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

6 months to
9 Jun 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 30 43 43
Rank change year-on-year +13 0 -3
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,486 2,691 4,714
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 5.74% 4.84% 5.38%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.73% 5.40% 5.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,425 1,819 3,287
10th Percentile £406 £429 £430
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 £813 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £545 £532
% change year-on-year -8.26% +2.40% +14.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 431 205 196
10th Percentile £45.88 £46.25 £39.08
25th Percentile £52.50 £52.50 £48.39
Median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% +13.04% +21.05%
75th Percentile £70.00 £70.30 £65.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £78.00 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.04 £65.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year -1.48% +8.33% +26.32%

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 36,914 49,809 79,437
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.21% 89.64% 90.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,592 34,469 55,846
10th Percentile £300 £325 £350
25th Percentile £413 £438 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +2.33% +7.50%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £649
90th Percentile £750 £750 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £490
% change year-on-year - +2.04% +8.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,564 1,687 1,868
10th Percentile £12.75 £10.70 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.00 £15.75 £15.75
Median hourly rate £36.50 £35.80 £25.68
Median % change year-on-year +1.96% +39.41% +11.65%
75th Percentile £61.25 £65.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.12 £35.00 £20.51
% change year-on-year +8.91% +70.69% -2.36%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 +11 2,242 £600 -0.37% 2,166
UK excluding London +22 1,166 £500 -8.26% 1,476
London +6 1,124 £650 - 827
Work from Home +16 964 £650 +8.33% 1,220
North of England +47 270 £518 -5.91% 314
South East +26 270 £548 +4.29% 326
East of England +11 206 £500 -9.09% 175
South West -5 188 £525 -9.33% 237
North West +54 162 £533 -3.18% 202
Midlands +51 107 £475 -9.52% 244
Scotland +29 107 £475 -5.94% 144
West Midlands +38 77 £463 -20.60% 121
Yorkshire +9 72 £450 -10.00% 80
North East +25 39 £390 -44.29% 35
East Midlands +21 29 £550 +29.41% 122
Wales +5 16 £513 -12.54% 27
Northern Ireland +3 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
1 244 (9.81%) Apache Airflow
2 234 (9.41%) Apache
3 62 (2.49%) Confluence
4 31 (1.25%) Apache Spark
5 15 (0.60%) CMS
6 10 (0.40%) nginx
7 8 (0.32%) IIS
8 7 (0.28%) Headless CMS
8 7 (0.28%) SAS
9 6 (0.24%) Anypoint
10 5 (0.20%) Apache Solr
11 4 (0.16%) BizTalk Server
11 4 (0.16%) OpenStack
12 3 (0.12%) CICS
12 3 (0.12%) SharePoint
13 2 (0.080%) ArcGIS
13 2 (0.080%) Drupal
13 2 (0.080%) JBoss
13 2 (0.080%) MQSeries
13 2 (0.080%) WildFly
Applications
