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

6 months to
29 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 31 44 30
Rank change year-on-year +13 -14 +10
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,705 1,365 1,851
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.84% 4.95% 5.72%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.90% 5.45% 6.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,448 829 1,117
10th Percentile £400 £375 £409
25th Percentile £463 £463 £498
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £580 £625
Median % change year-on-year -5.17% -7.20% +3.05%
75th Percentile £688 £738 £810
90th Percentile £775 £838 £888
UK median daily rate £550 £555 £600
% change year-on-year -0.90% -7.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 426 118 215
10th Percentile £51.25 £43.96 £46.18
25th Percentile £60.00 £52.50 £58.75
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.50
Median % change year-on-year - -0.76% +0.77%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.38 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £73.60 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.50
% change year-on-year - -0.76% +0.77%

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 39,188 25,068 27,886
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.60% 90.98% 86.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,853 15,921 17,051
10th Percentile £325 £298 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £645
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,855 1,537 1,209
10th Percentile £13.91 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.60 £17.87 £20.19
Median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +63.02% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.50 £47.00 £67.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £67.35 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £39.75 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +58.05% -40.82% -1.16%

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 29 September 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 29 September 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 29 September 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 -1 1,202 £600 -4.00% 4,043
North of England +19 459 £525 +5.00% 838
South East +31 340 £525 +10.53% 762
South West +16 302 £550 +15.79% 582
East of England +19 234 £510 +2.00% 528
North West +20 218 £550 +10.00% 515
Yorkshire +13 181 £500 - 224
Midlands +38 143 £470 -6.93% 418
West Midlands +18 99 £470 -18.26% 219
North East +1 64 £650 +31.65% 101
East Midlands +14 43 £435 +7.01% 199
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 57 (2.11%) Apache Spark
2 56 (2.07%) Confluence
3 48 (1.77%) Apache Airflow
4 31 (1.15%) Apache
5 16 (0.59%) CMS
6 13 (0.48%) SharePoint
7 8 (0.30%) Jupyter
8 7 (0.26%) Ethereum
8 7 (0.26%) SAS
9 6 (0.22%) Camunda
10 5 (0.18%) Apache Solr
10 5 (0.18%) Apache Superset
10 5 (0.18%) Hyperledger
10 5 (0.18%) WordPress
11 4 (0.15%) nginx
12 3 (0.11%) MQSeries
12 3 (0.11%) WebSphere
13 2 (0.074%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 2 (0.074%) Cloud Foundry
13 2 (0.074%) IIS
Applications
