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

6 months to
28 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 40 42 34
Rank change year-on-year +2 -8 +8
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 1,923 1,217 1,942
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.07% 5.02% 5.16%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.88% 5.52% 5.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,007 813 1,133
10th Percentile £400 £400 £425
25th Percentile £453 £500 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -
75th Percentile £663 £750 £748
90th Percentile £788 £838 £801
UK median daily rate £550 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 396 81 318
10th Percentile £52.25 £43.00 £46.25
25th Percentile £61.25 £53.00 £51.38
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year - +4.00% -3.85%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £73.46 £68.75 £79.13
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £64.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +1.56% +2.40% -3.21%

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 32,731 22,028 32,675
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.21% 90.81% 86.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,968 14,519 21,584
10th Percentile £313 £313 £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 £614 £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 1,997 852 2,159
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.00 £13.00
25th Percentile £19.00 £20.30 £16.00
Median hourly rate £36.00 £32.66 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.24% -1.05% -12.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £58.69
90th Percentile £77.50 £77.10 £71.75
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year +7.69% - -9.72%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 -9 835 £600 -8.99% 539
North of England +19 286 £505 -4.27% 264
South West +11 258 £535 -7.76% 216
South East -1 194 £525 +2.44% 355
East of England +33 183 £475 -2.36% 135
North West +8 132 £503 -5.19% 145
Yorkshire +2 109 £523 +4.50% 87
Midlands -32 102 £506 +4.65% 126
West Midlands -15 89 £502 +0.30% 74
North East +24 48 £464 - 33
East Midlands -32 13 £525 +8.81% 52
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 64 (3.33%) Confluence
2 47 (2.44%) Apache
3 45 (2.34%) Apache Spark
4 18 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
5 10 (0.52%) CMS
6 9 (0.47%) WebLogic
7 8 (0.42%) Palantir Foundry
8 4 (0.21%) IIS
8 4 (0.21%) JBoss
8 4 (0.21%) nginx
8 4 (0.21%) OpenStack
8 4 (0.21%) SharePoint
9 3 (0.16%) Camunda
9 3 (0.16%) SAS
9 3 (0.16%) Sitecore CMS
10 2 (0.10%) Magnolia
10 2 (0.10%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 2 (0.10%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.10%) WinCC
10 2 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 12 (0.62%) Microsoft Excel
1 12 (0.62%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.47%) Chatbot
3 5 (0.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 5 (0.26%) Simulink
4 2 (0.10%) CPLEX
4 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.10%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.052%) Maya
5 1 (0.052%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.052%) OrCAD
Business Applications
1 4 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
2 2 (0.10%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.10%) LabWindows
2 2 (0.10%) Primavera
3 1 (0.052%) Aladdin
3 1 (0.052%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 1 (0.052%) Sprinklr
3 1 (0.052%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 556 (28.91%) AWS
2 358 (18.62%) Azure
3 185 (9.62%) GCP
4 132 (6.86%) Serverless
5 129 (6.71%) GitHub
6 69 (3.59%) Azure DevOps
7 63 (3.28%) AWS Lambda
8 57 (2.96%) GitHub Actions
9 55 (2.86%) Amazon S3
10 51 (2.65%) OpenShift
11 46 (2.39%) Power Platform
12 42 (2.18%) AWS CloudFormation
13 40 (2.08%) Azure AKS
14 37 (1.92%) Amazon EKS
15 33 (1.72%) Amazon ECS
