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 21 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 33 54 35
Rank change year-on-year +21 -19 +25
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 277 106 259
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 4.65% 3.56% 4.74%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.79% 3.89% 5.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 119 62 132
10th Percentile £349 £360 £389
25th Percentile £413 £463 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -6.82% +4.76%
75th Percentile £660 £600 £650
90th Percentile £725 £625 £688
England median daily rate £550 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 73 15 69
10th Percentile £46.25 £44.51 £45.00
25th Percentile £48.64 £48.99 £51.06
Median hourly rate £60.00 £56.75 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +5.73% -9.20% +8.70%
75th Percentile £68.55 £63.13 £67.02
90th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £75.50
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 4,788 2,724 4,603
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 80.46% 91.56% 84.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,124 1,742 2,674
10th Percentile £280 £250 £250
25th Percentile £412 £391 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% - -1.48%
75th Percentile £610 £600 £625
90th Percentile £700 £663 £700
England median daily rate £513 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 427 174 440
10th Percentile £15.07 £13.13 £13.00
25th Percentile £23.00 £15.00 £18.20
Median hourly rate £52.50 £25.82 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +103.35% -45.65% -5.00%
75th Percentile £82.13 £61.16 £62.50
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.00 £76.86
England median hourly rate £46.80 £28.75 £36.50
% change year-on-year +62.78% -21.23% -0.11%

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 21 May 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 21 May 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 21 May 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 +23 121 £575 +8.49% 124
Thames Valley -9 72 £448 -10.54% 104
Surrey +13 50 £513 +2.50% 33
Berkshire -12 42 £450 -10.09% 46
Buckinghamshire -17 22 £361 -31.18% 16
West Sussex -4 12 £280 -2.78% 11
East Sussex - 12 £525 - 10
Oxfordshire -16 8 £800 +77.78% 42
Sussex - 3 £323 - 3
Kent -6 2 £550 +15.79% 17
Middlesex - 2 £552 - 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 7 (2.53%) Confluence
2 4 (1.44%) IIS
3 2 (0.72%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.36%) Apache
4 1 (0.36%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.36%) CMS
4 1 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.36%) SAS
Applications
1 9 (3.25%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (1.44%) CPLEX
3 2 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
Cloud Services
1 37 (13.36%) Azure
2 26 (9.39%) AWS
3 17 (6.14%) OpenShift
4 16 (5.78%) GitHub
5 14 (5.05%) Azure DevOps
5 14 (5.05%) Serverless
6 10 (3.61%) GCP
7 8 (2.89%) Azure Functions
8 7 (2.53%) Amazon S3
8 7 (2.53%) GitHub Actions
9 6 (2.17%) Amazon EKS
9 6 (2.17%) Cloud Computing
10 5 (1.81%) Azure API Management
10 5 (1.81%) Azure Data Factory
10 5 (1.81%) Azure Storage
11 4 (1.44%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 4 (1.44%) Amazon ECS
11 4 (1.44%) AWS Lambda
11 4 (1.44%) Power Platform
12 3 (1.08%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 10 (3.61%) Software-Defined Radio
2 9 (3.25%) Wireless
3 1 (0.36%) HTTP
3 1 (0.36%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (6.50%) NoSQL
1 18 (6.50%) PostgreSQL
2 14 (5.05%) SQL Server
3 13 (4.69%) Relational Database
4 6 (2.17%) Azure SQL Database
4 6 (2.17%) DynamoDB
5 5 (1.81%) Big Data
5 5 (1.81%) Data Lake
5 5 (1.81%) Data Warehouse
5 5 (1.81%) MongoDB
6 3 (1.08%) Amazon Redshift
7 2 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
7 2 (0.72%) BigQuery
7 2 (0.72%) Metadata
7 2 (0.72%) Pinecone
7 2 (0.72%) Power BI
7 2 (0.72%) Weaviate
8 1 (0.36%) Amazon Athena
8 1 (0.36%) Apache Iceberg
8 1 (0.36%) Parquet
Development Applications
1 29 (10.47%) Git
2 21 (7.58%) Jenkins
3 18 (6.50%) GitLab
4 15 (5.42%) SonarQube
5 7 (2.53%) JIRA
6 5 (1.81%) Bitbucket
7 3 (1.08%) Android Studio
7 3 (1.08%) Subversion
8 2 (0.72%) JUnit
8 2 (0.72%) Postman
8 2 (0.72%) Sonatype Nexus
8 2 (0.72%) Visual Studio
9 1 (0.36%) Artifactory
9 1 (0.36%) CMake
9 1 (0.36%) GoogleTest
9 1 (0.36%) Liquibase
9 1 (0.36%) MLflow
9 1 (0.36%) NUnit
9 1 (0.36%) Selenium
9 1 (0.36%) Tricentis qTest
General
1 35 (12.64%) Aerospace
1 35 (12.64%) Social Skills
2 19 (6.86%) Finance
3 18 (6.50%) Manufacturing
