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

6 months to
22 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 43 32 44
Rank change year-on-year -11 +12 -7
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 1,544 1,705 1,804
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.05% 5.45% 4.56%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.61% 6.27% 5.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 887 1,020 1,204
10th Percentile £375 £403 £425
25th Percentile £463 £500 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £560 £600 £611
Median % change year-on-year -6.67% -1.80% +1.83%
75th Percentile £695 £775 £738
90th Percentile £825 £868 £810
UK median daily rate £550 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 191 159 228
10th Percentile £46.25 £42.90 £46.18
25th Percentile £55.00 £54.49 £51.75
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £67.25 £70.00 £69.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £90.00
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 27,542 27,205 35,091
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 90.07% 87.01% 88.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,480 16,613 23,999
10th Percentile £300 £313 £313
25th Percentile £405 £414 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% -3.67% -0.91%
75th Percentile £625 £645 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,822 1,002 1,481
10th Percentile £14.86 £15.07 £14.54
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.00 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.36 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -28.87% -21.42% +26.76%
75th Percentile £50.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.75 £74.72 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £33.93 £44.00
% change year-on-year -25.88% -22.89% +25.71%

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 22 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 22 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 22 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 -10 831 £625 -7.41% 1,540
North of England -6 210 £525 - 439
East of England +2 129 £538 +13.16% 266
South West -17 121 £454 -24.38% 304
Yorkshire -9 112 £525 -4.55% 99
South East -32 102 £475 -5.00% 530
North West -22 79 £550 +15.79% 293
Midlands -41 79 £525 +8.58% 183
West Midlands -16 64 £525 +8.58% 113
North East +2 22 £488 -18.41% 47
East Midlands -31 15 £450 -6.74% 69
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 72 (4.66%) Apache Airflow
2 71 (4.60%) Apache
3 55 (3.56%) Confluence
4 30 (1.94%) Apache Spark
5 14 (0.91%) JBoss
6 11 (0.71%) CMS
6 11 (0.71%) WebLogic
7 6 (0.39%) OpenStack
8 4 (0.26%) SAS
8 4 (0.26%) WordPress
9 3 (0.19%) Appian
9 3 (0.19%) IIS
9 3 (0.19%) nginx
9 3 (0.19%) Sitecore CMS
10 2 (0.13%) Magnolia
10 2 (0.13%) SharePoint
10 2 (0.13%) Tomcat
11 1 (0.065%) CICS
11 1 (0.065%) Microsoft Exchange
11 1 (0.065%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 17 (1.10%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (0.71%) Chatbot
3 10 (0.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 10 (0.65%) Simulink
4 9 (0.58%) Microsoft Office
5 3 (0.19%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.065%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.065%) Stateflow
Business Applications
1 8 (0.52%) Aladdin
1 8 (0.52%) Temenos T24
2 3 (0.19%) Fidessa
2 3 (0.19%) FLEXCUBE
2 3 (0.19%) Oracle BPM
2 3 (0.19%) thinkFolio
3 2 (0.13%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.13%) Primavera
4 1 (0.065%) ION Anvil
4 1 (0.065%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.065%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 542 (35.10%) AWS
2 268 (17.36%) Azure
3 173 (11.20%) GCP
4 167 (10.82%) Serverless
5 130 (8.42%) GitHub
6 77 (4.99%) GitHub Actions
7 70 (4.53%) AWS Lambda
8 65 (4.21%) Azure DevOps
9 62 (4.02%) dbt
10 57 (3.69%) Snowflake
11 52 (3.37%) Amazon S3
12 46 (2.98%) Power Platform
