Software Engineering Contract Job Trends in England

Software Engineering
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring Software Engineering skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 16 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 40 42 33
Rank change year-on-year +2 -9 +8
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 1,979 1,219 1,965
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.04% 5.00% 5.26%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.90% 5.49% 6.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,050 811 1,146
10th Percentile £400 £406 £425
25th Percentile £450 £500 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -
75th Percentile £663 £763 £750
90th Percentile £776 £838 £850
UK median daily rate £550 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 425 77 324
10th Percentile £52.50 £42.80 £46.25
25th Percentile £61.25 £52.50 £52.19
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year - +4.00% -2.56%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £73.46 £68.75 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year - +4.00% -2.56%

All Process & Methodology Skills
England

Software Engineering falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 33,547 22,212 32,344
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.44% 91.02% 86.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,492 14,606 21,309
10th Percentile £314 £311 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,069 881 2,207
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.84 £12.85
25th Percentile £20.09 £18.51 £15.76
Median hourly rate £41.56 £31.76 £34.21
Median % change year-on-year +30.84% -7.16% -8.77%
75th Percentile £66.25 £64.50 £58.69
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.25 £71.75
UK median hourly rate £37.16 £30.45 £33.55
% change year-on-year +22.04% -9.24% -7.45%

Software Engineering
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Software Engineering relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

Software Engineering job vacancy trend in England

Software Engineering
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Software Engineering.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Software Engineering

Software Engineering
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Software Engineering in England over the 6 months to 16 April 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Software Engineering in England

Software Engineering
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Software Engineering.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Software Engineering

Software Engineering
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Software Engineering in England over the 6 months to 16 April 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Software Engineering in England

Software Engineering
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 Engineering within the England region over the 6 months to 16 April 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 -10 843 £600 -11.11% 517
North of England +13 279 £500 -0.30% 249
South West +14 276 £575 -0.86% 186
South East +5 223 £525 +2.44% 342
East of England +32 201 £475 -2.66% 152
North West +2 133 £500 -3.05% 139
Yorkshire -3 103 £518 +0.98% 78
Midlands -31 97 £498 +4.30% 124
West Midlands -20 85 £492 -3.09% 72
North East +20 48 £478 +3.80% 35
East Midlands -33 12 £513 +6.22% 52
Software Engineering
UK

