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 8 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 35 41 31
Rank change year-on-year +6 -10 +10
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,106 1,200 2,041
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.20% 4.95% 5.54%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.13% 5.43% 6.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,100 788 1,199
10th Percentile £400 £400 £421
25th Percentile £453 £488 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -
75th Percentile £669 £775 £750
90th Percentile £775 £838 £850
UK median daily rate £550 £594 £600
% change year-on-year -7.37% -1.04% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 463 81 349
10th Percentile £52.50 £43.00 £46.25
25th Percentile £61.25 £57.50 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year - +4.00% -3.85%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £72.50 £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 34,360 22,106 31,891
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.81% 91.23% 86.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,945 14,454 20,903
10th Percentile £319 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,132 926 2,241
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.56 £12.92
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £46.47 £29.15 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.40% -20.14% -2.14%
75th Percentile £67.84 £63.19 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.00 £28.75 £36.50
% change year-on-year +46.09% -21.23% +1.39%

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 8 May 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 8 May 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 8 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 -7 867 £575 -14.81% 688
South West +16 304 £575 +4.55% 176
North of England +14 301 £500 - 342
South East +17 267 £519 +1.22% 402
East of England +40 219 £475 -2.72% 174
North West -3 139 £494 -1.25% 180
Yorkshire +9 112 £500 - 106
Midlands -33 91 £498 +3.11% 143
West Midlands -14 80 £489 -6.93% 78
North East +23 55 £590 +28.26% 57
East Midlands -34 10 £525 +7.14% 65
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 (2.56%) Confluence
2 43 (2.04%) Apache Spark
3 38 (1.80%) Apache
4 17 (0.81%) Apache Airflow
5 7 (0.33%) SAS
6 5 (0.24%) CMS
6 5 (0.24%) IIS
6 5 (0.24%) nginx
6 5 (0.24%) Palantir Foundry
6 5 (0.24%) SharePoint
7 4 (0.19%) WebLogic
8 3 (0.14%) Camunda
8 3 (0.14%) OpenStack
8 3 (0.14%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.095%) MQSeries
9 2 (0.095%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 2 (0.095%) WinCC
10 1 (0.047%) Cloud Foundry
10 1 (0.047%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.047%) Smallworld
Applications
1 14 (0.66%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (0.28%) Chatbot
2 6 (0.28%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.19%) CPLEX
3 4 (0.19%) Simulink
4 2 (0.095%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.095%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.047%) Adobe After Effects
5 1 (0.047%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 1 (0.047%) Blender
5 1 (0.047%) CATIA
5 1 (0.047%) Maya
5 1 (0.047%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.047%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.047%) OrCAD
Business Applications
1 6 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (0.095%) Aladdin
3 2 (0.095%) LabWindows
3 2 (0.095%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.047%) Orchestrade
4 1 (0.047%) Primavera
4 1 (0.047%) Sprinklr
4 1 (0.047%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 538 (25.55%) AWS
2 398 (18.90%) Azure
3 190 (9.02%) GCP
4 140 (6.65%) GitHub
5 113 (5.37%) Serverless
6 78 (3.70%) Azure DevOps
7 66 (3.13%) AWS Lambda
8 60 (2.85%) Amazon S3
9 57 (2.71%) GitHub Actions
10 51 (2.42%) OpenShift
11 46 (2.18%) Power Platform
12 39 (1.85%) Amazon EKS
13 37 (1.76%) Amazon ECS
