Software Developer Contracts

Software Developer
UK

The median Software Developer daily rate in the UK is £525 according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months to 20 May 2024.

The first table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics including a comparison to same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
20 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 212 304 356
Rank change year-on-year +92 +52 -28
Contract jobs requiring a Software Developer 470 468 673
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 1.10% 0.82% 0.76%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.19% 0.86% 0.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 217 337 435
10th Percentile £400 £363 £363
25th Percentile £431 £420 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% +4.00% +11.11%
75th Percentile £700 £650 £613
90th Percentile £888 £738 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £485
% change year-on-year -5.26% -2.06% +14.12%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 27 25
10th Percentile £46.25 £49.39 -
25th Percentile £48.40 £51.81 £35.00
Median hourly rate £60.70 £58.59 £48.74
Median % change year-on-year +3.61% +20.21% +44.41%
75th Percentile £65.00 £69.34 £55.75
90th Percentile £75.50 £79.00 £57.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £58.91 £58.59 £54.50
% change year-on-year +0.54% +7.50% +50.59%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK

The following table is for comparison with the above and includes summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 39,468 54,175 84,246
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.79% 94.61% 95.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,716 37,826 59,224
10th Percentile £280 £313 £313
25th Percentile £410 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £543 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.23% +3.33% +8.47%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £638
90th Percentile £750 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £489 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -2.20% +5.26% +11.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,674 1,504 2,051
10th Percentile £12.83 £14.25 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.30 £19.06 £15.82
Median hourly rate £36.50 £45.00 £23.91
Median % change year-on-year -18.89% +88.21% +6.27%
75th Percentile £61.30 £65.75 £49.25
90th Percentile £72.90 £76.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £42.50 £20.00
% change year-on-year -5.88% +112.50% +4.19%

Software Developer
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured Software Developer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Software Developer in the UK

Software Developer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Software Developer.

Daily rate trend for Software Developer in the UK

Software Developer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Software Developer over the 6 months to 20 May 2024.

Daily rate histogram for Software Developer in the UK

Software Developer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Software Developer.

Hourly rate trend for Software Developer in the UK

Software Developer
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Software Developer over the 6 months to 20 May 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for Software Developer in the UK

Software Developer
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 Developer within the UK over the 6 months to 20 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 +111 411 £531 -0.89% 431
Work from Home +152 307 £563 +9.76% 254
UK excluding London +35 240 £450 -5.26% 376
London +112 202 £550 -8.33% 104
North of England +85 94 £450 - 89
North West +35 43 £420 -5.62% 48
Midlands +27 35 £425 -19.05% 83
South West +8 35 £525 -12.50% 52
Yorkshire +45 34 £450 - 29
South East -16 28 £413 - 97
Scotland +5 27 £460 -3.16% 22
East Midlands +21 19 £425 -28.08% 31
North East +25 17 - - 15
West Midlands +26 16 £375 -28.57% 52
East of England +12 11 £485 -3.00% 26
Wales +15 7 £520 +15.56% 6
Northern Ireland - 3 £650 - 12

Software Developer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 20 May 2024, Software Developer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Software Developer in the job title.

1 240 (51.06%) C#
2 226 (48.09%) JavaScript
2 226 (48.09%) Python
3 212 (45.11%) Software Engineering
4 194 (41.28%) SQL
5 173 (36.81%) Degree
6 161 (34.26%) HTML
6 161 (34.26%) Agile
7 158 (33.62%) Code Quality
8 154 (32.77%) Artificial Intelligence
9 153 (32.55%) Conversational UI
10 151 (32.13%) PayPal
10 151 (32.13%) Chatbot
11 107 (22.77%) Azure
12 104 (22.13%) AWS
13 99 (21.06%) .NET
14 98 (20.85%) Java
15 87 (18.51%) DevOps
16 75 (15.96%) CI/CD
17 70 (14.89%) SQL Server
18 67 (14.26%) Scrum
19 63 (13.40%) PowerShell
20 62 (13.19%) Microsoft
20 62 (13.19%) Azure DevOps
21 59 (12.55%) TypeScript
22 54 (11.49%) Finance
23 52 (11.06%) Security Cleared
23 52 (11.06%) Public Sector
24 46 (9.79%) .NET Framework
25 45 (9.57%) XML