Software Engineering
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 51 (2.58%) Confluence
2 46 (2.32%) Apache Spark
3 43 (2.17%) Apache
4 21 (1.06%) Apache Airflow
5 11 (0.56%) CMS
6 9 (0.45%) WebLogic
7 6 (0.30%) Palantir Foundry
8 5 (0.25%) IIS
8 5 (0.25%) SharePoint
9 4 (0.20%) JBoss
9 4 (0.20%) nginx
10 3 (0.15%) Camunda
10 3 (0.15%) OpenStack
10 3 (0.15%) SAS
11 2 (0.10%) Magnolia
11 2 (0.10%) MQSeries
11 2 (0.10%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 2 (0.10%) Sitecore CMS
11 2 (0.10%) Tomcat
11 2 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 10 (0.51%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (0.40%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.20%) Simulink
4 3 (0.15%) Chatbot
4 3 (0.15%) CPLEX
4 3 (0.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.10%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.051%) Maya
6 1 (0.051%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.051%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.051%) OrCAD
Business Applications
1 6 (0.30%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (0.10%) Aladdin
3 2 (0.10%) LabWindows
4 1 (0.051%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.051%) Orchestrade
4 1 (0.051%) Primavera
4 1 (0.051%) Sprinklr
4 1 (0.051%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 544 (27.49%) AWS
2 368 (18.60%) Azure
3 181 (9.15%) GCP
4 135 (6.82%) GitHub
5 114 (5.76%) Serverless
6 72 (3.64%) Azure DevOps
7 65 (3.28%) AWS Lambda
8 60 (3.03%) Amazon S3
9 55 (2.78%) GitHub Actions
10 49 (2.48%) Power Platform
11 47 (2.37%) OpenShift
12 41 (2.07%) AWS CloudFormation
13 36 (1.82%) Amazon ECS
13 36 (1.82%) Amazon EKS
13 36 (1.82%) Azure AKS
14 31 (1.57%) SaaS
15 27 (1.36%) Amazon EC2
15 27 (1.36%) Amazon SQS
16 26 (1.31%) Azure Functions
17 21 (1.06%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 21 (1.06%) Ethernet
2 17 (0.86%) Software-Defined Radio
3 14 (0.71%) Network Security
4 13 (0.66%) TCP/IP
5 11 (0.56%) Firewall
6 8 (0.40%) Wireless
7 7 (0.35%) 3GPP
7 7 (0.35%) HTTP
8 5 (0.25%) Modbus
9 4 (0.20%) BGP
9 4 (0.20%) RS-232
9 4 (0.20%) RS-485
9 4 (0.20%) Software-Defined Networking
9 4 (0.20%) VLAN
9 4 (0.20%) VPN
10 3 (0.15%) Bluetooth
10 3 (0.15%) IPv4
10 3 (0.15%) IPv6
10 3 (0.15%) RS-422
10 3 (0.15%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 127 (6.42%) PostgreSQL
2 68 (3.44%) Relational Database
3 62 (3.13%) NoSQL
3 62 (3.13%) SQL Server
4 58 (2.93%) Apache Cassandra
5 55 (2.78%) MongoDB
6 35 (1.77%) Power BI
7 31 (1.57%) Amazon RDS
7 31 (1.57%) Data Lake
8 28 (1.41%) Big Data
8 28 (1.41%) MySQL
9 27 (1.36%) BigQuery
10 25 (1.26%) Metadata
11 23 (1.16%) DynamoDB
12 18 (0.91%) Data Warehouse
13 15 (0.76%) Elasticsearch
13 15 (0.76%) Mixpanel
14 14 (0.71%) Amazon Athena
15 13 (0.66%) Amazon Redshift
16 12 (0.61%) Redis
Development Applications
1 204 (10.31%) Git
2 127 (6.42%) Jenkins
3 105 (5.31%) JIRA
4 103 (5.20%) GitLab
5 38 (1.92%) SonarQube
6 34 (1.72%) JUnit
7 33 (1.67%) Rational Rhapsody
8 30 (1.52%) Rational DOORS
9 27 (1.36%) IntelliJ
10 26 (1.31%) Gradle
11 25 (1.26%) Selenium
12 23 (1.16%) Cucumber
13 22 (1.11%) Bitbucket
13 22 (1.11%) Cypress.io
14 18 (0.91%) Maven
