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 19 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 41 42 34
Rank change year-on-year +1 -8 +8
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 1,851 1,221 1,938
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.00% 4.99% 5.12%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.79% 5.50% 5.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 975 808 1,130
10th Percentile £381 £406 £418
25th Percentile £450 £500 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -
75th Percentile £663 £750 £738
90th Percentile £788 £838 £800
UK median daily rate £550 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 373 80 317
10th Percentile £52.50 £42.95 £46.25
25th Percentile £61.25 £56.97 £51.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year - +4.00% -3.85%
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.00 £68.75
90th Percentile £73.26 £68.75 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year - +4.00% -3.85%

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 31,979 22,196 32,870
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.42% 90.71% 86.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,491 14,461 21,766
10th Percentile £313 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £504 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.05% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,970 819 2,143
10th Percentile £15.34 £15.08 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.00 £16.06
Median hourly rate £31.45 £33.40 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -5.84% +2.77% -10.41%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.50 £70.63
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £32.50 £32.12
% change year-on-year -7.69% +1.20% -8.24%

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 19 March 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 19 March 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 19 March 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 -10 802 £600 -8.99% 537
North of England +9 274 £523 -0.95% 247
South West +10 247 £535 -8.55% 205
South East -2 181 £500 - 338
East of England +35 179 £475 +5.09% 130
North West +10 131 £515 -6.36% 111
Midlands -27 101 £500 +2.04% 123
Yorkshire -5 98 £525 - 97
West Midlands -14 85 £500 - 78
North East +25 50 £494 - 40
East Midlands -34 16 £506 +3.32% 45
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 59 (3.19%) Confluence
2 46 (2.49%) Apache Spark
3 44 (2.38%) Apache
4 21 (1.13%) Apache Airflow
5 10 (0.54%) CMS
6 9 (0.49%) WebLogic
7 8 (0.43%) Palantir Foundry
8 4 (0.22%) IIS
8 4 (0.22%) JBoss
8 4 (0.22%) nginx
8 4 (0.22%) OpenStack
9 3 (0.16%) SAS
9 3 (0.16%) SharePoint
9 3 (0.16%) Sitecore CMS
10 2 (0.11%) Camunda
10 2 (0.11%) Magnolia
10 2 (0.11%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.11%) WinCC
10 2 (0.11%) WordPress
11 1 (0.054%) Appian
Applications
1 14 (0.76%) Microsoft Excel
1 14 (0.76%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (0.54%) Chatbot
3 5 (0.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.22%) Simulink
5 2 (0.11%) CPLEX
5 2 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.054%) Maya
6 1 (0.054%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.054%) OrCAD
Business Applications
1 4 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
2 2 (0.11%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.11%) LabWindows
2 2 (0.11%) Primavera
3 1 (0.054%) Aladdin
3 1 (0.054%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 1 (0.054%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 541 (29.23%) AWS
2 347 (18.75%) Azure
3 181 (9.78%) GCP
4 131 (7.08%) Serverless
5 129 (6.97%) GitHub
6 67 (3.62%) Azure DevOps
7 60 (3.24%) Amazon S3
7 60 (3.24%) AWS Lambda
7 60 (3.24%) GitHub Actions
8 45 (2.43%) Power Platform
9 44 (2.38%) OpenShift
10 43 (2.32%) Amazon EKS
10 43 (2.32%) Azure AKS
11 41 (2.22%) AWS CloudFormation
12 36 (1.94%) Azure Functions
13 34 (1.84%) Amazon ECS
