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 10 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 35 59 35
Rank change year-on-year +24 -24 +26
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 283 99 274
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 4.70% 3.31% 4.77%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.81% 3.62% 5.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 120 63 132
10th Percentile £349 £351 £389
25th Percentile £413 £463 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £501 £544
Median % change year-on-year +4.90% -7.95% +3.57%
75th Percentile £667 £600 £650
90th Percentile £725 - £688
England median daily rate £550 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -0.37%
Number of hourly rates quoted 76 11 80
10th Percentile £46.50 £44.51 £45.00
25th Percentile £48.64 £46.75 £51.06
Median hourly rate £60.00 £54.88 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.34% -15.58% +13.04%
75th Percentile £68.55 £63.51 £70.11
90th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £75.00
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 4,867 2,734 4,755
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 80.79% 91.50% 82.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,096 1,746 2,744
10th Percentile £280 £250 £261
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £501
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -0.20% -0.79%
75th Percentile £610 £600 £625
90th Percentile £700 £660 £700
England median daily rate £515 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 469 190 470
10th Percentile £15.05 £13.23 £13.00
25th Percentile £21.35 £15.00 £18.32
Median hourly rate £52.50 £25.15 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +108.75% -47.05% -9.52%
75th Percentile £82.25 £58.73 £65.00
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.00 £77.04
England median hourly rate £47.00 £28.00 £37.50
% change year-on-year +67.86% -25.33% +4.17%

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 10 June 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 10 June 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 10 June 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 +31 128 £550 +5.77% 126
Thames Valley -11 71 £499 -0.25% 104
Surrey +7 49 £513 +7.89% 29
Berkshire -16 40 £499 -0.25% 42
Buckinghamshire -18 22 £361 -31.18% 25
West Sussex -11 14 £280 -2.78% 13
East Sussex - 12 £525 - 4
Oxfordshire -20 9 £800 +85.51% 37
Kent +1 4 £550 +15.79% 22
Sussex - 3 £323 - 2
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 6 (2.12%) Confluence
2 4 (1.41%) IIS
3 3 (1.06%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.35%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.35%) CMS
4 1 (0.35%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.35%) SAS
Applications
1 8 (2.83%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (1.77%) CPLEX
3 2 (0.71%) Spreadsheet
Cloud Services
1 39 (13.78%) Azure
2 25 (8.83%) AWS
3 17 (6.01%) OpenShift
4 16 (5.65%) Azure DevOps
4 16 (5.65%) GitHub
5 13 (4.59%) Serverless
6 10 (3.53%) GCP
7 7 (2.47%) Azure Functions
7 7 (2.47%) GitHub Actions
8 6 (2.12%) Amazon S3
9 5 (1.77%) Azure API Management
9 5 (1.77%) Azure Data Factory
9 5 (1.77%) Azure Storage
10 4 (1.41%) Amazon EKS
10 4 (1.41%) Cloud Computing
10 4 (1.41%) Power Platform
10 4 (1.41%) SaaS
11 3 (1.06%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 3 (1.06%) Amazon ECS
11 3 (1.06%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 13 (4.59%) Wireless
2 10 (3.53%) Software-Defined Radio
3 1 (0.35%) HTTP
3 1 (0.35%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (7.07%) PostgreSQL
2 17 (6.01%) NoSQL
3 13 (4.59%) Relational Database
4 12 (4.24%) SQL Server
5 6 (2.12%) Azure SQL Database
5 6 (2.12%) Big Data
5 6 (2.12%) Data Lake
5 6 (2.12%) Data Warehouse
5 6 (2.12%) DynamoDB
5 6 (2.12%) MongoDB
6 4 (1.41%) Amazon Redshift
7 3 (1.06%) Metadata
8 2 (0.71%) Pinecone
8 2 (0.71%) Power BI
8 2 (0.71%) Weaviate
9 1 (0.35%) Amazon RDS
9 1 (0.35%) Apache Iceberg
9 1 (0.35%) BigQuery
9 1 (0.35%) Elasticsearch
9 1 (0.35%) Parquet
Development Applications
1 28 (9.89%) Git
2 17 (6.01%) GitLab
2 17 (6.01%) Jenkins
3 15 (5.30%) SonarQube
4 7 (2.47%) JIRA
5 4 (1.41%) Bitbucket
6 2 (0.71%) Android Studio
6 2 (0.71%) JUnit
6 2 (0.71%) Postman
6 2 (0.71%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.71%) Subversion
6 2 (0.71%) Visual Studio
7 1 (0.35%) Cucumber
7 1 (0.35%) LabVIEW
7 1 (0.35%) MLflow
7 1 (0.35%) Mockito
7 1 (0.35%) NUnit
7 1 (0.35%) Rational DOORS
7 1 (0.35%) Selenium
7 1 (0.35%) Tricentis qTest
General
1 40 (14.13%) Aerospace
2 38 (13.43%) Social Skills
