Software Engineering Contracts

Software Engineering
UK

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for Software Engineering skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited Software Engineering over the 6 months to 28 May 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
28 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 32 43 43
Rank change year-on-year +11 0 -4
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,388 2,715 4,749
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 5.58% 4.82% 5.38%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.51% 5.38% 5.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,391 1,826 3,322
10th Percentile £410 £425 £425
25th Percentile £481 £500 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year - - +14.29%
75th Percentile £750 £717 £694
90th Percentile £850 £800 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £545 £525
% change year-on-year -8.26% +3.81% +16.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 404 201 199
10th Percentile £46.25 £46.25 £40.45
25th Percentile £52.50 £53.75 £48.30
Median hourly rate £62.50 £64.15 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year -2.56% +11.56% +25.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £70.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £77.00 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year -3.85% +8.33% +31.15%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Software Engineering is in the Processes and Methodologies category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 36,703 50,479 79,939
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.70% 89.71% 90.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,654 34,954 56,109
10th Percentile £300 £325 £344
25th Percentile £413 £438 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +2.33% +7.50%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £640
90th Percentile £750 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £485
% change year-on-year - +3.04% +9.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,498 1,668 1,904
10th Percentile £12.74 £10.63 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.00 £15.70 £15.52
Median hourly rate £36.50 £36.13 £25.68
Median % change year-on-year +1.04% +40.67% +7.00%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £49.50
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.00 £35.00 £20.00
% change year-on-year +8.57% +75.00% -4.99%

Software Engineering
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Software Engineering as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Software Engineering in the UK

Software Engineering
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Software Engineering.

Daily rate trend for Software Engineering in the UK

Software Engineering
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Software Engineering over the 6 months to 28 May 2024.

Daily rate histogram for Software Engineering in the UK

Software Engineering
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Software Engineering.

Hourly rate trend for Software Engineering in the UK

Software Engineering
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Software Engineering over the 6 months to 28 May 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for Software Engineering in the UK

Software Engineering
Top 17 Contract Locations

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 UK over the 6 months to 28 May 2024. 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
England +9 2,133 £600 - 2,225
UK excluding London +19 1,111 £500 -8.26% 1,451
London +5 1,074 £663 +1.92% 894
Work from Home +17 928 £650 +8.33% 1,404
South East +23 261 £550 +4.76% 323
North of England +47 259 £510 -7.27% 322
East of England +10 201 £500 -7.24% 176
South West -4 168 £525 -9.33% 236
North West +61 150 £533 -3.18% 201
Scotland +35 110 £475 -0.84% 126
Midlands +36 91 £492 -6.38% 231
Yorkshire +10 74 £450 -10.00% 89
West Midlands +18 65 £463 -15.91% 111
North East +24 37 £390 -38.82% 36
East Midlands +19 25 £550 +29.41% 119
Wales +2 19 £538 -8.15% 24
Northern Ireland +8 4 £675 +68.75% 38

