Technical Leadership Contract Job Trends in the South East

Technical Leadership
England > South East

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the South East requiring Technical Leadership skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 3 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 129 99 161
Rank change year-on-year -30 +62 -5
Contract jobs citing Technical Leadership 55 69 44
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 1.25% 1.97% 0.89%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.49% 2.23% 1.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 31 42 31
10th Percentile £406 £332 £363
25th Percentile £478 £453 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £588 £595 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.26% +13.33% -8.70%
75th Percentile £719 £638 £635
90th Percentile £825 £761 £662
England median daily rate £600 £601 £600
% change year-on-year -0.11% +0.11% -5.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 0 1
10th Percentile £70.10 - -
25th Percentile £75.58 - £86.75
Median hourly rate £81.00 - £88.50
75th Percentile - - £90.25
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £72.58 £35.00 £18.93
% change year-on-year +107.37% +84.89% -68.84%

All Process & Methodology Skills
South East

Technical Leadership 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 3,698 3,101 4,397
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 84.28% 88.50% 89.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,440 1,921 2,815
10th Percentile £223 £250 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £510 £515
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% -0.97% +0.98%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £614
90th Percentile £688 £675 £688
England median daily rate £500 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 341 119 247
10th Percentile £14.75 £19.84 £17.60
25th Percentile £17.00 £26.13 £26.13
Median hourly rate £22.50 £47.25 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -52.38% -14.10% +37.50%
75th Percentile £53.75 £63.00 £66.25
90th Percentile £77.50 £74.89 £76.53
England median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +27.14%

Technical Leadership
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

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

Technical Leadership job vacancy trend in the South East

Technical Leadership
Daily Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Technical Leadership.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Technical Leadership

Technical Leadership
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Technical Leadership in the South East over the 6 months to 3 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Technical Leadership in the South East

Technical Leadership
Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Technical Leadership.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Technical Leadership

Technical Leadership
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 Technical Leadership within the South East region over the 6 months to 3 January 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
Thames Valley -12 30 £530 -3.59% 37
Berkshire -18 21 £475 -13.64% 21
Hampshire -13 13 £675 +31.71% 28
Oxfordshire - 5 £650 - 16
Isle of Wight - 5 - - 3
Buckinghamshire +1 4 £650 +30.00% 3
Surrey -10 3 £566 -24.53% 7
West Sussex -15 3 £638 +2.00%
Technical Leadership
England

