Software Engineering Contract Job Trends in the South West

Software Engineering
England > South West

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the South West requiring Software Engineering skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 16 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 31 19
Rank change year-on-year +13 -12 -3
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 298 113 195
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 8.01% 5.66% 7.76%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.27% 6.25% 9.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 107 39 41
10th Percentile £413 £68 £425
25th Percentile £508 £375 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £458 £563
Median % change year-on-year +20.22% -18.67% +2.27%
75th Percentile £604 £575 £676
90th Percentile £675 £648 -
England median daily rate £550 £575 £601
% change year-on-year -4.35% -4.25% -0.99%
Number of hourly rates quoted 122 48 73
10th Percentile £54.21 £61.25 £61.25
25th Percentile £65.00 - £65.00
Median hourly rate £66.50 £65.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.31% -7.14% +7.69%
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.00 -
90th Percentile £70.00 £69.13 £70.25
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.50
% change year-on-year - -0.76% +0.77%

All Process & Methodology Skills
South West

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 the South West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 2,901 1,807 2,110
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 77.96% 90.53% 83.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,612 1,026 1,209
10th Percentile £340 £213 £303
25th Percentile £463 £375 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.39% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £721 £731
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 484 278 201
10th Percentile £14.27 £15.25 £22.50
25th Percentile £21.33 £18.87 £46.25
Median hourly rate £61.17 £25.15 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year +143.20% -62.74% +12.50%
75th Percentile £70.00 £63.75 £72.50
90th Percentile £76.75 £68.00 £74.44
England median hourly rate £38.13 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +51.59% -40.82% -5.56%

Software Engineering
Job Vacancy Trend in the South West

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Software Engineering relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West.

Software Engineering job vacancy trend in the South West

Software Engineering
Daily Rate Trend in the South West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing Software Engineering.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing Software Engineering

Software Engineering
Daily Rate Histogram in the South West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Software Engineering in the South West over the 6 months to 16 October 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Software Engineering in the South West

Software Engineering
Hourly Rate Trend in the South West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing Software Engineering.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing Software Engineering

Software Engineering
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South West

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Software Engineering in the South West over the 6 months to 16 October 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Software Engineering in the South West

Software Engineering
Contract Job Locations in the South West

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 South West region over the 6 months to 16 October 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
Bristol +7 191 £525 +31.25% 110
Gloucestershire +22 40 £550 -12.00% 125
Somerset -9 25 £470 +4.79% 43
Devon -5 15 £605 +34.44% 29
Dorset -2 12 - - 32
Wiltshire -8 5 £575 - 24
Cornwall - 3 £750 - 1
Software Engineering
England

