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

6 months to
20 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 32 43 41
Rank change year-on-year +11 -2 -1
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 2,322 2,781 4,747
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 5.46% 4.86% 5.38%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.34% 5.41% 5.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,359 1,865 3,340
10th Percentile £412 £431 £425
25th Percentile £481 £504 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £600 £592
Median % change year-on-year - +1.35% +12.76%
75th Percentile £750 £720 £691
90th Percentile £850 £800 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £545 £525
% change year-on-year -6.42% +3.81% +16.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 384 201 201
10th Percentile £46.25 £46.25 £39.75
25th Percentile £52.50 £53.75 £47.50
Median hourly rate £62.50 £64.15 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.56% +16.63% +20.88%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £62.50
90th Percentile £78.38 £76.00 £68.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year -3.85% +13.04% +26.37%

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 36,622 51,397 80,021
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.09% 89.76% 90.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,613 35,611 56,174
10th Percentile £300 £325 £344
25th Percentile £413 £439 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +3.77% +7.07%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £638
90th Percentile £750 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £480
% change year-on-year - +4.17% +9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,439 1,690 1,913
10th Percentile £12.75 £10.63 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.00 £15.77 £15.50
Median hourly rate £36.50 £36.00 £25.68
Median % change year-on-year +1.39% +40.19% +7.00%
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% -6.54%

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 20 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 20 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 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 +9 2,071 £600 - 2,696
UK excluding London +17 1,082 £510 -6.42% 1,880
London +3 1,040 £673 +3.50% 1,221
Work from Home +15 910 £650 +8.33% 1,559
South East +25 259 £550 +4.76% 646
North of England +46 249 £525 -4.55% 350
East of England +8 191 £500 -8.17% 228
South West -8 159 £525 -9.33% 246
North West +50 143 £544 -9.33% 205
Scotland +33 111 £481 +0.47% 131
Midlands +20 93 £492 -6.38% 237
Yorkshire +17 73 £450 -11.11% 109
West Midlands +12 63 £463 -14.03% 118
North East +27 35 £390 -38.82% 39
East Midlands +28 29 £550 +29.41% 118
Wales +6 19 £538 -8.15% 32
Northern Ireland +4 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
1 211 (9.09%) Apache Airflow
2 203 (8.74%) Apache
3 59 (2.54%) Confluence
4 29 (1.25%) Apache Spark
5 15 (0.65%) CMS
6 10 (0.43%) nginx
7 8 (0.34%) IIS
8 7 (0.30%) BizTalk Server
8 7 (0.30%) Headless CMS
9 6 (0.26%) SAS
