Software Engineering Contracts

Software Engineering
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring Software Engineering skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Software Engineering over the 6 months leading up to 30 April 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Apr 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 42 33 43
Rank change year-on-year -9 +10 -1
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 1,421 2,251 2,914
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 4.86% 5.16% 4.88%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.35% 5.98% 5.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 926 1,319 1,951
10th Percentile £400 £413 £438
25th Percentile £475 £485 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year - - +3.45%
75th Percentile £738 £749 £703
90th Percentile £838 £850 £798
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £513 £540
% change year-on-year -2.44% -5.09% +2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 84 361 200
10th Percentile £42.65 £46.25 £46.13
25th Percentile £54.66 £52.50 £53.75
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £64.15
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -2.56% +16.63%
75th Percentile £68.00 £70.00 £68.56
90th Percentile £68.75 £80.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% -3.85% +14.54%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Software Engineering falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 26,551 37,621 53,662
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.82% 86.30% 89.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,137 24,254 37,244
10th Percentile £308 £300 £325
25th Percentile £413 £413 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £521 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.86% -4.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £650
90th Percentile £744 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.80% - +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,071 2,437 1,746
10th Percentile £14.70 £12.75 £11.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £29.00 £35.50 £37.30
Median % change year-on-year -18.31% -4.83% +49.20%
75th Percentile £62.00 £59.95 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.94 £36.50 £36.00
% change year-on-year -23.45% +1.39% +80.00%

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 30 April 2025.

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 30 April 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Software Engineering in the UK

Software Engineering
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 Engineering within the UK over the 6 months to 30 April 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 -8 1,212 £600 - 3,440
London -1 705 £675 - 1,576
Work from Home -1 576 £625 - 2,084
UK excluding London -14 559 £500 -2.44% 2,103
North of England -25 125 £500 -4.76% 620
South West +14 115 £575 +9.52% 278
South East -21 113 £513 -6.82% 406
Scotland +6 92 £478 -4.02% 202
North West -17 85 £500 -8.88% 387
Midlands -12 54 £483 -1.83% 293
Yorkshire -12 37 £500 +17.65% 162
West Midlands -8 36 £531 +16.38% 163
East of England -31 36 £488 -2.35% 258
East Midlands -6 15 £490 -10.91% 129
Northern Ireland +3 14 £325 -51.85% 38
Wales -2 11 £475 -13.79% 40
