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

6 months to
12 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 31 42 30
Rank change year-on-year +11 -12 +9
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,681 1,360 1,913
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.78% 4.89% 5.80%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.82% 5.38% 6.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,455 841 1,183
10th Percentile £400 £380 £413
25th Percentile £463 £475 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £625
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% -4.00% +4.03%
75th Percentile £681 £750 £810
90th Percentile £775 £838 £888
UK median daily rate £550 £575 £600
% change year-on-year -4.35% -4.17% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 417 112 236
10th Percentile £51.25 £39.09 £45.22
25th Percentile £57.63 £52.50 £54.56
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.50
Median % change year-on-year - -0.76% +0.77%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £73.67 £75.00 £77.50
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 39,332 25,280 28,365
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.86% 90.86% 86.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,139 16,057 17,805
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,708 1,495 1,348
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.36 £14.84
25th Percentile £17.85 £17.79 £20.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% +0.58%
75th Percentile £68.00 £49.88 £66.53
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.65 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +1.92%

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 September 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 September 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 September 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 -2 1,211 £600 -7.69% 3,068
North of England +25 435 £525 +5.76% 514
South East +33 335 £525 +10.53% 577
South West +18 311 £550 +2.33% 370
East of England +18 222 £507 +1.40% 359
North West +19 201 £530 +6.00% 300
Yorkshire +12 173 £500 +0.73% 151
Midlands +21 139 £463 -16.38% 233
West Midlands +4 96 £466 -18.90% 116
North East +5 64 £650 +41.30% 63
East Midlands +12 42 £435 -5.95% 116
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 61 (2.28%) Confluence
2 55 (2.05%) Apache Spark
3 47 (1.75%) Apache Airflow
4 36 (1.34%) Apache
5 14 (0.52%) SharePoint
6 12 (0.45%) CMS
7 7 (0.26%) Camunda
7 7 (0.26%) Jupyter
7 7 (0.26%) SAS
8 5 (0.19%) Apache Solr
8 5 (0.19%) Ethereum
8 5 (0.19%) Hyperledger
9 4 (0.15%) Apache Superset
9 4 (0.15%) WordPress
10 3 (0.11%) MQSeries
10 3 (0.11%) nginx
10 3 (0.11%) WebSphere
11 2 (0.075%) Cloud Foundry
11 2 (0.075%) IIS
11 2 (0.075%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 14 (0.52%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (0.41%) Chatbot
3 10 (0.37%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 10 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
4 5 (0.19%) Microsoft Excel
