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 £800, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 15 October 2025.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 102 102 117
Rank change year-on-year 0 +15 +8
Contract jobs requiring a Software Engineer 24 24 30
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 1.39% 1.13% 1.05%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.48% 1.20% 1.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 17 9 24
10th Percentile £476 £485 £390
25th Percentile £575 £515 £563
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £800 £600 £700
Median % change year-on-year +33.33% -14.29% +16.67%
75th Percentile £838 £675 £750
90th Percentile £917 £890 £775
Central London median daily rate £800 £600 £700
% change year-on-year +33.33% -14.29% +16.67%
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 1,618 1,994 2,690
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 93.85% 93.70% 94.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,112 1,235 1,863
10th Percentile £325 £363 £363
25th Percentile £425 £463 £464
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £593
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% -2.95% +3.04%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £700
90th Percentile £775 £783 £800
Central London median daily rate £550 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -4.35% - +0.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 16 13
10th Percentile £16.90 £17.25 £17.00
25th Percentile £20.63 £26.03 £21.25
Median hourly rate £27.04 £48.00 £38.00
Median % change year-on-year -43.68% +26.32% -9.52%
75th Percentile £35.88 £112.00 £48.75
90th Percentile £64.30 £137.50 £65.50
Central London median hourly rate £27.04 £35.00 £37.00
% change year-on-year -22.76% -5.41% -10.84%

Software Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the City of London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Software Engineer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London.

Software Engineer job vacancy trend 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 October 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 & Capabilities in the City of London

For the 6 months to 15 October 2025, Software Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of 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 11 (45.83%) Python
3 10 (41.67%) Java
4 9 (37.50%) AWS
4 9 (37.50%) AngularJS
4 9 (37.50%) CI/CD
5 7 (29.17%) DevOps
5 7 (29.17%) SQL
6 6 (25.00%) Front Office
6 6 (25.00%) Finance
6 6 (25.00%) Agile
6 6 (25.00%) Performance Optimisation
7 5 (20.83%) React
7 5 (20.83%) Banking
7 5 (20.83%) Linux
7 5 (20.83%) C#
7 5 (20.83%) C++
8 4 (16.67%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 4 (16.67%) FIX Protocol
8 4 (16.67%) Multithreading
8 4 (16.67%) Datadog
8 4 (16.67%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 4 (16.67%) GraphQL
8 4 (16.67%) Prometheus
8 4 (16.67%) Serverless
8 4 (16.67%) Deployment Automation
8 4 (16.67%) Technical Leadership
8 4 (16.67%) Infrastructure as Code
8 4 (16.67%) Amazon Cognito
8 4 (16.67%) AWS Step Functions

Software Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the City of London by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 1 (4.17%) JBoss
1 1 (4.17%) Oracle Workflow
Business Applications
1 1 (4.17%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 9 (37.50%) AWS
2 4 (16.67%) Amazon CloudWatch
2 4 (16.67%) Amazon Cognito
2 4 (16.67%) Amazon EventBridge
2 4 (16.67%) Amazon S3
2 4 (16.67%) Amazon SQS
2 4 (16.67%) AWS Lambda
2 4 (16.67%) AWS Step Functions
2 4 (16.67%) Datadog
2 4 (16.67%) Serverless
3 2 (8.33%) Azure
4 1 (4.17%) Azure DevOps
4 1 (4.17%) OpenShift
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (16.67%) DynamoDB
2 2 (8.33%) MySQL
3 1 (4.17%) Data Warehouse
3 1 (4.17%) MongoDB
3 1 (4.17%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 1 (4.17%) Git
1 1 (4.17%) GitLab
1 1 (4.17%) Jenkins
General
1 6 (25.00%) Finance
1 6 (25.00%) Front Office
2 5 (20.83%) Banking
3 4 (16.67%) Social Skills
4 2 (8.33%) Analytical Skills
4 2 (8.33%) Games
5 1 (4.17%) Back Office
5 1 (4.17%) Financial Institution
5 1 (4.17%) Investment Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (37.50%) AngularJS
2 5 (20.83%) React
3 4 (16.67%) FIX Protocol
3 4 (16.67%) GraphQL
3 4 (16.67%) OpenTelemetry
3 4 (16.67%) WebSockets
4 3 (12.50%) Spring
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%) CSS
6 1 (4.17%) HTML
6 1 (4.17%) HTML5
6 1 (4.17%) Kafka
6 1 (4.17%) Node.js
6 1 (4.17%) Spring MVC
6 1 (4.17%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 4 (16.67%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
2 3 (12.50%) Cloud Native
3 2 (8.33%) 3D Graphics
3 2 (8.33%) Derivative
3 2 (8.33%) Greenfield Project
3 2 (8.33%) Reference Data
3 2 (8.33%) Virtual Reality
4 1 (4.17%) Algorithms
4 1 (4.17%) Distributed Computing
4 1 (4.17%) Equities
4 1 (4.17%) Hedge funds
4 1 (4.17%) Hybrid Cloud
4 1 (4.17%) TWAP
4 1 (4.17%) Virtual Team
4 1 (4.17%) VWAP
Operating Systems
1 5 (20.83%) 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 4 (16.67%) Clean Code
5 4 (16.67%) Code Quality
5 4 (16.67%) Deployment Automation
5 4 (16.67%) Event-Driven
5 4 (16.67%) Event-Driven Architecture
5 4 (16.67%) Infrastructure as Code
5 4 (16.67%) Low Latency
5 4 (16.67%) Mentoring
5 4 (16.67%) Microservices
5 4 (16.67%) Multithreading
5 4 (16.67%) Observability
5 4 (16.67%) Technical Leadership
5 4 (16.67%) User Experience
6 3 (12.50%) Full-Stack Development
6 3 (12.50%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 11 (45.83%) Python
2 10 (41.67%) Java
3 7 (29.17%) SQL
4 5 (20.83%) C#
4 5 (20.83%) C++
5 2 (8.33%) PHP
5 2 (8.33%) TypeScript
6 1 (4.17%) Fortran
6 1 (4.17%) Go
6 1 (4.17%) JavaScript
6 1 (4.17%) MATLAB
6 1 (4.17%) PowerShell
6 1 (4.17%) R
Qualifications
1 3 (12.50%) Degree
2 2 (8.33%) Postgraduate
3 1 (4.17%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (8.33%) QA
Systems Management
1 4 (16.67%) Prometheus
2 1 (4.17%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 2 (8.33%) Oracle
2 1 (4.17%) ForgeRock
2 1 (4.17%) Microsoft
2 1 (4.17%) Ping Identity
2 1 (4.17%) Temenos