Software Engineering
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 229 (9.59%) Apache Airflow
2 221 (9.25%) Apache
3 60 (2.51%) Confluence
4 31 (1.30%) Apache Spark
5 15 (0.63%) CMS
6 11 (0.46%) nginx
7 8 (0.34%) IIS
8 7 (0.29%) Headless CMS
9 6 (0.25%) BizTalk Server
9 6 (0.25%) SAS
10 5 (0.21%) Anypoint
10 5 (0.21%) Apache Solr
11 4 (0.17%) OpenStack
12 3 (0.13%) CICS
12 3 (0.13%) JBoss
12 3 (0.13%) SharePoint
13 2 (0.084%) ArcGIS
13 2 (0.084%) Drupal
13 2 (0.084%) MQSeries
13 2 (0.084%) WildFly
Applications
1 124 (5.19%) Chatbot
2 37 (1.55%) Simulink
3 27 (1.13%) Stateflow
4 13 (0.54%) Microsoft Excel
5 9 (0.38%) Microsoft Office
6 5 (0.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 5 (0.21%) TargetLink
7 4 (0.17%) CPLEX
8 3 (0.13%) Adobe After Effects
8 3 (0.13%) Blender
8 3 (0.13%) Maya
8 3 (0.13%) Photoshop
9 2 (0.084%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 1 (0.042%) CATIA
10 1 (0.042%) PlantUML
10 1 (0.042%) Sketch
10 1 (0.042%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 8 (0.34%) Misys Midas
2 6 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.21%) Endur
3 5 (0.21%) Salesforce CRM
4 4 (0.17%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 3 (0.13%) FLEXCUBE
5 3 (0.13%) Oracle BPM
5 3 (0.13%) SAP S/4HANA
6 2 (0.084%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.084%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 2 (0.084%) Shopify
6 2 (0.084%) WebTrends
7 1 (0.042%) Advent Geneva
7 1 (0.042%) Fidessa
7 1 (0.042%) Front Arena
7 1 (0.042%) Remedy ITSM
7 1 (0.042%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 716 (29.98%) AWS
2 526 (22.03%) Azure
3 299 (12.52%) GCP
4 130 (5.44%) dbt
5 121 (5.07%) Snowflake
6 114 (4.77%) Azure DevOps
7 110 (4.61%) GitHub
8 99 (4.15%) Serverless
9 67 (2.81%) AWS Lambda
10 43 (1.80%) Azure Service Bus
11 41 (1.72%) Amazon S3
12 35 (1.47%) Azure Cosmos DB
12 35 (1.47%) PaaS
13 33 (1.38%) npm
14 32 (1.34%) SaaS
15 30 (1.26%) OpenShift
16 29 (1.21%) GitHub Actions
17 25 (1.05%) Amazon EC2
18 22 (0.92%) Azure Functions
18 22 (0.92%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 37 (1.55%) Modbus
1 37 (1.55%) RS-485
2 35 (1.47%) RS-422
3 31 (1.30%) Software-Defined Radio
4 26 (1.09%) TCP/IP
5 25 (1.05%) HTTP
6 22 (0.92%) SNMP
7 20 (0.84%) Firewall
8 18 (0.75%) Internet
9 16 (0.67%) VPN
10 12 (0.50%) Wi-Fi
11 11 (0.46%) Ethernet
11 11 (0.46%) SAN
11 11 (0.46%) Wireless
12 9 (0.38%) DNS
13 7 (0.29%) 802.11
13 7 (0.29%) Diameter Protocol
14 6 (0.25%) Tactical Data Link
15 5 (0.21%) 5G
15 5 (0.21%) Link 16
Database & Business Intelligence
1 196 (8.21%) Apache Ignite
2 156 (6.53%) PostgreSQL
3 128 (5.36%) Amazon Athena
4 127 (5.32%) Dremio
5 125 (5.23%) Apache Arrow
6 117 (4.90%) Data Lake
7 82 (3.43%) NoSQL
8 77 (3.22%) SQL Server
9 69 (2.89%) MySQL
10 53 (2.22%) Apache Cassandra
11 49 (2.05%) Relational Database
12 39 (1.63%) MongoDB
13 33 (1.38%) Big Data
14 29 (1.21%) Data Warehouse
15 28 (1.17%) Azure SQL Database
15 28 (1.17%) Elasticsearch
15 28 (1.17%) Oracle Database
16 24 (1.01%) Amazon Redshift
17 20 (0.84%) DynamoDB
18 19 (0.80%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 244 (10.22%) Git
2 169 (7.08%) JIRA
3 138 (5.78%) Jenkins
4 107 (4.48%) Cypress.io
5 64 (2.68%) GitLab
6 54 (2.26%) SonarQube
7 48 (2.01%) Selenium
8 39 (1.63%) Bitbucket
