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 27 April 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
27 Apr 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 33 43 42
Rank change year-on-year +10 -1 -6
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,227 2,943 4,914
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 5.14% 4.92% 5.53%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.96% 5.47% 6.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,302 1,971 3,477
10th Percentile £413 £438 £413
25th Percentile £485 £504 £492
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £600 £575
Median % change year-on-year - +4.35% +9.52%
75th Percentile £747 £702 £688
90th Percentile £850 £798 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £540 £525
% change year-on-year -2.78% +2.86% +16.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 357 204 220
10th Percentile £46.25 £46.25 £36.15
25th Percentile £52.50 £53.75 £46.93
Median hourly rate £62.50 £64.15 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.56% +16.63% +22.22%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.56 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £56.50
% change year-on-year -3.85% +15.04% +25.56%

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 37,374 53,774 80,482
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.31% 89.91% 90.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,095 37,304 56,474
10th Percentile £300 £325 £340
25th Percentile £413 £438 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +4.76% +8.25%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £638
90th Percentile £750 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £475
% change year-on-year - +5.26% +9.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,422 1,763 1,928
10th Percentile £12.75 £11.00 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.00 £16.25 £15.25
Median hourly rate £35.00 £37.34 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -6.27% +49.36% -
75th Percentile £59.44 £65.00 £49.25
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.00 £63.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.00 £36.00 £20.00
% change year-on-year - +80.00% -8.17%

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 27 April 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 27 April 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 27 April 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 +8 1,991 £600 - 2,245
UK excluding London +15 1,058 £525 -2.78% 1,531
London +4 973 £650 - 861
Work from Home +10 886 £625 +6.16% 1,330
South East +26 262 £550 +1.85% 358
North of England +46 252 £525 -4.55% 301
East of England +17 188 £500 -4.40% 224
North West +60 152 £549 -8.50% 179
South West -14 145 £525 -9.33% 268
Scotland +19 103 £498 +4.74% 137
Midlands +5 90 £496 -7.85% 223
Yorkshire +9 67 £425 -18.07% 93
West Midlands -3 59 £463 -14.35% 121
North East +22 35 £390 -32.17% 32
East Midlands +31 31 £550 +29.41% 102
Wales -2 18 £551 -5.97% 26
Northern Ireland +8 3 £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
1 157 (7.05%) Apache Airflow
2 146 (6.56%) Apache
3 48 (2.16%) Confluence
4 30 (1.35%) Apache Spark
5 13 (0.58%) CMS
6 8 (0.36%) BizTalk Server
6 8 (0.36%) IIS
