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

6 months to
9 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 33 45 28
Rank change year-on-year +12 -17 +11
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,275 1,156 2,242
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.36% 4.74% 6.03%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.30% 5.20% 7.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,201 756 1,287
10th Percentile £400 £400 £416
25th Percentile £463 £475 £488
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -
75th Percentile £675 £763 £750
90th Percentile £775 £838 £850
UK median daily rate £550 £575 £600
% change year-on-year -4.35% -4.17% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 462 63 397
10th Percentile £52.31 £43.50 £46.25
25th Percentile £60.00 £56.44 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.63 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £76.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year - +4.00% -2.56%

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 36,103 22,244 31,795
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.13% 91.27% 85.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,869 14,374 20,646
10th Percentile £325 £303 £300
25th Percentile £413 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,268 1,001 2,353
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.81
25th Percentile £20.79 £18.10 £16.00
Median hourly rate £47.25 £28.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +65.79% -24.00% +4.17%
75th Percentile £68.00 £58.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.00 £73.75 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £27.50 £36.50
% change year-on-year +59.85% -24.66% +1.67%

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 June 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 June 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 June 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 -2 963 £583 -11.47% 560
North of England +24 337 £515 +3.00% 293
South West +25 332 £570 +8.57% 194
South East +22 284 £525 +4.90% 377
East of England +37 221 £495 +1.43% 160
North West +7 158 £500 - 170
Yorkshire +18 123 £525 +7.14% 60
Midlands -31 88 £469 -6.20% 103
West Midlands -25 72 £466 -16.43% 61
North East +16 61 £593 +28.80% 63
East Midlands -28 15 £525 +7.14% 42
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 (2.33%) Confluence
2 45 (1.98%) Apache Spark
3 33 (1.45%) Apache
4 26 (1.14%) Apache Airflow
5 8 (0.35%) SAS
6 6 (0.26%) CMS
6 6 (0.26%) SharePoint
7 5 (0.22%) IIS
7 5 (0.22%) nginx
8 4 (0.18%) Ethereum
8 4 (0.18%) Hyperledger
8 4 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
8 4 (0.18%) WebLogic
9 3 (0.13%) Camunda
9 3 (0.13%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.088%) Cloud Foundry
10 2 (0.088%) MQSeries
10 2 (0.088%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 2 (0.088%) WinCC
11 1 (0.044%) OpenStack
Applications
1 14 (0.62%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (0.26%) Chatbot
2 6 (0.26%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (0.22%) CPLEX
4 4 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 4 (0.18%) Simulink
5 2 (0.088%) CATIA
5 2 (0.088%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.088%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.044%) Adobe After Effects
6 1 (0.044%) Blender
6 1 (0.044%) Maya
6 1 (0.044%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.044%) Notion
6 1 (0.044%) OrCAD
Business Applications
1 6 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
1 6 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
2 5 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
3 4 (0.18%) Quorum
3 4 (0.18%) R3 Corda
3 4 (0.18%) Ripple
4 2 (0.088%) Aladdin
4 2 (0.088%) LabWindows
4 2 (0.088%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.088%) Orchestrade
4 2 (0.088%) Remedy ITSM
5 1 (0.044%) Sprinklr
5 1 (0.044%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 557 (24.48%) AWS
2 425 (18.68%) Azure
3 204 (8.97%) GCP
4 160 (7.03%) GitHub
5 119 (5.23%) Serverless
6 91 (4.00%) Azure DevOps
7 75 (3.30%) AWS Lambda
