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 21 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 43 31 44
Rank change year-on-year -12 +13 -9
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 1,549 1,691 1,788
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.07% 5.44% 4.55%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.63% 6.27% 5.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 892 1,011 1,192
10th Percentile £375 £400 £425
25th Percentile £463 £499 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £559 £600 £610
Median % change year-on-year -6.88% -1.64% +1.67%
75th Percentile £695 £775 £738
90th Percentile £825 £875 £810
UK median daily rate £550 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 186 156 228
10th Percentile £46.25 £42.75 £46.18
25th Percentile £53.91 £54.27 £51.75
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £67.00 £70.00 £69.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 27,528 26,989 34,839
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 90.13% 86.89% 88.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,469 16,492 23,819
10th Percentile £300 £313 £313
25th Percentile £405 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% -3.67% -0.91%
75th Percentile £625 £644 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,814 971 1,471
10th Percentile £14.81 £15.10 £14.50
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.30 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £37.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -32.03% -16.85% +23.61%
75th Percentile £49.69 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.75 £75.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £43.90
% change year-on-year -28.14% -20.27% +25.43%

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 21 November 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 21 November 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 21 November 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 -10 839 £625 -7.41% 1,687
North of England -8 208 £525 - 455
East of England -1 126 £538 +13.16% 284
South West -15 123 £466 -22.29% 298
Yorkshire -10 110 £525 -4.55% 99
South East -27 100 £475 -5.00% 630
North West -17 79 £550 +15.79% 309
Midlands -38 79 £525 +8.58% 173
West Midlands -14 64 £525 +8.58% 102
North East -3 22 £488 -18.41% 47
East Midlands -30 15 £450 -6.74% 70
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 72 (4.65%) Apache Airflow
2 71 (4.58%) Apache
3 55 (3.55%) Confluence
4 30 (1.94%) Apache Spark
5 14 (0.90%) JBoss
6 11 (0.71%) CMS
6 11 (0.71%) WebLogic
7 6 (0.39%) OpenStack
8 4 (0.26%) nginx
8 4 (0.26%) SAS
8 4 (0.26%) WordPress
9 3 (0.19%) Appian
9 3 (0.19%) IIS
9 3 (0.19%) Sitecore CMS
10 2 (0.13%) Magnolia
10 2 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
10 2 (0.13%) SharePoint
10 2 (0.13%) Tomcat
11 1 (0.065%) Microsoft Exchange
11 1 (0.065%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 17 (1.10%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (0.71%) Chatbot
3 10 (0.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 10 (0.65%) Simulink
4 9 (0.58%) Microsoft Office
5 3 (0.19%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.065%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.065%) Stateflow
Business Applications
1 8 (0.52%) Aladdin
1 8 (0.52%) Temenos T24
2 6 (0.39%) FLEXCUBE
2 6 (0.39%) Oracle BPM
3 3 (0.19%) Fidessa
3 3 (0.19%) thinkFolio
4 2 (0.13%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.13%) Primavera
5 1 (0.065%) ION Anvil
5 1 (0.065%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.065%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 547 (35.31%) AWS
2 270 (17.43%) Azure
3 173 (11.17%) GCP
4 168 (10.85%) Serverless
5 130 (8.39%) GitHub
6 76 (4.91%) GitHub Actions
7 71 (4.58%) AWS Lambda
8 65 (4.20%) Azure DevOps
9 62 (4.00%) dbt
10 57 (3.68%) Snowflake
11 53 (3.42%) Amazon S3
12 46 (2.97%) Power Platform
13 42 (2.71%) Amazon ECS
