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

6 months to
17 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 31 44 30
Rank change year-on-year +13 -14 +10
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,697 1,361 1,899
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.81% 4.90% 5.81%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.85% 5.39% 6.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,458 831 1,163
10th Percentile £400 £380 £413
25th Percentile £463 £473 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £625
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% -4.00% +2.46%
75th Percentile £682 £750 £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 423 112 231
10th Percentile £51.25 £39.39 £45.22
25th Percentile £57.63 £52.50 £56.88
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.50
Median % change year-on-year - -0.76% +0.77%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.63 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year - - +0.66%

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 39,349 25,238 28,145
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.76% 90.90% 86.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,108 16,041 17,545
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £423
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -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 2,747 1,497 1,306
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.38 £14.92
25th Percentile £17.85 £17.87 £20.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -1.91%
75th Percentile £68.00 £49.75 £66.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +1.18%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 -2 1,208 £600 -7.69% 4,692
North of England +22 448 £525 +6.62% 912
South East +33 346 £525 +10.53% 883
South West +20 305 £550 +7.32% 562
East of England +15 223 £507 +1.40% 618
North West +18 205 £540 +8.00% 565
Yorkshire +10 181 £500 +0.73% 224
Midlands +20 141 £466 -14.44% 413
West Midlands -1 98 £470 -18.35% 232
North East +10 65 £650 +41.30% 123
East Midlands +22 42 £435 -3.33% 181
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 (2.22%) Confluence
2 57 (2.11%) Apache Spark
3 48 (1.78%) Apache Airflow
4 34 (1.26%) Apache
5 14 (0.52%) CMS
5 14 (0.52%) SharePoint
6 7 (0.26%) Camunda
6 7 (0.26%) Jupyter
6 7 (0.26%) SAS
7 6 (0.22%) Ethereum
8 5 (0.19%) Apache Solr
8 5 (0.19%) Hyperledger
9 4 (0.15%) Apache Superset
9 4 (0.15%) WordPress
10 3 (0.11%) MQSeries
10 3 (0.11%) nginx
10 3 (0.11%) WebSphere
11 2 (0.074%) IIS
11 2 (0.074%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 2 (0.074%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 14 (0.52%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (0.44%) Chatbot
3 10 (0.37%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 10 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
4 5 (0.19%) Microsoft Excel
5 4 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.11%) CPLEX
6 3 (0.11%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.11%) Simulink
6 3 (0.11%) Trello
7 2 (0.074%) CATIA
7 2 (0.074%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 2 (0.074%) Notion
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 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
2 5 (0.19%) R3 Corda
3 4 (0.15%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.15%) Oracle Payroll
3 4 (0.15%) Quorum
3 4 (0.15%) Ripple
4 3 (0.11%) Orchestrade
4 3 (0.11%) Primavera
4 3 (0.11%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.074%) Endur
5 2 (0.074%) Remedy ITSM
6 1 (0.037%) Aladdin
6 1 (0.037%) Distributed Ledger
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%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 690 (25.58%) AWS
2 546 (20.24%) Azure
3 277 (10.27%) GCP
4 241 (8.94%) GitHub
5 144 (5.34%) Serverless
6 126 (4.67%) GitHub Actions
7 110 (4.08%) Azure DevOps
8 105 (3.89%) AWS Lambda
9 70 (2.60%) Amazon S3
10 68 (2.52%) Anthropic Claude
11 60 (2.22%) GitHub Copilot
