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 26 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 31 43 30
Rank change year-on-year +12 -13 +11
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,502 1,356 2,044
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.53% 4.92% 5.91%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.48% 5.42% 6.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,394 878 1,300
10th Percentile £400 £383 £406
25th Percentile £468 £463 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £558 £600 £615
Median % change year-on-year -7.08% -2.44% +2.50%
75th Percentile £688 £775 £800
90th Percentile £788 £850 £888
UK median daily rate £550 £575 £600
% change year-on-year -4.35% -4.17% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 407 81 320
10th Percentile £50.85 £31.25 £48.00
25th Percentile £60.00 £51.25 £54.84
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.10 £77.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 38,601 25,022 29,686
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.36% 90.73% 85.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,205 16,045 19,444
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £421 £405 £414
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £756
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,390 1,351 1,859
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £13.69
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.87 £17.50
Median hourly rate £47.00 £25.15 £40.33
Median % change year-on-year +86.88% -37.63% -5.12%
75th Percentile £69.50 £52.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £83.00 £70.16 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -37.13% -5.88%

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 26 July 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 26 July 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 26 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 -1 1,125 £600 -7.69% 1,426
North of England +30 387 £538 +9.07% 360
South East +28 315 £525 +4.90% 379
South West +19 308 £550 +10.00% 202
East of England +23 216 £505 +3.48% 185
North West +2 184 £550 +10.00% 211
Yorkshire +17 140 £525 +7.14% 88
Midlands -11 109 £463 -7.50% 128
West Midlands -10 84 £459 -20.17% 74
North East +11 68 £650 +41.30% 64
East Midlands -8 24 £513 +7.89% 54
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 55 (2.20%) Confluence
2 47 (1.88%) Apache Spark
3 32 (1.28%) Apache Airflow
4 31 (1.24%) Apache
5 11 (0.44%) CMS
6 10 (0.40%) SAS
7 7 (0.28%) SharePoint
8 5 (0.20%) Ethereum
8 5 (0.20%) Hyperledger
8 5 (0.20%) nginx
9 4 (0.16%) Jupyter
9 4 (0.16%) WebLogic
10 3 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
10 3 (0.12%) Tomcat
11 2 (0.080%) Apache Pulsar
11 2 (0.080%) Apache Solr
11 2 (0.080%) Apache Superset
11 2 (0.080%) IIS
11 2 (0.080%) MQSeries
11 2 (0.080%) WordPress
Applications
1 15 (0.60%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (0.40%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 9 (0.36%) Chatbot
4 7 (0.28%) Microsoft Excel
5 6 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
6 5 (0.20%) CPLEX
7 4 (0.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 4 (0.16%) Microsoft Project
7 4 (0.16%) Simulink
8 3 (0.12%) MS Visio
8 3 (0.12%) Trello
9 2 (0.080%) CATIA
9 2 (0.080%) Notion
10 1 (0.040%) Adobe After Effects
10 1 (0.040%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.040%) Blender
10 1 (0.040%) Maya
10 1 (0.040%) S-PLUS
Business Applications
1 7 (0.28%) Oracle EBS
2 6 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
2 6 (0.24%) Payment Gateway
3 5 (0.20%) R3 Corda
4 4 (0.16%) Quorum
4 4 (0.16%) Ripple
5 3 (0.12%) Orchestrade
5 3 (0.12%) Primavera
5 3 (0.12%) Salesforce CRM
6 2 (0.080%) Aladdin
6 2 (0.080%) Endur
6 2 (0.080%) Remedy ITSM
7 1 (0.040%) Distributed Ledger
7 1 (0.040%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 1 (0.040%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 632 (25.26%) AWS
2 489 (19.54%) Azure
3 255 (10.19%) GCP
4 197 (7.87%) GitHub
5 123 (4.92%) Serverless
6 100 (4.00%) Azure DevOps
7 98 (3.92%) GitHub Actions
