Job Vacancy Trend Daily Rate Trend Daily Rate Histogram Hourly Rate Trend Hourly Rate Histogram Job Locations Contract Software Engineer Skill Set
Period
to 28 January 2022

The median contractor rate for a Software Engineer was £550 per day in advertised job vacancies during the 6 months to 28 January 2022.

The first table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics including a comparison to same period in the previous 2 years.

Note that daily and hourly rates are treated separately in these statistics. When calculating contractor rate percentiles, daily rates are never derived from quoted hourly rates or vice versa.

Software Engineer
UK
6 months to
28 Jan 2022		 Same period 2021 Same period 2020
Rank 126 94 156
Rank change year-on-year -32 +62 +38
Contract jobs requiring a Software Engineer 1,786 1,025 1,224
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 2.03% 2.40% 1.70%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.18% 2.60% 1.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,251 681 675
10th Percentile £400 £363 £356
25th Percentile £463 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £513 £475
Median % change year-on-year +7.32% +7.89% +1.06%
75th Percentile £650 £650 £575
90th Percentile £713 £713 £631
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £450 £450
% change year-on-year +10.00% - +5.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 118 83 142
10th Percentile £41.25 £36.25 £41.25
25th Percentile £46.20 £41.25 £42.50
Median hourly rate £50.25 £44.50 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +12.92% -6.32% +5.56%
75th Percentile £60.00 £47.06 £50.00
90th Percentile £73.25 £50.06 £53.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.50 £45.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year +12.22% -5.26% +5.56%

The following table is for comparison with the above and includes 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.

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK
Contract vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 81,958 39,436 67,641
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 93.35% 92.52% 93.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 57,512 27,011 45,226
10th Percentile £305 £258 £238
25th Percentile £413 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £473 £450
Median % change year-on-year +10.05% +5.00% -
75th Percentile £625 £575 £563
90th Percentile £700 £650 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £425
% change year-on-year +5.88% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,016 1,447 2,500
10th Percentile £12.25 £11.17 £11.17
25th Percentile £14.38 £14.25 £14.00
Median hourly rate £21.05 £23.47 £18.00
Median % change year-on-year -10.31% +30.39% +2.86%
75th Percentile £46.88 £45.25 £38.00
90th Percentile £62.15 £58.71 £50.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.12 £19.50 £17.50
% change year-on-year -7.10% +11.43% -

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 28 January 2022.

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 28 January 2022.

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 28 January 2022. 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 -30 1,547 £575 +10.58% 1,297
London -37 842 £600 +4.35% 472
UK excluding London +6 706 £495 +10.00% 932
Work from Home -38 454 £550 +10.00% 285
North of England +37 180 £400 -3.03% 188
South West -15 143 £550 +7.32% 138
East of England +1 121 £475 +18.75% 154
North West +18 118 £400 -3.03% 114
South East -56 95 £606 +40.17% 213
Midlands -40 69 £500 +23.46% 125
Scotland -22 51 £475 +22.58% 81
West Midlands -38 50 £520 +30.00% 69
Yorkshire +2 49 £400 +9.59% 57
Wales -2 47 £525 +2.44% 24
East Midlands -19 19 £450 -5.26% 56
North East +5 15 £400 -13.51% 17
Northern Ireland -8 1 £500 +20.48% 10

Software Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring IT Skills

For the 6 months to 28 January 2022, Software Engineer contract jobs required the following IT skills 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 1,746 (97.76%) Software Engineering
2 899 (50.34%) Agile Software Development
3 617 (34.55%) AWS
4 587 (32.87%) JavaScript
5 580 (32.47%) Java
6 510 (28.56%) Python
7 477 (26.71%) React
8 457 (25.59%) C#
9 452 (25.31%) CI/CD
10 448 (25.08%) Finance
11 411 (23.01%) .NET
12 380 (21.28%) Full Stack Development
13 367 (20.55%) Azure
14 343 (19.20%) SQL
15 334 (18.70%) Microservices
16 322 (18.03%) Docker
17 321 (17.97%) DevOps
18 320 (17.92%) TypeScript
19 311 (17.41%) Asset Management
20 305 (17.08%) Kubernetes
21 292 (16.35%) Node.js
22 273 (15.29%) Serverless
23 269 (15.06%) Front Office
24 263 (14.73%) Investment Management
25 255 (14.28%) TDD
26 249 (13.94%) Security Cleared
27 237 (13.27%) Git (software)
28 233 (13.05%) C++
29 225 (12.60%) AWS Lambda
30 224 (12.54%) Terraform

