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 29 May 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
29 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 32 44 43
Rank change year-on-year +12 -1 -4
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,406 2,708 4,709
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 5.61% 4.82% 5.38%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.55% 5.38% 5.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,396 1,819 3,295
10th Percentile £411 £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 £713 £694
90th Percentile £850 £800 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £503 £543 £525
% change year-on-year -7.37% +3.33% +16.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 410 200 196
10th Percentile £46.24 £46.25 £40.37
25th Percentile £52.50 £53.65 £48.08
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 36,749 50,370 79,373
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.64% 89.70% 90.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,629 34,859 55,702
10th Percentile £300 £325 £345
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 £486
% change year-on-year - +2.87% +9.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,511 1,675 1,892
10th Percentile £12.75 £10.63 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.00 £15.75 £15.50
Median hourly rate £36.50 £37.00 £25.68
Median % change year-on-year -1.35% +44.08% +7.00%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £49.50
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.12 £35.00 £20.00
% change year-on-year +8.91% +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 29 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 29 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 29 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 +11 2,151 £600 - 2,219
UK excluding London +19 1,121 £503 -7.37% 1,451
London +6 1,085 £650 - 891
Work from Home +18 930 £650 +8.33% 1,396
North of England +45 260 £518 -5.91% 323
South East +20 260 £550 +4.76% 323
East of England +10 201 £500 -6.54% 178
South West -3 173 £525 -9.01% 231
North West +57 150 £540 -1.82% 202
Scotland +28 110 £475 -2.96% 130
Midlands +41 96 £492 -6.38% 230
Yorkshire +14 75 £450 -10.00% 89
West Midlands +26 68 £475 -13.64% 112
North East +22 37 £390 -44.29% 36
East Midlands +18 27 £550 +29.41% 117
Wales +7 19 £538 -8.15% 24
Northern Ireland +6 4 £675 +68.75% 37

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
1 226 (9.39%) Apache Airflow
2 218 (9.06%) Apache
3 60 (2.49%) Confluence
4 31 (1.29%) Apache Spark
5 15 (0.62%) CMS
6 11 (0.46%) nginx
7 8 (0.33%) IIS
8 7 (0.29%) Headless CMS
9 6 (0.25%) Anypoint
9 6 (0.25%) BizTalk Server
9 6 (0.25%) SAS
10 5 (0.21%) Apache Solr
11 4 (0.17%) OpenStack
12 3 (0.12%) CICS
12 3 (0.12%) JBoss
12 3 (0.12%) SharePoint
13 2 (0.083%) ArcGIS
13 2 (0.083%) Drupal
13 2 (0.083%) MQSeries
13 2 (0.083%) WildFly
Applications
1 124 (5.15%) Chatbot
2 37 (1.54%) Simulink
3 27 (1.12%) Stateflow
4 13 (0.54%) Microsoft Excel
5 9 (0.37%) Microsoft Office
6 5 (0.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 5 (0.21%) TargetLink
7 4 (0.17%) CPLEX
8 3 (0.12%) Adobe After Effects
8 3 (0.12%) Blender
8 3 (0.12%) Maya
8 3 (0.12%) Photoshop
9 2 (0.083%) 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 9 (0.37%) 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 (0.12%) FLEXCUBE
5 3 (0.12%) Oracle BPM
5 3 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
6 2 (0.083%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.083%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 2 (0.083%) Shopify
6 2 (0.083%) 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
1 715 (29.72%) AWS
2 527 (21.90%) Azure
3 298 (12.39%) GCP
4 127 (5.28%) dbt
5 121 (5.03%) Snowflake
