January 2026 – South East UK – IT, Tech and AI Salary & Contractor Rates
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The “Thames Valley” Premium: Towns like Reading, Slough, and Bracknell (the M4 Corridor) along with the “Golden Triangle” (Oxford/Cambridge) command the highest salaries outside London.
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Specialist Hubs: Oxford and Cambridge see significantly higher rates for AI Researchers, NLP Engineers, and Firmware Engineers due to the concentration of life sciences and deep-tech startups.
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Contracting: The South East has a very mature contract market. Many contractors here commute into London or work for large US tech firms with UK headquarters in the region, keeping day rates high.
CategoryJob TitleYearly Low (£)Yearly Median (£)Yearly High (£)Contractor Day Rate (Med £)LeadershipChief Transformation Officer (CTRO)£125,000£162,000£195,000£1,350Chief Technology Officer (CTO)£120,000£158,000£198,000£1,300Chief Information Officer (CIO)£108,000£148,000£190,000£1,250Chief Info Security Officer (CISO)£98,000£132,000£165,000£1,150IT Director£82,000£102,000£125,000£950Head of Data / AI£98,000£125,000£155,000£1,050Head of Infrastructure£88,000£108,000£138,000£900Head of Architecture£105,000£135,000£175,000£1,150Operations3rd Line Support (SysAdmin)£48,000£62,000£82,000£4752nd Line Support£38,000£48,000£58,000£3501st Line Support£30,000£38,000£48,000£250IT Support Manager£60,000£75,000£95,000£575IT Field Engineer£35,000£45,000£55,000£350ArchitectureEnterprise Architect£92,000£112,000£145,000£1,000Solution Architect£85,000£105,000£135,000£875Cloud Architect (AWS/Azure)£95,000£118,000£150,000£950Security Architect£102,000£128,000£165,000£1,100Data Architect£88,000£110,000£140,000£950EngineeringAI / Machine Learning Engineer£85,000£108,000£145,000£950MLOps Engineer£88,000£112,000£155,000£1,000DevOps / SRE Engineer£78,000£98,000£135,000£850Cyber Security Engineer£72,000£92,000£125,000£800Data Engineer£68,000£88,000£120,000£775Software Developer (Senior)£78,000£95,000£135,000£750Full-Stack Developer£72,000£90,000£125,000£725Network Engineer£60,000£75,000£105,000£600Data & PMData Scientist (Senior)£78,000£98,000£135,000£875IT Project Manager£75,000£92,000£120,000£775Business Analyst (Technical)£65,000£82,000£105,000£650Scrum Master£70,000£88,000£115,000£750
If your company is thinking of hiring, do it now. As demand rises, so too with the rates of pay and the difficulty levels of attracting and securing the right talent.
If, however, your company is slowing down – beware! If your IT staff start to feel insecure, talent competitors and recruiters will find it very easy to persuade your staff to interview elsewhere. Despite the stress and negativity that may exist, take the time to focus on reassuring your team and, where appropriate, reward their loyalty. It’s a false economy to avoid salary increases for your best people. Doing so risks leave yourself vulnerable to losing key staff and the larger costs in both time and money of replacing them.
Should you be considering recruitment or simply would like some advice on anything recruitment related, please do not hesitate to give us a call and see how we can really help you to Recruit Someone Worth Recruiting.