5 4 (0.15%) CPLEX
5 4 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.11%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.11%) Simulink
6 3 (0.11%) Trello
7 2 (0.075%) CATIA
7 2 (0.075%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 2 (0.075%) Notion
8 1 (0.037%) Adobe After Effects
8 1 (0.037%) Adobe XD
8 1 (0.037%) Blender
8 1 (0.037%) S-PLUS
Business Applications
1 7 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
2 6 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
3 5 (0.19%) R3 Corda
4 4 (0.15%) Dynamics CRM
4 4 (0.15%) Quorum
4 4 (0.15%) Ripple
5 3 (0.11%) Oracle Payroll
5 3 (0.11%) Orchestrade
5 3 (0.11%) Primavera
5 3 (0.11%) Salesforce CRM
6 2 (0.075%) Endur
6 2 (0.075%) Remedy ITSM
7 1 (0.037%) Aladdin
7 1 (0.037%) Distributed Ledger
7 1 (0.037%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 1 (0.037%) Sage 50
7 1 (0.037%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.037%) Shopify
7 1 (0.037%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 680 (25.36%) AWS
2 539 (20.10%) Azure
3 274 (10.22%) GCP
4 237 (8.84%) GitHub
5 143 (5.33%) Serverless
6 124 (4.63%) GitHub Actions
7 110 (4.10%) Azure DevOps
8 103 (3.84%) AWS Lambda
9 70 (2.61%) Amazon S3
10 66 (2.46%) Anthropic Claude
11 57 (2.13%) OpenShift
12 55 (2.05%) GitHub Copilot
13 53 (1.98%) Amazon SQS
14 51 (1.90%) Amazon ECS
15 49 (1.83%) Amazon EKS
16 46 (1.72%) Power Platform
17 45 (1.68%) Snowflake
18 41 (1.53%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 34 (1.27%) Amazon EC2
19 34 (1.27%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 30 (1.12%) Software-Defined Radio
1 30 (1.12%) Wireless
2 20 (0.75%) Firewall
2 20 (0.75%) Internet
3 19 (0.71%) Ethernet
3 19 (0.71%) HTTP
3 19 (0.71%) TCP/IP
4 17 (0.63%) VPN
5 12 (0.45%) Wi-Fi
6 8 (0.30%) RTP
6 8 (0.30%) Wireshark
7 7 (0.26%) Network Security
8 6 (0.22%) 3GPP
8 6 (0.22%) Cisco IPT
8 6 (0.22%) DNS
9 4 (0.15%) RS-232
9 4 (0.15%) SSL
10 3 (0.11%) Reverse Proxy
10 3 (0.11%) RS-485
11 2 (0.075%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 148 (5.52%) PostgreSQL
2 108 (4.03%) Relational Database
3 87 (3.25%) SQL Server
4 82 (3.06%) NoSQL
5 55 (2.05%) MongoDB
6 53 (1.98%) Data Warehouse
7 44 (1.64%) DynamoDB
8 39 (1.45%) MySQL
9 34 (1.27%) Metadata
10 32 (1.19%) Amazon RDS
11 29 (1.08%) Power BI
12 28 (1.04%) Elasticsearch
13 27 (1.01%) Redis
14 26 (0.97%) Data Lake
15 25 (0.93%) Big Data
15 25 (0.93%) BigQuery
16 22 (0.82%) Pinecone
17 20 (0.75%) Weaviate
18 16 (0.60%) Chroma
19 14 (0.52%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 290 (10.82%) Git
2 159 (5.93%) Jenkins
3 155 (5.78%) GitLab
4 121 (4.51%) JIRA
5 59 (2.20%) SonarQube
6 43 (1.60%) JUnit
7 40 (1.49%) Gradle
8 33 (1.23%) Claude Code
9 30 (1.12%) Selenium
10 27 (1.01%) Maven
10 27 (1.01%) Rational DOORS
11 25 (0.93%) Visual Studio
12 24 (0.90%) Rational Rhapsody
13 22 (0.82%) Cucumber
14 19 (0.71%) Mockito
15 14 (0.52%) Cypress.io
15 14 (0.52%) LabVIEW
16 13 (0.48%) Bitbucket
17 12 (0.45%) Liquibase
17 12 (0.45%) Snyk
General
1 560 (20.89%) Social Skills
2 482 (17.98%) Finance
3 212 (7.91%) Banking
