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 4 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 39 41 36
Rank change year-on-year +2 -5 +4
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 1,825 1,249 1,885
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.08% 4.96% 5.01%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.83% 5.49% 5.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 957 802 1,082
10th Percentile £380 £413 £425
25th Percentile £450 £500 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -
75th Percentile £675 £750 £738
90th Percentile £800 £838 £800
UK median daily rate £543 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -9.48% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 361 77 316
10th Percentile £52.50 £43.91 £46.25
25th Percentile £61.25 £61.25 £51.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year - +4.00% -3.85%
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.00 £68.75
90th Percentile £72.50 £68.75 £75.00
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 31,295 22,746 32,794
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.03% 90.36% 87.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,032 14,434 21,722
10th Percentile £313 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £618 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,939 776 2,084
10th Percentile £15.24 £15.50 £13.29
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £29.00 £35.00 £33.78
Median % change year-on-year -17.14% +3.63% -6.18%
75th Percentile £63.75 £65.00 £59.44
90th Percentile £73.46 £75.38 £71.90
UK median hourly rate £27.94 £32.50 £32.85
% change year-on-year -14.03% -1.05% -6.16%

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 4 March 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 4 March 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 4 March 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 -12 809 £600 -7.69% 662
North of England +14 271 £520 -5.45% 360
South West +9 250 £500 -16.67% 316
East of England +33 177 £475 +5.56% 274
South East +2 154 £494 -1.25% 542
North West +5 129 £515 -6.36% 177
Midlands -16 103 £506 +3.27% 209
Yorkshire -10 100 £525 - 150
West Midlands -9 86 £513 +7.55% 89
North East +18 45 £488 -18.41% 34
East Midlands -27 17 £500 +1.01% 114
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 62 (3.40%) Confluence
2 50 (2.74%) Apache
3 46 (2.52%) Apache Spark
4 28 (1.53%) Apache Airflow
5 13 (0.71%) WebLogic
6 10 (0.55%) CMS
7 8 (0.44%) JBoss
7 8 (0.44%) Palantir Foundry
8 5 (0.27%) OpenStack
8 5 (0.27%) SAS
9 4 (0.22%) IIS
9 4 (0.22%) nginx
10 3 (0.16%) SharePoint
10 3 (0.16%) Sitecore CMS
11 2 (0.11%) Appian
11 2 (0.11%) Camunda
11 2 (0.11%) Magnolia
11 2 (0.11%) Tomcat
11 2 (0.11%) WinCC
11 2 (0.11%) WordPress
Applications
1 15 (0.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.77%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (0.55%) Chatbot
4 5 (0.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.11%) Simulink
6 1 (0.055%) CPLEX
6 1 (0.055%) Maya
6 1 (0.055%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.055%) OrCAD
6 1 (0.055%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.11%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.11%) LabWindows
1 2 (0.11%) Primavera
2 1 (0.055%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 1 (0.055%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 544 (29.81%) AWS
2 329 (18.03%) Azure
3 187 (10.25%) GCP
4 142 (7.78%) Serverless
5 123 (6.74%) GitHub
6 66 (3.62%) Azure DevOps
6 66 (3.62%) GitHub Actions
7 62 (3.40%) AWS Lambda
8 61 (3.34%) Amazon S3
9 46 (2.52%) Amazon EKS
10 45 (2.47%) Azure AKS
11 44 (2.41%) OpenShift
11 44 (2.41%) Power Platform
12 41 (2.25%) AWS CloudFormation
13 38 (2.08%) Azure Functions
14 37 (2.03%) Amazon EC2
15 36 (1.97%) Amazon ECS
16 34 (1.86%) SaaS
17 27 (1.48%) Snowflake
18 22 (1.21%) Cloud Run
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.32%) Ethernet
