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 18 May 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
18 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 32 44 42
Rank change year-on-year +12 -2 -6
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,325 2,753 4,707
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 5.46% 4.83% 5.38%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.34% 5.39% 5.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,359 1,840 3,299
10th Percentile £413 £431 £425
25th Percentile £485 £504 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £600 £595
Median % change year-on-year - +0.84% +13.33%
75th Percentile £750 £721 £694
90th Percentile £850 £800 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £519 £545 £525
% change year-on-year -4.82% +3.81% +16.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 383 198 205
10th Percentile £46.25 £46.25 £37.26
25th Percentile £52.50 £53.75 £47.50
Median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% +18.18% +21.55%
75th Percentile £70.00 £69.69 £62.50
90th Percentile £78.50 £76.00 £68.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year -3.85% +13.04% +27.78%

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 36,673 51,121 79,325
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.13% 89.77% 90.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,631 35,432 55,673
10th Percentile £300 £325 £344
25th Percentile £413 £438 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +3.77% +7.07%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £638
90th Percentile £750 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £480
% change year-on-year - +4.17% +9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,440 1,683 1,892
10th Percentile £12.75 £10.63 £12.50
25th Percentile £15.99 £16.01 £15.50
Median hourly rate £36.05 £36.00 £25.68
Median % change year-on-year +0.13% +40.19% +7.00%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £49.54
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £35.00 £20.00
% change year-on-year +7.14% +75.00% -4.99%

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 18 May 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 18 May 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 18 May 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 +10 2,074 £600 - 2,602
UK excluding London +17 1,089 £519 -4.82% 1,806
London +3 1,034 £671 +3.15% 1,205
Work from Home +15 912 £650 +8.33% 1,564
North of England +55 259 £525 -4.55% 319
South East +30 256 £550 +4.76% 631
East of England +9 191 £500 -8.17% 230
South West -9 159 £525 -9.33% 237
North West +63 153 £550 -8.33% 193
Scotland +36 111 £481 +0.89% 125
Midlands +24 93 £492 -6.38% 222
Yorkshire +12 73 £450 -11.11% 100
West Midlands +11 63 £463 -14.03% 108
North East +26 35 £390 -38.82% 28
East Midlands +25 29 £550 +29.41% 113
Wales +4 19 £538 -8.15% 33
Northern Ireland +5 4 £675 +68.75% 34

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
1 203 (8.73%) Apache Airflow
2 195 (8.39%) Apache
3 59 (2.54%) Confluence
4 29 (1.25%) Apache Spark
5 15 (0.65%) CMS
6 10 (0.43%) nginx
7 8 (0.34%) BizTalk Server
7 8 (0.34%) IIS
8 7 (0.30%) Headless CMS
9 6 (0.26%) SAS
9 6 (0.26%) Tornado
