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 28 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 43 38 44
Rank change year-on-year -5 +6 -6
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 1,593 1,409 1,650
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.04% 4.95% 4.49%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.70% 5.59% 5.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 864 869 1,066
10th Percentile £375 £409 £425
25th Percentile £450 £500 £503
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -
75th Percentile £688 £750 £738
90th Percentile £788 £850 £810
UK median daily rate £550 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 266 93 236
10th Percentile £49.63 £46.18 £46.18
25th Percentile £53.53 £54.36 £51.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £67.50 £68.00 £67.14
90th Percentile £70.00 £70.00 £77.75
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year - +4.00% -3.85%

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 27,947 25,226 32,434
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 88.49% 88.70% 88.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,782 15,552 22,007
10th Percentile £301 £313 £308
25th Percentile £406 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £625 £645 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £528
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.57% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,795 831 1,432
10th Percentile £15.18 £15.62 £14.36
25th Percentile £17.96 £20.30 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +25.64%
75th Percentile £56.69 £64.73 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.65 £75.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £43.42
% change year-on-year -22.62% -25.14% +24.04%

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 28 December 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 28 December 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 28 December 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 -9 787 £625 -7.41% 1,419
North of England +9 237 £520 -2.12% 933
East of England +17 152 £475 +4.63% 559
South West -5 150 £447 -25.50% 497
South East -10 121 £475 -5.00% 998
Yorkshire -3 119 £519 -5.68% 308
North West -2 93 £550 +15.79% 526
Midlands -29 73 £525 +8.58% 529
West Midlands -5 60 £525 +10.06% 271
North East +8 28 £488 -18.41% 102
East Midlands -29 13 £475 -5.00% 230
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 68 (4.27%) Apache
2 54 (3.39%) Confluence
3 50 (3.14%) Apache Airflow
4 42 (2.64%) Apache Spark
5 11 (0.69%) CMS
6 10 (0.63%) JBoss
6 10 (0.63%) WebLogic
7 7 (0.44%) OpenStack
8 4 (0.25%) IIS
8 4 (0.25%) SAS
8 4 (0.25%) WordPress
9 3 (0.19%) Appian
9 3 (0.19%) Sitecore CMS
10 2 (0.13%) Magnolia
10 2 (0.13%) nginx
10 2 (0.13%) Tomcat
11 1 (0.063%) CICS
11 1 (0.063%) Microsoft Exchange
11 1 (0.063%) SharePoint
11 1 (0.063%) Smallworld
Applications
1 18 (1.13%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (0.69%) Chatbot
3 10 (0.63%) Microsoft Office
4 9 (0.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.31%) Simulink
6 3 (0.19%) MS Visio
7 2 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.063%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 5 (0.31%) Aladdin
2 4 (0.25%) Temenos T24
3 3 (0.19%) Fidessa
3 3 (0.19%) thinkFolio
4 2 (0.13%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.13%) Primavera
5 1 (0.063%) Dynamics CRM
5 1 (0.063%) ION Anvil
5 1 (0.063%) LabWindows
5 1 (0.063%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 512 (32.14%) AWS
2 279 (17.51%) Azure
3 163 (10.23%) GCP
3 163 (10.23%) Serverless
4 129 (8.10%) GitHub
5 78 (4.90%) GitHub Actions
6 72 (4.52%) AWS Lambda
7 69 (4.33%) Azure DevOps
8 61 (3.83%) Amazon S3
9 46 (2.89%) Amazon ECS
9 46 (2.89%) Power Platform
10 45 (2.82%) Snowflake
11 41 (2.57%) Amazon EKS
11 41 (2.57%) Azure AKS
12 40 (2.51%) dbt
