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 vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 16 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 45 30 40
Rank change year-on-year -15 +10 -2
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 1,348 1,891 2,151
As % of all contract jobs advertised in England 4.90% 5.82% 5.05%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.39% 6.76% 5.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 821 1,159 1,480
10th Percentile £380 £413 £425
25th Percentile £475 £500 £510
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £625 £608
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% +2.75% +1.38%
75th Percentile £750 £810 £738
90th Percentile £838 £888 £825
UK median daily rate £575 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -4.17% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 113 231 218
10th Percentile £39.55 £45.22 £46.18
25th Percentile £52.50 £56.88 £51.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -0.76% +0.77% +8.33%
75th Percentile £67.50 £70.00 £69.88
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £64.57
% change year-on-year - +0.66% +7.62%

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 25,024 27,970 37,992
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 90.88% 86.03% 89.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,893 17,419 26,295
10th Percentile £300 £313 £319
25th Percentile £405 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £508 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.33% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £645 £656
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,490 1,309 1,438
10th Percentile £14.37 £14.96 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.00 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £43.54
Median % change year-on-year -41.51% -1.24% +50.14%
75th Percentile £49.31 £66.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £75.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year -41.51% +1.18% +46.55%

Software Engineering
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Job postings citing Software Engineering as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in England.

Job vacancy trend for Software Engineering 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 16 September 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 16 September 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 16 September 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 -4 795 £650 -4.59% 716
North of England -20 165 £493 -9.37% 393
South East -16 98 £475 -5.00% 564
South West -13 91 £513 -6.82% 271
North West -11 87 £500 - 242
East of England -15 81 £500 +5.26% 222
Yorkshire -4 72 £496 -9.75% 122
Midlands -42 49 £554 +16.58% 272
West Midlands -25 37 £575 +21.05% 152
East Midlands -23 12 £450 -5.26% 113
North East -15 6 £460 -23.01% 33
Software Engineering
UK

Software Engineering
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 92 (6.82%) Apache Airflow
2 71 (5.27%) Apache
3 38 (2.82%) Confluence
4 12 (0.89%) Apache Spark
5 7 (0.52%) JBoss
6 6 (0.45%) CMS
7 4 (0.30%) nginx
7 4 (0.30%) SAS
