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 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 74 65 50
Rank change year-on-year -9 -15 -2
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 122 114 198
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 2.74% 3.13% 3.93%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.24% 3.54% 4.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 52 74 122
10th Percentile £314 £359 £305
25th Percentile £413 £432 £427
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £529
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -5.44% -9.77%
75th Percentile £550 £625 £638
90th Percentile £659 £663 £663
England median daily rate £550 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 37 19 39
10th Percentile £46.25 £46.50 £46.25
25th Percentile £52.50 £51.75 £53.13
Median hourly rate £55.00 £57.54 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.41% -4.10% -
75th Percentile £57.50 £62.50 £65.63
90th Percentile £75.00 £67.12 £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 3,761 3,221 4,491
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 84.59% 88.37% 89.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,466 2,019 2,885
10th Percentile £222 £250 £213
25th Percentile £400 £402 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £510 £518
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% -1.62% +1.15%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £614
90th Percentile £677 £675 £688
England median daily rate £500 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 358 120 241
10th Percentile £14.75 £19.90 £18.50
25th Percentile £17.00 £26.19 £27.50
Median hourly rate £22.50 £48.62 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -53.73% -11.60% +41.94%
75th Percentile £48.75 £63.11 £66.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £74.88 £76.53
England median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +25.64%

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 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 27 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 27 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
Hampshire -3 41 £530 +6.00% 190
Surrey +7 38 £475 -5.00% 112
Thames Valley -18 31 £435 -24.35% 497
Berkshire -9 22 £425 -33.59% 298
West Sussex -7 8 £345 +6.15% 51
Oxfordshire -13 5 £500 - 94
Buckinghamshire -2 4 £445 +17.11% 105
Middlesex - 3 £594 - 2
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 3 (2.46%) Confluence
1 3 (2.46%) IIS
2 1 (0.82%) Apache
2 1 (0.82%) Apache Spark
2 1 (0.82%) CMS
2 1 (0.82%) Drupal
2 1 (0.82%) Gunicorn
2 1 (0.82%) nginx
2 1 (0.82%) Red Hat Fuse
2 1 (0.82%) WordPress
Applications
1 2 (1.64%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 18 (14.75%) AWS
2 17 (13.93%) Azure
3 9 (7.38%) GCP
4 7 (5.74%) OpenShift
4 7 (5.74%) Serverless
5 6 (4.92%) Cloud Computing
6 5 (4.10%) Amazon S3
6 5 (4.10%) Azure DevOps
6 5 (4.10%) GitHub
7 4 (3.28%) AWS CloudFormation
7 4 (3.28%) Azure Functions
8 3 (2.46%) Amazon ECS
8 3 (2.46%) Amazon EKS
8 3 (2.46%) GitHub Actions
9 2 (1.64%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 2 (1.64%) AWS Lambda
9 2 (1.64%) Azure Data Factory
9 2 (1.64%) Azure Monitor
9 2 (1.64%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 2 (1.64%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 4 (3.28%) NFC
1 4 (3.28%) PPP
2 3 (2.46%) Wireless
3 1 (0.82%) HTTP
3 1 (0.82%) MQTT
3 1 (0.82%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (8.20%) PostgreSQL
1 10 (8.20%) SQL Server
2 5 (4.10%) MongoDB
2 5 (4.10%) NoSQL
3 4 (3.28%) Relational Database
4 3 (2.46%) Azure SQL Database
4 3 (2.46%) Data Lake
5 2 (1.64%) Amazon RDS
5 2 (1.64%) BigQuery
5 2 (1.64%) DynamoDB
6 1 (0.82%) Data Vault
6 1 (0.82%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (0.82%) Elasticsearch
6 1 (0.82%) MySQL
6 1 (0.82%) Redis
Development Applications
1 23 (18.85%) Git
2 18 (14.75%) Jenkins
3 14 (11.48%) JIRA
4 4 (3.28%) Eclipse
4 4 (3.28%) Subversion
4 4 (3.28%) Valgrind
5 3 (2.46%) Cucumber
5 3 (2.46%) GitLab
5 3 (2.46%) Selenium
5 3 (2.46%) SonarQube
6 2 (1.64%) Android Studio
6 2 (1.64%) Bitbucket
6 2 (1.64%) Postman
7 1 (0.82%) Appium
7 1 (0.82%) Artifactory
7 1 (0.82%) Cypress.io
7 1 (0.82%) Gradle
7 1 (0.82%) Katalon Studio
7 1 (0.82%) MLflow
7 1 (0.82%) WebDriver
General
1 15 (12.30%) Social Skills
2 7 (5.74%) Public Sector
3 6 (4.92%) Analytical Skills
4 4 (3.28%) Electronics
