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 June 2026.

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

6 months to
17 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 89 138 65
Rank change year-on-year +49 -73 +74
Contract jobs requiring a Software Engineer 1,191 503 1,174
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.77% 2.03% 3.13%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.00% 2.20% 3.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 520 356 588
10th Percentile £400 £412 £450
25th Percentile £463 £475 £506
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £625 £630
Median % change year-on-year -12.00% -0.79% +5.00%
75th Percentile £688 £825 £788
90th Percentile £788 £875 £850
UK median daily rate £550 £600 £625
% change year-on-year -8.33% -4.00% +4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 367 33 365
10th Percentile £52.50 £46.01 £46.25
25th Percentile £60.50 £59.00 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £83.60 £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 39,651 22,840 34,791
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.36% 92.32% 92.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,409 15,016 22,678
10th Percentile £325 £293 £288
25th Percentile £415 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.46% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £635 £638
90th Percentile £731 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £515 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,798 1,018 2,675
10th Percentile £15.93 £14.00 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.35 £18.13 £16.58
Median hourly rate £45.00 £28.75 £39.55
Median % change year-on-year +56.52% -27.31% -12.11%
75th Percentile £67.50 £58.75 £62.83
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £74.00
UK median hourly rate £43.61 £27.45 £37.50
% change year-on-year +58.85% -26.80% -16.67%

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 June 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 June 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 June 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 -32 355 £613 -12.50% 501
South West +75 280 £550 -11.11% 240
North of England +31 189 £500 +11.11% 395
South East +28 155 £550 +1.85% 436
East of England +51 141 £500 +3.09% 310
North West +18 112 £540 +20.00% 214
Yorkshire -17 54 £500 +5.26% 98
Midlands -27 46 £450 -2.70% 208
West Midlands -24 36 £450 -7.69% 104
North East -8 25 £400 - 83
East Midlands -19 10 £473 -0.53% 104
Software Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 17 June 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 1,174 (98.57%) Software Engineering
2 319 (26.78%) Java
3 305 (25.61%) Agile
4 281 (23.59%) Security Cleared
5 271 (22.75%) CI/CD
6 267 (22.42%) AWS
7 226 (18.98%) Python
8 223 (18.72%) SC Cleared
9 174 (14.61%) C++
10 171 (14.36%) C#
11 160 (13.43%) TypeScript
12 156 (13.10%) React
13 138 (11.59%) JavaScript
14 135 (11.34%) SQL
15 132 (11.08%) Microservices
16 131 (11.00%) DevOps
17 130 (10.92%) Docker
18 129 (10.83%) Full-Stack Development
19 124 (10.41%) Kubernetes
20 120 (10.08%) Azure
21 116 (9.74%) AI
21 116 (9.74%) Linux
22 108 (9.07%) Ada
23 103 (8.65%) .NET
24 99 (8.31%) Test Automation
25 97 (8.14%) Kafka
26 94 (7.89%) Node.js
27 89 (7.47%) Git
28 88 (7.39%) Spring
28 88 (7.39%) Spring Boot

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 14 (1.18%) Apache Spark
1 14 (1.18%) Confluence
2 13 (1.09%) Apache
3 3 (0.25%) Apache Airflow
3 3 (0.25%) nginx
3 3 (0.25%) Tomcat
4 2 (0.17%) Camunda
4 2 (0.17%) MQSeries
4 2 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
4 2 (0.17%) SAS
4 2 (0.17%) WebLogic
4 2 (0.17%) WinCC
5 1 (0.084%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.084%) Apache Synapse
5 1 (0.084%) CMS
