Software Engineer Contract Job Trends in England

Software Engineer
UK > England

The median Software Engineer daily rate in England is £559, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 20 July 2026.

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

 6 months to
20 Jul 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 95 127 68
Rank change year-on-year +32 -59 +63
Contract jobs requiring a Software Engineer 1,214 598 1,100
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.70% 2.18% 3.08%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.92% 2.37% 3.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 550 399 596
10th Percentile £400 £409 £425
25th Percentile £470 £481 £512
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £559 £625 £650
Median % change year-on-year -10.60% -3.85% +10.17%
75th Percentile £688 £838 £800
90th Percentile £788 £875 £875
UK median daily rate £565 £600 £630
% change year-on-year -5.83% -4.76% +6.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 335 55 306
10th Percentile £52.50 £34.20 £48.00
25th Percentile £61.25 £60.13 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.38 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £79.00 £75.00
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 41,513 25,197 33,247
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.49% 91.87% 92.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,322 16,387 21,878
10th Percentile £325 £290 £300
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £629 £638
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,989 1,248 2,255
10th Percentile £16.00 £13.75 £13.25
25th Percentile £22.00 £17.87 £18.00
Median hourly rate £45.56 £27.39 £41.27
Median % change year-on-year +66.34% -33.63% -6.22%
75th Percentile £68.00 £56.52 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.01 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.69 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +73.72% -37.13% -6.98%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 -35 388 £625 -15.25% 462
South West +58 252 £543 -5.65% 104
North of England +11 197 £525 +10.53% 130
South East +25 157 £540 +3.85% 138
East of England +39 151 £505 +1.00% 97
North West +6 127 £550 +22.22% 75
Midlands -10 51 £450 - 57
Yorkshire -27 49 £481 -1.79% 35
West Midlands -30 39 £450 - 20
North East -14 23 £226 - 20
East Midlands -10 12 £473 -0.53% 37
Software Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 20 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 1,197 (98.60%) Software Engineering
2 334 (27.51%) Agile
3 311 (25.62%) Java
4 297 (24.46%) Security Cleared
5 278 (22.90%) CI/CD
6 263 (21.66%) Python
7 259 (21.33%) AWS
8 248 (20.43%) SC Cleared
9 179 (14.74%) C++
10 168 (13.84%) TypeScript
11 162 (13.34%) React
12 158 (13.01%) C#
13 142 (11.70%) Full-Stack Development
14 140 (11.53%) JavaScript
15 132 (10.87%) DevOps
16 131 (10.79%) Docker
17 125 (10.30%) Microservices
17 125 (10.30%) SQL
18 119 (9.80%) AI
19 117 (9.64%) Kubernetes
20 115 (9.47%) Azure
20 115 (9.47%) Linux
21 112 (9.23%) Test Automation
22 105 (8.65%) .NET
23 104 (8.57%) Ada
24 102 (8.40%) Node.js
25 94 (7.74%) Kafka
26 92 (7.58%) Problem-Solving
27 90 (7.41%) Git
28 85 (7.00%) TDD

