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 13 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 33 46 27
Rank change year-on-year +13 -19 +12
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,298 1,158 2,285
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.38% 4.71% 6.09%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.32% 5.15% 7.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,224 764 1,316
10th Percentile £400 £400 £419
25th Percentile £463 £475 £493
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -0.08%
75th Percentile £675 £763 £763
90th Percentile £784 £838 £875
UK median daily rate £550 £575 £600
% change year-on-year -4.35% -4.17% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 451 63 404
10th Percentile £52.50 £38.65 £46.25
25th Percentile £60.00 £51.63 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £79.50 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £64.02
% change year-on-year - +1.53% -0.20%

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 36,362 22,469 32,040
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.16% 91.35% 85.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,009 14,533 20,781
10th Percentile £325 £304 £300
25th Percentile £415 £407 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £508 £525
% change year-on-year +0.99% -3.33% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,276 1,038 2,365
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £20.79 £18.13 £16.02
Median hourly rate £47.00 £27.85 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +68.76% -25.73% +4.17%
75th Percentile £68.00 £58.66 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £27.13 £36.50
% change year-on-year +62.06% -25.68% +1.67%

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 13 June 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 13 June 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 13 June 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 -3 981 £583 -10.31% 509
North of England +30 347 £525 +5.00% 258
South West +31 331 £570 +6.05% 192
South East +25 286 £525 +4.90% 374
East of England +40 216 £495 +1.43% 146
North West +8 159 £500 - 151
Yorkshire +19 125 £525 +7.14% 59
Midlands -23 90 £462 -8.97% 92
West Midlands -20 71 £459 -18.94% 59
North East +18 68 £621 +35.05% 49
East Midlands -16 18 £513 +4.59% 33
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 53 (2.31%) Confluence
2 39 (1.70%) Apache Spark
3 27 (1.17%) Apache
4 26 (1.13%) Apache Airflow
5 8 (0.35%) SAS
6 6 (0.26%) CMS
6 6 (0.26%) SharePoint
7 5 (0.22%) nginx
8 4 (0.17%) Ethereum
8 4 (0.17%) Hyperledger
8 4 (0.17%) WebLogic
9 3 (0.13%) Camunda
9 3 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
9 3 (0.13%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.087%) Cloud Foundry
10 2 (0.087%) IIS
10 2 (0.087%) MQSeries
10 2 (0.087%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 2 (0.087%) WinCC
11 1 (0.044%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 15 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (0.26%) Chatbot
2 6 (0.26%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 5 (0.22%) CPLEX
4 4 (0.17%) Simulink
5 2 (0.087%) CATIA
5 2 (0.087%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.087%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.044%) Adobe After Effects
6 1 (0.044%) Blender
6 1 (0.044%) Maya
6 1 (0.044%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.044%) Notion
6 1 (0.044%) OrCAD
Business Applications
1 6 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
1 6 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
2 5 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
3 4 (0.17%) Quorum
3 4 (0.17%) R3 Corda
3 4 (0.17%) Ripple
4 3 (0.13%) Orchestrade
5 2 (0.087%) Aladdin
5 2 (0.087%) LabWindows
5 2 (0.087%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.087%) Remedy ITSM
6 1 (0.044%) Sprinklr
6 1 (0.044%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 563 (24.50%) AWS
2 434 (18.89%) Azure
3 204 (8.88%) GCP
4 165 (7.18%) GitHub
5 121 (5.27%) Serverless
6 95 (4.13%) Azure DevOps
7 77 (3.35%) AWS Lambda
