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

6 months to
21 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 28 34
Rank change year-on-year +18 +6 -8
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 309 106 159
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 9.16% 6.29% 5.02%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.63% 6.92% 6.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 61 45 58
10th Percentile £418 £355 £400
25th Percentile £513 £413 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% +4.76% -9.33%
75th Percentile £644 £644 £656
90th Percentile £700 £683 £725
England median daily rate £550 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 188 43 75
10th Percentile £53.86 £62.50 £52.50
25th Percentile - £65.00 £61.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £67.50 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.70% -3.57% +6.87%
75th Percentile £67.25 £68.38 -
90th Percentile £68.00 £69.75 £72.25
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year - +4.00% -3.85%

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 2,656 1,531 2,626
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 78.70% 90.81% 82.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,442 949 1,680
10th Percentile £325 £220 £225
25th Percentile £413 £400 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £607 £620 £625
90th Percentile £713 £688 £700
England median daily rate £513 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 458 160 343
10th Percentile £16.44 £18.20 £13.88
25th Percentile £25.30 £18.87 £29.75
Median hourly rate £57.50 £57.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year - +4.55% -8.33%
75th Percentile £65.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £70.00 £77.50
England median hourly rate £46.80 £28.75 £36.50
% change year-on-year +62.78% -21.23% -0.11%

