Software Engineering Contract Job Trends in Cheshire

Software Engineering
North West > Cheshire

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in Cheshire requiring Software Engineering skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 15 October 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 68 41 42
Rank change year-on-year -27 +1 +17
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 10 15 8
As % of all contract jobs in Cheshire 1.45% 2.80% 2.02%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.61% 3.25% 2.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 9 4 8
10th Percentile £343 £349 -
25th Percentile £350 £422 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £375 £475 £463
Median % change year-on-year -21.05% +2.70% -19.57%
75th Percentile £675 £503 £538
90th Percentile £703 £531 £568
North West median daily rate £500 £493 £550
% change year-on-year +1.42% -10.36% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 5 0
Median hourly rate - £42.50 -
North West median hourly rate £70.00 £42.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +64.71% -7.97% -2.78%

All Process and Methodology Skills
Cheshire

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 Cheshire.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 622 461 356
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Cheshire 90.14% 86.17% 89.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 467 281 208
10th Percentile £274 £325 £272
25th Percentile £358 £385 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £445 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -6.32% -5.00% +11.11%
75th Percentile £525 £565 £586
90th Percentile £688 £650 £617
North West median daily rate £450 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 20 29
10th Percentile £12.82 £16.00 £15.80
25th Percentile £15.50 £21.05 £17.50
Median hourly rate £18.87 £35.00 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -46.09% +34.62% +61.79%
75th Percentile £40.00 £43.75 £35.00
90th Percentile £71.00 £44.13 £40.00
North West median hourly rate £25.15 £40.33 £35.00
% change year-on-year -37.64% +15.21% +40.00%

Software Engineering
Job Vacancy Trend in Cheshire

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

Software Engineering job vacancy trend in Cheshire

Software Engineering
Daily Rate Trend in Cheshire

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

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

Software Engineering
Daily Rate Histogram in Cheshire

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Software Engineering in Cheshire over the 6 months to 15 October 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Software Engineering in Cheshire

Software Engineering
Hourly Rate Trend in Cheshire

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

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

Software Engineering
Contract Job Locations in Cheshire

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 Cheshire region over the 6 months to 15 October 2025. 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
Knutsford -17 3 £350 -17.65% 8
Wilmslow - 2 £663 -
Chester - 2 £625 - 10
Software Engineering
North West

Software Engineering
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Cheshire 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 3 (30.00%) Confluence
2 1 (10.00%) JBoss
2 1 (10.00%) Mule
2 1 (10.00%) Mule ESB
2 1 (10.00%) Tomcat
2 1 (10.00%) WebLogic
Cloud Services
1 4 (40.00%) AWS
2 2 (20.00%) Datadog
2 2 (20.00%) GitHub
2 2 (20.00%) GitHub Actions
3 1 (10.00%) Amazon ECS
3 1 (10.00%) AWS CloudFormation
3 1 (10.00%) AWS Lambda
3 1 (10.00%) Azure
3 1 (10.00%) Azure DevOps
3 1 (10.00%) Azure Service Bus
3 1 (10.00%) OpenShift
3 1 (10.00%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 2 (20.00%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (10.00%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 3 (30.00%) JIRA
2 2 (20.00%) Artifactory
2 2 (20.00%) SpecFlow
3 1 (10.00%) Cucumber
3 1 (10.00%) Git
3 1 (10.00%) JUnit
General
1 2 (20.00%) Finance
1 2 (20.00%) Social Skills
2 1 (10.00%) Analytical Skills
2 1 (10.00%) Banking
Job Titles
1 6 (60.00%) Software Engineer
2 2 (20.00%) Developer
3 1 (10.00%) Cloud Developer
3 1 (10.00%) Engineering Manager
3 1 (10.00%) Full-Stack Developer
3 1 (10.00%) Lead
3 1 (10.00%) Platform Engineer
3 1 (10.00%) Principal Engineer
3 1 (10.00%) Principal Software Engineer
3 1 (10.00%) Senior
3 1 (10.00%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (30.00%) .NET
2 2 (20.00%) AngularJS
2 2 (20.00%) Gherkin
2 2 (20.00%) Playwright
2 2 (20.00%) RESTful
3 1 (10.00%) .NET Core
3 1 (10.00%) ASP.NET
3 1 (10.00%) ASP.NET MVC
3 1 (10.00%) CSS
3 1 (10.00%) Entity Framework
3 1 (10.00%) HTML
3 1 (10.00%) HTML5
3 1 (10.00%) J2EE
3 1 (10.00%) Middleware
3 1 (10.00%) React
3 1 (10.00%) Spring
3 1 (10.00%) Spring Boot
3 1 (10.00%) Vue
3 1 (10.00%) Web Services
3 1 (10.00%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 2 (20.00%) Distributed Systems
1 2 (20.00%) PKI
2 1 (10.00%) Cloud Native
2 1 (10.00%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 1 (10.00%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 7 (70.00%) CI/CD
2 6 (60.00%) Agile
3 5 (50.00%) Mentoring
4 4 (40.00%) Coaching
4 4 (40.00%) Microservices
4 4 (40.00%) SOLID
4 4 (40.00%) TDD
5 3 (30.00%) DevOps
5 3 (30.00%) Full-Stack Development
5 3 (30.00%) Unit Testing
6 2 (20.00%) API Development
6 2 (20.00%) Continuous Delivery
6 2 (20.00%) Design Patterns
6 2 (20.00%) Informatics
6 2 (20.00%) OOP
6 2 (20.00%) OWASP
6 2 (20.00%) Pair Programming
6 2 (20.00%) Problem-Solving
6 2 (20.00%) Security Hardening
6 2 (20.00%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 4 (40.00%) Java
2 3 (30.00%) C#
3 2 (20.00%) JavaScript
3 2 (20.00%) SQL
4 1 (10.00%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 1 (10.00%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (10.00%) QA
System Software
1 3 (30.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 4 (40.00%) Kubernetes
2 1 (10.00%) Progress Chef
2 1 (10.00%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 2 (20.00%) Atlassian
1 2 (20.00%) Microsoft
2 1 (10.00%) AppDynamics
2 1 (10.00%) Dynatrace
2 1 (10.00%) MuleSoft
2 1 (10.00%) Oracle
2 1 (10.00%) Splunk