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

6 months to
25 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 31 42 30
Rank change year-on-year +11 -12 +10
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,720 1,379 1,896
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.84% 4.95% 5.78%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.91% 5.45% 6.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,449 841 1,150
10th Percentile £400 £377 £412
25th Percentile £463 £463 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £620
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% -3.23% +2.65%
75th Percentile £682 £738 £810
90th Percentile £775 £838 £888
UK median daily rate £550 £575 £600
% change year-on-year -4.35% -4.17% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 436 118 224
10th Percentile £51.25 £43.96 £46.18
25th Percentile £59.94 £52.50 £57.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.50
Median % change year-on-year - -0.76% +0.77%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.88 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.50
% change year-on-year - -0.76% +0.77%

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 39,385 25,311 28,279
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.63% 90.87% 86.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,009 16,087 17,408
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £421
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £645
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,837 1,536 1,254
10th Percentile £13.99 £14.41 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.72 £17.87 £20.14
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% -2.05%
75th Percentile £67.84 £47.22 £66.61
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +59.05% -40.82% -

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 25 September 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 25 September 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 25 September 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 -3 1,199 £600 -7.41% 4,540
North of England +24 455 £523 +4.60% 902
South East +30 350 £525 +10.53% 873
South West +16 311 £550 +12.82% 592
East of England +16 236 £510 +2.00% 548
North West +19 216 £550 +10.00% 553
Yorkshire +15 178 £500 - 244
Midlands +29 143 £469 -11.51% 422
West Midlands +18 99 £470 -18.26% 233
North East +1 65 £650 +33.33% 107
East Midlands +19 43 £435 - 189
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 58 (2.13%) Apache Spark
2 56 (2.06%) Confluence
3 49 (1.80%) Apache Airflow
4 33 (1.21%) Apache
5 15 (0.55%) CMS
6 14 (0.51%) SharePoint
7 8 (0.29%) Jupyter
8 7 (0.26%) Camunda
8 7 (0.26%) Ethereum
8 7 (0.26%) SAS
9 5 (0.18%) Apache Solr
9 5 (0.18%) Apache Superset
9 5 (0.18%) Hyperledger
10 4 (0.15%) nginx
10 4 (0.15%) WordPress
11 3 (0.11%) MQSeries
11 3 (0.11%) WebSphere
12 2 (0.074%) Cloud Foundry
12 2 (0.074%) IIS
12 2 (0.074%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 14 (0.51%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (0.40%) Chatbot
3 10 (0.37%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 10 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
