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

6 months to
11 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 40 41 34
Rank change year-on-year +1 -7 +8
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 1,819 1,224 1,926
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.01% 4.96% 5.06%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.79% 5.47% 5.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 946 797 1,109
10th Percentile £381 £413 £425
25th Percentile £450 £500 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -
75th Percentile £673 £750 £738
90th Percentile £794 £838 £800
UK median daily rate £550 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 368 80 323
10th Percentile £52.50 £42.95 £46.25
25th Percentile £61.25 £59.01 £52.13
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 31,421 22,365 33,112
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.55% 90.61% 86.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,102 14,445 21,880
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 £615 £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 1,952 795 2,164
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.25 £13.02
25th Percentile £18.80 £21.01 £16.06
Median hourly rate £30.00 £34.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -13.04% +6.15% -9.72%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £58.53
90th Percentile £74.26 £76.81 £71.83
UK median hourly rate £29.61 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year -8.89% - -7.14%

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 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 11 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 11 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 -12 788 £600 -11.11% 410
North of England +16 273 £518 -3.72% 280
South West +12 246 £500 -15.25% 245
East of England +32 176 £475 +5.56% 197
South East -3 169 £500 - 419
North West +8 130 £505 -8.18% 134
Midlands -15 103 £500 +4.82% 162
Yorkshire -9 98 £525 - 118
West Midlands -9 86 £500 +4.82% 75
North East +25 50 £488 - 29
East Midlands -31 17 £500 +1.01% 82
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 60 (3.30%) Confluence
2 51 (2.80%) Apache
3 48 (2.64%) Apache Spark
4 24 (1.32%) 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
9 4 (0.22%) IIS
9 4 (0.22%) nginx
10 3 (0.16%) SAS
10 3 (0.16%) SharePoint
10 3 (0.16%) Sitecore CMS
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
12 1 (0.055%) Headless CMS
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 3 (0.16%) Simulink
6 2 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.055%) CPLEX
7 1 (0.055%) Maya
7 1 (0.055%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.055%) OrCAD
7 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%) Aladdin
2 1 (0.055%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 1 (0.055%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 531 (29.19%) AWS
2 328 (18.03%) Azure
3 180 (9.90%) GCP
4 135 (7.42%) Serverless
5 125 (6.87%) GitHub
6 65 (3.57%) Azure DevOps
7 62 (3.41%) GitHub Actions
8 61 (3.35%) AWS Lambda
9 60 (3.30%) Amazon S3
10 46 (2.53%) Azure AKS
11 45 (2.47%) Amazon EKS
11 45 (2.47%) OpenShift
11 45 (2.47%) Power Platform
12 41 (2.25%) AWS CloudFormation
13 37 (2.03%) Azure Functions
14 34 (1.87%) Amazon EC2
14 34 (1.87%) Amazon ECS
15 31 (1.70%) SaaS
16 25 (1.37%) Datadog
