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

6 months to
5 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 36 40 33
Rank change year-on-year +4 -7 +8
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,113 1,217 2,017
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.21% 4.99% 5.47%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.14% 5.47% 6.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,101 806 1,179
10th Percentile £400 £401 £419
25th Percentile £453 £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 468 82 346
10th Percentile £52.50 £42.55 £46.25
25th Percentile £61.25 £55.91 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year - +4.00% -2.56%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £72.50 £68.75 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year - +4.00% -2.56%

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 34,426 22,233 31,934
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.84% 91.20% 86.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,983 14,556 20,949
10th Percentile £318 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,140 928 2,245
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.65 £12.92
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £45.46 £30.00 £36.05
Median % change year-on-year +51.53% -16.77% -2.97%
75th Percentile £67.50 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £41.94 £29.00 £35.83
% change year-on-year +44.62% -19.06% -0.47%

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 -7 864 £575 -14.81% 676
South West +14 312 £575 - 197
North of England +17 301 £500 - 308
South East +15 263 £525 +2.44% 392
East of England +34 220 £475 -2.72% 187
North West +4 137 £488 -2.60% 161
Yorkshire +9 114 £513 +2.50% 89
Midlands -29 96 £498 +1.53% 134
West Midlands -14 84 £492 -7.38% 66
North East +23 54 £588 +27.72% 58
East Midlands -38 11 £513 +4.59% 68
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 (2.60%) Confluence
2 45 (2.13%) Apache Spark
3 38 (1.80%) Apache
4 19 (0.90%) Apache Airflow
5 8 (0.38%) CMS
6 7 (0.33%) SAS
7 5 (0.24%) IIS
7 5 (0.24%) Palantir Foundry
7 5 (0.24%) SharePoint
8 4 (0.19%) nginx
8 4 (0.19%) WebLogic
9 3 (0.14%) Camunda
9 3 (0.14%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.095%) MQSeries
10 2 (0.095%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 2 (0.095%) Sitecore CMS
10 2 (0.095%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.095%) WinCC
11 1 (0.047%) Microsoft Exchange
11 1 (0.047%) Smallworld
Applications
1 14 (0.66%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (0.33%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (0.24%) Chatbot
4 4 (0.19%) Simulink
5 3 (0.14%) CPLEX
5 3 (0.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 2 (0.095%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.047%) Adobe After Effects
7 1 (0.047%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (0.047%) Blender
7 1 (0.047%) CATIA
7 1 (0.047%) Maya
7 1 (0.047%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.047%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.047%) OrCAD
Business Applications
1 6 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (0.095%) Aladdin
3 2 (0.095%) LabWindows
3 2 (0.095%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.047%) Orchestrade
4 1 (0.047%) Primavera
4 1 (0.047%) Sprinklr
4 1 (0.047%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 540 (25.56%) AWS
2 397 (18.79%) Azure
3 190 (8.99%) GCP
4 136 (6.44%) GitHub
5 117 (5.54%) Serverless
6 78 (3.69%) Azure DevOps
7 66 (3.12%) AWS Lambda
8 61 (2.89%) Amazon S3
9 56 (2.65%) GitHub Actions
10 51 (2.41%) OpenShift
10 51 (2.41%) Power Platform
11 40 (1.89%) Amazon EKS
12 39 (1.85%) AWS CloudFormation
13 38 (1.80%) Azure AKS
14 37 (1.75%) Amazon ECS
15 31 (1.47%) Amazon EC2
16 29 (1.37%) Amazon SQS
17 28 (1.33%) SaaS
