Software Engineer Contracts in England

Software Engineer
UK > England

The median Software Engineer daily rate in England is £603, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 124 80 138
Rank change year-on-year -44 +58 -17
Contract jobs requiring a Software Engineer 542 983 979
As % of all contract jobs advertised in England 2.23% 2.64% 1.94%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.40% 2.85% 2.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 364 521 642
10th Percentile £411 £450 £438
25th Percentile £480 £506 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £603 £638 £590
Median % change year-on-year -5.45% +8.05% -1.67%
75th Percentile £825 £750 £675
90th Percentile £875 £850 £750
UK median daily rate £600 £625 £590
% change year-on-year -4.00% +5.93% +2.61%
Number of hourly rates quoted 49 298 130
10th Percentile £52.40 £46.25 £44.96
25th Percentile £61.25 £52.50 £52.81
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £63.75
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -1.96% +11.84%
75th Percentile £68.00 £70.00 £70.23
90th Percentile £68.75 £80.00 £76.10
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £61.25
% change year-on-year +4.00% +2.04% +7.93%

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 22,549 34,488 47,741
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.59% 92.73% 94.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,007 22,894 33,903
10th Percentile £300 £275 £313
25th Percentile £409 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £638 £643 £663
90th Percentile £750 £750 £763
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -1.90% -2.78% +2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 900 2,432 1,409
10th Percentile £14.20 £13.00 £14.35
25th Percentile £18.51 £16.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £30.62 £36.31 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.67% -19.32% +100.00%
75th Percentile £63.75 £61.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £76.60
UK median hourly rate £29.00 £36.42 £45.00
% change year-on-year -20.37% -19.07% +91.49%

Software Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Job postings that featured Software Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in England.

Job vacancy trend for Software Engineer in England

Software Engineer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Software Engineer in England.

Daily rate trend for Software Engineer in England

Software Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Software Engineer in England over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Software Engineer in England

Software Engineer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Software Engineer in England.

Hourly rate trend for Software Engineer in England

Software Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Software Engineer in England over the 6 months to 1 May 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 1 May 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 -20 317 £675 - 1,032
South West +17 61 £600 +9.09% 208
South East -24 55 £575 +27.78% 556
North of England -25 55 £463 -11.90% 429
North West -21 38 £450 -17.88% 247
Midlands +35 22 £438 -16.67% 210
East of England -50 18 £583 +16.50% 266
Yorkshire +8 16 £480 +37.14% 115
East Midlands +17 10 £475 -17.39% 86
West Midlands +17 9 £450 -10.00% 109
North East -12 1 - - 70
Software Engineer
UK

Software Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England

For the 6 months to 1 May 2025, Software Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the England region featuring Software Engineer in the job title.

1 523 (96.49%) Software Engineering
2 272 (50.18%) Agile
3 242 (44.65%) AWS
4 231 (42.62%) Python
5 214 (39.48%) JavaScript
6 207 (38.19%) Finance
7 179 (33.03%) TypeScript
8 172 (31.73%) Java
9 149 (27.49%) React
10 144 (26.57%) Front Office
11 128 (23.62%) Fixed Income
12 122 (22.51%) Asset Management
13 121 (22.32%) CI/CD
14 118 (21.77%) GCP
15 113 (20.85%) Node.js
16 105 (19.37%) Security Cleared
17 97 (17.90%) Banking
17 97 (17.90%) Azure
18 93 (17.16%) Investment Management
19 90 (16.61%) SC Cleared
19 90 (16.61%) PostgreSQL
20 88 (16.24%) SQL
21 86 (15.87%) Fintech
22 84 (15.50%) C#
23 77 (14.21%) Test Automation
24 76 (14.02%) dbt
25 74 (13.65%) Linux
25 74 (13.65%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
26 73 (13.47%) Docker
26 73 (13.47%) DevOps

