Software Engineer Contracts in England

Software Engineer
UK > England

The median Software Engineer daily rate in England is £625, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 2 July 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 131 64 135
Rank change year-on-year -67 +71 -12
Contract jobs requiring a Software Engineer 559 1,169 906
As % of all contract jobs advertised in England 2.16% 3.13% 1.91%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.35% 3.37% 2.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 382 603 583
10th Percentile £413 £450 £431
25th Percentile £485 £506 £492
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £650 £600
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% +8.33% -
75th Percentile £838 £800 £688
90th Percentile £875 £875 £750
UK median daily rate £600 £628 £600
% change year-on-year -4.38% +4.58% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 46 350 149
10th Percentile £43.88 £46.25 £47.50
25th Percentile £61.25 £52.50 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £68.75 £70.00 £70.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £77.50 £88.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year - - +8.33%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
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 23,802 34,689 44,733
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.12% 92.93% 94.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,558 22,690 31,723
10th Percentile £293 £300 £313
25th Percentile £404 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -4.55% +1.85%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £663
90th Percentile £750 £750 £763
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% +1.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,110 2,587 1,360
10th Percentile £13.99 £12.87 £14.41
25th Percentile £17.90 £16.80 £19.50
Median hourly rate £28.34 £40.00 £43.93
Median % change year-on-year -29.15% -8.95% +75.72%
75th Percentile £57.50 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £74.52 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £26.50 £37.50 £43.00
% change year-on-year -29.33% -12.79% +68.63%

Software Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Job postings that featured Software Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in England.

Job vacancy trend for Software Engineer in England

Software Engineer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Software Engineer in England.

Daily rate trend for Software Engineer in England

Software Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Software Engineer in England over the 6 months to 2 July 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Software Engineer in England

Software Engineer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Software Engineer in England.

Hourly rate trend for Software Engineer in England

Software Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Software Engineer in England over the 6 months to 2 July 2025.

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 2 July 2025. 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 -29 347 £725 +3.57% 3,126
North of England -32 69 £475 -5.00% 849
North West -24 49 £450 -14.29% 531
South East -26 48 £520 +4.00% 863
East of England -47 34 £493 -1.50% 471
South West -48 31 £638 +15.91% 422
Yorkshire -1 19 £490 +22.50% 260
Midlands -2 19 £463 -4.29% 378
West Midlands +7 9 £488 -4.88% 207
East Midlands -3 9 £475 - 171
North East -11 1 - - 58
Software Engineer
UK

Software Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England

For the 6 months to 2 July 2025, Software Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the England region featuring Software Engineer in the job title.

1 543 (97.14%) Software Engineering
2 307 (54.92%) Agile
3 271 (48.48%) AWS
4 257 (45.97%) Python
5 252 (45.08%) JavaScript
6 240 (42.93%) Finance
7 219 (39.18%) Java
8 214 (38.28%) TypeScript
9 182 (32.56%) React
10 179 (32.02%) Front Office
11 161 (28.80%) Fixed Income
12 147 (26.30%) Node.js
13 146 (26.12%) Asset Management
14 138 (24.69%) Investment Management
15 125 (22.36%) Banking
16 124 (22.18%) GCP
17 115 (20.57%) CI/CD
18 113 (20.21%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 101 (18.07%) Equities
19 101 (18.07%) Fintech
20 96 (17.17%) Azure
21 90 (16.10%) dbt
22 89 (15.92%) PostgreSQL
23 86 (15.38%) Social Skills
23 86 (15.38%) Amazon Athena
24 85 (15.21%) Apache Airflow
24 85 (15.21%) Dremio
24 85 (15.21%) Apache Arrow
24 85 (15.21%) Apache Iceberg
25 84 (15.03%) C#

