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 6 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 43 36 44
Rank change year-on-year -7 +8 -7
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 1,555 1,615 1,714
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.00% 5.28% 4.47%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.59% 6.01% 5.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 881 984 1,138
10th Percentile £375 £401 £425
25th Percentile £463 £498 £504
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £611
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% -1.80% +1.83%
75th Percentile £688 £775 £738
90th Percentile £825 £850 £810
UK median daily rate £550 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 212 136 220
10th Percentile £46.25 £45.34 £46.18
25th Percentile £54.55 £56.78 £51.94
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £67.25 £70.00 £69.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £72.50 £85.50
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

All Process and 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 27,812 26,873 34,017
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 89.40% 87.89% 88.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,725 16,531 23,197
10th Percentile £300 £313 £313
25th Percentile £406 £415 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £525 £548
Median % change year-on-year -4.29% -4.11% -0.45%
75th Percentile £625 £645 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £533
% change year-on-year -4.76% -1.50% -3.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,799 953 1,442
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.23 £14.78
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.24 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.25
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -20.90% +18.00%
75th Percentile £50.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £75.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.75 £42.50
% change year-on-year -23.21% -22.94% +21.43%

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 6 December 2025.

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 6 December 2025.

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 6 December 2025. 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 -8 823 £625 -7.41% 407
North of England -3 218 £525 +1.20% 463
East of England +7 139 £500 +4.66% 356
South West -13 125 £450 -25.00% 298
Yorkshire -3 114 £523 -5.00% 179
South East -27 103 £475 -5.00% 648
North West -12 83 £550 +15.79% 248
Midlands -41 76 £525 +10.29% 288
West Midlands -14 61 £525 +10.53% 157
North East +8 24 £488 -18.41% 39
East Midlands -32 15 £450 -8.16% 118
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 70 (4.50%) Apache
2 63 (4.05%) Apache Airflow
3 53 (3.41%) Confluence
4 34 (2.19%) Apache Spark
5 13 (0.84%) JBoss
6 11 (0.71%) CMS
6 11 (0.71%) WebLogic
7 6 (0.39%) OpenStack
8 4 (0.26%) SAS
8 4 (0.26%) WordPress
9 3 (0.19%) Appian
9 3 (0.19%) Sitecore CMS
10 2 (0.13%) Magnolia
10 2 (0.13%) nginx
10 2 (0.13%) SharePoint
10 2 (0.13%) Tomcat
11 1 (0.064%) CICS
11 1 (0.064%) Microsoft Exchange
11 1 (0.064%) Smallworld
11 1 (0.064%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 17 (1.09%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (0.71%) Chatbot
3 10 (0.64%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (0.64%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 10 (0.64%) Simulink
4 3 (0.19%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.064%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.064%) Stateflow
Business Applications
1 8 (0.51%) Temenos T24
2 7 (0.45%) Aladdin
3 3 (0.19%) Fidessa
3 3 (0.19%) thinkFolio
4 2 (0.13%) FLEXCUBE
4 2 (0.13%) Oracle BPM
4 2 (0.13%) Primavera
5 1 (0.064%) Dynamics CRM
5 1 (0.064%) ION Anvil
5 1 (0.064%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.064%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 535 (34.41%) AWS
2 265 (17.04%) Azure
3 165 (10.61%) GCP
4 163 (10.48%) Serverless
5 130 (8.36%) GitHub
