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 21 May 2026.

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

 6 months to
21 May 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 85 137 76
Rank change year-on-year +52 -61 +57
Contract jobs requiring a Software Engineer 1,175 512 1,024
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.85% 2.11% 2.81%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.09% 2.29% 3.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 501 350 538
10th Percentile £400 £410 £450
25th Percentile £463 £475 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £625 £650
Median % change year-on-year -12.00% -3.85% +8.33%
75th Percentile £688 £825 £772
90th Percentile £788 £875 £850
UK median daily rate £550 £600 £625
% change year-on-year -8.33% -4.00% +4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 387 43 314
10th Percentile £52.50 £52.10 £46.25
25th Percentile £60.88 £60.13 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.38 £70.00
90th Percentile £72.50 £76.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year - - +6.12%

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 38,064 22,370 33,771
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.33% 92.38% 92.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,623 14,863 22,425
10th Percentile £320 £296 £281
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.27% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £644
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -3.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,618 925 2,441
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.00 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.00 £18.50 £16.30
Median hourly rate £45.00 £29.23 £37.18
Median % change year-on-year +53.95% -21.38% -16.94%
75th Percentile £67.50 £62.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £42.69 £27.99 £36.50
% change year-on-year +52.50% -23.32% -18.89%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 -21 354 £625 -7.41% 246
South West +47 263 £570 -0.87% 121
North of England +24 180 £500 +11.11% 139
South East +26 153 £550 -4.35% 193
East of England +55 151 £503 -13.65% 106
North West +22 105 £500 +11.11% 75
Yorkshire -14 53 £500 +5.26% 36
Midlands -34 42 £494 +12.99% 60
West Midlands -29 36 £478 +6.16% 34
North East 0 24 £400 - 30
East Midlands -30 6 £513 +7.89% 26
Software Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 21 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 1,162 (98.89%) Software Engineering
2 300 (25.53%) Java
3 283 (24.09%) Agile
4 276 (23.49%) Security Cleared
5 260 (22.13%) AWS
6 250 (21.28%) CI/CD
7 230 (19.57%) Python
8 213 (18.13%) SC Cleared
9 176 (14.98%) C++
10 166 (14.13%) C#
11 159 (13.53%) TypeScript
12 152 (12.94%) React
13 139 (11.83%) JavaScript
14 138 (11.74%) DevOps
14 138 (11.74%) Microservices
15 133 (11.32%) Docker
16 129 (10.98%) Kubernetes
17 127 (10.81%) Linux
18 125 (10.64%) SQL
19 122 (10.38%) Full-Stack Development
20 119 (10.13%) Azure
21 111 (9.45%) Ada
22 100 (8.51%) Node.js
23 99 (8.43%) .NET
24 96 (8.17%) AI
25 90 (7.66%) Test Automation
26 89 (7.57%) Kafka
27 85 (7.23%) C
27 85 (7.23%) Git
27 85 (7.23%) 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 18 (1.53%) Apache
2 16 (1.36%) Confluence
3 15 (1.28%) Apache Spark
4 4 (0.34%) IIS
5 3 (0.26%) nginx
5 3 (0.26%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.17%) Camunda
6 2 (0.17%) MQSeries
6 2 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
6 2 (0.17%) SAS
6 2 (0.17%) WebLogic
6 2 (0.17%) WinCC
7 1 (0.085%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 1 (0.085%) Apache Airflow
7 1 (0.085%) Apache Synapse
