Software Engineering Contract Job Trends in the City of London

Software Engineering
Central London > City of London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the City of London requiring Software Engineering skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 12 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 45 56 52
Rank change year-on-year +11 -4 -13
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 88 74 102
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 5.05% 3.54% 3.69%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.39% 3.87% 4.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 63 38 59
10th Percentile £413 £463 £498
25th Percentile £513 £485 £563
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £566 £650
Median % change year-on-year +10.38% -12.88% -
75th Percentile £731 £738 £763
90th Percentile £830 £890 £880
Central London median daily rate £619 £565 £675
% change year-on-year +9.51% -16.30% +8.00%
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 Process and Methodology Skills
City of London

Software Engineering falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in the City of London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 1,633 1,914 2,481
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 93.80% 91.49% 89.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,136 1,173 1,741
10th Percentile £325 £375 £363
25th Percentile £419 £469 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% - -
75th Percentile £675 £688 £694
90th Percentile £764 £788 £800
Central London median daily rate £550 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -4.35% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 17 16
10th Percentile £16.96 £16.70 £15.63
25th Percentile £20.18 £23.13 £17.00
Median hourly rate £27.50 £42.50 £32.75
Median % change year-on-year -35.29% +29.77% -30.13%
75th Percentile £41.75 £112.00 £52.63
90th Percentile £63.75 £137.50 £71.25
Central London median hourly rate £27.04 £35.00 £27.50
% change year-on-year -22.76% +27.27% -36.22%

Software Engineering
Job Vacancy Trend in the City of London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Software Engineering relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London.

Software Engineering job vacancy trend in the City of London

Software Engineering
Daily Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Software Engineering.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Software Engineering

Software Engineering
Daily Rate Histogram in the City of London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Software Engineering in the City of London over the 6 months to 12 November 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Software Engineering in the City of London

Software Engineering
Hourly Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Software Engineering.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Software Engineering