4 207 (7.72%) Public Sector
5 194 (7.24%) Analytical Skills
6 89 (3.32%) Aerospace
7 77 (2.87%) Front Office
8 52 (1.94%) Investment Banking
9 49 (1.83%) Manufacturing
10 48 (1.79%) Law
11 46 (1.72%) Retail
12 38 (1.42%) Automotive
13 34 (1.27%) Military
14 28 (1.04%) Influencing Skills
15 26 (0.97%) Aviation
16 24 (0.90%) Telecoms
17 23 (0.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 23 (0.86%) Marketing
18 18 (0.67%) Back Office
19 17 (0.63%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 1,147 (42.78%) Software Engineer
2 512 (19.10%) Developer
3 497 (18.54%) Senior
4 296 (11.04%) Lead
5 205 (7.65%) Senior Software Engineer
6 170 (6.34%) Java Engineer
7 162 (6.04%) Embedded Engineer
8 154 (5.74%) Embedded Software Engineer
9 145 (5.41%) Java Developer
10 137 (5.11%) Java Software Engineer
11 124 (4.63%) Software Developer
12 117 (4.36%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
13 113 (4.21%) C++ Software Engineer
14 107 (3.99%) Python Engineer
15 106 (3.95%) Senior Developer
16 105 (3.92%) Architect
17 98 (3.66%) Data Engineer
18 82 (3.06%) Lead Software Engineer
19 81 (3.02%) DevOps Engineer
20 79 (2.95%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 301 (11.23%) Terraform
2 253 (9.44%) React
3 237 (8.84%) REST
4 227 (8.47%) Spring
5 219 (8.17%) .NET
6 215 (8.02%) Spring Boot
7 170 (6.34%) Kafka
8 140 (5.22%) RESTful
9 138 (5.15%) Node.js
10 104 (3.88%) AngularJS
11 62 (2.31%) Django
12 55 (2.05%) HTML
13 54 (2.01%) CSS
14 53 (1.98%) Next.js
15 50 (1.86%) LangChain
16 49 (1.83%) OAuth
17 45 (1.68%) FastAPI
17 45 (1.68%) Web Services
18 44 (1.64%) JSON
19 41 (1.53%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 410 (15.29%) Cloud Native
2 238 (8.88%) Distributed Systems
3 148 (5.52%) Product Ownership
4 122 (4.55%) AI Agents
5 83 (3.10%) Algorithms
6 66 (2.46%) Enterprise Software
7 58 (2.16%) Data Structures
8 50 (1.86%) Onboarding
9 48 (1.79%) Data Protection Act
9 48 (1.79%) Embedded Systems
10 36 (1.34%) Legacy Systems
10 36 (1.34%) Self-Motivation
11 33 (1.23%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 29 (1.08%) Fixed Income
13 25 (0.93%) Derivative
13 25 (0.93%) Robotics
14 23 (0.86%) Greenfield Project
15 21 (0.78%) Equities
15 21 (0.78%) Virtual Team
16 19 (0.71%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 192 (7.16%) Linux
2 61 (2.28%) Windows
3 35 (1.31%) Unix
4 27 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 23 (0.86%) Embedded Linux
6 14 (0.52%) Android
6 14 (0.52%) FreeRTOS
7 12 (0.45%) Windows Server
8 9 (0.34%) Ubuntu
9 8 (0.30%) Apple iOS
10 6 (0.22%) Debian
11 4 (0.15%) Rocky
12 3 (0.11%) VMS
12 3 (0.11%) VxWorks
13 2 (0.075%) Windows Server 2019
13 2 (0.075%) zOS
14 1 (0.037%) Robot Operating System
14 1 (0.037%) Solaris
14 1 (0.037%) Tizen
14 1 (0.037%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 937 (34.95%) CI/CD
2 819 (30.55%) Agile
3 641 (23.91%) DevOps
4 559 (20.85%) AI
5 413 (15.40%) Microservices
6 397 (14.81%) Test Automation
7 329 (12.27%) Infrastructure as Code
8 327 (12.20%) Continuous Improvement
8 327 (12.20%) Problem-Solving
