Software Engineer Contract Job Trends in England

Software Engineer
UK > England

The median Software Engineer daily rate in England is £625, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 19 October 2025.

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

6 months to
19 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 138 78 116
Rank change year-on-year -60 +38 -5
Contract jobs requiring a Software Engineer 610 905 886
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.17% 2.84% 2.16%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.38% 3.06% 2.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 366 466 577
10th Percentile £408 £422 £413
25th Percentile £482 £500 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £625 £590
Median % change year-on-year - +5.93% -1.67%
75th Percentile £825 £850 £700
90th Percentile £875 £888 £775
UK median daily rate £600 £605 £575
% change year-on-year -0.87% +5.26% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 82 168 170
10th Percentile £32.31 £46.25 £48.32
25th Percentile £61.25 £60.75 £53.75
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -0.76% +0.77% -
75th Percentile £67.00 £70.00 £69.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year -0.76% +0.77% -

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 25,631 29,616 38,608
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.09% 93.01% 93.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 16,462 18,072 26,930
10th Percentile £280 £300 £300
25th Percentile £403 £413 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £512 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -2.43% -2.78% -1.82%
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 1,467 1,212 1,422
10th Percentile £13.82 £15.10 £15.25
25th Percentile £17.30 £21.25 £19.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -41.51% -6.89% +62.04%
75th Percentile £50.75 £67.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £74.99 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £40.16 £45.00
% change year-on-year -37.38% -10.75% +68.35%

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 19 October 2025.

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 19 October 2025.

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 19 October 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 -27 327 £700 +3.70% 224
North of England -13 101 £525 +5.00% 198
East of England -8 73 £500 - 139
Yorkshire +15 52 £525 +5.00% 53
South West -49 49 £513 +2.40% 167
North West -33 44 £550 +15.79% 117
South East -42 28 £475 -5.00% 277
Midlands -37 18 £525 +10.53% 72
West Midlands -8 15 £530 +6.00% 39
North East -4 6 £575 - 29
East Midlands -34 3 £450 -5.26% 33
Software Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 19 October 2025, 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.

1 603 (98.85%) Software Engineering
2 313 (51.31%) Agile
3 262 (42.95%) Python
4 259 (42.46%) AWS
5 216 (35.41%) Java
6 208 (34.10%) JavaScript
7 177 (29.02%) TypeScript
8 166 (27.21%) CI/CD
9 152 (24.92%) React
10 145 (23.77%) C++
11 133 (21.80%) Node.js
12 131 (21.48%) DevOps
13 115 (18.85%) Linux
14 114 (18.69%) Docker
15 112 (18.36%) Microservices
16 108 (17.70%) C#
17 107 (17.54%) GCP
18 105 (17.21%) Investment Management
19 93 (15.25%) Asset Management
19 93 (15.25%) SQL
20 92 (15.08%) Kubernetes
21 89 (14.59%) Azure
22 82 (13.44%) Full-Stack Development
22 82 (13.44%) Serverless
23 79 (12.95%) Containerisation
24 78 (12.79%) Security Cleared
24 78 (12.79%) Terraform
25 75 (12.30%) Infrastructure as Code
25 75 (12.30%) Test Automation
26 72 (11.80%) TDD