1 123 (4.95%) Chatbot
2 37 (1.49%) Simulink
3 27 (1.09%) Stateflow
4 9 (0.36%) Microsoft Excel
5 8 (0.32%) Microsoft Office
6 5 (0.20%) TargetLink
7 4 (0.16%) CPLEX
7 4 (0.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
8 3 (0.12%) Adobe After Effects
8 3 (0.12%) Blender
8 3 (0.12%) Maya
8 3 (0.12%) Photoshop
9 2 (0.080%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 1 (0.040%) CATIA
10 1 (0.040%) PlantUML
10 1 (0.040%) Sketch
10 1 (0.040%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 14 (0.56%) Misys Midas
2 6 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.20%) Endur
3 5 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
4 4 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 3 (0.12%) FLEXCUBE
5 3 (0.12%) Oracle BPM
6 2 (0.080%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.080%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 2 (0.080%) Shopify
6 2 (0.080%) WebTrends
7 1 (0.040%) Advent Geneva
7 1 (0.040%) Distributed Ledger
7 1 (0.040%) Fidessa
7 1 (0.040%) Front Arena
7 1 (0.040%) Remedy ITSM
7 1 (0.040%) SAP PM
7 1 (0.040%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 742 (29.85%) AWS
2 527 (21.20%) Azure
3 303 (12.19%) GCP
4 144 (5.79%) dbt
5 138 (5.55%) Snowflake
6 115 (4.63%) GitHub
7 112 (4.51%) Azure DevOps
8 103 (4.14%) Serverless
9 68 (2.74%) AWS Lambda
10 45 (1.81%) Azure Service Bus
11 43 (1.73%) Amazon S3
12 36 (1.45%) PaaS
13 35 (1.41%) Azure Cosmos DB
14 33 (1.33%) SaaS
15 31 (1.25%) Amazon EC2
15 31 (1.25%) npm
15 31 (1.25%) OpenShift
16 29 (1.17%) GitHub Actions
17 23 (0.93%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 22 (0.88%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 38 (1.53%) RS-485
2 37 (1.49%) Modbus
3 34 (1.37%) RS-422
4 33 (1.33%) Software-Defined Radio
5 26 (1.05%) TCP/IP
6 23 (0.93%) HTTP
6 23 (0.93%) SNMP
7 20 (0.80%) Firewall
8 19 (0.76%) Internet
9 16 (0.64%) VPN
10 11 (0.44%) Ethernet
10 11 (0.44%) SAN
10 11 (0.44%) Wi-Fi
10 11 (0.44%) Wireless
11 9 (0.36%) DNS
12 8 (0.32%) Diameter Protocol
12 8 (0.32%) Tactical Data Link
13 7 (0.28%) Link 16
14 6 (0.24%) 5G
14 6 (0.24%) 802.11
Database & Business Intelligence
1 210 (8.45%) Apache Ignite
2 158 (6.36%) PostgreSQL
3 143 (5.75%) Amazon Athena
4 141 (5.67%) Dremio
5 138 (5.55%) Apache Arrow
6 133 (5.35%) Data Lake
7 84 (3.38%) NoSQL
8 82 (3.30%) SQL Server
9 81 (3.26%) MySQL
10 54 (2.17%) Relational Database
11 53 (2.13%) Apache Cassandra
12 40 (1.61%) MongoDB
13 35 (1.41%) Amazon Redshift
13 35 (1.41%) Big Data
14 32 (1.29%) Data Warehouse
15 28 (1.13%) Elasticsearch
16 27 (1.09%) Azure SQL Database
16 27 (1.09%) Oracle Database
17 25 (1.01%) DynamoDB
18 19 (0.76%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 261 (10.50%) Git
2 172 (6.92%) JIRA
3 145 (5.83%) Jenkins
4 111 (4.47%) Cypress.io
5 63 (2.53%) GitLab
6 53 (2.13%) SonarQube
7 49 (1.97%) Selenium
8 43 (1.73%) GoogleTest
9 40 (1.61%) Bitbucket
10 38 (1.53%) Visual Studio
11 37 (1.49%) Cucumber
12 36 (1.45%) Postman
13 34 (1.37%) Eclipse
14 30 (1.21%) Rational DOORS
15 29 (1.17%) JUnit
16 26 (1.05%) Maven
17 24 (0.97%) Robot Framework
18 21 (0.84%) REST Assured
19 19 (0.76%) Artifactory
