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 September 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 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 191 132 106
Rank change year-on-year -59 -26 +53
Contract jobs citing IBM 36 32 80
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 0.55% 0.93% 1.75%
As % of the Vendors category 1.25% 1.80% 3.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 30 24 42
10th Percentile £411 £410 £315
25th Percentile £422 £444 £360
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £556 £435
Median % change year-on-year -17.30% +27.87% -8.42%
75th Percentile £534 £662 £522
90th Percentile £646 £720 £721
England median daily rate £500 £550 £480
% change year-on-year -9.09% +14.58% -8.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 5
10th Percentile - - £24.45
25th Percentile - - £27.00
Median hourly rate - - £28.00
75th Percentile - - £29.00
90th Percentile - - £51.20
England median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £70.00
% change year-on-year +158.45% -64.07% +7.69%

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 2,875 1,774 2,256
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 43.65% 51.38% 49.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,770 1,193 1,364
10th Percentile £270 £205 £250
25th Percentile £430 £363 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £516 £500 £516
Median % change year-on-year +3.25% -3.15% +3.25%
75th Percentile £610 £600 £626
90th Percentile £700 £650 £700
England median daily rate £513 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +1.49% -3.81% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 250 104 110
10th Percentile £14.12 £14.20 £15.92
25th Percentile £16.38 £15.22 £27.00
Median hourly rate £38.25 £20.00 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year +91.25% -65.13% +9.24%
75th Percentile £70.00 £35.73 £61.60
90th Percentile £92.69 £79.95 £70.00
England median hourly rate £29.07 £25.15 £35.00
% change year-on-year +15.59% -28.14% -20.00%

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 September 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 September 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 -44 13 £450 -14.29% 13
Berkshire -30 12 £450 -15.29% 7
Surrey -7 10 £460 -3.16% 7
West Sussex -25 7 £425 -40.97% 2
Hampshire -42 4 £643 +19.53% 10
Kent -3 1 £625 +224.68% 1
Buckinghamshire -33 1 £350 -30.00% 3
Home Counties - 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 4 (11.11%) WebSphere
2 3 (8.33%) ArcGIS
2 3 (8.33%) WebSphere Application Server
3 2 (5.56%) JBoss
4 1 (2.78%) CICS
4 1 (2.78%) IBM HTTP Server
4 1 (2.78%) Oracle HTTP Server
4 1 (2.78%) SAS
4 1 (2.78%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 3 (8.33%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 4 (11.11%) Maximo
2 2 (5.56%) Cognos Controller
3 1 (2.78%) IBM Planning Analytics
Cloud Services
1 11 (30.56%) Azure
2 10 (27.78%) AWS
3 9 (25.00%) Azure Service Bus
3 9 (25.00%) Boomi
3 9 (25.00%) GCP
3 9 (25.00%) iPaaS
4 4 (11.11%) Power Platform
5 3 (8.33%) OpenShift
6 1 (2.78%) AWS CloudFormation
6 1 (2.78%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 10 (27.78%) HTTP
2 3 (8.33%) Wireshark
3 2 (5.56%) Firewall
4 1 (2.78%) DMVPN
4 1 (2.78%) DNS
4 1 (2.78%) LAN
4 1 (2.78%) MPLS
4 1 (2.78%) SD-WAN
4 1 (2.78%) SSL
4 1 (2.78%) TCP/IP
4 1 (2.78%) TETRA
4 1 (2.78%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (22.22%) DataStage
2 4 (11.11%) Power BI
3 3 (8.33%) GIS
4 1 (2.78%) Data Warehouse
4 1 (2.78%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
4 1 (2.78%) IBM InfoSphere
4 1 (2.78%) Oracle Database
4 1 (2.78%) SQL Server
4 1 (2.78%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 9 (25.00%) JIRA
2 5 (13.89%) Rational DOORS
3 3 (8.33%) Jenkins
4 2 (5.56%) Git
4 2 (5.56%) GitLab
5 1 (2.78%) IBM UrbanCode
5 1 (2.78%) Introscope
General
1 6 (16.67%) Finance
2 3 (8.33%) Military
