Software Engineer Contract Job Trends in the City of London

Software Engineer
Central London > City of London

The median Software Engineer daily rate in the City of London is £750, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 15 September 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

 6 months to
15 Sep 2025		 Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 92 104 106
Rank change year-on-year +12 +2 +18
Contract jobs requiring a Software Engineer 24 24 46
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the City of London 1.37% 1.16% 1.50%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.46% 1.22% 1.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 18 11 34
10th Percentile £487 £481 £463
25th Percentile £584 £500 £541
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £750 £530 £610
Median % change year-on-year +41.51% -13.15% +1.71%
75th Percentile £828 £675 £719
90th Percentile £915 £875 £768
Central London median daily rate £750 £540 £601
% change year-on-year +38.89% -10.07% +0.08%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £26.25 - -
Median hourly rate £27.50 - -
75th Percentile £28.75 - -
90th Percentile - - -
Central London median hourly rate £27.50 - -

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
City of London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the City of London. 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 City of London with a recognized job title 1,643 1,960 2,904
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 93.83% 94.37% 94.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,099 1,245 2,008
10th Percentile £325 £363 £363
25th Percentile £423 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £600
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% -4.17% +4.35%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £706
90th Percentile £775 £785 £813
Central London median daily rate £550 £575 £580
% change year-on-year -4.35% -0.86% +2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 15 12
10th Percentile £17.35 £16.49 £14.42
25th Percentile £23.98 £21.25 £16.90
Median hourly rate £28.33 £27.00 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.91% -23.94% -14.97%
75th Percentile £53.50 £85.63 £44.87
90th Percentile £65.39 £137.50 £67.13
Central London median hourly rate £28.15 £35.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -19.57% - -15.66%

Software Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the City of London

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

Job vacancy trend for Software Engineer in the City of London

Software Engineer
Daily Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Software Engineer job vacancies in the City of London.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Software Engineer job vacancies in the City of London

Software Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in the City of London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Software Engineer in the City of London over the 6 months to 15 September 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Software Engineer in the City of London

Software Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Software Engineer job vacancies in the City of London.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Software Engineer job vacancies in the City of London

Software Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the City of London

For the 6 months to 15 September 2025, 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 across the City of London region featuring Software Engineer in the job title.

1 24 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 12 (50.00%) Python
3 10 (41.67%) AWS
4 9 (37.50%) Java
4 9 (37.50%) CI/CD
5 8 (33.33%) SQL
5 8 (33.33%) AngularJS
6 7 (29.17%) DevOps
7 6 (25.00%) AWS Lambda
7 6 (25.00%) Performance Optimisation
7 6 (25.00%) Linux
7 6 (25.00%) Front Office
7 6 (25.00%) Agile
7 6 (25.00%) Serverless
8 5 (20.83%) Infrastructure as Code
8 5 (20.83%) AWS Step Functions
8 5 (20.83%) Finance
8 5 (20.83%) C#
8 5 (20.83%) C++
8 5 (20.83%) GraphQL
8 5 (20.83%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 5 (20.83%) DynamoDB
8 5 (20.83%) Amazon S3
9 4 (16.67%) Amazon SQS
9 4 (16.67%) Low Latency
9 4 (16.67%) Event-Driven Architecture
9 4 (16.67%) WebSockets
9 4 (16.67%) React
9 4 (16.67%) Datadog
9 4 (16.67%) Mentoring

