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

6 months to
3 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 33 43 27
Rank change year-on-year +10 -16 +14
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,382 1,268 2,308
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.42% 4.86% 6.17%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.35% 5.34% 7.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,291 827 1,358
10th Percentile £400 £400 £418
25th Percentile £463 £475 £493
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £607
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% -1.07% +0.08%
75th Percentile £684 £775 £788
90th Percentile £788 £850 £879
UK median daily rate £550 £575 £600
% change year-on-year -4.35% -4.17% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 440 76 394
10th Percentile £52.50 £34.38 £46.25
25th Percentile £61.25 £51.81 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.03 £76.25 £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 37,490 23,760 31,971
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.37% 91.05% 85.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,605 15,276 20,748
10th Percentile £325 £300 £305
25th Percentile £419 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.46% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £730 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £515 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +1.98% -3.81% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,362 1,184 2,308
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.23 £12.79
25th Percentile £20.79 £17.95 £16.06
Median hourly rate £47.00 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +86.88% -34.02% +1.65%
75th Percentile £68.55 £55.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £82.25 £72.50 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +3.45%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 -6 1,031 £600 -8.29% 1,034
North of England +23 364 £538 +9.16% 371
South West +25 331 £550 +4.76% 265
South East +17 296 £525 +4.90% 434
East of England +27 219 £495 +1.38% 216
North West +6 173 £525 +5.00% 200
Yorkshire +18 126 £538 +9.69% 99
Midlands -28 96 £459 -8.20% 149
West Midlands -29 75 £459 -17.67% 74
North East +16 70 £650 +41.30% 74
East Midlands -13 20 £513 +7.89% 75
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 53 (2.23%) Confluence
2 41 (1.72%) Apache Spark
3 28 (1.18%) Apache
3 28 (1.18%) Apache Airflow
4 9 (0.38%) SAS
5 7 (0.29%) CMS
6 6 (0.25%) SharePoint
7 5 (0.21%) nginx
8 4 (0.17%) Ethereum
8 4 (0.17%) Hyperledger
8 4 (0.17%) WebLogic
9 3 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
9 3 (0.13%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.084%) Cloud Foundry
10 2 (0.084%) IIS
10 2 (0.084%) MQSeries
10 2 (0.084%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 2 (0.084%) WinCC
11 1 (0.042%) Apache Synapse
11 1 (0.042%) Camunda
Applications
1 14 (0.59%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (0.34%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 8 (0.34%) Chatbot
3 5 (0.21%) CPLEX
4 4 (0.17%) Simulink
5 3 (0.13%) Microsoft Excel
5 3 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.084%) CATIA
6 2 (0.084%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 1 (0.042%) Adobe After Effects
7 1 (0.042%) Blender
7 1 (0.042%) Maya
7 1 (0.042%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.042%) Notion
7 1 (0.042%) S-PLUS
Business Applications
1 6 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
1 6 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
1 6 (0.25%) Payment Gateway
2 4 (0.17%) Quorum
2 4 (0.17%) R3 Corda
2 4 (0.17%) Ripple
3 3 (0.13%) Orchestrade
4 2 (0.084%) Aladdin
4 2 (0.084%) Endur
4 2 (0.084%) Remedy ITSM
5 1 (0.042%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.042%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.042%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 584 (24.52%) AWS
2 456 (19.14%) Azure
3 215 (9.03%) GCP
4 165 (6.93%) GitHub
5 118 (4.95%) Serverless
6 97 (4.07%) Azure DevOps
