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

6 months to
15 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 35 43 31
Rank change year-on-year +8 -12 +10
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,124 1,174 2,052
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.21% 4.85% 5.63%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.16% 5.32% 6.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,109 772 1,205
10th Percentile £400 £400 £423
25th Percentile £454 £488 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -
75th Percentile £671 £775 £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 459 78 356
10th Percentile £52.50 £41.53 £46.25
25th Percentile £61.13 £57.77 £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 £73.09 £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 34,498 22,079 31,531
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.70% 91.24% 86.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,001 14,439 20,650
10th Percentile £320 £308 £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 2,129 933 2,247
10th Percentile £15.34 £14.44 £12.90
25th Percentile £20.38 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £47.00 £29.07 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +61.68% -20.36% -2.67%
75th Percentile £67.84 £63.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.01 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £28.75 £36.50
% change year-on-year +47.83% -21.23% +0.29%

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 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 15 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 15 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 -5 875 £575 -14.18% 690
North of England +14 309 £500 - 308
South West +18 307 £575 - 188
South East +16 273 £525 +2.44% 385
East of England +39 218 £495 +1.43% 173
North West +4 143 £500 - 163
Yorkshire +6 116 £500 - 81
Midlands -29 88 £498 +3.11% 126
West Midlands -17 77 £482 -9.26% 67
North East +21 55 £593 +28.80% 66
East Midlands -33 10 £563 +14.80% 59
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 54 (2.54%) Confluence
2 43 (2.02%) Apache Spark
3 38 (1.79%) Apache
4 20 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
5 7 (0.33%) SAS
6 5 (0.24%) CMS
6 5 (0.24%) IIS
6 5 (0.24%) nginx
6 5 (0.24%) Palantir Foundry
6 5 (0.24%) SharePoint
7 4 (0.19%) WebLogic
8 3 (0.14%) Camunda
8 3 (0.14%) OpenStack
8 3 (0.14%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.094%) MQSeries
9 2 (0.094%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 2 (0.094%) WinCC
10 1 (0.047%) Headless CMS
10 1 (0.047%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.047%) Smallworld
Applications
1 15 (0.71%) 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 (0.094%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.094%) 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 2 (0.094%) Aladdin
3 2 (0.094%) LabWindows
3 2 (0.094%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.047%) Orchestrade
4 1 (0.047%) Sprinklr
4 1 (0.047%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 535 (25.19%) AWS
2 395 (18.60%) Azure
3 195 (9.18%) GCP
4 142 (6.69%) GitHub
5 111 (5.23%) Serverless
6 77 (3.63%) Azure DevOps
7 67 (3.15%) AWS Lambda
8 59 (2.78%) Amazon S3
8 59 (2.78%) GitHub Actions
9 49 (2.31%) OpenShift
10 43 (2.02%) Power Platform
11 38 (1.79%) Azure AKS
12 37 (1.74%) Amazon EKS
13 34 (1.60%) Amazon ECS
14 33 (1.55%) AWS CloudFormation
15 32 (1.51%) Amazon SQS
16 29 (1.37%) Amazon EC2
17 27 (1.27%) SaaS
18 21 (0.99%) Azure Functions
19 20 (0.94%) Anthropic Claude
Communications & Networking
