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 13 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 64 61 39
Rank change year-on-year -3 -22 +16
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 173 102 264
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 3.31% 3.42% 4.69%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.00% 3.73% 5.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 83 60 141
10th Percentile £322 £420 £400
25th Percentile £413 £475 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £530
Median % change year-on-year - -5.66% -3.64%
75th Percentile £631 £591 £650
90th Percentile £725 £657 £688
England median daily rate £550 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 35 19 60
10th Percentile - £44.11 £46.13
25th Percentile £46.25 £48.24 £51.06
Median hourly rate £60.00 £57.54 £62.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.28% -7.19% +12.83%
75th Percentile £72.50 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.15 £64.52 £70.00
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year - +4.00% -3.85%

All Process & 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 4,322 2,738 4,885
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 82.78% 91.88% 86.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,829 1,725 2,920
10th Percentile £273 £250 £213
25th Percentile £403 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £508 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.48% +1.50% -1.48%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £613
90th Percentile £700 £675 £688
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 378 138 379
10th Percentile £15.08 £15.00 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.06 £18.20
Median hourly rate £30.00 £42.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -29.41% +13.33% -16.67%
75th Percentile £79.26 £62.50 £62.47
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.00 £75.16
England median hourly rate £30.00 £35.00 £32.50
% change year-on-year -14.29% +7.69% -9.72%

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 13 March 2026.

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 13 March 2026.