19 19 (0.76%) TeamCity
General
1 583 (23.45%) Finance
2 391 (15.73%) Social Skills
3 341 (13.72%) Front Office
4 324 (13.03%) Banking
5 151 (6.07%) Investment Banking
6 97 (3.90%) Public Sector
7 95 (3.82%) Analytical Skills
7 95 (3.82%) Electronics
8 87 (3.50%) Aerospace
9 60 (2.41%) Automotive
10 44 (1.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 44 (1.77%) Telecoms
11 42 (1.69%) Retail
12 36 (1.45%) Manufacturing
13 31 (1.25%) Law
14 30 (1.21%) Military
15 29 (1.17%) Legal
16 27 (1.09%) Marketing
17 26 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
18 23 (0.93%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,219 (49.03%) Software Engineer
2 778 (31.30%) Developer
3 413 (16.61%) Senior
4 235 (9.45%) Senior Software Engineer
5 217 (8.73%) Software Developer
6 190 (7.64%) Python Engineer
7 181 (7.28%) Lead
8 178 (7.16%) Java Engineer
9 176 (7.08%) Python Developer
10 172 (6.92%) Python Software Engineer
11 168 (6.76%) Developer/Software Engineer
12 149 (5.99%) Embedded Engineer
13 145 (5.83%) Embedded Software Engineer
14 134 (5.39%) Java Software Engineer
15 128 (5.15%) C++ Software Engineer
16 125 (5.03%) Java Developer
17 103 (4.14%) Senior Developer
18 102 (4.10%) Full Stack Engineer
19 100 (4.02%) React Developer
20 96 (3.86%) Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 391 (15.73%) React
2 257 (10.34%) HTML
3 236 (9.49%) gRPC
4 230 (9.25%) .NET
5 219 (8.81%) Protocol Buffers
6 178 (7.16%) Pandas
7 168 (6.76%) NumPy
8 162 (6.52%) Node.js
9 155 (6.23%) REST
10 149 (5.99%) Kafka
10 149 (5.99%) SciPy
11 143 (5.75%) Redux
12 137 (5.51%) AngularJS
13 134 (5.39%) CSS
14 101 (4.06%) Spring
15 89 (3.58%) Material-UI
15 89 (3.58%) Spring Boot
16 79 (3.18%) .NET Core
17 75 (3.02%) RESTful
18 71 (2.86%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 277 (11.14%) Fixed Income
2 231 (9.29%) Hedge funds
3 208 (8.37%) Equities
4 188 (7.56%) Derivative
4 188 (7.56%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 77 (3.10%) Distributed Systems
6 75 (3.02%) Algorithms
7 52 (2.09%) Greenfield Project
8 50 (2.01%) Self-Motivation
9 48 (1.93%) Management Information System
10 38 (1.53%) Cloud Native
11 37 (1.49%) Product Ownership
12 34 (1.37%) Linux Command Line
13 31 (1.25%) Enterprise Software
14 30 (1.21%) Data Structures
15 26 (1.05%) ARM Cortex
16 25 (1.01%) Onboarding
17 24 (0.97%) Data Protection Act
18 23 (0.93%) Mobile App
18 23 (0.93%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 262 (10.54%) Linux
2 95 (3.82%) Windows
3 41 (1.65%) Apple iOS
4 36 (1.45%) Android
5 27 (1.09%) FreeRTOS
6 24 (0.97%) Unix
7 18 (0.72%) Embedded Linux
8 9 (0.36%) Debian
8 9 (0.36%) Ubuntu
9 7 (0.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 5 (0.20%) VxWorks
11 4 (0.16%) SafeRTOS
11 4 (0.16%) Windows 10
12 3 (0.12%) zOS
13 2 (0.080%) VMS
13 2 (0.080%) Windows Server
14 1 (0.040%) CentOS
14 1 (0.040%) Solaris
14 1 (0.040%) Windows Mobile
Processes & Methodologies
1 990 (39.82%) Agile
2 487 (19.59%) DevOps
3 393 (15.81%) CI/CD
4 284 (11.42%) Full Stack Development
5 275 (11.06%) Artificial Intelligence
5 275 (11.06%) Asset Management
6 242 (9.73%) Scrum
7 229 (9.21%) TDD
