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

6 months to
3 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 31 41 30
Rank change year-on-year +10 -11 +10
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,737 1,396 1,860
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.88% 4.98% 5.73%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.94% 5.48% 6.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,456 841 1,123
10th Percentile £400 £375 £406
25th Percentile £468 £463 £491
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £560 £575 £615
Median % change year-on-year -2.61% -6.50% +0.65%
75th Percentile £688 £738 £810
90th Percentile £778 £838 £888
UK median daily rate £550 £563 £600
% change year-on-year -2.22% -6.25% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 432 121 213
10th Percentile £51.25 £42.25 £46.18
25th Percentile £60.00 £52.50 £57.54
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.50
Median % change year-on-year - -0.76% +0.77%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.25 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £73.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.50
% change year-on-year - -0.76% +0.77%

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 39,417 25,490 28,010
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.73% 90.96% 86.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,890 16,169 17,141
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £645
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,936 1,564 1,197
10th Percentile £13.85 £14.44 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.59 £17.87 £20.25
Median hourly rate £40.08 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.36% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.50 £47.00 £67.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £67.43 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £38.72 £25.15 £42.27
% change year-on-year +53.96% -40.49% -0.55%

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 3 October 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 3 October 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 3 October 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 -1 1,234 £600 -4.00% 5,074
North of England +21 469 £525 +5.00% 1,253
South East +40 340 £525 +10.53% 1,128
South West +14 302 £550 +17.33% 751
East of England +16 228 £511 -2.62% 758
North West +27 227 £550 +10.89% 720
Yorkshire +8 178 £500 - 339
Midlands +29 142 £470 -7.84% 662
West Midlands +17 98 £470 -18.26% 351
North East 0 68 £650 +31.65% 205
East Midlands +13 43 £435 +3.57% 311
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 60 (2.19%) Apache Spark
2 57 (2.08%) Confluence
3 49 (1.79%) Apache Airflow
4 34 (1.24%) Apache
5 16 (0.58%) CMS
6 14 (0.51%) SharePoint
7 9 (0.33%) Ethereum
7 9 (0.33%) Jupyter
8 7 (0.26%) SAS
9 6 (0.22%) Camunda
10 5 (0.18%) Apache Solr
10 5 (0.18%) Apache Superset
10 5 (0.18%) Hyperledger
10 5 (0.18%) nginx
10 5 (0.18%) WordPress
11 3 (0.11%) MQSeries
11 3 (0.11%) WebSphere
12 2 (0.073%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 2 (0.073%) Cloud Foundry
12 2 (0.073%) IIS
Applications