1 14 (0.52%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (0.41%) Chatbot
3 10 (0.37%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 10 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
4 5 (0.18%) Microsoft Excel
5 4 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.11%) CPLEX
6 3 (0.11%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.11%) Trello
7 2 (0.074%) CATIA
7 2 (0.074%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 2 (0.074%) Notion
7 2 (0.074%) Simulink
8 1 (0.037%) Adobe After Effects
8 1 (0.037%) Adobe XD
8 1 (0.037%) Blender
8 1 (0.037%) S-PLUS
Business Applications
1 7 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
2 6 (0.22%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.18%) Oracle Payroll
3 5 (0.18%) R3 Corda
4 4 (0.15%) Quorum
4 4 (0.15%) Ripple
5 3 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
5 3 (0.11%) Orchestrade
5 3 (0.11%) Primavera
5 3 (0.11%) Salesforce CRM
5 3 (0.11%) Temenos T24
6 2 (0.074%) Distributed Ledger
6 2 (0.074%) Endur
6 2 (0.074%) Remedy ITSM
7 1 (0.037%) Aladdin
7 1 (0.037%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 1 (0.037%) Sage 50
7 1 (0.037%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.037%) SAP S/4HANA
7 1 (0.037%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 685 (25.32%) AWS
2 551 (20.37%) Azure
3 286 (10.57%) GCP
4 243 (8.98%) GitHub
5 141 (5.21%) Serverless
6 127 (4.70%) GitHub Actions
7 117 (4.33%) Azure DevOps
8 101 (3.73%) AWS Lambda
9 72 (2.66%) Anthropic Claude
10 70 (2.59%) Amazon S3
11 67 (2.48%) GitHub Copilot
12 55 (2.03%) Amazon EKS
13 52 (1.92%) Amazon SQS
14 50 (1.85%) Amazon ECS
14 50 (1.85%) OpenShift
15 46 (1.70%) Snowflake
16 45 (1.66%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 44 (1.63%) Power Platform
18 35 (1.29%) dbt
19 32 (1.18%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 32 (1.18%) Wireless
2 29 (1.07%) Software-Defined Radio
3 23 (0.85%) Firewall
4 20 (0.74%) Internet
4 20 (0.74%) TCP/IP
4 20 (0.74%) VPN
5 18 (0.67%) Ethernet
5 18 (0.67%) HTTP
6 14 (0.52%) Wi-Fi
7 11 (0.41%) DNS
8 10 (0.37%) Network Security
9 9 (0.33%) RTP
9 9 (0.33%) Wireshark
10 6 (0.22%) 3GPP
10 6 (0.22%) Cisco IPT
11 5 (0.18%) SSL
12 4 (0.15%) Broadband
12 4 (0.15%) RS-232
13 3 (0.11%) RS-485
13 3 (0.11%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 141 (5.21%) PostgreSQL
2 96 (3.55%) Relational Database
3 84 (3.11%) SQL Server
4 82 (3.03%) NoSQL
5 61 (2.26%) MongoDB
6 53 (1.96%) Data Warehouse
7 41 (1.52%) DynamoDB
7 41 (1.52%) MySQL
8 34 (1.26%) Metadata
9 30 (1.11%) Amazon RDS
10 28 (1.04%) Data Lake
11 27 (1.00%) Big Data
11 27 (1.00%) Pinecone
11 27 (1.00%) Power BI
11 27 (1.00%) Redis
12 26 (0.96%) BigQuery
12 26 (0.96%) Elasticsearch
13 21 (0.78%) Weaviate
14 20 (0.74%) Chroma
15 16 (0.59%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 276 (10.20%) Git
2 156 (5.77%) GitLab
3 151 (5.58%) Jenkins
4 116 (4.29%) JIRA
5 48 (1.77%) SonarQube
6 41 (1.52%) Claude Code
7 37 (1.37%) Gradle
8 35 (1.29%) JUnit
9 31 (1.15%) Visual Studio
10 29 (1.07%) Rational DOORS
11 28 (1.04%) Selenium
12 27 (1.00%) Maven
13 22 (0.81%) Cucumber
14 20 (0.74%) Rational Rhapsody
15 17 (0.63%) Mockito
16 15 (0.55%) LabVIEW
