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

6 months to
9 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 32 43 42
Rank change year-on-year +11 -1 -5
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,298 2,812 4,799
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 5.34% 4.85% 5.50%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.19% 5.40% 6.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,339 1,876 3,373
10th Percentile £412 £431 £425
25th Percentile £485 £500 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £600 £590
Median % change year-on-year - +1.69% +12.38%
75th Percentile £750 £713 £688
90th Percentile £850 £798 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £540 £525
% change year-on-year -2.78% +2.86% +16.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 379 197 218
10th Percentile £46.25 £46.25 £36.65
25th Percentile £52.50 £53.75 £47.43
Median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% +18.18% +22.22%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £60.94
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.70 £70.32
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 37,140 52,105 79,027
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.25% 89.83% 90.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,924 36,124 55,482
10th Percentile £300 £325 £340
25th Percentile £413 £438 £426
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +3.77% +8.72%
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% +8.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,439 1,724 1,874
10th Percentile £12.75 £11.00 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.00 £16.17 £15.50
Median hourly rate £36.50 £36.00 £25.18
Median % change year-on-year +1.39% +42.97% +2.78%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £49.25
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.00 £35.00 £20.00
% change year-on-year +8.57% +75.00% -6.98%

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 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 9 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 9 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 2,054 £600 - 2,138
UK excluding London +17 1,078 £525 -2.78% 1,417
London +2 1,017 £669 +2.88% 860
Work from Home +12 902 £626 +6.10% 1,282
South East +21 258 £550 +4.76% 334
North of England +49 255 £525 -4.55% 295
East of England +9 193 £500 -6.89% 199
South West -8 155 £525 -9.33% 229
North West +64 151 £550 -8.33% 175
Scotland +36 106 £498 +4.74% 121
Midlands +22 94 £492 -8.64% 211
Yorkshire +13 71 £450 -12.20% 96
West Midlands +2 63 £456 -15.20% 102
North East +23 35 £390 -32.17% 28
East Midlands +37 30 £550 +29.41% 109
Wales +2 17 £551 -5.97% 26
Northern Ireland +5 3 £675 +68.75% 32

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
1 190 (8.27%) Apache Airflow
2 179 (7.79%) Apache
3 52 (2.26%) Confluence
4 31 (1.35%) Apache Spark
5 14 (0.61%) CMS
6 9 (0.39%) nginx
7 8 (0.35%) BizTalk Server
7 8 (0.35%) IIS
8 6 (0.26%) Tornado
9 5 (0.22%) Anypoint
9 5 (0.22%) SAS
10 4 (0.17%) Headless CMS
10 4 (0.17%) OpenStack