1 16 (0.58%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (0.44%) Chatbot
3 10 (0.37%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 10 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
4 5 (0.18%) Microsoft Excel
5 4 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.11%) CPLEX
6 3 (0.11%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.11%) Trello
7 2 (0.073%) CATIA
7 2 (0.073%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 2 (0.073%) Notion
7 2 (0.073%) Simulink
8 1 (0.037%) Adobe After Effects
8 1 (0.037%) Adobe XD
8 1 (0.037%) Blender
8 1 (0.037%) LaTeX
8 1 (0.037%) S-PLUS
Business Applications
1 7 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
2 6 (0.22%) Dynamics CRM
2 6 (0.22%) Oracle Payroll
3 5 (0.18%) R3 Corda
4 4 (0.15%) Quorum
4 4 (0.15%) Ripple
5 3 (0.11%) Distributed Ledger
5 3 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
5 3 (0.11%) Orchestrade
5 3 (0.11%) Primavera
5 3 (0.11%) Salesforce CRM
5 3 (0.11%) Temenos T24
6 2 (0.073%) Endur
6 2 (0.073%) Remedy ITSM
7 1 (0.037%) Aladdin
7 1 (0.037%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 1 (0.037%) Sage 50
7 1 (0.037%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.037%) SAP S/4HANA
7 1 (0.037%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 698 (25.50%) AWS
2 556 (20.31%) Azure
3 288 (10.52%) GCP
4 248 (9.06%) GitHub
5 146 (5.33%) Serverless
6 126 (4.60%) GitHub Actions
7 119 (4.35%) Azure DevOps
8 101 (3.69%) AWS Lambda
9 76 (2.78%) Anthropic Claude
10 71 (2.59%) GitHub Copilot
11 70 (2.56%) Amazon S3
12 58 (2.12%) Amazon EKS
13 52 (1.90%) Amazon SQS
13 52 (1.90%) OpenShift
14 51 (1.86%) Amazon ECS
15 47 (1.72%) Snowflake
16 46 (1.68%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 45 (1.64%) Power Platform
18 34 (1.24%) dbt
19 32 (1.17%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 30 (1.10%) Wireless
2 27 (0.99%) Software-Defined Radio
3 24 (0.88%) Firewall
4 20 (0.73%) Internet
4 20 (0.73%) TCP/IP
4 20 (0.73%) VPN
5 19 (0.69%) HTTP
6 16 (0.58%) Ethernet
7 14 (0.51%) Wi-Fi
8 12 (0.44%) DNS
9 11 (0.40%) Network Security
10 9 (0.33%) RTP
10 9 (0.33%) Wireshark
11 6 (0.22%) 3GPP
11 6 (0.22%) Cisco IPT
12 5 (0.18%) SSL
13 4 (0.15%) Broadband
13 4 (0.15%) Reverse Proxy
13 4 (0.15%) RS-232
14 3 (0.11%) RS-485
Database & Business Intelligence
1 140 (5.12%) PostgreSQL
2 97 (3.54%) Relational Database
3 85 (3.11%) SQL Server
4 83 (3.03%) NoSQL
5 61 (2.23%) MongoDB
6 53 (1.94%) Data Warehouse
7 41 (1.50%) MySQL
8 40 (1.46%) DynamoDB
9 35 (1.28%) Metadata
10 31 (1.13%) Data Lake
11 30 (1.10%) Amazon RDS
12 28 (1.02%) Redis
13 27 (0.99%) Big Data
13 27 (0.99%) BigQuery
13 27 (0.99%) Power BI
14 26 (0.95%) Elasticsearch
14 26 (0.95%) Pinecone
15 20 (0.73%) Weaviate
16 19 (0.69%) Chroma
17 18 (0.66%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 276 (10.08%) Git
2 157 (5.74%) GitLab
3 151 (5.52%) Jenkins
4 116 (4.24%) JIRA
5 49 (1.79%) SonarQube
6 43 (1.57%) Claude Code
7 37 (1.35%) Gradle
8 34 (1.24%) JUnit
9 31 (1.13%) Visual Studio
10 29 (1.06%) Rational DOORS
11 28 (1.02%) Selenium
12 27 (0.99%) Maven
13 23 (0.84%) Cucumber
14 21 (0.77%) Rational Rhapsody
15 17 (0.62%) Mockito
16 15 (0.55%) LabVIEW