5 1 (0.084%) IIS
5 1 (0.084%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (0.084%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.084%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 2 (0.17%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (0.17%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 3 (0.25%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.17%) LabWindows
Cloud Services
1 267 (22.42%) AWS
2 120 (10.08%) Azure
3 65 (5.46%) GCP
4 55 (4.62%) GitHub
4 55 (4.62%) Serverless
5 33 (2.77%) AWS Lambda
6 27 (2.27%) Amazon S3
7 26 (2.18%) OpenShift
8 22 (1.85%) Amazon EC2
9 21 (1.76%) GitHub Actions
10 19 (1.60%) Azure DevOps
11 17 (1.43%) Amazon ECS
12 16 (1.34%) Amazon SQS
13 13 (1.09%) Power Platform
14 12 (1.01%) Amazon EKS
15 11 (0.92%) AWS CloudFormation
15 11 (0.92%) SaaS
16 10 (0.84%) Azure Functions
17 9 (0.76%) Anthropic Claude
18 8 (0.67%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 32 (2.69%) Software-Defined Radio
2 21 (1.76%) Wireless
3 19 (1.60%) Ethernet
4 14 (1.18%) TCP/IP
5 12 (1.01%) HTTP
6 9 (0.76%) 3GPP
7 7 (0.59%) Firewall
7 7 (0.59%) RTP
8 6 (0.50%) Wireshark
9 5 (0.42%) VPN
10 3 (0.25%) Internet
11 2 (0.17%) DNS
12 1 (0.084%) BGP
12 1 (0.084%) Bluetooth
12 1 (0.084%) HTTPS
12 1 (0.084%) Modbus
12 1 (0.084%) Network Security
12 1 (0.084%) RTCP
12 1 (0.084%) VLAN
12 1 (0.084%) XCAP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 71 (5.96%) PostgreSQL
2 41 (3.44%) Relational Database
3 33 (2.77%) SQL Server
4 23 (1.93%) NoSQL
5 19 (1.60%) Apache Cassandra
6 18 (1.51%) Amazon RDS
6 18 (1.51%) MongoDB
7 17 (1.43%) DynamoDB
7 17 (1.43%) MySQL
8 12 (1.01%) Elasticsearch
9 10 (0.84%) Data Lake
10 9 (0.76%) Metadata
10 9 (0.76%) Power BI
11 8 (0.67%) Amazon Athena
12 7 (0.59%) Hadoop
13 6 (0.50%) Mixpanel
14 5 (0.42%) Amazon Aurora
14 5 (0.42%) Azure SQL Database
14 5 (0.42%) BigQuery
15 4 (0.34%) Redis
Development Applications
1 89 (7.47%) Git
2 57 (4.79%) Jenkins
3 48 (4.03%) GitLab
4 35 (2.94%) JIRA
5 24 (2.02%) JUnit
6 22 (1.85%) Gradle
7 20 (1.68%) Rational DOORS
7 20 (1.68%) Rational Rhapsody
7 20 (1.68%) Visual Studio
8 18 (1.51%) SonarQube
9 15 (1.26%) IntelliJ
10 13 (1.09%) Mockito
11 11 (0.92%) Cucumber
11 11 (0.92%) Eclipse
11 11 (0.92%) Liquibase
12 10 (0.84%) Selenium
13 9 (0.76%) Bitbucket
13 9 (0.76%) Maven
14 7 (0.59%) Cypress.io
14 7 (0.59%) LabVIEW
General
1 155 (13.01%) Finance
2 97 (8.14%) Social Skills
3 65 (5.46%) Aerospace
4 53 (4.45%) Front Office
5 46 (3.86%) Banking
6 39 (3.27%) Public Sector
7 32 (2.69%) Analytical Skills
8 30 (2.52%) Law
9 26 (2.18%) Manufacturing
10 17 (1.43%) Aviation
11 16 (1.34%) Retail
12 14 (1.18%) Automotive
13 13 (1.09%) Military
14 11 (0.92%) Investment Banking
15 8 (0.67%) Electronics
16 7 (0.59%) Back Office
16 7 (0.59%) Telecoms
17 6 (0.50%) Influencing Skills
18 5 (0.42%) Police
18 5 (0.42%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 156 (13.10%) React
2 103 (8.65%) .NET
3 97 (8.14%) Kafka
4 94 (7.89%) Node.js
5 88 (7.39%) Spring
5 88 (7.39%) Spring Boot
6 67 (5.63%) REST
7 57 (4.79%) AngularJS
8 52 (4.37%) Redux
9 48 (4.03%) GraphQL
10 39 (3.27%) RESTful
11 26 (2.18%) Next.js
12 24 (2.02%) Middleware
13 23 (1.93%) CSS
14 21 (1.76%) HTML
15 17 (1.43%) FastAPI
16 16 (1.34%) Vue
16 16 (1.34%) Web Services
17 15 (1.26%) Qt
17 15 (1.26%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 101 (8.48%) Cloud Native
2 69 (5.79%) Distributed Systems
3 62 (5.21%) Algorithms
4 56 (4.70%) Fixed Income
5 34 (2.85%) Product Ownership
6 27 (2.27%) Embedded Systems
7 21 (1.76%) Derivative
8 20 (1.68%) AI Agents
9 19 (1.60%) Legacy Systems
10 16 (1.34%) Onboarding
11 15 (1.26%) Equities
11 15 (1.26%) Self-Motivation
12 13 (1.09%) Robotics
13 12 (1.01%) Data Protection Act
14 10 (0.84%) FPGA
14 10 (0.84%) Greenfield Project
15 8 (0.67%) Data Centre
