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

6 months to
23 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 26 22 14
Rank change year-on-year -4 -8 +15
Contract jobs citing Degree 360 240 497
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 6.28% 8.02% 8.89%
As % of the Qualifications category 13.70% 19.69% 19.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 200 132 252
10th Percentile £204 £233 £205
25th Percentile £363 £400 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - +4.17%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £608
90th Percentile £701 £650 £638
England median daily rate £500 £520 £514
% change year-on-year -3.75% +1.12% -5.39%
Number of hourly rates quoted 65 27 88
10th Percentile £38.80 £17.50 £17.80
25th Percentile £80.50 £38.28 £27.31
Median hourly rate £84.00 £60.00 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year +40.00% +4.62% +27.44%
75th Percentile £88.00 £75.00 £61.30
90th Percentile - £76.34 £65.00
England median hourly rate £55.00 £54.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +1.85% +35.00% -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 2,627 1,219 2,506
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 45.79% 40.76% 44.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,762 776 1,415
10th Percentile £306 £304 £300
25th Percentile £425 £447 £433
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £540 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.78% -1.82% +4.76%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £646
90th Percentile £725 £688 £725
England median daily rate £520 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 270 85 214
10th Percentile £16.32 £20.03 £16.63
25th Percentile £22.79 £27.11 £25.70
Median hourly rate £54.50 £57.50 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year -5.22% +0.26% +3.33%
75th Percentile £84.00 £71.25 £66.74
90th Percentile £88.00 £79.34 £84.45
England median hourly rate £47.00 £47.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year -1.05% +18.75% -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 23 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 23 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 23 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 -0.26% 168
Berkshire -3 128 £400 -15.79% 73
Hampshire -1 87 £525 - 106
Buckinghamshire -4 38 £593 +12.42% 44
Surrey -19 32 £425 -5.56% 63
Oxfordshire -14 20 £469 -1.32% 55
Kent 0 14 £445 +27.14% 30
West Sussex -10 13 £285 -43.00% 17
Home Counties - 5 £700 -
East Sussex -2 4 £600 -14.29% 17
Sussex -3 3 £275 -41.02% 7
Middlesex -3 1 £198 -73.67% 7
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 10 (2.78%) SharePoint
2 8 (2.22%) Confluence
3 6 (1.67%) Microsoft Exchange
4 3 (0.83%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 3 (0.83%) Apache Spark
4 3 (0.83%) CMS
4 3 (0.83%) MS Project Server
5 1 (0.28%) Apache
5 1 (0.28%) Apache Pulsar
5 1 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
5 1 (0.28%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 56 (15.56%) Microsoft Office
2 51 (14.17%) Microsoft Excel
3 33 (9.17%) Microsoft Project
4 23 (6.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.56%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 12 (3.33%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (2.78%) Primavera
3 4 (1.11%) SAP ERP
4 2 (0.56%) Payment Gateway
5 1 (0.28%) Dynamics GP
5 1 (0.28%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.28%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.28%) SAP Hybris
5 1 (0.28%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 58 (16.11%) Azure
2 47 (13.06%) AWS
3 17 (4.72%) Power Platform
4 16 (4.44%) Microsoft 365
5 13 (3.61%) Entra ID
6 11 (3.06%) GCP
7 8 (2.22%) Azure DevOps
7 8 (2.22%) GitHub
7 8 (2.22%) GitHub Actions
7 8 (2.22%) SaaS
8 5 (1.39%) IaaS
