Software Developer Contracts in the UK excluding London

Software Developer
UK > UK excluding London

The median Software Developer daily rate in the UK excluding London is £475, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 21 May 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 274 180 214
Rank change year-on-year -94 +34 +31
Contract jobs requiring a Software Developer 65 240 250
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 0.50% 1.18% 1.08%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.55% 1.28% 1.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 45 66 179
10th Percentile £402 £338 £350
25th Percentile £435 £407 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +5.56% -5.26% -2.06%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £581
90th Percentile £620 £656 £640
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £520
% change year-on-year - +0.96% +4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 13 15
10th Percentile £50.50 - £49.11
25th Percentile £51.25 £46.25 £51.25
Median hourly rate £52.50 £58.91 £58.59
Median % change year-on-year -10.87% +0.54% +7.50%
75th Percentile £53.75 £65.00 £65.75
90th Percentile £54.50 £77.00 £73.47
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £60.70 £58.59
% change year-on-year -13.51% +3.61% +20.21%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK excluding London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the UK excluding London. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK excluding London with a recognized job title 11,872 18,741 21,812
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.89% 92.48% 94.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,548 11,455 15,203
10th Percentile £213 £213 £225
25th Percentile £363 £363 £394
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £489 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% -2.20% +5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £595 £600
90th Percentile £650 £688 £688
UK median daily rate £510 £525 £543
% change year-on-year -2.86% -3.23% +3.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 856 2,269 1,109
10th Percentile £13.84 £12.50 £13.41
25th Percentile £17.29 £15.75 £18.03
Median hourly rate £26.31 £40.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -34.23% -5.88% +112.50%
75th Percentile £63.75 £61.60 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £73.75 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £27.97 £36.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year -23.38% -18.89% +88.21%

Software Developer
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Job postings that featured Software Developer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Job vacancy trend for Software Developer in the UK excluding London

Software Developer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Software Developer in the UK excluding London.

Daily rate trend for Software Developer in the UK excluding London

Software Developer
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Software Developer in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 21 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Software Developer in the UK excluding London

Software Developer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Software Developer in the UK excluding London.

Hourly rate trend for Software Developer in the UK excluding London

Software Developer
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Software Developer within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 21 May 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
North of England -46 25 £500 +11.11% 191
North West -16 18 £500 +19.05% 129
East of England +26 10 £531 +9.54% 80
Scotland -15 10 £474 +2.93% 27
South East +20 6 £525 +27.27% 149
South West +8 5 £550 +4.76% 67
Northern Ireland -4 4 £364 -44.04% 4
Yorkshire -16 4 £525 +16.67% 39
West Midlands -3 3 £425 +13.33% 86
Midlands -16 3 £425 - 124
North East -17 3 - - 25
Wales -3 2 £246 -52.69% 17
Software Developer
UK

Software Developer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London

For the 6 months to 21 May 2025, Software Developer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the UK excluding London region featuring Software Developer in the job title.

1 27 (41.54%) AWS
2 24 (36.92%) Agile
3 23 (35.38%) JavaScript
3 23 (35.38%) SQL
4 22 (33.85%) Python
5 18 (27.69%) Java
5 18 (27.69%) Node.js
5 18 (27.69%) React
5 18 (27.69%) CI/CD
6 17 (26.15%) Public Sector
6 17 (26.15%) Security Cleared
7 16 (24.62%) C#
7 16 (24.62%) Serverless
8 13 (20.00%) Full-Stack Development
8 13 (20.00%) Code Quality
8 13 (20.00%) Docker
8 13 (20.00%) Microservices
8 13 (20.00%) AWS Lambda
9 12 (18.46%) DevOps
9 12 (18.46%) Git
9 12 (18.46%) RESTful
9 12 (18.46%) .NET
9 12 (18.46%) SC Cleared
10 11 (16.92%) Spring
10 11 (16.92%) HTML
10 11 (16.92%) Amazon S3
11 10 (15.38%) AngularJS
11 10 (15.38%) TypeScript
11 10 (15.38%) Scrum
11 10 (15.38%) C++

