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

6 months to
10 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 39 41 35
Rank change year-on-year +2 -6 +6
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 1,819 1,235 1,925
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.03% 4.99% 5.05%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.80% 5.51% 5.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 948 807 1,108
10th Percentile £381 £409 £425
25th Percentile £450 £500 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -
75th Percentile £675 £750 £738
90th Percentile £791 £838 £800
UK median daily rate £543 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -9.48% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 363 80 323
10th Percentile £52.50 £42.95 £46.25
25th Percentile £61.25 £59.01 £52.13
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 £72.50 £68.75 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year - +4.00% -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 31,340 22,420 33,107
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.60% 90.56% 86.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,068 14,466 21,877
10th Percentile £313 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £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 1,932 799 2,164
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.26 £13.02
25th Percentile £18.84 £21.00 £16.06
Median hourly rate £30.00 £34.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -13.04% +6.15% -8.84%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £58.53
90th Percentile £74.26 £77.25 £71.83
UK median hourly rate £29.61 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year -8.89% - -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 10 March 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 10 March 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 10 March 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 -12 793 £600 -9.09% 431
North of England +17 272 £518 -5.91% 266
South West +11 247 £500 -15.25% 257
East of England +30 176 £475 +5.56% 196
South East +4 166 £500 - 417
North West +10 131 £505 -8.18% 121
Midlands -15 103 £500 +4.82% 140
Yorkshire -4 99 £525 - 118
West Midlands -13 86 £500 +4.82% 64
North East +19 47 £488 -16.67% 28
East Midlands -28 17 £500 +1.01% 72
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 60 (3.30%) Confluence
2 51 (2.80%) Apache
3 49 (2.69%) Apache Spark
4 24 (1.32%) Apache Airflow
5 13 (0.71%) WebLogic
6 10 (0.55%) CMS
7 8 (0.44%) JBoss
7 8 (0.44%) Palantir Foundry
8 5 (0.27%) OpenStack
9 4 (0.22%) IIS
9 4 (0.22%) nginx
10 3 (0.16%) SAS
10 3 (0.16%) SharePoint
10 3 (0.16%) Sitecore CMS
11 2 (0.11%) Camunda
11 2 (0.11%) Magnolia
11 2 (0.11%) Tomcat
11 2 (0.11%) WinCC
11 2 (0.11%) WordPress
12 1 (0.055%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 15 (0.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.77%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (0.55%) Chatbot
4 5 (0.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.11%) Simulink
6 1 (0.055%) CPLEX
6 1 (0.055%) Maya
6 1 (0.055%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.055%) OrCAD
6 1 (0.055%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.11%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.11%) LabWindows
1 2 (0.11%) Primavera
2 1 (0.055%) Aladdin
2 1 (0.055%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 1 (0.055%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 532 (29.25%) AWS
2 330 (18.14%) Azure
3 181 (9.95%) GCP
4 135 (7.42%) Serverless
5 124 (6.82%) GitHub
6 67 (3.68%) Azure DevOps
7 62 (3.41%) GitHub Actions
8 61 (3.35%) AWS Lambda
9 60 (3.30%) Amazon S3
10 48 (2.64%) Azure AKS
11 46 (2.53%) Power Platform
12 45 (2.47%) Amazon EKS
13 43 (2.36%) OpenShift
14 41 (2.25%) AWS CloudFormation
15 37 (2.03%) Azure Functions
16 34 (1.87%) Amazon EC2
16 34 (1.87%) Amazon ECS
17 32 (1.76%) SaaS