12 59 (2.19%) OpenShift
13 54 (2.00%) Amazon SQS
14 50 (1.85%) Amazon ECS
14 50 (1.85%) Amazon EKS
15 46 (1.71%) Snowflake
16 45 (1.67%) Power Platform
17 43 (1.59%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 34 (1.26%) dbt
19 33 (1.22%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 31 (1.15%) Wireless
2 30 (1.11%) Software-Defined Radio
3 20 (0.74%) Firewall
3 20 (0.74%) Internet
4 19 (0.70%) HTTP
5 18 (0.67%) Ethernet
5 18 (0.67%) TCP/IP
6 17 (0.63%) VPN
7 13 (0.48%) Wi-Fi
8 8 (0.30%) Network Security
8 8 (0.30%) RTP
8 8 (0.30%) Wireshark
9 7 (0.26%) DNS
10 6 (0.22%) 3GPP
10 6 (0.22%) Cisco IPT
11 4 (0.15%) RS-232
11 4 (0.15%) SSL
12 3 (0.11%) Broadband
12 3 (0.11%) Reverse Proxy
12 3 (0.11%) RS-485
Database & Business Intelligence
1 147 (5.45%) PostgreSQL
2 103 (3.82%) Relational Database
3 87 (3.23%) SQL Server
4 78 (2.89%) NoSQL
5 55 (2.04%) MongoDB
6 50 (1.85%) Data Warehouse
7 44 (1.63%) DynamoDB
8 39 (1.45%) MySQL
9 33 (1.22%) Metadata
10 31 (1.15%) Amazon RDS
11 28 (1.04%) Power BI
12 27 (1.00%) Elasticsearch
12 27 (1.00%) Redis
13 26 (0.96%) Data Lake
14 25 (0.93%) Big Data
14 25 (0.93%) BigQuery
15 24 (0.89%) Pinecone
16 20 (0.74%) Weaviate
17 17 (0.63%) Chroma
18 15 (0.56%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 289 (10.72%) Git
2 158 (5.86%) Jenkins
3 157 (5.82%) GitLab
4 118 (4.38%) JIRA
5 58 (2.15%) SonarQube
6 39 (1.45%) Gradle
6 39 (1.45%) JUnit
7 35 (1.30%) Claude Code
8 30 (1.11%) Maven
8 30 (1.11%) Selenium
9 28 (1.04%) Rational DOORS
10 26 (0.96%) Visual Studio
11 21 (0.78%) Cucumber
11 21 (0.78%) Rational Rhapsody
12 17 (0.63%) Mockito
13 15 (0.56%) LabVIEW
14 13 (0.48%) Cypress.io
15 12 (0.44%) Bitbucket
15 12 (0.44%) Snyk
16 11 (0.41%) MLflow
General
1 570 (21.13%) Social Skills
2 487 (18.06%) Finance
3 215 (7.97%) Banking
4 205 (7.60%) Public Sector
5 196 (7.27%) Analytical Skills
6 96 (3.56%) Aerospace
7 78 (2.89%) Front Office
8 52 (1.93%) Investment Banking
9 51 (1.89%) Manufacturing
10 47 (1.74%) Law
11 46 (1.71%) Retail
12 40 (1.48%) Automotive
13 33 (1.22%) Military
14 28 (1.04%) Influencing Skills
15 26 (0.96%) Aviation
16 25 (0.93%) Marketing
16 25 (0.93%) Telecoms
17 22 (0.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 18 (0.67%) Back Office
19 17 (0.63%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 1,137 (42.16%) Software Engineer
2 515 (19.10%) Developer
3 510 (18.91%) Senior
4 300 (11.12%) Lead
5 209 (7.75%) Senior Software Engineer
6 170 (6.30%) Java Engineer
7 160 (5.93%) Embedded Engineer
8 153 (5.67%) Embedded Software Engineer
9 148 (5.49%) Java Developer
10 135 (5.01%) Java Software Engineer
11 131 (4.86%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
12 123 (4.56%) Software Developer
13 114 (4.23%) C++ Software Engineer
14 109 (4.04%) Senior Developer
15 108 (4.00%) Architect
16 105 (3.89%) Python Engineer
17 100 (3.71%) Data Engineer
18 82 (3.04%) DevOps Engineer
19 80 (2.97%) Lead Software Engineer
20 76 (2.82%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 304 (11.27%) Terraform
2 249 (9.23%) React
3 239 (8.86%) REST
4 229 (8.49%) Spring
5 222 (8.23%) .NET
6 215 (7.97%) Spring Boot
7 168 (6.23%) Kafka
8 141 (5.23%) RESTful
9 140 (5.19%) Node.js
10 103 (3.82%) AngularJS
11 60 (2.22%) Django
12 57 (2.11%) HTML
13 56 (2.08%) CSS
14 55 (2.04%) LangChain
14 55 (2.04%) Next.js
15 50 (1.85%) OAuth
16 47 (1.74%) Web Services
17 45 (1.67%) JSON
18 42 (1.56%) FastAPI
19 40 (1.48%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 417 (15.46%) Cloud Native
2 242 (8.97%) Distributed Systems
3 151 (5.60%) Product Ownership
4 132 (4.89%) AI Agents
5 80 (2.97%) Algorithms
6 65 (2.41%) Enterprise Software
7 57 (2.11%) Data Structures
8 55 (2.04%) Onboarding
9 48 (1.78%) Embedded Systems
10 47 (1.74%) Data Protection Act
11 37 (1.37%) Legacy Systems
11 37 (1.37%) Self-Motivation
12 32 (1.19%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 29 (1.08%) Fixed Income
14 26 (0.96%) Derivative
15 25 (0.93%) Robotics
16 24 (0.89%) Greenfield Project
17 23 (0.85%) Equities