13 38 (2.39%) AWS CloudFormation
14 36 (2.26%) OpenShift
15 32 (2.01%) Azure Functions
16 30 (1.88%) Amazon EC2
17 28 (1.76%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.51%) Ethernet
2 15 (0.94%) TCP/IP
3 9 (0.56%) Network Security
4 8 (0.50%) Internet
5 7 (0.44%) Firewall
6 6 (0.38%) Wireless
7 4 (0.25%) NFC
7 4 (0.25%) PPP
7 4 (0.25%) Software-Defined Networking
8 3 (0.19%) BGP
8 3 (0.19%) HTTP
8 3 (0.19%) Kerberos
8 3 (0.19%) SSH
8 3 (0.19%) tcpdump
8 3 (0.19%) VLAN
8 3 (0.19%) VPN
9 2 (0.13%) MIMO
9 2 (0.13%) Modbus
9 2 (0.13%) MQTT
9 2 (0.13%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 101 (6.34%) PostgreSQL
2 85 (5.34%) NoSQL
3 70 (4.39%) Apache Cassandra
4 60 (3.77%) MongoDB
5 54 (3.39%) SQL Server
6 50 (3.14%) Data Lake
7 42 (2.64%) Amazon Athena
8 41 (2.57%) Relational Database
9 36 (2.26%) Big Data
10 34 (2.13%) Power BI
11 31 (1.95%) Amazon RDS
11 31 (1.95%) Apache Arrow
11 31 (1.95%) Apache Iceberg
11 31 (1.95%) Dremio
12 28 (1.76%) Hadoop
13 26 (1.63%) MySQL
14 24 (1.51%) Metadata
15 23 (1.44%) Elasticsearch
16 22 (1.38%) Apache Ignite
17 20 (1.26%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 172 (10.80%) Git
2 146 (9.17%) Jenkins
3 125 (7.85%) GitLab
4 100 (6.28%) JIRA
5 38 (2.39%) Selenium
6 37 (2.32%) JUnit
7 32 (2.01%) Cucumber
7 32 (2.01%) Liquibase
8 30 (1.88%) Cypress.io
8 30 (1.88%) SonarQube
9 27 (1.69%) Eclipse
9 27 (1.69%) Gradle
10 25 (1.57%) Rational DOORS
11 21 (1.32%) Visual Studio
12 19 (1.19%) Artifactory
13 18 (1.13%) IntelliJ
13 18 (1.13%) Mockito
14 17 (1.07%) Maven
15 15 (0.94%) Bitbucket
16 13 (0.82%) Postman
General
1 320 (20.09%) Social Skills
2 306 (19.21%) Finance
3 138 (8.66%) Banking
4 113 (7.09%) Public Sector
5 84 (5.27%) Analytical Skills
6 66 (4.14%) Front Office
7 64 (4.02%) Investment Banking
8 41 (2.57%) Financial Institution
9 35 (2.20%) Aerospace
9 35 (2.20%) Electronics
10 31 (1.95%) Military
11 24 (1.51%) Law
12 23 (1.44%) Presentation Skills
13 19 (1.19%) Influencing Skills
13 19 (1.19%) Pharmaceutical
14 18 (1.13%) Manufacturing
15 13 (0.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 13 (0.82%) Retail
15 13 (0.82%) Telecoms
16 12 (0.75%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 756 (47.46%) Software Engineer
2 327 (20.53%) Senior
3 306 (19.21%) Developer
4 163 (10.23%) Senior Software Engineer
5 116 (7.28%) Lead
6 115 (7.22%) C++ Software Engineer
7 106 (6.65%) Python Engineer
8 79 (4.96%) AWS Engineer
9 76 (4.77%) Java Engineer
10 71 (4.46%) Embedded Engineer
11 69 (4.33%) Embedded Software Engineer
12 68 (4.27%) Python Software Engineer
13 66 (4.14%) Java Software Engineer
13 66 (4.14%) Senior Developer
14 64 (4.02%) AWS Software Engineer
15 62 (3.89%) Python Developer
16 54 (3.39%) Java Developer
17 52 (3.26%) Data Engineer
18 51 (3.20%) Architect
19 49 (3.08%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 222 (13.94%) Kafka
2 208 (13.06%) React
3 162 (10.17%) Node.js
4 141 (8.85%) .NET
5 132 (8.29%) REST
6 109 (6.84%) RESTful
7 100 (6.28%) gRPC
8 92 (5.78%) AngularJS
9 90 (5.65%) Spring
10 81 (5.08%) Spring Boot
11 62 (3.89%) Pandas
12 60 (3.77%) NumPy
13 53 (3.33%) FastAPI
13 53 (3.33%) HTML
14 52 (3.26%) JSON
15 46 (2.89%) SciPy
16 45 (2.82%) Vue
17 44 (2.76%) Middleware
18 43 (2.70%) CSS
19 41 (2.57%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 195 (12.24%) Cloud Native
2 128 (8.04%) Distributed Systems
3 61 (3.83%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 55 (3.45%) Product Ownership
5 53 (3.33%) Algorithms
6 52 (3.26%) Fixed Income
7 49 (3.08%) Hedge funds
8 38 (2.39%) Data Protection Act
8 38 (2.39%) Equities
9 37 (2.32%) Data Structures
10 36 (2.26%) Greenfield Project
11 34 (2.13%) Derivative
11 34 (2.13%) Public Cloud
12 30 (1.88%) Virtual Team
13 23 (1.44%) Embedded Systems
14 22 (1.38%) Pricing Data
15 21 (1.32%) Legacy Systems
16 20 (1.26%) Mobile App
16 20 (1.26%) Onboarding
