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

6 months to
27 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 54 57 35
Rank change year-on-year +3 -22 +21
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 190 106 269
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 3.50% 3.60% 4.79%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.24% 3.92% 5.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 88 62 144
10th Percentile £341 £419 £400
25th Percentile £413 £475 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £513 £548
Median % change year-on-year +1.22% -6.39% -0.45%
75th Percentile £650 £600 £650
90th Percentile £725 £656 £688
England median daily rate £550 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 45 20 60
10th Percentile £46.25 £44.31 £45.00
25th Percentile £46.75 £48.61 £46.25
Median hourly rate £60.00 £57.15 £61.00
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -6.32% +11.01%
75th Percentile £70.00 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.15 £64.52 £70.25
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 4,479 2,703 4,862
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 82.61% 91.91% 86.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,929 1,747 2,873
10th Percentile £281 £254 £213
25th Percentile £410 £404 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £509 £510 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.20% +2.00% -0.45%
75th Percentile £610 £613 £615
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 396 156 411
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.20 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.78 £19.56 £18.26
Median hourly rate £37.00 £32.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +13.85% -23.53% -5.56%
75th Percentile £80.12 £62.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.00 £76.86
England median hourly rate £35.91 £32.50 £33.00
% change year-on-year +10.49% -1.52% -12.00%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 -3 77 £600 +11.11% 96
Thames Valley -17 54 £445 -16.43% 108
Surrey +8 37 £475 -5.00% 27
Berkshire -17 34 £469 -6.25% 31
Buckinghamshire -14 14 £361 -35.48% 30
West Sussex -5 8 £280 -20.00% 6
Oxfordshire -7 6 £538 - 47
East Sussex - 4 £461 - 12
Sussex - 3 £323 - 3
Kent -10 2 £550 +15.79% 8
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 (3.68%) Confluence
2 3 (1.58%) IIS
3 2 (1.05%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.53%) Apache
4 1 (0.53%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.53%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 4 (2.11%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (1.05%) CPLEX
3 1 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
Cloud Services
1 30 (15.79%) Azure
2 20 (10.53%) AWS
3 15 (7.89%) Serverless
4 13 (6.84%) OpenShift
5 11 (5.79%) Azure DevOps
6 10 (5.26%) GitHub
7 9 (4.74%) Azure Functions
8 8 (4.21%) GCP
9 7 (3.68%) Amazon S3
10 6 (3.16%) Cloud Computing
11 5 (2.63%) Azure API Management
11 5 (2.63%) Azure Data Factory
11 5 (2.63%) Azure Storage
12 4 (2.11%) Amazon EKS
12 4 (2.11%) AWS Lambda
13 3 (1.58%) Amazon ECS
13 3 (1.58%) AWS CloudFormation
13 3 (1.58%) Azure AI
13 3 (1.58%) GitHub Actions
13 3 (1.58%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 7 (3.68%) Software-Defined Radio
2 2 (1.05%) HTTP
2 2 (1.05%) NFC
2 2 (1.05%) PPP
2 2 (1.05%) Wireless
3 1 (0.53%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (7.89%) PostgreSQL
2 14 (7.37%) NoSQL
3 13 (6.84%) SQL Server
4 12 (6.32%) Relational Database
5 7 (3.68%) Azure SQL Database
6 6 (3.16%) DynamoDB
7 5 (2.63%) Big Data
8 4 (2.11%) Data Lake
8 4 (2.11%) Data Warehouse
8 4 (2.11%) MongoDB
9 2 (1.05%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (1.05%) Amazon Redshift
9 2 (1.05%) BigQuery
9 2 (1.05%) Pinecone
9 2 (1.05%) Weaviate
10 1 (0.53%) Elasticsearch
10 1 (0.53%) Parquet
10 1 (0.53%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 24 (12.63%) Git
2 21 (11.05%) Jenkins
3 11 (5.79%) JIRA
3 11 (5.79%) SonarQube
4 7 (3.68%) GitLab
5 5 (2.63%) Bitbucket
6 3 (1.58%) Android Studio
6 3 (1.58%) Subversion
7 2 (1.05%) Eclipse
7 2 (1.05%) Valgrind
7 2 (1.05%) Visual Studio
8 1 (0.53%) Appium
8 1 (0.53%) Artifactory
8 1 (0.53%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.53%) Cypress.io
8 1 (0.53%) JUnit
8 1 (0.53%) Liquibase
8 1 (0.53%) Mockito
8 1 (0.53%) Rational DOORS
8 1 (0.53%) Selenium
General
1 27 (14.21%) Social Skills
2 20 (10.53%) Aerospace
3 11 (5.79%) Analytical Skills
