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

6 months to
20 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 34 43 31
Rank change year-on-year +9 -12 +8
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,149 1,163 2,075
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.23% 4.79% 5.70%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.18% 5.25% 6.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,126 767 1,219
10th Percentile £400 £400 £421
25th Percentile £459 £482 £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 459 76 357
10th Percentile £52.46 £40.38 £46.25
25th Percentile £60.50 £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 £69.38 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year - +4.00% -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 34,792 22,163 31,446
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.62% 91.27% 86.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,183 14,469 20,624
10th Percentile £325 £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 £510 £514 £525
% change year-on-year -0.88% -2.10% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,136 960 2,252
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.42 £12.93
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.20 £15.99
Median hourly rate £46.11 £28.75 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +60.37% -21.23% -1.75%
75th Percentile £67.84 £62.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £28.17 £36.05
% change year-on-year +50.90% -21.86% +0.13%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 -3 892 £589 -12.78% 754
North of England +24 319 £500 - 343
South West +15 307 £575 +4.55% 209
South East +19 274 £525 +2.44% 422
East of England +40 223 £495 +1.43% 174
North West +4 146 £500 - 184
Yorkshire +14 120 £500 +1.46% 91
Midlands -35 82 £475 -3.06% 136
West Midlands -14 71 £468 -11.88% 79
North East +21 58 £593 +51.92% 70
East Midlands -34 10 £563 +14.80% 57
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 (2.51%) Confluence
2 43 (2.00%) 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%) Cloud Foundry
9 2 (0.093%) MQSeries
9 2 (0.093%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 2 (0.093%) WinCC
10 1 (0.047%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 1 (0.047%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.047%) OpenStack
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
2 4 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
3 2 (0.093%) Aladdin
3 2 (0.093%) LabWindows
3 2 (0.093%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 2 (0.093%) Remedy ITSM
4 1 (0.047%) Orchestrade
4 1 (0.047%) Sprinklr
4 1 (0.047%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 537 (24.99%) AWS
2 397 (18.47%) Azure
3 194 (9.03%) GCP
4 142 (6.61%) GitHub
5 112 (5.21%) Serverless
6 79 (3.68%) Azure DevOps
7 69 (3.21%) AWS Lambda
8 59 (2.75%) Amazon S3
8 59 (2.75%) GitHub Actions
9 48 (2.23%) OpenShift
10 43 (2.00%) Power Platform
11 38 (1.77%) Azure AKS
12 37 (1.72%) Amazon EKS
13 35 (1.63%) Amazon SQS
14 34 (1.58%) Amazon ECS
15 32 (1.49%) Amazon EC2
15 32 (1.49%) AWS CloudFormation
16 25 (1.16%) SaaS
17 21 (0.98%) Azure Functions
18 20 (0.93%) Anthropic Claude
Communications & Networking
1 30 (1.40%) Software-Defined Radio
2 23 (1.07%) Ethernet
3 18 (0.84%) Wireless
4 15 (0.70%) HTTP
5 14 (0.65%) TCP/IP
6 10 (0.47%) Firewall