9 38 (1.59%) Cucumber
10 37 (1.55%) Visual Studio
11 35 (1.47%) Postman
12 34 (1.42%) GoogleTest
13 33 (1.38%) Eclipse
14 29 (1.21%) Rational DOORS
15 26 (1.09%) Maven
16 25 (1.05%) JUnit
17 23 (0.96%) Robot Framework
18 21 (0.88%) REST Assured
18 21 (0.88%) webpack
19 19 (0.80%) TeamCity
General
1 570 (23.87%) Finance
2 392 (16.42%) Social Skills
3 333 (13.94%) Front Office
4 305 (12.77%) Banking
5 139 (5.82%) Investment Banking
6 100 (4.19%) Analytical Skills
7 95 (3.98%) Public Sector
8 94 (3.94%) Electronics
9 80 (3.35%) Aerospace
10 59 (2.47%) Automotive
11 44 (1.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 39 (1.63%) Telecoms
13 37 (1.55%) Retail
14 34 (1.42%) Manufacturing
15 31 (1.30%) Law
16 28 (1.17%) Legal
17 27 (1.13%) Financial Institution
17 27 (1.13%) Military
17 27 (1.13%) Presentation Skills
18 25 (1.05%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,144 (47.91%) Software Engineer
2 769 (32.20%) Developer
3 387 (16.21%) Senior
4 219 (9.17%) Senior Software Engineer
5 216 (9.05%) Software Developer
6 179 (7.50%) Python Engineer
7 177 (7.41%) Lead
8 172 (7.20%) Python Developer
9 167 (6.99%) Developer/Software Engineer
10 164 (6.87%) Java Engineer
11 162 (6.78%) Python Software Engineer
12 138 (5.78%) Embedded Engineer
13 133 (5.57%) Embedded Software Engineer
14 120 (5.03%) Java Developer
14 120 (5.03%) Java Software Engineer
15 118 (4.94%) C++ Software Engineer
16 102 (4.27%) Full Stack Engineer
17 101 (4.23%) React Developer
18 96 (4.02%) Senior Developer
19 88 (3.69%) Full Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 395 (16.54%) React
2 252 (10.55%) HTML
3 231 (9.67%) .NET
4 219 (9.17%) gRPC
5 205 (8.58%) Protocol Buffers
6 166 (6.95%) Pandas
7 160 (6.70%) Node.js
8 156 (6.53%) NumPy
8 156 (6.53%) REST
9 144 (6.03%) Kafka
10 141 (5.90%) Redux
11 138 (5.78%) AngularJS
12 135 (5.65%) SciPy
13 129 (5.40%) CSS
14 104 (4.36%) Spring
15 89 (3.73%) Material-UI
15 89 (3.73%) Spring Boot
16 79 (3.31%) .NET Core
17 74 (3.10%) RESTful
18 70 (2.93%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 264 (11.06%) Fixed Income
2 217 (9.09%) Hedge funds
3 195 (8.17%) Equities
4 174 (7.29%) Derivative
5 166 (6.95%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 76 (3.18%) Algorithms
7 73 (3.06%) Distributed Systems
8 52 (2.18%) Self-Motivation
9 50 (2.09%) Greenfield Project
10 47 (1.97%) Management Information System
11 39 (1.63%) Cloud Native
12 37 (1.55%) Product Ownership
13 29 (1.21%) Data Structures
14 27 (1.13%) Enterprise Software
15 26 (1.09%) Linux Command Line
16 23 (0.96%) Onboarding
16 23 (0.96%) Renewable Energy
17 22 (0.92%) Legacy Systems
17 22 (0.92%) Public Cloud
18 21 (0.88%) ARM Cortex
Operating Systems
1 248 (10.39%) Linux
2 102 (4.27%) Windows
3 34 (1.42%) Android
4 32 (1.34%) Apple iOS
5 29 (1.21%) Unix
6 24 (1.01%) FreeRTOS
7 18 (0.75%) Embedded Linux
8 9 (0.38%) Debian
8 9 (0.38%) Ubuntu
9 7 (0.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 5 (0.21%) VxWorks
10 5 (0.21%) Windows 10
11 4 (0.17%) SafeRTOS
12 3 (0.13%) Mac OS
12 3 (0.13%) Windows Server
12 3 (0.13%) zOS
13 2 (0.084%) VMS
14 1 (0.042%) Solaris
14 1 (0.042%) Windows Mobile
14 1 (0.042%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 952 (39.87%) Agile
2 470 (19.68%) DevOps
3 384 (16.08%) CI/CD
4 281 (11.77%) Full Stack Development