10 5 (0.22%) 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
12 3 (0.13%) Tornado
13 2 (0.086%) ArcGIS
13 2 (0.086%) Drupal
13 2 (0.086%) MQSeries
Applications
1 124 (5.34%) Chatbot
2 37 (1.59%) Simulink
3 27 (1.16%) Stateflow
4 14 (0.60%) Microsoft Excel
5 9 (0.39%) 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%) CPLEX
7 3 (0.13%) Maya
7 3 (0.13%) Photoshop
8 2 (0.086%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.043%) CATIA
9 1 (0.043%) PlantUML
9 1 (0.043%) Sketch
9 1 (0.043%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 7 (0.30%) Salesforce CRM
2 6 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.22%) Endur
4 4 (0.17%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 3 (0.13%) FLEXCUBE
5 3 (0.13%) Misys Midas
5 3 (0.13%) Oracle BPM
5 3 (0.13%) SAP S/4HANA
6 2 (0.086%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.086%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 2 (0.086%) Shopify
6 2 (0.086%) WebTrends
7 1 (0.043%) Advent Geneva
7 1 (0.043%) Fidessa
7 1 (0.043%) Front Arena
7 1 (0.043%) Remedy ITSM
7 1 (0.043%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 693 (29.84%) AWS
2 526 (22.65%) Azure
3 289 (12.45%) GCP
4 115 (4.95%) Azure DevOps
4 115 (4.95%) dbt
5 108 (4.65%) Snowflake
6 102 (4.39%) GitHub
7 95 (4.09%) Serverless
8 63 (2.71%) AWS Lambda
9 43 (1.85%) Azure Service Bus
10 37 (1.59%) Amazon S3
11 36 (1.55%) PaaS
12 35 (1.51%) Azure Cosmos DB
13 34 (1.46%) npm
14 32 (1.38%) SaaS
15 29 (1.25%) GitHub Actions
16 28 (1.21%) OpenShift
17 23 (0.99%) Azure Functions
17 23 (0.99%) Azure Logic Apps
18 22 (0.95%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 37 (1.59%) Modbus
2 36 (1.55%) RS-485
3 35 (1.51%) RS-422
4 29 (1.25%) Software-Defined Radio
5 27 (1.16%) TCP/IP
6 25 (1.08%) HTTP
7 21 (0.90%) SNMP
8 20 (0.86%) Firewall
9 18 (0.78%) Internet
10 16 (0.69%) VPN
11 13 (0.56%) Wi-Fi
12 11 (0.47%) Ethernet
12 11 (0.47%) SAN
12 11 (0.47%) Wireless
13 10 (0.43%) DNS
14 8 (0.34%) 802.11
15 5 (0.22%) DHCP
15 5 (0.22%) Diameter Protocol
15 5 (0.22%) FTP
15 5 (0.22%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 180 (7.75%) Apache Ignite
2 152 (6.55%) PostgreSQL
3 112 (4.82%) Amazon Athena
4 111 (4.78%) Apache Arrow
4 111 (4.78%) Dremio
5 104 (4.48%) Data Lake
6 81 (3.49%) SQL Server
7 77 (3.32%) NoSQL
8 63 (2.71%) MySQL
9 53 (2.28%) Apache Cassandra
10 45 (1.94%) Relational Database
11 41 (1.77%) MongoDB
12 31 (1.34%) Big Data
13 29 (1.25%) Data Warehouse
14 28 (1.21%) Azure SQL Database
14 28 (1.21%) Oracle Database
15 26 (1.12%) Elasticsearch
16 23 (0.99%) Amazon Redshift
17 20 (0.86%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 18 (0.78%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 234 (10.08%) Git
2 165 (7.11%) JIRA
3 131 (5.64%) Jenkins
4 101 (4.35%) Cypress.io
5 60 (2.58%) GitLab
6 54 (2.33%) SonarQube
7 45 (1.94%) Selenium
8 39 (1.68%) Bitbucket
9 38 (1.64%) Cucumber
10 35 (1.51%) Visual Studio
11 32 (1.38%) Eclipse
11 32 (1.38%) Postman
12 31 (1.34%) Rational DOORS
13 30 (1.29%) GoogleTest
14 27 (1.16%) Maven
15 25 (1.08%) JUnit
16 23 (0.99%) webpack
