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 18 September 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 30 24 19
Rank change year-on-year -6 -5 +2
Contract jobs citing Degree 205 350 458
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the South East 5.88% 7.57% 8.25%
As % of the Qualifications category 15.15% 17.63% 21.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 121 208 292
10th Percentile £204 £198 £205
25th Percentile £350 £356 £314
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £475 £493
Median % change year-on-year -2.63% -3.55% +2.60%
75th Percentile £588 £608 £625
90th Percentile £650 £638 £700
England median daily rate £500 £510 £530
% change year-on-year -1.96% -3.77% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 50 30
10th Percentile £22.00 £30.07 £16.93
25th Percentile £23.16 £53.40 £50.00
Median hourly rate £62.00 £57.35 £61.00
Median % change year-on-year +8.11% -5.98% +35.56%
75th Percentile £81.00 £61.30 £71.87
90th Percentile £89.63 £75.50 £77.59
England median hourly rate £38.50 £57.35 £49.14
% change year-on-year -32.87% +16.71% +9.20%

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 1,353 1,985 2,153
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 38.79% 42.93% 38.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 876 1,250 1,323
10th Percentile £220 £330 £263
25th Percentile £410 £425 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -6.55% +4.76% -
75th Percentile £600 £638 £625
90th Percentile £650 £715 £700
England median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 119 154 134
10th Percentile - £22.30 £25.25
25th Percentile £18.87 £43.69 £50.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £58.17 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -56.77% -3.05% +33.33%
75th Percentile £64.25 £72.33 £73.74
90th Percentile £81.00 £87.46 £77.50
England median hourly rate £25.15 £54.00 £54.53
% change year-on-year -53.43% -0.97% +21.18%

Degree
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

Job postings citing Degree as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the South East.

Job vacancy trend for Degree 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 18 September 2025.

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 18 September 2025.

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 18 September 2025. 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 -12 85 £450 -10.00% 475
Berkshire -14 60 £450 -25.00% 296
Hampshire +5 57 £491 +3.37% 161
Surrey -20 26 £215 -46.25% 127
Oxfordshire -4 16 £450 +39.95% 83
West Sussex -5 15 £288 -35.28% 28
Buckinghamshire -6 9 £268 -39.89% 103
Isle of Wight - 6 - - 2
East Sussex +1 3 - - 43
Kent -7 1 - - 64
Sussex - 1 - - 43
Home Counties - 1 £550 -
Degree
England