Software Engineering
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South West 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 10 (3.36%) Confluence
2 7 (2.35%) SharePoint
3 3 (1.01%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.67%) Apache
Applications
1 9 (3.02%) Spreadsheet
2 6 (2.01%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 6 (2.01%) Oracle Payroll
Cloud Services
1 45 (15.10%) AWS
2 39 (13.09%) Azure
3 22 (7.38%) GCP
4 10 (3.36%) OCI
5 9 (3.02%) Serverless
6 6 (2.01%) GitHub
7 4 (1.34%) Azure Functions
7 4 (1.34%) Entra ID
7 4 (1.34%) Microsoft 365
7 4 (1.34%) Power Platform
8 3 (1.01%) AWS CloudFormation
8 3 (1.01%) AWS Lambda
8 3 (1.01%) Azure Data Factory
8 3 (1.01%) Azure DevOps
8 3 (1.01%) Azure Key Vault
8 3 (1.01%) Azure Service Bus
8 3 (1.01%) GitHub Copilot
8 3 (1.01%) PaaS
9 2 (0.67%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 2 (0.67%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.68%) Ethernet
2 4 (1.34%) TCP/IP
3 1 (0.34%) DHCP
3 1 (0.34%) DNS
3 1 (0.34%) Firewall
3 1 (0.34%) Network Security
3 1 (0.34%) RS-232
3 1 (0.34%) RS-422
3 1 (0.34%) SNMP
3 1 (0.34%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (2.68%) PostgreSQL
2 7 (2.35%) Elasticsearch
3 3 (1.01%) Apache Cassandra
3 3 (1.01%) Big Data
3 3 (1.01%) Data Lake
3 3 (1.01%) Data Warehouse
3 3 (1.01%) HBase
3 3 (1.01%) NoSQL
3 3 (1.01%) Pinecone
3 3 (1.01%) Power BI
3 3 (1.01%) SQL Server
4 2 (0.67%) Azure SQL Database
4 2 (0.67%) Chroma
4 2 (0.67%) Metadata
4 2 (0.67%) Power Query
4 2 (0.67%) Relational Database
4 2 (0.67%) Star Schema
5 1 (0.34%) Amazon RDS
5 1 (0.34%) BigQuery
5 1 (0.34%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 29 (9.73%) JIRA
2 24 (8.05%) GitLab
3 20 (6.71%) Rational Rhapsody
4 19 (6.38%) Jenkins
5 16 (5.37%) Git
6 9 (3.02%) Rational DOORS
7 6 (2.01%) Visual Studio
8 4 (1.34%) Eclipse
9 3 (1.01%) JUnit
9 3 (1.01%) Selenium
10 1 (0.34%) Bitbucket
General
1 32 (10.74%) Social Skills
2 22 (7.38%) Finance
3 19 (6.38%) Aerospace
4 17 (5.70%) Public Sector
5 9 (3.02%) Analytical Skills
6 7 (2.35%) Law
6 7 (2.35%) Military
7 6 (2.01%) Automotive
8 5 (1.68%) Banking
9 4 (1.34%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
10 3 (1.01%) Avionics
11 2 (0.67%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.34%) Aviation
12 1 (0.34%) Legal
12 1 (0.34%) Manufacturing
12 1 (0.34%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 175 (58.72%) Software Engineer
2 61 (20.47%) Developer
3 55 (18.46%) C++ Software Engineer
4 39 (13.09%) Software Developer
5 35 (11.74%) Embedded Engineer
6 34 (11.41%) Embedded Software Engineer
7 26 (8.72%) Ada Engineer
7 26 (8.72%) Ada Software Engineer
8 20 (6.71%) Lead
9 15 (5.03%) Applications Engineer
9 15 (5.03%) Senior
9 15 (5.03%) Technical Leader
10 12 (4.03%) PHP Software Engineer
10 12 (4.03%) Software Team Leader
10 12 (4.03%) Team Leader
11 11 (3.69%) Technical Team Leader
12 10 (3.36%) Oracle Developer
12 10 (3.36%) Qt Software Engineer
13 9 (3.02%) C# Software Engineer
14 8 (2.68%) .NET Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (7.38%) Terraform
2 15 (5.03%) Qt
2 15 (5.03%) React
2 15 (5.03%) REST
3 13 (4.36%) .NET
4 12 (4.03%) Oracle Fusion
5 7 (2.35%) Node.js
6 6 (2.01%) Jest
7 5 (1.68%) Quarkus
7 5 (1.68%) Web Services
8 4 (1.34%) .NET Framework
8 4 (1.34%) CSS
8 4 (1.34%) HTML
8 4 (1.34%) Middleware
8 4 (1.34%) Next.js
8 4 (1.34%) Spring
8 4 (1.34%) Spring Boot
9 3 (1.01%) .NET Core