17 21 (0.90%) REST Assured
17 21 (0.90%) Robot Framework
18 18 (0.78%) TeamCity
General
1 553 (23.82%) Finance
2 400 (17.23%) Social Skills
3 321 (13.82%) Front Office
4 290 (12.49%) Banking
5 126 (5.43%) Investment Banking
6 105 (4.52%) Analytical Skills
7 98 (4.22%) Electronics
8 90 (3.88%) Public Sector
9 79 (3.40%) Aerospace
10 61 (2.63%) Automotive
11 41 (1.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 38 (1.64%) Retail
13 35 (1.51%) Telecoms
14 32 (1.38%) Manufacturing
15 29 (1.25%) Law
16 28 (1.21%) Financial Institution
16 28 (1.21%) Legal
17 27 (1.16%) Presentation Skills
18 24 (1.03%) Marketing
19 23 (0.99%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,095 (47.16%) Software Engineer
2 767 (33.03%) Developer
3 374 (16.11%) Senior
4 214 (9.22%) Senior Software Engineer
5 212 (9.13%) Software Developer
6 173 (7.45%) Python Developer
7 170 (7.32%) Lead
7 170 (7.32%) Python Engineer
8 163 (7.02%) Developer/Software Engineer
9 156 (6.72%) Java Engineer
10 154 (6.63%) Python Software Engineer
11 131 (5.64%) Embedded Engineer
12 127 (5.47%) Embedded Software Engineer
13 119 (5.12%) Java Developer
14 114 (4.91%) C++ Software Engineer
15 113 (4.87%) Java Software Engineer
16 103 (4.44%) Full Stack Engineer
17 101 (4.35%) React Developer
18 91 (3.92%) Senior Developer
19 89 (3.83%) Full Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 393 (16.93%) React
2 251 (10.81%) HTML
3 228 (9.82%) .NET
4 200 (8.61%) gRPC
5 189 (8.14%) Protocol Buffers
6 162 (6.98%) Node.js
7 158 (6.80%) REST
8 152 (6.55%) Pandas
9 140 (6.03%) Kafka
9 140 (6.03%) NumPy
10 139 (5.99%) Redux
11 137 (5.90%) AngularJS
12 126 (5.43%) CSS
13 119 (5.12%) SciPy
14 102 (4.39%) Spring
15 90 (3.88%) Material-UI
16 87 (3.75%) Spring Boot
17 79 (3.40%) .NET Core
18 73 (3.14%) RESTful
19 70 (3.01%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 252 (10.85%) Fixed Income
2 208 (8.96%) Hedge funds
3 187 (8.05%) Equities
4 164 (7.06%) Derivative
5 153 (6.59%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 78 (3.36%) Algorithms
7 72 (3.10%) Distributed Systems
8 51 (2.20%) Self-Motivation
9 50 (2.15%) Greenfield Project
10 48 (2.07%) Management Information System
11 38 (1.64%) Cloud Native
12 36 (1.55%) Product Ownership
13 30 (1.29%) Data Structures
14 26 (1.12%) Enterprise Software
15 25 (1.08%) Renewable Energy
16 24 (1.03%) Linux Command Line
17 23 (0.99%) Onboarding
18 22 (0.95%) Public Cloud
19 21 (0.90%) Legacy Systems
20 20 (0.86%) ARM Cortex
Operating Systems
1 242 (10.42%) Linux
2 103 (4.44%) Windows
3 32 (1.38%) Android
4 31 (1.34%) Apple iOS
5 28 (1.21%) Unix
6 23 (0.99%) FreeRTOS
7 18 (0.78%) Embedded Linux
8 9 (0.39%) Debian
8 9 (0.39%) Ubuntu
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 (0.086%) VMS
14 1 (0.043%) CentOS
14 1 (0.043%) Solaris
14 1 (0.043%) Windows Mobile
Processes & Methodologies
1 934 (40.22%) Agile
2 466 (20.07%) DevOps
3 374 (16.11%) CI/CD
4 280 (12.06%) Full Stack Development
5 266 (11.46%) Artificial Intelligence
6 251 (10.81%) Asset Management
7 223 (9.60%) TDD
8 222 (9.56%) Test Automation
9 216 (9.30%) Scrum
