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 14 March 2026.

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

 6 months to
14 Mar 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 96 126 89
Rank change year-on-year +30 -37 +48
Contract jobs requiring a Software Engineer 966 538 906
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.62% 2.18% 2.39%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.85% 2.34% 2.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 412 353 470
10th Percentile £389 £413 £425
25th Percentile £463 £488 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £625
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% -4.00% +5.93%
75th Percentile £688 £713 £748
90th Percentile £800 £875 £788
UK median daily rate £550 £600 £625
% change year-on-year -8.33% -4.00% +6.84%
Number of hourly rates quoted 315 56 272
10th Percentile £52.50 £53.94 £46.25
25th Percentile £61.25 £61.25 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year - +4.00% -3.85%
75th Percentile £68.38 £68.00 £67.81
90th Percentile £70.43 £68.75 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year - +4.00% -3.85%

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 33,880 22,988 35,176
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.02% 93.03% 92.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,370 15,076 23,537
10th Percentile £310 £300 £270
25th Percentile £413 £408 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £621 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £748
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,235 770 2,274
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.25 £13.00
25th Percentile £19.41 £21.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £37.00 £35.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +5.71% +7.69% -23.53%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £58.75
90th Percentile £76.45 £77.59 £71.25
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £33.06 £32.50
% change year-on-year +5.88% +1.71% -23.53%

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 14 March 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 14 March 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 14 March 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 -28 314 £625 -1.96% 226
South West +22 202 £535 -8.15% 135
North of England +25 162 £544 +14.42% 140
East of England +45 123 £475 -26.92% 73
North West +24 88 £550 +22.22% 65
South East -23 86 £500 -10.31% 166
Yorkshire -24 48 £513 +2.50% 52
Midlands -37 40 £482 +1.43% 83
West Midlands -39 33 £489 +2.87% 45
North East +11 30 £550 - 23
East Midlands -31 7 £475 - 38
Software Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 14 March 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.

1 957 (99.07%) Software Engineering
2 274 (28.36%) Agile
3 263 (27.23%) AWS
4 249 (25.78%) Java
5 233 (24.12%) Python
6 226 (23.40%) Security Cleared
7 216 (22.36%) CI/CD
8 187 (19.36%) C++
9 172 (17.81%) SC Cleared
10 155 (16.05%) JavaScript
11 150 (15.53%) TypeScript
12 145 (15.01%) React
13 144 (14.91%) DevOps
14 137 (14.18%) Docker
14 137 (14.18%) Microservices
15 133 (13.77%) Kubernetes
16 126 (13.04%) C#
17 123 (12.73%) Linux
18 107 (11.08%) Node.js
18 107 (11.08%) SQL
19 104 (10.77%) Azure
19 104 (10.77%) Full-Stack Development
20 103 (10.66%) Kafka
21 96 (9.94%) Go
22 95 (9.83%) Terraform
23 94 (9.73%) Ada
24 88 (9.11%) Problem-Solving
25 86 (8.90%) AI
26 81 (8.39%) Git
27 79 (8.18%) Containerisation

