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 28 February 2026.

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

 6 months to
28 Feb 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 95 121 95
Rank change year-on-year +26 -26 +37
Contract jobs requiring a Software Engineer 934 561 867
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.63% 2.18% 2.29%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.86% 2.35% 2.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 405 353 455
10th Percentile £400 £413 £425
25th Percentile £463 £500 £481
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 £875 £788
UK median daily rate £550 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -8.33% - +2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 300 60 255
10th Percentile £52.38 £50.88 £46.25
25th Percentile £61.25 £60.69 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year - +4.00% -3.85%
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.00 £67.26
90th Percentile £70.07 £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 32,663 23,861 35,129
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.93% 92.91% 92.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,724 15,180 23,561
10th Percentile £306 £300 £270
25th Percentile £412 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £640
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 2,100 745 2,165
10th Percentile £15.18 £16.24 £13.23
25th Percentile £19.00 £22.00 £16.30
Median hourly rate £35.00 £36.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.78% +2.86% -12.50%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.40 £71.90
UK median hourly rate £33.50 £34.75 £35.00
% change year-on-year -3.60% -0.71% -12.50%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 -25 308 £625 - 224
South West +14 191 £500 -14.16% 95
North of England +21 156 £550 +15.79% 90
East of England +45 123 £525 -9.87% 65
North West +14 84 £550 +22.22% 48
South East -15 77 £550 -4.35% 147
Yorkshire -24 52 £525 +5.00% 30
Midlands -30 44 £500 +5.26% 51
West Midlands -21 36 £502 +5.58% 21
North East +4 22 £550 - 12
East Midlands -20 8 £475 -1.55% 30
Software Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 28 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.

1 924 (98.93%) Software Engineering
2 279 (29.87%) Agile
3 259 (27.73%) AWS
4 231 (24.73%) Python
5 224 (23.98%) CI/CD
6 221 (23.66%) Java
7 217 (23.23%) Security Cleared
8 194 (20.77%) C++
9 166 (17.77%) SC Cleared
10 153 (16.38%) JavaScript
11 150 (16.06%) DevOps
12 142 (15.20%) TypeScript
13 138 (14.78%) Docker
14 137 (14.67%) React
15 136 (14.56%) Linux
16 135 (14.45%) Kubernetes
16 135 (14.45%) Microservices
17 125 (13.38%) C#
18 111 (11.88%) SQL
19 105 (11.24%) Azure
20 103 (11.03%) Terraform
21 99 (10.60%) Node.js
22 96 (10.28%) Problem-Solving
23 93 (9.96%) Full-Stack Development
24 91 (9.74%) Kafka
25 90 (9.64%) Ada
25 90 (9.64%) Go
26 89 (9.53%) AI
27 86 (9.21%) GCP
28 85 (9.10%) 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 (2.89%) Apache
2 16 (1.71%) Confluence
3 15 (1.61%) Apache Spark
4 6 (0.64%) Apache Airflow
4 6 (0.64%) SAS
5 5 (0.54%) WebLogic
6 3 (0.32%) IIS
7 2 (0.21%) Camunda
7 2 (0.21%) JBoss
7 2 (0.21%) nginx
7 2 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
7 2 (0.21%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.21%) WinCC
8 1 (0.11%) Apache Synapse
8 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Exchange
8 1 (0.11%) Smallworld
Applications
1 4 (0.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.11%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.11%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.11%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 2 (0.21%) LabWindows
