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 20 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 45 55 60
Rank change year-on-year +10 +5 -19
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 92 76 94
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 5.17% 3.60% 3.49%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.53% 3.93% 3.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 65 37 53
10th Percentile £413 £459 £508
25th Percentile £513 £484 £563
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £565 £650
Median % change year-on-year +10.62% -13.08% -
75th Percentile £738 £738 £750
90th Percentile £838 £895 £865
Central London median daily rate £625 £548 £650
% change year-on-year +14.16% -15.77% +4.00%
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 1,664 1,933 2,418
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 93.43% 91.57% 89.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,171 1,185 1,698
10th Percentile £331 £375 £363
25th Percentile £419 £470 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% - -
75th Percentile £675 £688 £690
90th Percentile £760 £782 £811
Central London median daily rate £550 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -4.35% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 16 14
10th Percentile £16.96 £16.25 £17.00
25th Percentile £20.18 £25.38 £17.48
Median hourly rate £28.00 £50.00 £32.75
Median % change year-on-year -44.00% +52.67% -35.78%
75th Percentile £44.72 £112.00 £52.88
90th Percentile £63.75 £137.50 £72.25
Central London median hourly rate £27.50 £35.00 £27.50
% change year-on-year -21.43% +27.27% -41.33%

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 20 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 (5.43%) Confluence
2 3 (3.26%) Apache Spark
3 1 (1.09%) Apache
3 1 (1.09%) Cloud Foundry
3 1 (1.09%) JBoss
3 1 (1.09%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (1.09%) Oracle Workflow
Business Applications
1 2 (2.17%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (1.09%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 1 (1.09%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 33 (35.87%) AWS
2 22 (23.91%) Azure
3 10 (10.87%) GCP
4 9 (9.78%) Amazon S3
5 8 (8.70%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 8 (8.70%) AWS Lambda
5 8 (8.70%) Serverless
6 7 (7.61%) Power Platform
7 4 (4.35%) AWS Step Functions
7 4 (4.35%) Dynamics 365
8 3 (3.26%) Amazon Cognito
8 3 (3.26%) Amazon EventBridge
8 3 (3.26%) Amazon SQS
8 3 (3.26%) Azure DevOps
8 3 (3.26%) Datadog
8 3 (3.26%) GitHub
8 3 (3.26%) Google Gemini
8 3 (3.26%) Snowflake
9 2 (2.17%) OpenShift
9 2 (2.17%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 2 (2.17%) tcpdump
2 1 (1.09%) DNS
2 1 (1.09%) Firewall
2 1 (1.09%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (8.70%) Relational Database
2 6 (6.52%) MongoDB
3 5 (5.43%) DynamoDB
4 4 (4.35%) DB2
4 4 (4.35%) Hadoop
4 4 (4.35%) NoSQL
5 3 (3.26%) MemSQL
5 3 (3.26%) MySQL
5 3 (3.26%) Power BI
5 3 (3.26%) Sybase IQ
6 2 (2.17%) PostgreSQL
7 1 (1.09%) Amazon Redshift
7 1 (1.09%) Apache Cassandra
7 1 (1.09%) Big Data
7 1 (1.09%) Data Lake
7 1 (1.09%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (1.09%) Delta Lake
7 1 (1.09%) KDB
7 1 (1.09%) Metadata
7 1 (1.09%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 6 (6.52%) Git
1 6 (6.52%) GitLab
1 6 (6.52%) Jenkins
2 5 (5.43%) JIRA
3 4 (4.35%) Gradle
4 3 (3.26%) SonarQube
5 2 (2.17%) Cypress.io
5 2 (2.17%) JUnit
5 2 (2.17%) MLflow
5 2 (2.17%) Postman
5 2 (2.17%) TeamCity
6 1 (1.09%) Bitbucket
6 1 (1.09%) Cucumber
6 1 (1.09%) Hamcrest
6 1 (1.09%) Mockito
6 1 (1.09%) MSTest