13 42 (2.72%) Amazon ECS
14 35 (2.27%) Azure AKS
15 30 (1.94%) Amazon EKS
15 30 (1.94%) OpenShift
16 29 (1.88%) AWS CloudFormation
17 28 (1.81%) Azure Functions
18 27 (1.75%) Amazon EC2
19 24 (1.55%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 30 (1.94%) Ethernet
2 23 (1.49%) TCP/IP
3 10 (0.65%) Firewall
3 10 (0.65%) Network Security
4 8 (0.52%) Internet
4 8 (0.52%) NFC
4 8 (0.52%) PPP
5 6 (0.39%) Wireless
6 5 (0.32%) HTTP
7 4 (0.26%) tcpdump
7 4 (0.26%) VPN
8 3 (0.19%) BGP
8 3 (0.19%) Kerberos
8 3 (0.19%) Software-Defined Networking
8 3 (0.19%) VLAN
9 2 (0.13%) DNS
9 2 (0.13%) MIMO
9 2 (0.13%) MQTT
9 2 (0.13%) SSH
9 2 (0.13%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 125 (8.10%) PostgreSQL
2 87 (5.63%) NoSQL
3 68 (4.40%) Apache Cassandra
3 68 (4.40%) MongoDB
4 55 (3.56%) Amazon Athena
5 51 (3.30%) Apache Arrow
5 51 (3.30%) Apache Iceberg
5 51 (3.30%) Data Lake
5 51 (3.30%) Dremio
6 48 (3.11%) SQL Server
7 39 (2.53%) Big Data
8 37 (2.40%) Relational Database
9 32 (2.07%) Apache Ignite
9 32 (2.07%) Hadoop
9 32 (2.07%) Power BI
10 30 (1.94%) MySQL
11 27 (1.75%) Amazon RDS
11 27 (1.75%) Elasticsearch
12 24 (1.55%) DynamoDB
13 19 (1.23%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 184 (11.92%) Git
2 144 (9.33%) Jenkins
3 108 (6.99%) JIRA
4 99 (6.41%) GitLab
5 38 (2.46%) JUnit
6 37 (2.40%) Eclipse
7 35 (2.27%) Liquibase
7 35 (2.27%) Selenium
8 30 (1.94%) Cypress.io
9 28 (1.81%) Cucumber
10 27 (1.75%) SonarQube
11 26 (1.68%) Visual Studio
12 24 (1.55%) Gradle
13 19 (1.23%) Mockito
13 19 (1.23%) Rational DOORS
14 18 (1.17%) Maven
15 16 (1.04%) Artifactory
16 15 (0.97%) Bitbucket
17 12 (0.78%) Postman
17 12 (0.78%) TeamCity
General
1 357 (23.12%) Finance
2 356 (23.06%) Social Skills
3 164 (10.62%) Banking
4 111 (7.19%) Front Office
5 110 (7.12%) Public Sector
6 88 (5.70%) Analytical Skills
7 81 (5.25%) Investment Banking
8 39 (2.53%) Financial Institution
9 38 (2.46%) Military
10 30 (1.94%) Aerospace
11 25 (1.62%) Law
12 23 (1.49%) Presentation Skills
13 20 (1.30%) Electronics
13 20 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
14 18 (1.17%) Pharmaceutical
15 17 (1.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 16 (1.04%) Documentation Skills
17 13 (0.84%) Telecoms
18 11 (0.71%) Manufacturing
18 11 (0.71%) Retail
Job Titles
1 697 (45.14%) Software Engineer
2 361 (23.38%) Developer
3 305 (19.75%) Senior
4 149 (9.65%) Senior Software Engineer
5 128 (8.29%) Lead
6 115 (7.45%) Python Engineer
7 105 (6.80%) C++ Software Engineer
8 94 (6.09%) AWS Engineer
9 91 (5.89%) Java Engineer
10 84 (5.44%) Java Software Engineer
11 82 (5.31%) AWS Software Engineer
12 80 (5.18%) Python Software Engineer
13 73 (4.73%) Python Developer
14 72 (4.66%) Java Developer
15 64 (4.15%) Senior Developer
16 57 (3.69%) Developer/Software Engineer
17 50 (3.24%) Architect
18 49 (3.17%) Full-Stack Engineer
19 48 (3.11%) Data Engineer
20 46 (2.98%) Embedded Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 236 (15.28%) React
2 231 (14.96%) Kafka
3 179 (11.59%) Node.js
4 144 (9.33%) .NET
5 136 (8.81%) REST
6 118 (7.64%) RESTful
7 109 (7.06%) gRPC
8 106 (6.87%) AngularJS
9 90 (5.83%) Spring
10 86 (5.57%) Pandas
11 84 (5.44%) NumPy
12 71 (4.60%) SciPy
13 70 (4.53%) Spring Boot
14 60 (3.89%) Vue
15 59 (3.82%) HTML
16 53 (3.43%) FastAPI
16 53 (3.43%) JSON
17 49 (3.17%) GraphQL
18 44 (2.85%) CSS
19 43 (2.78%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 174 (11.27%) Cloud Native
2 131 (8.48%) Distributed Systems
3 104 (6.74%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 97 (6.28%) Fixed Income
5 67 (4.34%) Hedge funds
6 65 (4.21%) Equities
7 58 (3.76%) Algorithms
8 47 (3.04%) Product Ownership
9 45 (2.91%) Derivative
10 43 (2.78%) Data Structures
11 37 (2.40%) Public Cloud
12 34 (2.20%) Data Protection Act
12 34 (2.20%) Virtual Team
13 33 (2.14%) Greenfield Project
14 32 (2.07%) Pricing Data
15 22 (1.42%) Legacy Systems
16 21 (1.36%) Self-Motivation
17 19 (1.23%) Embedded Systems
18 18 (1.17%) Mobile App