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 67 (10.98%) Apache Airflow
2 49 (8.03%) Apache
3 9 (1.48%) Confluence
4 8 (1.31%) JBoss
5 4 (0.66%) SAS
5 4 (0.66%) WebLogic
6 3 (0.49%) Apache Spark
7 2 (0.33%) CICS
7 2 (0.33%) CMS
7 2 (0.33%) nginx
7 2 (0.33%) Tomcat
8 1 (0.16%) Drupal
8 1 (0.16%) Mule
8 1 (0.16%) Mule ESB
8 1 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
8 1 (0.16%) SharePoint
8 1 (0.16%) Tuxedo
8 1 (0.16%) WordPress
Applications
1 7 (1.15%) Simulink
2 1 (0.16%) CANalyzer
2 1 (0.16%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.16%) Stateflow
Business Applications
1 8 (1.31%) Temenos T24
2 5 (0.82%) FLEXCUBE
2 5 (0.82%) Oracle BPM
Cloud Services
1 259 (42.46%) AWS
2 107 (17.54%) GCP
3 89 (14.59%) Azure
4 82 (13.44%) Serverless
5 68 (11.15%) dbt
6 47 (7.70%) GitHub
7 41 (6.72%) Snowflake
8 37 (6.07%) AWS Lambda
9 24 (3.93%) GitHub Actions
10 22 (3.61%) Amazon ECS
11 21 (3.44%) Amazon S3
12 19 (3.11%) Azure DevOps
13 13 (2.13%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 13 (2.13%) Amazon EC2
13 13 (2.13%) AWS Step Functions
14 12 (1.97%) Amazon SQS
15 11 (1.80%) Datadog
16 9 (1.48%) Amazon EKS
16 9 (1.48%) AWS CloudFormation
16 9 (1.48%) Azure Cosmos DB
Communications & Networking
1 26 (4.26%) Ethernet
2 18 (2.95%) TCP/IP
3 9 (1.48%) NFC
3 9 (1.48%) PPP
4 2 (0.33%) SSL
4 2 (0.33%) X.509
5 1 (0.16%) Bluetooth
5 1 (0.16%) Cisco Nexus
5 1 (0.16%) HTTP
5 1 (0.16%) Internet
5 1 (0.16%) MQTT
5 1 (0.16%) UWB
5 1 (0.16%) VPN
5 1 (0.16%) Wi-Fi
5 1 (0.16%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 68 (11.15%) Amazon Athena
1 68 (11.15%) PostgreSQL
2 67 (10.98%) Apache Arrow
2 67 (10.98%) Apache Iceberg
2 67 (10.98%) Dremio
3 43 (7.05%) Data Lake
4 41 (6.72%) NoSQL
5 40 (6.56%) Apache Ignite
6 26 (4.26%) MongoDB
7 16 (2.62%) DynamoDB
8 14 (2.30%) SQL Server
9 13 (2.13%) Big Data
9 13 (2.13%) MySQL
10 11 (1.80%) Amazon RDS
10 11 (1.80%) Relational Database
11 10 (1.64%) Elasticsearch
12 9 (1.48%) Apache Cassandra
13 8 (1.31%) GIS
14 7 (1.15%) Hadoop
15 6 (0.98%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 63 (10.33%) Git
2 56 (9.18%) Jenkins
3 42 (6.89%) GitLab
4 34 (5.57%) JIRA
5 29 (4.75%) Eclipse
6 25 (4.10%) Visual Studio
7 20 (3.28%) Liquibase
8 13 (2.13%) Rational DOORS
9 9 (1.48%) Artifactory
9 9 (1.48%) Cypress.io
9 9 (1.48%) Valgrind
10 8 (1.31%) Gradle
11 7 (1.15%) JUnit
11 7 (1.15%) SonarQube
12 6 (0.98%) Selenium
13 5 (0.82%) Maven
13 5 (0.82%) Rational Rhapsody
14 3 (0.49%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 3 (0.49%) KGDB
14 3 (0.49%) LabVIEW
General
1 210 (34.43%) Finance
2 123 (20.16%) Social Skills
3 121 (19.84%) Front Office
4 107 (17.54%) Banking
5 56 (9.18%) Investment Banking
6 32 (5.25%) Military
7 30 (4.92%) Analytical Skills
7 30 (4.92%) Public Sector
8 17 (2.79%) Presentation Skills
9 16 (2.62%) Financial Institution
10 13 (2.13%) Aerospace
10 13 (2.13%) Law
11 9 (1.48%) Electronics
11 9 (1.48%) Pharmaceutical
12 8 (1.31%) Manufacturing
13 7 (1.15%) Automotive
13 7 (1.15%) Games
14 5 (0.82%) Back Office
14 5 (0.82%) Organisational Skills
15 4 (0.66%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 152 (24.92%) React
2 133 (21.80%) Node.js
3 70 (11.48%) AngularJS
4 69 (11.31%) NumPy
5 68 (11.15%) SciPy
6 67 (10.98%) Pandas
7 62 (10.16%) Kafka
8 59 (9.67%) .NET
9 55 (9.02%) REST
10 45 (7.38%) gRPC
10 45 (7.38%) Vue
11 43 (7.05%) RESTful
12 41 (6.72%) Redux
13 40 (6.56%) Protocol Buffers
14 36 (5.90%) Web Services
15 33 (5.41%) Spring
16 27 (4.43%) JSON
17 26 (4.26%) Spring Boot
18 25 (4.10%) GraphQL
19 23 (3.77%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 107 (17.54%) Fixed Income
2 94 (15.41%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 85 (13.93%) Equities
4 61 (10.00%) Cloud Native
5 50 (8.20%) Hedge funds
