Software Engineering Contracts

Software Engineering
UK

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for Software Engineering skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited Software Engineering over the 6 months to 7 December 2023 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
7 Dec 2023
Same period 2022 Same period 2021
Rank 48 38 39
Rank change year-on-year -10 +1 +4
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 1,890 4,457 5,226
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 4.21% 5.81% 5.83%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.76% 6.44% 6.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,244 3,083 3,893
10th Percentile £425 £458 £400
25th Percentile £500 £519 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £600 £550
Median % change year-on-year - +9.09% +4.76%
75th Percentile £738 £700 £650
90th Percentile £810 £763 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £550 £495
% change year-on-year -2.27% +11.11% +10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 231 224 155
10th Percentile £46.18 £42.78 £36.93
25th Percentile £51.75 £54.99 £45.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £49.00
Median % change year-on-year - +32.65% +8.89%
75th Percentile £69.00 £65.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £85.00 £74.63 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £49.00
% change year-on-year - +32.65% +8.89%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Software Engineering is in the Processes and Methodologies category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 39,726 69,214 81,237
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 88.51% 90.15% 90.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,590 47,923 56,854
10th Percentile £310 £338 £319
25th Percentile £425 £450 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £550 £523
Median % change year-on-year -3.18% +5.26% +10.00%
75th Percentile £650 £650 £623
90th Percentile £745 £750 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £463
% change year-on-year - +8.11% +7.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,525 1,676 1,999
10th Percentile £14.45 £13.41 £11.99
25th Percentile £18.95 £17.56 £13.50
Median hourly rate £42.50 £35.00 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year +21.43% +62.79% -17.31%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £46.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £72.73 £62.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.90 £32.50 £18.00
% change year-on-year +35.08% +80.56% -20.00%

Software Engineering
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Software Engineering as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Software Engineering in the UK

Software Engineering
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for Software Engineering in the UK

Software Engineering
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Software Engineering over the 6 months to 7 December 2023.

Daily rate histogram for Software Engineering in the UK

Software Engineering
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for Software Engineering in the UK

Software Engineering
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Software Engineering over the 6 months to 7 December 2023.

Hourly rate histogram for Software Engineering in the UK

Software Engineering
Top 16 Contract Locations

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 over the 6 months to 7 December 2023. 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 -7 1,694 £604 +0.67% 2,856
London -8 868 £650 - 1,222
UK excluding London -13 845 £538 -2.27% 2,007
Work from Home -17 679 £600 +2.39% 1,733
South West -5 217 £550 -8.33% 254
South East -5 175 £530 -9.56% 599
North of England +7 162 £538 -7.71% 431
East of England +4 141 £500 -14.68% 288
North West +28 113 £550 -8.33% 242
Scotland -15 73 £525 +6.49% 148
Midlands -41 62 £550 +1.85% 223
Yorkshire -12 44 £525 -4.55% 131
West Midlands -60 32 £550 +1.85% 143
East Midlands +30 28 £525 -1.18% 79
Wales -3 19 £525 -7.89% 57
North East +3 5 £500 -13.04% 60

