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

6 months to
15 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 32 42 29
Rank change year-on-year +10 -13 +12
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,459 1,311 2,165
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.50% 4.83% 5.90%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.43% 5.33% 6.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,343 857 1,339
10th Percentile £400 £388 £413
25th Percentile £463 £463 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £613
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% -2.04% +2.08%
75th Percentile £688 £775 £788
90th Percentile £788 £850 £888
UK median daily rate £550 £575 £600
% change year-on-year -4.35% -4.17% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 431 83 373
10th Percentile £52.29 £32.50 £46.25
25th Percentile £61.25 £51.63 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £77.00 £75.00
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 38,219 24,611 31,409
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.42% 90.71% 85.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,063 15,813 20,400
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £420 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £734 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,375 1,290 2,230
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.39 £13.00
25th Percentile £21.00 £18.10 £16.25
Median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +88.87% -34.02% -6.09%
75th Percentile £68.75 £54.56 £62.50
90th Percentile £83.00 £71.60 £72.58
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -4.70%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 -3 1,084 £600 -7.69% 824
North of England +26 382 £538 +9.69% 455
South West +25 323 £550 +7.32% 253
South East +20 300 £525 +4.90% 448
East of England +27 224 £505 +3.43% 236
North West +6 185 £525 +5.00% 256
Yorkshire +15 134 £538 +9.69% 144
Midlands -18 102 £459 -7.27% 238
West Midlands -29 79 £459 -17.11% 109
North East +13 68 £650 +41.30% 56
East Midlands -9 22 £513 +7.89% 129
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 55 (2.24%) Confluence
2 44 (1.79%) Apache Spark
3 31 (1.26%) Apache
3 31 (1.26%) Apache Airflow
4 10 (0.41%) SAS
5 9 (0.37%) CMS
6 5 (0.20%) Ethereum
6 5 (0.20%) Hyperledger
6 5 (0.20%) nginx
6 5 (0.20%) SharePoint
7 4 (0.16%) WebLogic
8 3 (0.12%) Jupyter
8 3 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
8 3 (0.12%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.081%) Apache Superset
9 2 (0.081%) Cloud Foundry
9 2 (0.081%) MQSeries
9 2 (0.081%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 2 (0.081%) WinCC
9 2 (0.081%) WordPress
Applications
1 15 (0.61%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.37%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 8 (0.33%) Chatbot
4 6 (0.24%) Microsoft Excel
4 6 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.20%) CPLEX
5 5 (0.20%) Simulink
6 4 (0.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 3 (0.12%) MS Visio
8 2 (0.081%) CATIA
8 2 (0.081%) Microsoft Project
9 1 (0.041%) Adobe After Effects
9 1 (0.041%) Adobe XD
9 1 (0.041%) Blender
9 1 (0.041%) Maya
9 1 (0.041%) Notion
9 1 (0.041%) S-PLUS
9 1 (0.041%) Trello
Business Applications
1 7 (0.28%) Oracle EBS
2 6 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
2 6 (0.24%) Payment Gateway
3 5 (0.20%) R3 Corda
4 4 (0.16%) Quorum
4 4 (0.16%) Ripple
5 3 (0.12%) Orchestrade
6 2 (0.081%) Aladdin
6 2 (0.081%) Endur
6 2 (0.081%) Remedy ITSM
6 2 (0.081%) Salesforce CRM
7 1 (0.041%) Distributed Ledger
7 1 (0.041%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 1 (0.041%) Primavera
7 1 (0.041%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 605 (24.60%) AWS
2 463 (18.83%) Azure
3 233 (9.48%) GCP
4 175 (7.12%) GitHub
5 122 (4.96%) Serverless
6 96 (3.90%) Azure DevOps
7 85 (3.46%) GitHub Actions
8 80 (3.25%) AWS Lambda
9 64 (2.60%) Amazon S3
10 55 (2.24%) OpenShift
11 47 (1.91%) Power Platform
12 42 (1.71%) Anthropic Claude
