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

6 months to
11 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 35 41 31
Rank change year-on-year +6 -10 +10
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,122 1,208 2,048
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.22% 4.93% 5.57%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.16% 5.41% 6.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,106 798 1,197
10th Percentile £400 £400 £421
25th Percentile £454 £488 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -
75th Percentile £671 £775 £750
90th Percentile £775 £838 £850
UK median daily rate £550 £588 £600
% change year-on-year -6.38% -2.08% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 470 81 356
10th Percentile £52.50 £43.00 £46.25
25th Percentile £61.25 £57.50 £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 £72.50 £68.75 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year - +4.00% -3.85%

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 34,470 22,336 31,802
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.75% 91.22% 86.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,971 14,617 20,828
10th Percentile £319 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £511 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £501 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.75% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,149 942 2,251
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.50 £12.92
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £47.00 £29.07 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +61.68% -20.36% -2.67%
75th Percentile £67.84 £63.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.13 £28.75 £36.50
% change year-on-year +46.52% -21.23% +0.69%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 -7 871 £575 -14.81% 703
North of England +15 307 £500 - 309
South West +17 306 £575 +4.55% 163
South East +18 267 £525 +2.44% 400
East of England +41 224 £488 -0.16% 171
North West -1 143 £500 - 163
Yorkshire +2 113 £500 - 93
Midlands -32 90 £498 +1.53% 136
West Midlands -16 78 £489 -7.98% 75
North East +25 56 £593 +28.80% 55
East Midlands -38 11 £525 +7.14% 61
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 (2.54%) Confluence
2 43 (2.03%) Apache Spark
3 38 (1.79%) Apache
4 16 (0.75%) Apache Airflow
5 7 (0.33%) SAS
6 5 (0.24%) CMS
6 5 (0.24%) nginx
6 5 (0.24%) Palantir Foundry
6 5 (0.24%) SharePoint
7 4 (0.19%) IIS
7 4 (0.19%) WebLogic
8 3 (0.14%) Camunda
8 3 (0.14%) OpenStack
8 3 (0.14%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.094%) MQSeries
9 2 (0.094%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 2 (0.094%) WinCC
10 1 (0.047%) Headless CMS
10 1 (0.047%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.047%) Smallworld
Applications
1 15 (0.71%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (0.28%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (0.24%) Chatbot
4 4 (0.19%) CPLEX
4 4 (0.19%) Simulink
5 2 (0.094%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.094%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.047%) Adobe After Effects
6 1 (0.047%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.047%) Blender
6 1 (0.047%) CATIA
6 1 (0.047%) Maya
6 1 (0.047%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.047%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.047%) OrCAD
Business Applications
1 6 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (0.094%) Aladdin
3 2 (0.094%) LabWindows
3 2 (0.094%) 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
1 539 (25.40%) AWS
2 397 (18.71%) Azure
3 189 (8.91%) GCP
4 140 (6.60%) GitHub
5 111 (5.23%) Serverless
6 78 (3.68%) Azure DevOps
7 65 (3.06%) AWS Lambda
8 58 (2.73%) Amazon S3
9 57 (2.69%) GitHub Actions
10 51 (2.40%) OpenShift
11 43 (2.03%) Power Platform
12 37 (1.74%) Amazon EKS
12 37 (1.74%) Azure AKS
13 35 (1.65%) Amazon ECS
13 35 (1.65%) AWS CloudFormation
14 30 (1.41%) Amazon SQS
