Developer Contract Job Trends in the South East

Developer
England > South East

The median Developer daily rate in the South East is £493, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 December 2025.

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

6 months to
1 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 29 21 21
Rank change year-on-year -8 0 -12
Contract jobs requiring a Developer 270 338 409
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 6.50% 8.48% 7.79%
As % of the Job Titles category 7.23% 9.14% 8.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 193 219 290
10th Percentile £313 £375 £350
25th Percentile £385 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £493 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -6.19% +5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £575 £638 £584
90th Percentile £623 £650 £650
England median daily rate £500 £535 £550
% change year-on-year -6.54% -2.73% -6.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 1 13
10th Percentile £32.99 - -
25th Percentile £52.50 £21.25 -
Median hourly rate £55.00 £22.50 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +144.44% -55.00% -25.65%
75th Percentile £57.50 £23.75 £70.00
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £55.00 £65.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year -15.38% +8.33% +2.95%

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 3,737 3,700 4,936
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.00% 92.78% 94.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,386 2,263 3,233
10th Percentile £208 £238 £207
25th Percentile £393 £400 £390
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £513
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% - +2.50%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £613
90th Percentile £675 £686 £688
England median daily rate £503 £525 £535
% change year-on-year -4.12% -1.78% -2.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 378 187 250
10th Percentile £13.75 £18.15 £16.23
25th Percentile £16.17 £24.18 £24.06
Median hourly rate £25.00 £52.50 £51.24
Median % change year-on-year -52.38% +2.46% +36.63%
75th Percentile £57.50 £70.00 £65.96
90th Percentile £81.00 £75.00 £76.53
England median hourly rate £25.15 £37.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year -32.93% -16.67% +38.46%

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 December 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 1 December 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 1 December 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 -19 117 £500 -4.76% 151
Berkshire -21 83 £530 -3.64% 68
Hampshire +8 70 £465 -24.82% 70
Surrey +25 51 £550 -12.52% 31
Buckinghamshire +6 29 £438 -10.26% 41
Kent +4 12 £338 -15.63% 35
East Sussex -5 10 £450 -10.00% 40
West Sussex -16 7 £488 +8.33% 13
Oxfordshire -20 5 £400 -11.11% 46
Middlesex - 3 £594 - 12
Sussex -3 1 £525 - 22
Developer
England

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

For the 6 months to 1 December 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.

1 101 (37.41%) Agile
2 79 (29.26%) CI/CD
3 69 (25.56%) SQL
4 67 (24.81%) Java
5 58 (21.48%) Problem-Solving
6 54 (20.00%) AWS
7 52 (19.26%) DevOps
8 50 (18.52%) Azure
8 50 (18.52%) Security Cleared
9 46 (17.04%) REST
10 43 (15.93%) Python
11 42 (15.56%) Full-Stack Development
12 37 (13.70%) C#
12 37 (13.70%) GitHub
12 37 (13.70%) SC Cleared
13 36 (13.33%) .NET
13 36 (13.33%) Microservices
13 36 (13.33%) React
14 35 (12.96%) PostgreSQL
14 35 (12.96%) RESTful
14 35 (12.96%) Software Engineering
14 35 (12.96%) TDD
15 34 (12.59%) Kubernetes
15 34 (12.59%) Scrum
16 33 (12.22%) JavaScript
17 32 (11.85%) Jenkins
18 31 (11.48%) Spring
19 28 (10.37%) Git
20 27 (10.00%) Oracle
21 26 (9.63%) Data Modelling

