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 17 February 2026.

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

 6 months to
17 Feb 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 102 123 103
Rank change year-on-year +21 -20 +28
Contract jobs requiring a Software Engineer 887 572 857
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.59% 2.23% 2.26%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.82% 2.40% 2.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 386 349 439
10th Percentile £400 £412 £425
25th Percentile £463 £500 £486
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £625
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% -4.00% +5.93%
75th Percentile £688 £713 £725
90th Percentile £800 £850 £788
UK median daily rate £550 £600 £613
% change year-on-year -8.33% -2.04% +4.39%
Number of hourly rates quoted 284 57 262
10th Percentile £51.25 £52.00 £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 £68.19 £68.00 £68.44
90th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £77.70
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 31,465 23,850 35,291
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.75% 93.03% 93.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,965 14,903 23,634
10th Percentile £302 £294 £275
25th Percentile £409 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.29% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £643
90th Percentile £725 £750 £747
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,017 693 2,141
10th Percentile £15.00 £16.25 £13.19
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.50 £16.54
Median hourly rate £31.65 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.57% - -12.01%
75th Percentile £63.75 £65.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £73.41 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £34.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -11.76% -2.86% -6.67%

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 17 February 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 17 February 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 17 February 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 -23 307 £625 - 249
South West +5 167 £500 -14.16% 132
North of England +22 152 £531 +11.79% 145
East of England +38 119 £525 -9.87% 79
North West +16 76 £550 +22.22% 91
South East -7 72 £550 +7.32% 182
Yorkshire -8 58 £525 +3.70% 33
Midlands -33 38 £500 +8.11% 82
West Midlands -23 33 £525 +10.53% 40
North East +2 20 £550 - 21
East Midlands -22 5 £475 -3.06% 42
Software Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 17 February 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.

1 877 (98.87%) Software Engineering
2 256 (28.86%) Agile
3 252 (28.41%) AWS
4 221 (24.92%) Python
5 208 (23.45%) CI/CD
6 204 (23.00%) Java
7 193 (21.76%) Security Cleared
8 188 (21.20%) C++
9 145 (16.35%) SC Cleared
10 144 (16.23%) DevOps
11 140 (15.78%) JavaScript
12 136 (15.33%) Docker
13 134 (15.11%) Kubernetes
14 133 (14.99%) Microservices
15 127 (14.32%) React
15 127 (14.32%) TypeScript
16 123 (13.87%) Linux
17 117 (13.19%) C#
18 104 (11.72%) SQL
19 101 (11.39%) Terraform
20 97 (10.94%) Azure
21 92 (10.37%) Problem-Solving
22 90 (10.15%) Full-Stack Development
23 86 (9.70%) AI
24 84 (9.47%) Containerisation
24 84 (9.47%) GCP
24 84 (9.47%) Kafka
25 83 (9.36%) Node.js
26 82 (9.24%) Test Automation
27 81 (9.13%) 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 28 (3.16%) Apache
2 15 (1.69%) Apache Spark
3 12 (1.35%) Confluence
4 10 (1.13%) Apache Airflow
5 5 (0.56%) WebLogic
6 4 (0.45%) SAS
7 3 (0.34%) IIS
8 2 (0.23%) Camunda
8 2 (0.23%) JBoss
9 1 (0.11%) Apache Synapse
9 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Exchange
9 1 (0.11%) nginx