Software Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 85 (15.21%) Apache Airflow
2 64 (11.45%) Apache
3 22 (3.94%) Confluence
4 5 (0.89%) CMS
4 5 (0.89%) Drupal
5 4 (0.72%) JBoss
5 4 (0.72%) WordPress
6 2 (0.36%) Apache Spark
6 2 (0.36%) Tuxedo
7 1 (0.18%) CICS
7 1 (0.18%) nginx
7 1 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
7 1 (0.18%) SharePoint
7 1 (0.18%) WebLogic
Applications
1 6 (1.07%) Simulink
2 2 (0.36%) CANalyzer
3 1 (0.18%) Stateflow
3 1 (0.18%) Trello
Business Applications
1 7 (1.25%) FLEXCUBE
1 7 (1.25%) Oracle BPM
2 5 (0.89%) Temenos T24
3 1 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.18%) LabWindows
3 1 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 271 (48.48%) AWS
2 124 (22.18%) GCP
3 96 (17.17%) Azure
4 90 (16.10%) dbt
5 51 (9.12%) Snowflake
6 43 (7.69%) Serverless
7 31 (5.55%) AWS Lambda
8 29 (5.19%) GitHub
9 19 (3.40%) GitHub Actions
10 17 (3.04%) Amazon ECS
11 16 (2.86%) Amazon EC2
12 15 (2.68%) Amazon SQS
13 14 (2.50%) Amazon EKS
13 14 (2.50%) Amazon S3
14 11 (1.97%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 10 (1.79%) Datadog
16 9 (1.61%) AWS CloudFormation
17 8 (1.43%) Amazon EventBridge
17 8 (1.43%) Azure AKS
17 8 (1.43%) Azure Cosmos DB
Communications & Networking
1 13 (2.33%) Ethernet
2 12 (2.15%) TCP/IP
3 5 (0.89%) HTTPS
3 5 (0.89%) NFC
3 5 (0.89%) PPP
4 4 (0.72%) Internet
5 3 (0.54%) 3GPP
5 3 (0.54%) DNS
5 3 (0.54%) HTTP
5 3 (0.54%) Wireless
6 2 (0.36%) Network Security
7 1 (0.18%) Cisco Nexus
7 1 (0.18%) Firewall
7 1 (0.18%) RS-232
7 1 (0.18%) SNMP
7 1 (0.18%) Software-Defined Radio
7 1 (0.18%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 89 (15.92%) PostgreSQL
2 86 (15.38%) Amazon Athena
3 85 (15.21%) Apache Arrow
3 85 (15.21%) Apache Iceberg
3 85 (15.21%) Dremio
4 38 (6.80%) Apache Ignite
4 38 (6.80%) Data Lake
5 26 (4.65%) Relational Database
6 21 (3.76%) SQL Server
7 17 (3.04%) MongoDB
7 17 (3.04%) MySQL
8 14 (2.50%) DynamoDB
9 13 (2.33%) NoSQL
10 8 (1.43%) Big Data
11 4 (0.72%) Amazon Aurora
11 4 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
11 4 (0.72%) Amazon Redshift
11 4 (0.72%) Oracle Database
12 3 (0.54%) Data Warehouse
12 3 (0.54%) HPCC
Development Applications
1 55 (9.84%) Jenkins
2 46 (8.23%) Git
3 41 (7.33%) JIRA
4 34 (6.08%) GitLab
5 25 (4.47%) Eclipse
6 17 (3.04%) Bitbucket
7 15 (2.68%) Gradle
8 14 (2.50%) Visual Studio
9 11 (1.97%) JUnit
10 10 (1.79%) GoogleTest
10 10 (1.79%) Liquibase
10 10 (1.79%) Mockito
10 10 (1.79%) Selenium
11 9 (1.61%) Cucumber
11 9 (1.61%) REST Assured
12 8 (1.43%) Robot Framework
12 8 (1.43%) SonarQube
13 7 (1.25%) Cypress.io
14 6 (1.07%) Rational DOORS
15 5 (0.89%) Valgrind
General
1 240 (42.93%) Finance
2 179 (32.02%) Front Office
3 125 (22.36%) Banking
4 86 (15.38%) Social Skills
5 63 (11.27%) Investment Banking
6 36 (6.44%) Analytical Skills
7 28 (5.01%) Public Sector
8 22 (3.94%) Military
9 16 (2.86%) Presentation Skills
10 15 (2.68%) Manufacturing
11 14 (2.50%) Marketing
11 14 (2.50%) Telecoms
12 12 (2.15%) Electronics
13 9 (1.61%) Law
14 5 (0.89%) Multimedia
14 5 (0.89%) Retail
15 4 (0.72%) Back Office
15 4 (0.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 4 (0.72%) Police
16 3 (0.54%) Aerospace
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 182 (32.56%) React
2 147 (26.30%) Node.js
3 81 (14.49%) AngularJS
4 78 (13.95%) Redux
5 77 (13.77%) NumPy
6 76 (13.60%) Pandas
7 69 (12.34%) SciPy
8 65 (11.63%) Vue
9 56 (10.02%) .NET
10 53 (9.48%) REST
11 44 (7.87%) Kafka
12 39 (6.98%) gRPC
13 38 (6.80%) Protocol Buffers
14 37 (6.62%) Spring
15 35 (6.26%) Spring Boot
16 33 (5.90%) GraphQL
17 29 (5.19%) Web Services
18 26 (4.65%) HTML
19 23 (4.11%) PySpark
19 23 (4.11%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 161 (28.80%) Fixed Income
