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

6 months to
25 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 32 44 43
Rank change year-on-year +12 -1 -3
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,355 2,728 4,700
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 5.52% 4.84% 5.37%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.44% 5.39% 5.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,375 1,828 3,287
10th Percentile £409 £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 £713 £694
90th Percentile £850 £800 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £545 £525
% change year-on-year -8.26% +3.81% +16.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 398 202 194
10th Percentile £46.25 £46.25 £40.32
25th Percentile £52.50 £53.75 £47.98
Median hourly rate £62.50 £64.57 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year -3.21% +12.30% +26.37%
75th Percentile £70.00 £70.00 £64.56
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.90 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year -3.85% +8.33% +31.87%

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 36,593 50,587 79,345
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.80% 89.68% 90.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,580 35,017 55,732
10th Percentile £300 £325 £345
25th Percentile £413 £438 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £535
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +2.80% +8.08%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £638
90th Percentile £750 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £485
% change year-on-year - +3.09% +9.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,483 1,675 1,881
10th Percentile £12.75 £10.63 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.00 £15.78 £15.50
Median hourly rate £36.05 £37.30 £25.68
Median % change year-on-year -3.36% +45.25% +9.28%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £49.50
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% -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 25 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 25 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 25 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 +8 2,104 £600 - 2,752
UK excluding London +19 1,098 £500 -8.26% 2,045
London +4 1,058 £675 +3.85% 1,313
Work from Home +17 919 £650 +8.33% 1,629
South East +23 260 £550 +4.76% 814
North of England +49 252 £518 -5.91% 350
East of England +8 197 £500 -7.24% 234
South West -3 165 £525 -9.33% 246
North West +54 146 £533 -3.18% 214
Scotland +31 110 £475 -2.96% 145
Midlands +41 93 £492 -6.38% 229
Yorkshire +9 72 £450 -11.11% 90
West Midlands +14 65 £463 -15.14% 108
North East +25 36 £390 -38.82% 50
East Midlands +22 27 £550 +29.41% 114
Wales +5 19 £538 -8.15% 26
Northern Ireland +3 4 £675 +68.75% 36

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
1 218 (9.26%) Apache Airflow
2 211 (8.96%) Apache
3 60 (2.55%) Confluence
4 30 (1.27%) Apache Spark
5 15 (0.64%) CMS
6 10 (0.42%) nginx
7 8 (0.34%) IIS
8 7 (0.30%) Headless CMS
9 6 (0.25%) BizTalk Server
9 6 (0.25%) SAS
10 5 (0.21%) Anypoint
11 4 (0.17%) Apache Solr
