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 12 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 40 42 34
Rank change year-on-year +2 -8 +8
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 1,824 1,226 1,928
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.01% 4.98% 5.07%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.79% 5.49% 5.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 949 801 1,114
10th Percentile £381 £413 £425
25th Percentile £450 £500 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -
75th Percentile £675 £750 £738
90th Percentile £788 £838 £800
UK median daily rate £545 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -9.17% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 369 80 322
10th Percentile £52.50 £42.95 £46.25
25th Percentile £61.25 £59.01 £51.94
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year - +4.00% -3.85%
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.00 £68.44
90th Percentile £72.50 £68.75 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year - +4.00% -3.85%

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 31,521 22,327 33,048
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.53% 90.61% 86.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,160 14,432 21,853
10th Percentile £313 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,961 797 2,159
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.25 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.00 £16.06
Median hourly rate £30.00 £34.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -13.04% +6.15% -9.72%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £76.63 £70.53
UK median hourly rate £29.61 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year -8.89% - -7.14%

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 12 March 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 12 March 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 12 March 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 -11 788 £600 -9.09% 607
North of England +10 274 £518 -1.43% 246
South West +9 245 £500 -15.25% 230
East of England +32 177 £475 +5.56% 153
South East -3 172 £500 - 383
North West +7 131 £515 -6.36% 123
Midlands -12 102 £500 +4.82% 108
Yorkshire -9 97 £525 - 94
West Midlands -14 86 £500 +4.82% 57
North East +24 51 £488 - 30
East Midlands -30 16 £506 +2.27% 51
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 61 (3.34%) Confluence
2 49 (2.69%) Apache
3 48 (2.63%) Apache Spark
4 22 (1.21%) Apache Airflow
5 13 (0.71%) WebLogic
6 10 (0.55%) CMS
7 8 (0.44%) JBoss
7 8 (0.44%) Palantir Foundry
8 5 (0.27%) OpenStack
9 4 (0.22%) IIS
9 4 (0.22%) nginx
10 3 (0.16%) SAS
10 3 (0.16%) SharePoint
10 3 (0.16%) Sitecore CMS
11 2 (0.11%) Camunda
11 2 (0.11%) Magnolia
11 2 (0.11%) Tomcat
11 2 (0.11%) WinCC
11 2 (0.11%) WordPress
12 1 (0.055%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 15 (0.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.77%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (0.55%) Chatbot
4 5 (0.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.16%) Simulink
6 2 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.055%) CPLEX
7 1 (0.055%) Maya
7 1 (0.055%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.055%) OrCAD
7 1 (0.055%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.11%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.11%) LabWindows
1 2 (0.11%) Primavera
2 1 (0.055%) Aladdin
2 1 (0.055%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.055%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 1 (0.055%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 533 (29.22%) AWS
2 331 (18.15%) Azure
3 180 (9.87%) GCP
4 135 (7.40%) Serverless
5 129 (7.07%) GitHub
6 65 (3.56%) Azure DevOps
7 62 (3.40%) GitHub Actions
8 61 (3.34%) AWS Lambda
9 60 (3.29%) Amazon S3
10 47 (2.58%) Azure AKS
11 46 (2.52%) Power Platform
12 45 (2.47%) OpenShift
13 44 (2.41%) Amazon EKS
14 41 (2.25%) AWS CloudFormation
15 37 (2.03%) Azure Functions
16 34 (1.86%) Amazon EC2