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 (3.70%) Confluence
2 5 (1.85%) SharePoint
3 4 (1.48%) Apache Spark
4 3 (1.11%) Apache
4 3 (1.11%) CMS
5 2 (0.74%) nginx
5 2 (0.74%) SharePoint Server
5 2 (0.74%) Umbraco
6 1 (0.37%) Anypoint
6 1 (0.37%) ArcGIS
6 1 (0.37%) Camunda
6 1 (0.37%) Documentum
6 1 (0.37%) Gunicorn
6 1 (0.37%) HCL Domino
6 1 (0.37%) Headless CMS
6 1 (0.37%) Hyperledger
6 1 (0.37%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.37%) Smallworld
6 1 (0.37%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.37%) WordPress
Applications
1 4 (1.48%) Adobe Illustrator
1 4 (1.48%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.74%) 3ds Max
3 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 3 (1.11%) Oracle Assets
1 3 (1.11%) Oracle General Ledger
1 3 (1.11%) Oracle Payables
1 3 (1.11%) Oracle Receivables
1 3 (1.11%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
2 2 (0.74%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.74%) Maximo
2 2 (0.74%) Oracle Cash Management
2 2 (0.74%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.37%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 54 (20.00%) AWS
2 50 (18.52%) Azure
3 37 (13.70%) GitHub
4 23 (8.52%) GitHub Actions
5 19 (7.04%) Azure DevOps
6 18 (6.67%) GCP
7 13 (4.81%) OpenShift
8 10 (3.70%) Power Platform
8 10 (3.70%) Serverless
9 9 (3.33%) Amazon S3
9 9 (3.33%) Dynamics 365
9 9 (3.33%) OCI
10 8 (2.96%) AWS Lambda
10 8 (2.96%) Datadog
11 7 (2.59%) Azure Logic Apps
12 6 (2.22%) Boomi
13 5 (1.85%) Amazon EC2
13 5 (1.85%) AtomSphere
14 4 (1.48%) AWS CloudFormation
15 3 (1.11%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.85%) Kerberos
1 5 (1.85%) SAN
2 4 (1.48%) TCP/IP
3 3 (1.11%) VPN
4 2 (0.74%) Bluetooth
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%) Ethernet VPN
5 1 (0.37%) HTTPS
5 1 (0.37%) MPLS
5 1 (0.37%) MQTT
5 1 (0.37%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 35 (12.96%) PostgreSQL
2 20 (7.41%) NoSQL
3 14 (5.19%) Relational Database
4 13 (4.81%) MongoDB
5 12 (4.44%) Oracle Reports
6 11 (4.07%) MySQL
7 10 (3.70%) Oracle BI Publisher
8 9 (3.33%) SQL Server
9 7 (2.59%) HBase
10 6 (2.22%) DynamoDB
11 5 (1.85%) Apache Cassandra
11 5 (1.85%) Couchbase
11 5 (1.85%) Data Warehouse
12 4 (1.48%) Oracle Database
12 4 (1.48%) SAP HANA
13 3 (1.11%) Azure SQL Database
13 3 (1.11%) BigQuery
13 3 (1.11%) Oracle BI EE
13 3 (1.11%) Power BI
14 2 (0.74%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 32 (11.85%) Jenkins
2 28 (10.37%) Git
3 21 (7.78%) Cucumber
4 19 (7.04%) JUnit
5 18 (6.67%) Gradle
6 14 (5.19%) Sonatype Nexus
7 13 (4.81%) JIRA
8 10 (3.70%) GitLab
9 9 (3.33%) JMeter
10 8 (2.96%) Maven
11 7 (2.59%) Artifactory
12 6 (2.22%) Bitbucket
13 5 (1.85%) Android Studio
14 4 (1.48%) Subversion
14 4 (1.48%) Visual Studio
15 3 (1.11%) Storybook
16 2 (0.74%) Gatling
16 2 (0.74%) Oracle APEX
16 2 (0.74%) Oracle Forms
16 2 (0.74%) Vite
General
1 65 (24.07%) Social Skills
2 40 (14.81%) Finance
3 36 (13.33%) Analytical Skills
4 20 (7.41%) Public Sector
5 6 (2.22%) Telecoms
6 5 (1.85%) Banking
6 5 (1.85%) Documentation Skills
6 5 (1.85%) Manufacturing
7 4 (1.48%) Electronics
7 4 (1.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 3 (1.11%) Aerospace
8 3 (1.11%) Billing
8 3 (1.11%) Marketing
8 3 (1.11%) Military
9 2 (0.74%) Automotive
9 2 (0.74%) General Ledger
9 2 (0.74%) Legal
10 1 (0.37%) Aviation
10 1 (0.37%) Presentation Skills
10 1 (0.37%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 46 (17.04%) REST
2 36 (13.33%) .NET
2 36 (13.33%) React
3 35 (12.96%) RESTful
4 31 (11.48%) Spring
5 24 (8.89%) Kafka
5 24 (8.89%) Spring Boot
6 22 (8.15%) HTML
6 22 (8.15%) SOAP
7 21 (7.78%) AngularJS
7 21 (7.78%) CSS
8 15 (5.56%) Web Services