7 1 (0.085%) CMS
7 1 (0.085%) Microsoft Exchange
7 1 (0.085%) SharePoint
7 1 (0.085%) 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 (0.085%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 1 (0.085%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 260 (22.13%) AWS
2 119 (10.13%) Azure
3 65 (5.53%) GCP
4 50 (4.26%) Serverless
5 49 (4.17%) GitHub
6 28 (2.38%) AWS Lambda
7 23 (1.96%) Amazon S3
8 21 (1.79%) Azure DevOps
9 20 (1.70%) OpenShift
10 19 (1.62%) Amazon EC2
11 17 (1.45%) GitHub Actions
12 15 (1.28%) Amazon ECS
12 15 (1.28%) Amazon SQS
12 15 (1.28%) Power Platform
13 13 (1.11%) AWS CloudFormation
14 11 (0.94%) Azure Functions
15 10 (0.85%) Amazon EKS
16 9 (0.77%) Collibra
17 8 (0.68%) SaaS
18 7 (0.60%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 32 (2.72%) Software-Defined Radio
2 19 (1.62%) Ethernet
3 17 (1.45%) Wireless
4 12 (1.02%) HTTP
5 11 (0.94%) TCP/IP
6 8 (0.68%) 3GPP
7 6 (0.51%) RTP
8 5 (0.43%) Firewall
8 5 (0.43%) Wireshark
9 3 (0.26%) VPN
10 2 (0.17%) DNS
10 2 (0.17%) Modbus
11 1 (0.085%) BGP
11 1 (0.085%) Bluetooth
11 1 (0.085%) HTTPS
11 1 (0.085%) Network Security
11 1 (0.085%) Profibus
11 1 (0.085%) RTCP
11 1 (0.085%) VLAN
11 1 (0.085%) XCAP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 69 (5.87%) PostgreSQL
2 35 (2.98%) SQL Server
3 34 (2.89%) Relational Database
4 22 (1.87%) Apache Cassandra
5 20 (1.70%) NoSQL
6 19 (1.62%) MongoDB
7 17 (1.45%) Amazon RDS
8 15 (1.28%) Data Lake
8 15 (1.28%) DynamoDB
9 14 (1.19%) MySQL
10 12 (1.02%) Power BI
11 11 (0.94%) Elasticsearch
11 11 (0.94%) Metadata
12 10 (0.85%) Amazon Athena
12 10 (0.85%) Mixpanel
13 7 (0.60%) BigQuery
13 7 (0.60%) Hadoop
14 6 (0.51%) Redis
15 5 (0.43%) Azure SQL Database
15 5 (0.43%) OLAP
Development Applications
1 85 (7.23%) Git
2 59 (5.02%) GitLab
3 52 (4.43%) Jenkins
4 39 (3.32%) JIRA
5 26 (2.21%) Gradle
6 23 (1.96%) JUnit
6 23 (1.96%) Rational DOORS
7 22 (1.87%) Rational Rhapsody
8 20 (1.70%) IntelliJ
9 17 (1.45%) SonarQube
10 16 (1.36%) Visual Studio
11 12 (1.02%) Cucumber
11 12 (1.02%) Mockito
12 10 (0.85%) Eclipse
12 10 (0.85%) Liquibase
13 9 (0.77%) Bitbucket
13 9 (0.77%) Maven
13 9 (0.77%) Selenium
14 7 (0.60%) Cypress.io
15 6 (0.51%) PVCS
General
1 139 (11.83%) Finance
2 93 (7.91%) Social Skills
3 60 (5.11%) Aerospace
4 51 (4.34%) Front Office
5 39 (3.32%) Public Sector
6 37 (3.15%) Analytical Skills
7 36 (3.06%) Banking
8 28 (2.38%) Law
9 27 (2.30%) Manufacturing
10 20 (1.70%) Electronics
11 16 (1.36%) Military
12 14 (1.19%) Retail
13 13 (1.11%) Aviation
14 11 (0.94%) Automotive
14 11 (0.94%) Investment Banking
15 8 (0.68%) Influencing Skills
16 7 (0.60%) Telecoms
17 5 (0.43%) Back Office
17 5 (0.43%) Presentation Skills
18 4 (0.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 152 (12.94%) React
2 100 (8.51%) Node.js
3 99 (8.43%) .NET
4 89 (7.57%) Kafka
5 85 (7.23%) Spring
6 80 (6.81%) Spring Boot
7 75 (6.38%) REST
8 60 (5.11%) AngularJS
9 48 (4.09%) GraphQL
10 46 (3.91%) Redux
11 39 (3.32%) RESTful
12 28 (2.38%) Middleware
13 23 (1.96%) Next.js
14 22 (1.87%) CSS
15 19 (1.62%) HTML
15 19 (1.62%) Vue
16 18 (1.53%) gRPC
17 17 (1.45%) Web Services
18 16 (1.36%) Qt
19 15 (1.28%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 86 (7.32%) Cloud Native
2 62 (5.28%) Algorithms
3 59 (5.02%) Distributed Systems
4 53 (4.51%) Fixed Income
5 40 (3.40%) Product Ownership
6 27 (2.30%) Embedded Systems
7 20 (1.70%) Derivative
8 19 (1.62%) AI Agents
9 16 (1.36%) Legacy Systems
10 14 (1.19%) Equities
10 14 (1.19%) Robotics
11 13 (1.11%) Data Protection Act
11 13 (1.11%) Greenfield Project
11 13 (1.11%) Onboarding
12 11 (0.94%) FPGA
13 10 (0.85%) Life Science
13 10 (0.85%) Mobile App
13 10 (0.85%) Self-Motivation
