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 18 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 33 43 31
Rank change year-on-year +10 -12 +10
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,141 1,176 2,073
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.23% 4.81% 5.69%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.17% 5.27% 6.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,117 777 1,218
10th Percentile £400 £400 £424
25th Percentile £455 £485 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -
75th Percentile £675 £763 £750
90th Percentile £775 £838 £850
UK median daily rate £550 £585 £600
% change year-on-year -5.98% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 458 76 356
10th Percentile £52.50 £40.38 £46.25
25th Percentile £61.06 £56.97 £52.50
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 £80.00
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 34,677 22,323 31,499
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.63% 91.22% 86.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,105 14,603 20,624
10th Percentile £321 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £505 £515 £525
% change year-on-year -1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,142 946 2,251
10th Percentile £15.31 £14.41 £12.92
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.50 £15.97
Median hourly rate £47.00 £29.00 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +62.07% -20.55% +0.69%
75th Percentile £67.96 £62.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.05 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £28.18 £36.02
% change year-on-year +50.82% -21.77% +1.04%

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 18 May 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 18 May 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 18 May 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 -6 886 £584 -13.44% 724
North of England +21 317 £500 - 313
South West +18 306 £575 +2.22% 186
South East +20 274 £525 +2.44% 384
East of England +42 218 £495 +1.43% 175
North West +4 145 £500 - 166
Yorkshire +11 120 £500 +1.46% 86
Midlands -28 86 £492 +0.37% 120
West Midlands -16 75 £475 -10.55% 64
North East +22 57 £593 +51.92% 63
East Midlands -32 10 £563 +14.80% 56
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 53 (2.48%) Confluence
2 42 (1.96%) Apache Spark
3 38 (1.77%) Apache
4 20 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
5 7 (0.33%) SAS
6 5 (0.23%) CMS
6 5 (0.23%) IIS
6 5 (0.23%) nginx
6 5 (0.23%) Palantir Foundry
6 5 (0.23%) SharePoint
7 4 (0.19%) WebLogic
8 3 (0.14%) Camunda
8 3 (0.14%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.093%) MQSeries
9 2 (0.093%) OpenStack
9 2 (0.093%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 2 (0.093%) WinCC
10 1 (0.047%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 1 (0.047%) Cloud Foundry
10 1 (0.047%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 15 (0.70%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (0.28%) Chatbot
2 6 (0.28%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.19%) CPLEX
3 4 (0.19%) Simulink
4 2 (0.093%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.093%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.047%) Adobe After Effects
5 1 (0.047%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 1 (0.047%) Blender
5 1 (0.047%) CATIA
5 1 (0.047%) Maya
5 1 (0.047%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.047%) OrCAD
Business Applications
1 6 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
3 3 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
4 2 (0.093%) Aladdin
4 2 (0.093%) LabWindows
4 2 (0.093%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.047%) Orchestrade
5 1 (0.047%) Sprinklr
5 1 (0.047%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 536 (25.04%) AWS
2 397 (18.54%) Azure
3 195 (9.11%) GCP
4 140 (6.54%) GitHub
5 111 (5.18%) Serverless
6 78 (3.64%) Azure DevOps
7 68 (3.18%) AWS Lambda
8 60 (2.80%) Amazon S3
9 57 (2.66%) GitHub Actions
10 49 (2.29%) OpenShift
