Software Engineering Contracts in the UK excluding London

Software Engineering
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the UK excluding London requiring Software Engineering skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Software Engineering over the 6 months leading up to 23 June 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Jun 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 58 28 49
Rank change year-on-year -30 +21 -3
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 530 1,217 938
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 3.92% 5.70% 4.11%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.33% 6.92% 4.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 301 433 557
10th Percentile £332 £358 £406
25th Percentile £419 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -7.41% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £638
90th Percentile £663 £688 £700
UK median daily rate £575 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -4.17% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 60 414 169
10th Percentile £46.08 £46.25 £46.65
25th Percentile £59.27 £52.50 £53.75
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £68.13 £70.00 £70.30
90th Percentile £78.05 £75.00 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year - - +13.04%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK excluding London

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 UK excluding London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 12,235 17,586 20,327
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 90.46% 82.35% 89.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,495 10,292 13,879
10th Percentile £235 £250 £263
25th Percentile £368 £380 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - +1.01%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £600
90th Percentile £650 £688 £694
UK median daily rate £502 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -4.33% -4.55% +1.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 996 2,217 1,273
10th Percentile £13.83 £12.50 £11.84
25th Percentile £16.90 £15.50 £15.21
Median hourly rate £25.08 £38.12 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -34.22% +17.29% +54.76%
75th Percentile £55.00 £61.60 £63.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £73.45 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £37.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year -32.93% +7.14% +34.62%

Software Engineering
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Job postings citing Software Engineering as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Job vacancy trend for Software Engineering in the UK excluding London

Software Engineering
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

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

Daily rate trend for Software Engineering in the UK excluding London

Software Engineering
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Software Engineering in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 23 June 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Software Engineering in the UK excluding London

Software Engineering
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

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

Hourly rate trend for Software Engineering in the UK excluding London

Software Engineering
Hourly Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Software Engineering in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 23 June 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Software Engineering in the UK excluding London

Software Engineering
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 Engineering within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 23 June 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 -41 120 £500 -3.38% 1,921
South East -23 101 £501 -7.95% 2,141
Scotland -3 93 £478 +4.95% 765
South West -11 88 £525 - 985
North West -23 85 £500 -4.76% 1,124
Midlands -37 58 £508 +6.84% 957
East of England -34 51 £488 -2.35% 1,005
West Midlands -22 41 £558 +20.54% 557
Yorkshire -29 31 £491 +9.20% 636
East Midlands -13 16 £483 -3.50% 396
Wales -7 11 £425 -17.07% 187
Northern Ireland -1 9 £400 -40.74% 222
North East -24 4 £460 - 163
Software Engineering
UK