1 30 (1.41%) Software-Defined Radio
2 25 (1.18%) Ethernet
3 17 (0.80%) Wireless
4 14 (0.66%) TCP/IP
5 13 (0.61%) HTTP
6 10 (0.47%) Firewall
7 9 (0.42%) Network Security
8 8 (0.38%) 3GPP
8 8 (0.38%) Wi-Fi
9 6 (0.28%) VPN
10 5 (0.24%) Modbus
10 5 (0.24%) RTP
11 4 (0.19%) DNS
11 4 (0.19%) RS-232
11 4 (0.19%) RS-485
11 4 (0.19%) Wireshark
12 3 (0.14%) Bluetooth
12 3 (0.14%) IPv4
12 3 (0.14%) IPv6
12 3 (0.14%) RS-422
Database & Business Intelligence
1 130 (6.12%) PostgreSQL
2 71 (3.34%) Relational Database
3 64 (3.01%) SQL Server
4 56 (2.64%) NoSQL
5 49 (2.31%) MongoDB
6 47 (2.21%) Apache Cassandra
7 34 (1.60%) Power BI
8 29 (1.37%) Amazon RDS
8 29 (1.37%) BigQuery
8 29 (1.37%) DynamoDB
9 28 (1.32%) Data Lake
10 27 (1.27%) Big Data
11 24 (1.13%) MySQL
12 20 (0.94%) Data Warehouse
12 20 (0.94%) Metadata
13 16 (0.75%) Amazon Athena
13 16 (0.75%) Pinecone
13 16 (0.75%) Redis
14 15 (0.71%) Weaviate
15 14 (0.66%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 205 (9.65%) Git
2 144 (6.78%) Jenkins
3 127 (5.98%) GitLab
4 110 (5.18%) JIRA
5 46 (2.17%) SonarQube
6 45 (2.12%) Gradle
7 33 (1.55%) JUnit
8 32 (1.51%) Rational DOORS
9 31 (1.46%) Rational Rhapsody
10 24 (1.13%) Cucumber
11 23 (1.08%) Bitbucket
11 23 (1.08%) IntelliJ
11 23 (1.08%) Maven
12 18 (0.85%) Selenium
12 18 (0.85%) Visual Studio
13 17 (0.80%) Cypress.io
14 16 (0.75%) Mockito
15 15 (0.71%) Liquibase
16 13 (0.61%) Artifactory
17 12 (0.56%) Eclipse
General
1 336 (15.82%) Finance
2 298 (14.03%) Social Skills
3 124 (5.84%) Banking
4 123 (5.79%) Public Sector
5 122 (5.74%) Analytical Skills
6 89 (4.19%) Aerospace
7 69 (3.25%) Front Office
8 44 (2.07%) Manufacturing
9 39 (1.84%) Law
10 33 (1.55%) Retail
11 32 (1.51%) Investment Banking
12 31 (1.46%) Electronics
13 26 (1.22%) Military
14 24 (1.13%) Influencing Skills
15 23 (1.08%) Telecoms
16 19 (0.89%) Presentation Skills
17 18 (0.85%) Automotive
18 17 (0.80%) Aviation
19 16 (0.75%) Financial Institution
20 13 (0.61%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,155 (54.38%) Software Engineer
2 382 (17.98%) Developer
3 361 (17.00%) Senior
4 178 (8.38%) Senior Software Engineer
5 164 (7.72%) Embedded Engineer
6 163 (7.67%) Lead
7 152 (7.16%) Embedded Software Engineer
7 152 (7.16%) Java Engineer
8 124 (5.84%) Java Software Engineer
9 118 (5.56%) C++ Software Engineer
10 111 (5.23%) Java Developer
11 81 (3.81%) Architect
12 71 (3.34%) Senior Developer
13 68 (3.20%) Developer/Software Engineer
14 64 (3.01%) Full-Stack Engineer
15 60 (2.82%) Data Engineer
15 60 (2.82%) Software Developer
16 59 (2.78%) DevOps Engineer
17 58 (2.73%) Lead Software Engineer
17 58 (2.73%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 241 (11.35%) React
2 185 (8.71%) Kafka
3 168 (7.91%) Node.js
4 159 (7.49%) Spring
5 154 (7.25%) .NET
6 144 (6.78%) Spring Boot
7 142 (6.69%) REST
8 103 (4.85%) AngularJS
9 94 (4.43%) RESTful
10 75 (3.53%) GraphQL
11 53 (2.50%) Redux
12 49 (2.31%) Middleware
13 45 (2.12%) gRPC
14 44 (2.07%) CSS
15 42 (1.98%) HTML
16 36 (1.69%) JSON
16 36 (1.69%) Playwright
17 34 (1.60%) LangChain
17 34 (1.60%) OpenTelemetry
17 34 (1.60%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 215 (10.12%) Cloud Native
2 144 (6.78%) Distributed Systems
3 98 (4.61%) Product Ownership
4 87 (4.10%) Algorithms
5 60 (2.82%) Fixed Income
6 51 (2.40%) AI Agents
7 35 (1.65%) Data Protection Act
7 35 (1.65%) Embedded Systems
8 31 (1.46%) Onboarding
9 29 (1.37%) Robotics
10 28 (1.32%) Derivative
10 28 (1.32%) Legacy Systems
11 27 (1.27%) Data Structures
12 25 (1.18%) Mobile App
13 22 (1.04%) Greenfield Project
14 19 (0.89%) Equities
14 19 (0.89%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 14 (0.66%) FPGA