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 13 March 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
Hampshire -4 68 £620 +12.73% 83
Thames Valley -24 49 £425 -20.19% 105
Surrey +3 33 £475 -5.00% 29
Berkshire -15 31 £450 -10.00% 34
Buckinghamshire -12 12 £361 -35.48% 28
West Sussex -6 10 £280 -20.00% 4
Oxfordshire -13 6 £538 - 43
Sussex - 3 £323 - 1
East Sussex - 3 £323 - 7
Kent -11 2 £550 +15.79% 9
Middlesex - 2 £552 -
Home Counties - 1 - -
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 7 (4.05%) Confluence
2 3 (1.73%) IIS
3 2 (1.16%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.58%) Apache
4 1 (0.58%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.58%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 4 (2.31%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.58%) CPLEX
Cloud Services
1 30 (17.34%) Azure
2 20 (11.56%) AWS
3 15 (8.67%) Serverless
4 12 (6.94%) OpenShift
5 11 (6.36%) Azure DevOps
5 11 (6.36%) GCP
6 10 (5.78%) GitHub
7 9 (5.20%) Amazon S3
7 9 (5.20%) Azure Functions
8 6 (3.47%) Cloud Computing
9 5 (2.89%) Azure API Management
9 5 (2.89%) Azure Data Factory
9 5 (2.89%) Azure Storage
10 4 (2.31%) Amazon EKS
10 4 (2.31%) AWS Lambda
10 4 (2.31%) Snowflake
11 3 (1.73%) Amazon ECS
11 3 (1.73%) AWS CloudFormation
11 3 (1.73%) GitHub Actions
11 3 (1.73%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 5 (2.89%) Software-Defined Radio
2 3 (1.73%) NFC
2 3 (1.73%) PPP
3 2 (1.16%) HTTP
4 1 (0.58%) HTTPS
4 1 (0.58%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (9.25%) PostgreSQL
2 13 (7.51%) NoSQL
3 12 (6.94%) SQL Server
4 7 (4.05%) Azure SQL Database
4 7 (4.05%) Relational Database
5 6 (3.47%) DynamoDB
6 5 (2.89%) Big Data
7 4 (2.31%) Data Lake
7 4 (2.31%) Data Warehouse
8 3 (1.73%) MongoDB
9 2 (1.16%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (1.16%) Amazon Redshift
9 2 (1.16%) BigQuery
9 2 (1.16%) Pinecone
9 2 (1.16%) Weaviate
10 1 (0.58%) Elasticsearch
10 1 (0.58%) Parquet
10 1 (0.58%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 28 (16.18%) Git
2 24 (13.87%) Jenkins
3 15 (8.67%) JIRA
4 8 (4.62%) SonarQube
5 6 (3.47%) GitLab
6 5 (2.89%) Bitbucket
7 4 (2.31%) Subversion
8 3 (1.73%) Android Studio
8 3 (1.73%) Cucumber
8 3 (1.73%) Eclipse
8 3 (1.73%) Valgrind
9 2 (1.16%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.58%) Appium
10 1 (0.58%) Artifactory
10 1 (0.58%) Cypress.io
10 1 (0.58%) MLflow
10 1 (0.58%) Postman
10 1 (0.58%) Rational DOORS
10 1 (0.58%) Selenium
10 1 (0.58%) Tricentis qTest
General
1 23 (13.29%) Social Skills
2 14 (8.09%) Aerospace
3 10 (5.78%) Finance
4 9 (5.20%) Public Sector
5 7 (4.05%) Analytical Skills
6 5 (2.89%) Electronics
7 4 (2.31%) Law
8 3 (1.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.58%) Avionics
9 1 (0.58%) Legal
9 1 (0.58%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.58%) Military
Job Titles
1 86 (49.71%) Software Engineer
2 38 (21.97%) Developer
3 30 (17.34%) Senior
4 15 (8.67%) Senior Software Engineer
5 13 (7.51%) C++ Software Engineer
5 13 (7.51%) DevOps Engineer
6 12 (6.94%) Java Developer
7 11 (6.36%) Android Developer
7 11 (6.36%) Embedded Engineer
7 11 (6.36%) Embedded Software Engineer
8 10 (5.78%) Java Engineer
9 8 (4.62%) Azure Engineer
10 7 (4.05%) Engineering Manager
10 7 (4.05%) Senior Manager
10 7 (4.05%) Software Engineering Manager
11 6 (3.47%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
11 6 (3.47%) Azure Software Engineer
11 6 (3.47%) Senior Developer
12 5 (2.89%) Lead
12 5 (2.89%) SC Cleared Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (15.03%) REST
2 15 (8.67%) .NET
2 15 (8.67%) JSON
3 13 (7.51%) AngularJS
4 12 (6.94%) Kafka
5 10 (5.78%) React
6 9 (5.20%) XML
7 8 (4.62%) Quarkus
8 7 (4.05%) Spring
8 7 (4.05%) Spring Boot
9 6 (3.47%) ARM Templates
9 6 (3.47%) Web Services
9 6 (3.47%) YAML
10 5 (2.89%) RabbitMQ
10 5 (2.89%) WebSockets
11 4 (2.31%) Node.js
11 4 (2.31%) PyTorch
11 4 (2.31%) RESTful
11 4 (2.31%) TensorFlow
12 3 (1.73%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 17 (9.83%) Cloud Native
2 6 (3.47%) CAN bus
3 5 (2.89%) Algorithms
3 5 (2.89%) Data Protection Act
3 5 (2.89%) Distributed Systems
4 4 (2.31%) Mobile App
4 4 (2.31%) Robotics
5 3 (1.73%) Data Structures
5 3 (1.73%) Smartcard
6 2 (1.16%) Enterprise Software
6 2 (1.16%) Mixed Reality
6 2 (1.16%) Virtual Reality
7 1 (0.58%) Device Driver
7 1 (0.58%) Distributed Architecture
7 1 (0.58%) FPGA
7 1 (0.58%) Legacy Code
7 1 (0.58%) Private Cloud
7 1 (0.58%) Product Ownership
7 1 (0.58%) Self-Motivation
7 1 (0.58%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 25 (14.45%) Linux
2 16 (9.25%) Android
3 15 (8.67%) Windows
4 4 (2.31%) Ubuntu
4 4 (2.31%) Windows Server
5 2 (1.16%) Apple iOS
5 2 (1.16%) Embedded Linux
5 2 (1.16%) Unix
6 1 (0.58%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 47 (27.17%) Agile
2 44 (25.43%) CI/CD
3 43 (24.86%) DevOps
4 23 (13.29%) Containerisation
4 23 (13.29%) Scrum
5 22 (12.72%) AI
6 20 (11.56%) Test Automation
7 19 (10.98%) Microservices
8 18 (10.40%) Computer Science
8 18 (10.40%) Problem-Solving
8 18 (10.40%) SDLC
9 15 (8.67%) Continuous Integration
9 15 (8.67%) Front End Development
10 13 (7.51%) Data Pipeline
10 13 (7.51%) Unit Testing
11 12 (6.94%) DevSecOps
11 12 (6.94%) Machine Learning
12 11 (6.36%) Android Development
12 11 (6.36%) Code Quality
13 10 (5.78%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 48 (27.75%) Java
2 47 (27.17%) Python
3 29 (16.76%) C#
4 25 (14.45%) JavaScript
5 21 (12.14%) C++
6 16 (9.25%) SQL
7 12 (6.94%) Go
8 9 (5.20%) Bash
9 8 (4.62%) C
10 7 (4.05%) Embedded C++
10 7 (4.05%) PowerShell
11 5 (2.89%) Ada
11 5 (2.89%) Rust
11 5 (2.89%) TypeScript
12 2 (1.16%) R
12 2 (1.16%) Scala
13 1 (0.58%) Delphi
13 1 (0.58%) MATLAB
13 1 (0.58%) Perl
13 1 (0.58%) PHP
Qualifications
1 71 (41.04%) Security Cleared
2 53 (30.64%) SC Cleared
3 19 (10.98%) Degree
4 13 (7.51%) Computer Science Degree
5 4 (2.31%) BPSS Clearance
5 4 (2.31%) DV Cleared
6 2 (1.16%) Azure Certification
7 1 (0.58%) ISTQB
7 1 (0.58%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 1 (0.58%) Master's Degree
7 1 (0.58%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (7.51%) QA
2 2 (1.16%) Data Quality
3 1 (0.58%) GDPR
3 1 (0.58%) PMO
System Software
1 29 (16.76%) Docker
2 6 (3.47%) Virtual Machines
3 3 (1.73%) Firmware
4 1 (0.58%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 28 (16.18%) Kubernetes
2 8 (4.62%) Argo
3 7 (4.05%) Terraform
4 5 (2.89%) Ansible
5 3 (1.73%) Grafana
5 3 (1.73%) Puppet
5 3 (1.73%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
6 2 (1.16%) Kubeflow
7 1 (0.58%) HP Quality Center
7 1 (0.58%) Podman
7 1 (0.58%) Progress Chef
7 1 (0.58%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 15 (8.67%) Red Hat
2 13 (7.51%) Microsoft
3 7 (4.05%) Databricks
4 4 (2.31%) Atlassian
4 4 (2.31%) OpenAI
5 3 (1.73%) CA Agile Central
5 3 (1.73%) Coverity
5 3 (1.73%) Google
5 3 (1.73%) Siemens
5 3 (1.73%) Thales
6 2 (1.16%) Ab Initio
6 2 (1.16%) Foundry
6 2 (1.16%) PagerDuty
6 2 (1.16%) Teradata
7 1 (0.58%) Apple
7 1 (0.58%) Splunk
7 1 (0.58%) UiPath