Software Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 72 (13.28%) Apache Airflow
2 65 (11.99%) Apache
3 24 (4.43%) Confluence
4 5 (0.92%) CMS
4 5 (0.92%) WordPress
5 4 (0.74%) Drupal
6 2 (0.37%) Apache Spark
6 2 (0.37%) BizTalk Server
6 2 (0.37%) Jupyter
7 1 (0.18%) CICS
7 1 (0.18%) Headless CMS
7 1 (0.18%) MQSeries
7 1 (0.18%) Tuxedo
7 1 (0.18%) WinCC
Applications
1 4 (0.74%) Simulink
2 1 (0.18%) CANalyzer
2 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.18%) Trello
Business Applications
1 11 (2.03%) BASE24
2 3 (0.55%) SAP ERP
2 3 (0.55%) SAP EWM
2 3 (0.55%) SAP GTS
2 3 (0.55%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.37%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.37%) FLEXCUBE
3 2 (0.37%) Misys Midas
3 2 (0.37%) Oracle BPM
4 1 (0.18%) LabWindows
4 1 (0.18%) Oracle TCA
4 1 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 242 (44.65%) AWS
2 118 (21.77%) GCP
3 97 (17.90%) Azure
4 76 (14.02%) dbt
5 45 (8.30%) Snowflake
6 31 (5.72%) Serverless
7 30 (5.54%) GitHub
8 26 (4.80%) Amazon EC2
8 26 (4.80%) Amazon ECS
9 25 (4.61%) Amazon EKS
9 25 (4.61%) AWS Lambda
10 23 (4.24%) GitHub Actions
11 17 (3.14%) Dagster
12 14 (2.58%) Azure Cosmos DB
13 12 (2.21%) AWS CloudFormation
14 11 (2.03%) Azure AKS
14 11 (2.03%) Azure Service Bus
15 10 (1.85%) Amazon S3
15 10 (1.85%) Apple Pay
15 10 (1.85%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 10 (1.85%) ATM
2 6 (1.11%) DNS
2 6 (1.11%) HTTP
2 6 (1.11%) TCP/IP
3 5 (0.92%) Ethernet
3 5 (0.92%) HTTPS
4 4 (0.74%) Internet
5 3 (0.55%) 3GPP
5 3 (0.55%) Network Security
5 3 (0.55%) Wireless
6 1 (0.18%) BGP
6 1 (0.18%) Firewall
6 1 (0.18%) HSRP
6 1 (0.18%) LAN
6 1 (0.18%) MQTT
6 1 (0.18%) SNMP
6 1 (0.18%) Software-Defined Networking
6 1 (0.18%) Software-Defined Radio
6 1 (0.18%) VPN
6 1 (0.18%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 90 (16.61%) PostgreSQL
2 73 (13.47%) Amazon Athena
3 72 (13.28%) Apache Arrow
3 72 (13.28%) Apache Iceberg
3 72 (13.28%) Dremio
4 40 (7.38%) Apache Ignite
5 31 (5.72%) SQL Server
6 30 (5.54%) Data Lake
7 27 (4.98%) Relational Database
8 18 (3.32%) MongoDB
9 17 (3.14%) MySQL
10 11 (2.03%) NoSQL
11 10 (1.85%) NonStop SQL
12 7 (1.29%) DynamoDB
12 7 (1.29%) Oracle Database
13 6 (1.11%) Oracle Database 11g
14 4 (0.74%) Amazon Redshift
14 4 (0.74%) Redis
15 3 (0.55%) Big Data
15 3 (0.55%) Impala
Development Applications
1 56 (10.33%) Jenkins
2 55 (10.15%) Git
3 54 (9.96%) JIRA
4 31 (5.72%) GitLab
5 26 (4.80%) Bitbucket
6 14 (2.58%) Cucumber
6 14 (2.58%) GoogleTest
6 14 (2.58%) JUnit
6 14 (2.58%) Rational DOORS
7 13 (2.40%) Eclipse
7 13 (2.40%) Selenium
8 11 (2.03%) SonarQube
8 11 (2.03%) Visual Studio
9 10 (1.85%) Gradle
9 10 (1.85%) Liquibase
9 10 (1.85%) Mockito
10 9 (1.66%) REST Assured
10 9 (1.66%) TestRail
11 7 (1.29%) Robot Framework
12 6 (1.11%) Cypress.io
General
1 207 (38.19%) Finance
2 144 (26.57%) Front Office
3 97 (17.90%) Banking
4 71 (13.10%) Social Skills
5 53 (9.78%) Investment Banking
6 32 (5.90%) Public Sector
7 30 (5.54%) Analytical Skills
8 15 (2.77%) Manufacturing
8 15 (2.77%) Telecoms
9 14 (2.58%) Electronics
9 14 (2.58%) Marketing
10 13 (2.40%) Aerospace
11 10 (1.85%) Law
11 10 (1.85%) Presentation Skills
12 9 (1.66%) Military
13 6 (1.11%) Automotive
13 6 (1.11%) Financial Institution
14 5 (0.92%) Multimedia
15 4 (0.74%) Advertising
15 4 (0.74%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 149 (27.49%) React
2 113 (20.85%) Node.js
3 66 (12.18%) NumPy
4 65 (11.99%) Pandas
5 64 (11.81%) Redux
6 62 (11.44%) .NET
6 62 (11.44%) AngularJS
7 57 (10.52%) SciPy
8 52 (9.59%) Vue
9 42 (7.75%) gRPC
10 40 (7.38%) Protocol Buffers
10 40 (7.38%) REST
11 34 (6.27%) PySpark
12 32 (5.90%) Kafka
13 31 (5.72%) Spring
13 31 (5.72%) Spring Boot
14 29 (5.35%) HTML
15 27 (4.98%) CSS
15 27 (4.98%) RESTful
16 22 (4.06%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 128 (23.62%) Fixed Income
2 74 (13.65%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 70 (12.92%) Equities
