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 5 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 45 31 41
Rank change year-on-year -14 +10 -4
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 1,456 1,728 1,865
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.95% 5.56% 4.73%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.46% 6.42% 5.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 857 1,038 1,270
10th Percentile £375 £404 £425
25th Percentile £463 £498 £504
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £600 £620
Median % change year-on-year -4.17% -3.23% +3.33%
75th Percentile £700 £788 £738
90th Percentile £838 £875 £823
UK median daily rate £550 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 146 162 234
10th Percentile £44.50 £44.66 £46.18
25th Percentile £52.50 £55.34 £51.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -0.76% +0.77% -
75th Percentile £67.00 £70.00 £69.00
90th Percentile £74.01 £75.00 £83.88
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 26,653 26,912 35,008
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 90.59% 86.57% 88.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 16,923 16,411 24,057
10th Percentile £295 £313 £313
25th Percentile £405 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £508 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.33% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £535
% change year-on-year -4.76% -1.87% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,722 972 1,474
10th Percentile £14.70 £15.00 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.79 £20.00 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £38.04 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -33.88% -15.48% +28.57%
75th Percentile £45.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.50 £74.40 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £35.36 £44.50
% change year-on-year -28.87% -20.54% +27.14%

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 5 November 2025.

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 5 November 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 5 November 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 -7 812 £625 -7.41% 2,293
North of England -8 203 £520 -0.95% 688
South West -10 111 £458 -23.11% 391
Yorkshire -1 105 £523 -5.00% 144
East of England -8 103 £550 +22.22% 406
South East -39 91 £475 -5.00% 1,752
North West -25 79 £550 +15.79% 447
Midlands -42 63 £525 +7.14% 239
West Midlands -21 50 £537 +8.48% 131
North East -5 22 £488 -18.41% 99
East Midlands -33 13 £421 -11.37% 100
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 77 (5.29%) Apache Airflow
2 72 (4.95%) Apache
3 52 (3.57%) Confluence
4 27 (1.85%) Apache Spark
5 14 (0.96%) JBoss
6 11 (0.76%) CMS
6 11 (0.76%) WebLogic
7 4 (0.27%) nginx
7 4 (0.27%) OpenStack
7 4 (0.27%) SAS
7 4 (0.27%) WordPress
8 3 (0.21%) Appian
8 3 (0.21%) IIS
8 3 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
8 3 (0.21%) SharePoint
8 3 (0.21%) Sitecore CMS
9 2 (0.14%) Drupal
9 2 (0.14%) Magnolia
9 2 (0.14%) Tomcat
10 1 (0.069%) Gunicorn
Applications
1 16 (1.10%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.89%) Chatbot
3 10 (0.69%) Simulink
4 9 (0.62%) Microsoft Office
4 9 (0.62%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.21%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.069%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.069%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.069%) Stateflow
Business Applications
1 8 (0.55%) Aladdin
1 8 (0.55%) FLEXCUBE
1 8 (0.55%) Oracle BPM
1 8 (0.55%) Temenos T24
2 3 (0.21%) Fidessa
2 3 (0.21%) thinkFolio
3 2 (0.14%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.069%) ION Anvil
4 1 (0.069%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.069%) Primavera
4 1 (0.069%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 537 (36.88%) AWS
2 250 (17.17%) Azure
3 174 (11.95%) GCP
4 159 (10.92%) Serverless
5 125 (8.59%) GitHub
6 71 (4.88%) GitHub Actions
7 69 (4.74%) dbt