13 37 (1.76%) AWS CloudFormation
13 37 (1.76%) Azure AKS
14 31 (1.47%) Amazon EC2
15 30 (1.42%) Amazon SQS
16 28 (1.33%) SaaS
17 23 (1.09%) Azure Functions
18 20 (0.95%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 28 (1.33%) Software-Defined Radio
2 25 (1.19%) Ethernet
3 15 (0.71%) Wireless
4 14 (0.66%) TCP/IP
5 12 (0.57%) HTTP
6 10 (0.47%) Network Security
7 8 (0.38%) 3GPP
8 7 (0.33%) Firewall
9 6 (0.28%) Wi-Fi
10 5 (0.24%) Modbus
10 5 (0.24%) RTP
11 4 (0.19%) DNS
11 4 (0.19%) RS-232
11 4 (0.19%) RS-485
11 4 (0.19%) Wireshark
12 3 (0.14%) Bluetooth
12 3 (0.14%) IPv4
12 3 (0.14%) IPv6
12 3 (0.14%) RS-422
12 3 (0.14%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 132 (6.27%) PostgreSQL
2 67 (3.18%) Relational Database
3 66 (3.13%) SQL Server
4 62 (2.94%) NoSQL
5 51 (2.42%) MongoDB
6 50 (2.37%) Apache Cassandra
7 36 (1.71%) Power BI
8 32 (1.52%) Amazon RDS
9 28 (1.33%) Big Data
9 28 (1.33%) Data Lake
9 28 (1.33%) DynamoDB
10 26 (1.23%) BigQuery
10 26 (1.23%) MySQL
11 21 (1.00%) Metadata
12 17 (0.81%) Data Warehouse
13 16 (0.76%) Amazon Athena
14 15 (0.71%) Redis
15 14 (0.66%) Elasticsearch
15 14 (0.66%) Pinecone
16 13 (0.62%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 208 (9.88%) Git
2 141 (6.70%) Jenkins
3 121 (5.75%) GitLab
4 111 (5.27%) JIRA
5 46 (2.18%) SonarQube
6 40 (1.90%) Gradle
7 35 (1.66%) Rational DOORS
8 34 (1.61%) JUnit
9 32 (1.52%) Rational Rhapsody
10 25 (1.19%) Cucumber
11 23 (1.09%) Bitbucket
11 23 (1.09%) IntelliJ
12 21 (1.00%) Maven
13 19 (0.90%) Visual Studio
14 18 (0.85%) Cypress.io
14 18 (0.85%) Selenium
15 17 (0.81%) Mockito
16 14 (0.66%) Liquibase
17 12 (0.57%) Artifactory
17 12 (0.57%) Eclipse
General
1 325 (15.43%) Finance
2 298 (14.15%) Social Skills
3 123 (5.84%) Public Sector
4 119 (5.65%) Banking
5 118 (5.60%) Analytical Skills
6 88 (4.18%) Aerospace
7 67 (3.18%) Front Office
8 41 (1.95%) Manufacturing
9 40 (1.90%) Law
10 35 (1.66%) Electronics
11 32 (1.52%) Retail
12 28 (1.33%) Investment Banking
13 26 (1.23%) Military
14 23 (1.09%) Influencing Skills
15 22 (1.04%) Presentation Skills
15 22 (1.04%) Telecoms
16 16 (0.76%) Automotive
17 15 (0.71%) Financial Institution
18 14 (0.66%) Aviation
19 13 (0.62%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,141 (54.18%) Software Engineer
2 376 (17.85%) Developer
3 361 (17.14%) Senior
4 175 (8.31%) Senior Software Engineer
5 167 (7.93%) Embedded Engineer
6 161 (7.64%) Lead
7 155 (7.36%) Embedded Software Engineer
8 145 (6.89%) Java Engineer
9 118 (5.60%) C++ Software Engineer
10 117 (5.56%) Java Software Engineer
11 104 (4.94%) Java Developer
12 84 (3.99%) Architect
13 70 (3.32%) Senior Developer
14 65 (3.09%) Developer/Software Engineer
14 65 (3.09%) Full-Stack Engineer
15 58 (2.75%) Lead Software Engineer
15 58 (2.75%) Python Developer
15 58 (2.75%) Python Engineer
16 57 (2.71%) Data Engineer
17 56 (2.66%) Ada Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 238 (11.30%) React
2 188 (8.93%) Kafka
3 169 (8.02%) Node.js
4 154 (7.31%) .NET
4 154 (7.31%) Spring
5 142 (6.74%) REST
6 138 (6.55%) Spring Boot
7 106 (5.03%) AngularJS
8 92 (4.37%) RESTful
9 74 (3.51%) GraphQL
10 53 (2.52%) Redux
11 51 (2.42%) Middleware
12 48 (2.28%) CSS
12 48 (2.28%) gRPC
13 46 (2.18%) HTML
14 37 (1.76%) JSON
14 37 (1.76%) Playwright
15 35 (1.66%) OpenTelemetry
16 33 (1.57%) Web Services
17 32 (1.52%) LangChain
Miscellaneous
1 215 (10.21%) Cloud Native
2 143 (6.79%) Distributed Systems
3 99 (4.70%) Product Ownership
4 82 (3.89%) Algorithms
5 59 (2.80%) Fixed Income
6 48 (2.28%) AI Agents
7 36 (1.71%) Data Protection Act
8 34 (1.61%) Embedded Systems
9 33 (1.57%) Onboarding
10 28 (1.33%) Legacy Systems
10 28 (1.33%) Robotics
11 26 (1.23%) Derivative
11 26 (1.23%) Mobile App
12 25 (1.19%) Data Structures
13 20 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
14 19 (0.90%) Equities
14 19 (0.90%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 15 (0.71%) FPGA
16 13 (0.62%) Data Centre
16 13 (0.62%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 197 (9.35%) Linux
