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 vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 17 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 37 21 14
Rank change year-on-year -16 -7 +12
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 91 195 312
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the South West 4.61% 7.36% 9.64%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.10% 8.79% 11.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 38 41 205
10th Percentile £312 £438 £450
25th Percentile £413 £463 £506
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.82% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £642 £638 £650
90th Percentile £685 £676 £700
England median daily rate £600 £625 £610
% change year-on-year -4.00% +2.46% +1.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 77 60
10th Percentile £63.25 £61.25 £49.83
25th Percentile - £65.00 £60.91
Median hourly rate £65.00 £70.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -7.14% +7.69% -
75th Percentile £68.00 - £70.00
90th Percentile £69.63 £73.75 £78.00
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year -0.76% +0.77% +8.33%

All Process and 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 1,783 2,219 2,819
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 90.37% 83.74% 87.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,031 1,323 1,948
10th Percentile £220 £271 £310
25th Percentile £375 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £706 £701 £725
England median daily rate £510 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.86% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 241 214 254
10th Percentile £15.00 £16.18 £20.08
25th Percentile £18.51 £48.50 £41.70
Median hourly rate £25.15 £67.50 £63.00
Median % change year-on-year -62.74% +7.14% +9.14%
75th Percentile £63.75 £72.50 £73.75
90th Percentile £68.75 £75.00 £83.40
England median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £43.79
% change year-on-year -41.51% -1.81% +51.01%

Software Engineering
Job Vacancy Trend in the South West

Job postings citing Software Engineering as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the South West.

Job vacancy trend for Software Engineering 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 17 September 2025.

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 17 September 2025.

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 17 September 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
Bristol -11 59 £538 +4.88% 118
Devon +12 10 £450 -5.26% 15
Somerset +9 9 £449 -0.33% 18
Gloucestershire -21 8 £644 +2.18% 96
Wiltshire +13 4 £605 +10.00% 15
Software Engineering
England

