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 9 February 2026.

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

6 months to
9 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 31 23 20
Rank change year-on-year -8 -3 -10
Contract jobs requiring a Developer 281 272 405
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 6.04% 8.65% 7.36%
As % of the Job Titles category 6.71% 9.33% 7.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 199 176 293
10th Percentile £313 £356 £350
25th Percentile £380 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £464 £490
Median % change year-on-year +2.43% -5.36% -9.05%
75th Percentile £561 £601 £575
90th Percentile £618 £638 £688
England median daily rate £500 £538 £525
% change year-on-year -7.06% +2.48% -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 1 23
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 - £73.75
90th Percentile £60.00 - £83.56
England median hourly rate £55.00 £65.00 £69.55
% change year-on-year -15.38% -6.54% +15.92%

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 4,186 2,915 5,149
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.04% 92.75% 93.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,707 1,793 3,197
10th Percentile £256 £245 £205
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
75th Percentile £600 £601 £601
90th Percentile £688 £674 £688
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 365 103 406
10th Percentile £13.95 £18.54 £13.00
25th Percentile £17.25 £24.18 £18.32
Median hourly rate £25.77 £42.88 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -39.90% -4.71% -
75th Percentile £60.00 £62.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £85.40 £74.97 £76.53
England median hourly rate £30.50 £35.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -12.87% - -5.74%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 -27 109 £450 -17.43% 72
Hampshire +4 87 £473 +11.29% 57
Berkshire -36 68 £478 -13.18% 35
Surrey +11 39 £505 +12.22% 43
Buckinghamshire +10 38 £444 -18.95% 18
West Sussex -10 20 £475 +12.35% 35
East Sussex -2 13 £413 -25.00% 21
Kent -4 8 £338 -12.90% 26
Sussex -1 6 £475 - 12
Oxfordshire -15 3 £338 +8.00% 19
Middlesex - 2 £552 - 9
Home Counties -3 1 - -
Developer
England

