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

6 months to
19 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 32 43 31
Rank change year-on-year +11 -12 +9
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,564 1,348 1,937
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.61% 4.89% 5.83%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.60% 5.38% 6.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,410 868 1,218
10th Percentile £400 £375 £406
25th Percentile £468 £463 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £558 £600 £625
Median % change year-on-year -7.08% -4.00% +4.17%
75th Percentile £688 £750 £800
90th Percentile £788 £841 £888
UK median daily rate £550 £575 £600
% change year-on-year -4.35% -4.17% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 411 97 267
10th Percentile £51.25 £38.63 £46.18
25th Percentile £60.00 £52.50 £54.49
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £73.00 £76.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year - - +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 38,841 25,050 28,543
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.95% 90.82% 85.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,105 15,945 18,525
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £511 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.68% -2.61% -4.55%
75th Percentile £630 £626 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £756
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.58%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,548 1,450 1,590
10th Percentile £14.25 £14.20 £14.12
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.87 £18.14
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +5.81%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.45 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.56 £25.15 £40.94
% change year-on-year +65.23% -38.57% +0.61%

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 August 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 August 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 August 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 1,155 £600 -7.69% 1,691
North of England +25 392 £525 +5.76% 460
South East +22 329 £525 +4.90% 485
South West +16 315 £550 +10.00% 325
East of England +22 218 £505 +3.37% 303
North West +11 176 £530 +6.00% 245
Yorkshire +17 152 £500 - 112
Midlands +6 113 £459 -14.53% 206
West Midlands -18 78 £455 -20.96% 122
North East +9 69 £650 +41.30% 106
East Midlands +3 34 £500 +5.26% 84
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 56 (2.18%) Confluence
2 51 (1.99%) Apache Spark
3 40 (1.56%) Apache Airflow
4 32 (1.25%) Apache
5 11 (0.43%) CMS
6 10 (0.39%) SAS
7 8 (0.31%) SharePoint
8 6 (0.23%) Jupyter
9 5 (0.20%) Apache Solr
9 5 (0.20%) Ethereum
9 5 (0.20%) Hyperledger
10 4 (0.16%) Apache Superset
10 4 (0.16%) Camunda
11 3 (0.12%) nginx
11 3 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
11 3 (0.12%) WordPress
12 2 (0.078%) Cloud Foundry
12 2 (0.078%) MQSeries
12 2 (0.078%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 2 (0.078%) Tomcat
Applications