11 3 (0.13%) Apache Solr
11 3 (0.13%) CICS
11 3 (0.13%) SharePoint
12 2 (0.087%) ArcGIS
12 2 (0.087%) Drupal
12 2 (0.087%) JBoss
12 2 (0.087%) MQSeries
Applications
1 124 (5.40%) Chatbot
2 37 (1.61%) Simulink
3 27 (1.17%) Stateflow
4 16 (0.70%) Microsoft Excel
5 10 (0.44%) 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%) Maya
7 3 (0.13%) Photoshop
8 2 (0.087%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 2 (0.087%) CPLEX
9 1 (0.044%) CATIA
9 1 (0.044%) PlantUML
9 1 (0.044%) Sketch
9 1 (0.044%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 6 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
1 6 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
2 5 (0.22%) Endur
3 4 (0.17%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 3 (0.13%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.13%) Misys Midas
4 3 (0.13%) Oracle BPM
4 3 (0.13%) SAP S/4HANA
5 2 (0.087%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.087%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.087%) Shopify
5 2 (0.087%) WebTrends
6 1 (0.044%) Advent Geneva
6 1 (0.044%) Fidessa
6 1 (0.044%) Front Arena
6 1 (0.044%) Remedy ITSM
6 1 (0.044%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 676 (29.42%) AWS
2 518 (22.54%) Azure
3 268 (11.66%) GCP
4 116 (5.05%) Azure DevOps
5 102 (4.44%) dbt
6 97 (4.22%) GitHub
7 93 (4.05%) Snowflake
8 92 (4.00%) Serverless
9 58 (2.52%) AWS Lambda
10 42 (1.83%) Azure Service Bus
11 39 (1.70%) PaaS
12 37 (1.61%) SaaS
13 35 (1.52%) npm
14 34 (1.48%) Azure Cosmos DB
15 32 (1.39%) Amazon S3
16 28 (1.22%) GitHub Actions
17 27 (1.17%) Amazon EC2
18 26 (1.13%) Azure Functions
19 24 (1.04%) OpenShift
20 23 (1.00%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 38 (1.65%) Modbus
2 37 (1.61%) RS-485
3 36 (1.57%) RS-422
4 29 (1.26%) Software-Defined Radio
5 27 (1.17%) TCP/IP
6 24 (1.04%) HTTP
7 20 (0.87%) Firewall
7 20 (0.87%) SNMP
8 18 (0.78%) Internet
9 16 (0.70%) VPN
10 14 (0.61%) Wi-Fi
11 11 (0.48%) Ethernet
11 11 (0.48%) SAN
11 11 (0.48%) Wireless
12 10 (0.44%) DNS
13 9 (0.39%) 802.11
14 7 (0.30%) FTP
15 6 (0.26%) Network Security
16 5 (0.22%) 5G
16 5 (0.22%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 157 (6.83%) Apache Ignite
2 141 (6.14%) PostgreSQL
3 98 (4.26%) Amazon Athena
4 97 (4.22%) Apache Arrow
4 97 (4.22%) Dremio
5 93 (4.05%) Data Lake
6 86 (3.74%) SQL Server
7 77 (3.35%) NoSQL
8 61 (2.65%) MySQL
9 53 (2.31%) Apache Cassandra
10 50 (2.18%) MongoDB
11 45 (1.96%) Relational Database
12 31 (1.35%) Big Data
13 30 (1.31%) Oracle Database
14 28 (1.22%) Azure SQL Database
14 28 (1.22%) Data Warehouse
15 25 (1.09%) Elasticsearch
16 22 (0.96%) Amazon Redshift
17 20 (0.87%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 18 (0.78%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 231 (10.05%) Git
2 157 (6.83%) JIRA
3 127 (5.53%) Jenkins
4 87 (3.79%) Cypress.io
5 62 (2.70%) GitLab
6 54 (2.35%) SonarQube
7 44 (1.91%) Selenium
8 40 (1.74%) Bitbucket
9 38 (1.65%) Cucumber
10 35 (1.52%) Visual Studio
11 34 (1.48%) Rational DOORS
12 32 (1.39%) Eclipse
13 28 (1.22%) GoogleTest
14 27 (1.17%) Maven
15 25 (1.09%) Postman
15 25 (1.09%) webpack