9 279 (10.41%) Containerisation
10 275 (10.26%) Observability
11 270 (10.07%) SDLC
12 257 (9.59%) Full-Stack Development
13 230 (8.58%) Machine Learning
14 228 (8.50%) Technical Leadership
15 227 (8.47%) Platform Engineering
16 225 (8.39%) Stakeholder Management
17 220 (8.21%) Event-Driven
18 215 (8.02%) Scrum
19 208 (7.76%) LLM
Programming Languages
1 782 (29.17%) Python
2 683 (25.48%) Java
3 391 (14.58%) SQL
4 296 (11.04%) C#
5 292 (10.89%) TypeScript
6 223 (8.32%) JavaScript
7 222 (8.28%) C++
8 117 (4.36%) C
9 89 (3.32%) Ada
10 83 (3.10%) Go
11 67 (2.50%) Kotlin
12 49 (1.83%) PowerShell
13 43 (1.60%) Bash
13 43 (1.60%) Rust
14 39 (1.45%) Scala
15 25 (0.93%) Embedded C
15 25 (0.93%) Ruby
16 22 (0.82%) Bicep
16 22 (0.82%) PL/SQL
17 19 (0.71%) PHP
Qualifications
1 605 (22.57%) Security Cleared
2 510 (19.02%) SC Cleared
3 211 (7.87%) Degree
4 99 (3.69%) Computer Science Degree
5 90 (3.36%) DV Cleared
6 61 (2.28%) BPSS Clearance
7 46 (1.72%) Master's Degree
8 41 (1.53%) AWS Certification
9 19 (0.71%) Azure Certification
10 18 (0.67%) PhD
11 17 (0.63%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 11 (0.41%) PMP
13 8 (0.30%) CISSP
13 8 (0.30%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 6 (0.22%) Chartered Engineer
14 6 (0.22%) ISTQB
14 6 (0.22%) TOGAF Certification
15 5 (0.19%) PMI Certification
16 4 (0.15%) GIAC
16 4 (0.15%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 176 (6.56%) QA
2 75 (2.80%) Data Quality
3 53 (1.98%) Accessibility
4 21 (0.78%) GDPR
5 17 (0.63%) Def Stans
5 17 (0.63%) MISRA
6 15 (0.56%) WCAG
7 12 (0.45%) NIST
8 11 (0.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 10 (0.37%) DO-178B
10 9 (0.34%) IEC 61508
11 8 (0.30%) GRC
11 8 (0.30%) NCSC
12 6 (0.22%) MISRA C
13 5 (0.19%) EMIR
13 5 (0.19%) HL7
13 5 (0.19%) JSP 440
13 5 (0.19%) MiFID
14 4 (0.15%) PCI DSS
15 3 (0.11%) DO-254
System Software
1 402 (14.99%) Docker
2 29 (1.08%) Firmware
3 18 (0.67%) Embedded Firmware
4 13 (0.48%) Active Directory
4 13 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
5 8 (0.30%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (0.037%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 449 (16.75%) Kubernetes
2 91 (3.39%) Ansible
3 56 (2.09%) Grafana
4 40 (1.49%) Argo
4 40 (1.49%) Prometheus
5 16 (0.60%) Single Sign-On
6 14 (0.52%) Kibana
7 8 (0.30%) Puppet
8 6 (0.22%) Functional Safety
9 4 (0.15%) Consul
9 4 (0.15%) HAProxy
9 4 (0.15%) Kubeflow
9 4 (0.15%) Kustomize
10 3 (0.11%) HP Fortify
10 3 (0.11%) Istio
10 3 (0.11%) Progress Chef
11 2 (0.075%) Cilium
11 2 (0.075%) Docker Swarm
11 2 (0.075%) Packer
11 2 (0.075%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 145 (5.41%) Microsoft
2 99 (3.69%) Google
3 86 (3.21%) Oracle
4 77 (2.87%) Databricks
5 62 (2.31%) OpenAI
6 45 (1.68%) Red Hat
7 29 (1.08%) Salesforce
8 24 (0.90%) Splunk
9 22 (0.82%) IBM
10 18 (0.67%) Foundry
10 18 (0.67%) ServiceNow
11 17 (0.63%) Informatica
12 12 (0.45%) Adobe
13 11 (0.41%) Checkmarx
13 11 (0.41%) SAP
14 10 (0.37%) VMware
15 9 (0.34%) Dynatrace
16 8 (0.30%) Confluent
17 7 (0.26%) Mistral
17 7 (0.26%) Solace