8 73 (3.21%) GitHub Actions
9 61 (2.68%) Amazon S3
10 52 (2.29%) OpenShift
11 45 (1.98%) Power Platform
12 37 (1.63%) Amazon SQS
13 34 (1.49%) Amazon ECS
13 34 (1.49%) Amazon EKS
13 34 (1.49%) Azure AKS
14 33 (1.45%) Amazon EC2
15 31 (1.36%) Anthropic Claude
16 29 (1.27%) SaaS
17 26 (1.14%) AWS CloudFormation
17 26 (1.14%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 30 (1.32%) Software-Defined Radio
2 24 (1.05%) Ethernet
3 22 (0.97%) Wireless
4 17 (0.75%) TCP/IP
5 15 (0.66%) HTTP
6 13 (0.57%) Firewall
7 12 (0.53%) Wi-Fi
8 10 (0.44%) 3GPP
9 9 (0.40%) VPN
10 8 (0.35%) Network Security
11 7 (0.31%) Internet
11 7 (0.31%) RTP
12 6 (0.26%) Wireshark
13 4 (0.18%) DNS
13 4 (0.18%) Modbus
14 3 (0.13%) Bluetooth
14 3 (0.13%) IPv4
14 3 (0.13%) IPv6
14 3 (0.13%) RS-232
14 3 (0.13%) RS-485
Database & Business Intelligence
1 136 (5.98%) PostgreSQL
2 78 (3.43%) Relational Database
3 65 (2.86%) SQL Server
4 59 (2.59%) NoSQL
5 51 (2.24%) MongoDB
6 40 (1.76%) Apache Cassandra
7 33 (1.45%) Power BI
8 32 (1.41%) DynamoDB
9 31 (1.36%) Amazon RDS
10 29 (1.27%) Big Data
10 29 (1.27%) BigQuery
10 29 (1.27%) Data Lake
11 26 (1.14%) Data Warehouse
12 25 (1.10%) MySQL
13 24 (1.05%) Metadata
14 17 (0.75%) Pinecone
15 16 (0.70%) Elasticsearch
15 16 (0.70%) Weaviate
16 15 (0.66%) Amazon Athena
16 15 (0.66%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 223 (9.80%) Git
2 144 (6.33%) Jenkins
3 134 (5.89%) GitLab
4 109 (4.79%) JIRA
5 50 (2.20%) Gradle
6 46 (2.02%) SonarQube
7 35 (1.54%) JUnit
8 32 (1.41%) Rational DOORS
9 31 (1.36%) Rational Rhapsody
10 25 (1.10%) Cucumber
11 24 (1.05%) IntelliJ
12 23 (1.01%) Selenium
13 22 (0.97%) Bitbucket
13 22 (0.97%) Visual Studio
14 21 (0.92%) Maven
15 18 (0.79%) Cypress.io
16 16 (0.70%) Liquibase
16 16 (0.70%) Mockito
17 13 (0.57%) Artifactory
18 12 (0.53%) Eclipse
General
1 386 (16.97%) Finance
2 335 (14.73%) Social Skills
3 140 (6.15%) Banking
4 136 (5.98%) Analytical Skills
5 134 (5.89%) Public Sector
6 100 (4.40%) Aerospace
7 73 (3.21%) Front Office
8 47 (2.07%) Manufacturing
9 39 (1.71%) Law
10 38 (1.67%) Retail
11 35 (1.54%) Investment Banking
12 28 (1.23%) Military
13 25 (1.10%) Automotive
13 25 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
14 24 (1.05%) Aviation
15 22 (0.97%) Telecoms
16 21 (0.92%) Electronics
17 17 (0.75%) Financial Institution
17 17 (0.75%) Presentation Skills
18 15 (0.66%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,185 (52.09%) Software Engineer
2 414 (18.20%) Developer
3 393 (17.27%) Senior
4 194 (8.53%) Lead
5 181 (7.96%) Senior Software Engineer
6 165 (7.25%) Java Engineer
7 155 (6.81%) Embedded Engineer
8 144 (6.33%) Embedded Software Engineer
9 135 (5.93%) Java Software Engineer
10 124 (5.45%) C++ Software Engineer
11 119 (5.23%) Java Developer
12 94 (4.13%) Architect
13 78 (3.43%) Senior Developer
14 70 (3.08%) Python Developer
15 69 (3.03%) Developer/Software Engineer
15 69 (3.03%) DevOps Engineer
15 69 (3.03%) Software Developer
16 66 (2.90%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 65 (2.86%) Full-Stack Engineer
17 65 (2.86%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 255 (11.21%) React
2 180 (7.91%) Kafka
3 176 (7.74%) Spring
4 174 (7.65%) .NET
5 166 (7.30%) Node.js
6 164 (7.21%) Spring Boot
7 159 (6.99%) REST
8 108 (4.75%) AngularJS
9 106 (4.66%) RESTful
10 73 (3.21%) GraphQL
11 53 (2.33%) Redux
12 47 (2.07%) CSS
13 45 (1.98%) HTML
14 43 (1.89%) Middleware
15 40 (1.76%) JSON
16 39 (1.71%) Next.js
17 36 (1.58%) gRPC
18 35 (1.54%) LangChain
18 35 (1.54%) Playwright
19 33 (1.45%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 244 (10.73%) Cloud Native
2 163 (7.16%) Distributed Systems
3 109 (4.79%) Product Ownership
4 89 (3.91%) Algorithms
5 63 (2.77%) Fixed Income
6 57 (2.51%) AI Agents
7 41 (1.80%) Embedded Systems
8 37 (1.63%) Data Protection Act
8 37 (1.63%) Onboarding
9 33 (1.45%) Legacy Systems
10 31 (1.36%) Data Structures
10 31 (1.36%) Derivative
11 30 (1.32%) Robotics
12 24 (1.05%) Equities
12 24 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
13 23 (1.01%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 22 (0.97%) Greenfield Project
