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 14 May 2026.

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

6 months to
14 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 26 12
Rank change year-on-year -1 -14 -1
Contract jobs requiring a Developer 376 227 513
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 6.38% 7.63% 9.36%
As % of the Job Titles category 6.95% 8.35% 10.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 258 166 394
10th Percentile £335 £321 £325
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £464 £490
Median % change year-on-year +7.76% -5.31% -6.44%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £638 £631 £675
England median daily rate £501 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.67% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 6 27
10th Percentile £25.00 £29.32 £41.75
25th Percentile £34.01 £40.85 £50.55
Median hourly rate £45.00 £51.25 £58.91
Median % change year-on-year -12.20% -13.00% -15.85%
75th Percentile £60.00 £54.69 £70.00
90th Percentile £67.50 £66.10 £81.78
England median hourly rate £53.75 £58.75 £65.00
% change year-on-year -8.51% -9.62% +2.77%

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 5,407 2,720 5,057
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.82% 91.46% 92.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,351 1,807 3,044
10th Percentile £300 £230 £213
25th Percentile £413 £379 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% - -
75th Percentile £613 £600 £619
90th Percentile £700 £663 £688
England median daily rate £513 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 515 161 481
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.78
25th Percentile £25.00 £19.97 £18.32
Median hourly rate £55.00 £32.50 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +69.23% -31.58% -
75th Percentile £81.53 £63.75 £62.50
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.00 £77.50
England median hourly rate £46.50 £30.00 £37.50
% change year-on-year +55.00% -20.00% -14.88%

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 14 May 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 14 May 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 14 May 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 -11 162 £515 +3.00% 62
Hampshire -1 107 £500 +9.89% 27
Berkshire -21 84 £475 -5.09% 23
Buckinghamshire +3 76 £525 +10.53% 19
Surrey -1 39 £513 +7.89% 40
West Sussex -2 30 £475 +35.71% 19
East Sussex +2 13 £525 +13.51% 13
Sussex - 13 £475 - 2
Kent -1 8 - - 24
Oxfordshire -22 2 £463 +48.08% 20
Middlesex - 2 £552 - 8
Home Counties - 1 - - 1
Developer
England

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

For the 6 months to 14 May 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.

1 158 (42.02%) Security Cleared
2 138 (36.70%) SC Cleared
3 76 (20.21%) Azure
3 76 (20.21%) Java
4 75 (19.95%) CI/CD
5 71 (18.88%) Agile
6 69 (18.35%) SQL
7 62 (16.49%) .NET
7 62 (16.49%) Oracle
8 59 (15.69%) Python
9 54 (14.36%) Software Engineering
10 52 (13.83%) DevOps
11 51 (13.56%) Git
12 50 (13.30%) C#
13 46 (12.23%) JavaScript
14 45 (11.97%) Microservices
15 40 (10.64%) AWS
15 40 (10.64%) Full-Stack Development
16 39 (10.37%) React
17 38 (10.11%) Problem-Solving
18 36 (9.57%) Data Modelling
18 36 (9.57%) REST
19 34 (9.04%) Kubernetes
19 34 (9.04%) RESTful
19 34 (9.04%) Unit Testing
20 33 (8.78%) Performance Tuning
21 31 (8.24%) Business Intelligence
22 30 (7.98%) Analytics
22 30 (7.98%) Containerisation
22 30 (7.98%) Scrum

