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 1 June 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
1 Jun 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 32 45 43
Rank change year-on-year +13 -2 -3
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,426 2,699 4,722
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 5.63% 4.81% 5.39%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.59% 5.37% 5.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,401 1,824 3,312
10th Percentile £410 £425 £425
25th Percentile £481 £500 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year - - +14.29%
75th Percentile £750 £725 £700
90th Percentile £850 £800 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £540 £525
% change year-on-year -7.41% +2.86% +13.51%
Number of hourly rates quoted 416 202 193
10th Percentile £46.18 £46.25 £39.85
25th Percentile £52.50 £53.45 £48.13
Median hourly rate £62.50 £64.57 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year -3.21% +12.30% +25.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £70.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £77.00 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year -3.85% +8.33% +30.43%

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 36,802 50,277 79,372
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.47% 89.69% 90.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,632 34,811 55,790
10th Percentile £300 £325 £345
25th Percentile £413 £438 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +2.33% +7.50%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £644
90th Percentile £750 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £488
% change year-on-year - +2.56% +9.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,530 1,673 1,868
10th Percentile £12.75 £10.63 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.00 £15.72 £15.63
Median hourly rate £36.50 £36.25 £25.68
Median % change year-on-year +0.69% +41.16% +9.74%
75th Percentile £60.75 £65.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.12 £35.00 £20.00
% change year-on-year +8.91% +75.00% -4.76%

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 1 June 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 1 June 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 1 June 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 +12 2,173 £600 - 2,208
UK excluding London +21 1,129 £500 -7.41% 1,412
London +8 1,097 £650 - 922
Work from Home +16 936 £650 +8.33% 1,156
South East +20 265 £550 +4.76% 306
North of England +43 263 £510 -7.27% 312
East of England +10 201 £500 -7.24% 167
South West -4 175 £525 -8.70% 231
North West +56 154 £540 -1.82% 207
Scotland +31 108 £475 -5.00% 128
Midlands +41 96 £492 -6.38% 234
Yorkshire +19 74 £450 -10.00% 77
West Midlands +31 68 £475 -13.64% 118
North East +26 37 £390 -44.29% 32
East Midlands +19 27 £550 +29.41% 115
Wales +8 19 £538 -8.15% 25
Northern Ireland +3 4 £675 +68.75% 29

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
1 227 (9.36%) Apache Airflow
2 219 (9.03%) Apache
3 60 (2.47%) Confluence
4 30 (1.24%) Apache Spark
5 15 (0.62%) CMS
6 11 (0.45%) nginx
7 8 (0.33%) IIS
8 7 (0.29%) Headless CMS
8 7 (0.29%) SAS
9 6 (0.25%) Anypoint
9 6 (0.25%) BizTalk Server
