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

6 months to
18 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 40 41 31
Rank change year-on-year +1 -10 +10
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 1,996 1,212 1,980
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.06% 4.95% 5.32%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.93% 5.43% 6.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,053 802 1,163
10th Percentile £400 £406 £425
25th Percentile £450 £500 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -
75th Percentile £663 £763 £750
90th Percentile £775 £838 £850
UK median daily rate £550 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 432 75 323
10th Percentile £52.50 £42.70 £46.25
25th Percentile £61.25 £52.75 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year - +4.00% -2.45%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £73.41 £68.75 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year - +4.00% -0.29%

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 33,651 22,305 32,263
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.36% 91.07% 86.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,531 14,664 21,253
10th Percentile £313 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £523 £525
% change year-on-year -4.31% -0.48% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,083 886 2,215
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.80 £12.85
25th Percentile £20.27 £18.51 £15.75
Median hourly rate £41.86 £31.64 £34.21
Median % change year-on-year +32.29% -7.51% -6.66%
75th Percentile £67.13 £63.75 £58.69
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.38 £71.75
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £30.00 £33.78
% change year-on-year +25.00% -11.18% -5.92%

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 April 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 18 April 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 18 April 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 -11 846 £599 -11.26% 552
North of England +11 286 £500 -0.10% 261
South West +17 280 £575 -1.71% 192
South East +12 225 £525 +4.90% 353
East of England +33 203 £475 -2.66% 159
North West -3 133 £500 -0.30% 147
Yorkshire +2 109 £509 +1.75% 80
Midlands -30 97 £498 +4.30% 127
West Midlands -27 85 £492 -3.09% 76
North East +22 49 £478 +3.80% 38
East Midlands -35 12 £513 +7.89% 51
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 50 (2.51%) Confluence
2 46 (2.30%) Apache Spark
3 43 (2.15%) Apache
4 21 (1.05%) Apache Airflow
5 11 (0.55%) CMS
6 9 (0.45%) WebLogic
7 6 (0.30%) Palantir Foundry
8 5 (0.25%) IIS
8 5 (0.25%) SharePoint
9 4 (0.20%) JBoss
9 4 (0.20%) nginx
10 3 (0.15%) Camunda
10 3 (0.15%) OpenStack
10 3 (0.15%) SAS
11 2 (0.10%) Magnolia
11 2 (0.10%) MQSeries
11 2 (0.10%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 2 (0.10%) Sitecore CMS
11 2 (0.10%) Tomcat
11 2 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 10 (0.50%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (0.40%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.20%) Simulink
4 3 (0.15%) Chatbot
4 3 (0.15%) CPLEX
4 3 (0.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.10%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.050%) Maya
6 1 (0.050%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.050%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.050%) OrCAD
Business Applications
1 6 (0.30%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (0.10%) Aladdin
3 2 (0.10%) LabWindows
4 1 (0.050%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.050%) Orchestrade
4 1 (0.050%) Primavera
4 1 (0.050%) Sprinklr
4 1 (0.050%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 546 (27.35%) AWS
2 369 (18.49%) Azure
3 182 (9.12%) GCP
4 135 (6.76%) GitHub
5 118 (5.91%) Serverless
6 72 (3.61%) Azure DevOps
7 66 (3.31%) AWS Lambda
8 61 (3.06%) Amazon S3
9 56 (2.81%) GitHub Actions
10 49 (2.45%) Power Platform
11 48 (2.40%) OpenShift