8 66 (4.53%) AWS Lambda
9 63 (4.33%) Azure DevOps
10 58 (3.98%) Snowflake
11 44 (3.02%) Amazon S3
12 38 (2.61%) Power Platform
13 36 (2.47%) Amazon ECS
14 32 (2.20%) Azure AKS
15 28 (1.92%) AWS CloudFormation
16 27 (1.85%) OpenShift
17 25 (1.72%) Azure Functions
18 24 (1.65%) Amazon EKS
19 23 (1.58%) Amazon EC2
19 23 (1.58%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.79%) Ethernet
2 20 (1.37%) TCP/IP
3 11 (0.76%) Firewall
4 9 (0.62%) Internet
4 9 (0.62%) Network Security
4 9 (0.62%) NFC
4 9 (0.62%) PPP
5 7 (0.48%) Wireless
6 6 (0.41%) HTTP
7 4 (0.27%) tcpdump
7 4 (0.27%) VPN
8 3 (0.21%) BGP
8 3 (0.21%) Kerberos
8 3 (0.21%) Software-Defined Networking
8 3 (0.21%) VLAN
9 2 (0.14%) HTTPS
9 2 (0.14%) SSH
9 2 (0.14%) SSL
9 2 (0.14%) Wi-Fi
9 2 (0.14%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 129 (8.86%) PostgreSQL
2 80 (5.49%) NoSQL
3 69 (4.74%) Apache Cassandra
4 66 (4.53%) MongoDB
5 64 (4.40%) Amazon Athena
6 59 (4.05%) Apache Arrow
6 59 (4.05%) Apache Iceberg
6 59 (4.05%) Dremio
7 53 (3.64%) Data Lake
8 41 (2.82%) SQL Server
9 37 (2.54%) Big Data
10 36 (2.47%) Apache Ignite
11 33 (2.27%) Relational Database
12 32 (2.20%) MySQL
13 31 (2.13%) Hadoop
14 29 (1.99%) Power BI
15 28 (1.92%) Elasticsearch
16 24 (1.65%) DynamoDB
17 21 (1.44%) Amazon RDS
18 19 (1.30%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 168 (11.54%) Git
2 138 (9.48%) Jenkins
3 98 (6.73%) JIRA
4 93 (6.39%) GitLab
5 36 (2.47%) Selenium
6 35 (2.40%) Eclipse
7 34 (2.34%) JUnit
7 34 (2.34%) Liquibase
8 30 (2.06%) Cypress.io
9 27 (1.85%) Cucumber
10 24 (1.65%) Gradle
10 24 (1.65%) SonarQube
11 22 (1.51%) Visual Studio
12 17 (1.17%) Maven
13 16 (1.10%) Artifactory
13 16 (1.10%) Mockito
14 15 (1.03%) Rational DOORS
15 13 (0.89%) Bitbucket
15 13 (0.89%) TeamCity
16 12 (0.82%) Postman
General
1 367 (25.21%) Finance
2 337 (23.15%) Social Skills
3 176 (12.09%) Banking
4 124 (8.52%) Front Office
5 102 (7.01%) Public Sector
6 87 (5.98%) Investment Banking
7 83 (5.70%) Analytical Skills
8 40 (2.75%) Military
9 39 (2.68%) Financial Institution
10 28 (1.92%) Aerospace
11 22 (1.51%) Law
12 21 (1.44%) Influencing Skills
13 19 (1.30%) Presentation Skills
14 18 (1.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 16 (1.10%) Pharmaceutical
16 14 (0.96%) Documentation Skills
16 14 (0.96%) Electronics
16 14 (0.96%) Retail
17 12 (0.82%) Telecoms
18 11 (0.76%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 633 (43.48%) Software Engineer
2 372 (25.55%) Developer
3 287 (19.71%) Senior
4 142 (9.75%) Senior Software Engineer
5 120 (8.24%) Lead
5 120 (8.24%) Python Engineer
6 101 (6.94%) AWS Engineer
7 96 (6.59%) Java Engineer
8 91 (6.25%) AWS Software Engineer
9 89 (6.11%) C++ Software Engineer
9 89 (6.11%) Java Software Engineer
10 87 (5.98%) Python Software Engineer
11 73 (5.01%) Python Developer
12 70 (4.81%) Java Developer
13 65 (4.46%) Developer/Software Engineer
14 57 (3.91%) Senior Developer
15 53 (3.64%) Full-Stack Engineer
16 49 (3.37%) Architect
17 45 (3.09%) Data Engineer
17 45 (3.09%) Lead Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 251 (17.24%) React
2 221 (15.18%) Kafka
3 179 (12.29%) Node.js
4 135 (9.27%) .NET
5 132 (9.07%) REST
6 117 (8.04%) RESTful
7 113 (7.76%) gRPC
8 112 (7.69%) AngularJS
9 93 (6.39%) Pandas
10 88 (6.04%) NumPy
11 86 (5.91%) Spring
12 80 (5.49%) SciPy
13 66 (4.53%) Vue
14 64 (4.40%) Spring Boot
15 61 (4.19%) HTML
16 54 (3.71%) JSON
17 52 (3.57%) FastAPI
18 50 (3.43%) GraphQL
19 42 (2.88%) CSS
20 39 (2.68%) Redux
Miscellaneous
1 162 (11.13%) Cloud Native
2 126 (8.65%) Distributed Systems
3 117 (8.04%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 110 (7.55%) Fixed Income
5 77 (5.29%) Equities
6 72 (4.95%) Hedge funds
7 58 (3.98%) Algorithms
8 48 (3.30%) Derivative
9 42 (2.88%) Data Structures
9 42 (2.88%) Product Ownership
10 36 (2.47%) Pricing Data
11 35 (2.40%) Public Cloud
12 34 (2.34%) Virtual Team
13 33 (2.27%) Greenfield Project
14 32 (2.20%) Data Protection Act
15 21 (1.44%) Self-Motivation
16 19 (1.30%) Legacy Systems
17 16 (1.10%) Embedded Systems