18 25 (1.37%) Datadog
19 23 (1.26%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 21 (1.15%) Ethernet
2 13 (0.71%) TCP/IP
3 12 (0.66%) Network Security
4 9 (0.49%) Firewall
5 7 (0.38%) Internet
6 5 (0.27%) 3GPP
6 5 (0.27%) Modbus
6 5 (0.27%) Software-Defined Radio
7 4 (0.22%) BGP
7 4 (0.22%) HTTP
7 4 (0.22%) RS-232
7 4 (0.22%) RS-485
7 4 (0.22%) Software-Defined Networking
7 4 (0.22%) VLAN
7 4 (0.22%) Wireless
8 3 (0.16%) IPv4
8 3 (0.16%) Kerberos
8 3 (0.16%) NFC
8 3 (0.16%) PPP
8 3 (0.16%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 122 (6.71%) PostgreSQL
2 73 (4.01%) Apache Cassandra
3 67 (3.68%) MongoDB
4 66 (3.63%) NoSQL
5 53 (2.91%) SQL Server
6 51 (2.80%) Relational Database
7 35 (1.92%) Data Lake
8 34 (1.87%) Amazon RDS
9 33 (1.81%) Big Data
9 33 (1.81%) Power BI
10 29 (1.59%) MySQL
11 28 (1.54%) BigQuery
12 27 (1.48%) Metadata
13 21 (1.15%) Hadoop
14 20 (1.10%) DynamoDB
15 17 (0.93%) Amazon Athena
15 17 (0.93%) Data Warehouse
15 17 (0.93%) Elasticsearch
16 15 (0.82%) Mixpanel
17 12 (0.66%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 179 (9.84%) Git
2 126 (6.93%) Jenkins
3 117 (6.43%) GitLab
4 102 (5.61%) JIRA
5 32 (1.76%) Rational DOORS
6 31 (1.70%) Selenium
7 29 (1.59%) JUnit
8 27 (1.48%) Cucumber
8 27 (1.48%) Rational Rhapsody
8 27 (1.48%) SonarQube
9 26 (1.43%) Cypress.io
9 26 (1.43%) Gradle
10 24 (1.32%) Bitbucket
10 24 (1.32%) IntelliJ
11 23 (1.26%) Eclipse
12 18 (0.99%) Maven
13 17 (0.93%) Visual Studio
14 15 (0.82%) Liquibase
14 15 (0.82%) Mockito
15 12 (0.66%) Postman
General
1 315 (17.32%) Finance
2 301 (16.55%) Social Skills
3 121 (6.65%) Public Sector
4 114 (6.27%) Banking
5 93 (5.11%) Analytical Skills
6 66 (3.63%) Front Office
7 60 (3.30%) Aerospace
8 43 (2.36%) Electronics
9 33 (1.81%) Law
10 32 (1.76%) Retail
11 29 (1.59%) Financial Institution
12 28 (1.54%) Investment Banking
13 27 (1.48%) Military
14 23 (1.26%) Influencing Skills
14 23 (1.26%) Manufacturing
15 21 (1.15%) Presentation Skills
15 21 (1.15%) Telecoms
16 17 (0.93%) Pharmaceutical
17 13 (0.71%) Documentation Skills
18 10 (0.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 939 (51.62%) Software Engineer
2 350 (19.24%) Senior
3 341 (18.75%) Developer
4 161 (8.85%) Senior Software Engineer
5 142 (7.81%) Lead
6 126 (6.93%) C++ Software Engineer
7 112 (6.16%) Java Engineer
8 102 (5.61%) Embedded Engineer
9 91 (5.00%) Embedded Software Engineer
10 90 (4.95%) Java Software Engineer
11 78 (4.29%) Java Developer
12 74 (4.07%) Senior Developer
13 70 (3.85%) Python Engineer
14 67 (3.68%) Architect
15 62 (3.41%) Developer/Software Engineer
16 60 (3.30%) Python Developer
17 55 (3.02%) Data Engineer
17 55 (3.02%) Lead Software Engineer
18 51 (2.80%) Full-Stack Engineer
19 49 (2.69%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 234 (12.86%) React
2 220 (12.09%) Kafka
3 171 (9.40%) Node.js
4 146 (8.03%) REST
5 137 (7.53%) .NET
6 117 (6.43%) Spring
7 106 (5.83%) RESTful
7 106 (5.83%) Spring Boot
8 91 (5.00%) AngularJS
9 76 (4.18%) gRPC
10 70 (3.85%) GraphQL
11 64 (3.52%) Middleware
12 55 (3.02%) HTML
13 54 (2.97%) Redux
14 52 (2.86%) JSON
15 49 (2.69%) CSS
16 38 (2.09%) FastAPI
16 38 (2.09%) Playwright
16 38 (2.09%) Vue
17 34 (1.87%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 211 (11.60%) Cloud Native
2 129 (7.09%) Distributed Systems
3 89 (4.89%) Product Ownership
4 65 (3.57%) Algorithms
5 61 (3.35%) Fixed Income
6 41 (2.25%) Data Protection Act
7 34 (1.87%) Mobile App
8 33 (1.81%) Legacy Systems
9 29 (1.59%) AI Agents
9 29 (1.59%) Derivative
10 28 (1.54%) Data Structures
10 28 (1.54%) Onboarding
11 27 (1.48%) Equities
12 26 (1.43%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 26 (1.43%) Greenfield Project
13 23 (1.26%) Hedge funds
14 22 (1.21%) Embedded Systems
14 22 (1.21%) Public Cloud
15 20 (1.10%) Life Science
16 19 (1.04%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 212 (11.65%) Linux
2 78 (4.29%) Windows
3 57 (3.13%) Unix
