Software Engineer Contract Job Trends in England

Software Engineer
UK > England

The median Software Engineer daily rate in England is £550, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 10 June 2026.

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

 6 months to
10 Jun 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 87 135 67
Rank change year-on-year +48 -68 +68
Contract jobs requiring a Software Engineer 1,179 504 1,155
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.79% 2.06% 3.08%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.02% 2.23% 3.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 512 352 585
10th Percentile £400 £413 £450
25th Percentile £463 £475 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £625 £630
Median % change year-on-year -12.00% -0.79% +5.00%
75th Percentile £688 £825 £788
90th Percentile £775 £875 £850
UK median daily rate £550 £600 £625
% change year-on-year -8.33% -4.00% +4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 369 36 352
10th Percentile £52.50 £48.26 £46.25
25th Percentile £57.63 £59.00 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £73.46 £82.25 £80.00
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 39,011 22,600 34,789
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.35% 92.37% 92.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,059 14,872 22,778
10th Percentile £325 £290 £288
25th Percentile £413 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £514 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.17% -2.10% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.68% -4.76% -2.60%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,743 986 2,652
10th Percentile £15.79 £14.00 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.13 £16.30
Median hourly rate £45.00 £29.07 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +54.80% -24.49% -14.44%
75th Percentile £67.50 £60.00 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £74.00
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £27.70 £37.50
% change year-on-year +53.43% -26.13% -16.67%

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 10 June 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 10 June 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 10 June 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 -35 357 £620 -9.22% 245
South West +69 273 £553 -10.71% 115
North of England +23 181 £500 +11.11% 155
South East +23 157 £550 +5.77% 197
East of England +51 144 £500 +3.09% 118
North West +19 110 £489 +8.61% 87
Yorkshire -20 50 £500 +5.26% 31
Midlands -38 41 £467 +0.94% 50
West Midlands -25 33 £458 -5.97% 27
North East -1 23 £400 - 37
East Midlands -28 8 £500 +5.26% 23
Software Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 10 June 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 1,166 (98.90%) Software Engineering
2 310 (26.29%) Java
3 294 (24.94%) Agile
4 278 (23.58%) Security Cleared
5 264 (22.39%) AWS
6 262 (22.22%) CI/CD
7 232 (19.68%) Python
8 220 (18.66%) SC Cleared
9 171 (14.50%) C++
10 167 (14.16%) C#
11 157 (13.32%) TypeScript
12 154 (13.06%) React
13 140 (11.87%) JavaScript
14 136 (11.54%) Microservices
15 135 (11.45%) DevOps
16 129 (10.94%) Docker
17 127 (10.77%) Full-Stack Development
17 127 (10.77%) SQL
18 125 (10.60%) Kubernetes
19 121 (10.26%) Linux
20 117 (9.92%) Azure
21 114 (9.67%) AI
22 110 (9.33%) Ada
23 100 (8.48%) .NET
24 93 (7.89%) Test Automation
25 92 (7.80%) Node.js
26 90 (7.63%) Kafka
26 90 (7.63%) Spring
27 87 (7.38%) Git
28 86 (7.29%) Spring Boot

