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

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 25 25 14
Rank change year-on-year 0 -11 +14
Contract jobs citing Degree 382 203 494
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 6.38% 6.95% 8.85%
As % of the Qualifications category 14.11% 17.47% 19.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 202 119 249
10th Percentile £204 £246 £205
25th Percentile £350 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £586 £560 £608
90th Percentile £711 £625 £638
England median daily rate £500 £505 £500
% change year-on-year -0.99% +1.00% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 73 25 84
10th Percentile £31.25 £20.56 £17.80
25th Percentile £52.00 £41.00 £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 £53.50 £40.13
% change year-on-year +2.80% +33.33% -10.83%

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 2,707 1,162 2,494
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 45.19% 39.78% 44.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,834 745 1,455
10th Percentile £318 £263 £338
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 £733
England median daily rate £525 £525 £538
% change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 276 79 215
10th Percentile £16.35 £19.68 £17.68
25th Percentile £25.77 £28.00 £26.49
Median hourly rate £55.00 £56.75 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year -3.08% -1.05% -3.54%
75th Percentile £84.00 £72.50 £67.91
90th Percentile £88.00 £78.69 £85.65
England median hourly rate £47.52 £32.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +46.22% -18.75% -25.93%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 -2 197 £489 +2.89% 134
Berkshire +3 125 £400 -15.79% 61
Hampshire +2 99 £550 +6.80% 99
Buckinghamshire -11 39 £570 +5.07% 38
Oxfordshire -5 33 £525 +16.67% 39
Surrey -18 31 £208 -43.54% 57
Kent +3 13 £445 +61.82% 21
West Sussex -17 13 £275 -14.06% 13
East Sussex -2 4 £600 - 7
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 (3.14%) SharePoint
2 10 (2.62%) Confluence
3 5 (1.31%) Microsoft Exchange
4 3 (0.79%) Apache Spark
4 3 (0.79%) 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 (13.35%) Microsoft Office
2 39 (10.21%) Microsoft Excel
3 27 (7.07%) Microsoft Project
4 21 (5.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.79%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 11 (2.88%) SAP S/4HANA
2 7 (1.83%) 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 72 (18.85%) Azure
2 47 (12.30%) AWS
3 25 (6.54%) Entra ID
4 24 (6.28%) Microsoft 365
5 15 (3.93%) Power Platform
6 11 (2.88%) GCP
6 11 (2.88%) SaaS
7 8 (2.09%) Azure DevOps
7 8 (2.09%) IaaS
8 7 (1.83%) GitHub
8 7 (1.83%) GitHub Actions
9 6 (1.57%) OneDrive
9 6 (1.57%) PaaS
10 4 (1.05%) Power Automate
11 3 (0.79%) Lucidchart
11 3 (0.79%) Sauce Labs
11 3 (0.79%) Serverless
12 2 (0.52%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 2 (0.52%) AWS CloudFormation
12 2 (0.52%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 27 (7.07%) Firewall
2 17 (4.45%) WAN
3 15 (3.93%) DNS
3 15 (3.93%) LAN
4 13 (3.40%) Network Security
4 13 (3.40%) TCP/IP
5 10 (2.62%) Wireless
6 9 (2.36%) BGP
6 9 (2.36%) DHCP
6 9 (2.36%) OSPF
7 6 (1.57%) HTTP
7 6 (1.57%) IPsec
7 6 (1.57%) Structured Cabling
8 4 (1.05%) RSVP
8 4 (1.05%) SSH
8 4 (1.05%) VXLAN