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 27 (2.80%) Apache
2 19 (1.97%) Apache Spark
3 16 (1.66%) Confluence
4 5 (0.52%) WebLogic
5 3 (0.31%) Apache Airflow
5 3 (0.31%) IIS
6 2 (0.21%) Camunda
6 2 (0.21%) JBoss
6 2 (0.21%) nginx
6 2 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
6 2 (0.21%) SAS
6 2 (0.21%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.21%) WinCC
7 1 (0.10%) Apache Synapse
7 1 (0.10%) Microsoft Exchange
7 1 (0.10%) Smallworld
Applications
1 4 (0.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.10%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.10%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.10%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.10%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 2 (0.21%) LabWindows
2 1 (0.10%) Aladdin
2 1 (0.10%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 263 (27.23%) AWS
2 104 (10.77%) Azure
3 77 (7.97%) GCP
4 64 (6.63%) Serverless
5 48 (4.97%) GitHub
6 30 (3.11%) AWS Lambda
7 25 (2.59%) GitHub Actions
8 24 (2.48%) Amazon S3
9 21 (2.17%) Azure DevOps
10 19 (1.97%) Amazon ECS
11 17 (1.76%) Amazon EC2
11 17 (1.76%) AWS CloudFormation
11 17 (1.76%) OpenShift
12 16 (1.66%) Amazon EKS
12 16 (1.66%) Amazon SQS
12 16 (1.66%) Power Platform
13 13 (1.35%) Azure Functions
14 11 (1.14%) Cloud Computing
14 11 (1.14%) Collibra
15 10 (1.04%) Cloud Run
Communications & Networking
1 16 (1.66%) Ethernet
2 11 (1.14%) TCP/IP
3 5 (0.52%) Firewall
3 5 (0.52%) Software-Defined Radio
4 4 (0.41%) 3GPP
4 4 (0.41%) BGP
4 4 (0.41%) Network Security
4 4 (0.41%) VLAN
5 3 (0.31%) HTTP
5 3 (0.31%) NFC
5 3 (0.31%) PPP
5 3 (0.31%) Software-Defined Networking
6 2 (0.21%) Modbus
6 2 (0.21%) Wireless
7 1 (0.10%) FTP
7 1 (0.10%) HTTPS
7 1 (0.10%) LTE
7 1 (0.10%) Multicast
7 1 (0.10%) Profibus
7 1 (0.10%) XCAP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 64 (6.63%) PostgreSQL
2 33 (3.42%) NoSQL
3 32 (3.31%) Apache Cassandra
3 32 (3.31%) MongoDB
4 27 (2.80%) SQL Server
5 22 (2.28%) Data Lake
6 21 (2.17%) Amazon RDS
7 19 (1.97%) MySQL
7 19 (1.97%) Relational Database
8 14 (1.45%) Amazon Athena
8 14 (1.45%) Metadata
8 14 (1.45%) Power BI
9 12 (1.24%) Mixpanel
10 11 (1.14%) DynamoDB
11 9 (0.93%) BigQuery
11 9 (0.93%) Elasticsearch
11 9 (0.93%) Hadoop
12 8 (0.83%) Amazon Aurora
13 7 (0.72%) Big Data
13 7 (0.72%) OLAP
Development Applications
1 81 (8.39%) Git
2 53 (5.49%) GitLab
3 51 (5.28%) Jenkins
4 44 (4.55%) JIRA
5 25 (2.59%) Rational DOORS
6 22 (2.28%) Rational Rhapsody
7 20 (2.07%) Gradle
8 17 (1.76%) IntelliJ
8 17 (1.76%) Visual Studio
9 16 (1.66%) Eclipse
10 13 (1.35%) Cypress.io
10 13 (1.35%) Liquibase
10 13 (1.35%) SonarQube
11 12 (1.24%) JUnit
12 11 (1.14%) Bitbucket
12 11 (1.14%) Cucumber
13 8 (0.83%) Postman
13 8 (0.83%) PVCS
14 7 (0.72%) Maven
14 7 (0.72%) Oracle APEX
General
1 114 (11.80%) Finance
2 98 (10.14%) Social Skills
3 52 (5.38%) Front Office
4 46 (4.76%) Public Sector
5 38 (3.93%) Aerospace
6 35 (3.62%) Analytical Skills
6 35 (3.62%) Electronics
7 34 (3.52%) Banking
8 26 (2.69%) Law
9 22 (2.28%) Military
10 18 (1.86%) Manufacturing
11 11 (1.14%) Financial Institution
11 11 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
11 11 (1.14%) Retail
12 9 (0.93%) Pharmaceutical
13 8 (0.83%) Investment Banking
13 8 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
14 5 (0.52%) Health Technology
15 4 (0.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 3 (0.31%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 145 (15.01%) React
2 107 (11.08%) Node.js
3 103 (10.66%) Kafka
4 76 (7.87%) REST
5 69 (7.14%) .NET
6 59 (6.11%) Spring
7 57 (5.90%) Spring Boot
8 49 (5.07%) AngularJS
9 48 (4.97%) Redux
10 46 (4.76%) RESTful
11 44 (4.55%) GraphQL
12 34 (3.52%) Middleware
13 29 (3.00%) gRPC
14 24 (2.48%) CSS
15 23 (2.38%) HTML
16 21 (2.17%) Qt
17 20 (2.07%) JSON
17 20 (2.07%) Web Services
17 20 (2.07%) XML
18 17 (1.76%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 79 (8.18%) Cloud Native
2 53 (5.49%) Distributed Systems
3 52 (5.38%) Fixed Income
4 43 (4.45%) Algorithms
5 29 (3.00%) Product Ownership
