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 3 June 2026.

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

6 months to
3 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 90 140 70
Rank change year-on-year +50 -70 +70
Contract jobs requiring a Software Engineer 1,173 486 1,098
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.81% 2.03% 2.97%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.05% 2.20% 3.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 495 338 567
10th Percentile £400 £413 £450
25th Percentile £463 £475 £511
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £625 £630
Median % change year-on-year -12.00% -0.79% +5.00%
75th Percentile £688 £825 £763
90th Percentile £788 £875 £850
UK median daily rate £550 £600 £625
% change year-on-year -8.33% -4.00% +4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 378 35 337
10th Percentile £52.50 £47.51 £46.25
25th Percentile £60.50 £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 £81.70 £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 38,507 22,115 34,261
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.34% 92.38% 92.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,765 14,615 22,560
10th Percentile £325 £290 £285
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £517 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.10% -1.52% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £504 £525
% change year-on-year +1.69% -4.00% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,712 936 2,585
10th Percentile £15.79 £14.00 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.13 £16.30
Median hourly rate £45.00 £29.57 £37.75
Median % change year-on-year +52.21% -21.68% -16.11%
75th Percentile £67.50 £60.00 £62.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £74.00
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £28.00 £37.50
% change year-on-year +51.79% -25.33% -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 3 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 3 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 3 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 -28 349 £625 -7.41% 571
South West +63 272 £570 -7.88% 193
North of England +20 180 £500 +11.11% 261
South East +30 156 £550 +0.92% 251
East of England +51 145 £504 -13.48% 147
North West +23 108 £489 +8.61% 165
Yorkshire -23 51 £500 +5.26% 50
Midlands -32 42 £467 +6.70% 107
West Midlands -31 34 £458 +1.87% 67
North East -8 23 £400 - 46
East Midlands -28 8 £500 +5.26% 40
Software Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 3 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 1,160 (98.89%) Software Engineering
2 308 (26.26%) Java
3 289 (24.64%) Agile
4 272 (23.19%) Security Cleared
5 261 (22.25%) CI/CD
6 260 (22.17%) AWS
7 231 (19.69%) Python
8 211 (17.99%) SC Cleared
9 174 (14.83%) C++
10 165 (14.07%) C#
11 152 (12.96%) TypeScript
12 149 (12.70%) React
13 140 (11.94%) JavaScript
14 137 (11.68%) DevOps
15 135 (11.51%) Microservices
16 128 (10.91%) Docker
17 127 (10.83%) Kubernetes
18 123 (10.49%) Full-Stack Development
18 123 (10.49%) Linux
18 123 (10.49%) SQL
19 116 (9.89%) Azure
20 113 (9.63%) Ada
21 105 (8.95%) AI
22 99 (8.44%) .NET
23 93 (7.93%) Node.js
24 92 (7.84%) Test Automation
25 91 (7.76%) Spring
26 88 (7.50%) Kafka
27 87 (7.42%) Git
28 86 (7.33%) 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 16 (1.36%) Apache
2 15 (1.28%) Apache Spark
2 15 (1.28%) Confluence
3 4 (0.34%) IIS
4 3 (0.26%) Apache Airflow
4 3 (0.26%) nginx
4 3 (0.26%) 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
Applications
1 2 (0.17%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (0.17%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.17%) LabWindows
