Developer Contract Job Trends in the South East

Developer
England > South East

The median Developer daily rate in the South East is £475, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 January 2026.

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

6 months to
1 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 33 22 23
Rank change year-on-year -11 +1 -13
Contract jobs requiring a Developer 246 302 372
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 5.58% 8.44% 7.55%
As % of the Job Titles category 6.17% 9.10% 8.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 177 192 262
10th Percentile £313 £351 £350
25th Percentile £400 £401 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £481 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.30% -3.75% -9.09%
75th Percentile £550 £636 £575
90th Percentile £600 £650 £675
England median daily rate £500 £534 £550
% change year-on-year -6.37% -2.91% -6.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 1 13
10th Percentile - - £50.00
25th Percentile £52.50 £21.25 £57.50
Median hourly rate £55.00 £22.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +144.44% -62.50% -11.11%
75th Percentile £57.50 £23.75 £70.00
90th Percentile - - £78.00
England median hourly rate £57.50 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -11.54% - +6.12%

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 3,990 3,320 4,610
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.54% 92.76% 93.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,602 2,076 2,987
10th Percentile £222 £238 £205
25th Percentile £400 £400 £378
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £505 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.99% +1.00% -
75th Percentile £600 £620 £610
90th Percentile £688 £675 £688
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 355 124 253
10th Percentile £13.75 £18.56 £16.30
25th Percentile £16.50 £24.18 £27.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £42.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -40.82% -22.73% +46.67%
75th Percentile £57.50 £62.59 £66.25
90th Percentile £85.40 £71.70 £76.53
England median hourly rate £27.21 £35.00 £45.88
% change year-on-year -22.26% -23.71% +40.01%

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 1 January 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 1 January 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 1 January 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 -27 101 £450 -18.18% 96
Berkshire -31 68 £478 -13.18% 46
Hampshire -6 64 £465 +7.08% 46
Surrey +22 48 £525 +16.67% 29
Buckinghamshire +14 28 £444 -19.32% 27
East Sussex -2 11 £450 -18.18% 23
Kent +1 10 £338 -15.63% 24
West Sussex -18 9 £488 +15.31% 23
Oxfordshire -15 5 £400 - 24
Middlesex - 3 £594 - 13
Sussex -4 1 £525 - 9
Developer
England

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

For the 6 months to 1 January 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 86 (34.96%) Agile
2 68 (27.64%) SQL
3 67 (27.24%) CI/CD
3 67 (27.24%) Java
4 55 (22.36%) Problem-Solving
5 53 (21.54%) Security Cleared
6 50 (20.33%) AWS
7 42 (17.07%) REST
7 42 (17.07%) Software Engineering
8 40 (16.26%) Azure
8 40 (16.26%) SC Cleared
9 38 (15.45%) Full-Stack Development
10 37 (15.04%) DevOps
10 37 (15.04%) GitHub
11 35 (14.23%) .NET
11 35 (14.23%) C#
11 35 (14.23%) Microservices
11 35 (14.23%) PostgreSQL
12 34 (13.82%) Kubernetes
12 34 (13.82%) Scrum
12 34 (13.82%) Spring
13 33 (13.41%) Python
14 32 (13.01%) JavaScript
14 32 (13.01%) Jenkins
14 32 (13.01%) TDD
15 28 (11.38%) React
15 28 (11.38%) RESTful
16 27 (10.98%) Git
17 26 (10.57%) Spring Boot
18 25 (10.16%) Business Intelligence

