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 20 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 37 71 53
Rank change year-on-year +34 -18 +10
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 346 100 165
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 5.23% 2.87% 3.59%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.51% 3.22% 4.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 134 53 87
10th Percentile £280 £277 £353
25th Percentile £400 £354 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +10.53% -5.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £619 £600 £628
90th Percentile £696 - £672
England median daily rate £550 £600 £615
% change year-on-year -8.33% -2.44% +0.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 110 23 50
10th Percentile £47.00 £51.50 £47.25
25th Percentile £51.25 £52.50 £55.97
Median hourly rate £60.00 £55.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -21.43% +21.74%
75th Percentile £69.50 £57.50 £75.00
90th Percentile £70.15 - £75.50
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.50
% change year-on-year - -0.76% +0.77%

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 5,318 3,106 3,800
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 80.41% 89.20% 82.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,176 1,936 2,273
10th Percentile £280 £220 £255
25th Percentile £425 £380 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -2.44% -1.14%
75th Percentile £619 £591 £625
90th Percentile £713 £650 £688
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 635 304 248
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.33 £16.00
25th Percentile £16.77 £15.50 £30.41
Median hourly rate £51.50 £20.73 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year +148.43% -63.85% +8.21%
75th Percentile £70.00 £50.00 £71.41
90th Percentile £87.56 £69.65 £78.75
England median hourly rate £42.41 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +68.61% -41.51% -3.37%

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 20 September 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 20 September 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 20 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
Hampshire +44 133 £525 +19.32% 192
Thames Valley +21 99 £550 +9.89% 347
Berkshire +6 58 £550 +7.26% 142
Surrey +1 55 £513 +7.89% 62
West Sussex -1 36 £280 -2.78% 61
Oxfordshire -5 26 £625 +44.93% 169
Buckinghamshire - 15 £525 - 37
East Sussex - 10 £525 - 29
Middlesex -12 6 £600 -5.51% 7
Kent 0 4 - - 19
Sussex - 3 £325 - 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 (0.58%) Apache Airflow
1 2 (0.58%) Apache Spark
2 1 (0.29%) CMS
2 1 (0.29%) Confluence
2 1 (0.29%) IIS
2 1 (0.29%) SAS
Applications
1 8 (2.31%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.87%) CPLEX
2 3 (0.87%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (0.29%) Adobe XD
3 1 (0.29%) Simulink
3 1 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 3 (0.87%) Primavera
1 3 (0.87%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 42 (12.14%) Azure
2 41 (11.85%) AWS
3 27 (7.80%) OpenShift
4 19 (5.49%) GitHub
5 18 (5.20%) Azure DevOps
6 15 (4.34%) GCP
7 11 (3.18%) GitHub Actions
8 7 (2.02%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 7 (2.02%) SaaS
9 6 (1.73%) Serverless
10 5 (1.45%) Amazon EKS