18 26 (1.23%) Azure Functions
19 21 (0.99%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 28 (1.33%) Software-Defined Radio
2 25 (1.18%) Ethernet
3 16 (0.76%) Wireless
4 14 (0.66%) TCP/IP
5 12 (0.57%) HTTP
6 10 (0.47%) Network Security
7 9 (0.43%) 3GPP
8 7 (0.33%) Firewall
9 6 (0.28%) Wi-Fi
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
12 3 (0.14%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 130 (6.15%) PostgreSQL
2 67 (3.17%) SQL Server
3 65 (3.08%) Relational Database
4 60 (2.84%) NoSQL
5 52 (2.46%) Apache Cassandra
6 49 (2.32%) MongoDB
7 36 (1.70%) Power BI
8 33 (1.56%) Amazon RDS
9 30 (1.42%) Data Lake
10 28 (1.33%) Big Data
11 27 (1.28%) BigQuery
12 26 (1.23%) DynamoDB
12 26 (1.23%) MySQL
13 21 (0.99%) Metadata
14 19 (0.90%) Data Warehouse
15 16 (0.76%) Amazon Redshift
16 15 (0.71%) Amazon Athena
17 14 (0.66%) Elasticsearch
17 14 (0.66%) Redis
18 13 (0.62%) Mixpanel
Development Applications
1 210 (9.94%) Git
2 141 (6.67%) Jenkins
3 119 (5.63%) GitLab
4 110 (5.21%) JIRA
5 45 (2.13%) SonarQube
6 36 (1.70%) Gradle
7 34 (1.61%) Rational DOORS
8 33 (1.56%) JUnit
9 32 (1.51%) Rational Rhapsody
10 25 (1.18%) Cucumber
11 23 (1.09%) Bitbucket
11 23 (1.09%) IntelliJ
12 19 (0.90%) Maven
13 18 (0.85%) Cypress.io
13 18 (0.85%) Selenium
13 18 (0.85%) Visual Studio
14 16 (0.76%) Mockito
15 13 (0.62%) Liquibase
16 12 (0.57%) Artifactory
16 12 (0.57%) Eclipse
General
1 319 (15.10%) Finance
2 308 (14.58%) Social Skills
3 126 (5.96%) Public Sector
4 120 (5.68%) Analytical Skills
5 115 (5.44%) Banking
6 87 (4.12%) Aerospace
7 65 (3.08%) Front Office
8 40 (1.89%) Law
8 40 (1.89%) Manufacturing
9 36 (1.70%) Electronics
10 31 (1.47%) Retail
11 27 (1.28%) Military
12 26 (1.23%) Investment Banking
13 23 (1.09%) Influencing Skills
14 22 (1.04%) Presentation Skills
15 21 (0.99%) Telecoms
16 16 (0.76%) Financial Institution
17 14 (0.66%) Automotive
17 14 (0.66%) Aviation
18 13 (0.62%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,145 (54.19%) Software Engineer
2 376 (17.79%) Developer
3 374 (17.70%) Senior
4 182 (8.61%) Senior Software Engineer
5 169 (8.00%) Embedded Engineer
6 159 (7.52%) Lead
7 157 (7.43%) Embedded Software Engineer
8 144 (6.81%) Java Engineer
9 123 (5.82%) C++ Software Engineer
10 116 (5.49%) Java Software Engineer
11 101 (4.78%) Java Developer
12 86 (4.07%) Architect
13 73 (3.45%) Senior Developer
14 66 (3.12%) Developer/Software Engineer
15 64 (3.03%) Full-Stack Engineer
16 61 (2.89%) Data Engineer
16 61 (2.89%) Python Engineer
17 60 (2.84%) Software Developer
18 57 (2.70%) Python Developer
19 56 (2.65%) Lead Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 231 (10.93%) React
2 190 (8.99%) Kafka
3 169 (8.00%) Node.js
4 152 (7.19%) .NET
5 147 (6.96%) Spring
6 143 (6.77%) REST
7 134 (6.34%) Spring Boot
8 105 (4.97%) AngularJS
9 93 (4.40%) RESTful
10 75 (3.55%) GraphQL
11 53 (2.51%) Middleware
11 53 (2.51%) Redux
12 51 (2.41%) gRPC
13 49 (2.32%) CSS
14 46 (2.18%) HTML
15 38 (1.80%) Playwright
16 37 (1.75%) JSON
16 37 (1.75%) Web Services
17 34 (1.61%) OpenTelemetry
18 30 (1.42%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 216 (10.22%) Cloud Native
2 144 (6.81%) Distributed Systems
3 98 (4.64%) Product Ownership
4 82 (3.88%) Algorithms
5 58 (2.74%) Fixed Income
6 41 (1.94%) AI Agents
7 33 (1.56%) Data Protection Act
7 33 (1.56%) Embedded Systems
8 32 (1.51%) Onboarding
9 28 (1.33%) Legacy Systems
9 28 (1.33%) Robotics
10 26 (1.23%) Derivative
10 26 (1.23%) Mobile App
11 25 (1.18%) Data Structures
12 20 (0.95%) Equities
13 19 (0.90%) Greenfield Project
14 18 (0.85%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 14 (0.66%) FPGA
16 13 (0.62%) Life Science
16 13 (0.62%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 198 (9.37%) Linux
2 70 (3.31%) Windows
3 43 (2.04%) Unix
4 25 (1.18%) Android
5 23 (1.09%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 19 (0.90%) Apple iOS