8 3 (0.22%) GemFire
8 3 (0.22%) IIS
8 3 (0.22%) Oracle Coherence
8 3 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
8 3 (0.22%) SharePoint
8 3 (0.22%) WebLogic
9 2 (0.15%) CICS
9 2 (0.15%) Drupal
9 2 (0.15%) OpenStack
9 2 (0.15%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.15%) TPMS
9 2 (0.15%) WordPress
Applications
1 10 (0.74%) Simulink
2 9 (0.67%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (0.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.52%) Microsoft Office
5 5 (0.37%) MS Visio
6 4 (0.30%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
7 2 (0.15%) Stateflow
8 1 (0.074%) CANalyzer
8 1 (0.074%) Fusion 360
8 1 (0.074%) Siemens NX
8 1 (0.074%) Trello
Business Applications
1 11 (0.82%) FLEXCUBE
1 11 (0.82%) Oracle BPM
2 8 (0.59%) Aladdin
2 8 (0.59%) Temenos T24
3 3 (0.22%) Fidessa
3 3 (0.22%) thinkFolio
4 2 (0.15%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.15%) Oracle 11i
4 2 (0.15%) Teamcenter
5 1 (0.074%) IBM Planning Analytics
5 1 (0.074%) ION Anvil
5 1 (0.074%) LabWindows
5 1 (0.074%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.074%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.074%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 517 (38.35%) AWS
2 243 (18.03%) Azure
3 178 (13.20%) GCP
4 124 (9.20%) Serverless
5 93 (6.90%) GitHub
6 89 (6.60%) dbt
7 58 (4.30%) Azure DevOps
8 57 (4.23%) Snowflake
9 55 (4.08%) AWS Lambda
10 53 (3.93%) GitHub Actions
11 31 (2.30%) Amazon S3
11 31 (2.30%) Power Platform
12 28 (2.08%) Amazon ECS
12 28 (2.08%) AWS CloudFormation
13 24 (1.78%) Azure AKS
14 22 (1.63%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 19 (1.41%) Amazon SQS
15 19 (1.41%) Azure Cosmos DB
16 18 (1.34%) OpenShift
16 18 (1.34%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.85%) Ethernet
2 21 (1.56%) TCP/IP
3 10 (0.74%) Firewall
4 9 (0.67%) HTTP
5 7 (0.52%) HTTPS
6 6 (0.45%) NFC
6 6 (0.45%) PPP
6 6 (0.45%) Wireless
7 5 (0.37%) Network Security
8 4 (0.30%) Bluetooth
8 4 (0.30%) tcpdump
8 4 (0.30%) Wi-Fi
9 3 (0.22%) Internet
10 2 (0.15%) DNS
10 2 (0.15%) MQTT
10 2 (0.15%) SSH
10 2 (0.15%) SSL
10 2 (0.15%) VPN
10 2 (0.15%) X.509
11 1 (0.074%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 163 (12.09%) PostgreSQL
2 87 (6.45%) Amazon Athena
3 83 (6.16%) Apache Arrow
3 83 (6.16%) Apache Iceberg
3 83 (6.16%) Dremio
4 66 (4.90%) NoSQL
5 61 (4.53%) Apache Cassandra
6 58 (4.30%) Data Lake
7 49 (3.64%) MongoDB
8 47 (3.49%) Apache Ignite
8 47 (3.49%) Relational Database
9 44 (3.26%) SQL Server
10 31 (2.30%) MySQL
11 27 (2.00%) Big Data
11 27 (2.00%) Elasticsearch
12 25 (1.85%) DynamoDB
12 25 (1.85%) Hadoop
13 24 (1.78%) Power BI
14 14 (1.04%) Redis
15 13 (0.96%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 155 (11.50%) Jenkins
2 142 (10.53%) Git
3 99 (7.34%) JIRA
4 88 (6.53%) GitLab
5 47 (3.49%) Liquibase
6 42 (3.12%) Gradle
6 42 (3.12%) JUnit
7 32 (2.37%) Cucumber
7 32 (2.37%) Mockito
8 30 (2.23%) Selenium
9 28 (2.08%) Eclipse
10 24 (1.78%) Cypress.io
10 24 (1.78%) SonarQube
10 24 (1.78%) Visual Studio
11 19 (1.41%) Bitbucket
12 15 (1.11%) REST Assured
13 13 (0.96%) Artifactory
13 13 (0.96%) CircleCI
13 13 (0.96%) Maven
14 11 (0.82%) TeamCity
General