16 32 (1.66%) Amazon EC2
16 32 (1.66%) Azure Functions
17 31 (1.61%) SaaS
18 28 (1.46%) Amazon SQS
19 24 (1.25%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 21 (1.09%) Ethernet
2 13 (0.68%) Network Security
2 13 (0.68%) TCP/IP
3 10 (0.52%) Firewall
4 7 (0.36%) Internet
4 7 (0.36%) Software-Defined Radio
5 6 (0.31%) Wireless
6 5 (0.26%) 3GPP
6 5 (0.26%) HTTP
6 5 (0.26%) Modbus
7 4 (0.21%) BGP
7 4 (0.21%) RS-232
7 4 (0.21%) RS-485
7 4 (0.21%) Software-Defined Networking
7 4 (0.21%) VLAN
8 3 (0.16%) Bluetooth
8 3 (0.16%) IPv4
8 3 (0.16%) IPv6
8 3 (0.16%) Kerberos
8 3 (0.16%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 123 (6.40%) PostgreSQL
2 71 (3.69%) Apache Cassandra
3 70 (3.64%) Relational Database
4 67 (3.48%) NoSQL
5 56 (2.91%) SQL Server
6 55 (2.86%) MongoDB
7 34 (1.77%) Data Lake
8 33 (1.72%) Amazon RDS
9 32 (1.66%) Power BI
10 30 (1.56%) MySQL
11 28 (1.46%) BigQuery
12 26 (1.35%) Big Data
13 24 (1.25%) DynamoDB
14 23 (1.20%) Metadata
15 18 (0.94%) Data Warehouse
16 17 (0.88%) Hadoop
17 16 (0.83%) Amazon Athena
17 16 (0.83%) Elasticsearch
18 15 (0.78%) Mixpanel
19 12 (0.62%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 198 (10.30%) Git
2 130 (6.76%) Jenkins
3 108 (5.62%) GitLab
4 107 (5.56%) JIRA
5 37 (1.92%) SonarQube
6 34 (1.77%) Rational DOORS
7 32 (1.66%) JUnit
7 32 (1.66%) Rational Rhapsody
8 27 (1.40%) Selenium
9 26 (1.35%) Gradle
10 25 (1.30%) Cucumber
11 24 (1.25%) Bitbucket
12 23 (1.20%) Cypress.io
13 22 (1.14%) IntelliJ
14 21 (1.09%) Maven
15 18 (0.94%) Eclipse
15 18 (0.94%) Liquibase
16 17 (0.88%) Mockito
16 17 (0.88%) Visual Studio
17 11 (0.57%) Artifactory
General
1 316 (16.43%) Social Skills
2 307 (15.96%) Finance
3 126 (6.55%) Public Sector
4 115 (5.98%) Banking
5 107 (5.56%) Analytical Skills
6 73 (3.80%) Aerospace
7 63 (3.28%) Front Office
8 44 (2.29%) Electronics
9 34 (1.77%) Law
10 29 (1.51%) Financial Institution
10 29 (1.51%) Retail
11 26 (1.35%) Influencing Skills
12 25 (1.30%) Investment Banking
12 25 (1.30%) Manufacturing
12 25 (1.30%) Military
13 21 (1.09%) Telecoms
14 20 (1.04%) Presentation Skills
15 14 (0.73%) Documentation Skills
16 12 (0.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 12 (0.62%) Legal
Job Titles
1 1,007 (52.37%) Software Engineer
2 361 (18.77%) Senior
3 352 (18.30%) Developer
4 165 (8.58%) Senior Software Engineer
5 148 (7.70%) Lead
6 136 (7.07%) Java Engineer
7 119 (6.19%) C++ Software Engineer
8 113 (5.88%) Embedded Engineer
9 109 (5.67%) Java Software Engineer
10 101 (5.25%) Embedded Software Engineer
11 87 (4.52%) Architect
12 80 (4.16%) Java Developer
13 76 (3.95%) Senior Developer
14 69 (3.59%) Python Engineer
15 62 (3.22%) Developer/Software Engineer
15 62 (3.22%) Python Developer
16 59 (3.07%) Lead Software Engineer
17 54 (2.81%) Software Developer
18 53 (2.76%) AWS Engineer
19 52 (2.70%) Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 226 (11.75%) React
2 217 (11.28%) Kafka
3 166 (8.63%) Node.js
4 143 (7.44%) REST
5 142 (7.38%) .NET
6 128 (6.66%) Spring
7 114 (5.93%) Spring Boot
8 107 (5.56%) RESTful
9 103 (5.36%) AngularJS
10 73 (3.80%) gRPC
11 67 (3.48%) GraphQL
12 58 (3.02%) Middleware
13 52 (2.70%) HTML
13 52 (2.70%) Redux
14 49 (2.55%) CSS
15 48 (2.50%) JSON
16 43 (2.24%) Playwright
17 36 (1.87%) Web Services
18 34 (1.77%) Vue
19 32 (1.66%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 222 (11.54%) Cloud Native
2 158 (8.22%) Distributed Systems
3 92 (4.78%) Product Ownership
4 72 (3.74%) Algorithms
5 60 (3.12%) Fixed Income
6 36 (1.87%) Data Protection Act
6 36 (1.87%) Mobile App
7 32 (1.66%) Legacy Systems
8 29 (1.51%) Data Structures
8 29 (1.51%) Onboarding
9 28 (1.46%) AI Agents
9 28 (1.46%) Derivative
9 28 (1.46%) Embedded Systems
10 26 (1.35%) Greenfield Project
11 25 (1.30%) Equities
12 22 (1.14%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 22 (1.14%) Public Cloud
12 22 (1.14%) Virtual Team
13 19 (0.99%) Hedge funds
14 17 (0.88%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 206 (10.71%) Linux
