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 4 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 24 14
Rank change year-on-year -3 -10 +12
Contract jobs citing Degree 423 224 485
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 6.67% 6.89% 8.48%
As % of the Qualifications category 14.81% 17.22% 19.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 216 136 247
10th Percentile £199 £241 £205
25th Percentile £311 £357 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £481 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.90% -3.75% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £608
90th Percentile £713 £644 £638
England median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 93 27 80
10th Percentile £25.83 £22.09 £17.78
25th Percentile £37.00 £32.18 £22.50
Median hourly rate £82.50 £56.75 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year +45.37% -1.05% +19.48%
75th Percentile £87.16 £75.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £88.00 - £65.00
England median hourly rate £48.50 £45.15 £41.50
% change year-on-year +7.42% +8.80% -15.29%

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 2,856 1,301 2,548
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 45.04% 40.03% 44.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,938 830 1,485
10th Percentile £325 £262 £351
25th Percentile £450 £406 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £537 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.33% -4.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £625 £600 £650
90th Percentile £725 £663 £725
England median daily rate £525 £525 £538
% change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 298 94 223
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.87 £17.80
25th Percentile £29.40 £24.78 £26.49
Median hourly rate £61.16 £46.90 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year +30.41% -18.22% -4.42%
75th Percentile £84.75 £70.00 £70.04
90th Percentile £88.00 £79.16 £87.46
England median hourly rate £53.45 £28.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year +87.54% -32.94% -22.73%

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 4 July 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 4 July 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 4 July 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 +6 213 £509 +6.54% 197
Berkshire +6 128 £400 -19.03% 110
Hampshire +6 112 £550 +6.80% 123
Oxfordshire -2 46 £525 +16.67% 51
Surrey -13 46 £305 -16.44% 92
Buckinghamshire -10 39 £582 +10.76% 42
Kent +7 13 £445 +61.82% 31
West Sussex -19 13 £338 +16.78% 15
Sussex - 4 £275 - 4
Home Counties +2 3 - -
East Sussex -3 2 £461 - 18
Middlesex - 2 £334 - 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 18 (4.26%) SharePoint
2 11 (2.60%) Confluence
3 5 (1.18%) Microsoft Exchange
4 3 (0.71%) Apache Spark
5 2 (0.47%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 2 (0.47%) CMS
5 2 (0.47%) MS Project Server
6 1 (0.24%) Apache Pulsar
6 1 (0.24%) Oracle Service Bus
6 1 (0.24%) Oracle Workflow
6 1 (0.24%) WebLogic
Applications
1 55 (13.00%) Microsoft Office
2 39 (9.22%) Microsoft Excel
3 22 (5.20%) Microsoft Project
4 19 (4.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.95%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.24%) CATIA
6 1 (0.24%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.24%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 11 (2.60%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (1.18%) Salesforce CRM
3 4 (0.95%) Primavera
4 2 (0.47%) Payment Gateway
4 2 (0.47%) Teamcenter
5 1 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
5 1 (0.24%) ENOVIA
5 1 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.24%) SAP Hybris
5 1 (0.24%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 88 (20.80%) Azure
2 52 (12.29%) AWS
3 36 (8.51%) Entra ID
4 32 (7.57%) Microsoft 365
5 20 (4.73%) GCP
6 19 (4.49%) Power Platform
7 13 (3.07%) SaaS
8 11 (2.60%) Azure DevOps
8 11 (2.60%) OneDrive
