Software Engineer Contract Job Trends in England

Software Engineer
UK > England

The median Software Engineer daily rate in England is £573, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 10 August 2026.

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

6 months to
10 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 96 128 67
Rank change year-on-year +32 -61 +54
Contract jobs requiring a Software Engineer 1,201 618 1,014
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.64% 2.22% 3.05%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.85% 2.42% 3.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 544 404 561
10th Percentile £400 £410 £450
25th Percentile £463 £488 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £573 £640 £650
Median % change year-on-year -10.55% -1.54% +13.04%
75th Percentile £688 £838 £850
90th Percentile £753 £875 £888
UK median daily rate £575 £625 £644
% change year-on-year -8.00% -2.91% +11.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 320 60 248
10th Percentile £52.29 £31.25 £47.35
25th Percentile £60.00 £59.00 £57.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £68.55 £67.00 £70.06
90th Percentile £73.46 £77.75 £77.50
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 42,140 25,508 30,829
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.51% 91.65% 92.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,526 16,531 20,304
10th Percentile £325 £285 £300
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £630 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,165 1,327 1,793
10th Percentile £15.25 £13.53 £14.16
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.48 £21.25
Median hourly rate £42.65 £25.30 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.58% -43.78% +5.88%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £66.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% +1.18%

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 August 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 August 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 August 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 -46 398 £625 -16.67% 1,110
South West +57 235 £550 -12.00% 157
North of England +8 185 £525 +6.92% 190
South East +30 160 £530 +4.43% 192
East of England +30 148 £505 +1.00% 150
North West +3 117 £550 +13.75% 121
Midlands -4 59 £448 -5.79% 93
Yorkshire -16 52 £475 -5.00% 36
West Midlands -18 39 £444 - 47
East Midlands +4 20 £473 -0.53% 46
North East -26 18 - - 33
Software Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 10 August 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 1,187 (98.83%) Software Engineering
2 332 (27.64%) Agile
3 314 (26.14%) Java
4 292 (24.31%) Security Cleared
5 289 (24.06%) CI/CD
6 274 (22.81%) Python
7 252 (20.98%) SC Cleared
8 241 (20.07%) AWS
9 170 (14.15%) C++
10 158 (13.16%) C#
11 149 (12.41%) TypeScript
12 148 (12.32%) React
13 140 (11.66%) Full-Stack Development
14 137 (11.41%) DevOps
15 130 (10.82%) Docker
15 130 (10.82%) Microservices
16 129 (10.74%) JavaScript
17 128 (10.66%) SQL
18 121 (10.07%) AI
19 114 (9.49%) Kubernetes
19 114 (9.49%) Test Automation
20 113 (9.41%) Linux
21 111 (9.24%) Azure
22 109 (9.08%) .NET
23 96 (7.99%) Ada
23 96 (7.99%) Git
24 92 (7.66%) Node.js
25 88 (7.33%) Problem-Solving
26 85 (7.08%) Spring
27 83 (6.91%) Kafka

