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

6 months to
25 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 34 44 31
Rank change year-on-year +10 -13 +9
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,170 1,139 2,103
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.24% 4.75% 5.76%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.19% 5.20% 6.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,128 750 1,234
10th Percentile £400 £400 £419
25th Percentile £462 £477 £488
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -
75th Percentile £675 £772 £750
90th Percentile £775 £838 £850
UK median daily rate £550 £575 £600
% change year-on-year -4.35% -4.17% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 456 66 370
10th Percentile £52.29 £33.88 £46.25
25th Percentile £60.00 £52.84 £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 £73.46 £73.75 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year - +4.00% -3.21%

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 35,064 21,889 31,425
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.71% 91.30% 86.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,297 14,308 20,582
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £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 £510 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,170 926 2,283
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.35 £12.88
25th Percentile £20.39 £18.13 £16.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £28.18 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.69% -22.79% -2.46%
75th Percentile £67.84 £60.00 £61.25
90th Percentile £80.28 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.13 £27.59 £36.05
% change year-on-year +52.71% -23.47% -0.22%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 -4 906 £591 -12.41% 633
North of England +23 319 £525 +5.00% 293
South West +21 309 £575 +2.22% 177
South East +22 277 £525 +2.44% 372
East of England +36 222 £495 +1.43% 142
North West -1 147 £500 - 164
Yorkshire +11 118 £525 +7.14% 76
Midlands -31 83 £472 -3.67% 93
West Midlands -27 72 £466 -13.24% 60
North East +19 59 £593 +51.92% 55
East Midlands -29 10 £563 +14.80% 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 54 (2.49%) Confluence
2 45 (2.07%) Apache Spark
3 36 (1.66%) Apache
4 22 (1.01%) Apache Airflow
5 8 (0.37%) SAS
6 6 (0.28%) SharePoint
7 5 (0.23%) CMS
7 5 (0.23%) IIS
7 5 (0.23%) nginx
8 4 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
8 4 (0.18%) WebLogic
9 3 (0.14%) Camunda
9 3 (0.14%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.092%) Cloud Foundry
10 2 (0.092%) MQSeries
10 2 (0.092%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 2 (0.092%) WinCC
11 1 (0.046%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 1 (0.046%) Microsoft Exchange
11 1 (0.046%) OpenStack
Applications
1 15 (0.69%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (0.28%) Chatbot
2 6 (0.28%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.18%) CPLEX
3 4 (0.18%) Simulink
4 2 (0.092%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 2 (0.092%) CATIA
4 2 (0.092%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.092%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.046%) Adobe After Effects
5 1 (0.046%) Blender
5 1 (0.046%) Maya
5 1 (0.046%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.046%) Notion
5 1 (0.046%) OrCAD
Business Applications
1 6 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
2 4 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
3 2 (0.092%) Aladdin
3 2 (0.092%) LabWindows
3 2 (0.092%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 2 (0.092%) Remedy ITSM
4 1 (0.046%) Orchestrade
4 1 (0.046%) Sprinklr
4 1 (0.046%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 532 (24.52%) AWS
2 401 (18.48%) Azure
3 196 (9.03%) GCP
4 146 (6.73%) GitHub
5 108 (4.98%) Serverless
6 81 (3.73%) Azure DevOps
7 66 (3.04%) AWS Lambda
8 61 (2.81%) GitHub Actions
9 59 (2.72%) Amazon S3
10 49 (2.26%) OpenShift
11 44 (2.03%) Power Platform
