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 12 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 33 45 27
Rank change year-on-year +12 -18 +12
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,301 1,153 2,272
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.40% 4.70% 6.06%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.34% 5.15% 7.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,223 761 1,312
10th Percentile £400 £400 £419
25th Percentile £463 £475 £494
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -0.66%
75th Percentile £675 £763 £763
90th Percentile £785 £838 £875
UK median daily rate £550 £575 £600
% change year-on-year -4.35% -4.17% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 457 61 402
10th Percentile £52.42 £37.50 £46.25
25th Percentile £60.00 £52.00 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £80.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £63.25
% change year-on-year - +2.77% -1.40%

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 36,315 22,393 32,018
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.15% 91.34% 85.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,987 14,479 20,805
10th Percentile £325 £303 £300
25th Percentile £414 £407 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £508 £525
% change year-on-year +0.99% -3.33% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,273 1,020 2,369
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.80
25th Percentile £20.82 £18.10 £16.00
Median hourly rate £47.50 £28.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +69.64% -25.33% +5.63%
75th Percentile £68.00 £58.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £27.21 £36.50
% change year-on-year +61.56% -25.45% +4.20%

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 12 June 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 12 June 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 12 June 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 -5 981 £586 -9.81% 453
North of England +27 346 £525 +5.00% 246
South West +29 331 £570 +6.05% 182
South East +23 289 £525 +4.90% 365
East of England +39 217 £495 +1.43% 147
North West +13 160 £500 - 141
Yorkshire +21 123 £525 +7.14% 56
Midlands -30 90 £462 -8.97% 93
West Midlands -25 71 £459 -18.94% 59
North East +14 68 £621 +35.05% 50
East Midlands -19 18 £513 +4.59% 34
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 54 (2.35%) Confluence
2 40 (1.74%) Apache Spark
3 27 (1.17%) Apache
4 26 (1.13%) Apache Airflow
5 8 (0.35%) SAS
6 6 (0.26%) CMS
6 6 (0.26%) SharePoint
7 5 (0.22%) nginx
8 4 (0.17%) Ethereum
8 4 (0.17%) Hyperledger
8 4 (0.17%) IIS
8 4 (0.17%) WebLogic
9 3 (0.13%) Camunda
9 3 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
9 3 (0.13%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.087%) Cloud Foundry
10 2 (0.087%) MQSeries
10 2 (0.087%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 2 (0.087%) WinCC
11 1 (0.043%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 15 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (0.26%) Chatbot
2 6 (0.26%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 5 (0.22%) CPLEX
4 4 (0.17%) Simulink
5 2 (0.087%) CATIA
5 2 (0.087%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.087%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.043%) Adobe After Effects
6 1 (0.043%) Blender
6 1 (0.043%) Maya
6 1 (0.043%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.043%) Notion
6 1 (0.043%) OrCAD
Business Applications
1 6 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
1 6 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
2 5 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
3 4 (0.17%) Quorum
3 4 (0.17%) R3 Corda
3 4 (0.17%) Ripple
4 3 (0.13%) Orchestrade
5 2 (0.087%) Aladdin
5 2 (0.087%) LabWindows
5 2 (0.087%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.087%) Remedy ITSM
6 1 (0.043%) Sprinklr
6 1 (0.043%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 561 (24.38%) AWS
2 433 (18.82%) Azure
3 202 (8.78%) GCP
4 165 (7.17%) GitHub
5 121 (5.26%) Serverless
6 94 (4.09%) Azure DevOps
7 77 (3.35%) AWS Lambda
