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

6 months to
12 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 31 44 32
Rank change year-on-year +13 -12 +5
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,558 1,349 1,947
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.61% 4.87% 5.84%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.59% 5.37% 6.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,420 874 1,232
10th Percentile £400 £375 £410
25th Percentile £469 £463 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £564 £600 £625
Median % change year-on-year -6.04% -4.00% +4.17%
75th Percentile £694 £763 £800
90th Percentile £788 £850 £888
UK median daily rate £561 £575 £600
% change year-on-year -2.39% -4.17% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 411 84 278
10th Percentile £51.25 £33.46 £46.78
25th Percentile £60.00 £51.94 £56.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £73.00 £76.75 £77.50
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 38,794 25,132 28,630
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.10% 90.79% 85.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,129 16,058 18,629
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £423
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £756
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,535 1,418 1,653
10th Percentile £14.56 £14.20 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £17.87 £18.50
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +3.61%
75th Percentile £68.75 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £41.08
% change year-on-year +68.99% -38.77% -1.96%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 1,158 £601 -7.62% 4,008
North of England +27 387 £534 +6.75% 655
South East +33 325 £525 +2.44% 672
South West +19 313 £550 +10.00% 426
East of England +23 222 £505 +3.43% 435
North West +12 177 £550 +10.00% 404
Yorkshire +16 145 £500 - 147
Midlands -1 111 £459 -12.32% 283
West Midlands -6 80 £455 -20.87% 163
North East +10 70 £650 +42.86% 108
East Midlands +7 30 £513 +7.89% 120
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 55 (2.15%) Confluence
2 48 (1.88%) Apache Spark
3 38 (1.49%) Apache Airflow
4 33 (1.29%) 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%) Ethereum
9 5 (0.20%) Hyperledger
9 5 (0.20%) nginx
10 4 (0.16%) Apache Solr
11 3 (0.12%) Apache Superset
11 3 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
11 3 (0.12%) Tomcat
11 3 (0.12%) WebLogic
11 3 (0.12%) WordPress
12 2 (0.078%) Apache Pulsar
12 2 (0.078%) Camunda
12 2 (0.078%) IIS
Applications
1 13 (0.51%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (0.39%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 10 (0.39%) Chatbot
3 7 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
4 6 (0.23%) Microsoft Excel
5 4 (0.16%) CPLEX
5 4 (0.16%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.16%) Simulink
6 3 (0.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 3 (0.12%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.12%) Trello
7 2 (0.078%) CATIA
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%) Maya
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%) 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
1 640 (25.02%) AWS
2 509 (19.90%) Azure
3 257 (10.05%) GCP
4 216 (8.44%) GitHub
5 123 (4.81%) Serverless
6 108 (4.22%) GitHub Actions
7 105 (4.10%) Azure DevOps
8 86 (3.36%) AWS Lambda
9 61 (2.38%) Amazon S3
10 58 (2.27%) OpenShift
11 55 (2.15%) Anthropic Claude
12 48 (1.88%) Amazon EKS
12 48 (1.88%) Amazon SQS
12 48 (1.88%) Power Platform
13 47 (1.84%) Amazon ECS
14 42 (1.64%) GitHub Copilot
15 40 (1.56%) Azure AKS
16 33 (1.29%) Snowflake
17 29 (1.13%) Amazon EC2
17 29 (1.13%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.06%) Software-Defined Radio