2 1 (0.11%) Aladdin
2 1 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 259 (27.73%) AWS
2 105 (11.24%) Azure
3 86 (9.21%) GCP
4 74 (7.92%) Serverless
5 48 (5.14%) GitHub
6 30 (3.21%) AWS Lambda
7 26 (2.78%) GitHub Actions
8 25 (2.68%) Amazon S3
8 25 (2.68%) Azure DevOps
9 20 (2.14%) Amazon ECS
10 19 (2.03%) Amazon EC2
11 17 (1.82%) AWS CloudFormation
12 16 (1.71%) Amazon EKS
12 16 (1.71%) Amazon SQS
13 15 (1.61%) OpenShift
13 15 (1.61%) Power Platform
14 13 (1.39%) Azure Functions
15 11 (1.18%) Cloud Computing
16 10 (1.07%) Cloud Run
17 9 (0.96%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 19 (2.03%) Ethernet
2 13 (1.39%) TCP/IP
3 5 (0.54%) Firewall
3 5 (0.54%) Software-Defined Radio
4 4 (0.43%) 3GPP
4 4 (0.43%) BGP
4 4 (0.43%) Network Security
4 4 (0.43%) VLAN
5 3 (0.32%) HTTP
5 3 (0.32%) NFC
5 3 (0.32%) PPP
5 3 (0.32%) Software-Defined Networking
6 2 (0.21%) Modbus
6 2 (0.21%) Wireless
7 1 (0.11%) DNS
7 1 (0.11%) HTTPS
7 1 (0.11%) LTE
7 1 (0.11%) Multicast
7 1 (0.11%) Profibus
7 1 (0.11%) XCAP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 57 (6.10%) PostgreSQL
2 36 (3.85%) NoSQL
3 30 (3.21%) Apache Cassandra
3 30 (3.21%) MongoDB
4 24 (2.57%) SQL Server
5 22 (2.36%) Amazon RDS
6 21 (2.25%) Data Lake
7 20 (2.14%) MySQL
8 17 (1.82%) Amazon Athena
9 15 (1.61%) Relational Database
10 13 (1.39%) Metadata
10 13 (1.39%) Power BI
11 12 (1.28%) Mixpanel
12 11 (1.18%) DynamoDB
13 10 (1.07%) Elasticsearch
13 10 (1.07%) Hadoop
14 9 (0.96%) BigQuery
15 8 (0.86%) Amazon Aurora
16 7 (0.75%) Big Data
16 7 (0.75%) OLAP
Development Applications
1 76 (8.14%) Git
2 55 (5.89%) GitLab
3 47 (5.03%) Jenkins
4 44 (4.71%) JIRA
5 24 (2.57%) Rational DOORS
6 20 (2.14%) Rational Rhapsody
7 19 (2.03%) Liquibase
8 18 (1.93%) Eclipse
8 18 (1.93%) Gradle
8 18 (1.93%) Visual Studio
9 15 (1.61%) IntelliJ
10 14 (1.50%) Cypress.io
11 10 (1.07%) Bitbucket
11 10 (1.07%) Cucumber
11 10 (1.07%) SonarQube
12 8 (0.86%) Postman
12 8 (0.86%) PVCS
12 8 (0.86%) Selenium
13 7 (0.75%) JUnit
13 7 (0.75%) Maven
General
1 122 (13.06%) Finance
2 116 (12.42%) Social Skills
3 47 (5.03%) Public Sector
4 43 (4.60%) Aerospace
4 43 (4.60%) Front Office
5 41 (4.39%) Banking
6 40 (4.28%) Analytical Skills
7 35 (3.75%) Electronics
8 25 (2.68%) Law
9 24 (2.57%) Military
10 18 (1.93%) Manufacturing
11 16 (1.71%) Financial Institution
12 12 (1.28%) Retail
13 11 (1.18%) Influencing Skills
13 11 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
14 9 (0.96%) Investment Banking
14 9 (0.96%) Pharmaceutical
15 6 (0.64%) Automotive
16 5 (0.54%) Health Technology
17 4 (0.43%) Organisational Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 137 (14.67%) React
2 99 (10.60%) Node.js
3 91 (9.74%) Kafka
4 74 (7.92%) REST
5 69 (7.39%) .NET
6 54 (5.78%) RESTful
7 52 (5.57%) Spring
8 50 (5.35%) Spring Boot
9 45 (4.82%) AngularJS
10 37 (3.96%) Redux
11 36 (3.85%) GraphQL
12 35 (3.75%) Middleware
13 28 (3.00%) gRPC
14 23 (2.46%) CSS
14 23 (2.46%) HTML
14 23 (2.46%) Qt
15 22 (2.36%) Web Services
16 21 (2.25%) JSON
17 20 (2.14%) XML
18 18 (1.93%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 86 (9.21%) Cloud Native
2 60 (6.42%) Distributed Systems
3 42 (4.50%) Fixed Income
4 40 (4.28%) Algorithms
5 30 (3.21%) Product Ownership
6 20 (2.14%) Public Cloud
7 19 (2.03%) Embedded Systems
8 18 (1.93%) Equities
8 18 (1.93%) Greenfield Project
9 17 (1.82%) Data Protection Act
10 14 (1.50%) Derivative
10 14 (1.50%) Legacy Systems
11 13 (1.39%) Life Science
11 13 (1.39%) Mobile App
12 12 (1.28%) AI Agents