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 13 (1.08%) Confluence
2 10 (0.83%) Apache Spark
3 7 (0.58%) Apache
4 4 (0.33%) Apache Solr
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%) MQSeries
6 2 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
6 2 (0.17%) SAS
6 2 (0.17%) WordPress
7 1 (0.083%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 1 (0.083%) Apache Pulsar
7 1 (0.083%) IIS
7 1 (0.083%) SharePoint
7 1 (0.083%) Tuxedo
7 1 (0.083%) WebLogic
7 1 (0.083%) WinCC
Applications
1 3 (0.25%) Trello
2 2 (0.17%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.17%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 2 (0.17%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.083%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.083%) S-PLUS
Business Applications
1 4 (0.33%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.083%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 241 (20.07%) AWS
2 111 (9.24%) Azure
3 62 (5.16%) GitHub
4 57 (4.75%) GCP
5 54 (4.50%) Serverless
6 37 (3.08%) AWS Lambda
7 32 (2.66%) GitHub Actions
8 24 (2.00%) OpenShift
9 22 (1.83%) Amazon SQS
10 21 (1.75%) Amazon S3
11 20 (1.67%) Amazon ECS
12 16 (1.33%) Amazon EKS
13 14 (1.17%) Amazon EC2
14 12 (1.00%) Azure DevOps
15 11 (0.92%) Power Platform
16 10 (0.83%) Anthropic Claude
17 9 (0.75%) SaaS
18 8 (0.67%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 8 (0.67%) AWS CloudFormation
18 8 (0.67%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 28 (2.33%) Software-Defined Radio
2 24 (2.00%) Wireless
3 20 (1.67%) Ethernet
4 15 (1.25%) TCP/IP
5 11 (0.92%) Firewall
5 11 (0.92%) HTTP
5 11 (0.92%) VPN
6 8 (0.67%) 3GPP
6 8 (0.67%) RTP
7 7 (0.58%) Wireshark
8 4 (0.33%) Internet
9 2 (0.17%) Network Security
9 2 (0.17%) RS-232
9 2 (0.17%) RS-422
10 1 (0.083%) DNS
10 1 (0.083%) Modbus
10 1 (0.083%) MQTT
10 1 (0.083%) RS-485
10 1 (0.083%) RTCP
10 1 (0.083%) XCAP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 71 (5.91%) PostgreSQL
2 46 (3.83%) Relational Database
3 39 (3.25%) SQL Server
4 33 (2.75%) NoSQL
5 19 (1.58%) DynamoDB
6 16 (1.33%) Elasticsearch
7 13 (1.08%) MySQL
8 12 (1.00%) MongoDB
9 7 (0.58%) Apache Cassandra
9 7 (0.58%) Metadata
9 7 (0.58%) Power BI
9 7 (0.58%) Redis
10 6 (0.50%) Amazon RDS
10 6 (0.50%) Big Data
11 4 (0.33%) Geospatial Data
11 4 (0.33%) ObjectStore
12 3 (0.25%) Couchbase
12 3 (0.25%) Data Mining
12 3 (0.25%) Pentaho
12 3 (0.25%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 96 (7.99%) Git
2 65 (5.41%) Jenkins
3 55 (4.58%) GitLab
4 33 (2.75%) JIRA
5 24 (2.00%) JUnit
6 18 (1.50%) Rational DOORS
6 18 (1.50%) Visual Studio
7 17 (1.42%) SonarQube
8 14 (1.17%) Mockito
9 13 (1.08%) Gradle
9 13 (1.08%) Rational Rhapsody
10 11 (0.92%) Eclipse
11 10 (0.83%) LabVIEW
11 10 (0.83%) Liquibase
12 9 (0.75%) Bitbucket
12 9 (0.75%) Selenium
13 8 (0.67%) Claude Code
13 8 (0.67%) IntelliJ
14 7 (0.58%) TeamCity
15 6 (0.50%) Cucumber
General
1 163 (13.57%) Finance
2 121 (10.07%) Social Skills
3 68 (5.66%) Banking
4 58 (4.83%) Aerospace
5 57 (4.75%) Public Sector
6 52 (4.33%) Front Office
7 41 (3.41%) Analytical Skills
8 27 (2.25%) Law
9 23 (1.92%) Manufacturing
10 17 (1.42%) Automotive
10 17 (1.42%) Aviation
11 14 (1.17%) Electronics
11 14 (1.17%) Retail
12 13 (1.08%) Military
13 12 (1.00%) Investment Banking
14 11 (0.92%) Back Office
15 7 (0.58%) Avionics
15 7 (0.58%) Telecoms
16 5 (0.42%) Fire and Rescue
16 5 (0.42%) Marketing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 148 (12.32%) React
2 109 (9.08%) .NET
3 92 (7.66%) Node.js
4 85 (7.08%) Spring
5 83 (6.91%) Kafka
6 79 (6.58%) Spring Boot
7 76 (6.33%) REST
8 51 (4.25%) AngularJS
9 43 (3.58%) Redux
10 39 (3.25%) Django
11 38 (3.16%) GraphQL
12 37 (3.08%) RESTful
13 23 (1.92%) Next.js
14 20 (1.67%) FastAPI
15 19 (1.58%) CSS
15 19 (1.58%) HTML
16 18 (1.50%) .NET Core
17 16 (1.33%) Flask
18 14 (1.17%) Quarkus
18 14 (1.17%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 118 (9.83%) Cloud Native
