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 2 July 2026.

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

6 months to
2 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 90 131 64
Rank change year-on-year +41 -67 +71
Contract jobs requiring a Software Engineer 1,225 559 1,169
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.79% 2.16% 3.13%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.02% 2.35% 3.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 547 382 603
10th Percentile £400 £413 £450
25th Percentile £463 £485 £506
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £625 £650
Median % change year-on-year -12.00% -3.85% +8.33%
75th Percentile £688 £838 £800
90th Percentile £788 £875 £875
UK median daily rate £550 £600 £628
% change year-on-year -8.33% -4.38% +4.58%
Number of hourly rates quoted 354 46 350
10th Percentile £53.34 £43.88 £46.25
25th Percentile £61.25 £61.25 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £78.75 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 40,541 23,799 34,693
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.39% 92.15% 92.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,820 15,556 22,692
10th Percentile £325 £293 £300
25th Percentile £419 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £638
90th Percentile £735 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,915 1,109 2,587
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.00 £12.87
25th Percentile £22.00 £17.98 £16.80
Median hourly rate £45.00 £28.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +57.89% -28.75% -8.95%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £79.80 £75.00 £74.52
UK median hourly rate £43.00 £26.75 £37.50
% change year-on-year +60.75% -28.67% -12.79%

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 2 July 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 2 July 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 2 July 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 -33 382 £625 -13.79% 402
South West +70 272 £550 -13.73% 172
North of England +22 193 £513 +7.89% 173
South East +25 159 £550 +5.77% 229
East of England +44 150 £500 +1.52% 158
North West +10 120 £550 +22.22% 98
Yorkshire -13 50 £488 -0.51% 40
Midlands -20 48 £450 -2.70% 68
West Midlands -30 37 £450 -7.69% 30
North East -6 25 £400 - 35
East Midlands -16 11 £473 -0.53% 38
Software Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 2 July 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 1,207 (98.53%) Software Engineering
2 328 (26.78%) Agile
3 317 (25.88%) Java
4 306 (24.98%) Security Cleared
5 280 (22.86%) CI/CD
6 275 (22.45%) AWS
7 250 (20.41%) Python
8 249 (20.33%) SC Cleared
9 186 (15.18%) C++
10 170 (13.88%) C#
11 166 (13.55%) TypeScript
12 160 (13.06%) React
13 141 (11.51%) JavaScript
14 139 (11.35%) Full-Stack Development
15 138 (11.27%) DevOps
16 135 (11.02%) Docker
16 135 (11.02%) Microservices
17 133 (10.86%) SQL
18 123 (10.04%) Kubernetes
19 120 (9.80%) Azure
20 116 (9.47%) AI
21 114 (9.31%) Linux
22 109 (8.90%) Ada
23 108 (8.82%) .NET
24 106 (8.65%) Test Automation
25 102 (8.33%) Node.js
26 98 (8.00%) Kafka
27 90 (7.35%) Git
28 87 (7.10%) TDD
29 86 (7.02%) Spring

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 14 (1.14%) Confluence
2 13 (1.06%) Apache Spark
3 11 (0.90%) Apache
4 3 (0.24%) Apache Airflow
4 3 (0.24%) nginx
4 3 (0.24%) Tomcat
5 2 (0.16%) MQSeries
5 2 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
5 2 (0.16%) SAS
5 2 (0.16%) WebLogic
5 2 (0.16%) WinCC
6 1 (0.082%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 1 (0.082%) Apache Synapse
6 1 (0.082%) Camunda
6 1 (0.082%) CMS
6 1 (0.082%) IIS
6 1 (0.082%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.082%) SharePoint