2 3 (8.33%) Social Skills
3 2 (5.56%) Aerospace
4 1 (2.78%) Analytical Skills
4 1 (2.78%) Automotive
4 1 (2.78%) Banking
4 1 (2.78%) Documentation Skills
4 1 (2.78%) German Language
4 1 (2.78%) Police
4 1 (2.78%) Retail
4 1 (2.78%) Spanish Language
4 1 (2.78%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 12 (33.33%) Architect
2 11 (30.56%) Solutions Architect
3 6 (16.67%) DataStage Developer
3 6 (16.67%) Developer
4 5 (13.89%) Senior
5 4 (11.11%) Analyst
6 3 (8.33%) Business Analyst
6 3 (8.33%) Data Business Analyst
6 3 (8.33%) Middleware Engineer
7 2 (5.56%) Linux Engineer
7 2 (5.56%) Migration Engineer
8 1 (2.78%) Analyst Programmer
8 1 (2.78%) C++ Software Engineer
8 1 (2.78%) Delivery Manager
8 1 (2.78%) Migration Consultant
8 1 (2.78%) Network Architect
8 1 (2.78%) Product Manager
8 1 (2.78%) Programmer
8 1 (2.78%) Senior Network Architect
8 1 (2.78%) Senior Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (36.11%) Middleware
2 10 (27.78%) Kafka
2 10 (27.78%) RabbitMQ
3 9 (25.00%) ActiveMQ
3 9 (25.00%) EDI
3 9 (25.00%) GraphQL
3 9 (25.00%) JSON
3 9 (25.00%) JWT
3 9 (25.00%) OAuth
3 9 (25.00%) OpenAPI
3 9 (25.00%) REST
3 9 (25.00%) SAML
3 9 (25.00%) SOAP
3 9 (25.00%) Swagger
3 9 (25.00%) XML
4 2 (5.56%) JMS
5 1 (2.78%) ISPF
5 1 (2.78%) Jakarta EE
5 1 (2.78%) JDBC
5 1 (2.78%) WebSphere MQ
Miscellaneous
1 10 (27.78%) Cloud Native
2 9 (25.00%) Distributed Systems
3 3 (8.33%) Mainframe
4 2 (5.56%) Enterprise Software
4 2 (5.56%) VSAM
5 1 (2.78%) Clustering
5 1 (2.78%) Data Centre
5 1 (2.78%) Enterprise Storage
5 1 (2.78%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 1 (2.78%) Hybrid Cloud
5 1 (2.78%) IBM Mainframe
5 1 (2.78%) iSeries
5 1 (2.78%) Legacy Applications
5 1 (2.78%) Onboarding
5 1 (2.78%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 12 (33.33%) Linux
2 8 (22.22%) Unix
3 1 (2.78%) Oracle Linux
3 1 (2.78%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (2.78%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
3 1 (2.78%) Windows
3 1 (2.78%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 10 (27.78%) Batch Processing
1 10 (27.78%) Integration Patterns
2 9 (25.00%) API Design
2 9 (25.00%) API Management
2 9 (25.00%) Enterprise Architecture
2 9 (25.00%) Event-Driven
2 9 (25.00%) Event-Driven Architecture
2 9 (25.00%) Webhook
3 8 (22.22%) Root Cause Analysis
4 7 (19.44%) ETL
5 5 (13.89%) Migration
6 4 (11.11%) Business Intelligence
6 4 (11.11%) Computer Science
6 4 (11.11%) DevOps
6 4 (11.11%) Integration Testing
6 4 (11.11%) Requirements Management
6 4 (11.11%) Systems Engineering
7 3 (8.33%) Regulatory Compliance
7 3 (8.33%) Requirements Gathering
7 3 (8.33%) Requirements Workshops
Programming Languages
1 12 (33.33%) SQL
2 7 (19.44%) Python
3 4 (11.11%) C
3 4 (11.11%) Java
3 4 (11.11%) PowerShell
4 3 (8.33%) Bash
4 3 (8.33%) JCL
4 3 (8.33%) Lua
4 3 (8.33%) Perl
5 2 (5.56%) COBOL
5 2 (5.56%) Shell Script
6 1 (2.78%) Ada
6 1 (2.78%) C++
6 1 (2.78%) Jython
Qualifications
1 4 (11.11%) Degree
2 2 (5.56%) SC Cleared
2 2 (5.56%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (8.33%) Data Quality
2 1 (2.78%) DO-254
2 1 (2.78%) GAAP
2 1 (2.78%) IEC 61508
2 1 (2.78%) IFRS
2 1 (2.78%) ISO 26262
System Software
1 4 (11.11%) Docker
1 4 (11.11%) VMware Infrastructure
2 2 (5.56%) Hyper-V
3 1 (2.78%) Firmware
3 1 (2.78%) RACF
3 1 (2.78%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 4 (11.11%) Ansible
2 1 (2.78%) Argo
2 1 (2.78%) CA Endevor
2 1 (2.78%) CA Wily
2 1 (2.78%) Kubernetes
2 1 (2.78%) Podman
2 1 (2.78%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 12 (33.33%) Oracle
2 9 (25.00%) Google
2 9 (25.00%) Informatica
2 9 (25.00%) MuleSoft
2 9 (25.00%) TIBCO
2 9 (25.00%) WSO2
3 5 (13.89%) Microsoft
3 5 (13.89%) VMware
4 3 (8.33%) ESRI
4 3 (8.33%) Red Hat
4 3 (8.33%) SAP
5 2 (5.56%) Cognos
6 1 (2.78%) Avaya
6 1 (2.78%) Broadcom
6 1 (2.78%) Cisco
6 1 (2.78%) Commvault
6 1 (2.78%) EMC
6 1 (2.78%) Fortinet
6 1 (2.78%) HP
6 1 (2.78%) Teradata