Software Engineer Contract Job Trends in England

Software Engineer
UK > England

The median Software Engineer daily rate in England is £570, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 23 July 2026.

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

6 months to
23 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 97 130 69
Rank change year-on-year +33 -61 +60
Contract jobs requiring a Software Engineer 1,207 599 1,082
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.69% 2.19% 3.08%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.91% 2.39% 3.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 549 398 592
10th Percentile £400 £410 £425
25th Percentile £475 £482 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £570 £625 £650
Median % change year-on-year -8.80% -3.85% +13.04%
75th Percentile £688 £838 £800
90th Percentile £788 £875 £875
UK median daily rate £572 £600 £630
% change year-on-year -4.67% -4.76% +9.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 328 56 294
10th Percentile £52.50 £34.94 £48.00
25th Percentile £60.50 £60.69 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.19 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.08 £78.75 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

All Contract IT Job Roles
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 41,522 25,105 32,718
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.52% 91.81% 93.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,299 16,309 21,568
10th Percentile £325 £288 £300
25th Percentile £425 £403 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £512 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.54% -2.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,983 1,254 2,147
10th Percentile £16.00 £13.75 £13.51
25th Percentile £22.46 £17.87 £18.30
Median hourly rate £45.56 £27.29 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +66.91% -35.78% -3.53%
75th Percentile £68.00 £56.44 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.04 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.69 £25.15 £40.33
% change year-on-year +73.72% -37.63% -7.70%

Software Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in 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 England.

Software Engineer job vacancy trend in England

Software Engineer
Daily Rate Trend in England

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

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

Software Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Software Engineer in England over the 6 months to 23 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Software Engineer in England

Software Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend in England

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

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

Software Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Software Engineer in England over the 6 months to 23 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Software Engineer in England

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 Software Engineer within the England region over the 6 months to 23 July 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
London -38 386 £625 -15.25% 555
South West +63 247 £543 -5.65% 146
North of England +14 200 £525 +10.53% 146
South East +23 157 £530 +6.00% 154
East of England +29 147 £505 +1.00% 116
North West +11 132 £550 +22.22% 89
Midlands -19 53 £450 +0.56% 69
Yorkshire -25 49 £481 -1.79% 39
West Midlands -27 40 £450 - 27
North East -18 21 - - 18
East Midlands -8 13 £473 -0.53% 42
Software Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 23 July 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 England region featuring Software Engineer in the job title.

1 1,191 (98.67%) Software Engineering
2 338 (28.00%) Agile
3 316 (26.18%) Java
4 288 (23.86%) Security Cleared
5 282 (23.36%) CI/CD
6 267 (22.12%) Python
7 258 (21.38%) AWS
8 243 (20.13%) SC Cleared
9 173 (14.33%) C++
10 166 (13.75%) TypeScript
11 164 (13.59%) React
12 157 (13.01%) C#
13 144 (11.93%) Full-Stack Development
14 141 (11.68%) JavaScript
15 133 (11.02%) DevOps
16 131 (10.85%) Docker
17 129 (10.69%) Microservices
18 128 (10.60%) SQL
19 119 (9.86%) AI
20 116 (9.61%) Kubernetes
21 114 (9.44%) Azure
22 113 (9.36%) Linux
23 111 (9.20%) Test Automation
24 105 (8.70%) .NET
25 101 (8.37%) Node.js
26 100 (8.29%) Ada
27 96 (7.95%) Kafka
28 91 (7.54%) Problem-Solving
29 90 (7.46%) Git
30 86 (7.13%) Spring

