Developer Contract Job Trends in the South East

Developer
England > South East

The median Developer daily rate in the South East is £500, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 7 November 2025.

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

6 months to
7 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 24 20 22
Rank change year-on-year -4 +2 -12
Contract jobs requiring a Developer 272 364 420
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 7.03% 8.73% 7.78%
As % of the Job Titles category 7.85% 9.44% 8.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 193 233 299
10th Percentile £313 £375 £350
25th Percentile £375 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -7.62%
75th Percentile £575 £638 £575
90th Percentile £625 £650 £650
England median daily rate £503 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -4.29% -4.55% -6.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 2 13
10th Percentile £32.94 £27.38 -
25th Percentile £52.50 £36.56 -
Median hourly rate £55.00 £53.75 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.33% +7.50% -24.39%
75th Percentile £57.50 £71.56 £70.00
90th Percentile - £81.13 -
England median hourly rate £55.00 £65.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year -15.38% +8.33% -4.00%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
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 3,463 3,856 5,103
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 89.48% 92.49% 94.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,234 2,314 3,375
10th Percentile £204 £245 £210
25th Percentile £375 £400 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £509 £510
Median % change year-on-year -1.82% -0.15% +2.00%
75th Percentile £598 £625 £613
90th Percentile £663 £684 £688
England median daily rate £510 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -2.86% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 345 215 248
10th Percentile £13.50 £16.00 £16.00
25th Percentile £15.91 £26.63 £22.69
Median hourly rate £20.79 £57.50 £51.24
Median % change year-on-year -63.84% +12.22% +45.52%
75th Percentile £50.00 £71.57 £67.50
90th Percentile £71.80 £75.16 £76.53
England median hourly rate £25.15 £40.33 £45.21
% change year-on-year -37.63% -10.81% +50.70%

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 7 November 2025.

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 7 November 2025.

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 7 November 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 -11 132 £525 - 410
Berkshire -17 96 £550 +4.76% 331
Hampshire +2 67 £462 -19.74% 99
Surrey +14 43 £550 +0.92% 53
Buckinghamshire +3 29 £431 -5.48% 41
Kent +3 12 £338 -19.64% 31
East Sussex -8 10 £450 +12.50% 45
West Sussex -9 9 £400 -15.34% 30
Oxfordshire -17 7 £406 -9.72% 39
Middlesex - 1 £635 - 12
Developer
England

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

For the 6 months to 7 November 2025, 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.

1 104 (38.24%) Agile
2 75 (27.57%) SQL
3 72 (26.47%) CI/CD
4 56 (20.59%) DevOps
5 55 (20.22%) Azure
5 55 (20.22%) Java
6 51 (18.75%) Problem-Solving
7 50 (18.38%) REST
8 47 (17.28%) AWS
9 42 (15.44%) Python
10 41 (15.07%) Security Cleared
11 39 (14.34%) JavaScript
11 39 (14.34%) Scrum
12 38 (13.97%) React
12 38 (13.97%) RESTful
13 36 (13.24%) C#
13 36 (13.24%) TDD
14 35 (12.87%) .NET
14 35 (12.87%) Full-Stack Development
15 34 (12.50%) Data Modelling
15 34 (12.50%) Microservices
16 33 (12.13%) Software Engineering
17 31 (11.40%) Kubernetes
18 30 (11.03%) GitHub
18 30 (11.03%) Oracle
18 30 (11.03%) PostgreSQL
19 29 (10.66%) Git
19 29 (10.66%) SC Cleared
20 27 (9.93%) Business Intelligence
21 26 (9.56%) HTML