Software Developer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 2 (3.08%) CMS
2 1 (1.54%) GeoServer
2 1 (1.54%) Headless CMS
2 1 (1.54%) JBoss
2 1 (1.54%) OpenEdge
2 1 (1.54%) OpenROAD
2 1 (1.54%) SAS
2 1 (1.54%) WordPress
Applications
1 6 (9.23%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (1.54%) BusinessWorks
Cloud Services
1 27 (41.54%) AWS
2 16 (24.62%) Serverless
3 13 (20.00%) AWS Lambda
4 11 (16.92%) Amazon S3
5 9 (13.85%) Azure
6 6 (9.23%) GitHub
7 5 (7.69%) SaaS
8 4 (6.15%) GitHub Actions
9 3 (4.62%) Amazon SQS
9 3 (4.62%) AWS CloudFormation
9 3 (4.62%) AWS CodePipeline
9 3 (4.62%) OpenShift
10 2 (3.08%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 2 (3.08%) Amazon EC2
10 2 (3.08%) AWS CodeBuild
11 1 (1.54%) Amazon GuardDuty
11 1 (1.54%) AWS Fargate
11 1 (1.54%) Entra ID
11 1 (1.54%) PaaS
11 1 (1.54%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 2 (3.08%) 3GPP
1 2 (3.08%) 4G
1 2 (3.08%) 5G
1 2 (3.08%) HTTPS
1 2 (3.08%) Wireless
2 1 (1.54%) Fibre Channel
2 1 (1.54%) iSCSI
2 1 (1.54%) SAN
2 1 (1.54%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (15.38%) PostgreSQL
2 6 (9.23%) MongoDB
2 6 (9.23%) SQL Server
3 5 (7.69%) MySQL
4 3 (4.62%) Amazon RDS
4 3 (4.62%) DynamoDB
4 3 (4.62%) GIS
5 2 (3.08%) Amazon Aurora
5 2 (3.08%) Azure SQL Database
5 2 (3.08%) NoSQL
5 2 (3.08%) ObjectStore
5 2 (3.08%) Relational Database
5 2 (3.08%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 1 (1.54%) Amazon Redshift
6 1 (1.54%) Big Data
6 1 (1.54%) CockroachDB
6 1 (1.54%) Elasticsearch
6 1 (1.54%) Geospatial Data
6 1 (1.54%) Metadata
6 1 (1.54%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 12 (18.46%) Git
2 5 (7.69%) GitLab
3 4 (6.15%) Jenkins
3 4 (6.15%) JIRA
4 2 (3.08%) Artifactory
4 2 (3.08%) Cypress.io
4 2 (3.08%) Maven
4 2 (3.08%) SonarQube
4 2 (3.08%) Sonatype Nexus
5 1 (1.54%) Appium
5 1 (1.54%) gulp
5 1 (1.54%) Jasmine
5 1 (1.54%) Mocha
5 1 (1.54%) Newman
5 1 (1.54%) Postman
5 1 (1.54%) Selenium
5 1 (1.54%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
5 1 (1.54%) Subversion
5 1 (1.54%) tSQLt
5 1 (1.54%) Visual Studio
General
1 17 (26.15%) Public Sector
2 8 (12.31%) Social Skills
3 6 (9.23%) Finance
4 3 (4.62%) Retail
5 2 (3.08%) Analytical Skills
5 2 (3.08%) Banking
5 2 (3.08%) Telecoms
5 2 (3.08%) Wholesale Banking
6 1 (1.54%) Aerospace
6 1 (1.54%) Aviation
6 1 (1.54%) Health Technology
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (27.69%) Node.js
1 18 (27.69%) React
2 12 (18.46%) .NET
2 12 (18.46%) RESTful
3 11 (16.92%) HTML
3 11 (16.92%) Spring
4 10 (15.38%) AngularJS
5 9 (13.85%) REST
6 8 (12.31%) Spring Boot
7 7 (10.77%) AWS CDK
8 6 (9.23%) Web Services
9 5 (7.69%) CSS
