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 8 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 40 77 39
Rank change year-on-year +37 -38 +24
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 319 96 220
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 4.75% 2.75% 4.44%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.87% 3.06% 5.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 128 58 120
10th Percentile £280 £321 £378
25th Percentile £400 £423 £411
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% +2.50% -3.38%
75th Percentile £638 £600 £632
90th Percentile £705 £626 £675
England median daily rate £563 £600 £625
% change year-on-year -6.25% -4.00% +4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 101 10 62
10th Percentile £47.00 £43.09 £45.25
25th Percentile £48.64 £44.95 £54.09
Median hourly rate £60.00 £52.50 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.29% -25.00% +21.74%
75th Percentile £68.75 £63.06 £75.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £64.91 -
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 5,435 3,137 4,102
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 80.97% 89.96% 82.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,358 1,962 2,495
10th Percentile £280 £250 £255
25th Percentile £415 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £515
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -2.91% -0.66%
75th Percentile £613 £600 £638
90th Percentile £713 £675 £700
England median daily rate £525 £513 £525
% change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 587 284 325
10th Percentile £15.03 £13.50 £15.00
25th Percentile £23.11 £15.13 £26.25
Median hourly rate £55.00 £21.41 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year +156.89% -62.67% +14.70%
75th Percentile £78.75 £50.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £88.00 £71.50 £76.86
England median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -40.82% -

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 8 August 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 8 August 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 8 August 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 +34 138 £534 +4.15% 118
Thames Valley -1 79 £530 +5.89% 200
Surrey +11 55 £525 +10.53% 39
Berkshire -13 43 £550 +9.89% 84
West Sussex -4 27 £280 -0.97% 18
Buckinghamshire -20 19 £525 -8.70% 35
Oxfordshire -9 17 £553 +28.12% 83
East Sussex - 10 £525 - 9
Kent +5 4 - - 14
Sussex - 3 £323 - 4
Middlesex -16 2 £470 -25.98% 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 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
1 3 (0.94%) Apache Spark
2 2 (0.63%) Confluence
3 1 (0.31%) CMS
3 1 (0.31%) IIS
3 1 (0.31%) SAS
Applications
1 8 (2.51%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (1.25%) CPLEX
3 3 (0.94%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.94%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.31%) Adobe XD
5 1 (0.31%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 3 (0.94%) Primavera
1 3 (0.94%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 34 (10.66%) Azure
2 30 (9.40%) AWS
3 26 (8.15%) OpenShift
4 16 (5.02%) GitHub
5 12 (3.76%) Azure DevOps
5 12 (3.76%) GCP
6 11 (3.45%) GitHub Actions
7 8 (2.51%) SaaS
8 5 (1.57%) Amazon S3
8 5 (1.57%) Snowflake
9 4 (1.25%) Amazon EKS
10 3 (0.94%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 3 (0.94%) Amazon ECS