7 6 (0.27%) nginx
7 6 (0.27%) Tornado
8 5 (0.22%) Anypoint
9 4 (0.18%) OpenStack
10 3 (0.13%) CICS
10 3 (0.13%) Headless CMS
10 3 (0.13%) SAS
10 3 (0.13%) SharePoint
11 2 (0.090%) Apache Solr
11 2 (0.090%) ArcGIS
11 2 (0.090%) Drupal
11 2 (0.090%) EPiServer
11 2 (0.090%) MQSeries
Applications
1 124 (5.57%) Chatbot
2 37 (1.66%) Simulink
3 27 (1.21%) Stateflow
4 17 (0.76%) Microsoft Excel
5 10 (0.45%) Microsoft Office
6 5 (0.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 5 (0.22%) TargetLink
7 2 (0.090%) Adobe After Effects
7 2 (0.090%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.090%) Blender
7 2 (0.090%) Maya
7 2 (0.090%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.045%) CATIA
8 1 (0.045%) PlantUML
8 1 (0.045%) Sketch
8 1 (0.045%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 8 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (0.22%) Endur
3 4 (0.18%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 3 (0.13%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.13%) Oracle BPM
4 3 (0.13%) Salesforce CRM
4 3 (0.13%) SAP S/4HANA
5 2 (0.090%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.090%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.090%) Shopify
5 2 (0.090%) WebTrends
6 1 (0.045%) Advent Geneva
6 1 (0.045%) Front Arena
6 1 (0.045%) Remedy ITSM
6 1 (0.045%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 634 (28.47%) AWS
2 490 (22.00%) Azure
3 238 (10.69%) GCP
4 114 (5.12%) Azure DevOps
5 90 (4.04%) Serverless
6 88 (3.95%) GitHub
7 85 (3.82%) dbt
8 74 (3.32%) Snowflake
9 56 (2.51%) AWS Lambda
10 42 (1.89%) Azure Service Bus
11 41 (1.84%) PaaS
11 41 (1.84%) SaaS
12 35 (1.57%) npm
13 32 (1.44%) Amazon S3
13 32 (1.44%) Azure Cosmos DB
14 31 (1.39%) Amazon EC2
15 29 (1.30%) GitHub Actions
16 26 (1.17%) Azure Functions
17 24 (1.08%) Azure Logic Apps
17 24 (1.08%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 38 (1.71%) Modbus
2 37 (1.66%) RS-422
3 36 (1.62%) RS-485
4 27 (1.21%) Software-Defined Radio
5 23 (1.03%) HTTP
6 22 (0.99%) TCP/IP
7 20 (0.90%) Firewall
8 19 (0.85%) Internet
9 18 (0.81%) SNMP
10 17 (0.76%) Wi-Fi
11 16 (0.72%) VPN
12 13 (0.58%) Wireless
13 12 (0.54%) 802.11
14 11 (0.49%) SAN
15 10 (0.45%) DNS
16 7 (0.31%) FTP
17 6 (0.27%) Ethernet
17 6 (0.27%) Network Security
18 5 (0.22%) 5G
18 5 (0.22%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 124 (5.57%) Apache Ignite
1 124 (5.57%) PostgreSQL
2 82 (3.68%) SQL Server
3 81 (3.64%) Amazon Athena
3 81 (3.64%) Apache Arrow
3 81 (3.64%) Dremio
4 74 (3.32%) Data Lake
5 73 (3.28%) NoSQL
6 55 (2.47%) MySQL
7 54 (2.42%) Apache Cassandra
8 47 (2.11%) MongoDB
9 38 (1.71%) Relational Database
10 31 (1.39%) Big Data
11 29 (1.30%) Oracle Database
12 27 (1.21%) Azure SQL Database
13 26 (1.17%) Data Warehouse
14 22 (0.99%) Elasticsearch
15 19 (0.85%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 18 (0.81%) Oracle Database 11g
17 17 (0.76%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 213 (9.56%) Git
2 147 (6.60%) JIRA
3 123 (5.52%) Jenkins
4 72 (3.23%) Cypress.io
5 58 (2.60%) GitLab
6 54 (2.42%) SonarQube
7 42 (1.89%) Selenium
8 38 (1.71%) Bitbucket
9 34 (1.53%) Cucumber
10 33 (1.48%) Rational DOORS
11 29 (1.30%) Visual Studio
12 27 (1.21%) webpack
13 25 (1.12%) Eclipse
13 25 (1.12%) Maven