2 75 (3.90%) Windows
3 46 (2.39%) Unix
4 27 (1.40%) Android
5 24 (1.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 19 (0.99%) Apple iOS
7 15 (0.78%) Windows Server
8 11 (0.57%) Ubuntu
9 8 (0.42%) Embedded Linux
10 6 (0.31%) FreeRTOS
11 4 (0.21%) Debian
11 4 (0.21%) VMS
12 3 (0.16%) Rocky
13 2 (0.10%) Robot Operating System
13 2 (0.10%) Solaris
13 2 (0.10%) Windows Server 2008
13 2 (0.10%) Windows Server 2019
14 1 (0.052%) Mac OS
14 1 (0.052%) Windows 10
14 1 (0.052%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 578 (30.06%) Agile
2 564 (29.33%) CI/CD
3 398 (20.70%) DevOps
4 345 (17.94%) Microservices
5 269 (13.99%) AI
6 248 (12.90%) Problem-Solving
7 225 (11.70%) Containerisation
8 215 (11.18%) Test Automation
9 195 (10.14%) Infrastructure as Code
10 193 (10.04%) Full-Stack Development
11 173 (9.00%) Computer Science
12 162 (8.42%) Machine Learning
13 154 (8.01%) Continuous Improvement
13 154 (8.01%) Mentoring
14 143 (7.44%) Observability
15 135 (7.02%) SDLC
16 134 (6.97%) Scrum
16 134 (6.97%) TDD
17 126 (6.55%) Technical Leadership
18 111 (5.77%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 537 (27.93%) Python
2 477 (24.80%) Java
3 255 (13.26%) SQL
4 237 (12.32%) C++
5 234 (12.17%) TypeScript
6 230 (11.96%) C#
7 229 (11.91%) JavaScript
8 170 (8.84%) Go
9 123 (6.40%) Ada
10 114 (5.93%) C
11 39 (2.03%) PowerShell
12 33 (1.72%) Kotlin
13 32 (1.66%) Bash
14 30 (1.56%) Rust
15 26 (1.35%) Embedded C
16 25 (1.30%) MATLAB
16 25 (1.30%) Ruby
17 23 (1.20%) Shell Script
18 21 (1.09%) Embedded C++
19 17 (0.88%) Scala
Qualifications
1 464 (24.13%) Security Cleared
2 358 (18.62%) SC Cleared
3 202 (10.50%) Degree
4 95 (4.94%) Computer Science Degree
5 61 (3.17%) DV Cleared
6 60 (3.12%) Master's Degree
7 27 (1.40%) BPSS Clearance
8 22 (1.14%) PhD
9 21 (1.09%) AWS Certification
10 20 (1.04%) CISSP
11 17 (0.88%) CISM
12 16 (0.83%) Azure Certification
13 15 (0.78%) TOGAF Certification
14 13 (0.68%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 8 (0.42%) ISTQB
16 7 (0.36%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
17 6 (0.31%) Microsoft Certified Professional
18 5 (0.26%) Microsoft Certification
19 4 (0.21%) HND
20 3 (0.16%) HNC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 105 (5.46%) QA
2 59 (3.07%) Def Stans
3 40 (2.08%) IEC 61508
4 39 (2.03%) Data Quality
5 31 (1.61%) Accessibility
6 30 (1.56%) MISRA
7 25 (1.30%) GDPR
8 20 (1.04%) MISRA C
9 19 (0.99%) WCAG
10 12 (0.62%) NIST
11 11 (0.57%) DO-178B
12 7 (0.36%) HL7
12 7 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
13 6 (0.31%) NCSC
14 5 (0.26%) EU AI Act
15 3 (0.16%) SLA
16 2 (0.10%) FATCA
16 2 (0.10%) PCI DSS
16 2 (0.10%) PMO
16 2 (0.10%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 334 (17.37%) Docker
2 20 (1.04%) Firmware
3 16 (0.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 12 (0.62%) Virtual Machines
5 8 (0.42%) Active Directory
6 5 (0.26%) Embedded Firmware
7 4 (0.21%) Oracle RAC
8 3 (0.16%) HDFS
9 2 (0.10%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 374 (19.45%) Kubernetes
2 216 (11.23%) Terraform
3 95 (4.94%) Grafana
4 63 (3.28%) Ansible
5 57 (2.96%) Prometheus
6 32 (1.66%) Argo
7 18 (0.94%) Puppet
8 13 (0.68%) Progress Chef
9 9 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
10 6 (0.31%) Istio
11 5 (0.26%) Kibana
11 5 (0.26%) Kubeflow
12 4 (0.21%) Data Guard
12 4 (0.21%) Docker Swarm
12 4 (0.21%) HAProxy
12 4 (0.21%) HP Quality Center
13 3 (0.16%) Podman
13 3 (0.16%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
14 2 (0.10%) HP ALM
14 2 (0.10%) rkt
Vendors
1 150 (7.80%) Microsoft
2 70 (3.64%) Google
3 65 (3.38%) Oracle
4 63 (3.28%) Red Hat
5 46 (2.39%) Databricks
6 26 (1.35%) Splunk
7 22 (1.14%) Foundry
8 21 (1.09%) IBM
9 17 (0.88%) VMware
10 16 (0.83%) BiZZdesign
11 15 (0.78%) OpenAI
12 11 (0.57%) Atlassian
12 11 (0.57%) Siemens
13 10 (0.52%) PagerDuty
13 10 (0.52%) ServiceNow
14 9 (0.47%) Palantir
14 9 (0.47%) SAP
14 9 (0.47%) Software AG
15 8 (0.42%) ANSYS
15 8 (0.42%) CyberArk