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

6 months to
16 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 44 32 41
Rank change year-on-year -12 +9 -5
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 1,514 1,707 1,842
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.04% 5.48% 4.60%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.58% 6.32% 5.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 875 1,021 1,236
10th Percentile £375 £400 £425
25th Percentile £463 £490 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £568 £600 £616
Median % change year-on-year -5.33% -2.56% +2.63%
75th Percentile £700 £775 £748
90th Percentile £825 £875 £823
UK median daily rate £550 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 177 157 230
10th Percentile £46.25 £42.80 £46.18
25th Percentile £53.55 £54.36 £51.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £67.00 £70.00 £68.94
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £81.63
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 27,129 27,014 35,522
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 90.29% 86.78% 88.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,216 16,502 24,361
10th Percentile £300 £313 £313
25th Percentile £405 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £506 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year -3.62% -3.67% -0.91%
75th Percentile £625 £642 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £533
% change year-on-year -4.76% -1.41% -3.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,789 972 1,496
10th Percentile £14.75 £15.10 £14.42
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.28 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £37.50 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -32.93% -15.73% +27.14%
75th Percentile £46.75 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £74.72 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £43.33
% change year-on-year -28.14% -19.22% +23.80%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 -7 823 £625 -7.41% 1,669
North of England -6 207 £525 +1.20% 481
South West -10 122 £466 -22.29% 325
East of England -2 121 £538 +13.16% 308
Yorkshire -4 110 £525 -4.55% 113
South East -28 97 £475 -5.00% 507
North West -25 77 £550 +15.79% 321
Midlands -48 72 £509 +5.33% 193
West Midlands -21 57 £530 +9.62% 111
North East -4 23 £488 -18.41% 47
East Midlands -27 15 £450 -6.74% 80
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 75 (4.95%) Apache Airflow
2 71 (4.69%) Apache
3 52 (3.43%) Confluence
4 31 (2.05%) Apache Spark
5 14 (0.92%) JBoss
6 11 (0.73%) CMS
6 11 (0.73%) WebLogic
7 4 (0.26%) IIS
7 4 (0.26%) nginx
7 4 (0.26%) OpenStack
7 4 (0.26%) SAS
7 4 (0.26%) WordPress
8 3 (0.20%) Appian
8 3 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
8 3 (0.20%) Sitecore CMS
9 2 (0.13%) Magnolia
9 2 (0.13%) SharePoint
9 2 (0.13%) Tomcat
10 1 (0.066%) Cloud Foundry
10 1 (0.066%) Gunicorn
Applications
1 17 (1.12%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (0.73%) Chatbot
3 10 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 10 (0.66%) Simulink
4 9 (0.59%) Microsoft Office
5 3 (0.20%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.066%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.066%) Stateflow
Business Applications
1 8 (0.53%) Aladdin
1 8 (0.53%) Temenos T24
2 6 (0.40%) FLEXCUBE
2 6 (0.40%) Oracle BPM
3 3 (0.20%) Fidessa
3 3 (0.20%) thinkFolio
4 2 (0.13%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.13%) Primavera
5 1 (0.066%) ION Anvil
5 1 (0.066%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.066%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 540 (35.67%) AWS
2 264 (17.44%) Azure
3 177 (11.69%) GCP
4 160 (10.57%) Serverless
5 123 (8.12%) GitHub
6 71 (4.69%) GitHub Actions
7 66 (4.36%) AWS Lambda
8 65 (4.29%) dbt
9 64 (4.23%) Azure DevOps
10 58 (3.83%) Snowflake
11 50 (3.30%) Amazon S3
12 46 (3.04%) Power Platform