4 9 (4.74%) Finance
4 9 (4.74%) Public Sector
5 7 (3.68%) Electronics
6 4 (2.11%) Law
6 4 (2.11%) Manufacturing
7 3 (1.58%) Avionics
7 3 (1.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (0.53%) Advertising
8 1 (0.53%) Banking
8 1 (0.53%) Legal
8 1 (0.53%) Military
8 1 (0.53%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 93 (48.95%) Software Engineer
2 41 (21.58%) Developer
3 28 (14.74%) Senior
4 14 (7.37%) DevOps Engineer
5 13 (6.84%) Senior Software Engineer
6 12 (6.32%) Android Developer
6 12 (6.32%) Java Developer
6 12 (6.32%) Java Engineer
7 11 (5.79%) C++ Software Engineer
7 11 (5.79%) Embedded Engineer
7 11 (5.79%) Embedded Software Engineer
8 10 (5.26%) Engineering Manager
8 10 (5.26%) Lead
8 10 (5.26%) Software Engineering Manager
9 9 (4.74%) SC Cleared Software Engineer
10 8 (4.21%) Azure Engineer
10 8 (4.21%) Senior Manager
11 7 (3.68%) Software Manager
12 6 (3.16%) Azure Software Engineer
12 6 (3.16%) Java Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (12.11%) REST
2 18 (9.47%) .NET
3 15 (7.89%) AngularJS
4 14 (7.37%) JSON
5 13 (6.84%) React
6 11 (5.79%) Kafka
6 11 (5.79%) Quarkus
7 8 (4.21%) XML
8 6 (3.16%) ARM Templates
8 6 (3.16%) YAML
9 5 (2.63%) RESTful
9 5 (2.63%) Spring
9 5 (2.63%) Spring Boot
9 5 (2.63%) WebSockets
10 4 (2.11%) PyTorch
10 4 (2.11%) RabbitMQ
10 4 (2.11%) TensorFlow
10 4 (2.11%) Web Services
10 4 (2.11%) WPF
11 3 (1.58%) Yocto
Miscellaneous
1 19 (10.00%) Cloud Native
2 9 (4.74%) Distributed Systems
3 7 (3.68%) Algorithms
4 6 (3.16%) Data Protection Act
5 5 (2.63%) Mobile App
6 4 (2.11%) Data Structures
6 4 (2.11%) Embedded Systems
6 4 (2.11%) Robotics
7 3 (1.58%) CAN bus
7 3 (1.58%) Device Driver
7 3 (1.58%) Distributed Architecture
7 3 (1.58%) Enterprise Software
8 2 (1.05%) Analytical Mindset
8 2 (1.05%) MicroBlaze
8 2 (1.05%) Mixed Reality
8 2 (1.05%) RISC-V
8 2 (1.05%) Smartcard
8 2 (1.05%) Virtual Reality
8 2 (1.05%) Virtual Team
9 1 (0.53%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 24 (12.63%) Linux
2 16 (8.42%) Android
3 14 (7.37%) Windows
4 4 (2.11%) Embedded Linux
4 4 (2.11%) Windows Server
5 3 (1.58%) Ubuntu
6 2 (1.05%) Unix
7 1 (0.53%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.53%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 54 (28.42%) Agile
2 46 (24.21%) DevOps
3 45 (23.68%) CI/CD
4 28 (14.74%) Scrum
5 23 (12.11%) AI
5 23 (12.11%) Microservices
5 23 (12.11%) Test Automation
6 22 (11.58%) Containerisation
6 22 (11.58%) Problem-Solving
7 21 (11.05%) Computer Science
7 21 (11.05%) SDLC
8 20 (10.53%) Front End Development
9 18 (9.47%) DevSecOps
10 17 (8.95%) Unit Testing
11 15 (7.89%) Sprint Planning
12 14 (7.37%) Data Pipeline
13 12 (6.32%) Android Development
13 12 (6.32%) Machine Learning
13 12 (6.32%) Secure Coding
14 11 (5.79%) Code Quality
Programming Languages
1 54 (28.42%) Java
2 49 (25.79%) Python
3 29 (15.26%) C#
4 25 (13.16%) C++
4 25 (13.16%) JavaScript
5 19 (10.00%) SQL
6 12 (6.32%) C
7 10 (5.26%) Go
8 9 (4.74%) Bash
9 7 (3.68%) Ada
9 7 (3.68%) PowerShell
10 6 (3.16%) TypeScript
11 5 (2.63%) Rust
12 4 (2.11%) Embedded C++
13 2 (1.05%) R
13 2 (1.05%) Scala
14 1 (0.53%) Delphi
14 1 (0.53%) MATLAB
14 1 (0.53%) Ruby
14 1 (0.53%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 81 (42.63%) Security Cleared
2 62 (32.63%) SC Cleared
3 22 (11.58%) Degree
4 13 (6.84%) Computer Science Degree
5 5 (2.63%) DV Cleared
6 4 (2.11%) BPSS Clearance
7 2 (1.05%) Azure Certification
8 1 (0.53%) ISTQB
8 1 (0.53%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 1 (0.53%) Master's Degree
8 1 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (8.42%) QA
2 2 (1.05%) Data Quality
3 1 (0.53%) PMO
System Software
1 27 (14.21%) Docker
2 5 (2.63%) Firmware
3 3 (1.58%) Virtual Machines
4 2 (1.05%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 30 (15.79%) Kubernetes
2 11 (5.79%) Argo
3 7 (3.68%) Terraform
4 5 (2.63%) Ansible
5 3 (1.58%) Grafana
5 3 (1.58%) Puppet
5 3 (1.58%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
6 2 (1.05%) Kubeflow
7 1 (0.53%) HP Quality Center
7 1 (0.53%) Podman
7 1 (0.53%) Progress Chef
7 1 (0.53%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 17 (8.95%) Red Hat
2 13 (6.84%) Microsoft
3 7 (3.68%) Databricks
4 4 (2.11%) Atlassian
4 4 (2.11%) OpenAI
4 4 (2.11%) Siemens
5 3 (1.58%) Coverity
5 3 (1.58%) Google
5 3 (1.58%) Thales
6 2 (1.05%) Ab Initio
6 2 (1.05%) CA Agile Central
6 2 (1.05%) Foundry
6 2 (1.05%) PagerDuty
6 2 (1.05%) Teradata
7 1 (0.53%) Apple
7 1 (0.53%) SAP
7 1 (0.53%) Splunk
7 1 (0.53%) UiPath