1 405 (30.04%) Finance
2 321 (23.81%) Social Skills
3 193 (14.32%) Banking
4 178 (13.20%) Front Office
5 94 (6.97%) Investment Banking
6 93 (6.90%) Public Sector
7 92 (6.82%) Analytical Skills
8 38 (2.82%) Military
9 32 (2.37%) Manufacturing
10 31 (2.30%) Telecoms
11 30 (2.23%) Marketing
12 28 (2.08%) Electronics
13 26 (1.93%) Financial Institution
14 23 (1.71%) Law
15 22 (1.63%) Presentation Skills
16 21 (1.56%) Aerospace
17 16 (1.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 12 (0.89%) Documentation Skills
18 12 (0.89%) Influencing Skills
19 11 (0.82%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 603 (44.73%) Software Engineer
2 402 (29.82%) Developer
3 245 (18.18%) Senior
4 138 (10.24%) Senior Software Engineer
5 122 (9.05%) Python Engineer
6 118 (8.75%) Java Engineer
7 117 (8.68%) AWS Engineer
8 115 (8.53%) Java Software Engineer
9 112 (8.31%) AWS Software Engineer
10 102 (7.57%) Python Software Engineer
11 100 (7.42%) Developer/Software Engineer
12 91 (6.75%) Lead
13 86 (6.38%) Java Developer
14 70 (5.19%) Python Developer
15 65 (4.82%) C++ Software Engineer
16 60 (4.45%) Full-Stack Engineer
17 58 (4.30%) AWS Developer
18 57 (4.23%) React Developer
19 51 (3.78%) Architect
20 50 (3.71%) Senior Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 282 (20.92%) React
2 206 (15.28%) Kafka
3 198 (14.69%) Node.js
4 135 (10.01%) AngularJS
5 128 (9.50%) REST
6 118 (8.75%) gRPC
7 115 (8.53%) .NET
7 115 (8.53%) Pandas
8 112 (8.31%) NumPy
9 100 (7.42%) SciPy
10 90 (6.68%) Spring
11 88 (6.53%) Vue
12 84 (6.23%) RESTful
13 71 (5.27%) Spring Boot
14 66 (4.90%) Redux
15 61 (4.53%) GraphQL
16 50 (3.71%) HTML
17 47 (3.49%) Protocol Buffers
18 40 (2.97%) Web Services
19 39 (2.89%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 155 (11.50%) Fixed Income
2 148 (10.98%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 110 (8.16%) Equities
4 109 (8.09%) Cloud Native
5 107 (7.94%) Distributed Systems
6 90 (6.68%) Hedge funds
7 55 (4.08%) Derivative
8 51 (3.78%) Algorithms
9 47 (3.49%) Pricing Data
10 40 (2.97%) Data Structures
11 33 (2.45%) Greenfield Project
12 31 (2.30%) Product Ownership
13 25 (1.85%) Public Cloud
14 22 (1.63%) Virtual Team
15 21 (1.56%) Data Protection Act
15 21 (1.56%) Self-Motivation
16 19 (1.41%) FPGA
17 15 (1.11%) Embedded Systems
18 13 (0.96%) Linux Command Line
19 12 (0.89%) Verilog
Operating Systems
1 219 (16.25%) Linux
2 67 (4.97%) Windows
3 43 (3.19%) Unix
4 20 (1.48%) Android
5 16 (1.19%) Ubuntu
6 10 (0.74%) Apple iOS
6 10 (0.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 5 (0.37%) Mac OS
7 5 (0.37%) Windows Server
8 3 (0.22%) HPUX
8 3 (0.22%) Solaris
8 3 (0.22%) VMS
9 2 (0.15%) AIX
9 2 (0.15%) zOS
10 1 (0.074%) Amazon Linux
10 1 (0.074%) FreeRTOS
10 1 (0.074%) Robot Operating System
10 1 (0.074%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 608 (45.10%) Agile
2 396 (29.38%) CI/CD
3 333 (24.70%) DevOps
4 266 (19.73%) Microservices
5 204 (15.13%) Problem-Solving
6 175 (12.98%) TDD
7 163 (12.09%) Containerisation
8 159 (11.80%) Infrastructure as Code
9 156 (11.57%) Full-Stack Development
10 151 (11.20%) Test Automation
11 146 (10.83%) Investment Management
12 144 (10.68%) Computer Science
