (1.30%) Tenable
12 5 (1.30%) Workday
13 4 (1.04%) Juniper
13 4 (1.04%) Red Hat