1 15 (0.59%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (0.39%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 10 (0.39%) Chatbot
3 9 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
4 5 (0.20%) Microsoft Excel
5 4 (0.16%) CPLEX
5 4 (0.16%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.16%) Simulink
6 3 (0.12%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.12%) Trello
7 2 (0.078%) CATIA
7 2 (0.078%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 2 (0.078%) Notion
8 1 (0.039%) Adobe After Effects
8 1 (0.039%) Adobe XD
8 1 (0.039%) Blender
8 1 (0.039%) S-PLUS
Business Applications
1 7 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
1 7 (0.27%) Payment Gateway
2 6 (0.23%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.20%) R3 Corda
4 4 (0.16%) Quorum
4 4 (0.16%) Ripple
5 3 (0.12%) Orchestrade
5 3 (0.12%) Primavera
5 3 (0.12%) Salesforce CRM
6 2 (0.078%) Aladdin
6 2 (0.078%) Endur
6 2 (0.078%) Oracle Payroll
6 2 (0.078%) Remedy ITSM
7 1 (0.039%) Distributed Ledger
7 1 (0.039%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 1 (0.039%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.039%) Shopify
7 1 (0.039%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 639 (24.92%) AWS
2 522 (20.36%) Azure
3 260 (10.14%) GCP
4 218 (8.50%) GitHub
5 127 (4.95%) Serverless
6 109 (4.25%) GitHub Actions
7 108 (4.21%) Azure DevOps
8 90 (3.51%) AWS Lambda
9 62 (2.42%) Amazon S3
10 58 (2.26%) OpenShift
11 57 (2.22%) Anthropic Claude
12 50 (1.95%) Amazon EKS
13 49 (1.91%) Amazon SQS
13 49 (1.91%) Power Platform
14 47 (1.83%) Amazon ECS
15 44 (1.72%) GitHub Copilot
16 38 (1.48%) Azure AKS
16 38 (1.48%) Snowflake
17 31 (1.21%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 28 (1.09%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 28 (1.09%) Software-Defined Radio
2 27 (1.05%) Wireless
3 20 (0.78%) Ethernet
4 19 (0.74%) Firewall
4 19 (0.74%) Internet
5 18 (0.70%) TCP/IP
6 15 (0.59%) VPN
7 14 (0.55%) HTTP
8 11 (0.43%) Wi-Fi
9 7 (0.27%) Network Security
9 7 (0.27%) RTP
9 7 (0.27%) Wireshark
10 6 (0.23%) 3GPP
11 4 (0.16%) DNS
11 4 (0.16%) RS-232
11 4 (0.16%) SSL
12 3 (0.12%) IPv4
12 3 (0.12%) IPv6
12 3 (0.12%) RS-485
13 2 (0.078%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 148 (5.77%) PostgreSQL
2 99 (3.86%) Relational Database
3 84 (3.28%) NoSQL
4 82 (3.20%) SQL Server
5 49 (1.91%) MongoDB
6 48 (1.87%) Data Warehouse
7 38 (1.48%) DynamoDB
8 36 (1.40%) MySQL
9 34 (1.33%) Power BI
10 29 (1.13%) Big Data
10 29 (1.13%) Metadata
11 25 (0.98%) Amazon RDS
11 25 (0.98%) Redis
12 24 (0.94%) Data Lake
13 22 (0.86%) Elasticsearch
14 21 (0.82%) Pinecone
15 20 (0.78%) BigQuery
16 19 (0.74%) Weaviate
17 18 (0.70%) Amazon Redshift
18 12 (0.47%) Apache Cassandra
Development Applications
1 269 (10.49%) Git
2 167 (6.51%) Jenkins
3 148 (5.77%) GitLab
4 113 (4.41%) JIRA
5 58 (2.26%) SonarQube
6 38 (1.48%) Gradle
6 38 (1.48%) JUnit
7 28 (1.09%) Claude Code
7 28 (1.09%) Rational DOORS
8 25 (0.98%) Visual Studio
9 23 (0.90%) Rational Rhapsody
10 22 (0.86%) Selenium
11 20 (0.78%) Maven
12 17 (0.66%) Bitbucket
12 17 (0.66%) Cucumber
12 17 (0.66%) Mockito
13 14 (0.55%) Liquibase
14 13 (0.51%) Cypress.io
15 12 (0.47%) Eclipse
15 12 (0.47%) IntelliJ
General