10 5 (1.45%) AWS Lambda
11 4 (1.16%) Snowflake
12 3 (0.87%) Anthropic Claude
12 3 (0.87%) Azure AKS
12 3 (0.87%) Cloudflare
12 3 (0.87%) Datadog
12 3 (0.87%) GitHub Copilot
12 3 (0.87%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
12 3 (0.87%) Supabase
Communications & Networking
1 23 (6.65%) Wireless
2 10 (2.89%) Software-Defined Radio
3 3 (0.87%) Broadband
3 3 (0.87%) Network Security
4 2 (0.58%) Wi-Fi
5 1 (0.29%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (6.07%) PostgreSQL
2 10 (2.89%) NoSQL
3 7 (2.02%) Metadata
3 7 (2.02%) Relational Database
4 6 (1.73%) DynamoDB
5 5 (1.45%) Amazon RDS
5 5 (1.45%) Data Warehouse
6 4 (1.16%) SQL Server
7 3 (0.87%) Geospatial Data
7 3 (0.87%) MongoDB
8 2 (0.58%) Amazon Redshift
8 2 (0.58%) Apache Iceberg
8 2 (0.58%) BigQuery
8 2 (0.58%) Data Lake
8 2 (0.58%) Power BI
8 2 (0.58%) Redis
9 1 (0.29%) Big Data
9 1 (0.29%) Couchbase
9 1 (0.29%) Oracle Database
9 1 (0.29%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 36 (10.40%) Git
2 25 (7.23%) GitLab
3 20 (5.78%) SonarQube
4 14 (4.05%) Jenkins
5 12 (3.47%) LabVIEW
6 5 (1.45%) JIRA
7 4 (1.16%) Visual Studio Code
8 2 (0.58%) Bitbucket
8 2 (0.58%) JUnit
8 2 (0.58%) Postman
8 2 (0.58%) Sonatype Nexus
8 2 (0.58%) Subversion
9 1 (0.29%) CMake
9 1 (0.29%) Cucumber
9 1 (0.29%) GoogleTest
9 1 (0.29%) Maven
9 1 (0.29%) NUnit
9 1 (0.29%) PowerBuilder
9 1 (0.29%) Rational DOORS
9 1 (0.29%) Selenium
General
1 62 (17.92%) Social Skills
2 53 (15.32%) Aerospace
3 31 (8.96%) Finance
4 25 (7.23%) Analytical Skills
5 24 (6.94%) Manufacturing
6 11 (3.18%) Automotive
7 10 (2.89%) Public Sector
8 7 (2.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 6 (1.73%) Avionics
10 5 (1.45%) Aviation
10 5 (1.45%) Law
11 4 (1.16%) Banking
11 4 (1.16%) Japanese Language
11 4 (1.16%) Marketing
12 3 (0.87%) Electronics
13 2 (0.58%) Military
13 2 (0.58%) Telecoms
14 1 (0.29%) Advertising
14 1 (0.29%) Influencing Skills
14 1 (0.29%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 166 (47.98%) Software Engineer
2 59 (17.05%) Developer
3 49 (14.16%) Senior
4 46 (13.29%) Embedded Engineer
4 46 (13.29%) Embedded Software Engineer
5 26 (7.51%) Lead
6 23 (6.65%) Senior Software Engineer
7 21 (6.07%) Software Developer
8 15 (4.34%) Technical Leader
9 12 (3.47%) Architect
9 12 (3.47%) Data Engineer
9 12 (3.47%) Java Developer
10 11 (3.18%) C++ Software Engineer
10 11 (3.18%) Engineering Manager
11 10 (2.89%) Principal Engineer
11 10 (2.89%) Software Manager
12 9 (2.60%) Java Engineer
12 9 (2.60%) SC Cleared Software Engineer
12 9 (2.60%) Senior Developer
13 8 (2.31%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (9.25%) Terraform
2 27 (7.80%) AngularJS
3 19 (5.49%) React
4 18 (5.20%) .NET
4 18 (5.20%) Quarkus
5 16 (4.62%) REST
6 13 (3.76%) RESTful
7 12 (3.47%) JSON
7 12 (3.47%) Kafka
8 10 (2.89%) Yocto
9 9 (2.60%) CSS
9 9 (2.60%) HTML
9 9 (2.60%) Node.js
10 8 (2.31%) WinForms
11 7 (2.02%) LDAP
11 7 (2.02%) OpenTofu
11 7 (2.02%) WPF
12 6 (1.73%) .NET Core
12 6 (1.73%) GraphQL
13 5 (1.45%) JSON Schema
Miscellaneous
1 27 (7.80%) Cloud Native
2 23 (6.65%) Product Ownership
3 12 (3.47%) AI Agents
3 12 (3.47%) Distributed Systems
3 12 (3.47%) Embedded Systems
4 11 (3.18%) Algorithms
5 10 (2.89%) Device Driver
6 9 (2.60%) MicroBlaze
6 9 (2.60%) RISC-V
7 8 (2.31%) Data Protection Act
7 8 (2.31%) Data Structures