15 29 (1.37%) Amazon EC2
16 28 (1.32%) SaaS
17 22 (1.04%) Azure Functions
18 20 (0.94%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 29 (1.37%) Software-Defined Radio
2 27 (1.27%) Ethernet
3 16 (0.75%) TCP/IP
3 16 (0.75%) Wireless
4 13 (0.61%) HTTP
5 10 (0.47%) Network Security
6 8 (0.38%) 3GPP
6 8 (0.38%) Wi-Fi
7 7 (0.33%) Firewall
8 5 (0.24%) Modbus
8 5 (0.24%) RTP
9 4 (0.19%) DNS
9 4 (0.19%) RS-232
9 4 (0.19%) RS-485
9 4 (0.19%) Wireshark
10 3 (0.14%) Bluetooth
10 3 (0.14%) IPv4
10 3 (0.14%) IPv6
10 3 (0.14%) RS-422
10 3 (0.14%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 131 (6.17%) PostgreSQL
2 67 (3.16%) Relational Database
3 64 (3.02%) SQL Server
4 60 (2.83%) NoSQL
5 50 (2.36%) Apache Cassandra
5 50 (2.36%) MongoDB
6 34 (1.60%) Power BI
7 30 (1.41%) Amazon RDS
8 28 (1.32%) Data Lake
8 28 (1.32%) DynamoDB
9 27 (1.27%) Big Data
10 26 (1.23%) BigQuery
10 26 (1.23%) MySQL
11 20 (0.94%) Metadata
12 17 (0.80%) Data Warehouse
13 16 (0.75%) Amazon Athena
14 15 (0.71%) Redis
15 14 (0.66%) Elasticsearch
15 14 (0.66%) Pinecone
16 13 (0.61%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 208 (9.80%) Git
2 142 (6.69%) Jenkins
3 123 (5.80%) GitLab
4 111 (5.23%) JIRA
5 47 (2.21%) SonarQube
6 43 (2.03%) Gradle
7 35 (1.65%) Rational DOORS
8 34 (1.60%) JUnit
9 32 (1.51%) Rational Rhapsody
10 25 (1.18%) Cucumber
11 23 (1.08%) Bitbucket
11 23 (1.08%) IntelliJ
12 22 (1.04%) Maven
13 21 (0.99%) Visual Studio
14 18 (0.85%) Selenium
15 17 (0.80%) Cypress.io
15 17 (0.80%) Mockito
16 14 (0.66%) Eclipse
16 14 (0.66%) Liquibase
17 12 (0.57%) Artifactory
General
1 327 (15.41%) Finance
2 301 (14.18%) Social Skills
3 122 (5.75%) Public Sector
4 121 (5.70%) Analytical Skills
4 121 (5.70%) Banking
5 90 (4.24%) Aerospace
6 67 (3.16%) Front Office
7 42 (1.98%) Manufacturing
8 41 (1.93%) Law
9 34 (1.60%) Electronics
10 33 (1.56%) Retail
11 30 (1.41%) Investment Banking
12 28 (1.32%) Military
13 23 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
13 23 (1.08%) Telecoms
14 22 (1.04%) Presentation Skills
15 16 (0.75%) Automotive
16 15 (0.71%) Aviation
16 15 (0.71%) Financial Institution
17 13 (0.61%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,154 (54.38%) Software Engineer
2 380 (17.91%) Developer
3 363 (17.11%) Senior
4 177 (8.34%) Senior Software Engineer
5 167 (7.87%) Embedded Engineer
6 163 (7.68%) Lead
7 155 (7.30%) Embedded Software Engineer
8 145 (6.83%) Java Engineer
9 124 (5.84%) C++ Software Engineer
10 117 (5.51%) Java Software Engineer
11 109 (5.14%) Java Developer
12 84 (3.96%) Architect
13 72 (3.39%) Senior Developer
14 66 (3.11%) Developer/Software Engineer
15 64 (3.02%) Full-Stack Engineer
16 58 (2.73%) Lead Software Engineer
16 58 (2.73%) Python Engineer
17 57 (2.69%) Data Engineer
18 56 (2.64%) Python Developer
18 56 (2.64%) Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 239 (11.26%) React
2 186 (8.77%) Kafka
3 168 (7.92%) Node.js
4 158 (7.45%) Spring
5 153 (7.21%) .NET
6 143 (6.74%) Spring Boot
7 142 (6.69%) REST
8 106 (5.00%) AngularJS
9 93 (4.38%) RESTful
10 75 (3.53%) GraphQL
11 53 (2.50%) Redux
12 51 (2.40%) Middleware
13 48 (2.26%) gRPC
14 47 (2.21%) CSS
15 45 (2.12%) HTML
16 36 (1.70%) JSON
16 36 (1.70%) Playwright
17 35 (1.65%) Web Services
18 34 (1.60%) OpenTelemetry
19 32 (1.51%) LangChain
Miscellaneous
1 217 (10.23%) Cloud Native
2 145 (6.83%) Distributed Systems
3 98 (4.62%) Product Ownership
4 85 (4.01%) Algorithms
5 59 (2.78%) Fixed Income
6 48 (2.26%) AI Agents
7 35 (1.65%) Data Protection Act
8 34 (1.60%) Embedded Systems
9 32 (1.51%) Onboarding
10 29 (1.37%) Robotics
11 28 (1.32%) Legacy Systems
12 27 (1.27%) Data Structures
12 27 (1.27%) Derivative
13 26 (1.23%) Mobile App
14 20 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
15 19 (0.90%) Equities
15 19 (0.90%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 15 (0.71%) FPGA
17 13 (0.61%) Data Centre
17 13 (0.61%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 200 (9.43%) Linux