7 77 (3.35%) GitHub Actions
8 63 (2.74%) Amazon S3
9 56 (2.43%) OpenShift
10 46 (2.00%) Power Platform
11 38 (1.65%) Amazon SQS
12 37 (1.61%) Azure AKS
13 36 (1.56%) Amazon ECS
14 35 (1.52%) Amazon EKS
15 33 (1.43%) Anthropic Claude
16 32 (1.39%) Amazon EC2
17 28 (1.22%) AWS CloudFormation
17 28 (1.22%) SaaS
18 27 (1.17%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 30 (1.30%) Software-Defined Radio
2 23 (1.00%) Ethernet
3 22 (0.96%) Wireless
4 17 (0.74%) TCP/IP
5 14 (0.61%) HTTP
6 13 (0.56%) Firewall
7 12 (0.52%) Wi-Fi
8 10 (0.43%) 3GPP
9 9 (0.39%) Internet
9 9 (0.39%) VPN
10 7 (0.30%) Network Security
10 7 (0.30%) RTP
11 6 (0.26%) Wireshark
12 4 (0.17%) DNS
13 3 (0.13%) Bluetooth
13 3 (0.13%) IPv4
13 3 (0.13%) IPv6
13 3 (0.13%) Modbus
13 3 (0.13%) RS-232
13 3 (0.13%) RS-485
Database & Business Intelligence
1 140 (6.08%) PostgreSQL
2 79 (3.43%) Relational Database
3 69 (3.00%) SQL Server
4 61 (2.65%) NoSQL
5 51 (2.22%) MongoDB
6 38 (1.65%) Apache Cassandra
7 33 (1.43%) DynamoDB
7 33 (1.43%) Power BI
8 30 (1.30%) Amazon RDS
9 28 (1.22%) BigQuery
10 27 (1.17%) Data Lake
10 27 (1.17%) MySQL
11 26 (1.13%) Data Warehouse
12 25 (1.09%) Big Data
12 25 (1.09%) Metadata
13 17 (0.74%) Pinecone
13 17 (0.74%) Redis
14 16 (0.70%) Weaviate
15 15 (0.65%) Amazon Redshift
15 15 (0.65%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 225 (9.78%) Git
2 141 (6.13%) Jenkins
3 127 (5.52%) GitLab
4 109 (4.74%) JIRA
5 52 (2.26%) SonarQube
6 45 (1.96%) Gradle
7 34 (1.48%) JUnit
8 30 (1.30%) Rational Rhapsody
9 29 (1.26%) Rational DOORS
10 24 (1.04%) Cucumber
11 23 (1.00%) Visual Studio
12 22 (0.96%) IntelliJ
13 21 (0.91%) Bitbucket
14 20 (0.87%) Maven
14 20 (0.87%) Selenium
15 16 (0.70%) Cypress.io
15 16 (0.70%) Liquibase
15 16 (0.70%) Mockito
16 13 (0.56%) Claude Code
17 12 (0.52%) Eclipse
General
1 395 (17.17%) Finance
2 345 (14.99%) Social Skills
3 146 (6.35%) Banking
4 138 (6.00%) Analytical Skills
5 134 (5.82%) Public Sector
6 99 (4.30%) Aerospace
7 77 (3.35%) Front Office
8 45 (1.96%) Manufacturing
9 44 (1.91%) Law
9 44 (1.91%) Retail
10 37 (1.61%) Investment Banking
11 28 (1.22%) Military
12 25 (1.09%) Automotive
12 25 (1.09%) Aviation
13 24 (1.04%) Influencing Skills
14 22 (0.96%) Telecoms
15 18 (0.78%) Financial Institution
16 16 (0.70%) Electronics
16 16 (0.70%) Presentation Skills
17 15 (0.65%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,180 (51.28%) Software Engineer
2 421 (18.30%) Developer
3 402 (17.47%) Senior
4 203 (8.82%) Lead
5 178 (7.74%) Senior Software Engineer
6 169 (7.34%) Java Engineer
7 149 (6.48%) Embedded Engineer
8 138 (6.00%) Embedded Software Engineer
8 138 (6.00%) Java Software Engineer
9 122 (5.30%) C++ Software Engineer
10 121 (5.26%) Java Developer
11 102 (4.43%) Architect
12 83 (3.61%) Senior Developer
13 72 (3.13%) Software Developer
14 71 (3.09%) Python Developer
15 70 (3.04%) Developer/Software Engineer
16 68 (2.96%) DevOps Engineer
17 67 (2.91%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 65 (2.82%) Full-Stack Engineer
19 64 (2.78%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 263 (11.43%) React
2 178 (7.74%) .NET
3 176 (7.65%) Kafka
3 176 (7.65%) Spring
4 167 (7.26%) Node.js
5 164 (7.13%) Spring Boot
6 160 (6.95%) REST
7 112 (4.87%) AngularJS
8 108 (4.69%) RESTful
9 71 (3.09%) GraphQL
10 55 (2.39%) Redux
11 48 (2.09%) CSS
12 47 (2.04%) HTML
13 41 (1.78%) JSON
13 41 (1.78%) Middleware
14 40 (1.74%) Next.js
15 37 (1.61%) LangChain
16 33 (1.43%) gRPC
16 33 (1.43%) Playwright
16 33 (1.43%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 253 (11.00%) Cloud Native
2 167 (7.26%) Distributed Systems
3 114 (4.95%) Product Ownership
4 91 (3.95%) Algorithms
5 66 (2.87%) Fixed Income
6 60 (2.61%) AI Agents
7 41 (1.78%) Embedded Systems
8 38 (1.65%) Onboarding
9 37 (1.61%) Data Protection Act
10 34 (1.48%) Legacy Systems
11 33 (1.43%) Derivative
12 32 (1.39%) Data Structures
13 29 (1.26%) Robotics
14 27 (1.17%) Self-Motivation
15 25 (1.09%) Equities
15 25 (1.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 22 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
17 21 (0.91%) Enterprise Software
18 20 (0.87%) Mobile App
19 15 (0.65%) FPGA