17 16 (1.10%) Mobile App
17 16 (1.10%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 234 (16.07%) Linux
2 70 (4.81%) Windows
3 52 (3.57%) Unix
4 22 (1.51%) Ubuntu
5 18 (1.24%) Android
6 10 (0.69%) Apple iOS
7 8 (0.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 8 (0.55%) Windows Server
8 6 (0.41%) Mac OS
9 5 (0.34%) FreeRTOS
10 4 (0.27%) VMS
11 1 (0.069%) Amazon Linux
11 1 (0.069%) Robot Operating System
11 1 (0.069%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.069%) Windows Embedded Compact
11 1 (0.069%) Windows Server 2008
11 1 (0.069%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 616 (42.31%) Agile
2 451 (30.98%) CI/CD
3 343 (23.56%) DevOps
4 295 (20.26%) Microservices
5 229 (15.73%) Problem-Solving
6 185 (12.71%) Containerisation
7 181 (12.43%) Infrastructure as Code
8 176 (12.09%) Test Automation
9 163 (11.20%) Computer Science
10 159 (10.92%) Mentoring
11 156 (10.71%) Full-Stack Development
11 156 (10.71%) TDD
12 154 (10.58%) AI
13 141 (9.68%) Scrum
14 130 (8.93%) Machine Learning
15 115 (7.90%) Clean Code
16 109 (7.49%) Open Source
17 99 (6.80%) Continuous Integration
18 98 (6.73%) Investment Management
19 87 (5.98%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 533 (36.61%) Python
2 406 (27.88%) Java
3 308 (21.15%) JavaScript
4 262 (17.99%) SQL
5 252 (17.31%) TypeScript
6 238 (16.35%) C++
7 205 (14.08%) C#
8 141 (9.68%) Go
9 66 (4.53%) C
10 35 (2.40%) Ada
11 34 (2.34%) Shell Script
12 30 (2.06%) Rust
13 27 (1.85%) Bash
14 20 (1.37%) Scala
14 20 (1.37%) VB
15 19 (1.30%) PowerShell
16 16 (1.10%) PL/SQL
17 15 (1.03%) MATLAB
17 15 (1.03%) PHP
17 15 (1.03%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 249 (17.10%) Security Cleared
2 202 (13.87%) SC Cleared
3 195 (13.39%) Degree
4 94 (6.46%) Computer Science Degree
5 49 (3.37%) Master's Degree
6 48 (3.30%) DV Cleared
7 20 (1.37%) BPSS Clearance
8 18 (1.24%) AWS Certification
9 17 (1.17%) MCP
10 16 (1.10%) PhD
11 11 (0.76%) CISSP
12 10 (0.69%) Azure Certification
12 10 (0.69%) CISM
13 9 (0.62%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 7 (0.48%) Postgraduate
14 7 (0.48%) TOGAF Certification
15 6 (0.41%) ISTQB
16 4 (0.27%) PMP
17 3 (0.21%) EMC Certification
17 3 (0.21%) HNC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 76 (5.22%) QA
2 30 (2.06%) Data Quality
3 27 (1.85%) Accessibility
4 21 (1.44%) WCAG
5 19 (1.30%) Def Stans
6 18 (1.24%) IEC 61508
7 16 (1.10%) MISRA
8 15 (1.03%) GDPR
9 14 (0.96%) NIST
10 13 (0.89%) EU AI Act
11 12 (0.82%) MISRA C
12 9 (0.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
13 5 (0.34%) DO-178B
13 5 (0.34%) SLA
13 5 (0.34%) Software Quality Assurance
14 4 (0.27%) ISO 26262
14 4 (0.27%) MiFID
15 3 (0.21%) NCSC
15 3 (0.21%) SEPA
15 3 (0.21%) SOC 2
System Software
1 332 (22.80%) Docker
2 16 (1.10%) Active Directory
3 6 (0.41%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (0.34%) Firmware
4 5 (0.34%) zsh
5 2 (0.14%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (0.069%) Embedded Firmware
6 1 (0.069%) KVM
6 1 (0.069%) Virtual Desktop
6 1 (0.069%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 318 (21.84%) Kubernetes
2 175 (12.02%) Terraform
3 64 (4.40%) Ansible
4 59 (4.05%) Grafana
5 52 (3.57%) Prometheus
6 14 (0.96%) Puppet
7 13 (0.89%) Kibana
8 8 (0.55%) Podman
8 8 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
9 7 (0.48%) Argo
10 6 (0.41%) Progress Chef
11 4 (0.27%) Functional Safety
11 4 (0.27%) Kubeflow
12 3 (0.21%) Cilium
12 3 (0.21%) Rsyslog
12 3 (0.21%) SCOM
12 3 (0.21%) SELinux
13 2 (0.14%) Packer
13 2 (0.14%) rkt
14 1 (0.069%) Consul
Vendors
1 121 (8.31%) Microsoft
2 59 (4.05%) Oracle
3 52 (3.57%) Google
4 39 (2.68%) Splunk
5 32 (2.20%) Foundry
6 30 (2.06%) Databricks
7 27 (1.85%) Red Hat
8 15 (1.03%) Atlassian
8 15 (1.03%) Palantir
9 14 (0.96%) Cloudera
10 10 (0.69%) OpenAI
10 10 (0.69%) Salesforce
10 10 (0.69%) Temenos
11 9 (0.62%) BiZZdesign
11 9 (0.62%) CA Agile Central
11 9 (0.62%) SAP
11 9 (0.62%) webMethods
12 8 (0.55%) ServiceNow
13 7 (0.48%) Cisco
14 6 (0.41%) NVIDIA