4 26 (1.43%) Android
5 20 (1.10%) Apple iOS
6 19 (1.04%) Ubuntu
7 17 (0.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 14 (0.77%) Windows Server
9 6 (0.33%) FreeRTOS
10 3 (0.16%) Debian
10 3 (0.16%) Embedded Linux
10 3 (0.16%) VMS
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 (0.055%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.055%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 574 (31.56%) Agile
2 522 (28.70%) CI/CD
3 371 (20.40%) DevOps
4 312 (17.15%) Microservices
5 264 (14.51%) AI
6 240 (13.19%) Problem-Solving
7 210 (11.54%) Containerisation
8 197 (10.83%) Test Automation
9 187 (10.28%) Full-Stack Development
10 181 (9.95%) Infrastructure as Code
11 167 (9.18%) Machine Learning
12 163 (8.96%) Computer Science
13 153 (8.41%) Mentoring
14 150 (8.25%) Continuous Improvement
15 130 (7.15%) Scrum
16 128 (7.04%) SDLC
17 122 (6.71%) Observability
18 116 (6.38%) Technical Leadership
19 115 (6.32%) TDD
20 114 (6.27%) Open Source
Programming Languages
1 521 (28.64%) Python
2 434 (23.86%) Java
3 252 (13.85%) C++
4 251 (13.80%) SQL
5 242 (13.30%) JavaScript
6 228 (12.53%) TypeScript
7 218 (11.98%) C#
8 166 (9.13%) Go
9 116 (6.38%) Ada
10 111 (6.10%) C
11 36 (1.98%) PowerShell
12 33 (1.81%) Shell Script
13 32 (1.76%) Rust
14 29 (1.59%) Bash
14 29 (1.59%) Kotlin
15 25 (1.37%) Embedded C
16 24 (1.32%) Embedded C++
17 19 (1.04%) MATLAB
17 19 (1.04%) Scala
18 16 (0.88%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 416 (22.87%) Security Cleared
2 321 (17.65%) SC Cleared
3 202 (11.11%) Degree
4 92 (5.06%) Computer Science Degree
5 59 (3.24%) Master's Degree
6 57 (3.13%) DV Cleared
7 23 (1.26%) BPSS Clearance
8 20 (1.10%) PhD
9 19 (1.04%) AWS Certification
10 18 (0.99%) CISSP
11 17 (0.93%) Azure Certification
11 17 (0.93%) CISM
12 15 (0.82%) TOGAF Certification
13 11 (0.60%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 11 (0.60%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 7 (0.38%) ISTQB
15 6 (0.33%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 5 (0.27%) Microsoft Certification
17 4 (0.22%) HND
17 4 (0.22%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 91 (5.00%) QA
2 55 (3.02%) Def Stans
3 38 (2.09%) Data Quality
3 38 (2.09%) IEC 61508
4 33 (1.81%) Accessibility
5 31 (1.70%) MISRA
6 28 (1.54%) GDPR
7 21 (1.15%) MISRA C
8 18 (0.99%) WCAG
9 17 (0.93%) NIST
10 11 (0.60%) DO-178B
11 10 (0.55%) EU AI Act
12 6 (0.33%) HL7
12 6 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
13 3 (0.16%) NCSC
13 3 (0.16%) SLA
14 2 (0.11%) FATCA
14 2 (0.11%) PCI DSS
14 2 (0.11%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 2 (0.11%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 333 (18.31%) Docker
2 17 (0.93%) Firmware
3 15 (0.82%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
5 10 (0.55%) Active Directory
6 4 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
7 3 (0.16%) HDFS
8 2 (0.11%) Embedded Firmware
8 2 (0.11%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 357 (19.63%) Kubernetes
2 206 (11.32%) Terraform
3 95 (5.22%) Grafana
4 65 (3.57%) Ansible
5 58 (3.19%) Prometheus
6 23 (1.26%) Puppet
7 22 (1.21%) Argo
8 13 (0.71%) Progress Chef
9 10 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
10 7 (0.38%) Kibana
11 6 (0.33%) Istio
12 5 (0.27%) HP Quality Center
12 5 (0.27%) Kubeflow
13 4 (0.22%) Data Guard
13 4 (0.22%) Podman
14 3 (0.16%) Docker Swarm
14 3 (0.16%) HP ALM
14 3 (0.16%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
15 2 (0.11%) Functional Safety
15 2 (0.11%) rkt
Vendors
1 144 (7.92%) Microsoft
2 68 (3.74%) Google
3 60 (3.30%) Red Hat
4 57 (3.13%) Oracle
5 46 (2.53%) Databricks
6 28 (1.54%) Splunk
7 25 (1.37%) Foundry
8 18 (0.99%) IBM
9 16 (0.88%) BiZZdesign
9 16 (0.88%) VMware
10 14 (0.77%) OpenAI
11 10 (0.55%) Atlassian
11 10 (0.55%) PagerDuty
11 10 (0.55%) Siemens
12 9 (0.49%) Palantir
12 9 (0.49%) SAP
12 9 (0.49%) Software AG
13 8 (0.44%) ANSYS
13 8 (0.44%) ServiceNow
13 8 (0.44%) webMethods