5 3 (2.46%) Finance
5 3 (2.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 2 (1.64%) Aerospace
7 1 (0.82%) Automotive
7 1 (0.82%) Influencing Skills
7 1 (0.82%) Law
7 1 (0.82%) Legal
Job Titles
1 48 (39.34%) Software Engineer
2 42 (34.43%) Developer
3 21 (17.21%) Senior
4 12 (9.84%) C++ Software Engineer
4 12 (9.84%) Senior Software Engineer
5 9 (7.38%) DevOps Engineer
6 7 (5.74%) Java Developer
7 6 (4.92%) Android Developer
8 5 (4.10%) Embedded C++ Engineer
8 5 (4.10%) Embedded C++ Software Engineer
8 5 (4.10%) Embedded Engineer
8 5 (4.10%) Embedded Software Engineer
8 5 (4.10%) Principal Engineer
8 5 (4.10%) Senior C++ Software Engineer
8 5 (4.10%) Senior Developer
9 4 (3.28%) C# Software Engineer
9 4 (3.28%) Linux Engineer
9 4 (3.28%) Senior Linux Engineer
9 4 (3.28%) Software Development Engineer
9 4 (3.28%) Software Engineering Graduate
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (13.93%) REST
2 11 (9.02%) JSON
3 10 (8.20%) XML
4 9 (7.38%) AngularJS
5 8 (6.56%) .NET
5 8 (6.56%) Kafka
5 8 (6.56%) Web Services
6 7 (5.74%) React
7 6 (4.92%) YAML
8 5 (4.10%) RabbitMQ
9 4 (3.28%) gRPC
9 4 (3.28%) Node.js
9 4 (3.28%) PyTorch
9 4 (3.28%) Spring
9 4 (3.28%) Spring Boot
9 4 (3.28%) TensorFlow
9 4 (3.28%) Vue
10 3 (2.46%) Google JAX
10 3 (2.46%) GraphQL
10 3 (2.46%) JAX
Miscellaneous
1 6 (4.92%) Algorithms
1 6 (4.92%) CAN bus
1 6 (4.92%) Cloud Native
2 5 (4.10%) Distributed Systems
3 4 (3.28%) Robotics
3 4 (3.28%) Smartcard
4 3 (2.46%) Mobile App
5 2 (1.64%) Security Posture
6 1 (0.82%) Data Protection Act
6 1 (0.82%) Data Structures
6 1 (0.82%) Distributed Architecture
6 1 (0.82%) IoT
6 1 (0.82%) Legacy Code
6 1 (0.82%) Legacy Systems
6 1 (0.82%) Mixed Reality
6 1 (0.82%) SCADA
6 1 (0.82%) Self-Motivation
6 1 (0.82%) State Machine
6 1 (0.82%) Virtual Reality
6 1 (0.82%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 22 (18.03%) Linux
2 13 (10.66%) Windows
3 12 (9.84%) Android
4 5 (4.10%) Ubuntu
5 4 (3.28%) Windows Server
6 3 (2.46%) VMS
7 2 (1.64%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.82%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 49 (40.16%) Agile
2 33 (27.05%) DevOps
3 30 (24.59%) CI/CD
4 29 (23.77%) Scrum
5 27 (22.13%) TDD
6 22 (18.03%) Workflow
7 20 (16.39%) Acceptance Criteria
7 20 (16.39%) Containerisation
8 19 (15.57%) Data Integration
8 19 (15.57%) Test Strategy
9 18 (14.75%) CAFM
10 15 (12.30%) Continuous Integration
10 15 (12.30%) Microservices
10 15 (12.30%) Test Automation
11 13 (10.66%) Problem-Solving
12 12 (9.84%) AI
13 11 (9.02%) Configuration Management
14 9 (7.38%) Computer Science
14 9 (7.38%) Machine Learning
14 9 (7.38%) Secure Coding
Programming Languages
1 27 (22.13%) Java
1 27 (22.13%) Python
1 27 (22.13%) SQL
2 21 (17.21%) C#
3 19 (15.57%) C++
4 18 (14.75%) VB
5 17 (13.93%) JavaScript
6 8 (6.56%) Bash
7 7 (5.74%) Embedded C++
8 5 (4.10%) C
8 5 (4.10%) Go
8 5 (4.10%) PowerShell
9 4 (3.28%) Ada
9 4 (3.28%) TypeScript
10 3 (2.46%) R
11 2 (1.64%) Rust
12 1 (0.82%) Delphi
12 1 (0.82%) Ruby
12 1 (0.82%) Shell Script
12 1 (0.82%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 36 (29.51%) Security Cleared
2 30 (24.59%) SC Cleared
3 10 (8.20%) Degree
4 9 (7.38%) Computer Science Degree
5 2 (1.64%) ISTQB
5 2 (1.64%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 1 (0.82%) DV Cleared
6 1 (0.82%) Master's Degree
6 1 (0.82%) OCP
6 1 (0.82%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (6.56%) QA
2 4 (3.28%) GDPR
3 3 (2.46%) EU AI Act
3 3 (2.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (1.64%) NIST
5 1 (0.82%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.82%) ISO/IEC 17025
System Software
1 26 (21.31%) Docker
2 6 (4.92%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (0.82%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.82%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 26 (21.31%) Kubernetes
2 8 (6.56%) Ansible
3 6 (4.92%) Terraform
4 4 (3.28%) Grafana
5 3 (2.46%) Cilium
5 3 (2.46%) Puppet
5 3 (2.46%) Rsyslog
5 3 (2.46%) SCOM
6 2 (1.64%) Argo
6 2 (1.64%) Prometheus
6 2 (1.64%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
7 1 (0.82%) Kubeflow
7 1 (0.82%) Podman
7 1 (0.82%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 9 (7.38%) Microsoft
1 9 (7.38%) Red Hat
2 3 (2.46%) CA Agile Central
2 3 (2.46%) Google
2 3 (2.46%) NVIDIA
3 2 (1.64%) Atlassian
3 2 (1.64%) Coverity
3 2 (1.64%) Databricks
3 2 (1.64%) PagerDuty
3 2 (1.64%) Thales
4 1 (0.82%) Splunk