13 41 (1.67%) Amazon SQS
14 40 (1.63%) Amazon ECS
14 40 (1.63%) Amazon EKS
15 39 (1.59%) Azure AKS
16 32 (1.30%) Amazon EC2
17 30 (1.22%) AWS CloudFormation
17 30 (1.22%) SaaS
18 28 (1.14%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.02%) Software-Defined Radio
2 24 (0.98%) Ethernet
2 24 (0.98%) Wireless
3 18 (0.73%) Firewall
3 18 (0.73%) TCP/IP
4 16 (0.65%) Internet
5 15 (0.61%) HTTP
6 13 (0.53%) VPN
7 12 (0.49%) Wi-Fi
8 10 (0.41%) 3GPP
9 8 (0.33%) Network Security
10 7 (0.28%) RTP
11 6 (0.24%) Wireshark
12 5 (0.20%) DNS
12 5 (0.20%) RS-232
13 4 (0.16%) RS-422
13 4 (0.16%) RS-485
14 3 (0.12%) IPv4
14 3 (0.12%) IPv6
14 3 (0.12%) Modbus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 149 (6.06%) PostgreSQL
2 90 (3.66%) Relational Database
3 74 (3.01%) SQL Server
4 67 (2.72%) NoSQL
5 50 (2.03%) MongoDB
6 34 (1.38%) Data Warehouse
7 31 (1.26%) DynamoDB
8 30 (1.22%) Power BI
9 28 (1.14%) Big Data
9 28 (1.14%) MySQL
10 24 (0.98%) Amazon RDS
11 23 (0.94%) Apache Cassandra
11 23 (0.94%) BigQuery
11 23 (0.94%) Data Lake
11 23 (0.94%) Metadata
12 22 (0.89%) Redis
13 19 (0.77%) Elasticsearch
13 19 (0.77%) Pinecone
14 17 (0.69%) Amazon Redshift
14 17 (0.69%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 242 (9.84%) Git
2 149 (6.06%) Jenkins
3 122 (4.96%) GitLab
4 106 (4.31%) JIRA
5 55 (2.24%) SonarQube
6 35 (1.42%) Gradle
7 32 (1.30%) JUnit
8 26 (1.06%) Rational DOORS
9 24 (0.98%) Visual Studio
10 23 (0.94%) Rational Rhapsody
11 20 (0.81%) Cucumber
11 20 (0.81%) Selenium
12 19 (0.77%) Bitbucket
13 18 (0.73%) Claude Code
13 18 (0.73%) Maven
14 16 (0.65%) Liquibase
15 14 (0.57%) Cypress.io
15 14 (0.57%) Mockito
16 13 (0.53%) IntelliJ
17 12 (0.49%) Eclipse
General
1 438 (17.81%) Finance
2 423 (17.20%) Social Skills
3 169 (6.87%) Banking
4 164 (6.67%) Analytical Skills
5 159 (6.47%) Public Sector
6 108 (4.39%) Aerospace
7 88 (3.58%) Front Office
8 53 (2.16%) Retail
9 46 (1.87%) Law
10 45 (1.83%) Manufacturing
11 41 (1.67%) Investment Banking
12 29 (1.18%) Automotive
13 27 (1.10%) Military
14 26 (1.06%) Aviation
15 25 (1.02%) Telecoms
16 24 (0.98%) Influencing Skills
17 22 (0.89%) Electronics
18 16 (0.65%) Documentation Skills
18 16 (0.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 16 (0.65%) Legal
Job Titles
1 1,211 (49.25%) Software Engineer
2 452 (18.38%) Developer
3 418 (17.00%) Senior
4 258 (10.49%) Lead
5 178 (7.24%) Senior Software Engineer
6 174 (7.08%) Java Engineer
7 145 (5.90%) Embedded Engineer
8 144 (5.86%) Java Software Engineer
9 134 (5.45%) Embedded Software Engineer
10 133 (5.41%) Java Developer
11 123 (5.00%) C++ Software Engineer
12 106 (4.31%) Architect
13 98 (3.99%) Lead Software Engineer
14 93 (3.78%) Python Engineer
15 88 (3.58%) Software Developer
16 81 (3.29%) Senior Developer
17 77 (3.13%) Python Developer
18 75 (3.05%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 75 (3.05%) DevOps Engineer
19 72 (2.93%) Developer/Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 274 (11.14%) React
2 186 (7.56%) .NET
3 179 (7.28%) Kafka
3 179 (7.28%) Spring
4 178 (7.24%) Node.js
5 172 (6.99%) REST
6 161 (6.55%) Spring Boot
7 111 (4.51%) RESTful
8 103 (4.19%) AngularJS
9 77 (3.13%) GraphQL
10 59 (2.40%) Redux
11 46 (1.87%) CSS
12 45 (1.83%) HTML
12 45 (1.83%) Next.js
13 41 (1.67%) JSON
14 40 (1.63%) Django
15 37 (1.50%) OAuth
16 35 (1.42%) Quarkus
16 35 (1.42%) Web Services
17 33 (1.34%) LangChain
Miscellaneous
1 290 (11.79%) Cloud Native
2 200 (8.13%) Distributed Systems
3 118 (4.80%) Product Ownership
4 84 (3.42%) Algorithms
5 72 (2.93%) Fixed Income
6 65 (2.64%) AI Agents
7 44 (1.79%) Embedded Systems
8 43 (1.75%) Data Structures
8 43 (1.75%) Onboarding
9 41 (1.67%) Data Protection Act
10 34 (1.38%) Derivative
11 33 (1.34%) Legacy Systems
12 32 (1.30%) Self-Motivation
13 31 (1.26%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 28 (1.14%) Enterprise Software
14 28 (1.14%) Equities
15 22 (0.89%) Robotics
16 19 (0.77%) Greenfield Project
17 17 (0.69%) Mobile App
18 16 (0.65%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 188 (7.65%) Linux
