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

6 months to
30 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 40 42 33
Rank change year-on-year +2 -9 +9
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 1,918 1,227 1,951
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.06% 5.02% 5.18%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.87% 5.53% 5.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,002 822 1,139
10th Percentile £400 £403 £425
25th Percentile £451 £500 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -
75th Percentile £667 £750 £746
90th Percentile £788 £838 £825
UK median daily rate £550 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 404 81 320
10th Percentile £52.15 £43.00 £46.25
25th Percentile £61.25 £53.00 £51.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year - +4.00% -3.21%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £73.46 £68.75 £78.88
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £64.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +1.56% +2.40% -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 32,652 22,196 32,688
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.09% 90.77% 86.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,899 14,634 21,608
10th Percentile £313 £311 £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 2,012 866 2,163
10th Percentile £15.34 £15.00 £13.00
25th Percentile £19.04 £20.03 £15.97
Median hourly rate £36.71 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +12.95% - -13.33%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.67 £57.91
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.25 £71.13
UK median hourly rate £35.50 £31.88 £32.50
% change year-on-year +11.36% -1.91% -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 30 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 30 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 30 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 -9 827 £600 -9.09% 539
North of England +16 280 £503 -4.29% 264
South West +9 262 £535 -8.55% 216
South East +1 198 £525 +2.44% 355
East of England +30 186 £475 -2.36% 135
North West +2 128 £500 -5.66% 145
Yorkshire -3 107 £525 +5.00% 87
Midlands -26 103 £505 +2.96% 126
West Midlands -11 91 £502 +0.30% 74
North East +21 48 £464 +0.82% 33
East Midlands -38 12 £538 +8.59% 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 63 (3.28%) Confluence
2 47 (2.45%) Apache
3 45 (2.35%) Apache Spark
4 18 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
5 9 (0.47%) CMS
5 9 (0.47%) WebLogic
6 8 (0.42%) Palantir Foundry
7 4 (0.21%) IIS
7 4 (0.21%) JBoss
7 4 (0.21%) nginx
7 4 (0.21%) OpenStack
7 4 (0.21%) SharePoint
8 3 (0.16%) Camunda
8 3 (0.16%) SAS
9 2 (0.10%) Magnolia
9 2 (0.10%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 2 (0.10%) Sitecore CMS
9 2 (0.10%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.10%) WinCC
9 2 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 12 (0.63%) Microsoft Excel
1 12 (0.63%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (0.42%) 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
1 549 (28.62%) AWS
2 353 (18.40%) Azure
3 183 (9.54%) GCP
4 130 (6.78%) Serverless
5 127 (6.62%) GitHub
6 68 (3.55%) Azure DevOps
7 61 (3.18%) AWS Lambda
8 55 (2.87%) Amazon S3
8 55 (2.87%) GitHub Actions
9 51 (2.66%) OpenShift
10 45 (2.35%) Power Platform
11 42 (2.19%) AWS CloudFormation
