Software Engineer Contract Job Trends in Scotland

Software Engineer
UK > Scotland

The median Software Engineer daily rate in Scotland is £488, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 13 December 2025.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 61 95 120
Rank change year-on-year +34 +25 -1
Contract jobs requiring a Software Engineer 53 24 23
As % of all contract jobs in Scotland 3.37% 1.40% 0.95%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.75% 1.52% 1.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 17 8 13
10th Percentile £410 £312 £330
25th Percentile £419 £422 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £525 £450
Median % change year-on-year -7.19% +16.72% -11.11%
75th Percentile £613 £650 £538
90th Percentile £635 £661 £548
UK median daily rate £575 £600 £575
% change year-on-year -4.17% +4.35% -2.54%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 1 4
10th Percentile £52.75 - £44.99
25th Percentile £53.13 £46.00 £50.59
Median hourly rate £57.50 £47.00 £56.85
Median % change year-on-year +22.34% -17.33% +8.59%
75th Percentile £66.88 £48.00 £61.75
90th Percentile £70.25 - £62.20
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
Scotland

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in Scotland. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in Scotland with a recognized job title 1,414 1,575 2,275
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.01% 91.57% 94.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 833 951 1,428
10th Percentile £213 £200 £250
25th Percentile £360 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £454 £450 £480
Median % change year-on-year +0.89% -6.25% +1.05%
75th Percentile £540 £538 £581
90th Percentile £625 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 56 53 61
10th Percentile £17.30 £13.33 £12.26
25th Percentile £20.00 £16.37 £16.50
Median hourly rate £24.62 £20.94 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year +17.57% +7.38% +10.05%
75th Percentile £41.65 £24.18 £59.03
90th Percentile £64.67 £28.25 £62.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £34.75 £44.00
% change year-on-year -27.63% -21.02% +40.98%

Software Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in Scotland

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Software Engineer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in Scotland.

Software Engineer job vacancy trend in Scotland

Software Engineer
Daily Rate Trend in Scotland

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Software Engineer job vacancies in Scotland.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Software Engineer job vacancies in Scotland

Software Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in Scotland

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Software Engineer in Scotland over the 6 months to 13 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Software Engineer in Scotland

Software Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend in Scotland

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Software Engineer job vacancies in Scotland.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Software Engineer job vacancies in Scotland

Software Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram in Scotland

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Software Engineer in Scotland over the 6 months to 13 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Software Engineer in Scotland

Software Engineer
Contract Job Locations in Scotland

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Software Engineer within the Scotland region over the 6 months to 13 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
Glasgow +17 26 £575 +76.92% 15
Edinburgh +18 25 £425 -34.62% 41
Dundee - 1 £438 - 1
Renfrewshire - 1 - - 1
Software Engineer
UK

Software Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Scotland

For the 6 months to 13 December 2025, Software Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the Scotland region featuring Software Engineer in the job title.

1 53 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 27 (50.94%) Java
3 26 (49.06%) CI/CD
4 25 (47.17%) Agile
5 20 (37.74%) Python
6 15 (28.30%) Spring
7 14 (26.42%) Kubernetes
7 14 (26.42%) Microservices
8 13 (24.53%) Azure
8 13 (24.53%) Spring Boot
9 12 (22.64%) AWS
9 12 (22.64%) Full-Stack Development
10 11 (20.75%) C++
11 10 (18.87%) DevOps
11 10 (18.87%) OO
11 10 (18.87%) Problem-Solving
11 10 (18.87%) Terraform
11 10 (18.87%) TypeScript
12 9 (16.98%) Continuous Improvement
12 9 (16.98%) Go
12 9 (16.98%) Observability
13 8 (15.09%) AI
13 8 (15.09%) Jenkins
13 8 (15.09%) RESTful
14 7 (13.21%) Computer Science
14 7 (13.21%) Git
14 7 (13.21%) Grafana
14 7 (13.21%) Infrastructure as Code
14 7 (13.21%) JavaScript
14 7 (13.21%) React