6 78 (5.02%) GitHub Actions
7 70 (4.50%) AWS Lambda
8 68 (4.37%) Azure DevOps
9 57 (3.67%) Amazon S3
10 53 (3.41%) dbt
11 52 (3.34%) Snowflake
12 47 (3.02%) Power Platform
13 45 (2.89%) Amazon ECS
14 39 (2.51%) Azure AKS
15 35 (2.25%) Amazon EKS
15 35 (2.25%) AWS CloudFormation
16 30 (1.93%) Azure Functions
16 30 (1.93%) OpenShift
17 28 (1.80%) Amazon EC2
18 24 (1.54%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 28 (1.80%) Ethernet
2 19 (1.22%) TCP/IP
3 10 (0.64%) Firewall
3 10 (0.64%) Network Security
4 8 (0.51%) Internet
5 7 (0.45%) NFC
5 7 (0.45%) PPP
6 6 (0.39%) Wireless
7 4 (0.26%) HTTP
7 4 (0.26%) Software-Defined Networking
7 4 (0.26%) tcpdump
7 4 (0.26%) VPN
8 3 (0.19%) BGP
8 3 (0.19%) Kerberos
8 3 (0.19%) VLAN
9 2 (0.13%) DNS
9 2 (0.13%) HTTPS
9 2 (0.13%) SSH
9 2 (0.13%) SSL
9 2 (0.13%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 115 (7.40%) PostgreSQL
2 86 (5.53%) NoSQL
3 71 (4.57%) Apache Cassandra
4 67 (4.31%) MongoDB
5 50 (3.22%) Amazon Athena
5 50 (3.22%) Data Lake
6 49 (3.15%) SQL Server
7 43 (2.77%) Apache Arrow
7 43 (2.77%) Apache Iceberg
7 43 (2.77%) Dremio
8 37 (2.38%) Big Data
8 37 (2.38%) Relational Database
9 35 (2.25%) Power BI
10 29 (1.86%) Amazon RDS
10 29 (1.86%) Hadoop
10 29 (1.86%) MySQL
11 28 (1.80%) Apache Ignite
12 24 (1.54%) Elasticsearch
13 22 (1.41%) DynamoDB
14 21 (1.35%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 177 (11.38%) Git
2 145 (9.32%) Jenkins
3 102 (6.56%) GitLab
3 102 (6.56%) JIRA
4 36 (2.32%) JUnit
4 36 (2.32%) Selenium
5 34 (2.19%) Eclipse
5 34 (2.19%) Liquibase
6 29 (1.86%) Cypress.io
7 27 (1.74%) Cucumber
7 27 (1.74%) SonarQube
8 24 (1.54%) Visual Studio
9 21 (1.35%) Gradle
10 20 (1.29%) Rational DOORS
11 19 (1.22%) Mockito
12 16 (1.03%) Maven
13 15 (0.96%) Artifactory
14 14 (0.90%) Bitbucket
15 13 (0.84%) Postman
16 11 (0.71%) CircleCI
General
1 337 (21.67%) Finance
1 337 (21.67%) Social Skills
2 151 (9.71%) Banking
3 111 (7.14%) Public Sector
4 94 (6.05%) Front Office
5 84 (5.40%) Analytical Skills
6 74 (4.76%) Investment Banking
7 39 (2.51%) Financial Institution
8 37 (2.38%) Military
9 31 (1.99%) Aerospace
10 27 (1.74%) Electronics
11 25 (1.61%) Law
12 23 (1.48%) Presentation Skills
13 19 (1.22%) Influencing Skills
14 18 (1.16%) Pharmaceutical
15 15 (0.96%) Documentation Skills
15 15 (0.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 12 (0.77%) Manufacturing
16 12 (0.77%) Telecoms
17 11 (0.71%) Games
Job Titles
1 718 (46.17%) Software Engineer
2 335 (21.54%) Developer
3 315 (20.26%) Senior
4 154 (9.90%) Senior Software Engineer
5 124 (7.97%) Lead
6 111 (7.14%) Python Engineer
7 109 (7.01%) C++ Software Engineer
8 89 (5.72%) AWS Engineer
9 79 (5.08%) Java Engineer
10 74 (4.76%) AWS Software Engineer
10 74 (4.76%) Python Software Engineer
11 72 (4.63%) Java Software Engineer
12 67 (4.31%) Java Developer
12 67 (4.31%) Python Developer
12 67 (4.31%) Senior Developer
13 53 (3.41%) Embedded Engineer
14 51 (3.28%) Embedded Software Engineer
15 50 (3.22%) Architect
15 50 (3.22%) Data Engineer
16 49 (3.15%) Developer/Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 237 (15.24%) Kafka
2 218 (14.02%) React
3 176 (11.32%) Node.js
4 139 (8.94%) .NET
5 128 (8.23%) REST
6 111 (7.14%) RESTful
7 108 (6.95%) gRPC
8 93 (5.98%) AngularJS
9 83 (5.34%) Spring
10 76 (4.89%) Pandas
11 75 (4.82%) NumPy
12 67 (4.31%) Spring Boot
13 61 (3.92%) SciPy
14 54 (3.47%) HTML
15 52 (3.34%) FastAPI
16 51 (3.28%) JSON
16 51 (3.28%) Vue
17 46 (2.96%) GraphQL
18 42 (2.70%) CSS
19 41 (2.64%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 185 (11.90%) Cloud Native
2 132 (8.49%) Distributed Systems
3 86 (5.53%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 79 (5.08%) Fixed Income
5 58 (3.73%) Hedge funds
6 53 (3.41%) Equities
7 52 (3.34%) Product Ownership
8 51 (3.28%) Algorithms
9 41 (2.64%) Derivative
10 39 (2.51%) Data Structures
11 36 (2.32%) Public Cloud
12 34 (2.19%) Data Protection Act
12 34 (2.19%) Greenfield Project
13 32 (2.06%) Virtual Team
14 28 (1.80%) Pricing Data
15 21 (1.35%) Embedded Systems