4 68 (12.55%) Hedge funds
5 47 (8.67%) Derivative
6 24 (4.43%) Greenfield Project
7 22 (4.06%) Algorithms
8 14 (2.58%) Product Ownership
9 13 (2.40%) Data Structures
9 13 (2.40%) Distributed Systems
10 12 (2.21%) Pricing Data
11 10 (1.85%) Cloud Native
12 6 (1.11%) Data Protection Act
12 6 (1.11%) Mobile App
13 5 (0.92%) Public Cloud
14 4 (0.74%) Legacy Code
14 4 (0.74%) NHS
14 4 (0.74%) PKI
14 4 (0.74%) Taxonomies
15 3 (0.55%) Equity Derivative
Operating Systems
1 74 (13.65%) Linux
2 17 (3.14%) Windows
3 7 (1.29%) Embedded Linux
3 7 (1.29%) Unix
4 5 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (0.55%) VxWorks
6 2 (0.37%) Android
6 2 (0.37%) Windows Server
7 1 (0.18%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.18%) FreeRTOS
7 1 (0.18%) Ubuntu
7 1 (0.18%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 523 (96.49%) Software Engineering
2 272 (50.18%) Agile
3 122 (22.51%) Asset Management
4 121 (22.32%) CI/CD
5 93 (17.16%) Investment Management
6 86 (15.87%) Fintech
7 77 (14.21%) Test Automation
8 73 (13.47%) DevOps
9 63 (11.62%) TDD
10 62 (11.44%) Problem-Solving
11 59 (10.89%) Microservices
12 55 (10.15%) Containerisation
13 51 (9.41%) Full-Stack Development
14 50 (9.23%) Scrum
15 49 (9.04%) User Experience
16 45 (8.30%) Continuous Integration
17 44 (8.12%) Migration
17 44 (8.12%) OO
18 33 (6.09%) Computer Science
19 32 (5.90%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 231 (42.62%) Python
2 214 (39.48%) JavaScript
3 179 (33.03%) TypeScript
4 172 (31.73%) Java
5 88 (16.24%) SQL
6 84 (15.50%) C#
7 67 (12.36%) C++
8 30 (5.54%) Ada
9 25 (4.61%) C
10 21 (3.87%) Go
11 16 (2.95%) Bash
12 13 (2.40%) PL/SQL
13 9 (1.66%) PowerShell
14 8 (1.48%) PHP
15 7 (1.29%) Rust
15 7 (1.29%) T-SQL
16 5 (0.92%) MATLAB
16 5 (0.92%) Scala
17 4 (0.74%) Bicep
17 4 (0.74%) Perl
Qualifications
1 105 (19.37%) Security Cleared
2 90 (16.61%) SC Cleared
3 40 (7.38%) Degree
4 29 (5.35%) Computer Science Degree
5 16 (2.95%) DV Cleared
6 10 (1.85%) Master's Degree
7 2 (0.37%) CCNP
7 2 (0.37%) Cisco Certification
7 2 (0.37%) OCA
7 2 (0.37%) Oracle Certification
7 2 (0.37%) RHCA
7 2 (0.37%) RHCE
7 2 (0.37%) SANS
7 2 (0.37%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 1 (0.18%) AWS Certification
8 1 (0.18%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 1 (0.18%) HND
8 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (3.32%) Def Stans
1 18 (3.32%) IEC 61508
2 13 (2.40%) MISRA
2 13 (2.40%) MISRA C
3 11 (2.03%) ISO 8583
4 10 (1.85%) PSD2
5 9 (1.66%) Accessibility
5 9 (1.66%) QA
6 8 (1.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 3 (0.55%) GDPR
8 2 (0.37%) DO-178B
8 2 (0.37%) Government Security Classifications
8 2 (0.37%) ISO 26262
9 1 (0.18%) GRC
9 1 (0.18%) HL7
9 1 (0.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 1 (0.18%) MiFID
9 1 (0.18%) NIST
9 1 (0.18%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 73 (13.47%) Docker
2 3 (0.55%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (0.18%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.18%) Firmware
3 1 (0.18%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 67 (12.36%) Kubernetes
2 44 (8.12%) Terraform
3 23 (4.24%) Ansible
4 8 (1.48%) Grafana
5 7 (1.29%) Podman
6 6 (1.11%) Docker Swarm
6 6 (1.11%) Prometheus
7 5 (0.92%) Single Sign-On
8 3 (0.55%) Puppet
8 3 (0.55%) WMI
9 2 (0.37%) Progress Chef
9 2 (0.37%) vCenter Server
10 1 (0.18%) Argo
10 1 (0.18%) CA Endevor
10 1 (0.18%) Functional Safety
10 1 (0.18%) Istio
10 1 (0.18%) PowerCLI
Vendors
1 29 (5.35%) Oracle
2 25 (4.61%) Google
3 21 (3.87%) Microsoft
4 16 (2.95%) Atlassian
5 15 (2.77%) SAP
6 10 (1.85%) HP
7 8 (1.48%) Intel
8 6 (1.11%) Databricks
9 5 (0.92%) ForgeRock
10 4 (0.74%) Ping Identity
10 4 (0.74%) Zend
11 3 (0.55%) CA Agile Central
11 3 (0.55%) Cisco
11 3 (0.55%) IBM
11 3 (0.55%) Red Hat
11 3 (0.55%) Veracode
11 3 (0.55%) Virgin Media
11 3 (0.55%) VMware
11 3 (0.55%) Wind River
12 2 (0.37%) Perforce