19 17 (1.10%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 243 (15.74%) Linux
2 81 (5.25%) Windows
3 51 (3.30%) Unix
4 23 (1.49%) Android
5 22 (1.42%) Ubuntu
6 15 (0.97%) Apple iOS
7 9 (0.58%) Windows Server
8 8 (0.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 6 (0.39%) FreeRTOS
9 6 (0.39%) Mac OS
10 4 (0.26%) VMS
11 1 (0.065%) Amazon Linux
11 1 (0.065%) Debian
11 1 (0.065%) Robot Operating System
11 1 (0.065%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.065%) Windows Embedded Compact
11 1 (0.065%) Windows Server 2008
11 1 (0.065%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 630 (40.80%) Agile
2 482 (31.22%) CI/CD
3 357 (23.12%) DevOps
4 301 (19.49%) Microservices
5 237 (15.35%) Problem-Solving
6 203 (13.15%) Containerisation
7 200 (12.95%) Infrastructure as Code
8 184 (11.92%) Test Automation
9 171 (11.08%) AI
10 168 (10.88%) Computer Science
11 162 (10.49%) Mentoring
12 160 (10.36%) TDD
13 146 (9.46%) Full-Stack Development
14 143 (9.26%) Scrum
15 138 (8.94%) Machine Learning
16 116 (7.51%) Clean Code
17 113 (7.32%) Open Source
18 107 (6.93%) Continuous Integration
19 93 (6.02%) Data Pipeline
20 90 (5.83%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 536 (34.72%) Python
2 406 (26.30%) Java
3 296 (19.17%) JavaScript
4 267 (17.29%) SQL
5 258 (16.71%) C++
6 241 (15.61%) TypeScript
7 228 (14.77%) C#
8 146 (9.46%) Go
9 80 (5.18%) C
10 40 (2.59%) Ada
11 32 (2.07%) Shell Script
12 29 (1.88%) Rust
13 28 (1.81%) Bash
14 20 (1.30%) VB
15 19 (1.23%) PowerShell
15 19 (1.23%) Ruby
15 19 (1.23%) Scala
16 16 (1.04%) PHP
17 15 (0.97%) MATLAB
18 14 (0.91%) Embedded C++
Qualifications
1 276 (17.88%) Security Cleared
2 228 (14.77%) SC Cleared
3 202 (13.08%) Degree
4 97 (6.28%) Computer Science Degree
5 55 (3.56%) Master's Degree
6 51 (3.30%) DV Cleared
7 20 (1.30%) AWS Certification
8 19 (1.23%) BPSS Clearance
9 18 (1.17%) PhD
10 17 (1.10%) MCP
11 15 (0.97%) CISSP
12 13 (0.84%) CISM
13 10 (0.65%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 10 (0.65%) Azure Certification
14 9 (0.58%) TOGAF Certification
15 7 (0.45%) Postgraduate
16 6 (0.39%) ISTQB
17 4 (0.26%) HND
18 3 (0.19%) EMC Certification
18 3 (0.19%) HNC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 80 (5.18%) QA
2 29 (1.88%) Data Quality
3 28 (1.81%) Accessibility
4 20 (1.30%) WCAG
5 19 (1.23%) Def Stans
6 16 (1.04%) GDPR
6 16 (1.04%) IEC 61508
6 16 (1.04%) MISRA
7 13 (0.84%) EU AI Act
8 12 (0.78%) NIST
9 10 (0.65%) MISRA C
10 7 (0.45%) DO-178B
10 7 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 5 (0.32%) Software Quality Assurance
12 4 (0.26%) ISO 26262
12 4 (0.26%) MiFID
12 4 (0.26%) SLA
13 3 (0.19%) IEC 62304
13 3 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 15288
13 3 (0.19%) NCSC
System Software
1 349 (22.60%) Docker
2 16 (1.04%) Active Directory
3 9 (0.58%) Virtual Machines
4 8 (0.52%) Firmware
5 5 (0.32%) VMware Infrastructure
6 4 (0.26%) zsh
7 2 (0.13%) Embedded Firmware
8 1 (0.065%) KVM
8 1 (0.065%) Virtual Desktop
8 1 (0.065%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 327 (21.18%) Kubernetes
2 197 (12.76%) Terraform
3 74 (4.79%) Grafana
4 73 (4.73%) Ansible
5 60 (3.89%) Prometheus
6 18 (1.17%) Puppet
7 13 (0.84%) Kibana
8 11 (0.71%) Argo
9 8 (0.52%) Progress Chef
9 8 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
10 7 (0.45%) Podman
11 4 (0.26%) Functional Safety
11 4 (0.26%) Kubeflow
12 3 (0.19%) Cilium
12 3 (0.19%) Rsyslog
12 3 (0.19%) SCOM
12 3 (0.19%) SELinux
13 2 (0.13%) Packer
13 2 (0.13%) rkt
14 1 (0.065%) Fluentd
Vendors
1 132 (8.55%) Microsoft
2 57 (3.69%) Oracle
3 56 (3.63%) Google
4 38 (2.46%) Splunk
5 32 (2.07%) Databricks
5 32 (2.07%) Foundry
6 27 (1.75%) Red Hat
7 15 (0.97%) Palantir
8 14 (0.91%) Atlassian
8 14 (0.91%) Cloudera
9 11 (0.71%) BiZZdesign
9 11 (0.71%) Salesforce
10 10 (0.65%) OpenAI
10 10 (0.65%) SAP
10 10 (0.65%) Temenos
11 9 (0.58%) CA Agile Central
11 9 (0.58%) ServiceNow
11 9 (0.58%) webMethods
12 8 (0.52%) IBM
13 7 (0.45%) Cisco