Software Engineer Contracts

Software Engineer
UK

The median Software Engineer daily rate in the UK is £600, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 6 July 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
6 Jul 2025		 Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 135 75 148
Rank change year-on-year -60 +73 -7
Contract jobs requiring a Software Engineer 650 1,248 1,033
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 2.04% 2.88% 1.82%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.22% 3.10% 1.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 438 643 650
10th Percentile £400 £425 £425
25th Percentile £470 £500 £490
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £625 £600
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% +4.17% -
75th Percentile £825 £800 £688
90th Percentile £875 £875 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 52 375 156
10th Percentile £39.09 £46.25 £47.50
25th Percentile £59.75 £52.50 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £70.00 £70.00 £70.30
90th Percentile £84.05 £75.00 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year - - +8.33%

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 29,294 40,276 53,656
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.97% 93.01% 94.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,671 25,908 37,253
10th Percentile £287 £285 £313
25th Percentile £400 £409 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% +1.13%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £493 £500
% change year-on-year -3.65% -1.40% +4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,326 2,804 1,565
10th Percentile £13.75 £12.86 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.36 £16.65 £19.00
Median hourly rate £26.45 £37.50 £43.63
Median % change year-on-year -29.47% -14.05% +74.52%
75th Percentile £55.25 £62.96 £65.00
90th Percentile £73.25 £74.00 £77.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -37.13% - +100.00%

Software Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for Software Engineer in the UK

Software Engineer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for Software Engineer in the UK

Software Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Software Engineer over the 6 months to 6 July 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Software Engineer in the UK

Software Engineer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for Software Engineer in the UK

Software Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Software Engineer over the 6 months to 6 July 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Software Engineer in the UK

Software Engineer
Top 17 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Software Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 6 July 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 -64 571 £625 -3.85% 5,106
London -29 355 £725 +3.57% 2,831
Work from Home -5 316 £725 +7.41% 2,474
UK excluding London -93 244 £475 -5.00% 2,686
North of England -30 72 £475 -5.00% 744
North West -18 52 £450 -16.12% 478
South East -35 48 £520 +6.67% 560
East of England -40 35 £493 -1.50% 372
South West -53 31 £638 +15.91% 314
Scotland +5 26 £473 +33.57% 278
Yorkshire +7 19 £490 +22.50% 207
Midlands +3 19 £463 -5.90% 279
West Midlands +5 9 £488 -4.88% 146
East Midlands -8 9 £475 - 133
Wales +7 7 £425 +3.03% 78
Northern Ireland -8 6 £400 -33.33% 96
North East -10 1 - - 60

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

For the 6 months to 6 July 2025, 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 Software Engineer in the job title.

1 634 (97.54%) Software Engineering
2 332 (51.08%) Agile
3 303 (46.62%) AWS
4 287 (44.15%) Python
5 274 (42.15%) JavaScript
6 257 (39.54%) Finance
7 248 (38.15%) Java
8 224 (34.46%) TypeScript
9 196 (30.15%) React
10 183 (28.15%) Front Office
11 163 (25.08%) Fixed Income
12 160 (24.62%) Node.js
13 146 (22.46%) Asset Management
14 139 (21.38%) Investment Management
14 139 (21.38%) CI/CD
15 136 (20.92%) Banking
16 133 (20.46%) GCP
17 116 (17.85%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 107 (16.46%) Azure
19 106 (16.31%) Equities
19 106 (16.31%) Social Skills
20 102 (15.69%) Fintech
21 99 (15.23%) DevOps
21 99 (15.23%) Microservices
22 95 (14.62%) PostgreSQL
23 93 (14.31%) C#
24 91 (14.00%) C++
24 91 (14.00%) SQL
25 90 (13.85%) dbt
26 89 (13.69%) Security Cleared

