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 11 May 2026.

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

 6 months to
11 May 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 86 129 75
Rank change year-on-year +43 -54 +65
Contract jobs requiring a Software Engineer 1,167 536 1,013
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.87% 2.19% 2.76%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.11% 2.37% 2.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 497 363 528
10th Percentile £400 £413 £450
25th Percentile £463 £475 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £625 £638
Median % change year-on-year -12.00% -1.96% +8.05%
75th Percentile £688 £825 £750
90th Percentile £788 £875 £850
UK median daily rate £550 £600 £625
% change year-on-year -8.33% -4.00% +5.93%
Number of hourly rates quoted 399 48 314
10th Percentile £52.50 £52.35 £46.25
25th Percentile £61.25 £61.25 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £69.75 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £71.07 £68.75 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
% 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 37,544 22,663 34,086
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.31% 92.56% 92.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,357 15,087 22,604
10th Percentile £313 £300 £281
25th Percentile £413 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £620 £638 £645
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £505 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -1.46% -2.38% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,576 922 2,444
10th Percentile £15.75 £14.00 £12.87
25th Percentile £20.90 £18.51 £16.30
Median hourly rate £47.00 £30.26 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +55.32% -19.31% -16.67%
75th Percentile £67.50 £63.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £44.25 £28.51 £37.34
% change year-on-year +55.24% -23.66% -17.02%

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 11 May 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 11 May 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 11 May 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 -23 350 £625 -7.41% 293
South West +45 261 £575 - 101
North of England +23 173 £500 +5.26% 168
East of England +52 157 £500 -14.16% 113
South East +18 147 £550 -4.35% 232
North West +15 103 £500 +11.11% 87
Yorkshire -21 48 £500 +4.17% 53
Midlands -45 42 £494 +12.99% 73
West Midlands -34 35 £489 +8.58% 41
North East +6 24 £400 - 30
East Midlands -36 7 £500 +5.26% 32
Software Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 11 May 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 1,154 (98.89%) Software Engineering
2 293 (25.11%) Java
3 276 (23.65%) Agile
4 271 (23.22%) Security Cleared
5 261 (22.37%) AWS
6 242 (20.74%) CI/CD
7 223 (19.11%) Python
8 205 (17.57%) SC Cleared
9 187 (16.02%) C++
10 166 (14.22%) C#
11 158 (13.54%) TypeScript
12 149 (12.77%) React
13 144 (12.34%) JavaScript
14 139 (11.91%) DevOps
15 134 (11.48%) Microservices
16 128 (10.97%) Docker
17 127 (10.88%) Linux
18 126 (10.80%) Kubernetes
19 120 (10.28%) Full-Stack Development
20 118 (10.11%) SQL
21 117 (10.03%) Azure
22 113 (9.68%) Ada
23 102 (8.74%) Node.js
24 96 (8.23%) AI
25 95 (8.14%) .NET
26 91 (7.80%) C
27 89 (7.63%) Kafka
28 87 (7.46%) Go
29 85 (7.28%) Git
29 85 (7.28%) 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 (1.63%) Apache
2 16 (1.37%) Confluence
3 13 (1.11%) Apache Spark
4 3 (0.26%) IIS
4 3 (0.26%) nginx
4 3 (0.26%) Tomcat
5 2 (0.17%) Camunda
5 2 (0.17%) MQSeries
5 2 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
5 2 (0.17%) SAS
5 2 (0.17%) WebLogic
5 2 (0.17%) WinCC
6 1 (0.086%) Apache Synapse
6 1 (0.086%) CMS
6 1 (0.086%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.086%) SharePoint