10 5 (0.22%) Anypoint
11 4 (0.17%) Apache Solr
11 4 (0.17%) OpenStack
12 3 (0.13%) CICS
12 3 (0.13%) SharePoint
13 2 (0.086%) ArcGIS
13 2 (0.086%) Drupal
13 2 (0.086%) JBoss
13 2 (0.086%) MQSeries
Applications
1 124 (5.33%) Chatbot
2 37 (1.59%) Simulink
3 27 (1.16%) Stateflow
4 14 (0.60%) Microsoft Excel
5 9 (0.39%) Microsoft Office
6 5 (0.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 5 (0.22%) TargetLink
7 3 (0.13%) Adobe After Effects
7 3 (0.13%) Blender
7 3 (0.13%) CPLEX
7 3 (0.13%) Maya
7 3 (0.13%) Photoshop
8 2 (0.086%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.043%) CATIA
9 1 (0.043%) PlantUML
9 1 (0.043%) Sketch
9 1 (0.043%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 7 (0.30%) Salesforce CRM
2 6 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.22%) Endur
4 4 (0.17%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 3 (0.13%) FLEXCUBE
5 3 (0.13%) Misys Midas
5 3 (0.13%) Oracle BPM
5 3 (0.13%) SAP S/4HANA
6 2 (0.086%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.086%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 2 (0.086%) Shopify
6 2 (0.086%) WebTrends
7 1 (0.043%) Advent Geneva
7 1 (0.043%) Fidessa
7 1 (0.043%) Front Arena
7 1 (0.043%) Remedy ITSM
7 1 (0.043%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 697 (29.98%) AWS
2 527 (22.67%) Azure
3 281 (12.09%) GCP
4 115 (4.95%) Azure DevOps
5 111 (4.77%) dbt
6 104 (4.47%) Snowflake
7 102 (4.39%) GitHub
8 95 (4.09%) Serverless
9 63 (2.71%) AWS Lambda
10 43 (1.85%) Azure Service Bus
11 38 (1.63%) PaaS
12 36 (1.55%) Amazon S3
12 36 (1.55%) Azure Cosmos DB
13 34 (1.46%) npm
14 32 (1.38%) SaaS
15 29 (1.25%) GitHub Actions
16 27 (1.16%) OpenShift
17 24 (1.03%) Amazon EC2
17 24 (1.03%) Azure Functions
17 24 (1.03%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 38 (1.63%) Modbus
2 37 (1.59%) RS-485
3 36 (1.55%) RS-422
4 29 (1.25%) Software-Defined Radio
5 27 (1.16%) TCP/IP
6 25 (1.08%) HTTP
7 20 (0.86%) Firewall
7 20 (0.86%) SNMP
8 18 (0.77%) Internet
9 16 (0.69%) VPN
10 13 (0.56%) Wi-Fi
11 11 (0.47%) Ethernet
11 11 (0.47%) SAN
11 11 (0.47%) Wireless
12 10 (0.43%) DNS
13 8 (0.34%) 802.11
14 5 (0.22%) DHCP
14 5 (0.22%) Diameter Protocol
14 5 (0.22%) FTP
14 5 (0.22%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 172 (7.40%) Apache Ignite
2 147 (6.32%) PostgreSQL
3 108 (4.65%) Amazon Athena
4 107 (4.60%) Apache Arrow
4 107 (4.60%) Dremio
5 100 (4.30%) Data Lake
6 84 (3.61%) SQL Server
7 77 (3.31%) NoSQL
8 63 (2.71%) MySQL
9 53 (2.28%) Apache Cassandra
10 50 (2.15%) MongoDB
11 45 (1.94%) Relational Database
12 32 (1.38%) Big Data
13 29 (1.25%) Azure SQL Database
13 29 (1.25%) Data Warehouse
14 28 (1.20%) Oracle Database
15 25 (1.08%) Elasticsearch
16 23 (0.99%) Amazon Redshift
17 20 (0.86%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 18 (0.77%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 233 (10.02%) Git
2 164 (7.05%) JIRA
3 133 (5.72%) Jenkins
4 97 (4.17%) Cypress.io
5 69 (2.97%) GitLab
6 54 (2.32%) SonarQube
7 45 (1.94%) Selenium
8 39 (1.68%) Bitbucket
9 38 (1.63%) Cucumber
10 35 (1.51%) Visual Studio
11 31 (1.33%) Eclipse
11 31 (1.33%) Postman
11 31 (1.33%) Rational DOORS
12 30 (1.29%) GoogleTest
13 27 (1.16%) Maven
14 25 (1.08%) JUnit
15 23 (0.99%) webpack