Software Engineering
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 29 (5.47%) Confluence
2 11 (2.08%) Apache
3 7 (1.32%) Apache Spark
4 6 (1.13%) CMS
5 4 (0.75%) Drupal
5 4 (0.75%) WordPress
6 3 (0.57%) IIS
7 2 (0.38%) GemFire
7 2 (0.38%) nginx
7 2 (0.38%) Oracle Workflow
7 2 (0.38%) TPMS
8 1 (0.19%) Camunda
8 1 (0.19%) JBoss
8 1 (0.19%) OpenROAD
8 1 (0.19%) SharePoint
8 1 (0.19%) Tuxedo
8 1 (0.19%) Umbraco
8 1 (0.19%) WebLogic
8 1 (0.19%) WebSphere
Applications
1 4 (0.75%) Simulink
2 3 (0.57%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.57%) Stateflow
3 2 (0.38%) CANalyzer
4 1 (0.19%) Acrobat
4 1 (0.19%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.19%) Fusion 360
4 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.19%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 2 (0.38%) LabWindows
1 2 (0.38%) Teamcenter
2 1 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 134 (25.28%) AWS
2 96 (18.11%) Azure
3 39 (7.36%) GCP
3 39 (7.36%) Serverless
4 22 (4.15%) AWS Lambda
5 20 (3.77%) GitHub
6 19 (3.58%) SaaS
7 18 (3.40%) Azure DevOps
8 15 (2.83%) Amazon S3
9 14 (2.64%) AWS CloudFormation
10 12 (2.26%) OpenShift
11 11 (2.08%) Amazon EC2
12 9 (1.70%) AWS CodeBuild
13 8 (1.51%) Amazon EKS
13 8 (1.51%) BlazeMeter
13 8 (1.51%) GitHub Actions
14 7 (1.32%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 7 (1.32%) Amazon ECS
14 7 (1.32%) Cloud Computing
15 6 (1.13%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 13 (2.45%) Ethernet
2 10 (1.89%) TCP/IP
3 6 (1.13%) NFC
4 5 (0.94%) Firewall
4 5 (0.94%) Internet
4 5 (0.94%) PPP
5 4 (0.75%) HTTP
5 4 (0.75%) HTTPS
5 4 (0.75%) SAN
5 4 (0.75%) SNMP
6 3 (0.57%) Software-Defined Radio
7 2 (0.38%) Cisco Nexus
7 2 (0.38%) DNS
7 2 (0.38%) NAS
8 1 (0.19%) BGP
8 1 (0.19%) DWDM
8 1 (0.19%) IGRP
8 1 (0.19%) MPLS
8 1 (0.19%) OSPF
8 1 (0.19%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 55 (10.38%) Relational Database
2 39 (7.36%) MongoDB
3 38 (7.17%) PostgreSQL
4 27 (5.09%) NoSQL
5 19 (3.58%) MySQL
5 19 (3.58%) SQL Server
6 12 (2.26%) DB2
7 11 (2.08%) Big Data
8 9 (1.70%) Apache Cassandra
9 7 (1.32%) Amazon Aurora
9 7 (1.32%) Elasticsearch
9 7 (1.32%) Hadoop
9 7 (1.32%) RDBMS
10 5 (0.94%) Amazon RDS
10 5 (0.94%) DynamoDB
11 4 (0.75%) Data Warehouse
12 3 (0.57%) Amazon Redshift
12 3 (0.57%) GIS
12 3 (0.57%) Power BI
12 3 (0.57%) Redis
Development Applications
1 70 (13.21%) Git
2 67 (12.64%) JIRA
3 64 (12.08%) Jenkins
4 43 (8.11%) GitLab
5 34 (6.42%) JUnit
6 27 (5.09%) Eclipse
7 23 (4.34%) Bitbucket
8 20 (3.77%) Cucumber
9 16 (3.02%) Selenium
10 15 (2.83%) Visual Studio
11 14 (2.64%) REST Assured
12 13 (2.45%) Mockito
12 13 (2.45%) SonarQube
13 12 (2.26%) GoogleTest
14 11 (2.08%) Cypress.io
14 11 (2.08%) Gradle
14 11 (2.08%) Liquibase
15 9 (1.70%) Robot Framework
16 8 (1.51%) Subversion
17 7 (1.32%) LabVIEW
General
1 164 (30.94%) Social Skills
2 93 (17.55%) Finance
3 57 (10.75%) Analytical Skills
4 52 (9.81%) Public Sector