12 37 (1.71%) Amazon EKS
12 37 (1.71%) Azure AKS
13 35 (1.61%) Amazon SQS
14 33 (1.52%) Amazon EC2
14 33 (1.52%) Amazon ECS
15 30 (1.38%) AWS CloudFormation
16 26 (1.20%) SaaS
17 23 (1.06%) Anthropic Claude
18 20 (0.92%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 30 (1.38%) Software-Defined Radio
2 23 (1.06%) Ethernet
3 19 (0.88%) Wireless
4 15 (0.69%) HTTP
5 14 (0.65%) TCP/IP
6 11 (0.51%) Firewall
7 10 (0.46%) Wi-Fi
8 9 (0.41%) 3GPP
9 7 (0.32%) Network Security
9 7 (0.32%) VPN
10 6 (0.28%) RTP
11 5 (0.23%) Wireshark
12 4 (0.18%) DNS
12 4 (0.18%) Modbus
13 3 (0.14%) Bluetooth
13 3 (0.14%) IPv4
13 3 (0.14%) IPv6
13 3 (0.14%) RS-232
13 3 (0.14%) RS-422
13 3 (0.14%) RS-485
Database & Business Intelligence
1 127 (5.85%) PostgreSQL
2 70 (3.23%) Relational Database
3 62 (2.86%) SQL Server
4 57 (2.63%) NoSQL
5 48 (2.21%) MongoDB
6 46 (2.12%) Apache Cassandra
7 35 (1.61%) Power BI
8 31 (1.43%) Amazon RDS
9 29 (1.34%) BigQuery
9 29 (1.34%) Data Lake
10 28 (1.29%) DynamoDB
11 26 (1.20%) Big Data
12 24 (1.11%) Metadata
12 24 (1.11%) MySQL
13 21 (0.97%) Data Warehouse
14 16 (0.74%) Amazon Athena
14 16 (0.74%) Pinecone
15 15 (0.69%) Elasticsearch
15 15 (0.69%) Redis
15 15 (0.69%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 212 (9.77%) Git
2 142 (6.54%) Jenkins
3 131 (6.04%) GitLab
4 106 (4.88%) JIRA
5 48 (2.21%) Gradle
6 45 (2.07%) SonarQube
7 34 (1.57%) JUnit
8 31 (1.43%) Rational DOORS
9 30 (1.38%) Rational Rhapsody
10 24 (1.11%) IntelliJ
11 23 (1.06%) Cucumber
12 22 (1.01%) Bitbucket
12 22 (1.01%) Selenium
13 21 (0.97%) Maven
14 19 (0.88%) Visual Studio
15 18 (0.83%) Cypress.io
16 16 (0.74%) Mockito
17 15 (0.69%) Liquibase
18 13 (0.60%) Artifactory
19 12 (0.55%) Claude Code
General
1 357 (16.45%) Finance
2 301 (13.87%) Social Skills
3 127 (5.85%) Analytical Skills
3 127 (5.85%) Banking
4 123 (5.67%) Public Sector
5 91 (4.19%) Aerospace
6 70 (3.23%) Front Office
7 45 (2.07%) Manufacturing
8 38 (1.75%) Law
9 34 (1.57%) Retail
10 33 (1.52%) Investment Banking
11 28 (1.29%) Military
12 27 (1.24%) Electronics
13 24 (1.11%) Influencing Skills
14 22 (1.01%) Telecoms
15 21 (0.97%) Aviation
16 18 (0.83%) Automotive
16 18 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
17 16 (0.74%) Financial Institution
18 13 (0.60%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,159 (53.41%) Software Engineer
2 392 (18.06%) Developer
3 377 (17.37%) Senior
4 179 (8.25%) Senior Software Engineer
5 176 (8.11%) Lead
6 161 (7.42%) Embedded Engineer
7 153 (7.05%) Java Engineer
8 150 (6.91%) Embedded Software Engineer
9 124 (5.71%) Java Software Engineer
10 118 (5.44%) C++ Software Engineer
11 112 (5.16%) Java Developer
12 84 (3.87%) Architect
13 73 (3.36%) Senior Developer
14 70 (3.23%) Developer/Software Engineer
15 65 (3.00%) DevOps Engineer
15 65 (3.00%) Full-Stack Engineer
16 64 (2.95%) Software Developer
17 61 (2.81%) Python Developer
18 59 (2.72%) Python Engineer
19 58 (2.67%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 245 (11.29%) React
2 181 (8.34%) Kafka
3 164 (7.56%) Spring
4 162 (7.47%) Node.js
5 160 (7.37%) .NET
6 149 (6.87%) Spring Boot
7 148 (6.82%) REST
8 105 (4.84%) AngularJS
9 97 (4.47%) RESTful
10 76 (3.50%) GraphQL
11 53 (2.44%) Redux
12 47 (2.17%) Middleware
13 46 (2.12%) CSS
14 42 (1.94%) gRPC
14 42 (1.94%) HTML
15 38 (1.75%) JSON
16 34 (1.57%) LangChain
16 34 (1.57%) Next.js
16 34 (1.57%) Playwright
17 33 (1.52%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 225 (10.37%) Cloud Native
2 152 (7.00%) Distributed Systems
3 101 (4.65%) Product Ownership
4 88 (4.06%) Algorithms
5 61 (2.81%) Fixed Income
6 51 (2.35%) AI Agents
7 39 (1.80%) Embedded Systems
8 36 (1.66%) Onboarding
9 35 (1.61%) Data Protection Act
10 30 (1.38%) Derivative
11 29 (1.34%) Legacy Systems
11 29 (1.34%) Robotics
12 27 (1.24%) Data Structures
13 23 (1.06%) Greenfield Project
13 23 (1.06%) Mobile App
14 22 (1.01%) Equities
15 20 (0.92%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 15 (0.69%) FPGA
16 15 (0.69%) Self-Motivation
17 14 (0.65%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 189 (8.71%) Linux