2 15 (0.82%) TCP/IP
3 12 (0.66%) Network Security
4 9 (0.49%) Firewall
5 7 (0.38%) Internet
6 5 (0.27%) 3GPP
6 5 (0.27%) Modbus
6 5 (0.27%) Software-Defined Radio
7 4 (0.22%) BGP
7 4 (0.22%) HTTP
7 4 (0.22%) RS-232
7 4 (0.22%) RS-485
7 4 (0.22%) Software-Defined Networking
7 4 (0.22%) VLAN
7 4 (0.22%) Wireless
8 3 (0.16%) Bluetooth
8 3 (0.16%) Kerberos
8 3 (0.16%) NFC
8 3 (0.16%) PPP
8 3 (0.16%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 125 (6.85%) PostgreSQL
2 75 (4.11%) Apache Cassandra
3 68 (3.73%) MongoDB
4 65 (3.56%) NoSQL
5 49 (2.68%) Relational Database
5 49 (2.68%) SQL Server
6 36 (1.97%) Amazon RDS
7 34 (1.86%) Data Lake
8 31 (1.70%) MySQL
8 31 (1.70%) Power BI
9 30 (1.64%) Big Data
10 28 (1.53%) BigQuery
11 27 (1.48%) Metadata
12 24 (1.32%) Hadoop
13 19 (1.04%) Amazon Athena
13 19 (1.04%) Elasticsearch
14 18 (0.99%) DynamoDB
15 16 (0.88%) Data Warehouse
16 14 (0.77%) Mixpanel
17 11 (0.60%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 171 (9.37%) Git
2 130 (7.12%) Jenkins
3 120 (6.58%) GitLab
4 105 (5.75%) JIRA
5 34 (1.86%) Selenium
6 31 (1.70%) Rational DOORS
7 30 (1.64%) JUnit
7 30 (1.64%) SonarQube
8 29 (1.59%) Cucumber
9 28 (1.53%) Cypress.io
10 26 (1.42%) Gradle
10 26 (1.42%) Rational Rhapsody
11 25 (1.37%) Eclipse
12 24 (1.32%) Bitbucket
13 23 (1.26%) IntelliJ
14 19 (1.04%) Liquibase
15 18 (0.99%) Maven
15 18 (0.99%) Visual Studio
16 16 (0.88%) Mockito
17 12 (0.66%) Postman
General
1 325 (17.81%) Finance
2 314 (17.21%) Social Skills
3 123 (6.74%) Public Sector
4 121 (6.63%) Banking
5 94 (5.15%) Analytical Skills
6 70 (3.84%) Front Office
7 60 (3.29%) Aerospace
8 43 (2.36%) Electronics
9 33 (1.81%) Law
10 32 (1.75%) Financial Institution
11 31 (1.70%) Investment Banking
12 30 (1.64%) Retail
13 29 (1.59%) Military
14 26 (1.42%) Influencing Skills
15 25 (1.37%) Manufacturing
16 23 (1.26%) Presentation Skills
17 18 (0.99%) Pharmaceutical
17 18 (0.99%) Telecoms
18 13 (0.71%) Documentation Skills
19 12 (0.66%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 944 (51.73%) Software Engineer
2 360 (19.73%) Senior
3 353 (19.34%) Developer
4 173 (9.48%) Senior Software Engineer
5 151 (8.27%) Lead
6 129 (7.07%) C++ Software Engineer
7 107 (5.86%) Java Engineer
8 99 (5.42%) Embedded Engineer
9 90 (4.93%) Embedded Software Engineer
10 87 (4.77%) Java Software Engineer
11 83 (4.55%) Java Developer
12 76 (4.16%) Senior Developer
13 72 (3.95%) Python Engineer
14 65 (3.56%) Developer/Software Engineer
15 61 (3.34%) Python Developer
16 60 (3.29%) Architect
17 58 (3.18%) Lead Software Engineer
18 56 (3.07%) Data Engineer
19 51 (2.79%) AWS Engineer
19 51 (2.79%) Full-Stack Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 245 (13.42%) React
2 221 (12.11%) Kafka
3 179 (9.81%) Node.js
4 148 (8.11%) REST
5 140 (7.67%) .NET
6 112 (6.14%) Spring
7 110 (6.03%) RESTful
8 105 (5.75%) Spring Boot
9 96 (5.26%) AngularJS
10 77 (4.22%) gRPC
11 71 (3.89%) GraphQL
12 61 (3.34%) Middleware
13 56 (3.07%) HTML
14 54 (2.96%) Redux
15 53 (2.90%) JSON
16 49 (2.68%) CSS
17 41 (2.25%) Playwright
18 40 (2.19%) Vue
19 39 (2.14%) FastAPI
20 36 (1.97%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 217 (11.89%) Cloud Native
2 133 (7.29%) Distributed Systems
3 89 (4.88%) Product Ownership
4 66 (3.62%) Algorithms
5 64 (3.51%) Fixed Income
6 41 (2.25%) Data Protection Act
7 34 (1.86%) Mobile App
8 32 (1.75%) Data Structures
8 32 (1.75%) Legacy Systems
9 30 (1.64%) Derivative
9 30 (1.64%) Equities
10 28 (1.53%) AI Agents
10 28 (1.53%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 28 (1.53%) Onboarding
11 26 (1.42%) Greenfield Project
11 26 (1.42%) Public Cloud
12 24 (1.32%) Hedge funds
13 21 (1.15%) Embedded Systems
13 21 (1.15%) Virtual Team
14 20 (1.10%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 223 (12.22%) Linux
2 83 (4.55%) Windows
3 58 (3.18%) Unix
4 27 (1.48%) Android
5 21 (1.15%) Apple iOS
6 19 (1.04%) Ubuntu
7 17 (0.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 14 (0.77%) Windows Server