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 15 (1.27%) Apache Spark
1 15 (1.27%) Confluence
2 13 (1.10%) Apache
3 4 (0.34%) IIS
4 3 (0.25%) Apache Airflow
4 3 (0.25%) nginx
4 3 (0.25%) Tomcat
5 2 (0.17%) Camunda
5 2 (0.17%) MQSeries
5 2 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
5 2 (0.17%) SAS
5 2 (0.17%) WebLogic
5 2 (0.17%) WinCC
6 1 (0.085%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 1 (0.085%) Apache Synapse
6 1 (0.085%) CMS
6 1 (0.085%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.085%) SharePoint
6 1 (0.085%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 2 (0.17%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (0.17%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 3 (0.25%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.17%) LabWindows
3 1 (0.085%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 264 (22.39%) AWS
2 117 (9.92%) Azure
3 67 (5.68%) GCP
4 55 (4.66%) Serverless
5 53 (4.50%) GitHub
6 33 (2.80%) AWS Lambda
7 25 (2.12%) Amazon S3
8 22 (1.87%) Amazon EC2
9 21 (1.78%) OpenShift
10 20 (1.70%) Azure DevOps
11 19 (1.61%) GitHub Actions
12 16 (1.36%) Amazon ECS
12 16 (1.36%) Amazon SQS
13 13 (1.10%) Power Platform
14 12 (1.02%) Amazon EKS
14 12 (1.02%) SaaS
15 10 (0.85%) AWS CloudFormation
15 10 (0.85%) Azure Functions
16 9 (0.76%) Anthropic Claude
17 8 (0.68%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 32 (2.71%) Software-Defined Radio
2 21 (1.78%) Wireless
3 20 (1.70%) Ethernet
4 14 (1.19%) TCP/IP
5 11 (0.93%) HTTP
6 9 (0.76%) 3GPP
7 7 (0.59%) Firewall
7 7 (0.59%) RTP
8 6 (0.51%) Wireshark
9 5 (0.42%) VPN
10 2 (0.17%) DNS
10 2 (0.17%) Internet
10 2 (0.17%) Modbus
11 1 (0.085%) BGP
11 1 (0.085%) HTTPS
11 1 (0.085%) Network Security
11 1 (0.085%) Profibus
11 1 (0.085%) RTCP
11 1 (0.085%) VLAN
11 1 (0.085%) XCAP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 70 (5.94%) PostgreSQL
2 40 (3.39%) Relational Database
3 34 (2.88%) SQL Server
4 22 (1.87%) NoSQL
5 20 (1.70%) Apache Cassandra
6 18 (1.53%) Amazon RDS
6 18 (1.53%) MongoDB
7 16 (1.36%) DynamoDB
8 14 (1.19%) MySQL
9 12 (1.02%) Data Lake
9 12 (1.02%) Elasticsearch
10 11 (0.93%) Metadata
11 10 (0.85%) Power BI
12 9 (0.76%) Amazon Athena
13 8 (0.68%) Mixpanel
14 7 (0.59%) Hadoop
15 5 (0.42%) Azure SQL Database
15 5 (0.42%) BigQuery
16 4 (0.34%) Amazon Aurora
16 4 (0.34%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 87 (7.38%) Git
2 54 (4.58%) Jenkins
3 53 (4.50%) GitLab
4 36 (3.05%) JIRA
5 25 (2.12%) Gradle
5 25 (2.12%) JUnit
6 21 (1.78%) Rational Rhapsody
7 20 (1.70%) Rational DOORS
8 19 (1.61%) Visual Studio
9 18 (1.53%) IntelliJ
10 15 (1.27%) SonarQube
11 13 (1.10%) Cucumber
11 13 (1.10%) Mockito
12 11 (0.93%) Eclipse
12 11 (0.93%) Liquibase
13 10 (0.85%) Selenium
14 9 (0.76%) Bitbucket
14 9 (0.76%) Maven
15 7 (0.59%) Cypress.io
16 6 (0.51%) TeamCity
General
1 152 (12.89%) Finance
2 93 (7.89%) Social Skills
3 63 (5.34%) Aerospace
4 51 (4.33%) Front Office
5 42 (3.56%) Banking
6 39 (3.31%) Public Sector
7 33 (2.80%) Analytical Skills
8 29 (2.46%) Law
9 28 (2.37%) Manufacturing
10 16 (1.36%) Aviation
11 15 (1.27%) Military
11 15 (1.27%) Retail
12 14 (1.19%) Automotive
13 11 (0.93%) Investment Banking
14 9 (0.76%) Electronics
15 7 (0.59%) Back Office
15 7 (0.59%) Influencing Skills
15 7 (0.59%) Telecoms
16 5 (0.42%) Police
16 5 (0.42%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 154 (13.06%) React
2 100 (8.48%) .NET
3 92 (7.80%) Node.js
4 90 (7.63%) Kafka
4 90 (7.63%) Spring
5 86 (7.29%) Spring Boot
6 69 (5.85%) REST
7 60 (5.09%) AngularJS
8 48 (4.07%) GraphQL
9 46 (3.90%) Redux
10 39 (3.31%) RESTful
11 26 (2.21%) Next.js
12 24 (2.04%) Middleware
13 22 (1.87%) CSS
14 20 (1.70%) HTML
15 19 (1.61%) Vue
16 17 (1.44%) FastAPI
17 16 (1.36%) Web Services
18 15 (1.27%) Qt
18 15 (1.27%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 95 (8.06%) Cloud Native
2 64 (5.43%) Distributed Systems
3 60 (5.09%) Algorithms
4 54 (4.58%) Fixed Income
5 34 (2.88%) Product Ownership
6 28 (2.37%) Embedded Systems
7 21 (1.78%) Derivative
8 20 (1.70%) AI Agents
9 17 (1.44%) Legacy Systems
10 15 (1.27%) Equities