Degree
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the South East by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 17 (8.29%) Microsoft Exchange
2 9 (4.39%) SharePoint
3 4 (1.95%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (0.98%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.98%) Camunda
4 2 (0.98%) CMS
4 2 (0.98%) Confluence
4 2 (0.98%) JBoss
4 2 (0.98%) nginx
5 1 (0.49%) Anypoint
5 1 (0.49%) Apache
5 1 (0.49%) Gunicorn
5 1 (0.49%) IIS
5 1 (0.49%) SAS
5 1 (0.49%) ThingWorx
5 1 (0.49%) Tomcat
Applications
1 28 (13.66%) Microsoft Excel
2 19 (9.27%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (5.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (3.41%) Microsoft Project
5 6 (2.93%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.49%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.49%) Trello
6 1 (0.49%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 4 (1.95%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (1.46%) Teamcenter
3 2 (0.98%) Payment Gateway
3 2 (0.98%) SAP GRC
4 1 (0.49%) BPCS
4 1 (0.49%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.49%) Oracle EBS R12
4 1 (0.49%) Oracle Receivables
4 1 (0.49%) Primavera
4 1 (0.49%) SAP CO
4 1 (0.49%) SAP FI
4 1 (0.49%) SAP FI/CO
4 1 (0.49%) SAP HR
4 1 (0.49%) SAP PM
4 1 (0.49%) SAP WM
Cloud Services
1 29 (14.15%) AWS
2 25 (12.20%) Azure
3 19 (9.27%) GCP
4 18 (8.78%) Microsoft 365
5 17 (8.29%) Power Platform
6 9 (4.39%) Cloud Computing
6 9 (4.39%) IaaS
7 8 (3.90%) OpenShift
7 8 (3.90%) PaaS
8 7 (3.41%) Entra ID
9 6 (2.93%) SaaS
10 4 (1.95%) dbt
10 4 (1.95%) GitHub
10 4 (1.95%) Serverless
11 3 (1.46%) Amazon S3
11 3 (1.46%) AWS Lambda
11 3 (1.46%) Azure DevOps
11 3 (1.46%) Azure Sentinel
11 3 (1.46%) Lucidchart
12 2 (0.98%) Amazon EMR
Communications & Networking
1 20 (9.76%) Firewall
2 15 (7.32%) DNS
2 15 (7.32%) VPN
3 13 (6.34%) DHCP
4 11 (5.37%) Wireless
5 8 (3.90%) SMTP
6 6 (2.93%) TCP/IP
7 5 (2.44%) Network Security
7 5 (2.44%) VoIP
7 5 (2.44%) Wi-Fi
8 4 (1.95%) MPLS
8 4 (1.95%) VLAN
9 3 (1.46%) 5G
9 3 (1.46%) 802.11
9 3 (1.46%) Radio Access Network
10 2 (0.98%) 4G
10 2 (0.98%) GPON
10 2 (0.98%) LTE
10 2 (0.98%) NAS
10 2 (0.98%) xDSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (7.80%) Power BI
2 11 (5.37%) Relational Database
3 10 (4.88%) Big Data
3 10 (4.88%) Tableau
4 9 (4.39%) Amazon RDS
5 8 (3.90%) Elasticsearch
5 8 (3.90%) PostgreSQL
6 7 (3.41%) Data Warehouse
7 4 (1.95%) MySQL
8 3 (1.46%) SQL Server
9 2 (0.98%) Amazon Redshift
9 2 (0.98%) Data Lake
9 2 (0.98%) Hadoop
9 2 (0.98%) NoSQL
10 1 (0.49%) Amazon Athena
10 1 (0.49%) Metadata
10 1 (0.49%) Microsoft Analysis Services
10 1 (0.49%) Power Query
10 1 (0.49%) Redis
10 1 (0.49%) Sisense
Development Applications
1 19 (9.27%) JIRA
2 15 (7.32%) Git
3 8 (3.90%) Jenkins
4 7 (3.41%) Subversion
5 5 (2.44%) Rational DOORS
6 2 (0.98%) IntelliJ
6 2 (0.98%) JUnit
6 2 (0.98%) Visual Studio
7 1 (0.49%) CMake
7 1 (0.49%) GitLab
7 1 (0.49%) HP UFT
7 1 (0.49%) Katalon Studio
7 1 (0.49%) Selenium
7 1 (0.49%) SoapUI
General