11 4 (0.17%) OpenStack
12 3 (0.13%) CICS
12 3 (0.13%) JBoss
12 3 (0.13%) SharePoint
13 2 (0.085%) ArcGIS
13 2 (0.085%) Drupal
13 2 (0.085%) MQSeries
14 1 (0.042%) EPiServer
Applications
1 124 (5.27%) Chatbot
2 37 (1.57%) Simulink
3 27 (1.15%) Stateflow
4 13 (0.55%) Microsoft Excel
5 9 (0.38%) Microsoft Office
6 5 (0.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 5 (0.21%) TargetLink
7 4 (0.17%) CPLEX
8 3 (0.13%) Adobe After Effects
8 3 (0.13%) Blender
8 3 (0.13%) Maya
8 3 (0.13%) Photoshop
9 2 (0.085%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 1 (0.042%) CATIA
10 1 (0.042%) PlantUML
10 1 (0.042%) Sketch
10 1 (0.042%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 7 (0.30%) Misys Midas
2 6 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.21%) Endur
3 5 (0.21%) Salesforce CRM
4 4 (0.17%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 3 (0.13%) FLEXCUBE
5 3 (0.13%) Oracle BPM
5 3 (0.13%) SAP S/4HANA
6 2 (0.085%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.085%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 2 (0.085%) Shopify
6 2 (0.085%) WebTrends
7 1 (0.042%) Advent Geneva
7 1 (0.042%) Fidessa
7 1 (0.042%) Front Arena
7 1 (0.042%) Remedy ITSM
7 1 (0.042%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 699 (29.68%) AWS
2 526 (22.34%) Azure
3 291 (12.36%) GCP
4 121 (5.14%) dbt
5 114 (4.84%) Azure DevOps
5 114 (4.84%) Snowflake
6 107 (4.54%) GitHub
7 97 (4.12%) Serverless
8 65 (2.76%) AWS Lambda
9 43 (1.83%) Azure Service Bus
10 40 (1.70%) Amazon S3
11 35 (1.49%) Azure Cosmos DB
11 35 (1.49%) PaaS
12 33 (1.40%) npm
13 32 (1.36%) SaaS
14 30 (1.27%) OpenShift
15 29 (1.23%) GitHub Actions
16 23 (0.98%) Amazon EC2
17 22 (0.93%) Azure Functions
17 22 (0.93%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 37 (1.57%) Modbus
1 37 (1.57%) RS-485
2 35 (1.49%) RS-422
3 31 (1.32%) Software-Defined Radio
4 26 (1.10%) TCP/IP
5 25 (1.06%) HTTP
6 22 (0.93%) SNMP
7 20 (0.85%) Firewall
8 18 (0.76%) Internet
9 16 (0.68%) VPN
10 13 (0.55%) Wi-Fi
11 11 (0.47%) Ethernet
11 11 (0.47%) SAN
11 11 (0.47%) Wireless
12 9 (0.38%) DNS
13 8 (0.34%) 802.11
14 6 (0.25%) Diameter Protocol
14 6 (0.25%) Tactical Data Link
15 5 (0.21%) 5G
15 5 (0.21%) J1939
Database & Business Intelligence
1 187 (7.94%) Apache Ignite
2 155 (6.58%) PostgreSQL
3 119 (5.05%) Amazon Athena
4 118 (5.01%) Dremio
5 117 (4.97%) Apache Arrow
6 110 (4.67%) Data Lake
7 80 (3.40%) NoSQL
8 77 (3.27%) SQL Server
9 66 (2.80%) MySQL
10 53 (2.25%) Apache Cassandra
11 47 (2.00%) Relational Database
12 38 (1.61%) MongoDB
13 32 (1.36%) Big Data
14 29 (1.23%) Data Warehouse
15 28 (1.19%) Azure SQL Database
15 28 (1.19%) Oracle Database
16 27 (1.15%) Elasticsearch
17 23 (0.98%) Amazon Redshift
18 19 (0.81%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 18 (0.76%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 241 (10.23%) Git
2 168 (7.13%) JIRA
3 135 (5.73%) Jenkins
4 106 (4.50%) Cypress.io
5 62 (2.63%) GitLab
6 54 (2.29%) SonarQube
7 47 (2.00%) Selenium
8 39 (1.66%) Bitbucket
9 38 (1.61%) Cucumber
10 35 (1.49%) Postman
10 35 (1.49%) Visual Studio
11 34 (1.44%) GoogleTest
12 33 (1.40%) Eclipse
13 28 (1.19%) Rational DOORS
14 26 (1.10%) Maven