14 35 (2.26%) Azure AKS
15 31 (2.00%) OpenShift
16 30 (1.94%) Amazon EKS
16 30 (1.94%) AWS CloudFormation
17 28 (1.81%) Azure Functions
18 27 (1.74%) Amazon EC2
19 25 (1.61%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 30 (1.94%) Ethernet
2 23 (1.48%) TCP/IP
3 11 (0.71%) Firewall
4 10 (0.65%) Network Security
5 8 (0.52%) Internet
5 8 (0.52%) NFC
5 8 (0.52%) PPP
6 6 (0.39%) Wireless
7 5 (0.32%) HTTP
8 4 (0.26%) tcpdump
8 4 (0.26%) VPN
9 3 (0.19%) BGP
9 3 (0.19%) Kerberos
9 3 (0.19%) Software-Defined Networking
9 3 (0.19%) VLAN
10 2 (0.13%) DNS
10 2 (0.13%) HTTPS
10 2 (0.13%) SSH
10 2 (0.13%) SSL
10 2 (0.13%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 123 (7.94%) PostgreSQL
2 86 (5.55%) NoSQL
3 70 (4.52%) Apache Cassandra
4 68 (4.39%) MongoDB
5 55 (3.55%) Amazon Athena
6 51 (3.29%) Apache Arrow
6 51 (3.29%) Apache Iceberg
6 51 (3.29%) Data Lake
6 51 (3.29%) Dremio
7 45 (2.91%) SQL Server
8 39 (2.52%) Big Data
9 37 (2.39%) Relational Database
10 32 (2.07%) Apache Ignite
10 32 (2.07%) Hadoop
10 32 (2.07%) MySQL
10 32 (2.07%) Power BI
11 27 (1.74%) Amazon RDS
11 27 (1.74%) Elasticsearch
12 25 (1.61%) DynamoDB
13 19 (1.23%) Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 183 (11.81%) Git
2 145 (9.36%) Jenkins
3 107 (6.91%) JIRA
4 98 (6.33%) GitLab
5 37 (2.39%) Eclipse
5 37 (2.39%) JUnit
6 35 (2.26%) Liquibase
6 35 (2.26%) Selenium
7 30 (1.94%) Cypress.io
8 28 (1.81%) Cucumber
9 27 (1.74%) SonarQube
10 26 (1.68%) Visual Studio
11 24 (1.55%) Gradle
12 18 (1.16%) Maven
12 18 (1.16%) Mockito
12 18 (1.16%) Rational DOORS
13 16 (1.03%) Artifactory
14 15 (0.97%) Bitbucket
15 12 (0.77%) Postman
15 12 (0.77%) TeamCity
General
1 360 (23.24%) Finance
2 359 (23.18%) Social Skills
3 168 (10.85%) Banking
4 111 (7.17%) Front Office
5 110 (7.10%) Public Sector
6 92 (5.94%) Analytical Skills
7 81 (5.23%) Investment Banking
8 41 (2.65%) Military
9 39 (2.52%) Financial Institution
10 30 (1.94%) Aerospace
11 25 (1.61%) Law
12 23 (1.48%) Presentation Skills
13 20 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
14 19 (1.23%) Electronics
15 18 (1.16%) Pharmaceutical
16 17 (1.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 16 (1.03%) Documentation Skills
18 13 (0.84%) Telecoms
19 11 (0.71%) Manufacturing
19 11 (0.71%) Retail
Job Titles
1 696 (44.93%) Software Engineer
2 364 (23.50%) Developer
3 308 (19.88%) Senior
4 150 (9.68%) Senior Software Engineer
5 128 (8.26%) Lead
6 115 (7.42%) Python Engineer
7 103 (6.65%) C++ Software Engineer
8 94 (6.07%) AWS Engineer
9 93 (6.00%) Java Engineer
10 86 (5.55%) Java Software Engineer
11 82 (5.29%) AWS Software Engineer
12 80 (5.16%) Python Software Engineer
13 74 (4.78%) Python Developer
14 70 (4.52%) Java Developer
15 64 (4.13%) Senior Developer
16 57 (3.68%) Developer/Software Engineer
17 51 (3.29%) Full-Stack Engineer
18 50 (3.23%) Architect
19 48 (3.10%) Data Engineer
20 46 (2.97%) Lead Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 239 (15.43%) React
2 233 (15.04%) Kafka
3 181 (11.68%) Node.js
4 141 (9.10%) .NET
5 136 (8.78%) REST
6 118 (7.62%) RESTful
7 112 (7.23%) gRPC
8 109 (7.04%) AngularJS
9 91 (5.87%) Spring
10 86 (5.55%) Pandas
11 84 (5.42%) NumPy
12 71 (4.58%) SciPy
12 71 (4.58%) Spring Boot
13 60 (3.87%) Vue
14 59 (3.81%) HTML
15 53 (3.42%) FastAPI
15 53 (3.42%) JSON
16 51 (3.29%) GraphQL
17 44 (2.84%) CSS
18 43 (2.78%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 176 (11.36%) Cloud Native
2 132 (8.52%) Distributed Systems
3 104 (6.71%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 97 (6.26%) Fixed Income
5 67 (4.33%) Hedge funds
6 65 (4.20%) Equities
7 58 (3.74%) Algorithms
8 47 (3.03%) Product Ownership
9 45 (2.91%) Derivative
10 43 (2.78%) Data Structures
11 37 (2.39%) Public Cloud
12 34 (2.19%) Data Protection Act
13 33 (2.13%) Greenfield Project
13 33 (2.13%) Virtual Team
14 32 (2.07%) Pricing Data
15 22 (1.42%) Legacy Systems
16 21 (1.36%) Self-Motivation
17 19 (1.23%) Embedded Systems
18 18 (1.16%) Mobile App