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 12 (0.99%) Apache Spark
3 8 (0.66%) Apache
4 4 (0.33%) CMS
5 3 (0.25%) Apache Airflow
5 3 (0.25%) nginx
5 3 (0.25%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.16%) MQSeries
6 2 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
6 2 (0.16%) SAS
6 2 (0.16%) WebLogic
6 2 (0.16%) WinCC
6 2 (0.16%) WordPress
7 1 (0.082%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 1 (0.082%) Apache Solr
7 1 (0.082%) Apache Synapse
7 1 (0.082%) IIS
7 1 (0.082%) Microsoft Exchange
7 1 (0.082%) SharePoint
7 1 (0.082%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 2 (0.16%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (0.16%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (0.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 2 (0.16%) MS Visio
1 2 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
1 2 (0.16%) Trello
2 1 (0.082%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.082%) S-PLUS
Business Applications
1 3 (0.25%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 259 (21.33%) AWS
2 115 (9.47%) Azure
3 70 (5.77%) GCP
4 58 (4.78%) GitHub
5 53 (4.37%) Serverless
6 36 (2.97%) AWS Lambda
7 28 (2.31%) GitHub Actions
8 26 (2.14%) OpenShift
9 24 (1.98%) Amazon S3
10 19 (1.57%) Amazon SQS
11 17 (1.40%) Amazon EC2
11 17 (1.40%) Amazon ECS
12 13 (1.07%) Amazon EKS
12 13 (1.07%) SaaS
13 10 (0.82%) Anthropic Claude
13 10 (0.82%) Azure DevOps
14 9 (0.74%) Power Platform
15 7 (0.58%) Amazon EventBridge
15 7 (0.58%) AWS CloudFormation
15 7 (0.58%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 27 (2.22%) Software-Defined Radio
2 23 (1.89%) Wireless
3 20 (1.65%) Ethernet
4 15 (1.24%) TCP/IP
5 12 (0.99%) HTTP
6 11 (0.91%) Firewall
7 9 (0.74%) 3GPP
7 9 (0.74%) VPN
8 8 (0.66%) RTP
9 7 (0.58%) Wireshark
10 4 (0.33%) Internet
11 3 (0.25%) Network Security
12 2 (0.16%) DNS
12 2 (0.16%) RS-232
12 2 (0.16%) RS-422
13 1 (0.082%) BGP
13 1 (0.082%) HTTPS
13 1 (0.082%) MQTT
13 1 (0.082%) RS-485
13 1 (0.082%) RTCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 72 (5.93%) PostgreSQL
2 45 (3.71%) Relational Database
3 39 (3.21%) SQL Server
4 27 (2.22%) NoSQL
5 16 (1.32%) DynamoDB
5 16 (1.32%) Elasticsearch
6 15 (1.24%) MongoDB
7 10 (0.82%) Apache Cassandra
7 10 (0.82%) MySQL
8 9 (0.74%) Amazon RDS
9 6 (0.49%) Metadata
9 6 (0.49%) Redis
10 5 (0.41%) Big Data
10 5 (0.41%) Power BI
11 4 (0.33%) Geospatial Data
11 4 (0.33%) GIS
11 4 (0.33%) Hadoop
12 3 (0.25%) Amazon Athena
12 3 (0.25%) Data Hub
12 3 (0.25%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 90 (7.41%) Git
2 61 (5.02%) Jenkins
3 48 (3.95%) GitLab
4 30 (2.47%) JIRA
5 21 (1.73%) JUnit
6 19 (1.57%) Visual Studio
7 18 (1.48%) SonarQube
8 17 (1.40%) Rational DOORS
9 14 (1.15%) Gradle
9 14 (1.15%) Rational Rhapsody
10 11 (0.91%) Eclipse
10 11 (0.91%) Liquibase
10 11 (0.91%) Mockito
11 9 (0.74%) Bitbucket
11 9 (0.74%) Selenium
12 8 (0.66%) Cucumber
12 8 (0.66%) IntelliJ
13 7 (0.58%) LabVIEW
13 7 (0.58%) TeamCity
14 6 (0.49%) Mocha
General
1 166 (13.67%) Finance
2 123 (10.13%) Social Skills
3 67 (5.52%) Aerospace
4 59 (4.86%) Banking
4 59 (4.86%) Front Office
5 53 (4.37%) Public Sector
6 41 (3.38%) Analytical Skills
7 31 (2.55%) Law
8 25 (2.06%) Manufacturing
9 18 (1.48%) Retail
10 17 (1.40%) Aviation
11 16 (1.32%) Automotive
12 14 (1.15%) Electronics
13 12 (0.99%) Military
14 11 (0.91%) Investment Banking
15 8 (0.66%) Back Office
15 8 (0.66%) Telecoms
16 7 (0.58%) Avionics
17 5 (0.41%) Fire and Rescue
17 5 (0.41%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 162 (13.34%) React
2 105 (8.65%) .NET
3 102 (8.40%) Node.js
4 94 (7.74%) Kafka
5 82 (6.75%) Spring
6 76 (6.26%) Spring Boot
7 68 (5.60%) REST
8 56 (4.61%) Redux
9 55 (4.53%) AngularJS
10 52 (4.28%) GraphQL
11 39 (3.21%) RESTful
12 33 (2.72%) Django
13 24 (1.98%) Next.js
14 23 (1.89%) CSS
15 21 (1.73%) HTML
16 19 (1.57%) FastAPI
17 18 (1.48%) .NET Core
18 16 (1.32%) Web Services
19 15 (1.24%) Vue
20 14 (1.15%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 109 (8.98%) Cloud Native