17 14 (0.51%) Cypress.io
18 13 (0.47%) Bitbucket
19 12 (0.44%) Snyk
20 11 (0.40%) Postman
General
1 586 (21.41%) Social Skills
2 523 (19.11%) Finance
3 226 (8.26%) Banking
4 203 (7.42%) Public Sector
5 193 (7.05%) Analytical Skills
6 95 (3.47%) Aerospace
7 79 (2.89%) Front Office
8 58 (2.12%) Investment Banking
9 54 (1.97%) Manufacturing
10 46 (1.68%) Law
11 45 (1.64%) Retail
12 40 (1.46%) Automotive
13 32 (1.17%) Military
13 32 (1.17%) Telecoms
14 26 (0.95%) Aviation
15 25 (0.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 25 (0.91%) Influencing Skills
15 25 (0.91%) Marketing
16 21 (0.77%) Back Office
17 17 (0.62%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,101 (40.23%) Software Engineer
2 535 (19.55%) Developer
3 525 (19.18%) Senior
4 300 (10.96%) Lead
5 201 (7.34%) Senior Software Engineer
6 157 (5.74%) Java Engineer
7 151 (5.52%) Java Developer
8 150 (5.48%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
8 150 (5.48%) Embedded Engineer
9 144 (5.26%) Embedded Software Engineer
10 132 (4.82%) Software Developer
11 127 (4.64%) Java Software Engineer
12 118 (4.31%) Architect
13 115 (4.20%) C++ Software Engineer
14 112 (4.09%) Senior Developer
15 110 (4.02%) Python Engineer
16 107 (3.91%) Data Engineer
17 89 (3.25%) DevOps Engineer
18 80 (2.92%) AWS Engineer
19 76 (2.78%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 303 (11.07%) Terraform
2 252 (9.21%) React
3 244 (8.91%) REST
4 225 (8.22%) Spring
5 220 (8.04%) .NET
6 214 (7.82%) Spring Boot
7 178 (6.50%) Kafka
8 153 (5.59%) RESTful
9 136 (4.97%) Node.js
10 98 (3.58%) AngularJS
11 63 (2.30%) Django
12 60 (2.19%) LangChain
12 60 (2.19%) OAuth
13 59 (2.16%) HTML
14 57 (2.08%) CSS
15 54 (1.97%) Next.js
16 51 (1.86%) Web Services
17 47 (1.72%) FastAPI
18 46 (1.68%) Model Context Protocol
19 43 (1.57%) LangGraph
Miscellaneous
1 436 (15.93%) Cloud Native
2 242 (8.84%) Distributed Systems
3 158 (5.77%) AI Agents
4 155 (5.66%) Product Ownership
5 71 (2.59%) Algorithms
5 71 (2.59%) Enterprise Software
6 63 (2.30%) Onboarding
7 58 (2.12%) Data Structures
8 51 (1.86%) Data Protection Act
9 44 (1.61%) Embedded Systems
10 37 (1.35%) Self-Motivation
11 36 (1.32%) Legacy Systems
12 32 (1.17%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 28 (1.02%) Derivative
13 28 (1.02%) Fixed Income
13 28 (1.02%) Greenfield Project
14 24 (0.88%) Equities
15 23 (0.84%) Robotics
16 21 (0.77%) Virtual Team
17 20 (0.73%) Legacy Applications
Operating Systems
1 191 (6.98%) Linux
2 67 (2.45%) Windows
3 34 (1.24%) Unix
4 20 (0.73%) Embedded Linux
4 20 (0.73%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 14 (0.51%) Android
5 14 (0.51%) FreeRTOS
6 12 (0.44%) Windows Server
7 9 (0.33%) Apple iOS
8 7 (0.26%) Ubuntu
9 4 (0.15%) Debian
10 3 (0.11%) Rocky
10 3 (0.11%) VxWorks
11 2 (0.073%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.073%) zOS
12 1 (0.037%) Solaris
12 1 (0.037%) Tizen
12 1 (0.037%) VMS
12 1 (0.037%) webOS
12 1 (0.037%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 963 (35.18%) CI/CD
2 839 (30.65%) Agile
3 661 (24.15%) DevOps
4 619 (22.62%) AI
5 416 (15.20%) Test Automation
6 402 (14.69%) Microservices
7 358 (13.08%) Continuous Improvement