Software Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring IT Skills by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same job type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 59 (3.30%) Confluence
2 50 (2.80%) Apache
3 35 (1.96%) Elasticsearch
4 30 (1.68%) Apache Airflow
4 30 (1.68%) Apache Spark
5 17 (0.95%) SAS
6 15 (0.84%) SharePoint
7 9 (0.50%) Cloud Foundry
8 8 (0.45%) CMS
9 7 (0.39%) CICS
9 7 (0.39%) Tomcat
10 5 (0.28%) BizTalk Server
10 5 (0.28%) Headless CMS
10 5 (0.28%) IIS
10 5 (0.28%) JBoss
10 5 (0.28%) Mule
11 3 (0.17%) ArcGIS
11 3 (0.17%) IBM Notes
12 2 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.11%) WebLogic
Applications
1 19 (1.06%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.78%) Simulink
3 12 (0.67%) Adobe XD
3 12 (0.67%) Sketch
4 11 (0.62%) Microsoft Office
5 5 (0.28%) FrameMaker
5 5 (0.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.17%) InVision
7 2 (0.11%) Zeplin
8 1 (0.056%) Adobe Illustrator
8 1 (0.056%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.056%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.056%) PlantUML
8 1 (0.056%) Stateflow
Business Applications
1 4 (0.22%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (0.17%) SAP ERP
3 2 (0.11%) assyst
3 2 (0.11%) IBM Operational Decision Manager
3 2 (0.11%) SAP EWM
3 2 (0.11%) SAP Hybris
3 2 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.056%) Distributed Ledger
4 1 (0.056%) LabWindows
Cloud Services
1 617 (34.55%) AWS
2 367 (20.55%) Azure
3 273 (15.29%) Serverless
4 225 (12.60%) AWS Lambda
5 172 (9.63%) GCP
6 156 (8.73%) Amazon S3
7 92 (5.15%) Amazon SQS
7 92 (5.15%) AWS Step Functions
8 60 (3.36%) GitHub
9 47 (2.63%) Amazon EC2
10 45 (2.52%) AWS CloudFormation
11 35 (1.96%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 29 (1.62%) Amazon Cognito
13 24 (1.34%) Amazon Kinesis
14 22 (1.23%) Azure Service Bus
15 21 (1.18%) OpenShift
15 21 (1.18%) SaaS
16 19 (1.06%) PaaS
17 17 (0.95%) Power Platform
17 17 (0.95%) Slack
Communications & Networking
1 37 (2.07%) HTTP
2 23 (1.29%) TCP/IP
3 18 (1.01%) HTTPS
4 13 (0.73%) Ethernet
5 12 (0.67%) Wireless
6 10 (0.56%) Wi-Fi
7 8 (0.45%) Radio Access Network
8 7 (0.39%) 3GPP
9 6 (0.34%) 5G
9 6 (0.34%) Bluetooth
9 6 (0.34%) Kerberos
10 5 (0.28%) DHCP
10 5 (0.28%) DNS
10 5 (0.28%) Firewall
10 5 (0.28%) ZigBee
11 4 (0.22%) FTP
11 4 (0.22%) VoIP
12 3 (0.17%) Broadband
12 3 (0.17%) Internet
12 3 (0.17%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 175 (9.80%) Amazon DynamoDB
2 108 (6.05%) NoSQL
3 104 (5.82%) Amazon RDS
4 89 (4.98%) PostgreSQL
5 81 (4.54%) SQL Server
6 78 (4.37%) MySQL
7 72 (4.03%) MongoDB
8 50 (2.80%) Relational Database
9 42 (2.35%) Hadoop
10 35 (1.96%) Redis
11 34 (1.90%) Big Data
12 30 (1.68%) Apache Hive
13 26 (1.46%) Amazon Athena
14 23 (1.29%) Azure SQL Database
15 21 (1.18%) GIS
15 21 (1.18%) Impala
16 17 (0.95%) Geospatial Data
17 16 (0.90%) Data Warehouse
18 15 (0.84%) Pentaho
19 14 (0.78%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 237 (13.27%) Git (software)
