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

6 months to
9 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 24 13
Rank change year-on-year -3 -11 +14
Contract jobs citing Degree 356 233 506
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 6.32% 7.79% 8.97%
As % of the Qualifications category 13.68% 19.35% 19.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 198 126 260
10th Percentile £275 £256 £205
25th Percentile £400 £400 £323
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
75th Percentile £588 £588 £608
90th Percentile £678 £669 £650
England median daily rate £500 £525 £513
% change year-on-year -4.76% +2.44% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 65 26 89
10th Percentile £26.58 £17.50 £17.80
25th Percentile £80.50 £35.17 £27.50
Median hourly rate £84.00 £59.26 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year +41.76% +3.32% +27.44%
75th Percentile £88.00 £75.00 £61.30
90th Percentile - £76.68 £65.40
England median hourly rate £52.50 £54.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year -3.67% +36.25% -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 2,602 1,204 2,540
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 46.21% 40.25% 45.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,732 782 1,430
10th Percentile £309 £306 £280
25th Percentile £430 £438 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £541 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.00% -1.59% +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 270 83 213
10th Percentile £15.74 £18.80 £17.64
25th Percentile £20.79 £27.55 £27.50
Median hourly rate £52.25 £56.75 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year -7.93% -1.05% +7.14%
75th Percentile £84.00 £70.00 £66.74
90th Percentile £88.00 £78.13 £83.95
England median hourly rate £41.94 £50.75 £38.95
% change year-on-year -17.36% +30.30% -24.37%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 -2 192 £475 -3.85% 191
Berkshire +1 137 £400 -16.23% 94
Hampshire +3 85 £525 +1.94% 113
Buckinghamshire 0 38 £565 +7.11% 47
Surrey -20 29 £500 - 70
Oxfordshire -11 17 £500 -28.57% 53
West Sussex -10 15 £400 -20.00% 14
Kent -1 13 £445 +27.14% 34
Home Counties - 5 £700 -
East Sussex -4 4 £600 -9.43% 21
Sussex -5 1 £275 -41.02% 8
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 (3.37%) SharePoint
2 10 (2.81%) Confluence
3 4 (1.12%) Microsoft Exchange
4 3 (0.84%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 3 (0.84%) Apache Spark
4 3 (0.84%) CMS
4 3 (0.84%) 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 (15.73%) Microsoft Office
2 51 (14.33%) Microsoft Excel
3 38 (10.67%) Microsoft Project
4 22 (6.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.56%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 12 (3.37%) Primavera
2 10 (2.81%) SAP S/4HANA
3 5 (1.40%) SAP ERP
4 2 (0.56%) Payment Gateway
4 2 (0.56%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.28%) Dynamics GP
5 1 (0.28%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.28%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.28%) SAP Hybris
5 1 (0.28%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 54 (15.17%) Azure
2 48 (13.48%) AWS
3 17 (4.78%) Power Platform
4 16 (4.49%) Microsoft 365
5 13 (3.65%) GCP
6 9 (2.53%) Azure DevOps
6 9 (2.53%) Entra ID
6 9 (2.53%) GitHub
6 9 (2.53%) GitHub Actions
7 5 (1.40%) SaaS
8 4 (1.12%) IaaS
9 3 (0.84%) Amazon EKS
9 3 (0.84%) Amazon S3
9 3 (0.84%) AWS CloudFormation
9 3 (0.84%) 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 32 (8.99%) Firewall
2 20 (5.62%) WAN
3 17 (4.78%) LAN
4 14 (3.93%) Network Security
4 14 (3.93%) Wireless
5 11 (3.09%) BGP
5 11 (3.09%) OSPF
