Software Engineering Contracts in England

Software Engineering
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in England requiring Software Engineering skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Software Engineering over the 6 months leading up to 3 July 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 43 27 41
Rank change year-on-year -16 +14 -1
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 1,268 2,308 2,342
As % of all contract jobs advertised in England 4.86% 6.17% 4.95%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.34% 7.22% 5.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 827 1,358 1,596
10th Percentile £400 £418 £431
25th Percentile £475 £493 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £607 £606
Median % change year-on-year -1.07% +0.08% +1.00%
75th Percentile £775 £788 £738
90th Percentile £850 £879 £825
UK median daily rate £575 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -4.17% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 76 394 201
10th Percentile £34.38 £46.25 £47.50
25th Percentile £51.81 £52.50 £53.75
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £68.00 £70.00 £70.30
90th Percentile £76.25 £77.50 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year - - +13.04%

All Process and 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 23,765 31,961 42,529
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 91.03% 85.51% 89.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,278 20,746 29,768
10th Percentile £300 £305 £325
25th Percentile £406 £413 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £638 £650 £675
90th Percentile £750 £750 £775
UK median daily rate £505 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -3.81% -4.55% +1.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,187 2,306 1,553
10th Percentile £14.20 £12.79 £11.87
25th Percentile £17.87 £16.06 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £38.12 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -34.02% +1.65% +44.23%
75th Percentile £55.00 £61.60 £64.63
90th Percentile £72.50 £73.75 £75.82
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £37.50 £36.00
% change year-on-year -32.93% +4.17% +38.46%

Software Engineering
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Job postings citing Software Engineering as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in England.

Job vacancy trend for Software Engineering in England

Software Engineering
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Software Engineering in England.

Daily rate trend for Software Engineering in England

Software Engineering
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Software Engineering in England over the 6 months to 3 July 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Software Engineering in England

Software Engineering
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Software Engineering in England.

Hourly rate trend for Software Engineering in England

Software Engineering
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Software Engineering in England over the 6 months to 3 July 2025.

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 3 July 2025. 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 -6 750 £654 -3.96% 2,445
North of England -34 128 £492 -6.21% 752
South East -20 109 £501 -4.67% 597
South West -10 92 £525 - 327
North West -17 88 £500 -4.76% 485
Midlands -26 62 £500 +5.26% 288
East of England -27 61 £488 -2.35% 308
West Midlands -23 42 £558 +22.19% 158
Yorkshire -26 36 £490 - 203
East Midlands -13 19 £475 -5.00% 128
North East -23 4 £460 - 67
Software Engineering
UK