2 82 (6.83%) Distributed Systems
3 50 (4.16%) Fixed Income
4 38 (3.16%) Algorithms
5 31 (2.58%) Embedded Systems
6 28 (2.33%) Product Ownership
7 23 (1.92%) AI Agents
8 22 (1.83%) Onboarding
9 18 (1.50%) Derivative
10 14 (1.17%) Data Structures
11 12 (1.00%) Equities
11 12 (1.00%) Legacy Systems
11 12 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
12 11 (0.92%) Data Protection Act
12 11 (0.92%) RISC-V
13 9 (0.75%) Device Driver
13 9 (0.75%) Enterprise Software
13 9 (0.75%) FPGA
14 8 (0.67%) Legacy Applications
14 8 (0.67%) PCIe
Operating Systems
1 113 (9.41%) Linux
2 36 (3.00%) Windows
3 18 (1.50%) Embedded Linux
4 14 (1.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 11 (0.92%) FreeRTOS
6 9 (0.75%) Unix
7 6 (0.50%) Android
8 5 (0.42%) Windows Server
9 4 (0.33%) Debian
9 4 (0.33%) Rocky
9 4 (0.33%) Ubuntu
10 3 (0.25%) Apple iOS
10 3 (0.25%) Solaris
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 1,187 (98.83%) Software Engineering
2 332 (27.64%) Agile
3 289 (24.06%) CI/CD
4 140 (11.66%) Full-Stack Development
5 137 (11.41%) DevOps
6 130 (10.82%) Microservices
7 121 (10.07%) AI
8 114 (9.49%) Test Automation
9 88 (7.33%) Problem-Solving
10 81 (6.74%) TDD
11 74 (6.16%) Continuous Improvement
12 69 (5.75%) Software Testing
13 67 (5.58%) Containerisation
14 64 (5.33%) Infrastructure as Code
14 64 (5.33%) Mentoring
15 61 (5.08%) SDLC
16 57 (4.75%) Event-Driven
17 56 (4.66%) Clean Code
18 54 (4.50%) Machine Learning
19 53 (4.41%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 314 (26.14%) Java
2 274 (22.81%) Python
3 170 (14.15%) C++
4 158 (13.16%) C#
5 149 (12.41%) TypeScript
6 129 (10.74%) JavaScript
7 128 (10.66%) SQL
8 96 (7.99%) Ada
9 79 (6.58%) C
10 63 (5.25%) Go
11 36 (3.00%) Kotlin
12 23 (1.92%) Rust
13 22 (1.83%) PowerShell
14 21 (1.75%) Embedded C
15 14 (1.17%) PHP
16 12 (1.00%) PL/SQL
17 11 (0.92%) Bash
18 9 (0.75%) MATLAB
19 8 (0.67%) Scala
20 7 (0.58%) R
Qualifications
1 292 (24.31%) Security Cleared
2 252 (20.98%) SC Cleared
3 46 (3.83%) Degree
4 34 (2.83%) DV Cleared
5 20 (1.67%) BPSS Clearance
6 19 (1.58%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (0.67%) AWS Certification
7 8 (0.67%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 7 (0.58%) ISTQB
9 6 (0.50%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 3 (0.25%) Chartered Engineer
10 3 (0.25%) PhD
11 2 (0.17%) Master's Degree
11 2 (0.17%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 1 (0.083%) CCNP
12 1 (0.083%) Cisco Certification
12 1 (0.083%) HNC
12 1 (0.083%) HND
12 1 (0.083%) OCA
12 1 (0.083%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 38 (3.16%) QA
2 16 (1.33%) Def Stans
3 13 (1.08%) IEC 61508
4 11 (0.92%) MISRA
5 9 (0.75%) Accessibility
6 8 (0.67%) DO-178B
6 8 (0.67%) GDPR
7 6 (0.50%) Data Quality
8 5 (0.42%) WCAG
9 4 (0.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 3 (0.25%) ISO 20022
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%) HL7
12 1 (0.083%) ISO/IEC 27001
12 1 (0.083%) MIL-STD-1553
System Software
1 130 (10.82%) Docker
2 15 (1.25%) Firmware
3 6 (0.50%) Embedded Firmware
4 3 (0.25%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.17%) HDFS
5 2 (0.17%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 114 (9.49%) Kubernetes
2 63 (5.25%) Terraform
3 20 (1.67%) Ansible
4 13 (1.08%) Argo
5 12 (1.00%) Grafana
6 7 (0.58%) 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
8 3 (0.25%) Progress Chef
8 3 (0.25%) Puppet
9 2 (0.17%) Cilium
9 2 (0.17%) HAProxy
10 1 (0.083%) CA Endevor
10 1 (0.083%) PTC Integrity
Vendors
1 38 (3.16%) Microsoft
2 24 (2.00%) Oracle
3 19 (1.58%) Red Hat
4 17 (1.42%) Google
5 10 (0.83%) IBM
6 9 (0.75%) SAP
7 6 (0.50%) Hitachi
8 5 (0.42%) Databricks
8 5 (0.42%) MathWorks
8 5 (0.42%) OpenAI
9 4 (0.33%) Checkmarx
9 4 (0.33%) Splunk
9 4 (0.33%) VMware
10 3 (0.25%) FIS
10 3 (0.25%) Informatica
10 3 (0.25%) Talend
11 2 (0.17%) Confluent
11 2 (0.17%) Denodo
11 2 (0.17%) NVIDIA
11 2 (0.17%) Palantir