7 77 (3.35%) GitHub Actions
8 63 (2.74%) Amazon S3
9 56 (2.44%) OpenShift
10 47 (2.05%) Power Platform
11 38 (1.65%) Amazon SQS
12 36 (1.57%) Amazon ECS
12 36 (1.57%) Azure AKS
13 35 (1.52%) Amazon EKS
14 34 (1.48%) Anthropic Claude
15 32 (1.39%) Amazon EC2
16 28 (1.22%) AWS CloudFormation
16 28 (1.22%) SaaS
17 27 (1.17%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 30 (1.31%) Software-Defined Radio
2 23 (1.00%) Ethernet
3 22 (0.96%) Wireless
4 17 (0.74%) TCP/IP
5 15 (0.65%) HTTP
6 13 (0.57%) Firewall
7 12 (0.52%) Wi-Fi
8 10 (0.44%) 3GPP
9 9 (0.39%) Internet
9 9 (0.39%) VPN
10 7 (0.30%) Network Security
10 7 (0.30%) RTP
11 6 (0.26%) Wireshark
12 4 (0.17%) DNS
13 3 (0.13%) Bluetooth
13 3 (0.13%) IPv4
13 3 (0.13%) IPv6
13 3 (0.13%) RS-232
13 3 (0.13%) RS-422
13 3 (0.13%) RS-485
Database & Business Intelligence
1 140 (6.09%) PostgreSQL
2 78 (3.39%) Relational Database
3 67 (2.92%) SQL Server
4 61 (2.65%) NoSQL
5 51 (2.22%) MongoDB
6 37 (1.61%) Apache Cassandra
7 33 (1.44%) DynamoDB
7 33 (1.44%) Power BI
8 30 (1.31%) Amazon RDS
9 28 (1.22%) BigQuery
9 28 (1.22%) MySQL
10 27 (1.17%) Data Lake
11 26 (1.13%) Data Warehouse
12 25 (1.09%) Big Data
12 25 (1.09%) Metadata
13 17 (0.74%) Pinecone
13 17 (0.74%) Redis
14 16 (0.70%) Weaviate
15 15 (0.65%) Amazon Redshift
15 15 (0.65%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 225 (9.79%) Git
2 141 (6.14%) Jenkins
3 123 (5.35%) GitLab
4 109 (4.74%) JIRA
5 52 (2.26%) SonarQube
6 43 (1.87%) Gradle
7 34 (1.48%) JUnit
8 30 (1.31%) Rational Rhapsody
9 29 (1.26%) Rational DOORS
10 24 (1.04%) Cucumber
11 23 (1.00%) Visual Studio
12 21 (0.91%) Bitbucket
13 20 (0.87%) IntelliJ
13 20 (0.87%) Maven
13 20 (0.87%) Selenium
14 16 (0.70%) Cypress.io
14 16 (0.70%) Liquibase
14 16 (0.70%) Mockito
15 13 (0.57%) Claude Code
16 12 (0.52%) Eclipse
General
1 397 (17.28%) Finance
2 344 (14.97%) Social Skills
3 147 (6.40%) Banking
4 137 (5.96%) Analytical Skills
5 134 (5.83%) Public Sector
6 99 (4.31%) Aerospace
7 77 (3.35%) Front Office
8 44 (1.91%) Law
8 44 (1.91%) Manufacturing
8 44 (1.91%) Retail
9 37 (1.61%) Investment Banking
10 27 (1.17%) Military
11 25 (1.09%) Automotive
11 25 (1.09%) Aviation
12 24 (1.04%) Influencing Skills
13 22 (0.96%) Telecoms
14 18 (0.78%) Financial Institution
15 16 (0.70%) Presentation Skills
16 15 (0.65%) Documentation Skills
16 15 (0.65%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 1,172 (51.00%) Software Engineer
2 425 (18.49%) Developer
3 402 (17.49%) Senior
4 205 (8.92%) Lead
5 179 (7.79%) Senior Software Engineer
6 166 (7.22%) Java Engineer
7 147 (6.40%) Embedded Engineer
8 136 (5.92%) Embedded Software Engineer
8 136 (5.92%) Java Software Engineer
9 123 (5.35%) C++ Software Engineer
10 122 (5.31%) Java Developer
11 102 (4.44%) Architect
12 83 (3.61%) Senior Developer
13 73 (3.18%) Software Developer
14 72 (3.13%) Python Developer
15 70 (3.05%) Developer/Software Engineer
16 67 (2.92%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 67 (2.92%) DevOps Engineer
17 65 (2.83%) Full-Stack Engineer
17 65 (2.83%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 263 (11.44%) React
2 179 (7.79%) .NET
3 177 (7.70%) Kafka
4 174 (7.57%) Spring
5 167 (7.27%) Node.js
6 162 (7.05%) Spring Boot
7 158 (6.88%) REST
8 110 (4.79%) AngularJS
9 108 (4.70%) RESTful
10 71 (3.09%) GraphQL
11 55 (2.39%) Redux
12 48 (2.09%) CSS
13 47 (2.05%) HTML
14 41 (1.78%) Middleware
15 40 (1.74%) JSON
15 40 (1.74%) Next.js
16 37 (1.61%) LangChain
17 33 (1.44%) gRPC
17 33 (1.44%) Playwright
17 33 (1.44%) Quarkus
Miscellaneous
1 254 (11.05%) Cloud Native
2 169 (7.35%) Distributed Systems
3 114 (4.96%) Product Ownership
4 91 (3.96%) Algorithms
5 66 (2.87%) Fixed Income
6 61 (2.65%) AI Agents
7 40 (1.74%) Embedded Systems
8 39 (1.70%) Onboarding
9 37 (1.61%) Data Protection Act
10 34 (1.48%) Legacy Systems
11 33 (1.44%) Derivative
12 32 (1.39%) Data Structures
13 28 (1.22%) Robotics
14 27 (1.17%) Self-Motivation
15 25 (1.09%) Equities
15 25 (1.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 22 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
17 21 (0.91%) Enterprise Software
18 20 (0.87%) Mobile App
19 15 (0.65%) FPGA