12 40 (2.09%) Azure AKS
13 35 (1.82%) Amazon EKS
14 32 (1.67%) Amazon EC2
14 32 (1.67%) Azure Functions
15 31 (1.62%) Amazon ECS
16 30 (1.56%) SaaS
17 26 (1.36%) Amazon SQS
18 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%) Software-Defined Radio
5 6 (0.31%) Internet
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%) RS-422
8 3 (0.16%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 124 (6.47%) PostgreSQL
2 69 (3.60%) Apache Cassandra
2 69 (3.60%) Relational Database
3 63 (3.28%) NoSQL
4 55 (2.87%) SQL Server
5 53 (2.76%) MongoDB
6 34 (1.77%) Data Lake
7 33 (1.72%) Amazon RDS
8 32 (1.67%) Power BI
9 30 (1.56%) MySQL
10 28 (1.46%) BigQuery
11 26 (1.36%) Big Data
12 23 (1.20%) Metadata
13 22 (1.15%) DynamoDB
14 18 (0.94%) Data Warehouse
15 17 (0.89%) Hadoop
16 16 (0.83%) Amazon Athena
16 16 (0.83%) Elasticsearch
17 15 (0.78%) Mixpanel
18 12 (0.63%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 198 (10.32%) Git
2 128 (6.67%) Jenkins
3 108 (5.63%) GitLab
4 105 (5.47%) JIRA
5 35 (1.82%) SonarQube
6 34 (1.77%) Rational DOORS
7 33 (1.72%) Rational Rhapsody
8 32 (1.67%) JUnit
9 27 (1.41%) Selenium
10 25 (1.30%) Cucumber
10 25 (1.30%) Gradle
11 24 (1.25%) Bitbucket
12 23 (1.20%) Cypress.io
13 22 (1.15%) IntelliJ
14 21 (1.09%) Maven
15 18 (0.94%) Eclipse
15 18 (0.94%) Liquibase
16 17 (0.89%) Mockito
16 17 (0.89%) Visual Studio
17 11 (0.57%) Artifactory
General
1 311 (16.21%) Social Skills
2 302 (15.75%) Finance
3 124 (6.47%) Public Sector
4 112 (5.84%) Banking
5 107 (5.58%) Analytical Skills
6 76 (3.96%) Aerospace
7 63 (3.28%) Front Office
8 44 (2.29%) Electronics
9 34 (1.77%) Law
10 28 (1.46%) Financial Institution
10 28 (1.46%) Retail
11 26 (1.36%) Influencing Skills
12 25 (1.30%) Manufacturing
12 25 (1.30%) Military
13 24 (1.25%) Investment Banking
14 21 (1.09%) Telecoms
15 20 (1.04%) Presentation Skills
16 14 (0.73%) Documentation Skills
17 12 (0.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 12 (0.63%) Legal
Job Titles
1 1,016 (52.97%) Software Engineer
2 356 (18.56%) Senior
3 346 (18.04%) Developer
4 164 (8.55%) Senior Software Engineer
5 146 (7.61%) Lead
6 136 (7.09%) Java Engineer
7 121 (6.31%) C++ Software Engineer
8 118 (6.15%) Embedded Engineer
9 109 (5.68%) Java Software Engineer
10 106 (5.53%) Embedded Software Engineer
11 87 (4.54%) Architect
12 79 (4.12%) Java Developer
13 73 (3.81%) Senior Developer
14 69 (3.60%) Python Engineer
15 62 (3.23%) Developer/Software Engineer
15 62 (3.23%) Python Developer
16 58 (3.02%) Lead Software Engineer
17 54 (2.82%) Software Developer
18 53 (2.76%) AWS Engineer
19 52 (2.71%) Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 225 (11.73%) React
2 209 (10.90%) Kafka
3 165 (8.60%) Node.js
4 142 (7.40%) REST
5 136 (7.09%) .NET
6 127 (6.62%) Spring
7 113 (5.89%) Spring Boot
8 105 (5.47%) RESTful
9 102 (5.32%) AngularJS
10 71 (3.70%) gRPC
11 67 (3.49%) GraphQL
12 58 (3.02%) Middleware
13 52 (2.71%) Redux
14 51 (2.66%) HTML
15 48 (2.50%) CSS
15 48 (2.50%) JSON
16 43 (2.24%) Playwright
17 36 (1.88%) Web Services
18 34 (1.77%) Vue
19 32 (1.67%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 219 (11.42%) Cloud Native
2 157 (8.19%) Distributed Systems
3 90 (4.69%) Product Ownership
4 71 (3.70%) Algorithms
5 60 (3.13%) Fixed Income
6 35 (1.82%) Data Protection Act
7 33 (1.72%) Mobile App
8 30 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
9 28 (1.46%) Derivative
