Software Engineer Contracts

Software Engineer
UK

The median Software Engineer daily rate in the UK is £625 according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months to 16 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
16 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 81 143 136
Rank change year-on-year +62 -7 -1
Contract jobs requiring a Software Engineer 1,106 1,059 1,756
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 2.60% 1.86% 2.01%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.80% 1.96% 2.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 571 655 1,173
10th Percentile £450 £438 £423
25th Percentile £500 £500 £495
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £590 £590
Median % change year-on-year +5.93% - +18.00%
75th Percentile £750 £675 £694
90th Percentile £850 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £538 £513
% change year-on-year -2.42% +4.98% +13.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 338 138 144
10th Percentile £46.25 £46.60 £43.48
25th Percentile £52.50 £53.75 £48.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £63.75 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +1.96% +10.87% +27.78%
75th Percentile £70.00 £70.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £77.00 £66.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year - +8.33% +33.33%

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 39,484 53,902 83,447
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.78% 94.62% 95.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,682 37,660 58,636
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% +10.53%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £638
90th Percentile £750 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -2.00% +5.26% +11.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,662 1,503 2,044
10th Percentile £12.82 £14.25 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.30 £19.38 £15.76
Median hourly rate £36.58 £45.00 £24.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.72% +87.50% +6.67%
75th Percentile £61.30 £65.75 £49.25
90th Percentile £73.44 £76.20 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £42.50 £20.00
% change year-on-year -5.88% +112.50% +5.26%

Software Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for Software Engineer in the UK

Software Engineer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for Software Engineer in the UK

Software Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Software Engineer over the 6 months to 16 May 2024.

Daily rate histogram for Software Engineer in the UK

Software Engineer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for Software Engineer in the UK

Software Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Software Engineer over the 6 months to 16 May 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for Software Engineer in the UK

Software Engineer
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 Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 16 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 +58 1,023 £648 +9.75% 1,184
UK excluding London +64 554 £525 -2.42% 818
London +51 454 £675 +8.00% 457
Work from Home +33 374 £650 +12.65% 858
East of England +33 154 £550 -0.90% 110
South East +39 135 £450 -13.46% 188
North of England +69 116 £525 -8.70% 151
South West +16 104 £550 +4.76% 161
North West +69 85 £550 - 92
Scotland +34 27 £326 -30.56% 73
Yorkshire +13 18 £400 -23.81% 47
North East +10 13 £390 -44.29% 14
Midlands -12 9 £525 -2.42% 112
Wales +14 6 £458 -22.95% 19
West Midlands -7 6 £500 -7.41% 58
Northern Ireland +8 4 £675 - 18
East Midlands +7 3 £575 +35.29% 53

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

For the 6 months to 16 May 2024, Software Engineer 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 Engineer in the job title.

1 1,094 (98.92%) Software Engineering
2 451 (40.78%) Agile
3 384 (34.72%) AWS
4 299 (27.03%) Python
5 268 (24.23%) Finance
6 261 (23.60%) Java
7 243 (21.97%) TypeScript
8 231 (20.89%) Azure
9 229 (20.71%) JavaScript
10 215 (19.44%) C#
11 211 (19.08%) React
12 206 (18.63%) C++
13 200 (18.08%) Front Office
14 182 (16.46%) C
15 176 (15.91%) Asset Management
16 170 (15.37%) Fixed Income
16 170 (15.37%) DevOps
17 166 (15.01%) GCP
18 155 (14.01%) Investment Management
19 154 (13.92%) Banking
19 154 (13.92%) Full Stack Development
20 148 (13.38%) Social Skills
21 146 (13.20%) Security Cleared
21 146 (13.20%) gRPC
22 141 (12.75%) Apache Airflow
22 141 (12.75%) Protocol Buffers
22 141 (12.75%) Apache
23 139 (12.57%) Hedge funds
24 135 (12.21%) Apache Ignite
25 133 (12.03%) Linux