15 21 (1.35%) Legacy Systems
16 19 (1.22%) Onboarding
16 19 (1.22%) Self-Motivation
17 18 (1.16%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 242 (15.56%) Linux
2 78 (5.02%) Windows
3 50 (3.22%) Unix
4 26 (1.67%) Android
5 21 (1.35%) Ubuntu
6 15 (0.96%) Apple iOS
7 9 (0.58%) Windows Server
8 8 (0.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 6 (0.39%) FreeRTOS
9 6 (0.39%) Mac OS
10 4 (0.26%) VMS
11 1 (0.064%) Debian
11 1 (0.064%) Robot Operating System
11 1 (0.064%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.064%) Windows Embedded Compact
11 1 (0.064%) Windows Server 2008
11 1 (0.064%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 604 (38.84%) Agile
2 487 (31.32%) CI/CD
3 354 (22.77%) DevOps
4 306 (19.68%) Microservices
5 224 (14.41%) Problem-Solving
6 211 (13.57%) Infrastructure as Code
7 210 (13.50%) Containerisation
8 184 (11.83%) Test Automation
9 178 (11.45%) AI
10 166 (10.68%) Computer Science
11 158 (10.16%) Mentoring
12 144 (9.26%) TDD
13 141 (9.07%) Full-Stack Development
13 141 (9.07%) Scrum
14 139 (8.94%) Machine Learning
15 114 (7.33%) Open Source
16 108 (6.95%) Clean Code
17 107 (6.88%) Continuous Integration
18 97 (6.24%) Data Pipeline
19 92 (5.92%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 521 (33.50%) Python
2 379 (24.37%) Java
3 272 (17.49%) JavaScript
4 265 (17.04%) SQL
5 259 (16.66%) C++
6 227 (14.60%) C#
6 227 (14.60%) TypeScript
7 153 (9.84%) Go
8 84 (5.40%) C
9 43 (2.77%) Ada
10 31 (1.99%) Bash
10 31 (1.99%) Shell Script
11 29 (1.86%) Rust
12 20 (1.29%) Ruby
12 20 (1.29%) VB
13 18 (1.16%) PowerShell
14 17 (1.09%) Scala
15 16 (1.03%) PHP
16 15 (0.96%) Embedded C++
16 15 (0.96%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 289 (18.59%) Security Cleared
2 238 (15.31%) SC Cleared
3 205 (13.18%) Degree
4 98 (6.30%) Computer Science Degree
5 58 (3.73%) Master's Degree
6 51 (3.28%) DV Cleared
7 20 (1.29%) AWS Certification
8 18 (1.16%) MCP
8 18 (1.16%) PhD
9 17 (1.09%) BPSS Clearance
10 16 (1.03%) CISSP
11 14 (0.90%) CISM
12 11 (0.71%) Azure Certification
13 10 (0.64%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 10 (0.64%) TOGAF Certification
14 7 (0.45%) Postgraduate
15 6 (0.39%) ISTQB
16 4 (0.26%) HND
16 4 (0.26%) Microsoft Certification
17 3 (0.19%) EMC Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 77 (4.95%) QA
2 32 (2.06%) Data Quality
3 26 (1.67%) Accessibility
4 22 (1.41%) Def Stans
5 19 (1.22%) GDPR
5 19 (1.22%) WCAG
6 18 (1.16%) MISRA
7 17 (1.09%) IEC 61508
8 13 (0.84%) EU AI Act
9 12 (0.77%) NIST
10 10 (0.64%) MISRA C
11 9 (0.58%) DO-178B
12 7 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
13 5 (0.32%) Software Quality Assurance
14 4 (0.26%) HL7
14 4 (0.26%) ISO 26262
14 4 (0.26%) MiFID
14 4 (0.26%) SLA
15 3 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 15288
15 3 (0.19%) SEPA
System Software
1 355 (22.83%) Docker
2 15 (0.96%) Active Directory
3 10 (0.64%) Firmware
3 10 (0.64%) Virtual Machines
4 6 (0.39%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.19%) zsh
6 2 (0.13%) Embedded Firmware
7 1 (0.064%) KVM
7 1 (0.064%) Virtual Desktop
7 1 (0.064%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 337 (21.67%) Kubernetes
2 216 (13.89%) Terraform
3 83 (5.34%) Grafana
4 76 (4.89%) Ansible
5 67 (4.31%) Prometheus
6 21 (1.35%) Puppet
7 12 (0.77%) Argo
7 12 (0.77%) Kibana
8 9 (0.58%) Progress Chef
9 8 (0.51%) Podman
10 7 (0.45%) Single Sign-On
11 4 (0.26%) Functional Safety
12 3 (0.19%) Cilium
12 3 (0.19%) Kubeflow
12 3 (0.19%) Rsyslog
12 3 (0.19%) SCOM
12 3 (0.19%) SELinux
13 2 (0.13%) Packer
13 2 (0.13%) rkt
14 1 (0.064%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 133 (8.55%) Microsoft
2 57 (3.67%) Google
3 52 (3.34%) Oracle
4 39 (2.51%) Splunk
5 34 (2.19%) Databricks
6 31 (1.99%) Foundry
6 31 (1.99%) Red Hat
7 15 (0.96%) Palantir
8 13 (0.84%) Cloudera
9 12 (0.77%) Atlassian
9 12 (0.77%) BiZZdesign
9 12 (0.77%) SAP
10 11 (0.71%) Salesforce
11 10 (0.64%) OpenAI
11 10 (0.64%) Temenos
12 9 (0.58%) webMethods
13 8 (0.51%) CyberArk
13 8 (0.51%) IBM
13 8 (0.51%) ServiceNow
13 8 (0.51%) VMware