Software Engineering
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 5 (5.68%) Confluence
2 3 (3.41%) Apache Spark
3 1 (1.14%) Apache
3 1 (1.14%) Cloud Foundry
3 1 (1.14%) JBoss
3 1 (1.14%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (1.14%) Oracle Workflow
Business Applications
1 2 (2.27%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (1.14%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 1 (1.14%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 31 (35.23%) AWS
2 21 (23.86%) Azure
3 9 (10.23%) Amazon S3
4 8 (9.09%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 8 (9.09%) AWS Lambda
4 8 (9.09%) GCP
4 8 (9.09%) Serverless
5 7 (7.95%) Power Platform
6 4 (4.55%) AWS Step Functions
6 4 (4.55%) Dynamics 365
7 3 (3.41%) Amazon Cognito
7 3 (3.41%) Amazon EventBridge
7 3 (3.41%) Amazon SQS
7 3 (3.41%) Azure DevOps
7 3 (3.41%) Datadog
7 3 (3.41%) Google Gemini
7 3 (3.41%) Snowflake
8 2 (2.27%) GitHub
8 2 (2.27%) OpenShift
8 2 (2.27%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 2 (2.27%) tcpdump
2 1 (1.14%) DNS
2 1 (1.14%) Firewall
2 1 (1.14%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (7.95%) Relational Database
2 5 (5.68%) DynamoDB
2 5 (5.68%) MongoDB
3 4 (4.55%) DB2
3 4 (4.55%) Hadoop
4 3 (3.41%) MemSQL
4 3 (3.41%) NoSQL
4 3 (3.41%) Power BI
4 3 (3.41%) Sybase IQ
5 2 (2.27%) MySQL
6 1 (1.14%) Amazon Redshift
6 1 (1.14%) Big Data
6 1 (1.14%) Data Lake
6 1 (1.14%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (1.14%) Delta Lake
6 1 (1.14%) KDB
6 1 (1.14%) Metadata
6 1 (1.14%) Oracle Database
6 1 (1.14%) Pinecone
6 1 (1.14%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 6 (6.82%) GitLab
1 6 (6.82%) Jenkins
2 5 (5.68%) Git
2 5 (5.68%) JIRA
3 4 (4.55%) Gradle
4 3 (3.41%) SonarQube
5 2 (2.27%) Cypress.io
5 2 (2.27%) MLflow
5 2 (2.27%) Postman
5 2 (2.27%) TeamCity
6 1 (1.14%) Cucumber
6 1 (1.14%) Gatling
6 1 (1.14%) Hamcrest
6 1 (1.14%) JUnit
6 1 (1.14%) MSTest
6 1 (1.14%) Selenium
6 1 (1.14%) Serenity BDD
6 1 (1.14%) SpecFlow
6 1 (1.14%) Vite
General
1 34 (38.64%) Social Skills
2 27 (30.68%) Finance
3 17 (19.32%) Banking
4 12 (13.64%) Analytical Skills
5 10 (11.36%) Front Office
6 5 (5.68%) Retail Banking
7 4 (4.55%) Investment Banking
8 3 (3.41%) Financial Institution
8 3 (3.41%) Public Sector
9 2 (2.27%) Games
9 2 (2.27%) Pharmaceutical
9 2 (2.27%) Telecoms
10 1 (1.14%) Back Office
10 1 (1.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 1 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (1.14%) Legal
10 1 (1.14%) Retail
Job Titles
1 24 (27.27%) Software Engineer
2 20 (22.73%) Senior
3 15 (17.05%) Developer
4 13 (14.77%) Lead
5 9 (10.23%) Python Engineer
6 6 (6.82%) Java Developer
7 4 (4.55%) Architect
7 4 (4.55%) Data Scientist
7 4 (4.55%) Senior Software Engineer
8 3 (3.41%) C++ Software Engineer
8 3 (3.41%) Data Engineer
8 3 (3.41%) Java Engineer
8 3 (3.41%) Java Software Engineer
8 3 (3.41%) Principal Engineer
8 3 (3.41%) Python Developer
8 3 (3.41%) Python Software Engineer
8 3 (3.41%) Software Design Engineer
9 2 (2.27%) Angular Developer
9 2 (2.27%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
9 2 (2.27%) Senior DevOps
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (18.18%) .NET
2 13 (14.77%) React
3 12 (13.64%) AngularJS
4 9 (10.23%) RESTful
5 7 (7.95%) Node.js
6 6 (6.82%) CSS
6 6 (6.82%) HTML
7 5 (5.68%) HTML5
7 5 (5.68%) Spring
8 4 (4.55%) FIX Protocol
8 4 (4.55%) Kafka
8 4 (4.55%) OpenTelemetry
9 3 (3.41%) GraphQL
9 3 (3.41%) LangGraph
9 3 (3.41%) REST
9 3 (3.41%) Spring Boot
9 3 (3.41%) WebSockets
10 2 (2.27%) JSON
10 2 (2.27%) Pandas
10 2 (2.27%) Unity (Game Engine)
Miscellaneous
1 11 (12.50%) Cloud Native
2 8 (9.09%) Virtual Team
3 7 (7.95%) Algorithms
4 6 (6.82%) Data Structures
4 6 (6.82%) Distributed Systems
5 5 (5.68%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 4 (4.55%) Enterprise Software
6 4 (4.55%) Hedge funds
6 4 (4.55%) Legacy Systems
7 3 (3.41%) Derivative
7 3 (3.41%) Linux Command Line
8 2 (2.27%) 3D Graphics
8 2 (2.27%) AI Agents
8 2 (2.27%) Distributed Computing
8 2 (2.27%) Greenfield Project
8 2 (2.27%) Low-Code
8 2 (2.27%) Product Ownership
8 2 (2.27%) Reference Data
8 2 (2.27%) Self-Motivation
8 2 (2.27%) Virtual Reality
Operating Systems
1 12 (13.64%) Linux
2 4 (4.55%) Windows
3 3 (3.41%) Unix
4 2 (2.27%) Windows Server
5 1 (1.14%) Android
5 1 (1.14%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 27 (30.68%) CI/CD
2 26 (29.55%) Agile
3 19 (21.59%) DevOps
4 18 (20.45%) Problem-Solving
5 16 (18.18%) Code Quality
6 13 (14.77%) Design Patterns
6 13 (14.77%) Event-Driven
6 13 (14.77%) Test Automation
7 12 (13.64%) Computer Science
7 12 (13.64%) Mentoring
7 12 (13.64%) Microservices
8 10 (11.36%) Event-Driven Architecture
9 9 (10.23%) AI
9 9 (10.23%) Analytics
9 9 (10.23%) Full-Stack Development
9 9 (10.23%) Scrum
9 9 (10.23%) Technical Leadership
10 8 (9.09%) Infrastructure as Code
10 8 (9.09%) Machine Learning
10 8 (9.09%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 42 (47.73%) Python
2 27 (30.68%) Java
3 19 (21.59%) SQL
4 12 (13.64%) C#
5 9 (10.23%) C++
5 9 (10.23%) TypeScript
6 6 (6.82%) JavaScript
7 3 (3.41%) Go
8 2 (2.27%) PHP
8 2 (2.27%) PowerShell
8 2 (2.27%) R
8 2 (2.27%) Rust
9 1 (1.14%) C
9 1 (1.14%) COBOL
9 1 (1.14%) Fortran
9 1 (1.14%) MATLAB
9 1 (1.14%) PL/SQL
9 1 (1.14%) RPG
Qualifications
1 13 (14.77%) Degree
2 5 (5.68%) Computer Science Degree
2 5 (5.68%) Security Cleared
3 4 (4.55%) SC Cleared
4 2 (2.27%) Postgraduate
5 1 (1.14%) AWS Certification
5 1 (1.14%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 1 (1.14%) BPSS Clearance
5 1 (1.14%) CFA
5 1 (1.14%) DV Cleared
5 1 (1.14%) Master's Degree
5 1 (1.14%) MBA
5 1 (1.14%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (3.41%) Data Quality
1 3 (3.41%) QA
2 1 (1.14%) EMIR
2 1 (1.14%) GDPR
2 1 (1.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 1 (1.14%) MiFID
2 1 (1.14%) SOC 2
System Software
1 13 (14.77%) Docker
2 1 (1.14%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 13 (14.77%) Kubernetes
2 5 (5.68%) Ansible
3 3 (3.41%) Prometheus
3 3 (3.41%) Terraform
4 1 (1.14%) Grafana
4 1 (1.14%) Kubeflow
4 1 (1.14%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 12 (13.64%) Microsoft
2 6 (6.82%) Oracle
3 3 (3.41%) Databricks
3 3 (3.41%) Google
4 2 (2.27%) DevExpress
4 2 (2.27%) DocuSign
5 1 (1.14%) Alteryx
5 1 (1.14%) Avaloq
5 1 (1.14%) FNZ
5 1 (1.14%) ForgeRock
5 1 (1.14%) Foundry
5 1 (1.14%) IBM
5 1 (1.14%) ION Trading
5 1 (1.14%) Ping Identity
5 1 (1.14%) Splunk
5 1 (1.14%) Temenos