13 10 (1.07%) Robotics
14 9 (0.96%) Data Structures
14 9 (0.96%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 9 (0.96%) Onboarding
15 8 (0.86%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 136 (14.56%) Linux
2 61 (6.53%) Windows
3 26 (2.78%) Unix
4 16 (1.71%) Apple iOS
5 13 (1.39%) Android
6 12 (1.28%) Windows Server
7 11 (1.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 7 (0.75%) Ubuntu
9 5 (0.54%) FreeRTOS
10 3 (0.32%) Debian
10 3 (0.32%) Embedded Linux
11 2 (0.21%) Robot Operating System
11 2 (0.21%) Rocky
11 2 (0.21%) Solaris
11 2 (0.21%) Windows Server 2008
11 2 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
12 1 (0.11%) Mac OS
12 1 (0.11%) VMS
12 1 (0.11%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 924 (98.93%) Software Engineering
2 279 (29.87%) Agile
3 224 (23.98%) CI/CD
4 150 (16.06%) DevOps
5 135 (14.45%) Microservices
6 96 (10.28%) Problem-Solving
7 93 (9.96%) Full-Stack Development
8 89 (9.53%) AI
9 85 (9.10%) Containerisation
10 81 (8.67%) Test Automation
11 75 (8.03%) Infrastructure as Code
11 75 (8.03%) Mentoring
12 73 (7.82%) TDD
13 58 (6.21%) Clean Code
14 57 (6.10%) Machine Learning
15 54 (5.78%) Continuous Improvement
15 54 (5.78%) Unit Testing
16 52 (5.57%) Validation
17 51 (5.46%) Scrum
18 50 (5.35%) Continuous Integration
Programming Languages
1 231 (24.73%) Python
2 221 (23.66%) Java
3 194 (20.77%) C++
4 153 (16.38%) JavaScript
5 142 (15.20%) TypeScript
6 125 (13.38%) C#
7 111 (11.88%) SQL
8 90 (9.64%) Ada
8 90 (9.64%) Go
9 75 (8.03%) C
10 23 (2.46%) Embedded C
10 23 (2.46%) Embedded C++
11 20 (2.14%) Kotlin
11 20 (2.14%) PowerShell
11 20 (2.14%) Rust
12 17 (1.82%) MATLAB
13 13 (1.39%) Bash
14 10 (1.07%) PL/SQL
14 10 (1.07%) Swift
15 8 (0.86%) Perl
Qualifications
1 217 (23.23%) Security Cleared
2 166 (17.77%) SC Cleared
3 80 (8.57%) Degree
4 38 (4.07%) Computer Science Degree
5 31 (3.32%) DV Cleared
6 17 (1.82%) Master's Degree
7 12 (1.28%) AWS Certification
8 9 (0.96%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 8 (0.86%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (0.32%) AWS Certified Developer
10 3 (0.32%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 3 (0.32%) 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 (0.11%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 42 (4.50%) Def Stans
2 32 (3.43%) IEC 61508
3 29 (3.10%) MISRA
3 29 (3.10%) QA
4 19 (2.03%) MISRA C
5 18 (1.93%) Data Quality
6 10 (1.07%) DO-178B
7 8 (0.86%) Accessibility
7 8 (0.86%) GDPR
8 6 (0.64%) HL7
9 2 (0.21%) NCSC
9 2 (0.21%) 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
1 138 (14.78%) Docker
2 14 (1.50%) Firmware
2 14 (1.50%) Virtual Machines
3 10 (1.07%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (0.43%) Active Directory
4 4 (0.43%) Oracle RAC
5 2 (0.21%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 135 (14.45%) Kubernetes
2 103 (11.03%) Terraform
3 37 (3.96%) Grafana
4 33 (3.53%) Ansible
5 20 (2.14%) Prometheus
6 8 (0.86%) Argo
7 4 (0.43%) Data Guard
7 4 (0.43%) Puppet
7 4 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
8 2 (0.21%) Functional Safety
8 2 (0.21%) Kibana
8 2 (0.21%) Progress Chef
9 1 (0.11%) Podman
Vendors
1 38 (4.07%) Microsoft
2 31 (3.32%) Red Hat
3 30 (3.21%) Google
4 26 (2.78%) Oracle
5 22 (2.36%) Databricks
6 21 (2.25%) Splunk
7 16 (1.71%) IBM
8 10 (1.07%) VMware
9 8 (0.86%) ANSYS
9 8 (0.86%) Siemens
10 7 (0.75%) Spotify
11 5 (0.54%) MathWorks
12 4 (0.43%) Atlassian
12 4 (0.43%) Brio
13 3 (0.32%) Palantir
14 2 (0.21%) Adobe
14 2 (0.21%) Foundry
14 2 (0.21%) Informatica
14 2 (0.21%) Talend
14 2 (0.21%) webMethods
641 Software Engineer jobs in England