Software Development Engineer Contracts

Software Development Engineer
UK

The median Software Development Engineer daily rate in the UK is £475 according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months to 12 May 2024.

The first table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics including a comparison to same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
12 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 558 673 808
Rank change year-on-year +115 +135 -143
Contract jobs requiring a Software Development Engineer 28 25 57
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.065% 0.043% 0.065%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.070% 0.045% 0.068%
Number of daily rates quoted 17 16 25
10th Percentile £408 £488 £368
25th Percentile £425 £504 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £550 £500
Median % change year-on-year -13.64% +10.00% +14.29%
75th Percentile £488 £675 £550
90th Percentile £493 - £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 - £475
% change year-on-year - - +46.15%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 1
10th Percentile £49.00 - -
25th Percentile £55.00 - -
Median hourly rate £65.00 - £40.00
75th Percentile - - -
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 - -

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK

The following table is for comparison with the above and includes summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 39,893 55,060 83,598
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.76% 94.65% 95.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,957 38,445 58,715
10th Percentile £280 £313 £313
25th Percentile £410 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £540 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.78% +2.86% +10.53%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £638
90th Percentile £750 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -2.00% +5.26% +11.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,673 1,534 2,047
10th Percentile £12.86 £14.25 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.30 £19.06 £15.89
Median hourly rate £37.50 £45.00 £23.91
Median % change year-on-year -16.67% +88.21% +5.89%
75th Percentile £61.30 £65.75 £49.25
90th Percentile £72.90 £76.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £42.08 £20.00
% change year-on-year -4.94% +110.39% +2.56%

Software Development Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured Software Development Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Software Development Engineer in the UK

Software Development Engineer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for Software Development Engineer in the UK

Software Development Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Software Development Engineer over the 6 months to 12 May 2024.

Daily rate histogram for Software Development Engineer in the UK

Software Development Engineer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for Software Development Engineer in the UK

Software Development Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Software Development Engineer over the 6 months to 12 May 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for Software Development Engineer in the UK

Software Development Engineer
Top 10 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Software Development Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 12 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 +115 26 £475 -13.64% 6
London +87 14 £475 -13.64% 1
UK excluding London - 13 £450 - 5
Work from Home +112 8 £463 -15.91% 1
East of England - 6 - - 1
South East - 5 £450 - 1
Scotland - 1 - -
Midlands - 1 - - 2
South West - 1 - -
West Midlands - 1 - - 2

Software Development Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 12 May 2024, Software Development Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Software Development Engineer in the job title.

1 18 (64.29%) Software Engineering
1 18 (64.29%) Degree
2 14 (50.00%) Computer Science
2 14 (50.00%) Agile
3 13 (46.43%) C++
4 12 (42.86%) Oracle
5 10 (35.71%) Scrum
5 10 (35.71%) Azure
6 9 (32.14%) Validation
7 8 (28.57%) Kafka
7 8 (28.57%) Feasibility Study
7 8 (28.57%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (28.57%) Social Skills
8 7 (25.00%) Couchbase
8 7 (25.00%) Git
8 7 (25.00%) Product Management
8 7 (25.00%) Software Testing
8 7 (25.00%) Linux
8 7 (25.00%) Python
9 6 (21.43%) Test Automation
9 6 (21.43%) SDET
10 5 (17.86%) Jenkins
10 5 (17.86%) Data Structures
10 5 (17.86%) RESTful
10 5 (17.86%) Continuous Integration
10 5 (17.86%) SQL
10 5 (17.86%) Java
11 4 (14.29%) C#
11 4 (14.29%) Windows
11 4 (14.29%) SOAP

