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

6 months to
7 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 36 41 33
Rank change year-on-year +5 -8 +8
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,123 1,207 2,038
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.21% 4.95% 5.50%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.15% 5.43% 6.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,106 795 1,196
10th Percentile £400 £400 £419
25th Percentile £453 £488 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -
75th Percentile £670 £775 £750
90th Percentile £775 £838 £850
UK median daily rate £550 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 468 84 348
10th Percentile £52.50 £42.65 £46.25
25th Percentile £61.25 £56.97 £52.50
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 £72.50 £68.75 £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 34,525 22,234 32,111
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.79% 91.21% 86.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,016 14,552 21,077
10th Percentile £319 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,153 931 2,253
10th Percentile £15.35 £14.66 £12.94
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £30.00 £36.34
Median % change year-on-year +50.00% -17.43% -2.19%
75th Percentile £67.50 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £41.56 £29.00 £35.96
% change year-on-year +43.29% -19.35% -0.11%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 -6 873 £575 -14.81% 700
South West +15 311 £575 - 184
North of England +16 300 £500 - 342
South East +23 266 £525 +2.44% 413
East of England +40 222 £475 -2.72% 192
North West -1 138 £488 -2.50% 173
Yorkshire +8 112 £500 - 103
Midlands -33 94 £498 +1.53% 137
West Midlands -13 83 £489 -7.98% 71
North East +26 54 £593 +28.80% 67
East Midlands -37 10 £525 +7.14% 66
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 55 (2.59%) Confluence
2 45 (2.12%) Apache Spark
3 38 (1.79%) Apache
4 18 (0.85%) Apache Airflow
5 7 (0.33%) SAS
6 6 (0.28%) CMS
7 5 (0.24%) IIS
7 5 (0.24%) Palantir Foundry
7 5 (0.24%) SharePoint
8 4 (0.19%) nginx
8 4 (0.19%) WebLogic
9 3 (0.14%) Camunda
9 3 (0.14%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.094%) MQSeries
10 2 (0.094%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 2 (0.094%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.094%) WinCC
11 1 (0.047%) Cloud Foundry
11 1 (0.047%) Microsoft Exchange
11 1 (0.047%) Smallworld
Applications
1 14 (0.66%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (0.33%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (0.24%) Chatbot
4 4 (0.19%) CPLEX
4 4 (0.19%) Simulink
5 3 (0.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 2 (0.094%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.047%) Adobe After Effects
7 1 (0.047%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (0.047%) Blender
7 1 (0.047%) CATIA
7 1 (0.047%) Maya
7 1 (0.047%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.047%) MS Visio
7 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%) Primavera
4 1 (0.047%) Sprinklr
4 1 (0.047%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 540 (25.44%) AWS
2 399 (18.79%) Azure
3 189 (8.90%) GCP
4 139 (6.55%) GitHub
5 116 (5.46%) Serverless
6 78 (3.67%) Azure DevOps
7 67 (3.16%) AWS Lambda
8 63 (2.97%) Amazon S3
9 57 (2.68%) GitHub Actions
10 51 (2.40%) OpenShift
11 49 (2.31%) Power Platform
12 40 (1.88%) Amazon EKS
13 39 (1.84%) AWS CloudFormation
14 38 (1.79%) Amazon ECS
15 37 (1.74%) Azure AKS
16 32 (1.51%) Amazon EC2
17 30 (1.41%) Amazon SQS
18 28 (1.32%) SaaS
