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

6 months to
5 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 94 55 67
Rank change year-on-year -39 +12 -13
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 91 149 174
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 2.37% 3.58% 3.25%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.69% 4.24% 3.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 46 80 113
10th Percentile £274 £358 £305
25th Percentile £342 £454 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -10.41%
75th Percentile £547 £606 £600
90th Percentile £600 £663 £650
England median daily rate £575 £600 £620
% change year-on-year -4.17% -3.23% +3.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 41 30
10th Percentile - £51.00 £47.66
25th Percentile £52.50 £61.28 £51.75
Median hourly rate £55.00 £70.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.43% +27.27% -12.64%
75th Percentile £57.50 £75.00 £63.44
90th Percentile £59.43 - £70.00
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year -0.76% +0.77% -

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 3,381 3,516 4,802
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 87.91% 84.58% 89.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,136 2,137 3,148
10th Percentile £219 £256 £223
25th Percentile £387 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £511 £520
Median % change year-on-year -2.06% -1.83% +1.96%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £617
90th Percentile £652 £688 £699
England median daily rate £508 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -3.33% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 368 169 246
10th Percentile £14.00 £16.25 £16.25
25th Percentile £16.17 £30.00 £24.63
Median hourly rate £20.71 £58.30 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -64.48% +11.05% +40.00%
75th Percentile £33.49 £70.00 £66.25
90th Percentile £68.75 £75.00 £76.53
England median hourly rate £25.15 £38.04 £45.00
% change year-on-year -33.88% -15.48% +28.57%