1 2 (0.17%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.085%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 260 (22.17%) AWS
2 116 (9.89%) Azure
3 63 (5.37%) GCP
4 53 (4.52%) Serverless
5 50 (4.26%) GitHub
6 31 (2.64%) AWS Lambda
7 25 (2.13%) Amazon S3
8 21 (1.79%) Amazon EC2
8 21 (1.79%) Azure DevOps
8 21 (1.79%) OpenShift
9 16 (1.36%) Amazon ECS
9 16 (1.36%) GitHub Actions
10 14 (1.19%) Amazon SQS
11 13 (1.11%) Power Platform
12 10 (0.85%) Amazon EKS
12 10 (0.85%) AWS CloudFormation
12 10 (0.85%) Azure Functions
12 10 (0.85%) SaaS
13 9 (0.77%) Anthropic Claude
14 8 (0.68%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 32 (2.73%) Software-Defined Radio
2 20 (1.71%) Ethernet
3 19 (1.62%) Wireless
4 13 (1.11%) TCP/IP
5 12 (1.02%) HTTP
6 9 (0.77%) 3GPP
7 7 (0.60%) RTP
8 6 (0.51%) Firewall
8 6 (0.51%) Wireshark
9 4 (0.34%) VPN
10 2 (0.17%) DNS
10 2 (0.17%) Modbus
11 1 (0.085%) MQTT
11 1 (0.085%) Network Security
11 1 (0.085%) Profibus
11 1 (0.085%) RS-232
11 1 (0.085%) RS-422
11 1 (0.085%) RS-485
11 1 (0.085%) VLAN
11 1 (0.085%) XCAP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 65 (5.54%) PostgreSQL
2 35 (2.98%) Relational Database
3 33 (2.81%) SQL Server
4 21 (1.79%) Apache Cassandra
4 21 (1.79%) NoSQL
5 19 (1.62%) MongoDB
6 18 (1.53%) Amazon RDS
7 16 (1.36%) DynamoDB
8 14 (1.19%) MySQL
9 12 (1.02%) Data Lake
9 12 (1.02%) Elasticsearch
10 11 (0.94%) Metadata
11 10 (0.85%) Power BI
12 9 (0.77%) Amazon Athena
13 8 (0.68%) Mixpanel
14 7 (0.60%) Hadoop
15 5 (0.43%) Azure SQL Database
15 5 (0.43%) BigQuery
16 4 (0.34%) Amazon Aurora
16 4 (0.34%) Redis
Development Applications
1 87 (7.42%) Git
2 59 (5.03%) GitLab
3 53 (4.52%) Jenkins
4 38 (3.24%) JIRA
5 27 (2.30%) Gradle
6 25 (2.13%) JUnit
7 23 (1.96%) Rational DOORS
8 22 (1.88%) Rational Rhapsody
9 20 (1.71%) IntelliJ
10 19 (1.62%) Visual Studio
11 16 (1.36%) SonarQube
12 13 (1.11%) Mockito
13 12 (1.02%) Cucumber
14 11 (0.94%) Eclipse
14 11 (0.94%) Liquibase
15 10 (0.85%) Selenium
16 9 (0.77%) Bitbucket
16 9 (0.77%) Maven
17 7 (0.60%) Cypress.io
18 6 (0.51%) TeamCity
General
1 148 (12.62%) Finance
2 95 (8.10%) Social Skills
3 64 (5.46%) Aerospace
4 51 (4.35%) Front Office
5 41 (3.50%) Banking
6 36 (3.07%) Public Sector
7 35 (2.98%) Analytical Skills
8 29 (2.47%) Law
9 28 (2.39%) Manufacturing
10 16 (1.36%) Aviation
11 15 (1.28%) Military
12 14 (1.19%) Automotive
12 14 (1.19%) Electronics
13 13 (1.11%) Retail
14 11 (0.94%) Investment Banking
15 7 (0.60%) Back Office
15 7 (0.60%) Influencing Skills
15 7 (0.60%) Telecoms
16 5 (0.43%) Fire and Rescue
16 5 (0.43%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 149 (12.70%) React
2 99 (8.44%) .NET
3 93 (7.93%) Node.js
4 91 (7.76%) Spring
5 88 (7.50%) Kafka
6 86 (7.33%) Spring Boot
7 71 (6.05%) REST
8 59 (5.03%) AngularJS
9 49 (4.18%) GraphQL
10 46 (3.92%) Redux
11 37 (3.15%) RESTful
12 26 (2.22%) Middleware
13 23 (1.96%) Next.js
14 21 (1.79%) CSS
15 20 (1.71%) HTML
16 19 (1.62%) Vue
17 17 (1.45%) gRPC
17 17 (1.45%) Web Services
18 16 (1.36%) Qt
19 15 (1.28%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 90 (7.67%) Cloud Native
2 61 (5.20%) Algorithms
2 61 (5.20%) Distributed Systems
3 53 (4.52%) Fixed Income
4 36 (3.07%) Product Ownership
5 27 (2.30%) Embedded Systems
6 21 (1.79%) Derivative
7 19 (1.62%) AI Agents
8 16 (1.36%) Legacy Systems
9 15 (1.28%) Robotics
10 14 (1.19%) Equities
10 14 (1.19%) Onboarding
11 13 (1.11%) Data Protection Act
11 13 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
12 12 (1.02%) Greenfield Project
13 11 (0.94%) FPGA
14 10 (0.85%) Life Science
15 9 (0.77%) Device Driver
15 9 (0.77%) Mobile App