16 13 (0.61%) Data Centre
16 13 (0.61%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 196 (9.23%) Linux
2 70 (3.30%) Windows
3 44 (2.07%) Unix
4 24 (1.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 23 (1.08%) Android
6 18 (0.85%) Apple iOS
7 14 (0.66%) Embedded Linux
8 12 (0.56%) Windows Server
9 11 (0.52%) FreeRTOS
10 6 (0.28%) Ubuntu
11 5 (0.24%) 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 (0.094%) Robot Operating System
15 1 (0.047%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 609 (28.67%) CI/CD
2 578 (27.21%) Agile
3 421 (19.82%) DevOps
4 333 (15.68%) Microservices
5 291 (13.70%) AI
6 239 (11.25%) Problem-Solving
7 229 (10.78%) Test Automation
8 225 (10.59%) Full-Stack Development
9 220 (10.36%) Containerisation
10 196 (9.23%) Infrastructure as Code
11 160 (7.53%) Observability
12 155 (7.30%) SDLC
13 151 (7.11%) Machine Learning
14 150 (7.06%) Continuous Improvement
15 148 (6.97%) Mentoring
16 147 (6.92%) Computer Science
17 144 (6.78%) TDD
18 140 (6.59%) Scrum
18 140 (6.59%) Technical Leadership
19 125 (5.89%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 545 (25.66%) Java
2 530 (24.95%) Python
3 279 (13.14%) SQL
4 272 (12.81%) C#
5 249 (11.72%) TypeScript
6 224 (10.55%) JavaScript
7 219 (10.31%) C++
8 146 (6.87%) Go
9 129 (6.07%) Ada
10 116 (5.46%) C
11 38 (1.79%) Kotlin
12 37 (1.74%) PowerShell
13 33 (1.55%) Bash
14 31 (1.46%) Embedded C
15 30 (1.41%) Rust
16 26 (1.22%) MATLAB
17 21 (0.99%) Scala
18 20 (0.94%) Ruby
18 20 (0.94%) Shell Script
19 16 (0.75%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 513 (24.15%) Security Cleared
2 400 (18.83%) SC Cleared
3 170 (8.00%) Degree
4 87 (4.10%) Computer Science Degree
5 67 (3.15%) DV Cleared
6 33 (1.55%) BPSS Clearance
7 32 (1.51%) Master's Degree
8 20 (0.94%) AWS Certification
9 13 (0.61%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 11 (0.52%) Azure Certification
11 8 (0.38%) CISSP
12 7 (0.33%) ISTQB
12 7 (0.33%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 7 (0.33%) PhD
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
1 112 (5.27%) QA
2 48 (2.26%) Def Stans
3 39 (1.84%) Data Quality
4 34 (1.60%) IEC 61508
5 27 (1.27%) Accessibility
6 24 (1.13%) GDPR
7 20 (0.94%) MISRA
8 14 (0.66%) MISRA C
9 9 (0.42%) NCSC
10 8 (0.38%) WCAG
11 7 (0.33%) NIST
12 6 (0.28%) DO-178B
12 6 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
13 5 (0.24%) HL7
13 5 (0.24%) PCI DSS
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
1 305 (14.36%) Docker
2 21 (0.99%) Firmware
3 15 (0.71%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (0.42%) Embedded Firmware
5 8 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
6 6 (0.28%) Active Directory
7 4 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
8 3 (0.14%) HDFS
9 2 (0.094%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 349 (16.43%) Kubernetes
2 204 (9.60%) Terraform
3 85 (4.00%) Grafana
4 61 (2.87%) Ansible
5 50 (2.35%) Prometheus
6 37 (1.74%) Argo
7 13 (0.61%) Puppet
8 11 (0.52%) Progress Chef
9 6 (0.28%) Istio
9 6 (0.28%) Kibana
10 5 (0.24%) 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 (0.094%) Consul
13 2 (0.094%) HP ALM
13 2 (0.094%) Podman
Vendors
1 126 (5.93%) Microsoft
2 73 (3.44%) Google
3 58 (2.73%) Oracle
4 57 (2.68%) Red Hat
5 45 (2.12%) Databricks
6 25 (1.18%) OpenAI
7 23 (1.08%) IBM
8 17 (0.80%) Splunk
9 16 (0.75%) VMware
10 14 (0.66%) Informatica
11 13 (0.61%) Foundry
11 13 (0.61%) SAP
11 13 (0.61%) ServiceNow
12 11 (0.52%) Okta
12 11 (0.52%) Siemens
13 10 (0.47%) Dynatrace
13 10 (0.47%) ForgeRock
13 10 (0.47%) MathWorks
14 9 (0.42%) Atlassian
15 8 (0.38%) Salesforce