Software Engineer Contract Job Trends in England

Software Engineer
UK > England

The median Software Engineer daily rate in England is £600, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 3 December 2025.

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

 6 months to
3 Dec 2025		 Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 117 89 125
Rank change year-on-year -28 +36 -12
Contract jobs requiring a Software Engineer 723 780 784
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.34% 2.56% 2.05%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.56% 2.76% 2.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 372 423 490
10th Percentile £385 £400 £425
25th Percentile £463 £478 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £600 £600
75th Percentile £728 £850 £713
90th Percentile £850 £888 £788
UK median daily rate £575 £600 £575
% change year-on-year -4.17% +4.35% -2.54%
Number of hourly rates quoted 162 112 167
10th Percentile £46.03 £47.50 £49.25
25th Percentile £61.25 £60.75 £55.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £67.25 £70.00 £68.88
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.75 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 28,194 28,301 35,685
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.25% 92.95% 93.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,074 17,449 24,550
10th Percentile £285 £300 £290
25th Percentile £403 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £504 £525 £534
Median % change year-on-year -4.05% -1.69% -2.91%
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 1,702 1,000 1,383
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.36 £15.35
25th Percentile £17.88 £21.05 £20.00
Median hourly rate £25.74 £37.25 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -30.91% -17.22% +38.46%
75th Percentile £57.50 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.45 £74.38 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +48.33%

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 December 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 3 December 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 3 December 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 -17 323 £625 -7.41% 245
North of England +7 125 £550 +11.39% 175
East of England +14 112 £500 - 145
South West -34 74 £450 -18.18% 159
Yorkshire +19 66 £525 +2.44% 62
North West -14 50 £550 +15.79% 87
South East -48 38 £475 -5.00% 271
Midlands -33 28 £500 +5.26% 69
West Midlands -13 23 £525 +7.69% 30
North East -2 11 £575 - 26
East Midlands -35 5 £475 - 39
Software Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 3 December 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.

1 715 (98.89%) Software Engineering
2 291 (40.25%) Agile
3 241 (33.33%) AWS
4 239 (33.06%) Python
5 197 (27.25%) Java
6 195 (26.97%) CI/CD
7 188 (26.00%) C++
8 176 (24.34%) JavaScript
9 143 (19.78%) TypeScript
10 141 (19.50%) DevOps
11 134 (18.53%) Docker
12 133 (18.40%) C#
13 132 (18.26%) Linux
14 129 (17.84%) Microservices
14 129 (17.84%) React
15 123 (17.01%) Security Cleared
16 120 (16.60%) Node.js
17 107 (14.80%) Kubernetes
18 104 (14.38%) SQL
19 102 (14.11%) SC Cleared
20 95 (13.14%) Terraform
21 94 (13.00%) Azure
22 85 (11.76%) Containerisation
23 84 (11.62%) GCP
23 84 (11.62%) Serverless
24 81 (11.20%) Infrastructure as Code
25 80 (11.07%) Problem-Solving
26 78 (10.79%) Kafka
26 78 (10.79%) TDD
27 75 (10.37%) Degree

