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

6 months to
14 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 35 44 31
Rank change year-on-year +9 -13 +10
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,123 1,174 2,051
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.23% 4.87% 5.61%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.17% 5.34% 6.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,108 771 1,204
10th Percentile £400 £400 £423
25th Percentile £454 £488 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -
75th Percentile £669 £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 462 77 355
10th Percentile £52.50 £40.95 £46.25
25th Percentile £61.25 £57.50 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year - +4.00% -3.85%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £72.95 £68.75 £80.00
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 34,393 22,003 31,618
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.67% 91.23% 86.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,924 14,379 20,694
10th Percentile £319 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £505 £516 £525
% change year-on-year -2.13% -1.71% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,131 924 2,243
10th Percentile £15.34 £14.42 £12.88
25th Percentile £20.36 £18.47 £16.00
Median hourly rate £47.00 £29.02 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +61.96% -20.49% -2.25%
75th Percentile £67.84 £63.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £28.60 £36.50
% change year-on-year +48.60% -21.64% +1.39%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 -6 872 £575 -14.81% 702
North of England +19 307 £500 - 301
South West +16 307 £575 - 173
South East +18 274 £525 +2.44% 385
East of England +39 219 £491 +0.67% 161
North West +3 143 £500 - 157
Yorkshire +6 114 £500 - 84
Midlands -26 89 £498 +1.53% 120
West Midlands -12 78 £482 -9.26% 68
North East +24 55 £593 +28.80% 62
East Midlands -36 10 £563 +14.80% 52
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 43 (2.03%) Apache Spark
3 38 (1.79%) Apache
4 19 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
5 7 (0.33%) SAS
6 5 (0.24%) CMS
6 5 (0.24%) IIS
6 5 (0.24%) nginx
6 5 (0.24%) Palantir Foundry
6 5 (0.24%) SharePoint
7 4 (0.19%) WebLogic
8 3 (0.14%) Camunda
8 3 (0.14%) OpenStack
8 3 (0.14%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.094%) MQSeries
9 2 (0.094%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 2 (0.094%) WinCC
10 1 (0.047%) Headless CMS
10 1 (0.047%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.047%) Smallworld
Applications
1 15 (0.71%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (0.28%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (0.24%) Chatbot
4 4 (0.19%) CPLEX
4 4 (0.19%) Simulink
5 2 (0.094%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.094%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.047%) Adobe After Effects
6 1 (0.047%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.047%) Blender
6 1 (0.047%) CATIA
6 1 (0.047%) Maya
6 1 (0.047%) MS Visio
6 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%) Sprinklr
4 1 (0.047%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 534 (25.15%) AWS
2 397 (18.70%) Azure
3 195 (9.19%) GCP
4 141 (6.64%) GitHub
5 110 (5.18%) Serverless
6 78 (3.67%) Azure DevOps
7 65 (3.06%) AWS Lambda
8 58 (2.73%) GitHub Actions
9 57 (2.68%) Amazon S3
10 49 (2.31%) OpenShift
11 43 (2.03%) Power Platform
12 38 (1.79%) Azure AKS
13 36 (1.70%) Amazon EKS
14 34 (1.60%) Amazon ECS
15 33 (1.55%) AWS CloudFormation
16 31 (1.46%) Amazon SQS
17 27 (1.27%) Amazon EC2