16 21 (0.90%) REST Assured
16 21 (0.90%) Robot Framework
17 18 (0.77%) TeamCity
General
1 546 (23.48%) Finance
2 401 (17.25%) Social Skills
3 313 (13.46%) Front Office
4 284 (12.22%) Banking
5 122 (5.25%) Investment Banking
6 104 (4.47%) Analytical Skills
7 101 (4.34%) Electronics
8 95 (4.09%) Public Sector
9 78 (3.35%) Aerospace
10 61 (2.62%) Automotive
11 41 (1.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 38 (1.63%) Retail
13 37 (1.59%) Telecoms
14 34 (1.46%) Manufacturing
15 30 (1.29%) Law
16 28 (1.20%) Financial Institution
16 28 (1.20%) Legal
16 28 (1.20%) Presentation Skills
17 26 (1.12%) Marketing
18 23 (0.99%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,098 (47.23%) Software Engineer
2 765 (32.90%) Developer
3 378 (16.26%) Senior
4 219 (9.42%) Senior Software Engineer
5 210 (9.03%) Software Developer
6 171 (7.35%) Lead
7 169 (7.27%) Python Developer
8 166 (7.14%) Python Engineer
9 157 (6.75%) Developer/Software Engineer
10 154 (6.62%) Java Engineer
11 149 (6.41%) Python Software Engineer
12 130 (5.59%) Embedded Engineer
13 126 (5.42%) Embedded Software Engineer
14 118 (5.08%) Java Developer
15 115 (4.95%) C++ Software Engineer
16 112 (4.82%) Java Software Engineer
17 100 (4.30%) Full Stack Engineer
18 97 (4.17%) React Developer
19 91 (3.91%) Senior Developer
20 89 (3.83%) Full Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 394 (16.95%) React
2 252 (10.84%) HTML
3 230 (9.89%) .NET
4 192 (8.26%) gRPC
5 181 (7.78%) Protocol Buffers
6 172 (7.40%) Node.js
7 157 (6.75%) REST
8 151 (6.49%) Pandas
9 142 (6.11%) Kafka
10 138 (5.94%) AngularJS
11 136 (5.85%) NumPy
11 136 (5.85%) Redux
12 127 (5.46%) CSS
13 115 (4.95%) SciPy
14 102 (4.39%) Spring
15 87 (3.74%) Spring Boot
16 86 (3.70%) Material-UI
17 82 (3.53%) RESTful
18 80 (3.44%) .NET Core
19 70 (3.01%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 246 (10.58%) Fixed Income
2 201 (8.65%) Hedge funds
3 180 (7.74%) Equities
4 162 (6.97%) Derivative
5 150 (6.45%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 78 (3.35%) Algorithms
7 72 (3.10%) Distributed Systems
8 51 (2.19%) Greenfield Project
8 51 (2.19%) Self-Motivation
9 48 (2.06%) Management Information System
10 38 (1.63%) Cloud Native
11 37 (1.59%) Product Ownership
12 30 (1.29%) Data Structures
13 26 (1.12%) Enterprise Software
13 26 (1.12%) Renewable Energy
14 24 (1.03%) Linux Command Line
15 23 (0.99%) Onboarding
16 22 (0.95%) Public Cloud
17 21 (0.90%) Legacy Systems
18 20 (0.86%) ARM Cortex
Operating Systems
1 242 (10.41%) Linux
2 103 (4.43%) Windows
3 32 (1.38%) Android
4 31 (1.33%) Apple iOS
5 27 (1.16%) Unix
6 23 (0.99%) FreeRTOS
7 18 (0.77%) Embedded Linux
8 9 (0.39%) Debian
8 9 (0.39%) Ubuntu
9 6 (0.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 5 (0.22%) VxWorks
10 5 (0.22%) Windows 10
11 4 (0.17%) SafeRTOS
12 3 (0.13%) Mac OS
12 3 (0.13%) Windows Server
12 3 (0.13%) zOS
13 2 (0.086%) VMS
14 1 (0.043%) Solaris
14 1 (0.043%) Windows Mobile
14 1 (0.043%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 933 (40.13%) Agile
2 470 (20.22%) DevOps
3 385 (16.56%) CI/CD
4 277 (11.91%) Full Stack Development
5 261 (11.23%) Artificial Intelligence
6 245 (10.54%) Asset Management
7 226 (9.72%) TDD
8 222 (9.55%) Test Automation
9 215 (9.25%) Scrum