14 9 (0.77%) Device Driver
15 8 (0.68%) PCIe
Operating Systems
1 127 (10.81%) Linux
2 50 (4.26%) Windows
3 19 (1.62%) Unix
4 16 (1.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 15 (1.28%) Embedded Linux
6 12 (1.02%) Apple iOS
7 11 (0.94%) FreeRTOS
7 11 (0.94%) Windows Server
8 7 (0.60%) Android
9 5 (0.43%) Ubuntu
10 4 (0.34%) Debian
10 4 (0.34%) Rocky
11 3 (0.26%) Solaris
11 3 (0.26%) Windows Server 2008
11 3 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.17%) Robot Operating System
13 1 (0.085%) Mac OS
13 1 (0.085%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,162 (98.89%) Software Engineering
2 283 (24.09%) Agile
3 250 (21.28%) CI/CD
4 138 (11.74%) DevOps
4 138 (11.74%) Microservices
5 122 (10.38%) Full-Stack Development
6 96 (8.17%) AI
7 90 (7.66%) Test Automation
8 85 (7.23%) Problem-Solving
9 77 (6.55%) Containerisation
10 72 (6.13%) TDD
11 64 (5.45%) SDLC
12 61 (5.19%) Infrastructure as Code
13 60 (5.11%) Mentoring
13 60 (5.11%) Scrum
14 57 (4.85%) Machine Learning
15 55 (4.68%) Continuous Improvement
16 52 (4.43%) Unit Testing
17 51 (4.34%) Observability
18 50 (4.26%) Clean Code
Programming Languages
1 300 (25.53%) Java
2 230 (19.57%) Python
3 176 (14.98%) C++
4 166 (14.13%) C#
5 159 (13.53%) TypeScript
6 139 (11.83%) JavaScript
7 125 (10.64%) SQL
8 111 (9.45%) Ada
9 85 (7.23%) C
10 84 (7.15%) Go
11 30 (2.55%) Embedded C
12 27 (2.30%) Kotlin
13 26 (2.21%) Rust
14 25 (2.13%) PowerShell
15 22 (1.87%) MATLAB
16 15 (1.28%) Bash
17 12 (1.02%) Embedded C++
18 10 (0.85%) PL/SQL
19 9 (0.77%) PHP
20 7 (0.60%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 276 (23.49%) Security Cleared
2 213 (18.13%) SC Cleared
3 52 (4.43%) Degree
4 42 (3.57%) DV Cleared
5 21 (1.79%) Computer Science Degree
6 10 (0.85%) BPSS Clearance
7 7 (0.60%) AWS Certification
7 7 (0.60%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 5 (0.43%) ISTQB
8 5 (0.43%) 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 (0.085%) CCDP
11 1 (0.085%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 1 (0.085%) OCA
11 1 (0.085%) Oracle Certification
11 1 (0.085%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 38 (3.23%) QA
2 32 (2.72%) Def Stans
3 28 (2.38%) IEC 61508
4 18 (1.53%) Data Quality
4 18 (1.53%) MISRA
5 13 (1.11%) GDPR
6 12 (1.02%) MISRA C
7 11 (0.94%) Accessibility
8 4 (0.34%) DO-178B
8 4 (0.34%) HL7
8 4 (0.34%) NCSC
8 4 (0.34%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 3 (0.26%) WCAG
10 2 (0.17%) ISO 26262
11 1 (0.085%) DICOM
11 1 (0.085%) FATCA
11 1 (0.085%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 1 (0.085%) NIST
System Software
1 133 (11.32%) Docker
2 14 (1.19%) Firmware
3 8 (0.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (0.51%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (0.43%) Embedded Firmware
6 4 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
7 2 (0.17%) HDFS
8 1 (0.085%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 129 (10.98%) Kubernetes
2 72 (6.13%) Terraform
3 27 (2.30%) Grafana
4 20 (1.70%) Ansible
5 11 (0.94%) Argo
6 7 (0.60%) Prometheus
7 4 (0.34%) Data Guard
8 2 (0.17%) Cilium
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 (0.085%) CA Endevor
9 1 (0.085%) Functional Safety
9 1 (0.085%) Podman
Vendors
1 35 (2.98%) Microsoft
2 34 (2.89%) Red Hat
3 23 (1.96%) Google
4 21 (1.79%) Oracle
5 20 (1.70%) IBM
6 19 (1.62%) Databricks
7 10 (0.85%) MathWorks
8 8 (0.68%) Spotify
8 8 (0.68%) VMware
9 7 (0.60%) Siemens
9 7 (0.60%) Splunk
10 6 (0.51%) ANSYS
10 6 (0.51%) SAP
11 4 (0.34%) Atlassian
11 4 (0.34%) Checkmarx
11 4 (0.34%) OpenAI
12 3 (0.26%) Informatica
12 3 (0.26%) Palantir
12 3 (0.26%) Sybase
12 3 (0.26%) Talend
845 Software Engineer jobs in England