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 85 (13.08%) Apache Airflow
2 64 (9.85%) Apache
3 25 (3.85%) Confluence
4 7 (1.08%) CMS
4 7 (1.08%) WordPress
5 6 (0.92%) Drupal
6 5 (0.77%) JBoss
7 4 (0.62%) Apache Spark
7 4 (0.62%) Documentum
7 4 (0.62%) FileNet
8 2 (0.31%) GemFire
8 2 (0.31%) Gunicorn
8 2 (0.31%) Tuxedo
9 1 (0.15%) CICS
9 1 (0.15%) nginx
9 1 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
9 1 (0.15%) SharePoint
9 1 (0.15%) WebLogic
Applications
1 6 (0.92%) Simulink
2 2 (0.31%) CANalyzer
3 1 (0.15%) Stateflow
3 1 (0.15%) Trello
Business Applications
1 7 (1.08%) FLEXCUBE
1 7 (1.08%) Oracle BPM
1 7 (1.08%) Temenos T24
2 2 (0.31%) Endur
2 2 (0.31%) LabWindows
3 1 (0.15%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.15%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 303 (46.62%) AWS
2 133 (20.46%) GCP
3 107 (16.46%) Azure
4 90 (13.85%) dbt
5 55 (8.46%) Serverless
6 51 (7.85%) Snowflake
7 35 (5.38%) AWS Lambda
8 30 (4.62%) GitHub
9 23 (3.54%) Amazon SQS
10 20 (3.08%) Amazon EC2
10 20 (3.08%) Amazon ECS
10 20 (3.08%) Amazon S3
11 19 (2.92%) GitHub Actions
12 14 (2.15%) Amazon EKS
13 13 (2.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 12 (1.85%) Datadog
15 10 (1.54%) AWS CloudFormation
16 9 (1.38%) Azure AKS
16 9 (1.38%) Azure Cosmos DB
16 9 (1.38%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 13 (2.00%) Ethernet
2 12 (1.85%) TCP/IP
3 7 (1.08%) NFC
4 5 (0.77%) HTTPS
4 5 (0.77%) PPP
5 4 (0.62%) Internet
5 4 (0.62%) Software-Defined Networking
6 3 (0.46%) 3GPP
6 3 (0.46%) DNS
6 3 (0.46%) HTTP
6 3 (0.46%) Wireless
7 2 (0.31%) Cisco Nexus
7 2 (0.31%) Network Security
8 1 (0.15%) Firewall
8 1 (0.15%) RS-232
8 1 (0.15%) SAN
8 1 (0.15%) SNMP
8 1 (0.15%) Software-Defined Radio
8 1 (0.15%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 95 (14.62%) PostgreSQL
2 86 (13.23%) Amazon Athena
3 85 (13.08%) Apache Arrow
3 85 (13.08%) Apache Iceberg
3 85 (13.08%) Dremio
4 39 (6.00%) Apache Ignite
5 38 (5.85%) Data Lake
5 38 (5.85%) Relational Database
6 25 (3.85%) SQL Server
7 24 (3.69%) MySQL
8 21 (3.23%) MongoDB
9 16 (2.46%) NoSQL
10 15 (2.31%) DynamoDB
11 8 (1.23%) Amazon Aurora
11 8 (1.23%) Big Data
12 7 (1.08%) Amazon RDS
12 7 (1.08%) Oracle Database
13 4 (0.62%) Amazon Redshift
13 4 (0.62%) Data Warehouse
14 3 (0.46%) GIS
Development Applications
1 61 (9.38%) Jenkins
2 58 (8.92%) Git
3 44 (6.77%) JIRA
4 40 (6.15%) GitLab
5 25 (3.85%) Eclipse
6 19 (2.92%) Bitbucket
7 17 (2.62%) Gradle
8 16 (2.46%) Visual Studio
9 12 (1.85%) JUnit
10 11 (1.69%) Mockito
11 10 (1.54%) GoogleTest
11 10 (1.54%) Liquibase
11 10 (1.54%) Selenium
12 9 (1.38%) Cucumber
12 9 (1.38%) Cypress.io
12 9 (1.38%) REST Assured
12 9 (1.38%) SonarQube
13 8 (1.23%) Robot Framework
14 7 (1.08%) Maven
15 6 (0.92%) Rational DOORS
General
1 257 (39.54%) Finance
2 183 (28.15%) Front Office
3 136 (20.92%) Banking
4 106 (16.31%) Social Skills
5 70 (10.77%) Investment Banking
6 42 (6.46%) Analytical Skills
7 35 (5.38%) Public Sector
8 23 (3.54%) Military
9 18 (2.77%) Telecoms
10 16 (2.46%) Presentation Skills
11 15 (2.31%) Manufacturing
12 14 (2.15%) Marketing
13 13 (2.00%) Electronics
14 9 (1.38%) Law
15 8 (1.23%) Multimedia
16 7 (1.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 6 (0.92%) Back Office
18 5 (0.77%) Aerospace
18 5 (0.77%) Retail
19 4 (0.62%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 196 (30.15%) React
2 160 (24.62%) Node.js
3 84 (12.92%) AngularJS
4 78 (12.00%) Redux
5 77 (11.85%) NumPy
6 76 (11.69%) Pandas
7 69 (10.62%) SciPy
8 65 (10.00%) .NET
8 65 (10.00%) Vue
9 56 (8.62%) REST
10 53 (8.15%) Kafka
11 48 (7.38%) Spring
12 45 (6.92%) Spring Boot
13 40 (6.15%) gRPC
14 38 (5.85%) Protocol Buffers
15 34 (5.23%) GraphQL
16 32 (4.92%) CSS
17 31 (4.77%) HTML
18 30 (4.62%) Web Services
19 27 (4.15%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 163 (25.08%) Fixed Income