16 8 (0.68%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 123 (10.49%) Linux
2 47 (4.01%) Windows
3 18 (1.53%) Unix
4 16 (1.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 15 (1.28%) Embedded Linux
6 12 (1.02%) Apple iOS
7 11 (0.94%) FreeRTOS
8 9 (0.77%) Windows Server
9 6 (0.51%) Android
10 4 (0.34%) Debian
10 4 (0.34%) Rocky
10 4 (0.34%) Ubuntu
11 3 (0.26%) Solaris
11 3 (0.26%) Windows Server 2008
11 3 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.17%) Robot Operating System
12 2 (0.17%) VxWorks
13 1 (0.085%) Mac OS
13 1 (0.085%) Tizen
13 1 (0.085%) webOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,160 (98.89%) Software Engineering
2 289 (24.64%) Agile
3 261 (22.25%) CI/CD
4 137 (11.68%) DevOps
5 135 (11.51%) Microservices
6 123 (10.49%) Full-Stack Development
7 105 (8.95%) AI
8 92 (7.84%) Test Automation
9 85 (7.25%) Problem-Solving
10 80 (6.82%) TDD
11 76 (6.48%) Containerisation
12 65 (5.54%) SDLC
13 60 (5.12%) Infrastructure as Code
14 59 (5.03%) Machine Learning
14 59 (5.03%) Mentoring
15 57 (4.86%) Continuous Improvement
16 56 (4.77%) Scrum
17 51 (4.35%) Clean Code
18 50 (4.26%) Software Testing
19 49 (4.18%) Unit Testing
Programming Languages
1 308 (26.26%) Java
2 231 (19.69%) Python
3 174 (14.83%) C++
4 165 (14.07%) C#
5 152 (12.96%) TypeScript
6 140 (11.94%) JavaScript
7 123 (10.49%) SQL
8 113 (9.63%) Ada
9 81 (6.91%) Go
10 79 (6.73%) C
11 28 (2.39%) Kotlin
12 26 (2.22%) Embedded C
13 25 (2.13%) PowerShell
14 23 (1.96%) Rust
15 22 (1.88%) MATLAB
16 15 (1.28%) Bash
17 10 (0.85%) Embedded C++
17 10 (0.85%) PL/SQL
18 7 (0.60%) Scala
18 7 (0.60%) Swift
Qualifications
1 272 (23.19%) Security Cleared
2 211 (17.99%) SC Cleared
3 57 (4.86%) Degree
4 40 (3.41%) DV Cleared
5 23 (1.96%) Computer Science Degree
6 13 (1.11%) BPSS Clearance
7 7 (0.60%) AWS Certification
7 7 (0.60%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 5 (0.43%) ISTQB
8 5 (0.43%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 3 (0.26%) Chartered Engineer
9 3 (0.26%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (0.17%) CCNA
10 2 (0.17%) CCNP
10 2 (0.17%) HNC
10 2 (0.17%) HND
11 1 (0.085%) CCDP
11 1 (0.085%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 1 (0.085%) OCA
11 1 (0.085%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 39 (3.32%) QA
2 30 (2.56%) Def Stans
2 30 (2.56%) IEC 61508
3 17 (1.45%) MISRA
4 14 (1.19%) Data Quality
5 12 (1.02%) MISRA C
6 11 (0.94%) Accessibility
6 11 (0.94%) GDPR
7 5 (0.43%) DO-178B
8 4 (0.34%) NCSC
8 4 (0.34%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 3 (0.26%) WCAG
10 2 (0.17%) HL7
10 2 (0.17%) ISO 26262
11 1 (0.085%) DICOM
11 1 (0.085%) FATCA
11 1 (0.085%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 1 (0.085%) NIST
System Software
1 128 (10.91%) Docker
2 15 (1.28%) Firmware
3 6 (0.51%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (0.43%) Embedded Firmware
5 4 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
5 4 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.17%) HDFS
7 1 (0.085%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 127 (10.83%) Kubernetes
2 67 (5.71%) Terraform
3 27 (2.30%) Grafana
4 20 (1.71%) Ansible
5 10 (0.85%) Argo
6 7 (0.60%) 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 35 (2.98%) Microsoft
2 32 (2.73%) Red Hat
3 22 (1.88%) Google
3 22 (1.88%) Oracle
4 18 (1.53%) IBM
5 16 (1.36%) Databricks
6 10 (0.85%) MathWorks
7 7 (0.60%) Siemens
7 7 (0.60%) Splunk
7 7 (0.60%) Spotify
8 6 (0.51%) SAP
8 6 (0.51%) VMware
9 5 (0.43%) OpenAI
10 4 (0.34%) ANSYS
10 4 (0.34%) Atlassian
10 4 (0.34%) Checkmarx
11 3 (0.26%) Informatica
11 3 (0.26%) Sybase
11 3 (0.26%) Talend
12 2 (0.17%) Ariba