15 17 (0.86%) Visual Studio
16 16 (0.81%) Eclipse
17 15 (0.76%) Mockito
18 11 (0.56%) Liquibase
19 10 (0.51%) Artifactory
General
1 304 (15.36%) Finance
2 301 (15.21%) Social Skills
3 125 (6.32%) Public Sector
4 110 (5.56%) Analytical Skills
4 110 (5.56%) Banking
5 79 (3.99%) Aerospace
6 63 (3.18%) Front Office
7 37 (1.87%) Electronics
8 33 (1.67%) Law
8 33 (1.67%) Retail
9 31 (1.57%) Manufacturing
10 28 (1.41%) Influencing Skills
11 27 (1.36%) Investment Banking
11 27 (1.36%) Military
12 22 (1.11%) Telecoms
13 21 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
14 16 (0.81%) Financial Institution
15 13 (0.66%) Documentation Skills
15 13 (0.66%) Legal
16 11 (0.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 1,067 (53.92%) Software Engineer
2 358 (18.09%) Senior
3 354 (17.89%) Developer
4 171 (8.64%) Senior Software Engineer
5 145 (7.33%) Lead
6 135 (6.82%) Java Engineer
7 133 (6.72%) Embedded Engineer
8 123 (6.22%) C++ Software Engineer
9 121 (6.11%) Embedded Software Engineer
10 106 (5.36%) Java Software Engineer
11 85 (4.30%) Java Developer
12 83 (4.19%) Architect
13 70 (3.54%) Senior Developer
14 67 (3.39%) Developer/Software Engineer
15 61 (3.08%) Python Developer
15 61 (3.08%) Python Engineer
16 60 (3.03%) Data Engineer
17 58 (2.93%) Lead Software Engineer
17 58 (2.93%) Software Developer
18 55 (2.78%) Full-Stack Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 230 (11.62%) React
2 197 (9.95%) Kafka
3 165 (8.34%) Node.js
4 149 (7.53%) .NET
5 141 (7.12%) REST
6 135 (6.82%) Spring
7 119 (6.01%) Spring Boot
8 101 (5.10%) AngularJS
9 94 (4.75%) RESTful
10 73 (3.69%) GraphQL
11 59 (2.98%) gRPC
12 55 (2.78%) Middleware
13 52 (2.63%) Redux
14 50 (2.53%) HTML
15 49 (2.48%) CSS
16 44 (2.22%) JSON
17 40 (2.02%) Playwright
18 36 (1.82%) Web Services
19 32 (1.62%) Vue
20 31 (1.57%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 210 (10.61%) Cloud Native
2 144 (7.28%) Distributed Systems
3 95 (4.80%) Product Ownership
4 81 (4.09%) Algorithms
5 58 (2.93%) Fixed Income
6 36 (1.82%) AI Agents
7 34 (1.72%) Data Protection Act
8 28 (1.41%) Onboarding
9 27 (1.36%) Data Structures
9 27 (1.36%) Derivative
9 27 (1.36%) Embedded Systems
9 27 (1.36%) Mobile App
10 26 (1.31%) Legacy Systems
11 22 (1.11%) Greenfield Project
11 22 (1.11%) Robotics
12 21 (1.06%) Equities
13 19 (0.96%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 14 (0.71%) Life Science
14 14 (0.71%) NHS
15 13 (0.66%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 194 (9.80%) Linux
2 72 (3.64%) Windows
3 46 (2.32%) Unix
4 26 (1.31%) Android
5 25 (1.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 19 (0.96%) Apple iOS
7 14 (0.71%) Windows Server
8 9 (0.45%) Embedded Linux
9 6 (0.30%) FreeRTOS
9 6 (0.30%) Ubuntu
10 5 (0.25%) Debian
11 4 (0.20%) VMS
12 3 (0.15%) Rocky
13 2 (0.10%) Robot Operating System
13 2 (0.10%) Solaris
13 2 (0.10%) Windows Server 2008
13 2 (0.10%) Windows Server 2019
14 1 (0.051%) Mac OS
14 1 (0.051%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 578 (29.21%) CI/CD
2 570 (28.80%) Agile
3 401 (20.26%) DevOps
4 324 (16.37%) Microservices
5 270 (13.64%) AI
6 235 (11.87%) Problem-Solving
7 210 (10.61%) Containerisation
7 210 (10.61%) Full-Stack Development
