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 9 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 34 46
Rank change year-on-year -16 +12 +4
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 82 101 90
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 4.06% 5.59% 3.82%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.57% 6.10% 4.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 65 52 44
10th Percentile £416 £463 £433
25th Percentile £513 £509 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £575 £599
Median % change year-on-year - -3.98% -7.87%
75th Percentile £675 £750 £753
90th Percentile £788 £825 £838
Central London median daily rate £575 £575 £575
% change year-on-year - - -11.54%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £55.81 - -
Median hourly rate £57.77 - -
75th Percentile £59.72 - -
90th Percentile - - -
Central London median hourly rate £57.77 - -

All Process & 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 1,795 1,655 2,106
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 88.77% 91.64% 89.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,244 1,039 1,497
10th Percentile £356 £363 £350
25th Percentile £431 £463 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £541 £575 £568
Median % change year-on-year -5.87% +1.32% -5.42%
75th Percentile £669 £688 £688
90th Percentile £775 £775 £800
Central London median daily rate £550 £575 £550
% change year-on-year -4.35% +4.55% -6.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 10 13
10th Percentile £18.75 £22.00 £17.00
25th Percentile £20.18 £26.25 £18.93
Median hourly rate £28.00 £35.50 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.13% +42.00% -28.57%
75th Percentile £47.50 £47.50 £41.84
90th Percentile £59.72 £112.00 £49.55
Central London median hourly rate £26.11 £35.00 £27.81
% change year-on-year -25.40% +25.85% -20.54%

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 9 March 2026.

