Senior Software Engineer Contracts

Senior Software Engineer
UK

The median Senior Software Engineer daily rate in the UK is £500, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 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
1 May 2025		 Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 400 377 536
Rank change year-on-year -23 +159 +28
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Software Engineer 121 208 182
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.41% 0.48% 0.30%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.45% 0.51% 0.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 92 147 129
10th Percentile £400 £425 £424
25th Percentile £413 £459 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £638 £550
Median % change year-on-year -21.57% +15.91% -8.33%
75th Percentile £788 £688 £650
90th Percentile £874 £850 £749
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £538
% change year-on-year -5.00% -7.06% +2.48%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 28 5
10th Percentile £32.63 £35.52 £41.50
25th Percentile £39.25 £46.91 £51.25
Median hourly rate £56.00 £65.00 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -13.85% +23.81% +11.70%
75th Percentile £81.56 £72.75 £53.75
90th Percentile £90.63 £83.75 £59.28
UK excluding London median hourly rate £56.00 £57.50 £52.50
% change year-on-year -2.61% +9.52% +11.70%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. 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 with a recognized job title 27,084 40,415 56,464
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.52% 92.78% 94.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,692 26,309 39,470
10th Percentile £300 £275 £313
25th Percentile £406 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.78% +2.86%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £492 £500
% change year-on-year -3.46% -1.60% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,035 2,664 1,570
10th Percentile £14.07 £12.86 £14.29
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.30 £19.50
Median hourly rate £29.00 £36.42 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.37% -19.07% +91.49%
75th Percentile £62.50 £60.75 £65.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £39.55 £42.50
% change year-on-year -29.20% -6.94% +117.95%

Senior Software Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured Senior Software Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Senior Software Engineer in the UK

Senior Software Engineer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Senior Software Engineer.

Daily rate trend for Senior Software Engineer in the UK

Senior Software Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Senior Software Engineer over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Senior Software Engineer in the UK

Senior Software Engineer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Senior Software Engineer.

Hourly rate trend for Senior Software Engineer in the UK

Senior Software Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Senior Software Engineer over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Senior Software Engineer in the UK

Senior Software Engineer
Top 15 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Senior Software Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 1 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
England -31 107 £500 -23.08% 682
London -15 58 £638 -1.92% 340
Work from Home +9 52 £750 +15.38% 441
UK excluding London +47 51 £475 -5.00% 449
North of England +25 26 £450 -23.40% 118
North West +21 19 £438 -30.00% 70
South East +26 10 £500 -4.08% 144
Midlands +27 7 £438 - 49
Yorkshire +9 6 £475 +69.64% 32
Scotland +16 4 - - 36
Wales +3 3 £413 - 12
East Midlands - 3 £490 - 22
South West +42 1 £425 -12.82% 43
West Midlands +13 1 - - 21
North East - 1 - - 17

Senior Software Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 1 May 2025, Senior Software Engineer 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 featuring Senior Software Engineer in the job title.

1 120 (99.17%) Software Engineering
2 64 (52.89%) JavaScript
3 62 (51.24%) AWS
4 57 (47.11%) TypeScript
5 54 (44.63%) Agile
6 51 (42.15%) Python
7 38 (31.40%) Java
8 37 (30.58%) Finance
8 37 (30.58%) React
9 30 (24.79%) CI/CD
10 29 (23.97%) Node.js
11 27 (22.31%) Banking
12 26 (21.49%) Front Office
12 26 (21.49%) Problem-Solving
13 24 (19.83%) dbt
14 23 (19.01%) Fixed Income
15 22 (18.18%) Investment Banking
15 22 (18.18%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 22 (18.18%) Azure
15 22 (18.18%) SciPy
15 22 (18.18%) NumPy
15 22 (18.18%) Pandas
16 21 (17.36%) Hedge funds
16 21 (17.36%) Protocol Buffers
16 21 (17.36%) Equities
16 21 (17.36%) Asset Management
16 21 (17.36%) C#
16 21 (17.36%) Apache
16 21 (17.36%) Derivative
16 21 (17.36%) Test Automation