Software Engineer 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
1 141 (12.75%) Apache
1 141 (12.75%) Apache Airflow
2 21 (1.90%) Confluence
3 6 (0.54%) Apache Spark
3 6 (0.54%) IIS
4 2 (0.18%) Apache Solr
4 2 (0.18%) Drupal
4 2 (0.18%) SAS
5 1 (0.090%) Cloud Foundry
5 1 (0.090%) CMS
5 1 (0.090%) Ethereum
5 1 (0.090%) Headless CMS
5 1 (0.090%) JBoss
5 1 (0.090%) MetaMask
5 1 (0.090%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (0.090%) MTS
5 1 (0.090%) nginx
5 1 (0.090%) Tomcat
5 1 (0.090%) WebSphere
5 1 (0.090%) WordPress
Applications
1 29 (2.62%) Simulink
2 22 (1.99%) Stateflow
3 3 (0.27%) Adobe After Effects
3 3 (0.27%) Blender
3 3 (0.27%) Maya
3 3 (0.27%) Photoshop
4 1 (0.090%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.090%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.090%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 5 (0.45%) Salesforce CRM
2 3 (0.27%) Misys Midas
3 2 (0.18%) FLEXCUBE
3 2 (0.18%) Oracle BPM
4 1 (0.090%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.090%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 384 (34.72%) AWS
2 231 (20.89%) Azure
3 166 (15.01%) GCP
4 67 (6.06%) dbt
5 56 (5.06%) Snowflake
6 48 (4.34%) GitHub
7 36 (3.25%) Azure DevOps
7 36 (3.25%) Serverless
8 21 (1.90%) AWS Lambda
9 16 (1.45%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 16 (1.45%) Azure Service Bus
10 14 (1.27%) Amazon S3
11 13 (1.18%) Amazon EC2
12 11 (0.99%) Azure Cosmos DB
13 10 (0.90%) Azure App Service
14 7 (0.63%) AWS CloudFormation
14 7 (0.63%) AWS Step Functions
14 7 (0.63%) Azure Functions
14 7 (0.63%) Entra ID
14 7 (0.63%) npm
Communications & Networking
1 37 (3.35%) RS-485
2 36 (3.25%) Modbus
2 36 (3.25%) RS-422
3 23 (2.08%) Software-Defined Radio
4 17 (1.54%) HTTP
5 15 (1.36%) TCP/IP
6 13 (1.18%) Internet
6 13 (1.18%) SNMP
7 10 (0.90%) Ethernet
8 9 (0.81%) Wi-Fi
9 8 (0.72%) 802.11
10 6 (0.54%) Wireless
11 5 (0.45%) Diameter Protocol
11 5 (0.45%) J1939
12 4 (0.36%) Firewall
12 4 (0.36%) Radio Access Network
12 4 (0.36%) VPN
13 3 (0.27%) Link 16
13 3 (0.27%) RS-232
13 3 (0.27%) Tactical Data Link
Database & Business Intelligence
1 135 (12.21%) Apache Ignite
2 83 (7.50%) PostgreSQL
3 67 (6.06%) Amazon Athena
3 67 (6.06%) Apache Arrow
3 67 (6.06%) Dremio
4 51 (4.61%) Data Lake
5 47 (4.25%) Apache Cassandra
6 33 (2.98%) SQL Server
7 25 (2.26%) NoSQL
8 24 (2.17%) MySQL
9 22 (1.99%) MongoDB
10 11 (0.99%) Relational Database
11 9 (0.81%) Couchbase
12 7 (0.63%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 7 (0.63%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 6 (0.54%) DynamoDB
13 6 (0.54%) SQLite
14 5 (0.45%) Data Warehouse
14 5 (0.45%) Oracle Reports
15 4 (0.36%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 90 (8.14%) Git