2 117 (6.55%) JIRA
3 114 (6.38%) Jenkins
4 68 (3.81%) GitLab
5 61 (3.42%) Visual Studio
6 45 (2.52%) Maven
7 44 (2.46%) Rational Rhapsody
8 39 (2.18%) Selenium
9 38 (2.13%) Rational DOORS
10 29 (1.62%) Eclipse
11 26 (1.46%) Cypress.io
12 24 (1.34%) TeamCity
13 22 (1.23%) Cucumber
14 20 (1.12%) JMeter
14 20 (1.12%) NetBeans
14 20 (1.12%) Rational Team Concert
15 19 (1.06%) JUnit
15 19 (1.06%) Postman
16 18 (1.01%) SpecFlow
17 17 (0.95%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 448 (25.08%) Finance
2 269 (15.06%) Front Office
3 207 (11.59%) Social Skills
4 84 (4.70%) Analytical Skills
5 67 (3.75%) Public Sector
6 60 (3.36%) Banking
7 57 (3.19%) Electronics
8 46 (2.58%) Retail
9 22 (1.23%) Organisational Skills
10 21 (1.18%) Law
11 19 (1.06%) Games
11 19 (1.06%) Investment Banking
12 18 (1.01%) Marketing
12 18 (1.01%) Presentation Skills
13 17 (0.95%) Pharmaceutical
13 17 (0.95%) Publishing
14 14 (0.78%) Automotive
15 13 (0.73%) Financial Institution
16 11 (0.62%) Telecoms
17 9 (0.50%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 477 (26.71%) React
2 411 (23.01%) .NET
3 292 (16.35%) Node.js
4 172 (9.63%) AngularJS
5 138 (7.73%) .NET Core
6 134 (7.50%) Kafka
7 114 (6.38%) Material-UI
8 103 (5.77%) Spring
9 97 (5.43%) HTML
9 97 (5.43%) REST
10 92 (5.15%) Spring Boot
11 91 (5.10%) CSS
12 89 (4.98%) RESTful
12 89 (4.98%) Vue.js
13 79 (4.42%) ASP.NET
14 69 (3.86%) .NET Framework
15 64 (3.58%) ASP.NET Web API
16 63 (3.53%) Web Services
17 54 (3.02%) GraphQL
18 53 (2.97%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 159 (8.90%) Equities
2 147 (8.23%) Derivative
3 146 (8.17%) Hedge funds
4 143 (8.01%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 130 (7.28%) Fixed Income
6 104 (5.82%) User Experience
7 81 (4.54%) Greenfield Project
8 60 (3.36%) Algorithms
9 53 (2.97%) Self-Motivation
10 37 (2.07%) Data Structures
11 30 (1.68%) Cloud Native
12 28 (1.57%) Data Protection Act
13 25 (1.40%) Credit Derivative
14 21 (1.18%) Client/Server
15 20 (1.12%) Mobile App
16 19 (1.06%) Legacy Applications
17 17 (0.95%) Embedded Systems
18 12 (0.67%) Biotechnology
19 11 (0.62%) Virtual Team
20 10 (0.56%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 202 (11.31%) Linux
2 130 (7.28%) Windows
3 40 (2.24%) Unix
4 24 (1.34%) Android
5 16 (0.90%) Windows 10
6 14 (0.78%) Embedded Linux
7 12 (0.67%) Apple iOS
8 10 (0.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 4 (0.22%) VxWorks
9 4 (0.22%) zOS
10 3 (0.17%) VME
10 3 (0.17%) VMS
11 2 (0.11%) CentOS
11 2 (0.11%) OpenWrt
11 2 (0.11%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.11%) Windows Server
12 1 (0.056%) Mac OS X
12 1 (0.056%) Solaris
12 1 (0.056%) Tizen
12 1 (0.056%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,746 (97.76%) Software Engineering
2 899 (50.34%) Agile Software Development
3 452 (25.31%) CI/CD
4 380 (21.28%) Full Stack Development
5 334 (18.70%) Microservices
6 321 (17.97%) DevOps
7 311 (17.41%) Asset Management
8 263 (14.73%) Investment Management