2 74 (6.10%) Distributed Systems
3 61 (5.02%) Fixed Income
4 44 (3.62%) Algorithms
5 34 (2.80%) Product Ownership
6 31 (2.55%) Embedded Systems
7 21 (1.73%) Derivative
8 20 (1.65%) AI Agents
9 17 (1.40%) Onboarding
10 16 (1.32%) Legacy Systems
11 15 (1.24%) Equities
11 15 (1.24%) Self-Motivation
12 13 (1.07%) Data Protection Act
13 11 (0.91%) Data Structures
14 10 (0.82%) Enterprise Software
14 10 (0.82%) RISC-V
15 9 (0.74%) FPGA
15 9 (0.74%) Greenfield Project
16 8 (0.66%) Data Centre
16 8 (0.66%) PCIe
Operating Systems
1 115 (9.47%) Linux
2 39 (3.21%) Windows
3 17 (1.40%) Embedded Linux
4 15 (1.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 12 (0.99%) Unix
6 11 (0.91%) FreeRTOS
7 8 (0.66%) Apple iOS
8 6 (0.49%) Windows Server
9 5 (0.41%) Android
10 3 (0.25%) Debian
10 3 (0.25%) Rocky
10 3 (0.25%) Solaris
10 3 (0.25%) Ubuntu
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 1,197 (98.60%) Software Engineering
2 334 (27.51%) Agile
3 278 (22.90%) CI/CD
4 142 (11.70%) Full-Stack Development
5 132 (10.87%) DevOps
6 125 (10.30%) Microservices
7 119 (9.80%) AI
8 112 (9.23%) Test Automation
9 92 (7.58%) Problem-Solving
10 85 (7.00%) TDD
11 74 (6.10%) Continuous Improvement
12 69 (5.68%) Containerisation
13 66 (5.44%) Software Testing
14 65 (5.35%) Mentoring
15 64 (5.27%) Infrastructure as Code
16 63 (5.19%) Machine Learning
17 59 (4.86%) SDLC
18 58 (4.78%) Event-Driven
19 56 (4.61%) Clean Code
20 53 (4.37%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 311 (25.62%) Java
2 263 (21.66%) Python
3 179 (14.74%) C++
4 168 (13.84%) TypeScript
5 158 (13.01%) C#
6 140 (11.53%) JavaScript
7 125 (10.30%) SQL
8 104 (8.57%) Ada
9 76 (6.26%) C
10 73 (6.01%) Go
11 29 (2.39%) Kotlin
12 23 (1.89%) Rust
13 19 (1.57%) Embedded C
13 19 (1.57%) PowerShell
14 14 (1.15%) PHP
15 13 (1.07%) MATLAB
16 12 (0.99%) PL/SQL
17 11 (0.91%) Bash
18 8 (0.66%) R
19 6 (0.49%) Scala
Qualifications
1 297 (24.46%) Security Cleared
2 248 (20.43%) SC Cleared
3 51 (4.20%) Degree
4 36 (2.97%) DV Cleared
5 21 (1.73%) BPSS Clearance
6 20 (1.65%) Computer Science Degree
7 9 (0.74%) AWS Certification
7 9 (0.74%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 5 (0.41%) ISTQB
8 5 (0.41%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 3 (0.25%) Chartered Engineer
9 3 (0.25%) PhD
10 2 (0.16%) CCNP
10 2 (0.16%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (0.16%) HNC
10 2 (0.16%) HND
10 2 (0.16%) Master's Degree
10 2 (0.16%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 1 (0.082%) CCDP
11 1 (0.082%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 42 (3.46%) QA
2 19 (1.57%) Def Stans
3 14 (1.15%) IEC 61508
4 13 (1.07%) MISRA
5 10 (0.82%) Data Quality
6 9 (0.74%) Accessibility
6 9 (0.74%) DO-178B
6 9 (0.74%) GDPR
7 5 (0.41%) WCAG
8 4 (0.33%) MISRA C
8 4 (0.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 2 (0.16%) ISO 26262
9 2 (0.16%) NCSC
10 1 (0.082%) FATCA
10 1 (0.082%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 1 (0.082%) MIL-STD-1553
10 1 (0.082%) NIST
System Software
1 131 (10.79%) Docker
2 15 (1.24%) Firmware
3 5 (0.41%) Embedded Firmware
4 2 (0.16%) HDFS
4 2 (0.16%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.082%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 117 (9.64%) Kubernetes
2 65 (5.35%) Terraform
3 19 (1.57%) Ansible
4 16 (1.32%) Grafana
5 13 (1.07%) Argo
6 9 (0.74%) Prometheus
7 5 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
8 4 (0.33%) Control-M
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 37 (3.05%) Microsoft
2 25 (2.06%) Oracle
3 23 (1.89%) Red Hat
4 21 (1.73%) Google
5 10 (0.82%) IBM
6 8 (0.66%) SAP
7 7 (0.58%) Splunk
8 6 (0.49%) OpenAI
8 6 (0.49%) Siemens
9 5 (0.41%) MathWorks
10 4 (0.33%) Checkmarx
10 4 (0.33%) Databricks
10 4 (0.33%) Sybase
11 3 (0.25%) Hitachi
11 3 (0.25%) Informatica
11 3 (0.25%) Talend
12 2 (0.16%) Ariba
12 2 (0.16%) Foundry
12 2 (0.16%) Palantir
12 2 (0.16%) Salesforce
956 Software Engineer jobs in England