5 29 (5.47%) Electronics
6 27 (5.09%) Telecoms
7 24 (4.53%) Marketing
8 23 (4.34%) Manufacturing
9 21 (3.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 18 (3.40%) Banking
11 17 (3.21%) Law
12 16 (3.02%) Military
13 12 (2.26%) Aerospace
13 12 (2.26%) Presentation Skills
14 11 (2.08%) Front Office
15 6 (1.13%) Police
15 6 (1.13%) Retail
16 5 (0.94%) Automotive
16 5 (0.94%) Investment Banking
16 5 (0.94%) Legal
Job Titles
1 208 (39.25%) Software Engineer
2 133 (25.09%) Developer
3 66 (12.45%) Senior
4 62 (11.70%) Java Developer
5 46 (8.68%) Senior Software Engineer
6 35 (6.60%) Java Engineer
7 31 (5.85%) Java Software Engineer
8 25 (4.72%) Architect
9 22 (4.15%) C# Software Engineer
10 21 (3.96%) C++ Software Engineer
10 21 (3.96%) SC Cleared Software Engineer
11 19 (3.58%) Full-Stack Engineer
12 18 (3.40%) DevOps Engineer
12 18 (3.40%) Support Engineer
13 17 (3.21%) Full-Stack Developer
13 17 (3.21%) Linux Engineer
14 16 (3.02%) Lead
15 15 (2.83%) FPGA Engineer
15 15 (2.83%) Senior Developer
16 14 (2.64%) Embedded Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (13.02%) React
2 64 (12.08%) .NET
3 59 (11.13%) Spring
4 52 (9.81%) CSS
5 51 (9.62%) REST
6 50 (9.43%) Node.js
7 45 (8.49%) Kafka
8 41 (7.74%) Spring Boot
9 38 (7.17%) HTML
10 37 (6.98%) AngularJS
11 30 (5.66%) RESTful
12 27 (5.09%) Web Services
13 22 (4.15%) Middleware
14 16 (3.02%) Swagger
15 15 (2.83%) OpenAPI
16 14 (2.64%) Java EE
16 14 (2.64%) JSON
16 14 (2.64%) OAuth
17 12 (2.26%) AWS CDK
17 12 (2.26%) Qt
Miscellaneous
1 30 (5.66%) Algorithms
2 26 (4.91%) Data Structures
3 22 (4.15%) Cloud Native
4 20 (3.77%) Product Ownership
5 18 (3.40%) FPGA
6 16 (3.02%) Management Information System
7 15 (2.83%) Verilog
8 14 (2.64%) Greenfield Project
8 14 (2.64%) Mobile App
9 10 (1.89%) Equities
10 9 (1.70%) Data Centre
10 9 (1.70%) Equity Derivative
10 9 (1.70%) PKI
11 8 (1.51%) Derivative
11 8 (1.51%) Enterprise Software
12 7 (1.32%) Distributed Systems
13 6 (1.13%) Credit Risk
13 6 (1.13%) iPad
13 6 (1.13%) iPhone
13 6 (1.13%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 135 (25.47%) Linux
2 46 (8.68%) Windows
3 36 (6.79%) Unix
4 19 (3.58%) Ubuntu
5 11 (2.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (1.89%) Android
7 9 (1.70%) Windows Server
8 8 (1.51%) Apple iOS
9 6 (1.13%) HPUX
9 6 (1.13%) Solaris
10 4 (0.75%) Embedded Linux
11 2 (0.38%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.19%) Amazon Linux
12 1 (0.19%) FreeRTOS
12 1 (0.19%) VMS
12 1 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
12 1 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 221 (41.70%) Agile
2 157 (29.62%) CI/CD
3 114 (21.51%) Problem-Solving
4 109 (20.57%) DevOps
5 95 (17.92%) Test Automation
6 82 (15.47%) TDD
7 80 (15.09%) Microservices
8 65 (12.26%) Scrum
9 62 (11.70%) Computer Science
10 61 (11.51%) Containerisation
11 59 (11.13%) Continuous Integration
12 56 (10.57%) Full-Stack Development
13 49 (9.25%) User Experience
