Software Engineering Contract Job Trends in the South East

Software Engineering
England > South East

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the South East requiring Software Engineering skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 5 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 85 58 59
Rank change year-on-year -27 +1 -8
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 104 146 173
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 2.44% 3.66% 3.35%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.82% 4.20% 3.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 46 83 114
10th Percentile £274 £358 £305
25th Percentile £363 £454 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £529
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -5.44% -9.77%
75th Percentile £538 £625 £631
90th Percentile £597 £663 £663
England median daily rate £550 £600 £610
% change year-on-year -8.33% -1.64% +1.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 36 28
10th Percentile £46.25 £47.50 £46.98
25th Percentile £52.50 £54.56 £52.31
Median hourly rate £55.00 £66.44 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year -17.21% +15.54% -8.00%
75th Percentile £57.50 £75.00 £65.31
90th Percentile £75.00 - £70.00
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

All Process and Methodology Skills
South East

Software Engineering falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in the South East.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 3,693 3,476 4,648
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 86.53% 87.12% 89.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,373 2,149 3,007
10th Percentile £222 £250 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £523
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -1.91% +1.95%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £615
90th Percentile £675 £688 £688
England median daily rate £500 £525 £545
% change year-on-year -4.76% -3.67% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 393 156 243
10th Percentile £14.58 £18.60 £16.42
25th Percentile £16.95 £26.19 £25.00
Median hourly rate £22.00 £55.00 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -60.00% +4.76% +20.69%
75th Percentile £41.00 £70.00 £65.93
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £76.53
England median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +18.67%

Software Engineering
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

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

Software Engineering job vacancy trend in the South East

Software Engineering
Daily Rate Trend in the South East

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

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

Software Engineering
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Software Engineering in the South East over the 6 months to 5 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Software Engineering in the South East

Software Engineering
Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

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

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

Software Engineering
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South East

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Software Engineering in the South East over the 6 months to 5 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Software Engineering in the South East

Software Engineering
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 Software Engineering within the South East region over the 6 months to 5 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
Surrey +13 39 £475 -5.00% 79
Hampshire -14 31 £440 -23.48% 130
Thames Valley -25 19 £463 -13.15% 341
Berkshire -14 16 £425 -29.75% 174
West Sussex -5 11 £340 +4.62% 30
Oxfordshire -15 3 £500 +2.56% 96
Middlesex - 3 £594 - 4
Software Engineering
England

