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 29 April 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
29 Apr 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 33 43 42
Rank change year-on-year +10 -1 -5
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,251 2,914 4,899
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 5.16% 4.88% 5.52%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.98% 5.43% 6.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,319 1,951 3,465
10th Percentile £413 £438 £417
25th Percentile £485 £500 £495
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £600 £580
Median % change year-on-year - +3.45% +10.48%
75th Percentile £749 £703 £688
90th Percentile £850 £798 £756
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £540 £525
% change year-on-year -5.09% +2.86% +16.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 361 200 221
10th Percentile £46.25 £46.13 £36.25
25th Percentile £52.50 £53.75 £47.00
Median hourly rate £62.50 £64.15 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.56% +16.63% +22.22%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.56 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £56.75
% change year-on-year -3.85% +14.54% +26.11%

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 37,621 53,662 80,392
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.30% 89.91% 90.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,254 37,244 56,449
10th Percentile £300 £325 £340
25th Percentile £413 £438 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +4.76% +7.69%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £638
90th Percentile £750 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £475
% change year-on-year - +5.26% +9.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,437 1,746 1,925
10th Percentile £12.75 £11.00 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.00 £16.25 £15.25
Median hourly rate £35.50 £37.30 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.83% +49.20% -
75th Percentile £59.95 £65.00 £49.25
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.00 £64.32
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.50 £36.00 £20.00
% change year-on-year +1.39% +80.00% -7.24%

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 29 April 2024.

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 29 April 2024.

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 29 April 2024. 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 2,013 £600 - 2,352
UK excluding London +14 1,066 £513 -5.09% 1,567
London +3 987 £675 +3.85% 920
Work from Home +11 892 £625 +5.93% 1,407
South East +26 262 £550 +3.77% 366
North of England +46 254 £525 -4.55% 307
East of England +16 189 £500 -4.40% 239
North West +66 152 £549 -8.50% 185
South West -12 148 £525 -9.33% 266
Scotland +19 104 £498 +4.74% 128
Midlands +13 91 £492 -8.64% 237
Yorkshire +10 69 £425 -17.07% 93
West Midlands -3 60 £456 -15.51% 128
North East +22 35 £390 -32.17% 32
East Midlands +35 31 £550 +29.41% 109
Wales -3 18 £551 -5.97% 26
Northern Ireland +9 3 £675 +68.75% 35

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
1 165 (7.33%) Apache Airflow
2 155 (6.89%) Apache
3 48 (2.13%) Confluence
4 32 (1.42%) Apache Spark
5 13 (0.58%) CMS
6 8 (0.36%) BizTalk Server