17 14 (0.52%) Cypress.io
18 13 (0.48%) Bitbucket
19 12 (0.44%) Snyk
20 10 (0.37%) Postman
General
1 570 (21.07%) Social Skills
2 512 (18.93%) Finance
3 223 (8.24%) Banking
4 201 (7.43%) Public Sector
5 190 (7.02%) Analytical Skills
6 91 (3.36%) Aerospace
7 81 (2.99%) Front Office
8 55 (2.03%) Investment Banking
9 52 (1.92%) Manufacturing
10 46 (1.70%) Retail
11 45 (1.66%) Law
12 40 (1.48%) Automotive
13 32 (1.18%) Military
14 31 (1.15%) Telecoms
15 26 (0.96%) Aviation
15 26 (0.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 26 (0.96%) Influencing Skills
16 25 (0.92%) Marketing
17 19 (0.70%) Back Office
18 16 (0.59%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,105 (40.85%) Software Engineer
2 529 (19.56%) Developer
3 519 (19.19%) Senior
4 294 (10.87%) Lead
5 202 (7.47%) Senior Software Engineer
6 157 (5.80%) Java Engineer
7 155 (5.73%) Embedded Engineer
8 149 (5.51%) Embedded Software Engineer
8 149 (5.51%) Java Developer
9 145 (5.36%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
10 128 (4.73%) Software Developer
11 126 (4.66%) Java Software Engineer
12 116 (4.29%) C++ Software Engineer
13 113 (4.18%) Senior Developer
14 111 (4.10%) Architect
15 104 (3.84%) Data Engineer
16 103 (3.81%) Python Engineer
17 85 (3.14%) DevOps Engineer
18 76 (2.81%) AWS Engineer
18 76 (2.81%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 298 (11.02%) Terraform
2 255 (9.43%) React
3 239 (8.84%) REST
4 224 (8.28%) Spring
5 221 (8.17%) .NET
6 213 (7.87%) Spring Boot
7 173 (6.40%) Kafka
8 148 (5.47%) RESTful
9 138 (5.10%) Node.js
10 95 (3.51%) AngularJS
11 62 (2.29%) Django
12 60 (2.22%) LangChain
12 60 (2.22%) OAuth
13 59 (2.18%) HTML
14 57 (2.11%) CSS
15 54 (2.00%) Next.js
16 50 (1.85%) Web Services
17 44 (1.63%) FastAPI
18 43 (1.59%) .NET Core
18 43 (1.59%) Model Context Protocol
Miscellaneous
1 424 (15.67%) Cloud Native
2 240 (8.87%) Distributed Systems
3 153 (5.66%) Product Ownership
4 148 (5.47%) AI Agents
5 73 (2.70%) Algorithms
6 69 (2.55%) Enterprise Software
7 61 (2.26%) Onboarding
8 58 (2.14%) Data Structures
9 47 (1.74%) Data Protection Act
10 45 (1.66%) Embedded Systems
11 36 (1.33%) Legacy Systems
12 35 (1.29%) Self-Motivation
13 33 (1.22%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 29 (1.07%) Fixed Income
15 27 (1.00%) Greenfield Project
16 26 (0.96%) Derivative
17 24 (0.89%) Equities
18 23 (0.85%) Robotics
19 21 (0.78%) Virtual Team
20 19 (0.70%) Legacy Applications
Operating Systems
1 188 (6.95%) Linux
2 66 (2.44%) Windows
3 35 (1.29%) Unix
4 20 (0.74%) Embedded Linux
4 20 (0.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 14 (0.52%) FreeRTOS
6 12 (0.44%) Android
6 12 (0.44%) Windows Server
7 8 (0.30%) Ubuntu
8 7 (0.26%) Apple iOS
9 5 (0.18%) Debian
10 3 (0.11%) Rocky
10 3 (0.11%) VxWorks
11 2 (0.074%) VMS
11 2 (0.074%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.074%) zOS
12 1 (0.037%) Solaris
12 1 (0.037%) Tizen
12 1 (0.037%) webOS
12 1 (0.037%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 952 (35.19%) CI/CD
2 819 (30.28%) Agile
3 647 (23.92%) DevOps
4 601 (22.22%) AI
5 403 (14.90%) Test Automation
6 398 (14.71%) Microservices
7 346 (12.79%) Continuous Improvement
8 330 (12.20%) Problem-Solving