Software Engineering
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
1 127 (6.72%) Confluence
2 69 (3.65%) Apache Airflow
3 65 (3.44%) Apache
4 39 (2.06%) Apache Spark
5 33 (1.75%) nginx
6 15 (0.79%) BizTalk Server
7 14 (0.74%) CMS
8 11 (0.58%) Tomcat
9 8 (0.42%) SharePoint
10 7 (0.37%) SAS
10 7 (0.37%) Sitecore CMS
10 7 (0.37%) Tornado
11 5 (0.26%) Apache Solr
12 4 (0.21%) Luigi
13 3 (0.16%) EPiServer
13 3 (0.16%) Jupyter
14 2 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 2 (0.11%) Alfresco
14 2 (0.11%) Umbraco
14 2 (0.11%) WordPress
Applications
1 15 (0.79%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (0.58%) Microsoft Excel
3 6 (0.32%) Simulink
4 3 (0.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.053%) Blender
5 1 (0.053%) CATIA
5 1 (0.053%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.053%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.053%) OrCAD
5 1 (0.053%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.053%) Trello
5 1 (0.053%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.58%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (0.26%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 4 (0.21%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.16%) Distributed Ledger
5 2 (0.11%) Global One
5 2 (0.11%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.11%) SAP PP
5 2 (0.11%) Teamcenter
6 1 (0.053%) DELMIA
6 1 (0.053%) ENOVIA
6 1 (0.053%) Exstream
6 1 (0.053%) Fidessa
6 1 (0.053%) LabWindows
6 1 (0.053%) OpenLink RightAngle
6 1 (0.053%) SAP CRM
Cloud Services
1 615 (32.54%) AWS
2 445 (23.54%) Azure
3 232 (12.28%) GCP
4 107 (5.66%) Serverless
5 100 (5.29%) Azure DevOps
6 79 (4.18%) GitHub
7 56 (2.96%) AWS Lambda
8 48 (2.54%) Power Platform
9 44 (2.33%) Amazon S3
9 44 (2.33%) Azure Functions
10 42 (2.22%) npm
11 38 (2.01%) SaaS
12 37 (1.96%) Azure Logic Apps
13 36 (1.90%) dbt
14 33 (1.75%) OpenShift
15 32 (1.69%) Azure Cosmos DB
16 30 (1.59%) Azure Event Grid
17 27 (1.43%) Amazon EC2
18 26 (1.38%) Azure App Service
19 25 (1.32%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 38 (2.01%) RS-485
2 35 (1.85%) RS-422
3 34 (1.80%) Modbus
4 29 (1.53%) IPv4
5 25 (1.32%) Wireless
6 18 (0.95%) Firewall
6 18 (0.95%) HTTP
7 17 (0.90%) SNMP
8 15 (0.79%) Software-Defined Radio
9 13 (0.69%) FTP
10 12 (0.63%) Wi-Fi
11 11 (0.58%) Ethernet
11 11 (0.58%) Network Security
11 11 (0.58%) VPN
12 10 (0.53%) DNS
12 10 (0.53%) SSL
12 10 (0.53%) Tactical Data Link
12 10 (0.53%) TCP/IP
12 10 (0.53%) VoIP
13 9 (0.48%) 802.11
Database & Business Intelligence
1 106 (5.61%) SQL Server
2 85 (4.50%) MongoDB
3 84 (4.44%) PostgreSQL
4 53 (2.80%) NoSQL
5 49 (2.59%) MySQL
6 47 (2.49%) Relational Database
7 44 (2.33%) Apache Ignite
8 36 (1.90%) Power BI
9 35 (1.85%) Amazon Athena
10 33 (1.75%) Big Data
11 30 (1.59%) Elasticsearch
12 29 (1.53%) Data Lake
13 28 (1.48%) Apache Arrow
13 28 (1.48%) Dremio
14 27 (1.43%) Oracle Database
15 24 (1.27%) Azure SQL Database
15 24 (1.27%) Tableau
16 23 (1.22%) Apache Cassandra
16 23 (1.22%) Data Warehouse
16 23 (1.22%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 220 (11.64%) Git
2 160 (8.47%) JIRA
3 103 (5.45%) Jenkins
4 57 (3.02%) Bitbucket
5 54 (2.86%) Rational DOORS
6 47 (2.49%) Cypress.io
7 44 (2.33%) GitLab
8 41 (2.17%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 37 (1.96%) webpack
10 34 (1.80%) Visual Studio
11 29 (1.53%) Artifactory
12 27 (1.43%) Liquibase
13 26 (1.38%) Robot Framework
