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 15 October 2026.

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

 6 months to
15 Oct 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 120 140 77
Rank change year-on-year +20 -63 +38
Contract jobs requiring a Software Engineer 1,079 602 925
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.30% 2.14% 2.88%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.51% 2.35% 3.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 438 370 473
10th Percentile £365 £410 £425
25th Percentile £463 £486 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £625 £625
Median % change year-on-year -12.00% - +6.16%
75th Percentile £669 £825 £850
90th Percentile £750 £875 £888
UK median daily rate £550 £611 £625
% change year-on-year -10.02% -2.20% +8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 316 71 176
10th Percentile £51.75 £31.25 £47.00
25th Percentile £60.00 £61.25 £60.75
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.50
Median % change year-on-year - -0.76% +0.77%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.50
% change year-on-year - -0.76% +0.77%

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 43,070 25,660 29,897
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.95% 91.15% 93.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,333 16,528 18,273
10th Percentile £325 £278 £300
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -2.78%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,798 1,445 1,249
10th Percentile £14.50 £13.80 £15.10
25th Percentile £20.01 £17.33 £21.25
Median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +65.94% -41.51% -6.89%
75th Percentile £67.85 £50.00 £67.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.56 £25.15 £41.27
% change year-on-year +65.23% -39.05% -8.30%

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 15 October 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 15 October 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 15 October 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 -57 340 £625 -16.67% 130
North of England -3 202 £512 -2.57% 94
South West +41 177 £525 +2.44% 99
East of England +14 143 £505 +1.00% 83
South East +33 142 £530 +11.58% 113
North West +20 130 £550 +4.76% 58
Midlands +2 68 £470 -10.48% 44
Yorkshire -41 51 £460 -12.38% 17
West Midlands -21 37 £470 -11.32% 22
East Midlands +16 31 £400 -8.15% 22
North East -21 21 £470 -18.26% 19
Software Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 15 October 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 1,067 (98.89%) Software Engineering
2 287 (26.60%) Java
3 286 (26.51%) CI/CD
4 274 (25.39%) Agile
5 238 (22.06%) Python
6 224 (20.76%) Security Cleared
7 196 (18.16%) AWS
8 193 (17.89%) SC Cleared
9 176 (16.31%) C++
10 136 (12.60%) DevOps
11 133 (12.33%) AI
12 126 (11.68%) C#
13 123 (11.40%) Test Automation
14 122 (11.31%) Microservices
15 114 (10.57%) SQL
15 114 (10.57%) TypeScript
16 110 (10.19%) Docker
17 108 (10.01%) Kubernetes
18 107 (9.92%) React
19 106 (9.82%) Azure
20 105 (9.73%) Full-Stack Development
21 92 (8.53%) Spring
22 91 (8.43%) .NET
22 91 (8.43%) Continuous Improvement
23 90 (8.34%) Spring Boot
24 89 (8.25%) JavaScript
25 87 (8.06%) Linux
25 87 (8.06%) REST
26 82 (7.60%) Problem-Solving
27 80 (7.41%) 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 12 (1.11%) Apache Spark
2 8 (0.74%) Apache
2 8 (0.74%) Apache Airflow
3 5 (0.46%) Apache Solr
4 4 (0.37%) CMS
4 4 (0.37%) Confluence
5 3 (0.28%) SharePoint
6 2 (0.19%) nginx
6 2 (0.19%) WordPress
7 1 (0.093%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 1 (0.093%) Apache Pulsar
7 1 (0.093%) Headless CMS
7 1 (0.093%) IIS
7 1 (0.093%) MQSeries
7 1 (0.093%) Palantir Foundry
7 1 (0.093%) Tomcat
