Senior Software Engineer Contract Job Trends in England

Senior Software Engineer
UK > England

The median Senior Software Engineer daily rate in England is £580, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 13 December 2025.

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

 6 months to
13 Dec 2025		 Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 392 364 470
Rank change year-on-year -28 +106 +63
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Software Engineer 153 144 101
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.49% 0.47% 0.26%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.54% 0.51% 0.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 97 112 73
10th Percentile £418 £463 £450
25th Percentile £463 £475 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £580 £675 £600
Median % change year-on-year -14.07% +12.50% -
75th Percentile £825 £850 £675
90th Percentile - £866 £775
UK median daily rate £550 £675 £619
% change year-on-year -18.52% +9.05% +3.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 8 1
10th Percentile £38.59 £41.25 -
25th Percentile £38.63 £55.88 £40.82
Median hourly rate £58.72 £65.50 £43.84
Median % change year-on-year -10.35% +49.41% -8.67%
75th Percentile £65.70 £70.25 £46.86
90th Percentile £66.50 - -
UK median hourly rate £58.72 £65.50 £48.77
% change year-on-year -10.35% +34.30% -7.10%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
England

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in 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 England with a recognized job title 28,233 28,165 35,983
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.17% 92.89% 93.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,092 17,437 24,751
10th Percentile £285 £300 £294
25th Percentile £405 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £507 £525 £534
Median % change year-on-year -3.38% -1.69% -2.91%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,705 974 1,399
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.34 £15.32
25th Percentile £17.87 £21.05 £19.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £37.25 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.48% -17.22% +36.36%
75th Percentile £57.50 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.50 £74.42 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £34.75 £44.00
% change year-on-year -27.63% -21.02% +40.98%

Senior Software Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in England

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

Senior Software Engineer job vacancy trend in England

Senior Software Engineer
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Senior Software Engineer job vacancies in England.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Senior Software Engineer job vacancies in England

Senior Software Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Senior Software Engineer in England over the 6 months to 13 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Senior Software Engineer in England

Senior Software Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Senior Software Engineer job vacancies in England.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Senior Software Engineer job vacancies in England

Senior Software Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Senior Software Engineer in England over the 6 months to 13 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Senior Software Engineer in England

Senior Software Engineer
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Senior Software Engineer within the England region over the 6 months to 13 December 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
London -1 88 £750 -6.25% 61
North of England -25 32 £525 -4.55% 54
Yorkshire -25 19 £531 -24.14% 21
South East -24 13 £475 -5.00% 84
North West -12 12 £475 - 29
Midlands -26 11 £530 +7.07% 38
West Midlands -20 7 £892 - 18
East Midlands -15 4 £475 -4.04% 18
South West -18 4 £426 -14.80% 50
East of England -14 2 - - 39
North East -6 1 £450 - 4
Senior Software Engineer
UK

Senior Software Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England

For the 6 months to 13 December 2025, Senior 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 England region featuring Senior Software Engineer in the job title.

1 153 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 89 (58.17%) Agile
3 74 (48.37%) Python
4 66 (43.14%) AWS
5 61 (39.87%) Java
6 53 (34.64%) JavaScript
7 44 (28.76%) CI/CD
8 43 (28.10%) Linux
9 41 (26.80%) TypeScript
10 38 (24.84%) C++
10 38 (24.84%) Microservices
11 37 (24.18%) DevOps
12 36 (23.53%) Apache
13 35 (22.88%) Degree
14 31 (20.26%) C#
14 31 (20.26%) Docker
14 31 (20.26%) Serverless
15 28 (18.30%) gRPC
15 28 (18.30%) NumPy
15 28 (18.30%) SciPy
16 27 (17.65%) Amazon Athena
16 27 (17.65%) Apache Airflow
16 27 (17.65%) Apache Arrow
16 27 (17.65%) Apache Iceberg
16 27 (17.65%) Apache Ignite
16 27 (17.65%) Asset Management
16 27 (17.65%) Data Lake
16 27 (17.65%) dbt
16 27 (17.65%) Dremio
16 27 (17.65%) Investment Management

