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 3 July 2026.

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

6 months to
3 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 91 131 65
Rank change year-on-year +40 -66 +69
Contract jobs requiring a Software Engineer 1,219 564 1,170
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.78% 2.16% 3.13%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.00% 2.35% 3.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 546 383 608
10th Percentile £400 £413 £441
25th Percentile £463 £483 £506
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £625 £650
Median % change year-on-year -12.00% -3.85% +8.33%
75th Percentile £688 £838 £800
90th Percentile £788 £875 £875
UK median daily rate £550 £600 £628
% change year-on-year -8.33% -4.38% +4.58%
Number of hourly rates quoted 353 47 349
10th Percentile £53.34 £41.40 £46.25
25th Percentile £61.25 £60.13 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £78.50 £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 40,580 24,049 34,742
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.41% 92.16% 92.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,840 15,686 22,733
10th Percentile £325 £291 £300
25th Percentile £419 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £638
90th Percentile £735 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,926 1,128 2,569
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.00 £12.88
25th Percentile £21.93 £18.00 £16.86
Median hourly rate £45.00 £28.18 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.69% -29.55% -8.95%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.00 £26.50 £37.50
% change year-on-year +62.26% -29.33% -12.79%

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 July 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 3 July 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 3 July 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 -26 380 £625 -13.79% 397
South West +70 270 £550 -13.73% 172
North of England +18 191 £513 +7.89% 167
South East +29 158 £550 +5.77% 224
East of England +40 151 £500 +1.52% 152
North West +13 120 £550 +22.22% 92
Yorkshire -22 49 £488 -0.51% 40
Midlands -32 48 £450 -2.70% 68
West Midlands -34 37 £450 -7.69% 30
North East -14 24 £400 - 35
East Midlands -12 11 £473 -0.53% 38
Software Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 3 July 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 1,201 (98.52%) Software Engineering
2 325 (26.66%) Agile
3 314 (25.76%) Java
4 305 (25.02%) Security Cleared
5 278 (22.81%) CI/CD
6 273 (22.40%) AWS
7 248 (20.34%) Python
8 247 (20.26%) SC Cleared
9 184 (15.09%) C++
10 169 (13.86%) C#
11 166 (13.62%) TypeScript
12 158 (12.96%) React
13 140 (11.48%) JavaScript
14 138 (11.32%) Full-Stack Development
15 136 (11.16%) DevOps
16 135 (11.07%) Microservices
17 133 (10.91%) Docker
18 131 (10.75%) SQL
19 120 (9.84%) Kubernetes
20 119 (9.76%) Azure
21 116 (9.52%) AI
22 114 (9.35%) Linux
23 108 (8.86%) Ada
24 107 (8.78%) .NET
25 106 (8.70%) Test Automation
26 102 (8.37%) Node.js
27 98 (8.04%) Kafka
28 88 (7.22%) Git
29 86 (7.05%) TDD
30 85 (6.97%) Problem-Solving

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 (1.15%) Confluence
2 13 (1.07%) Apache Spark
3 11 (0.90%) Apache
4 3 (0.25%) Apache Airflow
4 3 (0.25%) nginx
4 3 (0.25%) Tomcat
5 2 (0.16%) MQSeries
5 2 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
5 2 (0.16%) SAS
5 2 (0.16%) WebLogic
5 2 (0.16%) WinCC
6 1 (0.082%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 1 (0.082%) Apache Synapse
6 1 (0.082%) CMS
6 1 (0.082%) IIS
6 1 (0.082%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.082%) SharePoint