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 14 (1.16%) Confluence
2 12 (0.99%) Apache Spark
3 8 (0.66%) Apache
4 4 (0.33%) CMS
5 3 (0.25%) Apache Airflow
5 3 (0.25%) nginx
5 3 (0.25%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.17%) Apache Solr
6 2 (0.17%) MQSeries
6 2 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
6 2 (0.17%) SAS
6 2 (0.17%) WebLogic
6 2 (0.17%) WinCC
6 2 (0.17%) WordPress
7 1 (0.083%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 1 (0.083%) Apache Synapse
7 1 (0.083%) IIS
7 1 (0.083%) Microsoft Exchange
7 1 (0.083%) SharePoint
7 1 (0.083%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 2 (0.17%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (0.17%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (0.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 2 (0.17%) MS Visio
1 2 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
1 2 (0.17%) Trello
2 1 (0.083%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.083%) S-PLUS
Business Applications
1 3 (0.25%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 258 (21.38%) AWS
2 114 (9.44%) Azure
3 68 (5.63%) GCP
4 59 (4.89%) GitHub
5 54 (4.47%) Serverless
6 38 (3.15%) AWS Lambda
7 28 (2.32%) GitHub Actions
8 25 (2.07%) OpenShift
9 23 (1.91%) Amazon S3
10 21 (1.74%) Amazon SQS
11 20 (1.66%) Amazon ECS
12 16 (1.33%) Amazon EC2
13 15 (1.24%) Amazon EKS
14 12 (0.99%) SaaS
15 10 (0.83%) Anthropic Claude
15 10 (0.83%) Azure DevOps
15 10 (0.83%) Power Platform
16 9 (0.75%) AWS CloudFormation
17 7 (0.58%) Amazon EventBridge
17 7 (0.58%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 27 (2.24%) Software-Defined Radio
2 23 (1.91%) Wireless
3 20 (1.66%) Ethernet
4 15 (1.24%) TCP/IP
5 12 (0.99%) Firewall
5 12 (0.99%) HTTP
6 10 (0.83%) VPN
7 9 (0.75%) 3GPP
8 8 (0.66%) RTP
9 7 (0.58%) Wireshark
10 4 (0.33%) Internet
11 3 (0.25%) Network Security
12 2 (0.17%) DNS
12 2 (0.17%) RS-232
12 2 (0.17%) RS-422
13 1 (0.083%) BGP
13 1 (0.083%) HTTPS
13 1 (0.083%) MQTT
13 1 (0.083%) RS-485
13 1 (0.083%) RTCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 73 (6.05%) PostgreSQL
2 47 (3.89%) Relational Database
3 39 (3.23%) SQL Server
4 30 (2.49%) NoSQL
5 19 (1.57%) DynamoDB
6 16 (1.33%) Elasticsearch
7 14 (1.16%) MongoDB
8 12 (0.99%) MySQL
9 10 (0.83%) Apache Cassandra
10 9 (0.75%) Amazon RDS
11 6 (0.50%) Metadata
11 6 (0.50%) Power BI
11 6 (0.50%) Redis
12 5 (0.41%) Big Data
13 4 (0.33%) Geospatial Data
13 4 (0.33%) Hadoop
14 3 (0.25%) Amazon Athena
14 3 (0.25%) Data Hub
14 3 (0.25%) Data Lake
14 3 (0.25%) Pinecone
Development Applications
1 90 (7.46%) Git
2 60 (4.97%) Jenkins
3 49 (4.06%) GitLab
4 29 (2.40%) JIRA
5 23 (1.91%) JUnit
6 18 (1.49%) SonarQube
6 18 (1.49%) Visual Studio
7 16 (1.33%) Rational DOORS
8 13 (1.08%) Gradle
8 13 (1.08%) Mockito
8 13 (1.08%) Rational Rhapsody
9 11 (0.91%) Eclipse
9 11 (0.91%) Liquibase
10 9 (0.75%) Selenium
11 8 (0.66%) Bitbucket
11 8 (0.66%) IntelliJ
12 7 (0.58%) Cucumber
12 7 (0.58%) LabVIEW
12 7 (0.58%) TeamCity
13 6 (0.50%) Mocha
General
1 167 (13.84%) Finance
2 122 (10.11%) Social Skills
3 63 (5.22%) Aerospace
4 60 (4.97%) Banking
4 60 (4.97%) Front Office
5 52 (4.31%) Public Sector
6 40 (3.31%) Analytical Skills
7 29 (2.40%) Law
8 25 (2.07%) Manufacturing
9 18 (1.49%) Retail
10 17 (1.41%) Aviation
11 16 (1.33%) Automotive
12 13 (1.08%) Electronics
13 12 (0.99%) Military
14 11 (0.91%) Investment Banking
15 8 (0.66%) Back Office
16 7 (0.58%) Avionics
16 7 (0.58%) Telecoms
17 5 (0.41%) Fire and Rescue
17 5 (0.41%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 164 (13.59%) React
2 105 (8.70%) .NET
3 101 (8.37%) Node.js
4 96 (7.95%) Kafka
5 86 (7.13%) Spring
6 81 (6.71%) Spring Boot
7 71 (5.88%) REST
8 56 (4.64%) Redux
9 55 (4.56%) AngularJS
10 51 (4.23%) GraphQL
11 42 (3.48%) RESTful
12 34 (2.82%) Django
13 24 (1.99%) CSS
13 24 (1.99%) Next.js
14 22 (1.82%) HTML
15 19 (1.57%) FastAPI
16 17 (1.41%) .NET Core
17 16 (1.33%) Web Services
18 15 (1.24%) Vue
19 14 (1.16%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 113 (9.36%) Cloud Native
2 79 (6.55%) Distributed Systems