6 113 (4.70%) Azure DevOps
7 112 (4.66%) GitHub
8 100 (4.16%) Serverless
9 68 (2.83%) AWS Lambda
10 43 (1.79%) Azure Service Bus
11 41 (1.70%) Amazon S3
12 35 (1.45%) Azure Cosmos DB
12 35 (1.45%) PaaS
13 33 (1.37%) npm
13 33 (1.37%) SaaS
14 31 (1.29%) OpenShift
15 29 (1.21%) GitHub Actions
16 25 (1.04%) Amazon EC2
17 22 (0.91%) Azure Functions
17 22 (0.91%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 37 (1.54%) Modbus
1 37 (1.54%) RS-485
2 35 (1.45%) RS-422
3 31 (1.29%) Software-Defined Radio
4 26 (1.08%) TCP/IP
5 25 (1.04%) HTTP
6 22 (0.91%) SNMP
7 20 (0.83%) 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 (0.37%) 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
1 193 (8.02%) Apache Ignite
2 156 (6.48%) PostgreSQL
3 125 (5.20%) Amazon Athena
4 124 (5.15%) Dremio
5 122 (5.07%) Apache Arrow
6 117 (4.86%) Data Lake
7 83 (3.45%) NoSQL
8 78 (3.24%) SQL Server
9 70 (2.91%) MySQL
10 53 (2.20%) Apache Cassandra
11 49 (2.04%) Relational Database
12 39 (1.62%) MongoDB
13 33 (1.37%) Big Data
14 30 (1.25%) Data Warehouse
15 28 (1.16%) Azure SQL Database
15 28 (1.16%) Elasticsearch
15 28 (1.16%) Oracle Database
16 24 (1.00%) Amazon Redshift
17 21 (0.87%) DynamoDB
18 19 (0.79%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 245 (10.18%) Git
2 171 (7.11%) JIRA
3 141 (5.86%) Jenkins
4 107 (4.45%) Cypress.io
5 64 (2.66%) GitLab
6 54 (2.24%) SonarQube
7 48 (2.00%) Selenium
8 39 (1.62%) Bitbucket
9 38 (1.58%) Cucumber
10 37 (1.54%) Visual Studio
11 36 (1.50%) GoogleTest
12 35 (1.45%) Postman
13 33 (1.37%) Eclipse
14 29 (1.21%) Rational DOORS
15 26 (1.08%) Maven
16 25 (1.04%) JUnit
17 23 (0.96%) Robot Framework
18 21 (0.87%) REST Assured
18 21 (0.87%) webpack
19 20 (0.83%) TeamCity
General
1 568 (23.61%) Finance
2 397 (16.50%) Social Skills
3 330 (13.72%) Front Office
4 302 (12.55%) Banking
5 136 (5.65%) Investment Banking
6 100 (4.16%) Analytical Skills
7 94 (3.91%) Electronics
8 93 (3.87%) Public Sector
9 80 (3.33%) Aerospace
10 59 (2.45%) Automotive
11 44 (1.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 40 (1.66%) Retail
12 40 (1.66%) Telecoms
13 34 (1.41%) Manufacturing
14 31 (1.29%) Law
15 29 (1.21%) Legal
16 27 (1.12%) Military
16 27 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
17 26 (1.08%) Financial Institution
18 25 (1.04%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,154 (47.96%) Software Engineer
2 770 (32.00%) Developer
3 393 (16.33%) Senior
4 221 (9.19%) Senior Software Engineer
5 217 (9.02%) Software Developer
6 177 (7.36%) Python Engineer
7 176 (7.32%) Lead
8 171 (7.11%) Python Developer
9 165 (6.86%) Developer/Software Engineer
10 164 (6.82%) Java Engineer
11 160 (6.65%) Python Software Engineer
12 139 (5.78%) Embedded Engineer
13 134 (5.57%) Embedded Software Engineer
14 120 (4.99%) C++ Software Engineer
14 120 (4.99%) Java Software Engineer
15 119 (4.95%) Java Developer
16 102 (4.24%) Full Stack Engineer
17 101 (4.20%) React Developer
18 99 (4.11%) Senior Developer
19 88 (3.66%) Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 397 (16.50%) React
2 252 (10.47%) HTML
3 232 (9.64%) .NET
4 216 (8.98%) gRPC
5 202 (8.40%) Protocol Buffers
6 163 (6.77%) Pandas
7 161 (6.69%) Node.js
8 158 (6.57%) REST
9 153 (6.36%) NumPy
10 145 (6.03%) Kafka
11 141 (5.86%) Redux
12 139 (5.78%) AngularJS
13 132 (5.49%) SciPy
14 129 (5.36%) CSS
15 104 (4.32%) Spring
16 89 (3.70%) Material-UI
16 89 (3.70%) Spring Boot
17 79 (3.28%) .NET Core
18 74 (3.08%) RESTful
19 70 (2.91%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 264 (10.97%) Fixed Income
2 217 (9.02%) Hedge funds
3 195 (8.10%) Equities
4 174 (7.23%) Derivative
5 168 (6.98%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 76 (3.16%) Algorithms
7 73 (3.03%) Distributed Systems
8 52 (2.16%) Self-Motivation