Software Engineering
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 2 (1.92%) Confluence
2 1 (0.96%) Apache Spark
2 1 (0.96%) CMS
2 1 (0.96%) Drupal
2 1 (0.96%) Gunicorn
2 1 (0.96%) nginx
2 1 (0.96%) Red Hat Fuse
2 1 (0.96%) WordPress
Applications
1 1 (0.96%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 17 (16.35%) AWS
2 13 (12.50%) Azure
3 9 (8.65%) GCP
4 6 (5.77%) OpenShift
5 5 (4.81%) Amazon S3
5 5 (4.81%) GitHub
5 5 (4.81%) Serverless
6 4 (3.85%) AWS CloudFormation
6 4 (3.85%) Azure DevOps
6 4 (3.85%) GitHub Actions
7 3 (2.88%) Amazon ECS
7 3 (2.88%) Amazon EKS
7 3 (2.88%) Azure Functions
7 3 (2.88%) Azure Monitor
8 2 (1.92%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 2 (1.92%) Azure AKS
8 2 (1.92%) Azure Key Vault
8 2 (1.92%) Entra ID
8 2 (1.92%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 2 (1.92%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 7 (6.73%) NFC
1 7 (6.73%) PPP
2 3 (2.88%) Wireless
3 1 (0.96%) HTTP
3 1 (0.96%) MQTT
3 1 (0.96%) VoIP
3 1 (0.96%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (11.54%) PostgreSQL
2 5 (4.81%) NoSQL
3 4 (3.85%) MongoDB
3 4 (3.85%) SQL Server
4 2 (1.92%) Amazon RDS
4 2 (1.92%) Azure SQL Database
4 2 (1.92%) BigQuery
4 2 (1.92%) Data Lake
4 2 (1.92%) DynamoDB
5 1 (0.96%) Data Vault
5 1 (0.96%) Data Warehouse
5 1 (0.96%) MySQL
5 1 (0.96%) Redis
5 1 (0.96%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 26 (25.00%) Git
2 19 (18.27%) Jenkins
3 18 (17.31%) JIRA
4 7 (6.73%) Eclipse
4 7 (6.73%) Valgrind
5 5 (4.81%) Subversion
6 4 (3.85%) Cucumber
6 4 (3.85%) Selenium
7 3 (2.88%) Postman
8 2 (1.92%) GitLab
8 2 (1.92%) SonarQube
8 2 (1.92%) WebDriver
9 1 (0.96%) Android Studio
9 1 (0.96%) Appium
9 1 (0.96%) Bitbucket
9 1 (0.96%) Cypress.io
9 1 (0.96%) Gradle
9 1 (0.96%) Katalon Studio
9 1 (0.96%) Maven
9 1 (0.96%) MLflow
General
1 15 (14.42%) Social Skills
2 6 (5.77%) Public Sector
3 5 (4.81%) Analytical Skills
4 4 (3.85%) Electronics
4 4 (3.85%) Finance
5 3 (2.88%) Aerospace
6 2 (1.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (0.96%) Automotive
7 1 (0.96%) Influencing Skills
7 1 (0.96%) Law
7 1 (0.96%) Legal
Job Titles
1 38 (36.54%) Software Engineer
2 36 (34.62%) Developer
3 23 (22.12%) Senior
4 15 (14.42%) C++ Software Engineer
5 14 (13.46%) Senior Software Engineer
6 8 (7.69%) Senior C++ Software Engineer
7 7 (6.73%) Development Engineer
7 7 (6.73%) Linux Engineer
7 7 (6.73%) Senior Development Engineer
7 7 (6.73%) Senior Linux Engineer
7 7 (6.73%) Senior Software Development Engineer
7 7 (6.73%) Software Development Engineer
8 6 (5.77%) Applications Engineer
8 6 (5.77%) Java Developer
9 5 (4.81%) Embedded C++ Engineer
9 5 (4.81%) Embedded C++ Software Engineer
9 5 (4.81%) Embedded Engineer
9 5 (4.81%) Embedded Software Engineer
9 5 (4.81%) Principal Engineer
9 5 (4.81%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (17.31%) REST
2 9 (8.65%) JSON
2 9 (8.65%) Kafka
2 9 (8.65%) Web Services
3 8 (7.69%) XML
4 7 (6.73%) RabbitMQ
5 6 (5.77%) gRPC
6 5 (4.81%) GraphQL
7 4 (3.85%) .NET
7 4 (3.85%) AngularJS
7 4 (3.85%) Node.js
7 4 (3.85%) PyTorch
7 4 (3.85%) React
7 4 (3.85%) RESTful
7 4 (3.85%) Spring
7 4 (3.85%) Spring Boot
7 4 (3.85%) TensorFlow
8 3 (2.88%) Google JAX