17 27 (1.27%) SaaS
18 22 (1.04%) Azure Functions
19 18 (0.85%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 30 (1.41%) Software-Defined Radio
2 25 (1.18%) Ethernet
3 17 (0.80%) Wireless
4 14 (0.66%) TCP/IP
5 13 (0.61%) HTTP
6 10 (0.47%) Firewall
7 9 (0.42%) Network Security
8 8 (0.38%) 3GPP
8 8 (0.38%) Wi-Fi
9 6 (0.28%) VPN
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
Database & Business Intelligence
1 131 (6.17%) PostgreSQL
2 70 (3.30%) Relational Database
3 64 (3.01%) SQL Server
4 58 (2.73%) NoSQL
5 50 (2.36%) MongoDB
6 48 (2.26%) Apache Cassandra
7 34 (1.60%) Power BI
8 29 (1.37%) BigQuery
8 29 (1.37%) DynamoDB
9 28 (1.32%) Amazon RDS
9 28 (1.32%) Data Lake
10 27 (1.27%) Big Data
11 25 (1.18%) MySQL
12 20 (0.94%) Data Warehouse
12 20 (0.94%) Metadata
13 16 (0.75%) Amazon Athena
14 15 (0.71%) Pinecone
14 15 (0.71%) Redis
15 14 (0.66%) Elasticsearch
15 14 (0.66%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 206 (9.70%) Git
2 141 (6.64%) Jenkins
3 125 (5.89%) GitLab
4 110 (5.18%) JIRA
5 46 (2.17%) SonarQube
6 44 (2.07%) Gradle
7 35 (1.65%) JUnit
8 32 (1.51%) Rational DOORS
9 31 (1.46%) Rational Rhapsody
10 24 (1.13%) Cucumber
11 23 (1.08%) Bitbucket
11 23 (1.08%) IntelliJ
12 22 (1.04%) Maven
13 19 (0.89%) Visual Studio
14 18 (0.85%) Mockito
14 18 (0.85%) Selenium
15 17 (0.80%) Cypress.io
16 15 (0.71%) Liquibase
17 12 (0.57%) Artifactory
17 12 (0.57%) Claude Code
General
1 330 (15.54%) Finance
2 298 (14.04%) Social Skills
3 123 (5.79%) Public Sector
4 122 (5.75%) Banking
5 120 (5.65%) Analytical Skills
6 89 (4.19%) Aerospace
7 69 (3.25%) Front Office
8 43 (2.03%) Manufacturing
9 39 (1.84%) Law
10 33 (1.55%) Retail
11 31 (1.46%) Electronics
11 31 (1.46%) Investment Banking
12 26 (1.22%) Military
13 24 (1.13%) Influencing Skills
14 23 (1.08%) Telecoms
15 19 (0.89%) Presentation Skills
16 18 (0.85%) Automotive
17 16 (0.75%) Aviation
18 15 (0.71%) Financial Institution
19 13 (0.61%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,154 (54.36%) Software Engineer
2 380 (17.90%) Developer
3 360 (16.96%) Senior
4 178 (8.38%) Senior Software Engineer
5 167 (7.87%) Embedded Engineer
6 165 (7.77%) Lead
7 155 (7.30%) Embedded Software Engineer
8 151 (7.11%) Java Engineer
9 123 (5.79%) Java Software Engineer
10 118 (5.56%) C++ Software Engineer
11 111 (5.23%) Java Developer
12 82 (3.86%) Architect
13 70 (3.30%) Senior Developer
14 67 (3.16%) Developer/Software Engineer
15 64 (3.01%) Full-Stack Engineer
16 59 (2.78%) Data Engineer
17 58 (2.73%) DevOps Engineer
17 58 (2.73%) Lead Software Engineer
17 58 (2.73%) Python Engineer
17 58 (2.73%) Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 243 (11.45%) React
2 183 (8.62%) Kafka
3 167 (7.87%) Node.js
4 160 (7.54%) Spring
5 156 (7.35%) .NET
6 145 (6.83%) Spring Boot
7 142 (6.69%) REST
8 106 (4.99%) AngularJS
9 95 (4.47%) RESTful
10 74 (3.49%) GraphQL
11 53 (2.50%) Redux
12 50 (2.36%) Middleware
13 47 (2.21%) CSS
14 45 (2.12%) gRPC
14 45 (2.12%) HTML
15 36 (1.70%) JSON
16 35 (1.65%) Playwright
17 34 (1.60%) Web Services
18 33 (1.55%) LangChain
18 33 (1.55%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 213 (10.03%) Cloud Native
2 142 (6.69%) Distributed Systems
3 97 (4.57%) Product Ownership
4 87 (4.10%) Algorithms
5 60 (2.83%) Fixed Income
6 50 (2.36%) AI Agents
7 35 (1.65%) Data Protection Act
8 34 (1.60%) Embedded Systems
9 31 (1.46%) Onboarding
10 29 (1.37%) Robotics
11 28 (1.32%) Legacy Systems
12 27 (1.27%) Data Structures
12 27 (1.27%) Derivative
13 26 (1.22%) Mobile App
14 21 (0.99%) Greenfield Project
15 19 (0.89%) Equities
15 19 (0.89%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 15 (0.71%) FPGA
