Software Engineer Contract Job Trends in the East of England

Software Engineer
England > East of England

The median Software Engineer daily rate in the East of England is £500, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 11 May 2026.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
11 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 65 14
Rank change year-on-year +52 -51 +31
Contract jobs requiring a Software Engineer 157 18 154
As % of all contract jobs in the East of England 7.04% 1.87% 8.15%
As % of the Job Titles category 7.71% 2.12% 9.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 32 6 14
10th Percentile £265 £470 £413
25th Percentile £413 £491 £457
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £583 £550
Median % change year-on-year -14.16% +5.91% -
75th Percentile £606 £675 £594
90th Percentile £638 £684 £600
England median daily rate £550 £625 £638
% change year-on-year -12.00% -1.96% +8.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 101 8 116
10th Percentile £57.63 £49.82 £52.50
25th Percentile £62.50 £59.00 £60.00
Median hourly rate £67.50 £62.25 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +8.43% -4.23% +13.04%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.19 £70.94
90th Percentile - £73.03 £80.00
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

All Contract IT Job Roles
East of England

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the East of England. 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 East of England with a recognized job title 2,037 850 1,685
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.39% 88.27% 89.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 931 451 751
10th Percentile £193 £200 £205
25th Percentile £350 £375 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year - +11.11% -5.26%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £575
90th Percentile £675 £675 £650
England median daily rate £513 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 587 167 597
10th Percentile £14.33 £14.93 £14.16
25th Percentile £17.87 £16.95 £16.30
Median hourly rate £30.58 £47.44 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year -35.54% +10.33% +19.36%
75th Percentile £65.00 £72.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £85.00 £75.25
England median hourly rate £47.00 £30.26 £37.50
% change year-on-year +55.32% -19.31% -16.67%

Software Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the East of England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Software Engineer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the East of England.

Software Engineer job vacancy trend in the East of England

Software Engineer
Daily Rate Trend in the East of England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Software Engineer job vacancies in the East of England.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Software Engineer job vacancies in the East of England

Software Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in the East of England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Software Engineer in the East of England over the 6 months to 11 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Software Engineer in the East of England

Software Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend in the East of England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Software Engineer job vacancies in the East of England.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Software Engineer job vacancies in the East of England

Software Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram in the East of England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Software Engineer in the East of England over the 6 months to 11 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Software Engineer in the East of England

Software Engineer
Contract Job Locations in the East of England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Software Engineer within the East of England region over the 6 months to 11 May 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
Hertfordshire +32 100 £638 - 34
Bedfordshire +6 18 £525 -19.23% 14
Essex +6 18 £535 +10.31% 8
Cambridgeshire +20 13 £425 -12.28% 51
Suffolk - 7 £625 - 4
Norfolk -27 1 - - 3
Software Engineer
England

Software Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the East of England

For the 6 months to 11 May 2026, Software Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the East of England region featuring Software Engineer in the job title.

1 151 (96.18%) Software Engineering
2 54 (34.39%) C++
3 43 (27.39%) Security Cleared
4 37 (23.57%) C
5 32 (20.38%) C#
5 32 (20.38%) SC Cleared
6 29 (18.47%) Ada
7 23 (14.65%) Embedded C
7 23 (14.65%) Rational DOORS
8 22 (14.01%) Agile
9 21 (13.38%) Software-Defined Radio
10 19 (12.10%) Windows
11 17 (10.83%) Ethernet
11 17 (10.83%) Git
11 17 (10.83%) JIRA
11 17 (10.83%) Linux
11 17 (10.83%) Unit Testing
12 15 (9.55%) CI/CD
12 15 (9.55%) Validation
13 13 (8.28%) Embedded C++
13 13 (8.28%) Python
13 13 (8.28%) Verification and Validation
14 12 (7.64%) TDD
14 12 (7.64%) UML
14 12 (7.64%) Visualisation
15 11 (7.01%) Continuous Integration
15 11 (7.01%) SDLC
15 11 (7.01%) SysML
15 11 (7.01%) Visual Studio
16 10 (6.37%) DevOps

Software Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the East of England 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:

Applications
1 2 (1.27%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 4 (2.55%) GCP
1 4 (2.55%) GitHub
2 3 (1.91%) Azure
3 2 (1.27%) Azure DevOps
4 1 (0.64%) Anthropic Claude
4 1 (0.64%) AWS
4 1 (0.64%) Azure AKS
4 1 (0.64%) ChatGPT
4 1 (0.64%) Google Ads
4 1 (0.64%) Google Gemini
Communications & Networking
1 21 (13.38%) Software-Defined Radio
2 17 (10.83%) Ethernet
3 8 (5.10%) Wireless
4 7 (4.46%) TCP/IP
5 2 (1.27%) Modbus
6 1 (0.64%) Firewall
6 1 (0.64%) Profibus
6 1 (0.64%) RS-232
6 1 (0.64%) RS-422
6 1 (0.64%) RS-485
6 1 (0.64%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (1.27%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 23 (14.65%) Rational DOORS
2 17 (10.83%) Git
2 17 (10.83%) JIRA
3 11 (7.01%) Visual Studio
4 8 (5.10%) Eclipse
4 8 (5.10%) PVCS
5 4 (2.55%) IntelliJ
5 4 (2.55%) JUnit
5 4 (2.55%) SonarQube
6 3 (1.91%) LabVIEW
6 3 (1.91%) Rational Rhapsody
7 1 (0.64%) GitLab
7 1 (0.64%) Gradle
General
1 17 (10.83%) Aerospace
2 14 (8.92%) Electronics
3 9 (5.73%) Social Skills
4 8 (5.10%) Law
4 8 (5.10%) Military
5 7 (4.46%) Manufacturing
6 6 (3.82%) Analytical Skills
6 6 (3.82%) Presentation Skills
7 5 (3.18%) Finance
8 2 (1.27%) Banking
8 2 (1.27%) Publishing
9 1 (0.64%) Automotive
9 1 (0.64%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.64%) Public Sector
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (6.37%) Node.js
2 8 (5.10%) React
3 7 (4.46%) .NET
3 7 (4.46%) Web Services
4 5 (3.18%) Spring Boot
5 4 (2.55%) Spring
6 3 (1.91%) WPF
7 2 (1.27%) WinForms
8 1 (0.64%) .NET Framework
8 1 (0.64%) CSS
8 1 (0.64%) HTML
8 1 (0.64%) Kafka
8 1 (0.64%) PyTorch
8 1 (0.64%) TensorFlow
8 1 (0.64%) WCF
8 1 (0.64%) Yocto
Miscellaneous
1 9 (5.73%) Embedded Systems
2 8 (5.10%) FPGA
2 8 (5.10%) PCIe
3 6 (3.82%) Product Ownership
4 4 (2.55%) Legacy Applications
4 4 (2.55%) Life Science
5 3 (1.91%) Cloud Native
5 3 (1.91%) Cyber Threat
6 2 (1.27%) Genomics
6 2 (1.27%) Legacy Systems
6 2 (1.27%) Management Information System
6 2 (1.27%) Reference Data
6 2 (1.27%) Robotics
6 2 (1.27%) Self-Motivation
7 1 (0.64%) Augmented Reality
7 1 (0.64%) Data Centre
7 1 (0.64%) Device Driver
7 1 (0.64%) Distributed Computing
7 1 (0.64%) Video\Live Streaming
7 1 (0.64%) Virtual Reality
Operating Systems
1 19 (12.10%) Windows
2 17 (10.83%) Linux
3 8 (5.10%) FreeRTOS
4 2 (1.27%) Robot Operating System
5 1 (0.64%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 151 (96.18%) Software Engineering
2 22 (14.01%) Agile
3 17 (10.83%) Unit Testing
4 15 (9.55%) CI/CD
4 15 (9.55%) Validation
5 13 (8.28%) Verification and Validation
6 12 (7.64%) TDD
6 12 (7.64%) UML
6 12 (7.64%) Visualisation
7 11 (7.01%) Continuous Integration
7 11 (7.01%) SDLC
7 11 (7.01%) SysML
8 10 (6.37%) DevOps
8 10 (6.37%) Digital Signal Processing
8 10 (6.37%) Signal Processing
8 10 (6.37%) Synthetic Environment
9 9 (5.73%) Software Testing
9 9 (5.73%) Test Scripting
10 8 (5.10%) Code Coverage
10 8 (5.10%) Requirements Analysis
Programming Languages
1 54 (34.39%) C++
2 37 (23.57%) C
3 32 (20.38%) C#
4 29 (18.47%) Ada
5 23 (14.65%) Embedded C
6 13 (8.28%) Embedded C++
6 13 (8.28%) Python
7 9 (5.73%) JavaScript
8 8 (5.10%) Java
9 6 (3.82%) TypeScript
10 3 (1.91%) Go
10 3 (1.91%) SQL
11 2 (1.27%) Perl
11 2 (1.27%) PowerShell
11 2 (1.27%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 43 (27.39%) Security Cleared
2 32 (20.38%) SC Cleared
3 4 (2.55%) Degree
4 3 (1.91%) DV Cleared
5 2 (1.27%) ISTQB
5 2 (1.27%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 1 (0.64%) BPSS Clearance
6 1 (0.64%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (1.91%) QA
2 1 (0.64%) IEC 61508
System Software
1 8 (5.10%) Virtual Machines
1 8 (5.10%) VMware Infrastructure
2 2 (1.27%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 1 (0.64%) Ansible
1 1 (0.64%) Functional Safety
1 1 (0.64%) Kubernetes
1 1 (0.64%) Terraform
Vendors
1 8 (5.10%) ANSYS
1 8 (5.10%) IBM
1 8 (5.10%) Microsoft
1 8 (5.10%) VMware
2 5 (3.18%) Google
3 4 (2.55%) Checkmarx
4 1 (0.64%) NVIDIA
4 1 (0.64%) OpenAI
4 1 (0.64%) OpenText
4 1 (0.64%) Serena
4 1 (0.64%) Siemens