3 20 (7.07%) Finance
4 19 (6.71%) Analytical Skills
5 18 (6.36%) Manufacturing
6 10 (3.53%) Public Sector
7 9 (3.18%) Law
8 5 (1.77%) Aviation
8 5 (1.77%) Avionics
9 3 (1.06%) Electronics
10 2 (0.71%) Automotive
10 2 (0.71%) Military
11 1 (0.35%) Advertising
11 1 (0.35%) Banking
11 1 (0.35%) Legal
11 1 (0.35%) Retail Banking
11 1 (0.35%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 157 (55.48%) Software Engineer
2 52 (18.37%) Developer
3 41 (14.49%) Senior
4 37 (13.07%) Embedded Engineer
4 37 (13.07%) Embedded Software Engineer
5 20 (7.07%) Senior Software Engineer
6 15 (5.30%) SC Cleared Software Engineer
7 14 (4.95%) Engineering Manager
7 14 (4.95%) Java Engineer
7 14 (4.95%) Software Engineering Manager
8 13 (4.59%) DevOps Engineer
8 13 (4.59%) Java Developer
9 12 (4.24%) Software Manager
10 11 (3.89%) Lead
11 10 (3.53%) C++ Software Engineer
12 8 (2.83%) Android Developer
12 8 (2.83%) Azure Engineer
12 8 (2.83%) Python Developer
12 8 (2.83%) Senior Developer
12 8 (2.83%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (9.19%) .NET
1 26 (9.19%) REST
2 21 (7.42%) React
3 19 (6.71%) AngularJS
4 15 (5.30%) JSON
4 15 (5.30%) Kafka
5 13 (4.59%) Quarkus
5 13 (4.59%) RESTful
6 10 (3.53%) WPF
7 8 (2.83%) WinForms
8 7 (2.47%) FastAPI
8 7 (2.47%) Flask
8 7 (2.47%) GraphQL
9 6 (2.12%) ARM Templates
9 6 (2.12%) pytest
9 6 (2.12%) RabbitMQ
9 6 (2.12%) XML
9 6 (2.12%) Yocto
10 5 (1.77%) Node.js
10 5 (1.77%) NumPy
Miscellaneous
1 26 (9.19%) Cloud Native
2 15 (5.30%) Algorithms
3 11 (3.89%) Distributed Systems
4 10 (3.53%) Data Structures
5 9 (3.18%) Robotics
6 8 (2.83%) Data Protection Act
7 7 (2.47%) Embedded Systems
8 6 (2.12%) Device Driver
9 5 (1.77%) Enterprise Software
9 5 (1.77%) MicroBlaze
9 5 (1.77%) RISC-V
9 5 (1.77%) Social Media
10 4 (1.41%) Mobile App
10 4 (1.41%) Onboarding
10 4 (1.41%) Product Ownership
11 3 (1.06%) AI Agents
11 3 (1.06%) Analytical Mindset
11 3 (1.06%) ARM Cortex
11 3 (1.06%) Distributed Architecture
11 3 (1.06%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 21 (7.42%) Linux
2 8 (2.83%) Android
2 8 (2.83%) Windows
3 7 (2.47%) Embedded Linux
4 4 (1.41%) Windows Server
5 2 (0.71%) Unix
6 1 (0.35%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.35%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 71 (25.09%) Agile
2 59 (20.85%) CI/CD
3 55 (19.43%) DevOps
4 33 (11.66%) AI
5 32 (11.31%) Scrum
6 30 (10.60%) Problem-Solving
6 30 (10.60%) Test Automation
7 27 (9.54%) Containerisation
8 26 (9.19%) Microservices
9 24 (8.48%) DevSecOps
10 23 (8.13%) Unit Testing
11 22 (7.77%) SDLC
12 21 (7.42%) Front End Development
13 18 (6.36%) Computer Science
14 17 (6.01%) Sprint Planning
15 16 (5.65%) Data Pipeline
15 16 (5.65%) Stakeholder Management
15 16 (5.65%) Systems Engineering
16 15 (5.30%) Continuous Improvement
16 15 (5.30%) Software Delivery
Programming Languages
1 63 (22.26%) Java
2 56 (19.79%) Python
3 36 (12.72%) C#
4 31 (10.95%) C
5 30 (10.60%) JavaScript
6 26 (9.19%) C++
7 24 (8.48%) SQL
8 15 (5.30%) TypeScript
9 14 (4.95%) Go
10 10 (3.53%) Embedded C
11 8 (2.83%) Bash
12 7 (2.47%) PowerShell
13 5 (1.77%) Ada
14 4 (1.41%) Rust
14 4 (1.41%) Scala
15 2 (0.71%) PL/SQL
15 2 (0.71%) R
16 1 (0.35%) Embedded C++
16 1 (0.35%) MATLAB
16 1 (0.35%) Swift
Qualifications
1 103 (36.40%) Security Cleared
2 84 (29.68%) SC Cleared
3 24 (8.48%) Degree
4 10 (3.53%) Computer Science Degree
5 7 (2.47%) BPSS Clearance
6 4 (1.41%) DV Cleared
7 2 (0.71%) Azure Certification
8 1 (0.35%) ISTQB
8 1 (0.35%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 1 (0.35%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (5.65%) QA
2 3 (1.06%) Data Quality
3 1 (0.35%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
3 1 (0.35%) PMO
System Software
1 25 (8.83%) Docker
2 8 (2.83%) Firmware
3 5 (1.77%) Embedded Firmware
4 1 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.35%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 38 (13.43%) Kubernetes
2 14 (4.95%) Argo
3 10 (3.53%) Terraform
4 6 (2.12%) Ansible
5 5 (1.77%) Grafana
6 4 (1.41%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.71%) Kubeflow
7 2 (0.71%) Puppet
7 2 (0.71%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
8 1 (0.35%) HP Quality Center
Vendors
1 18 (6.36%) Red Hat
2 11 (3.89%) Microsoft
3 7 (2.47%) Databricks
4 5 (1.77%) Workday
5 4 (1.41%) OpenAI
5 4 (1.41%) Siemens
6 3 (1.06%) Atlassian
6 3 (1.06%) Oracle
6 3 (1.06%) SAP
7 2 (0.71%) Ab Initio
7 2 (0.71%) Coverity
7 2 (0.71%) Foundry
7 2 (0.71%) Google
7 2 (0.71%) Teradata
7 2 (0.71%) Thales
8 1 (0.35%) Apple
8 1 (0.35%) CA Agile Central
8 1 (0.35%) Dynatrace
8 1 (0.35%) UiPath
8 1 (0.35%) VMware