10 5 (0.21%) Apache Solr
11 4 (0.16%) OpenStack
12 3 (0.12%) CICS
12 3 (0.12%) JBoss
12 3 (0.12%) SharePoint
13 2 (0.082%) ArcGIS
13 2 (0.082%) Drupal
13 2 (0.082%) MQSeries
13 2 (0.082%) WildFly
Applications
1 124 (5.11%) Chatbot
2 37 (1.53%) Simulink
3 27 (1.11%) Stateflow
4 13 (0.54%) Microsoft Excel
5 9 (0.37%) Microsoft Office
6 5 (0.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 5 (0.21%) TargetLink
7 4 (0.16%) CPLEX
8 3 (0.12%) Adobe After Effects
8 3 (0.12%) Blender
8 3 (0.12%) Maya
8 3 (0.12%) Photoshop
9 2 (0.082%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 1 (0.041%) CATIA
10 1 (0.041%) PlantUML
10 1 (0.041%) Sketch
10 1 (0.041%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 10 (0.41%) Misys Midas
2 6 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.21%) Endur
3 5 (0.21%) Salesforce CRM
4 4 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 3 (0.12%) FLEXCUBE
5 3 (0.12%) Oracle BPM
5 3 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
6 2 (0.082%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.082%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 2 (0.082%) Shopify
6 2 (0.082%) WebTrends
7 1 (0.041%) Advent Geneva
7 1 (0.041%) Fidessa
7 1 (0.041%) Front Arena
7 1 (0.041%) Remedy ITSM
7 1 (0.041%) SAP PM
7 1 (0.041%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 719 (29.64%) AWS
2 529 (21.81%) Azure
3 296 (12.20%) GCP
4 129 (5.32%) dbt
5 123 (5.07%) Snowflake
6 112 (4.62%) Azure DevOps
6 112 (4.62%) GitHub
7 100 (4.12%) Serverless
8 68 (2.80%) AWS Lambda
9 44 (1.81%) Azure Service Bus
10 42 (1.73%) Amazon S3
11 36 (1.48%) Azure Cosmos DB
12 35 (1.44%) PaaS
13 33 (1.36%) npm
13 33 (1.36%) SaaS
14 31 (1.28%) OpenShift
15 29 (1.20%) GitHub Actions
16 26 (1.07%) Amazon EC2
17 22 (0.91%) Azure Functions
17 22 (0.91%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 37 (1.53%) Modbus
1 37 (1.53%) RS-485
2 35 (1.44%) RS-422
3 31 (1.28%) Software-Defined Radio
4 26 (1.07%) TCP/IP
5 23 (0.95%) HTTP
6 22 (0.91%) SNMP
7 20 (0.82%) Firewall
8 19 (0.78%) Internet
9 16 (0.66%) VPN
10 12 (0.49%) Wi-Fi
11 11 (0.45%) Ethernet
11 11 (0.45%) SAN
11 11 (0.45%) Wireless
12 9 (0.37%) DNS
13 7 (0.29%) 802.11
13 7 (0.29%) Diameter Protocol
13 7 (0.29%) Tactical Data Link
14 6 (0.25%) Link 16
15 5 (0.21%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 195 (8.04%) Apache Ignite
2 156 (6.43%) PostgreSQL
3 127 (5.23%) Amazon Athena
4 126 (5.19%) Dremio
5 124 (5.11%) Apache Arrow
6 119 (4.91%) Data Lake
7 83 (3.42%) NoSQL
8 79 (3.26%) SQL Server
9 70 (2.89%) MySQL
10 55 (2.27%) Apache Cassandra
11 51 (2.10%) Relational Database
12 38 (1.57%) MongoDB
13 32 (1.32%) Big Data
13 32 (1.32%) Data Warehouse
14 28 (1.15%) Azure SQL Database
14 28 (1.15%) Elasticsearch
14 28 (1.15%) Oracle Database
15 25 (1.03%) Amazon Redshift
16 22 (0.91%) DynamoDB
17 19 (0.78%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 246 (10.14%) Git
2 171 (7.05%) JIRA
3 139 (5.73%) Jenkins
4 108 (4.45%) Cypress.io
5 64 (2.64%) GitLab
6 54 (2.23%) SonarQube
7 48 (1.98%) Selenium
8 39 (1.61%) Bitbucket
9 37 (1.53%) Cucumber
9 37 (1.53%) Visual Studio
10 36 (1.48%) GoogleTest
10 36 (1.48%) Postman
11 33 (1.36%) Eclipse
12 29 (1.20%) Rational DOORS
13 26 (1.07%) JUnit
