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 2 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 29 22 13
Rank change year-on-year -7 -9 +12
Contract jobs citing Degree 347 233 493
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 6.28% 7.89% 8.74%
As % of the Qualifications category 13.51% 19.80% 19.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 189 124 255
10th Percentile £272 £254 £202
25th Percentile £400 £409 £291
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - +1.01%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £608
90th Percentile £651 £675 £645
England median daily rate £500 £525 £513
% change year-on-year -4.76% +2.44% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 64 25 80
10th Percentile £24.84 £17.50 £17.80
25th Percentile £80.38 £44.51 £26.39
Median hourly rate £84.00 £61.76 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year +36.01% +7.69% +27.44%
75th Percentile £88.00 £75.00 £61.30
90th Percentile - £77.02 £67.00
England median hourly rate £51.77 £53.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year -3.23% +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 2,569 1,177 2,525
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 46.50% 39.86% 44.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,710 764 1,430
10th Percentile £306 £304 £263
25th Percentile £425 £437 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - +4.76%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £688 £719
England median daily rate £520 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 264 85 200
10th Percentile £15.62 £19.09 £17.80
25th Percentile £20.50 £28.00 £26.39
Median hourly rate £52.25 £56.75 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year -7.92% -1.05% +9.24%
75th Percentile £84.00 £70.00 £66.81
90th Percentile £89.46 £76.51 £84.40
England median hourly rate £37.00 £50.00 £37.50
% change year-on-year -26.00% +33.33% -25.00%

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 2 April 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 2 April 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 2 April 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 -3 186 £475 -5.00% 191
Berkshire +1 138 £400 -17.65% 94
Hampshire +4 85 £523 +0.48% 113
Buckinghamshire -1 35 £560 +6.16% 47
Surrey -19 27 £525 +5.00% 70
West Sussex -11 16 £348 -18.24% 14
Kent -2 13 £445 +27.14% 34
Oxfordshire -13 13 £525 -25.00% 53
East Sussex -6 5 £588 -11.32% 21
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 12 (3.46%) SharePoint
2 10 (2.88%) Confluence
3 4 (1.15%) Microsoft Exchange
4 3 (0.86%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 3 (0.86%) Apache Spark
4 3 (0.86%) CMS
4 3 (0.86%) MS Project Server
5 1 (0.29%) Apache
5 1 (0.29%) Apache Pulsar
5 1 (0.29%) Oracle Workflow
5 1 (0.29%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 57 (16.43%) Microsoft Office
2 49 (14.12%) Microsoft Excel
3 38 (10.95%) Microsoft Project
4 21 (6.05%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.58%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.29%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 12 (3.46%) Primavera
2 8 (2.31%) SAP S/4HANA
3 5 (1.44%) SAP ERP
4 2 (0.58%) Payment Gateway
4 2 (0.58%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.58%) Teamcenter
5 1 (0.29%) Dynamics GP
5 1 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.29%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.29%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 53 (15.27%) Azure
2 46 (13.26%) AWS
3 18 (5.19%) Power Platform
4 16 (4.61%) Microsoft 365
5 13 (3.75%) GCP
6 9 (2.59%) Azure DevOps
6 9 (2.59%) GitHub
6 9 (2.59%) GitHub Actions
7 8 (2.31%) Entra ID
8 5 (1.44%) SaaS
9 4 (1.15%) IaaS
10 3 (0.86%) Amazon EKS
10 3 (0.86%) Amazon S3
10 3 (0.86%) AWS CloudFormation
