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 10 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
10 May 2025		 Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 400 379 534
Rank change year-on-year -21 +155 +27
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Software Engineer 123 216 174
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.42% 0.50% 0.30%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.45% 0.54% 0.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 94 149 121
10th Percentile £400 £425 £419
25th Percentile £413 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £650 £550
Median % change year-on-year -23.08% +18.18% -8.33%
75th Percentile £825 £740 £656
90th Percentile - £850 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £521 £538
% change year-on-year -8.87% -3.11% +3.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 29 5
10th Percentile £33.10 £35.52 £41.50
25th Percentile £43.50 £46.91 £51.25
Median hourly rate £60.00 £65.00 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -7.69% +23.81% +11.11%
75th Percentile £86.63 £72.50 £53.75
90th Percentile £90.25 £83.75 £59.28
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.00 £65.00 £52.50
% change year-on-year -7.69% +23.81% +3.16%

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 27,188 39,941 54,901
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.48% 92.76% 94.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,734 26,001 38,348
10th Percentile £300 £280 £313
25th Percentile £406 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -2.78% +2.86%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,055 2,673 1,536
10th Percentile £14.00 £12.86 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.25 £19.06
Median hourly rate £28.60 £36.65 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.96% -18.56% +88.21%
75th Percentile £62.50 £61.30 £65.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.90 £76.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £40.00 £42.43
% change year-on-year -31.25% -5.73% +115.78%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 -19 109 £500 -23.08% 819
London -7 61 £638 -1.92% 426
Work from Home +3 56 £750 +15.38% 498
UK excluding London +38 51 £475 -8.87% 560
North of England +25 28 £450 -23.40% 135
North West +19 21 £438 -30.00% 74
South East +21 8 £500 -4.08% 178
Midlands +18 7 £438 - 56
Yorkshire +13 6 £475 +69.64% 41
Scotland +15 4 - - 50
Wales +5 3 £413 - 13
East Midlands - 3 £490 - 24
South West +36 1 £425 -12.82% 50
West Midlands +15 1 - - 27
North East - 1 - - 22

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

For the 6 months to 10 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.

1 122 (99.19%) Software Engineering
2 68 (55.28%) JavaScript
3 67 (54.47%) AWS
4 64 (52.03%) TypeScript
5 57 (46.34%) Agile
6 55 (44.72%) Python
7 43 (34.96%) Java
8 39 (31.71%) Finance
9 38 (30.89%) React
10 33 (26.83%) CI/CD
11 30 (24.39%) Node.js
12 29 (23.58%) Banking
13 28 (22.76%) Front Office
13 28 (22.76%) dbt
14 26 (21.14%) Fixed Income
14 26 (21.14%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 25 (20.33%) Apache
15 25 (20.33%) Equities
15 25 (20.33%) Asset Management
15 25 (20.33%) Investment Banking
15 25 (20.33%) Derivative
15 25 (20.33%) SciPy
15 25 (20.33%) NumPy
15 25 (20.33%) Hedge funds
15 25 (20.33%) Protocol Buffers
15 25 (20.33%) Data Lake
15 25 (20.33%) Pandas
15 25 (20.33%) Amazon Athena
15 25 (20.33%) Apache Ignite
15 25 (20.33%) gRPC

