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 22 March 2026.

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

 6 months to
22 Mar 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 98 124 89
Rank change year-on-year +26 -35 +48
Contract jobs requiring a Software Engineer 990 544 918
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.64% 2.21% 2.43%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.87% 2.37% 2.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 425 358 480
10th Percentile £400 £412 £425
25th Percentile £463 £486 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £625
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% -4.00% +5.93%
75th Percentile £688 £722 £750
90th Percentile £800 £875 £800
UK median daily rate £550 £600 £625
% change year-on-year -8.33% -4.00% +6.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 322 58 275
10th Percentile £52.50 £52.50 £46.25
25th Percentile £61.25 £61.25 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year - +4.00% -
75th Percentile £68.41 £68.00 £68.88
90th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £62.50
% 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 34,524 22,954 34,992
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.05% 93.06% 92.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,808 15,206 23,386
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £408 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £620 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,266 799 2,282
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.05 £13.00
25th Percentile £19.50 £21.24 £16.25
Median hourly rate £37.50 £35.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% +7.69% -23.53%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £59.99
90th Percentile £76.58 £77.25 £71.90
UK median hourly rate £36.00 £32.91 £32.50
% change year-on-year +9.41% +1.25% -23.53%

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 22 March 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 22 March 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 22 March 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 -18 321 £625 -1.96% 250
South West +19 207 £535 -9.32% 137
North of England +18 165 £531 +11.79% 142
East of England +42 127 £475 -18.45% 99
South East -18 91 £525 -2.78% 200
North West +29 90 £550 +22.22% 66
Yorkshire -25 52 £525 +7.69% 52
Midlands -38 41 £489 +5.65% 91
West Midlands -41 34 £494 +4.07% 52
North East +7 26 £439 - 24
East Midlands -35 7 £475 - 39
Software Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 22 March 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.

1 981 (99.09%) Software Engineering
2 272 (27.47%) Agile
3 265 (26.77%) AWS
4 257 (25.96%) Java
5 233 (23.54%) Security Cleared
6 224 (22.63%) CI/CD
6 224 (22.63%) Python
7 187 (18.89%) C++
8 177 (17.88%) SC Cleared
9 151 (15.25%) JavaScript
10 150 (15.15%) TypeScript
11 143 (14.44%) DevOps
11 143 (14.44%) React
12 139 (14.04%) Docker
13 137 (13.84%) Microservices
14 135 (13.64%) Kubernetes
15 129 (13.03%) C#
16 122 (12.32%) Linux
17 111 (11.21%) Azure
17 111 (11.21%) SQL
18 106 (10.71%) Node.js
19 104 (10.51%) Full-Stack Development
20 101 (10.20%) Kafka
21 100 (10.10%) Ada
22 98 (9.90%) Go
23 93 (9.39%) Terraform
24 90 (9.09%) Problem-Solving
25 85 (8.59%) AI
26 79 (7.98%) Containerisation
27 77 (7.78%) 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 24 (2.42%) Apache
2 18 (1.82%) Apache Spark
3 15 (1.52%) Confluence
4 3 (0.30%) IIS
4 3 (0.30%) WebLogic
5 2 (0.20%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.20%) Camunda
5 2 (0.20%) nginx
5 2 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
5 2 (0.20%) SAS
5 2 (0.20%) Tomcat
5 2 (0.20%) WinCC
6 1 (0.10%) Apache Synapse
6 1 (0.10%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.10%) Smallworld
Applications