8 203 (10.26%) Test Automation
9 199 (10.06%) Infrastructure as Code
10 158 (7.98%) Machine Learning
11 155 (7.83%) Computer Science
12 153 (7.73%) Continuous Improvement
13 152 (7.68%) Observability
14 150 (7.58%) Mentoring
15 138 (6.97%) SDLC
16 137 (6.92%) Scrum
17 132 (6.67%) TDD
18 124 (6.27%) Technical Leadership
19 119 (6.01%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 531 (26.83%) Python
2 482 (24.36%) Java
3 261 (13.19%) SQL
4 253 (12.78%) C#
5 238 (12.03%) TypeScript
6 230 (11.62%) C++
7 214 (10.81%) JavaScript
8 153 (7.73%) Go
9 128 (6.47%) Ada
10 111 (5.61%) C
11 38 (1.92%) PowerShell
12 34 (1.72%) Kotlin
13 33 (1.67%) Bash
14 29 (1.47%) Embedded C
15 27 (1.36%) MATLAB
16 26 (1.31%) Rust
17 25 (1.26%) Ruby
18 22 (1.11%) Scala
19 20 (1.01%) Shell Script
20 18 (0.91%) Embedded C++
Qualifications
1 478 (24.15%) Security Cleared
2 369 (18.65%) SC Cleared
3 172 (8.69%) Degree
4 86 (4.35%) Computer Science Degree
5 61 (3.08%) DV Cleared
6 42 (2.12%) Master's Degree
7 31 (1.57%) BPSS Clearance
8 21 (1.06%) AWS Certification
9 14 (0.71%) Azure Certification
10 13 (0.66%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 13 (0.66%) CISSP
10 13 (0.66%) PhD
11 10 (0.51%) CISM
12 8 (0.40%) ISTQB
12 8 (0.40%) TOGAF Certification
13 7 (0.35%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
14 4 (0.20%) HND
14 4 (0.20%) Microsoft Certification
15 3 (0.15%) Cisco Certification
15 3 (0.15%) HNC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 110 (5.56%) QA
2 55 (2.78%) Def Stans
3 41 (2.07%) Data Quality
4 40 (2.02%) IEC 61508
5 27 (1.36%) Accessibility
6 25 (1.26%) GDPR
6 25 (1.26%) MISRA
7 19 (0.96%) MISRA C
8 10 (0.51%) NIST
8 10 (0.51%) WCAG
9 7 (0.35%) DO-178B
9 7 (0.35%) HL7
9 7 (0.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 6 (0.30%) NCSC
11 2 (0.10%) EU AI Act
11 2 (0.10%) FATCA
11 2 (0.10%) PCI DSS
11 2 (0.10%) PMO
11 2 (0.10%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 2 (0.10%) SLA
System Software
1 314 (15.87%) Docker
2 17 (0.86%) Firmware
3 16 (0.81%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.51%) Virtual Machines
5 8 (0.40%) Active Directory
6 5 (0.25%) Embedded Firmware
7 4 (0.20%) Oracle RAC
8 3 (0.15%) HDFS
9 2 (0.10%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 342 (17.28%) Kubernetes
2 212 (10.71%) Terraform
3 85 (4.30%) Grafana
4 53 (2.68%) Ansible
5 46 (2.32%) Prometheus
6 29 (1.47%) Argo
7 17 (0.86%) Puppet
8 12 (0.61%) Progress Chef
9 7 (0.35%) Kibana
10 6 (0.30%) Istio
10 6 (0.30%) Single Sign-On
11 5 (0.25%) HAProxy
11 5 (0.25%) Kubeflow
12 4 (0.20%) Data Guard
12 4 (0.20%) Docker Swarm
12 4 (0.20%) HP Quality Center
13 3 (0.15%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
14 2 (0.10%) HP ALM
14 2 (0.10%) Podman
15 1 (0.051%) Consul
Vendors
1 139 (7.02%) Microsoft
2 78 (3.94%) Google
3 60 (3.03%) Oracle
4 56 (2.83%) Red Hat
5 49 (2.48%) Databricks
6 24 (1.21%) IBM
7 20 (1.01%) OpenAI
7 20 (1.01%) Splunk
8 17 (0.86%) Foundry
8 17 (0.86%) VMware
9 13 (0.66%) ServiceNow
10 11 (0.56%) Siemens
11 10 (0.51%) Atlassian
11 10 (0.51%) MathWorks
11 10 (0.51%) PagerDuty
11 10 (0.51%) SAP
12 9 (0.45%) BiZZdesign
12 9 (0.45%) Software AG
13 8 (0.40%) Okta
13 8 (0.40%) Spotify