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 14 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 66 42 37
Rank change year-on-year -24 -5 +30
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 10 15 15
As % of all contract jobs in Cheshire 1.42% 2.91% 3.79%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.62% 3.33% 4.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 8 4 14
10th Percentile £340 £349 £425
25th Percentile £350 £422 £428
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £464 £475 £481
Median % change year-on-year -2.42% -1.25% -
75th Percentile £678 £503 £538
90th Percentile £710 £531 £579
North West median daily rate £550 £475 £525
% change year-on-year +15.79% -9.52% -12.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 5 0
Median hourly rate - £42.50 -
North West median hourly rate £41.71 £42.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year -1.87% -7.97% +3.36%

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 619 450 363
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Cheshire 88.18% 87.38% 91.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 462 272 227
10th Percentile £268 £325 £265
25th Percentile £358 £388 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £447 £498 £510
Median % change year-on-year -10.25% -2.34% +13.33%
75th Percentile £538 £569 £561
90th Percentile £688 £650 £605
North West median daily rate £450 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% +1.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 38 25 25
10th Percentile £12.82 £16.10 £15.40
25th Percentile £15.53 £21.05 £17.25
Median hourly rate £22.43 £32.50 £22.53
Median % change year-on-year -30.98% +44.25% +89.97%
75th Percentile £40.00 £35.00 £35.00
90th Percentile £70.55 £43.75 £40.00
North West median hourly rate £29.60 £35.36 £35.00
% change year-on-year -16.29% +1.03% +59.09%

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 14 November 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 14 November 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 -23 2 £359 -15.65% 2
Wilmslow - 2 £663 -
Chester - 2 £625 - 3
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 2 (20.00%) 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 3 (30.00%) Azure
3 2 (20.00%) Azure DevOps
3 2 (20.00%) Azure Service Bus
3 2 (20.00%) Datadog
3 2 (20.00%) GitHub
3 2 (20.00%) GitHub Actions
4 1 (10.00%) GCP
4 1 (10.00%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 2 (20.00%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (20.00%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 2 (20.00%) Artifactory
1 2 (20.00%) Git
1 2 (20.00%) JIRA
1 2 (20.00%) SpecFlow
2 1 (10.00%) Cucumber
2 1 (10.00%) JUnit
2 1 (10.00%) Selenium
General
1 3 (30.00%) Finance
1 3 (30.00%) Social Skills
2 2 (20.00%) Banking
3 1 (10.00%) Analytical Skills
3 1 (10.00%) Influencing Skills
3 1 (10.00%) Retail
Job Titles
1 7 (70.00%) Software Engineer
2 2 (20.00%) Senior
2 2 (20.00%) Senior Software Engineer
3 1 (10.00%) Applications Architect
3 1 (10.00%) Architect
3 1 (10.00%) Developer
3 1 (10.00%) Digital Architect
3 1 (10.00%) Full-Stack Developer
3 1 (10.00%) Java Applications Architect
3 1 (10.00%) Java Architect
3 1 (10.00%) Lead
3 1 (10.00%) Platform Engineer
3 1 (10.00%) Principal Engineer
3 1 (10.00%) Principal Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (40.00%) .NET
2 2 (20.00%) .NET Core
2 2 (20.00%) .NET Framework
2 2 (20.00%) AngularJS
2 2 (20.00%) Entity Framework
2 2 (20.00%) Gherkin
2 2 (20.00%) OAuth
2 2 (20.00%) Playwright
2 2 (20.00%) React
2 2 (20.00%) RESTful
2 2 (20.00%) YAML
3 1 (10.00%) ASP.NET MVC
3 1 (10.00%) HTML
3 1 (10.00%) HTML5
3 1 (10.00%) J2EE
3 1 (10.00%) JSON
3 1 (10.00%) REST
3 1 (10.00%) Spring
3 1 (10.00%) Spring Boot
3 1 (10.00%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 3 (30.00%) Distributed Systems
1 3 (30.00%) Product Ownership
2 2 (20.00%) PKI
3 1 (10.00%) Cloud Native
3 1 (10.00%) Mobile Banking
Processes & Methodologies
1 7 (70.00%) Agile
2 6 (60.00%) CI/CD
3 5 (50.00%) Mentoring
4 4 (40.00%) Full-Stack Development
4 4 (40.00%) Microservices
4 4 (40.00%) SOLID
5 3 (30.00%) Coaching
5 3 (30.00%) DevOps
5 3 (30.00%) Problem-Solving
5 3 (30.00%) TDD
5 3 (30.00%) Technical Debt
5 3 (30.00%) Unit Testing
6 2 (20.00%) BDD
6 2 (20.00%) Data Management
6 2 (20.00%) Informatics
6 2 (20.00%) Integration Testing
6 2 (20.00%) OWASP
6 2 (20.00%) Pair Programming
6 2 (20.00%) Software Architecture
6 2 (20.00%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 4 (40.00%) C#
2 3 (30.00%) Java
2 3 (30.00%) SQL
3 2 (20.00%) JavaScript
4 1 (10.00%) PL/SQL
4 1 (10.00%) Python
Qualifications
1 1 (10.00%) Degree
System Software
1 3 (30.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 4 (40.00%) Kubernetes
2 2 (20.00%) 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%) Google
2 1 (10.00%) MuleSoft
2 1 (10.00%) Oracle
2 1 (10.00%) Splunk