1 4 (0.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.10%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.10%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.10%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.10%) Simulink
3 1 (0.10%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.20%) LabWindows
2 1 (0.10%) Aladdin
2 1 (0.10%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 265 (26.77%) AWS
2 111 (11.21%) Azure
3 73 (7.37%) GCP
4 65 (6.57%) Serverless
5 49 (4.95%) GitHub
6 30 (3.03%) AWS Lambda
7 27 (2.73%) GitHub Actions
8 24 (2.42%) Amazon S3
9 21 (2.12%) Azure DevOps
10 19 (1.92%) Amazon ECS
11 18 (1.82%) AWS CloudFormation
12 17 (1.72%) Amazon EC2
12 17 (1.72%) OpenShift
13 16 (1.62%) Amazon SQS
13 16 (1.62%) Power Platform
14 14 (1.41%) Amazon EKS
15 13 (1.31%) Azure Functions
16 11 (1.11%) Collibra
17 9 (0.91%) AWS Step Functions
17 9 (0.91%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 16 (1.62%) Ethernet
2 11 (1.11%) TCP/IP
3 5 (0.51%) Firewall
3 5 (0.51%) Software-Defined Radio
4 4 (0.40%) 3GPP
4 4 (0.40%) BGP
4 4 (0.40%) HTTP
4 4 (0.40%) Network Security
4 4 (0.40%) VLAN
5 3 (0.30%) Software-Defined Networking
6 2 (0.20%) Modbus
6 2 (0.20%) NFC
6 2 (0.20%) PPP
6 2 (0.20%) Wireless
7 1 (0.10%) Bluetooth
7 1 (0.10%) DNS
7 1 (0.10%) HTTPS
7 1 (0.10%) Internet
7 1 (0.10%) RTCP
7 1 (0.10%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 64 (6.46%) PostgreSQL
2 32 (3.23%) Apache Cassandra
3 30 (3.03%) NoSQL
4 28 (2.83%) SQL Server
5 25 (2.53%) MongoDB
5 25 (2.53%) Relational Database
6 22 (2.22%) Amazon RDS
7 21 (2.12%) Data Lake
8 19 (1.92%) MySQL
9 14 (1.41%) Metadata
9 14 (1.41%) Power BI
10 13 (1.31%) Amazon Athena
11 12 (1.21%) Mixpanel
12 11 (1.11%) DynamoDB
13 9 (0.91%) BigQuery
13 9 (0.91%) Elasticsearch
13 9 (0.91%) Hadoop
14 8 (0.81%) Amazon Aurora
15 7 (0.71%) OLAP
15 7 (0.71%) OLTP
Development Applications
1 76 (7.68%) Git
2 53 (5.35%) Jenkins
3 49 (4.95%) GitLab
4 44 (4.44%) JIRA
5 25 (2.53%) Rational DOORS
6 23 (2.32%) Rational Rhapsody
7 22 (2.22%) Gradle
8 17 (1.72%) Visual Studio
9 15 (1.52%) IntelliJ
10 14 (1.41%) Liquibase
11 13 (1.31%) Cypress.io
11 13 (1.31%) Eclipse
11 13 (1.31%) SonarQube
12 12 (1.21%) JUnit
13 11 (1.11%) Bitbucket
13 11 (1.11%) Cucumber
14 9 (0.91%) Maven
15 8 (0.81%) Postman
15 8 (0.81%) PVCS
16 7 (0.71%) Mockito
General
1 115 (11.62%) Finance
2 98 (9.90%) Social Skills
3 51 (5.15%) Front Office
4 43 (4.34%) Public Sector
5 39 (3.94%) Aerospace
5 39 (3.94%) Analytical Skills
6 35 (3.54%) Electronics
7 34 (3.43%) Banking
8 28 (2.83%) Law
9 20 (2.02%) Military
10 18 (1.82%) Manufacturing
11 11 (1.11%) Retail
12 10 (1.01%) Financial Institution
13 9 (0.91%) Influencing Skills
14 8 (0.81%) Investment Banking
14 8 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
15 5 (0.51%) Health Technology
15 5 (0.51%) Pharmaceutical
16 4 (0.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 3 (0.30%) Games
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 143 (14.44%) React
2 106 (10.71%) Node.js
3 101 (10.20%) Kafka
4 75 (7.58%) REST
5 71 (7.17%) .NET
6 58 (5.86%) Spring
7 57 (5.76%) Spring Boot
8 50 (5.05%) AngularJS
9 48 (4.85%) Redux
10 47 (4.75%) RESTful
11 45 (4.55%) GraphQL
12 35 (3.54%) Middleware
13 28 (2.83%) gRPC
14 26 (2.63%) CSS
15 23 (2.32%) HTML
16 20 (2.02%) Qt
17 19 (1.92%) Web Services
18 17 (1.72%) JSON
18 17 (1.72%) Vue
18 17 (1.72%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 81 (8.18%) Cloud Native
2 60 (6.06%) Distributed Systems
3 50 (5.05%) Fixed Income
4 45 (4.55%) Algorithms
5 31 (3.13%) Product Ownership
6 19 (1.92%) Embedded Systems
7 17 (1.72%) Equities
8 16 (1.62%) Derivative
8 16 (1.62%) Legacy Systems
9 15 (1.52%) Greenfield Project
10 14 (1.41%) Data Protection Act
11 13 (1.31%) Mobile App
11 13 (1.31%) Public Cloud
12 11 (1.11%) AI Agents
12 11 (1.11%) Robotics
13 10 (1.01%) Life Science
