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

6 months to
27 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 33 45 31
Rank change year-on-year +12 -14 +9
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,196 1,120 2,104
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.27% 4.71% 5.76%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.21% 5.16% 6.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,142 739 1,235
10th Percentile £400 £400 £419
25th Percentile £463 £482 £488
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -
75th Percentile £675 £775 £750
90th Percentile £775 £838 £850
UK median daily rate £550 £575 £600
% change year-on-year -4.35% -4.17% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 458 63 369
10th Percentile £52.20 £43.50 £46.25
25th Percentile £60.00 £56.44 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year - +4.00% -3.85%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.25 £70.00
90th Percentile £73.62 £76.00 £79.00
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 35,337 21,704 31,436
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.82% 91.29% 85.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,449 14,185 20,585
10th Percentile £325 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.10% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £512 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -0.14% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,203 923 2,285
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.13 £15.95
Median hourly rate £45.00 £28.00 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +60.71% -23.29% -2.67%
75th Percentile £68.00 £60.00 £61.25
90th Percentile £81.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £41.94 £27.45 £36.02
% change year-on-year +52.79% -23.80% -2.64%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 -2 918 £578 -14.37% 1,007
North of England +19 324 £525 +5.00% 344
South West +23 311 £575 +2.22% 224
South East +26 280 £525 +2.44% 376
East of England +36 225 £495 +1.38% 172
North West +5 153 £500 - 218
Yorkshire +18 119 £525 +7.14% 69
Midlands -40 84 £472 -3.67% 133
West Midlands -23 72 £466 -13.48% 80
North East +18 57 £593 +51.92% 59
East Midlands -35 11 £563 +14.80% 53
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 52 (2.37%) Confluence
2 47 (2.14%) Apache Spark
3 35 (1.59%) Apache
4 23 (1.05%) Apache Airflow
5 8 (0.36%) SAS
6 6 (0.27%) CMS
6 6 (0.27%) SharePoint
7 5 (0.23%) IIS
7 5 (0.23%) nginx
8 4 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
8 4 (0.18%) WebLogic
9 3 (0.14%) Camunda
9 3 (0.14%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.091%) Cloud Foundry
10 2 (0.091%) MQSeries
10 2 (0.091%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 2 (0.091%) WinCC
11 1 (0.046%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 1 (0.046%) Microsoft Exchange
11 1 (0.046%) OpenStack
Applications
1 14 (0.64%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (0.27%) Chatbot
2 6 (0.27%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.18%) CPLEX
3 4 (0.18%) Simulink
4 2 (0.091%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 2 (0.091%) CATIA
4 2 (0.091%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.091%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.046%) Adobe After Effects
5 1 (0.046%) Blender
5 1 (0.046%) Maya
5 1 (0.046%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.046%) Notion
5 1 (0.046%) OrCAD
Business Applications
1 6 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
2 4 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
3 2 (0.091%) Aladdin
3 2 (0.091%) LabWindows
3 2 (0.091%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 2 (0.091%) Remedy ITSM
4 1 (0.046%) Orchestrade
4 1 (0.046%) Quorum
4 1 (0.046%) R3 Corda
4 1 (0.046%) Ripple
4 1 (0.046%) Sprinklr
4 1 (0.046%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 540 (24.59%) AWS
2 413 (18.81%) Azure
3 203 (9.24%) GCP
4 146 (6.65%) GitHub
5 108 (4.92%) Serverless
6 84 (3.83%) Azure DevOps
7 66 (3.01%) AWS Lambda
8 61 (2.78%) GitHub Actions
