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 26 April 2026.

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

 6 months to
26 Apr 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 90 119 83
Rank change year-on-year +29 -36 +52
Contract jobs requiring a Software Engineer 1,125 555 971
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.82% 2.27% 2.61%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.05% 2.45% 2.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 486 370 516
10th Percentile £400 £413 £449
25th Percentile £450 £483 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £603 £628
Median % change year-on-year -8.75% -3.94% +6.36%
75th Percentile £688 £819 £750
90th Percentile £788 £875 £800
UK median daily rate £550 £600 £625
% change year-on-year -8.33% -4.00% +5.93%
Number of hourly rates quoted 384 50 293
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% +2.04%
75th Percentile £68.75 £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% +4.17%

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 36,897 22,673 34,523
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.34% 92.66% 92.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,106 15,121 22,965
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £409 £411
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 £517 £525
% change year-on-year -3.29% -1.52% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,492 898 2,411
10th Percentile £15.72 £14.20 £12.92
25th Percentile £20.98 £18.51 £16.30
Median hourly rate £45.46 £31.70 £35.65
Median % change year-on-year +43.41% -11.08% -20.78%
75th Percentile £67.47 £64.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.85 £29.24 £35.68
% change year-on-year +46.55% -18.05% -20.71%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 -33 338 £625 -7.41% 196
South West +37 254 £575 -4.17% 106
North of England +26 170 £500 +5.26% 126
East of England +44 149 £500 -14.16% 88
South East +1 132 £550 -2.22% 210
North West +15 91 £489 +8.61% 73
Yorkshire -22 55 £500 +4.17% 35
Midlands -36 43 £475 +8.57% 65
West Midlands -30 36 £467 +3.74% 35
North East +7 26 £400 - 18
East Midlands -40 7 £475 - 30
Software Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 26 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 1,114 (99.02%) Software Engineering
2 274 (24.36%) Security Cleared
3 271 (24.09%) Agile
4 266 (23.64%) Java
5 257 (22.84%) AWS
6 231 (20.53%) CI/CD
7 224 (19.91%) Python
8 211 (18.76%) SC Cleared
9 187 (16.62%) C++
10 154 (13.69%) C#
11 150 (13.33%) TypeScript
12 140 (12.44%) React
13 136 (12.09%) DevOps
14 134 (11.91%) JavaScript
15 128 (11.38%) Microservices
16 126 (11.20%) Docker
17 123 (10.93%) Kubernetes
18 121 (10.76%) Full-Stack Development
18 121 (10.76%) Linux
19 117 (10.40%) Azure
20 113 (10.04%) Ada
20 113 (10.04%) SQL
21 103 (9.16%) Node.js
22 97 (8.62%) AI
23 91 (8.09%) Kafka
24 89 (7.91%) C
24 89 (7.91%) Git
25 88 (7.82%) .NET
26 87 (7.73%) Go
27 83 (7.38%) 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 (1.69%) Apache
2 17 (1.51%) Confluence
3 15 (1.33%) Apache Spark
4 3 (0.27%) IIS
4 3 (0.27%) 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 (0.089%) Apache Synapse
6 1 (0.089%) CMS
6 1 (0.089%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.089%) SharePoint
6 1 (0.089%) Smallworld
Applications
1 3 (0.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.18%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.089%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.18%) LabWindows
2 1 (0.089%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 257 (22.84%) AWS
