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

6 months to
9 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 33 43 29
Rank change year-on-year +10 -14 +11
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,434 1,297 2,255
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.44% 4.81% 6.05%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.37% 5.29% 7.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,326 845 1,366
10th Percentile £400 £400 £419
25th Percentile £463 £475 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £613
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% -2.04% +2.08%
75th Percentile £688 £775 £788
90th Percentile £788 £850 £888
UK median daily rate £550 £575 £600
% change year-on-year -4.35% -4.17% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 434 79 380
10th Percentile £52.50 £36.25 £46.25
25th Percentile £61.25 £51.63 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £75.50 £75.25
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 38,237 24,502 31,943
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.52% 90.81% 85.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,096 15,746 20,754
10th Percentile £325 £300 £306
25th Percentile £419 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £733 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £518 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -3.81% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,381 1,253 2,276
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.98 £16.06
Median hourly rate £47.00 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +86.88% -34.02% -6.07%
75th Percentile £68.75 £54.01 £61.60
90th Percentile £82.37 £70.16 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% -6.25%

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 9 July 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 9 July 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 9 July 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 -6 1,063 £600 -7.69% 1,141
North of England +26 373 £538 +9.25% 324
South West +22 324 £550 +4.76% 530
South East +22 304 £525 +3.65% 367
East of England +30 228 £505 +3.43% 221
North West +12 178 £525 +5.00% 186
Yorkshire +25 131 £538 +9.69% 83
Midlands -28 98 £459 -8.20% 144
West Midlands -31 76 £457 -18.03% 75
North East +17 69 £650 +41.30% 56
East Midlands -11 21 £513 +7.89% 68
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 53 (2.18%) Confluence
2 46 (1.89%) Apache Spark
3 33 (1.36%) Apache
4 31 (1.27%) Apache Airflow
5 10 (0.41%) SAS
6 7 (0.29%) CMS
7 5 (0.21%) nginx
7 5 (0.21%) SharePoint
8 4 (0.16%) Ethereum
8 4 (0.16%) Hyperledger
8 4 (0.16%) WebLogic
9 3 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
9 3 (0.12%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.082%) Apache Superset
10 2 (0.082%) Cloud Foundry
10 2 (0.082%) IIS
10 2 (0.082%) Jupyter
10 2 (0.082%) MQSeries
10 2 (0.082%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 2 (0.082%) WinCC
Applications
1 15 (0.62%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.37%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 8 (0.33%) Chatbot
4 6 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.21%) CPLEX
5 5 (0.21%) Simulink
6 4 (0.16%) Microsoft Excel
7 2 (0.082%) CATIA
7 2 (0.082%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 2 (0.082%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.041%) Adobe After Effects
8 1 (0.041%) Adobe XD
8 1 (0.041%) Blender
8 1 (0.041%) Maya
8 1 (0.041%) MS Visio
8 1 (0.041%) Notion
8 1 (0.041%) S-PLUS
Business Applications
1 7 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
2 6 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
2 6 (0.25%) Payment Gateway
3 4 (0.16%) Quorum
3 4 (0.16%) R3 Corda
3 4 (0.16%) Ripple
4 3 (0.12%) Orchestrade
5 2 (0.082%) Aladdin
5 2 (0.082%) Endur
5 2 (0.082%) Remedy ITSM
5 2 (0.082%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.041%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.041%) Primavera
6 1 (0.041%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 595 (24.45%) AWS
2 463 (19.02%) Azure
3 231 (9.49%) GCP
4 168 (6.90%) GitHub