14 33 (1.78%) Amazon EC2
15 32 (1.73%) SaaS
16 24 (1.30%) Amazon SQS
16 24 (1.30%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 21 (1.13%) Ethernet
2 13 (0.70%) TCP/IP
3 12 (0.65%) Network Security
4 10 (0.54%) Firewall
5 7 (0.38%) Internet
6 5 (0.27%) 3GPP
6 5 (0.27%) Modbus
6 5 (0.27%) Software-Defined Radio
7 4 (0.22%) BGP
7 4 (0.22%) HTTP
7 4 (0.22%) RS-232
7 4 (0.22%) RS-485
7 4 (0.22%) Software-Defined Networking
7 4 (0.22%) VLAN
7 4 (0.22%) Wireless
8 3 (0.16%) Bluetooth
8 3 (0.16%) IPv4
8 3 (0.16%) IPv6
8 3 (0.16%) Kerberos
8 3 (0.16%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 122 (6.59%) PostgreSQL
2 74 (4.00%) Apache Cassandra
3 68 (3.67%) NoSQL
4 60 (3.24%) MongoDB
4 60 (3.24%) Relational Database
5 51 (2.76%) SQL Server
6 35 (1.89%) Amazon RDS
6 35 (1.89%) Data Lake
7 32 (1.73%) Power BI
8 31 (1.67%) Big Data
9 28 (1.51%) BigQuery
9 28 (1.51%) MySQL
10 25 (1.35%) Metadata
11 21 (1.13%) DynamoDB
12 20 (1.08%) Data Warehouse
13 18 (0.97%) Hadoop
14 16 (0.86%) Amazon Athena
15 15 (0.81%) Elasticsearch
15 15 (0.81%) Mixpanel
16 13 (0.70%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 180 (9.72%) Git
2 128 (6.92%) Jenkins
3 113 (6.10%) GitLab
4 105 (5.67%) JIRA
5 33 (1.78%) Rational DOORS
6 30 (1.62%) Rational Rhapsody
7 28 (1.51%) JUnit
7 28 (1.51%) SonarQube
8 27 (1.46%) Cucumber
8 27 (1.46%) Gradle
9 25 (1.35%) Selenium
10 24 (1.30%) Bitbucket
10 24 (1.30%) Cypress.io
11 21 (1.13%) IntelliJ
12 18 (0.97%) Eclipse
13 17 (0.92%) Liquibase
13 17 (0.92%) Maven
13 17 (0.92%) Mockito
13 17 (0.92%) Visual Studio
14 10 (0.54%) Postman
General
1 308 (16.64%) Finance
2 301 (16.26%) Social Skills
3 126 (6.81%) Public Sector
4 115 (6.21%) Banking
5 102 (5.51%) Analytical Skills
6 65 (3.51%) Front Office
7 62 (3.35%) Aerospace
8 42 (2.27%) Electronics
9 31 (1.67%) Law
9 31 (1.67%) Retail
10 29 (1.57%) Financial Institution
11 28 (1.51%) Investment Banking
12 26 (1.40%) Military
13 24 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
14 23 (1.24%) Manufacturing
15 20 (1.08%) Presentation Skills
15 20 (1.08%) Telecoms
16 14 (0.76%) Documentation Skills
17 13 (0.70%) Pharmaceutical
18 12 (0.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 960 (51.86%) Software Engineer
2 348 (18.80%) Senior
3 339 (18.31%) Developer
4 156 (8.43%) Senior Software Engineer
5 151 (8.16%) Lead
6 125 (6.75%) Java Engineer
7 120 (6.48%) C++ Software Engineer
8 105 (5.67%) Embedded Engineer
9 102 (5.51%) Java Software Engineer
10 94 (5.08%) Embedded Software Engineer
11 77 (4.16%) Architect
12 73 (3.94%) Java Developer
12 73 (3.94%) Senior Developer
13 67 (3.62%) Python Engineer
14 63 (3.40%) Developer/Software Engineer
14 63 (3.40%) Python Developer
15 59 (3.19%) Lead Software Engineer
16 55 (2.97%) Data Engineer
17 49 (2.65%) AWS Engineer
17 49 (2.65%) Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 233 (12.59%) React
2 221 (11.94%) Kafka
3 165 (8.91%) Node.js
4 141 (7.62%) REST
5 135 (7.29%) .NET
6 120 (6.48%) Spring
7 108 (5.83%) Spring Boot
8 102 (5.51%) RESTful
9 93 (5.02%) AngularJS
10 77 (4.16%) gRPC
11 67 (3.62%) GraphQL
12 60 (3.24%) Middleware
13 54 (2.92%) Redux
14 52 (2.81%) HTML
15 50 (2.70%) CSS
16 47 (2.54%) JSON
17 40 (2.16%) Playwright
18 37 (2.00%) Vue
19 36 (1.94%) FastAPI
20 33 (1.78%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 214 (11.56%) Cloud Native
2 144 (7.78%) Distributed Systems
3 90 (4.86%) Product Ownership
4 69 (3.73%) Algorithms
5 59 (3.19%) Fixed Income
6 36 (1.94%) Data Protection Act
7 35 (1.89%) Mobile App
8 31 (1.67%) Legacy Systems
9 30 (1.62%) Data Structures
10 28 (1.51%) AI Agents
10 28 (1.51%) Derivative
10 28 (1.51%) Onboarding
11 26 (1.40%) Equities
12 25 (1.35%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 25 (1.35%) Greenfield Project
13 24 (1.30%) Embedded Systems
14 21 (1.13%) Public Cloud
15 20 (1.08%) Hedge funds
15 20 (1.08%) Virtual Team
16 16 (0.86%) Robotics
Operating Systems
1 203 (10.97%) Linux
2 77 (4.16%) Windows
3 49 (2.65%) Unix
4 27 (1.46%) Android