2 117 (10.40%) Azure
3 63 (5.60%) GCP
4 51 (4.53%) GitHub
4 51 (4.53%) Serverless
5 26 (2.31%) AWS Lambda
6 21 (1.87%) Amazon S3
6 21 (1.87%) GitHub Actions
7 20 (1.78%) Azure DevOps
8 19 (1.69%) OpenShift
9 17 (1.51%) AWS CloudFormation
10 16 (1.42%) Power Platform
11 15 (1.33%) Amazon ECS
12 14 (1.24%) Amazon SQS
13 12 (1.07%) Amazon EC2
13 12 (1.07%) Azure Functions
14 10 (0.89%) Collibra
14 10 (0.89%) SaaS
15 9 (0.80%) Amazon EKS
16 7 (0.62%) Azure Storage
Communications & Networking
1 22 (1.96%) Software-Defined Radio
2 18 (1.60%) Ethernet
3 11 (0.98%) TCP/IP
3 11 (0.98%) Wireless
4 8 (0.71%) 3GPP
5 7 (0.62%) HTTP
6 5 (0.44%) RTP
7 4 (0.36%) Wireshark
8 3 (0.27%) Firewall
9 2 (0.18%) Modbus
10 1 (0.089%) BGP
10 1 (0.089%) FTP
10 1 (0.089%) HTTPS
10 1 (0.089%) LTE
10 1 (0.089%) Network Security
10 1 (0.089%) Profibus
10 1 (0.089%) RTCP
10 1 (0.089%) VLAN
10 1 (0.089%) VPN
10 1 (0.089%) XCAP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 66 (5.87%) PostgreSQL
2 30 (2.67%) SQL Server
3 28 (2.49%) Relational Database
4 25 (2.22%) Apache Cassandra
5 21 (1.87%) MongoDB
6 20 (1.78%) NoSQL
7 17 (1.51%) Data Lake
8 16 (1.42%) Amazon RDS
8 16 (1.42%) MySQL
9 13 (1.16%) Power BI
10 12 (1.07%) Metadata
11 11 (0.98%) DynamoDB
11 11 (0.98%) Mixpanel
12 10 (0.89%) Amazon Athena
12 10 (0.89%) Elasticsearch
13 8 (0.71%) BigQuery
14 7 (0.62%) Redis
15 6 (0.53%) Hadoop
15 6 (0.53%) OLAP
15 6 (0.53%) OLTP
Development Applications
1 89 (7.91%) Git
2 55 (4.89%) GitLab
3 46 (4.09%) Jenkins
4 42 (3.73%) JIRA
5 24 (2.13%) Rational Rhapsody
6 23 (2.04%) Rational DOORS
7 21 (1.87%) Gradle
8 19 (1.69%) JUnit
9 18 (1.60%) IntelliJ
10 17 (1.51%) SonarQube
10 17 (1.51%) Visual Studio
11 12 (1.07%) Cucumber
12 11 (0.98%) Eclipse
13 10 (0.89%) Bitbucket
13 10 (0.89%) Cypress.io
13 10 (0.89%) Maven
14 8 (0.71%) Mockito
14 8 (0.71%) PVCS
15 7 (0.62%) Oracle APEX
15 7 (0.62%) Selenium
General
1 113 (10.04%) Finance
2 92 (8.18%) Social Skills
3 56 (4.98%) Aerospace
4 50 (4.44%) Front Office
5 40 (3.56%) Public Sector
6 34 (3.02%) Analytical Skills
7 29 (2.58%) Law
8 28 (2.49%) Banking
8 28 (2.49%) Electronics
9 24 (2.13%) Manufacturing
10 20 (1.78%) Military
11 13 (1.16%) Retail
12 9 (0.80%) Aviation
12 9 (0.80%) Influencing Skills
13 8 (0.71%) Presentation Skills
14 7 (0.62%) Investment Banking
15 5 (0.44%) Health Technology
16 4 (0.36%) Fire and Rescue
16 4 (0.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 4 (0.36%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 140 (12.44%) React
2 103 (9.16%) Node.js
3 91 (8.09%) Kafka
4 88 (7.82%) .NET
5 72 (6.40%) REST
6 67 (5.96%) Spring
7 63 (5.60%) Spring Boot
8 52 (4.62%) AngularJS
9 46 (4.09%) Redux
10 45 (4.00%) GraphQL
11 35 (3.11%) RESTful
12 32 (2.84%) Middleware
13 22 (1.96%) gRPC
14 21 (1.87%) CSS
15 18 (1.60%) HTML
16 17 (1.51%) JSON
16 17 (1.51%) Next.js
16 17 (1.51%) Qt
16 17 (1.51%) Vue
16 17 (1.51%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 74 (6.58%) Cloud Native
2 60 (5.33%) Algorithms
3 50 (4.44%) Fixed Income
4 48 (4.27%) Distributed Systems
5 34 (3.02%) Product Ownership
6 22 (1.96%) Embedded Systems
7 19 (1.69%) AI Agents
8 15 (1.33%) Derivative
9 14 (1.24%) Legacy Systems
9 14 (1.24%) Robotics
10 13 (1.16%) Equities
10 13 (1.16%) Mobile App
11 11 (0.98%) Data Protection Act
11 11 (0.98%) Greenfield Project
11 11 (0.98%) Onboarding
12 10 (0.89%) FPGA
12 10 (0.89%) Life Science
13 8 (0.71%) NHS
13 8 (0.71%) Self-Motivation
14 7 (0.62%) PCIe
Operating Systems
1 121 (10.76%) Linux
2 48 (4.27%) Windows
3 18 (1.60%) Unix