2 58 (2.36%) Windows
3 35 (1.42%) Unix
4 29 (1.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 19 (0.77%) Embedded Linux
6 15 (0.61%) Apple iOS
7 13 (0.53%) Android
8 11 (0.45%) FreeRTOS
9 10 (0.41%) Windows Server
10 8 (0.33%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.16%) Debian
11 4 (0.16%) VMS
11 4 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.12%) Rocky
12 3 (0.12%) Solaris
12 3 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
13 2 (0.081%) VxWorks
14 1 (0.041%) Tizen
14 1 (0.041%) webOS
14 1 (0.041%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 753 (30.62%) CI/CD
2 739 (30.05%) Agile
3 537 (21.84%) DevOps
4 412 (16.75%) AI
5 358 (14.56%) Microservices
6 312 (12.69%) Test Automation
7 275 (11.18%) Problem-Solving
8 258 (10.49%) Full-Stack Development
9 241 (9.80%) Infrastructure as Code
10 233 (9.48%) Containerisation
10 233 (9.48%) Continuous Improvement
11 206 (8.38%) Machine Learning
12 200 (8.13%) Observability
13 194 (7.89%) SDLC
14 193 (7.85%) TDD
15 191 (7.77%) Mentoring
16 176 (7.16%) Scrum
17 172 (6.99%) Platform Engineering
18 169 (6.87%) Event-Driven
18 169 (6.87%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 686 (27.90%) Python
2 635 (25.82%) Java
3 316 (12.85%) SQL
4 305 (12.40%) TypeScript
5 282 (11.47%) C#
6 238 (9.68%) JavaScript
7 223 (9.07%) C++
8 132 (5.37%) Ada
9 126 (5.12%) Go
10 113 (4.60%) C
11 46 (1.87%) Kotlin
12 40 (1.63%) Rust
13 33 (1.34%) Bash
13 33 (1.34%) PowerShell
14 32 (1.30%) Scala
15 25 (1.02%) PL/SQL
16 20 (0.81%) MATLAB
17 19 (0.77%) Embedded C
18 18 (0.73%) Ruby
18 18 (0.73%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 582 (23.67%) Security Cleared
2 476 (19.36%) SC Cleared
3 186 (7.56%) Degree
4 83 (3.38%) Computer Science Degree
5 73 (2.97%) DV Cleared
6 55 (2.24%) BPSS Clearance
7 36 (1.46%) Master's Degree
8 32 (1.30%) AWS Certification
9 18 (0.73%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 15 (0.61%) Azure Certification
10 15 (0.61%) PhD
11 10 (0.41%) CISSP
12 7 (0.28%) ISTQB
12 7 (0.28%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 6 (0.24%) Chartered Engineer
13 6 (0.24%) TOGAF Certification
14 5 (0.20%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 5 (0.20%) PMP
15 4 (0.16%) CISM
15 4 (0.16%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 139 (5.65%) QA
2 49 (1.99%) Data Quality
3 44 (1.79%) Accessibility
4 40 (1.63%) Def Stans
5 25 (1.02%) IEC 61508
6 21 (0.85%) GDPR
7 17 (0.69%) MISRA
8 15 (0.61%) NIST
9 11 (0.45%) DO-178B
9 11 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 11 (0.45%) WCAG
10 9 (0.37%) NCSC
11 7 (0.28%) MISRA C
12 6 (0.24%) GRC
12 6 (0.24%) PCI DSS
13 5 (0.20%) JSP 440
13 5 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 4 (0.16%) DO-254
15 3 (0.12%) FATCA
16 2 (0.081%) EMIR
System Software
1 339 (13.79%) Docker
2 23 (0.94%) Firmware
3 10 (0.41%) Active Directory
3 10 (0.41%) Embedded Firmware
4 7 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (0.24%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (0.12%) HDFS
7 2 (0.081%) SRDF
8 1 (0.041%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 394 (16.02%) Kubernetes
2 233 (9.48%) Terraform
3 68 (2.77%) Ansible
4 61 (2.48%) Grafana
5 40 (1.63%) Prometheus
6 37 (1.50%) Argo
7 12 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
8 11 (0.45%) Kibana
9 7 (0.28%) Puppet
10 6 (0.24%) Kubeflow
10 6 (0.24%) Progress Chef
11 5 (0.20%) HAProxy
12 4 (0.16%) HP Quality Center
13 3 (0.12%) Consul
13 3 (0.12%) Docker Swarm
13 3 (0.12%) Functional Safety
14 2 (0.081%) Cilium
14 2 (0.081%) HP ALM
14 2 (0.081%) HP Fortify
14 2 (0.081%) Istio
Vendors
1 126 (5.12%) Microsoft
2 82 (3.33%) Google
3 75 (3.05%) Oracle
4 49 (1.99%) Red Hat
5 43 (1.75%) Databricks
6 38 (1.55%) OpenAI
7 19 (0.77%) Informatica
7 19 (0.77%) Splunk
8 18 (0.73%) IBM
9 17 (0.69%) ServiceNow
10 15 (0.61%) Foundry
10 15 (0.61%) Salesforce
11 12 (0.49%) SAP
11 12 (0.49%) Siemens
12 11 (0.45%) Adobe
13 10 (0.41%) Checkmarx
13 10 (0.41%) ForgeRock
13 10 (0.41%) Okta
14 8 (0.33%) Dynatrace
14 8 (0.33%) Solace