Software Engineering
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 112 (8.83%) Apache Airflow
2 93 (7.33%) Apache
3 39 (3.08%) Confluence
4 28 (2.21%) Apache Spark
5 8 (0.63%) CMS
5 8 (0.63%) GemFire
5 8 (0.63%) Oracle Coherence
6 5 (0.39%) Drupal
7 4 (0.32%) JBoss
7 4 (0.32%) SAS
7 4 (0.32%) WordPress
8 3 (0.24%) IIS
8 3 (0.24%) Oracle Workflow
8 3 (0.24%) SharePoint
9 2 (0.16%) Headless CMS
9 2 (0.16%) nginx
9 2 (0.16%) TPMS
10 1 (0.079%) Luigi
10 1 (0.079%) WebLogic
10 1 (0.079%) WebSphere
Applications
1 9 (0.71%) Simulink
2 6 (0.47%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (0.39%) Microsoft Office
4 4 (0.32%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.24%) Chatbot
5 3 (0.24%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.24%) Stateflow
6 2 (0.16%) CANalyzer
6 2 (0.16%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.079%) Fusion 360
7 1 (0.079%) Siemens NX
7 1 (0.079%) Trello
Business Applications
1 14 (1.10%) FLEXCUBE
1 14 (1.10%) Oracle BPM
2 5 (0.39%) Temenos T24
3 4 (0.32%) Aladdin
4 2 (0.16%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.16%) Fidessa
4 2 (0.16%) Oracle 11i
4 2 (0.16%) Teamcenter
5 1 (0.079%) IBM Planning Analytics
5 1 (0.079%) LabWindows
5 1 (0.079%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.079%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.079%) SAP HCM
5 1 (0.079%) thinkFolio
Cloud Services
1 539 (42.51%) AWS
2 252 (19.87%) Azure
3 196 (15.46%) GCP
4 112 (8.83%) dbt
5 104 (8.20%) Serverless
6 69 (5.44%) GitHub
7 61 (4.81%) AWS Lambda
8 54 (4.26%) Snowflake
9 44 (3.47%) Azure DevOps
10 40 (3.15%) GitHub Actions
11 39 (3.08%) Amazon ECS
12 37 (2.92%) OpenShift
13 25 (1.97%) Amazon EC2
14 24 (1.89%) SaaS
15 22 (1.74%) Azure AKS
16 21 (1.66%) Amazon S3
16 21 (1.66%) AWS CloudFormation
17 20 (1.58%) Amazon EKS
18 19 (1.50%) Amazon SQS
18 19 (1.50%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 14 (1.10%) Ethernet
1 14 (1.10%) TCP/IP
2 12 (0.95%) HTTP
3 9 (0.71%) Firewall
4 8 (0.63%) HTTPS
4 8 (0.63%) Network Security
5 7 (0.55%) Internet
6 5 (0.39%) DNS
6 5 (0.39%) NFC
6 5 (0.39%) PPP
7 4 (0.32%) SNMP
7 4 (0.32%) VSAN
8 3 (0.24%) Bluetooth
8 3 (0.24%) Software-Defined Radio
8 3 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
8 3 (0.24%) Wireless
9 2 (0.16%) VPN
10 1 (0.079%) DHCP
10 1 (0.079%) LAN
10 1 (0.079%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 156 (12.30%) PostgreSQL
2 108 (8.52%) Amazon Athena
3 104 (8.20%) Apache Iceberg
3 104 (8.20%) Dremio
4 100 (7.89%) Apache Arrow
5 71 (5.60%) Relational Database
6 54 (4.26%) SQL Server
7 53 (4.18%) Apache Ignite
8 52 (4.10%) Apache Cassandra
9 48 (3.79%) Data Lake
10 43 (3.39%) NoSQL
11 40 (3.15%) MongoDB
12 33 (2.60%) MySQL
13 26 (2.05%) Big Data
14 18 (1.42%) Oracle Database
15 17 (1.34%) DynamoDB
15 17 (1.34%) Hadoop
16 16 (1.26%) Elasticsearch
17 14 (1.10%) Power BI
18 11 (0.87%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 143 (11.28%) Git
2 137 (10.80%) Jenkins
3 95 (7.49%) JIRA
4 79 (6.23%) GitLab
5 46 (3.63%) Gradle
6 43 (3.39%) JUnit
7 34 (2.68%) Bitbucket
8 33 (2.60%) Liquibase
9 31 (2.44%) Mockito
10 30 (2.37%) Eclipse
11 24 (1.89%) Cucumber
11 24 (1.89%) SonarQube
12 22 (1.74%) Selenium
13 20 (1.58%) Cypress.io
14 18 (1.42%) Artifactory
15 17 (1.34%) REST Assured