6 9 (2.53%) IPsec
6 9 (2.53%) Structured Cabling
7 8 (2.25%) TCP/IP
8 7 (1.97%) DNS
8 7 (1.97%) Unified Communications
9 6 (1.69%) HTTP
10 4 (1.12%) SSH
11 3 (0.84%) Ethernet
11 3 (0.84%) SAN
11 3 (0.84%) VXLAN
11 3 (0.84%) WebEx
12 2 (0.56%) Cisco Nexus
12 2 (0.56%) Radio Access Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (4.78%) Power BI
2 15 (4.21%) SQL Server
3 11 (3.09%) Relational Database
4 10 (2.81%) MySQL
5 7 (1.97%) PostgreSQL
6 6 (1.69%) BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
7 4 (1.12%) Big Data
8 3 (0.84%) Data Warehouse
8 3 (0.84%) Oracle Database
8 3 (0.84%) Tableau
9 2 (0.56%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (0.56%) Hadoop
9 2 (0.56%) Metadata
9 2 (0.56%) NoSQL
9 2 (0.56%) Oracle Reports
10 1 (0.28%) Apache Cassandra
10 1 (0.28%) Couchbase
10 1 (0.28%) Data Mining
10 1 (0.28%) DynamoDB
10 1 (0.28%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 28 (7.87%) Rational DOORS
2 22 (6.18%) JIRA
3 13 (3.65%) Burp Suite
4 11 (3.09%) Metasploit
5 9 (2.53%) Git
6 7 (1.97%) CircleCI
6 7 (1.97%) GitLab
6 7 (1.97%) Gradle
7 6 (1.69%) Jenkins
7 6 (1.69%) JUnit
8 4 (1.12%) 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%) Artifactory
10 1 (0.28%) Maven
10 1 (0.28%) SoapUI
10 1 (0.28%) Team Foundation Server
10 1 (0.28%) TestNG
General
1 131 (36.80%) Social Skills
2 62 (17.42%) Analytical Skills
3 55 (15.45%) Aerospace
4 51 (14.33%) Finance
5 27 (7.58%) Public Sector
6 20 (5.62%) Documentation Skills
7 18 (5.06%) Influencing Skills
8 17 (4.78%) Manufacturing
9 14 (3.93%) Organisational Skills
10 9 (2.53%) Marketing
10 9 (2.53%) Presentation Skills
11 8 (2.25%) Law
11 8 (2.25%) Legal
12 7 (1.97%) Telecoms
13 6 (1.69%) Retail
14 4 (1.12%) Electronics
14 4 (1.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 4 (1.12%) Military
15 3 (0.84%) Avionics
15 3 (0.84%) Billing
Job Titles
1 43 (12.08%) Analyst
2 33 (9.27%) Product Manager
3 32 (8.99%) Delivery Manager
4 30 (8.43%) Senior
5 28 (7.87%) Product Delivery Manager
5 28 (7.87%) Project Manager
6 27 (7.58%) Lead
7 22 (6.18%) Systems Delivery Manager
7 22 (6.18%) Systems Manager
8 18 (5.06%) Architect
9 14 (3.93%) Technical Support
10 12 (3.37%) Penetration Tester
10 12 (3.37%) Project Planner
10 12 (3.37%) SC Cleared Project Manager
10 12 (3.37%) Tester
11 11 (3.09%) Consultant
11 11 (3.09%) Developer
12 10 (2.81%) Network Engineer
12 10 (2.81%) Security Engineer
13 9 (2.53%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (3.09%) REST
2 7 (1.97%) RAML
3 6 (1.69%) Android Jetpack
4 5 (1.40%) ADO
4 5 (1.40%) Dagger
4 5 (1.40%) Jetpack Compose
4 5 (1.40%) OkHttp
4 5 (1.40%) React
4 5 (1.40%) RxJava
4 5 (1.40%) WireMock
5 4 (1.12%) Kafka
6 3 (0.84%) HTML
6 3 (0.84%) Spring
6 3 (0.84%) Web Services
7 2 (0.56%) HTML5
7 2 (0.56%) JSR 170
7 2 (0.56%) OAuth
7 2 (0.56%) OSGi
7 2 (0.56%) RabbitMQ
7 2 (0.56%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 41 (11.52%) Product Ownership
2 38 (10.67%) Management Information System
3 24 (6.74%) Data Structures
4 22 (6.18%) Data Centre
5 20 (5.62%) Virtual Team
6 15 (4.21%) Onboarding
7 13 (3.65%) Security Posture
8 11 (3.09%) Analytical Mindset
8 11 (3.09%) Data Protection Act
9 10 (2.81%) PMI
10 9 (2.53%) Security Operations Centre
11 8 (2.25%) Self-Motivation
12 7 (1.97%) Cloud Native
12 7 (1.97%) Legacy Code
13 6 (1.69%) BYOD
13 6 (1.69%) Driving Licence
14 5 (1.40%) Cyberattack
14 5 (1.40%) Handset
14 5 (1.40%) Hybrid Cloud
15 4 (1.12%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 60 (16.85%) Windows
2 36 (10.11%) Linux
3 19 (5.34%) Unix
4 10 (2.81%) Windows Server
5 7 (1.97%) Android
6 5 (1.40%) Windows 10