Software Engineering
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the South West 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 5 (5.49%) Apache
2 2 (2.20%) Apache Airflow
2 2 (2.20%) Oracle Workflow
3 1 (1.10%) nginx
Applications
1 1 (1.10%) Chatbot
1 1 (1.10%) Simulink
Cloud Services
1 23 (25.27%) AWS
2 10 (10.99%) Azure
3 8 (8.79%) GCP
4 6 (6.59%) Serverless
5 5 (5.49%) GitHub
5 5 (5.49%) npm
6 4 (4.40%) AWS CloudFormation
7 3 (3.30%) AWS Lambda
7 3 (3.30%) Azure DevOps
8 2 (2.20%) Amazon EC2
8 2 (2.20%) Amazon ECS
8 2 (2.20%) Amazon EKS
8 2 (2.20%) Amazon S3
8 2 (2.20%) Azure AKS
8 2 (2.20%) Azure Cosmos DB
8 2 (2.20%) Entra ID
8 2 (2.20%) Figma
8 2 (2.20%) OpenShift
8 2 (2.20%) Prefect
8 2 (2.20%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 2 (2.20%) Ethernet
1 2 (2.20%) TCP/IP
2 1 (1.10%) Cisco Nexus
2 1 (1.10%) Firewall
2 1 (1.10%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (7.69%) GIS
2 5 (5.49%) PostgreSQL
3 3 (3.30%) Geospatial Data
4 2 (2.20%) Amazon RDS
4 2 (2.20%) ClickHouse
4 2 (2.20%) Elasticsearch
4 2 (2.20%) Flink
4 2 (2.20%) MySQL
4 2 (2.20%) NoSQL
4 2 (2.20%) Oracle Database
4 2 (2.20%) SQL Server
5 1 (1.10%) MongoDB
5 1 (1.10%) Spatial Data
Development Applications
1 9 (9.89%) Git
2 6 (6.59%) Jenkins
3 5 (5.49%) GitLab
4 3 (3.30%) Cypress.io
4 3 (3.30%) webpack
5 2 (2.20%) Artifactory
5 2 (2.20%) CMake
5 2 (2.20%) Eclipse
5 2 (2.20%) JIRA
5 2 (2.20%) Storybook
5 2 (2.20%) Visual Studio
5 2 (2.20%) Vite
6 1 (1.10%) GoogleTest
6 1 (1.10%) Gradle
6 1 (1.10%) SonarQube
6 1 (1.10%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 12 (13.19%) Social Skills
2 7 (7.69%) Aerospace
2 7 (7.69%) Public Sector
3 6 (6.59%) Law
4 4 (4.40%) Analytical Skills
4 4 (4.40%) Automotive
5 3 (3.30%) Military
6 2 (2.20%) Finance
6 2 (2.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 2 (2.20%) Tech for Good
7 1 (1.10%) Banking
7 1 (1.10%) Electronics
7 1 (1.10%) Games
7 1 (1.10%) Manufacturing
7 1 (1.10%) Marketing
7 1 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
7 1 (1.10%) Retail
7 1 (1.10%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 36 (39.56%) Software Engineer
2 15 (16.48%) Developer
3 13 (14.29%) C++ Software Engineer
4 10 (10.99%) Support Engineer
5 9 (9.89%) Product Engineer
5 9 (9.89%) Products Support Engineer
5 9 (9.89%) Software Support Engineer
6 8 (8.79%) Linux Engineer
6 8 (8.79%) Linux Support
6 8 (8.79%) Linux Support Engineer
6 8 (8.79%) Senior
7 5 (5.49%) Data Engineer
7 5 (5.49%) Documentation Officer
8 4 (4.40%) Architect
8 4 (4.40%) Full-Stack Engineer
8 4 (4.40%) Full-Stack Software Engineer
8 4 (4.40%) Lead
8 4 (4.40%) Platform Engineer
8 4 (4.40%) Senior Software Engineer
8 4 (4.40%) Software Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (23.08%) Middleware
2 17 (18.68%) Qt
3 15 (16.48%) React
4 13 (14.29%) Node.js
5 7 (7.69%) CSS
5 7 (7.69%) HTML
5 7 (7.69%) REST
6 6 (6.59%) AngularJS
7 5 (5.49%) Spring
8 4 (4.40%) Apache NiFi
8 4 (4.40%) AWS CDK
8 4 (4.40%) Spring Boot
8 4 (4.40%) Vue
8 4 (4.40%) Web Services
9 3 (3.30%) Django
9 3 (3.30%) RESTful
10 2 (2.20%) Express.js
10 2 (2.20%) JDBC
10 2 (2.20%) NumPy
10 2 (2.20%) Zustand
Miscellaneous
1 6 (6.59%) Video\Live Streaming
2 4 (4.40%) Cloud Native
2 4 (4.40%) Self-Motivation
3 2 (2.20%) Algorithms
3 2 (2.20%) CUDA
3 2 (2.20%) Data Protection Act
3 2 (2.20%) Greenfield Project
3 2 (2.20%) IoT
3 2 (2.20%) Robotics
4 1 (1.10%) Data Structures
4 1 (1.10%) Distributed Systems
4 1 (1.10%) Embedded Systems
4 1 (1.10%) Hackathon
4 1 (1.10%) Management Information System
4 1 (1.10%) Public Cloud
4 1 (1.10%) Raspberry Pi
4 1 (1.10%) Renewable Energy
Operating Systems
1 25 (27.47%) Linux
2 16 (17.58%) Windows
3 9 (9.89%) Ubuntu
4 1 (1.10%) Android
4 1 (1.10%) Robot Operating System
4 1 (1.10%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 18 (19.78%) Agile
2 15 (16.48%) CI/CD
3 12 (13.19%) Test Automation
4 11 (12.09%) Configuration Management
4 11 (12.09%) DevOps
4 11 (12.09%) Full-Stack Development
5 10 (10.99%) Problem-Solving
6 9 (9.89%) Infrastructure as Code
7 7 (7.69%) Containerisation
7 7 (7.69%) Software Testing
8 6 (6.59%) Analytics
8 6 (6.59%) Information Security
8 6 (6.59%) Microservices
8 6 (6.59%) User Experience
9 5 (5.49%) Computer Science
9 5 (5.49%) Continuous Integration
9 5 (5.49%) Mentoring
9 5 (5.49%) SDLC
9 5 (5.49%) Software Delivery
9 5 (5.49%) Workflow
Programming Languages
1 38 (41.76%) C++
2 26 (28.57%) JavaScript
3 25 (27.47%) Python
4 24 (26.37%) Ada
5 15 (16.48%) C
5 15 (16.48%) TypeScript
6 13 (14.29%) Java
7 11 (12.09%) Shell Script
8 10 (10.99%) SQL
9 8 (8.79%) PowerShell
10 5 (5.49%) C#
11 3 (3.30%) Go
12 2 (2.20%) Bash
12 2 (2.20%) Bicep
12 2 (2.20%) Perl
13 1 (1.10%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 36 (39.56%) Security Cleared
2 25 (27.47%) SC Cleared
3 9 (9.89%) Degree
4 7 (7.69%) DV Cleared
5 5 (5.49%) Computer Science Degree
6 4 (4.40%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
7 2 (2.20%) BPSS Clearance
8 1 (1.10%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (12.09%) Def Stans
1 11 (12.09%) IEC 61508
1 11 (12.09%) MISRA
1 11 (12.09%) MISRA C
2 7 (7.69%) QA
3 2 (2.20%) Accessibility
3 2 (2.20%) Data Quality
3 2 (2.20%) WCAG
4 1 (1.10%) GDPR
System Software
1 11 (12.09%) Docker
2 2 (2.20%) Active Directory
3 1 (1.10%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 15 (16.48%) Terraform
2 10 (10.99%) Ansible
3 8 (8.79%) Kubernetes
4 2 (2.20%) Grafana
4 2 (2.20%) Kibana
5 1 (1.10%) Podman
5 1 (1.10%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 12 (13.19%) Red Hat
2 6 (6.59%) Microsoft
3 5 (5.49%) VMware
4 4 (4.40%) Google
5 2 (2.20%) Databricks
5 2 (2.20%) Oracle
6 1 (1.10%) Cisco
6 1 (1.10%) ESRI
6 1 (1.10%) Genesys
6 1 (1.10%) NVIDIA
6 1 (1.10%) Rapid7
6 1 (1.10%) Salesforce
6 1 (1.10%) SAP