Senior Software Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities 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 21 (17.36%) Apache
1 21 (17.36%) Apache Airflow
2 2 (1.65%) Confluence
3 1 (0.83%) WordPress
Applications
1 1 (0.83%) Trello
Business Applications
1 2 (1.65%) LabWindows
2 1 (0.83%) Oracle TCA
Cloud Services
1 62 (51.24%) AWS
2 24 (19.83%) dbt
3 22 (18.18%) Azure
4 21 (17.36%) Snowflake
5 16 (13.22%) Amazon EC2
5 16 (13.22%) Amazon ECS
6 13 (10.74%) Amazon EKS
6 13 (10.74%) GCP
7 10 (8.26%) Serverless
8 9 (7.44%) AWS Lambda
8 9 (7.44%) Dagster
9 8 (6.61%) GitHub
10 7 (5.79%) Amazon SQS
11 6 (4.96%) AWS CodeBuild
11 6 (4.96%) GitHub Actions
12 4 (3.31%) AWS CloudFormation
13 2 (1.65%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 2 (1.65%) Amazon S3
13 2 (1.65%) Apigee
13 2 (1.65%) Azure Stack
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.83%) Firewall
1 1 (0.83%) HTTP
1 1 (0.83%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (17.36%) Amazon Athena
1 21 (17.36%) Apache Arrow
1 21 (17.36%) Apache Iceberg
1 21 (17.36%) Apache Ignite
1 21 (17.36%) Data Lake
1 21 (17.36%) Dremio
2 14 (11.57%) PostgreSQL
3 9 (7.44%) SQL Server
4 7 (5.79%) MySQL
5 6 (4.96%) MongoDB
6 4 (3.31%) Amazon Redshift
6 4 (3.31%) Relational Database
7 2 (1.65%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 1 (0.83%) Apache Cassandra
8 1 (0.83%) Azure SQL Database
8 1 (0.83%) DynamoDB
8 1 (0.83%) GIS
8 1 (0.83%) InfluxDB
8 1 (0.83%) KDB
8 1 (0.83%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 15 (12.40%) Git
1 15 (12.40%) JIRA
2 13 (10.74%) Jenkins
3 9 (7.44%) Bitbucket
4 7 (5.79%) GoogleTest
4 7 (5.79%) Rational DOORS
4 7 (5.79%) TestRail
5 4 (3.31%) GitLab
6 3 (2.48%) Cypress.io
6 3 (2.48%) Visual Studio
7 2 (1.65%) CircleCI
7 2 (1.65%) LabVIEW
7 2 (1.65%) SonarQube
7 2 (1.65%) Subversion
8 1 (0.83%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.83%) Gradle
8 1 (0.83%) Jasmine
8 1 (0.83%) PHPUnit
8 1 (0.83%) XCTest
8 1 (0.83%) XCUITest
General
1 37 (30.58%) Finance
2 27 (22.31%) Banking
3 26 (21.49%) Front Office
4 22 (18.18%) Investment Banking
5 16 (13.22%) Social Skills
6 7 (5.79%) Analytical Skills
7 5 (4.13%) Public Sector
8 4 (3.31%) Multimedia
9 1 (0.83%) Automotive
9 1 (0.83%) Electronics
9 1 (0.83%) Financial Institution
9 1 (0.83%) Games
9 1 (0.83%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.83%) Retail
9 1 (0.83%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (30.58%) React
2 29 (23.97%) Node.js
3 22 (18.18%) NumPy
3 22 (18.18%) Pandas
3 22 (18.18%) SciPy
4 21 (17.36%) gRPC
4 21 (17.36%) Protocol Buffers
5 20 (16.53%) .NET
6 14 (11.57%) RESTful
7 12 (9.92%) CSS
8 9 (7.44%) HTML
8 9 (7.44%) PySpark
9 7 (5.79%) .NET Core
9 7 (5.79%) AWS CDK