9 28 (1.46%) Embedded Systems
9 28 (1.46%) Onboarding
10 27 (1.41%) AI Agents
10 27 (1.41%) Data Structures
11 25 (1.30%) Equities
12 24 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
13 22 (1.15%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 22 (1.15%) Public Cloud
14 21 (1.09%) Virtual Team
15 19 (0.99%) Hedge funds
16 17 (0.89%) Robotics
Operating Systems
1 205 (10.69%) Linux
2 74 (3.86%) Windows
3 45 (2.35%) Unix
4 27 (1.41%) 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
1 569 (29.67%) Agile
2 557 (29.04%) CI/CD
3 391 (20.39%) DevOps
4 338 (17.62%) Microservices
5 266 (13.87%) AI
6 244 (12.72%) Problem-Solving
7 219 (11.42%) Containerisation
8 213 (11.11%) Test Automation
9 195 (10.17%) Infrastructure as Code
10 191 (9.96%) Full-Stack Development
11 172 (8.97%) Computer Science
12 160 (8.34%) Machine Learning
13 153 (7.98%) Continuous Improvement
14 152 (7.92%) Mentoring
15 142 (7.40%) Observability
16 133 (6.93%) Scrum
16 133 (6.93%) SDLC
17 130 (6.78%) TDD
18 125 (6.52%) Technical Leadership
19 111 (5.79%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 534 (27.84%) Python
2 476 (24.82%) Java
3 247 (12.88%) SQL
4 239 (12.46%) C++
5 231 (12.04%) TypeScript
6 230 (11.99%) C#
7 227 (11.84%) JavaScript
8 166 (8.65%) Go
9 126 (6.57%) Ada
10 115 (6.00%) C
11 39 (2.03%) PowerShell
12 32 (1.67%) Bash
12 32 (1.67%) Kotlin
13 27 (1.41%) Rust
14 26 (1.36%) Embedded C
14 26 (1.36%) MATLAB
15 25 (1.30%) Ruby
16 23 (1.20%) Shell Script
17 21 (1.09%) Embedded C++
18 16 (0.83%) Scala
Qualifications
1 466 (24.30%) Security Cleared
2 360 (18.77%) SC Cleared
3 199 (10.38%) Degree
4 95 (4.95%) Computer Science Degree
5 62 (3.23%) DV Cleared
6 59 (3.08%) Master's Degree
7 26 (1.36%) BPSS Clearance
8 21 (1.09%) AWS Certification
8 21 (1.09%) PhD
9 19 (0.99%) CISSP
10 16 (0.83%) CISM
11 14 (0.73%) Azure Certification
11 14 (0.73%) TOGAF Certification
12 13 (0.68%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 8 (0.42%) ISTQB
14 7 (0.36%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 6 (0.31%) Microsoft Certified Professional
16 5 (0.26%) Microsoft Certification
17 4 (0.21%) HND
18 3 (0.16%) HNC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 104 (5.42%) QA
2 59 (3.08%) Def Stans
3 40 (2.09%) IEC 61508
4 39 (2.03%) Data Quality
5 31 (1.62%) Accessibility
6 30 (1.56%) MISRA
7 25 (1.30%) GDPR
8 20 (1.04%) MISRA C
9 18 (0.94%) WCAG
10 12 (0.63%) 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
1 325 (16.94%) Docker
2 20 (1.04%) Firmware
3 16 (0.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 12 (0.63%) 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
1 367 (19.13%) Kubernetes
2 213 (11.11%) Terraform
3 95 (4.95%) Grafana
4 62 (3.23%) Ansible
5 57 (2.97%) Prometheus
6 32 (1.67%) Argo
7 18 (0.94%) Puppet
8 13 (0.68%) Progress Chef
9 8 (0.42%) 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%) Functional Safety
14 2 (0.10%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 149 (7.77%) Microsoft
2 70 (3.65%) Google
3 64 (3.34%) Oracle
4 63 (3.28%) Red Hat
5 46 (2.40%) Databricks
6 26 (1.36%) Splunk
7 22 (1.15%) Foundry
7 22 (1.15%) IBM
8 17 (0.89%) VMware
9 15 (0.78%) BiZZdesign
9 15 (0.78%) OpenAI
10 11 (0.57%) Atlassian
10 11 (0.57%) Siemens
11 10 (0.52%) PagerDuty
11 10 (0.52%) ServiceNow
12 9 (0.47%) Palantir
12 9 (0.47%) SAP
12 9 (0.47%) Software AG
13 8 (0.42%) ANSYS
13 8 (0.42%) MathWorks