North East -28 3 £460 +17.95% 74

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
1 115 (8.09%) Apache Airflow
2 110 (7.74%) Apache
3 52 (3.66%) Confluence
4 45 (3.17%) Apache Spark
5 14 (0.99%) SAS
6 11 (0.77%) CMS
7 10 (0.70%) GemFire
8 8 (0.56%) Oracle Coherence
9 7 (0.49%) WordPress
10 4 (0.28%) Drupal
11 3 (0.21%) Documentum
11 3 (0.21%) FileNet
11 3 (0.21%) Headless CMS
11 3 (0.21%) SharePoint
12 2 (0.14%) BizTalk Server
12 2 (0.14%) IIS
12 2 (0.14%) Jupyter
12 2 (0.14%) TPMS
13 1 (0.070%) Umbraco
13 1 (0.070%) WinCC
Applications
1 6 (0.42%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (0.35%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.35%) Simulink
3 2 (0.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.070%) Acrobat
4 1 (0.070%) CANalyzer
4 1 (0.070%) Fusion 360
4 1 (0.070%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.070%) Siemens NX
4 1 (0.070%) Stateflow
4 1 (0.070%) Trello
Business Applications
1 10 (0.70%) BASE24
2 6 (0.42%) SAP S/4HANA
3 5 (0.35%) FLEXCUBE
3 5 (0.35%) Oracle BPM
4 4 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
5 3 (0.21%) Dynamics CRM
5 3 (0.21%) Salesforce CRM
5 3 (0.21%) SAP ERP
5 3 (0.21%) SAP EWM
5 3 (0.21%) SAP GTS
6 2 (0.14%) Endur
6 2 (0.14%) LabWindows
6 2 (0.14%) Misys Midas
6 2 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
6 2 (0.14%) Teamcenter
7 1 (0.070%) Fidessa
7 1 (0.070%) IBM Planning Analytics
7 1 (0.070%) Oracle 11i
7 1 (0.070%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 575 (40.46%) AWS
2 305 (21.46%) Azure
3 212 (14.92%) GCP
4 124 (8.73%) Serverless
5 115 (8.09%) dbt
6 89 (6.26%) AWS Lambda
7 77 (5.42%) GitHub
8 76 (5.35%) Amazon ECS
9 66 (4.64%) OpenShift
10 61 (4.29%) Azure DevOps
11 55 (3.87%) Amazon EC2
12 51 (3.59%) Snowflake
13 50 (3.52%) Amazon S3
14 47 (3.31%) GitHub Actions
15 40 (2.81%) AWS CloudFormation
16 33 (2.32%) Amazon EKS
17 32 (2.25%) Amazon SQS
18 31 (2.18%) Cloud Computing
19 27 (1.90%) Dagster
19 27 (1.90%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 18 (1.27%) HTTP
2 10 (0.70%) DNS
3 9 (0.63%) ATM
4 8 (0.56%) TCP/IP
5 7 (0.49%) Firewall
5 7 (0.49%) SNMP
5 7 (0.49%) Software-Defined Radio
6 6 (0.42%) HTTPS
6 6 (0.42%) Internet
6 6 (0.42%) Network Security
6 6 (0.42%) SAN
7 5 (0.35%) Ethernet
7 5 (0.35%) MQTT
7 5 (0.35%) NAS
7 5 (0.35%) VPN
8 4 (0.28%) Modbus
8 4 (0.28%) SSL
8 4 (0.28%) VSAN
9 3 (0.21%) Software-Defined Networking
9 3 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 167 (11.75%) PostgreSQL
2 117 (8.23%) Relational Database
3 113 (7.95%) Amazon Athena
4 110 (7.74%) Apache Iceberg
4 110 (7.74%) Dremio
5 99 (6.97%) Apache Arrow
6 76 (5.35%) SQL Server
7 74 (5.21%) MongoDB
8 70 (4.93%) Apache Ignite
9 62 (4.36%) NoSQL
10 59 (4.15%) MySQL
11 57 (4.01%) Data Lake
12 53 (3.73%) Apache Cassandra
13 30 (2.11%) Big Data
13 30 (2.11%) Oracle Database
14 29 (2.04%) Amazon RDS
15 21 (1.48%) Power BI
16 20 (1.41%) Amazon Redshift
17 19 (1.34%) DynamoDB
18 18 (1.27%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 172 (12.10%) Git
2 156 (10.98%) Jenkins
3 106 (7.46%) JIRA
4 90 (6.33%) GitLab
5 77 (5.42%) JUnit
6 48 (3.38%) Cucumber
7 47 (3.31%) Bitbucket
8 44 (3.10%) Gradle
9 40 (2.81%) Artifactory
10 37 (2.60%) Mockito
11 34 (2.39%) Liquibase
12 31 (2.18%) SonarQube
13 23 (1.62%) Maven