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 46 (6.36%) Apache
2 45 (6.22%) Apache Airflow
3 10 (1.38%) Apache Spark
3 10 (1.38%) Confluence
4 7 (0.97%) JBoss
5 5 (0.69%) WebLogic
6 4 (0.55%) SAS
7 2 (0.28%) Tomcat
8 1 (0.14%) CICS
8 1 (0.14%) CMS
8 1 (0.14%) Mule
8 1 (0.14%) Mule ESB
8 1 (0.14%) nginx
8 1 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
8 1 (0.14%) Smallworld
8 1 (0.14%) Tuxedo
8 1 (0.14%) WordPress
Applications
1 6 (0.83%) Simulink
2 2 (0.28%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.14%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.14%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 8 (1.11%) Temenos T24
2 2 (0.28%) FLEXCUBE
2 2 (0.28%) Oracle BPM
3 1 (0.14%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 241 (33.33%) AWS
2 94 (13.00%) Azure
3 84 (11.62%) GCP
3 84 (11.62%) Serverless
4 52 (7.19%) GitHub
5 45 (6.22%) dbt
6 39 (5.39%) AWS Lambda
7 32 (4.43%) Snowflake
8 31 (4.29%) GitHub Actions
9 27 (3.73%) Amazon ECS
10 25 (3.46%) Amazon S3
11 24 (3.32%) Azure DevOps
12 15 (2.07%) Amazon SQS
13 14 (1.94%) AWS CloudFormation
14 13 (1.80%) Amazon EKS
15 12 (1.66%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 12 (1.66%) Amazon EC2
16 10 (1.38%) AWS Step Functions
16 10 (1.38%) Azure Functions
17 9 (1.24%) Cloud Run
Communications & Networking
1 27 (3.73%) Ethernet
2 20 (2.77%) TCP/IP
3 7 (0.97%) NFC
3 7 (0.97%) PPP
4 3 (0.41%) BGP
4 3 (0.41%) Firewall
4 3 (0.41%) Network Security
4 3 (0.41%) Software-Defined Networking
4 3 (0.41%) VLAN
5 2 (0.28%) SSL
5 2 (0.28%) X.509
6 1 (0.14%) 5G
6 1 (0.14%) 5G NR
6 1 (0.14%) Internet
6 1 (0.14%) LTE
6 1 (0.14%) Multicast
6 1 (0.14%) UWB
6 1 (0.14%) Wi-Fi
6 1 (0.14%) Wireless
6 1 (0.14%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 52 (7.19%) PostgreSQL
2 50 (6.92%) Amazon Athena
3 45 (6.22%) Apache Arrow
3 45 (6.22%) Apache Iceberg
3 45 (6.22%) Dremio
4 44 (6.09%) NoSQL
5 40 (5.53%) Data Lake
6 30 (4.15%) Apache Ignite
7 27 (3.73%) MongoDB
8 20 (2.77%) SQL Server
9 15 (2.07%) Apache Cassandra
10 14 (1.94%) Amazon RDS
10 14 (1.94%) Big Data
11 13 (1.80%) DynamoDB
12 11 (1.52%) MySQL
13 10 (1.38%) Relational Database
14 8 (1.11%) Elasticsearch
14 8 (1.11%) GIS
15 7 (0.97%) Hadoop
15 7 (0.97%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 73 (10.10%) Git
2 51 (7.05%) Jenkins
3 43 (5.95%) GitLab
4 40 (5.53%) JIRA
5 29 (4.01%) Eclipse
6 27 (3.73%) Visual Studio
7 21 (2.90%) Liquibase
8 18 (2.49%) Rational DOORS
9 10 (1.38%) Cypress.io
10 8 (1.11%) Artifactory
10 8 (1.11%) Rational Rhapsody
11 7 (0.97%) Gradle
11 7 (0.97%) JUnit
11 7 (0.97%) SonarQube
11 7 (0.97%) Valgrind
12 6 (0.83%) Selenium
13 5 (0.69%) Maven
13 5 (0.69%) Postman
14 4 (0.55%) PVCS
15 3 (0.41%) JMeter
General
1 170 (23.51%) Finance
2 133 (18.40%) Social Skills
3 83 (11.48%) Banking
4 80 (11.07%) Front Office
5 45 (6.22%) Investment Banking
6 42 (5.81%) Public Sector
7 36 (4.98%) Military
8 33 (4.56%) Analytical Skills
9 21 (2.90%) Aerospace
9 21 (2.90%) Electronics
10 19 (2.63%) Presentation Skills
11 17 (2.35%) Financial Institution
11 17 (2.35%) Law
12 9 (1.24%) Manufacturing
12 9 (1.24%) Pharmaceutical
13 8 (1.11%) Games
14 6 (0.83%) Automotive
14 6 (0.83%) Retail
15 5 (0.69%) Back Office
15 5 (0.69%) Influencing Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 129 (17.84%) React
2 120 (16.60%) Node.js
3 78 (10.79%) Kafka
4 72 (9.96%) .NET
5 57 (7.88%) REST
6 50 (6.92%) AngularJS
7 47 (6.50%) NumPy
7 47 (6.50%) SciPy
8 46 (6.36%) RESTful
9 45 (6.22%) Pandas
10 41 (5.67%) gRPC
11 32 (4.43%) Spring
11 32 (4.43%) Web Services
12 30 (4.15%) Protocol Buffers
13 27 (3.73%) JSON
14 26 (3.60%) Spring Boot
14 26 (3.60%) Vue
15 23 (3.18%) Redux
15 23 (3.18%) XML
16 22 (3.04%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 67 (9.27%) Fixed Income
2 64 (8.85%) Cloud Native
3 59 (8.16%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 52 (7.19%) Distributed Systems