2 64 (2.95%) Windows
3 44 (2.03%) Unix
4 25 (1.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 22 (1.01%) Android
6 17 (0.78%) Apple iOS
7 16 (0.74%) Embedded Linux
8 12 (0.55%) Windows Server
9 11 (0.51%) FreeRTOS
10 6 (0.28%) Ubuntu
11 5 (0.23%) Debian
12 4 (0.18%) Rocky
12 4 (0.18%) VMS
12 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
13 3 (0.14%) Solaris
13 3 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
14 2 (0.092%) Robot Operating System
15 1 (0.046%) Mac OS
15 1 (0.046%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 627 (28.89%) CI/CD
2 593 (27.33%) Agile
3 438 (20.18%) DevOps
4 337 (15.53%) Microservices
5 311 (14.33%) AI
6 242 (11.15%) Test Automation
7 234 (10.78%) Problem-Solving
8 230 (10.60%) Full-Stack Development
9 217 (10.00%) Containerisation
10 194 (8.94%) Infrastructure as Code
11 167 (7.70%) Continuous Improvement
12 163 (7.51%) Observability
13 159 (7.33%) SDLC
14 153 (7.05%) TDD
15 151 (6.96%) Machine Learning
16 148 (6.82%) Mentoring
17 144 (6.64%) Scrum
18 143 (6.59%) Computer Science
19 138 (6.36%) Platform Engineering
19 138 (6.36%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 560 (25.81%) Java
2 548 (25.25%) Python
3 286 (13.18%) SQL
4 272 (12.53%) C#
5 256 (11.80%) TypeScript
6 220 (10.14%) JavaScript
7 215 (9.91%) C++
8 138 (6.36%) Go
9 127 (5.85%) Ada
10 114 (5.25%) C
11 44 (2.03%) Kotlin
12 39 (1.80%) PowerShell
13 33 (1.52%) Rust
14 31 (1.43%) Bash
15 28 (1.29%) Embedded C
16 26 (1.20%) MATLAB
17 22 (1.01%) Scala
18 19 (0.88%) Ruby
19 18 (0.83%) Shell Script
20 17 (0.78%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 521 (24.01%) Security Cleared
2 411 (18.94%) SC Cleared
3 171 (7.88%) Degree
4 83 (3.82%) Computer Science Degree
5 66 (3.04%) DV Cleared
6 35 (1.61%) BPSS Clearance
7 30 (1.38%) Master's Degree
8 20 (0.92%) AWS Certification
9 13 (0.60%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 12 (0.55%) Azure Certification
11 8 (0.37%) CISSP
11 8 (0.37%) PhD
12 7 (0.32%) ISTQB
12 7 (0.32%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 6 (0.28%) CISM
13 6 (0.28%) TOGAF Certification
14 3 (0.14%) Cisco Certification
14 3 (0.14%) HNC
14 3 (0.14%) HND
14 3 (0.14%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 114 (5.25%) QA
2 46 (2.12%) Def Stans
3 42 (1.94%) Data Quality
4 33 (1.52%) IEC 61508
5 31 (1.43%) Accessibility
6 24 (1.11%) GDPR
7 19 (0.88%) MISRA
8 13 (0.60%) MISRA C
9 11 (0.51%) NCSC
10 9 (0.41%) WCAG
11 7 (0.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 7 (0.32%) NIST
12 6 (0.28%) PCI DSS
13 5 (0.23%) DO-178B
13 5 (0.23%) HL7
13 5 (0.23%) JSP 440
14 4 (0.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 3 (0.14%) DO-254
15 3 (0.14%) FATCA
15 3 (0.14%) MiFID
System Software
1 303 (13.96%) Docker
2 20 (0.92%) Firmware
3 13 (0.60%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (0.41%) Embedded Firmware
5 7 (0.32%) Active Directory
5 7 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
6 4 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
7 3 (0.14%) HDFS
8 2 (0.092%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 362 (16.68%) Kubernetes
2 204 (9.40%) Terraform
3 81 (3.73%) Grafana
4 58 (2.67%) Ansible
5 47 (2.17%) Prometheus
6 34 (1.57%) Argo
7 11 (0.51%) Puppet
8 8 (0.37%) Progress Chef
9 6 (0.28%) Istio
9 6 (0.28%) Kibana
10 5 (0.23%) HAProxy
11 4 (0.18%) Data Guard
11 4 (0.18%) HP Quality Center
11 4 (0.18%) Single Sign-On
12 3 (0.14%) Docker Swarm
12 3 (0.14%) Kubeflow
12 3 (0.14%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
13 2 (0.092%) Consul
13 2 (0.092%) HP ALM
13 2 (0.092%) Podman
Vendors
1 129 (5.94%) Microsoft
2 73 (3.36%) Google
3 63 (2.90%) Oracle
4 60 (2.76%) Red Hat
5 45 (2.07%) Databricks
6 28 (1.29%) OpenAI
7 22 (1.01%) IBM
8 17 (0.78%) Splunk
9 15 (0.69%) Informatica
10 14 (0.65%) VMware
11 13 (0.60%) ServiceNow
12 12 (0.55%) Foundry
12 12 (0.55%) Siemens
13 11 (0.51%) Okta
13 11 (0.51%) SAP
14 10 (0.46%) ForgeRock
14 10 (0.46%) MathWorks
15 9 (0.41%) Atlassian
15 9 (0.41%) Dynatrace
15 9 (0.41%) Salesforce