Developer Contract Job Trends in the South East

Developer
England > South East

The median Developer daily rate in the South East is £472, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 2 February 2026.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 31 22 21
Rank change year-on-year -9 -1 -11
Contract jobs requiring a Developer 269 280 411
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 5.90% 8.80% 7.46%
As % of the Job Titles category 6.56% 9.48% 7.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 188 184 299
10th Percentile £313 £354 £350
25th Percentile £383 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £472 £475 £490
Median % change year-on-year -0.74% -3.06% -9.26%
75th Percentile £553 £603 £575
90th Percentile £638 £638 £688
England median daily rate £500 £540 £525
% change year-on-year -7.41% +2.86% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 1 22
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £52.50 - £46.25
Median hourly rate £55.00 £77.19 £58.00
Median % change year-on-year -28.75% +33.09% -13.91%
75th Percentile £57.50 - £70.00
90th Percentile £60.00 - £84.01
England median hourly rate £55.00 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -15.38% - +4.00%

All Contract IT Job Roles
South East

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the South East. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the South East with a recognized job title 4,100 2,953 5,150
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 89.99% 92.80% 93.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,655 1,820 3,214
10th Percentile £255 £237 £205
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
75th Percentile £600 £609 £600
90th Percentile £688 £675 £688
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 352 105 401
10th Percentile £13.88 £18.58 £13.00
25th Percentile £17.00 £24.18 £18.92
Median hourly rate £25.15 £42.50 £45.21
Median % change year-on-year -40.82% -5.99% +0.47%
75th Percentile £58.13 £62.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £85.31 £69.75 £76.53
England median hourly rate £30.00 £35.00 £35.95
% change year-on-year -14.29% -2.64% +2.71%

Developer
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Developer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East.

Developer job vacancy trend in the South East

Developer
Daily Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Developer job vacancies in the South East.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Developer job vacancies in the South East

Developer
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Developer in the South East over the 6 months to 2 February 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Developer in the South East

Developer
Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Developer job vacancies in the South East.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Developer job vacancies in the South East

Developer
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South East

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Developer in the South East over the 6 months to 2 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Developer in the South East

Developer
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 Developer within the South East region over the 6 months to 2 February 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 -24 105 £445 -19.09% 70
Hampshire +6 81 £463 +9.00% 64
Berkshire -39 64 £475 -13.64% 33
Surrey +13 41 £505 +12.22% 56
Buckinghamshire +10 37 £450 -17.81% 20
West Sussex -15 15 £475 +12.35% 42
East Sussex 0 14 £375 -31.82% 35
Kent -3 8 £338 -15.63% 28
Sussex -1 5 £475 - 17
Oxfordshire -13 4 £400 +28.00% 18
Middlesex - 2 £552 - 12
Developer
England

Developer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East

For the 6 months to 2 February 2026, Developer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the South East region featuring Developer in the job title.

1 83 (30.86%) Java
2 81 (30.11%) Agile
3 73 (27.14%) SQL
4 67 (24.91%) Security Cleared
5 62 (23.05%) CI/CD
6 53 (19.70%) SC Cleared
7 52 (19.33%) Problem-Solving
8 49 (18.22%) AWS
9 45 (16.73%) Azure
9 45 (16.73%) Software Engineering
10 42 (15.61%) REST
11 41 (15.24%) JavaScript
12 39 (14.50%) Full-Stack Development
12 39 (14.50%) Spring
13 38 (14.13%) GitHub
14 35 (13.01%) Kubernetes
14 35 (13.01%) Scrum
15 34 (12.64%) DevOps
15 34 (12.64%) PostgreSQL
15 34 (12.64%) React
15 34 (12.64%) Test Automation
16 32 (11.90%) .NET
16 32 (11.90%) Jenkins
16 32 (11.90%) Microservices
17 31 (11.52%) C#
18 30 (11.15%) Python
18 30 (11.15%) TDD
19 29 (10.78%) Spring Boot
20 28 (10.41%) Business Intelligence
20 28 (10.41%) Microsoft