9 8 (1.89%) Serverless
10 6 (1.42%) Power Automate
11 5 (1.18%) IaaS
12 4 (0.95%) GitHub
12 4 (0.95%) GitHub Actions
12 4 (0.95%) PaaS
12 4 (0.95%) PowerApps
12 4 (0.95%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 3 (0.71%) Lucidchart
13 3 (0.71%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
13 3 (0.71%) Sauce Labs
Communications & Networking
1 21 (4.96%) DNS
1 21 (4.96%) TCP/IP
2 19 (4.49%) Firewall
3 15 (3.55%) Network Security
4 14 (3.31%) DHCP
5 13 (3.07%) LAN
5 13 (3.07%) WAN
6 9 (2.13%) BGP
6 9 (2.13%) OSPF
7 6 (1.42%) HTTP
7 6 (1.42%) IPsec
8 5 (1.18%) Cisco Nexus
8 5 (1.18%) SSH
8 5 (1.18%) VPN
9 4 (0.95%) BIG-IP
9 4 (0.95%) MQTT
9 4 (0.95%) RSVP
9 4 (0.95%) SD-WAN
10 3 (0.71%) Cisco Firepower
10 3 (0.71%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (4.49%) SQL Server
2 17 (4.02%) Power BI
3 11 (2.60%) Relational Database
4 10 (2.36%) MySQL
5 6 (1.42%) PostgreSQL
6 4 (0.95%) Elasticsearch
6 4 (0.95%) Tableau
7 3 (0.71%) Big Data
7 3 (0.71%) Data Warehouse
7 3 (0.71%) Oracle Database
8 2 (0.47%) Hadoop
9 1 (0.24%) BigQuery
9 1 (0.24%) Data Mining
9 1 (0.24%) DynamoDB
9 1 (0.24%) NoSQL
9 1 (0.24%) Oracle Database 10g
9 1 (0.24%) Oracle Database 11g
9 1 (0.24%) Oracle Database 12c
9 1 (0.24%) Oracle Reports
9 1 (0.24%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 29 (6.86%) Rational DOORS
2 24 (5.67%) JIRA
3 10 (2.36%) Git
4 8 (1.89%) GitLab
5 4 (0.95%) CircleCI
5 4 (0.95%) Gradle
5 4 (0.95%) Jenkins
5 4 (0.95%) SonarQube
6 3 (0.71%) Android Studio
6 3 (0.71%) Browser DevTools
6 3 (0.71%) Eclipse
6 3 (0.71%) JUnit
6 3 (0.71%) Xcode
7 2 (0.47%) Balsamiq
7 2 (0.47%) Sonatype Nexus
8 1 (0.24%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.24%) Metasploit
8 1 (0.24%) MLflow
8 1 (0.24%) Selenium
8 1 (0.24%) TestNG
General
1 178 (42.08%) Social Skills
2 81 (19.15%) Analytical Skills
3 65 (15.37%) Finance
4 62 (14.66%) Aerospace
5 54 (12.77%) Public Sector
6 23 (5.44%) Documentation Skills
7 20 (4.73%) Organisational Skills
8 17 (4.02%) Manufacturing
8 17 (4.02%) Marketing
9 16 (3.78%) Influencing Skills
10 15 (3.55%) Law
11 12 (2.84%) Presentation Skills
12 10 (2.36%) Telecoms
13 9 (2.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 9 (2.13%) Military
14 8 (1.89%) Retail
15 6 (1.42%) Aviation
15 6 (1.42%) French Language
15 6 (1.42%) Legal
16 5 (1.18%) Arabic Language
Job Titles
1 60 (14.18%) Analyst
2 51 (12.06%) Senior
3 34 (8.04%) Lead
4 32 (7.57%) Product Manager
5 29 (6.86%) Delivery Manager
6 28 (6.62%) IT Manager
6 28 (6.62%) Product Delivery Manager
7 24 (5.67%) Architect
7 24 (5.67%) Project Manager
8 23 (5.44%) Senior Manager
9 22 (5.20%) Systems Delivery Manager
9 22 (5.20%) Systems Manager
10 17 (4.02%) Category Manager
11 16 (3.78%) IT Support
11 16 (3.78%) Technical Support
12 15 (3.55%) IT Services Manager
12 15 (3.55%) Senior Category Manager
12 15 (3.55%) Senior IT Manager
12 15 (3.55%) Senior Service Manager
13 14 (3.31%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (4.02%) OAuth
2 15 (3.55%) LDAP
2 15 (3.55%) OpenID
2 15 (3.55%) Oracle Fusion
2 15 (3.55%) SAML
3 13 (3.07%) SailPoint
4 10 (2.36%) OAuth2
4 10 (2.36%) React
4 10 (2.36%) Web Services
5 9 (2.13%) REST
6 7 (1.65%) .NET
6 7 (1.65%) Kafka
7 6 (1.42%) CSS
7 6 (1.42%) RESTful
8 5 (1.18%) AngularJS
8 5 (1.18%) GraphQL
8 5 (1.18%) gRPC
9 4 (0.95%) Keycloak
9 4 (0.95%) Protocol Buffers
9 4 (0.95%) RAML
Miscellaneous
1 49 (11.58%) Product Ownership
2 45 (10.64%) Management Information System
3 29 (6.86%) Onboarding
4 28 (6.62%) Data Centre
5 26 (6.15%) Data Structures
6 16 (3.78%) Virtual Team
7 9 (2.13%) Cloud Native
7 9 (2.13%) Security Posture
7 9 (2.13%) Self-Motivation
8 8 (1.89%) Hybrid Cloud
8 8 (1.89%) Operational Technology
8 8 (1.89%) PMI
8 8 (1.89%) Robotics
9 7 (1.65%) CCTV
9 7 (1.65%) Data Protection Act
9 7 (1.65%) Mobile App
10 6 (1.42%) BYOD
10 6 (1.42%) Enterprise Software
10 6 (1.42%) SCADA
11 5 (1.18%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
Operating Systems
