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

6 months to
21 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 32 26
Rank change year-on-year +18 -6 -12
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 323 93 178
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 8.82% 4.82% 6.42%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.19% 5.36% 7.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 107 42 45
10th Percentile £445 £355 £425
25th Percentile £513 £385 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -6.98% -2.27%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £630
90th Percentile £675 £681 £683
England median daily rate £560 £600 £625
% change year-on-year -6.67% -4.00% +4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 140 33 78
10th Percentile £59.92 £63.00 £62.13
25th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.31
Median hourly rate £66.50 £67.50 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -1.48% -3.57% +7.69%
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.00 -
90th Percentile £70.00 £74.00 £73.75
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 2,887 1,735 2,307
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 78.86% 89.85% 83.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,629 1,013 1,473
10th Percentile £325 £213 £264
25th Percentile £425 £363 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.42%
75th Percentile £619 £615 £634
90th Percentile £725 £700 £700
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 435 220 255
10th Percentile £14.91 £14.98 £13.86
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.51 £40.00
Median hourly rate £62.25 £25.15 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year +147.51% -62.74% +5.23%
75th Percentile £68.00 £64.06 £72.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.00 £76.50
England median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -40.82% +3.61%

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 August 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 August 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 August 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 +16 221 £550 +47.65% 63
Gloucestershire +14 37 £550 -16.98% 80
Somerset -10 24 £448 -2.19% 18
Devon -9 18 £609 +35.28% 10
Wiltshire -10 11 £564 -6.24% 10
Dorset -2 5 - - 9
Cornwall - 3 £750 - 3
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 11 (3.41%) Confluence
2 5 (1.55%) SharePoint
3 3 (0.93%) Apache
3 3 (0.93%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 7 (2.17%) Spreadsheet
2 5 (1.55%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (0.93%) Simulink
4 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.62%) Oracle Payroll
Cloud Services
1 50 (15.48%) AWS
2 35 (10.84%) Azure
3 14 (4.33%) GCP
4 9 (2.79%) Serverless
5 7 (2.17%) GitHub
5 7 (2.17%) OCI
6 4 (1.24%) AWS CloudFormation
6 4 (1.24%) AWS Lambda
6 4 (1.24%) Entra ID
6 4 (1.24%) Microsoft 365
7 3 (0.93%) Amazon S3
7 3 (0.93%) Azure Functions
7 3 (0.93%) Azure Key Vault
7 3 (0.93%) Azure Service Bus
7 3 (0.93%) GitHub Copilot
7 3 (0.93%) PaaS
8 2 (0.62%) Amazon SQS
8 2 (0.62%) dbt
8 2 (0.62%) OpenShift
8 2 (0.62%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.17%) Ethernet
2 6 (1.86%) TCP/IP
3 1 (0.31%) AMQP
3 1 (0.31%) Firewall
3 1 (0.31%) Network Security
3 1 (0.31%) RS-232
3 1 (0.31%) RS-422
3 1 (0.31%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (2.48%) PostgreSQL
2 7 (2.17%) Elasticsearch
3 3 (0.93%) Apache Cassandra
3 3 (0.93%) Big Data
3 3 (0.93%) Data Warehouse
3 3 (0.93%) HBase
3 3 (0.93%) NoSQL
3 3 (0.93%) Relational Database
4 2 (0.62%) Amazon RDS
4 2 (0.62%) Geospatial Data
5 1 (0.31%) Amazon Athena
5 1 (0.31%) Amazon Aurora
5 1 (0.31%) Data Lake
5 1 (0.31%) DynamoDB
5 1 (0.31%) InfluxDB
5 1 (0.31%) MongoDB
5 1 (0.31%) Pinecone
5 1 (0.31%) Power BI
5 1 (0.31%) QGIS
5 1 (0.31%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 26 (8.05%) Git
2 21 (6.50%) GitLab
2 21 (6.50%) JIRA
3 20 (6.19%) Jenkins
4 17 (5.26%) Rational Rhapsody
5 8 (2.48%) Visual Studio
6 7 (2.17%) Rational DOORS
7 6 (1.86%) Eclipse
8 4 (1.24%) JUnit
8 4 (1.24%) Selenium
9 2 (0.62%) Bitbucket
10 1 (0.31%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 1 (0.31%) NUnit
General
1 44 (13.62%) Social Skills
2 21 (6.50%) Aerospace
3 16 (4.95%) Finance
3 16 (4.95%) Public Sector
4 9 (2.79%) Law
5 8 (2.48%) Analytical Skills
5 8 (2.48%) Military
6 6 (1.86%) Automotive
7 4 (1.24%) Documentation Skills
8 3 (0.93%) Avionics
8 3 (0.93%) Banking
9 2 (0.62%) Influencing Skills
9 2 (0.62%) Presentation Skills
9 2 (0.62%) Telecoms
10 1 (0.31%) Aviation
10 1 (0.31%) Legal