19 25 (1.18%) Azure Functions
20 20 (0.94%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 28 (1.32%) Software-Defined Radio
2 25 (1.18%) Ethernet
3 15 (0.71%) Wireless
4 14 (0.66%) TCP/IP
5 12 (0.57%) HTTP
6 10 (0.47%) Network Security
7 8 (0.38%) 3GPP
8 7 (0.33%) Firewall
9 6 (0.28%) Wi-Fi
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
12 3 (0.14%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 133 (6.26%) PostgreSQL
2 67 (3.16%) Relational Database
2 67 (3.16%) SQL Server
3 61 (2.87%) NoSQL
4 51 (2.40%) MongoDB
5 50 (2.36%) Apache Cassandra
6 37 (1.74%) Power BI
7 33 (1.55%) Amazon RDS
8 30 (1.41%) Data Lake
9 28 (1.32%) Big Data
9 28 (1.32%) DynamoDB
10 26 (1.22%) BigQuery
10 26 (1.22%) MySQL
11 21 (0.99%) Metadata
12 18 (0.85%) Data Warehouse
13 16 (0.75%) Amazon Athena
14 15 (0.71%) Amazon Redshift
14 15 (0.71%) Redis
15 14 (0.66%) Elasticsearch
16 13 (0.61%) Mixpanel
Development Applications
1 212 (9.99%) Git
2 141 (6.64%) Jenkins
3 121 (5.70%) GitLab
4 111 (5.23%) JIRA
5 45 (2.12%) SonarQube
6 39 (1.84%) Gradle
7 35 (1.65%) Rational DOORS
8 34 (1.60%) JUnit
9 32 (1.51%) Rational Rhapsody
10 25 (1.18%) Cucumber
11 23 (1.08%) Bitbucket
11 23 (1.08%) IntelliJ
12 20 (0.94%) Maven
13 19 (0.89%) Visual Studio
14 18 (0.85%) Cypress.io
14 18 (0.85%) Selenium
15 17 (0.80%) Mockito
16 14 (0.66%) Liquibase
17 12 (0.57%) Artifactory
17 12 (0.57%) Eclipse
General
1 325 (15.31%) Finance
2 300 (14.13%) Social Skills
3 124 (5.84%) Public Sector
4 120 (5.65%) Analytical Skills
4 120 (5.65%) Banking
5 88 (4.15%) Aerospace
6 68 (3.20%) Front Office
7 41 (1.93%) Manufacturing
8 40 (1.88%) Law
9 35 (1.65%) Electronics
10 32 (1.51%) Retail
11 29 (1.37%) Investment Banking
12 27 (1.27%) Military
13 23 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
14 22 (1.04%) Presentation Skills
14 22 (1.04%) Telecoms
15 16 (0.75%) Financial Institution
16 15 (0.71%) Automotive
17 14 (0.66%) Aviation
17 14 (0.66%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,152 (54.26%) Software Engineer
2 378 (17.80%) Developer
3 368 (17.33%) Senior
4 179 (8.43%) Senior Software Engineer
5 169 (7.96%) Embedded Engineer
6 162 (7.63%) Lead
7 157 (7.40%) Embedded Software Engineer
8 145 (6.83%) Java Engineer
9 121 (5.70%) C++ Software Engineer
10 117 (5.51%) Java Software Engineer
11 103 (4.85%) Java Developer
12 86 (4.05%) Architect
13 71 (3.34%) Senior Developer
14 66 (3.11%) Developer/Software Engineer
15 65 (3.06%) Full-Stack Engineer
16 60 (2.83%) Data Engineer
16 60 (2.83%) Python Engineer
17 58 (2.73%) Lead Software Engineer
17 58 (2.73%) Python Developer
17 58 (2.73%) Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 237 (11.16%) React
2 190 (8.95%) Kafka
3 167 (7.87%) Node.js
4 153 (7.21%) .NET
5 152 (7.16%) Spring
6 144 (6.78%) REST
7 138 (6.50%) Spring Boot
8 106 (4.99%) AngularJS
9 92 (4.33%) RESTful
10 74 (3.49%) GraphQL
11 53 (2.50%) Middleware
11 53 (2.50%) Redux
12 48 (2.26%) CSS
12 48 (2.26%) gRPC
13 46 (2.17%) HTML
14 37 (1.74%) JSON
14 37 (1.74%) Playwright
15 35 (1.65%) Web Services
16 34 (1.60%) OpenTelemetry
17 31 (1.46%) Next.js
Miscellaneous
1 217 (10.22%) Cloud Native
2 142 (6.69%) Distributed Systems
3 100 (4.71%) Product Ownership
4 83 (3.91%) Algorithms
5 60 (2.83%) Fixed Income
6 46 (2.17%) AI Agents
7 35 (1.65%) Data Protection Act
8 34 (1.60%) Embedded Systems
9 33 (1.55%) Onboarding
10 28 (1.32%) Legacy Systems
10 28 (1.32%) Robotics
11 27 (1.27%) Derivative
12 26 (1.22%) Data Structures
12 26 (1.22%) Mobile App
13 20 (0.94%) Equities
13 20 (0.94%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 20 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