8 83 (3.32%) AWS Lambda
9 62 (2.48%) Amazon S3
10 55 (2.20%) OpenShift
11 49 (1.96%) Anthropic Claude
12 48 (1.92%) Power Platform
13 46 (1.84%) Amazon EKS
14 45 (1.80%) Amazon SQS
15 44 (1.76%) Amazon ECS
16 39 (1.56%) Azure AKS
17 35 (1.40%) GitHub Copilot
18 32 (1.28%) AWS CloudFormation
19 30 (1.20%) Amazon EC2
20 28 (1.12%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.00%) Software-Defined Radio
2 24 (0.96%) Wireless
3 23 (0.92%) Ethernet
4 19 (0.76%) Firewall
5 18 (0.72%) TCP/IP
6 17 (0.68%) Internet
7 15 (0.60%) HTTP
8 14 (0.56%) VPN
9 11 (0.44%) Wi-Fi
10 9 (0.36%) 3GPP
11 8 (0.32%) Network Security
11 8 (0.32%) RTP
12 7 (0.28%) Wireshark
13 6 (0.24%) RS-232
14 5 (0.20%) DNS
14 5 (0.20%) RS-485
15 4 (0.16%) RS-422
16 3 (0.12%) HTTPS
16 3 (0.12%) IPv4
16 3 (0.12%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 157 (6.27%) PostgreSQL
2 96 (3.84%) Relational Database
3 77 (3.08%) SQL Server
4 74 (2.96%) NoSQL
5 52 (2.08%) MongoDB
6 37 (1.48%) Data Warehouse
7 36 (1.44%) DynamoDB
8 31 (1.24%) MySQL
9 30 (1.20%) Big Data
9 30 (1.20%) Power BI
10 24 (0.96%) Redis
11 23 (0.92%) Amazon RDS
11 23 (0.92%) BigQuery
12 22 (0.88%) Data Lake
12 22 (0.88%) Elasticsearch
12 22 (0.88%) Metadata
13 18 (0.72%) Apache Cassandra
14 17 (0.68%) Amazon Redshift
14 17 (0.68%) Pinecone
15 15 (0.60%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 253 (10.11%) Git
2 153 (6.12%) Jenkins
3 136 (5.44%) GitLab
4 110 (4.40%) JIRA
5 58 (2.32%) SonarQube
6 36 (1.44%) Gradle
7 34 (1.36%) JUnit
8 24 (0.96%) Visual Studio
9 23 (0.92%) Claude Code
10 22 (0.88%) Rational DOORS
11 20 (0.80%) Bitbucket
11 20 (0.80%) Cucumber
12 19 (0.76%) Rational Rhapsody
13 18 (0.72%) Maven
13 18 (0.72%) Selenium
14 16 (0.64%) Liquibase
14 16 (0.64%) Mockito
15 12 (0.48%) Cypress.io
15 12 (0.48%) Eclipse
15 12 (0.48%) Mocha
General
1 465 (18.59%) Finance
2 445 (17.79%) Social Skills
3 182 (7.27%) Banking
4 168 (6.71%) Analytical Skills
4 168 (6.71%) Public Sector
5 103 (4.12%) Aerospace
6 98 (3.92%) Front Office
7 58 (2.32%) Retail
8 45 (1.80%) Manufacturing
9 43 (1.72%) Investment Banking
10 42 (1.68%) Law
11 31 (1.24%) Telecoms
12 30 (1.20%) Military
13 28 (1.12%) Automotive
14 27 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
15 25 (1.00%) Aviation
16 20 (0.80%) Electronics
17 18 (0.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 17 (0.68%) Legal
19 15 (0.60%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,195 (47.76%) Software Engineer
2 471 (18.82%) Developer
3 426 (17.03%) Senior
4 281 (11.23%) Lead
5 176 (7.03%) Senior Software Engineer
6 170 (6.79%) Java Engineer
7 142 (5.68%) Embedded Engineer
8 140 (5.60%) Java Software Engineer
9 133 (5.32%) Embedded Software Engineer
9 133 (5.32%) Java Developer
10 117 (4.68%) C++ Software Engineer
11 106 (4.24%) Lead Software Engineer
12 102 (4.08%) Python Engineer
13 101 (4.04%) Architect
14 100 (4.00%) Software Developer
15 86 (3.44%) Senior Developer
16 81 (3.24%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 77 (3.08%) DevOps Engineer
18 76 (3.04%) Python Developer
19 73 (2.92%) Developer/Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 284 (11.35%) React
2 200 (7.99%) .NET
3 195 (7.79%) REST
4 190 (7.59%) Spring
5 185 (7.39%) Node.js
6 184 (7.35%) Kafka
7 171 (6.83%) Spring Boot
8 119 (4.76%) RESTful
9 111 (4.44%) AngularJS
10 77 (3.08%) GraphQL
11 58 (2.32%) Redux
12 48 (1.92%) Next.js
13 47 (1.88%) CSS
13 47 (1.88%) Django
13 47 (1.88%) HTML
14 44 (1.76%) JSON
15 39 (1.56%) Quarkus
16 36 (1.44%) .NET Core
16 36 (1.44%) LangChain
17 35 (1.40%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 326 (13.03%) Cloud Native
2 217 (8.67%) Distributed Systems
3 134 (5.36%) Product Ownership
4 84 (3.36%) Algorithms
5 77 (3.08%) AI Agents
6 75 (3.00%) Fixed Income
7 50 (2.00%) Data Structures
8 46 (1.84%) Onboarding
9 43 (1.72%) Data Protection Act
9 43 (1.72%) Embedded Systems
10 37 (1.48%) Enterprise Software
11 36 (1.44%) Derivative
12 35 (1.40%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 34 (1.36%) Legacy Systems
14 32 (1.28%) Self-Motivation
15 29 (1.16%) Equities
16 23 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