2 64 (5.79%) Cypress.io
3 61 (5.52%) Jenkins
4 59 (5.33%) JIRA
5 26 (2.35%) Visual Studio
6 24 (2.17%) Eclipse
7 23 (2.08%) GitLab
7 23 (2.08%) GoogleTest
8 19 (1.72%) Rational DOORS
8 19 (1.72%) Selenium
9 17 (1.54%) Bitbucket
9 17 (1.54%) SonarQube
10 14 (1.27%) Rational Rhapsody
11 13 (1.18%) Cucumber
12 12 (1.08%) Maven
13 11 (0.99%) Robot Framework
14 7 (0.63%) REST Assured
15 6 (0.54%) CircleCI
15 6 (0.54%) Sonatype Nexus
15 6 (0.54%) Subversion
General
1 268 (24.23%) Finance
2 200 (18.08%) Front Office
3 154 (13.92%) Banking
4 148 (13.38%) Social Skills
5 84 (7.59%) Electronics
6 65 (5.88%) Aerospace
7 64 (5.79%) Investment Banking
8 44 (3.98%) Automotive
9 27 (2.44%) Public Sector
10 26 (2.35%) Analytical Skills
11 21 (1.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 21 (1.90%) Manufacturing
12 20 (1.81%) Legal
13 18 (1.63%) Military
13 18 (1.63%) Telecoms
14 14 (1.27%) Law
15 13 (1.18%) Aviation
16 11 (0.99%) Games
16 11 (0.99%) Presentation Skills
17 10 (0.90%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 211 (19.08%) React
2 146 (13.20%) gRPC
3 141 (12.75%) Protocol Buffers
4 129 (11.66%) .NET
5 113 (10.22%) Redux
6 94 (8.50%) Node.js
7 85 (7.69%) Kafka
8 79 (7.14%) Pandas
9 77 (6.96%) Material-UI
10 74 (6.69%) NumPy
11 68 (6.15%) SciPy
12 67 (6.06%) AngularJS
13 53 (4.79%) REST
14 51 (4.61%) RESTful
15 50 (4.52%) .NET Core
16 48 (4.34%) Spring
17 47 (4.25%) CSS
17 47 (4.25%) HTML
18 40 (3.62%) Spring Boot
19 33 (2.98%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 170 (15.37%) Fixed Income
2 139 (12.57%) Hedge funds
3 113 (10.22%) Equities
4 99 (8.95%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 93 (8.41%) Derivative
6 39 (3.53%) Algorithms
7 31 (2.80%) Self-Motivation
8 21 (1.90%) Distributed Systems
9 20 (1.81%) Greenfield Project
10 19 (1.72%) ARM Cortex
11 16 (1.45%) Embedded Systems
12 14 (1.27%) IoT
13 11 (0.99%) Legacy Systems
13 11 (0.99%) Product Ownership
14 10 (0.90%) Data Structures
14 10 (0.90%) Linux Command Line
14 10 (0.90%) Pricing Data
15 9 (0.81%) Data Protection Act
15 9 (0.81%) Renewable Energy
16 8 (0.72%) Device Driver
Operating Systems
1 133 (12.03%) Linux
2 50 (4.52%) Windows
3 23 (2.08%) FreeRTOS
4 16 (1.45%) Embedded Linux
5 9 (0.81%) Android
6 8 (0.72%) Apple iOS
6 8 (0.72%) Unix
7 4 (0.36%) SafeRTOS
7 4 (0.36%) VxWorks
8 3 (0.27%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.090%) CentOS
9 1 (0.090%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 1 (0.090%) Windows Server
9 1 (0.090%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,094 (98.92%) Software Engineering
2 451 (40.78%) Agile
3 176 (15.91%) Asset Management
4 170 (15.37%) DevOps
5 155 (14.01%) Investment Management
6 154 (13.92%) Full Stack Development