17 23 (1.26%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 21 (1.15%) Ethernet
2 13 (0.71%) 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%) IPv4
8 3 (0.16%) Kerberos
8 3 (0.16%) NFC
8 3 (0.16%) PPP
8 3 (0.16%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 121 (6.65%) PostgreSQL
2 74 (4.07%) Apache Cassandra
3 68 (3.74%) NoSQL
4 65 (3.57%) MongoDB
5 52 (2.86%) SQL Server
6 50 (2.75%) Relational Database
7 35 (1.92%) Data Lake
8 34 (1.87%) Amazon RDS
9 33 (1.81%) Big Data
10 32 (1.76%) Power BI
11 28 (1.54%) BigQuery
11 28 (1.54%) MySQL
12 26 (1.43%) Metadata
13 20 (1.10%) DynamoDB
13 20 (1.10%) Hadoop
14 17 (0.93%) Amazon Athena
14 17 (0.93%) Data Warehouse
15 15 (0.82%) Elasticsearch
15 15 (0.82%) Mixpanel
16 12 (0.66%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 179 (9.84%) Git
2 127 (6.98%) Jenkins
3 117 (6.43%) GitLab
4 102 (5.61%) JIRA
5 32 (1.76%) Rational DOORS
6 31 (1.70%) Selenium
7 29 (1.59%) JUnit
7 29 (1.59%) SonarQube
8 27 (1.48%) Cucumber
8 27 (1.48%) Rational Rhapsody
9 26 (1.43%) Cypress.io
9 26 (1.43%) Gradle
10 24 (1.32%) Bitbucket
10 24 (1.32%) IntelliJ
11 23 (1.26%) Eclipse
12 18 (0.99%) Maven
13 17 (0.93%) Visual Studio
14 16 (0.88%) Liquibase
15 14 (0.77%) Mockito
16 12 (0.66%) Postman
General
1 308 (16.93%) Finance
2 301 (16.55%) Social Skills
3 119 (6.54%) Public Sector
4 114 (6.27%) Banking
5 93 (5.11%) Analytical Skills
6 66 (3.63%) Front Office
7 60 (3.30%) Aerospace
8 43 (2.36%) Electronics
9 32 (1.76%) Law
10 31 (1.70%) Retail
11 29 (1.59%) Financial Institution
12 28 (1.54%) Investment Banking
13 27 (1.48%) Military
14 24 (1.32%) Manufacturing
15 23 (1.26%) Influencing Skills
16 21 (1.15%) Presentation Skills
16 21 (1.15%) Telecoms
17 17 (0.93%) Pharmaceutical
18 13 (0.71%) Documentation Skills
19 10 (0.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 942 (51.79%) Software Engineer
2 349 (19.19%) Senior
3 337 (18.53%) Developer
4 160 (8.80%) Senior Software Engineer
5 141 (7.75%) Lead
6 123 (6.76%) C++ Software Engineer
7 118 (6.49%) Java Engineer
8 102 (5.61%) Embedded Engineer
9 96 (5.28%) Java Software Engineer
10 91 (5.00%) Embedded Software Engineer
11 76 (4.18%) Java Developer
12 74 (4.07%) Senior Developer
13 71 (3.90%) Python Engineer
14 69 (3.79%) Architect
15 62 (3.41%) Developer/Software Engineer
16 60 (3.30%) Python Developer
17 55 (3.02%) Data Engineer
17 55 (3.02%) Lead Software Engineer
18 49 (2.69%) AWS Engineer
18 49 (2.69%) Full-Stack Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 231 (12.70%) React
2 218 (11.98%) Kafka
3 168 (9.24%) Node.js
4 146 (8.03%) REST
5 138 (7.59%) .NET
6 117 (6.43%) Spring
7 106 (5.83%) RESTful
8 105 (5.77%) Spring Boot
9 91 (5.00%) AngularJS
10 78 (4.29%) gRPC
11 69 (3.79%) GraphQL
12 64 (3.52%) Middleware
13 55 (3.02%) HTML
14 54 (2.97%) Redux
15 52 (2.86%) JSON
16 49 (2.69%) CSS
17 38 (2.09%) FastAPI
17 38 (2.09%) Playwright
17 38 (2.09%) Vue
18 34 (1.87%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 209 (11.49%) Cloud Native
2 132 (7.26%) Distributed Systems
3 89 (4.89%) Product Ownership
4 65 (3.57%) Algorithms
5 62 (3.41%) Fixed Income
6 40 (2.20%) Data Protection Act
7 34 (1.87%) Mobile App
8 33 (1.81%) Legacy Systems
9 29 (1.59%) Derivative
10 28 (1.54%) AI Agents
10 28 (1.54%) Data Structures
11 27 (1.48%) Equities
11 27 (1.48%) Onboarding