4 16 (1.42%) Apple iOS
5 15 (1.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 13 (1.16%) Android
7 10 (0.89%) Embedded Linux
8 9 (0.80%) Windows Server
9 7 (0.62%) FreeRTOS
10 5 (0.44%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.36%) Debian
12 3 (0.27%) Rocky
13 2 (0.18%) Robot Operating System
13 2 (0.18%) Solaris
13 2 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
13 2 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
14 1 (0.089%) Mac OS
14 1 (0.089%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,114 (99.02%) Software Engineering
2 271 (24.09%) Agile
3 231 (20.53%) CI/CD
4 136 (12.09%) DevOps
5 128 (11.38%) Microservices
6 121 (10.76%) Full-Stack Development
7 97 (8.62%) AI
8 83 (7.38%) Problem-Solving
9 77 (6.84%) TDD
10 73 (6.49%) Test Automation
11 69 (6.13%) Containerisation
12 62 (5.51%) Mentoring
13 61 (5.42%) Scrum
14 60 (5.33%) Infrastructure as Code
15 59 (5.24%) SDLC
16 57 (5.07%) Machine Learning
17 56 (4.98%) Unit Testing
18 50 (4.44%) Continuous Improvement
19 46 (4.09%) Clean Code
20 45 (4.00%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 266 (23.64%) Java
2 224 (19.91%) Python
3 187 (16.62%) C++
4 154 (13.69%) C#
5 150 (13.33%) TypeScript
6 134 (11.91%) JavaScript
7 113 (10.04%) Ada
7 113 (10.04%) SQL
8 89 (7.91%) C
9 87 (7.73%) Go
10 32 (2.84%) Embedded C
11 25 (2.22%) Kotlin
12 22 (1.96%) MATLAB
13 21 (1.87%) PowerShell
13 21 (1.87%) Rust
14 17 (1.51%) Embedded C++
15 14 (1.24%) Bash
16 9 (0.80%) PL/SQL
16 9 (0.80%) Swift
17 7 (0.62%) Perl
Qualifications
1 274 (24.36%) Security Cleared
2 211 (18.76%) SC Cleared
3 49 (4.36%) Degree
4 39 (3.47%) DV Cleared
5 22 (1.96%) Computer Science Degree
6 10 (0.89%) BPSS Clearance
7 7 (0.62%) AWS Certification
7 7 (0.62%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 4 (0.36%) ISTQB
8 4 (0.36%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 3 (0.27%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (0.18%) CCNA
10 2 (0.18%) CCNP
10 2 (0.18%) HNC
10 2 (0.18%) HND
11 1 (0.089%) CCDP
11 1 (0.089%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 1 (0.089%) OCA
11 1 (0.089%) Oracle Certification
11 1 (0.089%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 38 (3.38%) Def Stans
2 34 (3.02%) QA
3 32 (2.84%) IEC 61508
4 21 (1.87%) MISRA
5 19 (1.69%) Data Quality
6 15 (1.33%) MISRA C
7 12 (1.07%) GDPR
8 8 (0.71%) Accessibility
9 6 (0.53%) DO-178B
9 6 (0.53%) HL7
10 4 (0.36%) NCSC
11 2 (0.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 1 (0.089%) DICOM
12 1 (0.089%) FATCA
12 1 (0.089%) ISO/IEC 27001
12 1 (0.089%) NIST
12 1 (0.089%) WCAG
System Software
1 126 (11.20%) Docker
2 15 (1.33%) Firmware
3 10 (0.89%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (0.36%) Embedded Firmware
5 4 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
6 2 (0.18%) HDFS
7 1 (0.089%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 123 (10.93%) Kubernetes
2 79 (7.02%) Terraform
3 24 (2.13%) Grafana
4 20 (1.78%) Ansible
5 11 (0.98%) Argo
6 6 (0.53%) Prometheus
7 4 (0.36%) 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 (0.089%) Functional Safety
9 1 (0.089%) Podman
Vendors
1 38 (3.38%) Microsoft
2 33 (2.93%) Red Hat
3 23 (2.04%) Google
3 23 (2.04%) Oracle
4 21 (1.87%) IBM
5 20 (1.78%) Databricks
6 10 (0.89%) MathWorks
6 10 (0.89%) VMware
7 8 (0.71%) ANSYS
7 8 (0.71%) Siemens
7 8 (0.71%) Spotify
8 6 (0.53%) Splunk
9 4 (0.36%) Atlassian
9 4 (0.36%) Brio
9 4 (0.36%) Checkmarx
10 3 (0.27%) Informatica
10 3 (0.27%) NVIDIA
10 3 (0.27%) OpenAI
10 3 (0.27%) SAP
10 3 (0.27%) Talend
761 Software Engineer jobs in England