9 60 (2.73%) Amazon S3
10 50 (2.28%) OpenShift
11 45 (2.05%) Power Platform
12 37 (1.68%) Azure AKS
13 36 (1.64%) Amazon EKS
14 35 (1.59%) Amazon SQS
15 32 (1.46%) Amazon EC2
16 31 (1.41%) Amazon ECS
17 27 (1.23%) AWS CloudFormation
18 25 (1.14%) SaaS
19 24 (1.09%) Anthropic Claude
20 22 (1.00%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 30 (1.37%) Software-Defined Radio
2 23 (1.05%) Ethernet
3 19 (0.87%) Wireless
4 15 (0.68%) HTTP
5 14 (0.64%) TCP/IP
6 11 (0.50%) Firewall
7 10 (0.46%) 3GPP
7 10 (0.46%) Wi-Fi
8 7 (0.32%) Network Security
8 7 (0.32%) RTP
8 7 (0.32%) VPN
9 6 (0.27%) Wireshark
10 4 (0.18%) DNS
10 4 (0.18%) Internet
10 4 (0.18%) Modbus
11 3 (0.14%) Bluetooth
11 3 (0.14%) IPv4
11 3 (0.14%) IPv6
11 3 (0.14%) RS-232
11 3 (0.14%) RS-485
Database & Business Intelligence
1 128 (5.83%) PostgreSQL
2 73 (3.32%) Relational Database
3 64 (2.91%) SQL Server
4 58 (2.64%) NoSQL
5 49 (2.23%) MongoDB
6 44 (2.00%) Apache Cassandra
7 34 (1.55%) Power BI
8 30 (1.37%) Amazon RDS
8 30 (1.37%) BigQuery
8 30 (1.37%) Data Lake
9 29 (1.32%) DynamoDB
10 27 (1.23%) Big Data
11 24 (1.09%) Metadata
11 24 (1.09%) MySQL
12 23 (1.05%) Data Warehouse
13 16 (0.73%) Pinecone
14 15 (0.68%) Amazon Athena
14 15 (0.68%) Elasticsearch
14 15 (0.68%) Redis
14 15 (0.68%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 218 (9.93%) Git
2 140 (6.38%) Jenkins
3 132 (6.01%) GitLab
4 105 (4.78%) JIRA
5 48 (2.19%) Gradle
6 45 (2.05%) SonarQube
7 34 (1.55%) JUnit
7 34 (1.55%) Rational DOORS
8 31 (1.41%) Rational Rhapsody
9 24 (1.09%) IntelliJ
10 23 (1.05%) Cucumber
11 22 (1.00%) Selenium
12 21 (0.96%) Bitbucket
12 21 (0.96%) Maven
12 21 (0.96%) Visual Studio
13 18 (0.82%) Cypress.io
14 16 (0.73%) Mockito
15 15 (0.68%) Liquibase
16 13 (0.59%) Artifactory
17 12 (0.55%) Claude Code
General
1 364 (16.58%) Finance
2 312 (14.21%) Social Skills
3 132 (6.01%) Analytical Skills
4 131 (5.97%) Banking
5 121 (5.51%) Public Sector
6 96 (4.37%) Aerospace
7 71 (3.23%) Front Office
8 45 (2.05%) Manufacturing
9 38 (1.73%) Law
10 34 (1.55%) Retail
11 33 (1.50%) Investment Banking
12 27 (1.23%) Military
13 26 (1.18%) Electronics
14 25 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
15 23 (1.05%) Automotive
16 22 (1.00%) Aviation
16 22 (1.00%) Telecoms
17 17 (0.77%) Financial Institution
17 17 (0.77%) Presentation Skills
18 13 (0.59%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,163 (52.96%) Software Engineer
2 399 (18.17%) Developer
3 385 (17.53%) Senior
4 185 (8.42%) Lead
5 184 (8.38%) Senior Software Engineer
6 159 (7.24%) Embedded Engineer
7 154 (7.01%) Java Engineer
8 148 (6.74%) Embedded Software Engineer
9 125 (5.69%) Java Software Engineer
10 118 (5.37%) C++ Software Engineer
11 114 (5.19%) Java Developer
12 87 (3.96%) Architect
13 73 (3.32%) Senior Developer
14 70 (3.19%) Developer/Software Engineer
15 68 (3.10%) Software Developer
16 66 (3.01%) DevOps Engineer
17 65 (2.96%) Full-Stack Engineer
18 62 (2.82%) Python Developer
18 62 (2.82%) Python Engineer
19 60 (2.73%) Lead Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 249 (11.34%) React
2 180 (8.20%) Kafka
3 166 (7.56%) .NET
4 165 (7.51%) Spring
5 163 (7.42%) Node.js
6 152 (6.92%) Spring Boot
7 150 (6.83%) REST
8 106 (4.83%) AngularJS
9 99 (4.51%) RESTful
10 75 (3.42%) GraphQL
11 53 (2.41%) Redux
12 47 (2.14%) CSS
13 45 (2.05%) Middleware
14 43 (1.96%) HTML
15 41 (1.87%) gRPC
16 40 (1.82%) JSON
17 37 (1.68%) Next.js
18 34 (1.55%) LangChain
19 33 (1.50%) Playwright
20 32 (1.46%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 235 (10.70%) Cloud Native
2 154 (7.01%) Distributed Systems
3 105 (4.78%) Product Ownership
4 89 (4.05%) Algorithms
5 62 (2.82%) Fixed Income
6 53 (2.41%) AI Agents
7 39 (1.78%) Embedded Systems
8 36 (1.64%) Data Protection Act
8 36 (1.64%) Onboarding
9 32 (1.46%) Derivative
10 30 (1.37%) Robotics
11 29 (1.32%) Legacy Systems
12 28 (1.28%) Data Structures
13 23 (1.05%) Equities
13 23 (1.05%) Greenfield Project
14 22 (1.00%) Mobile App
15 21 (0.96%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 19 (0.87%) Self-Motivation
17 16 (0.73%) FPGA
