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

6 months to
16 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 32 45 27
Rank change year-on-year +13 -18 +13
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,301 1,164 2,290
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.37% 4.71% 6.12%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.31% 5.16% 7.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,224 769 1,312
10th Percentile £400 £400 £418
25th Percentile £463 £475 £488
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -2.04%
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 62 412
10th Percentile £52.50 £38.08 £46.25
25th Percentile £60.00 £51.44 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.69 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £79.75 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year - - +1.33%

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 36,481 22,561 31,958
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.14% 91.35% 85.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,067 14,578 20,676
10th Percentile £325 £302 £300
25th Percentile £415 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.46% -0.98% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £506 £525
% change year-on-year +1.28% -3.62% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,283 1,053 2,381
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £20.81 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £47.00 £27.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +70.91% -26.67% +7.05%
75th Percentile £68.00 £56.25 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £26.32 £37.18
% change year-on-year +67.02% -29.21% +6.23%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 -5 980 £589 -9.42% 1,206
North of England +26 346 £538 +7.50% 789
South West +27 335 £570 +8.57% 398
South East +24 285 £525 +3.65% 855
East of England +40 215 £495 +1.43% 585
North West +5 157 £503 +0.50% 413
Yorkshire +22 124 £525 +7.14% 209
Midlands -23 92 £462 -8.97% 437
West Midlands -23 73 £459 -18.94% 216
North East +19 70 £621 +35.05% 168
East Midlands -20 18 £513 +4.59% 221
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 (2.35%) Confluence
2 39 (1.69%) 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 (0.043%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 16 (0.70%) 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 (0.043%) Adobe After Effects
6 1 (0.043%) Blender
6 1 (0.043%) Maya
6 1 (0.043%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.043%) Notion
6 1 (0.043%) 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 (0.043%) Sprinklr
6 1 (0.043%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 563 (24.47%) AWS
2 436 (18.95%) Azure
3 204 (8.87%) GCP
4 167 (7.26%) GitHub
5 120 (5.22%) Serverless
6 96 (4.17%) Azure DevOps
7 78 (3.39%) GitHub Actions
8 76 (3.30%) AWS Lambda
9 63 (2.74%) Amazon S3
10 54 (2.35%) OpenShift
11 47 (2.04%) Power Platform
12 38 (1.65%) Amazon SQS
13 36 (1.56%) Amazon ECS
13 36 (1.56%) Azure AKS
14 35 (1.52%) Amazon EKS
15 34 (1.48%) Anthropic Claude
16 32 (1.39%) Amazon EC2
17 28 (1.22%) AWS CloudFormation
18 27 (1.17%) SaaS
19 26 (1.13%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 30 (1.30%) 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 (0.56%) Firewall
7 12 (0.52%) Wi-Fi
8 10 (0.43%) 3GPP
8 10 (0.43%) 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%) Modbus
13 3 (0.13%) RS-232
13 3 (0.13%) RS-485
Database & Business Intelligence
1 140 (6.08%) PostgreSQL
2 78 (3.39%) Relational Database