9 1 (0.11%) Smallworld
9 1 (0.11%) Tomcat
9 1 (0.11%) WinCC
Applications
1 4 (0.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.11%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.11%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.11%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 2 (0.23%) LabWindows
2 1 (0.11%) Aladdin
2 1 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 252 (28.41%) AWS
2 97 (10.94%) Azure
3 84 (9.47%) GCP
4 78 (8.79%) Serverless
5 49 (5.52%) GitHub
6 36 (4.06%) AWS Lambda
7 26 (2.93%) Amazon S3
8 25 (2.82%) Amazon ECS
8 25 (2.82%) GitHub Actions
9 24 (2.71%) Azure DevOps
10 21 (2.37%) Amazon EC2
11 18 (2.03%) AWS CloudFormation
12 17 (1.92%) Amazon SQS
13 16 (1.80%) Amazon EKS
14 14 (1.58%) OpenShift
15 11 (1.24%) Cloud Computing
15 11 (1.24%) Power Platform
16 10 (1.13%) Azure Functions
16 10 (1.13%) Cloud Run
16 10 (1.13%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 15 (1.69%) Ethernet
2 7 (0.79%) TCP/IP
3 5 (0.56%) Firewall
3 5 (0.56%) Software-Defined Radio
4 4 (0.45%) 3GPP
4 4 (0.45%) BGP
4 4 (0.45%) Network Security
4 4 (0.45%) VLAN
5 3 (0.34%) HTTP
5 3 (0.34%) NFC
5 3 (0.34%) PPP
5 3 (0.34%) Software-Defined Networking
6 2 (0.23%) Modbus
6 2 (0.23%) Wireless
7 1 (0.11%) FTP
7 1 (0.11%) LTE
7 1 (0.11%) Multicast
7 1 (0.11%) Profibus
7 1 (0.11%) VPN
7 1 (0.11%) XCAP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 53 (5.98%) PostgreSQL
2 39 (4.40%) NoSQL
3 30 (3.38%) MongoDB
4 28 (3.16%) Apache Cassandra
5 24 (2.71%) SQL Server
6 23 (2.59%) Data Lake
7 22 (2.48%) Amazon RDS
8 21 (2.37%) Amazon Athena
9 18 (2.03%) MySQL
10 16 (1.80%) Relational Database
11 13 (1.47%) Metadata
12 12 (1.35%) Mixpanel
13 11 (1.24%) DynamoDB
13 11 (1.24%) Power BI
14 10 (1.13%) Apache Arrow
14 10 (1.13%) Apache Iceberg
14 10 (1.13%) Dremio
15 9 (1.01%) BigQuery
16 8 (0.90%) Amazon Aurora
16 8 (0.90%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 75 (8.46%) Git
2 53 (5.98%) GitLab
3 43 (4.85%) Jenkins
4 40 (4.51%) JIRA
5 24 (2.71%) Rational DOORS
6 19 (2.14%) Liquibase
7 18 (2.03%) Gradle
8 17 (1.92%) Rational Rhapsody
9 14 (1.58%) Cypress.io
9 14 (1.58%) IntelliJ
10 12 (1.35%) Eclipse
10 12 (1.35%) Visual Studio
11 10 (1.13%) Cucumber
12 9 (1.01%) Selenium
12 9 (1.01%) SonarQube
13 8 (0.90%) Maven
13 8 (0.90%) Postman
13 8 (0.90%) PVCS
14 7 (0.79%) JUnit
14 7 (0.79%) Oracle APEX
General
1 122 (13.75%) Finance
2 113 (12.74%) Social Skills
3 46 (5.19%) Public Sector
4 45 (5.07%) Banking
5 40 (4.51%) Aerospace
6 39 (4.40%) Front Office
7 38 (4.28%) Analytical Skills
8 34 (3.83%) Electronics
9 22 (2.48%) Law
10 20 (2.25%) Military
11 17 (1.92%) Financial Institution
11 17 (1.92%) Manufacturing
12 13 (1.47%) Investment Banking
13 11 (1.24%) Influencing Skills
14 10 (1.13%) Retail
15 8 (0.90%) Pharmaceutical
16 6 (0.68%) Automotive
16 6 (0.68%) Presentation Skills
17 5 (0.56%) Health Technology
17 5 (0.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 127 (14.32%) React
2 84 (9.47%) Kafka
3 83 (9.36%) Node.js
4 68 (7.67%) .NET
4 68 (7.67%) REST
5 55 (6.20%) RESTful
6 52 (5.86%) Spring
7 51 (5.75%) Spring Boot
8 45 (5.07%) AngularJS
9 32 (3.61%) Middleware
10 28 (3.16%) GraphQL
10 28 (3.16%) gRPC
11 26 (2.93%) Redux
12 24 (2.71%) Qt
13 23 (2.59%) CSS
14 21 (2.37%) JSON
15 20 (2.25%) HTML
15 20 (2.25%) XML
16 18 (2.03%) Elastic Stack
16 18 (2.03%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 79 (8.91%) Cloud Native
2 58 (6.54%) Distributed Systems
3 41 (4.62%) Algorithms
4 35 (3.95%) Fixed Income
5 26 (2.93%) Product Ownership
6 20 (2.25%) Public Cloud
7 19 (2.14%) Equities
8 18 (2.03%) Greenfield Project
9 17 (1.92%) Embedded Systems
10 15 (1.69%) Data Protection Act
11 14 (1.58%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 14 (1.58%) Legacy Systems
