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

6 months to
18 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 44 32 44
Rank change year-on-year -12 +12 -8
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 1,521 1,680 1,811
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.05% 5.48% 4.57%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.60% 6.31% 5.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 876 1,004 1,212
10th Percentile £375 £400 £425
25th Percentile £463 £493 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £565 £600 £608
Median % change year-on-year -5.83% -1.28% +1.29%
75th Percentile £700 £776 £738
90th Percentile £825 £875 £810
UK median daily rate £550 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 182 155 231
10th Percentile £46.25 £42.70 £46.18
25th Percentile £53.91 £54.18 £51.25
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 27,183 26,639 35,184
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 90.25% 86.82% 88.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,253 16,245 24,094
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 1,795 955 1,480
10th Percentile £14.75 £15.10 £14.49
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.30 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £37.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.93% -16.67% +28.57%
75th Percentile £47.06 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.94 £74.82 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.00
% change year-on-year -28.14% -20.45% +25.71%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 -8 825 £625 -7.41% 1,606
North of England -10 207 £525 - 457
East of England -1 125 £538 +13.16% 300
South West -15 121 £466 -22.29% 319
Yorkshire -5 110 £525 -4.55% 111
South East -30 97 £475 -5.00% 522
North West -19 78 £550 +15.79% 301
Midlands -46 74 £509 +5.33% 182
West Midlands -23 59 £525 +8.58% 108
North East -1 22 £488 -18.41% 45
East Midlands -34 15 £450 -6.74% 73
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 73 (4.80%) Apache Airflow
2 70 (4.60%) Apache
3 53 (3.48%) Confluence
4 30 (1.97%) Apache Spark
5 14 (0.92%) JBoss
6 11 (0.72%) CMS
6 11 (0.72%) WebLogic
7 5 (0.33%) OpenStack
8 4 (0.26%) IIS
8 4 (0.26%) nginx
8 4 (0.26%) SAS
8 4 (0.26%) WordPress
9 3 (0.20%) Appian
9 3 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
9 3 (0.20%) Sitecore CMS
10 2 (0.13%) Magnolia
10 2 (0.13%) SharePoint
10 2 (0.13%) Tomcat
11 1 (0.066%) Microsoft Exchange
11 1 (0.066%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 17 (1.12%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (0.72%) Chatbot
3 10 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 10 (0.66%) Simulink
4 9 (0.59%) Microsoft Office
5 3 (0.20%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.066%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.066%) Stateflow
Business Applications
1 8 (0.53%) Aladdin
1 8 (0.53%) Temenos T24
2 6 (0.39%) FLEXCUBE
2 6 (0.39%) Oracle BPM
3 3 (0.20%) Fidessa
3 3 (0.20%) thinkFolio
4 2 (0.13%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.13%) Primavera
5 1 (0.066%) ION Anvil
5 1 (0.066%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.066%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 538 (35.37%) AWS
2 264 (17.36%) Azure
3 172 (11.31%) GCP
4 162 (10.65%) Serverless
5 127 (8.35%) GitHub
6 74 (4.87%) GitHub Actions
7 67 (4.40%) AWS Lambda
8 64 (4.21%) Azure DevOps
9 63 (4.14%) dbt
10 58 (3.81%) Snowflake
11 51 (3.35%) Amazon S3
12 46 (3.02%) Power Platform
13 41 (2.70%) Amazon ECS
14 33 (2.17%) Azure AKS
15 30 (1.97%) Amazon EKS
16 29 (1.91%) AWS CloudFormation
16 29 (1.91%) OpenShift
17 28 (1.84%) Azure Functions
18 25 (1.64%) Amazon EC2
19 24 (1.58%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 29 (1.91%) Ethernet