6 8 (0.36%) IIS
7 7 (0.31%) nginx
8 6 (0.27%) Tornado
9 5 (0.22%) Anypoint
10 4 (0.18%) OpenStack
11 3 (0.13%) CICS
11 3 (0.13%) Headless CMS
11 3 (0.13%) SAS
11 3 (0.13%) SharePoint
12 2 (0.089%) Apache Solr
12 2 (0.089%) ArcGIS
12 2 (0.089%) Drupal
12 2 (0.089%) EPiServer
12 2 (0.089%) MQSeries
Applications
1 124 (5.51%) Chatbot
2 37 (1.64%) Simulink
3 27 (1.20%) Stateflow
4 17 (0.76%) Microsoft Excel
5 10 (0.44%) Microsoft Office
6 5 (0.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 5 (0.22%) TargetLink
7 2 (0.089%) Adobe After Effects
7 2 (0.089%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.089%) Blender
7 2 (0.089%) Maya
7 2 (0.089%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.044%) CATIA
8 1 (0.044%) PlantUML
8 1 (0.044%) Sketch
8 1 (0.044%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 8 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (0.22%) Endur
3 4 (0.18%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 3 (0.13%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.13%) Oracle BPM
4 3 (0.13%) Salesforce CRM
4 3 (0.13%) SAP S/4HANA
5 2 (0.089%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.089%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.089%) Shopify
5 2 (0.089%) WebTrends
6 1 (0.044%) Advent Geneva
6 1 (0.044%) Front Arena
6 1 (0.044%) Remedy ITSM
6 1 (0.044%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 648 (28.79%) AWS
2 497 (22.08%) Azure
3 250 (11.11%) GCP
4 114 (5.06%) Azure DevOps
5 93 (4.13%) GitHub
6 91 (4.04%) Serverless
7 89 (3.95%) dbt
8 78 (3.47%) Snowflake
9 57 (2.53%) AWS Lambda
10 42 (1.87%) Azure Service Bus
11 41 (1.82%) PaaS
11 41 (1.82%) SaaS
12 36 (1.60%) npm
13 32 (1.42%) Amazon S3
13 32 (1.42%) Azure Cosmos DB
14 31 (1.38%) Amazon EC2
15 29 (1.29%) GitHub Actions
16 26 (1.16%) Azure Functions
17 24 (1.07%) Azure Logic Apps
17 24 (1.07%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 38 (1.69%) Modbus
2 37 (1.64%) RS-422
3 36 (1.60%) RS-485
4 27 (1.20%) Software-Defined Radio
5 24 (1.07%) TCP/IP
6 23 (1.02%) HTTP
7 20 (0.89%) Firewall
8 19 (0.84%) Internet
9 18 (0.80%) SNMP
10 17 (0.76%) Wi-Fi
11 16 (0.71%) VPN
12 13 (0.58%) Wireless
13 12 (0.53%) 802.11
14 11 (0.49%) SAN
15 10 (0.44%) DNS
16 8 (0.36%) Ethernet
17 7 (0.31%) FTP
18 6 (0.27%) Network Security
19 5 (0.22%) DHCP
19 5 (0.22%) Tactical Data Link
Database & Business Intelligence
1 132 (5.86%) Apache Ignite
2 128 (5.69%) PostgreSQL
3 85 (3.78%) Amazon Athena
3 85 (3.78%) Apache Arrow
3 85 (3.78%) Dremio
4 82 (3.64%) SQL Server
5 79 (3.51%) Data Lake
6 74 (3.29%) NoSQL
7 56 (2.49%) MySQL
8 54 (2.40%) Apache Cassandra
9 48 (2.13%) MongoDB
10 41 (1.82%) Relational Database
11 31 (1.38%) Big Data
12 29 (1.29%) Oracle Database
13 28 (1.24%) Azure SQL Database
14 27 (1.20%) Data Warehouse
15 22 (0.98%) Elasticsearch
16 20 (0.89%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 18 (0.80%) Oracle Database 11g
17 18 (0.80%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 216 (9.60%) Git
2 149 (6.62%) JIRA
3 125 (5.55%) Jenkins
4 77 (3.42%) Cypress.io
5 58 (2.58%) GitLab
6 54 (2.40%) SonarQube
7 42 (1.87%) Selenium
8 38 (1.69%) Bitbucket
9 35 (1.55%) Cucumber
10 33 (1.47%) Rational DOORS
11 31 (1.38%) Visual Studio
12 27 (1.20%) Eclipse
12 27 (1.20%) webpack
13 25 (1.11%) Maven
