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 21 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 32 45 31
Rank change year-on-year +13 -14 +9
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,595 1,352 1,930
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.68% 4.91% 5.80%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.69% 5.40% 6.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,424 864 1,206
10th Percentile £400 £375 £406
25th Percentile £468 £463 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £560 £600 £625
Median % change year-on-year -6.67% -4.00% +4.17%
75th Percentile £688 £750 £800
90th Percentile £788 £838 £888
UK median daily rate £552 £575 £600
% change year-on-year -4.09% -4.17% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 418 103 265
10th Percentile £51.25 £33.01 £46.18
25th Percentile £60.00 £52.50 £54.36
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £73.14 £75.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 38,779 25,035 28,563
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.92% 90.85% 85.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,017 15,949 18,476
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £630 £626 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £756
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.58%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,559 1,455 1,574
10th Percentile £14.25 £14.22 £14.05
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.92 £17.80
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -40.82% +3.61%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.05 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £40.50
% change year-on-year +67.00% -37.90% -1.22%

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 21 August 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 21 August 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 21 August 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 -2 1,170 £600 -7.69% 407
North of England +27 398 £525 +5.00% 250
South East +23 332 £525 +4.90% 329
South West +18 323 £550 +10.00% 214
East of England +24 217 £505 +2.17% 133
North West +14 181 £550 +10.00% 131
Yorkshire +15 153 £500 - 59
Midlands +3 114 £459 -15.00% 123
West Midlands -14 78 £455 -20.96% 64
North East +11 69 £650 +41.30% 61
East Midlands +3 35 £500 +5.26% 58
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 58 (2.24%) Confluence
2 53 (2.04%) Apache Spark
3 42 (1.62%) Apache Airflow
4 34 (1.31%) Apache
5 11 (0.42%) CMS
6 10 (0.39%) SAS
7 8 (0.31%) SharePoint
8 6 (0.23%) Jupyter
9 5 (0.19%) Apache Solr
9 5 (0.19%) Ethereum
9 5 (0.19%) Hyperledger
10 4 (0.15%) Apache Superset
10 4 (0.15%) Camunda
11 3 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
11 3 (0.12%) WordPress
12 2 (0.077%) Cloud Foundry
12 2 (0.077%) IIS
12 2 (0.077%) MQSeries
12 2 (0.077%) nginx
12 2 (0.077%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 15 (0.58%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (0.39%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 10 (0.39%) Chatbot
3 9 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