15 17 (1.34%) Visual Studio
16 16 (1.26%) Maven
17 12 (0.95%) GoogleTest
18 11 (0.87%) TeamCity
General
1 415 (32.73%) Finance
2 316 (24.92%) Social Skills
3 214 (16.88%) Front Office
4 194 (15.30%) Banking
5 111 (8.75%) Analytical Skills
6 92 (7.26%) Investment Banking
7 87 (6.86%) Public Sector
8 47 (3.71%) Telecoms
9 40 (3.15%) Marketing
10 36 (2.84%) Electronics
11 35 (2.76%) Manufacturing
12 32 (2.52%) Military
13 21 (1.66%) Financial Institution
14 20 (1.58%) Presentation Skills
15 19 (1.50%) Law
16 17 (1.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 17 (1.34%) Retail
17 13 (1.03%) Aerospace
18 9 (0.71%) Influencing Skills
18 9 (0.71%) Police
Job Titles
1 548 (43.22%) Software Engineer
2 420 (33.12%) Developer
3 219 (17.27%) Senior
4 126 (9.94%) AWS Engineer
4 126 (9.94%) Developer/Software Engineer
5 122 (9.62%) Java Engineer
6 115 (9.07%) Python Engineer
7 113 (8.91%) Java Software Engineer
8 109 (8.60%) Senior Software Engineer
9 104 (8.20%) AWS Software Engineer
10 93 (7.33%) Java Developer
11 83 (6.55%) Python Software Engineer
12 82 (6.47%) Lead
13 75 (5.91%) Python Developer
14 74 (5.84%) AWS Developer
15 70 (5.52%) React Developer
16 58 (4.57%) Senior Developer
17 55 (4.34%) Architect
18 51 (4.02%) Full-Stack Engineer
19 50 (3.94%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 272 (21.45%) React
2 175 (13.80%) Kafka
3 174 (13.72%) Node.js
4 144 (11.36%) AngularJS
5 126 (9.94%) .NET
6 111 (8.75%) REST
7 103 (8.12%) Pandas
8 102 (8.04%) NumPy
9 96 (7.57%) gRPC
10 90 (7.10%) SciPy
10 90 (7.10%) Vue
11 87 (6.86%) Spring
12 85 (6.70%) Redux
13 71 (5.60%) HTML
14 67 (5.28%) Spring Boot
15 62 (4.89%) CSS
15 62 (4.89%) RESTful
16 50 (3.94%) GraphQL
17 46 (3.63%) PySpark
18 41 (3.23%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 171 (13.49%) Fixed Income
2 140 (11.04%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 106 (8.36%) Equities
3 106 (8.36%) Hedge funds
4 83 (6.55%) Distributed Systems
5 63 (4.97%) Derivative
6 56 (4.42%) Algorithms
7 51 (4.02%) Cloud Native
8 43 (3.39%) Product Ownership
9 33 (2.60%) Data Structures
10 31 (2.44%) Greenfield Project
11 30 (2.37%) Pricing Data
12 21 (1.66%) Public Cloud
13 18 (1.42%) FPGA
14 15 (1.18%) Mobile App
14 15 (1.18%) Verilog
15 13 (1.03%) Management Information System
16 12 (0.95%) PKI
17 10 (0.79%) Virtual Team
18 8 (0.63%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 183 (14.43%) Linux
2 48 (3.79%) Windows
3 35 (2.76%) Unix
4 19 (1.50%) Ubuntu
5 14 (1.10%) Android
6 11 (0.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 7 (0.55%) Windows Server
8 4 (0.32%) Apple iOS
8 4 (0.32%) Embedded Linux
9 3 (0.24%) HPUX
9 3 (0.24%) Solaris
10 2 (0.16%) AIX
10 2 (0.16%) VMS
11 1 (0.079%) Amazon Linux
11 1 (0.079%) FreeRTOS
11 1 (0.079%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.079%) Windows 7
11 1 (0.079%) Windows Server 2012
11 1 (0.079%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.079%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 576 (45.43%) Agile
2 354 (27.92%) CI/CD
3 301 (23.74%) DevOps
4 241 (19.01%) Microservices
5 216 (17.03%) Problem-Solving
6 165 (13.01%) Asset Management
7 160 (12.62%) TDD
8 159 (12.54%) Test Automation
9 154 (12.15%) Full-Stack Development
10 145 (11.44%) Investment Management
11 136 (10.73%) Computer Science