8 7 (2.02%) Social Media
9 5 (1.45%) Robotics
10 4 (1.16%) Enterprise Software
10 4 (1.16%) Management Information System
11 3 (0.87%) ARM Cortex
11 3 (0.87%) Low-Code
11 3 (0.87%) Onboarding
11 3 (0.87%) Virtual Team
12 2 (0.58%) Distributed Architecture
Operating Systems
1 36 (10.40%) Linux
2 12 (3.47%) Embedded Linux
3 5 (1.45%) Windows
4 2 (0.58%) Debian
5 1 (0.29%) Android
5 1 (0.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.29%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 106 (30.64%) Agile
2 80 (23.12%) CI/CD
3 54 (15.61%) DevOps
4 52 (15.03%) Test Automation
5 44 (12.72%) Continuous Improvement
5 44 (12.72%) Problem-Solving
6 42 (12.14%) Scrum
7 40 (11.56%) DevSecOps
8 38 (10.98%) Stakeholder Management
9 33 (9.54%) Computer Science
9 33 (9.54%) SDLC
10 32 (9.25%) Mentoring
11 30 (8.67%) AI
12 29 (8.38%) Roadmaps
12 29 (8.38%) Technical Leadership
13 28 (8.09%) Unit Testing
14 26 (7.51%) Infrastructure as Code
14 26 (7.51%) Validation
15 23 (6.65%) Containerisation
15 23 (6.65%) Sprint Planning
Programming Languages
1 55 (15.90%) Java
2 51 (14.74%) Python
3 45 (13.01%) C
4 35 (10.12%) SQL
5 27 (7.80%) C++
6 26 (7.51%) C#
6 26 (7.51%) TypeScript
7 20 (5.78%) JavaScript
8 14 (4.05%) Go
9 10 (2.89%) Embedded C
10 6 (1.73%) Bash
11 5 (1.45%) PowerShell
12 4 (1.16%) PL/SQL
13 3 (0.87%) Ada
13 3 (0.87%) Apex Code
14 2 (0.58%) Kotlin
14 2 (0.58%) Scala
15 1 (0.29%) Embedded C++
15 1 (0.29%) Ruby
15 1 (0.29%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 106 (30.64%) Security Cleared
2 98 (28.32%) SC Cleared
3 37 (10.69%) Degree
4 15 (4.34%) Computer Science Degree
5 8 (2.31%) AWS Certification
6 7 (2.02%) Azure Certification
6 7 (2.02%) DV Cleared
7 5 (1.45%) BPSS Clearance
7 5 (1.45%) PMP
8 4 (1.16%) Master's Degree
8 4 (1.16%) PMI Certification
9 3 (0.87%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
10 2 (0.58%) CISSP
10 2 (0.58%) TOGAF Certification
11 1 (0.29%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 1 (0.29%) CCSP
11 1 (0.29%) CISA
11 1 (0.29%) Cisco Certification
11 1 (0.29%) ISTQB
11 1 (0.29%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (9.25%) QA
2 9 (2.60%) Data Quality
3 4 (1.16%) Accessibility
3 4 (1.16%) NIST
4 3 (0.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (0.58%) Software Quality Assurance
6 1 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
6 1 (0.29%) GRC
6 1 (0.29%) ITGC
6 1 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 1 (0.29%) WCAG
System Software
1 32 (9.25%) Docker
2 10 (2.89%) Embedded Firmware
2 10 (2.89%) Firmware
3 7 (2.02%) Active Directory
4 4 (1.16%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.29%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 48 (13.87%) Kubernetes
2 19 (5.49%) Argo
3 15 (4.34%) Ansible
4 5 (1.45%) Grafana
5 4 (1.16%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.58%) Kibana
6 2 (0.58%) Puppet
7 1 (0.29%) CASB
Vendors
1 19 (5.49%) Red Hat
2 17 (4.91%) Microsoft
3 8 (2.31%) Oracle
4 6 (1.73%) Salesforce
5 5 (1.45%) SAP
5 5 (1.45%) Workday
6 4 (1.16%) Google
7 3 (0.87%) Databricks
7 3 (0.87%) Splunk
8 1 (0.29%) Adobe
8 1 (0.29%) Ariba
8 1 (0.29%) CA Agile Central
8 1 (0.29%) Denodo
8 1 (0.29%) Dynatrace
8 1 (0.29%) IBM
8 1 (0.29%) Informatica
8 1 (0.29%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
8 1 (0.29%) Siemens
8 1 (0.29%) VMware