19 17 (1.10%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 242 (15.62%) Linux
2 78 (5.04%) Windows
3 51 (3.29%) Unix
4 23 (1.48%) Android
5 22 (1.42%) Ubuntu
6 15 (0.97%) Apple iOS
7 8 (0.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 8 (0.52%) Windows Server
8 6 (0.39%) FreeRTOS
8 6 (0.39%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.26%) VMS
10 1 (0.065%) Amazon Linux
10 1 (0.065%) Debian
10 1 (0.065%) Robot Operating System
10 1 (0.065%) Windows 10
10 1 (0.065%) Windows Embedded Compact
10 1 (0.065%) Windows Server 2008
10 1 (0.065%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 633 (40.87%) Agile
2 486 (31.38%) CI/CD
3 362 (23.37%) DevOps
4 307 (19.82%) Microservices
5 240 (15.49%) Problem-Solving
6 204 (13.17%) Containerisation
7 203 (13.11%) Infrastructure as Code
8 184 (11.88%) Test Automation
9 172 (11.10%) Computer Science
10 171 (11.04%) AI
11 165 (10.65%) Mentoring
12 161 (10.39%) TDD
13 153 (9.88%) Full-Stack Development
14 144 (9.30%) Scrum
15 138 (8.91%) Machine Learning
16 118 (7.62%) Clean Code
17 114 (7.36%) Open Source
18 106 (6.84%) Continuous Integration
19 93 (6.00%) Data Pipeline
20 91 (5.87%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 540 (34.86%) Python
2 410 (26.47%) Java
3 297 (19.17%) JavaScript
4 269 (17.37%) SQL
5 257 (16.59%) C++
6 243 (15.69%) TypeScript
7 225 (14.53%) C#
8 150 (9.68%) Go
9 79 (5.10%) C
10 38 (2.45%) Ada
11 33 (2.13%) Shell Script
12 30 (1.94%) Bash
13 29 (1.87%) Rust
14 20 (1.29%) PowerShell
14 20 (1.29%) VB
15 19 (1.23%) Ruby
15 19 (1.23%) Scala
16 15 (0.97%) MATLAB
16 15 (0.97%) PL/SQL
17 14 (0.90%) R
Qualifications
1 277 (17.88%) Security Cleared
2 228 (14.72%) SC Cleared
3 205 (13.23%) Degree
4 98 (6.33%) Computer Science Degree
5 55 (3.55%) Master's Degree
6 52 (3.36%) DV Cleared
7 20 (1.29%) AWS Certification
8 19 (1.23%) BPSS Clearance
9 18 (1.16%) PhD
10 17 (1.10%) MCP
11 15 (0.97%) CISSP
12 13 (0.84%) CISM
13 10 (0.65%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 10 (0.65%) Azure Certification
14 9 (0.58%) TOGAF Certification
15 7 (0.45%) Postgraduate
16 6 (0.39%) ISTQB
17 4 (0.26%) HND
18 3 (0.19%) HNC
18 3 (0.19%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 84 (5.42%) QA
2 31 (2.00%) Data Quality
3 28 (1.81%) Accessibility
4 20 (1.29%) WCAG
5 19 (1.23%) Def Stans
6 16 (1.03%) GDPR
6 16 (1.03%) IEC 61508
6 16 (1.03%) MISRA
7 13 (0.84%) EU AI Act
8 12 (0.77%) NIST
9 10 (0.65%) MISRA C
10 7 (0.45%) DO-178B
10 7 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 5 (0.32%) Software Quality Assurance
12 4 (0.26%) ISO 26262
12 4 (0.26%) MiFID
12 4 (0.26%) SLA
13 3 (0.19%) IEC 62304
13 3 (0.19%) NCSC
13 3 (0.19%) SEPA
System Software
1 348 (22.47%) Docker
2 16 (1.03%) Active Directory
3 8 (0.52%) Firmware
3 8 (0.52%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (0.32%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (0.32%) zsh
5 2 (0.13%) Embedded Firmware
6 1 (0.065%) KVM
6 1 (0.065%) Virtual Desktop
6 1 (0.065%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 330 (21.30%) Kubernetes
2 198 (12.78%) Terraform
3 75 (4.84%) Ansible
4 74 (4.78%) Grafana
5 61 (3.94%) Prometheus
6 18 (1.16%) Puppet
7 13 (0.84%) Kibana
8 11 (0.71%) Argo
9 8 (0.52%) Podman
9 8 (0.52%) Progress Chef
9 8 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
10 4 (0.26%) Functional Safety
10 4 (0.26%) Kubeflow
11 3 (0.19%) Cilium
11 3 (0.19%) Rsyslog
11 3 (0.19%) SCOM
11 3 (0.19%) SELinux
12 2 (0.13%) Packer
12 2 (0.13%) rkt
13 1 (0.065%) Consul
Vendors
1 132 (8.52%) Microsoft
2 61 (3.94%) Oracle
3 55 (3.55%) Google
4 38 (2.45%) Splunk
5 33 (2.13%) Databricks
6 32 (2.07%) Foundry
7 28 (1.81%) Red Hat
8 15 (0.97%) Palantir
9 14 (0.90%) Atlassian
9 14 (0.90%) Cloudera
10 11 (0.71%) BiZZdesign
10 11 (0.71%) Salesforce
11 10 (0.65%) OpenAI
11 10 (0.65%) SAP
11 10 (0.65%) Temenos
12 9 (0.58%) CA Agile Central
12 9 (0.58%) ServiceNow
12 9 (0.58%) webMethods
13 7 (0.45%) Cisco
13 7 (0.45%) CyberArk