6 1 (0.086%) Smallworld
Applications
1 2 (0.17%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (0.17%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.17%) LabWindows
2 1 (0.086%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 261 (22.37%) AWS
2 117 (10.03%) Azure
3 62 (5.31%) GCP
4 49 (4.20%) Serverless
5 48 (4.11%) GitHub
6 26 (2.23%) AWS Lambda
7 21 (1.80%) OpenShift
8 20 (1.71%) Azure DevOps
9 19 (1.63%) Amazon S3
10 17 (1.46%) GitHub Actions
11 15 (1.29%) Amazon EC2
11 15 (1.29%) Amazon SQS
11 15 (1.29%) AWS CloudFormation
11 15 (1.29%) Power Platform
12 14 (1.20%) Amazon ECS
13 11 (0.94%) Azure Functions
14 9 (0.77%) Amazon EKS
14 9 (0.77%) Collibra
14 9 (0.77%) SaaS
15 7 (0.60%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 30 (2.57%) Software-Defined Radio
2 22 (1.89%) Ethernet
3 15 (1.29%) Wireless
4 13 (1.11%) TCP/IP
5 10 (0.86%) HTTP
6 7 (0.60%) 3GPP
7 5 (0.43%) RTP
8 4 (0.34%) Wireshark
9 3 (0.26%) Firewall
10 2 (0.17%) DNS
10 2 (0.17%) Modbus
11 1 (0.086%) BGP
11 1 (0.086%) Bluetooth
11 1 (0.086%) HTTPS
11 1 (0.086%) Internet
11 1 (0.086%) Network Security
11 1 (0.086%) Profibus
11 1 (0.086%) RTCP
11 1 (0.086%) VPN
11 1 (0.086%) XCAP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 69 (5.91%) PostgreSQL
2 33 (2.83%) SQL Server
3 31 (2.66%) Relational Database
4 23 (1.97%) Apache Cassandra
5 20 (1.71%) MongoDB
5 20 (1.71%) NoSQL
6 15 (1.29%) Data Lake
6 15 (1.29%) DynamoDB
6 15 (1.29%) MySQL
7 14 (1.20%) Amazon RDS
8 12 (1.03%) Power BI
9 10 (0.86%) Amazon Athena
9 10 (0.86%) Elasticsearch
9 10 (0.86%) Metadata
9 10 (0.86%) Mixpanel
10 7 (0.60%) BigQuery
10 7 (0.60%) Redis
11 6 (0.51%) Hadoop
12 5 (0.43%) Azure SQL Database
12 5 (0.43%) OLAP
Development Applications
1 85 (7.28%) Git
2 59 (5.06%) GitLab
3 50 (4.28%) Jenkins
4 42 (3.60%) JIRA
5 26 (2.23%) Rational DOORS
6 25 (2.14%) Gradle
7 23 (1.97%) Rational Rhapsody
8 22 (1.89%) JUnit
9 20 (1.71%) Visual Studio
10 19 (1.63%) IntelliJ
10 19 (1.63%) SonarQube
11 14 (1.20%) Cucumber
12 13 (1.11%) Eclipse
13 11 (0.94%) Mockito
14 10 (0.86%) Bitbucket
14 10 (0.86%) Maven
15 9 (0.77%) Liquibase
16 8 (0.69%) PVCS
16 8 (0.69%) Selenium
17 7 (0.60%) Cypress.io
General
1 127 (10.88%) Finance
2 95 (8.14%) Social Skills
3 60 (5.14%) Aerospace
4 51 (4.37%) Front Office
5 39 (3.34%) Public Sector
6 36 (3.08%) Analytical Skills
7 35 (3.00%) Banking
8 30 (2.57%) Law
9 25 (2.14%) Electronics
9 25 (2.14%) Manufacturing
10 19 (1.63%) Military
11 14 (1.20%) Retail
12 10 (0.86%) Investment Banking
13 9 (0.77%) Aviation
14 8 (0.69%) Automotive
14 8 (0.69%) Influencing Skills
14 8 (0.69%) Presentation Skills
15 5 (0.43%) Telecoms
16 4 (0.34%) Fire and Rescue
16 4 (0.34%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 149 (12.77%) React
2 102 (8.74%) Node.js
3 95 (8.14%) .NET
4 89 (7.63%) Kafka
5 79 (6.77%) Spring
6 74 (6.34%) Spring Boot
7 72 (6.17%) REST
8 57 (4.88%) AngularJS
9 47 (4.03%) GraphQL
10 46 (3.94%) Redux
11 35 (3.00%) RESTful
12 30 (2.57%) Middleware
13 21 (1.80%) CSS
14 20 (1.71%) gRPC
14 20 (1.71%) HTML
14 20 (1.71%) Next.js
14 20 (1.71%) Web Services
15 17 (1.46%) Vue
16 16 (1.37%) JSON
16 16 (1.37%) Qt
Miscellaneous
1 83 (7.11%) Cloud Native
2 61 (5.23%) Algorithms
3 54 (4.63%) Distributed Systems
4 52 (4.46%) Fixed Income
5 39 (3.34%) Product Ownership
6 24 (2.06%) Embedded Systems
7 20 (1.71%) AI Agents
8 18 (1.54%) Derivative
9 16 (1.37%) Legacy Systems
10 14 (1.20%) Equities
10 14 (1.20%) Robotics
11 13 (1.11%) Data Protection Act
11 13 (1.11%) Mobile App
12 12 (1.03%) FPGA
13 11 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
13 11 (0.94%) Onboarding
14 10 (0.86%) Life Science
14 10 (0.86%) Self-Motivation
15 9 (0.77%) PCIe
16 8 (0.69%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 127 (10.88%) Linux