6 10 (0.47%) Wi-Fi
7 9 (0.42%) 3GPP
8 8 (0.37%) Network Security
9 6 (0.28%) RTP
9 6 (0.28%) VPN
10 5 (0.23%) Wireshark
11 4 (0.19%) DNS
11 4 (0.19%) Modbus
12 3 (0.14%) Bluetooth
12 3 (0.14%) IPv4
12 3 (0.14%) IPv6
12 3 (0.14%) RS-232
12 3 (0.14%) RS-422
12 3 (0.14%) RS-485
Database & Business Intelligence
1 130 (6.05%) PostgreSQL
2 70 (3.26%) Relational Database
3 66 (3.07%) SQL Server
4 58 (2.70%) NoSQL
5 50 (2.33%) MongoDB
6 46 (2.14%) Apache Cassandra
7 34 (1.58%) Power BI
8 32 (1.49%) Amazon RDS
9 29 (1.35%) BigQuery
9 29 (1.35%) DynamoDB
10 28 (1.30%) Data Lake
11 27 (1.26%) Big Data
12 24 (1.12%) MySQL
13 20 (0.93%) Data Warehouse
13 20 (0.93%) Metadata
14 16 (0.74%) Amazon Athena
15 15 (0.70%) Elasticsearch
15 15 (0.70%) Pinecone
15 15 (0.70%) Redis
16 14 (0.65%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 211 (9.82%) Git
2 142 (6.61%) Jenkins
3 128 (5.96%) GitLab
4 107 (4.98%) JIRA
5 46 (2.14%) Gradle
6 44 (2.05%) SonarQube
7 33 (1.54%) JUnit
8 32 (1.49%) Rational DOORS
9 31 (1.44%) Rational Rhapsody
10 24 (1.12%) Cucumber
10 24 (1.12%) IntelliJ
11 23 (1.07%) Bitbucket
11 23 (1.07%) Maven
12 22 (1.02%) Selenium
13 19 (0.88%) Cypress.io
14 17 (0.79%) Visual Studio
15 16 (0.74%) Mockito
16 14 (0.65%) Liquibase
17 13 (0.60%) Artifactory
18 12 (0.56%) Claude Code
General
1 347 (16.15%) Finance
2 296 (13.77%) Social Skills
3 126 (5.86%) Analytical Skills
4 124 (5.77%) Public Sector
5 122 (5.68%) Banking
6 88 (4.09%) Aerospace
7 69 (3.21%) Front Office
8 44 (2.05%) Manufacturing
9 38 (1.77%) Law
10 33 (1.54%) Retail
11 32 (1.49%) Investment Banking
12 30 (1.40%) Electronics
13 28 (1.30%) Military
14 24 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
15 21 (0.98%) Telecoms
16 20 (0.93%) Aviation
17 18 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
18 17 (0.79%) Automotive
19 16 (0.74%) Financial Institution
20 13 (0.60%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,161 (54.03%) Software Engineer
2 388 (18.05%) Developer
3 371 (17.26%) Senior
4 179 (8.33%) Senior Software Engineer
5 169 (7.86%) Lead
6 162 (7.54%) Embedded Engineer
7 152 (7.07%) Java Engineer
8 151 (7.03%) Embedded Software Engineer
9 123 (5.72%) Java Software Engineer
10 120 (5.58%) C++ Software Engineer
11 112 (5.21%) Java Developer
12 82 (3.82%) Architect
13 74 (3.44%) Senior Developer
14 69 (3.21%) Developer/Software Engineer
15 64 (2.98%) DevOps Engineer
15 64 (2.98%) Full-Stack Engineer
16 62 (2.89%) Software Developer
17 61 (2.84%) Python Developer
18 60 (2.79%) Data Engineer
18 60 (2.79%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 244 (11.35%) React
2 181 (8.42%) Kafka
3 165 (7.68%) Node.js
4 162 (7.54%) Spring
5 159 (7.40%) .NET
6 147 (6.84%) REST
6 147 (6.84%) Spring Boot
7 107 (4.98%) AngularJS
8 96 (4.47%) RESTful
9 73 (3.40%) GraphQL
10 53 (2.47%) Redux
11 48 (2.23%) Middleware
12 46 (2.14%) CSS
13 43 (2.00%) HTML
14 42 (1.95%) gRPC
15 39 (1.81%) JSON
16 34 (1.58%) Next.js
16 34 (1.58%) Playwright
17 33 (1.54%) LangChain
17 33 (1.54%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 220 (10.24%) Cloud Native
2 146 (6.79%) Distributed Systems
3 101 (4.70%) Product Ownership
4 88 (4.09%) Algorithms
5 61 (2.84%) Fixed Income
6 49 (2.28%) AI Agents
7 36 (1.68%) Embedded Systems
8 35 (1.63%) Data Protection Act
9 34 (1.58%) Onboarding
10 30 (1.40%) Derivative
11 29 (1.35%) Legacy Systems
11 29 (1.35%) Robotics