4 5 (0.18%) Microsoft Excel
5 4 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.11%) CPLEX
6 3 (0.11%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.11%) Trello
7 2 (0.074%) CATIA
7 2 (0.074%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 2 (0.074%) Notion
7 2 (0.074%) Simulink
8 1 (0.037%) Adobe After Effects
8 1 (0.037%) Adobe XD
8 1 (0.037%) Blender
8 1 (0.037%) S-PLUS
Business Applications
1 7 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
2 5 (0.18%) Oracle Payroll
2 5 (0.18%) R3 Corda
3 4 (0.15%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.15%) Quorum
3 4 (0.15%) Ripple
4 3 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
4 3 (0.11%) Orchestrade
4 3 (0.11%) Primavera
4 3 (0.11%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.074%) Distributed Ledger
5 2 (0.074%) Endur
5 2 (0.074%) Remedy ITSM
6 1 (0.037%) Aladdin
6 1 (0.037%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.037%) Sage 50
6 1 (0.037%) SAP ERP
6 1 (0.037%) SAP S/4HANA
6 1 (0.037%) Shopify
6 1 (0.037%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 692 (25.44%) AWS
2 550 (20.22%) Azure
3 285 (10.48%) GCP
4 243 (8.93%) GitHub
5 145 (5.33%) Serverless
6 127 (4.67%) GitHub Actions
7 115 (4.23%) Azure DevOps
8 106 (3.90%) AWS Lambda
9 70 (2.57%) Amazon S3
9 70 (2.57%) Anthropic Claude
10 66 (2.43%) GitHub Copilot
11 55 (2.02%) Amazon SQS
12 54 (1.99%) OpenShift
13 53 (1.95%) Amazon EKS
14 51 (1.88%) Amazon ECS
15 47 (1.73%) Snowflake
16 46 (1.69%) Power Platform
17 45 (1.65%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 35 (1.29%) dbt
19 31 (1.14%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 33 (1.21%) Wireless
2 31 (1.14%) Software-Defined Radio
3 22 (0.81%) Firewall
4 20 (0.74%) Internet
5 19 (0.70%) TCP/IP
5 19 (0.70%) VPN
6 18 (0.66%) Ethernet
6 18 (0.66%) HTTP
7 14 (0.51%) Wi-Fi
8 10 (0.37%) DNS
9 9 (0.33%) Network Security
9 9 (0.33%) RTP
9 9 (0.33%) Wireshark
10 6 (0.22%) 3GPP
10 6 (0.22%) Cisco IPT
11 4 (0.15%) Broadband
11 4 (0.15%) RS-232
11 4 (0.15%) SSL
12 3 (0.11%) Reverse Proxy
12 3 (0.11%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 143 (5.26%) PostgreSQL
2 102 (3.75%) Relational Database
3 84 (3.09%) SQL Server
4 79 (2.90%) NoSQL
5 60 (2.21%) MongoDB
6 52 (1.91%) Data Warehouse
7 46 (1.69%) DynamoDB
8 43 (1.58%) MySQL
9 34 (1.25%) Metadata
10 30 (1.10%) Amazon RDS
11 28 (1.03%) Data Lake
11 28 (1.03%) Power BI
11 28 (1.03%) Redis
12 27 (0.99%) Big Data
13 26 (0.96%) BigQuery
13 26 (0.96%) Elasticsearch
13 26 (0.96%) Pinecone
14 21 (0.77%) Weaviate
15 19 (0.70%) Chroma
16 16 (0.59%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 279 (10.26%) Git
2 157 (5.77%) GitLab
3 150 (5.51%) Jenkins
4 115 (4.23%) JIRA
5 53 (1.95%) SonarQube
6 38 (1.40%) Claude Code
6 38 (1.40%) Gradle
7 37 (1.36%) JUnit
8 31 (1.14%) Visual Studio
9 29 (1.07%) Rational DOORS
9 29 (1.07%) Selenium
10 28 (1.03%) Maven
11 21 (0.77%) Cucumber
12 20 (0.74%) Rational Rhapsody
13 17 (0.63%) Mockito
14 15 (0.55%) LabVIEW
15 13 (0.48%) Bitbucket
16 12 (0.44%) Cypress.io
16 12 (0.44%) Snyk
17 10 (0.37%) MLflow
General
