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

6 months to
24 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 26 25 14
Rank change year-on-year -1 -11 +14
Contract jobs citing Degree 382 213 495
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 6.39% 7.26% 8.99%
As % of the Qualifications category 14.12% 18.07% 20.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 206 123 252
10th Percentile £204 £252 £205
25th Percentile £351 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £560 £608
90th Percentile £706 £623 £638
England median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 70 25 84
10th Percentile £31.25 £20.56 £17.80
25th Percentile £60.61 £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 £56.50 £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 2,705 1,179 2,438
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 45.24% 40.20% 44.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,839 756 1,418
10th Percentile £318 £263 £334
25th Percentile £438 £414 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% -4.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £625 £608 £650
90th Percentile £725 £675 £738
England median daily rate £525 £525 £537
% change year-on-year - -2.23% -2.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 274 80 209
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.50 £17.58
25th Percentile £24.63 £26.62 £26.25
Median hourly rate £54.50 £55.00 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year -0.91% -4.10% -4.42%
75th Percentile £84.00 £70.31 £67.00
90th Percentile £88.00 £77.31 £85.65
England median hourly rate £47.54 £35.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +35.83% -12.50% -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 24 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 24 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 24 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 -1 198 £496 +4.42% 192
Berkshire 0 127 £400 -15.79% 91
Hampshire +3 95 £550 +6.80% 131
Buckinghamshire -15 39 £570 +5.07% 58
Oxfordshire -3 32 £525 +16.67% 48
Surrey -16 31 £208 -49.24% 65
Kent +3 16 £445 +61.82% 21
West Sussex -17 14 £275 -14.06% 16
East Sussex 0 4 £600 - 14
Sussex - 4 £275 - 7
Home Counties - 3 - -
Middlesex - 1 £198 - 12
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 13 (3.40%) 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 52 (13.61%) Microsoft Office
2 41 (10.73%) Microsoft Excel
3 28 (7.33%) Microsoft Project
4 22 (5.76%) 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
4 1 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.26%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.26%) SAP Hybris
4 1 (0.26%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.26%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 75 (19.63%) Azure
2 51 (13.35%) AWS
3 25 (6.54%) Microsoft 365
4 24 (6.28%) Entra ID
5 14 (3.66%) Power Platform
6 12 (3.14%) GCP
7 11 (2.88%) SaaS
8 8 (2.09%) Azure DevOps
8 8 (2.09%) GitHub
8 8 (2.09%) GitHub Actions
8 8 (2.09%) IaaS
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 32 (8.38%) Firewall
2 20 (5.24%) WAN
3 17 (4.45%) LAN
4 14 (3.66%) DNS
5 13 (3.40%) TCP/IP
5 13 (3.40%) Wireless
6 12 (3.14%) BGP