4 5 (0.19%) Microsoft Excel
5 4 (0.15%) CPLEX
5 4 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.15%) Simulink
6 3 (0.12%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.12%) Trello
7 2 (0.077%) CATIA
7 2 (0.077%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 2 (0.077%) Notion
8 1 (0.039%) Adobe After Effects
8 1 (0.039%) Adobe XD
8 1 (0.039%) Blender
8 1 (0.039%) S-PLUS
Business Applications
1 7 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
1 7 (0.27%) Payment Gateway
2 6 (0.23%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.19%) R3 Corda
4 4 (0.15%) Quorum
4 4 (0.15%) Ripple
5 3 (0.12%) Orchestrade
5 3 (0.12%) Primavera
5 3 (0.12%) Salesforce CRM
6 2 (0.077%) Aladdin
6 2 (0.077%) Endur
6 2 (0.077%) Oracle Payroll
6 2 (0.077%) Remedy ITSM
7 1 (0.039%) Distributed Ledger
7 1 (0.039%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 1 (0.039%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.039%) Shopify
7 1 (0.039%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 649 (25.01%) AWS
2 529 (20.39%) Azure
3 262 (10.10%) GCP
4 219 (8.44%) GitHub
5 128 (4.93%) Serverless
6 110 (4.24%) Azure DevOps
6 110 (4.24%) GitHub Actions
7 92 (3.55%) AWS Lambda
8 63 (2.43%) Amazon S3
9 59 (2.27%) OpenShift
10 57 (2.20%) Anthropic Claude
11 50 (1.93%) Amazon EKS
12 49 (1.89%) Amazon SQS
12 49 (1.89%) Power Platform
13 47 (1.81%) Amazon ECS
14 44 (1.70%) GitHub Copilot
15 38 (1.46%) Snowflake
16 37 (1.43%) Azure AKS
17 32 (1.23%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 29 (1.12%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 29 (1.12%) Software-Defined Radio
2 28 (1.08%) Wireless
3 20 (0.77%) Ethernet
4 19 (0.73%) Firewall
4 19 (0.73%) Internet
5 18 (0.69%) TCP/IP
6 16 (0.62%) HTTP
7 15 (0.58%) VPN
8 11 (0.42%) Wi-Fi
9 7 (0.27%) Network Security
9 7 (0.27%) RTP
9 7 (0.27%) Wireshark
10 6 (0.23%) 3GPP
11 4 (0.15%) DNS
11 4 (0.15%) RS-232
11 4 (0.15%) SSL
12 3 (0.12%) Cisco IPT
12 3 (0.12%) IPv4
12 3 (0.12%) IPv6
12 3 (0.12%) RS-485
Database & Business Intelligence
1 149 (5.74%) PostgreSQL
2 102 (3.93%) Relational Database
3 84 (3.24%) NoSQL
3 84 (3.24%) SQL Server
4 49 (1.89%) Data Warehouse
4 49 (1.89%) MongoDB
5 39 (1.50%) DynamoDB
6 37 (1.43%) MySQL
7 34 (1.31%) Power BI
8 29 (1.12%) Metadata
9 28 (1.08%) Big Data
10 26 (1.00%) Amazon RDS
11 25 (0.96%) Elasticsearch
11 25 (0.96%) Redis
12 24 (0.92%) Data Lake
13 21 (0.81%) Pinecone
14 20 (0.77%) BigQuery
15 19 (0.73%) Weaviate
16 18 (0.69%) Amazon Redshift
17 12 (0.46%) Apache Cassandra
Development Applications
1 274 (10.56%) Git
2 168 (6.47%) Jenkins
3 150 (5.78%) GitLab
4 119 (4.59%) JIRA
5 58 (2.24%) SonarQube
6 38 (1.46%) Gradle
6 38 (1.46%) JUnit
7 28 (1.08%) Claude Code
8 26 (1.00%) Rational DOORS
9 25 (0.96%) Selenium
9 25 (0.96%) Visual Studio
10 22 (0.85%) Rational Rhapsody
11 20 (0.77%) Maven
12 17 (0.66%) Bitbucket
12 17 (0.66%) Cucumber
12 17 (0.66%) Mockito
13 13 (0.50%) Cypress.io
13 13 (0.50%) Liquibase
14 12 (0.46%) Eclipse
14 12 (0.46%) LabVIEW
General
1 501 (19.31%) Social Skills
2 457 (17.61%) Finance
3 195 (7.51%) Banking