Developer Skill Set
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 11 (4.09%) Confluence
2 8 (2.97%) SharePoint
3 4 (1.49%) Apache Spark
4 3 (1.12%) Apache
4 3 (1.12%) ArcGIS
4 3 (1.12%) CMS
5 2 (0.74%) IIS
5 2 (0.74%) SharePoint Server
6 1 (0.37%) Appian
6 1 (0.37%) BizTalk Server
6 1 (0.37%) Camunda
6 1 (0.37%) Documentum
6 1 (0.37%) Headless CMS
6 1 (0.37%) JBoss
6 1 (0.37%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.37%) Smallworld
6 1 (0.37%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.37%) Umbraco
6 1 (0.37%) WebLogic
6 1 (0.37%) WordPress
Applications
1 3 (1.12%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 3 (1.12%) Oracle Assets
1 3 (1.12%) Oracle General Ledger
1 3 (1.12%) Oracle Payables
1 3 (1.12%) Oracle Receivables
1 3 (1.12%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
1 3 (1.12%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.74%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.74%) Maximo
2 2 (0.74%) Oracle Cash Management
2 2 (0.74%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.37%) SAP HR
3 1 (0.37%) SAP PSCD
3 1 (0.37%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 49 (18.22%) AWS
2 45 (16.73%) Azure
3 38 (14.13%) GitHub
4 22 (8.18%) GitHub Actions
5 19 (7.06%) GCP
5 19 (7.06%) Power Platform
6 18 (6.69%) OpenShift
7 10 (3.72%) Amazon S3
7 10 (3.72%) Azure DevOps
8 9 (3.35%) OCI
8 9 (3.35%) Serverless
9 8 (2.97%) Datadog
9 8 (2.97%) Dynamics 365
10 7 (2.60%) AWS Lambda
11 6 (2.23%) Azure Service Bus
11 6 (2.23%) Boomi
12 5 (1.86%) AtomSphere
12 5 (1.86%) AWS CloudFormation
12 5 (1.86%) Snowflake
13 4 (1.49%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.86%) Kerberos
2 2 (0.74%) Bluetooth
2 2 (0.74%) Tactical Data Link
2 2 (0.74%) VoIP
3 1 (0.37%) Asterisk PBX
3 1 (0.37%) HTTP
3 1 (0.37%) Network Security
3 1 (0.37%) SAN
3 1 (0.37%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (12.64%) PostgreSQL
2 19 (7.06%) NoSQL
3 15 (5.58%) Relational Database
4 14 (5.20%) SQL Server
5 11 (4.09%) MongoDB
6 10 (3.72%) MySQL
6 10 (3.72%) Oracle BI Publisher
6 10 (3.72%) Oracle Reports
6 10 (3.72%) Power BI
7 8 (2.97%) HBase
8 7 (2.60%) DynamoDB
9 6 (2.23%) Data Warehouse
10 5 (1.86%) Apache Cassandra
10 5 (1.86%) Couchbase
10 5 (1.86%) Oracle Database
11 4 (1.49%) Azure SQL Database
11 4 (1.49%) Big Data
11 4 (1.49%) SAP HANA
11 4 (1.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 3 (1.12%) Oracle BI EE
Development Applications
1 32 (11.90%) Jenkins
2 25 (9.29%) JUnit
3 23 (8.55%) Git
4 22 (8.18%) Cucumber
4 22 (8.18%) Gradle
5 15 (5.58%) Sonatype Nexus
6 10 (3.72%) GitLab
7 9 (3.35%) JMeter
8 8 (2.97%) Artifactory
8 8 (2.97%) Bitbucket
8 8 (2.97%) JIRA
8 8 (2.97%) Maven
9 7 (2.60%) Android Studio
10 5 (1.86%) Visual Studio
11 4 (1.49%) Selenium
11 4 (1.49%) SonarQube
11 4 (1.49%) Storybook
11 4 (1.49%) Subversion
12 3 (1.12%) CircleCI
13 2 (0.74%) Gatling
General
1 59 (21.93%) Social Skills
2 44 (16.36%) Finance
3 26 (9.67%) Analytical Skills
4 20 (7.43%) Public Sector
5 6 (2.23%) Telecoms
6 5 (1.86%) Manufacturing
7 4 (1.49%) Banking
7 4 (1.49%) Electronics
7 4 (1.49%) Marketing
8 3 (1.12%) Aerospace
8 3 (1.12%) Aviation
8 3 (1.12%) Billing
8 3 (1.12%) Documentation Skills
8 3 (1.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 2 (0.74%) General Ledger
9 2 (0.74%) Legal
10 1 (0.37%) Health Technology
10 1 (0.37%) Military
10 1 (0.37%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 42 (15.61%) REST
2 39 (14.50%) Spring
3 34 (12.64%) React
4 32 (11.90%) .NET