13 10 (1.01%) Onboarding
14 9 (0.91%) Data Structures
15 8 (0.81%) CUDA
16 7 (0.71%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 122 (12.32%) Linux
2 55 (5.56%) Windows
3 20 (2.02%) Unix
4 16 (1.62%) Apple iOS
5 14 (1.41%) Android
6 13 (1.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 12 (1.21%) Windows Server
8 7 (0.71%) Ubuntu
9 5 (0.51%) FreeRTOS
10 4 (0.40%) Debian
11 3 (0.30%) Embedded Linux
11 3 (0.30%) Rocky
12 2 (0.20%) Robot Operating System
12 2 (0.20%) Solaris
12 2 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
12 2 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
13 1 (0.10%) Mac OS
13 1 (0.10%) VMS
13 1 (0.10%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 981 (99.09%) Software Engineering
2 272 (27.47%) Agile
3 224 (22.63%) CI/CD
4 143 (14.44%) DevOps
5 137 (13.84%) Microservices
6 104 (10.51%) Full-Stack Development
7 90 (9.09%) Problem-Solving
8 85 (8.59%) AI
9 79 (7.98%) Containerisation
10 77 (7.78%) TDD
11 72 (7.27%) Test Automation
12 68 (6.87%) Mentoring
13 66 (6.67%) Infrastructure as Code
14 57 (5.76%) Scrum
15 56 (5.66%) Clean Code
16 54 (5.45%) SDLC
17 51 (5.15%) Continuous Improvement
18 50 (5.05%) Machine Learning
19 49 (4.95%) Unit Testing
20 47 (4.75%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 257 (25.96%) Java
2 224 (22.63%) Python
3 187 (18.89%) C++
4 151 (15.25%) JavaScript
5 150 (15.15%) TypeScript
6 129 (13.03%) C#
7 111 (11.21%) SQL
8 100 (10.10%) Ada
9 98 (9.90%) Go
10 75 (7.58%) C
11 25 (2.53%) Embedded C
12 24 (2.42%) PowerShell
13 23 (2.32%) Embedded C++
13 23 (2.32%) Kotlin
14 20 (2.02%) MATLAB
14 20 (2.02%) Rust
15 17 (1.72%) Bash
16 10 (1.01%) PL/SQL
17 9 (0.91%) Swift
18 8 (0.81%) Perl
Qualifications
1 233 (23.54%) Security Cleared
2 177 (17.88%) SC Cleared
3 59 (5.96%) Degree
4 34 (3.43%) DV Cleared
5 30 (3.03%) Computer Science Degree
6 10 (1.01%) Master's Degree
7 8 (0.81%) AWS Certification
7 8 (0.81%) BPSS Clearance
8 7 (0.71%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 3 (0.30%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (0.20%) CCNA
10 2 (0.20%) CCNP
10 2 (0.20%) HNC
10 2 (0.20%) HND
10 2 (0.20%) ISTQB
10 2 (0.20%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 1 (0.10%) AWS Certified Developer
11 1 (0.10%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 1 (0.10%) RHCA
11 1 (0.10%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 45 (4.55%) Def Stans
2 35 (3.54%) IEC 61508
3 29 (2.93%) MISRA
3 29 (2.93%) QA
4 20 (2.02%) Data Quality
5 19 (1.92%) MISRA C
6 13 (1.31%) GDPR
7 10 (1.01%) DO-178B
8 8 (0.81%) Accessibility
9 6 (0.61%) HL7
10 3 (0.30%) NCSC
11 2 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 1 (0.10%) AUTOSAR
12 1 (0.10%) DICOM
12 1 (0.10%) ISO 26262
12 1 (0.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
12 1 (0.10%) NIST
12 1 (0.10%) WCAG
System Software
1 139 (14.04%) Docker
2 15 (1.52%) Firmware
3 14 (1.41%) Virtual Machines
4 10 (1.01%) VMware Infrastructure
5 4 (0.40%) Oracle RAC
6 2 (0.20%) HDFS
7 1 (0.10%) Active Directory
7 1 (0.10%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 135 (13.64%) Kubernetes
2 93 (9.39%) Terraform
3 31 (3.13%) Grafana
4 28 (2.83%) Ansible
5 13 (1.31%) Prometheus
6 10 (1.01%) Argo
7 4 (0.40%) Data Guard
8 3 (0.30%) Single Sign-On
9 2 (0.20%) Functional Safety
9 2 (0.20%) Progress Chef
9 2 (0.20%) Puppet
10 1 (0.10%) HAProxy
10 1 (0.10%) Podman
Vendors
1 35 (3.54%) Microsoft
2 34 (3.43%) Red Hat
3 25 (2.53%) Oracle
4 24 (2.42%) Google
5 23 (2.32%) Databricks
6 18 (1.82%) IBM
7 14 (1.41%) Splunk
8 10 (1.01%) VMware
9 8 (0.81%) ANSYS
9 8 (0.81%) Siemens
9 8 (0.81%) Spotify
10 7 (0.71%) MathWorks
11 4 (0.40%) Atlassian
11 4 (0.40%) Brio
12 3 (0.30%) NVIDIA
12 3 (0.30%) OpenAI
12 3 (0.30%) Palantir
13 2 (0.20%) Denodo
13 2 (0.20%) PagerDuty
13 2 (0.20%) Rockwell
888 Software Engineer jobs in England