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 2 (2.44%) Apache Spark
2 1 (1.22%) Apache
2 1 (1.22%) Cloud Foundry
2 1 (1.22%) Confluence
2 1 (1.22%) SharePoint
2 1 (1.22%) Smallworld
Applications
1 1 (1.22%) Maya
Business Applications
1 1 (1.22%) Aladdin
1 1 (1.22%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 30 (36.59%) AWS
2 18 (21.95%) Azure
3 11 (13.41%) GCP
4 10 (12.20%) GitHub
5 4 (4.88%) Google Gemini
5 4 (4.88%) Power Platform
6 3 (3.66%) AWS Lambda
6 3 (3.66%) Azure DevOps
6 3 (3.66%) GitHub Actions
6 3 (3.66%) Serverless
7 2 (2.44%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 2 (2.44%) Amazon S3
7 2 (2.44%) Amazon SageMaker
7 2 (2.44%) Azure AKS
7 2 (2.44%) Azure Cosmos DB
7 2 (2.44%) Cloud Run
7 2 (2.44%) dbt
7 2 (2.44%) Entra ID
7 2 (2.44%) GitHub Copilot
8 1 (1.22%) Amazon Kinesis
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.22%) HTTP
1 1 (1.22%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (9.76%) Relational Database
2 4 (4.88%) MongoDB
2 4 (4.88%) NoSQL
2 4 (4.88%) PostgreSQL
3 2 (2.44%) Apache Cassandra
3 2 (2.44%) BigQuery
3 2 (2.44%) Power BI
4 1 (1.22%) Amazon Redshift
4 1 (1.22%) Big Data
4 1 (1.22%) Data Hub
4 1 (1.22%) Data Lake
4 1 (1.22%) Delta Lake
4 1 (1.22%) Elasticsearch
4 1 (1.22%) Hadoop
4 1 (1.22%) Metadata
4 1 (1.22%) MySQL
4 1 (1.22%) Pinecone
4 1 (1.22%) SQL Server
4 1 (1.22%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 9 (10.98%) GitLab
2 6 (7.32%) Git
3 5 (6.10%) Jenkins
4 3 (3.66%) Cypress.io
4 3 (3.66%) JUnit
5 2 (2.44%) Gradle
5 2 (2.44%) Mockito
5 2 (2.44%) Postman
5 2 (2.44%) TeamCity
6 1 (1.22%) CircleCI
6 1 (1.22%) Claude Code
6 1 (1.22%) Gatling
6 1 (1.22%) Hamcrest
6 1 (1.22%) Jaeger
6 1 (1.22%) MLflow
6 1 (1.22%) Mocha
6 1 (1.22%) Serenity BDD
6 1 (1.22%) SonarQube
6 1 (1.22%) Vite
6 1 (1.22%) webpack
General
1 22 (26.83%) Finance
2 17 (20.73%) Social Skills
3 13 (15.85%) Banking
4 5 (6.10%) Analytical Skills
4 5 (6.10%) Manufacturing
5 3 (3.66%) Pharmaceutical
6 2 (2.44%) Front Office
6 2 (2.44%) Investment Banking
6 2 (2.44%) Public Sector
6 2 (2.44%) Retail Banking
7 1 (1.22%) Advertising
7 1 (1.22%) Aerospace
7 1 (1.22%) Back Office
7 1 (1.22%) Financial Institution
7 1 (1.22%) Games
7 1 (1.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (1.22%) Presentation Skills
7 1 (1.22%) Retail
Job Titles
1 28 (34.15%) Software Engineer
2 22 (26.83%) Senior
3 14 (17.07%) Developer
4 11 (13.41%) Lead
5 8 (9.76%) Python Engineer
6 7 (8.54%) Architect
7 6 (7.32%) .NET Software Engineer
7 6 (7.32%) Java Engineer
7 6 (7.32%) Senior Software Engineer
8 5 (6.10%) Data Scientist
8 5 (6.10%) Hardware Engineer
8 5 (6.10%) Integration Engineer
8 5 (6.10%) Senior Developer
8 5 (6.10%) Software Integration Engineer
8 5 (6.10%) Technical Leader
9 4 (4.88%) DevOps Engineer
9 4 (4.88%) Python Developer
10 3 (3.66%) AWS Engineer
10 3 (3.66%) Java Software Engineer
10 3 (3.66%) Senior Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (15.85%) React
2 11 (13.41%) .NET
3 9 (10.98%) REST
3 9 (10.98%) RESTful
4 8 (9.76%) Node.js
5 7 (8.54%) AngularJS
5 7 (8.54%) Spring
6 6 (7.32%) Kafka
6 6 (7.32%) LangChain
6 6 (7.32%) LangGraph
7 5 (6.10%) HTML
8 4 (4.88%) CSS
8 4 (4.88%) GraphQL
8 4 (4.88%) OpenTelemetry
9 3 (3.66%) DOM
9 3 (3.66%) FastAPI
9 3 (3.66%) Playwright
9 3 (3.66%) React Native
9 3 (3.66%) Spring Boot
9 3 (3.66%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 15 (18.29%) Cloud Native
2 8 (9.76%) Life Science
3 7 (8.54%) Distributed Systems
4 6 (7.32%) Virtual Team
5 5 (6.10%) AI Agents
5 5 (6.10%) Product Ownership
6 4 (4.88%) Legacy Systems
7 3 (3.66%) Mobile App
7 3 (3.66%) Onboarding
8 1 (1.22%) Data Structures
8 1 (1.22%) Derivative
8 1 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
8 1 (1.22%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 1 (1.22%) Hedge funds
8 1 (1.22%) Media Streaming
8 1 (1.22%) NHS
8 1 (1.22%) Online Games
8 1 (1.22%) Robotics
8 1 (1.22%) TWAP
8 1 (1.22%) VWAP
Operating Systems
1 2 (2.44%) Linux
1 2 (2.44%) Windows
2 1 (1.22%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 32 (39.02%) CI/CD
2 23 (28.05%) AI
3 19 (23.17%) DevOps
4 18 (21.95%) Agile
4 18 (21.95%) Microservices
4 18 (21.95%) Test Automation
5 16 (19.51%) Problem-Solving
6 14 (17.07%) Full-Stack Development
7 13 (15.85%) Code Quality
8 12 (14.63%) Data Science
8 12 (14.63%) Design Patterns
8 12 (14.63%) Generative AI
9 11 (13.41%) Observability
10 10 (12.20%) Machine Learning
11 9 (10.98%) Containerisation
12 8 (9.76%) Infrastructure as Code
13 7 (8.54%) SDLC
13 7 (8.54%) TDD
13 7 (8.54%) Technical Leadership
14 6 (7.32%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 27 (32.93%) Python
2 24 (29.27%) Java
3 15 (18.29%) SQL
4 8 (9.76%) TypeScript
5 7 (8.54%) C#
5 7 (8.54%) JavaScript
6 3 (3.66%) C++
7 2 (2.44%) COBOL
7 2 (2.44%) Go
7 2 (2.44%) Rust
8 1 (1.22%) PowerShell
8 1 (1.22%) R
8 1 (1.22%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 15 (18.29%) Security Cleared
2 14 (17.07%) SC Cleared
3 9 (10.98%) Degree
4 3 (3.66%) Computer Science Degree
5 2 (2.44%) AWS Certification
5 2 (2.44%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 1 (1.22%) DBS Check
6 1 (1.22%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (2.44%) Data Quality
2 1 (1.22%) Accessibility
2 1 (1.22%) GDPR
2 1 (1.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 1 (1.22%) NIST
2 1 (1.22%) WCAG
System Software
1 20 (24.39%) Docker
2 1 (1.22%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 18 (21.95%) Kubernetes
2 5 (6.10%) Terraform
3 3 (3.66%) Ansible
3 3 (3.66%) Grafana
4 2 (2.44%) Prometheus
5 1 (1.22%) Argo
5 1 (1.22%) Istio
Vendors
1 7 (8.54%) Google
1 7 (8.54%) Microsoft
2 4 (4.88%) Oracle
3 3 (3.66%) Databricks
4 2 (2.44%) Splunk
5 1 (1.22%) Dynatrace
5 1 (1.22%) IBM