Software Engineering Contracts in Scotland

Software Engineering
UK > Scotland

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in Scotland requiring Software Engineering skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Software Engineering over the 6 months leading up to 17 June 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Jun 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 38 34 60
Rank change year-on-year -4 +26 -8
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 90 109 113
As % of all contract jobs advertised in Scotland 5.52% 5.18% 4.21%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.94% 5.99% 4.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 43 55 83
10th Percentile £300 £369 £413
25th Percentile £404 £400 £441
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% -2.44%
75th Percentile £544 £500 £594
90th Percentile £635 £695 £650
UK median daily rate £575 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -4.17% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 13 4
10th Percentile £60.75 £40.90 £45.75
25th Percentile £61.88 £52.50 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £60.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +8.33% +4.35% +5.50%
75th Percentile £69.38 £62.50 £59.69
90th Percentile £71.25 - £61.38
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £64.15
% change year-on-year - +1.33% +11.56%

All Process and Methodology Skills
Scotland

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 Scotland.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 1,515 1,820 2,473
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Scotland 93.00% 86.42% 92.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 853 1,130 1,717
10th Percentile £255 £219 £260
25th Percentile £368 £363 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £465 £475
Median % change year-on-year -0.54% -2.11% -
75th Percentile £538 £575 £550
90th Percentile £600 £638 £638
UK median daily rate £508 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -3.33% -4.55% +1.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 59 90 57
10th Percentile £16.22 £12.30 £10.63
25th Percentile £17.30 £15.02 £12.13
Median hourly rate £20.00 £19.50 £16.50
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% +18.18% -55.92%
75th Percentile £25.68 £46.24 £43.75
90th Percentile £61.00 £60.93 £63.50
UK median hourly rate £25.50 £37.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year -32.00% +7.14% +34.62%

Software Engineering
Job Vacancy Trend in Scotland

Job postings citing Software Engineering as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in Scotland.

Job vacancy trend for Software Engineering in Scotland

Software Engineering
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in Scotland

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Software Engineering in Scotland.

Daily rate trend for Software Engineering in Scotland

Software Engineering
Daily Rate Histogram in Scotland

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Software Engineering in Scotland over the 6 months to 17 June 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Software Engineering in Scotland

Software Engineering
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in Scotland

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Software Engineering in Scotland.

Hourly rate trend for Software Engineering in Scotland

Software Engineering
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 Engineering within the Scotland region over the 6 months to 17 June 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 -8 70 £473 -0.53% 491
Edinburgh +7 16 £500 +2.56% 523
Fife - 3 - - 44
Dundee - 1 £438 - 56
Software Engineering
UK