7 77 (3.23%) GitHub Actions
8 76 (3.19%) AWS Lambda
9 61 (2.56%) Amazon S3
10 57 (2.39%) OpenShift
11 46 (1.93%) Power Platform
12 40 (1.68%) Amazon SQS
13 39 (1.64%) Azure AKS
14 37 (1.55%) Anthropic Claude
15 36 (1.51%) Amazon ECS
16 35 (1.47%) Amazon EKS
17 30 (1.26%) Amazon EC2
17 30 (1.26%) SaaS
18 28 (1.18%) Entra ID
19 27 (1.13%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 30 (1.26%) Software-Defined Radio
2 24 (1.01%) Ethernet
3 22 (0.92%) Wireless
4 17 (0.71%) TCP/IP
5 15 (0.63%) HTTP
6 14 (0.59%) Internet
7 13 (0.55%) Firewall
8 12 (0.50%) Wi-Fi
9 10 (0.42%) 3GPP
10 9 (0.38%) VPN
11 8 (0.34%) Network Security
12 7 (0.29%) RTP
13 6 (0.25%) Wireshark
14 4 (0.17%) DNS
14 4 (0.17%) RS-232
14 4 (0.17%) RS-422
15 3 (0.13%) IPv4
15 3 (0.13%) IPv6
15 3 (0.13%) Modbus
15 3 (0.13%) RS-485
Database & Business Intelligence
1 145 (6.09%) PostgreSQL
2 85 (3.57%) Relational Database
3 71 (2.98%) SQL Server
4 66 (2.77%) NoSQL
5 55 (2.31%) MongoDB
6 35 (1.47%) DynamoDB
7 32 (1.34%) Data Warehouse
8 30 (1.26%) Power BI
9 29 (1.22%) MySQL
10 27 (1.13%) Amazon RDS
10 27 (1.13%) Apache Cassandra
11 25 (1.05%) Big Data
12 23 (0.97%) BigQuery
12 23 (0.97%) Data Lake
13 21 (0.88%) Metadata
14 20 (0.84%) Redis
15 18 (0.76%) Elasticsearch
15 18 (0.76%) Pinecone
16 16 (0.67%) Amazon Redshift
16 16 (0.67%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 235 (9.87%) Git
2 146 (6.13%) Jenkins
3 122 (5.12%) GitLab
4 106 (4.45%) JIRA
5 56 (2.35%) SonarQube
6 36 (1.51%) Gradle
7 32 (1.34%) JUnit
8 27 (1.13%) Rational DOORS
8 27 (1.13%) Rational Rhapsody
9 25 (1.05%) Visual Studio
10 20 (0.84%) Cucumber
10 20 (0.84%) Selenium
11 19 (0.80%) Maven
12 18 (0.76%) Bitbucket
13 16 (0.67%) Liquibase
14 14 (0.59%) Claude Code
14 14 (0.59%) Cypress.io
14 14 (0.59%) IntelliJ
14 14 (0.59%) Mockito
15 12 (0.50%) Eclipse
General
1 423 (17.76%) Finance
2 401 (16.83%) Social Skills
3 158 (6.63%) Banking
4 150 (6.30%) Analytical Skills
5 146 (6.13%) Public Sector
6 99 (4.16%) Aerospace
7 85 (3.57%) Front Office
8 50 (2.10%) Retail
9 45 (1.89%) Law
10 42 (1.76%) Investment Banking
10 42 (1.76%) Manufacturing
11 28 (1.18%) Military
12 25 (1.05%) Automotive
12 25 (1.05%) Aviation
13 24 (1.01%) Influencing Skills
13 24 (1.01%) Telecoms
14 19 (0.80%) Electronics
15 17 (0.71%) Legal
16 16 (0.67%) Documentation Skills
17 14 (0.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 1,201 (50.42%) Software Engineer
2 438 (18.39%) Developer
3 397 (16.67%) Senior
4 243 (10.20%) Lead
5 175 (7.35%) Senior Software Engineer
6 168 (7.05%) Java Engineer
7 146 (6.13%) Embedded Engineer
8 138 (5.79%) Java Software Engineer
9 135 (5.67%) Embedded Software Engineer
10 129 (5.42%) C++ Software Engineer
10 129 (5.42%) Java Developer
11 102 (4.28%) Architect
12 90 (3.78%) Lead Software Engineer
13 83 (3.48%) Python Engineer
14 82 (3.44%) Senior Developer
15 80 (3.36%) Software Developer
16 73 (3.06%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 72 (3.02%) Python Developer
18 68 (2.85%) Developer/Software Engineer
19 67 (2.81%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 269 (11.29%) React
2 186 (7.81%) .NET
3 179 (7.51%) Kafka
4 174 (7.30%) Node.js
4 174 (7.30%) Spring
5 166 (6.97%) REST
6 157 (6.59%) Spring Boot
7 109 (4.58%) RESTful
8 105 (4.41%) AngularJS
9 77 (3.23%) GraphQL
10 59 (2.48%) Redux
11 46 (1.93%) CSS
12 45 (1.89%) HTML
13 40 (1.68%) JSON
13 40 (1.68%) Next.js
14 36 (1.51%) Quarkus
15 35 (1.47%) Web Services
16 34 (1.43%) Django
17 33 (1.39%) Middleware
17 33 (1.39%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 271 (11.38%) Cloud Native
2 180 (7.56%) Distributed Systems
3 122 (5.12%) Product Ownership
4 87 (3.65%) Algorithms
5 71 (2.98%) Fixed Income
6 63 (2.64%) AI Agents
7 43 (1.81%) Embedded Systems
8 41 (1.72%) Onboarding
9 36 (1.51%) Data Protection Act
9 36 (1.51%) Data Structures
10 33 (1.39%) Derivative
10 33 (1.39%) Legacy Systems
11 31 (1.30%) Self-Motivation
12 27 (1.13%) Equities
12 27 (1.13%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 25 (1.05%) Enterprise Software
14 20 (0.84%) Robotics