14 23 (1.02%) GoogleTest
14 23 (1.02%) Postman
15 22 (0.98%) JUnit
16 21 (0.93%) REST Assured
17 18 (0.80%) Artifactory
18 17 (0.76%) TeamCity
General
1 505 (22.43%) Finance
2 401 (17.81%) Social Skills
3 279 (12.39%) Front Office
4 234 (10.40%) Banking
5 110 (4.89%) Analytical Skills
6 108 (4.80%) Electronics
7 104 (4.62%) Public Sector
8 99 (4.40%) Investment Banking
9 75 (3.33%) Aerospace
10 62 (2.75%) Automotive
11 42 (1.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 41 (1.82%) Telecoms
13 40 (1.78%) Manufacturing
14 37 (1.64%) Marketing
15 36 (1.60%) Retail
16 31 (1.38%) Law
17 28 (1.24%) Financial Institution
17 28 (1.24%) Legal
18 25 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
19 17 (0.76%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,039 (46.16%) Software Engineer
2 746 (33.14%) Developer
3 364 (16.17%) Senior
4 207 (9.20%) Software Developer
5 204 (9.06%) Senior Software Engineer
6 165 (7.33%) Lead
7 152 (6.75%) Python Developer
8 142 (6.31%) Developer/Software Engineer
9 141 (6.26%) Python Engineer
10 130 (5.78%) Embedded Engineer
11 129 (5.73%) Java Engineer
12 125 (5.55%) Embedded Software Engineer
13 123 (5.46%) Python Software Engineer
14 110 (4.89%) Java Developer
15 107 (4.75%) C++ Software Engineer
16 94 (4.18%) Full Stack Engineer
17 91 (4.04%) Java Software Engineer
18 89 (3.95%) Senior Developer
19 81 (3.60%) Full Stack Developer
20 80 (3.55%) React Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 379 (16.84%) React
2 252 (11.20%) HTML
3 228 (10.13%) .NET
4 165 (7.33%) REST
5 161 (7.15%) Node.js
6 151 (6.71%) gRPC
7 142 (6.31%) Kafka
7 142 (6.31%) Protocol Buffers
8 136 (6.04%) AngularJS
9 131 (5.82%) Pandas
10 126 (5.60%) CSS
11 119 (5.29%) Redux
12 118 (5.24%) NumPy
13 96 (4.26%) SciPy
14 92 (4.09%) Spring
15 77 (3.42%) .NET Core
16 75 (3.33%) Spring Boot
17 74 (3.29%) RESTful
18 71 (3.15%) Material-UI
19 57 (2.53%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 211 (9.37%) Fixed Income
2 165 (7.33%) Hedge funds
3 152 (6.75%) Equities
4 143 (6.35%) Derivative
5 127 (5.64%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 78 (3.47%) Algorithms
7 69 (3.07%) Distributed Systems
8 54 (2.40%) Greenfield Project
9 52 (2.31%) Self-Motivation
10 48 (2.13%) Management Information System
11 38 (1.69%) Product Ownership
12 37 (1.64%) Cloud Native
13 30 (1.33%) Data Structures
14 25 (1.11%) Renewable Energy
15 22 (0.98%) Public Cloud
16 21 (0.93%) Enterprise Software
16 21 (0.93%) Onboarding
17 19 (0.84%) Linux Command Line
18 18 (0.80%) ARM Cortex
18 18 (0.80%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 230 (10.22%) Linux
2 102 (4.53%) Windows
3 30 (1.33%) Unix
4 25 (1.11%) Android
5 24 (1.07%) Apple iOS
6 21 (0.93%) Embedded Linux
6 21 (0.93%) FreeRTOS
7 10 (0.44%) Ubuntu
8 9 (0.40%) Debian
9 6 (0.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 5 (0.22%) VxWorks
10 5 (0.22%) Windows 10
11 4 (0.18%) SafeRTOS
12 3 (0.13%) Mac OS
12 3 (0.13%) Windows Server
12 3 (0.13%) zOS
13 2 (0.089%) VMS
14 1 (0.044%) Solaris
14 1 (0.044%) Windows Mobile
14 1 (0.044%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 854 (37.94%) Agile
2 457 (20.30%) DevOps
3 354 (15.73%) CI/CD
4 258 (11.46%) Full Stack Development
5 237 (10.53%) Artificial Intelligence
6 227 (10.08%) Problem-Solving