9 6 (0.33%) FreeRTOS
10 3 (0.16%) Debian
10 3 (0.16%) Embedded Linux
10 3 (0.16%) VMS
11 2 (0.11%) Mac OS
11 2 (0.11%) Robot Operating System
11 2 (0.11%) Rocky
11 2 (0.11%) Solaris
11 2 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
11 2 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
12 1 (0.055%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.055%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 588 (32.22%) Agile
2 525 (28.77%) CI/CD
3 374 (20.49%) DevOps
4 312 (17.10%) Microservices
5 259 (14.19%) AI
6 246 (13.48%) Problem-Solving
7 215 (11.78%) Containerisation
8 203 (11.12%) Test Automation
9 188 (10.30%) Infrastructure as Code
10 187 (10.25%) Full-Stack Development
11 168 (9.21%) Machine Learning
12 162 (8.88%) Mentoring
13 160 (8.77%) Computer Science
14 148 (8.11%) Continuous Improvement
15 128 (7.01%) Scrum
16 126 (6.90%) SDLC
17 120 (6.58%) Observability
18 118 (6.47%) Open Source
19 117 (6.41%) TDD
20 116 (6.36%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 528 (28.93%) Python
2 432 (23.67%) Java
3 258 (14.14%) JavaScript
4 254 (13.92%) C++
5 248 (13.59%) SQL
6 238 (13.04%) TypeScript
7 223 (12.22%) C#
8 169 (9.26%) Go
9 117 (6.41%) Ada
10 109 (5.97%) C
11 34 (1.86%) PowerShell
12 33 (1.81%) Rust
12 33 (1.81%) Shell Script
13 29 (1.59%) Kotlin
14 28 (1.53%) Bash
15 24 (1.32%) Embedded C
15 24 (1.32%) Embedded C++
16 18 (0.99%) MATLAB
16 18 (0.99%) Scala
17 16 (0.88%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 406 (22.25%) Security Cleared
2 320 (17.53%) SC Cleared
3 203 (11.12%) Degree
4 91 (4.99%) Computer Science Degree
5 60 (3.29%) Master's Degree
6 54 (2.96%) DV Cleared
7 22 (1.21%) BPSS Clearance
8 19 (1.04%) AWS Certification
9 18 (0.99%) CISSP
9 18 (0.99%) PhD
10 17 (0.93%) CISM
11 15 (0.82%) Azure Certification
11 15 (0.82%) TOGAF Certification
12 12 (0.66%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 10 (0.55%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 7 (0.38%) ISTQB
15 6 (0.33%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 5 (0.27%) Microsoft Certification
17 4 (0.22%) HND
17 4 (0.22%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 94 (5.15%) QA
2 54 (2.96%) Def Stans
3 38 (2.08%) Data Quality
3 38 (2.08%) IEC 61508
4 34 (1.86%) Accessibility
5 31 (1.70%) MISRA
6 22 (1.21%) GDPR
7 21 (1.15%) MISRA C
8 18 (0.99%) WCAG
9 14 (0.77%) NIST
10 11 (0.60%) DO-178B
11 10 (0.55%) EU AI Act
12 6 (0.33%) HL7
13 3 (0.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
13 3 (0.16%) NCSC
13 3 (0.16%) SLA
14 2 (0.11%) FATCA
14 2 (0.11%) PCI DSS
14 2 (0.11%) Software Quality Assurance
15 1 (0.055%) DO-254
System Software
1 336 (18.41%) Docker
2 17 (0.93%) Firmware
3 15 (0.82%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (0.60%) Active Directory
6 4 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
7 3 (0.16%) HDFS
8 2 (0.11%) Embedded Firmware
8 2 (0.11%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 360 (19.73%) Kubernetes
2 213 (11.67%) Terraform
3 96 (5.26%) Grafana
4 69 (3.78%) Ansible
5 59 (3.23%) Prometheus
6 23 (1.26%) Argo
6 23 (1.26%) Puppet
7 13 (0.71%) Progress Chef
8 10 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
9 8 (0.44%) Kibana
10 6 (0.33%) Istio
11 5 (0.27%) HP Quality Center
11 5 (0.27%) Kubeflow
12 4 (0.22%) Data Guard
12 4 (0.22%) Podman
13 3 (0.16%) Docker Swarm
13 3 (0.16%) HP ALM
13 3 (0.16%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
14 2 (0.11%) Functional Safety
14 2 (0.11%) rkt
Vendors
1 140 (7.67%) Microsoft
2 66 (3.62%) Google
3 60 (3.29%) Red Hat
4 57 (3.12%) Oracle
5 45 (2.47%) Databricks
6 32 (1.75%) Splunk
7 25 (1.37%) Foundry
8 18 (0.99%) IBM
9 16 (0.88%) BiZZdesign
9 16 (0.88%) VMware
10 13 (0.71%) OpenAI
11 10 (0.55%) Atlassian
11 10 (0.55%) PagerDuty
12 9 (0.49%) Palantir
12 9 (0.49%) Software AG
13 8 (0.44%) ANSYS
13 8 (0.44%) SAP
13 8 (0.44%) ServiceNow
13 8 (0.44%) Siemens
13 8 (0.44%) webMethods