10 1 (0.31%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 231 (71.52%) Software Engineer
2 51 (15.79%) C++ Software Engineer
3 50 (15.48%) Developer
4 46 (14.24%) Embedded Engineer
5 45 (13.93%) Embedded Software Engineer
6 44 (13.62%) Ada Engineer
6 44 (13.62%) Ada Software Engineer
7 28 (8.67%) Software Developer
8 18 (5.57%) Applications Engineer
9 17 (5.26%) Lead
10 14 (4.33%) C# Software Engineer
10 14 (4.33%) SC Cleared Software Engineer
10 14 (4.33%) Senior
11 13 (4.02%) Java Engineer
12 12 (3.72%) Algorithm Engineer
12 12 (3.72%) Java Software Engineer
12 12 (3.72%) PHP Software Engineer
13 9 (2.79%) Senior Software Engineer
14 8 (2.48%) .NET Developer
15 6 (1.86%) Oracle Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (5.88%) REST
2 17 (5.26%) React
3 16 (4.95%) Terraform
4 15 (4.64%) .NET
5 11 (3.41%) Middleware
5 11 (3.41%) Node.js
6 8 (2.48%) Oracle Fusion
7 7 (2.17%) Web Services
8 6 (1.86%) AWS CDK
8 6 (1.86%) Jest
8 6 (1.86%) Qt
9 5 (1.55%) Quarkus
10 4 (1.24%) .NET Framework
10 4 (1.24%) CSS
10 4 (1.24%) GraphQL
10 4 (1.24%) HTML
10 4 (1.24%) Next.js
10 4 (1.24%) SOAP
10 4 (1.24%) Spring
10 4 (1.24%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 26 (8.05%) Cloud Native
2 23 (7.12%) Algorithms
3 11 (3.41%) Self-Motivation
4 8 (2.48%) Legacy Systems
5 7 (2.17%) Product Ownership
6 6 (1.86%) Embedded Systems
7 4 (1.24%) Team-Oriented Environment
8 3 (0.93%) Clustering
8 3 (0.93%) Distributed Systems
8 3 (0.93%) Wiki
9 2 (0.62%) Device Driver
10 1 (0.31%) AI Agents
10 1 (0.31%) Greenfield Project
10 1 (0.31%) Legacy Applications
10 1 (0.31%) Linux Command Line
10 1 (0.31%) Low-Code
10 1 (0.31%) Management Information System
10 1 (0.31%) Onboarding
10 1 (0.31%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 48 (14.86%) Linux
2 10 (3.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 10 (3.10%) Windows
3 5 (1.55%) Embedded Linux
4 4 (1.24%) Android
4 4 (1.24%) FreeRTOS
5 3 (0.93%) Debian
5 3 (0.93%) Rocky
5 3 (0.93%) Ubuntu
5 3 (0.93%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.31%) Windows 10
6 1 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 62 (19.20%) CI/CD
2 47 (14.55%) Agile
3 29 (8.98%) DevOps
4 25 (7.74%) SDLC
5 24 (7.43%) Problem-Solving
6 23 (7.12%) Test Automation
6 23 (7.12%) UML
7 20 (6.19%) Containerisation
8 17 (5.26%) Infrastructure as Code
8 17 (5.26%) Platform Engineering
8 17 (5.26%) Technical Leadership
9 16 (4.95%) AI
9 16 (4.95%) Stakeholder Management
10 15 (4.64%) Configuration Management
10 15 (4.64%) TDD
11 14 (4.33%) Validation
12 12 (3.72%) Continuous Improvement
12 12 (3.72%) Information Security
12 12 (3.72%) Software Delivery
13 11 (3.41%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 76 (23.53%) Ada
1 76 (23.53%) C++
2 52 (16.10%) Python
3 44 (13.62%) Java
4 40 (12.38%) C#
5 22 (6.81%) JavaScript
6 19 (5.88%) C
6 19 (5.88%) TypeScript
7 18 (5.57%) SQL
8 14 (4.33%) PHP
9 11 (3.41%) MATLAB
10 9 (2.79%) PL/SQL
10 9 (2.79%) PowerShell
11 7 (2.17%) Bash
12 5 (1.55%) Go
13 4 (1.24%) Rust
14 2 (0.62%) Kotlin
15 1 (0.31%) Ada 95
15 1 (0.31%) Fortran
15 1 (0.31%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 113 (34.98%) Security Cleared
2 86 (26.63%) SC Cleared
3 20 (6.19%) DV Cleared
4 15 (4.64%) Degree
5 12 (3.72%) BPSS Clearance
6 9 (2.79%) Computer Science Degree
7 6 (1.86%) Chartered Engineer
8 2 (0.62%) AWS Certification
8 2 (0.62%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 1 (0.31%) AWS Certified Developer
9 1 (0.31%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 1 (0.31%) CCNP
9 1 (0.31%) Cisco Certification
9 1 (0.31%) ISTQB
9 1 (0.31%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 1 (0.31%) OCA
9 1 (0.31%) Oracle Certification
9 1 (0.31%) RHCA
9 1 (0.31%) RHCE
9 1 (0.31%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (4.33%) IEC 61508
2 13 (4.02%) Def Stans
3 11 (3.41%) QA
4 7 (2.17%) Accessibility
5 6 (1.86%) MISRA
5 6 (1.86%) MISRA C
5 6 (1.86%) WCAG
6 5 (1.55%) NCSC
7 3 (0.93%) JSP 440
8 2 (0.62%) GDPR
9 1 (0.31%) MIL-STD-1553
System Software
1 31 (9.60%) Docker
2 2 (0.62%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.31%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 28 (8.67%) Kubernetes
2 18 (5.57%) Ansible
3 3 (0.93%) Functional Safety
3 3 (0.93%) Progress Chef
3 3 (0.93%) Single Sign-On
4 2 (0.62%) Docker Swarm
4 2 (0.62%) Puppet
5 1 (0.31%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
5 1 (0.31%) Grafana
5 1 (0.31%) Prometheus
5 1 (0.31%) PTC Integrity
Vendors
1 16 (4.95%) Oracle
2 14 (4.33%) Microsoft
3 8 (2.48%) IBM
4 7 (2.17%) Google
5 5 (1.55%) MathWorks
6 4 (1.24%) Red Hat
7 1 (0.31%) Cloudera
7 1 (0.31%) F5
7 1 (0.31%) Green Hills
7 1 (0.31%) PTC
7 1 (0.31%) VMware