4 17 (6.14%) Analytical Skills
5 11 (3.97%) Public Sector
6 9 (3.25%) Law
7 5 (1.81%) Aviation
8 4 (1.44%) Electronics
9 3 (1.08%) Avionics
10 2 (0.72%) Military
11 1 (0.36%) Advertising
11 1 (0.36%) Automotive
11 1 (0.36%) Banking
11 1 (0.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.36%) Legal
11 1 (0.36%) Retail Banking
11 1 (0.36%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 153 (55.23%) Software Engineer
2 55 (19.86%) Developer
3 40 (14.44%) Senior
4 33 (11.91%) Embedded Engineer
4 33 (11.91%) Embedded Software Engineer
5 20 (7.22%) Senior Software Engineer
6 17 (6.14%) DevOps Engineer
7 15 (5.42%) Java Developer
7 15 (5.42%) SC Cleared Software Engineer
8 14 (5.05%) Engineering Manager
8 14 (5.05%) Java Engineer
8 14 (5.05%) Software Engineering Manager
9 12 (4.33%) Android Developer
10 11 (3.97%) Software Manager
11 10 (3.61%) Senior Developer
12 9 (3.25%) C++ Software Engineer
12 9 (3.25%) Lead
13 8 (2.89%) Azure Engineer
13 8 (2.89%) Senior Manager
14 7 (2.53%) SC Cleared Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (9.75%) REST
2 26 (9.39%) .NET
3 20 (7.22%) React
4 18 (6.50%) AngularJS
5 13 (4.69%) JSON
5 13 (4.69%) Kafka
5 13 (4.69%) Quarkus
6 11 (3.97%) RESTful
7 10 (3.61%) WPF
8 8 (2.89%) WinForms
9 7 (2.53%) XML
10 6 (2.17%) ARM Templates
10 6 (2.17%) FastAPI
10 6 (2.17%) Flask
10 6 (2.17%) GraphQL
10 6 (2.17%) YAML
10 6 (2.17%) Yocto
11 5 (1.81%) Node.js
11 5 (1.81%) pytest
11 5 (1.81%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 23 (8.30%) Cloud Native
2 14 (5.05%) Algorithms
3 11 (3.97%) Distributed Systems
4 9 (3.25%) Robotics
5 7 (2.53%) Data Protection Act
5 7 (2.53%) Data Structures
5 7 (2.53%) Embedded Systems
6 6 (2.17%) Device Driver
7 5 (1.81%) MicroBlaze
7 5 (1.81%) Mobile App
7 5 (1.81%) RISC-V
7 5 (1.81%) Social Media
8 4 (1.44%) Enterprise Software
8 4 (1.44%) Onboarding
9 3 (1.08%) AI Agents
9 3 (1.08%) ARM Cortex
9 3 (1.08%) Virtual Team
10 2 (0.72%) Analytical Mindset
10 2 (0.72%) Product Ownership
10 2 (0.72%) Virtual Reality
Operating Systems
1 25 (9.03%) Linux
2 13 (4.69%) Android
3 10 (3.61%) Windows
4 7 (2.53%) Embedded Linux
5 5 (1.81%) Windows Server
6 2 (0.72%) Unix
7 1 (0.36%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.36%) Ubuntu
7 1 (0.36%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 71 (25.63%) Agile
2 60 (21.66%) CI/CD
3 56 (20.22%) DevOps
4 31 (11.19%) AI
5 30 (10.83%) Scrum
6 29 (10.47%) Test Automation
7 28 (10.11%) Containerisation
7 28 (10.11%) Microservices
8 27 (9.75%) Problem-Solving
9 25 (9.03%) Unit Testing
10 23 (8.30%) DevSecOps
11 22 (7.94%) SDLC
12 21 (7.58%) Front End Development
13 20 (7.22%) Computer Science
14 17 (6.14%) Sprint Planning
15 16 (5.78%) Systems Engineering
16 15 (5.42%) Machine Learning
17 14 (5.05%) Data Pipeline
17 14 (5.05%) Software Delivery
17 14 (5.05%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 63 (22.74%) Java
2 58 (20.94%) Python
3 36 (13.00%) C#
4 29 (10.47%) C
5 28 (10.11%) JavaScript
6 25 (9.03%) C++
7 21 (7.58%) SQL
8 14 (5.05%) Go
9 13 (4.69%) TypeScript
10 10 (3.61%) Bash
10 10 (3.61%) Embedded C
11 9 (3.25%) PowerShell
12 5 (1.81%) Ada
12 5 (1.81%) Rust
13 4 (1.44%) Scala
14 2 (0.72%) R
15 1 (0.36%) Delphi
15 1 (0.36%) Embedded C++
15 1 (0.36%) PHP
15 1 (0.36%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 104 (37.55%) Security Cleared
2 84 (30.32%) SC Cleared
3 26 (9.39%) Degree
4 12 (4.33%) Computer Science Degree
5 5 (1.81%) BPSS Clearance
5 5 (1.81%) DV Cleared
6 2 (0.72%) Azure Certification
7 1 (0.36%) ISTQB
7 1 (0.36%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 1 (0.36%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (5.78%) QA
2 2 (0.72%) Data Quality
3 1 (0.36%) Actionable Recommendations
3 1 (0.36%) PMO
System Software
1 28 (10.11%) Docker
2 8 (2.89%) Firmware
3 5 (1.81%) Embedded Firmware
4 1 (0.36%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 41 (14.80%) Kubernetes
2 14 (5.05%) Argo
3 12 (4.33%) Terraform
4 8 (2.89%) Ansible
5 7 (2.53%) Grafana
6 5 (1.81%) Prometheus
7 4 (1.44%) Puppet
8 3 (1.08%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
9 2 (0.72%) Kubeflow
10 1 (0.36%) HP Quality Center
10 1 (0.36%) Podman
10 1 (0.36%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 21 (7.58%) Red Hat
2 11 (3.97%) Microsoft
3 7 (2.53%) Databricks
4 5 (1.81%) Workday
5 4 (1.44%) Atlassian
5 4 (1.44%) Google
5 4 (1.44%) OpenAI
5 4 (1.44%) Siemens
6 3 (1.08%) Coverity
6 3 (1.08%) SAP
6 3 (1.08%) Thales
7 2 (0.72%) Ab Initio
7 2 (0.72%) Foundry
7 2 (0.72%) Oracle
7 2 (0.72%) Teradata
8 1 (0.36%) Apple
8 1 (0.36%) Ariba
8 1 (0.36%) Informatica
8 1 (0.36%) Splunk
8 1 (0.36%) VMware