1 70 (16.55%) Windows
2 51 (12.06%) Linux
3 35 (8.27%) Unix
4 15 (3.55%) Apple iOS
5 14 (3.31%) Windows Server
6 11 (2.60%) Mac OS
7 10 (2.36%) Android
8 9 (2.13%) Windows 10
9 4 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 2 (0.47%) OpenVMS
10 2 (0.47%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.47%) Windows Server 2012
11 1 (0.24%) Solaris
11 1 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 167 (39.48%) Computer Science
2 118 (27.90%) Agile
3 92 (21.75%) Problem-Solving
4 84 (19.86%) Continuous Improvement
5 71 (16.78%) Cybersecurity
6 69 (16.31%) Stakeholder Management
7 64 (15.13%) Change Control
8 63 (14.89%) ITIL
9 61 (14.42%) Decision-Making
10 58 (13.71%) ITSM
11 55 (13.00%) AI
12 54 (12.77%) Information Security
13 50 (11.82%) PRINCE2
14 49 (11.58%) Project Management
15 48 (11.35%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 44 (10.40%) Systems Engineering
17 39 (9.22%) CI/CD
18 36 (8.51%) Programme Management
18 36 (8.51%) Scaled Agile Framework
19 34 (8.04%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 60 (14.18%) Python
2 33 (7.80%) PowerShell
3 23 (5.44%) SQL
4 20 (4.73%) Java
5 16 (3.78%) JavaScript
6 8 (1.89%) Perl
6 8 (1.89%) Shell Script
7 5 (1.18%) Bash
7 5 (1.18%) Kotlin
8 4 (0.95%) C
8 4 (0.95%) C++
8 4 (0.95%) Rust
9 3 (0.71%) C#
9 3 (0.71%) Korn
10 2 (0.47%) Ada
10 2 (0.47%) Go
10 2 (0.47%) PL/SQL
10 2 (0.47%) R
10 2 (0.47%) TypeScript
10 2 (0.47%) X++
Qualifications
1 177 (41.84%) Security Cleared
2 109 (25.77%) SC Cleared
3 60 (14.18%) Computer Science Degree
4 25 (5.91%) CISSP
5 21 (4.96%) Master's Degree
5 21 (4.96%) PMI Certification
6 19 (4.49%) Cisco Certification
6 19 (4.49%) DV Cleared
6 19 (4.49%) PMP
7 17 (4.02%) BPSS Clearance
8 15 (3.55%) Microsoft Certification
9 14 (3.31%) CISM
10 12 (2.84%) CCNP
11 10 (2.36%) ACCA
11 10 (2.36%) CIMA
12 9 (2.13%) CESG Certified Professional
13 8 (1.89%) AWS Certification
13 8 (1.89%) CompTIA Security+
14 7 (1.65%) Azure Certification
15 6 (1.42%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 52 (12.29%) NIST
2 50 (11.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 17 (4.02%) NCSC
4 15 (3.55%) Data Quality
4 15 (3.55%) PMO
5 12 (2.84%) GDPR
6 10 (2.36%) QA
7 8 (1.89%) NIST 800
7 8 (1.89%) PCI DSS
7 8 (1.89%) SLA
8 7 (1.65%) Cyber Essentials
8 7 (1.65%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 6 (1.42%) ISO/IEC 20000
10 5 (1.18%) Government Security Classifications
11 4 (0.95%) GRC
11 4 (0.95%) ISO 31000
12 3 (0.71%) Accessibility
12 3 (0.71%) IEC 61508
12 3 (0.71%) ISO 26262
12 3 (0.71%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 49 (11.58%) Active Directory
2 15 (3.55%) Docker
3 10 (2.36%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (1.42%) VMware NSX
5 5 (1.18%) Firmware
6 4 (0.95%) Embedded Firmware
7 3 (0.71%) OpenAM
7 3 (0.71%) Oracle RAC
8 2 (0.47%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.24%) Citrix Hypervisor
9 1 (0.24%) UAG
9 1 (0.24%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 15 (3.55%) Kubernetes
2 14 (3.31%) Microsoft Intune
3 10 (2.36%) Jamf Pro
3 10 (2.36%) Terraform
4 7 (1.65%) Grafana
4 7 (1.65%) Prometheus
5 6 (1.42%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 6 (1.42%) Ansible
6 5 (1.18%) Single Sign-On
7 4 (0.95%) Podman
7 4 (0.95%) Puppet
8 3 (0.71%) Oracle RMAN
9 2 (0.47%) Nessus
9 2 (0.47%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
9 2 (0.47%) vCenter Server
10 1 (0.24%) CASB
10 1 (0.24%) Dell DRAC
10 1 (0.24%) HP ALM
10 1 (0.24%) Istio
10 1 (0.24%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 98 (23.17%) Microsoft
2 45 (10.64%) Oracle
3 33 (7.80%) SAP
4 28 (6.62%) ServiceNow
5 26 (6.15%) IBM
6 17 (4.02%) BeyondTrust
6 17 (4.02%) CyberArk
7 15 (3.55%) Ariba
8 14 (3.31%) Cisco
8 14 (3.31%) VMware
9 10 (2.36%) Salesforce
10 9 (2.13%) Google
10 9 (2.13%) Palo Alto
11 7 (1.65%) Splunk
12 6 (1.42%) CheckPoint
12 6 (1.42%) Tenable
13 5 (1.18%) Aruba
13 5 (1.18%) Dell
13 5 (1.18%) F5
13 5 (1.18%) Workday