17 19 (1.19%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 234 (14.69%) Linux
2 84 (5.27%) Windows
3 50 (3.14%) Unix
4 32 (2.01%) Android
5 18 (1.13%) Ubuntu
6 17 (1.07%) Apple iOS
7 12 (0.75%) Windows Server
8 8 (0.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 7 (0.44%) Mac OS
10 6 (0.38%) FreeRTOS
11 5 (0.31%) VMS
12 3 (0.19%) Robot Operating System
13 1 (0.063%) Debian
13 1 (0.063%) Windows 10
13 1 (0.063%) Windows Embedded Compact
13 1 (0.063%) Windows Server 2008
13 1 (0.063%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 560 (35.15%) Agile
2 496 (31.14%) CI/CD
3 369 (23.16%) DevOps
4 302 (18.96%) Microservices
5 222 (13.94%) Infrastructure as Code
6 221 (13.87%) Containerisation
7 220 (13.81%) Problem-Solving
8 201 (12.62%) AI
9 183 (11.49%) Test Automation
10 172 (10.80%) Computer Science
11 153 (9.60%) Mentoring
12 150 (9.42%) Machine Learning
13 144 (9.04%) Full-Stack Development
14 135 (8.47%) TDD
15 129 (8.10%) Scrum
16 119 (7.47%) Open Source
17 113 (7.09%) Clean Code
18 100 (6.28%) Data Pipeline
19 96 (6.03%) SDLC
20 94 (5.90%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 510 (32.02%) Python
2 357 (22.41%) Java
3 266 (16.70%) SQL
4 261 (16.38%) C++
5 240 (15.07%) JavaScript
6 223 (14.00%) C#
7 206 (12.93%) TypeScript
8 144 (9.04%) Go
9 89 (5.59%) C
10 56 (3.52%) Ada
11 32 (2.01%) Bash
12 31 (1.95%) Rust
13 30 (1.88%) Shell Script
14 28 (1.76%) PowerShell
15 25 (1.57%) Kotlin
16 22 (1.38%) Ruby
17 20 (1.26%) VB
18 19 (1.19%) Embedded C++
19 18 (1.13%) Embedded C
20 15 (0.94%) PHP
Qualifications
1 308 (19.33%) Security Cleared
2 256 (16.07%) SC Cleared
3 216 (13.56%) Degree
4 102 (6.40%) Computer Science Degree
5 64 (4.02%) Master's Degree
6 49 (3.08%) DV Cleared
7 20 (1.26%) AWS Certification
8 19 (1.19%) PhD
9 18 (1.13%) MCP
10 16 (1.00%) BPSS Clearance
10 16 (1.00%) CISSP
11 15 (0.94%) CISM
12 11 (0.69%) Azure Certification
13 10 (0.63%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 10 (0.63%) TOGAF Certification
14 7 (0.44%) Postgraduate
15 6 (0.38%) ISTQB
16 4 (0.25%) HND
16 4 (0.25%) Microsoft Certification
17 3 (0.19%) EMC Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 80 (5.02%) QA
2 36 (2.26%) Data Quality
3 32 (2.01%) Accessibility
4 29 (1.82%) Def Stans
5 24 (1.51%) IEC 61508
6 23 (1.44%) MISRA
7 22 (1.38%) GDPR
8 20 (1.26%) WCAG
9 14 (0.88%) MISRA C
10 13 (0.82%) EU AI Act
11 12 (0.75%) NIST
12 10 (0.63%) DO-178B
13 6 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
14 5 (0.31%) HL7
15 4 (0.25%) ISO 26262
15 4 (0.25%) MiFID
16 3 (0.19%) IEC 62304
16 3 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 15288
16 3 (0.19%) SLA
16 3 (0.19%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 360 (22.60%) Docker
2 15 (0.94%) Active Directory
3 13 (0.82%) Virtual Machines
4 12 (0.75%) Firmware
5 10 (0.63%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (0.19%) zsh
7 2 (0.13%) Embedded Firmware
8 1 (0.063%) KVM
8 1 (0.063%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 360 (22.60%) Kubernetes
2 230 (14.44%) Terraform
3 96 (6.03%) Grafana
4 77 (4.83%) Ansible
5 70 (4.39%) Prometheus
6 21 (1.32%) Puppet
7 16 (1.00%) Argo
8 12 (0.75%) Kibana
9 10 (0.63%) Progress Chef
10 9 (0.56%) Podman
10 9 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
11 5 (0.31%) Functional Safety
12 4 (0.25%) Istio
13 3 (0.19%) Cilium
13 3 (0.19%) Kubeflow
13 3 (0.19%) Rsyslog
13 3 (0.19%) SCOM
13 3 (0.19%) SELinux
14 2 (0.13%) Docker Swarm
14 2 (0.13%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
Vendors
1 138 (8.66%) Microsoft
2 65 (4.08%) Google
3 46 (2.89%) Oracle
4 44 (2.76%) Databricks
5 43 (2.70%) Red Hat
6 39 (2.45%) Splunk
7 30 (1.88%) Foundry
8 14 (0.88%) Palantir
9 13 (0.82%) Atlassian
9 13 (0.82%) BiZZdesign
9 13 (0.82%) IBM
10 12 (0.75%) Cloudera
10 12 (0.75%) SAP
10 12 (0.75%) VMware
11 9 (0.56%) OpenAI
12 8 (0.50%) CyberArk
12 8 (0.50%) Salesforce
12 8 (0.50%) webMethods
13 7 (0.44%) ANSYS
13 7 (0.44%) ServiceNow