15 25 (1.06%) JUnit
16 23 (0.98%) Robot Framework
17 22 (0.93%) webpack
18 21 (0.89%) REST Assured
19 18 (0.76%) Artifactory
General
1 561 (23.82%) Finance
2 394 (16.73%) Social Skills
3 327 (13.89%) Front Office
4 294 (12.48%) Banking
5 131 (5.56%) Investment Banking
6 101 (4.29%) Analytical Skills
7 96 (4.08%) Electronics
8 93 (3.95%) Public Sector
9 81 (3.44%) Aerospace
10 59 (2.51%) Automotive
11 43 (1.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 38 (1.61%) Retail
13 36 (1.53%) Telecoms
14 33 (1.40%) Manufacturing
15 30 (1.27%) Law
16 28 (1.19%) Legal
17 27 (1.15%) Financial Institution
18 26 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
19 25 (1.06%) Marketing
19 25 (1.06%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,126 (47.81%) Software Engineer
2 764 (32.44%) Developer
3 379 (16.09%) Senior
4 215 (9.13%) Senior Software Engineer
5 211 (8.96%) Software Developer
6 175 (7.43%) Python Engineer
7 173 (7.35%) Lead
8 171 (7.26%) Python Developer
9 164 (6.96%) Developer/Software Engineer
10 160 (6.79%) Java Engineer
11 159 (6.75%) Python Software Engineer
12 136 (5.77%) Embedded Engineer
13 132 (5.61%) Embedded Software Engineer
14 119 (5.05%) Java Developer
15 117 (4.97%) C++ Software Engineer
15 117 (4.97%) Java Software Engineer
16 103 (4.37%) Full Stack Engineer
17 101 (4.29%) React Developer
18 94 (3.99%) Senior Developer
19 89 (3.78%) Full Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 392 (16.65%) React
2 253 (10.74%) HTML
3 229 (9.72%) .NET
4 209 (8.87%) gRPC
5 196 (8.32%) Protocol Buffers
6 158 (6.71%) Node.js
7 157 (6.67%) Pandas
8 156 (6.62%) REST
9 147 (6.24%) NumPy
10 141 (5.99%) Redux
11 140 (5.94%) Kafka
12 137 (5.82%) AngularJS
13 129 (5.48%) CSS
14 126 (5.35%) SciPy
15 103 (4.37%) Spring
16 90 (3.82%) Material-UI
17 88 (3.74%) Spring Boot
18 77 (3.27%) .NET Core
19 73 (3.10%) RESTful
20 70 (2.97%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 258 (10.96%) Fixed Income
2 211 (8.96%) Hedge funds
3 190 (8.07%) Equities
4 169 (7.18%) Derivative
5 160 (6.79%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 77 (3.27%) Algorithms
7 73 (3.10%) Distributed Systems
8 52 (2.21%) Self-Motivation
9 50 (2.12%) Greenfield Project
10 47 (2.00%) Management Information System
11 39 (1.66%) Cloud Native
12 36 (1.53%) Product Ownership
13 29 (1.23%) Data Structures
14 27 (1.15%) Enterprise Software
15 26 (1.10%) Linux Command Line
16 23 (0.98%) Onboarding
16 23 (0.98%) Renewable Energy
17 22 (0.93%) Legacy Systems
17 22 (0.93%) Public Cloud
18 21 (0.89%) ARM Cortex
Operating Systems
1 245 (10.40%) Linux
2 102 (4.33%) Windows
3 33 (1.40%) Android
4 31 (1.32%) Apple iOS
5 29 (1.23%) Unix
6 24 (1.02%) FreeRTOS
7 18 (0.76%) Embedded Linux
8 9 (0.38%) Debian
8 9 (0.38%) Ubuntu
9 7 (0.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 5 (0.21%) VxWorks
10 5 (0.21%) 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 (0.085%) VMS
14 1 (0.042%) CentOS
14 1 (0.042%) Windows Mobile
14 1 (0.042%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 937 (39.79%) Agile
2 468 (19.87%) DevOps
3 379 (16.09%) CI/CD
4 282 (11.97%) Full Stack Development
5 268 (11.38%) Artificial Intelligence
