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

6 months to
27 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 38 41 33
Rank change year-on-year +3 -8 +8
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,051 1,225 2,002
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.12% 5.01% 5.39%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.03% 5.49% 6.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,070 811 1,176
10th Percentile £400 £406 £425
25th Percentile £450 £492 £492
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -
75th Percentile £667 £775 £750
90th Percentile £775 £838 £850
UK median daily rate £550 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 455 80 337
10th Percentile £52.50 £42.95 £46.25
25th Percentile £61.25 £54.78 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year - +4.00% -2.56%
75th Percentile £69.38 £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% -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 34,040 22,301 32,179
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.02% 91.14% 86.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,771 14,632 21,098
10th Percentile £316 £310 £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 £523 £525
% change year-on-year -4.40% -0.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,121 919 2,238
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.74 £12.90
25th Percentile £20.38 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £44.00 £30.45 £35.58
Median % change year-on-year +44.50% -14.41% -5.13%
75th Percentile £67.25 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £40.54 £29.15 £35.00
% change year-on-year +39.07% -16.71% -5.41%

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 27 April 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 27 April 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 27 April 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 -11 851 £598 -11.41% 637
South West +13 295 £575 - 191
North of England +18 293 £500 - 287
South East +10 247 £525 +2.44% 361
East of England +36 210 £475 -2.72% 157
North West +4 133 £494 -1.45% 163
Yorkshire -5 111 £509 +1.75% 80
Midlands -21 96 £483 +0.17% 129
West Midlands -13 84 £478 -9.98% 73
North East +24 53 £483 +4.89% 44
East Midlands -41 11 £500 +2.04% 55
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 50 (2.44%) Confluence
2 46 (2.24%) Apache Spark
3 38 (1.85%) Apache
4 23 (1.12%) Apache Airflow
5 9 (0.44%) CMS
6 7 (0.34%) WebLogic
7 6 (0.29%) SAS
8 5 (0.24%) IIS
8 5 (0.24%) Palantir Foundry
8 5 (0.24%) SharePoint
9 4 (0.20%) nginx
10 3 (0.15%) Camunda
10 3 (0.15%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.098%) JBoss
11 2 (0.098%) MQSeries
11 2 (0.098%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 2 (0.098%) Sitecore CMS
11 2 (0.098%) Tomcat
11 2 (0.098%) WinCC
12 1 (0.049%) Smallworld
Applications
1 12 (0.59%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (0.39%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.20%) Chatbot
3 4 (0.20%) Simulink
4 3 (0.15%) CPLEX
4 3 (0.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.098%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.049%) Adobe After Effects
6 1 (0.049%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.049%) Blender
6 1 (0.049%) Maya
6 1 (0.049%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.049%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.049%) OrCAD
Business Applications
1 6 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (0.098%) Aladdin
3 2 (0.098%) LabWindows
4 1 (0.049%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.049%) Orchestrade
4 1 (0.049%) Primavera
4 1 (0.049%) Sprinklr
4 1 (0.049%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 550 (26.82%) AWS
2 384 (18.72%) Azure
3 187 (9.12%) GCP
4 137 (6.68%) GitHub
5 120 (5.85%) Serverless
6 77 (3.75%) Azure DevOps
7 69 (3.36%) AWS Lambda
8 66 (3.22%) Amazon S3
9 60 (2.93%) GitHub Actions
10 52 (2.54%) Power Platform
11 49 (2.39%) OpenShift