12 13 (1.47%) Derivative
12 13 (1.47%) Life Science
12 13 (1.47%) Mobile App
13 11 (1.24%) AI Agents
14 10 (1.13%) Data Structures
14 10 (1.13%) Onboarding
15 9 (1.01%) Robotics
16 8 (0.90%) CUDA
Operating Systems
1 123 (13.87%) Linux
2 56 (6.31%) Windows
3 24 (2.71%) Unix
4 16 (1.80%) Apple iOS
5 13 (1.47%) Android
6 11 (1.24%) Windows Server
7 9 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 6 (0.68%) Ubuntu
9 5 (0.56%) FreeRTOS
10 2 (0.23%) Debian
10 2 (0.23%) Embedded Linux
10 2 (0.23%) Robot Operating System
11 1 (0.11%) Mac OS
11 1 (0.11%) Rocky
11 1 (0.11%) Solaris
11 1 (0.11%) VMS
11 1 (0.11%) Windows Embedded Compact
11 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
11 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 877 (98.87%) Software Engineering
2 256 (28.86%) Agile
3 208 (23.45%) CI/CD
4 144 (16.23%) DevOps
5 133 (14.99%) Microservices
6 92 (10.37%) Problem-Solving
7 90 (10.15%) Full-Stack Development
8 86 (9.70%) AI
9 84 (9.47%) Containerisation
10 82 (9.24%) Test Automation
11 76 (8.57%) Infrastructure as Code
12 71 (8.00%) Mentoring
13 67 (7.55%) TDD
14 59 (6.65%) Clean Code
15 57 (6.43%) Machine Learning
16 52 (5.86%) Computer Science
17 51 (5.75%) Continuous Improvement
18 48 (5.41%) Software Testing
18 48 (5.41%) Validation
19 46 (5.19%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 221 (24.92%) Python
2 204 (23.00%) Java
3 188 (21.20%) C++
4 140 (15.78%) JavaScript
5 127 (14.32%) TypeScript
6 117 (13.19%) C#
7 104 (11.72%) SQL
8 80 (9.02%) Go
9 76 (8.57%) Ada
10 74 (8.34%) C
11 23 (2.59%) Embedded C++
12 22 (2.48%) Embedded C
13 20 (2.25%) Kotlin
13 20 (2.25%) Rust
14 18 (2.03%) PowerShell
15 16 (1.80%) MATLAB
16 11 (1.24%) Shell Script
17 10 (1.13%) Bash
17 10 (1.13%) Swift
18 8 (0.90%) Perl
Qualifications
1 193 (21.76%) Security Cleared
2 145 (16.35%) SC Cleared
3 81 (9.13%) Degree
4 40 (4.51%) Computer Science Degree
5 28 (3.16%) DV Cleared
6 18 (2.03%) Master's Degree
7 11 (1.24%) AWS Certification
8 8 (0.90%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 6 (0.68%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (0.34%) AWS Certified Developer
10 3 (0.34%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 3 (0.34%) Postgraduate
11 2 (0.23%) CCNA
11 2 (0.23%) Cisco Certification
12 1 (0.11%) Azure Certification
12 1 (0.11%) CCDP
12 1 (0.11%) CCNP
12 1 (0.11%) HNC
12 1 (0.11%) HND
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 38 (4.28%) Def Stans
2 29 (3.27%) MISRA
2 29 (3.27%) QA
3 28 (3.16%) IEC 61508
4 19 (2.14%) MISRA C
5 16 (1.80%) Data Quality
6 10 (1.13%) DO-178B
7 8 (0.90%) Accessibility
7 8 (0.90%) GDPR
8 6 (0.68%) HL7
9 2 (0.23%) NCSC
9 2 (0.23%) Software Quality Assurance
10 1 (0.11%) AUTOSAR
10 1 (0.11%) DICOM
10 1 (0.11%) ISO 26262
10 1 (0.11%) NIST
System Software
1 136 (15.33%) Docker
2 14 (1.58%) Firmware
2 14 (1.58%) Virtual Machines
3 9 (1.01%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (0.45%) Active Directory
4 4 (0.45%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 134 (15.11%) Kubernetes
2 101 (11.39%) Terraform
3 35 (3.95%) Grafana
4 27 (3.04%) Ansible
5 20 (2.25%) Prometheus
6 7 (0.79%) Argo
7 4 (0.45%) Data Guard
7 4 (0.45%) Single Sign-On
8 2 (0.23%) Functional Safety
8 2 (0.23%) Kibana
8 2 (0.23%) Puppet
9 1 (0.11%) Podman
Vendors
1 30 (3.38%) Google
1 30 (3.38%) Microsoft
2 28 (3.16%) Red Hat
3 24 (2.71%) Oracle
4 22 (2.48%) Databricks
5 21 (2.37%) Splunk
6 16 (1.80%) IBM
7 9 (1.01%) VMware
8 8 (0.90%) ANSYS
9 7 (0.79%) Siemens
9 7 (0.79%) Spotify
10 5 (0.56%) MathWorks
11 4 (0.45%) Brio
12 3 (0.34%) Atlassian
13 2 (0.23%) Adobe
13 2 (0.23%) Cisco
13 2 (0.23%) NVIDIA
13 2 (0.23%) OpenAI
13 2 (0.23%) Sybase
13 2 (0.23%) webMethods
830 Software Engineer jobs in England