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 (4.07%) Confluence
2 8 (3.25%) SharePoint
3 4 (1.63%) Apache Spark
4 3 (1.22%) Apache
4 3 (1.22%) CMS
5 2 (0.81%) ArcGIS
5 2 (0.81%) nginx
5 2 (0.81%) SharePoint Server
5 2 (0.81%) Umbraco
6 1 (0.41%) Camunda
6 1 (0.41%) Documentum
6 1 (0.41%) Gunicorn
6 1 (0.41%) Headless CMS
6 1 (0.41%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.41%) Smallworld
6 1 (0.41%) WordPress
Applications
1 2 (0.81%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.41%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 3 (1.22%) Oracle Assets
1 3 (1.22%) Oracle General Ledger
1 3 (1.22%) Oracle Payables
1 3 (1.22%) Oracle Receivables
1 3 (1.22%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
2 2 (0.81%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.81%) Maximo
2 2 (0.81%) Oracle Cash Management
2 2 (0.81%) Oracle EBS
2 2 (0.81%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.41%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 50 (20.33%) AWS
2 40 (16.26%) Azure
3 37 (15.04%) GitHub
4 22 (8.94%) GitHub Actions
5 16 (6.50%) GCP
5 16 (6.50%) Power Platform
6 14 (5.69%) OpenShift
7 12 (4.88%) Azure DevOps
8 11 (4.47%) Serverless
9 9 (3.66%) Amazon S3
9 9 (3.66%) OCI
10 8 (3.25%) AWS Lambda
10 8 (3.25%) Datadog
11 7 (2.85%) Dynamics 365
12 6 (2.44%) Boomi
13 5 (2.03%) Amazon EC2
13 5 (2.03%) AtomSphere
13 5 (2.03%) AWS CloudFormation
13 5 (2.03%) Azure Logic Apps
14 4 (1.63%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 5 (2.03%) Kerberos
2 2 (0.81%) Bluetooth
2 2 (0.81%) HTTP
2 2 (0.81%) VoIP
3 1 (0.41%) Asterisk PBX
3 1 (0.41%) HTTPS
3 1 (0.41%) MQTT
3 1 (0.41%) Network Security
3 1 (0.41%) SAN
3 1 (0.41%) Tactical Data Link
3 1 (0.41%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 35 (14.23%) PostgreSQL
2 19 (7.72%) NoSQL
3 14 (5.69%) Relational Database
4 11 (4.47%) MongoDB
4 11 (4.47%) SQL Server
5 10 (4.07%) MySQL
5 10 (4.07%) Oracle BI Publisher
5 10 (4.07%) Oracle Reports
6 8 (3.25%) HBase
7 7 (2.85%) Power BI
8 6 (2.44%) DynamoDB
9 5 (2.03%) Apache Cassandra
9 5 (2.03%) Couchbase
9 5 (2.03%) Data Warehouse
10 4 (1.63%) Azure SQL Database
10 4 (1.63%) Oracle Database
10 4 (1.63%) SAP HANA
11 3 (1.22%) BigQuery
11 3 (1.22%) Data Lake
11 3 (1.22%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 32 (13.01%) Jenkins
2 27 (10.98%) Git
3 22 (8.94%) Cucumber
3 22 (8.94%) JUnit
4 21 (8.54%) Gradle
5 15 (6.10%) Sonatype Nexus
6 11 (4.47%) JIRA
7 10 (4.07%) GitLab
8 9 (3.66%) JMeter
9 8 (3.25%) Artifactory
10 7 (2.85%) Maven
11 6 (2.44%) Android Studio
11 6 (2.44%) Bitbucket
12 4 (1.63%) Subversion
12 4 (1.63%) Visual Studio
13 3 (1.22%) Storybook
14 2 (0.81%) Oracle APEX
14 2 (0.81%) Oracle Forms
14 2 (0.81%) Selenium
14 2 (0.81%) Vite
General
1 58 (23.58%) Social Skills
2 37 (15.04%) Finance
3 31 (12.60%) Analytical Skills
4 18 (7.32%) Public Sector
5 5 (2.03%) Manufacturing
6 4 (1.63%) Banking
6 4 (1.63%) Electronics
6 4 (1.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 4 (1.63%) Telecoms
7 3 (1.22%) Aerospace
7 3 (1.22%) Billing
7 3 (1.22%) Documentation Skills
7 3 (1.22%) Marketing
8 2 (0.81%) Aviation
8 2 (0.81%) General Ledger
8 2 (0.81%) Legal
9 1 (0.41%) Digital Healthcare
9 1 (0.41%) Health Technology
9 1 (0.41%) Military
9 1 (0.41%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 42 (17.07%) REST
2 35 (14.23%) .NET
3 34 (13.82%) Spring
4 28 (11.38%) React
4 28 (11.38%) RESTful
5 26 (10.57%) Spring Boot
6 25 (10.16%) Kafka
7 20 (8.13%) AngularJS
8 19 (7.72%) HTML