2 71 (3.37%) Windows
3 42 (1.99%) Unix
4 25 (1.19%) Android
5 24 (1.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 20 (0.95%) Apple iOS
7 13 (0.62%) Embedded Linux
8 11 (0.52%) FreeRTOS
8 11 (0.52%) Windows Server
9 7 (0.33%) Ubuntu
10 6 (0.28%) Debian
11 4 (0.19%) Rocky
11 4 (0.19%) VMS
12 3 (0.14%) Solaris
12 3 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
12 3 (0.14%) Windows Server 2019
13 2 (0.095%) Robot Operating System
14 1 (0.047%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 595 (28.25%) CI/CD
2 583 (27.68%) Agile
3 422 (20.04%) DevOps
4 329 (15.62%) Microservices
5 289 (13.72%) AI
6 232 (11.02%) Problem-Solving
7 228 (10.83%) Full-Stack Development
8 219 (10.40%) Containerisation
8 219 (10.40%) Test Automation
9 197 (9.35%) Infrastructure as Code
10 158 (7.50%) Observability
10 158 (7.50%) SDLC
11 153 (7.26%) Machine Learning
12 151 (7.17%) Continuous Improvement
13 150 (7.12%) Computer Science
14 145 (6.89%) Scrum
15 144 (6.84%) Mentoring
16 141 (6.70%) TDD
17 137 (6.51%) Technical Leadership
18 123 (5.84%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 530 (25.17%) Python
2 527 (25.02%) Java
3 278 (13.20%) SQL
4 267 (12.68%) C#
5 245 (11.63%) TypeScript
6 225 (10.68%) JavaScript
7 223 (10.59%) C++
8 147 (6.98%) Go
9 133 (6.32%) Ada
10 122 (5.79%) C
11 36 (1.71%) Kotlin
12 35 (1.66%) PowerShell
13 34 (1.61%) Bash
13 34 (1.61%) Embedded C
14 27 (1.28%) Rust
15 26 (1.23%) MATLAB
16 21 (1.00%) Shell Script
17 20 (0.95%) Ruby
17 20 (0.95%) Scala
18 17 (0.81%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 511 (24.26%) Security Cleared
2 398 (18.90%) SC Cleared
3 169 (8.02%) Degree
4 87 (4.13%) Computer Science Degree
5 66 (3.13%) DV Cleared
6 34 (1.61%) Master's Degree
7 33 (1.57%) BPSS Clearance
8 20 (0.95%) AWS Certification
9 13 (0.62%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 11 (0.52%) Azure Certification
11 10 (0.47%) CISSP
12 8 (0.38%) CISM
12 8 (0.38%) PhD
13 7 (0.33%) TOGAF Certification
14 6 (0.28%) ISTQB
14 6 (0.28%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 3 (0.14%) Cisco Certification
15 3 (0.14%) HNC
15 3 (0.14%) HND
15 3 (0.14%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 115 (5.46%) QA
2 49 (2.33%) Def Stans
3 39 (1.85%) Data Quality
4 35 (1.66%) IEC 61508
5 27 (1.28%) Accessibility
6 24 (1.14%) GDPR
7 21 (1.00%) MISRA
8 15 (0.71%) MISRA C
9 9 (0.43%) NCSC
10 8 (0.38%) WCAG
11 7 (0.33%) NIST
12 6 (0.28%) DO-178B
12 6 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
13 5 (0.24%) HL7
14 4 (0.19%) PCI DSS
14 4 (0.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 3 (0.14%) EMIR
15 3 (0.14%) FATCA
15 3 (0.14%) JSP 440
15 3 (0.14%) MiFID
System Software
1 307 (14.58%) Docker
2 21 (1.00%) Firmware
3 17 (0.81%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.47%) Virtual Machines
5 9 (0.43%) Embedded Firmware
6 6 (0.28%) Active Directory
7 4 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
8 3 (0.14%) HDFS
9 2 (0.095%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 348 (16.52%) Kubernetes
2 207 (9.83%) Terraform
3 89 (4.23%) Grafana
4 62 (2.94%) Ansible
5 52 (2.47%) Prometheus
6 37 (1.76%) Argo
7 15 (0.71%) Puppet
8 12 (0.57%) Progress Chef
9 6 (0.28%) Istio
9 6 (0.28%) Kibana
10 5 (0.24%) HAProxy
11 4 (0.19%) Data Guard
11 4 (0.19%) Docker Swarm
11 4 (0.19%) HP Quality Center
11 4 (0.19%) Kubeflow
11 4 (0.19%) Single Sign-On
12 3 (0.14%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
13 2 (0.095%) Consul
13 2 (0.095%) HP ALM
13 2 (0.095%) Podman
Vendors
1 132 (6.27%) Microsoft
2 74 (3.51%) Google
3 62 (2.94%) Oracle
4 58 (2.75%) Red Hat
5 45 (2.14%) Databricks
6 25 (1.19%) IBM
7 23 (1.09%) OpenAI
8 18 (0.85%) Splunk
8 18 (0.85%) VMware
9 13 (0.62%) Foundry
9 13 (0.62%) Informatica
9 13 (0.62%) SAP
9 13 (0.62%) ServiceNow
10 11 (0.52%) Okta
10 11 (0.52%) Siemens
11 10 (0.47%) Dynatrace
11 10 (0.47%) ForgeRock
11 10 (0.47%) MathWorks
11 10 (0.47%) PagerDuty
12 9 (0.43%) Software AG