16 24 (1.04%) JUnit
17 21 (0.91%) REST Assured
18 20 (0.87%) Robot Framework
19 17 (0.74%) Artifactory
General
1 534 (23.24%) Finance
2 408 (17.75%) Social Skills
3 300 (13.05%) Front Office
4 263 (11.44%) Banking
5 111 (4.83%) Investment Banking
6 106 (4.61%) Analytical Skills
6 106 (4.61%) Electronics
7 98 (4.26%) Public Sector
8 78 (3.39%) Aerospace
9 62 (2.70%) Automotive
10 42 (1.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 41 (1.78%) Telecoms
12 39 (1.70%) Manufacturing
13 38 (1.65%) Retail
14 34 (1.48%) Marketing
15 30 (1.31%) Law
16 28 (1.22%) Financial Institution
16 28 (1.22%) Legal
16 28 (1.22%) Presentation Skills
17 23 (1.00%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,080 (47.00%) Software Engineer
2 753 (32.77%) Developer
3 375 (16.32%) Senior
4 214 (9.31%) Senior Software Engineer
5 207 (9.01%) Software Developer
6 170 (7.40%) Lead
7 164 (7.14%) Python Developer
8 158 (6.88%) Python Engineer
9 151 (6.57%) Developer/Software Engineer
10 145 (6.31%) Java Engineer
11 139 (6.05%) Python Software Engineer
12 131 (5.70%) Embedded Engineer
13 127 (5.53%) Embedded Software Engineer
14 113 (4.92%) C++ Software Engineer
15 111 (4.83%) Java Developer
16 104 (4.53%) Java Software Engineer
17 99 (4.31%) Full Stack Engineer
18 93 (4.05%) React Developer
19 89 (3.87%) Senior Developer
20 86 (3.74%) Full Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 392 (17.06%) React
2 252 (10.97%) HTML
3 230 (10.01%) .NET
4 177 (7.70%) gRPC
5 170 (7.40%) Node.js
6 166 (7.22%) Protocol Buffers
7 159 (6.92%) REST
8 144 (6.27%) Kafka
9 141 (6.14%) Pandas
10 139 (6.05%) AngularJS
11 131 (5.70%) Redux
12 128 (5.57%) CSS
13 127 (5.53%) NumPy
14 106 (4.61%) SciPy
15 97 (4.22%) Spring
16 82 (3.57%) Material-UI
17 81 (3.52%) RESTful
18 80 (3.48%) .NET Core
18 80 (3.48%) Spring Boot
19 65 (2.83%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 235 (10.23%) Fixed Income
2 191 (8.31%) Hedge funds
3 169 (7.35%) Equities
4 153 (6.66%) Derivative
5 139 (6.05%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 78 (3.39%) Algorithms
7 72 (3.13%) Distributed Systems
8 54 (2.35%) Greenfield Project
9 52 (2.26%) Self-Motivation
10 48 (2.09%) Management Information System
11 39 (1.70%) Product Ownership
12 38 (1.65%) Cloud Native
13 30 (1.31%) Data Structures
14 26 (1.13%) Renewable Energy
15 23 (1.00%) Enterprise Software
16 22 (0.96%) Onboarding
16 22 (0.96%) Public Cloud
17 21 (0.91%) Linux Command Line
18 20 (0.87%) Legacy Systems
19 19 (0.83%) ARM Cortex
Operating Systems
1 242 (10.53%) Linux
2 104 (4.53%) Windows
3 27 (1.17%) Android
4 26 (1.13%) Apple iOS
4 26 (1.13%) Unix
5 22 (0.96%) FreeRTOS
6 20 (0.87%) Embedded Linux
7 10 (0.44%) Ubuntu
8 9 (0.39%) Debian
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 (0.087%) VMS
14 1 (0.044%) Solaris
14 1 (0.044%) Windows Mobile
14 1 (0.044%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 905 (39.38%) Agile
2 466 (20.28%) DevOps
3 371 (16.14%) CI/CD
4 270 (11.75%) Full Stack Development
5 253 (11.01%) Artificial Intelligence
6 234 (10.18%) Asset Management
7 222 (9.66%) Problem-Solving
8 221 (9.62%) TDD
