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 27 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 31 43 29
Rank change year-on-year +12 -14 +12
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,493 1,357 2,029
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.54% 4.92% 5.91%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.50% 5.42% 6.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,390 879 1,293
10th Percentile £400 £383 £406
25th Percentile £468 £463 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £558 £600 £625
Median % change year-on-year -7.08% -4.00% +4.17%
75th Percentile £688 £775 £800
90th Percentile £788 £850 £888
UK median daily rate £550 £575 £600
% change year-on-year -4.35% -4.17% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 407 81 313
10th Percentile £50.85 £31.25 £47.60
25th Percentile £60.00 £51.25 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £77.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 38,369 25,044 29,488
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.25% 90.72% 85.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,058 16,057 19,314
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £423 £405 £416
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £633 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £756
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,388 1,359 1,834
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £13.69
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.87 £17.69
Median hourly rate £47.00 £25.15 £40.33
Median % change year-on-year +86.88% -37.63% -5.12%
75th Percentile £69.56 £51.77 £65.00
90th Percentile £83.00 £70.16 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -37.13% -5.88%

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 27 July 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 27 July 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 27 July 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 -1 1,118 £600 -7.69% 1,431
North of England +27 386 £538 +9.07% 361
South East +27 314 £525 +4.90% 381
South West +17 308 £550 +10.00% 202
East of England +26 217 £505 +3.48% 187
North West +1 183 £550 +10.00% 213
Yorkshire +16 140 £525 +7.14% 87
Midlands -9 109 £463 -7.50% 130
West Midlands -9 84 £459 -20.17% 75
North East +12 68 £650 +41.30% 64
East Midlands -7 24 £513 +7.89% 55
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 (2.21%) Confluence
2 46 (1.85%) Apache Spark
3 32 (1.28%) Apache Airflow
4 30 (1.20%) Apache
5 11 (0.44%) CMS
6 10 (0.40%) SAS
7 7 (0.28%) SharePoint
8 5 (0.20%) Ethereum
8 5 (0.20%) Hyperledger
8 5 (0.20%) nginx
9 4 (0.16%) Jupyter
9 4 (0.16%) WebLogic
10 3 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
10 3 (0.12%) Tomcat
11 2 (0.080%) Apache Pulsar
11 2 (0.080%) Apache Solr
11 2 (0.080%) Apache Superset
11 2 (0.080%) MQSeries
11 2 (0.080%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 2 (0.080%) WordPress
Applications
1 15 (0.60%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (0.40%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 9 (0.36%) Chatbot
4 7 (0.28%) Microsoft Excel
5 6 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
6 5 (0.20%) CPLEX
7 4 (0.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 4 (0.16%) Microsoft Project
7 4 (0.16%) Simulink
8 3 (0.12%) MS Visio
8 3 (0.12%) Trello
9 2 (0.080%) CATIA
9 2 (0.080%) Notion
10 1 (0.040%) Adobe After Effects
10 1 (0.040%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.040%) Blender
10 1 (0.040%) Maya
10 1 (0.040%) S-PLUS
Business Applications
1 7 (0.28%) Oracle EBS
2 6 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
2 6 (0.24%) Payment Gateway
3 5 (0.20%) R3 Corda
4 4 (0.16%) Quorum
4 4 (0.16%) Ripple
5 3 (0.12%) Orchestrade
5 3 (0.12%) Primavera
5 3 (0.12%) Salesforce CRM
6 2 (0.080%) Aladdin
6 2 (0.080%) Endur
6 2 (0.080%) Remedy ITSM
7 1 (0.040%) Distributed Ledger
7 1 (0.040%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 1 (0.040%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 629 (25.23%) AWS
2 489 (19.61%) Azure
3 253 (10.15%) GCP
4 196 (7.86%) GitHub
5 120 (4.81%) Serverless
6 101 (4.05%) Azure DevOps