10 4 (6.15%) .NET Core
11 3 (4.62%) ASP.NET Web API
11 3 (4.62%) Hibernate
11 3 (4.62%) Jest
11 3 (4.62%) XML
12 2 (3.08%) Apache CXF
12 2 (3.08%) ASP.NET
12 2 (3.08%) Ruby on Rails
Miscellaneous
1 3 (4.62%) Derivative
1 3 (4.62%) Distributed Systems
1 3 (4.62%) Equities
1 3 (4.62%) Equity Derivative
1 3 (4.62%) Legacy Systems
1 3 (4.62%) Mobile App
1 3 (4.62%) Self-Motivation
2 2 (3.08%) Cloud Native
2 2 (3.08%) Greenfield Project
2 2 (3.08%) NHS
3 1 (1.54%) Client/Server
3 1 (1.54%) Clustering
3 1 (1.54%) Enterprise Software
3 1 (1.54%) NVMe
3 1 (1.54%) Product Ownership
3 1 (1.54%) Replication
3 1 (1.54%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 4 (6.15%) Linux
2 2 (3.08%) Unix
3 1 (1.54%) Data ONTAP
3 1 (1.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (1.54%) Windows
3 1 (1.54%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 24 (36.92%) Agile
2 18 (27.69%) CI/CD
3 13 (20.00%) Code Quality
3 13 (20.00%) Full-Stack Development
3 13 (20.00%) Microservices
4 12 (18.46%) DevOps
5 10 (15.38%) Scrum
6 9 (13.85%) Artificial Intelligence
6 9 (13.85%) Software Engineering
6 9 (13.85%) Test Automation
7 8 (12.31%) Containerisation
7 8 (12.31%) Problem-Solving
8 7 (10.77%) Continuous Integration
9 6 (9.23%) Clean Code
9 6 (9.23%) Conversational UI
9 6 (9.23%) Unit Testing
10 5 (7.69%) Infrastructure as Code
10 5 (7.69%) SDLC
11 4 (6.15%) User Experience
11 4 (6.15%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 23 (35.38%) JavaScript
1 23 (35.38%) SQL
2 22 (33.85%) Python
3 18 (27.69%) Java
4 16 (24.62%) C#
5 10 (15.38%) C++
5 10 (15.38%) TypeScript
6 4 (6.15%) T-SQL
7 2 (3.08%) Go
7 2 (3.08%) Kotlin
7 2 (3.08%) PHP
7 2 (3.08%) PowerShell
7 2 (3.08%) Ruby
7 2 (3.08%) Scala
8 1 (1.54%) Bash
8 1 (1.54%) Perl
8 1 (1.54%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 17 (26.15%) Security Cleared
2 12 (18.46%) SC Cleared
3 9 (13.85%) Degree
4 4 (6.15%) DV Cleared
5 1 (1.54%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (9.23%) QA
2 2 (3.08%) Accessibility
3 1 (1.54%) Disclosure Scotland
3 1 (1.54%) GDPR
3 1 (1.54%) HL7
3 1 (1.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 1 (1.54%) WCAG
System Software
1 13 (20.00%) Docker
2 1 (1.54%) Active Directory
2 1 (1.54%) GPFS
2 1 (1.54%) NFS
Systems Management
1 9 (13.85%) Kubernetes
1 9 (13.85%) Terraform
2 3 (4.62%) Ansible
3 2 (3.08%) Grafana
4 1 (1.54%) SCCM
4 1 (1.54%) Veritas Storage Foundation
Vendors
1 7 (10.77%) Microsoft
2 6 (9.23%) PayPal
3 4 (6.15%) Google
4 3 (4.62%) Oracle
5 1 (1.54%) Brio
5 1 (1.54%) Brocade
5 1 (1.54%) EMC
5 1 (1.54%) IBM
5 1 (1.54%) NetApp
5 1 (1.54%) RedGate
5 1 (1.54%) ServiceNow
5 1 (1.54%) Sybase
5 1 (1.54%) TIBCO
5 1 (1.54%) Veritas