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

For the 6 months to 9 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 90 (32.03%) Java
2 84 (29.89%) Agile
3 76 (27.05%) SQL
4 74 (26.33%) Security Cleared
5 66 (23.49%) CI/CD
6 59 (21.00%) SC Cleared
7 55 (19.57%) AWS
7 55 (19.57%) Problem-Solving
8 50 (17.79%) Azure
9 47 (16.73%) Software Engineering
10 43 (15.30%) REST
10 43 (15.30%) Spring
11 42 (14.95%) JavaScript
12 40 (14.23%) Full-Stack Development
12 40 (14.23%) Kubernetes
13 38 (13.52%) DevOps
13 38 (13.52%) GitHub
13 38 (13.52%) Microservices
14 37 (13.17%) Scrum
15 36 (12.81%) PostgreSQL
15 36 (12.81%) Python
16 35 (12.46%) Test Automation
17 34 (12.10%) React
17 34 (12.10%) Spring Boot
18 32 (11.39%) Jenkins
19 31 (11.03%) .NET
19 31 (11.03%) Business Intelligence
20 30 (10.68%) TDD
21 29 (10.32%) C#
21 29 (10.32%) 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 (3.91%) Confluence
2 8 (2.85%) SharePoint
3 4 (1.42%) Apache
3 4 (1.42%) Apache Spark
4 3 (1.07%) ArcGIS
4 3 (1.07%) CMS
5 2 (0.71%) IIS
5 2 (0.71%) SharePoint Server
6 1 (0.36%) BizTalk Server
6 1 (0.36%) Camunda
6 1 (0.36%) Documentum
6 1 (0.36%) Headless CMS
6 1 (0.36%) JBoss
6 1 (0.36%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.36%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 1 (0.36%) Smallworld
6 1 (0.36%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.36%) Umbraco
6 1 (0.36%) WebLogic
6 1 (0.36%) WordPress
Applications
1 3 (1.07%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.36%) CPLEX
2 1 (0.36%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 3 (1.07%) Oracle Assets
1 3 (1.07%) Oracle General Ledger
1 3 (1.07%) Oracle Payables
1 3 (1.07%) Oracle Receivables
1 3 (1.07%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
1 3 (1.07%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.71%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.71%) Maximo
2 2 (0.71%) Oracle Cash Management
2 2 (0.71%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.36%) SAP HR
3 1 (0.36%) SAP PSCD
3 1 (0.36%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 55 (19.57%) AWS
2 50 (17.79%) Azure
3 38 (13.52%) GitHub
4 22 (7.83%) GitHub Actions
5 21 (7.47%) GCP
6 19 (6.76%) Power Platform
7 18 (6.41%) OpenShift
8 10 (3.56%) Amazon S3
8 10 (3.56%) Azure DevOps
9 9 (3.20%) Dynamics 365
9 9 (3.20%) OCI
9 9 (3.20%) Serverless
10 8 (2.85%) Datadog
11 7 (2.49%) AWS Lambda
12 6 (2.14%) Azure Service Bus
12 6 (2.14%) Boomi
13 5 (1.78%) AtomSphere
13 5 (1.78%) AWS CloudFormation
13 5 (1.78%) Snowflake
14 4 (1.42%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.78%) Kerberos
2 2 (0.71%) Bluetooth
2 2 (0.71%) HTTP
2 2 (0.71%) Tactical Data Link
2 2 (0.71%) VoIP
3 1 (0.36%) Asterisk PBX
3 1 (0.36%) HTTPS
3 1 (0.36%) Network Security
3 1 (0.36%) SAN
3 1 (0.36%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (12.81%) PostgreSQL
2 22 (7.83%) NoSQL
3 15 (5.34%) Relational Database
4 13 (4.63%) Oracle BI Publisher
4 13 (4.63%) Oracle Reports
4 13 (4.63%) SQL Server
5 12 (4.27%) MongoDB
6 11 (3.91%) MySQL
7 10 (3.56%) Power BI
8 8 (2.85%) HBase
9 7 (2.49%) DynamoDB
10 6 (2.14%) Data Warehouse
11 5 (1.78%) Apache Cassandra
11 5 (1.78%) Couchbase
11 5 (1.78%) Oracle Database
12 4 (1.42%) Azure SQL Database
12 4 (1.42%) Big Data
12 4 (1.42%) SAP HANA
12 4 (1.42%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 3 (1.07%) Oracle BI EE
Development Applications
1 32 (11.39%) Jenkins
2 26 (9.25%) Git
3 25 (8.90%) JUnit
4 22 (7.83%) Cucumber
4 22 (7.83%) Gradle
5 15 (5.34%) Sonatype Nexus
6 10 (3.56%) GitLab
7 9 (3.20%) JIRA
7 9 (3.20%) JMeter
8 8 (2.85%) Artifactory
8 8 (2.85%) Maven
9 7 (2.49%) Android Studio
9 7 (2.49%) Bitbucket
10 4 (1.42%) Selenium
10 4 (1.42%) SonarQube
10 4 (1.42%) Storybook
10 4 (1.42%) Subversion
10 4 (1.42%) Visual Studio
11 3 (1.07%) CircleCI
12 2 (0.71%) Gatling
General
1 59 (21.00%) Social Skills
2 46 (16.37%) Finance
3 27 (9.61%) Analytical Skills
4 20 (7.12%) Public Sector
5 6 (2.14%) Telecoms
6 5 (1.78%) Manufacturing
7 4 (1.42%) Banking
7 4 (1.42%) Electronics
7 4 (1.42%) Marketing