13 26 (1.07%) Maven
14 23 (0.95%) Robot Framework
15 21 (0.87%) REST Assured
15 21 (0.87%) webpack
16 19 (0.78%) TeamCity
General
1 571 (23.54%) Finance
2 396 (16.32%) Social Skills
3 333 (13.73%) Front Office
4 305 (12.57%) Banking
5 138 (5.69%) Investment Banking
6 101 (4.16%) Analytical Skills
7 94 (3.87%) Electronics
8 93 (3.83%) Public Sector
9 84 (3.46%) Aerospace
10 59 (2.43%) Automotive
11 44 (1.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 40 (1.65%) Retail
12 40 (1.65%) Telecoms
13 36 (1.48%) Manufacturing
14 31 (1.28%) Law
15 29 (1.20%) Legal
16 27 (1.11%) Military
16 27 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
17 26 (1.07%) Marketing
18 25 (1.03%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,170 (48.23%) Software Engineer
2 773 (31.86%) Developer
3 400 (16.49%) Senior
4 226 (9.32%) Senior Software Engineer
5 215 (8.86%) Software Developer
6 179 (7.38%) Python Engineer
7 174 (7.17%) Lead
8 172 (7.09%) Python Developer
9 167 (6.88%) Java Engineer
10 165 (6.80%) Developer/Software Engineer
11 162 (6.68%) Python Software Engineer
12 141 (5.81%) Embedded Engineer
13 136 (5.61%) Embedded Software Engineer
14 123 (5.07%) Java Software Engineer
15 121 (4.99%) C++ Software Engineer
16 119 (4.91%) Java Developer
17 103 (4.25%) Full Stack Engineer
18 101 (4.16%) React Developer
19 99 (4.08%) Senior Developer
20 89 (3.67%) Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 393 (16.20%) React
2 253 (10.43%) HTML
3 232 (9.56%) .NET
4 220 (9.07%) gRPC
5 204 (8.41%) Protocol Buffers
6 164 (6.76%) Pandas
7 162 (6.68%) Node.js
8 157 (6.47%) REST
9 154 (6.35%) NumPy
10 146 (6.02%) Kafka
11 141 (5.81%) Redux
12 139 (5.73%) AngularJS
13 134 (5.52%) SciPy
14 129 (5.32%) CSS
15 103 (4.25%) Spring
16 89 (3.67%) Material-UI
16 89 (3.67%) Spring Boot
17 79 (3.26%) .NET Core
18 75 (3.09%) RESTful
19 70 (2.89%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 266 (10.96%) Fixed Income
2 219 (9.03%) Hedge funds
3 197 (8.12%) Equities
4 177 (7.30%) Derivative
5 170 (7.01%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 75 (3.09%) Algorithms
6 75 (3.09%) Distributed Systems
7 51 (2.10%) Self-Motivation
8 50 (2.06%) Greenfield Project
9 47 (1.94%) Management Information System
10 39 (1.61%) Cloud Native
11 37 (1.53%) Product Ownership
12 30 (1.24%) Data Structures
13 28 (1.15%) Linux Command Line
14 26 (1.07%) Enterprise Software
15 24 (0.99%) ARM Cortex
15 24 (0.99%) Mobile App
15 24 (0.99%) Onboarding
16 23 (0.95%) Legacy Systems
16 23 (0.95%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 252 (10.39%) Linux
2 100 (4.12%) Windows
3 40 (1.65%) Apple iOS
4 34 (1.40%) Android
5 29 (1.20%) Unix
6 26 (1.07%) FreeRTOS
7 18 (0.74%) Embedded Linux
8 9 (0.37%) Debian
8 9 (0.37%) Ubuntu
9 7 (0.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 5 (0.21%) VxWorks
10 5 (0.21%) Windows 10
11 4 (0.16%) SafeRTOS
12 3 (0.12%) Mac OS
12 3 (0.12%) Windows Server
12 3 (0.12%) zOS
13 2 (0.082%) VMS
14 1 (0.041%) Solaris
14 1 (0.041%) Windows Mobile
14 1 (0.041%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 954 (39.32%) Agile
2 474 (19.54%) DevOps
3 384 (15.83%) CI/CD
4 281 (11.58%) Full Stack Development
5 269 (11.09%) Artificial Intelligence
6 261 (10.76%) Asset Management
7 229 (9.44%) TDD