13 129 (9.57%) Asset Management
14 127 (9.42%) Mentoring
15 124 (9.20%) Scrum
16 119 (8.83%) Fintech
17 104 (7.72%) Continuous Integration
18 99 (7.34%) Clean Code
19 93 (6.90%) Artificial Intelligence
19 93 (6.90%) Open Source
Programming Languages
1 488 (36.20%) Python
2 430 (31.90%) Java
3 337 (25.00%) JavaScript
4 295 (21.88%) TypeScript
5 235 (17.43%) SQL
6 193 (14.32%) C#
7 192 (14.24%) C++
8 125 (9.27%) Go
9 43 (3.19%) C
10 38 (2.82%) Shell Script
11 35 (2.60%) Bash
12 27 (2.00%) Ada
12 27 (2.00%) Rust
13 21 (1.56%) PowerShell
13 21 (1.56%) VB
14 18 (1.34%) Bicep
14 18 (1.34%) PL/SQL
14 18 (1.34%) Ruby
15 15 (1.11%) Scala
16 14 (1.04%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 225 (16.69%) Security Cleared
2 174 (12.91%) SC Cleared
3 161 (11.94%) Degree
4 87 (6.45%) Computer Science Degree
5 46 (3.41%) DV Cleared
6 29 (2.15%) Master's Degree
7 17 (1.26%) BPSS Clearance
8 15 (1.11%) AWS Certification
9 9 (0.67%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 6 (0.45%) Azure Certification
11 5 (0.37%) CISSP
12 4 (0.30%) CISM
12 4 (0.30%) PMP
12 4 (0.30%) Postgraduate
12 4 (0.30%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 3 (0.22%) CEH
13 3 (0.22%) EMC Certification
13 3 (0.22%) ISTQB
13 3 (0.22%) Numerate Degree
13 3 (0.22%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 65 (4.82%) QA
2 18 (1.34%) Data Quality
3 17 (1.26%) IEC 61508
4 15 (1.11%) Accessibility
5 14 (1.04%) Def Stans
6 11 (0.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 11 (0.82%) MISRA
6 11 (0.82%) MISRA C
7 10 (0.74%) GDPR
8 9 (0.67%) WCAG
9 7 (0.52%) NIST
10 5 (0.37%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 4 (0.30%) MiFID
11 4 (0.30%) SEPA
11 4 (0.30%) SLA
12 3 (0.22%) EU AI Act
12 3 (0.22%) ISO 26262
12 3 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 15288
12 3 (0.22%) SOC 2
12 3 (0.22%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 287 (21.29%) Docker
2 11 (0.82%) Active Directory
3 5 (0.37%) zsh
4 3 (0.22%) GridGain
5 2 (0.15%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (0.074%) Embedded Firmware
6 1 (0.074%) Firmware
6 1 (0.074%) KVM
6 1 (0.074%) Virtual Desktop
6 1 (0.074%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 263 (19.51%) Kubernetes
2 157 (11.65%) Terraform
3 73 (5.42%) Ansible
4 46 (3.41%) Prometheus
5 45 (3.34%) Grafana
6 15 (1.11%) Podman
7 10 (0.74%) Docker Swarm
8 9 (0.67%) Kibana
9 8 (0.59%) Puppet
10 7 (0.52%) Progress Chef
10 7 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
11 4 (0.30%) Argo
12 3 (0.22%) Cilium
12 3 (0.22%) Functional Safety
12 3 (0.22%) Kubeflow
12 3 (0.22%) Opsview
12 3 (0.22%) Rsyslog
12 3 (0.22%) SCOM
12 3 (0.22%) SELinux
13 2 (0.15%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 94 (6.97%) Microsoft
2 62 (4.60%) Oracle
3 50 (3.71%) Google
4 28 (2.08%) SAP
5 25 (1.85%) Splunk
6 21 (1.56%) Databricks
7 19 (1.41%) Foundry
8 16 (1.19%) Red Hat
9 15 (1.11%) Palantir
10 14 (1.04%) Atlassian
11 12 (0.89%) Cloudera
11 12 (0.89%) IBM
11 12 (0.89%) Xilinx
12 10 (0.74%) Temenos
13 9 (0.67%) CA Agile Central
13 9 (0.67%) Salesforce
14 7 (0.52%) OpenAI
14 7 (0.52%) Ping Identity
14 7 (0.52%) VMware
15 6 (0.45%) PagerDuty