10 3 (0.94%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
10 3 (0.94%) Serverless
11 2 (0.63%) AWS Lambda
11 2 (0.63%) Azure Data Factory
11 2 (0.63%) Power Automate
11 2 (0.63%) Power Platform
11 2 (0.63%) Zapier
Communications & Networking
1 17 (5.33%) Wireless
2 6 (1.88%) Software-Defined Radio
3 3 (0.94%) Network Security
4 2 (0.63%) HTTPS
5 1 (0.31%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (7.21%) PostgreSQL
2 17 (5.33%) NoSQL
3 15 (4.70%) Relational Database
4 8 (2.51%) Data Warehouse
5 7 (2.19%) SQL Server
6 6 (1.88%) Metadata
7 5 (1.57%) Big Data
7 5 (1.57%) DynamoDB
8 4 (1.25%) Amazon Redshift
8 4 (1.25%) Data Lake
8 4 (1.25%) MongoDB
9 3 (0.94%) Geospatial Data
10 2 (0.63%) Apache Iceberg
10 2 (0.63%) BigQuery
10 2 (0.63%) Power BI
10 2 (0.63%) Redis
11 1 (0.31%) Amazon RDS
11 1 (0.31%) Azure SQL Database
11 1 (0.31%) Parquet
11 1 (0.31%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 34 (10.66%) Git
2 23 (7.21%) SonarQube
3 20 (6.27%) GitLab
4 16 (5.02%) Jenkins
5 8 (2.51%) JIRA
6 6 (1.88%) LabVIEW
7 2 (0.63%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.63%) JUnit
7 2 (0.63%) Postman
7 2 (0.63%) Rational DOORS
7 2 (0.63%) Sonatype Nexus
8 1 (0.31%) CMake
8 1 (0.31%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.31%) GoogleTest
8 1 (0.31%) Liquibase
8 1 (0.31%) NUnit
8 1 (0.31%) Selenium
8 1 (0.31%) Subversion
8 1 (0.31%) tSQLt
8 1 (0.31%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 58 (18.18%) Social Skills
2 48 (15.05%) Aerospace
3 29 (9.09%) Finance
4 25 (7.84%) Analytical Skills
5 20 (6.27%) Manufacturing
6 8 (2.51%) Public Sector
7 7 (2.19%) Avionics
8 6 (1.88%) Law
9 5 (1.57%) Aviation
10 4 (1.25%) Electronics
10 4 (1.25%) Marketing
11 3 (0.94%) Automotive
11 3 (0.94%) Banking
11 3 (0.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (0.94%) Military
12 2 (0.63%) Telecoms
13 1 (0.31%) Advertising
13 1 (0.31%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 158 (49.53%) Software Engineer
2 60 (18.81%) Developer
3 47 (14.73%) Senior
4 36 (11.29%) Embedded Engineer
4 36 (11.29%) Embedded Software Engineer
5 24 (7.52%) Lead
6 20 (6.27%) Senior Software Engineer
7 18 (5.64%) Engineering Manager
7 18 (5.64%) Software Developer
8 17 (5.33%) Java Engineer
9 15 (4.70%) Software Manager
10 14 (4.39%) Software Engineering Manager
11 13 (4.08%) Java Developer
12 12 (3.76%) C++ Software Engineer
12 12 (3.76%) Data Engineer
13 11 (3.45%) SC Cleared Software Engineer
13 11 (3.45%) Senior Developer
13 11 (3.45%) Technical Leader
14 9 (2.82%) DevOps Engineer
14 9 (2.82%) Principal Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (9.40%) AngularJS
2 23 (7.21%) .NET
3 22 (6.90%) React
4 21 (6.58%) Quarkus
5 20 (6.27%) REST
6 15 (4.70%) Kafka
7 14 (4.39%) RESTful
8 11 (3.45%) JSON
9 8 (2.51%) GraphQL
9 8 (2.51%) WinForms
9 8 (2.51%) WPF
10 7 (2.19%) Yocto
11 6 (1.88%) .NET Core
11 6 (1.88%) FastAPI
11 6 (1.88%) Flask
11 6 (1.88%) RabbitMQ
12 5 (1.57%) .NET Framework
12 5 (1.57%) Node.js
12 5 (1.57%) pytest
12 5 (1.57%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 27 (8.46%) Cloud Native
2 21 (6.58%) Product Ownership
3 15 (4.70%) Distributed Systems
4 14 (4.39%) Algorithms
5 10 (3.13%) Data Protection Act
5 10 (3.13%) Data Structures
6 8 (2.51%) Embedded Systems
7 7 (2.19%) Device Driver
8 6 (1.88%) Enterprise Software
8 6 (1.88%) MicroBlaze