7 12 (0.57%) Embedded Linux
8 11 (0.52%) Windows Server
9 10 (0.47%) FreeRTOS
10 7 (0.33%) Ubuntu
11 6 (0.28%) Debian
12 4 (0.19%) Rocky
12 4 (0.19%) VMS
13 2 (0.095%) Robot Operating System
13 2 (0.095%) Solaris
13 2 (0.095%) Windows Server 2008
13 2 (0.095%) Windows Server 2019
14 1 (0.047%) Mac OS
14 1 (0.047%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 594 (28.11%) CI/CD
2 590 (27.92%) Agile
3 421 (19.92%) DevOps
4 329 (15.57%) Microservices
5 283 (13.39%) AI
6 233 (11.03%) Problem-Solving
7 228 (10.79%) Full-Stack Development
8 220 (10.41%) Containerisation
9 219 (10.36%) Test Automation
10 202 (9.56%) Infrastructure as Code
11 159 (7.52%) SDLC
12 157 (7.43%) Observability
13 154 (7.29%) Computer Science
14 151 (7.15%) Continuous Improvement
15 150 (7.10%) Machine Learning
15 150 (7.10%) Mentoring
16 143 (6.77%) Scrum
17 139 (6.58%) TDD
17 139 (6.58%) Technical Leadership
18 121 (5.73%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 532 (25.18%) Python
2 516 (24.42%) Java
3 273 (12.92%) SQL
4 267 (12.64%) C#
5 245 (11.59%) TypeScript
6 228 (10.79%) C++
7 219 (10.36%) JavaScript
8 148 (7.00%) Go
9 134 (6.34%) Ada
10 124 (5.87%) C
11 36 (1.70%) Embedded C
11 36 (1.70%) Kotlin
11 36 (1.70%) PowerShell
12 33 (1.56%) Bash
13 26 (1.23%) MATLAB
14 25 (1.18%) Ruby
14 25 (1.18%) Rust
15 21 (0.99%) Shell Script
16 20 (0.95%) Scala
17 17 (0.80%) Embedded C++
Qualifications
1 511 (24.18%) Security Cleared
2 399 (18.88%) SC Cleared
3 173 (8.19%) Degree
4 89 (4.21%) Computer Science Degree
5 64 (3.03%) DV Cleared
6 35 (1.66%) Master's Degree
7 32 (1.51%) BPSS Clearance
8 21 (0.99%) AWS Certification
9 13 (0.62%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 13 (0.62%) Azure Certification
10 12 (0.57%) CISSP
11 10 (0.47%) PhD
12 9 (0.43%) CISM
13 8 (0.38%) TOGAF Certification
14 6 (0.28%) ISTQB
14 6 (0.28%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 4 (0.19%) HND
15 4 (0.19%) Microsoft Certification
16 3 (0.14%) Cisco Certification
16 3 (0.14%) HNC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 116 (5.49%) QA
2 51 (2.41%) Def Stans
3 38 (1.80%) Data Quality
4 36 (1.70%) IEC 61508
5 29 (1.37%) Accessibility
6 25 (1.18%) GDPR
7 22 (1.04%) MISRA
8 16 (0.76%) MISRA C
9 9 (0.43%) NCSC
10 8 (0.38%) WCAG
11 7 (0.33%) DO-178B
11 7 (0.33%) HL7
11 7 (0.33%) NIST
12 6 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
13 4 (0.19%) PCI DSS
13 4 (0.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 3 (0.14%) EMIR
14 3 (0.14%) FATCA
14 3 (0.14%) JSP 440
14 3 (0.14%) MiFID
System Software
1 311 (14.72%) Docker
2 21 (0.99%) Firmware
3 17 (0.80%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.47%) Virtual Machines
5 8 (0.38%) Embedded Firmware
6 6 (0.28%) Active Directory
7 4 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
8 3 (0.14%) HDFS
9 2 (0.095%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 349 (16.52%) Kubernetes
2 211 (9.99%) Terraform
3 89 (4.21%) Grafana
4 62 (2.93%) Ansible
5 51 (2.41%) Prometheus
6 36 (1.70%) Argo
7 15 (0.71%) Puppet
8 12 (0.57%) Progress Chef
9 6 (0.28%) Istio
10 5 (0.24%) HAProxy
10 5 (0.24%) Kibana
10 5 (0.24%) Kubeflow
11 4 (0.19%) Data Guard
11 4 (0.19%) Docker Swarm
11 4 (0.19%) HP Quality Center
11 4 (0.19%) Single Sign-On
12 3 (0.14%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
13 2 (0.095%) Consul
13 2 (0.095%) HP ALM
13 2 (0.095%) Podman
Vendors
1 139 (6.58%) Microsoft
2 75 (3.55%) Google
3 62 (2.93%) Oracle
4 57 (2.70%) Red Hat
5 46 (2.18%) Databricks
6 24 (1.14%) IBM
7 21 (0.99%) OpenAI
8 18 (0.85%) Splunk
8 18 (0.85%) VMware
9 13 (0.62%) Foundry
10 12 (0.57%) Informatica
10 12 (0.57%) SAP
10 12 (0.57%) ServiceNow
11 11 (0.52%) Okta
12 10 (0.47%) Atlassian
12 10 (0.47%) Dynatrace
12 10 (0.47%) ForgeRock
12 10 (0.47%) MathWorks
12 10 (0.47%) PagerDuty
12 10 (0.47%) Siemens