12 26 (1.43%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 26 (1.43%) Greenfield Project
13 23 (1.26%) Embedded Systems
13 23 (1.26%) Hedge funds
14 22 (1.21%) Public Cloud
15 20 (1.10%) Life Science
16 19 (1.04%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 208 (11.43%) Linux
2 78 (4.29%) Windows
3 55 (3.02%) Unix
4 26 (1.43%) Android
5 20 (1.10%) Apple iOS
6 19 (1.04%) Ubuntu
7 16 (0.88%) 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
1 570 (31.34%) Agile
2 524 (28.81%) CI/CD
3 370 (20.34%) DevOps
4 313 (17.21%) Microservices
5 263 (14.46%) AI
6 240 (13.19%) Problem-Solving
7 210 (11.54%) Containerisation
8 200 (11.00%) Test Automation
9 185 (10.17%) Full-Stack Development
10 179 (9.84%) Infrastructure as Code
11 165 (9.07%) Machine Learning
12 162 (8.91%) Computer Science
13 153 (8.41%) Mentoring
14 151 (8.30%) Continuous Improvement
15 132 (7.26%) Scrum
16 130 (7.15%) SDLC
17 123 (6.76%) Observability
18 117 (6.43%) TDD
19 115 (6.32%) Open Source
19 115 (6.32%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 521 (28.64%) Python
2 438 (24.08%) Java
3 249 (13.69%) C++
3 249 (13.69%) SQL
4 241 (13.25%) JavaScript
5 225 (12.37%) TypeScript
6 218 (11.98%) C#
7 169 (9.29%) Go
8 116 (6.38%) Ada
9 112 (6.16%) C
10 35 (1.92%) PowerShell
11 33 (1.81%) Shell Script
12 32 (1.76%) Rust
13 30 (1.65%) Kotlin
14 29 (1.59%) Bash
15 25 (1.37%) Embedded C
16 24 (1.32%) Embedded C++
17 20 (1.10%) MATLAB
18 19 (1.04%) Scala
19 16 (0.88%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 414 (22.76%) Security Cleared
2 319 (17.54%) SC Cleared
3 200 (11.00%) Degree
4 92 (5.06%) Computer Science Degree
5 59 (3.24%) Master's Degree
6 57 (3.13%) DV Cleared
7 24 (1.32%) BPSS Clearance
8 20 (1.10%) PhD
9 19 (1.04%) AWS Certification
10 18 (0.99%) CISSP
11 17 (0.93%) Azure Certification
11 17 (0.93%) CISM
12 15 (0.82%) TOGAF Certification
13 11 (0.60%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 11 (0.60%) 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 (5.17%) QA
2 55 (3.02%) Def Stans
3 38 (2.09%) Data Quality
3 38 (2.09%) IEC 61508
4 33 (1.81%) Accessibility
5 31 (1.70%) MISRA
6 28 (1.54%) GDPR
7 21 (1.15%) MISRA C
8 18 (0.99%) WCAG
9 17 (0.93%) NIST
10 11 (0.60%) DO-178B
11 10 (0.55%) EU AI Act
12 6 (0.33%) HL7
12 6 (0.33%) 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%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 2 (0.11%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 333 (18.31%) Docker
2 17 (0.93%) Firmware
3 15 (0.82%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
5 8 (0.44%) 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
1 358 (19.68%) Kubernetes
2 205 (11.27%) Terraform
3 95 (5.22%) Grafana
4 65 (3.57%) Ansible
5 58 (3.19%) Prometheus
6 24 (1.32%) Argo
7 23 (1.26%) Puppet
8 13 (0.71%) Progress Chef
9 10 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
10 6 (0.33%) Istio
11 5 (0.27%) HP Quality Center
11 5 (0.27%) Kibana
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
1 142 (7.81%) Microsoft
2 69 (3.79%) Google
3 61 (3.35%) Red Hat
4 56 (3.08%) Oracle
5 45 (2.47%) Databricks
6 28 (1.54%) Splunk
7 25 (1.37%) Foundry
8 18 (0.99%) IBM
9 16 (0.88%) BiZZdesign
9 16 (0.88%) VMware
10 14 (0.77%) OpenAI
11 10 (0.55%) Atlassian
11 10 (0.55%) PagerDuty
11 10 (0.55%) Siemens
12 9 (0.49%) Palantir
12 9 (0.49%) SAP
12 9 (0.49%) Software AG
13 8 (0.44%) ANSYS
13 8 (0.44%) ServiceNow
13 8 (0.44%) webMethods