6 12 (3.14%) Network Security
6 12 (3.14%) OSPF
7 9 (2.36%) IPsec
7 9 (2.36%) Structured Cabling
8 8 (2.09%) DHCP
9 6 (1.57%) HTTP
10 4 (1.05%) RSVP
10 4 (1.05%) SSH
11 3 (0.79%) Ethernet
11 3 (0.79%) NAS
11 3 (0.79%) Radio Access Network
11 3 (0.79%) SAN
11 3 (0.79%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (3.93%) Relational Database
2 14 (3.66%) MySQL
2 14 (3.66%) SQL Server
3 12 (3.14%) Power BI
4 5 (1.31%) PostgreSQL
5 3 (0.79%) Big Data
5 3 (0.79%) BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
5 3 (0.79%) Oracle Database
5 3 (0.79%) Tableau
6 2 (0.52%) Data Warehouse
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%) Elasticsearch
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 18 (4.71%) JIRA
3 11 (2.88%) Burp Suite
3 11 (2.88%) Metasploit
4 8 (2.09%) Git
5 7 (1.83%) CircleCI
5 7 (1.83%) GitLab
5 7 (1.83%) Gradle
6 6 (1.57%) JUnit
7 5 (1.31%) Jenkins
8 3 (0.79%) Android Studio
8 3 (0.79%) Browser DevTools
8 3 (0.79%) Eclipse
8 3 (0.79%) Selenium
8 3 (0.79%) Xcode
9 2 (0.52%) Balsamiq
9 2 (0.52%) Visual Studio
9 2 (0.52%) WebDriver
10 1 (0.26%) Artifactory
10 1 (0.26%) SoapUI
General
1 145 (37.96%) Social Skills
2 61 (15.97%) Analytical Skills
2 61 (15.97%) Finance
3 58 (15.18%) Aerospace
4 41 (10.73%) Public Sector
5 24 (6.28%) Documentation Skills
6 16 (4.19%) Manufacturing
6 16 (4.19%) Organisational Skills
7 15 (3.93%) Law
8 11 (2.88%) Influencing Skills
8 11 (2.88%) Marketing
9 9 (2.36%) Legal
10 8 (2.09%) Presentation Skills
11 7 (1.83%) Retail
11 7 (1.83%) Telecoms
12 6 (1.57%) Aviation
13 5 (1.31%) Military
14 3 (0.79%) Banking
14 3 (0.79%) Billing
14 3 (0.79%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 50 (13.09%) Analyst
2 45 (11.78%) Senior
3 33 (8.64%) Product Manager
4 29 (7.59%) Delivery Manager
5 28 (7.33%) Product Delivery Manager
6 26 (6.81%) Project Manager
7 24 (6.28%) Lead
8 22 (5.76%) IT Manager
8 22 (5.76%) Systems Delivery Manager
8 22 (5.76%) Systems Manager
9 20 (5.24%) Technical Support
10 19 (4.97%) Architect
10 19 (4.97%) Senior Manager
11 13 (3.40%) Senior Analyst
12 12 (3.14%) Category Manager
12 12 (3.14%) Network Engineer
13 11 (2.88%) Business Analyst
13 11 (2.88%) Consultant
13 11 (2.88%) Penetration Tester
13 11 (2.88%) Technical Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (2.88%) REST
2 10 (2.62%) Oracle Fusion
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%) OkHttp
7 5 (1.31%) RxJava
7 5 (1.31%) WireMock
8 4 (1.05%) AngularJS
8 4 (1.05%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 43 (11.26%) Product Ownership
2 32 (8.38%) Management Information System
3 29 (7.59%) Data Centre
4 24 (6.28%) Data Structures
5 22 (5.76%) Onboarding
6 20 (5.24%) Virtual Team
7 12 (3.14%) Security Posture
8 10 (2.62%) Data Protection Act
9 9 (2.36%) Self-Motivation
10 8 (2.09%) Robotics
11 7 (1.83%) Analytical Mindset
11 7 (1.83%) Legacy Code
11 7 (1.83%) Mobile App
11 7 (1.83%) PMI
11 7 (1.83%) Security Operations Centre
12 6 (1.57%) BYOD
12 6 (1.57%) Cloud Native
13 5 (1.31%) CCTV
13 5 (1.31%) Cyberattack
13 5 (1.31%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 76 (19.90%) Windows
2 49 (12.83%) Linux
3 33 (8.64%) 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
1 157 (41.10%) Computer Science