Software Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Scotland 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 2 (3.77%) Confluence
2 1 (1.89%) ArcGIS
2 1 (1.89%) Smallworld
Cloud Services
1 13 (24.53%) Azure
2 12 (22.64%) AWS
3 5 (9.43%) GCP
4 3 (5.66%) Amazon OpenSearch
4 3 (5.66%) Datadog
5 2 (3.77%) GitHub
5 2 (3.77%) Serverless
6 1 (1.89%) Azure DevOps
6 1 (1.89%) BlazeMeter
6 1 (1.89%) GitHub Actions
6 1 (1.89%) npm
6 1 (1.89%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.89%) NFC
1 1 (1.89%) RS-232
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (9.43%) Relational Database
2 3 (5.66%) Amazon Aurora
2 3 (5.66%) NoSQL
2 3 (5.66%) SQL Server
3 2 (3.77%) MySQL
3 2 (3.77%) PostgreSQL
4 1 (1.89%) Apache Cassandra
4 1 (1.89%) DB2
4 1 (1.89%) GIS
4 1 (1.89%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 8 (15.09%) Jenkins
2 7 (13.21%) Git
3 5 (9.43%) GitLab
4 4 (7.55%) JUnit
4 4 (7.55%) Rational Rhapsody
5 3 (5.66%) Cypress.io
6 2 (3.77%) Bitbucket
6 2 (3.77%) JIRA
6 2 (3.77%) Liquibase
6 2 (3.77%) Mockito
7 1 (1.89%) Cucumber
7 1 (1.89%) git-flow
7 1 (1.89%) Maven
7 1 (1.89%) webpack
General
1 25 (47.17%) Finance
2 17 (32.08%) Social Skills
3 12 (22.64%) Banking
4 3 (5.66%) Aerospace
4 3 (5.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 2 (3.77%) Public Sector
6 1 (1.89%) Analytical Skills
6 1 (1.89%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (28.30%) Spring
2 13 (24.53%) Spring Boot
3 8 (15.09%) RESTful
4 7 (13.21%) React
5 6 (11.32%) FastAPI
6 5 (9.43%) Kafka
7 4 (7.55%) .NET
7 4 (7.55%) AngularJS
7 4 (7.55%) OpenTelemetry
7 4 (7.55%) REST
8 3 (5.66%) Boost C++ Libraries
8 3 (5.66%) Flask
8 3 (5.66%) Jest
8 3 (5.66%) Lambda Expressions
8 3 (5.66%) OAuth
8 3 (5.66%) OAuth2
8 3 (5.66%) OpenID
8 3 (5.66%) SAML
9 2 (3.77%) Elastic Stack
10 1 (1.89%) FHIR
Miscellaneous
1 9 (16.98%) Cloud Native
2 3 (5.66%) Equities
2 3 (5.66%) Fixed Income
2 3 (5.66%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
2 3 (5.66%) Management Information System
2 3 (5.66%) Market Risk
2 3 (5.66%) Virtual Team
3 2 (3.77%) Data Protection Act
3 2 (3.77%) Distributed Systems
3 2 (3.77%) Public Cloud
4 1 (1.89%) Algorithms
4 1 (1.89%) Data Structures
4 1 (1.89%) Embedded Systems
4 1 (1.89%) EMV
4 1 (1.89%) Onboarding
4 1 (1.89%) Private Cloud
4 1 (1.89%) Product Ownership
4 1 (1.89%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 6 (11.32%) Linux
2 1 (1.89%) Unix
2 1 (1.89%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 53 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 26 (49.06%) CI/CD
3 25 (47.17%) Agile
4 14 (26.42%) Microservices
5 12 (22.64%) Full-Stack Development
6 10 (18.87%) DevOps
6 10 (18.87%) OO
6 10 (18.87%) Problem-Solving
7 9 (16.98%) Continuous Improvement
7 9 (16.98%) Observability
8 8 (15.09%) AI
9 7 (13.21%) Computer Science
9 7 (13.21%) Infrastructure as Code
10 6 (11.32%) Containerisation
10 6 (11.32%) SDLC
11 4 (7.55%) Mentoring
11 4 (7.55%) Open Source
11 4 (7.55%) Software Testing
11 4 (7.55%) Stakeholder Management
11 4 (7.55%) UML
Programming Languages
1 27 (50.94%) Java
2 20 (37.74%) Python
3 11 (20.75%) C++
4 10 (18.87%) TypeScript
5 9 (16.98%) Go
6 7 (13.21%) JavaScript
7 5 (9.43%) SQL
8 4 (7.55%) C
9 3 (5.66%) C#
9 3 (5.66%) PowerShell
10 1 (1.89%) Magik
10 1 (1.89%) Perl
Qualifications
1 4 (7.55%) Degree
2 3 (5.66%) Computer Science Degree
2 3 (5.66%) MCP
3 2 (3.77%) AWS Certification
3 2 (3.77%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
3 2 (3.77%) Master's Degree
4 1 (1.89%) HND
4 1 (1.89%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (7.55%) QA
2 2 (3.77%) Accessibility
2 2 (3.77%) MISRA
2 2 (3.77%) MISRA C
3 1 (1.89%) DICOM
3 1 (1.89%) HL7
3 1 (1.89%) ISO 13485
System Software
1 5 (9.43%) Docker
2 2 (3.77%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 14 (26.42%) Kubernetes
2 10 (18.87%) Terraform
3 7 (13.21%) Grafana
4 4 (7.55%) Ansible
5 2 (3.77%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 7 (13.21%) Splunk
2 4 (7.55%) IBM
3 3 (5.66%) Microsoft
4 2 (3.77%) Google
4 2 (3.77%) Oracle
5 1 (1.89%) Dynatrace
5 1 (1.89%) ESRI
5 1 (1.89%) Sitecore
5 1 (1.89%) VMware