8 19 (7.72%) SOAP
9 17 (6.91%) CSS
10 14 (5.69%) Node.js
11 12 (4.88%) Oracle Fusion
11 12 (4.88%) RabbitMQ
11 12 (4.88%) Web Services
12 9 (3.66%) Hibernate
13 8 (3.25%) .NET Core
14 6 (2.44%) .NET Framework
14 6 (2.44%) GraphQL
14 6 (2.44%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 10 (4.07%) Mobile App
2 7 (2.85%) Cloud Native
3 6 (2.44%) Data Structures
3 6 (2.44%) Onboarding
4 4 (1.63%) Analytical Mindset
4 4 (1.63%) Client/Server
5 2 (0.81%) Algorithms
5 2 (0.81%) Distributed Systems
5 2 (0.81%) Greenfield Project
5 2 (0.81%) Legacy Code
5 2 (0.81%) Management Information System
5 2 (0.81%) Product Ownership
5 2 (0.81%) Virtual Team
6 1 (0.41%) AI Agents
6 1 (0.41%) CMDB
6 1 (0.41%) EMV
6 1 (0.41%) Enterprise Software
6 1 (0.41%) IoT
6 1 (0.41%) Legacy Systems
6 1 (0.41%) Renewable Energy
Operating Systems
1 22 (8.94%) Android
2 14 (5.69%) Linux
3 10 (4.07%) Apple iOS
4 6 (2.44%) Windows
5 5 (2.03%) Unix
6 1 (0.41%) CentOS
6 1 (0.41%) Debian
6 1 (0.41%) Ubuntu
6 1 (0.41%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 86 (34.96%) Agile
2 67 (27.24%) CI/CD
3 55 (22.36%) Problem-Solving
4 42 (17.07%) Software Engineering
5 38 (15.45%) Full-Stack Development
6 37 (15.04%) DevOps
7 35 (14.23%) Microservices
8 34 (13.82%) Scrum
9 32 (13.01%) TDD
10 25 (10.16%) Business Intelligence
10 25 (10.16%) Test Automation
11 24 (9.76%) Data Integration
11 24 (9.76%) Data Modelling
12 23 (9.35%) Computer Science
13 20 (8.13%) Workflow
14 19 (7.72%) Acceptance Criteria
14 19 (7.72%) Test Strategy
15 18 (7.32%) CAFM
15 18 (7.32%) Continuous Integration
16 17 (6.91%) Android Development
Programming Languages
1 68 (27.64%) SQL
2 67 (27.24%) Java
3 35 (14.23%) C#
4 33 (13.41%) Python
5 32 (13.01%) JavaScript
6 18 (7.32%) VB
7 8 (3.25%) Go
8 7 (2.85%) C++
8 7 (2.85%) PL/SQL
8 7 (2.85%) Shell Script
8 7 (2.85%) TypeScript
9 6 (2.44%) Kotlin
10 5 (2.03%) Apex Code
10 5 (2.03%) C
10 5 (2.03%) PowerShell
11 4 (1.63%) ABAP
11 4 (1.63%) Swift
12 3 (1.22%) Objective-C
12 3 (1.22%) X++
13 2 (0.81%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 53 (21.54%) Security Cleared
2 40 (16.26%) SC Cleared
3 23 (9.35%) Degree
4 20 (8.13%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (4.07%) OCP
5 10 (4.07%) Oracle Certification
6 8 (3.25%) DV Cleared
7 2 (0.81%) BPSS Clearance
8 1 (0.41%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (5.28%) QA
2 6 (2.44%) Data Quality
3 4 (1.63%) GDPR
4 3 (1.22%) SLA
5 2 (0.81%) Accessibility
6 1 (0.41%) Actionable Recommendations
6 1 (0.41%) Def Stans
6 1 (0.41%) ISO/IEC 17025
6 1 (0.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (0.41%) NIST
System Software
1 20 (8.13%) Docker
2 4 (1.63%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 34 (13.82%) Kubernetes
2 11 (4.47%) Ansible
3 9 (3.66%) Grafana
4 7 (2.85%) Progress Chef
4 7 (2.85%) Terraform
5 3 (1.22%) Argo
5 3 (1.22%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.81%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
6 2 (0.81%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
7 1 (0.41%) Rsyslog
7 1 (0.41%) SCOM
Vendors
1 24 (9.76%) Microsoft
2 23 (9.35%) Oracle
3 11 (4.47%) Salesforce
4 10 (4.07%) SAP
5 9 (3.66%) VMware
6 7 (2.85%) Atlassian
7 6 (2.44%) Databricks
8 4 (1.63%) Apple
8 4 (1.63%) Google
8 4 (1.63%) Informatica
8 4 (1.63%) ServiceNow
9 3 (1.22%) Red Hat
9 3 (1.22%) Virgin Media
10 2 (0.81%) Blue Prism
10 2 (0.81%) Coverity
10 2 (0.81%) IFS
10 2 (0.81%) Teradata
10 2 (0.81%) Thales
11 1 (0.41%) Pega
11 1 (0.41%) Telerik