14 22 (1.55%) Selenium
15 21 (1.48%) Eclipse
16 19 (1.34%) GoogleTest
17 18 (1.27%) Visual Studio
18 16 (1.13%) Cypress.io
18 16 (1.13%) REST Assured
19 14 (0.99%) Rational DOORS
General
1 442 (31.10%) Finance
2 321 (22.59%) Social Skills
3 224 (15.76%) Front Office
4 193 (13.58%) Banking
5 133 (9.36%) Analytical Skills
6 121 (8.52%) Public Sector
7 94 (6.62%) Investment Banking
8 53 (3.73%) Telecoms
9 47 (3.31%) Marketing
10 40 (2.81%) Manufacturing
11 39 (2.74%) Electronics
12 23 (1.62%) Financial Institution
13 22 (1.55%) Aerospace
14 18 (1.27%) Law
14 18 (1.27%) Retail
15 17 (1.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 17 (1.20%) Presentation Skills
16 16 (1.13%) Military
17 13 (0.91%) Legal
18 10 (0.70%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 607 (42.72%) Software Engineer
2 447 (31.46%) Developer
3 240 (16.89%) Senior
4 152 (10.70%) Python Engineer
5 144 (10.13%) AWS Engineer
6 129 (9.08%) Java Developer
7 122 (8.59%) Senior Software Engineer
8 114 (8.02%) Java Engineer
9 107 (7.53%) Developer/Software Engineer
10 99 (6.97%) Java Software Engineer
11 92 (6.47%) AWS Software Engineer
12 84 (5.91%) DevOps Engineer
12 84 (5.91%) Python Software Engineer
13 76 (5.35%) Lead
14 71 (5.00%) Senior Developer
15 68 (4.79%) Python Developer
16 61 (4.29%) Software Developer
17 60 (4.22%) Data Engineer
18 58 (4.08%) AWS Developer
19 57 (4.01%) React Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 252 (17.73%) React
2 177 (12.46%) Kafka
3 156 (10.98%) Node.js
4 153 (10.77%) .NET
5 127 (8.94%) Spring
6 123 (8.66%) AngularJS
7 108 (7.60%) Spring Boot
8 95 (6.69%) NumPy
8 95 (6.69%) Pandas
9 88 (6.19%) CSS
10 84 (5.91%) HTML
11 80 (5.63%) PySpark
12 79 (5.56%) REST
12 79 (5.56%) RESTful
13 77 (5.42%) SciPy
14 76 (5.35%) gRPC
15 71 (5.00%) Vue
16 65 (4.57%) Redux
17 59 (4.15%) Swagger
18 56 (3.94%) OpenAPI
Miscellaneous
1 130 (9.15%) Fixed Income
2 85 (5.98%) Equities
2 85 (5.98%) Hedge funds
3 84 (5.91%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 75 (5.28%) Algorithms
5 66 (4.64%) Derivative
6 59 (4.15%) Distributed Systems
7 54 (3.80%) Product Ownership
8 43 (3.03%) Data Structures
9 32 (2.25%) Cloud Native
9 32 (2.25%) Greenfield Project
10 27 (1.90%) Public Cloud
11 19 (1.34%) Management Information System
12 18 (1.27%) Mobile App
13 15 (1.06%) Enterprise Software
13 15 (1.06%) Equity Derivative
14 13 (0.91%) FPGA
15 12 (0.84%) Data Centre
15 12 (0.84%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
15 12 (0.84%) Pricing Data
Operating Systems
1 224 (15.76%) Linux
2 58 (4.08%) Windows
3 48 (3.38%) Unix
4 36 (2.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 21 (1.48%) Android
6 12 (0.84%) Windows Server
7 11 (0.77%) Apple iOS
7 11 (0.77%) Ubuntu
8 8 (0.56%) Embedded Linux
9 6 (0.42%) HPUX
9 6 (0.42%) Solaris
10 5 (0.35%) VxWorks
11 3 (0.21%) FreeRTOS
12 2 (0.14%) VMS
12 2 (0.14%) Windows 10
13 1 (0.070%) AIX
13 1 (0.070%) SUSE
13 1 (0.070%) Windows 7
13 1 (0.070%) Windows Server 2012
13 1 (0.070%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 613 (43.14%) Agile
2 428 (30.12%) CI/CD
3 359 (25.26%) DevOps
4 251 (17.66%) Problem-Solving
5 240 (16.89%) Microservices
6 194 (13.65%) Test Automation
7 174 (12.24%) TDD
8 173 (12.17%) Asset Management
9 159 (11.19%) Containerisation
10 145 (10.20%) Full-Stack Development