Senior Software Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in 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:

Application Platforms
1 36 (23.53%) Apache
2 27 (17.65%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (0.65%) JBoss
Business Applications
1 2 (1.31%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 66 (43.14%) AWS
2 31 (20.26%) Serverless
3 27 (17.65%) dbt
3 27 (17.65%) Snowflake
4 22 (14.38%) GCP
5 17 (11.11%) Azure
6 8 (5.23%) GitHub
7 7 (4.58%) GitHub Actions
8 5 (3.27%) Amazon ECS
8 5 (3.27%) AWS Lambda
8 5 (3.27%) Azure DevOps
9 4 (2.61%) Amazon EventBridge
9 4 (2.61%) Amazon SQS
10 3 (1.96%) Amazon EKS
10 3 (1.96%) AWS CloudFormation
10 3 (1.96%) AWS KMS
11 2 (1.31%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 2 (1.31%) AWS CodePipeline
11 2 (1.31%) Azure Service Bus
11 2 (1.31%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 6 (3.92%) NFC
1 6 (3.92%) PPP
2 3 (1.96%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (17.65%) Amazon Athena
1 27 (17.65%) Apache Arrow
1 27 (17.65%) Apache Iceberg
1 27 (17.65%) Apache Ignite
1 27 (17.65%) Data Lake
1 27 (17.65%) Dremio
2 20 (13.07%) NoSQL
3 9 (5.88%) Big Data
4 6 (3.92%) MongoDB
5 5 (3.27%) PostgreSQL
6 4 (2.61%) DynamoDB
7 3 (1.96%) SQL Server
8 2 (1.31%) Amazon Aurora
8 2 (1.31%) DocumentDB
8 2 (1.31%) Oracle Database
9 1 (0.65%) Data Warehouse
9 1 (0.65%) KDB
Development Applications
1 16 (10.46%) Liquibase
2 14 (9.15%) Jenkins
3 12 (7.84%) GitLab
4 9 (5.88%) Git
5 6 (3.92%) Eclipse
5 6 (3.92%) Valgrind
6 3 (1.96%) JIRA
6 3 (1.96%) KGDB
6 3 (1.96%) Oracle APEX
7 2 (1.31%) CocoaPods
8 1 (0.65%) CircleCI
8 1 (0.65%) CMake
8 1 (0.65%) Cypress.io
8 1 (0.65%) GoogleTest
8 1 (0.65%) Gradle
8 1 (0.65%) Mocha
8 1 (0.65%) Storybook
8 1 (0.65%) TestRail
8 1 (0.65%) Vite
8 1 (0.65%) webpack
General
1 60 (39.22%) Finance
2 41 (26.80%) Banking
3 33 (21.57%) Social Skills
4 31 (20.26%) Front Office
5 28 (18.30%) Investment Banking
6 11 (7.19%) Financial Institution
7 6 (3.92%) Public Sector
8 4 (2.61%) Aerospace
9 3 (1.96%) Analytical Skills
9 3 (1.96%) Automotive
10 2 (1.31%) Games
10 2 (1.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.65%) Health Technology
11 1 (0.65%) Law
11 1 (0.65%) Military
11 1 (0.65%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (18.30%) gRPC
1 28 (18.30%) NumPy
1 28 (18.30%) SciPy
2 27 (17.65%) Pandas
2 27 (17.65%) Protocol Buffers
3 22 (14.38%) REST
4 20 (13.07%) React
5 19 (12.42%) RESTful
6 16 (10.46%) .NET
6 16 (10.46%) Kafka
7 13 (8.50%) Elastic Stack
8 9 (5.88%) Apache NiFi
8 9 (5.88%) Node.js
9 7 (4.58%) JSON
10 6 (3.92%) Web Services
10 6 (3.92%) XML
11 4 (2.61%) CSS
11 4 (2.61%) HTML
11 4 (2.61%) Spring
11 4 (2.61%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 29 (18.95%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
2 28 (18.30%) Fixed Income
2 28 (18.30%) Hedge funds