10 6 (4.96%) AngularJS
10 6 (4.96%) GraphQL
11 5 (4.13%) Blazor
11 5 (4.13%) Kafka
11 5 (4.13%) Puppeteer
11 5 (4.13%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 23 (19.01%) Fixed Income
2 22 (18.18%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 21 (17.36%) Derivative
3 21 (17.36%) Equities
3 21 (17.36%) Hedge funds
4 13 (10.74%) Greenfield Project
5 12 (9.92%) Pricing Data
6 6 (4.96%) Cloud Native
7 4 (3.31%) Mobile App
8 3 (2.48%) Algorithms
8 3 (2.48%) NHS
9 2 (1.65%) Data Protection Act
9 2 (1.65%) Data Structures
9 2 (1.65%) Digital Media
9 2 (1.65%) Distributed Systems
9 2 (1.65%) Enterprise Software
9 2 (1.65%) FPGA
9 2 (1.65%) Video\Live Streaming
10 1 (0.83%) Analytical Mindset
10 1 (0.83%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 12 (9.92%) Linux
2 7 (5.79%) Embedded Linux
3 1 (0.83%) Android
3 1 (0.83%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 120 (99.17%) Software Engineering
2 54 (44.63%) Agile
3 30 (24.79%) CI/CD
4 26 (21.49%) Problem-Solving
5 21 (17.36%) Asset Management
5 21 (17.36%) Test Automation
6 15 (12.40%) Computer Science
7 14 (11.57%) DevOps
7 14 (11.57%) Scrum
8 13 (10.74%) TDD
9 12 (9.92%) Clean Code
9 12 (9.92%) Investment Management
9 12 (9.92%) Mentoring
9 12 (9.92%) Microservices
10 11 (9.09%) Front End Development
11 10 (8.26%) Continuous Integration
11 10 (8.26%) Design Patterns
11 10 (8.26%) OO
12 9 (7.44%) Containerisation
12 9 (7.44%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 64 (52.89%) JavaScript
2 57 (47.11%) TypeScript
3 51 (42.15%) Python
4 38 (31.40%) Java
5 21 (17.36%) C#
6 19 (15.70%) SQL
7 12 (9.92%) C++
8 7 (5.79%) C
9 5 (4.13%) Bash
9 5 (4.13%) T-SQL
10 2 (1.65%) Go
11 1 (0.83%) Clojure
11 1 (0.83%) Fortran
11 1 (0.83%) Haskell
11 1 (0.83%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.83%) PHP
11 1 (0.83%) Ruby
11 1 (0.83%) Rust
11 1 (0.83%) Scala
11 1 (0.83%) Swift
Qualifications
1 16 (13.22%) Degree
2 15 (12.40%) Computer Science Degree
3 7 (5.79%) Security Cleared
4 5 (4.13%) SC Cleared
5 2 (1.65%) Master's Degree
6 1 (0.83%) DV Cleared
6 1 (0.83%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (8.26%) Accessibility
2 2 (1.65%) GDPR
2 2 (1.65%) Government Security Classifications
2 2 (1.65%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 1 (0.83%) MiFID
3 1 (0.83%) QA
System Software
1 14 (11.57%) Docker
Systems Management
1 11 (9.09%) Kubernetes
2 6 (4.96%) Terraform
3 3 (2.48%) Grafana
3 3 (2.48%) Prometheus
4 1 (0.83%) Ansible
Vendors
1 11 (9.09%) Google
2 7 (5.79%) Oracle
3 4 (3.31%) Microsoft
4 2 (1.65%) Atlassian
4 2 (1.65%) PagerDuty
5 1 (0.83%) BT
5 1 (0.83%) Hitachi
5 1 (0.83%) NVIDIA
5 1 (0.83%) ServiceNow
5 1 (0.83%) Xamarin
796 Senior Software Engineer jobs Nationwide