8 335 (12.24%) Problem-Solving
9 331 (12.09%) Infrastructure as Code
10 297 (10.85%) Observability
11 278 (10.16%) SDLC
12 269 (9.83%) Containerisation
13 262 (9.57%) Full-Stack Development
14 261 (9.54%) Stakeholder Management
15 243 (8.88%) Technical Leadership
16 238 (8.70%) LLM
17 237 (8.66%) Machine Learning
18 233 (8.51%) Platform Engineering
19 223 (8.15%) Event-Driven
19 223 (8.15%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 814 (29.74%) Python
2 679 (24.81%) Java
3 399 (14.58%) SQL
4 315 (11.51%) TypeScript
5 299 (10.92%) C#
6 230 (8.40%) JavaScript
7 228 (8.33%) C++
8 115 (4.20%) C
9 81 (2.96%) Go
10 76 (2.78%) Ada
11 67 (2.45%) Kotlin
12 51 (1.86%) PowerShell
13 48 (1.75%) Bash
14 45 (1.64%) Rust
15 37 (1.35%) Scala
16 29 (1.06%) Embedded C
17 24 (0.88%) PL/SQL
18 23 (0.84%) Bicep
19 21 (0.77%) PHP
20 17 (0.62%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 589 (21.52%) Security Cleared
2 489 (17.87%) SC Cleared
3 221 (8.07%) Degree
4 104 (3.80%) Computer Science Degree
5 99 (3.62%) DV Cleared
6 61 (2.23%) BPSS Clearance
7 49 (1.79%) Master's Degree
8 48 (1.75%) AWS Certification
9 25 (0.91%) Azure Certification
10 18 (0.66%) PhD
11 15 (0.55%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 12 (0.44%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 12 (0.44%) PMP
13 9 (0.33%) CISSP
14 6 (0.22%) Chartered Engineer
14 6 (0.22%) TOGAF Certification
15 5 (0.18%) ISTQB
15 5 (0.18%) Numerate Degree
15 5 (0.18%) PMI Certification
16 4 (0.15%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 174 (6.36%) QA
2 82 (3.00%) Data Quality
3 61 (2.23%) Accessibility
4 23 (0.84%) MISRA
5 20 (0.73%) GDPR
6 17 (0.62%) Def Stans
7 15 (0.55%) NIST
8 14 (0.51%) WCAG
9 12 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 12 (0.44%) MISRA C
10 11 (0.40%) IEC 61508
11 10 (0.37%) DO-178B
12 8 (0.29%) GRC
13 7 (0.26%) NCSC
14 5 (0.18%) EMIR
14 5 (0.18%) HL7
14 5 (0.18%) JSP 440
14 5 (0.18%) MiFID
14 5 (0.18%) PCI DSS
15 4 (0.15%) EU AI Act
System Software
1 401 (14.65%) Docker
2 27 (0.99%) Firmware
3 17 (0.62%) Active Directory
3 17 (0.62%) Embedded Firmware
4 12 (0.44%) Virtual Machines
5 8 (0.29%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (0.037%) Oracle RAC
6 1 (0.037%) zsh
Systems Management
1 456 (16.66%) Kubernetes
2 98 (3.58%) Ansible
3 57 (2.08%) Grafana
4 45 (1.64%) Prometheus
5 36 (1.32%) Argo
6 19 (0.69%) Single Sign-On
7 15 (0.55%) Kibana
8 10 (0.37%) Puppet
9 6 (0.22%) Functional Safety
10 5 (0.18%) Progress Chef
11 4 (0.15%) Istio
11 4 (0.15%) Kubeflow
11 4 (0.15%) Kustomize
12 3 (0.11%) Consul
12 3 (0.11%) HP Fortify
13 2 (0.073%) Cilium
13 2 (0.073%) HAProxy
13 2 (0.073%) Packer
13 2 (0.073%) Podman
13 2 (0.073%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 161 (5.88%) Microsoft
2 109 (3.98%) Google
3 89 (3.25%) Databricks
4 84 (3.07%) Oracle
5 74 (2.70%) OpenAI
6 39 (1.42%) Red Hat
7 31 (1.13%) Salesforce
8 26 (0.95%) Splunk
9 18 (0.66%) Foundry
9 18 (0.66%) IBM
10 17 (0.62%) Informatica
10 17 (0.62%) ServiceNow
11 13 (0.47%) Adobe
12 12 (0.44%) SAP
13 10 (0.37%) VMware
14 8 (0.29%) Checkmarx
14 8 (0.29%) Dynatrace
14 8 (0.29%) Siemens
15 7 (0.26%) Hitachi
15 7 (0.26%) Mistral