9 3 (0.83%) Amazon EKS
9 3 (0.83%) Amazon S3
9 3 (0.83%) AWS CloudFormation
9 3 (0.83%) Power Automate
10 2 (0.56%) Amazon EC2
10 2 (0.56%) Amazon ECS
10 2 (0.56%) Azure Sentinel
10 2 (0.56%) PaaS
10 2 (0.56%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 31 (8.61%) Firewall
2 20 (5.56%) WAN
3 17 (4.72%) LAN
4 14 (3.89%) Network Security
5 13 (3.61%) Wireless
6 11 (3.06%) BGP
6 11 (3.06%) OSPF
7 9 (2.50%) DNS
7 9 (2.50%) IPsec
7 9 (2.50%) Structured Cabling
8 8 (2.22%) TCP/IP
9 6 (1.67%) HTTP
10 4 (1.11%) SSH
11 3 (0.83%) DHCP
11 3 (0.83%) Ethernet
11 3 (0.83%) NAS
11 3 (0.83%) RSVP
11 3 (0.83%) SAN
11 3 (0.83%) VXLAN
11 3 (0.83%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (4.44%) Power BI
2 15 (4.17%) SQL Server
3 13 (3.61%) Relational Database
4 12 (3.33%) MySQL
5 6 (1.67%) BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
5 6 (1.67%) PostgreSQL
6 3 (0.83%) Big Data
6 3 (0.83%) Data Warehouse
6 3 (0.83%) Oracle Database
6 3 (0.83%) Tableau
7 2 (0.56%) Amazon RDS
7 2 (0.56%) Hadoop
7 2 (0.56%) Metadata
8 1 (0.28%) Data Mining
8 1 (0.28%) DynamoDB
8 1 (0.28%) NoSQL
8 1 (0.28%) Oracle Reports
8 1 (0.28%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 28 (7.78%) Rational DOORS
2 19 (5.28%) JIRA
3 11 (3.06%) Burp Suite
3 11 (3.06%) Metasploit
4 8 (2.22%) Git
5 7 (1.94%) CircleCI
5 7 (1.94%) Gradle
6 6 (1.67%) GitLab
6 6 (1.67%) JUnit
7 5 (1.39%) Jenkins
8 4 (1.11%) Selenium
9 2 (0.56%) Balsamiq
9 2 (0.56%) Cypress.io
9 2 (0.56%) Visual Studio
9 2 (0.56%) WebDriver
10 1 (0.28%) Eclipse
10 1 (0.28%) SoapUI
10 1 (0.28%) Team Foundation Server
10 1 (0.28%) TestNG
10 1 (0.28%) Xcode
General
1 122 (33.89%) Social Skills
2 59 (16.39%) Analytical Skills
3 57 (15.83%) Aerospace
4 51 (14.17%) Finance
5 32 (8.89%) Public Sector
6 23 (6.39%) Documentation Skills
7 17 (4.72%) Influencing Skills
7 17 (4.72%) Organisational Skills
8 14 (3.89%) Manufacturing
9 11 (3.06%) Marketing
10 9 (2.50%) Presentation Skills
11 7 (1.94%) Law
11 7 (1.94%) Legal
11 7 (1.94%) Telecoms
12 5 (1.39%) Retail
13 4 (1.11%) Electronics
13 4 (1.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 4 (1.11%) Military
14 3 (0.83%) Avionics
14 3 (0.83%) Billing
Job Titles
1 40 (11.11%) Analyst
2 33 (9.17%) Product Manager
3 32 (8.89%) Senior
4 31 (8.61%) Delivery Manager
5 28 (7.78%) Lead
5 28 (7.78%) Product Delivery Manager
6 25 (6.94%) Project Manager
7 22 (6.11%) Systems Delivery Manager
7 22 (6.11%) Systems Manager
8 18 (5.00%) Technical Support
9 17 (4.72%) Architect
10 11 (3.06%) Consultant
10 11 (3.06%) IT Manager
10 11 (3.06%) Penetration Tester
10 11 (3.06%) SC Cleared Project Manager
10 11 (3.06%) Senior Analyst
10 11 (3.06%) Tester
11 10 (2.78%) Developer
11 10 (2.78%) Network Engineer
11 10 (2.78%) Project Planner
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (2.78%) REST
2 7 (1.94%) RAML
3 6 (1.67%) Android Jetpack
3 6 (1.67%) OAuth
3 6 (1.67%) OAuth2
3 6 (1.67%) React
3 6 (1.67%) Web Services
4 5 (1.39%) ADO
4 5 (1.39%) Dagger
4 5 (1.39%) Jetpack Compose
4 5 (1.39%) LDAP
4 5 (1.39%) OkHttp
4 5 (1.39%) OpenID
4 5 (1.39%) RxJava
4 5 (1.39%) SAML
4 5 (1.39%) WireMock
5 4 (1.11%) SailPoint
6 3 (0.83%) AngularJS
6 3 (0.83%) GraphQL
6 3 (0.83%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 41 (11.39%) Product Ownership
2 37 (10.28%) Management Information System
3 24 (6.67%) Data Structures
4 23 (6.39%) Data Centre
5 19 (5.28%) Virtual Team
6 18 (5.00%) Onboarding
7 11 (3.06%) Analytical Mindset
7 11 (3.06%) PMI
7 11 (3.06%) Security Posture
8 10 (2.78%) Data Protection Act
9 9 (2.50%) Security Operations Centre
10 7 (1.94%) Cloud Native
10 7 (1.94%) Legacy Code
10 7 (1.94%) Self-Motivation
11 6 (1.67%) BYOD
12 5 (1.39%) Cyberattack
12 5 (1.39%) Hybrid Cloud
12 5 (1.39%) Mobile App
13 4 (1.11%) Algorithms
13 4 (1.11%) Embedded Systems
Operating Systems
1 63 (17.50%) Windows
2 39 (10.83%) Linux