11 137 (9.64%) Scrum
12 136 (9.57%) Continuous Integration
13 133 (9.36%) Computer Science
14 113 (7.95%) Fintech
15 109 (7.67%) Mentoring
16 108 (7.60%) Infrastructure as Code
17 104 (7.32%) User Experience
18 102 (7.18%) Investment Management
19 101 (7.11%) Artificial Intelligence
20 99 (6.97%) OO
Programming Languages
1 554 (38.99%) Python
2 477 (33.57%) Java
3 373 (26.25%) JavaScript
4 287 (20.20%) SQL
5 243 (17.10%) TypeScript
6 186 (13.09%) C#
7 128 (9.01%) C++
8 106 (7.46%) Go
9 48 (3.38%) C
10 46 (3.24%) Ada
11 44 (3.10%) Bash
12 39 (2.74%) Shell Script
13 36 (2.53%) PowerShell
14 29 (2.04%) Rust
14 29 (2.04%) Scala
15 19 (1.34%) PHP
16 18 (1.27%) PL/SQL
17 15 (1.06%) Ruby
18 14 (0.99%) Kotlin
19 12 (0.84%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 308 (21.67%) Security Cleared
2 259 (18.23%) SC Cleared
3 164 (11.54%) Degree
4 84 (5.91%) Computer Science Degree
5 63 (4.43%) DV Cleared
6 29 (2.04%) Master's Degree
7 26 (1.83%) Azure Certification
8 19 (1.34%) AWS Certification
9 14 (0.99%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 13 (0.91%) Microsoft Certification
11 10 (0.70%) Numerate Degree
12 9 (0.63%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 5 (0.35%) Cisco Certification
14 4 (0.28%) BPSS Clearance
14 4 (0.28%) CCNP
14 4 (0.28%) PMI Certification
14 4 (0.28%) SANS
15 3 (0.21%) PhD
15 3 (0.21%) PMP
16 2 (0.14%) OCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 77 (5.42%) QA
2 26 (1.83%) Accessibility
3 24 (1.69%) IEC 61508
4 23 (1.62%) Def Stans
5 17 (1.20%) MISRA
5 17 (1.20%) MISRA C
6 11 (0.77%) Data Quality
7 10 (0.70%) ISO 8583
7 10 (0.70%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 9 (0.63%) PSD2
9 7 (0.49%) GDPR
10 5 (0.35%) Disclosure Scotland
11 4 (0.28%) DO-178B
11 4 (0.28%) NIST
12 3 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
12 3 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
12 3 (0.21%) SEPA
12 3 (0.21%) Software Quality Assurance
13 2 (0.14%) ISO 26262
13 2 (0.14%) WCAG
System Software
1 284 (19.99%) Docker
2 8 (0.56%) GridGain
2 8 (0.56%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (0.42%) vSphere
4 5 (0.35%) Active Directory
4 5 (0.35%) Firmware
5 4 (0.28%) VMware NSX
6 3 (0.21%) Hyper-V
7 2 (0.14%) Embedded Firmware
8 1 (0.070%) GPFS
8 1 (0.070%) HDFS
8 1 (0.070%) Microsoft App-V
8 1 (0.070%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 295 (20.76%) Kubernetes
2 189 (13.30%) Terraform
3 85 (5.98%) Ansible
4 35 (2.46%) Grafana
5 24 (1.69%) Prometheus
6 11 (0.77%) Podman
7 10 (0.70%) Docker Swarm
8 7 (0.49%) Argo
8 7 (0.49%) Puppet
9 5 (0.35%) Istio
9 5 (0.35%) NetBackup
9 5 (0.35%) Oracle RMAN
9 5 (0.35%) Progress Chef
9 5 (0.35%) Single Sign-On
10 4 (0.28%) Kibana
11 3 (0.21%) Kubeflow
11 3 (0.21%) Opsview
11 3 (0.21%) WMI
12 2 (0.14%) PowerCLI
12 2 (0.14%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 89 (6.26%) Oracle
2 85 (5.98%) Google
3 83 (5.84%) Microsoft
4 42 (2.96%) SAP
5 25 (1.76%) Databricks
6 24 (1.69%) Red Hat
7 23 (1.62%) Atlassian
8 18 (1.27%) VMware
9 16 (1.13%) Splunk
10 15 (1.06%) IBM
11 12 (0.84%) MuleSoft
11 12 (0.84%) Sybase
12 11 (0.77%) Salesforce
13 10 (0.70%) HP
13 10 (0.70%) ServiceNow
13 10 (0.70%) Xilinx
14 9 (0.63%) Intel
15 8 (0.56%) Adobe
15 8 (0.56%) ForgeRock
16 7 (0.49%) Dynatrace