9 3 (1.01%) AWS CDK
9 3 (1.01%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 36 (12.08%) Cloud Native
2 9 (3.02%) Algorithms
3 8 (2.68%) Self-Motivation
4 7 (2.35%) Legacy Systems
5 6 (2.01%) Product Ownership
6 4 (1.34%) Onboarding
6 4 (1.34%) Team-Oriented Environment
7 3 (1.01%) AI Agents
7 3 (1.01%) Clustering
7 3 (1.01%) Distributed Systems
7 3 (1.01%) Embedded Systems
7 3 (1.01%) Wiki
8 2 (0.67%) Device Driver
8 2 (0.67%) Mobile App
8 2 (0.67%) Virtual Team
9 1 (0.34%) Data Protection Act
9 1 (0.34%) Data Structures
9 1 (0.34%) Greenfield Project
9 1 (0.34%) Low-Code
9 1 (0.34%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 29 (9.73%) Linux
2 9 (3.02%) Windows
3 6 (2.01%) FreeRTOS
3 6 (2.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 5 (1.68%) Embedded Linux
4 5 (1.68%) Windows Server
5 4 (1.34%) Android
6 2 (0.67%) Debian
6 2 (0.67%) Rocky
6 2 (0.67%) Ubuntu
7 1 (0.34%) Windows 10
7 1 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 61 (20.47%) CI/CD
2 42 (14.09%) Agile
3 38 (12.75%) DevOps
4 27 (9.06%) SDLC
5 24 (8.05%) Problem-Solving
6 22 (7.38%) Containerisation
6 22 (7.38%) Infrastructure as Code
6 22 (7.38%) Platform Engineering
6 22 (7.38%) UML
7 19 (6.38%) Test Automation
8 18 (6.04%) Software Delivery
9 16 (5.37%) DevSecOps
9 16 (5.37%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 16 (5.37%) Stakeholder Management
10 15 (5.03%) Business Intelligence
10 15 (5.03%) Multithreading
10 15 (5.03%) Requirements Gathering
11 14 (4.70%) Integration Testing
12 13 (4.36%) AI
12 13 (4.36%) Information Security
Programming Languages
1 85 (28.52%) C++
2 48 (16.11%) Ada
3 43 (14.43%) Python
4 39 (13.09%) Java
5 38 (12.75%) C#
6 26 (8.72%) SQL
7 19 (6.38%) TypeScript
8 18 (6.04%) JavaScript
9 14 (4.70%) PHP
10 13 (4.36%) C
10 13 (4.36%) PL/SQL
11 7 (2.35%) Go
12 6 (2.01%) PowerShell
13 4 (1.34%) Rust
14 3 (1.01%) Embedded C
14 3 (1.01%) Embedded C++
15 2 (0.67%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 2 (0.67%) Kotlin
16 1 (0.34%) Ada 95
16 1 (0.34%) Fortran
Qualifications
1 93 (31.21%) Security Cleared
2 69 (23.15%) SC Cleared
3 23 (7.72%) DV Cleared
4 16 (5.37%) Degree
5 10 (3.36%) BPSS Clearance
6 8 (2.68%) Computer Science Degree
7 6 (2.01%) Chartered Engineer
8 2 (0.67%) AWS Certification
8 2 (0.67%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 1 (0.34%) AWS Certified Developer
9 1 (0.34%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (4.36%) MISRA
1 13 (4.36%) MISRA C
2 11 (3.69%) IEC 61508
3 10 (3.36%) Def Stans
4 9 (3.02%) QA
5 8 (2.68%) Accessibility
6 6 (2.01%) WCAG
7 3 (1.01%) JSP 440
7 3 (1.01%) NCSC
8 2 (0.67%) Data Quality
8 2 (0.67%) GDPR
9 1 (0.34%) MIL-STD-1553
System Software
1 33 (11.07%) Docker
2 6 (2.01%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 35 (11.74%) Kubernetes
2 16 (5.37%) Ansible
3 3 (1.01%) Functional Safety
3 3 (1.01%) Single Sign-On
4 1 (0.34%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
4 1 (0.34%) Docker Swarm
4 1 (0.34%) McAfee ePO
4 1 (0.34%) PTC Integrity
4 1 (0.34%) SolarWinds Orion
4 1 (0.34%) WMI
4 1 (0.34%) WSUS
Vendors
1 22 (7.38%) Oracle
2 18 (6.04%) Google
3 15 (5.03%) Microsoft
4 4 (1.34%) Red Hat
5 3 (1.01%) IBM
6 2 (0.67%) Databricks
6 2 (0.67%) Dynatrace
6 2 (0.67%) Splunk
7 1 (0.34%) Cisco
7 1 (0.34%) Cloudera
7 1 (0.34%) F5
7 1 (0.34%) Fortinet
7 1 (0.34%) Green Hills
7 1 (0.34%) McAfee
7 1 (0.34%) Palo Alto
7 1 (0.34%) PTC
7 1 (0.34%) QinetiQ
7 1 (0.34%) SolarWinds
7 1 (0.34%) Thales