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 21 May 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 21 May 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 21 May 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 +9 237 £525 +40.00% 74
Gloucestershire +12 29 £606 -9.21% 52
Dorset +3 13 £550 -4.35% 20
Wiltshire -14 13 £575 -1.71% 14
Somerset -13 6 £671 +45.08% 29
Devon -21 6 £613 +22.50% 8
Cornwall - 2 £628 -
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 7 (2.27%) Apache
1 7 (2.27%) Confluence
2 2 (0.65%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.32%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (0.97%) Simulink
2 2 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 36 (11.65%) AWS
2 21 (6.80%) Azure
3 8 (2.59%) GCP
4 5 (1.62%) GitHub
5 4 (1.29%) OpenShift
6 3 (0.97%) Serverless
7 2 (0.65%) AWS CloudFormation
7 2 (0.65%) AWS Lambda
7 2 (0.65%) Power Platform
8 1 (0.32%) Amazon EC2
8 1 (0.32%) Amazon EventBridge
8 1 (0.32%) Amazon S3
8 1 (0.32%) Amazon SQS
8 1 (0.32%) Azure DevOps
8 1 (0.32%) Entra ID
8 1 (0.32%) Figma
8 1 (0.32%) GitHub Actions
8 1 (0.32%) Microsoft 365
8 1 (0.32%) Power Automate
8 1 (0.32%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 6 (1.94%) TCP/IP
2 5 (1.62%) Ethernet
3 1 (0.32%) AMQP
3 1 (0.32%) Bluetooth
3 1 (0.32%) Firewall
3 1 (0.32%) Network Security
3 1 (0.32%) VPN
3 1 (0.32%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (2.27%) PostgreSQL
2 5 (1.62%) Amazon RDS
3 4 (1.29%) Amazon Aurora
3 4 (1.29%) DynamoDB
3 4 (1.29%) MongoDB
3 4 (1.29%) MySQL
4 3 (0.97%) Relational Database
5 2 (0.65%) Apache Cassandra
5 2 (0.65%) Big Data
5 2 (0.65%) Elasticsearch
5 2 (0.65%) HBase
5 2 (0.65%) NoSQL
5 2 (0.65%) Power BI
6 1 (0.32%) Geospatial Data
6 1 (0.32%) GIS
6 1 (0.32%) InfluxDB
6 1 (0.32%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 23 (7.44%) GitLab
2 19 (6.15%) Rational Rhapsody
3 17 (5.50%) Git
4 15 (4.85%) Jenkins
5 10 (3.24%) JIRA
6 5 (1.62%) Eclipse
6 5 (1.62%) Visual Studio
7 4 (1.29%) Oracle APEX
8 3 (0.97%) Artifactory
8 3 (0.97%) JUnit
8 3 (0.97%) Selenium
8 3 (0.97%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.65%) Rational DOORS
10 1 (0.32%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 1 (0.32%) Bitbucket
10 1 (0.32%) NUnit
General
1 28 (9.06%) Aerospace
2 26 (8.41%) Social Skills
3 12 (3.88%) Finance
4 11 (3.56%) Law
5 9 (2.91%) Analytical Skills
5 9 (2.91%) Military
6 5 (1.62%) Public Sector
7 4 (1.29%) Banking
7 4 (1.29%) Electronics
8 2 (0.65%) Financial Institution
8 2 (0.65%) Investment Banking
8 2 (0.65%) Presentation Skills
8 2 (0.65%) Telecoms
9 1 (0.32%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.32%) Legal
9 1 (0.32%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 262 (84.79%) Software Engineer
2 60 (19.42%) C++ Software Engineer
3 52 (16.83%) Embedded Engineer
3 52 (16.83%) Embedded Software Engineer
4 30 (9.71%) Ada Engineer
4 30 (9.71%) Ada Software Engineer
5 29 (9.39%) Algorithm Engineer
6 20 (6.47%) Java Engineer
6 20 (6.47%) Java Software Engineer
7 18 (5.83%) Senior
8 17 (5.50%) Developer
9 15 (4.85%) Senior Software Engineer
10 12 (3.88%) Applications Engineer
11 11 (3.56%) C# Software Engineer
12 10 (3.24%) Lead
13 9 (2.91%) SC Cleared Software Engineer
14 8 (2.59%) Java Developer
15 7 (2.27%) C Software Engineer
15 7 (2.27%) C/C++ Software Engineer
16 6 (1.94%) Full-Stack Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (10.36%) Middleware
2 16 (5.18%) Qt
3 15 (4.85%) REST
4 10 (3.24%) Node.js
5 9 (2.91%) React
6 7 (2.27%) Spring Boot
7 6 (1.94%) .NET
8 5 (1.62%) AWS CDK
8 5 (1.62%) Web Services
9 4 (1.29%) GraphQL
9 4 (1.29%) SOAP
10 3 (0.97%) Apache NiFi
10 3 (0.97%) Elastic Stack
10 3 (0.97%) Flask
10 3 (0.97%) Jest
11 2 (0.65%) Kafka
11 2 (0.65%) pytest
11 2 (0.65%) Quarkus
11 2 (0.65%) RESTful
11 2 (0.65%) Yocto
Miscellaneous
1 45 (14.56%) Algorithms
2 10 (3.24%) Embedded Systems
3 9 (2.91%) Product Ownership
4 7 (2.27%) Cloud Native
4 7 (2.27%) Legacy Systems
5 6 (1.94%) Onboarding
6 5 (1.62%) Self-Motivation
7 2 (0.65%) AI Agents
7 2 (0.65%) Clustering
7 2 (0.65%) CUDA
7 2 (0.65%) Data Protection Act
7 2 (0.65%) Device Driver
7 2 (0.65%) Distributed Systems
8 1 (0.32%) Legacy Applications
8 1 (0.32%) Linux Command Line
8 1 (0.32%) Low-Code
8 1 (0.32%) Management Information System
8 1 (0.32%) Video\Live Streaming
8 1 (0.32%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 43 (13.92%) Linux
2 11 (3.56%) Windows
3 10 (3.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (1.29%) Debian
4 4 (1.29%) Rocky
4 4 (1.29%) Ubuntu
5 3 (0.97%) Embedded Linux
6 1 (0.32%) FreeRTOS
6 1 (0.32%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 54 (17.48%) CI/CD
2 34 (11.00%) Agile
3 21 (6.80%) UML
4 18 (5.83%) DevOps
4 18 (5.83%) Problem-Solving
5 17 (5.50%) Containerisation
5 17 (5.50%) Full-Stack Development
5 17 (5.50%) Technical Leadership
6 16 (5.18%) AI
7 15 (4.85%) SDLC
7 15 (4.85%) Test Automation
7 15 (4.85%) Workflow
8 14 (4.53%) Configuration Management
8 14 (4.53%) SysML
9 13 (4.21%) Continuous Improvement
10 12 (3.88%) Integration Testing
10 12 (3.88%) Microservices
10 12 (3.88%) Validation
11 11 (3.56%) TDD
11 11 (3.56%) Workflow Management
Programming Languages
1 86 (27.83%) Ada
2 82 (26.54%) C++
3 51 (16.50%) Java
4 44 (14.24%) Python
5 29 (9.39%) C
5 29 (9.39%) C#
6 24 (7.77%) MATLAB
7 15 (4.85%) JavaScript
8 10 (3.24%) PowerShell
8 10 (3.24%) TypeScript
9 9 (2.91%) SQL
10 7 (2.27%) Bash
11 5 (1.62%) Go
11 5 (1.62%) PHP
12 4 (1.29%) PL/SQL
13 1 (0.32%) Fortran
13 1 (0.32%) Scala
13 1 (0.32%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 110 (35.60%) Security Cleared
2 79 (25.57%) SC Cleared
3 21 (6.80%) DV Cleared
4 12 (3.88%) Degree
5 8 (2.59%) Computer Science Degree
6 5 (1.62%) BPSS Clearance
7 2 (0.65%) AWS Certification
7 2 (0.65%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 1 (0.32%) AWS Certified Developer
8 1 (0.32%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
8 1 (0.32%) CCNP
8 1 (0.32%) Cisco Certification
8 1 (0.32%) DBS Check
8 1 (0.32%) ISTQB
8 1 (0.32%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 1 (0.32%) Master's Degree
8 1 (0.32%) OCA
8 1 (0.32%) Oracle Certification
8 1 (0.32%) RHCA
8 1 (0.32%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 38 (12.30%) Def Stans
2 33 (10.68%) IEC 61508
3 18 (5.83%) MISRA
4 14 (4.53%) MISRA C
5 13 (4.21%) QA
6 5 (1.62%) NCSC
7 4 (1.29%) Accessibility
7 4 (1.29%) DO-178B
8 3 (0.97%) JSP 440
8 3 (0.97%) WCAG
9 1 (0.32%) Data Quality
9 1 (0.32%) DICOM
9 1 (0.32%) GDPR
9 1 (0.32%) HL7
System Software
1 27 (8.74%) Docker
2 4 (1.29%) Firmware
2 4 (1.29%) Oracle RAC
3 1 (0.32%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.32%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 23 (7.44%) Kubernetes
2 15 (4.85%) Ansible
3 8 (2.59%) Terraform
4 4 (1.29%) Data Guard
4 4 (1.29%) Grafana
4 4 (1.29%) Prometheus
5 3 (0.97%) Progress Chef
6 2 (0.65%) Puppet
7 1 (0.32%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
7 1 (0.32%) Docker Swarm
Vendors
1 11 (3.56%) IBM
2 10 (3.24%) MathWorks
3 9 (2.91%) Red Hat
4 7 (2.27%) Oracle
5 6 (1.94%) Microsoft
6 1 (0.32%) Cloudera
6 1 (0.32%) Databricks
6 1 (0.32%) F5
6 1 (0.32%) Google
6 1 (0.32%) VMware