6 1 (0.082%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 2 (0.16%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
2 1 (0.082%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.082%) S-PLUS
Business Applications
1 3 (0.24%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.082%) LabWindows
Cloud Services
1 275 (22.45%) AWS
2 120 (9.80%) Azure
3 64 (5.22%) GCP
4 57 (4.65%) GitHub
5 56 (4.57%) Serverless
6 36 (2.94%) AWS Lambda
7 27 (2.20%) OpenShift
8 26 (2.12%) Amazon S3
9 24 (1.96%) GitHub Actions
10 21 (1.71%) Amazon EC2
11 19 (1.55%) Amazon SQS
12 18 (1.47%) Amazon ECS
13 17 (1.39%) Azure DevOps
14 13 (1.06%) Amazon EKS
14 13 (1.06%) SaaS
15 11 (0.90%) Power Platform
16 10 (0.82%) Anthropic Claude
17 9 (0.73%) AWS CloudFormation
17 9 (0.73%) AWS Step Functions
17 9 (0.73%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 32 (2.61%) Software-Defined Radio
2 21 (1.71%) Wireless
3 20 (1.63%) Ethernet
4 14 (1.14%) TCP/IP
5 12 (0.98%) HTTP
6 9 (0.73%) 3GPP
7 7 (0.57%) Firewall
7 7 (0.57%) RTP
8 6 (0.49%) Wireshark
9 5 (0.41%) VPN
10 4 (0.33%) Internet
11 2 (0.16%) DNS
11 2 (0.16%) RS-232
11 2 (0.16%) RS-422
12 1 (0.082%) BGP
12 1 (0.082%) HTTPS
12 1 (0.082%) MQTT
12 1 (0.082%) RS-485
12 1 (0.082%) RTCP
12 1 (0.082%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 72 (5.88%) PostgreSQL
2 41 (3.35%) Relational Database
3 35 (2.86%) SQL Server
4 26 (2.12%) NoSQL
5 20 (1.63%) DynamoDB
6 18 (1.47%) MongoDB
7 16 (1.31%) Amazon RDS
7 16 (1.31%) Apache Cassandra
7 16 (1.31%) MySQL
8 13 (1.06%) Elasticsearch
9 7 (0.57%) Data Lake
9 7 (0.57%) Hadoop
9 7 (0.57%) Metadata
9 7 (0.57%) Power BI
10 6 (0.49%) Amazon Athena
11 5 (0.41%) Amazon Aurora
12 4 (0.33%) Azure SQL Database
12 4 (0.33%) Big Data
12 4 (0.33%) Geospatial Data
12 4 (0.33%) Mixpanel
Development Applications
1 90 (7.35%) Git
2 62 (5.06%) Jenkins
3 48 (3.92%) GitLab
4 32 (2.61%) JIRA
5 23 (1.88%) JUnit
6 20 (1.63%) Visual Studio
7 19 (1.55%) Rational DOORS
7 19 (1.55%) Rational Rhapsody
8 18 (1.47%) SonarQube
9 17 (1.39%) Gradle
10 12 (0.98%) Mockito
11 11 (0.90%) Eclipse
11 11 (0.90%) IntelliJ
11 11 (0.90%) Liquibase
12 10 (0.82%) Cucumber
12 10 (0.82%) Selenium
13 9 (0.73%) Bitbucket
14 8 (0.65%) Maven
15 6 (0.49%) LabVIEW
15 6 (0.49%) Mocha
General
1 163 (13.31%) Finance
2 118 (9.63%) Social Skills
3 64 (5.22%) Aerospace
4 58 (4.73%) Front Office
5 53 (4.33%) Banking
6 47 (3.84%) Public Sector
7 36 (2.94%) Analytical Skills
8 31 (2.53%) Law
9 24 (1.96%) Manufacturing
10 18 (1.47%) Retail
11 17 (1.39%) Aviation
12 14 (1.14%) Automotive
13 13 (1.06%) Electronics
13 13 (1.06%) Military
14 11 (0.90%) Investment Banking
15 8 (0.65%) Back Office
16 7 (0.57%) Telecoms
17 5 (0.41%) Avionics
17 5 (0.41%) Influencing Skills
17 5 (0.41%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 160 (13.06%) React
2 108 (8.82%) .NET
3 102 (8.33%) Node.js
4 98 (8.00%) Kafka
5 86 (7.02%) Spring
6 83 (6.78%) Spring Boot
7 71 (5.80%) REST
8 56 (4.57%) Redux
9 55 (4.49%) AngularJS
10 52 (4.24%) GraphQL
11 39 (3.18%) RESTful
12 26 (2.12%) Next.js
13 23 (1.88%) Django
14 22 (1.80%) CSS
15 21 (1.71%) Middleware
16 20 (1.63%) HTML
17 18 (1.47%) .NET Core
17 18 (1.47%) FastAPI
18 16 (1.31%) Vue
18 16 (1.31%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 110 (8.98%) Cloud Native
2 77 (6.29%) Distributed Systems
3 60 (4.90%) Fixed Income
4 56 (4.57%) Algorithms
5 36 (2.94%) Product Ownership
6 30 (2.45%) Embedded Systems
7 21 (1.71%) Derivative
8 19 (1.55%) AI Agents
9 18 (1.47%) Onboarding
10 17 (1.39%) Legacy Systems
11 15 (1.22%) Equities
11 15 (1.22%) Self-Motivation
12 13 (1.06%) Data Protection Act
13 10 (0.82%) FPGA
13 10 (0.82%) Robotics
14 9 (0.73%) RISC-V
15 8 (0.65%) Data Centre
15 8 (0.65%) Data Structures
15 8 (0.65%) Greenfield Project