1 568 (20.88%) Social Skills
2 503 (18.49%) Finance
3 218 (8.01%) Banking
4 200 (7.35%) Public Sector
5 192 (7.06%) Analytical Skills
6 99 (3.64%) Aerospace
7 78 (2.87%) Front Office
8 54 (1.99%) Manufacturing
9 52 (1.91%) Investment Banking
10 46 (1.69%) Retail
11 45 (1.65%) Law
12 39 (1.43%) Automotive
13 33 (1.21%) Military
14 31 (1.14%) Telecoms
15 26 (0.96%) Aviation
15 26 (0.96%) Influencing Skills
16 25 (0.92%) Marketing
17 24 (0.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 18 (0.66%) Back Office
19 16 (0.59%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 1,133 (41.65%) Software Engineer
2 534 (19.63%) Developer
3 518 (19.04%) Senior
4 298 (10.96%) Lead
5 205 (7.54%) Senior Software Engineer
6 161 (5.92%) Embedded Engineer
7 159 (5.85%) Java Engineer
8 155 (5.70%) Embedded Software Engineer
9 152 (5.59%) Java Developer
10 138 (5.07%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
11 130 (4.78%) Software Developer
12 127 (4.67%) Java Software Engineer
13 116 (4.26%) C++ Software Engineer
14 114 (4.19%) Senior Developer
15 110 (4.04%) Architect
16 106 (3.90%) Python Engineer
17 104 (3.82%) Data Engineer
18 80 (2.94%) DevOps Engineer
19 79 (2.90%) Lead Software Engineer
20 77 (2.83%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 298 (10.96%) Terraform
2 253 (9.30%) React
3 243 (8.93%) REST
4 229 (8.42%) Spring
5 223 (8.20%) .NET
6 217 (7.98%) Spring Boot
7 172 (6.32%) Kafka
8 150 (5.51%) RESTful
9 140 (5.15%) Node.js
10 99 (3.64%) AngularJS
11 62 (2.28%) Django
12 59 (2.17%) OAuth
13 58 (2.13%) HTML
13 58 (2.13%) LangChain
14 56 (2.06%) CSS
15 55 (2.02%) Next.js
16 53 (1.95%) Web Services
17 44 (1.62%) FastAPI
17 44 (1.62%) JSON
18 43 (1.58%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 421 (15.48%) Cloud Native
2 235 (8.64%) Distributed Systems
3 154 (5.66%) Product Ownership
4 142 (5.22%) AI Agents
5 74 (2.72%) Algorithms
6 67 (2.46%) Enterprise Software
7 60 (2.21%) Onboarding
8 56 (2.06%) Data Structures
9 50 (1.84%) Data Protection Act
10 48 (1.76%) Embedded Systems
11 37 (1.36%) Self-Motivation
12 35 (1.29%) Legacy Systems
13 33 (1.21%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 29 (1.07%) Fixed Income
15 28 (1.03%) Greenfield Project
16 25 (0.92%) Derivative
17 24 (0.88%) Equities
17 24 (0.88%) Robotics
18 21 (0.77%) Virtual Team
19 19 (0.70%) Legacy Applications
Operating Systems
1 190 (6.99%) Linux
2 66 (2.43%) Windows
3 35 (1.29%) Unix
4 23 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 22 (0.81%) Embedded Linux
6 14 (0.51%) FreeRTOS
7 13 (0.48%) Android
8 12 (0.44%) Windows Server
9 8 (0.29%) Ubuntu
10 7 (0.26%) Apple iOS
11 5 (0.18%) Debian
12 3 (0.11%) Rocky
12 3 (0.11%) VxWorks
13 2 (0.074%) VMS
13 2 (0.074%) Windows Server 2019
13 2 (0.074%) zOS
14 1 (0.037%) Solaris
14 1 (0.037%) Tizen
14 1 (0.037%) Windows 10
14 1 (0.037%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 949 (34.89%) CI/CD
2 825 (30.33%) Agile
3 647 (23.79%) DevOps
4 593 (21.80%) AI
5 408 (15.00%) Microservices
6 406 (14.93%) Test Automation
7 342 (12.57%) Continuous Improvement
8 328 (12.06%) Infrastructure as Code
9 327 (12.02%) Problem-Solving
10 290 (10.66%) Observability