14 46 (8.68%) Infrastructure as Code
15 45 (8.49%) SDLC
16 44 (8.30%) Multithreading
16 44 (8.30%) Validation
17 43 (8.11%) Design Patterns
18 36 (6.79%) Configuration Management
19 35 (6.60%) Continuous Delivery
Programming Languages
1 169 (31.89%) Java
2 136 (25.66%) JavaScript
3 125 (23.58%) Python
4 105 (19.81%) SQL
5 79 (14.91%) C#
6 72 (13.58%) TypeScript
7 69 (13.02%) C++
8 45 (8.49%) Shell Script
9 29 (5.47%) C
10 28 (5.28%) Ada
11 20 (3.77%) PowerShell
12 15 (2.83%) SystemVerilog
12 15 (2.83%) Tcl
13 14 (2.64%) PHP
14 13 (2.45%) Go
15 12 (2.26%) Bash
16 8 (1.51%) Kotlin
17 7 (1.32%) Swift
18 6 (1.13%) MATLAB
18 6 (1.13%) Scala
Qualifications
1 140 (26.42%) Security Cleared
2 111 (20.94%) SC Cleared
3 65 (12.26%) Degree
4 45 (8.49%) Computer Science Degree
5 23 (4.34%) DV Cleared
6 14 (2.64%) Azure Certification
7 9 (1.70%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 7 (1.32%) Microsoft Certification
9 6 (1.13%) AWS Certification
9 6 (1.13%) BPSS Clearance
10 5 (0.94%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 4 (0.75%) Cisco Certification
11 4 (0.75%) Master's Degree
12 3 (0.57%) CCNP
12 3 (0.57%) PMP
13 2 (0.38%) CISM
13 2 (0.38%) CISSP
13 2 (0.38%) OCA
13 2 (0.38%) Oracle Certification
13 2 (0.38%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 39 (7.36%) QA
2 15 (2.83%) IEC 61508
3 14 (2.64%) Def Stans
3 14 (2.64%) MISRA
3 14 (2.64%) MISRA C
4 12 (2.26%) Accessibility
5 5 (0.94%) Software Quality Assurance
6 4 (0.75%) Data Quality
6 4 (0.75%) GDPR
6 4 (0.75%) WCAG
7 3 (0.57%) Disclosure Scotland
8 2 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 2 (0.38%) NIST
9 1 (0.19%) DICOM
9 1 (0.19%) HL7
9 1 (0.19%) IEC 61131
9 1 (0.19%) ISO 13485
9 1 (0.19%) JSP 440
9 1 (0.19%) NCSC
9 1 (0.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 71 (13.40%) Docker
2 4 (0.75%) VMware Infrastructure
3 3 (0.57%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.57%) Firmware
4 1 (0.19%) GPFS
4 1 (0.19%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
4 1 (0.19%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 67 (12.64%) Kubernetes
1 67 (12.64%) Terraform
2 38 (7.17%) Ansible
3 22 (4.15%) Grafana
4 10 (1.89%) Docker Swarm
4 10 (1.89%) Podman
5 8 (1.51%) Prometheus
6 4 (0.75%) Progress Chef
6 4 (0.75%) Puppet
6 4 (0.75%) Single Sign-On
7 3 (0.57%) Opsview
7 3 (0.57%) WMI
8 2 (0.38%) FortiGate
8 2 (0.38%) Kibana
8 2 (0.38%) Kustomize
8 2 (0.38%) NetBackup
8 2 (0.38%) Oracle RMAN
8 2 (0.38%) vCenter Server
9 1 (0.19%) SCCM
9 1 (0.19%) Veritas Storage Foundation
Vendors
1 45 (8.49%) Google
2 41 (7.74%) Microsoft
3 20 (3.77%) SAP
4 18 (3.40%) Atlassian
5 17 (3.21%) Oracle
6 16 (3.02%) Red Hat
7 15 (2.83%) Xilinx
8 12 (2.26%) Splunk
9 11 (2.08%) VMware
10 10 (1.89%) IBM
10 10 (1.89%) Sybase
11 8 (1.51%) Dynatrace
12 7 (1.32%) Intel
13 6 (1.13%) Adobe
13 6 (1.13%) CA Agile Central
13 6 (1.13%) Cisco
13 6 (1.13%) PagerDuty
13 6 (1.13%) Sun
14 5 (0.94%) Databricks
14 5 (0.94%) ServiceNow