8 3 (2.88%) JAX
8 3 (2.88%) jQuery
Miscellaneous
1 7 (6.73%) Smartcard
2 6 (5.77%) Algorithms
2 6 (5.77%) CAN bus
2 6 (5.77%) Cloud Native
3 5 (4.81%) Distributed Systems
4 2 (1.92%) Legacy Systems
4 2 (1.92%) Mobile App
4 2 (1.92%) Security Posture
5 1 (0.96%) CMDB
5 1 (0.96%) Data Protection Act
5 1 (0.96%) Data Structures
5 1 (0.96%) Distributed Architecture
5 1 (0.96%) Hybrid Cloud
5 1 (0.96%) IoT
5 1 (0.96%) Legacy Code
5 1 (0.96%) SCADA
5 1 (0.96%) Self-Motivation
5 1 (0.96%) State Machine
5 1 (0.96%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 20 (19.23%) Linux
2 9 (8.65%) Android
2 9 (8.65%) Windows
3 8 (7.69%) Ubuntu
4 2 (1.92%) Apple iOS
4 2 (1.92%) VMS
5 1 (0.96%) Unix
5 1 (0.96%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 46 (44.23%) Agile
2 31 (29.81%) Scrum
3 29 (27.88%) TDD
4 27 (25.96%) CI/CD
5 23 (22.12%) DevOps
6 21 (20.19%) Workflow
7 20 (19.23%) Acceptance Criteria
8 19 (18.27%) Data Integration
8 19 (18.27%) Test Strategy
9 18 (17.31%) CAFM
10 17 (16.35%) Containerisation
10 17 (16.35%) Continuous Integration
11 14 (13.46%) Microservices
11 14 (13.46%) Test Automation
12 11 (10.58%) Configuration Management
13 10 (9.62%) Problem-Solving
14 8 (7.69%) Front End Development
14 8 (7.69%) Mentoring
14 8 (7.69%) SDLC
14 8 (7.69%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 26 (25.00%) Java
1 26 (25.00%) SQL
2 22 (21.15%) C++
3 20 (19.23%) C#
4 18 (17.31%) Python
4 18 (17.31%) VB
5 14 (13.46%) JavaScript
6 7 (6.73%) Embedded C++
6 7 (6.73%) Go
7 5 (4.81%) Bash
7 5 (4.81%) C
8 4 (3.85%) Ada
9 3 (2.88%) R
9 3 (2.88%) TypeScript
10 1 (0.96%) Bicep
10 1 (0.96%) Delphi
10 1 (0.96%) PowerShell
10 1 (0.96%) Ruby
10 1 (0.96%) Shell Script
10 1 (0.96%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 25 (24.04%) Security Cleared
2 20 (19.23%) SC Cleared
3 9 (8.65%) Degree
4 8 (7.69%) Computer Science Degree
5 2 (1.92%) ISTQB
5 2 (1.92%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 1 (0.96%) Azure Certification
6 1 (0.96%) DV Cleared
6 1 (0.96%) Master's Degree
6 1 (0.96%) Microsoft Certification
6 1 (0.96%) OCP
6 1 (0.96%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (4.81%) QA
2 4 (3.85%) GDPR
2 4 (3.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 3 (2.88%) EU AI Act
4 2 (1.92%) NIST
5 1 (0.96%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.96%) Government Security Classifications
5 1 (0.96%) ISO/IEC 17025
5 1 (0.96%) JSP 440
5 1 (0.96%) NCSC
System Software
1 25 (24.04%) Docker
2 6 (5.77%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (1.92%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 20 (19.23%) Kubernetes
2 6 (5.77%) Ansible
2 6 (5.77%) Terraform
3 4 (3.85%) Grafana
4 3 (2.88%) Cilium
4 3 (2.88%) Puppet
4 3 (2.88%) Rsyslog
4 3 (2.88%) SCOM
5 2 (1.92%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.96%) Argo
6 1 (0.96%) Kubeflow
6 1 (0.96%) Podman
6 1 (0.96%) Progress Chef
6 1 (0.96%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
Vendors
1 7 (6.73%) Microsoft
2 5 (4.81%) CA Agile Central
3 3 (2.88%) Google
3 3 (2.88%) NVIDIA
4 2 (1.92%) PagerDuty
4 2 (1.92%) Red Hat
5 1 (0.96%) Atlassian
5 1 (0.96%) Coverity
5 1 (0.96%) Databricks
5 1 (0.96%) Splunk
5 1 (0.96%) Thales