5 116 (4.77%) Serverless
6 97 (3.99%) Azure DevOps
7 79 (3.25%) GitHub Actions
8 76 (3.12%) AWS Lambda
9 62 (2.55%) Amazon S3
10 57 (2.34%) OpenShift
11 46 (1.89%) Power Platform
12 40 (1.64%) Amazon SQS
13 39 (1.60%) Azure AKS
14 37 (1.52%) Amazon ECS
14 37 (1.52%) Anthropic Claude
15 36 (1.48%) Amazon EKS
16 30 (1.23%) Amazon EC2
16 30 (1.23%) SaaS
17 28 (1.15%) AWS CloudFormation
17 28 (1.15%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 29 (1.19%) Software-Defined Radio
2 24 (0.99%) Ethernet
3 22 (0.90%) Wireless
4 17 (0.70%) Firewall
4 17 (0.70%) TCP/IP
5 15 (0.62%) HTTP
5 15 (0.62%) Internet
6 13 (0.53%) VPN
7 12 (0.49%) Wi-Fi
8 10 (0.41%) 3GPP
9 8 (0.33%) Network Security
10 7 (0.29%) RTP
11 6 (0.25%) Wireshark
12 4 (0.16%) DNS
12 4 (0.16%) RS-232
12 4 (0.16%) RS-422
13 3 (0.12%) IPv4
13 3 (0.12%) IPv6
13 3 (0.12%) Modbus
13 3 (0.12%) RS-485
Database & Business Intelligence
1 146 (6.00%) PostgreSQL
2 92 (3.78%) Relational Database
3 71 (2.92%) SQL Server
4 66 (2.71%) NoSQL
5 52 (2.14%) MongoDB
6 35 (1.44%) Data Warehouse
7 32 (1.31%) DynamoDB
8 30 (1.23%) Power BI
9 28 (1.15%) Big Data
9 28 (1.15%) MySQL
10 25 (1.03%) Apache Cassandra
11 24 (0.99%) Amazon RDS
11 24 (0.99%) Data Lake
12 23 (0.94%) BigQuery
13 22 (0.90%) Metadata
14 21 (0.86%) Redis
15 18 (0.74%) Elasticsearch
15 18 (0.74%) Pinecone
16 17 (0.70%) Amazon Redshift
17 16 (0.66%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 239 (9.82%) Git
2 147 (6.04%) Jenkins
3 124 (5.09%) GitLab
4 107 (4.40%) JIRA
5 55 (2.26%) SonarQube
6 36 (1.48%) Gradle
7 32 (1.31%) JUnit
8 28 (1.15%) Rational DOORS
9 27 (1.11%) Rational Rhapsody
10 24 (0.99%) Visual Studio
11 20 (0.82%) Cucumber
11 20 (0.82%) Selenium
12 19 (0.78%) Bitbucket
12 19 (0.78%) Maven
13 16 (0.66%) Liquibase
14 14 (0.58%) Claude Code
14 14 (0.58%) Cypress.io
14 14 (0.58%) IntelliJ
14 14 (0.58%) Mockito
15 12 (0.49%) Eclipse
General
1 435 (17.87%) Finance
2 420 (17.26%) Social Skills
3 164 (6.74%) Banking
4 156 (6.41%) Analytical Skills
5 155 (6.37%) Public Sector
6 106 (4.35%) Aerospace
7 85 (3.49%) Front Office
8 51 (2.10%) Retail
9 47 (1.93%) Law
10 45 (1.85%) Manufacturing
11 41 (1.68%) Investment Banking
12 28 (1.15%) Automotive
12 28 (1.15%) Military
13 26 (1.07%) Aviation
13 26 (1.07%) Influencing Skills
14 25 (1.03%) Telecoms
15 21 (0.86%) Electronics
16 17 (0.70%) Legal
17 16 (0.66%) Documentation Skills
17 16 (0.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 1,210 (49.71%) Software Engineer
2 454 (18.65%) Developer
3 413 (16.97%) Senior
4 255 (10.48%) Lead
5 178 (7.31%) Senior Software Engineer
6 174 (7.15%) Java Engineer
7 144 (5.92%) Embedded Engineer
8 143 (5.88%) Java Software Engineer
9 137 (5.63%) Java Developer
10 133 (5.46%) Embedded Software Engineer
11 127 (5.22%) C++ Software Engineer
12 106 (4.35%) Architect
13 98 (4.03%) Lead Software Engineer
14 90 (3.70%) Python Engineer
15 86 (3.53%) Software Developer
16 83 (3.41%) Senior Developer
17 77 (3.16%) Python Developer
18 75 (3.08%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
19 72 (2.96%) Developer/Software Engineer
19 72 (2.96%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 271 (11.13%) React
2 185 (7.60%) .NET
3 183 (7.52%) Kafka
4 177 (7.27%) Spring
5 174 (7.15%) Node.js
6 168 (6.90%) REST
7 159 (6.53%) Spring Boot
8 110 (4.52%) RESTful
9 103 (4.23%) AngularJS
10 78 (3.20%) GraphQL
11 59 (2.42%) Redux
12 46 (1.89%) CSS
13 45 (1.85%) HTML
14 41 (1.68%) Django
14 41 (1.68%) JSON
15 40 (1.64%) Next.js
16 37 (1.52%) OAuth
17 36 (1.48%) Web Services
18 35 (1.44%) Quarkus
19 34 (1.40%) LangChain
Miscellaneous
1 278 (11.42%) Cloud Native
2 193 (7.93%) Distributed Systems
3 121 (4.97%) Product Ownership
4 86 (3.53%) Algorithms
5 71 (2.92%) Fixed Income
6 66 (2.71%) AI Agents
7 44 (1.81%) Embedded Systems
8 41 (1.68%) Onboarding
9 39 (1.60%) Data Protection Act
10 38 (1.56%) Data Structures
11 33 (1.36%) Derivative
11 33 (1.36%) Legacy Systems
12 32 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
13 30 (1.23%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 27 (1.11%) Equities
15 26 (1.07%) Enterprise Software
16 21 (0.86%) Robotics
17 18 (0.74%) Greenfield Project
