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 April 2026.

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

 6 months to
28 Apr 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 89 121 83
Rank change year-on-year +32 -38 +56
Contract jobs requiring a Software Engineer 1,134 553 961
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.82% 2.26% 2.60%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.06% 2.44% 2.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 486 368 507
10th Percentile £400 £413 £445
25th Percentile £452 £482 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £630
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% -4.76% +6.78%
75th Percentile £688 £806 £750
90th Percentile £788 £875 £810
UK median daily rate £550 £600 £625
% change year-on-year -8.33% -4.00% +5.93%
Number of hourly rates quoted 390 50 292
10th Percentile £52.50 £52.45 £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 £68.70 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year - +4.00% -

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 37,090 22,661 34,277
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.36% 92.65% 92.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,200 15,114 22,756
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £409 £412
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £640
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £515 £525
% change year-on-year -3.00% -1.82% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,526 899 2,410
10th Percentile £15.77 £14.20 £12.92
25th Percentile £21.00 £18.51 £16.30
Median hourly rate £45.59 £31.76 £35.65
Median % change year-on-year +43.53% -10.91% -20.78%
75th Percentile £67.25 £64.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.54
UK median hourly rate £43.39 £29.25 £35.83
% change year-on-year +48.35% -18.36% -20.38%

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 April 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 April 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 April 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 -26 336 £625 -7.41% 252
South West +35 260 £575 -4.17% 132
North of England +21 168 £500 +5.26% 147
East of England +45 152 £500 -14.16% 104
South East +1 137 £550 -2.22% 265
North West +17 90 £489 +8.61% 88
Yorkshire -24 54 £500 +4.17% 40
Midlands -46 42 £475 +8.57% 61
West Midlands -34 35 £478 +6.16% 35
North East +6 26 £400 - 19
East Midlands -39 7 £475 - 26
Software Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 28 April 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 1,123 (99.03%) Software Engineering
2 274 (24.16%) Security Cleared
3 272 (23.99%) Agile
4 265 (23.37%) Java
5 254 (22.40%) AWS
6 228 (20.11%) CI/CD
7 225 (19.84%) Python
8 211 (18.61%) SC Cleared
9 187 (16.49%) C++
10 153 (13.49%) C#
11 152 (13.40%) TypeScript
12 142 (12.52%) React
13 136 (11.99%) JavaScript
14 133 (11.73%) DevOps
15 125 (11.02%) Docker
15 125 (11.02%) Microservices
16 122 (10.76%) Kubernetes
17 121 (10.67%) Linux
18 120 (10.58%) Full-Stack Development
19 117 (10.32%) Azure
20 114 (10.05%) Ada
21 111 (9.79%) SQL
22 103 (9.08%) Node.js
23 96 (8.47%) AI
24 90 (7.94%) Git
25 89 (7.85%) .NET
25 89 (7.85%) C
25 89 (7.85%) Kafka
26 88 (7.76%) Go
27 85 (7.50%) 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 19 (1.68%) Apache
2 17 (1.50%) Confluence
3 14 (1.23%) Apache Spark
4 3 (0.26%) IIS
4 3 (0.26%) WebLogic
5 2 (0.18%) Camunda
5 2 (0.18%) MQSeries
5 2 (0.18%) nginx
5 2 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
5 2 (0.18%) SAS
5 2 (0.18%) Tomcat
5 2 (0.18%) WinCC
6 1 (0.088%) Apache Synapse
6 1 (0.088%) CMS
6 1 (0.088%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.088%) SharePoint
