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

6 months to
21 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 41 41 36
Rank change year-on-year 0 -5 +5
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 1,766 1,270 1,880
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.05% 4.91% 4.95%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.79% 5.45% 5.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 915 799 1,090
10th Percentile £382 £413 £425
25th Percentile £450 £500 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -
75th Percentile £669 £750 £738
90th Percentile £775 £838 £800
UK median daily rate £544 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -9.32% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 343 79 315
10th Percentile £52.50 £41.50 £46.25
25th Percentile £61.25 £57.52 £51.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year - +4.00% -3.85%
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.00 £68.75
90th Percentile £73.26 £68.75 £76.50
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £64.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +0.78% +3.20% -3.85%

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 30,524 23,282 33,155
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.36% 90.06% 87.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,511 14,543 22,029
10th Percentile £313 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £618 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,903 748 2,025
10th Percentile £15.22 £15.62 £13.41
25th Percentile £18.28 £21.25 £16.30
Median hourly rate £26.61 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -23.99% - -
75th Percentile £63.05 £65.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £72.00 £75.08 £73.35
UK median hourly rate £25.77 £32.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year -20.71% -7.14% -

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 21 February 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 21 February 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 21 February 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 -12 784 £600 -8.40% 593
North of England +10 276 £520 -0.95% 277
South West +10 226 £500 -16.67% 209
East of England +30 174 £475 +5.56% 137
South East +10 147 £500 - 380
North West +10 130 £525 -4.55% 166
Yorkshire -13 108 £525 - 76
Midlands -14 98 £516 +6.77% 129
West Midlands -8 85 £525 +10.06% 65
North East +10 41 £488 -18.41% 35
East Midlands -23 13 £475 -5.00% 63
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 58 (3.28%) Confluence
2 52 (2.94%) Apache
3 43 (2.43%) Apache Spark
4 27 (1.53%) Apache Airflow
5 13 (0.74%) WebLogic
6 10 (0.57%) CMS
7 9 (0.51%) Palantir Foundry
8 8 (0.45%) JBoss
9 6 (0.34%) OpenStack
10 4 (0.23%) IIS
10 4 (0.23%) nginx
10 4 (0.23%) SAS
11 3 (0.17%) Sitecore CMS
12 2 (0.11%) Appian
12 2 (0.11%) Magnolia
12 2 (0.11%) Microsoft Exchange
12 2 (0.11%) SharePoint
12 2 (0.11%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.11%) WinCC
12 2 (0.11%) WordPress
Applications
1 16 (0.91%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.74%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (0.57%) Chatbot
4 5 (0.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.17%) Simulink
6 2 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.057%) CPLEX
7 1 (0.057%) Maya
7 1 (0.057%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.057%) OrCAD
7 1 (0.057%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.11%) LabWindows
1 2 (0.11%) Primavera
2 1 (0.057%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 1 (0.057%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 527 (29.84%) AWS
2 303 (17.16%) Azure
3 181 (10.25%) GCP
4 149 (8.44%) Serverless
5 121 (6.85%) GitHub
6 65 (3.68%) GitHub Actions
7 64 (3.62%) AWS Lambda
7 64 (3.62%) Azure DevOps
8 61 (3.45%) Amazon S3
9 44 (2.49%) Amazon EKS
10 43 (2.43%) AWS CloudFormation
11 42 (2.38%) OpenShift
12 41 (2.32%) Azure AKS
13 39 (2.21%) Power Platform
14 38 (2.15%) Amazon ECS