3 24 (6.67%) Unix
4 12 (3.33%) Windows Server
5 8 (2.22%) Android
6 6 (1.67%) Windows 10
7 4 (1.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 3 (0.83%) Mac OS
9 2 (0.56%) Apple iOS
9 2 (0.56%) OpenVMS
9 2 (0.56%) Ubuntu
9 2 (0.56%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 160 (44.44%) Computer Science
2 93 (25.83%) Agile
3 74 (20.56%) Continuous Improvement
4 65 (18.06%) Cybersecurity
4 65 (18.06%) Problem-Solving
5 58 (16.11%) PRINCE2
6 52 (14.44%) Project Management
7 45 (12.50%) Information Security
8 44 (12.22%) Change Control
8 44 (12.22%) Systems Engineering
9 42 (11.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 40 (11.11%) Stakeholder Management
11 36 (10.00%) Programme Management
12 35 (9.72%) ITIL
13 32 (8.89%) Scaled Agile Framework
14 28 (7.78%) AI
14 28 (7.78%) Configuration Management
14 28 (7.78%) ITSM
15 27 (7.50%) Model-Based Systems Engineering
15 27 (7.50%) Requirements Management
Programming Languages
1 41 (11.39%) Python
2 23 (6.39%) Java
3 22 (6.11%) SQL
4 19 (5.28%) PowerShell
5 17 (4.72%) JavaScript
6 11 (3.06%) Perl
7 8 (2.22%) Kotlin
8 6 (1.67%) Bash
9 4 (1.11%) Shell Script
10 3 (0.83%) C
10 3 (0.83%) C#
10 3 (0.83%) C++
10 3 (0.83%) Korn
11 2 (0.56%) Ada
11 2 (0.56%) Go
11 2 (0.56%) R
12 1 (0.28%) Bicep
12 1 (0.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.28%) Swift
12 1 (0.28%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 167 (46.39%) Security Cleared
2 111 (30.83%) SC Cleared
3 69 (19.17%) Computer Science Degree
4 19 (5.28%) PMI Certification
4 19 (5.28%) PMP
5 18 (5.00%) DV Cleared
6 17 (4.72%) Cisco Certification
6 17 (4.72%) Master's Degree
7 16 (4.44%) CCNP
7 16 (4.44%) CISSP
8 13 (3.61%) CREST Certified
9 11 (3.06%) CHECK Team Member
9 11 (3.06%) CompTIA Security+
9 11 (3.06%) Cyber Scheme
9 11 (3.06%) Postgraduate
10 10 (2.78%) CCNA
11 9 (2.50%) ACCA
11 9 (2.50%) CIMA
12 8 (2.22%) BPSS Clearance
12 8 (2.22%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 43 (11.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 35 (9.72%) NIST
2 35 (9.72%) PMO
3 25 (6.94%) QA
4 21 (5.83%) GDPR
5 18 (5.00%) PCI DSS
6 12 (3.33%) NCSC
7 8 (2.22%) Data Quality
7 8 (2.22%) NIST 800
8 7 (1.94%) SLA
9 6 (1.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 5 (1.39%) Accessibility
10 5 (1.39%) Government Security Classifications
10 5 (1.39%) ISO/IEC 20000
11 3 (0.83%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.83%) DO-254
11 3 (0.83%) IEC 61508
11 3 (0.83%) ISO 26262
11 3 (0.83%) ISO/IEC 42001
12 2 (0.56%) RMADS
System Software
1 28 (7.78%) Active Directory
2 10 (2.78%) Docker
3 6 (1.67%) Firmware
4 5 (1.39%) VMware Infrastructure
5 4 (1.11%) Embedded Firmware
6 2 (0.56%) Oracle RAC
6 2 (0.56%) VMware NSX
7 1 (0.28%) Citrix Hypervisor
7 1 (0.28%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.28%) UAG
7 1 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 11 (3.06%) Kubernetes
1 11 (3.06%) Nmap
2 9 (2.50%) Terraform
3 5 (1.39%) Ansible
3 5 (1.39%) Grafana
4 3 (0.83%) Prometheus
4 3 (0.83%) Puppet
5 2 (0.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 2 (0.56%) Microsoft Intune
5 2 (0.56%) Nessus
5 2 (0.56%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
5 2 (0.56%) Oracle RMAN
5 2 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
5 2 (0.56%) vCenter Server
6 1 (0.28%) Dell DRAC
6 1 (0.28%) FortiGate
6 1 (0.28%) HP ALM
6 1 (0.28%) Kubeflow
6 1 (0.28%) linkerd
6 1 (0.28%) Podman
Vendors
1 67 (18.61%) Microsoft
2 30 (8.33%) SAP
3 25 (6.94%) IBM
4 24 (6.67%) Oracle
5 18 (5.00%) Cisco
6 13 (3.61%) Palo Alto
7 12 (3.33%) CheckPoint
8 11 (3.06%) Aruba
9 10 (2.78%) BeyondTrust
9 10 (2.78%) CyberArk
10 9 (2.50%) ServiceNow
10 9 (2.50%) Splunk
11 7 (1.94%) VMware
12 4 (1.11%) Red Hat
12 4 (1.11%) Tenable
13 3 (0.83%) Adobe
13 3 (0.83%) Cadence
13 3 (0.83%) Dell
13 3 (0.83%) Salesforce
13 3 (0.83%) Siemens