6 1 (0.088%) Smallworld
Applications
1 3 (0.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.18%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.088%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.18%) LabWindows
2 1 (0.088%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 254 (22.40%) AWS
2 117 (10.32%) Azure
3 62 (5.47%) GCP
4 52 (4.59%) GitHub
5 51 (4.50%) Serverless
6 26 (2.29%) AWS Lambda
7 21 (1.85%) GitHub Actions
8 20 (1.76%) Amazon S3
8 20 (1.76%) Azure DevOps
9 19 (1.68%) OpenShift
10 16 (1.41%) AWS CloudFormation
11 15 (1.32%) Amazon ECS
11 15 (1.32%) Power Platform
12 13 (1.15%) Amazon SQS
13 12 (1.06%) Amazon EC2
13 12 (1.06%) Azure Functions
14 10 (0.88%) SaaS
15 9 (0.79%) Amazon EKS
15 9 (0.79%) Collibra
16 7 (0.62%) Azure Storage
Communications & Networking
1 22 (1.94%) Software-Defined Radio
2 18 (1.59%) Ethernet
3 11 (0.97%) TCP/IP
3 11 (0.97%) Wireless
4 8 (0.71%) 3GPP
5 7 (0.62%) HTTP
6 5 (0.44%) RTP
7 4 (0.35%) Wireshark
8 3 (0.26%) Firewall
9 2 (0.18%) Modbus
10 1 (0.088%) BGP
10 1 (0.088%) DNS
10 1 (0.088%) HTTPS
10 1 (0.088%) LTE
10 1 (0.088%) Network Security
10 1 (0.088%) Profibus
10 1 (0.088%) RTCP
10 1 (0.088%) VLAN
10 1 (0.088%) VPN
10 1 (0.088%) XCAP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 65 (5.73%) PostgreSQL
2 30 (2.65%) SQL Server
3 28 (2.47%) Relational Database
4 25 (2.20%) Apache Cassandra
5 21 (1.85%) MongoDB
6 20 (1.76%) NoSQL
7 16 (1.41%) Amazon RDS
7 16 (1.41%) Data Lake
8 15 (1.32%) MySQL
9 12 (1.06%) Metadata
9 12 (1.06%) Power BI
10 11 (0.97%) DynamoDB
11 10 (0.88%) Elasticsearch
11 10 (0.88%) Mixpanel
12 9 (0.79%) Amazon Athena
13 7 (0.62%) BigQuery
13 7 (0.62%) Redis
14 6 (0.53%) Hadoop
15 5 (0.44%) Azure SQL Database
15 5 (0.44%) OLAP
Development Applications
1 90 (7.94%) Git
2 56 (4.94%) GitLab
3 46 (4.06%) Jenkins
4 43 (3.79%) JIRA
5 24 (2.12%) Rational Rhapsody
6 23 (2.03%) Rational DOORS
7 21 (1.85%) Gradle
8 19 (1.68%) JUnit
9 18 (1.59%) IntelliJ
10 17 (1.50%) SonarQube
10 17 (1.50%) Visual Studio
11 12 (1.06%) Cucumber
12 11 (0.97%) Eclipse
13 10 (0.88%) Bitbucket
13 10 (0.88%) Cypress.io
13 10 (0.88%) Maven
14 8 (0.71%) Mockito
14 8 (0.71%) PVCS
15 7 (0.62%) Oracle APEX
15 7 (0.62%) Selenium
General
1 114 (10.05%) Finance
2 92 (8.11%) Social Skills
3 57 (5.03%) Aerospace
4 50 (4.41%) Front Office
5 40 (3.53%) Public Sector
6 34 (3.00%) Analytical Skills
7 29 (2.56%) Law
8 28 (2.47%) Banking
8 28 (2.47%) Electronics
9 25 (2.20%) Manufacturing
10 20 (1.76%) Military
11 13 (1.15%) Retail
12 9 (0.79%) Aviation
12 9 (0.79%) Influencing Skills
13 8 (0.71%) Presentation Skills
14 7 (0.62%) Investment Banking
15 5 (0.44%) Health Technology
16 4 (0.35%) Fire and Rescue
16 4 (0.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 4 (0.35%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 142 (12.52%) React
2 103 (9.08%) Node.js
3 89 (7.85%) .NET
3 89 (7.85%) Kafka
4 72 (6.35%) REST
5 66 (5.82%) Spring
6 61 (5.38%) Spring Boot
7 51 (4.50%) AngularJS
8 46 (4.06%) Redux
9 45 (3.97%) GraphQL
10 34 (3.00%) RESTful
11 31 (2.73%) Middleware
12 22 (1.94%) gRPC
13 21 (1.85%) CSS
14 18 (1.59%) HTML
15 17 (1.50%) JSON
15 17 (1.50%) Next.js
15 17 (1.50%) Vue
15 17 (1.50%) Web Services
16 16 (1.41%) Qt
Miscellaneous
1 72 (6.35%) Cloud Native
2 60 (5.29%) Algorithms
3 50 (4.41%) Fixed Income
4 49 (4.32%) Distributed Systems
5 36 (3.17%) Product Ownership
6 22 (1.94%) Embedded Systems
7 19 (1.68%) AI Agents
8 15 (1.32%) Derivative
9 14 (1.23%) Robotics
10 13 (1.15%) Equities
10 13 (1.15%) Legacy Systems
10 13 (1.15%) Mobile App
11 11 (0.97%) Data Protection Act
11 11 (0.97%) Onboarding
12 10 (0.88%) FPGA
12 10 (0.88%) Greenfield Project
12 10 (0.88%) Life Science
13 8 (0.71%) NHS