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 5 November 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 5 November 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 5 November 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
Surrey +13 37 £475 -5.00% 74
Hampshire -15 21 £425 -29.17% 105
Thames Valley -26 17 £525 +5.00% 490
Berkshire -16 13 £538 +4.37% 385
West Sussex 0 11 £314 -3.38% 15
Oxfordshire -11 4 £450 -10.00% 80
Middlesex - 1 £635 - 7
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 (2.20%) CMS
1 2 (2.20%) nginx
2 1 (1.10%) Apache Spark
2 1 (1.10%) Confluence
2 1 (1.10%) Drupal
2 1 (1.10%) Gunicorn
2 1 (1.10%) Red Hat Fuse
2 1 (1.10%) WordPress
Cloud Services
1 13 (14.29%) AWS
2 12 (13.19%) Azure
3 7 (7.69%) GCP
4 6 (6.59%) OpenShift
5 4 (4.40%) GitHub
5 4 (4.40%) Serverless
6 3 (3.30%) Amazon S3
6 3 (3.30%) Azure DevOps
6 3 (3.30%) Azure Monitor
6 3 (3.30%) GitHub Actions
7 2 (2.20%) Azure Key Vault
7 2 (2.20%) Entra ID
7 2 (2.20%) Snowflake
8 1 (1.10%) AWS Lambda
8 1 (1.10%) Azure AKS
8 1 (1.10%) Azure Data Factory
8 1 (1.10%) Azure Functions
8 1 (1.10%) Azure Logic Apps
8 1 (1.10%) Azure Sentinel
8 1 (1.10%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 9 (9.89%) NFC
1 9 (9.89%) PPP
2 3 (3.30%) Wireless
3 1 (1.10%) HTTP
3 1 (1.10%) MQTT
3 1 (1.10%) VoIP
3 1 (1.10%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (12.09%) PostgreSQL
2 4 (4.40%) MongoDB
3 3 (3.30%) NoSQL
4 2 (2.20%) Data Lake
4 2 (2.20%) DynamoDB
4 2 (2.20%) Redis
5 1 (1.10%) Azure SQL Database
5 1 (1.10%) Data Vault
5 1 (1.10%) Data Warehouse
5 1 (1.10%) GIS
5 1 (1.10%) MySQL
5 1 (1.10%) Relational Database
5 1 (1.10%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 22 (24.18%) Git
2 19 (20.88%) JIRA
3 15 (16.48%) Jenkins
4 9 (9.89%) Eclipse
4 9 (9.89%) Valgrind
5 5 (5.49%) Subversion
6 4 (4.40%) Cucumber
6 4 (4.40%) Selenium
7 2 (2.20%) Postman
7 2 (2.20%) SonarQube
7 2 (2.20%) WebDriver
8 1 (1.10%) Appium
8 1 (1.10%) Cypress.io
8 1 (1.10%) GitLab
8 1 (1.10%) Gradle
8 1 (1.10%) HP UFT
8 1 (1.10%) Katalon Studio
8 1 (1.10%) Maven
8 1 (1.10%) MLflow
General
1 19 (20.88%) Social Skills
2 5 (5.49%) Analytical Skills
2 5 (5.49%) Public Sector
3 4 (4.40%) Finance
4 3 (3.30%) Aerospace
5 1 (1.10%) Automotive
5 1 (1.10%) Electronics
5 1 (1.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 1 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
5 1 (1.10%) Law
5 1 (1.10%) Legal
5 1 (1.10%) Tech for Good
Job Titles
1 33 (36.26%) Developer
2 29 (31.87%) Software Engineer
3 19 (20.88%) Senior
4 14 (15.38%) C++ Software Engineer
5 13 (14.29%) Senior Software Engineer
6 10 (10.99%) Senior C++ Software Engineer
7 9 (9.89%) Development Engineer
7 9 (9.89%) Linux Engineer
7 9 (9.89%) Senior Development Engineer
7 9 (9.89%) Senior Linux Engineer
7 9 (9.89%) Senior Software Development Engineer
7 9 (9.89%) Software Development Engineer
8 6 (6.59%) Applications Engineer
9 5 (5.49%) Embedded C++ Engineer
9 5 (5.49%) Embedded C++ Software Engineer
9 5 (5.49%) Embedded Engineer
9 5 (5.49%) Embedded Software Engineer
9 5 (5.49%) Principal Engineer
10 4 (4.40%) FPGA Engineer
10 4 (4.40%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (23.08%) REST
2 11 (12.09%) Web Services
3 10 (10.99%) JSON
3 10 (10.99%) Kafka
4 9 (9.89%) XML
5 8 (8.79%) RabbitMQ
6 7 (7.69%) gRPC
7 6 (6.59%) GraphQL
7 6 (6.59%) React
8 4 (4.40%) AngularJS
8 4 (4.40%) Node.js
8 4 (4.40%) PyTorch
8 4 (4.40%) RESTful
8 4 (4.40%) Spring
8 4 (4.40%) Spring Boot
8 4 (4.40%) TensorFlow
9 3 (3.30%) Google JAX
9 3 (3.30%) JAX
9 3 (3.30%) jQuery
9 3 (3.30%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 9 (9.89%) Smartcard
2 7 (7.69%) Algorithms
3 6 (6.59%) CAN bus
4 4 (4.40%) FPGA
4 4 (4.40%) Verilog
5 3 (3.30%) Cloud Native
5 3 (3.30%) Distributed Systems
6 2 (2.20%) IoT
6 2 (2.20%) Legacy Systems
6 2 (2.20%) Security Posture
7 1 (1.10%) CMDB
7 1 (1.10%) Data Protection Act
7 1 (1.10%) Data Structures
7 1 (1.10%) Distributed Architecture
7 1 (1.10%) Hybrid Cloud
7 1 (1.10%) Mobile App
7 1 (1.10%) SCADA
7 1 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
7 1 (1.10%) State Machine
7 1 (1.10%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 21 (23.08%) Linux
2 9 (9.89%) Ubuntu
3 6 (6.59%) Windows
4 5 (5.49%) Unix
5 3 (3.30%) Android
6 2 (2.20%) Apple iOS
6 2 (2.20%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 44 (48.35%) Agile
2 32 (35.16%) Scrum
3 31 (34.07%) TDD
4 24 (26.37%) CI/CD
5 23 (25.27%) DevOps
6 21 (23.08%) Workflow
7 20 (21.98%) Acceptance Criteria
8 19 (20.88%) Data Integration
8 19 (20.88%) Test Strategy
9 18 (19.78%) CAFM
10 13 (14.29%) Containerisation
10 13 (14.29%) Continuous Integration
10 13 (14.29%) Microservices
11 12 (13.19%) Test Automation
12 10 (10.99%) Front End Development
12 10 (10.99%) User Experience
13 9 (9.89%) Cryptography
13 9 (9.89%) Machine Learning
13 9 (9.89%) Memory Management
13 9 (9.89%) Multithreading
Programming Languages
1 25 (27.47%) Java
1 25 (27.47%) SQL
2 22 (24.18%) Python
3 21 (23.08%) C++
4 19 (20.88%) C#
5 18 (19.78%) JavaScript
5 18 (19.78%) VB
6 8 (8.79%) Go
7 7 (7.69%) Embedded C++
8 5 (5.49%) C
9 4 (4.40%) Shell Script
9 4 (4.40%) SystemVerilog
9 4 (4.40%) Tcl
9 4 (4.40%) TypeScript
10 3 (3.30%) R
11 2 (2.20%) Ada
11 2 (2.20%) Bash
11 2 (2.20%) Ruby
12 1 (1.10%) Perl
12 1 (1.10%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 20 (21.98%) Security Cleared
2 16 (17.58%) SC Cleared
3 8 (8.79%) Degree
4 7 (7.69%) Computer Science Degree
5 2 (2.20%) ISTQB
5 2 (2.20%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 1 (1.10%) Azure Certification
6 1 (1.10%) Master's Degree
6 1 (1.10%) Microsoft Certification
6 1 (1.10%) OCP
6 1 (1.10%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (5.49%) QA
2 4 (4.40%) GDPR
2 4 (4.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 3 (3.30%) EU AI Act
4 2 (2.20%) NIST
5 1 (1.10%) Data Quality
5 1 (1.10%) Government Security Classifications
5 1 (1.10%) ISO/IEC 17025
5 1 (1.10%) JSP 440
5 1 (1.10%) NCSC
System Software
1 19 (20.88%) Docker
2 6 (6.59%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (2.20%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 17 (18.68%) Kubernetes
2 3 (3.30%) Ansible
2 3 (3.30%) Cilium
2 3 (3.30%) Rsyslog
2 3 (3.30%) SCOM
2 3 (3.30%) Terraform
3 1 (1.10%) Argo
3 1 (1.10%) Grafana
3 1 (1.10%) Kubeflow
3 1 (1.10%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 6 (6.59%) CA Agile Central
2 4 (4.40%) Microsoft
2 4 (4.40%) Xilinx
3 3 (3.30%) NVIDIA
4 1 (1.10%) Databricks
4 1 (1.10%) Google
4 1 (1.10%) Red Hat