9 255 (14.28%) TDD
10 208 (11.65%) Test Automation
11 178 (9.97%) Analytics
12 155 (8.68%) Continuous Integration
13 153 (8.57%) OO
14 138 (7.73%) Scrum
15 135 (7.56%) Software Testing
16 131 (7.33%) Problem-Solving
17 127 (7.11%) SDLC
18 94 (5.26%) OOP
19 87 (4.87%) Visualisation
20 83 (4.65%) Unit Testing
Programming Languages
1 587 (32.87%) JavaScript
2 580 (32.47%) Java
3 510 (28.56%) Python
4 457 (25.59%) C#
5 343 (19.20%) SQL
6 320 (17.92%) TypeScript
7 233 (13.05%) C++
8 154 (8.62%) C
9 107 (5.99%) Go
10 92 (5.15%) VB.NET
11 51 (2.86%) Scala
12 41 (2.30%) Ruby
13 40 (2.24%) Kotlin
13 40 (2.24%) Perl
14 38 (2.13%) Ada
14 38 (2.13%) Embedded C
15 37 (2.07%) PHP
15 37 (2.07%) PL/SQL
16 36 (2.02%) Shell Script
17 35 (1.96%) Bash
Qualifications
1 249 (13.94%) Security Cleared
2 213 (11.93%) SC Cleared
3 78 (4.37%) Degree
4 42 (2.35%) Computer Science Degree
5 30 (1.68%) DV Cleared
6 28 (1.57%) BPSS Clearance
7 12 (0.67%) Master's Degree
7 12 (0.67%) PhD
8 2 (0.11%) Chartered Engineer
9 1 (0.056%) BC Cleared
9 1 (0.056%) CITP
9 1 (0.056%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 100 (5.60%) QA
2 16 (0.90%) IEC 61508
3 15 (0.84%) MISRA
4 14 (0.78%) Def Stans
4 14 (0.78%) MISRA C
5 10 (0.56%) Accessibility
6 7 (0.39%) SLA
7 6 (0.34%) Disclosure Scotland
7 6 (0.34%) DO-178B
8 5 (0.28%) Data Quality
8 5 (0.28%) ISO 9001
9 4 (0.22%) IEC 62304
9 4 (0.22%) WCAG
10 3 (0.17%) GDPR
10 3 (0.17%) JTAG
11 2 (0.11%) EMIR
11 2 (0.11%) ISO 14001
11 2 (0.11%) ISO/IEC 12207
11 2 (0.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 2 (0.11%) MiFID
System Software
1 322 (18.03%) Docker
2 27 (1.51%) HDFS
3 16 (0.90%) Active Directory
4 12 (0.67%) Firmware
5 9 (0.50%) VMware Infrastructure
6 7 (0.39%) Apache ZooKeeper
6 7 (0.39%) Virtual Machines
7 4 (0.22%) iptables
8 3 (0.17%) Hyper-V
9 2 (0.11%) GridGain
9 2 (0.11%) Job Entry Subsystem
9 2 (0.11%) NFS
9 2 (0.11%) RACF
9 2 (0.11%) RHEV
9 2 (0.11%) vSphere
10 1 (0.056%) Apache Flume
10 1 (0.056%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 305 (17.08%) Kubernetes
2 224 (12.54%) Terraform
3 52 (2.91%) Ansible
4 44 (2.46%) Grafana
5 28 (1.57%) Prometheus
6 14 (0.78%) Kibana
7 12 (0.67%) Puppet
8 11 (0.62%) logstash
8 11 (0.62%) Rancher
9 9 (0.50%) Bosun
10 8 (0.45%) VictorOps
11 6 (0.34%) Opscode Chef
12 4 (0.22%) Graphite
12 4 (0.22%) systemd
13 3 (0.17%) Packer
13 3 (0.17%) vRealize Orchestrator
14 2 (0.11%) Oozie
14 2 (0.11%) Salt
14 2 (0.11%) vRealize
14 2 (0.11%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 101 (5.66%) Microsoft
2 76 (4.26%) Oracle
3 31 (1.74%) Google
4 24 (1.34%) Cloudera
5 19 (1.06%) Adobe
5 19 (1.06%) Informatica
6 18 (1.01%) Atlassian
6 18 (1.01%) Confluent
7 16 (0.90%) IBM
7 16 (0.90%) Red Hat
8 13 (0.73%) Splunk
9 12 (0.67%) VMware
10 11 (0.62%) Perfecto Mobile
11 10 (0.56%) Alteryx
11 10 (0.56%) SAP
11 10 (0.56%) Talend
12 8 (0.45%) Salesforce.com
13 7 (0.39%) Databricks
14 6 (0.34%) Conga
14 6 (0.34%) MuleSoft
1,457 Software Engineer job vacancies Nationwide