14 22 (1.16%) Postman
15 21 (1.11%) Rational Rhapsody
15 21 (1.11%) Selenium
16 20 (1.06%) TeamCity
17 19 (1.01%) GoogleTest
17 19 (1.01%) SonarQube
18 18 (0.95%) Eclipse
General
1 410 (21.69%) Finance
2 389 (20.58%) Social Skills
3 177 (9.37%) Front Office
4 151 (7.99%) Banking
5 148 (7.83%) Analytical Skills
6 140 (7.41%) Public Sector
7 90 (4.76%) Electronics
8 62 (3.28%) Investment Banking
9 54 (2.86%) Aerospace
10 51 (2.70%) Marketing
11 50 (2.65%) Manufacturing
12 40 (2.12%) Telecoms
13 37 (1.96%) Automotive
14 24 (1.27%) Financial Institution
15 20 (1.06%) Retail
16 16 (0.85%) Avionics
16 16 (0.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 16 (0.85%) Military
17 13 (0.69%) Aviation
17 13 (0.69%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 837 (44.29%) Software Engineer
2 574 (30.37%) Developer
3 218 (11.53%) Senior
4 156 (8.25%) Embedded Engineer
5 145 (7.67%) Embedded Software Engineer
6 122 (6.46%) Developer/Software Engineer
6 122 (6.46%) Lead
7 117 (6.19%) Python Developer
8 113 (5.98%) Senior Software Engineer
9 100 (5.29%) Python Engineer
10 95 (5.03%) C++ Software Engineer
11 90 (4.76%) DevOps Engineer
12 82 (4.34%) Python Software Engineer
13 78 (4.13%) AWS Engineer
13 78 (4.13%) Full Stack Developer
14 76 (4.02%) .NET Developer
15 74 (3.92%) Software Developer
16 72 (3.81%) React Developer
17 68 (3.60%) .NET Software Engineer
17 68 (3.60%) Full Stack Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 288 (15.24%) React
2 284 (15.03%) .NET
3 155 (8.20%) Node.js
4 152 (8.04%) Kafka
5 134 (7.09%) REST
6 129 (6.83%) AngularJS
7 106 (5.61%) HTML
8 98 (5.19%) CSS
9 96 (5.08%) .NET Core
10 88 (4.66%) Spring
11 86 (4.55%) Redux
12 72 (3.81%) ASP.NET
13 68 (3.60%) .NET Framework
14 65 (3.44%) RESTful
15 63 (3.33%) Vue
16 60 (3.17%) Spring Boot
17 57 (3.02%) gRPC
18 50 (2.65%) Pandas
19 48 (2.54%) GraphQL
19 48 (2.54%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 106 (5.61%) Fixed Income
2 104 (5.50%) Algorithms
3 83 (4.39%) Derivative
4 71 (3.76%) Equities
5 67 (3.54%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 65 (3.44%) Distributed Systems
7 56 (2.96%) Hedge funds
8 53 (2.80%) Cloud Native
9 49 (2.59%) Product Ownership
10 47 (2.49%) Data Structures
11 44 (2.33%) Self-Motivation
12 28 (1.48%) Data Protection Act
12 28 (1.48%) Greenfield Project
13 25 (1.32%) Mobile App
13 25 (1.32%) Virtual Team
14 24 (1.27%) Legacy Systems
15 21 (1.11%) Public Cloud
16 18 (0.95%) Embedded Systems
16 18 (0.95%) Management Information System
16 18 (0.95%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 311 (16.46%) Linux
2 137 (7.25%) Windows
3 80 (4.23%) Unix
4 24 (1.27%) Android
5 17 (0.90%) Windows Server
6 14 (0.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 13 (0.69%) Apple iOS
8 12 (0.63%) FreeRTOS
9 9 (0.48%) Embedded Linux
9 9 (0.48%) VxWorks
10 8 (0.42%) CentOS
11 6 (0.32%) Mac OS
12 4 (0.21%) Ubuntu
12 4 (0.21%) Windows 10
13 3 (0.16%) Mac OS X
14 2 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
14 2 (0.11%) Debian
14 2 (0.11%) Windows Server 2016
15 1 (0.053%) tvOS
15 1 (0.053%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 746 (39.47%) Agile
2 444 (23.49%) DevOps
3 371 (19.63%) CI/CD
4 248 (13.12%) Problem-Solving
5 247 (13.07%) Test Automation
6 214 (11.32%) Computer Science
7 205 (10.85%) TDD
8 200 (10.58%) Scrum
9 189 (10.00%) SDLC
10 186 (9.84%) Microservices
11 177 (9.37%) Full Stack Development