12 42 (2.05%) AWS CloudFormation
13 37 (1.80%) Azure AKS
14 36 (1.76%) Amazon ECS
15 35 (1.71%) Amazon EKS
16 30 (1.46%) SaaS
17 28 (1.37%) Amazon EC2
18 27 (1.32%) Amazon SQS
19 26 (1.27%) Azure Functions
20 21 (1.02%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.12%) Ethernet
2 22 (1.07%) Software-Defined Radio
3 14 (0.68%) TCP/IP
4 12 (0.59%) Wireless
5 11 (0.54%) Network Security
6 10 (0.49%) HTTP
7 9 (0.44%) 3GPP
8 8 (0.39%) Firewall
9 5 (0.24%) Modbus
9 5 (0.24%) RTP
10 4 (0.20%) RS-232
10 4 (0.20%) RS-485
10 4 (0.20%) VPN
10 4 (0.20%) Wireshark
11 3 (0.15%) Bluetooth
11 3 (0.15%) DNS
11 3 (0.15%) IPv4
11 3 (0.15%) IPv6
11 3 (0.15%) RS-422
12 2 (0.098%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 128 (6.24%) PostgreSQL
2 63 (3.07%) Relational Database
2 63 (3.07%) SQL Server
3 60 (2.93%) NoSQL
4 56 (2.73%) Apache Cassandra
5 53 (2.58%) MongoDB
6 37 (1.80%) Power BI
7 34 (1.66%) Amazon RDS
8 32 (1.56%) Data Lake
9 27 (1.32%) Big Data
9 27 (1.32%) BigQuery
9 27 (1.32%) MySQL
10 25 (1.22%) DynamoDB
11 23 (1.12%) Metadata
12 21 (1.02%) Data Warehouse
13 16 (0.78%) Amazon Redshift
14 15 (0.73%) Amazon Athena
15 14 (0.68%) Elasticsearch
15 14 (0.68%) Mixpanel
16 13 (0.63%) Redis
Development Applications
1 206 (10.04%) Git
2 133 (6.48%) Jenkins
3 110 (5.36%) GitLab
4 105 (5.12%) JIRA
5 41 (2.00%) SonarQube
6 33 (1.61%) Rational Rhapsody
7 32 (1.56%) Rational DOORS
8 31 (1.51%) JUnit
9 28 (1.37%) Gradle
10 25 (1.22%) IntelliJ
11 23 (1.12%) Bitbucket
12 22 (1.07%) Cucumber
12 22 (1.07%) Cypress.io
13 21 (1.02%) Selenium
14 18 (0.88%) Visual Studio
15 17 (0.83%) Maven
16 14 (0.68%) Eclipse
16 14 (0.68%) Mockito
17 11 (0.54%) Liquibase
18 10 (0.49%) Artifactory
General
1 306 (14.92%) Finance
2 300 (14.63%) Social Skills
3 127 (6.19%) Public Sector
4 110 (5.36%) Analytical Skills
5 109 (5.31%) Banking
6 85 (4.14%) Aerospace
7 65 (3.17%) Front Office
8 38 (1.85%) Law
9 37 (1.80%) Electronics
9 37 (1.80%) Manufacturing
10 33 (1.61%) Retail
11 27 (1.32%) Influencing Skills
11 27 (1.32%) Military
12 26 (1.27%) Investment Banking
13 21 (1.02%) Presentation Skills
13 21 (1.02%) Telecoms
14 14 (0.68%) Financial Institution
15 13 (0.63%) Documentation Skills
15 13 (0.63%) Legal
16 12 (0.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 1,122 (54.71%) Software Engineer
2 364 (17.75%) Senior
3 352 (17.16%) Developer
4 179 (8.73%) Senior Software Engineer
5 153 (7.46%) Lead
6 152 (7.41%) Embedded Engineer
7 140 (6.83%) Embedded Software Engineer
8 139 (6.78%) Java Engineer
9 125 (6.09%) C++ Software Engineer
10 110 (5.36%) Java Software Engineer
11 89 (4.34%) Java Developer
12 86 (4.19%) Architect
13 68 (3.32%) Senior Developer
14 67 (3.27%) Developer/Software Engineer
15 65 (3.17%) Python Engineer
16 62 (3.02%) Data Engineer
17 61 (2.97%) Full-Stack Engineer
18 59 (2.88%) Software Developer
19 58 (2.83%) Lead Software Engineer
20 56 (2.73%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 228 (11.12%) React
2 192 (9.36%) Kafka
3 169 (8.24%) Node.js
4 146 (7.12%) .NET
5 141 (6.87%) REST
6 137 (6.68%) Spring
7 122 (5.95%) Spring Boot
8 100 (4.88%) AngularJS
9 91 (4.44%) RESTful
10 74 (3.61%) GraphQL
11 56 (2.73%) gRPC
12 53 (2.58%) Middleware
13 52 (2.54%) Redux
14 48 (2.34%) CSS
15 45 (2.19%) HTML
16 38 (1.85%) JSON
16 38 (1.85%) Playwright
17 36 (1.76%) Web Services
18 33 (1.61%) OpenTelemetry
19 30 (1.46%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 213 (10.39%) Cloud Native
2 143 (6.97%) Distributed Systems
3 92 (4.49%) Product Ownership
4 82 (4.00%) Algorithms
5 58 (2.83%) Fixed Income
6 39 (1.90%) AI Agents
7 34 (1.66%) Data Protection Act
8 31 (1.51%) Embedded Systems
9 30 (1.46%) Onboarding
10 26 (1.27%) Data Structures
10 26 (1.27%) Derivative
10 26 (1.27%) Mobile App
10 26 (1.27%) Robotics
11 24 (1.17%) Legacy Systems
12 20 (0.98%) Equities
12 20 (0.98%) Greenfield Project
13 18 (0.88%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 14 (0.68%) NHS
15 13 (0.63%) Life Science