1 493 (19.23%) Social Skills
2 453 (17.67%) Finance
3 194 (7.57%) Banking
4 185 (7.22%) Analytical Skills
5 179 (6.98%) Public Sector
6 96 (3.74%) Aerospace
7 90 (3.51%) Front Office
8 50 (1.95%) Retail
9 48 (1.87%) Investment Banking
10 46 (1.79%) Manufacturing
11 45 (1.76%) Law
12 35 (1.37%) Automotive
13 29 (1.13%) Military
14 27 (1.05%) Telecoms
15 26 (1.01%) Aviation
16 24 (0.94%) Influencing Skills
17 20 (0.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 20 (0.78%) Marketing
18 18 (0.70%) Electronics
18 18 (0.70%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,170 (45.63%) Software Engineer
2 474 (18.49%) Developer
3 448 (17.47%) Senior
4 280 (10.92%) Lead
5 189 (7.37%) Senior Software Engineer
6 167 (6.51%) Java Engineer
7 157 (6.12%) Embedded Engineer
8 144 (5.62%) Embedded Software Engineer
9 136 (5.30%) Java Software Engineer
10 126 (4.91%) Java Developer
11 116 (4.52%) C++ Software Engineer
12 112 (4.37%) Software Developer
13 106 (4.13%) Python Engineer
14 104 (4.06%) Architect
15 97 (3.78%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 92 (3.59%) Lead Software Engineer
17 91 (3.55%) Senior Developer
18 86 (3.35%) Data Engineer
19 74 (2.89%) DevOps Engineer
19 74 (2.89%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 261 (10.18%) React
2 214 (8.35%) REST
3 208 (8.11%) .NET
4 201 (7.84%) Spring
5 184 (7.18%) Spring Boot
6 171 (6.67%) Kafka
7 157 (6.12%) Node.js
8 123 (4.80%) RESTful
9 109 (4.25%) AngularJS
10 55 (2.15%) Django
11 54 (2.11%) GraphQL
12 51 (1.99%) Next.js
13 47 (1.83%) HTML
14 45 (1.76%) CSS
15 43 (1.68%) LangChain
16 39 (1.52%) JSON
16 39 (1.52%) Quarkus
17 38 (1.48%) FastAPI
18 37 (1.44%) OAuth
18 37 (1.44%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 365 (14.24%) Cloud Native
2 226 (8.81%) Distributed Systems
3 131 (5.11%) Product Ownership
4 96 (3.74%) AI Agents
5 84 (3.28%) Algorithms
6 55 (2.15%) Enterprise Software
7 52 (2.03%) Fixed Income
8 51 (1.99%) Data Structures
9 49 (1.91%) Onboarding
10 48 (1.87%) Embedded Systems
11 42 (1.64%) Data Protection Act
12 34 (1.33%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 34 (1.33%) Legacy Systems
13 31 (1.21%) Derivative
14 30 (1.17%) Self-Motivation
15 27 (1.05%) Equities
15 27 (1.05%) Robotics
16 22 (0.86%) Greenfield Project
17 19 (0.74%) Virtual Team
18 18 (0.70%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 187 (7.29%) Linux
2 56 (2.18%) Windows
3 33 (1.29%) Unix
4 23 (0.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 22 (0.86%) Embedded Linux
6 14 (0.55%) FreeRTOS
7 13 (0.51%) Android
8 8 (0.31%) Ubuntu
8 8 (0.31%) Windows Server
9 6 (0.23%) Apple iOS
10 5 (0.20%) Debian
11 4 (0.16%) VMS
12 3 (0.12%) Rocky
12 3 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
13 2 (0.078%) Solaris
13 2 (0.078%) VxWorks
13 2 (0.078%) Windows Server 2008
14 1 (0.039%) Tizen
14 1 (0.039%) webOS
14 1 (0.039%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 859 (33.50%) CI/CD
2 787 (30.69%) Agile
3 595 (23.21%) DevOps
4 493 (19.23%) AI
5 395 (15.41%) Microservices
6 342 (13.34%) Test Automation
7 305 (11.90%) Problem-Solving
8 287 (11.19%) Continuous Improvement
9 281 (10.96%) Infrastructure as Code