2 23 (1.51%) TCP/IP
3 11 (0.72%) Firewall
4 8 (0.53%) Internet
4 8 (0.53%) Network Security
4 8 (0.53%) NFC
4 8 (0.53%) PPP
5 6 (0.39%) Wireless
6 5 (0.33%) HTTP
7 4 (0.26%) tcpdump
7 4 (0.26%) VPN
8 3 (0.20%) BGP
8 3 (0.20%) Kerberos
8 3 (0.20%) Software-Defined Networking
8 3 (0.20%) VLAN
9 2 (0.13%) DNS
9 2 (0.13%) HTTPS
9 2 (0.13%) SSH
9 2 (0.13%) SSL
9 2 (0.13%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 123 (8.09%) PostgreSQL
2 86 (5.65%) NoSQL
3 68 (4.47%) Apache Cassandra
3 68 (4.47%) MongoDB
4 57 (3.75%) Amazon Athena
5 53 (3.48%) Apache Arrow
5 53 (3.48%) Apache Iceberg
5 53 (3.48%) Data Lake
5 53 (3.48%) Dremio
6 46 (3.02%) SQL Server
7 37 (2.43%) Big Data
8 34 (2.24%) Apache Ignite
8 34 (2.24%) Relational Database
9 32 (2.10%) MySQL
9 32 (2.10%) Power BI
10 31 (2.04%) Hadoop
11 26 (1.71%) Elasticsearch
12 25 (1.64%) Amazon RDS
12 25 (1.64%) DynamoDB
13 19 (1.25%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 182 (11.97%) Git
2 139 (9.14%) Jenkins
3 103 (6.77%) JIRA
4 96 (6.31%) GitLab
5 37 (2.43%) Eclipse
5 37 (2.43%) JUnit
6 35 (2.30%) Selenium
7 34 (2.24%) Liquibase
8 30 (1.97%) Cypress.io
9 28 (1.84%) Cucumber
10 27 (1.78%) SonarQube
11 26 (1.71%) Visual Studio
12 24 (1.58%) Gradle
13 18 (1.18%) Mockito
13 18 (1.18%) Rational DOORS
14 17 (1.12%) Maven
15 16 (1.05%) Artifactory
16 14 (0.92%) Bitbucket
17 12 (0.79%) Postman
17 12 (0.79%) TeamCity
General
1 363 (23.87%) Finance
2 352 (23.14%) Social Skills
3 170 (11.18%) Banking
4 114 (7.50%) Front Office
5 106 (6.97%) Public Sector
6 90 (5.92%) Analytical Skills
7 84 (5.52%) Investment Banking
8 41 (2.70%) Military
9 39 (2.56%) Financial Institution
10 30 (1.97%) Aerospace
11 24 (1.58%) Law
12 23 (1.51%) Presentation Skills
13 21 (1.38%) Influencing Skills
14 18 (1.18%) Electronics
14 18 (1.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 18 (1.18%) Pharmaceutical
15 15 (0.99%) Documentation Skills
16 12 (0.79%) Telecoms
17 11 (0.72%) Manufacturing
17 11 (0.72%) Retail
Job Titles
1 684 (44.97%) Software Engineer
2 359 (23.60%) Developer
3 303 (19.92%) Senior
4 149 (9.80%) Senior Software Engineer
5 127 (8.35%) Lead
6 116 (7.63%) Python Engineer
7 103 (6.77%) C++ Software Engineer
8 94 (6.18%) AWS Engineer
9 93 (6.11%) Java Engineer
10 86 (5.65%) Java Software Engineer
11 83 (5.46%) AWS Software Engineer
12 82 (5.39%) Python Software Engineer
13 73 (4.80%) Python Developer
14 67 (4.40%) Java Developer
15 61 (4.01%) Senior Developer
16 57 (3.75%) Developer/Software Engineer
17 50 (3.29%) Architect
17 50 (3.29%) Full-Stack Engineer
18 46 (3.02%) Data Engineer
18 46 (3.02%) Lead Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 237 (15.58%) React
2 227 (14.92%) Kafka
3 176 (11.57%) Node.js
4 140 (9.20%) .NET
5 133 (8.74%) REST
6 117 (7.69%) RESTful
7 111 (7.30%) gRPC
8 107 (7.03%) AngularJS
9 89 (5.85%) Spring
10 87 (5.72%) Pandas
11 85 (5.59%) NumPy
12 73 (4.80%) SciPy
13 69 (4.54%) Spring Boot
14 60 (3.94%) Vue
15 59 (3.88%) HTML
16 53 (3.48%) FastAPI
17 52 (3.42%) JSON
18 49 (3.22%) GraphQL
19 45 (2.96%) CSS
20 43 (2.83%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 170 (11.18%) Cloud Native
2 128 (8.42%) Distributed Systems
3 107 (7.03%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 100 (6.57%) Fixed Income
5 69 (4.54%) Hedge funds
6 67 (4.40%) Equities
7 58 (3.81%) Algorithms
8 47 (3.09%) Derivative
9 46 (3.02%) Product Ownership
10 42 (2.76%) Data Structures
11 35 (2.30%) Public Cloud
12 34 (2.24%) Pricing Data
13 33 (2.17%) Data Protection Act
13 33 (2.17%) Greenfield Project
14 32 (2.10%) Virtual Team
15 21 (1.38%) Self-Motivation
16 20 (1.31%) Legacy Systems
17 18 (1.18%) Embedded Systems
18 17 (1.12%) Mobile App
18 17 (1.12%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 240 (15.78%) Linux