12 161 (8.52%) Software Testing
13 153 (8.10%) Continuous Integration
14 140 (7.41%) Unit Testing
15 136 (7.20%) OO
16 132 (6.98%) Asset Management
17 124 (6.56%) Analytics
18 122 (6.46%) Continuous Improvement
19 106 (5.61%) Roadmaps
20 102 (5.40%) Design Patterns
Programming Languages
1 618 (32.70%) Python
2 447 (23.65%) Java
3 386 (20.42%) JavaScript
4 381 (20.16%) C++
5 350 (18.52%) C#
6 305 (16.14%) SQL
7 272 (14.39%) TypeScript
8 271 (14.34%) C
9 125 (6.61%) Go
10 81 (4.29%) Bash
11 67 (3.54%) PowerShell
12 64 (3.39%) Embedded C
12 64 (3.39%) Scala
13 50 (2.65%) Ada
14 49 (2.59%) Ruby
15 47 (2.49%) Embedded C++
15 47 (2.49%) Perl
16 46 (2.43%) PL/SQL
17 45 (2.38%) Rust
18 41 (2.17%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 379 (20.05%) Security Cleared
2 289 (15.29%) SC Cleared
3 278 (14.71%) Degree
4 120 (6.35%) Computer Science Degree
5 91 (4.81%) DV Cleared
6 79 (4.18%) Master's Degree
7 36 (1.90%) AWS Certification
8 29 (1.53%) Chartered Engineer
9 20 (1.06%) PhD
10 17 (0.90%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 15 (0.79%) BPSS Clearance
12 13 (0.69%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
13 8 (0.42%) PMP
14 7 (0.37%) Azure Certification
14 7 (0.37%) PMI Certification
15 6 (0.32%) RHCSA
16 5 (0.26%) CESG Certified Professional
16 5 (0.26%) CISSP
16 5 (0.26%) CLAS
16 5 (0.26%) HNC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 124 (6.56%) QA
2 28 (1.48%) Accessibility
3 10 (0.53%) Disclosure Scotland
3 10 (0.53%) NIST
4 8 (0.42%) Data Quality
4 8 (0.42%) Def Stans
4 8 (0.42%) MISRA
5 7 (0.37%) MISRA C
6 6 (0.32%) IEC 61508
6 6 (0.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 6 (0.32%) JTAG
6 6 (0.32%) PCI DSS
7 5 (0.26%) DO-178B
7 5 (0.26%) ISO 26262
7 5 (0.26%) JSP 440
7 5 (0.26%) NCSC
7 5 (0.26%) RMADS
8 3 (0.16%) ARP4754
8 3 (0.16%) Automotive SPICE
8 3 (0.16%) DO-254
System Software
1 229 (12.12%) Docker
2 32 (1.69%) Firmware
3 27 (1.43%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (0.42%) Active Directory
4 8 (0.42%) Hyper-V
5 6 (0.32%) Embedded Firmware
6 5 (0.26%) zsh
7 4 (0.21%) Slurm Workload Manager
7 4 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
8 2 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
8 2 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.053%) Ceph
9 1 (0.053%) HDFS
9 1 (0.053%) KVM
9 1 (0.053%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.053%) VirtualBox
9 1 (0.053%) VMware NSX
9 1 (0.053%) vSphere
9 1 (0.053%) Xen
Systems Management
1 297 (15.71%) Kubernetes
2 155 (8.20%) Terraform
3 74 (3.92%) Ansible
4 36 (1.90%) Prometheus
5 35 (1.85%) Consul
6 32 (1.69%) Packer
7 31 (1.64%) Grafana
8 13 (0.69%) Zipkin
9 10 (0.53%) Kibana
9 10 (0.53%) Progress Chef
10 8 (0.42%) Puppet
11 7 (0.37%) PowerCLI
12 6 (0.32%) Istio
13 5 (0.26%) HP ALM
14 3 (0.16%) Argo
14 3 (0.16%) Knative
14 3 (0.16%) Podman
15 2 (0.11%) Functional Safety
15 2 (0.11%) Kubeflow
15 2 (0.11%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 131 (6.93%) Microsoft
2 93 (4.92%) Google
3 85 (4.50%) Oracle
4 56 (2.96%) Atlassian
5 48 (2.54%) Red Hat
6 36 (1.90%) Splunk
7 35 (1.85%) SAP
8 31 (1.64%) Dynatrace
9 27 (1.43%) Databricks
9 27 (1.43%) VMware
10 25 (1.32%) CyberArk
10 25 (1.32%) TOWER Software
11 24 (1.27%) IBM
11 24 (1.27%) Salesforce
12 20 (1.06%) MuleSoft
13 13 (0.69%) Finsemble
14 9 (0.48%) ServiceNow
14 9 (0.48%) Virgin Media
15 8 (0.42%) Lauterbach
15 8 (0.42%) Sitecore