6 256 (10.87%) Asset Management
7 225 (9.55%) TDD
7 225 (9.55%) Test Automation
8 223 (9.47%) Scrum
9 210 (8.92%) SDLC
10 207 (8.79%) Investment Management
11 204 (8.66%) Problem-Solving
12 202 (8.58%) Computer Science
13 197 (8.37%) Continuous Integration
14 195 (8.28%) Code Quality
15 187 (7.94%) Microservices
16 156 (6.62%) Machine Learning
17 154 (6.54%) Fintech
18 146 (6.20%) Analytics
19 143 (6.07%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 744 (31.59%) Python
2 620 (26.33%) Java
3 597 (25.35%) JavaScript
4 509 (21.61%) C#
5 458 (19.45%) SQL
6 439 (18.64%) TypeScript
7 284 (12.06%) C++
8 229 (9.72%) C
9 111 (4.71%) Go
10 76 (3.23%) PowerShell
11 65 (2.76%) Scala
12 59 (2.51%) Embedded C
13 42 (1.78%) MATLAB
14 41 (1.74%) Kotlin
15 38 (1.61%) Ada
15 38 (1.61%) Rust
16 35 (1.49%) PHP
16 35 (1.49%) PL/SQL
17 32 (1.36%) Bash
18 27 (1.15%) Perl
Qualifications
1 395 (16.77%) Degree
2 352 (14.95%) Security Cleared
3 254 (10.79%) SC Cleared
4 113 (4.80%) Computer Science Degree
5 106 (4.50%) DV Cleared
6 71 (3.01%) Master's Degree
7 19 (0.81%) BPSS Clearance
7 19 (0.81%) PhD
8 8 (0.34%) CISSP
9 7 (0.30%) CISM
10 6 (0.25%) CISA
11 3 (0.13%) Chartered Engineer
11 3 (0.13%) HND
11 3 (0.13%) ITIL Certification
12 2 (0.085%) Azure Certification
12 2 (0.085%) HNC
12 2 (0.085%) MBA
12 2 (0.085%) PgMP
12 2 (0.085%) PMI Certification
12 2 (0.085%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 106 (4.50%) QA
2 59 (2.51%) Data Quality
3 28 (1.19%) MISRA
4 20 (0.85%) PCI DSS
5 18 (0.76%) Accessibility
6 12 (0.51%) AUTOSAR
6 12 (0.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 12 (0.51%) MISRA C
7 11 (0.47%) NCSC
8 8 (0.34%) ISO 9001
9 7 (0.30%) JTAG
10 5 (0.21%) ISO 26262
10 5 (0.21%) SEPA
10 5 (0.21%) WCAG
11 3 (0.13%) GDPR
11 3 (0.13%) IEC 61508
11 3 (0.13%) MiFID
11 3 (0.13%) NIST
11 3 (0.13%) SLA
12 2 (0.085%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 224 (9.51%) Docker
2 36 (1.53%) Firmware
3 32 (1.36%) Active Directory
4 14 (0.59%) VMware Infrastructure
5 10 (0.42%) 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 (0.17%) zsh
9 3 (0.13%) Hyper-V
10 2 (0.085%) Time Sharing Option
11 1 (0.042%) NFS
11 1 (0.042%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.042%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 252 (10.70%) Kubernetes
2 119 (5.05%) Terraform
3 77 (3.27%) Ansible
4 59 (2.51%) Grafana
5 33 (1.40%) Prometheus
6 16 (0.68%) Argo
7 15 (0.64%) Kibana
7 15 (0.64%) Podman
8 11 (0.47%) Docker Swarm
8 11 (0.47%) Istio
9 9 (0.38%) Puppet
10 8 (0.34%) Single Sign-On
11 7 (0.30%) Progress Chef
12 6 (0.25%) Functional Safety
12 6 (0.25%) Kubeflow
12 6 (0.25%) Packer
13 4 (0.17%) Consul
13 4 (0.17%) HP ALM
13 4 (0.17%) vRealize Orchestrator
13 4 (0.17%) Zipkin
Vendors
1 157 (6.67%) Microsoft
2 144 (6.11%) Google
3 121 (5.14%) PayPal
4 107 (4.54%) Oracle
5 41 (1.74%) IBM
6 31 (1.32%) Atlassian
7 29 (1.23%) SAP
8 28 (1.19%) Databricks
9 25 (1.06%) Talend
10 23 (0.98%) Red Hat
10 23 (0.98%) VMware
11 20 (0.85%) Lauterbach
12 19 (0.81%) Salesforce
13 18 (0.76%) Denodo
14 15 (0.64%) Bloomberg
15 13 (0.55%) MuleSoft
16 12 (0.51%) Splunk
17 11 (0.47%) ServiceNow
17 11 (0.47%) Virgin Media
18 10 (0.42%) Adobe