18 14 (0.64%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 190 (8.65%) Linux
2 66 (3.01%) Windows
3 44 (2.00%) Unix
4 25 (1.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 21 (0.96%) Android
6 17 (0.77%) Apple iOS
7 16 (0.73%) Embedded Linux
8 12 (0.55%) Windows Server
9 11 (0.50%) FreeRTOS
10 6 (0.27%) Ubuntu
11 5 (0.23%) Debian
12 4 (0.18%) Rocky
12 4 (0.18%) VMS
12 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
13 3 (0.14%) Solaris
13 3 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
14 2 (0.091%) Robot Operating System
14 2 (0.091%) VxWorks
15 1 (0.046%) Mac OS
15 1 (0.046%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 640 (29.14%) CI/CD
2 606 (27.60%) Agile
3 446 (20.31%) DevOps
4 342 (15.57%) Microservices
5 322 (14.66%) AI
6 249 (11.34%) Test Automation
7 238 (10.84%) Problem-Solving
8 232 (10.56%) Full-Stack Development
9 216 (9.84%) Containerisation
10 194 (8.83%) Infrastructure as Code
11 170 (7.74%) Continuous Improvement
12 165 (7.51%) Observability
13 163 (7.42%) SDLC
14 160 (7.29%) Machine Learning
15 159 (7.24%) TDD
16 152 (6.92%) Mentoring
17 151 (6.88%) Computer Science
18 149 (6.79%) Scrum
19 146 (6.65%) Technical Leadership
20 139 (6.33%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 568 (25.87%) Java
2 559 (25.46%) Python
3 293 (13.34%) SQL
4 278 (12.66%) C#
5 254 (11.57%) TypeScript
6 226 (10.29%) JavaScript
7 215 (9.79%) C++
8 138 (6.28%) Go
9 132 (6.01%) Ada
10 112 (5.10%) C
11 44 (2.00%) Kotlin
12 40 (1.82%) PowerShell
13 33 (1.50%) Rust
14 31 (1.41%) Bash
15 28 (1.28%) Embedded C
16 26 (1.18%) MATLAB
17 22 (1.00%) Scala
18 18 (0.82%) PL/SQL
18 18 (0.82%) Ruby
18 18 (0.82%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 524 (23.86%) Security Cleared
2 412 (18.76%) SC Cleared
3 181 (8.24%) Degree
4 89 (4.05%) Computer Science Degree
5 65 (2.96%) DV Cleared
6 39 (1.78%) BPSS Clearance
7 30 (1.37%) Master's Degree
8 22 (1.00%) AWS Certification
9 15 (0.68%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 12 (0.55%) Azure Certification
11 9 (0.41%) PhD
12 8 (0.36%) CISSP
13 7 (0.32%) ISTQB
13 7 (0.32%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
14 6 (0.27%) CISM
14 6 (0.27%) TOGAF Certification
15 4 (0.18%) Chartered Engineer
16 3 (0.14%) Cisco Certification
16 3 (0.14%) MBA
16 3 (0.14%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 115 (5.24%) QA
2 44 (2.00%) Def Stans
3 42 (1.91%) Data Quality
4 33 (1.50%) IEC 61508
5 32 (1.46%) Accessibility
6 23 (1.05%) GDPR
7 18 (0.82%) MISRA
8 13 (0.59%) MISRA C
9 11 (0.50%) NCSC
10 9 (0.41%) WCAG
11 7 (0.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 7 (0.32%) NIST
12 6 (0.27%) DO-178B
12 6 (0.27%) PCI DSS
13 5 (0.23%) JSP 440
14 4 (0.18%) DO-254
14 4 (0.18%) HL7
14 4 (0.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 3 (0.14%) FATCA
15 3 (0.14%) MiFID
System Software
1 308 (14.03%) Docker
2 22 (1.00%) Firmware
3 13 (0.59%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.46%) Embedded Firmware
5 7 (0.32%) Active Directory
5 7 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
6 4 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
7 3 (0.14%) HDFS
8 2 (0.091%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 366 (16.67%) Kubernetes
2 205 (9.34%) Terraform
3 78 (3.55%) Grafana
4 58 (2.64%) Ansible
5 45 (2.05%) Prometheus
6 34 (1.55%) Argo
7 10 (0.46%) Puppet
8 8 (0.36%) Progress Chef
9 6 (0.27%) Istio
9 6 (0.27%) Kibana
9 6 (0.27%) Single Sign-On
10 5 (0.23%) HAProxy
11 4 (0.18%) Data Guard
11 4 (0.18%) HP Quality Center
12 3 (0.14%) Docker Swarm
12 3 (0.14%) Kubeflow
13 2 (0.091%) Cilium
13 2 (0.091%) Consul
13 2 (0.091%) HP ALM
13 2 (0.091%) Podman
Vendors
1 131 (5.97%) Microsoft
2 77 (3.51%) Google
3 64 (2.91%) Oracle
4 59 (2.69%) Red Hat
5 46 (2.09%) Databricks
6 30 (1.37%) OpenAI
7 22 (1.00%) IBM
8 18 (0.82%) Splunk
9 15 (0.68%) Informatica
10 14 (0.64%) VMware
11 13 (0.59%) ServiceNow
11 13 (0.59%) Siemens
12 12 (0.55%) Foundry
13 11 (0.50%) Okta
13 11 (0.50%) SAP
14 10 (0.46%) ForgeRock
14 10 (0.46%) MathWorks
14 10 (0.46%) Salesforce
15 9 (0.41%) Dynatrace
16 8 (0.36%) Spotify