5 271 (11.35%) Artificial Intelligence
6 263 (11.01%) Asset Management
7 226 (9.46%) Scrum
7 226 (9.46%) Test Automation
8 225 (9.42%) TDD
9 213 (8.92%) SDLC
10 210 (8.79%) Investment Management
11 204 (8.54%) Problem-Solving
12 201 (8.42%) Computer Science
13 199 (8.33%) Continuous Integration
14 196 (8.21%) Code Quality
15 189 (7.91%) Microservices
16 158 (6.62%) Machine Learning
17 156 (6.53%) Fintech
18 148 (6.20%) Analytics
19 140 (5.86%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 758 (31.74%) Python
2 633 (26.51%) Java
3 607 (25.42%) JavaScript
4 509 (21.31%) C#
5 459 (19.22%) SQL
6 448 (18.76%) TypeScript
7 293 (12.27%) C++
8 232 (9.72%) C
9 112 (4.69%) Go
10 77 (3.22%) PowerShell
11 66 (2.76%) Scala
12 59 (2.47%) Embedded C
13 43 (1.80%) Kotlin
14 42 (1.76%) MATLAB
15 38 (1.59%) Ada
15 38 (1.59%) Rust
16 35 (1.47%) Bash
16 35 (1.47%) PHP
17 34 (1.42%) PL/SQL
18 27 (1.13%) Perl
Qualifications
1 394 (16.50%) Degree
2 359 (15.03%) Security Cleared
3 261 (10.93%) SC Cleared
4 114 (4.77%) Computer Science Degree
5 104 (4.36%) DV Cleared
6 70 (2.93%) Master's Degree
7 19 (0.80%) BPSS Clearance
7 19 (0.80%) PhD
8 8 (0.34%) CISSP
9 7 (0.29%) CISM
10 6 (0.25%) CISA
11 3 (0.13%) HND
11 3 (0.13%) ITIL Certification
12 2 (0.084%) Azure Certification
12 2 (0.084%) HNC
12 2 (0.084%) MBA
12 2 (0.084%) PgMP
12 2 (0.084%) PMI Certification
12 2 (0.084%) PMP
13 1 (0.042%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 105 (4.40%) QA
2 63 (2.64%) Data Quality
3 29 (1.21%) MISRA
4 20 (0.84%) PCI DSS
5 18 (0.75%) Accessibility
6 13 (0.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 13 (0.54%) MISRA C
7 12 (0.50%) AUTOSAR
8 11 (0.46%) NCSC
9 8 (0.34%) ISO 9001
10 7 (0.29%) JTAG
11 5 (0.21%) ISO 26262
11 5 (0.21%) SEPA
11 5 (0.21%) WCAG
12 3 (0.13%) Cyber Essentials
12 3 (0.13%) GDPR
12 3 (0.13%) IEC 61508
12 3 (0.13%) MiFID
12 3 (0.13%) NIST
12 3 (0.13%) SLA
System Software
1 228 (9.55%) Docker
2 36 (1.51%) Firmware
3 32 (1.34%) Active Directory
4 14 (0.59%) VMware Infrastructure
5 11 (0.46%) Virtual Machines
6 6 (0.25%) VirtualBox
7 5 (0.21%) ACF2
7 5 (0.21%) Embedded Firmware
7 5 (0.21%) IAG
7 5 (0.21%) RACF
7 5 (0.21%) Virtual Servers
8 4 (0.17%) zsh
9 3 (0.13%) Hyper-V
10 2 (0.084%) Time Sharing Option
11 1 (0.042%) NFS
11 1 (0.042%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.042%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 260 (10.89%) Kubernetes
2 120 (5.03%) Terraform
3 80 (3.35%) Ansible
4 61 (2.55%) Grafana
5 35 (1.47%) Prometheus
6 16 (0.67%) Argo
7 15 (0.63%) Kibana
7 15 (0.63%) Podman
8 11 (0.46%) Docker Swarm
8 11 (0.46%) Istio
9 9 (0.38%) Puppet
10 8 (0.34%) Single Sign-On
11 7 (0.29%) Progress Chef
12 6 (0.25%) Functional Safety
12 6 (0.25%) Kubeflow
12 6 (0.25%) Packer
13 4 (0.17%) Consul
13 4 (0.17%) HP ALM
13 4 (0.17%) vRealize Orchestrator
13 4 (0.17%) Zipkin
Vendors
1 158 (6.62%) Microsoft
2 146 (6.11%) Google
3 121 (5.07%) PayPal
4 107 (4.48%) Oracle
5 41 (1.72%) IBM
6 32 (1.34%) Atlassian
7 30 (1.26%) SAP
8 27 (1.13%) Databricks
9 25 (1.05%) Talend
10 23 (0.96%) Red Hat
10 23 (0.96%) VMware
11 20 (0.84%) Lauterbach
12 19 (0.80%) Salesforce
13 18 (0.75%) Denodo
14 14 (0.59%) Bloomberg
15 13 (0.54%) MuleSoft
16 12 (0.50%) ServiceNow
16 12 (0.50%) Splunk
16 12 (0.50%) Virgin Media
17 10 (0.42%) Adobe