14 38 (2.15%) SaaS
15 36 (2.04%) Amazon EC2
16 35 (1.98%) Azure Functions
17 29 (1.64%) Snowflake
18 22 (1.25%) Cloud Run
Communications & Networking
1 18 (1.02%) Ethernet
2 12 (0.68%) Network Security
3 9 (0.51%) Firewall
4 8 (0.45%) TCP/IP
5 7 (0.40%) Internet
6 5 (0.28%) 3GPP
6 5 (0.28%) Modbus
6 5 (0.28%) Software-Defined Radio
7 4 (0.23%) BGP
7 4 (0.23%) HTTP
7 4 (0.23%) RS-232
7 4 (0.23%) RS-485
7 4 (0.23%) Software-Defined Networking
7 4 (0.23%) VLAN
7 4 (0.23%) VPN
7 4 (0.23%) Wireless
8 3 (0.17%) DNS
8 3 (0.17%) Kerberos
8 3 (0.17%) NFC
8 3 (0.17%) PPP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 114 (6.46%) PostgreSQL
2 78 (4.42%) Apache Cassandra
3 71 (4.02%) NoSQL
4 69 (3.91%) MongoDB
5 47 (2.66%) Relational Database
5 47 (2.66%) SQL Server
6 36 (2.04%) Amazon RDS
7 33 (1.87%) Big Data
7 33 (1.87%) Data Lake
8 32 (1.81%) MySQL
9 28 (1.59%) Power BI
10 27 (1.53%) BigQuery
10 27 (1.53%) Metadata
11 23 (1.30%) Hadoop
12 21 (1.19%) Amazon Athena
13 20 (1.13%) Elasticsearch
14 18 (1.02%) DynamoDB
15 15 (0.85%) Data Warehouse
16 14 (0.79%) Mixpanel
17 10 (0.57%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 166 (9.40%) Git
2 125 (7.08%) Jenkins
3 121 (6.85%) GitLab
4 96 (5.44%) JIRA
5 35 (1.98%) Selenium
6 32 (1.81%) Rational DOORS
7 31 (1.76%) JUnit
8 30 (1.70%) SonarQube
9 29 (1.64%) Cypress.io
10 28 (1.59%) Gradle
11 27 (1.53%) Cucumber
12 26 (1.47%) Rational Rhapsody
13 24 (1.36%) Liquibase
14 22 (1.25%) IntelliJ
15 20 (1.13%) Maven
16 19 (1.08%) Bitbucket
17 18 (1.02%) Mockito
18 17 (0.96%) Eclipse
19 13 (0.74%) Postman
20 12 (0.68%) Artifactory
General
1 307 (17.38%) Social Skills
2 303 (17.16%) Finance
3 124 (7.02%) Banking
4 123 (6.96%) Public Sector
5 95 (5.38%) Analytical Skills
6 57 (3.23%) Aerospace
7 50 (2.83%) Front Office
8 42 (2.38%) Electronics
9 35 (1.98%) Financial Institution
10 34 (1.93%) Investment Banking
11 31 (1.76%) Law
12 27 (1.53%) Influencing Skills
12 27 (1.53%) Retail
13 24 (1.36%) Manufacturing
14 22 (1.25%) Military
15 19 (1.08%) Telecoms
16 18 (1.02%) Pharmaceutical
17 16 (0.91%) Presentation Skills
18 15 (0.85%) Documentation Skills
19 12 (0.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 884 (50.06%) Software Engineer
2 365 (20.67%) Senior
3 331 (18.74%) Developer
4 180 (10.19%) Senior Software Engineer
5 129 (7.30%) Lead
6 124 (7.02%) C++ Software Engineer
7 96 (5.44%) Java Engineer
8 94 (5.32%) Embedded Engineer
9 86 (4.87%) Embedded Software Engineer
10 79 (4.47%) Java Software Engineer
11 77 (4.36%) Java Developer
11 77 (4.36%) Senior Developer
12 75 (4.25%) Python Engineer
13 62 (3.51%) Architect
14 61 (3.45%) Python Developer
15 54 (3.06%) AWS Engineer
16 51 (2.89%) Data Engineer
17 50 (2.83%) DevOps Engineer
17 50 (2.83%) Full-Stack Engineer
18 45 (2.55%) Developer/Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 219 (12.40%) React
2 215 (12.17%) Kafka
3 146 (8.27%) Node.js
4 139 (7.87%) REST
5 133 (7.53%) .NET
6 116 (6.57%) Spring
7 114 (6.46%) RESTful
8 108 (6.12%) Spring Boot
9 90 (5.10%) AngularJS
10 81 (4.59%) gRPC
11 58 (3.28%) Middleware
12 55 (3.11%) GraphQL
13 53 (3.00%) JSON
14 52 (2.94%) HTML
15 48 (2.72%) CSS
16 45 (2.55%) Playwright
17 40 (2.27%) FastAPI
18 38 (2.15%) Vue
19 34 (1.93%) Elastic Stack
19 34 (1.93%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 216 (12.23%) Cloud Native
2 135 (7.64%) Distributed Systems
3 87 (4.93%) Product Ownership
4 66 (3.74%) Algorithms
5 43 (2.43%) Data Protection Act
6 41 (2.32%) Fixed Income
7 33 (1.87%) Mobile App
8 32 (1.81%) Data Structures
9 31 (1.76%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 31 (1.76%) Legacy Systems
10 29 (1.64%) Public Cloud
11 26 (1.47%) AI Agents
11 26 (1.47%) Greenfield Project
11 26 (1.47%) Hedge funds
12 24 (1.36%) Equities
12 24 (1.36%) Onboarding
13 23 (1.30%) Derivative
14 22 (1.25%) Embedded Systems
14 22 (1.25%) Virtual Team
15 20 (1.13%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 219 (12.40%) Linux
2 75 (4.25%) Windows
3 53 (3.00%) Unix
4 27 (1.53%) Android