4 186 (7.17%) Public Sector
5 184 (7.09%) Analytical Skills
6 94 (3.62%) Aerospace
7 91 (3.51%) Front Office
8 49 (1.89%) Investment Banking
8 49 (1.89%) Retail
9 46 (1.77%) Law
9 46 (1.77%) Manufacturing
10 34 (1.31%) Automotive
11 31 (1.19%) Military
12 27 (1.04%) Telecoms
13 26 (1.00%) Aviation
14 24 (0.92%) Influencing Skills
15 20 (0.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 20 (0.77%) Marketing
16 18 (0.69%) Electronics
16 18 (0.69%) Legal
Job Titles
1 1,182 (45.55%) Software Engineer
2 480 (18.50%) Developer
3 453 (17.46%) Senior
4 289 (11.14%) Lead
5 192 (7.40%) Senior Software Engineer
6 171 (6.59%) Java Engineer
7 158 (6.09%) Embedded Engineer
8 147 (5.66%) Embedded Software Engineer
9 139 (5.36%) Java Software Engineer
10 126 (4.86%) Java Developer
11 116 (4.47%) C++ Software Engineer
12 112 (4.32%) Software Developer
13 106 (4.08%) Python Engineer
14 104 (4.01%) Architect
15 98 (3.78%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 92 (3.55%) Lead Software Engineer
17 91 (3.51%) Senior Developer
18 87 (3.35%) Data Engineer
19 77 (2.97%) Python Developer
20 75 (2.89%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 267 (10.29%) React
1 267 (10.29%) Terraform
2 216 (8.32%) REST
3 210 (8.09%) .NET
4 204 (7.86%) Spring
5 188 (7.24%) Spring Boot
6 175 (6.74%) Kafka
7 159 (6.13%) Node.js
8 128 (4.93%) RESTful
9 109 (4.20%) AngularJS
10 57 (2.20%) Django
11 54 (2.08%) GraphQL
11 54 (2.08%) Next.js
12 50 (1.93%) HTML
13 48 (1.85%) CSS
14 43 (1.66%) LangChain
15 41 (1.58%) JSON
16 39 (1.50%) Quarkus
16 39 (1.50%) Web Services
17 38 (1.46%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 368 (14.18%) Cloud Native
2 229 (8.82%) Distributed Systems
3 131 (5.05%) Product Ownership
4 96 (3.70%) AI Agents
5 84 (3.24%) Algorithms
6 57 (2.20%) Enterprise Software
7 52 (2.00%) Data Structures
7 52 (2.00%) Fixed Income
8 49 (1.89%) Embedded Systems
8 49 (1.89%) Onboarding
9 44 (1.70%) Data Protection Act
10 35 (1.35%) Legacy Systems
11 34 (1.31%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 31 (1.19%) Derivative
13 30 (1.16%) Self-Motivation
14 28 (1.08%) Equities
15 27 (1.04%) Robotics
16 23 (0.89%) Greenfield Project
17 18 (0.69%) NHS
17 18 (0.69%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 186 (7.17%) Linux
2 57 (2.20%) Windows
3 33 (1.27%) Unix
4 23 (0.89%) Embedded Linux
5 22 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 14 (0.54%) FreeRTOS
7 13 (0.50%) Android
8 8 (0.31%) Ubuntu
9 7 (0.27%) Windows Server
10 6 (0.23%) Apple iOS
11 5 (0.19%) Debian
12 4 (0.15%) VMS
13 3 (0.12%) Rocky
14 2 (0.077%) VxWorks
14 2 (0.077%) Windows Server 2019
15 1 (0.039%) Solaris
15 1 (0.039%) Tizen
15 1 (0.039%) webOS
15 1 (0.039%) Windows 10
15 1 (0.039%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 876 (33.76%) CI/CD
2 796 (30.67%) Agile
3 608 (23.43%) DevOps
4 500 (19.27%) AI
5 399 (15.38%) Microservices
6 350 (13.49%) Test Automation
7 303 (11.68%) Problem-Solving
8 292 (11.25%) Continuous Improvement
9 286 (11.02%) Infrastructure as Code
10 263 (10.13%) Full-Stack Development
11 259 (9.98%) Containerisation
12 240 (9.25%) SDLC