2 116 (17.85%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 106 (16.31%) Equities
4 81 (12.46%) Hedge funds
5 54 (8.31%) Derivative
6 30 (4.62%) Pricing Data
7 25 (3.85%) Greenfield Project
8 23 (3.54%) Algorithms
9 22 (3.38%) Cloud Native
10 19 (2.92%) Product Ownership
11 15 (2.31%) Data Structures
11 15 (2.31%) Distributed Systems
12 8 (1.23%) Mobile App
12 8 (1.23%) Self-Motivation
13 6 (0.92%) Data Protection Act
13 6 (0.92%) NHS
14 5 (0.77%) CUDA
14 5 (0.77%) PKI
14 5 (0.77%) Smartcard
15 4 (0.62%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 78 (12.00%) Linux
2 28 (4.31%) Windows
3 14 (2.15%) Unix
4 6 (0.92%) Ubuntu
5 5 (0.77%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 4 (0.62%) Android
7 3 (0.46%) Embedded Linux
8 2 (0.31%) Apple iOS
8 2 (0.31%) Windows Server
9 1 (0.15%) FreeRTOS
9 1 (0.15%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.15%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 634 (97.54%) Software Engineering
2 332 (51.08%) Agile
3 146 (22.46%) Asset Management
4 139 (21.38%) CI/CD
4 139 (21.38%) Investment Management
5 102 (15.69%) Fintech
6 99 (15.23%) DevOps
6 99 (15.23%) Microservices
7 87 (13.38%) Test Automation
8 85 (13.08%) TDD
9 83 (12.77%) Full-Stack Development
10 82 (12.62%) Problem-Solving
11 67 (10.31%) Containerisation
12 64 (9.85%) User Experience
13 54 (8.31%) Mentoring
14 53 (8.15%) Infrastructure as Code
15 51 (7.85%) Scrum
16 46 (7.08%) Order Management
17 43 (6.62%) Computer Science
18 41 (6.31%) Multithreading
Programming Languages
1 287 (44.15%) Python
2 274 (42.15%) JavaScript
3 248 (38.15%) Java
4 224 (34.46%) TypeScript
5 93 (14.31%) C#
6 91 (14.00%) C++
6 91 (14.00%) SQL
7 41 (6.31%) Go
8 33 (5.08%) C
9 14 (2.15%) Bash
9 14 (2.15%) PHP
10 11 (1.69%) PL/SQL
11 10 (1.54%) Ada
11 10 (1.54%) Rust
12 8 (1.23%) MATLAB
12 8 (1.23%) PowerShell
13 6 (0.92%) Scala
14 5 (0.77%) Bicep
14 5 (0.77%) Kotlin
15 4 (0.62%) DAML
Qualifications
1 89 (13.69%) Security Cleared
2 75 (11.54%) SC Cleared
3 44 (6.77%) Degree
4 29 (4.46%) Computer Science Degree
5 12 (1.85%) DV Cleared
6 11 (1.69%) Master's Degree
7 2 (0.31%) BPSS Clearance
7 2 (0.31%) CCNP
7 2 (0.31%) Cisco Certification
7 2 (0.31%) OCA
7 2 (0.31%) Oracle Certification
7 2 (0.31%) RHCA
7 2 (0.31%) RHCE
7 2 (0.31%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 1 (0.15%) AWS Certification
8 1 (0.15%) Microsoft Certification
8 1 (0.15%) PhD
8 1 (0.15%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (2.46%) QA
2 12 (1.85%) Accessibility
3 9 (1.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 6 (0.92%) Def Stans
4 6 (0.92%) IEC 61508
5 5 (0.77%) GDPR
5 5 (0.77%) MISRA
5 5 (0.77%) MISRA C
6 3 (0.46%) Software Quality Assurance
7 2 (0.31%) HL7
7 2 (0.31%) PMO
8 1 (0.15%) DICOM
8 1 (0.15%) GRC
8 1 (0.15%) ISO 13485
8 1 (0.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.15%) NIST
8 1 (0.15%) SEPA
System Software
1 81 (12.46%) Docker
2 4 (0.62%) VMware Infrastructure
3 3 (0.46%) Firmware
3 3 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
4 2 (0.31%) vSphere
5 1 (0.15%) GPFS
Systems Management
1 77 (11.85%) Kubernetes
2 66 (10.15%) Terraform
3 23 (3.54%) Ansible
4 11 (1.69%) Grafana
5 10 (1.54%) Prometheus
6 8 (1.23%) Podman
7 7 (1.08%) Istio
7 7 (1.08%) Single Sign-On
8 6 (0.92%) Docker Swarm
9 3 (0.46%) Puppet
9 3 (0.46%) vCenter Server
9 3 (0.46%) WMI
10 2 (0.31%) Progress Chef
11 1 (0.15%) CA Endevor
11 1 (0.15%) Veritas Storage Foundation
Vendors
1 37 (5.69%) Microsoft
1 37 (5.69%) Oracle
2 22 (3.38%) Google
3 16 (2.46%) Atlassian
4 13 (2.00%) SAP
5 9 (1.38%) Temenos
6 7 (1.08%) Cisco
6 7 (1.08%) Hitachi
6 7 (1.08%) Intel
7 6 (0.92%) ForgeRock
7 6 (0.92%) IBM
7 6 (0.92%) Splunk
7 6 (0.92%) VMware
8 5 (0.77%) Ping Identity
8 5 (0.77%) Salesforce
9 4 (0.62%) BT
9 4 (0.62%) Databricks
9 4 (0.62%) Zend
10 3 (0.46%) CA Agile Central
10 3 (0.46%) PagerDuty
5,774 Software Engineer jobs Nationwide