10 3 (0.86%) Power Automate
11 2 (0.58%) Amazon EC2
11 2 (0.58%) Amazon ECS
11 2 (0.58%) Azure Sentinel
11 2 (0.58%) PaaS
11 2 (0.58%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 29 (8.36%) Firewall
2 17 (4.90%) WAN
3 14 (4.03%) LAN
3 14 (4.03%) Wireless
4 13 (3.75%) Network Security
5 10 (2.88%) BGP
5 10 (2.88%) OSPF
6 9 (2.59%) IPsec
6 9 (2.59%) Structured Cabling
7 8 (2.31%) DNS
7 8 (2.31%) TCP/IP
8 7 (2.02%) Unified Communications
9 6 (1.73%) HTTP
10 4 (1.15%) WebEx
11 3 (0.86%) Ethernet
11 3 (0.86%) SAN
11 3 (0.86%) SSH
12 2 (0.58%) Internet
12 2 (0.58%) NAS
12 2 (0.58%) Radio Access Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (4.90%) Power BI
2 11 (3.17%) Relational Database
2 11 (3.17%) SQL Server
3 10 (2.88%) MySQL
4 7 (2.02%) PostgreSQL
5 6 (1.73%) BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
6 4 (1.15%) Big Data
7 3 (0.86%) Data Warehouse
7 3 (0.86%) Oracle Database
7 3 (0.86%) Tableau
8 2 (0.58%) Amazon RDS
8 2 (0.58%) Hadoop
8 2 (0.58%) Metadata
8 2 (0.58%) NoSQL
8 2 (0.58%) Oracle Reports
9 1 (0.29%) Apache Cassandra
9 1 (0.29%) Couchbase
9 1 (0.29%) Data Mining
9 1 (0.29%) DynamoDB
9 1 (0.29%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 28 (8.07%) Rational DOORS
2 21 (6.05%) JIRA
3 13 (3.75%) Burp Suite
4 11 (3.17%) Metasploit
5 9 (2.59%) Git
6 7 (2.02%) CircleCI
6 7 (2.02%) Gradle
7 6 (1.73%) GitLab
8 5 (1.44%) Jenkins
8 5 (1.44%) JUnit
9 3 (0.86%) Selenium
10 2 (0.58%) Balsamiq
10 2 (0.58%) Cypress.io
10 2 (0.58%) Visual Studio
10 2 (0.58%) WebDriver
11 1 (0.29%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.29%) Bitbucket
11 1 (0.29%) Maven
11 1 (0.29%) SoapUI
11 1 (0.29%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 132 (38.04%) Social Skills
2 58 (16.71%) Analytical Skills
3 53 (15.27%) Aerospace
4 48 (13.83%) Finance
5 25 (7.20%) Public Sector
6 18 (5.19%) Influencing Skills
6 18 (5.19%) Manufacturing
7 17 (4.90%) Documentation Skills
8 13 (3.75%) Organisational Skills
9 10 (2.88%) Presentation Skills
10 9 (2.59%) Legal
10 9 (2.59%) Marketing
11 8 (2.31%) Law
12 7 (2.02%) Telecoms
13 6 (1.73%) Retail
14 4 (1.15%) Electronics
14 4 (1.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 4 (1.15%) Military
15 3 (0.86%) Advertising
15 3 (0.86%) Billing
Job Titles
1 42 (12.10%) Analyst
2 33 (9.51%) Product Manager
3 32 (9.22%) Delivery Manager
4 30 (8.65%) Senior
5 28 (8.07%) Product Delivery Manager
5 28 (8.07%) Project Manager
6 25 (7.20%) Lead
7 22 (6.34%) Systems Delivery Manager
7 22 (6.34%) Systems Manager
8 15 (4.32%) Architect
9 14 (4.03%) Technical Support
10 12 (3.46%) Consultant
10 12 (3.46%) Penetration Tester
10 12 (3.46%) Project Planner
10 12 (3.46%) SC Cleared Project Manager
10 12 (3.46%) Tester
11 11 (3.17%) Developer
12 10 (2.88%) Security Engineer
13 9 (2.59%) Network Engineer
14 8 (2.31%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (3.17%) REST
2 7 (2.02%) RAML
3 6 (1.73%) Android Jetpack
4 5 (1.44%) ADO
4 5 (1.44%) Dagger
4 5 (1.44%) Jetpack Compose
4 5 (1.44%) OkHttp
4 5 (1.44%) React
4 5 (1.44%) RxJava
4 5 (1.44%) WireMock
5 4 (1.15%) Kafka
6 3 (0.86%) HTML
6 3 (0.86%) Spring
6 3 (0.86%) Web Services
7 2 (0.58%) HTML5
7 2 (0.58%) JSR 170
7 2 (0.58%) OAuth
7 2 (0.58%) OSGi
7 2 (0.58%) RabbitMQ
7 2 (0.58%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 41 (11.82%) Product Ownership
2 36 (10.37%) Management Information System
3 24 (6.92%) Data Structures
4 19 (5.48%) Data Centre
4 19 (5.48%) Virtual Team
5 13 (3.75%) Security Posture
6 11 (3.17%) Analytical Mindset
6 11 (3.17%) Data Protection Act
6 11 (3.17%) Onboarding
6 11 (3.17%) Security Operations Centre
7 10 (2.88%) PMI
8 8 (2.31%) Self-Motivation
9 7 (2.02%) Cloud Native
9 7 (2.02%) Legacy Code
10 6 (1.73%) BYOD
10 6 (1.73%) Driving Licence
11 5 (1.44%) Cyberattack
11 5 (1.44%) Handset