13 238 (9.17%) Observability
14 220 (8.48%) Machine Learning
15 205 (7.90%) Technical Leadership
16 203 (7.82%) Mentoring
16 203 (7.82%) Platform Engineering
17 196 (7.55%) Scrum
18 194 (7.48%) Event-Driven
19 193 (7.44%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 757 (29.17%) Python
2 658 (25.36%) Java
3 362 (13.95%) SQL
4 299 (11.52%) TypeScript
5 296 (11.41%) C#
6 228 (8.79%) JavaScript
7 224 (8.63%) C++
8 115 (4.43%) C
9 104 (4.01%) Ada
10 98 (3.78%) Go
11 63 (2.43%) Kotlin
12 43 (1.66%) PowerShell
13 41 (1.58%) Rust
14 39 (1.50%) Bash
15 38 (1.46%) Scala
16 24 (0.92%) PL/SQL
17 23 (0.89%) Embedded C
18 21 (0.81%) Bicep
19 20 (0.77%) Ruby
20 18 (0.69%) PHP
Qualifications
1 601 (23.16%) Security Cleared
2 502 (19.34%) SC Cleared
3 207 (7.98%) Degree
4 95 (3.66%) Computer Science Degree
5 81 (3.12%) DV Cleared
6 58 (2.24%) BPSS Clearance
7 46 (1.77%) Master's Degree
8 33 (1.27%) AWS Certification
9 20 (0.77%) PhD
10 16 (0.62%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 14 (0.54%) Azure Certification
12 8 (0.31%) CISSP
13 7 (0.27%) Microsoft Certified Professional
13 7 (0.27%) PMP
14 6 (0.23%) Chartered Engineer
14 6 (0.23%) ISTQB
15 4 (0.15%) GIAC
15 4 (0.15%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 4 (0.15%) MBA
15 4 (0.15%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 158 (6.09%) QA
2 63 (2.43%) Data Quality
3 47 (1.81%) Accessibility
4 25 (0.96%) GDPR
5 23 (0.89%) Def Stans
6 17 (0.66%) MISRA
7 15 (0.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 15 (0.58%) NIST
8 14 (0.54%) IEC 61508
9 12 (0.46%) WCAG
10 10 (0.39%) DO-178B
11 9 (0.35%) NCSC
12 7 (0.27%) GRC
13 6 (0.23%) MISRA C
14 5 (0.19%) HL7
14 5 (0.19%) JSP 440
14 5 (0.19%) PCI DSS
14 5 (0.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 3 (0.12%) DO-254
15 3 (0.12%) MiFID
System Software
1 383 (14.76%) Docker
2 29 (1.12%) Firmware
3 18 (0.69%) Embedded Firmware
4 9 (0.35%) Active Directory
4 9 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
5 7 (0.27%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (0.12%) HDFS
7 2 (0.077%) SRDF
8 1 (0.039%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 434 (16.72%) Kubernetes
2 88 (3.39%) Ansible
3 54 (2.08%) Grafana
4 41 (1.58%) Argo
5 38 (1.46%) Prometheus
6 14 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
7 11 (0.42%) Kibana
8 10 (0.39%) Puppet
9 7 (0.27%) Progress Chef
10 6 (0.23%) Functional Safety
10 6 (0.23%) Kubeflow
11 4 (0.15%) Consul
11 4 (0.15%) HAProxy
12 3 (0.12%) HP Fortify
12 3 (0.12%) Istio
12 3 (0.12%) Kustomize
13 2 (0.077%) Cilium
13 2 (0.077%) Docker Swarm
13 2 (0.077%) Packer
13 2 (0.077%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 139 (5.36%) Microsoft
2 92 (3.55%) Google
3 77 (2.97%) Oracle
4 64 (2.47%) Databricks
5 51 (1.97%) OpenAI
6 43 (1.66%) Red Hat
7 24 (0.92%) Salesforce
8 20 (0.77%) Informatica
9 19 (0.73%) ServiceNow
10 18 (0.69%) Splunk
11 17 (0.66%) IBM
12 13 (0.50%) Foundry
13 12 (0.46%) Adobe
13 12 (0.46%) SAP
14 11 (0.42%) Checkmarx
15 10 (0.39%) ForgeRock
15 10 (0.39%) Okta
16 9 (0.35%) Dynatrace
17 8 (0.31%) Confluent
17 8 (0.31%) VMware