Systems Engineering Contract Job Trends in the South East

Systems Engineering
England > South East

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the South East requiring Systems Engineering skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 20 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 160 163 112
Rank change year-on-year +3 -51 +97
Contract jobs citing Systems Engineering 29 7 94
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 0.66% 0.19% 1.88%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.78% 0.21% 2.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 14 5 62
10th Percentile £192 £277 £400
25th Percentile £450 £300 £503
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £388 £560
Median % change year-on-year +22.58% -30.80% -3.66%
75th Percentile £598 £450 £650
90th Percentile £668 £629 £840
England median daily rate £500 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -13.04% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 1 15
10th Percentile £70.80 - £54.05
25th Percentile - £62.63 £55.00
Median hourly rate £81.00 £67.27 £61.63
Median % change year-on-year +20.42% +9.14% +40.58%
75th Percentile - £71.90 £71.89
90th Percentile £87.50 - £76.53
England median hourly rate £71.00 £62.50 £61.63
% change year-on-year +13.60% +1.41% +2.72%

All Process and Methodology Skills
South East

Systems 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 3,725 3,287 4,498
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 85.18% 88.29% 89.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,436 2,048 2,911
10th Percentile £221 £250 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £520
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -1.44% +1.46%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £614
90th Percentile £675 £688 £688
England median daily rate £505 £525 £545
% change year-on-year -3.81% -3.67% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 369 126 229
10th Percentile £14.75 £19.67 £17.80
25th Percentile £17.00 £26.06 £26.00
Median hourly rate £22.27 £47.51 £54.39
Median % change year-on-year -53.14% -12.64% +45.03%
75th Percentile £48.75 £63.32 £65.86
90th Percentile £75.00 £74.93 £76.53
England median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +23.61%

Systems Engineering
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Systems Engineering relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East.

Systems Engineering job vacancy trend in the South East

Systems Engineering
Daily Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Systems Engineering.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Systems Engineering

Systems Engineering
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Systems Engineering in the South East over the 6 months to 20 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Systems Engineering in the South East

Systems Engineering
Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Systems Engineering.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Systems Engineering

Systems Engineering
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South East

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Systems Engineering in the South East over the 6 months to 20 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Systems Engineering in the South East

Systems 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 Systems Engineering within the South East region over the 6 months to 20 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 -8 13 £475 +38.18% 25
Berkshire +2 7 £544 - 1
Thames Valley -5 7 £544 - 3
Isle of Wight - 7 £81 - 2
Surrey +2 1 - - 4
West Sussex -10 1 £550 +22.22% 5
Systems Engineering
England

Systems 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:

Applications
1 1 (3.45%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (3.45%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 6 (20.69%) AWS
1 6 (20.69%) Azure
2 4 (13.79%) AWS CloudFormation
2 4 (13.79%) GitHub
2 4 (13.79%) GitHub Actions
3 3 (10.34%) OpenShift
4 1 (3.45%) Akamai
4 1 (3.45%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 1 (3.45%) Amazon EKS
4 1 (3.45%) AWS Lambda
4 1 (3.45%) Azure AKS
4 1 (3.45%) Azure DevOps
4 1 (3.45%) Azure Functions
4 1 (3.45%) GCP
4 1 (3.45%) SaaS
4 1 (3.45%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 4 (13.79%) Firewall
1 4 (13.79%) TCP/IP
2 3 (10.34%) DHCP
2 3 (10.34%) DNS
3 2 (6.90%) Network Security
3 2 (6.90%) Wireless
4 1 (3.45%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (10.34%) MongoDB
2 1 (3.45%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 4 (13.79%) GitLab
2 3 (10.34%) Maven
2 3 (10.34%) Rational DOORS
3 2 (6.90%) Jenkins
4 1 (3.45%) Git
4 1 (3.45%) Selenium
General
1 15 (51.72%) Social Skills
2 7 (24.14%) Analytical Skills
3 6 (20.69%) Aerospace
3 6 (20.69%) Manufacturing
4 3 (10.34%) Aviation
5 2 (6.90%) Legal
6 1 (3.45%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 9 (31.03%) Principal Engineer
2 6 (20.69%) Design Engineer
2 6 (20.69%) RF Design Engineer
2 6 (20.69%) RF Engineer
3 5 (17.24%) Senior
4 3 (10.34%) Analyst
4 3 (10.34%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 3 (10.34%) Principal Systems Engineer
4 3 (10.34%) Requirements Engineer
4 3 (10.34%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
4 3 (10.34%) Systems Engineer
5 2 (6.90%) Architect
5 2 (6.90%) Lead
5 2 (6.90%) Project Engineer
5 2 (6.90%) Project Leader
5 2 (6.90%) SOC Analyst
6 1 (3.45%) Automation Engineer
6 1 (3.45%) Business Analyst
6 1 (3.45%) Junior
6 1 (3.45%) System Design Authority
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (13.79%) Elastic Stack
2 3 (10.34%) Kafka
2 3 (10.34%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 3 (10.34%) PKI
2 2 (6.90%) Algorithms
2 2 (6.90%) Management Information System
2 2 (6.90%) Security Posture
3 1 (3.45%) Cloud Native
3 1 (3.45%) Cyber Threat
3 1 (3.45%) Distributed Systems
3 1 (3.45%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 8 (27.59%) Linux
2 6 (20.69%) Windows
3 2 (6.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (3.45%) Ubuntu
4 1 (3.45%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 14 (48.28%) Problem-Solving
2 10 (34.48%) Mentoring
3 9 (31.03%) Line Management
3 9 (31.03%) Technical Leadership
4 8 (27.59%) Containerisation
4 8 (27.59%) Cybersecurity
5 7 (24.14%) CI/CD
6 6 (20.69%) Continuous Improvement
6 6 (20.69%) Data Management
6 6 (20.69%) Logistics
6 6 (20.69%) PDM
6 6 (20.69%) Schematic Capture
7 5 (17.24%) DevOps
7 5 (17.24%) Infrastructure as Code
7 5 (17.24%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 5 (17.24%) SIEM
8 4 (13.79%) Decision-Making
8 4 (13.79%) DevSecOps
8 4 (13.79%) Incident Response
8 4 (13.79%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 9 (31.03%) Python
2 7 (24.14%) PowerShell
3 5 (17.24%) Bash
4 4 (13.79%) Java
5 1 (3.45%) Go
Qualifications
1 16 (55.17%) Security Cleared
2 13 (44.83%) Degree
3 11 (37.93%) SC Cleared
4 3 (10.34%) AWS Certification
4 3 (10.34%) DV Cleared
4 3 (10.34%) IIBA
5 2 (6.90%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 2 (6.90%) CFCE
5 2 (6.90%) CISSP
5 2 (6.90%) Computer Science Degree
5 2 (6.90%) GCFA
5 2 (6.90%) GCIA
5 2 (6.90%) GCIH
5 2 (6.90%) GIAC
5 2 (6.90%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
6 1 (3.45%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (10.34%) Def Stans
2 2 (6.90%) GDPR
2 2 (6.90%) HIPAA
2 2 (6.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 2 (6.90%) NIST
3 1 (3.45%) Actionable Recommendations
3 1 (3.45%) QA
System Software
1 6 (20.69%) Firmware
2 4 (13.79%) Active Directory
2 4 (13.79%) Docker
3 3 (10.34%) Hyper-V
3 3 (10.34%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 9 (31.03%) Kubernetes
2 5 (17.24%) Ansible
3 4 (13.79%) Grafana
3 4 (13.79%) Prometheus
3 4 (13.79%) Terraform
4 1 (3.45%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
4 1 (3.45%) Progress Chef
4 1 (3.45%) Puppet
4 1 (3.45%) Red Hat Satellite
4 1 (3.45%) SCOM
4 1 (3.45%) WhatsUp Gold
Vendors
1 6 (20.69%) EMC
1 6 (20.69%) VMware
2 5 (17.24%) Microsoft
3 4 (13.79%) Splunk
4 2 (6.90%) ArcSight
4 2 (6.90%) CrowdStrike
4 2 (6.90%) LogRhythm
5 1 (3.45%) CyberArk
5 1 (3.45%) Fortinet
5 1 (3.45%) Imperva
5 1 (3.45%) Okta
5 1 (3.45%) Proofpoint
5 1 (3.45%) Red Hat
5 1 (3.45%) Tenable
5 1 (3.45%) Zscaler