2 26 (1.02%) Wireless
3 23 (0.90%) Ethernet
4 20 (0.78%) TCP/IP
5 19 (0.74%) Firewall
5 19 (0.74%) Internet
6 16 (0.63%) VPN
7 14 (0.55%) HTTP
8 11 (0.43%) Wi-Fi
9 7 (0.27%) 3GPP
9 7 (0.27%) Network Security
9 7 (0.27%) RS-232
9 7 (0.27%) RTP
9 7 (0.27%) Wireshark
10 6 (0.23%) RS-485
11 5 (0.20%) DNS
12 4 (0.16%) RS-422
12 4 (0.16%) SSL
13 3 (0.12%) HTTPS
13 3 (0.12%) IPv4
Database & Business Intelligence
1 151 (5.90%) PostgreSQL
2 97 (3.79%) Relational Database
3 81 (3.17%) NoSQL
4 77 (3.01%) SQL Server
5 50 (1.95%) MongoDB
6 42 (1.64%) Data Warehouse
7 37 (1.45%) DynamoDB
8 34 (1.33%) MySQL
9 33 (1.29%) Power BI
10 29 (1.13%) Big Data
11 26 (1.02%) Metadata
12 23 (0.90%) Data Lake
12 23 (0.90%) Redis
13 21 (0.82%) Amazon RDS
13 21 (0.82%) Elasticsearch
14 20 (0.78%) BigQuery
15 19 (0.74%) Pinecone
16 17 (0.66%) Amazon Redshift
16 17 (0.66%) Weaviate
17 13 (0.51%) Apache Cassandra
Development Applications
1 270 (10.56%) Git
2 163 (6.37%) Jenkins
3 146 (5.71%) GitLab
4 109 (4.26%) JIRA
5 59 (2.31%) SonarQube
6 37 (1.45%) Gradle
7 35 (1.37%) JUnit
8 28 (1.09%) Claude Code
9 25 (0.98%) Rational DOORS
9 25 (0.98%) Visual Studio
10 20 (0.78%) Rational Rhapsody
10 20 (0.78%) Selenium
11 19 (0.74%) Maven
12 18 (0.70%) Bitbucket
13 17 (0.66%) Cucumber
13 17 (0.66%) Mockito
14 14 (0.55%) Liquibase
15 13 (0.51%) Cypress.io
16 12 (0.47%) Eclipse
16 12 (0.47%) Mocha
General
1 476 (18.61%) Social Skills
2 457 (17.87%) Finance
3 189 (7.39%) Banking
4 185 (7.23%) Analytical Skills
5 176 (6.88%) Public Sector
6 102 (3.99%) Aerospace
7 98 (3.83%) Front Office
8 52 (2.03%) Retail
9 47 (1.84%) Manufacturing
10 46 (1.80%) Investment Banking
11 44 (1.72%) Law
12 33 (1.29%) Automotive
13 30 (1.17%) Military
14 29 (1.13%) Telecoms
15 26 (1.02%) Aviation
16 25 (0.98%) Influencing Skills
17 21 (0.82%) Electronics
18 20 (0.78%) Marketing
19 19 (0.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 18 (0.70%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,184 (46.29%) Software Engineer
2 478 (18.69%) Developer
3 442 (17.28%) Senior
4 284 (11.10%) Lead
5 181 (7.08%) Senior Software Engineer
6 168 (6.57%) Java Engineer
7 153 (5.98%) Embedded Engineer
8 140 (5.47%) Embedded Software Engineer
9 137 (5.36%) Java Software Engineer
10 125 (4.89%) Java Developer
11 113 (4.42%) C++ Software Engineer
12 112 (4.38%) Software Developer
13 107 (4.18%) Python Engineer
14 104 (4.07%) Architect
15 102 (3.99%) Lead Software Engineer
16 91 (3.56%) Senior Developer
17 89 (3.48%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 84 (3.28%) Data Engineer
19 78 (3.05%) Python Developer
20 75 (2.93%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 267 (10.44%) React
2 206 (8.05%) REST
3 204 (7.97%) .NET
4 192 (7.51%) Spring
5 173 (6.76%) Kafka
6 172 (6.72%) Spring Boot
7 166 (6.49%) Node.js
8 119 (4.65%) RESTful
9 108 (4.22%) AngularJS
10 61 (2.38%) GraphQL
11 51 (1.99%) Django
12 49 (1.92%) Next.js
13 45 (1.76%) HTML
13 45 (1.76%) Redux
14 43 (1.68%) CSS
15 40 (1.56%) LangChain
15 40 (1.56%) Quarkus
16 37 (1.45%) FastAPI
16 37 (1.45%) JSON
17 36 (1.41%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 353 (13.80%) Cloud Native
2 218 (8.52%) Distributed Systems
3 132 (5.16%) Product Ownership
4 91 (3.56%) AI Agents
5 86 (3.36%) Algorithms
6 64 (2.50%) Fixed Income
7 52 (2.03%) Data Structures
8 49 (1.92%) Embedded Systems
8 49 (1.92%) Onboarding
9 46 (1.80%) Enterprise Software
10 41 (1.60%) Data Protection Act
11 34 (1.33%) Derivative
11 34 (1.33%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 32 (1.25%) Legacy Systems
12 32 (1.25%) Self-Motivation
13 30 (1.17%) Equities
14 27 (1.06%) Robotics
15 21 (0.82%) Greenfield Project
16 19 (0.74%) NHS
17 17 (0.66%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 189 (7.39%) Linux
