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 31 March 2026.

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

6 months to
31 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 29 22 12
Rank change year-on-year -7 -10 -2
Contract jobs requiring a Developer 340 244 493
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 6.19% 8.26% 8.74%
As % of the Job Titles category 6.77% 8.90% 9.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 238 174 371
10th Percentile £326 £350 £358
25th Percentile £412 £406 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £455 £475
Median % change year-on-year +10.01% -4.32% -9.52%
75th Percentile £575 £592 £568
90th Percentile £638 £638 £680
England median daily rate £500 £530 £525
% change year-on-year -5.66% +0.95% -7.49%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 4 23
10th Percentile £34.01 £25.93 £37.25
25th Percentile £36.13 £33.56 £46.25
Median hourly rate £55.00 £46.55 £58.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.17% -19.75% -14.07%
75th Percentile £60.00 £59.61 £73.75
90th Percentile £67.50 £70.16 £83.56
England median hourly rate £61.00 £61.00 £58.91
% change year-on-year - +3.56% -1.83%

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 5,024 2,741 5,232
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.51% 92.79% 92.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,159 1,812 3,170
10th Percentile £300 £245 £213
25th Percentile £413 £400 £390
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% - -
75th Percentile £613 £603 £611
90th Percentile £700 £665 £688
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 456 150 450
10th Percentile £15.38 £15.25 £12.86
25th Percentile £19.37 £21.30 £18.32
Median hourly rate £47.50 £41.55 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.33% -7.68% -
75th Percentile £81.05 £63.75 £62.35
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.05 £76.56
England median hourly rate £41.77 £34.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year +21.07% +6.15% -24.14%

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 31 March 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 31 March 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 31 March 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 -16 143 £515 +3.00% 98
Hampshire 0 102 £500 +15.94% 58
Berkshire -37 78 £519 +4.80% 55
Buckinghamshire +8 62 £517 -5.14% 20
Surrey +6 37 £505 +12.22% 41
West Sussex -3 28 £475 +12.45% 9
East Sussex +1 11 £450 -18.18% 12
Kent 0 10 £575 +53.33% 30
Sussex - 10 £475 - 4
Oxfordshire -19 3 £288 -13.13% 23
Middlesex - 2 £552 - 5
Home Counties -2 1 - -
Developer
England

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

For the 6 months to 31 March 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.

1 124 (36.47%) Security Cleared
2 105 (30.88%) SC Cleared
3 101 (29.71%) Java
4 85 (25.00%) CI/CD
5 79 (23.24%) SQL
6 72 (21.18%) Agile
7 64 (18.82%) Azure
8 56 (16.47%) AWS
9 50 (14.71%) DevOps
9 50 (14.71%) Oracle
10 49 (14.41%) .NET
10 49 (14.41%) Microservices
10 49 (14.41%) Problem-Solving
11 47 (13.82%) JavaScript
12 46 (13.53%) Full-Stack Development
13 45 (13.24%) Python
13 45 (13.24%) REST
14 44 (12.94%) Business Intelligence
14 44 (12.94%) Git
15 42 (12.35%) Software Engineering
16 41 (12.06%) React
16 41 (12.06%) Spring
17 40 (11.76%) Kubernetes
18 39 (11.47%) PostgreSQL
19 38 (11.18%) Test Automation
20 37 (10.88%) C#
21 34 (10.00%) Data Modelling
21 34 (10.00%) Scrum
22 33 (9.71%) GitHub
22 33 (9.71%) Unit Testing