9 50 (2.08%) Greenfield Project
10 47 (1.95%) Management Information System
11 39 (1.62%) Cloud Native
12 36 (1.50%) Product Ownership
13 29 (1.21%) Data Structures
14 28 (1.16%) Linux Command Line
15 27 (1.12%) Enterprise Software
16 24 (1.00%) Mobile App
16 24 (1.00%) Onboarding
17 23 (0.96%) Public Cloud
17 23 (0.96%) Renewable Energy
18 22 (0.91%) ARM Cortex
Operating Systems
1 251 (10.43%) Linux
2 102 (4.24%) Windows
3 37 (1.54%) Apple iOS
4 34 (1.41%) Android
5 29 (1.21%) Unix
6 24 (1.00%) FreeRTOS
7 18 (0.75%) Embedded Linux
8 9 (0.37%) Debian
8 9 (0.37%) 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 (0.12%) Mac OS
12 3 (0.12%) Windows Server
12 3 (0.12%) zOS
13 2 (0.083%) VMS
14 1 (0.042%) Solaris
14 1 (0.042%) Windows Mobile
14 1 (0.042%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 950 (39.48%) Agile
2 475 (19.74%) DevOps
3 386 (16.04%) CI/CD
4 280 (11.64%) Full Stack Development
5 271 (11.26%) Artificial Intelligence
6 259 (10.76%) Asset Management
7 228 (9.48%) TDD
8 226 (9.39%) Scrum
9 225 (9.35%) Test Automation
10 214 (8.89%) SDLC
11 209 (8.69%) Investment Management
12 203 (8.44%) Computer Science
12 203 (8.44%) Problem-Solving
13 201 (8.35%) Continuous Integration
14 196 (8.15%) Code Quality
15 192 (7.98%) Microservices
16 158 (6.57%) Fintech
17 157 (6.53%) Machine Learning
18 146 (6.07%) Analytics
19 143 (5.94%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 757 (31.46%) Python
2 630 (26.18%) Java
3 602 (25.02%) JavaScript
4 510 (21.20%) C#
5 460 (19.12%) SQL
6 447 (18.58%) TypeScript
7 294 (12.22%) C++
8 232 (9.64%) C
9 114 (4.74%) Go
10 77 (3.20%) PowerShell
11 65 (2.70%) Scala
12 60 (2.49%) Embedded C
13 44 (1.83%) Kotlin
14 42 (1.75%) MATLAB
15 38 (1.58%) Ada
16 37 (1.54%) Rust
17 35 (1.45%) Bash
17 35 (1.45%) PHP
18 34 (1.41%) PL/SQL
19 28 (1.16%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 397 (16.50%) Degree
2 361 (15.00%) Security Cleared
3 260 (10.81%) SC Cleared
4 117 (4.86%) Computer Science Degree
5 107 (4.45%) DV Cleared
6 70 (2.91%) Master's Degree
7 19 (0.79%) BPSS Clearance
7 19 (0.79%) PhD
8 8 (0.33%) CISSP
9 7 (0.29%) CISM
10 6 (0.25%) CISA
11 3 (0.12%) HND
11 3 (0.12%) ITIL Certification
12 2 (0.083%) Azure Certification
12 2 (0.083%) HNC
12 2 (0.083%) MBA
12 2 (0.083%) PgMP
12 2 (0.083%) PMI Certification
12 2 (0.083%) PMP
13 1 (0.042%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 107 (4.45%) QA
2 63 (2.62%) Data Quality
3 31 (1.29%) MISRA
4 20 (0.83%) 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 (0.33%) 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 (0.12%) Cyber Essentials
12 3 (0.12%) GDPR
12 3 (0.12%) IEC 61508
12 3 (0.12%) MiFID
12 3 (0.12%) NIST
12 3 (0.12%) SLA
System Software
1 230 (9.56%) Docker
2 36 (1.50%) Firmware
3 32 (1.33%) Active Directory
4 14 (0.58%) 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 (0.12%) Hyper-V
10 2 (0.083%) Time Sharing Option
11 1 (0.042%) NFS
11 1 (0.042%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.042%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 263 (10.93%) Kubernetes
2 122 (5.07%) Terraform
3 81 (3.37%) Ansible
4 61 (2.54%) Grafana
5 35 (1.45%) Prometheus
6 16 (0.67%) Argo
7 15 (0.62%) Kibana
7 15 (0.62%) Podman
8 11 (0.46%) Docker Swarm
8 11 (0.46%) Istio
9 9 (0.37%) Puppet
10 8 (0.33%) 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
1 161 (6.69%) Microsoft
2 149 (6.19%) Google
3 121 (5.03%) PayPal
4 108 (4.49%) Oracle
5 42 (1.75%) IBM
6 32 (1.33%) Atlassian
7 31 (1.29%) SAP
8 27 (1.12%) Databricks
9 25 (1.04%) Talend
10 23 (0.96%) Red Hat
10 23 (0.96%) VMware
11 21 (0.87%) Lauterbach
12 20 (0.83%) Salesforce
13 18 (0.75%) Denodo
14 14 (0.58%) Bloomberg
14 14 (0.58%) MuleSoft
15 13 (0.54%) Splunk
16 12 (0.50%) ServiceNow
16 12 (0.50%) Virgin Media
17 10 (0.42%) Adobe