7 1 (0.093%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 4 (0.37%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.28%) Trello
3 2 (0.19%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.19%) Microsoft Excel
3 2 (0.19%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.19%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.093%) S-PLUS
Business Applications
1 4 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.093%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.093%) SAP ERP
2 1 (0.093%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 196 (18.16%) AWS
2 106 (9.82%) Azure
3 59 (5.47%) GitHub
4 56 (5.19%) Serverless
5 53 (4.91%) GCP
6 42 (3.89%) AWS Lambda
7 37 (3.43%) GitHub Actions
8 26 (2.41%) Amazon SQS
9 21 (1.95%) Amazon ECS
9 21 (1.95%) Azure DevOps
10 20 (1.85%) Amazon S3
11 17 (1.58%) Amazon EKS
12 15 (1.39%) OpenShift
13 14 (1.30%) Amazon EventBridge
14 13 (1.20%) Amazon EC2
15 12 (1.11%) Power Platform
16 10 (0.93%) AWS CloudFormation
16 10 (0.93%) GitHub Copilot
17 9 (0.83%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 9 (0.83%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 29 (2.69%) Wireless
2 21 (1.95%) Software-Defined Radio
3 14 (1.30%) Ethernet
3 14 (1.30%) Firewall
3 14 (1.30%) VPN
4 13 (1.20%) TCP/IP
5 11 (1.02%) HTTP
6 6 (0.56%) RTP
6 6 (0.56%) Wireshark
7 5 (0.46%) DNS
8 4 (0.37%) 3GPP
8 4 (0.37%) Internet
9 2 (0.19%) Broadband
9 2 (0.19%) Network Security
9 2 (0.19%) SSL
9 2 (0.19%) VoIP
9 2 (0.19%) Wi-Fi
10 1 (0.093%) Asterisk PBX
10 1 (0.093%) RS-232
10 1 (0.093%) RS-422
Database & Business Intelligence
1 52 (4.82%) PostgreSQL
2 39 (3.61%) Relational Database
3 34 (3.15%) NoSQL
3 34 (3.15%) SQL Server
4 21 (1.95%) MySQL
5 17 (1.58%) DynamoDB
6 14 (1.30%) MongoDB
7 11 (1.02%) Elasticsearch
8 10 (0.93%) Redis
9 8 (0.74%) Metadata
10 7 (0.65%) Big Data
10 7 (0.65%) Data Lake
11 6 (0.56%) Power BI
12 5 (0.46%) Amazon RDS
12 5 (0.46%) Azure SQL Database
12 5 (0.46%) ObjectStore
13 4 (0.37%) Amazon Athena
14 3 (0.28%) Apache Cassandra
14 3 (0.28%) Electronic Patient Records
14 3 (0.28%) Geospatial Data
Development Applications
1 66 (6.12%) Git
2 44 (4.08%) Jenkins
3 42 (3.89%) GitLab
4 31 (2.87%) JIRA
5 22 (2.04%) Rational DOORS
6 20 (1.85%) Visual Studio
7 17 (1.58%) Rational Rhapsody
8 15 (1.39%) LabVIEW
9 13 (1.20%) JUnit
10 12 (1.11%) Claude Code
11 11 (1.02%) Gradle
12 10 (0.93%) Eclipse
13 9 (0.83%) Mockito
14 7 (0.65%) Selenium
15 6 (0.56%) Maven
16 5 (0.46%) Cucumber
16 5 (0.46%) Liquibase
16 5 (0.46%) SonarQube
16 5 (0.46%) TeamCity
17 4 (0.37%) MSTest
General
1 139 (12.88%) Finance
2 126 (11.68%) Social Skills
3 67 (6.21%) Banking
4 64 (5.93%) Public Sector
5 42 (3.89%) Aerospace
6 31 (2.87%) Analytical Skills
7 26 (2.41%) Front Office
8 23 (2.13%) Automotive
9 17 (1.58%) Law
9 17 (1.58%) Manufacturing
9 17 (1.58%) Telecoms
10 15 (1.39%) Military
11 12 (1.11%) Aviation
12 11 (1.02%) Electronics
12 11 (1.02%) Retail
13 9 (0.83%) Back Office
14 8 (0.74%) Avionics
14 8 (0.74%) Investment Banking
15 6 (0.56%) Marketing
16 4 (0.37%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 107 (9.92%) React
2 92 (8.53%) Spring
3 91 (8.43%) .NET
4 90 (8.34%) Spring Boot
5 87 (8.06%) REST
6 62 (5.75%) Node.js
7 60 (5.56%) Kafka
8 57 (5.28%) Terraform
9 51 (4.73%) RESTful
10 48 (4.45%) Django
11 30 (2.78%) AngularJS
12 25 (2.32%) FastAPI
13 21 (1.95%) Next.js
14 18 (1.67%) Web Services
15 17 (1.58%) .NET Core
15 17 (1.58%) GraphQL
15 17 (1.58%) Qt
16 16 (1.48%) CSS
16 16 (1.48%) Flask
17 14 (1.30%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 129 (11.96%) Cloud Native
2 87 (8.06%) Distributed Systems
3 30 (2.78%) Onboarding
4 29 (2.69%) Embedded Systems
5 28 (2.59%) AI Agents
6 25 (2.32%) Product Ownership
7 19 (1.76%) Algorithms
8 16 (1.48%) Enterprise Software