2 71 (3.35%) Windows
3 43 (2.03%) Unix
4 24 (1.13%) Android
4 24 (1.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 20 (0.94%) Apple iOS
6 13 (0.61%) Embedded Linux
7 11 (0.52%) FreeRTOS
7 11 (0.52%) Windows Server
8 7 (0.33%) Ubuntu
9 6 (0.28%) Debian
10 4 (0.19%) Rocky
10 4 (0.19%) VMS
11 3 (0.14%) Solaris
11 3 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
11 3 (0.14%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.094%) Robot Operating System
13 1 (0.047%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 600 (28.28%) CI/CD
2 582 (27.43%) Agile
3 421 (19.84%) DevOps
4 332 (15.65%) Microservices
5 291 (13.71%) AI
6 235 (11.07%) Problem-Solving
7 226 (10.65%) Full-Stack Development
8 224 (10.56%) Test Automation
9 221 (10.41%) Containerisation
10 198 (9.33%) Infrastructure as Code
11 160 (7.54%) Observability
12 158 (7.45%) SDLC
13 150 (7.07%) Computer Science
13 150 (7.07%) Machine Learning
14 148 (6.97%) Continuous Improvement
15 146 (6.88%) TDD
16 144 (6.79%) Mentoring
16 144 (6.79%) Scrum
17 138 (6.50%) Technical Leadership
18 124 (5.84%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 535 (25.21%) Java
2 527 (24.84%) Python
3 277 (13.05%) SQL
4 272 (12.82%) C#
5 248 (11.69%) TypeScript
6 229 (10.79%) C++
7 227 (10.70%) JavaScript
8 148 (6.97%) Go
9 131 (6.17%) Ada
10 122 (5.75%) C
11 37 (1.74%) Kotlin
12 36 (1.70%) PowerShell
13 34 (1.60%) Embedded C
14 33 (1.56%) Bash
15 29 (1.37%) Rust
16 26 (1.23%) MATLAB
17 21 (0.99%) Shell Script
18 20 (0.94%) Ruby
18 20 (0.94%) Scala
19 16 (0.75%) Embedded C++
Qualifications
1 511 (24.08%) Security Cleared
2 397 (18.71%) SC Cleared
3 172 (8.11%) Degree
4 87 (4.10%) Computer Science Degree
5 68 (3.20%) DV Cleared
6 34 (1.60%) Master's Degree
7 33 (1.56%) BPSS Clearance
8 20 (0.94%) AWS Certification
9 13 (0.61%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 11 (0.52%) Azure Certification
11 10 (0.47%) CISSP
12 8 (0.38%) CISM
12 8 (0.38%) PhD
13 7 (0.33%) TOGAF Certification
14 6 (0.28%) ISTQB
14 6 (0.28%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 3 (0.14%) Cisco Certification
15 3 (0.14%) HNC
15 3 (0.14%) HND
15 3 (0.14%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 114 (5.37%) QA
2 49 (2.31%) Def Stans
3 38 (1.79%) Data Quality
4 35 (1.65%) IEC 61508
5 26 (1.23%) Accessibility
6 24 (1.13%) GDPR
7 21 (0.99%) MISRA
8 15 (0.71%) MISRA C
9 9 (0.42%) NCSC
10 8 (0.38%) WCAG
11 7 (0.33%) NIST
12 6 (0.28%) DO-178B
12 6 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
13 5 (0.24%) HL7
13 5 (0.24%) PCI DSS
14 4 (0.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 3 (0.14%) EMIR
15 3 (0.14%) FATCA
15 3 (0.14%) JSP 440
15 3 (0.14%) MiFID
System Software
1 307 (14.47%) Docker
2 21 (0.99%) Firmware
3 17 (0.80%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.47%) Virtual Machines
5 9 (0.42%) Embedded Firmware
6 6 (0.28%) Active Directory
7 4 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
8 3 (0.14%) HDFS
9 2 (0.094%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 349 (16.45%) Kubernetes
2 205 (9.66%) Terraform
3 88 (4.15%) Grafana
4 63 (2.97%) Ansible
5 52 (2.45%) Prometheus
6 37 (1.74%) Argo
7 14 (0.66%) Puppet
8 12 (0.57%) Progress Chef
9 6 (0.28%) Istio
9 6 (0.28%) Kibana
10 5 (0.24%) HAProxy
11 4 (0.19%) Data Guard
11 4 (0.19%) Docker Swarm
11 4 (0.19%) HP Quality Center
11 4 (0.19%) Kubeflow
11 4 (0.19%) Single Sign-On
12 3 (0.14%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
13 2 (0.094%) Consul
13 2 (0.094%) HP ALM
13 2 (0.094%) Podman
Vendors
1 132 (6.22%) Microsoft
2 74 (3.49%) Google
3 60 (2.83%) Oracle
4 58 (2.73%) Red Hat
5 44 (2.07%) Databricks
6 25 (1.18%) IBM
7 23 (1.08%) OpenAI
8 18 (0.85%) Splunk
8 18 (0.85%) VMware
9 14 (0.66%) Informatica
10 13 (0.61%) Foundry
10 13 (0.61%) SAP
10 13 (0.61%) ServiceNow
11 11 (0.52%) Okta
11 11 (0.52%) Siemens
12 10 (0.47%) Dynatrace
12 10 (0.47%) ForgeRock
12 10 (0.47%) MathWorks
13 9 (0.42%) PagerDuty
13 9 (0.42%) Software AG