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 13 (3.46%) Oracle Application Server
2 8 (2.13%) Apache Spark
3 7 (1.86%) SharePoint
4 6 (1.60%) CMS
4 6 (1.60%) Confluence
5 4 (1.06%) IIS
5 4 (1.06%) Umbraco
6 3 (0.80%) Apache
6 3 (0.80%) ArcGIS
7 2 (0.53%) WordPress
8 1 (0.27%) Appian
8 1 (0.27%) BizTalk Server
8 1 (0.27%) JBoss
8 1 (0.27%) Kentico
8 1 (0.27%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.27%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 1 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
8 1 (0.27%) Tomcat
8 1 (0.27%) WebLogic
Applications
1 5 (1.33%) CPLEX
2 3 (0.80%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.53%) Oracle Smart View
4 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 10 (2.66%) Oracle ERP
2 5 (1.33%) Oracle 11i
2 5 (1.33%) Oracle EBS R12
3 3 (0.80%) Payment Gateway
4 2 (0.53%) SAP HR
4 2 (0.53%) SAP PSCD
4 2 (0.53%) Siebel CRM
5 1 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
5 1 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.27%) ProductWriter
Cloud Services
1 76 (20.21%) Azure
2 40 (10.64%) AWS
3 28 (7.45%) Azure DevOps
4 20 (5.32%) Power Platform
5 19 (5.05%) GCP
6 16 (4.26%) Serverless
7 14 (3.72%) OpenShift
8 13 (3.46%) Dynamics 365
8 13 (3.46%) GitHub
9 10 (2.66%) Amazon S3
10 8 (2.13%) Azure Functions
10 8 (2.13%) OCI
11 7 (1.86%) AWS Lambda
11 7 (1.86%) Azure Service Bus
11 7 (1.86%) GitHub Actions
11 7 (1.86%) Power Automate
12 6 (1.60%) Azure Key Vault
12 6 (1.60%) Oracle CX
12 6 (1.60%) PowerApps
12 6 (1.60%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.80%) HTTPS
2 2 (0.53%) BGP
2 2 (0.53%) Firewall
2 2 (0.53%) IPsec
2 2 (0.53%) LAN
2 2 (0.53%) MPLS
2 2 (0.53%) Software-Defined Radio
2 2 (0.53%) Tactical Data Link
2 2 (0.53%) WAN
2 2 (0.53%) Wireless
3 1 (0.27%) HTTP
3 1 (0.27%) SAN
3 1 (0.27%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (7.71%) Oracle Reports
2 28 (7.45%) Data Warehouse
3 27 (7.18%) PostgreSQL
4 22 (5.85%) SQL Server
5 18 (4.79%) NoSQL
5 18 (4.79%) Oracle ODI
6 16 (4.26%) Oracle BI Publisher
7 14 (3.72%) Relational Database
8 13 (3.46%) Power BI
9 10 (2.66%) MongoDB
10 7 (1.86%) Big Data
11 6 (1.60%) Azure SQL Database
11 6 (1.60%) DynamoDB
12 5 (1.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 4 (1.06%) MySQL
13 4 (1.06%) Oracle Database
14 3 (0.80%) GIS
15 2 (0.53%) RDBMS
15 2 (0.53%) Siebel EIM
15 2 (0.53%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 51 (13.56%) Git
2 13 (3.46%) Jenkins
3 12 (3.19%) Maven
4 11 (2.93%) Gradle
5 10 (2.66%) Bitbucket
5 10 (2.66%) Visual Studio
6 8 (2.13%) JIRA
6 8 (2.13%) JUnit
7 7 (1.86%) SonarQube
7 7 (1.86%) Subversion
8 5 (1.33%) GitLab
9 4 (1.06%) Android Studio
9 4 (1.06%) Eclipse
9 4 (1.06%) Selenium
10 3 (0.80%) CircleCI
10 3 (0.80%) Postman
11 2 (0.53%) Mockito
11 2 (0.53%) NUnit
11 2 (0.53%) SpecFlow
11 2 (0.53%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 42 (11.17%) Social Skills
2 36 (9.57%) Finance
3 25 (6.65%) Public Sector
4 17 (4.52%) Analytical Skills
5 10 (2.66%) Aerospace
6 7 (1.86%) Telecoms
7 6 (1.60%) Automotive
8 5 (1.33%) Law
8 5 (1.33%) Manufacturing
9 4 (1.06%) Billing
10 3 (0.80%) Aviation
10 3 (0.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 2 (0.53%) Banking
11 2 (0.53%) Presentation Skills
12 1 (0.27%) Advertising
12 1 (0.27%) Documentation Skills
12 1 (0.27%) Electronics
12 1 (0.27%) Legal
12 1 (0.27%) Marketing
12 1 (0.27%) Organisational Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 62 (16.49%) .NET
2 39 (10.37%) React
3 36 (9.57%) REST
4 34 (9.04%) RESTful
5 26 (6.91%) Spring
6 25 (6.65%) Kafka
7 21 (5.59%) Spring Boot
8 20 (5.32%) CSS
9 19 (5.05%) AngularJS
10 17 (4.52%) JSON
