IBM Contract Job Trends in the South East

IBM
England > South East

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the South East requiring knowledge or experience of IBM products and/or services. It includes a benchmarking guide to contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited IBM over the 6 months leading up to 21 February 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

The figures below represent the IT contractor job market in general and are not representative of contractor rates within the International Business Machines Corporation.

6 months to
21 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 159 116 170
Rank change year-on-year -43 +54 +1
Contract jobs citing IBM 30 43 39
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 0.62% 1.36% 0.71%
As % of the Vendors category 1.30% 2.70% 1.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 22 21 22
10th Percentile £325 £152 £401
25th Percentile £419 £168 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £420 £550
Median % change year-on-year +19.05% -23.64% +10.00%
75th Percentile £550 £525 £712
90th Percentile £720 £600 £736
England median daily rate £475 £484 £550
% change year-on-year -1.81% -12.05% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 9 0
Median hourly rate £83.00 £24.18 -
Median % change year-on-year +243.26% - -
England median hourly rate £67.50 £46.18 £70.00
% change year-on-year +46.17% -34.03% +64.01%

All Vendors
South East

IBM falls under the Vendor Products and Services category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring knowledge or experience of all vendor products and services in the South East.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for knowledge or experience of vendor products and services 2,303 1,592 2,738
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 47.82% 50.38% 49.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,638 1,027 1,711
10th Percentile £263 £250 £205
25th Percentile £412 £408 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% +3.00% -1.96%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £600
90th Percentile £688 £675 £688
England median daily rate £501 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.67% - -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 154 55 157
10th Percentile £12.50 £18.32 £13.05
25th Percentile £16.28 £23.84 £18.58
Median hourly rate £25.72 £27.76 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -7.35% -41.56% +5.56%
75th Percentile £66.88 £62.50 £63.00
90th Percentile £88.00 £73.50 £76.53
England median hourly rate £23.83 £30.89 £27.76
% change year-on-year -22.87% +11.29% -18.46%

IBM
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing IBM relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East.

IBM job vacancy trend in the South East

IBM
Daily Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing IBM.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing IBM

IBM
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing IBM in the South East over the 6 months to 21 February 2026.

Daily rate histogram for IBM in the South East

IBM
Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing IBM.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing IBM

IBM
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 IBM within the South East region over the 6 months to 21 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 -26 15 £420 -23.64% 11
Berkshire -13 12 £423 -6.11% 8
Hampshire -22 8 £525 +20.69% 7
West Sussex -12 5 £720 +8.68%
Buckinghamshire -8 3 £313 -43.09% 3
Surrey -29 2 £488 +199.08% 1
IBM
England

IBM
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 5 (16.67%) ArcGIS
2 3 (10.00%) CMS
Business Applications
1 6 (20.00%) Maximo
2 3 (10.00%) SAP R/3
2 3 (10.00%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (3.33%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 8 (26.67%) AWS
2 6 (20.00%) AWS CloudFormation
2 6 (20.00%) AWS Lambda
2 6 (20.00%) OCI
2 6 (20.00%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 2 (6.67%) DWDM
1 2 (6.67%) SDH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (20.00%) Amazon RDS
1 6 (20.00%) Amazon Redshift
1 6 (20.00%) Couchbase
1 6 (20.00%) NoSQL
2 5 (16.67%) GIS
Development Applications
1 9 (30.00%) Rational DOORS
2 5 (16.67%) Jenkins
3 4 (13.33%) JIRA
4 1 (3.33%) Bitbucket
4 1 (3.33%) Git
General
1 9 (30.00%) Analytical Skills
2 6 (20.00%) Finance
2 6 (20.00%) Social Skills
3 4 (13.33%) Telecoms
4 3 (10.00%) Aerospace
5 2 (6.67%) Documentation Skills
5 2 (6.67%) Presentation Skills
5 2 (6.67%) Public Sector
6 1 (3.33%) Banking
Job Titles
1 7 (23.33%) Architect
1 7 (23.33%) Solutions Architect
2 6 (20.00%) Data Engineer
3 5 (16.67%) Platform Engineer
4 4 (13.33%) Analyst
5 3 (10.00%) Data Analyst
5 3 (10.00%) Requirements Manager
6 2 (6.67%) AWS Engineer
6 2 (6.67%) Buyer
6 2 (6.67%) GIS Architect
6 2 (6.67%) IT Buyer
6 2 (6.67%) IT Manager
6 2 (6.67%) SAP Analyst
6 2 (6.67%) SAP Data Analyst
6 2 (6.67%) Systems Engineer
6 2 (6.67%) Telecoms Architect
7 1 (3.33%) Administrator
7 1 (3.33%) DOORS Business Analyst
7 1 (3.33%) Product Delivery Manager
7 1 (3.33%) SOC Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (20.00%) Kafka
2 1 (3.33%) JSON
2 1 (3.33%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 6 (20.00%) Replication
2 5 (16.67%) Legacy Systems
3 2 (6.67%) CMDB
3 2 (6.67%) Data Centre
3 2 (6.67%) Data Structures
3 2 (6.67%) Distributed Architecture
3 2 (6.67%) Distributed Systems
4 1 (3.33%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 7 (23.33%) Linux
1 7 (23.33%) Unix
2 1 (3.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 9 (30.00%) Migration
1 9 (30.00%) Roadmaps
1 9 (30.00%) Stakeholder Management
2 7 (23.33%) Asset Management
2 7 (23.33%) Platform Engineering
2 7 (23.33%) Problem-Solving
2 7 (23.33%) Validation
3 6 (20.00%) CI/CD
3 6 (20.00%) High Availability
3 6 (20.00%) Infrastructure as Code
3 6 (20.00%) Performance Tuning
3 6 (20.00%) Security Patching
4 5 (16.67%) Agile
4 5 (16.67%) Requirements Management
5 4 (13.33%) ITIL
5 4 (13.33%) Requirements Engineering
5 4 (13.33%) Technology Roadmap
6 3 (10.00%) Data Reconciliation
6 3 (10.00%) Model-Based Systems Engineering
6 3 (10.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 6 (20.00%) Python
2 5 (16.67%) Shell Script
3 1 (3.33%) Java
3 1 (3.33%) JavaScript
3 1 (3.33%) Jython
3 1 (3.33%) Perl
3 1 (3.33%) SQL
Qualifications
1 9 (30.00%) SC Cleared
1 9 (30.00%) Security Cleared
2 2 (6.67%) AWS Certification
2 2 (6.67%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (6.67%) ISO/IEC 19770
System Software
1 1 (3.33%) GPFS
Systems Management
1 6 (20.00%) Terraform
2 1 (3.33%) Ansible
2 1 (3.33%) BladeLogic
2 1 (3.33%) QRadar
Vendors
1 6 (20.00%) Confluent
2 4 (13.33%) Cisco
2 4 (13.33%) Microsoft
3 3 (10.00%) SAP
4 2 (6.67%) ESRI
4 2 (6.67%) F5
4 2 (6.67%) Juniper
4 2 (6.67%) Nokia
4 2 (6.67%) Oracle
4 2 (6.67%) Palo Alto
4 2 (6.67%) ServiceNow
4 2 (6.67%) Snow
5 1 (3.33%) CrowdStrike
5 1 (3.33%) Dell
5 1 (3.33%) HP
5 1 (3.33%) MapR
5 1 (3.33%) Mellanox
5 1 (3.33%) Red Hat
5 1 (3.33%) Salesforce
5 1 (3.33%) Solarflare