15 19 (0.80%) Greenfield Project
16 17 (0.71%) Mobile App
17 14 (0.59%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 184 (7.72%) Linux
2 59 (2.48%) Windows
3 37 (1.55%) Unix
4 30 (1.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 15 (0.63%) Apple iOS
5 15 (0.63%) Embedded Linux
6 13 (0.55%) Android
7 11 (0.46%) FreeRTOS
8 9 (0.38%) Ubuntu
8 9 (0.38%) Windows Server
9 5 (0.21%) 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 (0.084%) VxWorks
13 1 (0.042%) Tizen
13 1 (0.042%) webOS
13 1 (0.042%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 723 (30.35%) CI/CD
2 716 (30.06%) Agile
3 505 (21.20%) DevOps
4 379 (15.91%) AI
5 342 (14.36%) Microservices
6 295 (12.38%) Test Automation
7 261 (10.96%) Problem-Solving
8 252 (10.58%) Full-Stack Development
9 221 (9.28%) Containerisation
10 219 (9.19%) Infrastructure as Code
11 217 (9.11%) Continuous Improvement
12 188 (7.89%) TDD
13 185 (7.77%) SDLC
14 184 (7.72%) Observability
15 183 (7.68%) Machine Learning
16 178 (7.47%) Scrum
17 177 (7.43%) Mentoring
18 163 (6.84%) Platform Engineering
19 155 (6.51%) Technical Leadership
20 154 (6.47%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 640 (26.87%) Python
2 610 (25.61%) Java
3 311 (13.06%) SQL
4 293 (12.30%) TypeScript
5 292 (12.26%) C#
6 240 (10.08%) JavaScript
7 228 (9.57%) C++
8 130 (5.46%) Ada
9 125 (5.25%) Go
10 113 (4.74%) C
11 43 (1.81%) Kotlin
12 37 (1.55%) Rust
13 31 (1.30%) Bash
13 31 (1.30%) PowerShell
14 28 (1.18%) Scala
15 25 (1.05%) PL/SQL
16 24 (1.01%) MATLAB
17 21 (0.88%) Embedded C
18 17 (0.71%) Ruby
18 17 (0.71%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 585 (24.56%) Security Cleared
2 476 (19.98%) SC Cleared
3 178 (7.47%) Degree
4 79 (3.32%) Computer Science Degree
5 72 (3.02%) DV Cleared
6 50 (2.10%) BPSS Clearance
7 28 (1.18%) AWS Certification
7 28 (1.18%) Master's Degree
8 18 (0.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 13 (0.55%) Azure Certification
10 12 (0.50%) PhD
11 10 (0.42%) CISSP
12 7 (0.29%) ISTQB
12 7 (0.29%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 6 (0.25%) Chartered Engineer
13 6 (0.25%) TOGAF Certification
14 4 (0.17%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
14 4 (0.17%) CISM
14 4 (0.17%) GIAC
14 4 (0.17%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 131 (5.50%) QA
2 46 (1.93%) Data Quality
3 42 (1.76%) Def Stans
4 41 (1.72%) Accessibility
5 28 (1.18%) IEC 61508
6 21 (0.88%) GDPR
7 19 (0.80%) MISRA
8 14 (0.59%) NIST
9 10 (0.42%) DO-178B
9 10 (0.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 10 (0.42%) MISRA C
9 10 (0.42%) WCAG
10 9 (0.38%) NCSC
11 6 (0.25%) GRC
11 6 (0.25%) PCI DSS
12 5 (0.21%) JSP 440
12 5 (0.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 4 (0.17%) DO-254
14 3 (0.13%) FATCA
15 2 (0.084%) EMIR
System Software
1 324 (13.60%) Docker
2 24 (1.01%) Firmware
3 10 (0.42%) Active Directory
4 9 (0.38%) Embedded Firmware
5 7 (0.29%) VMware Infrastructure
6 5 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
7 4 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
8 3 (0.13%) HDFS
9 2 (0.084%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 381 (15.99%) Kubernetes
2 222 (9.32%) Terraform
3 66 (2.77%) Ansible
4 63 (2.64%) Grafana
5 40 (1.68%) Prometheus
6 38 (1.60%) Argo
7 11 (0.46%) Kibana
8 9 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
9 7 (0.29%) Puppet
10 6 (0.25%) Progress Chef
11 5 (0.21%) HAProxy
12 4 (0.17%) Data Guard
12 4 (0.17%) HP Quality Center
13 3 (0.13%) Consul
13 3 (0.13%) Docker Swarm
13 3 (0.13%) Functional Safety
13 3 (0.13%) Kubeflow
14 2 (0.084%) Cilium
14 2 (0.084%) HP Fortify
14 2 (0.084%) Istio
Vendors
1 123 (5.16%) Microsoft
2 77 (3.23%) Google
3 73 (3.06%) Oracle
4 51 (2.14%) Red Hat
5 43 (1.81%) Databricks
6 37 (1.55%) OpenAI
7 20 (0.84%) IBM
8 18 (0.76%) Informatica
8 18 (0.76%) ServiceNow
8 18 (0.76%) Splunk
9 14 (0.59%) Salesforce
10 13 (0.55%) Foundry
11 12 (0.50%) SAP
11 12 (0.50%) Siemens
12 10 (0.42%) Checkmarx
12 10 (0.42%) ForgeRock
12 10 (0.42%) Okta
13 9 (0.38%) Adobe
13 9 (0.38%) MathWorks
14 8 (0.34%) Dynatrace