11 15 (3.99%) .NET Framework
12 14 (3.72%) HTML
12 14 (3.72%) SOAP
13 12 (3.19%) Entity Framework
14 10 (2.66%) .NET Core
14 10 (2.66%) Web Services
15 9 (2.39%) ASP.NET
15 9 (2.39%) Node.js
15 9 (2.39%) OAuth
15 9 (2.39%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 18 (4.79%) Distributed Systems
2 17 (4.52%) Data Structures
3 14 (3.72%) Algorithms
4 12 (3.19%) Mobile App
5 10 (2.66%) Cloud Native
5 10 (2.66%) Product Ownership
6 8 (2.13%) Data Centre
7 6 (1.60%) Legacy Systems
8 5 (1.33%) Distributed Architecture
8 5 (1.33%) Enterprise Software
9 4 (1.06%) CMDB
9 4 (1.06%) Virtual Team
10 3 (0.80%) AI Agents
10 3 (0.80%) Client/Server
10 3 (0.80%) Legacy Code
10 3 (0.80%) Onboarding
11 2 (0.53%) Device Driver
11 2 (0.53%) Embedded Systems
11 2 (0.53%) Management Information System
11 2 (0.53%) MicroBlaze
Operating Systems
1 18 (4.79%) Android
2 13 (3.46%) Linux
3 9 (2.39%) Windows
4 6 (1.60%) Apple iOS
5 5 (1.33%) Unix
6 2 (0.53%) Embedded Linux
7 1 (0.27%) Debian
7 1 (0.27%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 75 (19.95%) CI/CD
2 71 (18.88%) Agile
3 54 (14.36%) Software Engineering
4 52 (13.83%) DevOps
5 45 (11.97%) Microservices
6 40 (10.64%) Full-Stack Development
7 38 (10.11%) Problem-Solving
8 36 (9.57%) Data Modelling
9 34 (9.04%) Unit Testing
10 33 (8.78%) Performance Tuning
11 31 (8.24%) Business Intelligence
12 30 (7.98%) Analytics
12 30 (7.98%) Containerisation
12 30 (7.98%) Scrum
13 29 (7.71%) ETL
14 28 (7.45%) Test Automation
15 26 (6.91%) Front End Development
16 22 (5.85%) Workflow
17 19 (5.05%) TDD
18 18 (4.79%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 76 (20.21%) Java
2 69 (18.35%) SQL
3 59 (15.69%) Python
4 50 (13.30%) C#
5 46 (12.23%) JavaScript
6 21 (5.59%) Go
7 18 (4.79%) TypeScript
8 12 (3.19%) Kotlin
9 10 (2.66%) C++
10 7 (1.86%) C
10 7 (1.86%) PL/SQL
11 5 (1.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 5 (1.33%) PHP
12 4 (1.06%) PowerShell
12 4 (1.06%) Swift
13 3 (0.80%) ABAP
13 3 (0.80%) Apex Code
13 3 (0.80%) Bash
13 3 (0.80%) X++
14 2 (0.53%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 158 (42.02%) Security Cleared
2 138 (36.70%) SC Cleared
3 17 (4.52%) DV Cleared
4 9 (2.39%) Degree
5 8 (2.13%) Computer Science Degree
6 4 (1.06%) BPSS Clearance
7 2 (0.53%) Azure Certification
8 1 (0.27%) AWS Certification
8 1 (0.27%) AWS Certified Developer
8 1 (0.27%) DBS Check
8 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Certification
8 1 (0.27%) OCP
8 1 (0.27%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (4.26%) QA
2 7 (1.86%) Accessibility
3 4 (1.06%) WCAG
4 3 (0.80%) GDPR
5 2 (0.53%) COBIT
5 2 (0.53%) Data Quality
5 2 (0.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (0.53%) NIST
6 1 (0.27%) GRC
System Software
1 29 (7.71%) Docker
2 5 (1.33%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.53%) Embedded Firmware
3 2 (0.53%) Firmware
3 2 (0.53%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 34 (9.04%) Kubernetes
2 11 (2.93%) Terraform
3 7 (1.86%) Argo
4 3 (0.80%) Ansible
4 3 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
4 3 (0.80%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
5 1 (0.27%) Grafana
5 1 (0.27%) Podman
5 1 (0.27%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 62 (16.49%) Oracle
2 28 (7.45%) Microsoft
3 19 (5.05%) ServiceNow
4 8 (2.13%) Salesforce
5 7 (1.86%) Atlassian
5 7 (1.86%) Red Hat
5 7 (1.86%) Siebel
6 6 (1.60%) Google
7 5 (1.33%) Blue Prism
7 5 (1.33%) SAP
7 5 (1.33%) Splunk
8 4 (1.06%) Ab Initio
8 4 (1.06%) Databricks
8 4 (1.06%) Teradata
9 3 (0.80%) Coverity
9 3 (0.80%) ESRI
9 3 (0.80%) Thales
10 2 (0.53%) Dynatrace
10 2 (0.53%) IFS
10 2 (0.53%) Virgin Media