9 219 (9.53%) Test Automation
10 217 (9.44%) Scrum
11 202 (8.79%) Computer Science
11 202 (8.79%) SDLC
12 197 (8.57%) Investment Management
13 195 (8.49%) Continuous Integration
14 192 (8.36%) Microservices
15 191 (8.31%) Code Quality
16 154 (6.70%) Fintech
17 149 (6.48%) Software Testing
18 142 (6.18%) Analytics
18 142 (6.18%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 722 (31.42%) Python
2 587 (25.54%) JavaScript
3 572 (24.89%) Java
4 516 (22.45%) C#
5 465 (20.23%) SQL
6 409 (17.80%) TypeScript
7 277 (12.05%) C++
8 219 (9.53%) C
9 114 (4.96%) Go
10 77 (3.35%) PowerShell
11 69 (3.00%) Scala
12 58 (2.52%) Embedded C
13 43 (1.87%) MATLAB
14 42 (1.83%) PL/SQL
15 39 (1.70%) Kotlin
16 38 (1.65%) Ada
17 34 (1.48%) Rust
18 30 (1.31%) Bash
18 30 (1.31%) PHP
19 29 (1.26%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 397 (17.28%) Degree
2 346 (15.06%) Security Cleared
3 256 (11.14%) SC Cleared
4 115 (5.00%) Computer Science Degree
5 92 (4.00%) DV Cleared
6 74 (3.22%) Master's Degree
7 21 (0.91%) BPSS Clearance
8 20 (0.87%) PhD
9 5 (0.22%) AWS Certification
9 5 (0.22%) Chartered Engineer
10 4 (0.17%) CISSP
11 3 (0.13%) CISM
11 3 (0.13%) HND
11 3 (0.13%) ITIL Certification
11 3 (0.13%) PMP
12 2 (0.087%) CISA
12 2 (0.087%) HNC
12 2 (0.087%) MBA
12 2 (0.087%) PgMP
12 2 (0.087%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 104 (4.53%) QA
2 47 (2.05%) Data Quality
3 21 (0.91%) MISRA
4 19 (0.83%) PCI DSS
5 16 (0.70%) Accessibility
6 14 (0.61%) AUTOSAR
7 11 (0.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 11 (0.48%) MISRA C
7 11 (0.48%) NCSC
8 8 (0.35%) ISO 9001
9 7 (0.30%) JTAG
10 6 (0.26%) ISO 26262
11 5 (0.22%) WCAG
12 4 (0.17%) SEPA
13 3 (0.13%) MiFID
13 3 (0.13%) SLA
14 2 (0.087%) Disclosure Scotland
14 2 (0.087%) DO-178B
14 2 (0.087%) IEC 61508
14 2 (0.087%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 210 (9.14%) Docker
2 35 (1.52%) Firmware
3 30 (1.31%) Active Directory
4 15 (0.65%) VMware Infrastructure
5 10 (0.44%) 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 (0.087%) Time Sharing Option
11 1 (0.044%) NFS
11 1 (0.044%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.044%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 250 (10.88%) Kubernetes
2 128 (5.57%) Terraform
3 74 (3.22%) Ansible
4 53 (2.31%) Grafana
5 31 (1.35%) Prometheus
6 13 (0.57%) Argo
6 13 (0.57%) Kibana
7 11 (0.48%) Docker Swarm
7 11 (0.48%) Podman
8 9 (0.39%) Istio
8 9 (0.39%) Puppet
8 9 (0.39%) Single Sign-On
9 8 (0.35%) Progress Chef
10 7 (0.30%) Kubeflow
11 6 (0.26%) Functional Safety
11 6 (0.26%) Packer
12 4 (0.17%) Consul
12 4 (0.17%) HP ALM
12 4 (0.17%) vRealize Orchestrator
12 4 (0.17%) Zipkin
Vendors
1 153 (6.66%) Microsoft
2 128 (5.57%) Google
3 121 (5.27%) PayPal
4 110 (4.79%) Oracle
5 40 (1.74%) IBM
6 35 (1.52%) SAP
7 34 (1.48%) Databricks
8 31 (1.35%) Atlassian
9 24 (1.04%) Talend
9 24 (1.04%) VMware
10 22 (0.96%) Red Hat
11 21 (0.91%) Salesforce
12 18 (0.78%) Bloomberg
12 18 (0.78%) Lauterbach
13 17 (0.74%) Denodo
14 15 (0.65%) MuleSoft
15 12 (0.52%) ServiceNow
15 12 (0.52%) Splunk
15 12 (0.52%) Virgin Media
16 10 (0.44%) Adobe