10 213 (9.16%) Problem-Solving
11 205 (8.82%) SDLC
12 203 (8.73%) Computer Science
13 202 (8.69%) Investment Management
14 196 (8.43%) Continuous Integration
15 195 (8.39%) Microservices
16 194 (8.34%) Code Quality
17 152 (6.54%) Fintech
18 150 (6.45%) Machine Learning
19 147 (6.32%) Software Testing
20 142 (6.11%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 734 (31.57%) Python
2 599 (25.76%) JavaScript
3 597 (25.68%) Java
4 508 (21.85%) C#
5 466 (20.04%) SQL
6 428 (18.41%) TypeScript
7 278 (11.96%) C++
8 224 (9.63%) C
9 114 (4.90%) Go
10 76 (3.27%) PowerShell
11 67 (2.88%) Scala
12 58 (2.49%) Embedded C
13 42 (1.81%) MATLAB
14 38 (1.63%) Ada
14 38 (1.63%) Kotlin
14 38 (1.63%) PL/SQL
15 36 (1.55%) Rust
16 35 (1.51%) PHP
17 30 (1.29%) Bash
18 29 (1.25%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 394 (16.95%) Degree
2 352 (15.14%) Security Cleared
3 256 (11.01%) SC Cleared
4 112 (4.82%) Computer Science Degree
5 100 (4.30%) DV Cleared
6 71 (3.05%) Master's Degree
7 21 (0.90%) BPSS Clearance
8 18 (0.77%) PhD
9 6 (0.26%) CISSP
10 5 (0.22%) CISM
11 4 (0.17%) Chartered Engineer
11 4 (0.17%) CISA
12 3 (0.13%) AWS Certification
12 3 (0.13%) HND
12 3 (0.13%) ITIL Certification
13 2 (0.086%) Azure Certification
13 2 (0.086%) MBA
13 2 (0.086%) PgMP
13 2 (0.086%) PMI Certification
13 2 (0.086%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 103 (4.43%) QA
2 51 (2.19%) Data Quality
3 24 (1.03%) MISRA
4 19 (0.82%) PCI DSS
5 17 (0.73%) Accessibility
6 14 (0.60%) AUTOSAR
7 11 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 11 (0.47%) MISRA C
7 11 (0.47%) NCSC
8 8 (0.34%) ISO 9001
9 7 (0.30%) JTAG
10 5 (0.22%) ISO 26262
10 5 (0.22%) WCAG
11 4 (0.17%) SEPA
12 3 (0.13%) MiFID
12 3 (0.13%) SLA
13 2 (0.086%) Cyber Essentials
13 2 (0.086%) Def Stans
13 2 (0.086%) Disclosure Scotland
13 2 (0.086%) GDPR
System Software
1 218 (9.38%) Docker
2 34 (1.46%) Firmware
3 31 (1.33%) Active Directory
4 15 (0.65%) VMware Infrastructure
5 10 (0.43%) Virtual Machines
6 6 (0.26%) VirtualBox
7 5 (0.22%) ACF2
7 5 (0.22%) Embedded Firmware
7 5 (0.22%) IAG
7 5 (0.22%) RACF
7 5 (0.22%) Virtual Servers
8 4 (0.17%) zsh
9 3 (0.13%) Hyper-V
10 2 (0.086%) Time Sharing Option
11 1 (0.043%) NFS
11 1 (0.043%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.043%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 255 (10.97%) Kubernetes
2 127 (5.46%) Terraform
3 76 (3.27%) Ansible
4 56 (2.41%) Grafana
5 31 (1.33%) Prometheus
6 14 (0.60%) Argo
6 14 (0.60%) Kibana
7 12 (0.52%) Podman
8 11 (0.47%) Docker Swarm
9 10 (0.43%) Istio
10 9 (0.39%) Puppet
11 8 (0.34%) Single Sign-On
12 7 (0.30%) Progress Chef
13 6 (0.26%) Functional Safety
13 6 (0.26%) Kubeflow
13 6 (0.26%) Packer
14 4 (0.17%) Consul
14 4 (0.17%) HP ALM
14 4 (0.17%) vRealize Orchestrator
14 4 (0.17%) Zipkin
Vendors
1 159 (6.84%) Microsoft
2 135 (5.81%) Google
3 121 (5.20%) PayPal
4 109 (4.69%) Oracle
5 40 (1.72%) IBM
6 34 (1.46%) Databricks
7 30 (1.29%) Atlassian
8 29 (1.25%) SAP
9 25 (1.08%) Talend
10 24 (1.03%) VMware
11 22 (0.95%) Red Hat
12 21 (0.90%) Salesforce
13 19 (0.82%) Lauterbach
14 18 (0.77%) Denodo
15 17 (0.73%) Bloomberg
16 15 (0.65%) MuleSoft
17 12 (0.52%) ServiceNow
17 12 (0.52%) Splunk
18 11 (0.47%) Virgin Media
19 10 (0.43%) Adobe