15 21 (0.92%) Mobile App
16 18 (0.79%) Enterprise Software
17 16 (0.70%) FPGA
Operating Systems
1 184 (8.09%) Linux
2 67 (2.95%) Windows
3 42 (1.85%) Unix
4 25 (1.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 17 (0.75%) Android
5 17 (0.75%) Apple iOS
6 16 (0.70%) Embedded Linux
7 12 (0.53%) Windows Server
8 11 (0.48%) FreeRTOS
9 5 (0.22%) Debian
9 5 (0.22%) Ubuntu
10 4 (0.18%) Rocky
10 4 (0.18%) VMS
10 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.13%) Solaris
11 3 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
12 2 (0.088%) Robot Operating System
12 2 (0.088%) VxWorks
13 1 (0.044%) Tizen
13 1 (0.044%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 666 (29.27%) CI/CD
2 635 (27.91%) Agile
3 467 (20.53%) DevOps
4 353 (15.52%) AI
5 349 (15.34%) Microservices
6 256 (11.25%) Test Automation
7 242 (10.64%) Problem-Solving
8 241 (10.59%) Full-Stack Development
9 218 (9.58%) Containerisation
10 203 (8.92%) Infrastructure as Code
11 180 (7.91%) Continuous Improvement
12 175 (7.69%) Observability
13 170 (7.47%) TDD
14 169 (7.43%) Machine Learning
15 168 (7.38%) SDLC
16 160 (7.03%) Mentoring
17 156 (6.86%) Scrum
18 150 (6.59%) Technical Leadership
19 149 (6.55%) Platform Engineering
20 145 (6.37%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 592 (26.02%) Java
2 584 (25.67%) Python
3 301 (13.23%) SQL
4 286 (12.57%) C#
5 265 (11.65%) TypeScript
6 231 (10.15%) JavaScript
7 217 (9.54%) C++
8 134 (5.89%) Ada
9 129 (5.67%) Go
10 108 (4.75%) C
11 49 (2.15%) Kotlin
12 40 (1.76%) PowerShell
13 30 (1.32%) Rust
14 29 (1.27%) Bash
15 26 (1.14%) Embedded C
15 26 (1.14%) MATLAB
16 23 (1.01%) Scala
17 19 (0.84%) PL/SQL
18 18 (0.79%) Ruby
18 18 (0.79%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 543 (23.87%) Security Cleared
2 433 (19.03%) SC Cleared
3 181 (7.96%) Degree
4 85 (3.74%) Computer Science Degree
5 67 (2.95%) DV Cleared
6 48 (2.11%) BPSS Clearance
7 28 (1.23%) Master's Degree
8 23 (1.01%) AWS Certification
9 15 (0.66%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 12 (0.53%) Azure Certification
11 8 (0.35%) CISSP
12 7 (0.31%) ISTQB
12 7 (0.31%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 7 (0.31%) PhD
13 6 (0.26%) Chartered Engineer
14 5 (0.22%) CISM
14 5 (0.22%) TOGAF Certification
15 3 (0.13%) HNC
15 3 (0.13%) MBA
15 3 (0.13%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 124 (5.45%) QA
2 44 (1.93%) Def Stans
3 40 (1.76%) Data Quality
4 37 (1.63%) Accessibility
5 36 (1.58%) IEC 61508
6 21 (0.92%) GDPR
7 18 (0.79%) MISRA
8 14 (0.62%) MISRA C
9 11 (0.48%) NCSC
10 10 (0.44%) WCAG
11 9 (0.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 9 (0.40%) NIST
12 6 (0.26%) PCI DSS
13 5 (0.22%) DO-178B
13 5 (0.22%) JSP 440
14 4 (0.18%) DO-254
14 4 (0.18%) GRC
14 4 (0.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 3 (0.13%) HL7
15 3 (0.13%) MiFID
System Software
1 311 (13.67%) Docker
2 21 (0.92%) Firmware
3 12 (0.53%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.44%) Embedded Firmware
5 8 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
6 7 (0.31%) Active Directory
7 4 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
8 3 (0.13%) HDFS
9 2 (0.088%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 368 (16.18%) Kubernetes
2 212 (9.32%) Terraform
3 75 (3.30%) Grafana
4 59 (2.59%) Ansible
5 41 (1.80%) Prometheus
6 34 (1.49%) Argo
7 9 (0.40%) Puppet
8 8 (0.35%) Progress Chef
9 7 (0.31%) Single Sign-On
10 6 (0.26%) Istio
10 6 (0.26%) Kibana
11 5 (0.22%) HAProxy
12 4 (0.18%) Data Guard
12 4 (0.18%) Docker Swarm
12 4 (0.18%) Functional Safety
12 4 (0.18%) HP Quality Center
13 3 (0.13%) Kubeflow
14 2 (0.088%) Cilium
14 2 (0.088%) Consul
14 2 (0.088%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 126 (5.54%) Microsoft
2 76 (3.34%) Google
3 68 (2.99%) Oracle
4 56 (2.46%) Red Hat
5 46 (2.02%) Databricks
6 34 (1.49%) OpenAI
7 23 (1.01%) IBM
8 18 (0.79%) Splunk
9 16 (0.70%) ServiceNow
10 15 (0.66%) Informatica
11 13 (0.57%) Siemens
12 12 (0.53%) Foundry
12 12 (0.53%) VMware
13 11 (0.48%) Salesforce
14 10 (0.44%) ForgeRock
14 10 (0.44%) MathWorks
14 10 (0.44%) Okta
14 10 (0.44%) SAP
15 8 (0.35%) Checkmarx
15 8 (0.35%) Dynatrace