15 8 (0.65%) PCIe
Operating Systems
1 114 (9.31%) Linux
2 42 (3.43%) Windows
3 16 (1.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 14 (1.14%) Embedded Linux
5 13 (1.06%) Unix
6 11 (0.90%) FreeRTOS
7 9 (0.73%) Apple iOS
8 6 (0.49%) Windows Server
9 4 (0.33%) Android
9 4 (0.33%) Debian
9 4 (0.33%) Rocky
9 4 (0.33%) Ubuntu
10 3 (0.24%) Solaris
10 3 (0.24%) Windows Server 2008
10 3 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.16%) VxWorks
12 1 (0.082%) Tizen
12 1 (0.082%) webOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,207 (98.53%) Software Engineering
2 328 (26.78%) Agile
3 280 (22.86%) CI/CD
4 139 (11.35%) Full-Stack Development
5 138 (11.27%) DevOps
6 135 (11.02%) Microservices
7 116 (9.47%) AI
8 106 (8.65%) Test Automation
9 87 (7.10%) TDD
10 85 (6.94%) Problem-Solving
11 72 (5.88%) Containerisation
12 71 (5.80%) Continuous Improvement
13 65 (5.31%) Infrastructure as Code
13 65 (5.31%) Software Testing
14 64 (5.22%) SDLC
15 63 (5.14%) Mentoring
16 60 (4.90%) Machine Learning
17 56 (4.57%) Clean Code
18 55 (4.49%) Event-Driven
18 55 (4.49%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 317 (25.88%) Java
2 250 (20.41%) Python
3 186 (15.18%) C++
4 170 (13.88%) C#
5 166 (13.55%) TypeScript
6 141 (11.51%) JavaScript
7 133 (10.86%) SQL
8 109 (8.90%) Ada
9 80 (6.53%) C
10 77 (6.29%) Go
11 25 (2.04%) Kotlin
12 22 (1.80%) Embedded C
12 22 (1.80%) Rust
13 20 (1.63%) MATLAB
14 18 (1.47%) PowerShell
15 16 (1.31%) PL/SQL
16 12 (0.98%) PHP
17 11 (0.90%) Bash
18 7 (0.57%) Scala
19 6 (0.49%) R
Qualifications
1 306 (24.98%) Security Cleared
2 249 (20.33%) SC Cleared
3 51 (4.16%) Degree
4 39 (3.18%) DV Cleared
5 21 (1.71%) Computer Science Degree
6 18 (1.47%) BPSS Clearance
7 8 (0.65%) AWS Certification
7 8 (0.65%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 5 (0.41%) ISTQB
8 5 (0.41%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 3 (0.24%) Chartered Engineer
10 2 (0.16%) CCNP
10 2 (0.16%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (0.16%) HNC
10 2 (0.16%) HND
11 1 (0.082%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 1 (0.082%) OCA
11 1 (0.082%) Oracle Certification
11 1 (0.082%) PhD
11 1 (0.082%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 43 (3.51%) QA
2 28 (2.29%) Def Stans
3 24 (1.96%) IEC 61508
4 17 (1.39%) MISRA
5 11 (0.90%) Data Quality
6 10 (0.82%) GDPR
7 9 (0.73%) Accessibility
7 9 (0.73%) MISRA C
8 8 (0.65%) DO-178B
9 5 (0.41%) WCAG
10 4 (0.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 3 (0.24%) NCSC
12 2 (0.16%) ISO 26262
13 1 (0.082%) FATCA
13 1 (0.082%) ISO/IEC 27001
13 1 (0.082%) MIL-STD-1553
13 1 (0.082%) NIST
System Software
1 135 (11.02%) Docker
2 17 (1.39%) Firmware
3 5 (0.41%) Embedded Firmware
4 4 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
5 3 (0.24%) VMware Infrastructure
6 2 (0.16%) HDFS
7 1 (0.082%) Active Directory
7 1 (0.082%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 123 (10.04%) Kubernetes
2 69 (5.63%) Terraform
3 18 (1.47%) Ansible
3 18 (1.47%) Grafana
4 13 (1.06%) Argo
5 7 (0.57%) Prometheus
6 5 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
7 4 (0.33%) Control-M
7 4 (0.33%) Data Guard
7 4 (0.33%) Kibana
8 3 (0.24%) Functional Safety
9 2 (0.16%) Cilium
9 2 (0.16%) HAProxy
9 2 (0.16%) Progress Chef
9 2 (0.16%) Puppet
10 1 (0.082%) CA Endevor
10 1 (0.082%) PTC Integrity
Vendors
1 37 (3.02%) Microsoft
2 29 (2.37%) Oracle
3 24 (1.96%) Red Hat
4 21 (1.71%) Google
5 14 (1.14%) IBM
6 11 (0.90%) Databricks
7 9 (0.73%) MathWorks
8 8 (0.65%) SAP
9 7 (0.57%) Splunk
10 6 (0.49%) Siemens
11 5 (0.41%) OpenAI
11 5 (0.41%) Spotify
12 4 (0.33%) Checkmarx
12 4 (0.33%) Sybase
13 3 (0.24%) Atlassian
13 3 (0.24%) Informatica
13 3 (0.24%) Talend
13 3 (0.24%) VMware
14 2 (0.16%) Foundry
14 2 (0.16%) Palantir