6 44 (7.21%) Distributed Systems
7 42 (6.89%) Derivative
8 40 (6.56%) Pricing Data
9 21 (3.44%) Public Cloud
10 19 (3.11%) Algorithms
11 14 (2.30%) Data Structures
12 13 (2.13%) Data Protection Act
13 12 (1.97%) Greenfield Project
13 12 (1.97%) Self-Motivation
14 10 (1.64%) Embedded Systems
14 10 (1.64%) PCIe
15 9 (1.48%) CUDA
15 9 (1.48%) Smartcard
15 9 (1.48%) Virtual Reality
16 8 (1.31%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 115 (18.85%) Linux
2 53 (8.69%) Windows
3 19 (3.11%) Unix
4 13 (2.13%) Android
5 9 (1.48%) Ubuntu
6 6 (0.98%) Apple iOS
7 5 (0.82%) FreeRTOS
8 3 (0.49%) Mac OS
9 2 (0.33%) zOS
10 1 (0.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 1 (0.16%) Robot Operating System
10 1 (0.16%) Windows Embedded Compact
10 1 (0.16%) Windows Server
10 1 (0.16%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 603 (98.85%) Software Engineering
2 313 (51.31%) Agile
3 166 (27.21%) CI/CD
4 131 (21.48%) DevOps
5 112 (18.36%) Microservices
6 105 (17.21%) Investment Management
7 93 (15.25%) Asset Management
8 82 (13.44%) Full-Stack Development
9 79 (12.95%) Containerisation
10 75 (12.30%) Infrastructure as Code
10 75 (12.30%) Test Automation
11 72 (11.80%) TDD
12 70 (11.48%) Problem-Solving
13 66 (10.82%) Fintech
14 58 (9.51%) Mentoring
15 54 (8.85%) Unit Testing
16 52 (8.52%) Clean Code
16 52 (8.52%) Computer Science
17 49 (8.03%) Continuous Integration
18 43 (7.05%) Order Management
Programming Languages
1 262 (42.95%) Python
2 216 (35.41%) Java
3 208 (34.10%) JavaScript
4 177 (29.02%) TypeScript
5 145 (23.77%) C++
6 108 (17.70%) C#
7 93 (15.25%) SQL
8 48 (7.87%) Go
9 32 (5.25%) C
10 15 (2.46%) Ada
11 12 (1.97%) Bicep
11 12 (1.97%) MATLAB
12 11 (1.80%) PHP
13 9 (1.48%) Bash
13 9 (1.48%) PL/SQL
13 9 (1.48%) Shell Script
14 7 (1.15%) Embedded C++
14 7 (1.15%) PowerShell
15 6 (0.98%) R
16 5 (0.82%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 78 (12.79%) Security Cleared
2 69 (11.31%) Degree
3 63 (10.33%) SC Cleared
4 34 (5.57%) Computer Science Degree
5 18 (2.95%) Master's Degree
6 14 (2.30%) DV Cleared
7 8 (1.31%) AWS Certification
8 7 (1.15%) BPSS Clearance
9 4 (0.66%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 4 (0.66%) MCP
9 4 (0.66%) Postgraduate
10 2 (0.33%) AWS Certified Developer
10 2 (0.33%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 1 (0.16%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (3.44%) QA
2 9 (1.48%) MISRA
3 8 (1.31%) Def Stans
4 5 (0.82%) MISRA C
4 5 (0.82%) Software Quality Assurance
5 4 (0.66%) DO-178B
5 4 (0.66%) IEC 61508
6 3 (0.49%) Accessibility
6 3 (0.49%) WCAG
7 2 (0.33%) PMO
8 1 (0.16%) AUTOSAR
8 1 (0.16%) GDPR
8 1 (0.16%) ISO 26262
8 1 (0.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.16%) NIST
8 1 (0.16%) SEPA
System Software
1 114 (18.69%) Docker
2 6 (0.98%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (0.82%) Active Directory
3 5 (0.82%) Firmware
4 1 (0.16%) Embedded Firmware
4 1 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 92 (15.08%) Kubernetes
2 78 (12.79%) Terraform
3 27 (4.43%) Ansible
4 25 (4.10%) Prometheus
5 21 (3.44%) Grafana
6 6 (0.98%) Kibana
7 4 (0.66%) Podman
8 3 (0.49%) SELinux
9 2 (0.33%) Argo
9 2 (0.33%) CA Endevor
9 2 (0.33%) Puppet
9 2 (0.33%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.16%) Bitnami
10 1 (0.16%) Functional Safety
10 1 (0.16%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 40 (6.56%) Microsoft
2 25 (4.10%) Oracle
3 24 (3.93%) Google
4 21 (3.44%) Splunk
5 10 (1.64%) Temenos
6 5 (0.82%) Atlassian
6 5 (0.82%) Salesforce
6 5 (0.82%) SAP
6 5 (0.82%) Workday
7 4 (0.66%) IBM
7 4 (0.66%) OpenAI
8 3 (0.49%) Cisco
8 3 (0.49%) Foundry
8 3 (0.49%) Ping Identity
8 3 (0.49%) Red Hat
8 3 (0.49%) webMethods
9 2 (0.33%) CA Agile Central
9 2 (0.33%) NVIDIA
9 2 (0.33%) ServiceNow
10 1 (0.16%) Xamarin