8 16 (1.48%) Greenfield Project
9 15 (1.39%) Data Structures
10 14 (1.30%) Fixed Income
11 13 (1.20%) RISC-V
11 13 (1.20%) Self-Motivation
12 11 (1.02%) Data Protection Act
12 11 (1.02%) Device Driver
13 9 (0.83%) Legacy Systems
14 7 (0.65%) Derivative
14 7 (0.65%) Legacy Applications
14 7 (0.65%) MicroBlaze
15 6 (0.56%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 87 (8.06%) Linux
2 34 (3.15%) Windows
3 16 (1.48%) Embedded Linux
4 10 (0.93%) FreeRTOS
5 6 (0.56%) Android
5 6 (0.56%) Unix
6 4 (0.37%) Apple iOS
6 4 (0.37%) Debian
6 4 (0.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 3 (0.28%) VxWorks
7 3 (0.28%) Windows Server
8 2 (0.19%) Rocky
8 2 (0.19%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.093%) Solaris
9 1 (0.093%) Tizen
9 1 (0.093%) webOS
9 1 (0.093%) Windows Server 2008
9 1 (0.093%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,067 (98.89%) Software Engineering
2 286 (26.51%) CI/CD
3 274 (25.39%) Agile
4 136 (12.60%) DevOps
5 133 (12.33%) AI
6 123 (11.40%) Test Automation
7 122 (11.31%) Microservices
8 105 (9.73%) Full-Stack Development
9 91 (8.43%) Continuous Improvement
10 82 (7.60%) Problem-Solving
11 80 (7.41%) TDD
12 71 (6.58%) Event-Driven
12 71 (6.58%) Observability
13 66 (6.12%) Software Testing
14 61 (5.65%) Infrastructure as Code
15 56 (5.19%) Containerisation
15 56 (5.19%) Event-Driven Architecture
16 55 (5.10%) Clean Code
17 51 (4.73%) Validation
18 50 (4.63%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 287 (26.60%) Java
2 238 (22.06%) Python
3 176 (16.31%) C++
4 126 (11.68%) C#
5 114 (10.57%) SQL
5 114 (10.57%) TypeScript
6 89 (8.25%) JavaScript
7 79 (7.32%) C
8 63 (5.84%) Ada
9 46 (4.26%) Kotlin
10 28 (2.59%) Embedded C
11 21 (1.95%) Go
11 21 (1.95%) Rust
12 16 (1.48%) PowerShell
13 15 (1.39%) PHP
14 10 (0.93%) Bash
15 8 (0.74%) PL/SQL
16 7 (0.65%) Ruby
17 6 (0.56%) RPG
17 6 (0.56%) Scala
Qualifications
1 224 (20.76%) Security Cleared
2 193 (17.89%) SC Cleared
3 41 (3.80%) Degree
4 32 (2.97%) DV Cleared
5 17 (1.58%) BPSS Clearance
6 15 (1.39%) Computer Science Degree
7 6 (0.56%) AWS Certification
8 5 (0.46%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 3 (0.28%) Chartered Engineer
9 3 (0.28%) ISTQB
10 2 (0.19%) Azure Certification
10 2 (0.19%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 2 (0.19%) Master's Degree
10 2 (0.19%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 2 (0.19%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (3.43%) QA
2 19 (1.76%) MISRA
3 13 (1.20%) Accessibility
3 13 (1.20%) Def Stans
4 11 (1.02%) MISRA C
5 10 (0.93%) IEC 61508
6 8 (0.74%) DO-178B
7 5 (0.46%) WCAG
8 4 (0.37%) Data Quality
9 3 (0.28%) GDPR
9 3 (0.28%) ISO 20022
10 2 (0.19%) HL7
10 2 (0.19%) ISO 26262
10 2 (0.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.093%) FATCA
11 1 (0.093%) MIL-STD-1553
System Software
1 110 (10.19%) Docker
2 16 (1.48%) Firmware
3 8 (0.74%) Embedded Firmware
4 4 (0.37%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 108 (10.01%) Kubernetes
2 12 (1.11%) Ansible
3 9 (0.83%) Grafana
4 7 (0.65%) Argo
5 6 (0.56%) Prometheus
6 4 (0.37%) Control-M
6 4 (0.37%) Kibana
6 4 (0.37%) Single Sign-On
7 3 (0.28%) Functional Safety
7 3 (0.28%) Podman
8 2 (0.19%) Cilium
8 2 (0.19%) HAProxy
8 2 (0.19%) Kustomize
8 2 (0.19%) Progress Chef
8 2 (0.19%) Puppet
9 1 (0.093%) CA Endevor
9 1 (0.093%) PTC Integrity
Vendors
1 37 (3.43%) Microsoft
2 25 (2.32%) Oracle
3 13 (1.20%) Databricks
3 13 (1.20%) Google
4 7 (0.65%) Hitachi
4 7 (0.65%) Red Hat
4 7 (0.65%) SAP
5 6 (0.56%) Splunk
6 5 (0.46%) IBM
6 5 (0.46%) OpenAI
6 5 (0.46%) Siemens
6 5 (0.46%) VMware
7 4 (0.37%) Castleton
7 4 (0.37%) Salesforce
8 3 (0.28%) Bloomberg
8 3 (0.28%) FactSet
8 3 (0.28%) FIS
8 3 (0.28%) MuleSoft
8 3 (0.28%) Reuters
8 3 (0.28%) SGI
530 Software Engineer jobs in England