Software Engineering
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in Scotland by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 3 (3.33%) Confluence
2 1 (1.11%) Apache
2 1 (1.11%) Apache Spark
2 1 (1.11%) Camunda
2 1 (1.11%) JBoss
2 1 (1.11%) OpenROAD
Applications
1 3 (3.33%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (1.11%) Acrobat
Business Applications
1 1 (1.11%) Dynamics CRM
1 1 (1.11%) LabWindows
Cloud Services
1 16 (17.78%) AWS
2 12 (13.33%) Azure
3 8 (8.89%) BlazeMeter
4 6 (6.67%) Amazon S3
5 5 (5.56%) OpenShift
5 5 (5.56%) Serverless
6 4 (4.44%) AWS Lambda
7 3 (3.33%) Cloud Computing
8 2 (2.22%) Azure DevOps
8 2 (2.22%) CloudFront
8 2 (2.22%) Datadog
8 2 (2.22%) GCP
8 2 (2.22%) Route 53
8 2 (2.22%) Snowflake
9 1 (1.11%) Amazon Bedrock
9 1 (1.11%) Amazon OpenSearch
9 1 (1.11%) Azure Pipelines
9 1 (1.11%) Dynamics 365
9 1 (1.11%) GitHub
9 1 (1.11%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 3 (3.33%) SAN
2 2 (2.22%) NAS
3 1 (1.11%) Cisco Nexus
3 1 (1.11%) NFC
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (27.78%) Relational Database
2 19 (21.11%) MongoDB
3 12 (13.33%) NoSQL
4 10 (11.11%) DB2
5 8 (8.89%) Apache Cassandra
6 6 (6.67%) RDBMS
7 5 (5.56%) Amazon Aurora
8 2 (2.22%) Big Data
8 2 (2.22%) Data Warehouse
8 2 (2.22%) MySQL
8 2 (2.22%) PostgreSQL
8 2 (2.22%) Redis
9 1 (1.11%) Azure SQL Database
9 1 (1.11%) Data Lake
9 1 (1.11%) DynamoDB
9 1 (1.11%) GIS
Development Applications
1 23 (25.56%) JUnit
2 6 (6.67%) Git
2 6 (6.67%) Jenkins
3 5 (5.56%) Xcode
4 4 (4.44%) JIRA
4 4 (4.44%) LabVIEW
5 3 (3.33%) Mockito
6 2 (2.22%) Artifactory
6 2 (2.22%) Bitbucket
6 2 (2.22%) Cucumber
6 2 (2.22%) GitLab
6 2 (2.22%) SonarQube
6 2 (2.22%) webpack
7 1 (1.11%) Ant
7 1 (1.11%) Cypress.io
7 1 (1.11%) Rational Rhapsody
7 1 (1.11%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (1.11%) Visual Studio
General
1 35 (38.89%) Finance
2 31 (34.44%) Social Skills
3 21 (23.33%) Analytical Skills
4 10 (11.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 7 (7.78%) Front Office
6 6 (6.67%) Banking
7 4 (4.44%) Electronics
7 4 (4.44%) Financial Institution
7 4 (4.44%) Public Sector
8 3 (3.33%) Manufacturing
9 1 (1.11%) Aerospace
9 1 (1.11%) Investment Banking
9 1 (1.11%) Military
9 1 (1.11%) Organisational Skills
9 1 (1.11%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 44 (48.89%) Developer
2 42 (46.67%) Java Developer
3 23 (25.56%) Software Engineer
4 12 (13.33%) Core Java Developer
5 9 (10.00%) Linux Developer
6 8 (8.89%) Senior
7 7 (7.78%) Java Engineer
8 6 (6.67%) Senior Software Engineer
9 5 (5.56%) AWS Engineer
9 5 (5.56%) AWS Software Engineer
9 5 (5.56%) Full-Stack Developer
9 5 (5.56%) Full-Stack Java Developer
9 5 (5.56%) Linux Scripter
9 5 (5.56%) Mobile Engineer
9 5 (5.56%) Python Engineer
10 4 (4.44%) Lead
11 3 (3.33%) Data Engineer
11 3 (3.33%) Development Engineer
11 3 (3.33%) Full-Stack Engineer
11 3 (3.33%) Python Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (34.44%) Spring
2 15 (16.67%) Kafka
3 12 (13.33%) React
3 12 (13.33%) Spring Boot
4 9 (10.00%) AngularJS
4 9 (10.00%) CSS
5 8 (8.89%) OAuth
6 7 (7.78%) JMS
7 6 (6.67%) RESTful