3 62 (5.14%) Fixed Income
4 44 (3.65%) Algorithms
5 33 (2.73%) Product Ownership
6 30 (2.49%) Embedded Systems
7 21 (1.74%) AI Agents
7 21 (1.74%) Derivative
8 17 (1.41%) Onboarding
9 16 (1.33%) Legacy Systems
10 15 (1.24%) Equities
10 15 (1.24%) Self-Motivation
11 13 (1.08%) Data Protection Act
12 11 (0.91%) Data Structures
13 10 (0.83%) RISC-V
14 9 (0.75%) Enterprise Software
14 9 (0.75%) FPGA
15 8 (0.66%) Device Driver
15 8 (0.66%) PCIe
15 8 (0.66%) Robotics
Operating Systems
1 113 (9.36%) Linux
2 38 (3.15%) Windows
3 17 (1.41%) Embedded Linux
4 15 (1.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 11 (0.91%) FreeRTOS
6 10 (0.83%) Unix
7 8 (0.66%) Apple iOS
8 6 (0.50%) Windows Server
9 5 (0.41%) Android
10 3 (0.25%) Debian
10 3 (0.25%) Rocky
10 3 (0.25%) Solaris
10 3 (0.25%) Ubuntu
10 3 (0.25%) Windows Server 2008
10 3 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.17%) VxWorks
12 1 (0.083%) Tizen
12 1 (0.083%) webOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,191 (98.67%) Software Engineering
2 338 (28.00%) Agile
3 282 (23.36%) CI/CD
4 144 (11.93%) Full-Stack Development
5 133 (11.02%) DevOps
6 129 (10.69%) Microservices
7 119 (9.86%) AI
8 111 (9.20%) Test Automation
9 91 (7.54%) Problem-Solving
10 86 (7.13%) TDD
11 76 (6.30%) Continuous Improvement
12 68 (5.63%) Containerisation
13 66 (5.47%) Mentoring
13 66 (5.47%) Software Testing
14 65 (5.39%) Infrastructure as Code
15 61 (5.05%) Machine Learning
15 61 (5.05%) SDLC
16 59 (4.89%) Event-Driven
17 57 (4.72%) Clean Code
18 53 (4.39%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 316 (26.18%) Java
2 267 (22.12%) Python
3 173 (14.33%) C++
4 166 (13.75%) TypeScript
5 157 (13.01%) C#
6 141 (11.68%) JavaScript
7 128 (10.60%) SQL
8 100 (8.29%) Ada
9 75 (6.21%) Go
10 74 (6.13%) C
11 30 (2.49%) Kotlin
12 24 (1.99%) Rust
13 20 (1.66%) PowerShell
14 19 (1.57%) Embedded C
15 14 (1.16%) PHP
16 13 (1.08%) MATLAB
17 12 (0.99%) PL/SQL
18 11 (0.91%) Bash
19 7 (0.58%) R
20 6 (0.50%) Scala
Qualifications
1 288 (23.86%) Security Cleared
2 243 (20.13%) SC Cleared
3 49 (4.06%) Degree
4 36 (2.98%) DV Cleared
5 20 (1.66%) BPSS Clearance
5 20 (1.66%) Computer Science Degree
6 9 (0.75%) AWS Certification
6 9 (0.75%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 5 (0.41%) ISTQB
7 5 (0.41%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 3 (0.25%) Chartered Engineer
8 3 (0.25%) PhD
9 2 (0.17%) CCNP
9 2 (0.17%) Cisco Certification
9 2 (0.17%) HNC
9 2 (0.17%) HND
9 2 (0.17%) Master's Degree
9 2 (0.17%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 1 (0.083%) CCDP
10 1 (0.083%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 44 (3.65%) QA
2 16 (1.33%) Def Stans
3 13 (1.08%) IEC 61508
4 11 (0.91%) MISRA
5 10 (0.83%) Data Quality
6 9 (0.75%) Accessibility
6 9 (0.75%) GDPR
7 8 (0.66%) DO-178B
8 5 (0.41%) WCAG
9 4 (0.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 3 (0.25%) MISRA C
11 2 (0.17%) ISO 26262
11 2 (0.17%) NCSC
12 1 (0.083%) FATCA
12 1 (0.083%) ISO/IEC 27001
12 1 (0.083%) MIL-STD-1553
12 1 (0.083%) NIST
System Software
1 131 (10.85%) Docker
2 14 (1.16%) Firmware
3 5 (0.41%) Embedded Firmware
4 2 (0.17%) HDFS
4 2 (0.17%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.083%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 116 (9.61%) Kubernetes
2 66 (5.47%) Terraform
3 19 (1.57%) Ansible
4 16 (1.33%) Grafana
5 13 (1.08%) Argo
6 9 (0.75%) Prometheus
7 4 (0.33%) Control-M
7 4 (0.33%) Kibana
7 4 (0.33%) Single Sign-On
8 3 (0.25%) Functional Safety
9 2 (0.17%) Cilium
9 2 (0.17%) HAProxy
9 2 (0.17%) Progress Chef
9 2 (0.17%) Puppet
10 1 (0.083%) CA Endevor
10 1 (0.083%) PTC Integrity
Vendors
1 37 (3.07%) Microsoft
2 26 (2.15%) Oracle
3 22 (1.82%) Red Hat
4 21 (1.74%) Google
5 10 (0.83%) IBM
6 8 (0.66%) SAP
7 7 (0.58%) Splunk
8 6 (0.50%) OpenAI
8 6 (0.50%) Siemens
9 5 (0.41%) MathWorks
10 4 (0.33%) Checkmarx
10 4 (0.33%) Databricks
10 4 (0.33%) Hitachi
10 4 (0.33%) Sybase
11 3 (0.25%) Informatica
11 3 (0.25%) Talend
12 2 (0.17%) Ariba
12 2 (0.17%) Foundry
12 2 (0.17%) Palantir
12 2 (0.17%) Salesforce