11 14 (1.19%) Onboarding
11 14 (1.19%) Robotics
12 13 (1.10%) Data Protection Act
12 13 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
13 11 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
14 10 (0.85%) FPGA
15 9 (0.76%) Life Science
16 8 (0.68%) Data Structures
16 8 (0.68%) Device Driver
16 8 (0.68%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 121 (10.26%) Linux
2 45 (3.82%) Windows
3 17 (1.44%) Unix
4 16 (1.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 15 (1.27%) Embedded Linux
6 11 (0.93%) Apple iOS
6 11 (0.93%) FreeRTOS
7 9 (0.76%) Windows Server
8 6 (0.51%) Android
9 4 (0.34%) Debian
9 4 (0.34%) Rocky
9 4 (0.34%) Ubuntu
10 3 (0.25%) Solaris
10 3 (0.25%) Windows Server 2008
10 3 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.17%) Robot Operating System
11 2 (0.17%) VxWorks
12 1 (0.085%) Mac OS
12 1 (0.085%) VMS
12 1 (0.085%) webOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,166 (98.90%) Software Engineering
2 294 (24.94%) Agile
3 262 (22.22%) CI/CD
4 136 (11.54%) Microservices
5 135 (11.45%) DevOps
6 127 (10.77%) Full-Stack Development
7 114 (9.67%) AI
8 93 (7.89%) Test Automation
9 83 (7.04%) Problem-Solving
10 80 (6.79%) TDD
11 77 (6.53%) Containerisation
12 63 (5.34%) SDLC
13 62 (5.26%) Infrastructure as Code
14 61 (5.17%) Machine Learning
15 59 (5.00%) Mentoring
16 56 (4.75%) Continuous Improvement
17 54 (4.58%) Scrum
18 53 (4.50%) Clean Code
19 52 (4.41%) Software Testing
20 48 (4.07%) Unit Testing
Programming Languages
1 310 (26.29%) Java
2 232 (19.68%) Python
3 171 (14.50%) C++
4 167 (14.16%) C#
5 157 (13.32%) TypeScript
6 140 (11.87%) JavaScript
7 127 (10.77%) SQL
8 110 (9.33%) Ada
9 80 (6.79%) Go
10 75 (6.36%) C
11 28 (2.37%) Kotlin
12 25 (2.12%) Embedded C
13 23 (1.95%) PowerShell
14 22 (1.87%) MATLAB
15 21 (1.78%) Rust
16 14 (1.19%) Bash
17 10 (0.85%) PHP
17 10 (0.85%) PL/SQL
18 9 (0.76%) Embedded C++
19 7 (0.59%) Scala
Qualifications
1 278 (23.58%) Security Cleared
2 220 (18.66%) SC Cleared
3 57 (4.83%) Degree
4 38 (3.22%) DV Cleared
5 22 (1.87%) Computer Science Degree
6 15 (1.27%) BPSS Clearance
7 7 (0.59%) AWS Certification
7 7 (0.59%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 5 (0.42%) ISTQB
8 5 (0.42%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 3 (0.25%) Chartered Engineer
10 2 (0.17%) CCNP
10 2 (0.17%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (0.17%) HNC
10 2 (0.17%) HND
11 1 (0.085%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 1 (0.085%) OCA
11 1 (0.085%) Oracle Certification
11 1 (0.085%) PhD
11 1 (0.085%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 38 (3.22%) QA
2 28 (2.37%) IEC 61508
3 27 (2.29%) Def Stans
4 15 (1.27%) MISRA
5 14 (1.19%) Data Quality
6 11 (0.93%) Accessibility
6 11 (0.93%) GDPR
6 11 (0.93%) MISRA C
7 5 (0.42%) WCAG
8 4 (0.34%) DO-178B
8 4 (0.34%) NCSC
8 4 (0.34%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 2 (0.17%) HL7
9 2 (0.17%) ISO 26262
10 1 (0.085%) DICOM
10 1 (0.085%) FATCA
10 1 (0.085%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 1 (0.085%) NIST
System Software
1 129 (10.94%) Docker
2 14 (1.19%) Firmware
3 5 (0.42%) Embedded Firmware
3 5 (0.42%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
5 3 (0.25%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.17%) HDFS
7 1 (0.085%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 125 (10.60%) Kubernetes
2 69 (5.85%) Terraform
3 25 (2.12%) Grafana
4 18 (1.53%) Ansible
5 10 (0.85%) Argo
6 7 (0.59%) Prometheus
7 4 (0.34%) Data Guard
7 4 (0.34%) Functional Safety
7 4 (0.34%) Single Sign-On
8 2 (0.17%) Cilium
8 2 (0.17%) HAProxy
8 2 (0.17%) Progress Chef
8 2 (0.17%) Puppet
9 1 (0.085%) CA Endevor
Vendors
1 34 (2.88%) Microsoft
2 29 (2.46%) Red Hat
3 23 (1.95%) Google
3 23 (1.95%) Oracle
4 16 (1.36%) Databricks
4 16 (1.36%) IBM
5 10 (0.85%) MathWorks
6 7 (0.59%) Siemens
6 7 (0.59%) Splunk
7 6 (0.51%) SAP
7 6 (0.51%) Spotify
8 5 (0.42%) OpenAI
8 5 (0.42%) VMware
9 4 (0.34%) Atlassian
9 4 (0.34%) Checkmarx
9 4 (0.34%) Sybase
10 3 (0.25%) ANSYS
10 3 (0.25%) Informatica
10 3 (0.25%) Talend
11 2 (0.17%) Ariba
851 Software Engineer jobs in England