Software Engineering Contract Job Trends in Cambridgeshire

Software Engineering
East of England > Cambridgeshire

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in Cambridgeshire requiring Software Engineering skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 2 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 32 15
Rank change year-on-year +16 -17 +14
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 23 7 45
As % of all contract jobs in Cambridgeshire 6.02% 2.73% 9.32%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 7.47% 3.02% 11.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 18 5 12
10th Percentile £168 £353 £448
25th Percentile £265 £454 £461
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £413 £515 £503
Median % change year-on-year -19.90% +2.33% -6.37%
75th Percentile £475 £588 £566
90th Percentile £520 £603 £575
East of England median daily rate £475 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -2.66% -2.40% -4.58%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 2 20
10th Percentile - £39.00 £35.52
25th Percentile - £41.25 £48.00
Median hourly rate - £47.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year - -13.64% +4.76%
75th Percentile - £53.75 £67.88
90th Percentile - £56.00 £75.00
East of England median hourly rate £68.21 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +4.94% - -

All Process & Methodology Skills
Cambridgeshire

Software Engineering falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in Cambridgeshire.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 308 232 404
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Cambridgeshire 80.63% 90.63% 83.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 163 131 156
10th Percentile £200 £285 £225
25th Percentile £335 £403 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £470 £475
Median % change year-on-year +1.06% -1.05% +5.56%
75th Percentile £539 £544 £563
90th Percentile £675 £650 £681
East of England median daily rate £475 £497 £475
% change year-on-year -4.47% +4.68% -0.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 67 40 181
10th Percentile £13.33 £14.98 -
25th Percentile £14.38 £15.00 £14.16
Median hourly rate £16.50 £16.23 £15.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.66% +8.20% -3.23%
75th Percentile £26.33 £21.46 £21.37
90th Percentile £35.91 £44.00 £39.75
East of England median hourly rate £22.00 £55.00 £38.12
% change year-on-year -60.00% +44.28% +46.56%

Software Engineering
Job Vacancy Trend in Cambridgeshire

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Software Engineering relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in Cambridgeshire.

Software Engineering job vacancy trend in Cambridgeshire

Software Engineering
Daily Rate Trend in Cambridgeshire

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Cambridgeshire citing Software Engineering.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Cambridgeshire citing Software Engineering

Software Engineering
Daily Rate Histogram in Cambridgeshire

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Software Engineering in Cambridgeshire over the 6 months to 2 April 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Software Engineering in Cambridgeshire

Software Engineering
Hourly Rate Trend in Cambridgeshire

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Cambridgeshire citing Software Engineering.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Cambridgeshire citing Software Engineering

Software Engineering
Contract Job Locations in Cambridgeshire

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 Cambridgeshire region over the 6 months to 2 April 2026. 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
Cambridge +8 19 £425 -26.09% 53
St Neots - 3 £185 - 1
Software Engineering
East of England