14 15 (0.71%) FPGA
15 13 (0.61%) Life Science
15 13 (0.61%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 198 (9.33%) Linux
2 70 (3.30%) Windows
3 43 (2.03%) Unix
4 26 (1.22%) Android
5 23 (1.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 20 (0.94%) Apple iOS
7 13 (0.61%) Embedded Linux
8 11 (0.52%) FreeRTOS
9 10 (0.47%) Windows Server
10 7 (0.33%) Ubuntu
11 6 (0.28%) Debian
12 4 (0.19%) Rocky
12 4 (0.19%) VMS
13 2 (0.094%) Robot Operating System
13 2 (0.094%) Solaris
13 2 (0.094%) Windows Server 2008
13 2 (0.094%) Windows Server 2019
14 1 (0.047%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 594 (27.98%) CI/CD
2 593 (27.93%) Agile
3 424 (19.97%) DevOps
4 330 (15.54%) Microservices
5 290 (13.66%) AI
6 233 (10.98%) Problem-Solving
7 229 (10.79%) Full-Stack Development
8 219 (10.32%) Test Automation
9 218 (10.27%) Containerisation
10 199 (9.37%) Infrastructure as Code
11 158 (7.44%) SDLC
12 157 (7.40%) Observability
13 154 (7.25%) Machine Learning
14 153 (7.21%) Computer Science
14 153 (7.21%) Continuous Improvement
15 146 (6.88%) Mentoring
16 145 (6.83%) Scrum
17 141 (6.64%) TDD
18 137 (6.45%) Technical Leadership
19 124 (5.84%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 537 (25.29%) Python
2 524 (24.68%) Java
3 280 (13.19%) SQL
4 271 (12.76%) C#
5 244 (11.49%) TypeScript
6 226 (10.65%) C++
7 225 (10.60%) JavaScript
8 145 (6.83%) Go
9 134 (6.31%) Ada
10 123 (5.79%) C
11 37 (1.74%) Kotlin
12 35 (1.65%) Bash
12 35 (1.65%) Embedded C
12 35 (1.65%) PowerShell
13 26 (1.22%) MATLAB
14 25 (1.18%) Rust
15 23 (1.08%) Ruby
16 21 (0.99%) Shell Script
17 20 (0.94%) Scala
18 16 (0.75%) Embedded C++
Qualifications
1 515 (24.26%) Security Cleared
2 402 (18.94%) SC Cleared
3 173 (8.15%) Degree
4 88 (4.15%) Computer Science Degree
5 66 (3.11%) DV Cleared
6 36 (1.70%) Master's Degree
7 32 (1.51%) BPSS Clearance
8 21 (0.99%) AWS Certification
9 13 (0.61%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 12 (0.57%) CISSP
11 11 (0.52%) Azure Certification
12 10 (0.47%) PhD
13 9 (0.42%) CISM
14 8 (0.38%) TOGAF Certification
15 6 (0.28%) ISTQB
15 6 (0.28%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 4 (0.19%) HND
16 4 (0.19%) Microsoft Certification
17 3 (0.14%) Cisco Certification
17 3 (0.14%) HNC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 115 (5.42%) QA
2 50 (2.36%) Def Stans
3 39 (1.84%) Data Quality
4 36 (1.70%) IEC 61508
5 29 (1.37%) Accessibility
6 25 (1.18%) GDPR
7 22 (1.04%) MISRA
8 16 (0.75%) 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
14 4 (0.19%) 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
1 306 (14.41%) Docker
2 21 (0.99%) Firmware
3 17 (0.80%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.47%) Virtual Machines
5 9 (0.42%) Embedded Firmware
6 6 (0.28%) Active Directory
7 4 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
8 3 (0.14%) HDFS
9 2 (0.094%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 346 (16.30%) Kubernetes
2 209 (9.84%) Terraform
3 90 (4.24%) Grafana
4 64 (3.01%) Ansible
5 52 (2.45%) Prometheus
6 37 (1.74%) Argo
7 16 (0.75%) Puppet
8 12 (0.57%) 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
1 139 (6.55%) Microsoft
2 73 (3.44%) Google
3 62 (2.92%) Oracle
4 57 (2.68%) Red Hat
5 47 (2.21%) Databricks
6 24 (1.13%) IBM
7 23 (1.08%) OpenAI
8 18 (0.85%) Splunk
8 18 (0.85%) VMware
9 13 (0.61%) Foundry
9 13 (0.61%) Informatica
10 12 (0.57%) SAP
10 12 (0.57%) ServiceNow
11 11 (0.52%) Okta
11 11 (0.52%) PagerDuty
11 11 (0.52%) Siemens
12 10 (0.47%) Dynatrace
12 10 (0.47%) ForgeRock
12 10 (0.47%) MathWorks
13 9 (0.42%) Software AG