14 23 (1.03%) Postman
15 22 (0.99%) GoogleTest
16 21 (0.94%) JUnit
16 21 (0.94%) REST Assured
17 18 (0.81%) Artifactory
18 17 (0.76%) TeamCity
General
1 493 (22.14%) Finance
2 393 (17.65%) Social Skills
3 271 (12.17%) Front Office
4 224 (10.06%) Banking
5 110 (4.94%) Analytical Skills
6 108 (4.85%) Electronics
7 103 (4.63%) Public Sector
8 94 (4.22%) Investment Banking
9 75 (3.37%) Aerospace
10 62 (2.78%) Automotive
11 42 (1.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 41 (1.84%) Telecoms
13 40 (1.80%) Manufacturing
14 37 (1.66%) Marketing
15 36 (1.62%) Retail
16 31 (1.39%) Law
17 28 (1.26%) Legal
18 27 (1.21%) Financial Institution
19 23 (1.03%) Presentation Skills
20 15 (0.67%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,025 (46.03%) Software Engineer
2 738 (33.14%) Developer
3 362 (16.26%) Senior
4 205 (9.21%) Software Developer
5 204 (9.16%) Senior Software Engineer
6 163 (7.32%) Lead
7 147 (6.60%) Python Developer
8 136 (6.11%) Developer/Software Engineer
9 135 (6.06%) Python Engineer
10 130 (5.84%) Embedded Engineer
11 125 (5.61%) Embedded Software Engineer
12 124 (5.57%) Java Engineer
13 117 (5.25%) Python Software Engineer
14 108 (4.85%) Java Developer
15 103 (4.63%) C++ Software Engineer
16 92 (4.13%) Full Stack Engineer
17 89 (4.00%) Senior Developer
18 86 (3.86%) Java Software Engineer
19 79 (3.55%) Full Stack Developer
20 75 (3.37%) React Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 373 (16.75%) React
2 251 (11.27%) HTML
3 225 (10.10%) .NET
4 165 (7.41%) REST
5 157 (7.05%) Node.js
6 142 (6.38%) gRPC
7 140 (6.29%) Kafka
8 135 (6.06%) AngularJS
9 134 (6.02%) Protocol Buffers
10 127 (5.70%) Pandas
11 125 (5.61%) CSS
12 115 (5.16%) Redux
13 114 (5.12%) NumPy
14 92 (4.13%) SciPy
15 91 (4.09%) Spring
16 76 (3.41%) .NET Core
17 74 (3.32%) Spring Boot
18 73 (3.28%) RESTful
19 67 (3.01%) Material-UI
20 55 (2.47%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 203 (9.12%) Fixed Income
2 157 (7.05%) Hedge funds
3 144 (6.47%) Equities
4 139 (6.24%) Derivative
5 122 (5.48%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 78 (3.50%) Algorithms
7 68 (3.05%) Distributed Systems
8 52 (2.33%) Greenfield Project
8 52 (2.33%) Self-Motivation
9 48 (2.16%) Management Information System
10 37 (1.66%) Cloud Native
10 37 (1.66%) Product Ownership
11 29 (1.30%) Data Structures
12 25 (1.12%) Renewable Energy
13 22 (0.99%) Public Cloud
14 21 (0.94%) Enterprise Software
14 21 (0.94%) Onboarding
15 19 (0.85%) Linux Command Line
16 18 (0.81%) ARM Cortex
16 18 (0.81%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 228 (10.24%) Linux
2 100 (4.49%) Windows
3 30 (1.35%) Unix
4 25 (1.12%) Android
5 24 (1.08%) Apple iOS
6 21 (0.94%) Embedded Linux
6 21 (0.94%) FreeRTOS
7 10 (0.45%) Ubuntu
8 9 (0.40%) Debian
9 6 (0.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 5 (0.22%) VxWorks
10 5 (0.22%) Windows 10
11 4 (0.18%) SafeRTOS
12 3 (0.13%) Mac OS
12 3 (0.13%) Windows Server
12 3 (0.13%) zOS
13 2 (0.090%) VMS
14 1 (0.045%) Solaris
14 1 (0.045%) Windows Mobile
14 1 (0.045%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 837 (37.58%) Agile
2 455 (20.43%) DevOps
3 346 (15.54%) CI/CD
4 254 (11.41%) Full Stack Development
5 233 (10.46%) Artificial Intelligence
6 223 (10.01%) Problem-Solving
7 213 (9.56%) TDD