5 29 (10.78%) Spring Boot
6 24 (8.92%) AngularJS
7 23 (8.55%) CSS
7 23 (8.55%) Kafka
8 22 (8.18%) HTML
9 20 (7.43%) SOAP
10 19 (7.06%) RESTful
11 13 (4.83%) Node.js
12 12 (4.46%) Oracle Fusion
13 11 (4.09%) RabbitMQ
13 11 (4.09%) Web Services
14 9 (3.35%) Hibernate
15 7 (2.60%) .NET Framework
16 6 (2.23%) .NET Core
16 6 (2.23%) JSON
17 5 (1.86%) Next.js
Miscellaneous
1 9 (3.35%) Mobile App
2 6 (2.23%) Data Structures
3 5 (1.86%) Client/Server
3 5 (1.86%) Product Ownership
4 4 (1.49%) Analytical Mindset
4 4 (1.49%) Distributed Systems
5 3 (1.12%) Legacy Code
5 3 (1.12%) Onboarding
5 3 (1.12%) Virtual Team
6 2 (0.74%) Cloud Native
6 2 (0.74%) CMDB
6 2 (0.74%) Greenfield Project
6 2 (0.74%) Management Information System
7 1 (0.37%) AI Agents
7 1 (0.37%) Data Protection Act
7 1 (0.37%) EMV
7 1 (0.37%) Enterprise Software
7 1 (0.37%) FMCG
7 1 (0.37%) Java Card
7 1 (0.37%) N-Tier
Operating Systems
1 22 (8.18%) Android
2 14 (5.20%) Linux
3 9 (3.35%) Apple iOS
4 8 (2.97%) Windows
5 6 (2.23%) Unix
6 1 (0.37%) CentOS
6 1 (0.37%) Debian
6 1 (0.37%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 81 (30.11%) Agile
2 62 (23.05%) CI/CD
3 52 (19.33%) Problem-Solving
4 45 (16.73%) Software Engineering
5 39 (14.50%) Full-Stack Development
6 35 (13.01%) Scrum
7 34 (12.64%) DevOps
7 34 (12.64%) Test Automation
8 32 (11.90%) Microservices
9 30 (11.15%) TDD
10 28 (10.41%) Business Intelligence
11 26 (9.67%) Data Modelling
12 25 (9.29%) Workflow
13 24 (8.92%) Data Integration
14 22 (8.18%) Front End Development
15 19 (7.06%) Acceptance Criteria
15 19 (7.06%) Test Strategy
16 18 (6.69%) CAFM
16 18 (6.69%) Computer Science
17 17 (6.32%) Unit Testing
Programming Languages
1 83 (30.86%) Java
2 73 (27.14%) SQL
3 41 (15.24%) JavaScript
4 31 (11.52%) C#
5 30 (11.15%) Python
6 18 (6.69%) VB
7 11 (4.09%) TypeScript
8 8 (2.97%) C++
9 7 (2.60%) PL/SQL
9 7 (2.60%) Shell Script
10 5 (1.86%) ABAP
10 5 (1.86%) Apex Code
10 5 (1.86%) Go
10 5 (1.86%) PowerShell
11 4 (1.49%) C
12 3 (1.12%) Kotlin
12 3 (1.12%) PHP
12 3 (1.12%) Swift
12 3 (1.12%) T-SQL
12 3 (1.12%) X++
Qualifications
1 67 (24.91%) Security Cleared
2 53 (19.70%) SC Cleared
3 19 (7.06%) Degree
4 15 (5.58%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (3.72%) OCP
5 10 (3.72%) Oracle Certification
6 8 (2.97%) DV Cleared
7 3 (1.12%) BPSS Clearance
8 1 (0.37%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (3.35%) QA
2 5 (1.86%) Data Quality
2 5 (1.86%) GDPR
3 3 (1.12%) Accessibility
3 3 (1.12%) SLA
4 1 (0.37%) Def Stans
4 1 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (0.37%) NIST
4 1 (0.37%) WCAG
System Software
1 16 (5.95%) Docker
2 4 (1.49%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (0.37%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 35 (13.01%) Kubernetes
2 10 (3.72%) Ansible
3 8 (2.97%) Grafana
3 8 (2.97%) Terraform
4 7 (2.60%) Progress Chef
5 5 (1.86%) Argo
6 3 (1.12%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
7 2 (0.74%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
7 2 (0.74%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.74%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 28 (10.41%) Microsoft
2 23 (8.55%) Oracle
3 11 (4.09%) Salesforce
4 9 (3.35%) SAP
4 9 (3.35%) VMware
5 8 (2.97%) Atlassian
6 6 (2.23%) Informatica
6 6 (2.23%) ServiceNow
7 5 (1.86%) Blue Prism
7 5 (1.86%) Databricks
7 5 (1.86%) Red Hat
8 4 (1.49%) Google
9 3 (1.12%) Coverity
9 3 (1.12%) Teradata
9 3 (1.12%) Thales
10 2 (0.74%) Cognos
10 2 (0.74%) IFS
10 2 (0.74%) Splunk
11 1 (0.37%) Telerik
11 1 (0.37%) UiPath