12 41 (2.05%) AWS CloudFormation
13 36 (1.80%) Amazon ECS
13 36 (1.80%) Amazon EKS
13 36 (1.80%) Azure AKS
14 30 (1.50%) SaaS
15 28 (1.40%) Amazon SQS
16 27 (1.35%) Amazon EC2
17 26 (1.30%) Azure Functions
18 21 (1.05%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 22 (1.10%) Ethernet
2 19 (0.95%) Software-Defined Radio
3 14 (0.70%) Network Security
4 13 (0.65%) TCP/IP
5 11 (0.55%) Firewall
6 9 (0.45%) Wireless
7 8 (0.40%) 3GPP
8 7 (0.35%) HTTP
9 5 (0.25%) Modbus
10 4 (0.20%) BGP
10 4 (0.20%) RS-232
10 4 (0.20%) RS-485
10 4 (0.20%) RTP
10 4 (0.20%) Software-Defined Networking
10 4 (0.20%) VLAN
10 4 (0.20%) VPN
11 3 (0.15%) Bluetooth
11 3 (0.15%) IPv4
11 3 (0.15%) IPv6
11 3 (0.15%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 127 (6.36%) PostgreSQL
2 64 (3.21%) Relational Database
3 62 (3.11%) NoSQL
3 62 (3.11%) SQL Server
4 58 (2.91%) Apache Cassandra
5 56 (2.81%) MongoDB
6 35 (1.75%) Power BI
7 31 (1.55%) Amazon RDS
7 31 (1.55%) Data Lake
8 28 (1.40%) Big Data
8 28 (1.40%) MySQL
9 27 (1.35%) BigQuery
10 25 (1.25%) Metadata
11 23 (1.15%) DynamoDB
12 18 (0.90%) Data Warehouse
13 15 (0.75%) Elasticsearch
13 15 (0.75%) Mixpanel
14 14 (0.70%) Amazon Athena
15 13 (0.65%) Amazon Redshift
15 13 (0.65%) Redis
Development Applications
1 205 (10.27%) Git
2 129 (6.46%) Jenkins
3 105 (5.26%) GitLab
3 105 (5.26%) JIRA
4 39 (1.95%) SonarQube
5 34 (1.70%) JUnit
6 32 (1.60%) Rational Rhapsody
7 31 (1.55%) Rational DOORS
8 27 (1.35%) Gradle
8 27 (1.35%) IntelliJ
9 25 (1.25%) Selenium
10 23 (1.15%) Cucumber
11 22 (1.10%) Bitbucket
11 22 (1.10%) Cypress.io
12 19 (0.95%) Maven
13 17 (0.85%) Visual Studio
14 16 (0.80%) Eclipse
15 15 (0.75%) Mockito
16 11 (0.55%) Liquibase
17 10 (0.50%) Artifactory
General
1 307 (15.38%) Finance
2 302 (15.13%) Social Skills
3 126 (6.31%) Public Sector
4 111 (5.56%) Banking
5 109 (5.46%) Analytical Skills
6 80 (4.01%) Aerospace
7 64 (3.21%) Front Office
8 37 (1.85%) Electronics
9 33 (1.65%) Law
9 33 (1.65%) Retail
10 31 (1.55%) Manufacturing
11 29 (1.45%) Influencing Skills
12 27 (1.35%) Investment Banking
12 27 (1.35%) Military
13 21 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
13 21 (1.05%) Telecoms
14 16 (0.80%) Financial Institution
15 13 (0.65%) Documentation Skills
15 13 (0.65%) Legal
16 11 (0.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 1,082 (54.21%) Software Engineer
2 362 (18.14%) Senior
3 355 (17.79%) Developer
4 176 (8.82%) Senior Software Engineer
5 146 (7.31%) Lead
6 138 (6.91%) Java Engineer
7 137 (6.86%) Embedded Engineer
8 125 (6.26%) C++ Software Engineer
8 125 (6.26%) Embedded Software Engineer
9 108 (5.41%) Java Software Engineer
10 88 (4.41%) Java Developer
11 85 (4.26%) Architect
12 71 (3.56%) Senior Developer
13 67 (3.36%) Developer/Software Engineer
14 62 (3.11%) Python Engineer
15 60 (3.01%) Data Engineer
15 60 (3.01%) Python Developer
16 58 (2.91%) Lead Software Engineer
16 58 (2.91%) Software Developer
17 56 (2.81%) Full-Stack Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 229 (11.47%) React
2 198 (9.92%) Kafka
3 168 (8.42%) Node.js
4 148 (7.41%) .NET
5 140 (7.01%) REST
6 137 (6.86%) Spring
7 121 (6.06%) Spring Boot
8 101 (5.06%) AngularJS
9 93 (4.66%) RESTful
10 73 (3.66%) GraphQL
11 59 (2.96%) gRPC
12 55 (2.76%) Middleware
13 52 (2.61%) Redux
14 50 (2.51%) HTML
15 49 (2.45%) CSS
16 44 (2.20%) JSON
17 40 (2.00%) Playwright
18 36 (1.80%) Web Services
19 32 (1.60%) OpenTelemetry
20 31 (1.55%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 213 (10.67%) Cloud Native
2 146 (7.31%) Distributed Systems
3 94 (4.71%) Product Ownership
4 81 (4.06%) Algorithms
5 59 (2.96%) Fixed Income
6 36 (1.80%) AI Agents
7 34 (1.70%) Data Protection Act
8 29 (1.45%) Onboarding
9 28 (1.40%) Embedded Systems
10 27 (1.35%) Data Structures
10 27 (1.35%) Derivative
10 27 (1.35%) Mobile App
11 25 (1.25%) Legacy Systems
12 23 (1.15%) Robotics
13 21 (1.05%) Equities
13 21 (1.05%) Greenfield Project
14 20 (1.00%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 14 (0.70%) Life Science
15 14 (0.70%) NHS