16 34 (1.86%) Amazon ECS
17 31 (1.70%) SaaS
18 25 (1.37%) Datadog
19 23 (1.26%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 20 (1.10%) Ethernet
2 12 (0.66%) Network Security
2 12 (0.66%) TCP/IP
3 9 (0.49%) Firewall
4 7 (0.38%) Internet
5 5 (0.27%) 3GPP
5 5 (0.27%) Modbus
5 5 (0.27%) Software-Defined Radio
6 4 (0.22%) BGP
6 4 (0.22%) HTTP
6 4 (0.22%) RS-232
6 4 (0.22%) RS-485
6 4 (0.22%) Software-Defined Networking
6 4 (0.22%) VLAN
6 4 (0.22%) Wireless
7 3 (0.16%) IPv4
7 3 (0.16%) IPv6
7 3 (0.16%) Kerberos
7 3 (0.16%) PPP
7 3 (0.16%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 121 (6.63%) PostgreSQL
2 74 (4.06%) Apache Cassandra
3 67 (3.67%) NoSQL
4 65 (3.56%) MongoDB
5 52 (2.85%) SQL Server
6 50 (2.74%) Relational Database
7 35 (1.92%) Data Lake
8 34 (1.86%) Amazon RDS
9 33 (1.81%) Big Data
9 33 (1.81%) Power BI
10 28 (1.54%) BigQuery
10 28 (1.54%) MySQL
11 26 (1.43%) Metadata
12 20 (1.10%) DynamoDB
12 20 (1.10%) Hadoop
13 17 (0.93%) Amazon Athena
13 17 (0.93%) Data Warehouse
14 15 (0.82%) Elasticsearch
14 15 (0.82%) Mixpanel
15 12 (0.66%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 180 (9.87%) Git
2 126 (6.91%) Jenkins
3 117 (6.41%) GitLab
4 103 (5.65%) JIRA
5 32 (1.75%) Rational DOORS
6 31 (1.70%) Selenium
7 29 (1.59%) JUnit
7 29 (1.59%) SonarQube
8 27 (1.48%) Cucumber
8 27 (1.48%) Rational Rhapsody
9 26 (1.43%) Cypress.io
9 26 (1.43%) Gradle
10 24 (1.32%) Bitbucket
10 24 (1.32%) IntelliJ
11 22 (1.21%) Eclipse
12 18 (0.99%) Maven
13 16 (0.88%) Visual Studio
14 15 (0.82%) Liquibase
15 14 (0.77%) Mockito
16 12 (0.66%) Postman
General
1 309 (16.94%) Finance
2 298 (16.34%) Social Skills
3 120 (6.58%) Public Sector
4 114 (6.25%) Banking
5 95 (5.21%) Analytical Skills
6 65 (3.56%) Front Office
7 61 (3.34%) Aerospace
8 42 (2.30%) Electronics
9 32 (1.75%) Law
10 31 (1.70%) Financial Institution
10 31 (1.70%) Retail
11 30 (1.64%) Investment Banking
12 27 (1.48%) Military
13 25 (1.37%) Influencing Skills
14 23 (1.26%) Manufacturing
15 20 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
15 20 (1.10%) Telecoms
16 17 (0.93%) Pharmaceutical
17 13 (0.71%) Documentation Skills
18 11 (0.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 941 (51.59%) Software Engineer
2 346 (18.97%) Senior
3 335 (18.37%) Developer
4 158 (8.66%) Senior Software Engineer
5 143 (7.84%) Lead
6 122 (6.69%) C++ Software Engineer
7 118 (6.47%) Java Engineer
8 102 (5.59%) Embedded Engineer
9 96 (5.26%) Java Software Engineer
10 91 (4.99%) Embedded Software Engineer
11 75 (4.11%) Java Developer
12 72 (3.95%) Senior Developer
13 71 (3.89%) Architect
14 70 (3.84%) Python Engineer
15 62 (3.40%) Developer/Software Engineer
16 60 (3.29%) Python Developer
17 55 (3.02%) Lead Software Engineer
18 54 (2.96%) Data Engineer
19 49 (2.69%) AWS Engineer
19 49 (2.69%) Full-Stack Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 233 (12.77%) React
2 217 (11.90%) Kafka
3 165 (9.05%) Node.js
4 143 (7.84%) REST
5 137 (7.51%) .NET
6 117 (6.41%) Spring
7 106 (5.81%) RESTful
8 104 (5.70%) Spring Boot
9 91 (4.99%) AngularJS
10 78 (4.28%) gRPC
11 67 (3.67%) GraphQL
12 64 (3.51%) Middleware
13 55 (3.02%) HTML
14 54 (2.96%) Redux
15 51 (2.80%) JSON
16 49 (2.69%) CSS
17 38 (2.08%) FastAPI
17 38 (2.08%) Playwright
17 38 (2.08%) Vue
18 34 (1.86%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 212 (11.62%) Cloud Native
2 133 (7.29%) Distributed Systems
3 89 (4.88%) Product Ownership
4 66 (3.62%) Algorithms
5 62 (3.40%) Fixed Income
6 41 (2.25%) Data Protection Act
7 34 (1.86%) Mobile App
8 32 (1.75%) Legacy Systems
9 29 (1.59%) Derivative
10 28 (1.54%) AI Agents
10 28 (1.54%) Data Structures
11 27 (1.48%) Equities
11 27 (1.48%) Greenfield Project
11 27 (1.48%) Onboarding
12 26 (1.43%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 23 (1.26%) Embedded Systems
14 22 (1.21%) Hedge funds
14 22 (1.21%) Public Cloud
15 20 (1.10%) Life Science
16 19 (1.04%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 208 (11.40%) Linux
2 77 (4.22%) Windows
3 55 (3.02%) Unix
4 26 (1.43%) Android
5 19 (1.04%) Apple iOS