9 329 (12.16%) Infrastructure as Code
10 288 (10.65%) Observability
11 271 (10.02%) SDLC
12 262 (9.69%) Containerisation
13 259 (9.57%) Full-Stack Development
14 252 (9.32%) Stakeholder Management
15 238 (8.80%) Technical Leadership
16 234 (8.65%) Machine Learning
17 228 (8.43%) LLM
17 228 (8.43%) Platform Engineering
18 220 (8.13%) Event-Driven
19 216 (7.99%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 796 (29.43%) Python
2 670 (24.77%) Java
3 385 (14.23%) SQL
4 308 (11.39%) TypeScript
5 300 (11.09%) C#
6 227 (8.39%) C++
6 227 (8.39%) JavaScript
7 117 (4.33%) C
8 83 (3.07%) Go
9 78 (2.88%) Ada
10 68 (2.51%) Kotlin
11 50 (1.85%) PowerShell
12 47 (1.74%) Bash
13 44 (1.63%) Rust
14 39 (1.44%) Scala
15 29 (1.07%) Embedded C
16 23 (0.85%) Bicep
16 23 (0.85%) PL/SQL
17 21 (0.78%) PHP
18 17 (0.63%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 582 (21.52%) Security Cleared
2 486 (17.97%) SC Cleared
3 216 (7.99%) Degree
4 99 (3.66%) Computer Science Degree
5 96 (3.55%) DV Cleared
6 61 (2.26%) BPSS Clearance
7 48 (1.77%) Master's Degree
8 45 (1.66%) AWS Certification
9 24 (0.89%) Azure Certification
10 18 (0.67%) PhD
11 15 (0.55%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 13 (0.48%) PMP
13 10 (0.37%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 9 (0.33%) CISSP
15 6 (0.22%) Chartered Engineer
15 6 (0.22%) TOGAF Certification
16 5 (0.18%) ISTQB
16 5 (0.18%) Numerate Degree
16 5 (0.18%) PMI Certification
17 4 (0.15%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 178 (6.58%) QA
2 78 (2.88%) Data Quality
3 59 (2.18%) Accessibility
4 22 (0.81%) MISRA
5 21 (0.78%) GDPR
6 17 (0.63%) Def Stans
7 14 (0.52%) NIST
7 14 (0.52%) WCAG
8 12 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 11 (0.41%) IEC 61508
9 11 (0.41%) MISRA C
10 10 (0.37%) DO-178B
11 9 (0.33%) GRC
12 6 (0.22%) NCSC
13 5 (0.18%) EMIR
13 5 (0.18%) HL7
13 5 (0.18%) JSP 440
13 5 (0.18%) MiFID
14 4 (0.15%) PCI DSS
15 3 (0.11%) DO-254
System Software
1 392 (14.49%) Docker
2 28 (1.04%) Firmware
3 17 (0.63%) Embedded Firmware
4 15 (0.55%) Active Directory
5 13 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
6 8 (0.30%) VMware Infrastructure
7 1 (0.037%) Oracle RAC
7 1 (0.037%) zsh
Systems Management
1 443 (16.38%) Kubernetes
2 97 (3.59%) Ansible
3 58 (2.14%) Grafana
4 45 (1.66%) Prometheus
5 34 (1.26%) Argo
6 19 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
7 16 (0.59%) Kibana
8 10 (0.37%) Puppet
9 6 (0.22%) Functional Safety
10 4 (0.15%) Consul
10 4 (0.15%) Istio
10 4 (0.15%) Kubeflow
10 4 (0.15%) Kustomize
10 4 (0.15%) Progress Chef
11 3 (0.11%) HP Fortify
12 2 (0.074%) Cilium
12 2 (0.074%) HAProxy
12 2 (0.074%) Packer
12 2 (0.074%) Podman
12 2 (0.074%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 153 (5.66%) Microsoft
2 106 (3.92%) Google
3 86 (3.18%) Databricks
4 82 (3.03%) Oracle
5 70 (2.59%) OpenAI
6 36 (1.33%) Red Hat
7 31 (1.15%) Salesforce
8 26 (0.96%) Splunk
9 19 (0.70%) IBM
10 17 (0.63%) Foundry
10 17 (0.63%) Informatica
10 17 (0.63%) ServiceNow
11 13 (0.48%) Adobe
12 12 (0.44%) SAP
13 10 (0.37%) VMware
14 9 (0.33%) Checkmarx
15 8 (0.30%) Dynatrace
15 8 (0.30%) Siemens
16 7 (0.26%) ForgeRock
16 7 (0.26%) Hitachi