11 43 (2.01%) Power Platform
12 39 (1.82%) Azure AKS
13 37 (1.73%) Amazon EKS
14 35 (1.63%) Amazon ECS
15 33 (1.54%) AWS CloudFormation
16 32 (1.49%) Amazon EC2
16 32 (1.49%) Amazon SQS
17 26 (1.21%) SaaS
18 21 (0.98%) Azure Functions
19 20 (0.93%) Anthropic Claude
Communications & Networking
1 30 (1.40%) Software-Defined Radio
2 24 (1.12%) Ethernet
3 17 (0.79%) Wireless
4 15 (0.70%) HTTP
5 14 (0.65%) TCP/IP
6 10 (0.47%) Firewall
7 9 (0.42%) 3GPP
7 9 (0.42%) Network Security
7 9 (0.42%) Wi-Fi
8 6 (0.28%) RTP
8 6 (0.28%) VPN
9 5 (0.23%) Modbus
9 5 (0.23%) Wireshark
10 4 (0.19%) DNS
10 4 (0.19%) RS-232
10 4 (0.19%) RS-485
11 3 (0.14%) Bluetooth
11 3 (0.14%) IPv4
11 3 (0.14%) IPv6
11 3 (0.14%) RS-422
Database & Business Intelligence
1 130 (6.07%) PostgreSQL
2 71 (3.32%) Relational Database
3 66 (3.08%) SQL Server
4 57 (2.66%) NoSQL
5 50 (2.34%) MongoDB
6 47 (2.20%) Apache Cassandra
7 34 (1.59%) Power BI
8 32 (1.49%) Amazon RDS
9 29 (1.35%) BigQuery
9 29 (1.35%) DynamoDB
10 28 (1.31%) Data Lake
11 26 (1.21%) Big Data
12 24 (1.12%) MySQL
13 20 (0.93%) Data Warehouse
13 20 (0.93%) Metadata
14 16 (0.75%) Amazon Athena
14 16 (0.75%) Redis
15 15 (0.70%) Pinecone
16 14 (0.65%) Elasticsearch
16 14 (0.65%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 208 (9.72%) Git
2 141 (6.59%) Jenkins
3 126 (5.89%) GitLab
4 106 (4.95%) JIRA
5 46 (2.15%) Gradle
6 44 (2.06%) SonarQube
7 32 (1.49%) JUnit
7 32 (1.49%) Rational DOORS
8 31 (1.45%) Rational Rhapsody
9 24 (1.12%) Cucumber
9 24 (1.12%) IntelliJ
10 23 (1.07%) Maven
11 22 (1.03%) Bitbucket
12 19 (0.89%) Selenium
13 17 (0.79%) Cypress.io
13 17 (0.79%) Visual Studio
14 16 (0.75%) Mockito
15 15 (0.70%) Liquibase
16 13 (0.61%) Artifactory
17 11 (0.51%) Eclipse
General
1 341 (15.93%) Finance
2 298 (13.92%) Social Skills
3 127 (5.93%) Public Sector
4 124 (5.79%) Analytical Skills
5 122 (5.70%) Banking
6 88 (4.11%) Aerospace
7 70 (3.27%) Front Office
8 44 (2.06%) Manufacturing
9 39 (1.82%) Law
10 33 (1.54%) Retail
11 32 (1.49%) Investment Banking
12 31 (1.45%) Electronics
13 26 (1.21%) Military
14 24 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
15 22 (1.03%) Telecoms
16 20 (0.93%) Aviation
17 18 (0.84%) Automotive
17 18 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
18 16 (0.75%) Financial Institution
19 14 (0.65%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,164 (54.37%) Software Engineer
2 386 (18.03%) Developer
3 369 (17.23%) Senior
4 180 (8.41%) Senior Software Engineer
5 165 (7.71%) Lead
6 163 (7.61%) Embedded Engineer
7 152 (7.10%) Java Engineer
8 151 (7.05%) Embedded Software Engineer
9 123 (5.74%) Java Software Engineer
10 120 (5.60%) C++ Software Engineer
11 112 (5.23%) Java Developer
12 82 (3.83%) Architect
13 73 (3.41%) Senior Developer
14 70 (3.27%) Developer/Software Engineer
15 65 (3.04%) Full-Stack Engineer
16 62 (2.90%) Software Developer
17 60 (2.80%) Data Engineer
17 60 (2.80%) DevOps Engineer
17 60 (2.80%) Python Engineer
18 58 (2.71%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 244 (11.40%) React
2 183 (8.55%) Kafka
3 169 (7.89%) Node.js
4 160 (7.47%) .NET
4 160 (7.47%) Spring
5 146 (6.82%) REST
5 146 (6.82%) Spring Boot
6 108 (5.04%) AngularJS
7 96 (4.48%) RESTful
8 75 (3.50%) GraphQL
9 53 (2.48%) Redux
10 49 (2.29%) Middleware
11 45 (2.10%) CSS
11 45 (2.10%) gRPC
12 43 (2.01%) HTML
13 37 (1.73%) JSON
14 36 (1.68%) Playwright
15 35 (1.63%) OpenTelemetry
16 34 (1.59%) Next.js
17 33 (1.54%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 218 (10.18%) Cloud Native
2 149 (6.96%) Distributed Systems
3 99 (4.62%) Product Ownership
4 88 (4.11%) Algorithms
5 61 (2.85%) Fixed Income
6 49 (2.29%) AI Agents
7 36 (1.68%) Data Protection Act
8 35 (1.63%) Embedded Systems
9 34 (1.59%) Onboarding
10 30 (1.40%) Derivative
10 30 (1.40%) Legacy Systems
11 29 (1.35%) Robotics
12 28 (1.31%) Data Structures
13 24 (1.12%) Mobile App
14 22 (1.03%) Greenfield Project
15 20 (0.93%) Equities
15 20 (0.93%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 14 (0.65%) FPGA
17 13 (0.61%) Data Centre