5 19 (1.04%) Ubuntu
6 16 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 14 (0.77%) Windows Server
8 6 (0.33%) FreeRTOS
9 3 (0.16%) Debian
9 3 (0.16%) Embedded Linux
9 3 (0.16%) VMS
10 2 (0.11%) Mac OS
10 2 (0.11%) Robot Operating System
10 2 (0.11%) Rocky
10 2 (0.11%) Solaris
10 2 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
10 2 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.055%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.055%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 566 (31.03%) Agile
2 521 (28.56%) CI/CD
3 369 (20.23%) DevOps
4 316 (17.32%) Microservices
5 265 (14.53%) AI
6 238 (13.05%) Problem-Solving
7 212 (11.62%) Containerisation
8 202 (11.07%) Test Automation
9 187 (10.25%) Full-Stack Development
10 179 (9.81%) Infrastructure as Code
11 165 (9.05%) Machine Learning
12 163 (8.94%) Computer Science
13 156 (8.55%) Mentoring
14 150 (8.22%) Continuous Improvement
15 131 (7.18%) Scrum
16 129 (7.07%) SDLC
17 126 (6.91%) Observability
18 118 (6.47%) TDD
19 116 (6.36%) Technical Leadership
20 115 (6.30%) Open Source
Programming Languages
1 526 (28.84%) Python
2 437 (23.96%) Java
3 249 (13.65%) C++
4 248 (13.60%) SQL
5 242 (13.27%) JavaScript
6 227 (12.45%) TypeScript
7 218 (11.95%) C#
8 168 (9.21%) Go
9 116 (6.36%) Ada
10 113 (6.20%) C
11 35 (1.92%) PowerShell
12 33 (1.81%) Shell Script
13 32 (1.75%) Rust
14 30 (1.64%) Bash
14 30 (1.64%) Kotlin
15 26 (1.43%) Embedded C
16 24 (1.32%) Embedded C++
17 20 (1.10%) MATLAB
17 20 (1.10%) Scala
18 17 (0.93%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 419 (22.97%) Security Cleared
2 321 (17.60%) SC Cleared
3 201 (11.02%) Degree
4 92 (5.04%) Computer Science Degree
5 58 (3.18%) DV Cleared
5 58 (3.18%) Master's Degree
6 24 (1.32%) BPSS Clearance
7 20 (1.10%) PhD
8 19 (1.04%) AWS Certification
8 19 (1.04%) CISSP
9 17 (0.93%) CISM
10 16 (0.88%) Azure Certification
11 15 (0.82%) TOGAF Certification
12 11 (0.60%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 11 (0.60%) Microsoft Certified Professional
13 7 (0.38%) ISTQB
14 6 (0.33%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 5 (0.27%) Microsoft Certification
16 4 (0.22%) HND
16 4 (0.22%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 94 (5.15%) QA
2 55 (3.02%) Def Stans
3 38 (2.08%) Data Quality
3 38 (2.08%) IEC 61508
4 33 (1.81%) Accessibility
5 31 (1.70%) MISRA
6 26 (1.43%) GDPR
7 21 (1.15%) MISRA C
8 18 (0.99%) WCAG
9 17 (0.93%) NIST
10 11 (0.60%) DO-178B
11 10 (0.55%) EU AI Act
12 6 (0.33%) HL7
12 6 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
13 4 (0.22%) NCSC
14 3 (0.16%) SLA
15 2 (0.11%) FATCA
15 2 (0.11%) PCI DSS
15 2 (0.11%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 2 (0.11%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 332 (18.20%) Docker
2 18 (0.99%) Firmware
3 15 (0.82%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
5 8 (0.44%) Active Directory
6 4 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
7 3 (0.16%) Embedded Firmware
7 3 (0.16%) HDFS
8 2 (0.11%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 362 (19.85%) Kubernetes
2 204 (11.18%) Terraform
3 95 (5.21%) Grafana
4 65 (3.56%) Ansible
5 58 (3.18%) Prometheus
6 24 (1.32%) Argo
7 23 (1.26%) Puppet
8 13 (0.71%) Progress Chef
9 10 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
10 6 (0.33%) Istio
11 5 (0.27%) HP Quality Center
11 5 (0.27%) Kibana
11 5 (0.27%) Kubeflow
12 4 (0.22%) Data Guard
12 4 (0.22%) Podman
13 3 (0.16%) Docker Swarm
13 3 (0.16%) HP ALM
13 3 (0.16%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
14 2 (0.11%) Functional Safety
14 2 (0.11%) rkt
Vendors
1 142 (7.79%) Microsoft
2 69 (3.78%) Google
3 61 (3.34%) Red Hat
4 57 (3.13%) Oracle
5 45 (2.47%) Databricks
6 28 (1.54%) Splunk
7 25 (1.37%) Foundry
8 18 (0.99%) IBM
9 16 (0.88%) BiZZdesign
9 16 (0.88%) VMware
10 14 (0.77%) OpenAI
11 10 (0.55%) Atlassian
11 10 (0.55%) PagerDuty
11 10 (0.55%) Siemens
12 9 (0.49%) Palantir
12 9 (0.49%) Software AG
13 8 (0.44%) ANSYS
13 8 (0.44%) CyberArk
13 8 (0.44%) ServiceNow
13 8 (0.44%) webMethods