7 97 (3.89%) GitHub Actions
8 80 (3.21%) AWS Lambda
9 58 (2.33%) Amazon S3
10 55 (2.21%) OpenShift
11 49 (1.97%) Anthropic Claude
12 47 (1.89%) Power Platform
13 46 (1.85%) Amazon EKS
14 43 (1.72%) Amazon SQS
15 41 (1.64%) Amazon ECS
16 39 (1.56%) Azure AKS
17 35 (1.40%) GitHub Copilot
18 30 (1.20%) AWS CloudFormation
19 28 (1.12%) Amazon EC2
19 28 (1.12%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.00%) Software-Defined Radio
2 24 (0.96%) Wireless
3 23 (0.92%) Ethernet
4 19 (0.76%) Firewall
5 18 (0.72%) TCP/IP
6 17 (0.68%) Internet
7 15 (0.60%) HTTP
8 14 (0.56%) VPN
9 11 (0.44%) Wi-Fi
10 9 (0.36%) 3GPP
11 8 (0.32%) Network Security
11 8 (0.32%) RTP
12 7 (0.28%) RS-232
12 7 (0.28%) Wireshark
13 6 (0.24%) RS-485
14 5 (0.20%) DNS
15 4 (0.16%) RS-422
16 3 (0.12%) HTTPS
16 3 (0.12%) Modbus
16 3 (0.12%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 157 (6.30%) PostgreSQL
2 96 (3.85%) Relational Database
3 76 (3.05%) SQL Server
4 74 (2.97%) NoSQL
5 52 (2.09%) MongoDB
6 37 (1.48%) Data Warehouse
7 34 (1.36%) DynamoDB
8 31 (1.24%) MySQL
9 30 (1.20%) Big Data
10 29 (1.16%) Power BI
11 23 (0.92%) Elasticsearch
11 23 (0.92%) Redis
12 21 (0.84%) Amazon RDS
12 21 (0.84%) BigQuery
12 21 (0.84%) Data Lake
12 21 (0.84%) Metadata
13 17 (0.68%) Amazon Redshift
13 17 (0.68%) Pinecone
14 16 (0.64%) Apache Cassandra
15 15 (0.60%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 250 (10.03%) Git
2 152 (6.10%) Jenkins
3 135 (5.42%) GitLab
4 110 (4.41%) JIRA
5 58 (2.33%) SonarQube
6 34 (1.36%) Gradle
6 34 (1.36%) JUnit
7 24 (0.96%) Visual Studio
8 23 (0.92%) Claude Code
9 22 (0.88%) Rational DOORS
10 20 (0.80%) Bitbucket
10 20 (0.80%) Cucumber
11 19 (0.76%) Rational Rhapsody
12 18 (0.72%) Selenium
13 16 (0.64%) Liquibase
13 16 (0.64%) Maven
13 16 (0.64%) Mockito
14 13 (0.52%) Cypress.io
15 12 (0.48%) Eclipse
15 12 (0.48%) IntelliJ
General
1 463 (18.57%) Finance
2 446 (17.89%) Social Skills
3 182 (7.30%) Banking
4 168 (6.74%) Analytical Skills
5 167 (6.70%) Public Sector
6 103 (4.13%) Aerospace
7 98 (3.93%) Front Office
8 56 (2.25%) Retail
9 46 (1.85%) Manufacturing
10 43 (1.72%) Investment Banking
11 42 (1.68%) Law
12 31 (1.24%) Telecoms
13 30 (1.20%) Military
14 28 (1.12%) Automotive
15 27 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
16 25 (1.00%) Aviation
17 21 (0.84%) Electronics
18 18 (0.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 17 (0.68%) Legal
20 15 (0.60%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,192 (47.81%) Software Engineer
2 468 (18.77%) Developer
3 421 (16.89%) Senior
4 280 (11.23%) Lead
5 175 (7.02%) Senior Software Engineer
6 168 (6.74%) Java Engineer
7 142 (5.70%) Embedded Engineer
8 138 (5.54%) Java Software Engineer
9 133 (5.33%) Embedded Software Engineer
9 133 (5.33%) Java Developer
10 116 (4.65%) C++ Software Engineer
11 106 (4.25%) Lead Software Engineer
12 102 (4.09%) Python Engineer
13 101 (4.05%) Architect
13 101 (4.05%) Software Developer
14 85 (3.41%) Senior Developer
15 81 (3.25%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 77 (3.09%) DevOps Engineer
17 76 (3.05%) Python Developer
18 73 (2.93%) Developer/Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 281 (11.27%) React
2 199 (7.98%) .NET
3 196 (7.86%) REST
4 188 (7.54%) Spring
5 184 (7.38%) Node.js
6 180 (7.22%) Kafka
7 169 (6.78%) Spring Boot
8 119 (4.77%) RESTful
9 111 (4.45%) AngularJS
10 75 (3.01%) GraphQL
11 57 (2.29%) Redux
12 49 (1.97%) Next.js
13 47 (1.89%) CSS
13 47 (1.89%) Django
13 47 (1.89%) HTML
14 44 (1.76%) JSON
15 39 (1.56%) Quarkus
16 35 (1.40%) .NET Core
16 35 (1.40%) FastAPI
16 35 (1.40%) LangChain
Miscellaneous
1 325 (13.04%) Cloud Native
2 215 (8.62%) Distributed Systems
3 134 (5.38%) Product Ownership
4 84 (3.37%) Algorithms
5 76 (3.05%) AI Agents
6 75 (3.01%) Fixed Income
7 50 (2.01%) Data Structures
8 46 (1.85%) Onboarding
9 43 (1.72%) Data Protection Act
9 43 (1.72%) Embedded Systems
10 37 (1.48%) Enterprise Software
11 36 (1.44%) Derivative
12 35 (1.40%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 34 (1.36%) Legacy Systems
14 32 (1.28%) Self-Motivation
15 29 (1.16%) Equities
16 23 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