7 128 (11.57%) TDD
8 127 (11.48%) CI/CD
9 114 (10.31%) Fintech
10 97 (8.77%) Computer Science
11 96 (8.68%) Problem-Solving
12 89 (8.05%) Validation
13 88 (7.96%) Machine Learning
14 86 (7.78%) Artificial Intelligence
14 86 (7.78%) Test Automation
15 80 (7.23%) Microservices
16 78 (7.05%) Continuous Integration
17 73 (6.60%) Unit Testing
18 72 (6.51%) SDLC
18 72 (6.51%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 299 (27.03%) Python
2 261 (23.60%) Java
3 243 (21.97%) TypeScript
4 229 (20.71%) JavaScript
5 215 (19.44%) C#
6 206 (18.63%) C++
7 182 (16.46%) C
8 110 (9.95%) SQL
9 57 (5.15%) Go
10 54 (4.88%) Embedded C
11 36 (3.25%) Ada
12 34 (3.07%) MATLAB
13 21 (1.90%) PHP
14 20 (1.81%) Perl
15 18 (1.63%) PowerShell
16 17 (1.54%) Rust
16 17 (1.54%) Scala
17 15 (1.36%) Kotlin
18 13 (1.18%) T-SQL
19 11 (0.99%) Bash
Qualifications
1 146 (13.20%) Security Cleared
2 105 (9.49%) Degree
3 97 (8.77%) SC Cleared
4 46 (4.16%) DV Cleared
5 45 (4.07%) Computer Science Degree
6 35 (3.16%) Master's Degree
7 12 (1.08%) PhD
8 7 (0.63%) BPSS Clearance
9 2 (0.18%) HND
10 1 (0.090%) Azure Certification
10 1 (0.090%) Chartered Engineer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 39 (3.53%) QA
2 18 (1.63%) Data Quality
3 17 (1.54%) MISRA
4 8 (0.72%) AUTOSAR
5 6 (0.54%) Accessibility
5 6 (0.54%) JTAG
6 5 (0.45%) MISRA C
7 2 (0.18%) Automotive SPICE
7 2 (0.18%) MiFID
7 2 (0.18%) SLA
8 1 (0.090%) HL7
8 1 (0.090%) ISO 20022
8 1 (0.090%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.090%) WCAG
System Software
1 108 (9.76%) Docker
2 29 (2.62%) Firmware
3 14 (1.27%) Active Directory
4 10 (0.90%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (0.45%) ACF2
5 5 (0.45%) IAG
5 5 (0.45%) RACF
5 5 (0.45%) VirtualBox
6 4 (0.36%) Embedded Firmware
6 4 (0.36%) VMware Infrastructure
7 3 (0.27%) zsh
8 1 (0.090%) Hyper-V
8 1 (0.090%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.090%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 111 (10.04%) Kubernetes
2 42 (3.80%) Terraform
3 15 (1.36%) Ansible
4 8 (0.72%) Podman
5 6 (0.54%) Functional Safety
6 5 (0.45%) Docker Swarm
6 5 (0.45%) Grafana
7 4 (0.36%) Single Sign-On
8 2 (0.18%) Argo
9 1 (0.090%) HP ALM
9 1 (0.090%) Microsoft Intune
9 1 (0.090%) Packer
9 1 (0.090%) Progress Chef
9 1 (0.090%) Puppet
9 1 (0.090%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 98 (8.86%) Google
2 49 (4.43%) Microsoft
3 36 (3.25%) Oracle
4 29 (2.62%) IBM
5 19 (1.72%) Lauterbach
6 17 (1.54%) Atlassian
7 6 (0.54%) Salesforce
8 5 (0.45%) NVIDIA
8 5 (0.45%) SAP
8 5 (0.45%) ServiceNow
8 5 (0.45%) Sybase
9 4 (0.36%) Adobe
9 4 (0.36%) Databricks
9 4 (0.36%) Intel
9 4 (0.36%) ION Trading
9 4 (0.36%) Okta
9 4 (0.36%) Roku
9 4 (0.36%) Splunk
9 4 (0.36%) VMware
10 3 (0.27%) MathWorks