Operating Systems
1 184 (8.00%) Linux
2 59 (2.56%) Windows
3 43 (1.87%) Unix
4 27 (1.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 17 (0.74%) Android
6 16 (0.70%) Apple iOS
6 16 (0.70%) Embedded Linux
7 11 (0.48%) FreeRTOS
7 11 (0.48%) Windows Server
8 7 (0.30%) Ubuntu
9 5 (0.22%) Debian
10 4 (0.17%) Rocky
10 4 (0.17%) VMS
10 4 (0.17%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.13%) Solaris
11 3 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
12 2 (0.087%) Robot Operating System
12 2 (0.087%) VxWorks
13 1 (0.043%) Mac OS
13 1 (0.043%) webOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 682 (29.64%) CI/CD
2 659 (28.64%) Agile
3 472 (20.51%) DevOps
4 369 (16.04%) AI
5 351 (15.25%) Microservices
6 269 (11.69%) Test Automation
7 246 (10.69%) Full-Stack Development
8 244 (10.60%) Problem-Solving
9 221 (9.60%) Containerisation
10 210 (9.13%) Infrastructure as Code
11 182 (7.91%) Continuous Improvement
12 176 (7.65%) SDLC
13 174 (7.56%) Observability
14 173 (7.52%) Machine Learning
15 170 (7.39%) TDD
16 168 (7.30%) Scrum
17 163 (7.08%) Mentoring
18 158 (6.87%) Platform Engineering
19 148 (6.43%) Technical Leadership
20 139 (6.04%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 597 (25.95%) Java
2 591 (25.68%) Python
3 303 (13.17%) SQL
4 293 (12.73%) C#
5 273 (11.86%) TypeScript
6 235 (10.21%) JavaScript
7 217 (9.43%) C++
8 129 (5.61%) Ada
9 128 (5.56%) Go
10 109 (4.74%) C
11 44 (1.91%) Kotlin
12 34 (1.48%) PowerShell
13 31 (1.35%) Rust
14 28 (1.22%) Bash
15 26 (1.13%) MATLAB
16 25 (1.09%) Embedded C
17 23 (1.00%) Scala
18 22 (0.96%) PL/SQL
19 18 (0.78%) Ruby
20 17 (0.74%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 550 (23.90%) Security Cleared
2 443 (19.25%) SC Cleared
3 173 (7.52%) Degree
4 79 (3.43%) Computer Science Degree
5 64 (2.78%) DV Cleared
6 48 (2.09%) BPSS Clearance
7 26 (1.13%) AWS Certification
7 26 (1.13%) Master's Degree
8 18 (0.78%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 11 (0.48%) Azure Certification
10 8 (0.35%) CISSP
10 8 (0.35%) PhD
11 7 (0.30%) ISTQB
11 7 (0.30%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 6 (0.26%) Chartered Engineer
13 5 (0.22%) CISM
13 5 (0.22%) TOGAF Certification
14 4 (0.17%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
15 3 (0.13%) MBA
15 3 (0.13%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 124 (5.39%) QA
2 42 (1.83%) Def Stans
3 38 (1.65%) Data Quality
4 36 (1.56%) Accessibility
5 33 (1.43%) IEC 61508
6 22 (0.96%) GDPR
7 17 (0.74%) MISRA
8 13 (0.56%) MISRA C
9 11 (0.48%) NCSC
10 10 (0.43%) NIST
11 9 (0.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 9 (0.39%) WCAG
12 6 (0.26%) PCI DSS
13 5 (0.22%) DO-178B
13 5 (0.22%) JSP 440
14 4 (0.17%) DO-254
14 4 (0.17%) GRC
14 4 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 3 (0.13%) HL7
15 3 (0.13%) MiFID
System Software
1 315 (13.69%) Docker
2 21 (0.91%) Firmware
3 10 (0.43%) Embedded Firmware
3 10 (0.43%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (0.35%) Active Directory
5 7 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
6 4 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
7 3 (0.13%) HDFS
8 2 (0.087%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 370 (16.08%) Kubernetes
2 211 (9.17%) Terraform
3 71 (3.09%) Grafana
4 56 (2.43%) Ansible
5 40 (1.74%) Argo
6 38 (1.65%) Prometheus
7 7 (0.30%) Puppet
7 7 (0.30%) Single Sign-On
8 6 (0.26%) Istio
8 6 (0.26%) Kibana
8 6 (0.26%) Progress Chef
9 5 (0.22%) HAProxy
10 4 (0.17%) Data Guard
10 4 (0.17%) HP Quality Center
11 3 (0.13%) Docker Swarm
11 3 (0.13%) Functional Safety
11 3 (0.13%) Kubeflow
12 2 (0.087%) Cilium
12 2 (0.087%) Consul
12 2 (0.087%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 122 (5.30%) Microsoft
2 76 (3.30%) Google
3 69 (3.00%) Oracle
4 58 (2.52%) Red Hat
5 43 (1.87%) Databricks
6 35 (1.52%) OpenAI
7 21 (0.91%) IBM
8 17 (0.74%) ServiceNow
8 17 (0.74%) Splunk
9 15 (0.65%) Informatica
10 12 (0.52%) Siemens
11 11 (0.48%) Foundry
11 11 (0.48%) Salesforce
12 10 (0.43%) ForgeRock
12 10 (0.43%) MathWorks
12 10 (0.43%) Okta
12 10 (0.43%) VMware
13 9 (0.39%) SAP
14 8 (0.35%) Atlassian
14 8 (0.35%) Dynatrace