18 20 (0.74%) Virtual Team
19 19 (0.70%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 191 (7.08%) Linux
2 62 (2.30%) Windows
3 36 (1.33%) Unix
4 25 (0.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 23 (0.85%) Embedded Linux
6 14 (0.52%) FreeRTOS
7 13 (0.48%) Android
8 12 (0.44%) Windows Server
9 9 (0.33%) Ubuntu
10 7 (0.26%) Apple iOS
11 6 (0.22%) Debian
12 4 (0.15%) Rocky
13 3 (0.11%) VMS
13 3 (0.11%) VxWorks
14 2 (0.074%) Windows Server 2019
14 2 (0.074%) zOS
15 1 (0.037%) Robot Operating System
15 1 (0.037%) Tizen
15 1 (0.037%) Windows 10
15 1 (0.037%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 948 (35.15%) CI/CD
2 814 (30.18%) Agile
3 644 (23.88%) DevOps
4 577 (21.39%) AI
5 406 (15.05%) Microservices
6 403 (14.94%) Test Automation
7 334 (12.38%) Continuous Improvement
8 333 (12.35%) Infrastructure as Code
8 333 (12.35%) Problem-Solving
9 281 (10.42%) Observability
10 272 (10.09%) Containerisation
11 268 (9.94%) SDLC
12 255 (9.45%) Full-Stack Development
13 241 (8.94%) Technical Leadership
14 234 (8.68%) Stakeholder Management
15 232 (8.60%) Machine Learning
16 231 (8.57%) Platform Engineering
17 219 (8.12%) Event-Driven
17 219 (8.12%) LLM
18 218 (8.08%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 795 (29.48%) Python
2 688 (25.51%) Java
3 386 (14.31%) SQL
4 296 (10.98%) C#
4 296 (10.98%) TypeScript
5 226 (8.38%) C++
6 225 (8.34%) JavaScript
7 121 (4.49%) C
8 84 (3.11%) Go
9 82 (3.04%) Ada
10 69 (2.56%) Kotlin
11 49 (1.82%) PowerShell
12 45 (1.67%) Rust
13 44 (1.63%) Bash
14 40 (1.48%) Scala
15 26 (0.96%) Embedded C
16 24 (0.89%) Ruby
17 23 (0.85%) PL/SQL
18 22 (0.82%) Bicep
19 19 (0.70%) PHP
Qualifications
1 607 (22.51%) Security Cleared
2 512 (18.98%) SC Cleared
3 218 (8.08%) Degree
4 100 (3.71%) Computer Science Degree
5 90 (3.34%) DV Cleared
6 64 (2.37%) BPSS Clearance
7 46 (1.71%) Master's Degree
8 42 (1.56%) AWS Certification
9 22 (0.82%) Azure Certification
10 18 (0.67%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 17 (0.63%) PhD
12 12 (0.44%) PMP
13 8 (0.30%) CISSP
13 8 (0.30%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 6 (0.22%) Chartered Engineer
14 6 (0.22%) ISTQB
14 6 (0.22%) TOGAF Certification
15 5 (0.19%) Numerate Degree
15 5 (0.19%) PMI Certification
16 4 (0.15%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 182 (6.75%) QA
2 75 (2.78%) Data Quality
3 55 (2.04%) Accessibility
4 21 (0.78%) GDPR
5 17 (0.63%) MISRA
6 15 (0.56%) WCAG
7 14 (0.52%) Def Stans
7 14 (0.52%) NIST
8 13 (0.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 10 (0.37%) DO-178B
10 8 (0.30%) GRC
11 7 (0.26%) IEC 61508
11 7 (0.26%) NCSC
12 6 (0.22%) MISRA C
13 5 (0.19%) EMIR
13 5 (0.19%) HL7
13 5 (0.19%) JSP 440
13 5 (0.19%) MiFID
14 4 (0.15%) PCI DSS
15 3 (0.11%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 399 (14.79%) Docker
2 29 (1.08%) Firmware
3 18 (0.67%) Embedded Firmware
4 14 (0.52%) Active Directory
5 13 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
6 8 (0.30%) VMware Infrastructure
7 1 (0.037%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 450 (16.69%) Kubernetes
2 92 (3.41%) Ansible
3 56 (2.08%) Grafana
4 40 (1.48%) Argo
4 40 (1.48%) Prometheus
5 16 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
6 15 (0.56%) Kibana
7 8 (0.30%) Puppet
8 6 (0.22%) Functional Safety
9 4 (0.15%) Consul
9 4 (0.15%) HAProxy
9 4 (0.15%) Kubeflow
9 4 (0.15%) Kustomize
10 3 (0.11%) HP Fortify
10 3 (0.11%) Istio
10 3 (0.11%) Progress Chef
11 2 (0.074%) Cilium
11 2 (0.074%) Docker Swarm
11 2 (0.074%) Packer
11 2 (0.074%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 150 (5.56%) Microsoft
2 101 (3.74%) Google
3 86 (3.19%) Oracle
4 76 (2.82%) Databricks
5 66 (2.45%) OpenAI
6 43 (1.59%) Red Hat
7 29 (1.08%) Salesforce
8 25 (0.93%) Splunk
9 21 (0.78%) IBM
10 19 (0.70%) Foundry
10 19 (0.70%) ServiceNow
11 17 (0.63%) Informatica
12 12 (0.44%) Adobe
13 11 (0.41%) SAP
14 10 (0.37%) Checkmarx
14 10 (0.37%) VMware
15 9 (0.33%) Dynatrace
16 8 (0.30%) Siemens
17 7 (0.26%) ForgeRock
17 7 (0.26%) Hitachi