3 65 (2.82%) SQL Server
4 61 (2.65%) NoSQL
5 51 (2.22%) MongoDB
6 37 (1.61%) Apache Cassandra
7 33 (1.43%) DynamoDB
7 33 (1.43%) Power BI
8 30 (1.30%) Amazon RDS
9 28 (1.22%) BigQuery
9 28 (1.22%) MySQL
10 27 (1.17%) Data Warehouse
11 26 (1.13%) Data Lake
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
1 224 (9.73%) Git
2 141 (6.13%) Jenkins
3 122 (5.30%) GitLab
4 110 (4.78%) JIRA
5 53 (2.30%) SonarQube
6 42 (1.83%) Gradle
7 33 (1.43%) JUnit
8 29 (1.26%) Rational DOORS
8 29 (1.26%) Rational Rhapsody
9 23 (1.00%) Visual Studio
10 22 (0.96%) Cucumber
11 21 (0.91%) Bitbucket
12 20 (0.87%) Maven
12 20 (0.87%) Selenium
13 19 (0.83%) IntelliJ
14 16 (0.70%) Cypress.io
14 16 (0.70%) Liquibase
14 16 (0.70%) Mockito
15 13 (0.56%) Claude Code
16 12 (0.52%) Eclipse
General
1 397 (17.25%) Finance
2 346 (15.04%) Social Skills
3 149 (6.48%) Banking
4 137 (5.95%) Analytical Skills
5 135 (5.87%) Public Sector
6 99 (4.30%) Aerospace
7 76 (3.30%) Front Office
8 45 (1.96%) Manufacturing
8 45 (1.96%) Retail
9 44 (1.91%) Law
10 37 (1.61%) Investment Banking
11 26 (1.13%) Military
12 25 (1.09%) Automotive
12 25 (1.09%) Aviation
13 24 (1.04%) Influencing Skills
14 22 (0.96%) Telecoms
15 18 (0.78%) Financial Institution
16 16 (0.70%) Presentation Skills
17 15 (0.65%) Documentation Skills
17 15 (0.65%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 1,172 (50.93%) Software Engineer
2 426 (18.51%) Developer
3 400 (17.38%) Senior
4 206 (8.95%) Lead
5 178 (7.74%) Senior Software Engineer
6 168 (7.30%) Java Engineer
7 146 (6.35%) Embedded Engineer
8 138 (6.00%) Java Software Engineer
9 135 (5.87%) Embedded Software Engineer
10 126 (5.48%) C++ Software Engineer
11 123 (5.35%) Java Developer
12 103 (4.48%) Architect
13 83 (3.61%) Senior Developer
14 75 (3.26%) Software Developer
15 72 (3.13%) Python Developer
16 71 (3.09%) Developer/Software Engineer
17 67 (2.91%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 65 (2.82%) DevOps Engineer
18 65 (2.82%) Python Engineer
19 64 (2.78%) Full-Stack Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 260 (11.30%) React
2 179 (7.78%) .NET
3 178 (7.74%) Kafka
4 171 (7.43%) Spring
5 167 (7.26%) Node.js
6 159 (6.91%) Spring Boot
7 156 (6.78%) REST
8 107 (4.65%) AngularJS
9 106 (4.61%) RESTful
10 72 (3.13%) GraphQL
11 55 (2.39%) Redux
12 48 (2.09%) CSS
13 47 (2.04%) HTML
14 41 (1.78%) Middleware
15 39 (1.69%) JSON
15 39 (1.69%) Next.js
16 37 (1.61%) LangChain
17 33 (1.43%) gRPC
17 33 (1.43%) Playwright
17 33 (1.43%) Quarkus
Miscellaneous
1 256 (11.13%) Cloud Native
2 171 (7.43%) Distributed Systems
3 114 (4.95%) Product Ownership
4 92 (4.00%) Algorithms
5 66 (2.87%) Fixed Income
6 61 (2.65%) AI Agents
7 39 (1.69%) Embedded Systems
7 39 (1.69%) Onboarding
8 35 (1.52%) Legacy Systems
9 34 (1.48%) Data Protection Act
10 33 (1.43%) Data Structures
10 33 (1.43%) Derivative
11 28 (1.22%) Robotics
12 27 (1.17%) Self-Motivation
13 25 (1.09%) Equities
13 25 (1.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 21 (0.91%) Enterprise Software
14 21 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
15 20 (0.87%) Mobile App
16 15 (0.65%) FPGA
Operating Systems
1 179 (7.78%) Linux
2 56 (2.43%) Windows
3 41 (1.78%) Unix
4 27 (1.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 16 (0.70%) Embedded Linux
6 15 (0.65%) Apple iOS
7 14 (0.61%) Android
8 11 (0.48%) FreeRTOS
9 9 (0.39%) Windows Server
10 7 (0.30%) Ubuntu
11 5 (0.22%) Debian
12 4 (0.17%) Rocky
12 4 (0.17%) VMS
12 4 (0.17%) Windows Server 2019
13 3 (0.13%) Solaris
13 3 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