Software Developer Skill Set
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 32 (6.81%) Apache
1 32 (6.81%) Apache Airflow
2 5 (1.06%) Umbraco
3 4 (0.85%) CMS
4 3 (0.64%) Apache Spark
4 3 (0.64%) WebLogic
5 1 (0.21%) Confluence
5 1 (0.21%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.21%) SAS
Applications
1 151 (32.13%) Chatbot
2 4 (0.85%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 4 (0.85%) LabWindows
1 4 (0.85%) NEC Housing
2 2 (0.43%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.21%) Aareon QL
3 1 (0.21%) Endur
3 1 (0.21%) MIS ActiveH
3 1 (0.21%) OPENHousing
Cloud Services
1 107 (22.77%) Azure
2 104 (22.13%) AWS
3 62 (13.19%) Azure DevOps
4 37 (7.87%) GCP
5 32 (6.81%) dbt
6 26 (5.53%) Snowflake
7 20 (4.26%) Serverless
8 18 (3.83%) GitHub
9 16 (3.40%) Amazon S3
9 16 (3.40%) Entra ID
10 14 (2.98%) AWS Lambda
11 10 (2.13%) Azure Service Bus
12 9 (1.91%) AWS CloudFormation
13 8 (1.70%) Amazon EC2
14 6 (1.28%) Azure Cosmos DB
14 6 (1.28%) OpenShift
15 5 (1.06%) AWS Step Functions
15 5 (1.06%) GitHub Actions
16 4 (0.85%) Microsoft 365
16 4 (0.85%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.85%) RS-232
2 3 (0.64%) VPN
3 2 (0.43%) Firewall
3 2 (0.43%) MQTT
3 2 (0.43%) Tactical Data Link
3 2 (0.43%) TCP/IP
4 1 (0.21%) 5G
4 1 (0.21%) DHCP
4 1 (0.21%) DNS
4 1 (0.21%) Internet
4 1 (0.21%) LTE
4 1 (0.21%) Radio Access Network
4 1 (0.21%) RFID
4 1 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 70 (14.89%) SQL Server
2 32 (6.81%) Amazon Athena
2 32 (6.81%) Apache Arrow
2 32 (6.81%) Apache Ignite
2 32 (6.81%) Dremio
3 27 (5.74%) Data Lake
4 24 (5.11%) NoSQL
5 13 (2.77%) PostgreSQL
6 9 (1.91%) MongoDB
7 8 (1.70%) Amazon Aurora
7 8 (1.70%) Relational Database
8 7 (1.49%) MySQL
9 5 (1.06%) Elasticsearch
9 5 (1.06%) Redis
10 4 (0.85%) Oracle Database
11 3 (0.64%) Big Data
11 3 (0.64%) Data Warehouse
11 3 (0.64%) Oracle Reports
12 2 (0.43%) Hadoop
12 2 (0.43%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 23 (4.89%) Git
2 17 (3.62%) SpecFlow
3 8 (1.70%) Jenkins
3 8 (1.70%) Selenium
4 7 (1.49%) Visual Studio
5 6 (1.28%) Cucumber
5 6 (1.28%) LabVIEW
6 4 (0.85%) JIRA
6 4 (0.85%) Maven
6 4 (0.85%) Subversion
7 3 (0.64%) Bitbucket
7 3 (0.64%) Cypress.io
7 3 (0.64%) Octopus Deploy
7 3 (0.64%) Oracle Forms
7 3 (0.64%) Rational DOORS
7 3 (0.64%) REST Assured
7 3 (0.64%) TeamCity
7 3 (0.64%) WebDriver
8 2 (0.43%) Mockito
8 2 (0.43%) Postman
General
1 54 (11.49%) Finance
2 52 (11.06%) Public Sector
3 44 (9.36%) Banking
4 38 (8.09%) Front Office
5 36 (7.66%) Investment Banking
5 36 (7.66%) Social Skills
6 9 (1.91%) Analytical Skills
7 7 (1.49%) Law
8 6 (1.28%) Local Government
9 5 (1.06%) Manufacturing
10 4 (0.85%) Tech for Good
11 3 (0.64%) Back Office
12 2 (0.43%) Legal
12 2 (0.43%) Retail
13 1 (0.21%) Aerospace
13 1 (0.21%) Financial Institution
13 1 (0.21%) Marketing
13 1 (0.21%) Military
13 1 (0.21%) Pharmaceutical
13 1 (0.21%) Publishing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 161 (34.26%) HTML
2 99 (21.06%) .NET
3 46 (9.79%) .NET Framework
4 45 (9.57%) XML
5 37 (7.87%) CSS
6 36 (7.66%) React
7 34 (7.23%) NumPy
7 34 (7.23%) Pandas
7 34 (7.23%) SciPy
8 32 (6.81%) gRPC
8 32 (6.81%) Protocol Buffers
9 29 (6.17%) RESTful
10 28 (5.96%) AngularJS
11 23 (4.89%) REST
12 19 (4.04%) .NET Core
13 18 (3.83%) Node.js