11 270 (9.93%) SDLC
12 267 (9.82%) Containerisation
13 260 (9.56%) Full-Stack Development
14 241 (8.86%) Stakeholder Management
15 240 (8.82%) Technical Leadership
16 235 (8.64%) Machine Learning
17 225 (8.27%) Platform Engineering
18 223 (8.20%) LLM
19 222 (8.16%) Event-Driven
20 215 (7.90%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 798 (29.34%) Python
2 679 (24.96%) Java
3 386 (14.19%) SQL
4 304 (11.18%) TypeScript
5 302 (11.10%) C#
6 230 (8.46%) C++
7 225 (8.27%) JavaScript
8 121 (4.45%) C
9 84 (3.09%) Go
10 80 (2.94%) Ada
11 68 (2.50%) Kotlin
12 48 (1.76%) PowerShell
13 45 (1.65%) Bash
14 44 (1.62%) Rust
15 39 (1.43%) Scala
16 29 (1.07%) Embedded C
17 23 (0.85%) Bicep
17 23 (0.85%) PL/SQL
18 20 (0.74%) PHP
19 17 (0.63%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 597 (21.95%) Security Cleared
2 504 (18.53%) SC Cleared
3 220 (8.09%) Degree
4 103 (3.79%) Computer Science Degree
5 93 (3.42%) DV Cleared
6 60 (2.21%) BPSS Clearance
7 50 (1.84%) Master's Degree
8 45 (1.65%) AWS Certification
9 24 (0.88%) Azure Certification
10 19 (0.70%) PhD
11 18 (0.66%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 13 (0.48%) PMP
13 10 (0.37%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 8 (0.29%) CISSP
15 6 (0.22%) Chartered Engineer
15 6 (0.22%) ISTQB
15 6 (0.22%) TOGAF Certification
16 5 (0.18%) Numerate Degree
16 5 (0.18%) PMI Certification
17 4 (0.15%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 179 (6.58%) QA
2 79 (2.90%) Data Quality
3 58 (2.13%) Accessibility
4 22 (0.81%) MISRA
5 21 (0.77%) GDPR
6 17 (0.63%) Def Stans
7 14 (0.51%) NIST
7 14 (0.51%) WCAG
8 12 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 11 (0.40%) IEC 61508
9 11 (0.40%) MISRA C
10 10 (0.37%) DO-178B
11 9 (0.33%) GRC
12 6 (0.22%) NCSC
13 5 (0.18%) EMIR
13 5 (0.18%) HL7
13 5 (0.18%) JSP 440
13 5 (0.18%) MiFID
14 4 (0.15%) PCI DSS
15 3 (0.11%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 393 (14.45%) Docker
2 30 (1.10%) Firmware
3 19 (0.70%) Embedded Firmware
4 15 (0.55%) Active Directory
5 13 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
6 8 (0.29%) VMware Infrastructure
7 1 (0.037%) Oracle RAC
7 1 (0.037%) zsh
Systems Management
1 444 (16.32%) Kubernetes
2 95 (3.49%) Ansible
3 56 (2.06%) Grafana
4 42 (1.54%) Prometheus
5 37 (1.36%) Argo
6 19 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
7 16 (0.59%) Kibana
8 9 (0.33%) Puppet
9 6 (0.22%) Functional Safety
10 4 (0.15%) Consul
10 4 (0.15%) Kubeflow
10 4 (0.15%) Kustomize
11 3 (0.11%) HP Fortify
11 3 (0.11%) Istio
11 3 (0.11%) Progress Chef
12 2 (0.074%) Cilium
12 2 (0.074%) Control-M
12 2 (0.074%) HAProxy
12 2 (0.074%) Packer
12 2 (0.074%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 150 (5.51%) Microsoft
2 106 (3.90%) Google
3 84 (3.09%) Oracle
4 83 (3.05%) Databricks
5 67 (2.46%) OpenAI
6 39 (1.43%) Red Hat
7 29 (1.07%) Salesforce
8 25 (0.92%) Splunk
9 20 (0.74%) IBM
10 17 (0.63%) Foundry
10 17 (0.63%) Informatica
10 17 (0.63%) ServiceNow
11 12 (0.44%) Adobe
12 11 (0.40%) SAP
13 10 (0.37%) VMware
14 9 (0.33%) Checkmarx
14 9 (0.33%) Dynatrace
15 8 (0.29%) Siemens
16 7 (0.26%) Hitachi
16 7 (0.26%) Mistral