12 135 (10.65%) Containerisation
13 119 (9.38%) Fintech
13 119 (9.38%) Scrum
14 113 (8.91%) Continuous Integration
15 110 (8.68%) Infrastructure as Code
16 107 (8.44%) User Experience
17 95 (7.49%) Mentoring
18 94 (7.41%) Open Source
19 74 (5.84%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 491 (38.72%) Python
2 438 (34.54%) Java
3 368 (29.02%) JavaScript
4 272 (21.45%) TypeScript
5 211 (16.64%) SQL
6 178 (14.04%) C#
7 144 (11.36%) C++
8 119 (9.38%) Go
9 45 (3.55%) C
10 40 (3.15%) Shell Script
11 33 (2.60%) PowerShell
12 31 (2.44%) Ada
13 30 (2.37%) Bash
14 28 (2.21%) Rust
15 20 (1.58%) Scala
16 19 (1.50%) PL/SQL
17 18 (1.42%) PHP
18 15 (1.18%) SystemVerilog
18 15 (1.18%) Tcl
19 14 (1.10%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 242 (19.09%) Security Cleared
2 187 (14.75%) SC Cleared
3 154 (12.15%) Degree
4 85 (6.70%) Computer Science Degree
5 56 (4.42%) DV Cleared
6 28 (2.21%) Master's Degree
7 21 (1.66%) Azure Certification
8 13 (1.03%) AWS Certification
9 10 (0.79%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 9 (0.71%) BPSS Clearance
10 9 (0.71%) Numerate Degree
10 9 (0.71%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 8 (0.63%) Microsoft Certification
12 5 (0.39%) PMP
13 4 (0.32%) Cisco Certification
14 3 (0.24%) CCNP
14 3 (0.24%) CEH
14 3 (0.24%) CISSP
14 3 (0.24%) PhD
14 3 (0.24%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 70 (5.52%) QA
2 17 (1.34%) Accessibility
3 16 (1.26%) IEC 61508
4 15 (1.18%) Def Stans
5 13 (1.03%) MISRA
5 13 (1.03%) MISRA C
6 9 (0.71%) Data Quality
6 9 (0.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 7 (0.55%) GDPR
7 7 (0.55%) NIST
7 7 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 5 (0.39%) Software Quality Assurance
9 4 (0.32%) MiFID
9 4 (0.32%) SLA
9 4 (0.32%) WCAG
10 3 (0.24%) EU AI Act
10 3 (0.24%) PMO
10 3 (0.24%) SEPA
11 2 (0.16%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 2 (0.16%) SOC 2
System Software
1 247 (19.48%) Docker
2 8 (0.63%) GridGain
2 8 (0.63%) VMware Infrastructure
3 4 (0.32%) VMware NSX
3 4 (0.32%) vSphere
4 3 (0.24%) Active Directory
5 2 (0.16%) Firmware
5 2 (0.16%) zsh
6 1 (0.079%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.079%) Microsoft App-V
6 1 (0.079%) Virtual Desktop
6 1 (0.079%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (0.079%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 234 (18.45%) Kubernetes
2 142 (11.20%) Terraform
3 67 (5.28%) Ansible
4 27 (2.13%) Grafana
5 26 (2.05%) Prometheus
6 12 (0.95%) Podman
7 11 (0.87%) Docker Swarm
8 8 (0.63%) Puppet
9 7 (0.55%) Progress Chef
10 6 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
11 4 (0.32%) Kibana
12 3 (0.24%) Argo
12 3 (0.24%) Kubeflow
12 3 (0.24%) Opsview
12 3 (0.24%) vCenter Server
12 3 (0.24%) WMI
13 2 (0.16%) FortiGate
13 2 (0.16%) logstash
13 2 (0.16%) SCCM
14 1 (0.079%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 89 (7.02%) Microsoft
2 82 (6.47%) Oracle
3 67 (5.28%) Google
4 33 (2.60%) SAP
5 21 (1.66%) Red Hat
6 19 (1.50%) Atlassian
7 18 (1.42%) Splunk
8 16 (1.26%) VMware
9 15 (1.18%) Databricks
9 15 (1.18%) Xilinx
10 10 (0.79%) IBM
11 9 (0.71%) CA Agile Central
11 9 (0.71%) Palantir
11 9 (0.71%) ServiceNow
12 8 (0.63%) Cloudera
12 8 (0.63%) Salesforce
13 7 (0.55%) Adobe
13 7 (0.55%) Foundry
13 7 (0.55%) Intel
13 7 (0.55%) Temenos