5 51 (7.05%) Equities
6 33 (4.56%) Hedge funds
7 32 (4.43%) Derivative
8 30 (4.15%) Pricing Data
9 22 (3.04%) Algorithms
10 21 (2.90%) Public Cloud
11 17 (2.35%) Data Structures
12 15 (2.07%) Embedded Systems
13 13 (1.80%) Data Protection Act
13 13 (1.80%) Greenfield Project
13 13 (1.80%) Product Ownership
14 12 (1.66%) CUDA
15 11 (1.52%) PCIe
15 11 (1.52%) Self-Motivation
16 9 (1.24%) Virtual Reality
17 8 (1.11%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 132 (18.26%) Linux
2 64 (8.85%) Windows
3 20 (2.77%) Unix
4 19 (2.63%) Android
5 11 (1.52%) Apple iOS
6 9 (1.24%) Ubuntu
7 6 (0.83%) Windows Server
8 5 (0.69%) FreeRTOS
8 5 (0.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 3 (0.41%) Mac OS
10 1 (0.14%) Debian
10 1 (0.14%) Robot Operating System
10 1 (0.14%) Windows Embedded Compact
10 1 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
10 1 (0.14%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 715 (98.89%) Software Engineering
2 291 (40.25%) Agile
3 195 (26.97%) CI/CD
4 141 (19.50%) DevOps
5 129 (17.84%) Microservices
6 85 (11.76%) Containerisation
7 81 (11.20%) Infrastructure as Code
8 80 (11.07%) Problem-Solving
9 78 (10.79%) TDD
10 75 (10.37%) Test Automation
11 73 (10.10%) Full-Stack Development
12 65 (8.99%) Mentoring
12 65 (8.99%) Unit Testing
13 64 (8.85%) Investment Management
14 57 (7.88%) Continuous Integration
15 56 (7.75%) AI
16 55 (7.61%) Computer Science
17 54 (7.47%) Asset Management
18 53 (7.33%) Clean Code
19 50 (6.92%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 239 (33.06%) Python
2 197 (27.25%) Java
3 188 (26.00%) C++
4 176 (24.34%) JavaScript
5 143 (19.78%) TypeScript
6 133 (18.40%) C#
7 104 (14.38%) SQL
8 57 (7.88%) Go
9 54 (7.47%) C
10 30 (4.15%) Ada
11 15 (2.07%) PHP
12 14 (1.94%) Embedded C++
13 13 (1.80%) Embedded C
14 11 (1.52%) Bicep
14 11 (1.52%) MATLAB
15 10 (1.38%) PowerShell
15 10 (1.38%) Shell Script
16 8 (1.11%) Bash
17 7 (0.97%) Rust
18 6 (0.83%) R
Qualifications
1 123 (17.01%) Security Cleared
2 102 (14.11%) SC Cleared
3 75 (10.37%) Degree
4 37 (5.12%) Computer Science Degree
5 20 (2.77%) Master's Degree
6 16 (2.21%) DV Cleared
7 9 (1.24%) AWS Certification
8 8 (1.11%) BPSS Clearance
9 5 (0.69%) MCP
10 4 (0.55%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 4 (0.55%) Postgraduate
11 3 (0.41%) AWS Certified Developer
11 3 (0.41%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 1 (0.14%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (2.90%) QA
2 18 (2.49%) Def Stans
3 17 (2.35%) MISRA
4 11 (1.52%) IEC 61508
5 10 (1.38%) MISRA C
6 8 (1.11%) Data Quality
7 7 (0.97%) DO-178B
8 5 (0.69%) Software Quality Assurance
9 4 (0.55%) Accessibility
9 4 (0.55%) GDPR
9 4 (0.55%) HL7
10 3 (0.41%) WCAG
11 2 (0.28%) PMO
12 1 (0.14%) AUTOSAR
12 1 (0.14%) ISO 26262
System Software
1 134 (18.53%) Docker
2 10 (1.38%) Virtual Machines
3 8 (1.11%) Firmware
4 5 (0.69%) Active Directory
5 4 (0.55%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (0.14%) Embedded Firmware
6 1 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 107 (14.80%) Kubernetes
2 95 (13.14%) Terraform
3 27 (3.73%) Ansible
4 22 (3.04%) Prometheus
5 19 (2.63%) Grafana
6 6 (0.83%) Kibana
7 4 (0.55%) Argo
7 4 (0.55%) Podman
8 3 (0.41%) SELinux
9 2 (0.28%) Puppet
9 2 (0.28%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.14%) Bitnami
10 1 (0.14%) CA Endevor
10 1 (0.14%) Functional Safety
10 1 (0.14%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 48 (6.64%) Microsoft
2 26 (3.60%) Google
2 26 (3.60%) Oracle
3 19 (2.63%) Splunk
4 10 (1.38%) Temenos
5 9 (1.24%) Databricks
5 9 (1.24%) Red Hat
6 7 (0.97%) IBM
7 5 (0.69%) SAP
7 5 (0.69%) VMware
7 5 (0.69%) Workday
8 4 (0.55%) ANSYS
8 4 (0.55%) Brio
8 4 (0.55%) OpenAI
8 4 (0.55%) Salesforce
9 3 (0.41%) Atlassian
9 3 (0.41%) Foundry
9 3 (0.41%) NVIDIA
9 3 (0.41%) webMethods
10 2 (0.28%) Ping Identity
944 Software Engineer jobs in England