17 13 (0.61%) Data Centre
17 13 (0.61%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 196 (9.23%) Linux
2 70 (3.30%) Windows
3 43 (2.03%) Unix
4 24 (1.13%) Android
4 24 (1.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 19 (0.89%) Apple iOS
6 14 (0.66%) Embedded Linux
7 12 (0.57%) Windows Server
8 11 (0.52%) FreeRTOS
9 7 (0.33%) Ubuntu
10 6 (0.28%) Debian
11 4 (0.19%) Rocky
11 4 (0.19%) VMS
12 3 (0.14%) Solaris
12 3 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
12 3 (0.14%) Windows Server 2019
13 2 (0.094%) Robot Operating System
14 1 (0.047%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 605 (28.50%) CI/CD
2 579 (27.27%) Agile
3 422 (19.88%) DevOps
4 334 (15.73%) Microservices
5 291 (13.71%) AI
6 239 (11.26%) Problem-Solving
7 226 (10.65%) Full-Stack Development
8 224 (10.55%) Test Automation
9 221 (10.41%) Containerisation
10 195 (9.19%) Infrastructure as Code
11 158 (7.44%) Observability
12 156 (7.35%) SDLC
13 149 (7.02%) Computer Science
13 149 (7.02%) Continuous Improvement
13 149 (7.02%) Machine Learning
14 147 (6.92%) Mentoring
15 143 (6.74%) TDD
16 140 (6.59%) Scrum
16 140 (6.59%) Technical Leadership
17 125 (5.89%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 540 (25.44%) Java
2 525 (24.73%) Python
3 278 (13.09%) SQL
4 275 (12.95%) C#
5 249 (11.73%) TypeScript
6 229 (10.79%) JavaScript
7 221 (10.41%) C++
8 144 (6.78%) Go
9 131 (6.17%) Ada
10 118 (5.56%) C
11 38 (1.79%) Kotlin
12 37 (1.74%) PowerShell
13 33 (1.55%) Bash
13 33 (1.55%) Embedded C
14 29 (1.37%) Rust
15 26 (1.22%) MATLAB
16 20 (0.94%) Ruby
16 20 (0.94%) Scala
16 20 (0.94%) Shell Script
17 16 (0.75%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 513 (24.16%) Security Cleared
2 400 (18.84%) SC Cleared
3 170 (8.01%) Degree
4 86 (4.05%) Computer Science Degree
5 67 (3.16%) DV Cleared
6 33 (1.55%) BPSS Clearance
6 33 (1.55%) Master's Degree
7 20 (0.94%) AWS Certification
8 13 (0.61%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 11 (0.52%) Azure Certification
10 10 (0.47%) CISSP
11 8 (0.38%) CISM
11 8 (0.38%) PhD
12 7 (0.33%) ISTQB
12 7 (0.33%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 7 (0.33%) TOGAF Certification
13 3 (0.14%) Cisco Certification
13 3 (0.14%) HNC
13 3 (0.14%) MBA
13 3 (0.14%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 113 (5.32%) QA
2 49 (2.31%) Def Stans
3 38 (1.79%) Data Quality
4 35 (1.65%) IEC 61508
5 27 (1.27%) Accessibility
6 24 (1.13%) GDPR
7 21 (0.99%) MISRA
8 15 (0.71%) 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
13 5 (0.24%) 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
1 305 (14.37%) Docker
2 21 (0.99%) Firmware
3 15 (0.71%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (0.42%) Embedded Firmware
5 8 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
6 6 (0.28%) Active Directory
7 4 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
8 3 (0.14%) HDFS
9 2 (0.094%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 348 (16.39%) Kubernetes
2 202 (9.51%) Terraform
3 84 (3.96%) Grafana
4 61 (2.87%) Ansible
5 49 (2.31%) Prometheus
6 36 (1.70%) Argo
7 13 (0.61%) Puppet
8 11 (0.52%) 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
1 128 (6.03%) Microsoft
2 73 (3.44%) Google
3 59 (2.78%) Oracle
4 57 (2.68%) Red Hat
5 44 (2.07%) Databricks
6 24 (1.13%) OpenAI
7 23 (1.08%) IBM
8 17 (0.80%) Splunk
9 16 (0.75%) VMware
10 14 (0.66%) Informatica
11 13 (0.61%) Foundry
11 13 (0.61%) SAP
11 13 (0.61%) ServiceNow
12 11 (0.52%) Okta
12 11 (0.52%) Siemens
13 10 (0.47%) Dynatrace
13 10 (0.47%) ForgeRock
13 10 (0.47%) MathWorks
14 9 (0.42%) Atlassian
15 8 (0.38%) PagerDuty