2 88 (23.04%) Agile
3 78 (20.42%) Continuous Improvement
4 69 (18.06%) Cybersecurity
4 69 (18.06%) Problem-Solving
5 53 (13.87%) Change Control
5 53 (13.87%) Information Security
6 51 (13.35%) PRINCE2
7 48 (12.57%) Project Management
7 48 (12.57%) Stakeholder Management
8 45 (11.78%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 44 (11.52%) Systems Engineering
10 42 (10.99%) Decision-Making
11 40 (10.47%) AI
12 39 (10.21%) ITIL
12 39 (10.21%) ITSM
13 33 (8.64%) Scaled Agile Framework
14 32 (8.38%) CI/CD
14 32 (8.38%) Programme Management
15 28 (7.33%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 48 (12.57%) Python
2 25 (6.54%) Java
2 25 (6.54%) PowerShell
3 21 (5.50%) SQL
4 17 (4.45%) JavaScript
5 13 (3.40%) Perl
6 8 (2.09%) Kotlin
7 5 (1.31%) Bash
7 5 (1.31%) Shell Script
8 3 (0.79%) C
8 3 (0.79%) C#
8 3 (0.79%) C++
8 3 (0.79%) Korn
9 2 (0.52%) Ada
9 2 (0.52%) Go
9 2 (0.52%) R
10 1 (0.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 1 (0.26%) Rust
10 1 (0.26%) Swift
10 1 (0.26%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 172 (45.03%) Security Cleared
2 111 (29.06%) SC Cleared
3 68 (17.80%) Computer Science Degree
4 23 (6.02%) Cisco Certification
5 21 (5.50%) CISSP
6 17 (4.45%) DV Cleared
7 16 (4.19%) CCNP
8 14 (3.66%) PMI Certification
8 14 (3.66%) PMP
9 13 (3.40%) CISM
9 13 (3.40%) Master's Degree
10 11 (2.88%) CHECK Team Member
10 11 (2.88%) CompTIA Security+
10 11 (2.88%) CREST Certified
10 11 (2.88%) Cyber Scheme
10 11 (2.88%) Postgraduate
11 10 (2.62%) ACCA
11 10 (2.62%) CCNA
11 10 (2.62%) CIMA
12 9 (2.36%) CESG Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 50 (13.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 42 (10.99%) NIST
3 27 (7.07%) PMO
4 23 (6.02%) GDPR
4 23 (6.02%) QA
5 18 (4.71%) PCI DSS
6 14 (3.66%) NCSC
7 8 (2.09%) Data Quality
7 8 (2.09%) NIST 800
8 7 (1.83%) Cyber Essentials
8 7 (1.83%) SLA
9 6 (1.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 5 (1.31%) Government Security Classifications
10 5 (1.31%) ISO/IEC 20000
11 4 (1.05%) Accessibility
11 4 (1.05%) ISO 31000
12 3 (0.79%) DO-254
12 3 (0.79%) IEC 61508
12 3 (0.79%) ISO 26262
12 3 (0.79%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 36 (9.42%) Active Directory
2 10 (2.62%) 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 12 (3.14%) Kubernetes
2 11 (2.88%) Nmap
3 9 (2.36%) Microsoft Intune
3 9 (2.36%) Terraform
4 5 (1.31%) Ansible
4 5 (1.31%) Grafana
4 5 (1.31%) Jamf Pro
5 4 (1.05%) Prometheus
5 4 (1.05%) Single Sign-On
6 3 (0.79%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 3 (0.79%) Puppet
7 2 (0.52%) Nessus
7 2 (0.52%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
7 2 (0.52%) Oracle RMAN
7 2 (0.52%) Podman
7 2 (0.52%) vCenter Server
8 1 (0.26%) Dell DRAC
8 1 (0.26%) linkerd
8 1 (0.26%) Nagios
8 1 (0.26%) SCCM
Vendors
1 74 (19.37%) Microsoft
2 36 (9.42%) Oracle
3 30 (7.85%) SAP
4 25 (6.54%) IBM
5 18 (4.71%) Cisco
6 15 (3.93%) ServiceNow
7 13 (3.40%) Palo Alto
8 12 (3.14%) CheckPoint
9 11 (2.88%) Aruba
9 11 (2.88%) BeyondTrust
9 11 (2.88%) CyberArk
10 10 (2.62%) Ariba
10 10 (2.62%) Splunk
10 10 (2.62%) VMware
11 5 (1.31%) Dell
11 5 (1.31%) Salesforce
11 5 (1.31%) Tenable
11 5 (1.31%) Workday
12 4 (1.05%) Red Hat
13 3 (0.79%) Siemens