7 4 (1.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 2 (0.56%) Apple iOS
8 2 (0.56%) Kali Linux
8 2 (0.56%) Mac OS
8 2 (0.56%) OpenVMS
8 2 (0.56%) Ubuntu
8 2 (0.56%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 153 (42.98%) Computer Science
2 100 (28.09%) Agile
3 74 (20.79%) Continuous Improvement
4 67 (18.82%) Problem-Solving
5 66 (18.54%) Cybersecurity
6 62 (17.42%) PRINCE2
7 56 (15.73%) Project Management
8 45 (12.64%) Systems Engineering
9 44 (12.36%) Stakeholder Management
10 42 (11.80%) Information Security
11 41 (11.52%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 39 (10.96%) Change Control
13 37 (10.39%) Programme Management
14 34 (9.55%) ITIL
15 33 (9.27%) Scaled Agile Framework
16 29 (8.15%) Decision-Making
17 28 (7.87%) Configuration Management
18 27 (7.58%) AI
18 27 (7.58%) Model-Based Systems Engineering
18 27 (7.58%) Requirements Management
Programming Languages
1 36 (10.11%) Python
2 21 (5.90%) Java
2 21 (5.90%) SQL
3 15 (4.21%) JavaScript
4 14 (3.93%) PowerShell
5 9 (2.53%) Perl
6 8 (2.25%) Kotlin
7 5 (1.40%) Bash
8 3 (0.84%) C
8 3 (0.84%) C#
8 3 (0.84%) C++
8 3 (0.84%) Go
8 3 (0.84%) Korn
8 3 (0.84%) Shell Script
9 2 (0.56%) Ada
9 2 (0.56%) R
10 1 (0.28%) Objective-C
10 1 (0.28%) PL/SQL
10 1 (0.28%) Tcl
10 1 (0.28%) VB
Qualifications
1 168 (47.19%) Security Cleared
2 112 (31.46%) SC Cleared
3 70 (19.66%) Computer Science Degree
4 19 (5.34%) Cisco Certification
5 18 (5.06%) CISSP
5 18 (5.06%) DV Cleared
5 18 (5.06%) Master's Degree
5 18 (5.06%) PMI Certification
5 18 (5.06%) PMP
6 17 (4.78%) CCNP
7 13 (3.65%) CREST Certified
8 12 (3.37%) Postgraduate
9 11 (3.09%) CHECK Team Member
9 11 (3.09%) Cyber Scheme
10 10 (2.81%) CCNA
10 10 (2.81%) CompTIA Security+
11 9 (2.53%) BPSS Clearance
12 7 (1.97%) ACCA
12 7 (1.97%) CIMA
12 7 (1.97%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (10.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 37 (10.39%) PMO
2 29 (8.15%) NIST
3 24 (6.74%) QA
4 23 (6.46%) GDPR
5 18 (5.06%) PCI DSS
6 11 (3.09%) NCSC
7 7 (1.97%) Data Quality
7 7 (1.97%) NIST 800
8 6 (1.69%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 5 (1.40%) Accessibility
9 5 (1.40%) Government Security Classifications
9 5 (1.40%) ISO/IEC 20000
9 5 (1.40%) SLA
10 3 (0.84%) Actionable Recommendations
10 3 (0.84%) DO-254
10 3 (0.84%) IEC 61508
10 3 (0.84%) ISO 26262
10 3 (0.84%) P3O
11 2 (0.56%) RMADS
System Software
1 18 (5.06%) Active Directory
2 11 (3.09%) Docker
3 4 (1.12%) Firmware
4 3 (0.84%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.56%) Embedded Firmware
5 2 (0.56%) Oracle RAC
6 1 (0.28%) Citrix Hypervisor
6 1 (0.28%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.28%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 13 (3.65%) Nmap
2 11 (3.09%) Kubernetes
3 9 (2.53%) Terraform
4 5 (1.40%) Ansible
4 5 (1.40%) Grafana
5 3 (0.84%) Nessus
5 3 (0.84%) Prometheus
5 3 (0.84%) Puppet
6 2 (0.56%) Microsoft Intune
6 2 (0.56%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
6 2 (0.56%) Oracle RMAN
7 1 (0.28%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 1 (0.28%) FortiGate
7 1 (0.28%) HP ALM
7 1 (0.28%) Istio
7 1 (0.28%) Kubeflow
7 1 (0.28%) linkerd
7 1 (0.28%) Nagios
7 1 (0.28%) Podman
7 1 (0.28%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 65 (18.26%) Microsoft
2 30 (8.43%) SAP
3 25 (7.02%) IBM
4 22 (6.18%) Oracle
5 16 (4.49%) Cisco
6 13 (3.65%) Palo Alto
7 12 (3.37%) CheckPoint
8 11 (3.09%) Aruba
9 10 (2.81%) Splunk
10 9 (2.53%) BeyondTrust
10 9 (2.53%) CyberArk
10 9 (2.53%) ServiceNow
11 5 (1.40%) VMware
12 4 (1.12%) Google
12 4 (1.12%) Red Hat
12 4 (1.12%) Salesforce
12 4 (1.12%) Tenable
13 3 (0.84%) Adobe
13 3 (0.84%) Fortinet
13 3 (0.84%) Siemens