17 21 (0.84%) Robotics
18 17 (0.68%) Virtual Team
19 16 (0.64%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 186 (7.46%) Linux
2 58 (2.33%) Windows
3 33 (1.32%) Unix
4 30 (1.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 19 (0.76%) Embedded Linux
6 13 (0.52%) Android
7 11 (0.44%) Apple iOS
7 11 (0.44%) FreeRTOS
8 10 (0.40%) Windows Server
9 8 (0.32%) Ubuntu
10 4 (0.16%) Debian
10 4 (0.16%) VMS
10 4 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.12%) Rocky
11 3 (0.12%) Solaris
11 3 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
12 2 (0.080%) VxWorks
13 1 (0.040%) Tizen
13 1 (0.040%) webOS
13 1 (0.040%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 806 (32.33%) CI/CD
2 782 (31.37%) Agile
3 578 (23.18%) DevOps
4 442 (17.73%) AI
5 376 (15.08%) Microservices
6 321 (12.88%) Test Automation
7 289 (11.59%) Problem-Solving
8 278 (11.15%) Full-Stack Development
9 261 (10.47%) Continuous Improvement
10 259 (10.39%) Infrastructure as Code
11 250 (10.03%) Containerisation
12 216 (8.66%) Machine Learning
13 214 (8.58%) Observability
14 205 (8.22%) Mentoring
15 202 (8.10%) SDLC
16 194 (7.78%) TDD
17 186 (7.46%) Scrum
18 183 (7.34%) Platform Engineering
18 183 (7.34%) Technical Leadership
19 176 (7.06%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 717 (28.76%) Python
2 650 (26.07%) Java
3 326 (13.08%) SQL
4 313 (12.56%) TypeScript
5 294 (11.79%) C#
6 246 (9.87%) JavaScript
7 212 (8.50%) C++
8 119 (4.77%) Go
9 114 (4.57%) Ada
10 108 (4.33%) C
11 55 (2.21%) Kotlin
12 42 (1.68%) Rust
13 35 (1.40%) Bash
13 35 (1.40%) PowerShell
14 31 (1.24%) Scala
15 24 (0.96%) PL/SQL
16 20 (0.80%) Ruby
17 18 (0.72%) Bicep
17 18 (0.72%) Embedded C
18 17 (0.68%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 586 (23.51%) Security Cleared
2 485 (19.45%) SC Cleared
3 192 (7.70%) Degree
4 83 (3.33%) Computer Science Degree
5 78 (3.13%) DV Cleared
6 53 (2.13%) BPSS Clearance
7 37 (1.48%) Master's Degree
8 36 (1.44%) AWS Certification
9 21 (0.84%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 18 (0.72%) PhD
11 16 (0.64%) Azure Certification
12 7 (0.28%) CISSP
13 6 (0.24%) Chartered Engineer
13 6 (0.24%) ISTQB
13 6 (0.24%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 6 (0.24%) Microsoft Certified Professional
13 6 (0.24%) PMP
14 4 (0.16%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
14 4 (0.16%) MBA
14 4 (0.16%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 150 (6.02%) QA
2 54 (2.17%) Data Quality
3 48 (1.93%) Accessibility
4 24 (0.96%) Def Stans
5 20 (0.80%) GDPR
6 14 (0.56%) IEC 61508
6 14 (0.56%) NIST
7 13 (0.52%) WCAG
8 12 (0.48%) MISRA
9 11 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 10 (0.40%) DO-178B
11 8 (0.32%) NCSC
12 6 (0.24%) GRC
12 6 (0.24%) PCI DSS
13 5 (0.20%) JSP 440
13 5 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 3 (0.12%) DO-254
14 3 (0.12%) FATCA
14 3 (0.12%) MISRA C
15 2 (0.080%) EMIR
System Software
1 362 (14.52%) Docker
2 23 (0.92%) Firmware
3 12 (0.48%) Embedded Firmware
4 10 (0.40%) Active Directory
5 7 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
6 6 (0.24%) VMware Infrastructure
7 3 (0.12%) HDFS
8 2 (0.080%) SRDF
9 1 (0.040%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 412 (16.53%) Kubernetes
2 247 (9.91%) Terraform
3 74 (2.97%) Ansible
4 58 (2.33%) Grafana
5 40 (1.60%) Argo
6 39 (1.56%) Prometheus
7 11 (0.44%) Kibana
7 11 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
8 9 (0.36%) Puppet
9 7 (0.28%) Progress Chef
10 6 (0.24%) Kubeflow
11 5 (0.20%) HAProxy
12 3 (0.12%) Consul
12 3 (0.12%) Functional Safety
13 2 (0.080%) Cilium
13 2 (0.080%) Docker Swarm
13 2 (0.080%) HP Fortify
13 2 (0.080%) HP Quality Center
14 1 (0.040%) logstash
14 1 (0.040%) QRadar
Vendors
1 125 (5.01%) Microsoft
2 86 (3.45%) Google
3 75 (3.01%) Oracle
4 50 (2.01%) Red Hat
5 45 (1.81%) Databricks
6 43 (1.72%) OpenAI
7 20 (0.80%) Splunk
8 19 (0.76%) Informatica
9 18 (0.72%) IBM
10 17 (0.68%) Salesforce
10 17 (0.68%) ServiceNow
11 15 (0.60%) Foundry
12 12 (0.48%) Adobe
13 11 (0.44%) SAP
13 11 (0.44%) Siemens
14 10 (0.40%) Checkmarx
14 10 (0.40%) ForgeRock
14 10 (0.40%) Okta
15 9 (0.36%) Dynatrace
15 9 (0.36%) Solace