12 4 (1.15%) Algorithms
12 4 (1.15%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 57 (16.43%) Windows
2 33 (9.51%) Linux
3 15 (4.32%) Unix
4 7 (2.02%) Android
4 7 (2.02%) Windows Server
5 6 (1.73%) Windows 10
6 5 (1.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 3 (0.86%) Ubuntu
8 2 (0.58%) Apple iOS
8 2 (0.58%) Kali Linux
8 2 (0.58%) Mac OS
8 2 (0.58%) OpenVMS
8 2 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 145 (41.79%) Computer Science
2 102 (29.39%) Agile
3 70 (20.17%) Continuous Improvement
4 67 (19.31%) Problem-Solving
5 64 (18.44%) Cybersecurity
6 62 (17.87%) PRINCE2
7 55 (15.85%) Project Management
8 45 (12.97%) Stakeholder Management
8 45 (12.97%) Systems Engineering
9 41 (11.82%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 39 (11.24%) Information Security
11 37 (10.66%) Programme Management
12 35 (10.09%) Change Control
13 34 (9.80%) ITIL
14 33 (9.51%) Scaled Agile Framework
15 28 (8.07%) Configuration Management
16 27 (7.78%) AI
16 27 (7.78%) Decision-Making
16 27 (7.78%) Model-Based Systems Engineering
16 27 (7.78%) Requirements Management
Programming Languages
1 31 (8.93%) Python
2 20 (5.76%) Java
2 20 (5.76%) SQL
3 15 (4.32%) JavaScript
4 10 (2.88%) PowerShell
5 9 (2.59%) Perl
6 8 (2.31%) Kotlin
7 5 (1.44%) Bash
8 3 (0.86%) C
8 3 (0.86%) C#
8 3 (0.86%) C++
8 3 (0.86%) Go
8 3 (0.86%) Korn
8 3 (0.86%) Shell Script
9 2 (0.58%) Ada
9 2 (0.58%) R
10 1 (0.29%) Objective-C
10 1 (0.29%) PL/SQL
10 1 (0.29%) Tcl
10 1 (0.29%) VB
Qualifications
1 163 (46.97%) Security Cleared
2 109 (31.41%) SC Cleared
3 70 (20.17%) Computer Science Degree
4 20 (5.76%) CISSP
4 20 (5.76%) Master's Degree
5 17 (4.90%) DV Cleared
5 17 (4.90%) PMI Certification
5 17 (4.90%) PMP
6 16 (4.61%) Cisco Certification
7 15 (4.32%) CREST Certified
8 14 (4.03%) CCNP
9 12 (3.46%) Postgraduate
10 11 (3.17%) CHECK Team Member
10 11 (3.17%) Cyber Scheme
11 10 (2.88%) CCNA
12 9 (2.59%) CISM
12 9 (2.59%) CompTIA Security+
13 8 (2.31%) BPSS Clearance
14 5 (1.44%) CIMA
14 5 (1.44%) CompTIA CySA+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (10.66%) PMO
2 32 (9.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 25 (7.20%) NIST
4 24 (6.92%) GDPR
5 23 (6.63%) QA
6 18 (5.19%) PCI DSS
7 12 (3.46%) NCSC
8 7 (2.02%) Data Quality
9 6 (1.73%) NIST 800
9 6 (1.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 5 (1.44%) Accessibility
10 5 (1.44%) Government Security Classifications
10 5 (1.44%) ISO/IEC 20000
10 5 (1.44%) SLA
11 3 (0.86%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.86%) DO-254
11 3 (0.86%) IEC 61508
11 3 (0.86%) ISO 26262
11 3 (0.86%) P3O
12 2 (0.58%) RMADS
System Software
1 15 (4.32%) Active Directory
2 11 (3.17%) Docker
3 3 (0.86%) Firmware
4 2 (0.58%) Oracle RAC
4 2 (0.58%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.29%) Citrix Hypervisor
5 1 (0.29%) Embedded Firmware
5 1 (0.29%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 13 (3.75%) Nmap
2 12 (3.46%) Kubernetes
3 9 (2.59%) Terraform
4 5 (1.44%) Ansible
4 5 (1.44%) Grafana
5 3 (0.86%) Microsoft Intune
5 3 (0.86%) Nessus
5 3 (0.86%) Prometheus
5 3 (0.86%) Puppet
6 2 (0.58%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
6 2 (0.58%) Oracle RMAN
7 1 (0.29%) HP ALM
7 1 (0.29%) Istio
7 1 (0.29%) Kubeflow
7 1 (0.29%) linkerd
7 1 (0.29%) Nagios
7 1 (0.29%) Podman
7 1 (0.29%) SCCM
7 1 (0.29%) SCOM
7 1 (0.29%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 64 (18.44%) Microsoft
2 28 (8.07%) SAP
3 25 (7.20%) IBM
4 19 (5.48%) Oracle
5 16 (4.61%) Cisco
6 12 (3.46%) CheckPoint
6 12 (3.46%) Palo Alto
7 11 (3.17%) Aruba
8 10 (2.88%) Splunk
9 9 (2.59%) ServiceNow
10 5 (1.44%) BeyondTrust
10 5 (1.44%) CyberArk
11 4 (1.15%) Google
11 4 (1.15%) Red Hat
11 4 (1.15%) Salesforce
11 4 (1.15%) Tenable
12 3 (0.86%) Adobe
12 3 (0.86%) Fortinet
12 3 (0.86%) Siemens
13 2 (0.58%) Veeam