8 5 (5.56%) OAuth2
8 5 (5.56%) SwiftUI
8 5 (5.56%) UIKit
9 4 (4.44%) .NET
10 3 (3.33%) Node.js
10 3 (3.33%) OpenID
10 3 (3.33%) OpenTelemetry
10 3 (3.33%) REST
10 3 (3.33%) SAML
11 2 (2.22%) JSON
11 2 (2.22%) MSMQ
Miscellaneous
1 21 (23.33%) Data Structures
2 15 (16.67%) Algorithms
3 7 (7.78%) Enterprise Software
4 5 (5.56%) Credit Risk
4 5 (5.56%) Equities
4 5 (5.56%) Equity Derivative
4 5 (5.56%) iPad
4 5 (5.56%) iPhone
4 5 (5.56%) Mobile App
4 5 (5.56%) Virtual Team
5 4 (4.44%) Cloud Native
6 3 (3.33%) Analogue Electronics
6 3 (3.33%) Data Centre
6 3 (3.33%) Derivative
6 3 (3.33%) Mainframe
6 3 (3.33%) Replication
7 2 (2.22%) Distributed Systems
7 2 (2.22%) Management Information System
7 2 (2.22%) Private Cloud
7 2 (2.22%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 32 (35.56%) Linux
2 11 (12.22%) Unix
3 7 (7.78%) Windows
4 5 (5.56%) Android
4 5 (5.56%) Apple iOS
5 3 (3.33%) HPUX
5 3 (3.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (3.33%) Solaris
6 2 (2.22%) Windows Server
7 1 (1.11%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 49 (54.44%) Agile
2 36 (40.00%) Problem-Solving
3 30 (33.33%) CI/CD
4 25 (27.78%) Multithreading
5 24 (26.67%) SDLC
6 15 (16.67%) DevOps
7 14 (15.56%) Computer Science
7 14 (15.56%) Concurrent Programming
7 14 (15.56%) Microservices
8 13 (14.44%) Full-Stack Development
8 13 (14.44%) Machine Learning
8 13 (14.44%) Test Automation
9 12 (13.33%) Artificial Intelligence
9 12 (13.33%) Continuous Improvement
9 12 (13.33%) Unit Testing
10 11 (12.22%) Design Patterns
11 10 (11.11%) Community of Practice
11 10 (11.11%) Performance Testing
11 10 (11.11%) Scrum
12 9 (10.00%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 57 (63.33%) Java
2 37 (41.11%) SQL
3 25 (27.78%) Python
4 13 (14.44%) TypeScript
5 12 (13.33%) JavaScript
6 9 (10.00%) Shell Script
7 5 (5.56%) C#
7 5 (5.56%) Objective-C
7 5 (5.56%) Swift
8 4 (4.44%) C
9 3 (3.33%) C++
10 2 (2.22%) Go
11 1 (1.11%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 9 (10.00%) Degree
2 4 (4.44%) Computer Science Degree
2 4 (4.44%) SC Cleared
2 4 (4.44%) Security Cleared
3 2 (2.22%) Master's Degree
4 1 (1.11%) AWS Certification
4 1 (1.11%) Azure Certification
4 1 (1.11%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (3.33%) Disclosure Scotland
2 1 (1.11%) Data Quality
2 1 (1.11%) DICOM
2 1 (1.11%) HL7
2 1 (1.11%) ISO 13485
2 1 (1.11%) MISRA
2 1 (1.11%) MISRA C
2 1 (1.11%) QA
System Software
1 1 (1.11%) Active Directory
1 1 (1.11%) Firmware
1 1 (1.11%) GPFS
Systems Management
1 11 (12.22%) Grafana
1 11 (12.22%) Kubernetes
2 8 (8.89%) Terraform
3 2 (2.22%) Kustomize
3 2 (2.22%) NetBackup
3 2 (2.22%) Oracle RMAN
3 2 (2.22%) Prometheus
4 1 (1.11%) Single Sign-On
4 1 (1.11%) Veritas Storage Foundation
Vendors
1 10 (11.11%) Sybase
2 8 (8.89%) Dynatrace
2 8 (8.89%) Splunk
3 7 (7.78%) IBM
4 3 (3.33%) Mentor Graphics
4 3 (3.33%) Microsoft
4 3 (3.33%) Sun
4 3 (3.33%) Unisys
4 3 (3.33%) Veritas
5 1 (1.11%) Adobe
5 1 (1.11%) Atlassian
5 1 (1.11%) Brocade
5 1 (1.11%) Cisco
5 1 (1.11%) EMC
5 1 (1.11%) Facebook
5 1 (1.11%) ForgeRock
5 1 (1.11%) Google
5 1 (1.11%) HP
5 1 (1.11%) NetApp
5 1 (1.11%) Salesforce