13 40 (2.64%) Amazon ECS
14 33 (2.18%) Azure AKS
15 30 (1.98%) AWS CloudFormation
16 29 (1.92%) OpenShift
17 28 (1.85%) Amazon EKS
17 28 (1.85%) Azure Functions
18 26 (1.72%) Amazon EC2
19 23 (1.52%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 28 (1.85%) Ethernet
2 22 (1.45%) TCP/IP
3 11 (0.73%) Firewall
4 8 (0.53%) Internet
4 8 (0.53%) Network Security
4 8 (0.53%) NFC
4 8 (0.53%) PPP
5 6 (0.40%) Wireless
6 5 (0.33%) HTTP
7 4 (0.26%) tcpdump
7 4 (0.26%) VPN
8 3 (0.20%) BGP
8 3 (0.20%) Kerberos
8 3 (0.20%) Software-Defined Networking
8 3 (0.20%) VLAN
9 2 (0.13%) DNS
9 2 (0.13%) HTTPS
9 2 (0.13%) SSH
9 2 (0.13%) SSL
9 2 (0.13%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 126 (8.32%) PostgreSQL
2 86 (5.68%) NoSQL
3 68 (4.49%) Apache Cassandra
3 68 (4.49%) MongoDB
4 59 (3.90%) Amazon Athena
5 55 (3.63%) Apache Arrow
5 55 (3.63%) Apache Iceberg
5 55 (3.63%) Dremio
6 53 (3.50%) Data Lake
7 46 (3.04%) SQL Server
8 36 (2.38%) Big Data
9 34 (2.25%) Apache Ignite
9 34 (2.25%) Relational Database
10 32 (2.11%) MySQL
10 32 (2.11%) Power BI
11 31 (2.05%) Hadoop
12 26 (1.72%) Elasticsearch
13 25 (1.65%) Amazon RDS
13 25 (1.65%) DynamoDB
14 19 (1.25%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 182 (12.02%) Git
2 136 (8.98%) Jenkins
3 99 (6.54%) JIRA
4 94 (6.21%) GitLab
5 36 (2.38%) Eclipse
5 36 (2.38%) JUnit
5 36 (2.38%) Selenium
6 34 (2.25%) Liquibase
7 30 (1.98%) Cypress.io
8 28 (1.85%) Cucumber
9 25 (1.65%) SonarQube
9 25 (1.65%) Visual Studio
10 24 (1.59%) Gradle
11 18 (1.19%) Mockito
11 18 (1.19%) Rational DOORS
12 17 (1.12%) Maven
13 16 (1.06%) Artifactory
14 13 (0.86%) Bitbucket
15 12 (0.79%) Postman
15 12 (0.79%) TeamCity
General
1 364 (24.04%) Finance
2 347 (22.92%) Social Skills
3 169 (11.16%) Banking
4 118 (7.79%) Front Office
5 106 (7.00%) Public Sector
6 89 (5.88%) Analytical Skills
7 84 (5.55%) Investment Banking
8 40 (2.64%) Military
9 39 (2.58%) Financial Institution
10 29 (1.92%) Aerospace
11 24 (1.59%) Law
12 22 (1.45%) Presentation Skills
13 21 (1.39%) Influencing Skills
14 18 (1.19%) Electronics
14 18 (1.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 18 (1.19%) Pharmaceutical
15 15 (0.99%) Documentation Skills
16 11 (0.73%) Manufacturing
16 11 (0.73%) Retail
16 11 (0.73%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 679 (44.85%) Software Engineer
2 364 (24.04%) Developer
3 304 (20.08%) Senior
4 148 (9.78%) Senior Software Engineer
5 127 (8.39%) Lead
6 117 (7.73%) Python Engineer
7 103 (6.80%) C++ Software Engineer
8 96 (6.34%) AWS Engineer
9 93 (6.14%) Java Engineer
10 86 (5.68%) Java Software Engineer
11 85 (5.61%) AWS Software Engineer
12 83 (5.48%) Python Software Engineer
13 74 (4.89%) Python Developer
14 69 (4.56%) Java Developer
15 62 (4.10%) Senior Developer
16 61 (4.03%) Developer/Software Engineer
17 52 (3.43%) Full-Stack Engineer
18 50 (3.30%) Architect
19 46 (3.04%) Data Engineer
19 46 (3.04%) Lead Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 244 (16.12%) React
2 225 (14.86%) Kafka
3 177 (11.69%) Node.js
4 139 (9.18%) .NET
5 134 (8.85%) REST
6 117 (7.73%) RESTful
7 111 (7.33%) AngularJS
7 111 (7.33%) gRPC
8 92 (6.08%) Pandas
9 90 (5.94%) Spring
10 87 (5.75%) NumPy
11 76 (5.02%) SciPy
12 69 (4.56%) Spring Boot
13 64 (4.23%) Vue
14 59 (3.90%) HTML
15 55 (3.63%) FastAPI
16 52 (3.43%) JSON
17 49 (3.24%) GraphQL
18 45 (2.97%) CSS
19 42 (2.77%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 168 (11.10%) Cloud Native
2 127 (8.39%) Distributed Systems
3 112 (7.40%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 104 (6.87%) Fixed Income
5 71 (4.69%) Equities
6 70 (4.62%) Hedge funds
7 59 (3.90%) Algorithms
8 47 (3.10%) Derivative
9 45 (2.97%) Product Ownership
10 43 (2.84%) Data Structures
11 35 (2.31%) Public Cloud
12 34 (2.25%) Pricing Data
13 33 (2.18%) Data Protection Act
13 33 (2.18%) Greenfield Project
14 32 (2.11%) Virtual Team
15 21 (1.39%) Self-Motivation
16 20 (1.32%) Legacy Systems