9 3 (0.79%) Ethernet
9 3 (0.79%) NAS
9 3 (0.79%) SAN
9 3 (0.79%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (3.66%) Relational Database
1 14 (3.66%) SQL Server
2 13 (3.40%) MySQL
2 13 (3.40%) Power BI
3 5 (1.31%) PostgreSQL
4 4 (1.05%) Tableau
5 3 (0.79%) Big Data
5 3 (0.79%) Oracle Database
6 2 (0.52%) BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
6 2 (0.52%) Data Warehouse
6 2 (0.52%) Elasticsearch
6 2 (0.52%) Hadoop
7 1 (0.26%) Amazon RDS
7 1 (0.26%) Data Mining
7 1 (0.26%) DynamoDB
7 1 (0.26%) Metadata
7 1 (0.26%) NoSQL
7 1 (0.26%) Oracle Reports
7 1 (0.26%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 28 (7.33%) Rational DOORS
2 17 (4.45%) JIRA
3 8 (2.09%) Burp Suite
3 8 (2.09%) Metasploit
4 7 (1.83%) CircleCI
4 7 (1.83%) Git
4 7 (1.83%) GitLab
4 7 (1.83%) Gradle
5 6 (1.57%) JUnit
6 4 (1.05%) Jenkins
7 3 (0.79%) Android Studio
7 3 (0.79%) Browser DevTools
7 3 (0.79%) Eclipse
7 3 (0.79%) 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
1 151 (39.53%) Social Skills
2 64 (16.75%) Finance
3 60 (15.71%) Analytical Skills
4 58 (15.18%) Aerospace
5 40 (10.47%) Public Sector
6 21 (5.50%) Documentation Skills
7 16 (4.19%) Organisational Skills
8 14 (3.66%) Law
8 14 (3.66%) Manufacturing
9 12 (3.14%) Marketing
10 10 (2.62%) Influencing Skills
11 8 (2.09%) Legal
11 8 (2.09%) Presentation Skills
12 7 (1.83%) Retail
12 7 (1.83%) Telecoms
13 6 (1.57%) Aviation
14 5 (1.31%) Military
15 4 (1.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 3 (0.79%) Banking
16 3 (0.79%) Billing
Job Titles
1 51 (13.35%) Senior
2 50 (13.09%) Analyst
3 32 (8.38%) Product Manager
4 29 (7.59%) Delivery Manager
5 28 (7.33%) Product Delivery Manager
6 27 (7.07%) IT Manager
7 26 (6.81%) Project Manager
8 24 (6.28%) Senior Manager
9 23 (6.02%) Lead
10 22 (5.76%) Systems Delivery Manager
10 22 (5.76%) Systems Manager
11 20 (5.24%) Architect
12 19 (4.97%) Technical Support
13 17 (4.45%) Category Manager
14 15 (3.93%) IT Services Manager
14 15 (3.93%) Senior Category Manager
14 15 (3.93%) Senior IT Manager
14 15 (3.93%) Senior Service Manager
15 14 (3.66%) Senior Analyst
16 12 (3.14%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (3.93%) Oracle Fusion
2 11 (2.88%) REST
3 9 (2.36%) OAuth
3 9 (2.36%) SailPoint
4 8 (2.09%) LDAP
4 8 (2.09%) SAML
4 8 (2.09%) Web Services
5 7 (1.83%) OAuth2
5 7 (1.83%) OpenID
5 7 (1.83%) RAML
5 7 (1.83%) React
6 6 (1.57%) Android Jetpack
7 5 (1.31%) Dagger
7 5 (1.31%) GraphQL
7 5 (1.31%) Jetpack Compose
7 5 (1.31%) Kafka
7 5 (1.31%) OkHttp
7 5 (1.31%) RxJava
7 5 (1.31%) WireMock
8 4 (1.05%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 43 (11.26%) Product Ownership
2 31 (8.12%) Management Information System
3 26 (6.81%) Data Centre
4 25 (6.54%) Data Structures
5 23 (6.02%) Onboarding
6 19 (4.97%) Virtual Team
7 10 (2.62%) Data Protection Act
7 10 (2.62%) Security Posture
7 10 (2.62%) Self-Motivation
8 8 (2.09%) PMI
8 8 (2.09%) Robotics
9 7 (1.83%) Legacy Code
9 7 (1.83%) Mobile App
9 7 (1.83%) Security Operations Centre
10 6 (1.57%) Analytical Mindset
10 6 (1.57%) BYOD
10 6 (1.57%) Cloud Native
10 6 (1.57%) Life Science
11 5 (1.31%) CCTV
11 5 (1.31%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 73 (19.11%) Windows
2 49 (12.83%) Linux
3 32 (8.38%) Unix
4 13 (3.40%) Android
5 12 (3.14%) Windows Server
6 10 (2.62%) Apple iOS
7 8 (2.09%) Windows 10