6 1 (0.082%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 2 (0.16%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
2 1 (0.082%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.082%) S-PLUS
Business Applications
1 3 (0.25%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 273 (22.40%) AWS
2 119 (9.76%) Azure
3 64 (5.25%) GCP
4 56 (4.59%) GitHub
5 54 (4.43%) Serverless
6 35 (2.87%) AWS Lambda
7 26 (2.13%) OpenShift
8 25 (2.05%) Amazon S3
9 24 (1.97%) GitHub Actions
10 20 (1.64%) Amazon EC2
11 19 (1.56%) Amazon SQS
12 17 (1.39%) Amazon ECS
13 16 (1.31%) Azure DevOps
14 13 (1.07%) SaaS
15 12 (0.98%) Amazon EKS
16 11 (0.90%) Power Platform
17 10 (0.82%) Anthropic Claude
18 9 (0.74%) AWS CloudFormation
18 9 (0.74%) AWS Step Functions
19 8 (0.66%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 32 (2.63%) Software-Defined Radio
2 21 (1.72%) Wireless
3 20 (1.64%) Ethernet
4 14 (1.15%) TCP/IP
5 12 (0.98%) HTTP
6 9 (0.74%) 3GPP
7 7 (0.57%) Firewall
7 7 (0.57%) RTP
8 6 (0.49%) Wireshark
9 5 (0.41%) VPN
10 4 (0.33%) Internet
11 2 (0.16%) DNS
11 2 (0.16%) RS-232
11 2 (0.16%) RS-422
12 1 (0.082%) BGP
12 1 (0.082%) HTTPS
12 1 (0.082%) Network Security
12 1 (0.082%) RS-485
12 1 (0.082%) RTCP
12 1 (0.082%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 71 (5.82%) PostgreSQL
2 40 (3.28%) Relational Database
3 35 (2.87%) SQL Server
4 26 (2.13%) NoSQL
5 20 (1.64%) DynamoDB
6 18 (1.48%) MongoDB
7 16 (1.31%) Apache Cassandra
8 15 (1.23%) Amazon RDS
8 15 (1.23%) MySQL
9 13 (1.07%) Elasticsearch
10 7 (0.57%) Hadoop
10 7 (0.57%) Metadata
10 7 (0.57%) Power BI
11 6 (0.49%) Amazon Athena
11 6 (0.49%) Data Lake
12 5 (0.41%) Amazon Aurora
13 4 (0.33%) Geospatial Data
13 4 (0.33%) GIS
13 4 (0.33%) Mixpanel
13 4 (0.33%) Redis
Development Applications
1 88 (7.22%) Git
2 62 (5.09%) Jenkins
3 47 (3.86%) GitLab
4 31 (2.54%) JIRA
5 22 (1.80%) JUnit
6 20 (1.64%) Visual Studio
7 18 (1.48%) Rational DOORS
7 18 (1.48%) Rational Rhapsody
7 18 (1.48%) SonarQube
8 15 (1.23%) Gradle
9 11 (0.90%) Eclipse
9 11 (0.90%) Liquibase
9 11 (0.90%) Mockito
10 10 (0.82%) IntelliJ
10 10 (0.82%) Selenium
11 9 (0.74%) Bitbucket
11 9 (0.74%) Cucumber
12 7 (0.57%) Maven
13 6 (0.49%) Mocha
13 6 (0.49%) TeamCity
General
1 163 (13.37%) Finance
2 118 (9.68%) Social Skills
3 64 (5.25%) Aerospace
4 58 (4.76%) Front Office
5 53 (4.35%) Banking
6 46 (3.77%) Public Sector
7 36 (2.95%) Analytical Skills
8 31 (2.54%) Law
9 24 (1.97%) Manufacturing
10 18 (1.48%) Retail
11 17 (1.39%) Aviation
12 14 (1.15%) Automotive
13 13 (1.07%) Military
14 12 (0.98%) Electronics
15 11 (0.90%) Investment Banking
16 8 (0.66%) Back Office
17 7 (0.57%) Telecoms
18 5 (0.41%) Avionics
18 5 (0.41%) Fire and Rescue
18 5 (0.41%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 158 (12.96%) React
2 107 (8.78%) .NET
3 102 (8.37%) Node.js
4 98 (8.04%) Kafka
5 84 (6.89%) Spring
6 80 (6.56%) Spring Boot
7 70 (5.74%) REST
8 56 (4.59%) Redux
9 53 (4.35%) AngularJS
10 52 (4.27%) GraphQL
11 39 (3.20%) RESTful
12 25 (2.05%) Next.js
13 22 (1.80%) Django
14 21 (1.72%) CSS
15 19 (1.56%) HTML
15 19 (1.56%) Middleware
16 18 (1.48%) .NET Core
17 17 (1.39%) FastAPI
18 16 (1.31%) Web Services
19 15 (1.23%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 108 (8.86%) Cloud Native
2 77 (6.32%) Distributed Systems
3 60 (4.92%) Fixed Income
4 55 (4.51%) Algorithms
5 36 (2.95%) Product Ownership
6 31 (2.54%) Embedded Systems
7 21 (1.72%) Derivative
8 18 (1.48%) AI Agents
8 18 (1.48%) Onboarding
9 17 (1.39%) Legacy Systems
10 15 (1.23%) Equities
10 15 (1.23%) Self-Motivation
11 13 (1.07%) Data Protection Act
12 10 (0.82%) FPGA
13 9 (0.74%) RISC-V
13 9 (0.74%) Robotics
14 8 (0.66%) Data Centre
14 8 (0.66%) Data Structures
14 8 (0.66%) Greenfield Project
14 8 (0.66%) PCIe
Operating Systems