6 19 (1.97%) Embedded Systems
7 18 (1.86%) Equities
8 16 (1.66%) Data Protection Act
8 16 (1.66%) Derivative
8 16 (1.66%) Greenfield Project
9 14 (1.45%) Legacy Systems
10 13 (1.35%) Life Science
10 13 (1.35%) Mobile App
10 13 (1.35%) Public Cloud
11 12 (1.24%) AI Agents
12 11 (1.14%) Robotics
13 9 (0.93%) Onboarding
14 8 (0.83%) CUDA
14 8 (0.83%) Data Structures
15 7 (0.72%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 123 (12.73%) Linux
2 56 (5.80%) Windows
3 22 (2.28%) Unix
4 15 (1.55%) Apple iOS
5 13 (1.35%) Android
6 12 (1.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 12 (1.24%) Windows Server
7 7 (0.72%) Ubuntu
8 5 (0.52%) FreeRTOS
9 3 (0.31%) Debian
9 3 (0.31%) Embedded Linux
10 2 (0.21%) Robot Operating System
10 2 (0.21%) Rocky
10 2 (0.21%) Solaris
10 2 (0.21%) Windows Server 2008
10 2 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.10%) Mac OS
11 1 (0.10%) VMS
11 1 (0.10%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 957 (99.07%) Software Engineering
2 274 (28.36%) Agile
3 216 (22.36%) CI/CD
4 144 (14.91%) DevOps
5 137 (14.18%) Microservices
6 104 (10.77%) Full-Stack Development
7 88 (9.11%) Problem-Solving
8 86 (8.90%) AI
9 79 (8.18%) Containerisation
10 76 (7.87%) TDD
10 76 (7.87%) Test Automation
11 74 (7.66%) Mentoring
12 67 (6.94%) Infrastructure as Code
13 57 (5.90%) Clean Code
14 55 (5.69%) Continuous Improvement
14 55 (5.69%) Scrum
15 54 (5.59%) Machine Learning
16 53 (5.49%) SDLC
17 52 (5.38%) Unit Testing
18 47 (4.87%) Investment Management
Programming Languages
1 249 (25.78%) Java
2 233 (24.12%) Python
3 187 (19.36%) C++
4 155 (16.05%) JavaScript
5 150 (15.53%) TypeScript
6 126 (13.04%) C#
7 107 (11.08%) SQL
8 96 (9.94%) Go
9 94 (9.73%) Ada
10 76 (7.87%) C
11 25 (2.59%) Embedded C
12 23 (2.38%) Embedded C++
13 22 (2.28%) Kotlin
13 22 (2.28%) PowerShell
14 19 (1.97%) MATLAB
14 19 (1.97%) Rust
15 16 (1.66%) Bash
16 10 (1.04%) PL/SQL
17 9 (0.93%) Swift
18 8 (0.83%) Perl
Qualifications
1 226 (23.40%) Security Cleared
2 172 (17.81%) SC Cleared
3 64 (6.63%) Degree
4 32 (3.31%) DV Cleared
5 30 (3.11%) Computer Science Degree
6 11 (1.14%) Master's Degree
7 9 (0.93%) AWS Certification
8 8 (0.83%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 7 (0.72%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (0.31%) Cisco Certification
11 2 (0.21%) CCNA
11 2 (0.21%) CCNP
11 2 (0.21%) HNC
11 2 (0.21%) HND
11 2 (0.21%) ISTQB
11 2 (0.21%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 2 (0.21%) Postgraduate
12 1 (0.10%) AWS Certified Developer
12 1 (0.10%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 1 (0.10%) RHCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 43 (4.45%) Def Stans
2 33 (3.42%) IEC 61508
3 31 (3.21%) QA
4 29 (3.00%) MISRA
5 20 (2.07%) Data Quality
6 19 (1.97%) MISRA C
7 12 (1.24%) GDPR
8 10 (1.04%) DO-178B
9 7 (0.72%) Accessibility
10 6 (0.62%) HL7
11 3 (0.31%) NCSC
12 2 (0.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 2 (0.21%) Software Quality Assurance
13 1 (0.10%) AUTOSAR
13 1 (0.10%) DICOM
13 1 (0.10%) ISO 26262
13 1 (0.10%) NIST
System Software
1 137 (14.18%) Docker
2 15 (1.55%) Firmware
3 14 (1.45%) Virtual Machines
4 10 (1.04%) VMware Infrastructure
5 4 (0.41%) Oracle RAC
6 2 (0.21%) Active Directory
6 2 (0.21%) HDFS
7 1 (0.10%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 133 (13.77%) Kubernetes
2 95 (9.83%) Terraform
3 30 (3.11%) Grafana
4 29 (3.00%) Ansible
5 13 (1.35%) Prometheus
6 10 (1.04%) Argo
7 4 (0.41%) Data Guard
7 4 (0.41%) Puppet
8 3 (0.31%) Single Sign-On
9 2 (0.21%) Functional Safety
9 2 (0.21%) Progress Chef
10 1 (0.10%) Podman
Vendors
1 34 (3.52%) Red Hat
2 33 (3.42%) Microsoft
3 28 (2.90%) Google
4 25 (2.59%) Oracle
5 23 (2.38%) Databricks
6 17 (1.76%) IBM
7 14 (1.45%) Splunk
8 10 (1.04%) VMware
9 8 (0.83%) ANSYS
9 8 (0.83%) Siemens
9 8 (0.83%) Spotify
10 6 (0.62%) MathWorks
11 4 (0.41%) Atlassian
11 4 (0.41%) Brio
12 3 (0.31%) NVIDIA
12 3 (0.31%) Palantir
13 2 (0.21%) Denodo
13 2 (0.21%) OpenAI
13 2 (0.21%) PagerDuty
13 2 (0.21%) Rockwell
793 Software Engineer jobs in England