8 6 (1.57%) Mac OS
9 4 (1.05%) 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
1 155 (40.58%) Computer Science
2 87 (22.77%) Agile
3 79 (20.68%) Continuous Improvement
4 71 (18.59%) Problem-Solving
5 67 (17.54%) Cybersecurity
6 56 (14.66%) Information Security
7 53 (13.87%) Change Control
8 50 (13.09%) PRINCE2
9 49 (12.83%) Decision-Making
10 48 (12.57%) Project Management
11 47 (12.30%) Stakeholder Management
12 45 (11.78%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 44 (11.52%) Systems Engineering
14 41 (10.73%) ITSM
15 40 (10.47%) AI
15 40 (10.47%) ITIL
16 33 (8.64%) Scaled Agile Framework
17 32 (8.38%) Programme Management
18 30 (7.85%) CI/CD
19 29 (7.59%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 47 (12.30%) Python
2 25 (6.54%) PowerShell
3 21 (5.50%) Java
3 21 (5.50%) SQL
4 16 (4.19%) JavaScript
5 12 (3.14%) Perl
6 8 (2.09%) Kotlin
7 6 (1.57%) Shell Script
8 5 (1.31%) Bash
9 3 (0.79%) C
9 3 (0.79%) C++
9 3 (0.79%) Korn
10 2 (0.52%) Ada
10 2 (0.52%) C#
10 2 (0.52%) Go
10 2 (0.52%) R
10 2 (0.52%) Rust
11 1 (0.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 1 (0.26%) Swift
11 1 (0.26%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 169 (44.24%) Security Cleared
2 108 (28.27%) SC Cleared
3 65 (17.02%) Computer Science Degree
4 21 (5.50%) Cisco Certification
4 21 (5.50%) CISSP
5 17 (4.45%) DV Cleared
6 15 (3.93%) PMI Certification
6 15 (3.93%) PMP
7 14 (3.66%) CCNP
8 13 (3.40%) CISM
9 12 (3.14%) Master's Degree
10 11 (2.88%) CompTIA Security+
11 10 (2.62%) ACCA
11 10 (2.62%) BPSS Clearance
11 10 (2.62%) CIMA
12 9 (2.36%) CESG Certified Professional
13 8 (2.09%) CCNA
13 8 (2.09%) CHECK Team Member
13 8 (2.09%) CREST Certified
13 8 (2.09%) Cyber Scheme
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 47 (12.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 42 (10.99%) NIST
3 25 (6.54%) PMO
4 19 (4.97%) GDPR
5 18 (4.71%) QA
6 15 (3.93%) PCI DSS
7 14 (3.66%) NCSC
8 9 (2.36%) Data Quality
9 8 (2.09%) NIST 800
10 7 (1.83%) Cyber Essentials
10 7 (1.83%) SLA
11 6 (1.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 5 (1.31%) Government Security Classifications
12 5 (1.31%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 4 (1.05%) ISO 31000
14 3 (0.79%) Accessibility
14 3 (0.79%) DO-254
14 3 (0.79%) IEC 61508
14 3 (0.79%) ISO 26262
14 3 (0.79%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 37 (9.69%) Active Directory
2 9 (2.36%) Docker
3 8 (2.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 7 (1.83%) Firmware
5 4 (1.05%) Embedded Firmware
6 3 (0.79%) 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 11 (2.88%) Kubernetes
2 9 (2.36%) Microsoft Intune
3 8 (2.09%) Nmap
3 8 (2.09%) Terraform
4 6 (1.57%) Grafana
5 5 (1.31%) Jamf Pro
5 5 (1.31%) Prometheus
6 4 (1.05%) Ansible
6 4 (1.05%) Single Sign-On
7 3 (0.79%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 3 (0.79%) 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 (19.63%) Microsoft
2 40 (10.47%) Oracle
3 34 (8.90%) SAP
4 25 (6.54%) IBM
5 17 (4.45%) ServiceNow
6 16 (4.19%) Cisco
7 15 (3.93%) Ariba
8 11 (2.88%) BeyondTrust
8 11 (2.88%) CyberArk
8 11 (2.88%) Palo Alto
9 10 (2.62%) CheckPoint
9 10 (2.62%) Splunk
9 10 (2.62%) VMware
10 9 (2.36%) Aruba
11 6 (1.57%) Salesforce
12 5 (1.31%) Dell
12 5 (1.31%) Tenable
12 5 (1.31%) Workday
13 4 (1.05%) Juniper
13 4 (1.05%) Red Hat