8 225 (9.05%) Test Automation
9 223 (8.97%) SDLC
10 217 (8.73%) Investment Management
11 215 (8.65%) Continuous Integration
12 206 (8.29%) Computer Science
13 202 (8.13%) Problem-Solving
14 197 (7.92%) Code Quality
15 193 (7.76%) Microservices
16 163 (6.56%) Analytics
17 161 (6.48%) Machine Learning
18 159 (6.40%) Fintech
19 144 (5.79%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 791 (31.82%) Python
2 659 (26.51%) Java
3 617 (24.82%) JavaScript
4 511 (20.56%) C#
5 463 (18.62%) TypeScript
6 461 (18.54%) SQL
7 305 (12.27%) C++
8 235 (9.45%) C
9 113 (4.55%) Go
10 76 (3.06%) PowerShell
11 64 (2.57%) Scala
12 62 (2.49%) Embedded C
13 43 (1.73%) Kotlin
13 43 (1.73%) MATLAB
14 41 (1.65%) Rust
15 40 (1.61%) Ada
16 34 (1.37%) Bash
17 33 (1.33%) PHP
18 31 (1.25%) PL/SQL
18 31 (1.25%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 405 (16.29%) Degree
2 375 (15.08%) Security Cleared
3 271 (10.90%) SC Cleared
4 119 (4.79%) Computer Science Degree
5 111 (4.47%) DV Cleared
6 70 (2.82%) Master's Degree
7 19 (0.76%) BPSS Clearance
8 18 (0.72%) PhD
9 8 (0.32%) CISSP
10 7 (0.28%) CISM
11 6 (0.24%) CISA
12 3 (0.12%) HND
12 3 (0.12%) ITIL Certification
13 2 (0.080%) Azure Certification
13 2 (0.080%) HNC
13 2 (0.080%) PgMP
13 2 (0.080%) PMI Certification
13 2 (0.080%) PMP
14 1 (0.040%) AWS Certification
14 1 (0.040%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 108 (4.34%) QA
2 68 (2.74%) Data Quality
3 38 (1.53%) MISRA
4 21 (0.84%) PCI DSS
5 19 (0.76%) Accessibility
6 14 (0.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 14 (0.56%) MISRA C
7 12 (0.48%) AUTOSAR
8 11 (0.44%) NCSC
9 8 (0.32%) ISO 9001
10 6 (0.24%) JTAG
11 5 (0.20%) ISO 26262
11 5 (0.20%) SEPA
11 5 (0.20%) WCAG
12 4 (0.16%) GDPR
12 4 (0.16%) NIST
13 3 (0.12%) Cyber Essentials
13 3 (0.12%) IEC 61508
13 3 (0.12%) MiFID
13 3 (0.12%) SLA
System Software
1 232 (9.33%) Docker
2 36 (1.45%) Firmware
3 32 (1.29%) Active Directory
4 12 (0.48%) VMware Infrastructure
5 11 (0.44%) Virtual Machines
6 6 (0.24%) VirtualBox
7 5 (0.20%) ACF2
7 5 (0.20%) Embedded Firmware
7 5 (0.20%) IAG
7 5 (0.20%) RACF
8 4 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
9 3 (0.12%) Hyper-V
9 3 (0.12%) zsh
10 2 (0.080%) Time Sharing Option
11 1 (0.040%) NFS
Systems Management
1 264 (10.62%) Kubernetes
2 123 (4.95%) Terraform
3 83 (3.34%) Ansible
4 72 (2.90%) Grafana
5 35 (1.41%) Prometheus
6 17 (0.68%) Argo
7 15 (0.60%) Podman
8 14 (0.56%) Kibana
9 11 (0.44%) Docker Swarm
10 10 (0.40%) Istio
11 9 (0.36%) Puppet
12 8 (0.32%) Single Sign-On
13 7 (0.28%) Packer
13 7 (0.28%) Progress Chef
14 6 (0.24%) Functional Safety
15 4 (0.16%) Consul
15 4 (0.16%) HP ALM
15 4 (0.16%) Kubeflow
15 4 (0.16%) vRealize Orchestrator
15 4 (0.16%) Zipkin
Vendors
1 160 (6.44%) Microsoft
2 154 (6.19%) Google
3 121 (4.87%) PayPal
4 104 (4.18%) Oracle
5 46 (1.85%) IBM
6 35 (1.41%) Atlassian
6 35 (1.41%) Talend
7 30 (1.21%) Databricks
7 30 (1.21%) SAP
8 28 (1.13%) Denodo
9 25 (1.01%) Lauterbach
9 25 (1.01%) Red Hat
10 21 (0.84%) VMware
11 19 (0.76%) Salesforce
12 17 (0.68%) Bloomberg
13 14 (0.56%) ServiceNow
14 13 (0.52%) MuleSoft
15 12 (0.48%) Splunk
15 12 (0.48%) Virgin Media
16 10 (0.40%) Adobe