17 13 (0.61%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 196 (9.15%) Linux
2 67 (3.13%) Windows
3 44 (2.06%) Unix
4 24 (1.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 22 (1.03%) Android
6 16 (0.75%) Apple iOS
7 14 (0.65%) Embedded Linux
8 12 (0.56%) Windows Server
9 11 (0.51%) FreeRTOS
10 6 (0.28%) Ubuntu
11 5 (0.23%) Debian
12 4 (0.19%) Rocky
12 4 (0.19%) VMS
13 3 (0.14%) Solaris
13 3 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
13 3 (0.14%) Windows Server 2019
14 2 (0.093%) Robot Operating System
15 1 (0.047%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 613 (28.63%) CI/CD
2 582 (27.18%) Agile
3 423 (19.76%) DevOps
4 336 (15.69%) Microservices
5 290 (13.55%) AI
6 238 (11.12%) Problem-Solving
7 229 (10.70%) Full-Stack Development
7 229 (10.70%) Test Automation
8 223 (10.42%) Containerisation
9 197 (9.20%) Infrastructure as Code
10 162 (7.57%) Observability
11 155 (7.24%) SDLC
12 153 (7.15%) Continuous Improvement
13 149 (6.96%) Machine Learning
14 148 (6.91%) Mentoring
15 147 (6.87%) Computer Science
16 143 (6.68%) TDD
17 142 (6.63%) Scrum
18 138 (6.45%) Technical Leadership
19 127 (5.93%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 551 (25.74%) Java
2 539 (25.18%) Python
3 284 (13.26%) SQL
4 273 (12.75%) C#
5 255 (11.91%) TypeScript
6 224 (10.46%) JavaScript
7 219 (10.23%) C++
8 145 (6.77%) Go
9 129 (6.03%) Ada
10 116 (5.42%) C
11 41 (1.91%) Kotlin
12 38 (1.77%) PowerShell
13 33 (1.54%) Bash
13 33 (1.54%) Rust
14 31 (1.45%) Embedded C
15 26 (1.21%) MATLAB
16 21 (0.98%) Scala
17 20 (0.93%) Ruby
17 20 (0.93%) Shell Script
18 16 (0.75%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 516 (24.10%) Security Cleared
2 404 (18.87%) SC Cleared
3 170 (7.94%) Degree
4 86 (4.02%) Computer Science Degree
5 69 (3.22%) DV Cleared
6 33 (1.54%) BPSS Clearance
7 31 (1.45%) Master's Degree
8 20 (0.93%) AWS Certification
9 13 (0.61%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 11 (0.51%) Azure Certification
11 8 (0.37%) CISSP
11 8 (0.37%) PhD
12 7 (0.33%) ISTQB
12 7 (0.33%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 6 (0.28%) CISM
13 6 (0.28%) TOGAF Certification
14 3 (0.14%) Cisco Certification
14 3 (0.14%) HNC
14 3 (0.14%) HND
14 3 (0.14%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 111 (5.18%) QA
2 48 (2.24%) Def Stans
3 40 (1.87%) Data Quality
4 34 (1.59%) IEC 61508
5 27 (1.26%) Accessibility
6 24 (1.12%) GDPR
7 20 (0.93%) MISRA
8 14 (0.65%) MISRA C
9 9 (0.42%) NCSC
10 8 (0.37%) WCAG
11 7 (0.33%) NIST
12 6 (0.28%) DO-178B
12 6 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
12 6 (0.28%) PCI DSS
13 5 (0.23%) HL7
14 4 (0.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 3 (0.14%) EMIR
15 3 (0.14%) FATCA
15 3 (0.14%) JSP 440
15 3 (0.14%) MiFID
System Software
1 308 (14.39%) Docker
2 21 (0.98%) Firmware
3 15 (0.70%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (0.42%) Embedded Firmware
5 8 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
6 6 (0.28%) Active Directory
7 4 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
8 3 (0.14%) HDFS
9 2 (0.093%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 354 (16.53%) Kubernetes
2 205 (9.57%) Terraform
3 85 (3.97%) Grafana
4 60 (2.80%) Ansible
5 50 (2.34%) Prometheus
6 35 (1.63%) Argo
7 13 (0.61%) Puppet
8 11 (0.51%) Progress Chef
9 6 (0.28%) Istio
9 6 (0.28%) Kibana
10 5 (0.23%) HAProxy
11 4 (0.19%) Data Guard
11 4 (0.19%) Docker Swarm
11 4 (0.19%) HP Quality Center
11 4 (0.19%) Kubeflow
11 4 (0.19%) Single Sign-On
12 3 (0.14%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
13 2 (0.093%) Cilium
13 2 (0.093%) Consul
13 2 (0.093%) Podman
Vendors
1 125 (5.84%) Microsoft
2 73 (3.41%) Google
3 58 (2.71%) Oracle
4 57 (2.66%) Red Hat
5 44 (2.06%) Databricks
6 25 (1.17%) OpenAI
7 23 (1.07%) IBM
8 17 (0.79%) Splunk
9 16 (0.75%) VMware
10 14 (0.65%) Informatica
11 13 (0.61%) Foundry
11 13 (0.61%) SAP
11 13 (0.61%) ServiceNow
12 11 (0.51%) Okta
12 11 (0.51%) Siemens
13 10 (0.47%) ForgeRock
13 10 (0.47%) MathWorks
14 9 (0.42%) Atlassian
14 9 (0.42%) Dynatrace
14 9 (0.42%) Salesforce