Software Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the City of London 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 1 (4.17%) JBoss
1 1 (4.17%) Oracle Workflow
Business Applications
1 1 (4.17%) Salesforce CRM
1 1 (4.17%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 10 (41.67%) AWS
2 6 (25.00%) AWS Lambda
2 6 (25.00%) Serverless
3 5 (20.83%) Amazon CloudWatch
3 5 (20.83%) Amazon S3
3 5 (20.83%) AWS Step Functions
4 4 (16.67%) Amazon Cognito
4 4 (16.67%) Amazon EventBridge
4 4 (16.67%) Amazon SQS
4 4 (16.67%) Datadog
5 2 (8.33%) Azure
6 1 (4.17%) Amazon EKS
6 1 (4.17%) AWS CloudFormation
6 1 (4.17%) Azure DevOps
6 1 (4.17%) GitHub
6 1 (4.17%) GitHub Actions
6 1 (4.17%) OpenShift
6 1 (4.17%) SaaS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (20.83%) DynamoDB
2 2 (8.33%) MySQL
3 1 (4.17%) Amazon Aurora
3 1 (4.17%) Amazon RDS
3 1 (4.17%) Data Warehouse
3 1 (4.17%) KDB
3 1 (4.17%) MongoDB
3 1 (4.17%) Oracle Database
3 1 (4.17%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 1 (4.17%) CircleCI
1 1 (4.17%) Git
1 1 (4.17%) GitLab
1 1 (4.17%) Jenkins
General
1 6 (25.00%) Front Office
2 5 (20.83%) Finance
3 4 (16.67%) Social Skills
4 3 (12.50%) Banking
5 2 (8.33%) Analytical Skills
5 2 (8.33%) Games
6 1 (4.17%) Back Office
6 1 (4.17%) Financial Institution
6 1 (4.17%) Investment Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (33.33%) AngularJS
2 5 (20.83%) GraphQL
3 4 (16.67%) OpenTelemetry
3 4 (16.67%) React
3 4 (16.67%) Spring
3 4 (16.67%) WebSockets
4 3 (12.50%) FIX Protocol
4 3 (12.50%) Node.js
4 3 (12.50%) Spring Boot
5 2 (8.33%) REST
5 2 (8.33%) Unity (Game Engine)
6 1 (4.17%) .NET
6 1 (4.17%) Bazel
6 1 (4.17%) Blazor
6 1 (4.17%) Jest
6 1 (4.17%) Middleware
6 1 (4.17%) RESTful
6 1 (4.17%) Spring MVC
6 1 (4.17%) Swing
6 1 (4.17%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 4 (16.67%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
2 3 (12.50%) Cloud Native
2 3 (12.50%) Greenfield Project
3 2 (8.33%) 3D Graphics
3 2 (8.33%) Algorithms
3 2 (8.33%) Reference Data
3 2 (8.33%) Virtual Reality
4 1 (4.17%) Data Structures
4 1 (4.17%) Derivative
4 1 (4.17%) Distributed Computing
4 1 (4.17%) Enterprise Software
4 1 (4.17%) Fixed Income
4 1 (4.17%) Hedge funds
4 1 (4.17%) Hybrid Cloud
4 1 (4.17%) Legacy Systems
4 1 (4.17%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 6 (25.00%) Linux
2 3 (12.50%) Windows
3 1 (4.17%) Android
3 1 (4.17%) Apple iOS
3 1 (4.17%) Unix
3 1 (4.17%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 24 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 9 (37.50%) CI/CD
3 7 (29.17%) DevOps
4 6 (25.00%) Agile
4 6 (25.00%) Performance Optimisation
5 5 (20.83%) Infrastructure as Code
6 4 (16.67%) Clean Code
6 4 (16.67%) Code Quality
6 4 (16.67%) Deployment Automation
6 4 (16.67%) Event-Driven
6 4 (16.67%) Event-Driven Architecture
6 4 (16.67%) Full-Stack Development
6 4 (16.67%) Low Latency
6 4 (16.67%) Mentoring
6 4 (16.67%) Microservices
6 4 (16.67%) Multithreading
6 4 (16.67%) Observability
6 4 (16.67%) Technical Leadership
6 4 (16.67%) User Experience
7 3 (12.50%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 12 (50.00%) Python
2 9 (37.50%) Java
3 8 (33.33%) SQL
4 5 (20.83%) C#
4 5 (20.83%) C++
5 3 (12.50%) TypeScript
6 2 (8.33%) Go
6 2 (8.33%) JavaScript
6 2 (8.33%) PHP
7 1 (4.17%) Fortran
7 1 (4.17%) MATLAB
7 1 (4.17%) PowerShell
7 1 (4.17%) R
7 1 (4.17%) Rust
Qualifications
1 4 (16.67%) Degree
2 2 (8.33%) Computer Science Degree
2 2 (8.33%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (8.33%) QA
Systems Management
1 4 (16.67%) Prometheus
2 2 (8.33%) Kubernetes
3 1 (4.17%) Terraform
Vendors
1 2 (8.33%) Oracle
2 1 (4.17%) ForgeRock
2 1 (4.17%) ION Trading
2 1 (4.17%) Microsoft
2 1 (4.17%) Ping Identity
2 1 (4.17%) Salesforce
2 1 (4.17%) Temenos
23 Software Engineer jobs in Central London