2 113 (20.21%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 101 (18.07%) Equities
4 81 (14.49%) Hedge funds
5 52 (9.30%) Derivative
6 30 (5.37%) Pricing Data
7 24 (4.29%) Greenfield Project
8 21 (3.76%) Algorithms
9 20 (3.58%) Cloud Native
10 16 (2.86%) Product Ownership
11 14 (2.50%) Data Structures
12 13 (2.33%) Distributed Systems
13 7 (1.25%) Mobile App
14 6 (1.07%) NHS
15 5 (0.89%) CUDA
15 5 (0.89%) Data Protection Act
15 5 (0.89%) PKI
15 5 (0.89%) Self-Motivation
15 5 (0.89%) Smartcard
16 4 (0.72%) Legacy Code
Operating Systems
1 69 (12.34%) Linux
2 23 (4.11%) Windows
3 10 (1.79%) Unix
4 6 (1.07%) Ubuntu
5 4 (0.72%) Android
6 3 (0.54%) Embedded Linux
7 2 (0.36%) Apple iOS
7 2 (0.36%) Windows Server
8 1 (0.18%) FreeRTOS
8 1 (0.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.18%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 543 (97.14%) Software Engineering
2 307 (54.92%) Agile
3 146 (26.12%) Asset Management
4 138 (24.69%) Investment Management
5 115 (20.57%) CI/CD
6 101 (18.07%) Fintech
7 78 (13.95%) TDD
8 76 (13.60%) DevOps
8 76 (13.60%) Full-Stack Development
9 72 (12.88%) Microservices
9 72 (12.88%) Test Automation
10 64 (11.45%) Problem-Solving
11 59 (10.55%) User Experience
12 55 (9.84%) Containerisation
13 48 (8.59%) Scrum
14 45 (8.05%) Order Management
15 41 (7.33%) Infrastructure as Code
16 39 (6.98%) Continuous Integration
17 38 (6.80%) Computer Science
17 38 (6.80%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 257 (45.97%) Python
2 252 (45.08%) JavaScript
3 219 (39.18%) Java
4 214 (38.28%) TypeScript
5 84 (15.03%) C#
6 80 (14.31%) SQL
7 76 (13.60%) C++
8 30 (5.37%) Go
9 23 (4.11%) C
10 14 (2.50%) Bash
11 11 (1.97%) PL/SQL
12 10 (1.79%) Ada
12 10 (1.79%) PHP
13 8 (1.43%) MATLAB
13 8 (1.43%) PowerShell
14 6 (1.07%) Rust
15 5 (0.89%) Scala
16 4 (0.72%) Bicep
16 4 (0.72%) Kotlin
16 4 (0.72%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 77 (13.77%) Security Cleared
2 64 (11.45%) SC Cleared
3 40 (7.16%) Degree
4 26 (4.65%) Computer Science Degree
5 12 (2.15%) DV Cleared
6 10 (1.79%) Master's Degree
7 2 (0.36%) CCNP
7 2 (0.36%) Cisco Certification
7 2 (0.36%) OCA
7 2 (0.36%) Oracle Certification
7 2 (0.36%) RHCA
7 2 (0.36%) RHCE
7 2 (0.36%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 1 (0.18%) BPSS Clearance
8 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Certification
8 1 (0.18%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (2.50%) QA
2 7 (1.25%) Accessibility
2 7 (1.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 6 (1.07%) Def Stans
3 6 (1.07%) IEC 61508
4 4 (0.72%) MISRA
4 4 (0.72%) MISRA C
5 3 (0.54%) GDPR
5 3 (0.54%) Software Quality Assurance
6 2 (0.36%) PMO
7 1 (0.18%) GRC
7 1 (0.18%) HL7
7 1 (0.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.18%) NIST
7 1 (0.18%) SEPA
System Software
1 69 (12.34%) Docker
2 2 (0.36%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (0.18%) Firmware
3 1 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 53 (9.48%) Kubernetes
2 49 (8.77%) Terraform
3 17 (3.04%) Ansible
4 10 (1.79%) Prometheus
5 8 (1.43%) Grafana
5 8 (1.43%) Podman
6 6 (1.07%) Docker Swarm
6 6 (1.07%) Single Sign-On
7 3 (0.54%) Puppet
7 3 (0.54%) vCenter Server
7 3 (0.54%) WMI
8 2 (0.36%) Progress Chef
9 1 (0.18%) CA Endevor
Vendors
1 30 (5.37%) Microsoft
2 26 (4.65%) Oracle
3 20 (3.58%) Google
4 15 (2.68%) Atlassian
5 12 (2.15%) SAP
6 7 (1.25%) Intel
7 6 (1.07%) Temenos
8 5 (0.89%) ForgeRock
8 5 (0.89%) Ping Identity
9 4 (0.72%) Cisco
9 4 (0.72%) Databricks
9 4 (0.72%) Salesforce
9 4 (0.72%) Zend
10 3 (0.54%) CA Agile Central
10 3 (0.54%) PagerDuty
10 3 (0.54%) Splunk
10 3 (0.54%) Virgin Media
10 3 (0.54%) VMware
11 2 (0.36%) ServiceNow
11 2 (0.36%) Veracode