15 8 (0.67%) Data Structures
15 8 (0.67%) Device Driver
15 8 (0.67%) PCIe
Operating Systems
1 116 (9.74%) Linux
2 42 (3.53%) Windows
3 16 (1.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 15 (1.26%) Embedded Linux
4 15 (1.26%) Unix
5 11 (0.92%) FreeRTOS
6 9 (0.76%) Apple iOS
7 6 (0.50%) Windows Server
8 4 (0.34%) Android
8 4 (0.34%) Debian
8 4 (0.34%) Rocky
8 4 (0.34%) Ubuntu
9 3 (0.25%) Solaris
9 3 (0.25%) Windows Server 2008
9 3 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
10 2 (0.17%) VxWorks
11 1 (0.084%) Robot Operating System
11 1 (0.084%) Tizen
11 1 (0.084%) VMS
11 1 (0.084%) webOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,174 (98.57%) Software Engineering
2 305 (25.61%) Agile
3 271 (22.75%) CI/CD
4 132 (11.08%) Microservices
5 131 (11.00%) DevOps
6 129 (10.83%) Full-Stack Development
7 116 (9.74%) AI
8 99 (8.31%) Test Automation
9 84 (7.05%) Problem-Solving
10 80 (6.72%) TDD
11 72 (6.05%) Containerisation
12 65 (5.46%) Infrastructure as Code
12 65 (5.46%) SDLC
13 62 (5.21%) Machine Learning
14 59 (4.95%) Mentoring
15 57 (4.79%) Continuous Improvement
15 57 (4.79%) Scrum
16 54 (4.53%) Software Testing
17 50 (4.20%) Unit Testing
18 49 (4.11%) Investment Management
Programming Languages
1 319 (26.78%) Java
2 226 (18.98%) Python
3 174 (14.61%) C++
4 171 (14.36%) C#
5 160 (13.43%) TypeScript
6 138 (11.59%) JavaScript
7 135 (11.34%) SQL
8 108 (9.07%) Ada
9 80 (6.72%) Go
10 76 (6.38%) C
11 28 (2.35%) Kotlin
12 25 (2.10%) Embedded C
13 22 (1.85%) MATLAB
14 21 (1.76%) Rust
15 20 (1.68%) PowerShell
16 16 (1.34%) PL/SQL
17 11 (0.92%) Bash
17 11 (0.92%) PHP
18 9 (0.76%) Embedded C++
19 7 (0.59%) Scala
Qualifications
1 281 (23.59%) Security Cleared
2 223 (18.72%) SC Cleared
3 52 (4.37%) Degree
4 38 (3.19%) DV Cleared
5 22 (1.85%) Computer Science Degree
6 16 (1.34%) BPSS Clearance
7 8 (0.67%) AWS Certification
7 8 (0.67%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 5 (0.42%) ISTQB
8 5 (0.42%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 3 (0.25%) Chartered Engineer
10 2 (0.17%) CCNP
10 2 (0.17%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (0.17%) HNC
10 2 (0.17%) HND
11 1 (0.084%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 1 (0.084%) OCA
11 1 (0.084%) Oracle Certification
11 1 (0.084%) PhD
11 1 (0.084%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 41 (3.44%) QA
2 27 (2.27%) IEC 61508
3 26 (2.18%) Def Stans
4 14 (1.18%) MISRA
5 13 (1.09%) Data Quality
6 11 (0.92%) GDPR
6 11 (0.92%) MISRA C
7 9 (0.76%) Accessibility
8 5 (0.42%) WCAG
9 4 (0.34%) NCSC
9 4 (0.34%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 3 (0.25%) DO-178B
11 2 (0.17%) HL7
11 2 (0.17%) ISO 26262
12 1 (0.084%) DICOM
12 1 (0.084%) FATCA
12 1 (0.084%) ISO/IEC 27001
12 1 (0.084%) NIST
System Software
1 130 (10.92%) Docker
2 13 (1.09%) Firmware
3 5 (0.42%) Embedded Firmware
3 5 (0.42%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
5 3 (0.25%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.17%) HDFS
7 1 (0.084%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 124 (10.41%) Kubernetes
2 70 (5.88%) Terraform
3 22 (1.85%) Grafana
4 18 (1.51%) Ansible
5 13 (1.09%) Argo
6 7 (0.59%) Prometheus
7 4 (0.34%) Control-M
7 4 (0.34%) Data Guard
8 3 (0.25%) Functional Safety
8 3 (0.25%) Single Sign-On
9 2 (0.17%) Cilium
9 2 (0.17%) HAProxy
9 2 (0.17%) Progress Chef
9 2 (0.17%) Puppet
10 1 (0.084%) CA Endevor
Vendors
1 35 (2.94%) Microsoft
2 29 (2.43%) Oracle
2 29 (2.43%) Red Hat
3 23 (1.93%) Google
4 16 (1.34%) IBM
5 14 (1.18%) Databricks
6 10 (0.84%) MathWorks
7 7 (0.59%) Splunk
8 6 (0.50%) SAP
8 6 (0.50%) Siemens
8 6 (0.50%) Spotify
9 5 (0.42%) OpenAI
9 5 (0.42%) VMware
10 4 (0.34%) Atlassian
10 4 (0.34%) Checkmarx
10 4 (0.34%) Sybase
11 3 (0.25%) ANSYS
11 3 (0.25%) Informatica
11 3 (0.25%) Talend
12 2 (0.17%) Ariba