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 10 (3.68%) Confluence
2 4 (1.47%) SharePoint
3 3 (1.10%) CMS
3 3 (1.10%) nginx
4 2 (0.74%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.74%) SharePoint Server
4 2 (0.74%) Umbraco
5 1 (0.37%) Anypoint
5 1 (0.37%) Apache
5 1 (0.37%) Camunda
5 1 (0.37%) Documentum
5 1 (0.37%) Gunicorn
5 1 (0.37%) HCL Domino
5 1 (0.37%) Headless CMS
5 1 (0.37%) Hyperledger
5 1 (0.37%) Jupyter
5 1 (0.37%) Smallworld
5 1 (0.37%) Tomcat
5 1 (0.37%) WordPress
Applications
1 6 (2.21%) Adobe Illustrator
1 6 (2.21%) Photoshop
2 3 (1.10%) 3ds Max
3 2 (0.74%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.37%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 4 (1.47%) Oracle EBS
2 3 (1.10%) Oracle Assets
2 3 (1.10%) Oracle General Ledger
2 3 (1.10%) Oracle Payables
2 3 (1.10%) Oracle Receivables
2 3 (1.10%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
3 2 (0.74%) Oracle Cash Management
4 1 (0.37%) Maximo
4 1 (0.37%) Oracle EBS R12
4 1 (0.37%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.37%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 55 (20.22%) Azure
2 47 (17.28%) AWS
3 30 (11.03%) GitHub
4 21 (7.72%) Azure DevOps
5 18 (6.62%) GitHub Actions
6 14 (5.15%) GCP
7 12 (4.41%) Power Platform
8 10 (3.68%) Amazon S3
9 9 (3.31%) OpenShift
10 8 (2.94%) Serverless
11 7 (2.57%) Azure Logic Apps
11 7 (2.57%) Datadog
12 6 (2.21%) Dynamics 365
12 6 (2.21%) OCI
13 5 (1.84%) Amazon EC2
13 5 (1.84%) AtomSphere
13 5 (1.84%) AWS Lambda
13 5 (1.84%) Boomi
14 4 (1.47%) AWS CloudFormation
15 3 (1.10%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.84%) SAN
2 4 (1.47%) Kerberos
2 4 (1.47%) TCP/IP
3 3 (1.10%) HTTPS
3 3 (1.10%) VPN
4 2 (0.74%) Firewall
4 2 (0.74%) HTTP
4 2 (0.74%) VoIP
5 1 (0.37%) Asterisk PBX
5 1 (0.37%) BGP
5 1 (0.37%) Bluetooth
5 1 (0.37%) Ethernet VPN
5 1 (0.37%) MPLS
5 1 (0.37%) MQTT
5 1 (0.37%) Network Security
5 1 (0.37%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (11.03%) PostgreSQL
2 17 (6.25%) NoSQL
3 16 (5.88%) Relational Database
4 15 (5.51%) Oracle Reports
5 14 (5.15%) Oracle BI Publisher
6 10 (3.68%) MongoDB
6 10 (3.68%) MySQL
7 7 (2.57%) SQL Server
8 6 (2.21%) Power BI
9 5 (1.84%) Apache Cassandra
9 5 (1.84%) Couchbase
9 5 (1.84%) Data Warehouse
9 5 (1.84%) DynamoDB
9 5 (1.84%) HBase
10 4 (1.47%) Oracle BI EE
11 3 (1.10%) Data Lake
11 3 (1.10%) Oracle Database
11 3 (1.10%) Redis
11 3 (1.10%) SAP HANA
12 2 (0.74%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 29 (10.66%) Git
2 24 (8.82%) Jenkins
3 17 (6.25%) JIRA
4 15 (5.51%) Cucumber
5 13 (4.78%) JUnit
6 11 (4.04%) Gradle
7 10 (3.68%) GitLab
8 8 (2.94%) Sonatype Nexus
9 6 (2.21%) Maven
9 6 (2.21%) Visual Studio
10 5 (1.84%) Artifactory
11 4 (1.47%) Bitbucket
11 4 (1.47%) JMeter
11 4 (1.47%) Subversion
12 3 (1.10%) Storybook
12 3 (1.10%) Visual Studio Code
13 2 (0.74%) Gatling
13 2 (0.74%) Vite
13 2 (0.74%) webpack
14 1 (0.37%) SonarQube
General
1 62 (22.79%) Social Skills
2 35 (12.87%) Finance
3 32 (11.76%) Analytical Skills
4 16 (5.88%) Public Sector
5 8 (2.94%) Telecoms
6 7 (2.57%) Manufacturing
7 5 (1.84%) Aerospace
8 4 (1.47%) Documentation Skills
8 4 (1.47%) Marketing
8 4 (1.47%) Military
9 3 (1.10%) Banking
9 3 (1.10%) Billing
9 3 (1.10%) Electronics
9 3 (1.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 2 (0.74%) Automotive
10 2 (0.74%) General Ledger
10 2 (0.74%) Retail
11 1 (0.37%) Digital Healthcare
11 1 (0.37%) Health Technology
11 1 (0.37%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 50 (18.38%) REST
2 38 (13.97%) React
2 38 (13.97%) RESTful
3 35 (12.87%) .NET
4 26 (9.56%) HTML
4 26 (9.56%) Spring
5 23 (8.46%) CSS
6 22 (8.09%) SOAP