Technical Leadership
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 (5.45%) Anypoint
1 3 (5.45%) Camunda
2 2 (3.64%) CMS
3 1 (1.82%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 1 (1.82%) Drupal
3 1 (1.82%) Ethereum
3 1 (1.82%) Hyperledger
3 1 (1.82%) WordPress
Business Applications
1 1 (1.82%) Distributed Ledger
1 1 (1.82%) R3 Corda
1 1 (1.82%) Remedy AR System
1 1 (1.82%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (1.82%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 16 (29.09%) Azure
2 15 (27.27%) AWS
3 5 (9.09%) AWS CloudFormation
4 4 (7.27%) GCP
5 3 (5.45%) Entra ID
5 3 (5.45%) IaaS
5 3 (5.45%) PaaS
6 2 (3.64%) Amazon EC2
6 2 (3.64%) Amazon ECS
6 2 (3.64%) Amazon S3
6 2 (3.64%) Azure DevOps
7 1 (1.82%) Amazon ECR
7 1 (1.82%) Amazon EKS
7 1 (1.82%) Amazon ELB
7 1 (1.82%) Amazon OpenSearch
7 1 (1.82%) AWS Lambda
7 1 (1.82%) Azure Sentinel
7 1 (1.82%) GitHub Actions
7 1 (1.82%) Serverless
7 1 (1.82%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 9 (16.36%) Firewall
2 5 (9.09%) DHCP
2 5 (9.09%) DNS
2 5 (9.09%) WAN
3 4 (7.27%) VPN
4 3 (5.45%) LAN
4 3 (5.45%) MPLS
4 3 (5.45%) SD-WAN
4 3 (5.45%) TCP/IP
5 2 (3.64%) BGP
5 2 (3.64%) EIGRP
5 2 (3.64%) OSPF
6 1 (1.82%) DMVPN
6 1 (1.82%) Kerberos
6 1 (1.82%) Network Security
6 1 (1.82%) TETRA
6 1 (1.82%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (1.82%) Amazon RDS
1 1 (1.82%) PostgreSQL
1 1 (1.82%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 2 (3.64%) Git
1 2 (3.64%) Visual Studio
2 1 (1.82%) Subversion
General
1 23 (41.82%) Social Skills
2 5 (9.09%) Manufacturing
3 4 (7.27%) Retail
4 2 (3.64%) Aerospace
4 2 (3.64%) Analytical Skills
4 2 (3.64%) Documentation Skills
4 2 (3.64%) Finance
4 2 (3.64%) Public Sector
5 1 (1.82%) Billing
5 1 (1.82%) Marketing
5 1 (1.82%) Police
Job Titles
1 16 (29.09%) Architect
2 10 (18.18%) Lead
3 7 (12.73%) Principal Engineer
3 7 (12.73%) Senior
4 6 (10.91%) Consultant
4 6 (10.91%) Technical Leader
5 5 (9.09%) Design Engineer
5 5 (9.09%) Network Architect
5 5 (9.09%) RF Design Engineer
5 5 (9.09%) RF Engineer
5 5 (9.09%) Technical Consultant
6 3 (5.45%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 3 (5.45%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
6 3 (5.45%) Technical Architect
7 2 (3.64%) Developer
7 2 (3.64%) Engineering Manager
7 2 (3.64%) Senior Architect
7 2 (3.64%) Senior Network Architect
7 2 (3.64%) Software Engineer
7 2 (3.64%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (20.00%) REST
2 7 (12.73%) SOAP
3 4 (7.27%) AngularJS
3 4 (7.27%) React
4 3 (5.45%) OAuth
4 3 (5.45%) OpenID
4 3 (5.45%) RESTful
5 2 (3.64%) OAuth2
5 2 (3.64%) SailPoint
5 2 (3.64%) SAML
5 2 (3.64%) Unity (Game Engine)
5 2 (3.64%) Unreal Engine
5 2 (3.64%) Vue
6 1 (1.82%) CSS
6 1 (1.82%) HTML
6 1 (1.82%) JSR 170
6 1 (1.82%) LDAP
6 1 (1.82%) Middleware
6 1 (1.82%) Spring
6 1 (1.82%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 5 (9.09%) CMDB
2 3 (5.45%) Onboarding
2 3 (5.45%) PKI
2 3 (5.45%) Product Ownership
3 2 (3.64%) Data Centre
3 2 (3.64%) Management Information System
3 2 (3.64%) Mixed Reality
3 2 (3.64%) Virtual Reality
4 1 (1.82%) Blockchain
4 1 (1.82%) Cloud Native
4 1 (1.82%) Data Protection Act
4 1 (1.82%) Digital Signage
4 1 (1.82%) Enterprise Software
4 1 (1.82%) Legacy Systems
4 1 (1.82%) Operational Technology
4 1 (1.82%) Replication
4 1 (1.82%) Security Operations Centre
4 1 (1.82%) TM Forum
4 1 (1.82%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 5 (9.09%) Windows
2 4 (7.27%) Linux
3 2 (3.64%) Windows 10
4 1 (1.82%) Apple iOS
4 1 (1.82%) Mac OS X
4 1 (1.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (1.82%) Solaris
4 1 (1.82%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 24 (43.64%) Problem-Solving
2 15 (27.27%) Agile
2 15 (27.27%) Mentoring
3 10 (18.18%) CI/CD
3 10 (18.18%) ITSM
3 10 (18.18%) Roadmaps
3 10 (18.18%) Systems Engineering
4 9 (16.36%) DevOps
4 9 (16.36%) Stakeholder Engagement
4 9 (16.36%) Stakeholder Management
5 8 (14.55%) Continuous Improvement
5 8 (14.55%) Migration
5 8 (14.55%) Strategic Roadmap
5 8 (14.55%) Technical Architecture
6 7 (12.73%) Enterprise Architecture
6 7 (12.73%) Infrastructure as Code
6 7 (12.73%) Line Management
6 7 (12.73%) Translating Business Requirements
7 6 (10.91%) Logistics
7 6 (10.91%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 6 (10.91%) JavaScript
2 5 (9.09%) Python
3 4 (7.27%) Bash
3 4 (7.27%) PowerShell
4 3 (5.45%) DataWeave
5 2 (3.64%) Java
6 1 (1.82%) C#
6 1 (1.82%) Perl
Qualifications
1 19 (34.55%) Security Cleared
2 11 (20.00%) Degree
3 10 (18.18%) SC Cleared
4 8 (14.55%) DV Cleared
5 4 (7.27%) AWS Certification
5 4 (7.27%) Computer Science Degree
6 3 (5.45%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 2 (3.64%) Azure Certification
7 2 (3.64%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 1 (1.82%) CISSP
8 1 (1.82%) GIAC
8 1 (1.82%) HND
8 1 (1.82%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (12.73%) GDPR
2 4 (7.27%) GRC
2 4 (7.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 4 (7.27%) NIST
2 4 (7.27%) QA
3 2 (3.64%) NCSC
4 1 (1.82%) California Consumer Privacy Act
4 1 (1.82%) HIPAA
4 1 (1.82%) PMO
4 1 (1.82%) RMADS
System Software
1 8 (14.55%) Active Directory
2 7 (12.73%) Firmware
3 6 (10.91%) Docker
4 4 (7.27%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (5.45%) Hyper-V
6 1 (1.82%) VMware ESXi
6 1 (1.82%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 7 (12.73%) Terraform
2 5 (9.09%) Ansible
2 5 (9.09%) Kubernetes
3 3 (5.45%) CloudHub
4 2 (3.64%) Endace
5 1 (1.82%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 1 (1.82%) AirWatch
5 1 (1.82%) Argo
5 1 (1.82%) Grafana
5 1 (1.82%) Jamf Pro
5 1 (1.82%) Prometheus
5 1 (1.82%) Red Hat Satellite
5 1 (1.82%) SCCM
5 1 (1.82%) SELinux
5 1 (1.82%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 6 (10.91%) Cisco
1 6 (10.91%) Microsoft
2 5 (9.09%) BMC
2 5 (9.09%) EMC
2 5 (9.09%) ServiceNow
3 4 (7.27%) VMware
4 3 (5.45%) MuleSoft
4 3 (5.45%) Zscaler
5 2 (3.64%) CyberArk
5 2 (3.64%) Juniper
5 2 (3.64%) Salesforce
6 1 (1.82%) Adobe
6 1 (1.82%) Fortinet
6 1 (1.82%) JDA
6 1 (1.82%) Oracle
6 1 (1.82%) Red Hat
6 1 (1.82%) Remedy
6 1 (1.82%) SAP
6 1 (1.82%) Symantec
6 1 (1.82%) Veritas