Software Engineering
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Cambridgeshire by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 1 (4.35%) Apache
1 1 (4.35%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 1 (4.35%) Chatbot
1 1 (4.35%) OrCAD
Cloud Services
1 7 (30.43%) Azure
2 5 (21.74%) Azure AKS
2 5 (21.74%) PaaS
3 4 (17.39%) Serverless
4 3 (13.04%) Azure Functions
4 3 (13.04%) GitHub
4 3 (13.04%) GitHub Copilot
5 2 (8.70%) AWS
6 1 (4.35%) Amazon Bedrock
6 1 (4.35%) Amazon EC2
6 1 (4.35%) Amazon ECS
6 1 (4.35%) Amazon EKS
6 1 (4.35%) Amazon S3
6 1 (4.35%) Amazon SageMaker
6 1 (4.35%) AWS Fargate
6 1 (4.35%) AWS Lambda
6 1 (4.35%) GCP
6 1 (4.35%) Google Ads
6 1 (4.35%) Power Platform
6 1 (4.35%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 1 (4.35%) 3GPP
1 1 (4.35%) 5G
1 1 (4.35%) 5G NR
1 1 (4.35%) LTE
1 1 (4.35%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (4.35%) Amazon Aurora
1 1 (4.35%) Amazon RDS
1 1 (4.35%) DynamoDB
1 1 (4.35%) NoSQL
1 1 (4.35%) Power BI
General
1 4 (17.39%) Manufacturing
2 1 (4.35%) Analytical Skills
2 1 (4.35%) Influencing Skills
2 1 (4.35%) Social Skills
Job Titles
1 11 (47.83%) Software Engineer
2 4 (17.39%) C++ Software Engineer
3 3 (13.04%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
3 3 (13.04%) Developer
3 3 (13.04%) Senior
4 2 (8.70%) .NET Developer
5 1 (4.35%) Architect
5 1 (4.35%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
5 1 (4.35%) Front-End Engineer (Client-Side Engineer)
5 1 (4.35%) Full-Stack Engineer
5 1 (4.35%) Hardware Architect
5 1 (4.35%) Lead
5 1 (4.35%) Platform Architect
5 1 (4.35%) Python Engineer
5 1 (4.35%) Python Software Engineer
5 1 (4.35%) Senior Developer
5 1 (4.35%) Technical Leader
5 1 (4.35%) Wireless Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (34.78%) .NET
2 5 (21.74%) RESTful
3 4 (17.39%) PyTorch
3 4 (17.39%) TensorFlow
4 3 (13.04%) A2A Protocol
4 3 (13.04%) Model Context Protocol
4 3 (13.04%) Semantic Kernel
5 2 (8.70%) Node.js
5 2 (8.70%) React
Miscellaneous
1 6 (26.09%) Algorithms
1 6 (26.09%) Cloud Native
2 5 (21.74%) Robotics
3 4 (17.39%) Life Science
4 1 (4.35%) Augmented Reality
4 1 (4.35%) Data Protection Act
4 1 (4.35%) Distributed Computing
4 1 (4.35%) FPGA
4 1 (4.35%) IoT
4 1 (4.35%) NB-IoT
4 1 (4.35%) PCIe
4 1 (4.35%) Product Ownership
4 1 (4.35%) Virtual Reality
Operating Systems
1 2 (8.70%) Linux
1 2 (8.70%) Robot Operating System
1 2 (8.70%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 8 (34.78%) AI
1 8 (34.78%) Machine Learning
1 8 (34.78%) Problem-Solving
2 7 (30.43%) Agile
3 6 (26.09%) Computer Science
3 6 (26.09%) Data Privacy
4 5 (21.74%) API Management
4 5 (21.74%) LLM
4 5 (21.74%) Prompt Engineering
4 5 (21.74%) Robotic Control
5 4 (17.39%) Data Pipeline
5 4 (17.39%) Deep Learning
5 4 (17.39%) High Availability
5 4 (17.39%) Mentoring
6 3 (13.04%) API Design
6 3 (13.04%) Cybersecurity
6 3 (13.04%) Full-Stack Development
6 3 (13.04%) Network Architecture
6 3 (13.04%) Prototyping
6 3 (13.04%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 13 (56.52%) Python
2 7 (30.43%) C++
3 4 (17.39%) C#
4 1 (4.35%) C
4 1 (4.35%) Embedded C
4 1 (4.35%) Embedded C++
4 1 (4.35%) Shell Script
4 1 (4.35%) SQL
Qualifications
1 6 (26.09%) Degree
2 4 (17.39%) Computer Science Degree
3 3 (13.04%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (13.04%) EU AI Act
1 3 (13.04%) NIST
2 1 (4.35%) Accessibility
System Software
1 2 (8.70%) Firmware
2 1 (4.35%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 2 (8.70%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 6 (26.09%) Microsoft
2 3 (13.04%) Foundry
3 1 (4.35%) Cadence
3 1 (4.35%) Google
3 1 (4.35%) OpenAI