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 7 (2.06%) SharePoint
2 6 (1.76%) Apache Spark
2 6 (1.76%) Confluence
3 4 (1.18%) Apache
3 4 (1.18%) IIS
3 4 (1.18%) Oracle Application Server
4 3 (0.88%) ArcGIS
5 2 (0.59%) CMS
6 1 (0.29%) Appian
6 1 (0.29%) BizTalk Server
6 1 (0.29%) JBoss
6 1 (0.29%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.29%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.29%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 1 (0.29%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.29%) Umbraco
6 1 (0.29%) WebLogic
6 1 (0.29%) WordPress
Applications
1 3 (0.88%) CPLEX
1 3 (0.88%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.59%) Oracle Smart View
3 1 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 9 (2.65%) Oracle ERP
2 4 (1.18%) Oracle 11i
2 4 (1.18%) Oracle EBS R12
3 3 (0.88%) Oracle Assets
3 3 (0.88%) Oracle EBS
3 3 (0.88%) Oracle General Ledger
3 3 (0.88%) Oracle Payables
3 3 (0.88%) Oracle Receivables
3 3 (0.88%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
3 3 (0.88%) Payment Gateway
4 2 (0.59%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.59%) Maximo
4 2 (0.59%) Oracle Cash Management
5 1 (0.29%) SAP HR
5 1 (0.29%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 64 (18.82%) Azure
2 56 (16.47%) AWS
3 33 (9.71%) GitHub
4 22 (6.47%) Azure DevOps
5 20 (5.88%) GCP
5 20 (5.88%) OpenShift
6 19 (5.59%) GitHub Actions
7 18 (5.29%) Power Platform
8 14 (4.12%) Serverless
9 11 (3.24%) OCI
10 10 (2.94%) Dynamics 365
11 9 (2.65%) Amazon S3
12 8 (2.35%) AWS Lambda
13 7 (2.06%) Azure Functions
13 7 (2.06%) Azure Service Bus
14 6 (1.76%) Azure Key Vault
14 6 (1.76%) Boomi
14 6 (1.76%) PowerApps
15 5 (1.47%) Amazon EC2
15 5 (1.47%) AtomSphere
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.88%) Kerberos
2 2 (0.59%) Bluetooth
2 2 (0.59%) HTTP
2 2 (0.59%) HTTPS
2 2 (0.59%) Tactical Data Link
3 1 (0.29%) Asterisk PBX
3 1 (0.29%) SAN
3 1 (0.29%) Software-Defined Radio
3 1 (0.29%) TCP/IP
3 1 (0.29%) VoIP
3 1 (0.29%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 39 (11.47%) PostgreSQL
2 28 (8.24%) Oracle Reports
3 24 (7.06%) Oracle BI Publisher
4 22 (6.47%) Relational Database
5 21 (6.18%) NoSQL
6 16 (4.71%) SQL Server
7 15 (4.41%) MongoDB
8 12 (3.53%) Power BI
9 11 (3.24%) MySQL
10 9 (2.65%) Data Warehouse
10 9 (2.65%) Oracle ODI
11 7 (2.06%) Azure SQL Database
11 7 (2.06%) DynamoDB
12 6 (1.76%) HBase
12 6 (1.76%) Oracle Database
13 5 (1.47%) Big Data
14 4 (1.18%) RDBMS
14 4 (1.18%) SAP HANA
14 4 (1.18%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 3 (0.88%) Oracle BI EE
Development Applications
1 44 (12.94%) Git
2 30 (8.82%) Jenkins
3 23 (6.76%) JUnit
4 21 (6.18%) Gradle
5 14 (4.12%) Cucumber
6 13 (3.82%) Maven
7 12 (3.53%) Sonatype Nexus
8 10 (2.94%) Visual Studio
9 9 (2.65%) JMeter
10 8 (2.35%) Android Studio
10 8 (2.35%) Bitbucket
10 8 (2.35%) GitLab
10 8 (2.35%) SonarQube
11 7 (2.06%) JIRA
11 7 (2.06%) Subversion
12 6 (1.76%) Artifactory
13 5 (1.47%) Selenium
14 4 (1.18%) Eclipse
14 4 (1.18%) Storybook
15 3 (0.88%) CircleCI
General
1 58 (17.06%) Social Skills
2 42 (12.35%) Finance
3 29 (8.53%) Public Sector
4 20 (5.88%) Analytical Skills
5 6 (1.76%) Aerospace
5 6 (1.76%) Telecoms
6 5 (1.47%) Automotive
6 5 (1.47%) Manufacturing
7 4 (1.18%) Electronics
7 4 (1.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 4 (1.18%) Marketing
8 3 (0.88%) Aviation
8 3 (0.88%) Banking
9 2 (0.59%) Documentation Skills
9 2 (0.59%) General Ledger
9 2 (0.59%) Presentation Skills
10 1 (0.29%) Advertising
10 1 (0.29%) Billing
10 1 (0.29%) Legal
10 1 (0.29%) Organisational Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 49 (14.41%) .NET
2 45 (13.24%) REST
3 41 (12.06%) React
3 41 (12.06%) Spring
4 32 (9.41%) Kafka