8 3 (1.07%) Aerospace
8 3 (1.07%) Aviation
8 3 (1.07%) Billing
9 2 (0.71%) Documentation Skills
9 2 (0.71%) General Ledger
9 2 (0.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 2 (0.71%) Legal
10 1 (0.36%) Health Technology
10 1 (0.36%) Military
10 1 (0.36%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (15.30%) REST
1 43 (15.30%) Spring
2 34 (12.10%) React
2 34 (12.10%) Spring Boot
3 31 (11.03%) .NET
4 26 (9.25%) Kafka
5 23 (8.19%) AngularJS
6 22 (7.83%) CSS
6 22 (7.83%) RESTful
7 21 (7.47%) HTML
8 20 (7.12%) SOAP
9 15 (5.34%) Oracle Fusion
10 13 (4.63%) Node.js
10 13 (4.63%) RabbitMQ
11 12 (4.27%) Web Services
12 11 (3.91%) Hibernate
13 9 (3.20%) JSON
14 7 (2.49%) .NET Framework
15 6 (2.14%) .NET Core
15 6 (2.14%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 11 (3.91%) Data Structures
2 9 (3.20%) Mobile App
3 6 (2.14%) Distributed Systems
3 6 (2.14%) Product Ownership
4 5 (1.78%) Client/Server
5 4 (1.42%) Analytical Mindset
5 4 (1.42%) Cloud Native
6 3 (1.07%) Algorithms
6 3 (1.07%) Legacy Code
6 3 (1.07%) Onboarding
6 3 (1.07%) Virtual Team
7 2 (0.71%) CMDB
7 2 (0.71%) Greenfield Project
7 2 (0.71%) Management Information System
8 1 (0.36%) AI Agents
8 1 (0.36%) Data Protection Act
8 1 (0.36%) Distributed Architecture
8 1 (0.36%) Java Card
8 1 (0.36%) Renewable Energy
8 1 (0.36%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 23 (8.19%) Android
2 15 (5.34%) Linux
3 9 (3.20%) Apple iOS
4 8 (2.85%) Windows
5 6 (2.14%) Unix
6 1 (0.36%) CentOS
6 1 (0.36%) Debian
6 1 (0.36%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 84 (29.89%) Agile
2 66 (23.49%) CI/CD
3 55 (19.57%) Problem-Solving
4 47 (16.73%) Software Engineering
5 40 (14.23%) Full-Stack Development
6 38 (13.52%) DevOps
6 38 (13.52%) Microservices
7 37 (13.17%) Scrum
8 35 (12.46%) Test Automation
9 31 (11.03%) Business Intelligence
10 30 (10.68%) TDD
11 26 (9.25%) Data Modelling
12 25 (8.90%) Workflow
13 23 (8.19%) Data Integration
14 22 (7.83%) Front End Development
15 21 (7.47%) Containerisation
16 19 (6.76%) Computer Science
17 18 (6.41%) AI
17 18 (6.41%) Android Development
17 18 (6.41%) Test Strategy
Programming Languages
1 90 (32.03%) Java
2 76 (27.05%) SQL
3 42 (14.95%) JavaScript
4 36 (12.81%) Python
5 29 (10.32%) C#
6 17 (6.05%) VB
7 12 (4.27%) TypeScript
8 8 (2.85%) C++
8 8 (2.85%) Go
9 7 (2.49%) PL/SQL
10 6 (2.14%) Kotlin
10 6 (2.14%) Shell Script
11 5 (1.78%) ABAP
11 5 (1.78%) Apex Code
11 5 (1.78%) PowerShell
12 4 (1.42%) C
12 4 (1.42%) PHP
13 3 (1.07%) Swift
13 3 (1.07%) T-SQL
13 3 (1.07%) X++
Qualifications
1 74 (26.33%) Security Cleared
2 59 (21.00%) SC Cleared
3 20 (7.12%) Degree
4 16 (5.69%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (3.56%) OCP
5 10 (3.56%) Oracle Certification
6 8 (2.85%) DV Cleared
7 3 (1.07%) BPSS Clearance
8 1 (0.36%) AWS Certification
8 1 (0.36%) AWS Certified Developer
8 1 (0.36%) Azure Certification
8 1 (0.36%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (3.56%) QA
2 5 (1.78%) Data Quality
2 5 (1.78%) GDPR
3 3 (1.07%) Accessibility
3 3 (1.07%) SLA
4 1 (0.36%) Def Stans
4 1 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (0.36%) NIST
4 1 (0.36%) WCAG
System Software
1 21 (7.47%) Docker
2 4 (1.42%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (0.36%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 40 (14.23%) Kubernetes
2 10 (3.56%) Ansible
3 8 (2.85%) Grafana
3 8 (2.85%) Terraform
4 7 (2.49%) Progress Chef
5 5 (1.78%) Argo
6 3 (1.07%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
7 2 (0.71%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
7 2 (0.71%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.71%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 29 (10.32%) Microsoft
2 26 (9.25%) Oracle
3 11 (3.91%) Salesforce
4 9 (3.20%) SAP
4 9 (3.20%) VMware
5 8 (2.85%) Atlassian
6 6 (2.14%) Informatica
6 6 (2.14%) ServiceNow
7 5 (1.78%) Blue Prism
7 5 (1.78%) Databricks
7 5 (1.78%) Red Hat
8 4 (1.42%) Google
9 3 (1.07%) Coverity
9 3 (1.07%) Teradata
9 3 (1.07%) Thales
10 2 (0.71%) Cognos
10 2 (0.71%) IFS
10 2 (0.71%) OpenAI
10 2 (0.71%) Splunk
11 1 (0.36%) UiPath