18 17 (0.70%) Mobile App
19 15 (0.62%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 191 (7.85%) Linux
2 59 (2.42%) Windows
3 36 (1.48%) Unix
4 30 (1.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 18 (0.74%) Embedded Linux
6 15 (0.62%) Apple iOS
7 13 (0.53%) Android
8 11 (0.45%) FreeRTOS
9 9 (0.37%) Ubuntu
9 9 (0.37%) Windows Server
10 5 (0.21%) Debian
11 4 (0.16%) Rocky
11 4 (0.16%) VMS
11 4 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.12%) Solaris
12 3 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
13 2 (0.082%) VxWorks
14 1 (0.041%) Tizen
14 1 (0.041%) webOS
14 1 (0.041%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 746 (30.65%) CI/CD
2 734 (30.16%) Agile
3 527 (21.65%) DevOps
4 396 (16.27%) AI
5 353 (14.50%) Microservices
6 302 (12.41%) Test Automation
7 273 (11.22%) Problem-Solving
8 255 (10.48%) Full-Stack Development
9 235 (9.65%) Containerisation
10 231 (9.49%) Infrastructure as Code
11 223 (9.16%) Continuous Improvement
12 196 (8.05%) Machine Learning
13 193 (7.93%) Observability
14 192 (7.89%) TDD
15 190 (7.81%) SDLC
16 184 (7.56%) Mentoring
17 176 (7.23%) Scrum
18 166 (6.82%) Platform Engineering
19 163 (6.70%) Technical Leadership
20 160 (6.57%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 672 (27.61%) Python
2 628 (25.80%) Java
3 312 (12.82%) SQL
4 298 (12.24%) TypeScript
5 289 (11.87%) C#
6 239 (9.82%) JavaScript
7 230 (9.45%) C++
8 130 (5.34%) Ada
9 126 (5.18%) Go
10 119 (4.89%) C
11 43 (1.77%) Kotlin
12 40 (1.64%) Rust
13 31 (1.27%) Bash
13 31 (1.27%) PowerShell
13 31 (1.27%) Scala
14 25 (1.03%) PL/SQL
15 23 (0.94%) MATLAB
16 20 (0.82%) Embedded C
17 18 (0.74%) Ruby
18 17 (0.70%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 587 (24.12%) Security Cleared
2 478 (19.64%) SC Cleared
3 187 (7.68%) Degree
4 84 (3.45%) Computer Science Degree
5 73 (3.00%) DV Cleared
6 51 (2.10%) BPSS Clearance
7 35 (1.44%) Master's Degree
8 28 (1.15%) AWS Certification
9 18 (0.74%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 15 (0.62%) PhD
11 13 (0.53%) Azure Certification
12 10 (0.41%) CISSP
13 7 (0.29%) ISTQB
13 7 (0.29%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
14 6 (0.25%) Chartered Engineer
14 6 (0.25%) TOGAF Certification
15 5 (0.21%) PMP
16 4 (0.16%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
16 4 (0.16%) CISM
16 4 (0.16%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 133 (5.46%) QA
2 48 (1.97%) Data Quality
3 44 (1.81%) Accessibility
4 41 (1.68%) Def Stans
5 26 (1.07%) IEC 61508
6 21 (0.86%) GDPR
7 18 (0.74%) MISRA
8 15 (0.62%) NIST
9 11 (0.45%) DO-178B
9 11 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 11 (0.45%) WCAG
10 9 (0.37%) NCSC
11 8 (0.33%) MISRA C
12 6 (0.25%) GRC
12 6 (0.25%) PCI DSS
13 5 (0.21%) JSP 440
13 5 (0.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 4 (0.16%) DO-254
15 3 (0.12%) FATCA
16 2 (0.082%) EMIR
System Software
1 335 (13.76%) Docker
2 24 (0.99%) Firmware
3 10 (0.41%) Active Directory
4 9 (0.37%) Embedded Firmware
5 7 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
5 7 (0.29%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (0.12%) HDFS
7 2 (0.082%) SRDF
8 1 (0.041%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 392 (16.11%) Kubernetes
2 230 (9.45%) Terraform
3 67 (2.75%) Ansible
4 63 (2.59%) Grafana
5 40 (1.64%) Prometheus
6 37 (1.52%) Argo
7 12 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
8 11 (0.45%) Kibana
9 7 (0.29%) Puppet
10 6 (0.25%) Progress Chef
11 5 (0.21%) HAProxy
11 5 (0.21%) Kubeflow
12 4 (0.16%) HP Quality Center
13 3 (0.12%) Consul
13 3 (0.12%) Docker Swarm
13 3 (0.12%) Functional Safety
14 2 (0.082%) Cilium
14 2 (0.082%) HP ALM
14 2 (0.082%) HP Fortify
14 2 (0.082%) Istio
Vendors
1 126 (5.18%) Microsoft
2 81 (3.33%) Google
3 74 (3.04%) Oracle
4 50 (2.05%) Red Hat
5 45 (1.85%) Databricks
6 37 (1.52%) OpenAI
7 19 (0.78%) IBM
7 19 (0.78%) Informatica
8 18 (0.74%) ServiceNow
8 18 (0.74%) Splunk
9 15 (0.62%) Salesforce
10 14 (0.58%) Foundry
11 12 (0.49%) SAP
11 12 (0.49%) Siemens
12 11 (0.45%) Adobe
13 10 (0.41%) Checkmarx
13 10 (0.41%) ForgeRock
13 10 (0.41%) Okta
14 8 (0.33%) Confluent
14 8 (0.33%) Solace