14 16 (3.40%) FastAPI
14 16 (3.40%) Spring
15 13 (2.77%) Kafka
16 12 (2.55%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 31 (6.60%) Derivative
1 31 (6.60%) Fixed Income
2 28 (5.96%) Equities
2 28 (5.96%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
2 28 (5.96%) Hedge funds
3 27 (5.74%) Product Ownership
4 10 (2.13%) Distributed Systems
5 9 (1.91%) Algorithms
6 7 (1.49%) Data Structures
6 7 (1.49%) Greenfield Project
7 6 (1.28%) Legacy Systems
8 5 (1.06%) Contactless
8 5 (1.06%) Data Protection Act
8 5 (1.06%) Management Information System
8 5 (1.06%) Mobile App
8 5 (1.06%) NHS
9 4 (0.85%) CCTV
9 4 (0.85%) Cloud Native
9 4 (0.85%) Onboarding
10 3 (0.64%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 20 (4.26%) Linux
2 10 (2.13%) Windows
3 5 (1.06%) Unix
4 4 (0.85%) Android
4 4 (0.85%) Windows 10
5 3 (0.64%) Oracle Linux
6 2 (0.43%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 212 (45.11%) Software Engineering
2 161 (34.26%) Agile
3 158 (33.62%) Code Quality
4 154 (32.77%) Artificial Intelligence
5 153 (32.55%) Conversational UI
6 87 (18.51%) DevOps
7 75 (15.96%) CI/CD
8 67 (14.26%) Scrum
9 37 (7.87%) Asset Management
10 28 (5.96%) Test Automation
11 27 (5.74%) Software Testing
12 26 (5.53%) Microservices
13 25 (5.32%) TDD
14 24 (5.11%) Line Management
15 23 (4.89%) API Development
16 22 (4.68%) Analytics
17 19 (4.04%) Front End Development
17 19 (4.04%) Full Stack Development
17 19 (4.04%) SDLC
18 18 (3.83%) Design Patterns
Programming Languages
1 240 (51.06%) C#
2 226 (48.09%) JavaScript
2 226 (48.09%) Python
3 194 (41.28%) SQL
4 98 (20.85%) Java
5 63 (13.40%) PowerShell
6 59 (12.55%) TypeScript
7 14 (2.98%) C++
8 13 (2.77%) Bicep
9 9 (1.91%) Bash
9 9 (1.91%) C
10 7 (1.49%) Ruby
11 5 (1.06%) Kotlin
11 5 (1.06%) PHP
11 5 (1.06%) Scala
12 4 (0.85%) Go
12 4 (0.85%) Perl
12 4 (0.85%) T-SQL
13 3 (0.64%) Rust
13 3 (0.64%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 173 (36.81%) Degree
2 52 (11.06%) Security Cleared
3 29 (6.17%) SC Cleared
4 12 (2.55%) DV Cleared
5 8 (1.70%) Computer Science Degree
6 3 (0.64%) CTC Cleared
6 3 (0.64%) Master's Degree
7 2 (0.43%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (1.91%) Accessibility
1 9 (1.91%) QA
2 6 (1.28%) PCI DSS
3 5 (1.06%) HL7
4 3 (0.64%) ISO 9001
4 3 (0.64%) ISO/IEC 12207
4 3 (0.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (0.43%) WCAG
6 1 (0.21%) Def Stans
6 1 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
6 1 (0.21%) DO-178B
6 1 (0.21%) GDPR
System Software
1 21 (4.47%) Docker
2 18 (3.83%) Active Directory
3 6 (1.28%) Virtual Machines
4 4 (0.85%) zsh
5 1 (0.21%) Hyper-V
5 1 (0.21%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 16 (3.40%) Kubernetes
1 16 (3.40%) Terraform
2 6 (1.28%) Grafana
3 2 (0.43%) Kibana
4 1 (0.21%) Ansible
4 1 (0.21%) Istio
4 1 (0.21%) PowerCLI
4 1 (0.21%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 151 (32.13%) PayPal
2 62 (13.19%) Microsoft
3 13 (2.77%) OpenAI
4 11 (2.34%) Oracle
5 7 (1.49%) Google
6 4 (0.85%) Databricks
6 4 (0.85%) NEC
6 4 (0.85%) RedGate
7 2 (0.43%) Apple
7 2 (0.43%) Splunk
7 2 (0.43%) Xamarin
8 1 (0.21%) Atlassian
8 1 (0.21%) Atmel
8 1 (0.21%) Capita
8 1 (0.21%) Civica
8 1 (0.21%) IBM
8 1 (0.21%) ION Trading
8 1 (0.21%) OpenLink
8 1 (0.21%) SEEBURGER
8 1 (0.21%) VMware