17 21 (0.84%) Robotics
18 17 (0.68%) Virtual Team
19 16 (0.64%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 186 (7.43%) Linux
2 58 (2.32%) Windows
3 34 (1.36%) Unix
4 30 (1.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 19 (0.76%) Embedded Linux
6 14 (0.56%) Android
6 14 (0.56%) Apple iOS
7 11 (0.44%) FreeRTOS
8 10 (0.40%) Windows Server
9 8 (0.32%) Ubuntu
10 4 (0.16%) Debian
10 4 (0.16%) VMS
10 4 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.12%) Rocky
11 3 (0.12%) Solaris
11 3 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
12 2 (0.080%) VxWorks
13 1 (0.040%) Tizen
13 1 (0.040%) webOS
13 1 (0.040%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 810 (32.37%) CI/CD
2 787 (31.45%) Agile
3 580 (23.18%) DevOps
4 444 (17.75%) AI
5 378 (15.11%) Microservices
6 322 (12.87%) Test Automation
7 289 (11.55%) Problem-Solving
8 277 (11.07%) Full-Stack Development
9 264 (10.55%) Continuous Improvement
10 262 (10.47%) Infrastructure as Code
11 251 (10.03%) Containerisation
12 218 (8.71%) Machine Learning
13 216 (8.63%) Observability
14 206 (8.23%) Mentoring
15 204 (8.15%) SDLC
16 194 (7.75%) TDD
17 186 (7.43%) Scrum
17 186 (7.43%) Technical Leadership
18 183 (7.31%) Platform Engineering
19 176 (7.03%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 719 (28.74%) Python
2 649 (25.94%) Java
3 329 (13.15%) SQL
4 312 (12.47%) TypeScript
5 297 (11.87%) C#
6 246 (9.83%) JavaScript
7 214 (8.55%) C++
8 122 (4.88%) Go
9 113 (4.52%) Ada
10 107 (4.28%) C
11 55 (2.20%) Kotlin
12 42 (1.68%) Rust
13 35 (1.40%) Bash
13 35 (1.40%) PowerShell
14 31 (1.24%) Scala
15 24 (0.96%) PL/SQL
16 20 (0.80%) Ruby
17 18 (0.72%) Bicep
17 18 (0.72%) Embedded C
18 17 (0.68%) PHP
Qualifications
1 589 (23.54%) Security Cleared
2 488 (19.50%) SC Cleared
3 192 (7.67%) Degree
4 84 (3.36%) Computer Science Degree
5 78 (3.12%) DV Cleared
6 54 (2.16%) BPSS Clearance
7 37 (1.48%) Master's Degree
8 35 (1.40%) AWS Certification
9 20 (0.80%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 18 (0.72%) PhD
11 16 (0.64%) Azure Certification
12 7 (0.28%) CISSP
13 6 (0.24%) Chartered Engineer
13 6 (0.24%) ISTQB
13 6 (0.24%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 6 (0.24%) Microsoft Certified Professional
13 6 (0.24%) PMP
14 4 (0.16%) GIAC
14 4 (0.16%) MBA
14 4 (0.16%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 152 (6.08%) QA
2 55 (2.20%) Data Quality
3 48 (1.92%) Accessibility
4 24 (0.96%) Def Stans
5 21 (0.84%) GDPR
6 14 (0.56%) IEC 61508
6 14 (0.56%) NIST
7 13 (0.52%) WCAG
8 12 (0.48%) MISRA
9 11 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 10 (0.40%) DO-178B
11 8 (0.32%) NCSC
12 6 (0.24%) GRC
12 6 (0.24%) PCI DSS
13 5 (0.20%) JSP 440
13 5 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 3 (0.12%) DO-254
14 3 (0.12%) FATCA
14 3 (0.12%) MISRA C
15 2 (0.080%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 367 (14.67%) Docker
2 22 (0.88%) Firmware
3 11 (0.44%) Embedded Firmware
4 10 (0.40%) Active Directory
5 7 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
6 6 (0.24%) VMware Infrastructure
7 3 (0.12%) HDFS
8 2 (0.080%) SRDF
9 1 (0.040%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 415 (16.59%) Kubernetes
2 249 (9.95%) Terraform
3 74 (2.96%) Ansible
4 58 (2.32%) Grafana
5 41 (1.64%) Argo
6 39 (1.56%) Prometheus
7 11 (0.44%) Kibana
7 11 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
8 9 (0.36%) Puppet
9 7 (0.28%) Progress Chef
10 6 (0.24%) Kubeflow
11 5 (0.20%) HAProxy
12 3 (0.12%) Consul
12 3 (0.12%) Functional Safety
13 2 (0.080%) Cilium
13 2 (0.080%) Docker Swarm
13 2 (0.080%) HP Fortify
13 2 (0.080%) HP Quality Center
13 2 (0.080%) Istio
14 1 (0.040%) Data Guard
Vendors
1 125 (5.00%) Microsoft
2 88 (3.52%) Google
3 76 (3.04%) Oracle
4 50 (2.00%) Red Hat
5 46 (1.84%) Databricks
6 43 (1.72%) OpenAI
7 20 (0.80%) Splunk
8 19 (0.76%) Informatica
9 18 (0.72%) IBM
10 17 (0.68%) Salesforce
10 17 (0.68%) ServiceNow
11 15 (0.60%) Foundry
12 12 (0.48%) Adobe
13 11 (0.44%) SAP
13 11 (0.44%) Siemens
14 10 (0.40%) Checkmarx
14 10 (0.40%) ForgeRock
14 10 (0.40%) Okta
15 9 (0.36%) Dynatrace
15 9 (0.36%) Solace