2 52 (4.46%) Windows
3 19 (1.63%) Unix
4 17 (1.46%) Apple iOS
5 16 (1.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 12 (1.03%) Embedded Linux
7 11 (0.94%) Android
8 10 (0.86%) FreeRTOS
8 10 (0.86%) Windows Server
9 6 (0.51%) Ubuntu
10 5 (0.43%) Debian
11 4 (0.34%) Rocky
12 3 (0.26%) Solaris
12 3 (0.26%) Windows Server 2008
12 3 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
13 2 (0.17%) Robot Operating System
14 1 (0.086%) Mac OS
14 1 (0.086%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,154 (98.89%) Software Engineering
2 276 (23.65%) Agile
3 242 (20.74%) CI/CD
4 139 (11.91%) DevOps
5 134 (11.48%) Microservices
6 120 (10.28%) Full-Stack Development
7 96 (8.23%) AI
8 85 (7.28%) Problem-Solving
9 84 (7.20%) Test Automation
10 77 (6.60%) TDD
11 73 (6.26%) Containerisation
12 66 (5.66%) SDLC
13 64 (5.48%) Scrum
14 62 (5.31%) Infrastructure as Code
15 59 (5.06%) Mentoring
15 59 (5.06%) Unit Testing
16 55 (4.71%) Machine Learning
17 52 (4.46%) Continuous Improvement
18 49 (4.20%) Observability
19 47 (4.03%) Clean Code
Programming Languages
1 293 (25.11%) Java
2 223 (19.11%) Python
3 187 (16.02%) C++
4 166 (14.22%) C#
5 158 (13.54%) TypeScript
6 144 (12.34%) JavaScript
7 118 (10.11%) SQL
8 113 (9.68%) Ada
9 91 (7.80%) C
10 87 (7.46%) Go
11 33 (2.83%) Embedded C
12 25 (2.14%) Kotlin
13 24 (2.06%) Rust
14 23 (1.97%) PowerShell
15 22 (1.89%) MATLAB
16 15 (1.29%) Embedded C++
17 14 (1.20%) Bash
18 10 (0.86%) PL/SQL
19 9 (0.77%) Swift
20 7 (0.60%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 271 (23.22%) Security Cleared
2 205 (17.57%) SC Cleared
3 49 (4.20%) Degree
4 42 (3.60%) DV Cleared
5 20 (1.71%) Computer Science Degree
6 9 (0.77%) BPSS Clearance
7 7 (0.60%) AWS Certification
7 7 (0.60%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 4 (0.34%) ISTQB
8 4 (0.34%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 3 (0.26%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (0.17%) CCNA
10 2 (0.17%) CCNP
10 2 (0.17%) HNC
10 2 (0.17%) HND
11 1 (0.086%) CCDP
11 1 (0.086%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 1 (0.086%) OCA
11 1 (0.086%) Oracle Certification
11 1 (0.086%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 38 (3.26%) QA
2 34 (2.91%) Def Stans
3 29 (2.49%) IEC 61508
4 19 (1.63%) MISRA
5 17 (1.46%) Data Quality
6 13 (1.11%) GDPR
6 13 (1.11%) MISRA C
7 11 (0.94%) Accessibility
8 5 (0.43%) DO-178B
9 4 (0.34%) HL7
9 4 (0.34%) NCSC
9 4 (0.34%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 3 (0.26%) WCAG
11 1 (0.086%) DICOM
11 1 (0.086%) FATCA
11 1 (0.086%) ISO 26262
11 1 (0.086%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 1 (0.086%) NIST
System Software
1 128 (10.97%) Docker
2 15 (1.29%) Firmware
3 10 (0.86%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (0.43%) Embedded Firmware
6 4 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
7 2 (0.17%) HDFS
8 1 (0.086%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 126 (10.80%) Kubernetes
2 72 (6.17%) Terraform
3 26 (2.23%) Grafana
4 21 (1.80%) Ansible
5 13 (1.11%) Argo
6 7 (0.60%) Prometheus
7 4 (0.34%) Data Guard
8 2 (0.17%) HAProxy
8 2 (0.17%) Progress Chef
8 2 (0.17%) Puppet
8 2 (0.17%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.086%) CA Endevor
9 1 (0.086%) Cilium
9 1 (0.086%) Functional Safety
9 1 (0.086%) Podman
Vendors
1 38 (3.26%) Microsoft
2 35 (3.00%) Red Hat
3 23 (1.97%) Google
4 22 (1.89%) IBM
5 21 (1.80%) Oracle
6 18 (1.54%) Databricks
7 10 (0.86%) MathWorks
7 10 (0.86%) VMware
8 8 (0.69%) ANSYS
8 8 (0.69%) Spotify
9 7 (0.60%) Siemens
9 7 (0.60%) Splunk
10 6 (0.51%) SAP
11 4 (0.34%) Atlassian
11 4 (0.34%) Checkmarx
12 3 (0.26%) Informatica
12 3 (0.26%) OpenAI
12 3 (0.26%) Palantir
12 3 (0.26%) Sybase
12 3 (0.26%) Talend
945 Software Engineer jobs in England