12 27 (1.26%) Data Structures
13 23 (1.07%) Greenfield Project
13 23 (1.07%) Mobile App
14 21 (0.98%) Equities
15 20 (0.93%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 15 (0.70%) FPGA
17 14 (0.65%) Self-Motivation
18 13 (0.60%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 193 (8.98%) Linux
2 66 (3.07%) Windows
3 44 (2.05%) Unix
4 24 (1.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 21 (0.98%) Android
6 15 (0.70%) Apple iOS
7 14 (0.65%) Embedded Linux
8 12 (0.56%) Windows Server
9 10 (0.47%) 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
1 614 (28.57%) CI/CD
2 589 (27.41%) Agile
3 426 (19.82%) DevOps
4 336 (15.64%) Microservices
5 297 (13.82%) AI
6 233 (10.84%) Test Automation
7 232 (10.80%) Problem-Solving
8 227 (10.56%) Full-Stack Development
9 218 (10.14%) Containerisation
10 193 (8.98%) Infrastructure as Code
11 162 (7.54%) Observability
12 159 (7.40%) Continuous Improvement
13 157 (7.31%) SDLC
14 151 (7.03%) Machine Learning
15 148 (6.89%) TDD
16 147 (6.84%) Mentoring
17 146 (6.79%) Computer Science
17 146 (6.79%) Scrum
18 135 (6.28%) Technical Leadership
19 131 (6.10%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 552 (25.69%) Java
2 540 (25.13%) Python
3 287 (13.36%) SQL
4 274 (12.75%) C#
5 250 (11.63%) TypeScript
6 223 (10.38%) JavaScript
7 218 (10.14%) C++
8 139 (6.47%) Go
9 129 (6.00%) Ada
10 115 (5.35%) C
11 43 (2.00%) Kotlin
12 38 (1.77%) PowerShell
13 33 (1.54%) Bash
13 33 (1.54%) Rust
14 30 (1.40%) Embedded C
15 26 (1.21%) MATLAB
16 22 (1.02%) Scala
17 20 (0.93%) Ruby
18 19 (0.88%) Shell Script
19 17 (0.79%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 524 (24.38%) Security Cleared
2 412 (19.17%) SC Cleared
3 172 (8.00%) Degree
4 85 (3.96%) Computer Science Degree
5 71 (3.30%) DV Cleared
6 35 (1.63%) BPSS Clearance
7 31 (1.44%) Master's Degree
8 21 (0.98%) AWS Certification
9 14 (0.65%) 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
1 110 (5.12%) QA
2 47 (2.19%) Def Stans
3 40 (1.86%) Data Quality
4 34 (1.58%) IEC 61508
5 28 (1.30%) Accessibility
6 24 (1.12%) GDPR
7 19 (0.88%) MISRA
8 14 (0.65%) MISRA C
9 11 (0.51%) NCSC
10 9 (0.42%) WCAG
11 7 (0.33%) NIST
12 6 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
12 6 (0.28%) PCI DSS
13 5 (0.23%) DO-178B
13 5 (0.23%) HL7
13 5 (0.23%) JSP 440
14 4 (0.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 3 (0.14%) DO-254
15 3 (0.14%) FATCA
15 3 (0.14%) MiFID
System Software
1 308 (14.33%) Docker
2 20 (0.93%) 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
1 358 (16.66%) Kubernetes
2 203 (9.45%) Terraform
3 80 (3.72%) Grafana
4 58 (2.70%) Ansible
5 46 (2.14%) Prometheus
6 34 (1.58%) Argo
7 12 (0.56%) Puppet
8 10 (0.47%) 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%) HP Quality Center
11 4 (0.19%) Single Sign-On
12 3 (0.14%) Docker Swarm
12 3 (0.14%) Kubeflow
12 3 (0.14%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
13 2 (0.093%) Consul
13 2 (0.093%) HP ALM
13 2 (0.093%) Podman
Vendors
1 126 (5.86%) Microsoft
2 72 (3.35%) Google
3 60 (2.79%) Oracle
4 57 (2.65%) Red Hat
5 45 (2.09%) Databricks
6 25 (1.16%) OpenAI
7 23 (1.07%) IBM
8 17 (0.79%) Splunk
9 16 (0.74%) VMware
10 15 (0.70%) Informatica
11 13 (0.60%) Foundry
11 13 (0.60%) ServiceNow
12 12 (0.56%) SAP
12 12 (0.56%) Siemens
13 11 (0.51%) Okta
14 10 (0.47%) ForgeRock
14 10 (0.47%) MathWorks
15 9 (0.42%) Atlassian
15 9 (0.42%) Dynatrace
16 8 (0.37%) Salesforce