Software Development Engineer Skill Set
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 4 (14.29%) Confluence
Cloud Services
1 10 (35.71%) Azure
2 4 (14.29%) AWS
3 2 (7.14%) Amazon EC2
3 2 (7.14%) Amazon S3
3 2 (7.14%) GitHub
4 1 (3.57%) Azure API Management
4 1 (3.57%) Azure Functions
4 1 (3.57%) GCP
4 1 (3.57%) npm
4 1 (3.57%) OpenShift
4 1 (3.57%) Serverless
4 1 (3.57%) Yarn
Communications & Networking
1 4 (14.29%) TCP/IP
2 1 (3.57%) HTTP
2 1 (3.57%) RS-485
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (25.00%) Couchbase
2 3 (10.71%) Relational Database
3 1 (3.57%) Apache Cassandra
3 1 (3.57%) KDB
3 1 (3.57%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 7 (25.00%) Git
2 5 (17.86%) Jenkins
3 4 (14.29%) Artifactory
3 4 (14.29%) Bitbucket
3 4 (14.29%) JIRA
4 1 (3.57%) Babel
4 1 (3.57%) Maven
4 1 (3.57%) Selenium
4 1 (3.57%) WebDriver
4 1 (3.57%) webpack
General
1 8 (28.57%) Social Skills
2 3 (10.71%) Finance
3 2 (7.14%) Electronics
3 2 (7.14%) Manufacturing
3 2 (7.14%) Marketing
3 2 (7.14%) Public Sector
3 2 (7.14%) Telecoms
4 1 (3.57%) Analytical Skills
4 1 (3.57%) Aviation
4 1 (3.57%) Front Office
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (28.57%) Kafka
2 5 (17.86%) RESTful
3 4 (14.29%) SOAP
3 4 (14.29%) XML
4 2 (7.14%) CSS
4 2 (7.14%) React
4 2 (7.14%) Redux
4 2 (7.14%) REST
4 2 (7.14%) Spring
5 1 (3.57%) Akka
5 1 (3.57%) Drools
5 1 (3.57%) Guice
5 1 (3.57%) JSON
5 1 (3.57%) Microsoft Graph
5 1 (3.57%) Middleware
5 1 (3.57%) Node.js
5 1 (3.57%) NumPy
5 1 (3.57%) Playwright
5 1 (3.57%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 5 (17.86%) Data Structures
2 3 (10.71%) Algorithms
2 3 (10.71%) Distributed Systems
3 2 (7.14%) Data Protection Act
4 1 (3.57%) Derivative
4 1 (3.57%) Equity Derivative
4 1 (3.57%) Fixed Income
4 1 (3.57%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 1 (3.57%) FPGA
4 1 (3.57%) Grid Computing
4 1 (3.57%) Legacy Code
4 1 (3.57%) Public Cloud
4 1 (3.57%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 7 (25.00%) Linux
2 4 (14.29%) Embedded Linux
2 4 (14.29%) Windows
3 2 (7.14%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 18 (64.29%) Software Engineering
2 14 (50.00%) Agile
2 14 (50.00%) Computer Science
3 10 (35.71%) Scrum
4 9 (32.14%) Validation
5 8 (28.57%) Feasibility Study
6 7 (25.00%) Product Management
6 7 (25.00%) Software Testing
7 6 (21.43%) SDET
7 6 (21.43%) Test Automation
8 5 (17.86%) Continuous Integration
9 4 (14.29%) API Testing
9 4 (14.29%) CI/CD
9 4 (14.29%) End-to-End Testing
9 4 (14.29%) Inventory Management
9 4 (14.29%) Manual Testing
9 4 (14.29%) Open Source
9 4 (14.29%) Performance Management
10 3 (10.71%) Customer-Centric Approach
10 3 (10.71%) Customer-Centricity
Programming Languages
1 13 (46.43%) C++
2 7 (25.00%) Python
3 5 (17.86%) Java
3 5 (17.86%) SQL
4 4 (14.29%) C#
5 3 (10.71%) C
5 3 (10.71%) JavaScript
5 3 (10.71%) TypeScript
6 2 (7.14%) Perl
7 1 (3.57%) Groovy
7 1 (3.57%) Rust
7 1 (3.57%) Scala
Qualifications
1 18 (64.29%) Degree
2 8 (28.57%) Computer Science Degree
3 2 (7.14%) Master's Degree
3 2 (7.14%) PhD
4 1 (3.57%) DV Cleared
4 1 (3.57%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (3.57%) ISO 20022
1 1 (3.57%) MiFID
1 1 (3.57%) QA
System Software
1 4 (14.29%) Virtual Machines
1 4 (14.29%) VirtualBox
2 1 (3.57%) Docker
Systems Management
1 1 (3.57%) Kubernetes
1 1 (3.57%) Podman
Vendors
1 12 (42.86%) Oracle
2 2 (7.14%) Microsoft
2 2 (7.14%) SAP
3 1 (3.57%) Dell
3 1 (3.57%) Splunk
3 1 (3.57%) Typelevel