2 78 (5.13%) Windows
3 53 (3.48%) Unix
4 22 (1.45%) Ubuntu
5 21 (1.38%) Android
6 14 (0.92%) Apple iOS
7 8 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 8 (0.53%) Windows Server
8 6 (0.39%) Mac OS
9 5 (0.33%) FreeRTOS
10 4 (0.26%) VMS
11 1 (0.066%) Amazon Linux
11 1 (0.066%) Debian
11 1 (0.066%) Robot Operating System
11 1 (0.066%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.066%) Windows Embedded Compact
11 1 (0.066%) Windows Server 2008
11 1 (0.066%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 630 (41.42%) Agile
2 470 (30.90%) CI/CD
3 352 (23.14%) DevOps
4 298 (19.59%) Microservices
5 232 (15.25%) Problem-Solving
6 195 (12.82%) Containerisation
7 194 (12.75%) Infrastructure as Code
8 180 (11.83%) Test Automation
9 170 (11.18%) AI
9 170 (11.18%) Computer Science
10 161 (10.59%) Mentoring
10 161 (10.59%) TDD
11 151 (9.93%) Full-Stack Development
12 143 (9.40%) Scrum
13 137 (9.01%) Machine Learning
14 117 (7.69%) Clean Code
15 111 (7.30%) Open Source
16 106 (6.97%) Continuous Integration
17 91 (5.98%) Continuous Improvement
17 91 (5.98%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 533 (35.04%) Python
2 402 (26.43%) Java
3 294 (19.33%) JavaScript
4 267 (17.55%) SQL
5 256 (16.83%) C++
6 239 (15.71%) TypeScript
7 223 (14.66%) C#
8 142 (9.34%) Go
9 76 (5.00%) C
10 40 (2.63%) Ada
11 33 (2.17%) Shell Script
12 30 (1.97%) Bash
13 29 (1.91%) Rust
14 20 (1.31%) VB
15 19 (1.25%) PowerShell
15 19 (1.25%) Ruby
15 19 (1.25%) Scala
16 15 (0.99%) MATLAB
16 15 (0.99%) PL/SQL
17 14 (0.92%) R
Qualifications
1 267 (17.55%) Security Cleared
2 220 (14.46%) SC Cleared
3 204 (13.41%) Degree
4 97 (6.38%) Computer Science Degree
5 54 (3.55%) Master's Degree
6 46 (3.02%) DV Cleared
7 19 (1.25%) AWS Certification
7 19 (1.25%) BPSS Clearance
8 18 (1.18%) PhD
9 17 (1.12%) MCP
10 15 (0.99%) CISSP
11 13 (0.85%) CISM
12 10 (0.66%) Azure Certification
13 9 (0.59%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 9 (0.59%) TOGAF Certification
14 7 (0.46%) Postgraduate
15 6 (0.39%) ISTQB
16 4 (0.26%) HND
16 4 (0.26%) PMP
17 3 (0.20%) EMC Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 79 (5.19%) QA
2 32 (2.10%) Data Quality
3 28 (1.84%) Accessibility
4 20 (1.31%) Def Stans
4 20 (1.31%) WCAG
5 18 (1.18%) IEC 61508
6 17 (1.12%) MISRA
7 16 (1.05%) GDPR
8 13 (0.85%) EU AI Act
9 12 (0.79%) MISRA C
9 12 (0.79%) NIST
10 7 (0.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 6 (0.39%) DO-178B
12 5 (0.33%) Software Quality Assurance
13 4 (0.26%) ISO 26262
13 4 (0.26%) MiFID
13 4 (0.26%) SLA
14 3 (0.20%) IEC 62304
14 3 (0.20%) NCSC
14 3 (0.20%) SEPA
System Software
1 338 (22.22%) Docker
2 16 (1.05%) Active Directory
3 8 (0.53%) Virtual Machines
4 6 (0.39%) Firmware
5 5 (0.33%) zsh
6 4 (0.26%) VMware Infrastructure
7 1 (0.066%) Embedded Firmware
7 1 (0.066%) KVM
7 1 (0.066%) Virtual Desktop
7 1 (0.066%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 321 (21.10%) Kubernetes
2 188 (12.36%) Terraform
3 71 (4.67%) Ansible
4 68 (4.47%) Grafana
5 56 (3.68%) Prometheus
6 17 (1.12%) Puppet
7 13 (0.85%) Kibana
8 10 (0.66%) Argo
9 8 (0.53%) Podman
9 8 (0.53%) Single Sign-On
10 6 (0.39%) Progress Chef
11 4 (0.26%) Functional Safety
12 3 (0.20%) Cilium
12 3 (0.20%) Kubeflow
12 3 (0.20%) Rsyslog
12 3 (0.20%) SCOM
12 3 (0.20%) SELinux
13 2 (0.13%) Packer
13 2 (0.13%) rkt
14 1 (0.066%) Consul
Vendors
1 131 (8.61%) Microsoft
2 62 (4.08%) Oracle
3 54 (3.55%) Google
4 38 (2.50%) Splunk
5 33 (2.17%) Databricks
6 31 (2.04%) Foundry
7 28 (1.84%) Red Hat
8 14 (0.92%) Atlassian
8 14 (0.92%) Palantir
9 13 (0.85%) Cloudera
10 11 (0.72%) BiZZdesign
11 10 (0.66%) OpenAI
11 10 (0.66%) Salesforce
11 10 (0.66%) Temenos
12 9 (0.59%) CA Agile Central
12 9 (0.59%) SAP
12 9 (0.59%) webMethods
13 8 (0.53%) ServiceNow
14 7 (0.46%) Cisco
14 7 (0.46%) CyberArk