8 6 (1.88%) RISC-V
9 5 (1.57%) Robotics
9 5 (1.57%) Social Media
10 4 (1.25%) Onboarding
10 4 (1.25%) Virtual Team
11 3 (0.94%) AI Agents
11 3 (0.94%) Analytical Mindset
11 3 (0.94%) ARM Cortex
11 3 (0.94%) Distributed Architecture
12 2 (0.63%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 25 (7.84%) Linux
2 9 (2.82%) Embedded Linux
3 4 (1.25%) Windows
4 2 (0.63%) Android
5 1 (0.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.31%) Unix
5 1 (0.31%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 96 (30.09%) Agile
2 63 (19.75%) CI/CD
3 51 (15.99%) DevOps
4 46 (14.42%) Test Automation
5 43 (13.48%) Scrum
6 40 (12.54%) Problem-Solving
7 38 (11.91%) DevSecOps
8 35 (10.97%) SDLC
9 33 (10.34%) Continuous Improvement
9 33 (10.34%) Unit Testing
10 30 (9.40%) Microservices
11 29 (9.09%) Sprint Planning
12 28 (8.78%) Computer Science
13 27 (8.46%) Front End Development
13 27 (8.46%) Mentoring
14 22 (6.90%) Containerisation
15 21 (6.58%) AI
15 21 (6.58%) Sprint Review
16 20 (6.27%) Technical Leadership
17 19 (5.96%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 76 (23.82%) Java
2 46 (14.42%) Python
3 37 (11.60%) C
4 32 (10.03%) C#
5 30 (9.40%) SQL
6 26 (8.15%) C++
7 21 (6.58%) TypeScript
8 20 (6.27%) JavaScript
9 19 (5.96%) Go
10 10 (3.13%) Embedded C
11 6 (1.88%) Bash
12 5 (1.57%) PowerShell
13 4 (1.25%) Ada
13 4 (1.25%) PL/SQL
13 4 (1.25%) Scala
14 3 (0.94%) Apex Code
15 2 (0.63%) Kotlin
16 1 (0.31%) Embedded C++
16 1 (0.31%) Rust
16 1 (0.31%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 112 (35.11%) Security Cleared
2 94 (29.47%) SC Cleared
3 32 (10.03%) Degree
4 13 (4.08%) Computer Science Degree
5 9 (2.82%) BPSS Clearance
6 4 (1.25%) DV Cleared
7 3 (0.94%) Azure Certification
7 3 (0.94%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
8 2 (0.63%) AWS Certification
8 2 (0.63%) Master's Degree
9 1 (0.31%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 1 (0.31%) CCSP
9 1 (0.31%) CISA
9 1 (0.31%) Cisco Certification
9 1 (0.31%) CISSP
9 1 (0.31%) ISTQB
9 1 (0.31%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 1 (0.31%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (8.15%) QA
2 9 (2.82%) Data Quality
3 3 (0.94%) Accessibility
4 2 (0.63%) Software Quality Assurance
5 1 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
5 1 (0.31%) GRC
5 1 (0.31%) ITGC
5 1 (0.31%) NIST
5 1 (0.31%) PMO
5 1 (0.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 1 (0.31%) WCAG
System Software
1 29 (9.09%) Docker
2 6 (1.88%) Embedded Firmware
2 6 (1.88%) Firmware
3 4 (1.25%) Active Directory
3 4 (1.25%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.31%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 45 (14.11%) Kubernetes
2 22 (6.90%) Argo
3 14 (4.39%) Terraform
4 8 (2.51%) Ansible
5 5 (1.57%) Grafana
6 4 (1.25%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.63%) Kibana
7 2 (0.63%) Puppet
8 1 (0.31%) CASB
8 1 (0.31%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 22 (6.90%) Red Hat
2 7 (2.19%) Microsoft
2 7 (2.19%) Oracle
3 6 (1.88%) SAP
4 5 (1.57%) Databricks
4 5 (1.57%) Google
4 5 (1.57%) Salesforce
4 5 (1.57%) Workday
5 3 (0.94%) Siemens
6 2 (0.63%) CA Agile Central
7 1 (0.31%) Ab Initio
7 1 (0.31%) Adobe
7 1 (0.31%) Ariba
7 1 (0.31%) Dynatrace
7 1 (0.31%) IBM
7 1 (0.31%) Informatica
7 1 (0.31%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
7 1 (0.31%) Teradata
7 1 (0.31%) UiPath
7 1 (0.31%) VMware