Operating Systems
1 182 (7.92%) Linux
2 57 (2.48%) Windows
3 42 (1.83%) Unix
4 27 (1.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 16 (0.70%) Android
5 16 (0.70%) Apple iOS
5 16 (0.70%) Embedded Linux
6 11 (0.48%) FreeRTOS
7 9 (0.39%) Windows Server
8 7 (0.30%) Ubuntu
9 5 (0.22%) Debian
10 4 (0.17%) Rocky
10 4 (0.17%) VMS
10 4 (0.17%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.13%) Solaris
11 3 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
12 2 (0.087%) VxWorks
13 1 (0.044%) Mac OS
13 1 (0.044%) Tizen
13 1 (0.044%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 684 (29.77%) CI/CD
2 658 (28.63%) Agile
3 473 (20.58%) DevOps
4 371 (16.14%) AI
5 352 (15.32%) Microservices
6 271 (11.79%) Test Automation
7 248 (10.79%) Full-Stack Development
8 244 (10.62%) Problem-Solving
9 219 (9.53%) Containerisation
10 210 (9.14%) Infrastructure as Code
11 182 (7.92%) Continuous Improvement
12 177 (7.70%) SDLC
13 175 (7.62%) Observability
14 174 (7.57%) Machine Learning
15 171 (7.44%) TDD
16 168 (7.31%) Scrum
17 164 (7.14%) Mentoring
18 158 (6.88%) Platform Engineering
19 149 (6.48%) Technical Leadership
20 137 (5.96%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 595 (25.89%) Java
2 588 (25.59%) Python
3 301 (13.10%) SQL
4 290 (12.62%) C#
5 274 (11.92%) TypeScript
6 234 (10.18%) JavaScript
7 216 (9.40%) C++
8 129 (5.61%) Go
9 128 (5.57%) Ada
10 108 (4.70%) C
11 42 (1.83%) Kotlin
12 32 (1.39%) PowerShell
12 32 (1.39%) Rust
13 26 (1.13%) Bash
13 26 (1.13%) MATLAB
14 25 (1.09%) Embedded C
15 23 (1.00%) Scala
16 22 (0.96%) PL/SQL
17 18 (0.78%) Ruby
18 17 (0.74%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 547 (23.80%) Security Cleared
2 441 (19.19%) SC Cleared
3 171 (7.44%) Degree
4 78 (3.39%) Computer Science Degree
5 64 (2.79%) DV Cleared
6 48 (2.09%) BPSS Clearance
7 26 (1.13%) AWS Certification
8 25 (1.09%) Master's Degree
9 18 (0.78%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 11 (0.48%) Azure Certification
11 8 (0.35%) CISSP
11 8 (0.35%) PhD
12 7 (0.30%) ISTQB
12 7 (0.30%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 6 (0.26%) Chartered Engineer
14 5 (0.22%) CISM
14 5 (0.22%) TOGAF Certification
15 4 (0.17%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
16 3 (0.13%) MBA
16 3 (0.13%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 124 (5.40%) QA
2 41 (1.78%) Def Stans
3 38 (1.65%) Data Quality
4 36 (1.57%) Accessibility
5 33 (1.44%) IEC 61508
6 22 (0.96%) GDPR
7 16 (0.70%) MISRA
8 13 (0.57%) MISRA C
9 11 (0.48%) NCSC
10 10 (0.44%) NIST
10 10 (0.44%) WCAG
11 9 (0.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
12 6 (0.26%) PCI DSS
13 5 (0.22%) JSP 440
14 4 (0.17%) DO-178B
14 4 (0.17%) DO-254
14 4 (0.17%) GRC
14 4 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 3 (0.13%) HL7
15 3 (0.13%) MiFID
System Software
1 314 (13.66%) Docker
2 20 (0.87%) Firmware
3 10 (0.44%) Embedded Firmware
3 10 (0.44%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (0.35%) Active Directory
5 7 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
6 4 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
7 3 (0.13%) HDFS
8 2 (0.087%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 367 (15.97%) Kubernetes
2 210 (9.14%) Terraform
3 68 (2.96%) Grafana
4 56 (2.44%) Ansible
5 40 (1.74%) Argo
6 38 (1.65%) Prometheus
7 8 (0.35%) Single Sign-On
8 7 (0.30%) Puppet
9 6 (0.26%) Istio
9 6 (0.26%) Kibana
9 6 (0.26%) Progress Chef
10 5 (0.22%) HAProxy
11 4 (0.17%) Data Guard
11 4 (0.17%) HP Quality Center
12 3 (0.13%) Docker Swarm
12 3 (0.13%) Functional Safety
12 3 (0.13%) Kubeflow
13 2 (0.087%) Cilium
13 2 (0.087%) Consul
13 2 (0.087%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 122 (5.31%) Microsoft
2 78 (3.39%) Google
3 68 (2.96%) Oracle
4 57 (2.48%) Red Hat
5 42 (1.83%) Databricks
6 35 (1.52%) OpenAI
7 21 (0.91%) IBM
8 17 (0.74%) ServiceNow
8 17 (0.74%) Splunk
9 15 (0.65%) Informatica
10 12 (0.52%) Salesforce
10 12 (0.52%) Siemens
11 11 (0.48%) Foundry
12 10 (0.44%) ForgeRock
12 10 (0.44%) MathWorks
12 10 (0.44%) Okta
12 10 (0.44%) VMware
13 9 (0.39%) SAP
14 8 (0.35%) Atlassian
14 8 (0.35%) Dynatrace