13 8 (0.71%) Self-Motivation
14 7 (0.62%) PCIe
Operating Systems
1 121 (10.67%) Linux
2 48 (4.23%) Windows
3 17 (1.50%) Unix
4 16 (1.41%) Apple iOS
4 16 (1.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 13 (1.15%) Android
6 10 (0.88%) Embedded Linux
7 9 (0.79%) Windows Server
8 7 (0.62%) FreeRTOS
9 6 (0.53%) Ubuntu
10 5 (0.44%) Debian
11 4 (0.35%) Rocky
12 2 (0.18%) Robot Operating System
12 2 (0.18%) Solaris
12 2 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
12 2 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
13 1 (0.088%) Mac OS
13 1 (0.088%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,123 (99.03%) Software Engineering
2 272 (23.99%) Agile
3 228 (20.11%) CI/CD
4 133 (11.73%) DevOps
5 125 (11.02%) Microservices
6 120 (10.58%) Full-Stack Development
7 96 (8.47%) AI
8 85 (7.50%) Problem-Solving
9 76 (6.70%) TDD
10 73 (6.44%) Test Automation
11 69 (6.08%) Containerisation
12 61 (5.38%) Mentoring
12 61 (5.38%) Scrum
13 59 (5.20%) SDLC
14 58 (5.11%) Infrastructure as Code
15 56 (4.94%) Machine Learning
15 56 (4.94%) Unit Testing
16 50 (4.41%) Continuous Improvement
17 47 (4.14%) Clean Code
18 44 (3.88%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 265 (23.37%) Java
2 225 (19.84%) Python
3 187 (16.49%) C++
4 153 (13.49%) C#
5 152 (13.40%) TypeScript
6 136 (11.99%) JavaScript
7 114 (10.05%) Ada
8 111 (9.79%) SQL
9 89 (7.85%) C
10 88 (7.76%) Go
11 32 (2.82%) Embedded C
12 24 (2.12%) Kotlin
13 22 (1.94%) MATLAB
14 21 (1.85%) PowerShell
14 21 (1.85%) Rust
15 17 (1.50%) Embedded C++
16 14 (1.23%) Bash
17 9 (0.79%) PL/SQL
17 9 (0.79%) Swift
18 7 (0.62%) Perl
Qualifications
1 274 (24.16%) Security Cleared
2 211 (18.61%) SC Cleared
3 49 (4.32%) Degree
4 39 (3.44%) DV Cleared
5 23 (2.03%) Computer Science Degree
6 10 (0.88%) BPSS Clearance
7 7 (0.62%) AWS Certification
7 7 (0.62%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 4 (0.35%) ISTQB
8 4 (0.35%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 3 (0.26%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (0.18%) CCNA
10 2 (0.18%) CCNP
10 2 (0.18%) HNC
10 2 (0.18%) HND
11 1 (0.088%) CCDP
11 1 (0.088%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 1 (0.088%) OCA
11 1 (0.088%) Oracle Certification
11 1 (0.088%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (3.26%) Def Stans
2 34 (3.00%) QA
3 31 (2.73%) IEC 61508
4 20 (1.76%) MISRA
5 18 (1.59%) Data Quality
6 14 (1.23%) MISRA C
7 11 (0.97%) GDPR
8 9 (0.79%) Accessibility
9 6 (0.53%) DO-178B
9 6 (0.53%) HL7
10 4 (0.35%) NCSC
11 2 (0.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 2 (0.18%) WCAG
12 1 (0.088%) DICOM
12 1 (0.088%) FATCA
12 1 (0.088%) ISO/IEC 27001
12 1 (0.088%) NIST
System Software
1 125 (11.02%) Docker
2 15 (1.32%) Firmware
3 10 (0.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (0.35%) Embedded Firmware
5 4 (0.35%) Oracle RAC
6 2 (0.18%) HDFS
7 1 (0.088%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 122 (10.76%) Kubernetes
2 77 (6.79%) Terraform
3 24 (2.12%) Grafana
4 20 (1.76%) Ansible
5 11 (0.97%) Argo
6 6 (0.53%) Prometheus
7 4 (0.35%) Data Guard
8 2 (0.18%) HAProxy
8 2 (0.18%) Progress Chef
8 2 (0.18%) Puppet
8 2 (0.18%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.088%) Functional Safety
9 1 (0.088%) Podman
Vendors
1 38 (3.35%) Microsoft
2 33 (2.91%) Red Hat
3 23 (2.03%) Oracle
4 22 (1.94%) Google
5 21 (1.85%) IBM
6 19 (1.68%) Databricks
7 10 (0.88%) MathWorks
7 10 (0.88%) VMware
8 8 (0.71%) ANSYS
8 8 (0.71%) Siemens
8 8 (0.71%) Spotify
9 6 (0.53%) Splunk
10 4 (0.35%) Atlassian
10 4 (0.35%) Brio
10 4 (0.35%) Checkmarx
11 3 (0.26%) Informatica
11 3 (0.26%) NVIDIA
11 3 (0.26%) OpenAI
11 3 (0.26%) SAP
11 3 (0.26%) Talend
886 Software Engineer jobs in England