7 213 (9.56%) Test Automation
8 207 (9.30%) Scrum
9 205 (9.21%) Asset Management
10 196 (8.80%) Computer Science
11 191 (8.58%) SDLC
12 188 (8.44%) Code Quality
13 183 (8.22%) Continuous Integration
14 180 (8.08%) Microservices
15 172 (7.72%) Investment Management
16 156 (7.00%) Fintech
17 145 (6.51%) Software Testing
18 136 (6.11%) Unit Testing
19 133 (5.97%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 692 (31.07%) Python
2 560 (25.15%) JavaScript
3 537 (24.11%) Java
4 501 (22.50%) C#
5 452 (20.30%) SQL
6 373 (16.75%) TypeScript
7 274 (12.30%) C++
8 219 (9.83%) C
9 114 (5.12%) Go
10 74 (3.32%) PowerShell
11 66 (2.96%) Scala
12 58 (2.60%) Embedded C
13 45 (2.02%) MATLAB
14 44 (1.98%) PL/SQL
15 38 (1.71%) Ada
16 37 (1.66%) Kotlin
17 32 (1.44%) PHP
17 32 (1.44%) Rust
18 29 (1.30%) Bash
19 28 (1.26%) Perl
Qualifications
1 389 (17.47%) Degree
2 335 (15.04%) Security Cleared
3 247 (11.09%) SC Cleared
4 113 (5.07%) Computer Science Degree
5 91 (4.09%) DV Cleared
6 74 (3.32%) Master's Degree
7 21 (0.94%) BPSS Clearance
8 20 (0.90%) PhD
9 8 (0.36%) AWS Certification
10 5 (0.22%) Chartered Engineer
11 3 (0.13%) ITIL Certification
11 3 (0.13%) PMP
12 2 (0.090%) CISSP
12 2 (0.090%) HND
12 2 (0.090%) MBA
12 2 (0.090%) PgMP
12 2 (0.090%) PMI Certification
13 1 (0.045%) CISM
13 1 (0.045%) HNC
13 1 (0.045%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 101 (4.54%) QA
2 40 (1.80%) Data Quality
3 18 (0.81%) PCI DSS
4 17 (0.76%) Accessibility
5 16 (0.72%) MISRA
6 14 (0.63%) AUTOSAR
7 11 (0.49%) NCSC
8 10 (0.45%) MISRA C
9 9 (0.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 8 (0.36%) ISO 9001
11 7 (0.31%) JTAG
12 6 (0.27%) ISO 26262
13 4 (0.18%) SEPA
13 4 (0.18%) WCAG
14 3 (0.13%) Disclosure Scotland
14 3 (0.13%) SLA
15 2 (0.090%) Def Stans
15 2 (0.090%) GDPR
15 2 (0.090%) ISO 20022
15 2 (0.090%) NIST
System Software
1 208 (9.34%) Docker
2 34 (1.53%) Firmware
3 29 (1.30%) Active Directory
4 16 (0.72%) VMware Infrastructure
5 10 (0.45%) Virtual Machines
6 6 (0.27%) Embedded Firmware
6 6 (0.27%) Virtual Servers
6 6 (0.27%) VirtualBox
7 5 (0.22%) ACF2
7 5 (0.22%) IAG
7 5 (0.22%) RACF
8 4 (0.18%) zsh
9 3 (0.13%) Hyper-V
10 2 (0.090%) Time Sharing Option
11 1 (0.045%) NFS
11 1 (0.045%) Virtual Desktop
11 1 (0.045%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.045%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 244 (10.96%) Kubernetes
2 133 (5.97%) Terraform
3 78 (3.50%) Ansible
4 45 (2.02%) Grafana
5 27 (1.21%) Prometheus
6 11 (0.49%) Argo
6 11 (0.49%) Docker Swarm
6 11 (0.49%) Podman
6 11 (0.49%) Progress Chef
7 9 (0.40%) Puppet
7 9 (0.40%) Single Sign-On
8 8 (0.36%) Kibana
9 7 (0.31%) Istio
9 7 (0.31%) Kubeflow
10 6 (0.27%) Functional Safety
10 6 (0.27%) Packer
11 4 (0.18%) Consul
11 4 (0.18%) HP ALM
11 4 (0.18%) vRealize Orchestrator
12 3 (0.13%) Zipkin
Vendors
1 142 (6.38%) Microsoft
2 121 (5.43%) PayPal
3 106 (4.76%) Oracle
4 104 (4.67%) Google
5 39 (1.75%) IBM
6 35 (1.57%) SAP
7 33 (1.48%) Databricks
8 29 (1.30%) Atlassian
9 25 (1.12%) VMware
10 21 (0.94%) Red Hat
11 18 (0.81%) Bloomberg
11 18 (0.81%) Salesforce
11 18 (0.81%) Talend
12 17 (0.76%) Lauterbach
13 15 (0.67%) MuleSoft
14 12 (0.54%) ServiceNow
15 11 (0.49%) Denodo
15 11 (0.49%) Splunk
15 11 (0.49%) Virgin Media
16 9 (0.40%) Avaloq