15 13 (0.63%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 194 (9.46%) Linux
2 69 (3.36%) Windows
3 44 (2.15%) Unix
4 26 (1.27%) Android
5 22 (1.07%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 19 (0.93%) Apple iOS
7 11 (0.54%) Embedded Linux
7 11 (0.54%) Windows Server
8 8 (0.39%) FreeRTOS
9 6 (0.29%) Ubuntu
10 5 (0.24%) Debian
11 4 (0.20%) VMS
12 3 (0.15%) Rocky
13 2 (0.098%) Robot Operating System
13 2 (0.098%) Solaris
13 2 (0.098%) Windows Server 2008
13 2 (0.098%) Windows Server 2019
14 1 (0.049%) Mac OS
14 1 (0.049%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 583 (28.43%) CI/CD
2 575 (28.04%) Agile
3 414 (20.19%) DevOps
4 318 (15.50%) Microservices
5 276 (13.46%) AI
6 225 (10.97%) Problem-Solving
7 217 (10.58%) Full-Stack Development
8 209 (10.19%) Containerisation
9 204 (9.95%) Test Automation
10 203 (9.90%) Infrastructure as Code
11 156 (7.61%) Computer Science
12 155 (7.56%) Observability
13 154 (7.51%) Machine Learning
14 148 (7.22%) Continuous Improvement
14 148 (7.22%) Mentoring
15 145 (7.07%) SDLC
16 140 (6.83%) Scrum
17 136 (6.63%) TDD
18 131 (6.39%) Technical Leadership
19 121 (5.90%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 529 (25.79%) Python
2 491 (23.94%) Java
3 267 (13.02%) SQL
4 258 (12.58%) C#
5 241 (11.75%) TypeScript
6 232 (11.31%) C++
7 215 (10.48%) JavaScript
8 150 (7.31%) Go
9 133 (6.48%) Ada
10 120 (5.85%) C
11 35 (1.71%) Kotlin
12 33 (1.61%) Embedded C
12 33 (1.61%) PowerShell
13 30 (1.46%) Bash
14 26 (1.27%) MATLAB
15 25 (1.22%) Ruby
16 24 (1.17%) Rust
17 21 (1.02%) Shell Script
18 20 (0.98%) Scala
19 18 (0.88%) Embedded C++
Qualifications
1 504 (24.57%) Security Cleared
2 395 (19.26%) SC Cleared
3 174 (8.48%) Degree
4 88 (4.29%) Computer Science Degree
5 61 (2.97%) DV Cleared
6 41 (2.00%) Master's Degree
7 31 (1.51%) BPSS Clearance
8 23 (1.12%) AWS Certification
9 14 (0.68%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 13 (0.63%) Azure Certification
10 13 (0.63%) CISSP
10 13 (0.63%) PhD
11 10 (0.49%) CISM
12 8 (0.39%) ISTQB
12 8 (0.39%) TOGAF Certification
13 7 (0.34%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
14 4 (0.20%) HND
14 4 (0.20%) Microsoft Certification
15 3 (0.15%) Cisco Certification
15 3 (0.15%) HNC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 115 (5.61%) QA
2 53 (2.58%) Def Stans
3 41 (2.00%) Data Quality
4 38 (1.85%) IEC 61508
5 26 (1.27%) Accessibility
5 26 (1.27%) GDPR
6 23 (1.12%) MISRA
7 17 (0.83%) MISRA C
8 8 (0.39%) NIST
9 7 (0.34%) DO-178B
9 7 (0.34%) HL7
9 7 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 6 (0.29%) NCSC
10 6 (0.29%) WCAG
11 3 (0.15%) EMIR
11 3 (0.15%) FATCA
11 3 (0.15%) MiFID
12 2 (0.098%) PCI DSS
12 2 (0.098%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 2 (0.098%) SLA
System Software
1 311 (15.16%) Docker
2 20 (0.98%) Firmware
3 16 (0.78%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.49%) Virtual Machines
5 7 (0.34%) Active Directory
5 7 (0.34%) Embedded Firmware
6 4 (0.20%) Oracle RAC
7 3 (0.15%) HDFS
8 2 (0.098%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 338 (16.48%) Kubernetes
2 213 (10.39%) Terraform
3 87 (4.24%) Grafana
4 55 (2.68%) Ansible
5 48 (2.34%) Prometheus
6 32 (1.56%) Argo
7 15 (0.73%) Puppet
8 12 (0.59%) Progress Chef
9 6 (0.29%) Istio
9 6 (0.29%) Single Sign-On
10 5 (0.24%) HAProxy
10 5 (0.24%) Kibana
10 5 (0.24%) Kubeflow
11 4 (0.20%) Data Guard
11 4 (0.20%) Docker Swarm
11 4 (0.20%) HP Quality Center
12 3 (0.15%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
13 2 (0.098%) Consul
13 2 (0.098%) HP ALM
13 2 (0.098%) Podman
Vendors
1 140 (6.83%) Microsoft
2 76 (3.71%) Google
3 61 (2.97%) Oracle
4 55 (2.68%) Red Hat
5 47 (2.29%) Databricks
6 23 (1.12%) IBM
7 21 (1.02%) Splunk
8 20 (0.98%) OpenAI
9 17 (0.83%) VMware
10 14 (0.68%) Foundry
11 13 (0.63%) ServiceNow
12 11 (0.54%) Siemens
13 10 (0.49%) Atlassian
13 10 (0.49%) MathWorks
13 10 (0.49%) PagerDuty
13 10 (0.49%) SAP
14 9 (0.44%) Dynatrace
14 9 (0.44%) Informatica
14 9 (0.44%) Okta
14 9 (0.44%) Software AG