9 14 (5.19%) Oracle Fusion
10 13 (4.81%) Node.js
10 13 (4.81%) RabbitMQ
11 12 (4.44%) Lightning Web Components
12 11 (4.07%) .NET Core
13 9 (3.33%) Hibernate
13 9 (3.33%) JSON
14 7 (2.59%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 9 (3.33%) Mobile App
2 7 (2.59%) Cloud Native
2 7 (2.59%) Onboarding
3 6 (2.22%) Algorithms
4 5 (1.85%) Data Structures
5 4 (1.48%) 3D Graphics
5 4 (1.48%) Client/Server
5 4 (1.48%) Vector Graphics
6 3 (1.11%) Analytical Mindset
7 2 (0.74%) Animation
7 2 (0.74%) Distributed Systems
7 2 (0.74%) e-Learning
7 2 (0.74%) Enterprise Software
7 2 (0.74%) Greenfield Project
7 2 (0.74%) Renewable Energy
8 1 (0.37%) Blockchain
8 1 (0.37%) Cyber Threat
8 1 (0.37%) Data Protection Act
8 1 (0.37%) FMCG
8 1 (0.37%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 19 (7.04%) Linux
2 16 (5.93%) Android
3 11 (4.07%) Windows
4 10 (3.70%) Apple iOS
5 7 (2.59%) Unix
6 5 (1.85%) Debian
6 5 (1.85%) Ubuntu
6 5 (1.85%) Windows Server
6 5 (1.85%) Windows Server 2016
7 2 (0.74%) CentOS
8 1 (0.37%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 101 (37.41%) Agile
2 79 (29.26%) CI/CD
3 58 (21.48%) Problem-Solving
4 52 (19.26%) DevOps
5 42 (15.56%) Full-Stack Development
6 36 (13.33%) Microservices
7 35 (12.96%) Software Engineering
7 35 (12.96%) TDD
8 34 (12.59%) Scrum
9 26 (9.63%) Data Modelling
10 25 (9.26%) AI
11 24 (8.89%) Data Integration
11 24 (8.89%) Test Automation
12 22 (8.15%) Computer Science
12 22 (8.15%) Workflow
13 21 (7.78%) Business Intelligence
14 20 (7.41%) Containerisation
15 19 (7.04%) Acceptance Criteria
15 19 (7.04%) Test Strategy
16 18 (6.67%) CAFM
Programming Languages
1 69 (25.56%) SQL
2 67 (24.81%) Java
3 43 (15.93%) Python
4 37 (13.70%) C#
5 33 (12.22%) JavaScript
6 18 (6.67%) VB
7 13 (4.81%) Apex Code
8 11 (4.07%) TypeScript
9 9 (3.33%) Go
9 9 (3.33%) PL/SQL
10 7 (2.59%) Shell Script
11 6 (2.22%) C++
12 5 (1.85%) C
12 5 (1.85%) PowerShell
12 5 (1.85%) X++
13 4 (1.48%) ABAP
13 4 (1.48%) Kotlin
13 4 (1.48%) Swift
14 3 (1.11%) Objective-C
15 2 (0.74%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 50 (18.52%) Security Cleared
2 37 (13.70%) SC Cleared
3 22 (8.15%) Degree
4 19 (7.04%) Computer Science Degree
5 9 (3.33%) OCP
5 9 (3.33%) Oracle Certification
6 8 (2.96%) DV Cleared
7 6 (2.22%) BPSS Clearance
8 1 (0.37%) CEH
8 1 (0.37%) ECSA
8 1 (0.37%) GCFA
8 1 (0.37%) GCIA
8 1 (0.37%) GCIH
8 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Certification
8 1 (0.37%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (5.19%) QA
2 6 (2.22%) Data Quality
3 4 (1.48%) GDPR
4 3 (1.11%) SLA
5 1 (0.37%) Accessibility
5 1 (0.37%) Actionable Recommendations
5 1 (0.37%) Def Stans
5 1 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 17025
5 1 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 1 (0.37%) NIST
System Software
1 23 (8.52%) Docker
2 4 (1.48%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 34 (12.59%) Kubernetes
2 11 (4.07%) Ansible
3 9 (3.33%) Grafana
4 7 (2.59%) Progress Chef
5 5 (1.85%) Terraform
6 3 (1.11%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.74%) Argo
7 2 (0.74%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
8 1 (0.37%) CloudHub
8 1 (0.37%) Rsyslog
8 1 (0.37%) SCOM
8 1 (0.37%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
Vendors
1 27 (10.00%) Oracle
2 24 (8.89%) Microsoft
3 21 (7.78%) Salesforce
4 13 (4.81%) VMware
5 11 (4.07%) SAP
6 10 (3.70%) Virgin Media
7 9 (3.33%) Databricks
8 6 (2.22%) Atlassian
8 6 (2.22%) MuleSoft
8 6 (2.22%) Red Hat
9 4 (1.48%) Adobe
9 4 (1.48%) Apple
9 4 (1.48%) Autodesk
9 4 (1.48%) Google
9 4 (1.48%) Informatica
10 2 (0.74%) Blue Prism
10 2 (0.74%) CA Agile Central
10 2 (0.74%) IBM
10 2 (0.74%) IFS
10 2 (0.74%) Teradata