8 226 (9.32%) Test Automation
9 225 (9.27%) Scrum
10 216 (8.90%) SDLC
11 211 (8.70%) Investment Management
12 203 (8.37%) Continuous Integration
12 203 (8.37%) Problem-Solving
13 201 (8.29%) Computer Science
14 196 (8.08%) Code Quality
15 195 (8.04%) Microservices
16 157 (6.47%) Fintech
17 155 (6.39%) Machine Learning
18 148 (6.10%) Analytics
19 146 (6.02%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 759 (31.29%) Python
2 629 (25.93%) Java
3 603 (24.86%) JavaScript
4 508 (20.94%) C#
5 460 (18.96%) SQL
6 449 (18.51%) TypeScript
7 295 (12.16%) C++
8 232 (9.56%) C
9 116 (4.78%) Go
10 76 (3.13%) PowerShell
11 64 (2.64%) Scala
12 62 (2.56%) Embedded C
13 44 (1.81%) Kotlin
14 43 (1.77%) MATLAB
15 39 (1.61%) Ada
16 37 (1.53%) Rust
17 35 (1.44%) Bash
17 35 (1.44%) PHP
18 33 (1.36%) PL/SQL
19 30 (1.24%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 398 (16.41%) Degree
2 365 (15.05%) Security Cleared
3 265 (10.92%) SC Cleared
4 116 (4.78%) Computer Science Degree
5 108 (4.45%) DV Cleared
6 68 (2.80%) Master's Degree
7 19 (0.78%) BPSS Clearance
8 18 (0.74%) PhD
9 8 (0.33%) CISSP
10 7 (0.29%) CISM
11 6 (0.25%) CISA
12 3 (0.12%) HND
12 3 (0.12%) ITIL Certification
13 2 (0.082%) Azure Certification
13 2 (0.082%) HNC
13 2 (0.082%) MBA
13 2 (0.082%) PgMP
13 2 (0.082%) PMI Certification
13 2 (0.082%) PMP
14 1 (0.041%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 107 (4.41%) QA
2 64 (2.64%) Data Quality
3 31 (1.28%) MISRA
4 20 (0.82%) PCI DSS
5 18 (0.74%) Accessibility
6 13 (0.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 13 (0.54%) MISRA C
7 12 (0.49%) AUTOSAR
8 11 (0.45%) NCSC
9 8 (0.33%) ISO 9001
10 7 (0.29%) JTAG
11 5 (0.21%) ISO 26262
11 5 (0.21%) SEPA
11 5 (0.21%) WCAG
12 3 (0.12%) Cyber Essentials
12 3 (0.12%) GDPR
12 3 (0.12%) IEC 61508
12 3 (0.12%) MiFID
12 3 (0.12%) NIST
12 3 (0.12%) SLA
System Software
1 231 (9.52%) Docker
2 36 (1.48%) Firmware
3 32 (1.32%) Active Directory
4 14 (0.58%) VMware Infrastructure
5 11 (0.45%) Virtual Machines
6 6 (0.25%) VirtualBox
7 5 (0.21%) ACF2
7 5 (0.21%) Embedded Firmware
7 5 (0.21%) IAG
7 5 (0.21%) RACF
7 5 (0.21%) Virtual Servers
8 4 (0.16%) zsh
9 3 (0.12%) Hyper-V
10 2 (0.082%) Time Sharing Option
11 1 (0.041%) NFS
11 1 (0.041%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.041%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 263 (10.84%) Kubernetes
2 121 (4.99%) Terraform
3 81 (3.34%) Ansible
4 60 (2.47%) Grafana
5 34 (1.40%) Prometheus
6 16 (0.66%) Argo
7 15 (0.62%) Podman
8 14 (0.58%) Kibana
9 11 (0.45%) Docker Swarm
10 10 (0.41%) Istio
11 9 (0.37%) Puppet
12 8 (0.33%) Single Sign-On
13 7 (0.29%) Progress Chef
14 6 (0.25%) Functional Safety
14 6 (0.25%) Packer
15 5 (0.21%) Kubeflow
16 4 (0.16%) Consul
16 4 (0.16%) HP ALM
16 4 (0.16%) vRealize Orchestrator
16 4 (0.16%) Zipkin
Vendors
1 162 (6.68%) Microsoft
2 148 (6.10%) Google
3 121 (4.99%) PayPal
4 108 (4.45%) Oracle
5 44 (1.81%) IBM
6 32 (1.32%) Atlassian
6 32 (1.32%) SAP
7 29 (1.20%) Databricks
8 25 (1.03%) Talend
9 23 (0.95%) Lauterbach
9 23 (0.95%) Red Hat
9 23 (0.95%) VMware
10 20 (0.82%) Salesforce
11 18 (0.74%) Denodo
12 14 (0.58%) Bloomberg
12 14 (0.58%) MuleSoft
13 13 (0.54%) Splunk
14 12 (0.49%) ServiceNow
15 11 (0.45%) Virgin Media
16 10 (0.41%) Adobe