6 22 (8.09%) Spring Boot
7 21 (7.72%) AngularJS
8 20 (7.35%) Kafka
9 19 (6.99%) Oracle Fusion
10 17 (6.25%) Lightning Web Components
11 16 (5.88%) Web Services
12 13 (4.78%) RabbitMQ
13 12 (4.41%) Node.js
14 11 (4.04%) .NET Core
15 10 (3.68%) JSON
16 9 (3.31%) Hibernate
16 9 (3.31%) Visualforce
Miscellaneous
1 8 (2.94%) Algorithms
2 7 (2.57%) Cloud Native
2 7 (2.57%) Mobile App
2 7 (2.57%) Onboarding
3 6 (2.21%) 3D Graphics
3 6 (2.21%) Vector Graphics
4 5 (1.84%) Data Structures
5 3 (1.10%) Analytical Mindset
5 3 (1.10%) Animation
5 3 (1.10%) e-Learning
6 2 (0.74%) Client/Server
6 2 (0.74%) CMDB
6 2 (0.74%) CSOC
6 2 (0.74%) Cyber Kill Chain
6 2 (0.74%) Distributed Systems
6 2 (0.74%) Greenfield Project
6 2 (0.74%) IoT
6 2 (0.74%) Product Ownership
6 2 (0.74%) Renewable Energy
6 2 (0.74%) Robotics
Operating Systems
1 15 (5.51%) Linux
2 12 (4.41%) Windows
3 10 (3.68%) Android
4 9 (3.31%) Apple iOS
5 7 (2.57%) Unix
6 5 (1.84%) Debian
6 5 (1.84%) Ubuntu
6 5 (1.84%) Windows Server
6 5 (1.84%) Windows Server 2016
7 2 (0.74%) CentOS
8 1 (0.37%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 104 (38.24%) Agile
2 72 (26.47%) CI/CD
3 56 (20.59%) DevOps
4 51 (18.75%) Problem-Solving
5 39 (14.34%) Scrum
6 36 (13.24%) TDD
7 35 (12.87%) Full-Stack Development
8 34 (12.50%) Data Modelling
8 34 (12.50%) Microservices
9 33 (12.13%) Software Engineering
10 27 (9.93%) Business Intelligence
11 25 (9.19%) Data Integration
12 23 (8.46%) AI
12 23 (8.46%) Workflow
13 22 (8.09%) Computer Science
14 21 (7.72%) Containerisation
15 19 (6.99%) Acceptance Criteria
15 19 (6.99%) Front End Development
15 19 (6.99%) Test Automation
15 19 (6.99%) Test Strategy
Programming Languages
1 75 (27.57%) SQL
2 55 (20.22%) Java
3 42 (15.44%) Python
4 39 (14.34%) JavaScript
5 36 (13.24%) C#
6 18 (6.62%) Apex Code
6 18 (6.62%) VB
7 13 (4.78%) TypeScript
8 10 (3.68%) Go
9 9 (3.31%) PL/SQL
10 7 (2.57%) Shell Script
11 5 (1.84%) C
11 5 (1.84%) C++
11 5 (1.84%) X++
12 4 (1.47%) ABAP
12 4 (1.47%) PowerShell
12 4 (1.47%) Ruby
13 3 (1.10%) Kotlin
13 3 (1.10%) SOQL
13 3 (1.10%) Swift
Qualifications
1 41 (15.07%) Security Cleared
2 29 (10.66%) SC Cleared
3 22 (8.09%) Degree
4 19 (6.99%) Computer Science Degree
5 7 (2.57%) BPSS Clearance
5 7 (2.57%) DV Cleared
5 7 (2.57%) OCP
5 7 (2.57%) Oracle Certification
6 2 (0.74%) CEH
6 2 (0.74%) ECSA
6 2 (0.74%) GCFA
6 2 (0.74%) GCIA
6 2 (0.74%) GCIH
7 1 (0.37%) DBS Check
7 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Certification
7 1 (0.37%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (4.41%) QA
2 6 (2.21%) Data Quality
2 6 (2.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 6 (2.21%) NIST
3 5 (1.84%) COBIT
4 4 (1.47%) GDPR
4 4 (1.47%) SLA
5 1 (0.37%) Actionable Recommendations
5 1 (0.37%) Def Stans
5 1 (0.37%) HL7
5 1 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 17025
System Software
1 24 (8.82%) Docker
2 1 (0.37%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 31 (11.40%) Kubernetes
2 8 (2.94%) Grafana
3 5 (1.84%) Ansible
4 3 (1.10%) Progress Chef
4 3 (1.10%) Prometheus
4 3 (1.10%) Terraform
5 2 (0.74%) Argo
5 2 (0.74%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
6 1 (0.37%) CloudHub
6 1 (0.37%) Rsyslog
6 1 (0.37%) SCOM
Vendors
1 30 (11.03%) Oracle
2 25 (9.19%) Salesforce
3 23 (8.46%) Microsoft
4 11 (4.04%) SAP
5 10 (3.68%) Virgin Media
6 9 (3.31%) Databricks
6 9 (3.31%) VMware
7 7 (2.57%) Adobe
7 7 (2.57%) Atlassian
8 6 (2.21%) Autodesk
8 6 (2.21%) MuleSoft
8 6 (2.21%) Red Hat
9 5 (1.84%) IBM
9 5 (1.84%) Splunk
10 4 (1.47%) Apple
10 4 (1.47%) Informatica
11 3 (1.10%) CA Agile Central
12 2 (0.74%) Blue Prism
12 2 (0.74%) ServiceNow
12 2 (0.74%) Teradata