3 27 (17.65%) Derivative
3 27 (17.65%) Equities
3 27 (17.65%) Pricing Data
4 25 (16.34%) Cloud Native
5 20 (13.07%) Distributed Systems
6 15 (9.80%) Public Cloud
7 10 (6.54%) Greenfield Project
8 8 (5.23%) Product Ownership
9 6 (3.92%) Smartcard
10 5 (3.27%) Self-Motivation
11 3 (1.96%) Data Protection Act
11 3 (1.96%) Device Driver
12 2 (1.31%) CUDA
12 2 (1.31%) Embedded Systems
12 2 (1.31%) Legacy Systems
12 2 (1.31%) Virtual Reality
12 2 (1.31%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 43 (28.10%) Linux
2 15 (9.80%) Unix
3 6 (3.92%) Ubuntu
3 6 (3.92%) Windows
4 2 (1.31%) Android
4 2 (1.31%) Apple iOS
5 1 (0.65%) Robot Operating System
5 1 (0.65%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 153 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 89 (58.17%) Agile
3 44 (28.76%) CI/CD
4 38 (24.84%) Microservices
5 37 (24.18%) DevOps
6 27 (17.65%) Asset Management
6 27 (17.65%) Investment Management
7 26 (16.99%) Mentoring
8 24 (15.69%) Containerisation
9 22 (14.38%) Cybersecurity
9 22 (14.38%) Infrastructure as Code
10 19 (12.42%) Cryptography
11 18 (11.76%) Computer Science
12 17 (11.11%) Test Automation
13 15 (9.80%) Problem-Solving
14 14 (9.15%) Root Cause Analysis
15 13 (8.50%) Continuous Integration
16 12 (7.84%) Change Management
16 12 (7.84%) Continuous Delivery
16 12 (7.84%) High Availability
Programming Languages
1 74 (48.37%) Python
2 61 (39.87%) Java
3 53 (34.64%) JavaScript
4 41 (26.80%) TypeScript
5 38 (24.84%) C++
6 31 (20.26%) C#
7 27 (17.65%) SQL
8 20 (13.07%) Go
9 5 (3.27%) C
9 5 (3.27%) Rust
10 3 (1.96%) Ada
11 2 (1.31%) Objective-C
11 2 (1.31%) Swift
12 1 (0.65%) Embedded C++
12 1 (0.65%) Korn
12 1 (0.65%) PHP
12 1 (0.65%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.65%) PowerShell
12 1 (0.65%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 35 (22.88%) Degree
2 19 (12.42%) Security Cleared
3 17 (11.11%) SC Cleared
4 15 (9.80%) Computer Science Degree
5 12 (7.84%) Master's Degree
6 9 (5.88%) DV Cleared
7 5 (3.27%) AWS Certification
8 3 (1.96%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 3 (1.96%) BPSS Clearance
9 2 (1.31%) AWS Certified Developer
9 2 (1.31%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 1 (0.65%) Azure Certification
10 1 (0.65%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (1.96%) QA
2 2 (1.31%) Accessibility
System Software
1 31 (20.26%) Docker
2 1 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 27 (17.65%) Kubernetes
2 26 (16.99%) Terraform
3 14 (9.15%) Prometheus
4 13 (8.50%) Grafana
5 12 (7.84%) Ansible
6 2 (1.31%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 13 (8.50%) Splunk
2 7 (4.58%) Google
3 6 (3.92%) Microsoft
4 5 (3.27%) Oracle
5 2 (1.31%) NVIDIA
5 2 (1.31%) Spotify
5 2 (1.31%) Temenos
6 1 (0.65%) Calypso
6 1 (0.65%) Cisco
6 1 (0.65%) Salesforce
311 Senior Software Engineer jobs in England