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 25 (20.33%) Apache
1 25 (20.33%) Apache Airflow
2 2 (1.63%) Confluence
3 1 (0.81%) WordPress
Applications
1 1 (0.81%) Trello
Business Applications
1 2 (1.63%) LabWindows
2 1 (0.81%) Oracle TCA
Cloud Services
1 67 (54.47%) AWS
2 28 (22.76%) dbt
3 25 (20.33%) Snowflake
4 21 (17.07%) Azure
5 16 (13.01%) Amazon EC2
5 16 (13.01%) Amazon ECS
6 14 (11.38%) GCP
7 13 (10.57%) Amazon EKS
8 12 (9.76%) Serverless
9 9 (7.32%) AWS Lambda
9 9 (7.32%) Dagster
10 8 (6.50%) GitHub
11 7 (5.69%) Amazon SQS
12 6 (4.88%) AWS CodeBuild
12 6 (4.88%) GitHub Actions
13 5 (4.07%) Apigee
14 4 (3.25%) AWS CloudFormation
15 3 (2.44%) Datadog
16 2 (1.63%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 2 (1.63%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.81%) Firewall
1 1 (0.81%) HTTP
1 1 (0.81%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (20.33%) Amazon Athena
1 25 (20.33%) Apache Arrow
1 25 (20.33%) Apache Iceberg
1 25 (20.33%) Apache Ignite
1 25 (20.33%) Data Lake
1 25 (20.33%) Dremio
2 13 (10.57%) PostgreSQL
3 8 (6.50%) SQL Server
4 7 (5.69%) MongoDB
5 6 (4.88%) MySQL
6 4 (3.25%) Amazon Redshift
6 4 (3.25%) NoSQL
6 4 (3.25%) Relational Database
7 2 (1.63%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 1 (0.81%) Apache Cassandra
8 1 (0.81%) Azure SQL Database
8 1 (0.81%) DynamoDB
8 1 (0.81%) GIS
8 1 (0.81%) InfluxDB
Development Applications
1 16 (13.01%) Git
2 15 (12.20%) Jenkins
2 15 (12.20%) JIRA
3 8 (6.50%) Bitbucket
4 6 (4.88%) GoogleTest
4 6 (4.88%) Rational DOORS
4 6 (4.88%) TestRail
5 5 (4.07%) GitLab
6 4 (3.25%) Cypress.io
7 3 (2.44%) CircleCI
7 3 (2.44%) Visual Studio
8 2 (1.63%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 2 (1.63%) LabVIEW
8 2 (1.63%) SonarQube
8 2 (1.63%) Subversion
9 1 (0.81%) Cucumber
9 1 (0.81%) JUnit
9 1 (0.81%) PHPUnit
9 1 (0.81%) Selenium
9 1 (0.81%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 39 (31.71%) Finance
2 29 (23.58%) Banking
3 28 (22.76%) Front Office
4 25 (20.33%) Investment Banking
5 16 (13.01%) Social Skills
6 7 (5.69%) Analytical Skills
7 4 (3.25%) Multimedia
8 3 (2.44%) Public Sector
9 1 (0.81%) Automotive
9 1 (0.81%) Electronics
9 1 (0.81%) Financial Institution
9 1 (0.81%) Games
9 1 (0.81%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.81%) Retail
9 1 (0.81%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (30.89%) React
2 30 (24.39%) Node.js
3 25 (20.33%) gRPC
3 25 (20.33%) NumPy
3 25 (20.33%) Pandas
3 25 (20.33%) Protocol Buffers
3 25 (20.33%) SciPy
4 19 (15.45%) .NET
5 15 (12.20%) RESTful
6 12 (9.76%) CSS
7 9 (7.32%) HTML
7 9 (7.32%) PySpark
8 7 (5.69%) AWS CDK
8 7 (5.69%) GraphQL
9 6 (4.88%) .NET Core
9 6 (4.88%) AngularJS
9 6 (4.88%) Puppeteer
10 5 (4.07%) Blazor
10 5 (4.07%) Vue
11 4 (3.25%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 26 (21.14%) Fixed Income
1 26 (21.14%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
2 25 (20.33%) Derivative
2 25 (20.33%) Equities
2 25 (20.33%) Hedge funds
3 16 (13.01%) Pricing Data
4 13 (10.57%) Greenfield Project
5 10 (8.13%) Cloud Native
6 3 (2.44%) Algorithms
6 3 (2.44%) Mobile App
6 3 (2.44%) NHS
7 2 (1.63%) Data Protection Act
7 2 (1.63%) Data Structures
7 2 (1.63%) Digital Media
7 2 (1.63%) Enterprise Software
7 2 (1.63%) FPGA
7 2 (1.63%) Onboarding
7 2 (1.63%) Product Ownership
7 2 (1.63%) Video\Live Streaming
8 1 (0.81%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 10 (8.13%) Linux
2 6 (4.88%) Embedded Linux
3 1 (0.81%) Android
3 1 (0.81%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.81%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 122 (99.19%) Software Engineering
2 57 (46.34%) Agile
3 33 (26.83%) CI/CD
4 25 (20.33%) Asset Management
5 24 (19.51%) Problem-Solving
5 24 (19.51%) Test Automation
6 16 (13.01%) DevOps
6 16 (13.01%) Investment Management
7 14 (11.38%) Computer Science
7 14 (11.38%) Scrum
8 13 (10.57%) Microservices
9 12 (9.76%) Clean Code
9 12 (9.76%) Containerisation
9 12 (9.76%) Front End Development
9 12 (9.76%) Mentoring
9 12 (9.76%) TDD
10 11 (8.94%) Design Patterns
10 11 (8.94%) Infrastructure as Code
11 10 (8.13%) Code Quality
11 10 (8.13%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 68 (55.28%) JavaScript
2 64 (52.03%) TypeScript
3 55 (44.72%) Python
4 43 (34.96%) Java
5 20 (16.26%) SQL
6 19 (15.45%) C#
7 11 (8.94%) C++
8 7 (5.69%) C
9 6 (4.88%) Bash
10 5 (4.07%) T-SQL
11 2 (1.63%) Go
12 1 (0.81%) Fortran
12 1 (0.81%) Kotlin
12 1 (0.81%) PHP
12 1 (0.81%) Ruby
12 1 (0.81%) Scala
12 1 (0.81%) Swift
Qualifications
1 15 (12.20%) Degree
2 14 (11.38%) Computer Science Degree
3 6 (4.88%) Security Cleared
4 5 (4.07%) SC Cleared
5 2 (1.63%) Master's Degree
6 1 (0.81%) DV Cleared
6 1 (0.81%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (8.13%) Accessibility
2 2 (1.63%) GDPR
2 2 (1.63%) Government Security Classifications
2 2 (1.63%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 1 (0.81%) MiFID
3 1 (0.81%) QA
System Software
1 16 (13.01%) Docker
Systems Management
1 12 (9.76%) Kubernetes
2 7 (5.69%) Terraform
3 4 (3.25%) Grafana
3 4 (3.25%) Prometheus
4 1 (0.81%) Ansible
Vendors
1 11 (8.94%) Google
2 7 (5.69%) Oracle
3 4 (3.25%) Microsoft
4 3 (2.44%) PagerDuty
5 2 (1.63%) Atlassian
5 2 (1.63%) Splunk
6 1 (0.81%) BT
6 1 (0.81%) Hitachi
6 1 (0.81%) NVIDIA
6 1 (0.81%) ServiceNow
954 Senior Software Engineer jobs Nationwide