5 21 (1.19%) Apple iOS
6 19 (1.08%) Ubuntu
7 17 (0.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 15 (0.85%) Windows Server
9 6 (0.34%) FreeRTOS
10 3 (0.17%) Debian
10 3 (0.17%) VMS
11 2 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
11 2 (0.11%) Mac OS
11 2 (0.11%) Robot Operating System
11 2 (0.11%) Rocky
11 2 (0.11%) Solaris
11 2 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
11 2 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
12 1 (0.057%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.057%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 557 (31.54%) Agile
2 505 (28.60%) CI/CD
3 363 (20.55%) DevOps
4 313 (17.72%) Microservices
5 256 (14.50%) AI
6 245 (13.87%) Problem-Solving
7 224 (12.68%) Containerisation
8 205 (11.61%) Test Automation
9 199 (11.27%) Infrastructure as Code
10 177 (10.02%) Full-Stack Development
11 165 (9.34%) Computer Science
12 160 (9.06%) Machine Learning
13 152 (8.61%) Mentoring
14 136 (7.70%) Continuous Improvement
15 126 (7.13%) Scrum
16 121 (6.85%) SDLC
17 120 (6.80%) Open Source
18 119 (6.74%) Observability
19 114 (6.46%) TDD
20 109 (6.17%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 505 (28.60%) Python
2 408 (23.10%) Java
3 254 (14.38%) C++
3 254 (14.38%) SQL
4 230 (13.02%) JavaScript
5 210 (11.89%) C#
6 209 (11.83%) TypeScript
7 157 (8.89%) Go
8 110 (6.23%) C
9 105 (5.95%) Ada
10 35 (1.98%) Rust
10 35 (1.98%) Shell Script
11 29 (1.64%) PowerShell
12 28 (1.59%) Kotlin
13 24 (1.36%) Bash
13 24 (1.36%) Embedded C++
14 23 (1.30%) Embedded C
15 18 (1.02%) MATLAB
16 17 (0.96%) Ruby
16 17 (0.96%) Scala
Qualifications
1 382 (21.63%) Security Cleared
2 303 (17.16%) SC Cleared
3 209 (11.83%) Degree
4 97 (5.49%) Computer Science Degree
5 65 (3.68%) Master's Degree
6 55 (3.11%) DV Cleared
7 21 (1.19%) AWS Certification
8 18 (1.02%) CISSP
8 18 (1.02%) PhD
9 17 (0.96%) BPSS Clearance
9 17 (0.96%) CISM
10 15 (0.85%) Azure Certification
10 15 (0.85%) TOGAF Certification
11 12 (0.68%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 10 (0.57%) Microsoft Certified Professional
13 8 (0.45%) ISTQB
14 7 (0.40%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 5 (0.28%) Microsoft Certification
15 5 (0.28%) Postgraduate
16 4 (0.23%) HND
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 93 (5.27%) QA
2 49 (2.77%) Def Stans
3 35 (1.98%) Accessibility
3 35 (1.98%) IEC 61508
4 34 (1.93%) Data Quality
5 31 (1.76%) MISRA
6 21 (1.19%) MISRA C
7 19 (1.08%) GDPR
8 18 (1.02%) WCAG
9 14 (0.79%) NIST
10 11 (0.62%) DO-178B
11 10 (0.57%) EU AI Act
12 6 (0.34%) HL7
13 3 (0.17%) ISO 26262
13 3 (0.17%) NCSC
13 3 (0.17%) SLA
14 2 (0.11%) FATCA
14 2 (0.11%) IEC 62304
14 2 (0.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
14 2 (0.11%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 346 (19.59%) Docker
2 17 (0.96%) Firmware
3 14 (0.79%) Virtual Machines
4 12 (0.68%) Active Directory
4 12 (0.68%) VMware Infrastructure
5 4 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
6 2 (0.11%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 369 (20.89%) Kubernetes
2 217 (12.29%) Terraform
3 99 (5.61%) Grafana
4 64 (3.62%) Prometheus
5 61 (3.45%) Ansible
6 22 (1.25%) Argo
7 20 (1.13%) Puppet
8 10 (0.57%) Progress Chef
8 10 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
9 8 (0.45%) Kibana
10 6 (0.34%) Istio
11 5 (0.28%) HP Quality Center
11 5 (0.28%) Podman
12 4 (0.23%) Data Guard
13 3 (0.17%) Docker Swarm
13 3 (0.17%) HP ALM
13 3 (0.17%) Kubeflow
13 3 (0.17%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
14 2 (0.11%) Functional Safety
14 2 (0.11%) rkt
Vendors
1 132 (7.47%) Microsoft
2 65 (3.68%) Google
3 60 (3.40%) Red Hat
4 55 (3.11%) Oracle
5 44 (2.49%) Databricks
6 37 (2.10%) Splunk
7 27 (1.53%) Foundry
8 19 (1.08%) IBM
9 16 (0.91%) BiZZdesign
10 13 (0.74%) VMware
11 12 (0.68%) OpenAI
12 11 (0.62%) Atlassian
13 10 (0.57%) Palantir
14 9 (0.51%) Software AG
15 8 (0.45%) ANSYS
15 8 (0.45%) CyberArk
15 8 (0.45%) PagerDuty
15 8 (0.45%) SAP
15 8 (0.45%) Siemens
15 8 (0.45%) webMethods