7 216 (9.60%) TDD
7 216 (9.60%) Test Automation
8 214 (9.51%) Asset Management
9 208 (9.24%) Scrum
10 197 (8.75%) Computer Science
11 196 (8.71%) SDLC
12 188 (8.35%) Code Quality
12 188 (8.35%) Continuous Integration
13 182 (8.09%) Microservices
14 176 (7.82%) Investment Management
15 157 (6.97%) Fintech
16 146 (6.49%) Software Testing
17 138 (6.13%) Unit Testing
18 136 (6.04%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 703 (31.23%) Python
2 569 (25.28%) JavaScript
3 547 (24.30%) Java
4 506 (22.48%) C#
5 455 (20.21%) SQL
6 385 (17.10%) TypeScript
7 278 (12.35%) C++
8 221 (9.82%) C
9 114 (5.06%) Go
10 74 (3.29%) PowerShell
11 68 (3.02%) Scala
12 58 (2.58%) Embedded C
13 45 (2.00%) MATLAB
14 44 (1.95%) PL/SQL
15 39 (1.73%) Kotlin
16 38 (1.69%) Ada
17 32 (1.42%) PHP
17 32 (1.42%) Rust
18 31 (1.38%) Bash
19 28 (1.24%) Perl
Qualifications
1 390 (17.33%) Degree
2 338 (15.02%) Security Cleared
3 250 (11.11%) SC Cleared
4 114 (5.06%) Computer Science Degree
5 91 (4.04%) DV Cleared
6 75 (3.33%) Master's Degree
7 21 (0.93%) BPSS Clearance
8 20 (0.89%) PhD
9 8 (0.36%) AWS Certification
10 5 (0.22%) Chartered Engineer
11 3 (0.13%) ITIL Certification
11 3 (0.13%) PMP
12 2 (0.089%) CISSP
12 2 (0.089%) HND
12 2 (0.089%) MBA
12 2 (0.089%) PgMP
12 2 (0.089%) PMI Certification
13 1 (0.044%) Microsoft Certification
13 1 (0.044%) OCP
13 1 (0.044%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 101 (4.49%) QA
2 41 (1.82%) Data Quality
3 18 (0.80%) PCI DSS
4 17 (0.76%) Accessibility
4 17 (0.76%) MISRA
5 14 (0.62%) AUTOSAR
6 11 (0.49%) NCSC
7 10 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 10 (0.44%) MISRA C
8 8 (0.36%) ISO 9001
9 7 (0.31%) JTAG
10 6 (0.27%) ISO 26262
11 4 (0.18%) SEPA
11 4 (0.18%) WCAG
12 3 (0.13%) Disclosure Scotland
12 3 (0.13%) MiFID
12 3 (0.13%) SLA
13 2 (0.089%) Def Stans
13 2 (0.089%) GRC
13 2 (0.089%) NIST
System Software
1 210 (9.33%) Docker
2 34 (1.51%) Firmware
3 29 (1.29%) Active Directory
4 16 (0.71%) VMware Infrastructure
5 10 (0.44%) Virtual Machines
6 6 (0.27%) Embedded Firmware
6 6 (0.27%) Virtual Servers
6 6 (0.27%) VirtualBox
7 5 (0.22%) ACF2
7 5 (0.22%) IAG
7 5 (0.22%) RACF
8 4 (0.18%) zsh
9 3 (0.13%) Hyper-V
10 2 (0.089%) Time Sharing Option
11 1 (0.044%) NFS
11 1 (0.044%) Virtual Desktop
11 1 (0.044%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.044%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 246 (10.93%) Kubernetes
2 133 (5.91%) Terraform
3 78 (3.47%) Ansible
4 47 (2.09%) Grafana
5 29 (1.29%) Prometheus
6 11 (0.49%) Argo
6 11 (0.49%) Docker Swarm
6 11 (0.49%) Podman
6 11 (0.49%) Progress Chef
7 9 (0.40%) Puppet
7 9 (0.40%) Single Sign-On
8 8 (0.36%) Kibana
9 7 (0.31%) Istio
9 7 (0.31%) Kubeflow
10 6 (0.27%) Functional Safety
10 6 (0.27%) Packer
11 4 (0.18%) Consul
11 4 (0.18%) HP ALM
11 4 (0.18%) vRealize Orchestrator
11 4 (0.18%) Zipkin
Vendors
1 144 (6.40%) Microsoft
2 121 (5.38%) PayPal
3 111 (4.93%) Google
4 106 (4.71%) Oracle
5 39 (1.73%) IBM
6 35 (1.55%) SAP
7 34 (1.51%) Databricks
8 29 (1.29%) Atlassian
9 25 (1.11%) VMware
10 21 (0.93%) Red Hat
11 19 (0.84%) Talend
12 18 (0.80%) Bloomberg
12 18 (0.80%) Salesforce
13 17 (0.76%) Lauterbach
14 15 (0.67%) MuleSoft
15 12 (0.53%) Denodo
15 12 (0.53%) ServiceNow
16 11 (0.49%) Splunk
16 11 (0.49%) Virgin Media
17 9 (0.40%) Avaloq