10 262 (10.22%) Full-Stack Development
11 256 (9.98%) Containerisation
12 234 (9.13%) SDLC
13 230 (8.97%) Observability
14 220 (8.58%) Machine Learning
15 202 (7.88%) Mentoring
16 200 (7.80%) Technical Leadership
17 196 (7.64%) Platform Engineering
18 192 (7.49%) Scrum
18 192 (7.49%) TDD
19 190 (7.41%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 751 (29.29%) Python
2 653 (25.47%) Java
3 355 (13.85%) SQL
4 297 (11.58%) TypeScript
5 294 (11.47%) C#
6 225 (8.78%) JavaScript
7 222 (8.66%) C++
8 115 (4.49%) C
9 108 (4.21%) Ada
10 100 (3.90%) Go
11 62 (2.42%) Kotlin
12 42 (1.64%) PowerShell
13 41 (1.60%) Rust
14 39 (1.52%) Bash
15 38 (1.48%) Scala
16 25 (0.98%) PL/SQL
17 22 (0.86%) Bicep
17 22 (0.86%) Embedded C
18 20 (0.78%) Ruby
19 18 (0.70%) PHP
Qualifications
1 594 (23.17%) Security Cleared
2 498 (19.42%) SC Cleared
3 200 (7.80%) Degree
4 92 (3.59%) Computer Science Degree
5 78 (3.04%) DV Cleared
6 55 (2.15%) BPSS Clearance
7 43 (1.68%) Master's Degree
8 33 (1.29%) AWS Certification
9 20 (0.78%) PhD
10 16 (0.62%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 14 (0.55%) Azure Certification
12 8 (0.31%) CISSP
13 7 (0.27%) Microsoft Certified Professional
13 7 (0.27%) PMP
14 6 (0.23%) Chartered Engineer
14 6 (0.23%) ISTQB
15 4 (0.16%) GIAC
15 4 (0.16%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 4 (0.16%) MBA
16 3 (0.12%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 152 (5.93%) QA
2 61 (2.38%) Data Quality
3 47 (1.83%) Accessibility
4 25 (0.98%) Def Stans
5 21 (0.82%) GDPR
6 17 (0.66%) MISRA
7 15 (0.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 15 (0.59%) NIST
8 14 (0.55%) IEC 61508
9 11 (0.43%) WCAG
10 10 (0.39%) DO-178B
11 9 (0.35%) NCSC
12 7 (0.27%) GRC
13 6 (0.23%) MISRA C
14 5 (0.20%) JSP 440
14 5 (0.20%) PCI DSS
14 5 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 3 (0.12%) DO-254
15 3 (0.12%) HL7
15 3 (0.12%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 380 (14.82%) Docker
2 28 (1.09%) Firmware
3 17 (0.66%) Embedded Firmware
4 9 (0.35%) Active Directory
4 9 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
5 7 (0.27%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (0.12%) HDFS
7 2 (0.078%) SRDF
8 1 (0.039%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 429 (16.73%) Kubernetes
2 264 (10.30%) Terraform
3 86 (3.35%) Ansible
4 54 (2.11%) Grafana
5 41 (1.60%) Argo
6 38 (1.48%) Prometheus
7 14 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
8 11 (0.43%) Kibana
9 10 (0.39%) Puppet
10 7 (0.27%) Progress Chef
11 6 (0.23%) Functional Safety
11 6 (0.23%) Kubeflow
12 4 (0.16%) Consul
12 4 (0.16%) HAProxy
13 3 (0.12%) HP Fortify
13 3 (0.12%) Istio
13 3 (0.12%) Kustomize
14 2 (0.078%) Cilium
14 2 (0.078%) Docker Swarm
14 2 (0.078%) Packer
Vendors
1 135 (5.27%) Microsoft
2 92 (3.59%) Google
3 74 (2.89%) Oracle
4 64 (2.50%) Databricks
5 51 (1.99%) OpenAI
6 43 (1.68%) Red Hat
7 23 (0.90%) Salesforce
8 20 (0.78%) Informatica
9 19 (0.74%) ServiceNow
10 18 (0.70%) IBM
10 18 (0.70%) Splunk
11 13 (0.51%) Foundry
12 12 (0.47%) Adobe
12 12 (0.47%) SAP
13 11 (0.43%) Checkmarx
14 10 (0.39%) ForgeRock
14 10 (0.39%) Okta
15 9 (0.35%) Dynatrace
16 8 (0.31%) Confluent
16 8 (0.31%) VMware