14 2 (0.087%) VxWorks
15 1 (0.043%) Tizen
15 1 (0.043%) webOS
15 1 (0.043%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 686 (29.81%) CI/CD
2 660 (28.68%) Agile
3 473 (20.56%) DevOps
4 370 (16.08%) AI
5 349 (15.17%) Microservices
6 272 (11.82%) Test Automation
7 246 (10.69%) Problem-Solving
8 244 (10.60%) Full-Stack Development
9 217 (9.43%) Containerisation
10 212 (9.21%) Infrastructure as Code
11 183 (7.95%) Continuous Improvement
12 178 (7.74%) SDLC
13 175 (7.61%) Observability
14 173 (7.52%) Machine Learning
15 172 (7.48%) TDD
16 168 (7.30%) Scrum
17 166 (7.21%) Mentoring
18 157 (6.82%) Platform Engineering
19 150 (6.52%) Technical Leadership
20 136 (5.91%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 596 (25.90%) Java
2 590 (25.64%) Python
3 303 (13.17%) SQL
4 292 (12.69%) C#
5 274 (11.91%) TypeScript
6 232 (10.08%) JavaScript
7 217 (9.43%) C++
8 129 (5.61%) Ada
8 129 (5.61%) Go
9 108 (4.69%) C
10 42 (1.83%) Kotlin
11 32 (1.39%) PowerShell
11 32 (1.39%) Rust
12 26 (1.13%) Bash
12 26 (1.13%) MATLAB
13 25 (1.09%) Embedded C
14 23 (1.00%) PL/SQL
14 23 (1.00%) Scala
15 19 (0.83%) Ruby
16 17 (0.74%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 550 (23.90%) Security Cleared
2 444 (19.30%) SC Cleared
3 170 (7.39%) Degree
4 78 (3.39%) Computer Science Degree
5 64 (2.78%) DV Cleared
6 49 (2.13%) BPSS Clearance
7 27 (1.17%) AWS Certification
8 25 (1.09%) Master's Degree
9 18 (0.78%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 12 (0.52%) Azure Certification
11 9 (0.39%) CISSP
12 8 (0.35%) PhD
13 7 (0.30%) ISTQB
13 7 (0.30%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
14 6 (0.26%) Chartered Engineer
14 6 (0.26%) TOGAF Certification
15 5 (0.22%) CISM
16 4 (0.17%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
17 3 (0.13%) GIAC
17 3 (0.13%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 123 (5.35%) QA
2 41 (1.78%) Def Stans
3 38 (1.65%) Data Quality
4 36 (1.56%) Accessibility
5 33 (1.43%) IEC 61508
6 22 (0.96%) GDPR
7 16 (0.70%) MISRA
8 13 (0.56%) MISRA C
9 11 (0.48%) NCSC
9 11 (0.48%) NIST
10 10 (0.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 10 (0.43%) WCAG
11 6 (0.26%) PCI DSS
12 5 (0.22%) GRC
12 5 (0.22%) JSP 440
13 4 (0.17%) DO-178B
13 4 (0.17%) DO-254
13 4 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 3 (0.13%) FATCA
14 3 (0.13%) HL7
System Software
1 315 (13.69%) Docker
2 20 (0.87%) Firmware
3 10 (0.43%) Embedded Firmware
3 10 (0.43%) VMware Infrastructure
4 7 (0.30%) Active Directory
4 7 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
6 3 (0.13%) HDFS
7 2 (0.087%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 367 (15.95%) Kubernetes
2 213 (9.26%) Terraform
3 67 (2.91%) Grafana
4 56 (2.43%) Ansible
5 40 (1.74%) Argo
6 38 (1.65%) Prometheus
7 7 (0.30%) Puppet
7 7 (0.30%) Single Sign-On
8 6 (0.26%) Istio
8 6 (0.26%) Kibana
8 6 (0.26%) Progress Chef
9 5 (0.22%) HAProxy
10 4 (0.17%) Data Guard
10 4 (0.17%) HP Quality Center
11 3 (0.13%) Docker Swarm
11 3 (0.13%) Functional Safety
11 3 (0.13%) Kubeflow
12 2 (0.087%) Cilium
12 2 (0.087%) Consul
12 2 (0.087%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 122 (5.30%) Microsoft
2 78 (3.39%) Google
3 70 (3.04%) Oracle
4 55 (2.39%) Red Hat
5 42 (1.83%) Databricks
6 35 (1.52%) OpenAI
7 21 (0.91%) IBM
8 18 (0.78%) ServiceNow
9 17 (0.74%) Splunk
10 15 (0.65%) Informatica
11 13 (0.56%) Salesforce
12 12 (0.52%) Siemens
13 11 (0.48%) Foundry
14 10 (0.43%) ForgeRock
14 10 (0.43%) MathWorks
14 10 (0.43%) Okta
14 10 (0.43%) VMware
15 9 (0.39%) Checkmarx
15 9 (0.39%) SAP
16 8 (0.35%) Dynatrace