16 13 (0.65%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 194 (9.72%) Linux
2 71 (3.56%) Windows
3 46 (2.30%) Unix
4 26 (1.30%) Android
5 25 (1.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 19 (0.95%) Apple iOS
7 14 (0.70%) Windows Server
8 9 (0.45%) Embedded Linux
9 7 (0.35%) FreeRTOS
10 6 (0.30%) Ubuntu
11 5 (0.25%) Debian
12 4 (0.20%) VMS
13 3 (0.15%) Rocky
14 2 (0.10%) Robot Operating System
14 2 (0.10%) Solaris
14 2 (0.10%) Windows Server 2008
14 2 (0.10%) Windows Server 2019
15 1 (0.050%) Mac OS
15 1 (0.050%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 582 (29.16%) CI/CD
2 570 (28.56%) Agile
3 407 (20.39%) DevOps
4 324 (16.23%) Microservices
5 271 (13.58%) AI
6 227 (11.37%) Problem-Solving
7 213 (10.67%) Full-Stack Development
8 206 (10.32%) Containerisation
9 202 (10.12%) Infrastructure as Code
9 202 (10.12%) Test Automation
10 159 (7.97%) Machine Learning
11 155 (7.77%) Computer Science
12 153 (7.67%) Observability
13 152 (7.62%) Continuous Improvement
13 152 (7.62%) Mentoring
14 139 (6.96%) SDLC
15 138 (6.91%) Scrum
16 133 (6.66%) TDD
17 128 (6.41%) Technical Leadership
18 119 (5.96%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 526 (26.35%) Python
2 486 (24.35%) Java
3 263 (13.18%) SQL
4 255 (12.78%) C#
5 241 (12.07%) TypeScript
6 232 (11.62%) C++
7 217 (10.87%) JavaScript
8 153 (7.67%) Go
9 130 (6.51%) Ada
10 114 (5.71%) C
11 38 (1.90%) PowerShell
12 35 (1.75%) Kotlin
13 32 (1.60%) Bash
14 29 (1.45%) Embedded C
15 26 (1.30%) MATLAB
15 26 (1.30%) Rust
16 25 (1.25%) Ruby
17 22 (1.10%) Scala
18 20 (1.00%) Shell Script
19 17 (0.85%) Embedded C++
Qualifications
1 483 (24.20%) Security Cleared
2 375 (18.79%) SC Cleared
3 172 (8.62%) Degree
4 87 (4.36%) Computer Science Degree
5 62 (3.11%) DV Cleared
6 42 (2.10%) Master's Degree
7 31 (1.55%) BPSS Clearance
8 23 (1.15%) AWS Certification
9 14 (0.70%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 13 (0.65%) Azure Certification
10 13 (0.65%) CISSP
10 13 (0.65%) PhD
11 10 (0.50%) CISM
12 8 (0.40%) ISTQB
12 8 (0.40%) TOGAF Certification
13 7 (0.35%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
14 4 (0.20%) HND
14 4 (0.20%) Microsoft Certification
15 3 (0.15%) Cisco Certification
15 3 (0.15%) HNC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 111 (5.56%) QA
2 55 (2.76%) Def Stans
3 41 (2.05%) Data Quality
4 40 (2.00%) IEC 61508
5 27 (1.35%) Accessibility
6 25 (1.25%) GDPR
6 25 (1.25%) MISRA
7 19 (0.95%) MISRA C
8 10 (0.50%) WCAG
9 9 (0.45%) NIST
10 7 (0.35%) DO-178B
10 7 (0.35%) HL7
10 7 (0.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 6 (0.30%) NCSC
12 2 (0.10%) FATCA
12 2 (0.10%) PCI DSS
12 2 (0.10%) PMO
12 2 (0.10%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 2 (0.10%) SLA
13 1 (0.050%) DICOM
System Software
1 312 (15.63%) Docker
2 17 (0.85%) Firmware
3 16 (0.80%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.50%) Virtual Machines
5 7 (0.35%) Active Directory
6 5 (0.25%) Embedded Firmware
7 4 (0.20%) Oracle RAC
8 3 (0.15%) HDFS
9 2 (0.10%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 340 (17.03%) Kubernetes
2 213 (10.67%) Terraform
3 86 (4.31%) Grafana
4 54 (2.71%) Ansible
5 47 (2.35%) Prometheus
6 31 (1.55%) Argo
7 17 (0.85%) Puppet
8 12 (0.60%) Progress Chef
9 7 (0.35%) Kibana
10 6 (0.30%) Istio
10 6 (0.30%) Single Sign-On
11 5 (0.25%) HAProxy
11 5 (0.25%) Kubeflow
12 4 (0.20%) Data Guard
12 4 (0.20%) Docker Swarm
12 4 (0.20%) HP Quality Center
13 3 (0.15%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
14 2 (0.10%) HP ALM
14 2 (0.10%) Podman
15 1 (0.050%) Consul
Vendors
1 138 (6.91%) Microsoft
2 77 (3.86%) Google
3 60 (3.01%) Oracle
4 57 (2.86%) Red Hat
5 49 (2.45%) Databricks
6 23 (1.15%) IBM
7 20 (1.00%) OpenAI
7 20 (1.00%) Splunk
8 17 (0.85%) VMware
9 16 (0.80%) Foundry
10 13 (0.65%) ServiceNow
11 11 (0.55%) Siemens
12 10 (0.50%) Atlassian
12 10 (0.50%) MathWorks
12 10 (0.50%) PagerDuty
12 10 (0.50%) SAP
13 9 (0.45%) BiZZdesign
13 9 (0.45%) Okta
13 9 (0.45%) Software AG
14 8 (0.40%) Spotify