1 110 (53.66%) Social Skills
2 62 (30.24%) Analytical Skills
3 33 (16.10%) Finance
4 17 (8.29%) Organisational Skills
5 16 (7.80%) Manufacturing
6 14 (6.83%) Telecoms
7 13 (6.34%) Public Sector
8 10 (4.88%) Legal
9 9 (4.39%) Aerospace
10 6 (2.93%) Automotive
11 5 (2.44%) Aviation
11 5 (2.44%) Electronics
12 4 (1.95%) Banking
12 4 (1.95%) Marketing
12 4 (1.95%) Presentation Skills
13 3 (1.46%) Documentation Skills
13 3 (1.46%) Law
13 3 (1.46%) Military
14 2 (0.98%) Pharmaceutical
15 1 (0.49%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 24 (11.71%) Analyst
2 20 (9.76%) Support Engineer
3 15 (7.32%) Developer
3 15 (7.32%) Senior
4 12 (5.85%) Architect
5 11 (5.37%) Desktop Support
6 10 (4.88%) IT Support
7 9 (4.39%) 3rd Line Engineer
7 9 (4.39%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 8 (3.90%) 3rd Line Support
8 8 (3.90%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
8 8 (3.90%) Business Analyst
8 8 (3.90%) Lead
9 7 (3.41%) 3rd Line Infrastructure Engineer
9 7 (3.41%) 3rd Line Infrastructure Support
9 7 (3.41%) Infrastructure Support
9 7 (3.41%) Infrastructure Support Engineer
9 7 (3.41%) Principal Engineer
10 6 (2.93%) Data Engineer
10 6 (2.93%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (3.90%) Kafka
2 7 (3.41%) REST
3 6 (2.93%) GraphQL
3 6 (2.93%) gRPC
3 6 (2.93%) HTML
3 6 (2.93%) RabbitMQ
4 4 (1.95%) CSS
4 4 (1.95%) RESTful
4 4 (1.95%) Web Services
5 3 (1.46%) 802.1X
5 3 (1.46%) Material Design
5 3 (1.46%) XML
6 2 (0.98%) JSON
6 2 (0.98%) Middleware
6 2 (0.98%) Pandas
6 2 (0.98%) PyTorch
6 2 (0.98%) scikit-learn
6 2 (0.98%) SOAP
6 2 (0.98%) TensorFlow
6 2 (0.98%) Visualforce
Miscellaneous
1 17 (8.29%) Management Information System
2 12 (5.85%) Data Centre
3 11 (5.37%) Driving Licence
3 11 (5.37%) PKI
4 8 (3.90%) Analytical Mindset
4 8 (3.90%) Cloud Native
4 8 (3.90%) Clustering
5 7 (3.41%) Data Protection Act
6 6 (2.93%) Life Science
6 6 (2.93%) Self-Motivation
7 5 (2.44%) Algorithms
7 5 (2.44%) Mobile App
7 5 (2.44%) Renewable Energy
8 4 (1.95%) Digital Media
8 4 (1.95%) Product Ownership
9 3 (1.46%) Legacy Systems
10 2 (0.98%) Distributed Systems
10 2 (0.98%) Operational Technology
10 2 (0.98%) Public Cloud
10 2 (0.98%) TM Forum
Operating Systems
1 41 (20.00%) Windows
2 25 (12.20%) Linux
3 11 (5.37%) Windows Server
4 9 (4.39%) Mac OS
5 6 (2.93%) Apple iOS
6 5 (2.44%) Unix
6 5 (2.44%) Windows 10
7 4 (1.95%) Android
8 3 (1.46%) Windows Server 2003
9 1 (0.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 1 (0.49%) Windows Server 2016
9 1 (0.49%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 72 (35.12%) Problem-Solving
2 70 (34.15%) Computer Science
3 42 (20.49%) Agile
4 38 (18.54%) ITIL
5 27 (13.17%) DevOps
6 26 (12.68%) Stakeholder Management
7 22 (10.73%) Migration
8 21 (10.24%) Project Management
9 20 (9.76%) Continuous Improvement
10 18 (8.78%) CI/CD
10 18 (8.78%) Cybersecurity
10 18 (8.78%) Decision-Making
11 17 (8.29%) Analytics
11 17 (8.29%) Business Intelligence
11 17 (8.29%) Data Management
12 16 (7.80%) Mentoring