10 210 (9.04%) Problem-Solving
11 206 (8.87%) SDLC
12 204 (8.79%) Investment Management
13 203 (8.74%) Computer Science
14 195 (8.40%) Continuous Integration
15 194 (8.35%) Code Quality
16 187 (8.05%) Microservices
17 154 (6.63%) Machine Learning
18 151 (6.50%) Fintech
19 145 (6.24%) Software Testing
20 142 (6.12%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 738 (31.78%) Python
2 604 (26.01%) Java
3 595 (25.62%) JavaScript
4 506 (21.79%) C#
5 463 (19.94%) SQL
6 431 (18.56%) TypeScript
7 278 (11.97%) C++
8 223 (9.60%) C
9 113 (4.87%) Go
10 76 (3.27%) PowerShell
11 67 (2.89%) Scala
12 58 (2.50%) Embedded C
13 42 (1.81%) MATLAB
14 38 (1.64%) Ada
14 38 (1.64%) Kotlin
15 37 (1.59%) PL/SQL
16 36 (1.55%) Rust
17 35 (1.51%) PHP
18 30 (1.29%) Bash
19 28 (1.21%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 393 (16.93%) Degree
2 350 (15.07%) Security Cleared
3 256 (11.02%) SC Cleared
4 112 (4.82%) Computer Science Degree
5 99 (4.26%) DV Cleared
6 71 (3.06%) Master's Degree
7 20 (0.86%) BPSS Clearance
8 18 (0.78%) PhD
9 8 (0.34%) CISSP
10 7 (0.30%) CISM
11 6 (0.26%) CISA
12 4 (0.17%) Chartered Engineer
13 3 (0.13%) HND
13 3 (0.13%) ITIL Certification
14 2 (0.086%) Azure Certification
14 2 (0.086%) HNC
14 2 (0.086%) MBA
14 2 (0.086%) PgMP
14 2 (0.086%) PMI Certification
14 2 (0.086%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 104 (4.48%) QA
2 52 (2.24%) Data Quality
3 24 (1.03%) MISRA
4 19 (0.82%) PCI DSS
5 17 (0.73%) Accessibility
6 14 (0.60%) AUTOSAR
7 11 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 11 (0.47%) MISRA C
7 11 (0.47%) NCSC
8 8 (0.34%) ISO 9001
9 7 (0.30%) JTAG
10 5 (0.22%) ISO 26262
10 5 (0.22%) SEPA
10 5 (0.22%) WCAG
11 3 (0.13%) MiFID
11 3 (0.13%) SLA
12 2 (0.086%) Disclosure Scotland
12 2 (0.086%) DO-178B
12 2 (0.086%) IEC 61508
12 2 (0.086%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 218 (9.39%) Docker
2 34 (1.46%) Firmware
3 31 (1.34%) Active Directory
4 15 (0.65%) VMware Infrastructure
5 10 (0.43%) 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 (0.086%) Time Sharing Option
11 1 (0.043%) NFS
11 1 (0.043%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.043%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 251 (10.81%) Kubernetes
2 117 (5.04%) Terraform
3 76 (3.27%) Ansible
4 57 (2.45%) Grafana
5 32 (1.38%) Prometheus
6 15 (0.65%) Argo
6 15 (0.65%) Kibana
7 13 (0.56%) Podman
8 11 (0.47%) Docker Swarm
8 11 (0.47%) Istio
9 9 (0.39%) Puppet
10 8 (0.34%) Single Sign-On
11 7 (0.30%) Progress Chef
12 6 (0.26%) Functional Safety
12 6 (0.26%) Kubeflow
12 6 (0.26%) Packer
13 4 (0.17%) Consul
13 4 (0.17%) HP ALM
13 4 (0.17%) vRealize Orchestrator
13 4 (0.17%) Zipkin
Vendors
1 160 (6.89%) Microsoft
2 139 (5.99%) Google
3 121 (5.21%) PayPal
4 108 (4.65%) Oracle
5 41 (1.77%) IBM
6 31 (1.34%) Databricks
7 30 (1.29%) Atlassian
8 27 (1.16%) SAP
9 25 (1.08%) Talend
10 24 (1.03%) VMware
11 22 (0.95%) Red Hat
12 21 (0.90%) Salesforce
13 19 (0.82%) Lauterbach
14 18 (0.78%) Denodo
15 17 (0.73%) Bloomberg
16 14 (0.60%) MuleSoft
17 12 (0.52%) ServiceNow
17 12 (0.52%) Splunk
18 11 (0.47%) Virgin Media
19 10 (0.43%) Adobe