1 114 (9.35%) Linux
2 42 (3.45%) Windows
3 16 (1.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 14 (1.15%) Embedded Linux
5 13 (1.07%) Unix
6 11 (0.90%) FreeRTOS
7 9 (0.74%) Apple iOS
8 6 (0.49%) Windows Server
9 4 (0.33%) Android
9 4 (0.33%) Debian
9 4 (0.33%) Rocky
9 4 (0.33%) Ubuntu
10 3 (0.25%) Solaris
10 3 (0.25%) Windows Server 2008
10 3 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.16%) VxWorks
12 1 (0.082%) Tizen
12 1 (0.082%) webOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,201 (98.52%) Software Engineering
2 325 (26.66%) Agile
3 278 (22.81%) CI/CD
4 138 (11.32%) Full-Stack Development
5 136 (11.16%) DevOps
6 135 (11.07%) Microservices
7 116 (9.52%) AI
8 106 (8.70%) Test Automation
9 86 (7.05%) TDD
10 85 (6.97%) Problem-Solving
11 70 (5.74%) Containerisation
12 69 (5.66%) Continuous Improvement
13 65 (5.33%) Software Testing
14 64 (5.25%) Infrastructure as Code
15 63 (5.17%) Mentoring
15 63 (5.17%) SDLC
16 60 (4.92%) Machine Learning
17 56 (4.59%) Clean Code
18 55 (4.51%) Event-Driven
18 55 (4.51%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 314 (25.76%) Java
2 248 (20.34%) Python
3 184 (15.09%) C++
4 169 (13.86%) C#
5 166 (13.62%) TypeScript
6 140 (11.48%) JavaScript
7 131 (10.75%) SQL
8 108 (8.86%) Ada
9 78 (6.40%) C
10 75 (6.15%) Go
11 24 (1.97%) Kotlin
12 22 (1.80%) Rust
13 21 (1.72%) Embedded C
14 20 (1.64%) MATLAB
15 18 (1.48%) PowerShell
16 16 (1.31%) PL/SQL
17 12 (0.98%) PHP
18 11 (0.90%) Bash
19 7 (0.57%) Scala
20 6 (0.49%) R
Qualifications
1 305 (25.02%) Security Cleared
2 247 (20.26%) SC Cleared
3 51 (4.18%) Degree
4 39 (3.20%) DV Cleared
5 21 (1.72%) Computer Science Degree
6 18 (1.48%) BPSS Clearance
7 8 (0.66%) AWS Certification
7 8 (0.66%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 5 (0.41%) ISTQB
8 5 (0.41%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 3 (0.25%) Chartered Engineer
10 2 (0.16%) CCNP
10 2 (0.16%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (0.16%) HNC
10 2 (0.16%) HND
11 1 (0.082%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 1 (0.082%) OCA
11 1 (0.082%) Oracle Certification
11 1 (0.082%) PhD
11 1 (0.082%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 43 (3.53%) QA
2 26 (2.13%) Def Stans
3 22 (1.80%) IEC 61508
4 16 (1.31%) MISRA
5 11 (0.90%) Data Quality
6 10 (0.82%) GDPR
7 9 (0.74%) Accessibility
8 8 (0.66%) DO-178B
8 8 (0.66%) MISRA C
9 5 (0.41%) WCAG
10 4 (0.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 2 (0.16%) ISO 26262
11 2 (0.16%) NCSC
12 1 (0.082%) FATCA
12 1 (0.082%) ISO/IEC 27001
12 1 (0.082%) MIL-STD-1553
12 1 (0.082%) NIST
System Software
1 133 (10.91%) Docker
2 17 (1.39%) Firmware
3 5 (0.41%) Embedded Firmware
4 4 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
5 2 (0.16%) HDFS
5 2 (0.16%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (0.082%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 120 (9.84%) Kubernetes
2 68 (5.58%) Terraform
3 18 (1.48%) Ansible
4 17 (1.39%) Grafana
5 13 (1.07%) Argo
6 7 (0.57%) Prometheus
7 5 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
8 4 (0.33%) Control-M
8 4 (0.33%) Data Guard
8 4 (0.33%) Kibana
9 3 (0.25%) Functional Safety
10 2 (0.16%) Cilium
10 2 (0.16%) HAProxy
10 2 (0.16%) Progress Chef
10 2 (0.16%) Puppet
11 1 (0.082%) CA Endevor
11 1 (0.082%) PTC Integrity
Vendors
1 36 (2.95%) Microsoft
2 29 (2.38%) Oracle
3 23 (1.89%) Red Hat
4 21 (1.72%) Google
5 13 (1.07%) IBM
6 10 (0.82%) Databricks
7 9 (0.74%) MathWorks
8 8 (0.66%) SAP
9 7 (0.57%) Splunk
10 6 (0.49%) Siemens
11 5 (0.41%) OpenAI
12 4 (0.33%) Checkmarx
12 4 (0.33%) Spotify
12 4 (0.33%) Sybase
13 3 (0.25%) Informatica
13 3 (0.25%) Talend
14 2 (0.16%) Cadence
14 2 (0.16%) PagerDuty
14 2 (0.16%) Palantir
14 2 (0.16%) QNX