12 16 (7.80%) Systems Engineering
13 15 (7.32%) Change Management
13 15 (7.32%) Line Management
13 15 (7.32%) Workflow
Programming Languages
1 26 (12.68%) Python
2 21 (10.24%) SQL
3 15 (7.32%) Java
4 14 (6.83%) PowerShell
5 9 (4.39%) JavaScript
6 6 (2.93%) Go
7 4 (1.95%) C#
7 4 (1.95%) Perl
8 3 (1.46%) Bash
8 3 (1.46%) C
8 3 (1.46%) Kotlin
8 3 (1.46%) Objective-C
8 3 (1.46%) Swift
9 2 (0.98%) Ada
9 2 (0.98%) Apex Code
9 2 (0.98%) C++
9 2 (0.98%) Kusto Query Language
9 2 (0.98%) MATLAB
9 2 (0.98%) R
9 2 (0.98%) Scala
Qualifications
1 53 (25.85%) Computer Science Degree
2 48 (23.41%) Security Cleared
3 33 (16.10%) SC Cleared
4 23 (11.22%) Master's Degree
5 18 (8.78%) DV Cleared
6 14 (6.83%) PMP
7 13 (6.34%) PMI Certification
8 11 (5.37%) Microsoft Certification
9 9 (4.39%) Cisco Certification
10 8 (3.90%) ACCA
11 7 (3.41%) CIMA
12 6 (2.93%) A+ Certification
13 5 (2.44%) CCNA
13 5 (2.44%) CISSP
14 4 (1.95%) AWS Certification
14 4 (1.95%) CCNP
15 3 (1.46%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 3 (1.46%) DBS Check
15 3 (1.46%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
15 3 (1.46%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (5.37%) GDPR
2 10 (4.88%) QA
3 9 (4.39%) Data Quality
4 6 (2.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 6 (2.93%) SLA
5 5 (2.44%) PMO
6 4 (1.95%) GRC
7 2 (0.98%) ARP4754
7 2 (0.98%) HIPAA
7 2 (0.98%) ISO/IEC 19770
7 2 (0.98%) OASIS TOSCA
7 2 (0.98%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.49%) COSHH
8 1 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
8 1 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 1 (0.49%) Def Stans
8 1 (0.49%) GxP
8 1 (0.49%) ISO/IEC 17025
8 1 (0.49%) PMBOK
System Software
1 24 (11.71%) Active Directory
2 18 (8.78%) Docker
3 14 (6.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (4.88%) VMware ESXi
5 9 (4.39%) Hyper-V
6 8 (3.90%) BitLocker
6 8 (3.90%) Microsoft App-V
6 8 (3.90%) Terminal Services
7 6 (2.93%) Firmware
8 2 (0.98%) vSphere
9 1 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.49%) Virtual Machines
9 1 (0.49%) VMware NSX
9 1 (0.49%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 13 (6.34%) Kubernetes
2 11 (5.37%) Ansible
3 10 (4.88%) vCenter Server
4 8 (3.90%) Nagios
4 8 (3.90%) Puppet
4 8 (3.90%) vMotion
5 5 (2.44%) Microsoft Intune
5 5 (2.44%) SCCM
6 3 (1.46%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 2 (0.98%) Amdocs OSS
8 1 (0.49%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
8 1 (0.49%) CSIRT
8 1 (0.49%) Jamf Pro
8 1 (0.49%) SCOM
8 1 (0.49%) Terraform
8 1 (0.49%) vRealize
8 1 (0.49%) vRealize Orchestrator
8 1 (0.49%) WSUS
Vendors
1 52 (25.37%) Microsoft
2 15 (7.32%) VMware
3 14 (6.83%) ServiceNow
4 13 (6.34%) Cisco
4 13 (6.34%) SAP
5 12 (5.85%) Citrix
6 11 (5.37%) Google
7 9 (4.39%) HP
7 9 (4.39%) Salesforce
8 8 (3.90%) Oracle
8 8 (3.90%) Symantec
9 6 (2.93%) Apple
9 6 (2.93%) CA Agile Central
9 6 (2.93%) EMC
10 5 (2.44%) Atlassian
10 5 (2.44%) Splunk
11 4 (1.95%) Cellebrite
11 4 (1.95%) CheckPoint
11 4 (1.95%) Meraki
11 4 (1.95%) Palo Alto