17 18 (1.19%) Embedded Systems
18 17 (1.12%) Onboarding
19 16 (1.06%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 238 (15.72%) Linux
2 75 (4.95%) Windows
3 53 (3.50%) Unix
4 22 (1.45%) Ubuntu
5 20 (1.32%) Android
6 12 (0.79%) Apple iOS
7 8 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 8 (0.53%) Windows Server
8 6 (0.40%) Mac OS
9 5 (0.33%) FreeRTOS
10 4 (0.26%) VMS
11 1 (0.066%) Amazon Linux
11 1 (0.066%) Debian
11 1 (0.066%) Robot Operating System
11 1 (0.066%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.066%) Windows Embedded Compact
11 1 (0.066%) Windows Server 2008
11 1 (0.066%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 631 (41.68%) Agile
2 466 (30.78%) CI/CD
3 348 (22.99%) DevOps
4 296 (19.55%) Microservices
5 229 (15.13%) Problem-Solving
6 193 (12.75%) Containerisation
7 192 (12.68%) Infrastructure as Code
8 178 (11.76%) Test Automation
9 170 (11.23%) Computer Science
10 165 (10.90%) AI
11 161 (10.63%) Mentoring
12 158 (10.44%) TDD
13 154 (10.17%) Full-Stack Development
14 143 (9.45%) Scrum
15 135 (8.92%) Machine Learning
16 117 (7.73%) Clean Code
17 111 (7.33%) Open Source
18 105 (6.94%) Continuous Integration
19 91 (6.01%) Continuous Improvement
19 91 (6.01%) Investment Management
Programming Languages
1 534 (35.27%) Python
2 401 (26.49%) Java
3 298 (19.68%) JavaScript
4 268 (17.70%) SQL
5 253 (16.71%) C++
6 243 (16.05%) TypeScript
7 217 (14.33%) C#
8 141 (9.31%) Go
9 76 (5.02%) C
10 40 (2.64%) Ada
11 33 (2.18%) Shell Script
12 30 (1.98%) Bash
12 30 (1.98%) Rust
13 20 (1.32%) VB
14 19 (1.25%) PowerShell
14 19 (1.25%) Ruby
14 19 (1.25%) Scala
15 15 (0.99%) MATLAB
15 15 (0.99%) PL/SQL
16 14 (0.92%) R
Qualifications
1 265 (17.50%) Security Cleared
2 219 (14.46%) SC Cleared
3 203 (13.41%) Degree
4 96 (6.34%) Computer Science Degree
5 53 (3.50%) Master's Degree
6 46 (3.04%) DV Cleared
7 19 (1.25%) AWS Certification
7 19 (1.25%) BPSS Clearance
7 19 (1.25%) PhD
8 17 (1.12%) MCP
9 15 (0.99%) CISSP
10 13 (0.86%) CISM
11 10 (0.66%) Azure Certification
12 9 (0.59%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 9 (0.59%) TOGAF Certification
13 7 (0.46%) Postgraduate
14 6 (0.40%) ISTQB
15 4 (0.26%) HND
15 4 (0.26%) PMP
16 3 (0.20%) EMC Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 77 (5.09%) QA
2 32 (2.11%) Data Quality
3 29 (1.92%) Accessibility
4 20 (1.32%) Def Stans
4 20 (1.32%) WCAG
5 18 (1.19%) IEC 61508
6 17 (1.12%) MISRA
7 16 (1.06%) GDPR
8 13 (0.86%) EU AI Act
9 12 (0.79%) MISRA C
9 12 (0.79%) NIST
10 7 (0.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 6 (0.40%) DO-178B
12 5 (0.33%) SLA
12 5 (0.33%) Software Quality Assurance
13 4 (0.26%) ISO 26262
13 4 (0.26%) MiFID
14 3 (0.20%) IEC 62304
14 3 (0.20%) NCSC
14 3 (0.20%) SEPA
System Software
1 339 (22.39%) Docker
2 16 (1.06%) Active Directory
3 8 (0.53%) Virtual Machines
4 6 (0.40%) Firmware
5 5 (0.33%) zsh
6 4 (0.26%) VMware Infrastructure
7 1 (0.066%) Embedded Firmware
7 1 (0.066%) KVM
7 1 (0.066%) Virtual Desktop
7 1 (0.066%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 321 (21.20%) Kubernetes
2 186 (12.29%) Terraform
3 69 (4.56%) Ansible
4 67 (4.43%) Grafana
5 56 (3.70%) Prometheus
6 17 (1.12%) Puppet
7 13 (0.86%) Kibana
8 8 (0.53%) Argo
8 8 (0.53%) Podman
8 8 (0.53%) Single Sign-On
9 6 (0.40%) Progress Chef
10 4 (0.26%) Functional Safety
10 4 (0.26%) Kubeflow
11 3 (0.20%) Cilium
11 3 (0.20%) Rsyslog
11 3 (0.20%) SCOM
11 3 (0.20%) SELinux
12 2 (0.13%) Packer
12 2 (0.13%) rkt
13 1 (0.066%) Consul
Vendors
1 130 (8.59%) Microsoft
2 62 (4.10%) Oracle
3 55 (3.63%) Google
4 38 (2.51%) Splunk
5 32 (2.11%) Databricks
6 31 (2.05%) Foundry
7 28 (1.85%) Red Hat
8 14 (0.92%) Atlassian
8 14 (0.92%) Palantir
9 13 (0.86%) Cloudera
10 11 (0.73%) BiZZdesign
11 10 (0.66%) OpenAI
11 10 (0.66%) Salesforce
11 10 (0.66%) Temenos
12 9 (0.59%) CA Agile Central
12 9 (0.59%) SAP
12 9 (0.59%) webMethods
13 8 (0.53%) ServiceNow
14 7 (0.46%) Cisco
14 7 (0.46%) CyberArk