4 32 (9.41%) RESTful
4 32 (9.41%) Spring Boot
5 21 (6.18%) Oracle Fusion
6 20 (5.88%) CSS
6 20 (5.88%) SOAP
7 19 (5.59%) AngularJS
8 16 (4.71%) JSON
9 14 (4.12%) HTML
10 13 (3.82%) OAuth
11 12 (3.53%) Hibernate
11 12 (3.53%) Node.js
11 12 (3.53%) Web Services
12 11 (3.24%) .NET Framework
13 10 (2.94%) Entity Framework
14 9 (2.65%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 18 (5.29%) Data Structures
2 15 (4.41%) Distributed Systems
3 11 (3.24%) Mobile App
4 8 (2.35%) Cloud Native
4 8 (2.35%) Data Centre
4 8 (2.35%) Product Ownership
5 7 (2.06%) Algorithms
6 5 (1.47%) Client/Server
6 5 (1.47%) Distributed Architecture
6 5 (1.47%) Legacy Systems
7 4 (1.18%) Virtual Team
8 3 (0.88%) CMDB
8 3 (0.88%) Enterprise Software
8 3 (0.88%) Legacy Code
8 3 (0.88%) Onboarding
9 2 (0.59%) Analytical Mindset
9 2 (0.59%) Management Information System
10 1 (0.29%) AI Agents
10 1 (0.29%) Legacy Applications
10 1 (0.29%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 23 (6.76%) Android
2 19 (5.59%) Linux
3 11 (3.24%) Windows
4 7 (2.06%) Apple iOS
5 5 (1.47%) Unix
6 1 (0.29%) CentOS
6 1 (0.29%) Debian
6 1 (0.29%) Embedded Linux
6 1 (0.29%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 85 (25.00%) CI/CD
2 72 (21.18%) Agile
3 50 (14.71%) DevOps
4 49 (14.41%) Microservices
4 49 (14.41%) Problem-Solving
5 46 (13.53%) Full-Stack Development
6 44 (12.94%) Business Intelligence
7 42 (12.35%) Software Engineering
8 38 (11.18%) Test Automation
9 34 (10.00%) Data Modelling
9 34 (10.00%) Scrum
10 33 (9.71%) Unit Testing
11 29 (8.53%) Performance Tuning
12 25 (7.35%) Containerisation
12 25 (7.35%) Front End Development
13 23 (6.76%) Analytics
14 21 (6.18%) Android Development
15 19 (5.59%) Migration
15 19 (5.59%) User Experience
16 18 (5.29%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 101 (29.71%) Java
2 79 (23.24%) SQL
3 47 (13.82%) JavaScript
4 45 (13.24%) Python
5 37 (10.88%) C#
6 18 (5.29%) TypeScript
7 17 (5.00%) Go
8 13 (3.82%) C++
9 12 (3.53%) Kotlin
9 12 (3.53%) PL/SQL
10 7 (2.06%) C
11 6 (1.76%) PHP
12 5 (1.47%) ABAP
13 4 (1.18%) Swift
13 4 (1.18%) T-SQL
14 3 (0.88%) PowerShell
14 3 (0.88%) Shell Script
15 2 (0.59%) Jython
15 2 (0.59%) Objective-C
15 2 (0.59%) X++
Qualifications
1 124 (36.47%) Security Cleared
2 105 (30.88%) SC Cleared
3 13 (3.82%) DV Cleared
4 11 (3.24%) Degree
5 10 (2.94%) Computer Science Degree
6 7 (2.06%) OCP
6 7 (2.06%) Oracle Certification
7 4 (1.18%) BPSS Clearance
8 2 (0.59%) Azure Certification
9 1 (0.29%) AWS Certification
9 1 (0.29%) AWS Certified Developer
9 1 (0.29%) DBS Check
9 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (4.12%) QA
2 7 (2.06%) Accessibility
3 4 (1.18%) GDPR
4 3 (0.88%) Data Quality
4 3 (0.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 3 (0.88%) NIST
4 3 (0.88%) SLA
4 3 (0.88%) WCAG
5 2 (0.59%) COBIT
6 1 (0.29%) Def Stans
System Software
1 25 (7.35%) Docker
2 5 (1.47%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.29%) Embedded Firmware
4 1 (0.29%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 40 (11.76%) Kubernetes
2 12 (3.53%) Terraform
3 9 (2.65%) Ansible
3 9 (2.65%) Argo
4 7 (2.06%) Grafana
5 6 (1.76%) Progress Chef
6 3 (0.88%) Prometheus
6 3 (0.88%) Single Sign-On
6 3 (0.88%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
7 1 (0.29%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
Vendors
1 50 (14.71%) Oracle
2 30 (8.82%) Microsoft
3 17 (5.00%) ServiceNow
4 11 (3.24%) Salesforce
5 8 (2.35%) Atlassian
5 8 (2.35%) Red Hat
5 8 (2.35%) SAP
5 8 (2.35%) VMware
6 5 (1.47%) Blue Prism
6 5 (1.47%) Databricks
7 4 (1.18%) Google
7 4 (1.18%) Siebel
7 4 (1.18%) Splunk
8 3 (0.88%) Coverity
8 3 (0.88%) Informatica
8 3 (0.88%) Teradata
8 3 (0.88%) Thales
9 2 (0.59%) Dynatrace
9 2 (0.59%) IFS
9 2 (0.59%) OpenAI