5 20 (1.08%) Apple iOS
6 19 (1.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 15 (0.81%) Windows Server
8 13 (0.70%) Ubuntu
9 6 (0.32%) FreeRTOS
10 4 (0.22%) Debian
11 3 (0.16%) Embedded Linux
11 3 (0.16%) Rocky
11 3 (0.16%) VMS
12 2 (0.11%) Mac OS
12 2 (0.11%) Robot Operating System
12 2 (0.11%) Solaris
12 2 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
12 2 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
13 1 (0.054%) Windows 10
13 1 (0.054%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 565 (30.52%) Agile
2 536 (28.96%) CI/CD
3 376 (20.31%) DevOps
4 328 (17.72%) Microservices
5 265 (14.32%) AI
6 241 (13.02%) Problem-Solving
7 220 (11.89%) Containerisation
8 201 (10.86%) Test Automation
9 188 (10.16%) Full-Stack Development
10 179 (9.67%) Infrastructure as Code
11 167 (9.02%) Computer Science
12 165 (8.91%) Machine Learning
13 151 (8.16%) Mentoring
14 149 (8.05%) Continuous Improvement
15 131 (7.08%) Observability
16 130 (7.02%) Scrum
17 129 (6.97%) SDLC
18 128 (6.92%) TDD
19 119 (6.43%) Technical Leadership
20 113 (6.10%) Open Source
Programming Languages
1 523 (28.25%) Python
2 455 (24.58%) Java
3 257 (13.88%) SQL
4 240 (12.97%) C++
5 236 (12.75%) JavaScript
6 232 (12.53%) TypeScript
7 220 (11.89%) C#
8 169 (9.13%) Go
9 117 (6.32%) Ada
10 107 (5.78%) C
11 36 (1.94%) PowerShell
12 31 (1.67%) Bash
12 31 (1.67%) Kotlin
12 31 (1.67%) Rust
13 27 (1.46%) Shell Script
14 26 (1.40%) Embedded C
15 24 (1.30%) Embedded C++
16 22 (1.19%) MATLAB
16 22 (1.19%) Ruby
17 17 (0.92%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 434 (23.45%) Security Cleared
2 331 (17.88%) SC Cleared
3 198 (10.70%) Degree
4 90 (4.86%) Computer Science Degree
5 58 (3.13%) DV Cleared
5 58 (3.13%) Master's Degree
6 25 (1.35%) BPSS Clearance
7 21 (1.13%) PhD
8 19 (1.03%) CISSP
9 18 (0.97%) AWS Certification
10 17 (0.92%) CISM
11 16 (0.86%) Azure Certification
12 15 (0.81%) TOGAF Certification
13 10 (0.54%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 9 (0.49%) Microsoft Certified Professional
15 7 (0.38%) ISTQB
16 6 (0.32%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
17 5 (0.27%) Microsoft Certification
18 4 (0.22%) HND
19 3 (0.16%) HNC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 97 (5.24%) QA
2 58 (3.13%) Def Stans
3 40 (2.16%) Data Quality
3 40 (2.16%) IEC 61508
4 34 (1.84%) Accessibility
5 31 (1.67%) MISRA
6 24 (1.30%) GDPR
7 21 (1.13%) MISRA C
8 18 (0.97%) WCAG
9 15 (0.81%) NIST
10 11 (0.59%) DO-178B
11 8 (0.43%) EU AI Act
12 6 (0.32%) HL7
12 6 (0.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
13 5 (0.27%) NCSC
14 3 (0.16%) SLA
15 2 (0.11%) FATCA
15 2 (0.11%) PCI DSS
15 2 (0.11%) PMO
15 2 (0.11%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 331 (17.88%) Docker
2 18 (0.97%) Firmware
3 16 (0.86%) VMware Infrastructure
4 15 (0.81%) Virtual Machines
5 8 (0.43%) Active Directory
6 4 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
7 3 (0.16%) Embedded Firmware
7 3 (0.16%) HDFS
8 2 (0.11%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 363 (19.61%) Kubernetes
2 204 (11.02%) Terraform
3 94 (5.08%) Grafana
4 64 (3.46%) Ansible
5 56 (3.03%) Prometheus
6 24 (1.30%) Argo
7 18 (0.97%) Puppet
8 12 (0.65%) Progress Chef
9 9 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
10 6 (0.32%) Istio
11 5 (0.27%) HP Quality Center
11 5 (0.27%) Kibana
11 5 (0.27%) Kubeflow
12 4 (0.22%) Data Guard
13 3 (0.16%) Docker Swarm
13 3 (0.16%) HP ALM
13 3 (0.16%) Podman
13 3 (0.16%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
14 2 (0.11%) Functional Safety
14 2 (0.11%) rkt
Vendors
1 143 (7.73%) Microsoft
2 67 (3.62%) Google
3 60 (3.24%) Oracle
4 57 (3.08%) Red Hat
5 48 (2.59%) Databricks
6 25 (1.35%) Splunk
7 24 (1.30%) Foundry
8 19 (1.03%) IBM
9 17 (0.92%) VMware
10 16 (0.86%) BiZZdesign
11 15 (0.81%) OpenAI
12 11 (0.59%) Atlassian
13 10 (0.54%) PagerDuty
13 10 (0.54%) Siemens
14 9 (0.49%) Palantir
14 9 (0.49%) SAP
14 9 (0.49%) ServiceNow
14 9 (0.49%) Software AG
15 8 (0.43%) ANSYS
15 8 (0.43%) CyberArk