2 59 (2.31%) Windows
3 31 (1.21%) Unix
4 28 (1.09%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 21 (0.82%) Embedded Linux
6 12 (0.47%) Android
7 11 (0.43%) FreeRTOS
8 9 (0.35%) Ubuntu
8 9 (0.35%) Windows Server
9 5 (0.20%) Apple iOS
9 5 (0.20%) Debian
10 4 (0.16%) Rocky
10 4 (0.16%) VMS
10 4 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.12%) Solaris
11 3 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
12 2 (0.078%) VxWorks
13 1 (0.039%) Tizen
13 1 (0.039%) webOS
13 1 (0.039%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 845 (33.03%) CI/CD
2 792 (30.96%) Agile
3 603 (23.57%) DevOps
4 475 (18.57%) AI
5 393 (15.36%) Microservices
6 343 (13.41%) Test Automation
7 305 (11.92%) Problem-Solving
8 282 (11.02%) Continuous Improvement
9 273 (10.67%) Infrastructure as Code
10 265 (10.36%) Full-Stack Development
11 254 (9.93%) Containerisation
12 225 (8.80%) SDLC
13 220 (8.60%) Machine Learning
14 218 (8.52%) Observability
15 209 (8.17%) Mentoring
16 198 (7.74%) Technical Leadership
17 193 (7.54%) Scrum
18 192 (7.51%) Platform Engineering
18 192 (7.51%) TDD
19 181 (7.08%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 750 (29.32%) Python
2 655 (25.61%) Java
3 340 (13.29%) SQL
4 303 (11.85%) TypeScript
5 292 (11.42%) C#
6 240 (9.38%) JavaScript
7 218 (8.52%) C++
8 116 (4.53%) C
9 110 (4.30%) Go
10 109 (4.26%) Ada
11 56 (2.19%) Kotlin
12 42 (1.64%) Rust
13 40 (1.56%) PowerShell
14 39 (1.52%) Bash
15 38 (1.49%) Scala
16 24 (0.94%) PL/SQL
17 22 (0.86%) Embedded C
18 20 (0.78%) Bicep
18 20 (0.78%) Ruby
19 18 (0.70%) PHP
Qualifications
1 608 (23.77%) Security Cleared
2 513 (20.05%) SC Cleared
3 201 (7.86%) Degree
4 92 (3.60%) Computer Science Degree
5 78 (3.05%) DV Cleared
6 54 (2.11%) BPSS Clearance
7 41 (1.60%) Master's Degree
8 34 (1.33%) AWS Certification
9 20 (0.78%) PhD
10 18 (0.70%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 14 (0.55%) Azure Certification
12 8 (0.31%) CISSP
13 7 (0.27%) ISTQB
14 6 (0.23%) Chartered Engineer
14 6 (0.23%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
14 6 (0.23%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 6 (0.23%) PMP
15 4 (0.16%) GIAC
15 4 (0.16%) MBA
15 4 (0.16%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 151 (5.90%) QA
2 60 (2.35%) Data Quality
3 48 (1.88%) Accessibility
4 25 (0.98%) Def Stans
5 19 (0.74%) GDPR
6 15 (0.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 15 (0.59%) NIST
7 14 (0.55%) IEC 61508
8 13 (0.51%) MISRA
8 13 (0.51%) WCAG
9 10 (0.39%) DO-178B
10 9 (0.35%) NCSC
11 7 (0.27%) GRC
12 6 (0.23%) PCI DSS
13 5 (0.20%) JSP 440
13 5 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 3 (0.12%) Automotive SPICE
14 3 (0.12%) DO-254
14 3 (0.12%) HL7
14 3 (0.12%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 377 (14.74%) Docker
2 26 (1.02%) Firmware
3 15 (0.59%) 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
1 426 (16.65%) Kubernetes
2 256 (10.01%) Terraform
3 80 (3.13%) Ansible
4 54 (2.11%) Grafana
5 42 (1.64%) Argo
6 39 (1.52%) Prometheus
7 12 (0.47%) 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
12 5 (0.20%) HAProxy
12 5 (0.20%) Kubeflow
13 4 (0.16%) Consul
14 3 (0.12%) HP Fortify
15 2 (0.078%) Cilium
15 2 (0.078%) Docker Swarm
15 2 (0.078%) Istio
15 2 (0.078%) Packer
15 2 (0.078%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 133 (5.20%) Microsoft
2 89 (3.48%) Google
3 72 (2.81%) Oracle
4 59 (2.31%) Databricks
5 49 (1.92%) Red Hat
6 46 (1.80%) OpenAI
7 21 (0.82%) Salesforce
8 20 (0.78%) Informatica
9 19 (0.74%) ServiceNow
10 18 (0.70%) IBM
11 16 (0.63%) Splunk
12 12 (0.47%) Adobe
12 12 (0.47%) Foundry
13 11 (0.43%) Checkmarx
13 11 (0.43%) SAP
14 10 (0.39%) Dynatrace
14 10 (0.39%) ForgeRock
14 10 (0.39%) Okta
15 8 (0.31%) Confluent
15 8 (0.31%) VMware