6 1 (1.09%) Selenium
6 1 (1.09%) Serenity BDD
6 1 (1.09%) SpecFlow
6 1 (1.09%) Vite
General
1 34 (36.96%) Social Skills
2 29 (31.52%) Finance
3 18 (19.57%) Banking
4 12 (13.04%) Analytical Skills
5 10 (10.87%) Front Office
6 5 (5.43%) Retail Banking
7 4 (4.35%) Investment Banking
8 3 (3.26%) Financial Institution
8 3 (3.26%) Pharmaceutical
8 3 (3.26%) Public Sector
9 2 (2.17%) Games
9 2 (2.17%) Telecoms
10 1 (1.09%) Back Office
10 1 (1.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 1 (1.09%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (1.09%) Legal
10 1 (1.09%) Retail
Job Titles
1 25 (27.17%) Software Engineer
2 21 (22.83%) Senior
3 18 (19.57%) Developer
4 13 (14.13%) Lead
5 9 (9.78%) Python Engineer
6 7 (7.61%) Java Developer
7 5 (5.43%) Python Developer
8 4 (4.35%) Architect
8 4 (4.35%) Data Scientist
8 4 (4.35%) Senior Software Engineer
9 3 (3.26%) Backend Developer
9 3 (3.26%) C++ Software Engineer
9 3 (3.26%) Data Engineer
9 3 (3.26%) Java Engineer
9 3 (3.26%) Java Software Engineer
9 3 (3.26%) Principal Engineer
9 3 (3.26%) Python Software Engineer
9 3 (3.26%) Senior Developer
9 3 (3.26%) Software Design Engineer
10 2 (2.17%) Senior DevOps
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (17.39%) .NET
2 14 (15.22%) React
3 13 (14.13%) AngularJS
4 10 (10.87%) RESTful
5 7 (7.61%) CSS
5 7 (7.61%) HTML
5 7 (7.61%) Node.js
6 6 (6.52%) Spring
7 5 (5.43%) HTML5
8 4 (4.35%) FIX Protocol
8 4 (4.35%) Kafka
8 4 (4.35%) OpenTelemetry
8 4 (4.35%) REST
8 4 (4.35%) Spring Boot
9 3 (3.26%) FastAPI
9 3 (3.26%) GraphQL
9 3 (3.26%) LangGraph
9 3 (3.26%) PyTorch
9 3 (3.26%) scikit-learn
9 3 (3.26%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 12 (13.04%) Cloud Native
2 8 (8.70%) Virtual Team
3 7 (7.61%) Algorithms
4 6 (6.52%) Data Structures
4 6 (6.52%) Distributed Systems
5 5 (5.43%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 5 (5.43%) Hedge funds
6 4 (4.35%) Enterprise Software
6 4 (4.35%) Legacy Systems
7 3 (3.26%) AI Agents
7 3 (3.26%) Derivative
7 3 (3.26%) Linux Command Line
8 2 (2.17%) 3D Graphics
8 2 (2.17%) Distributed Computing
8 2 (2.17%) Greenfield Project
8 2 (2.17%) Life Science
8 2 (2.17%) Product Ownership
8 2 (2.17%) Reference Data
8 2 (2.17%) Self-Motivation
8 2 (2.17%) Virtual Reality
Operating Systems
1 12 (13.04%) Linux
2 4 (4.35%) Windows
3 3 (3.26%) Unix
4 2 (2.17%) Windows Server
5 1 (1.09%) Android
5 1 (1.09%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 28 (30.43%) CI/CD
2 27 (29.35%) Agile
3 21 (22.83%) DevOps
4 18 (19.57%) Problem-Solving
5 17 (18.48%) Code Quality
6 14 (15.22%) Test Automation
7 13 (14.13%) Design Patterns
7 13 (14.13%) Event-Driven
7 13 (14.13%) Microservices
8 12 (13.04%) AI
8 12 (13.04%) Computer Science
8 12 (13.04%) Mentoring
9 10 (10.87%) Event-Driven Architecture
9 10 (10.87%) Full-Stack Development
9 10 (10.87%) Machine Learning
10 9 (9.78%) Analytics
10 9 (9.78%) Scrum
10 9 (9.78%) SDLC
10 9 (9.78%) Technical Leadership
11 8 (8.70%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 45 (48.91%) Python
2 30 (32.61%) Java
3 20 (21.74%) SQL
4 13 (14.13%) C#
5 10 (10.87%) C++
6 9 (9.78%) TypeScript
7 7 (7.61%) JavaScript
8 3 (3.26%) Go
9 2 (2.17%) PHP
9 2 (2.17%) PowerShell
9 2 (2.17%) R
9 2 (2.17%) Rust
10 1 (1.09%) C
10 1 (1.09%) COBOL
10 1 (1.09%) Fortran
10 1 (1.09%) MATLAB
10 1 (1.09%) PL/SQL
10 1 (1.09%) RPG
Qualifications
1 14 (15.22%) Degree
2 5 (5.43%) Computer Science Degree
2 5 (5.43%) Security Cleared
3 4 (4.35%) SC Cleared
4 2 (2.17%) Postgraduate
5 1 (1.09%) AWS Certification
5 1 (1.09%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 1 (1.09%) BPSS Clearance
5 1 (1.09%) CFA
5 1 (1.09%) DV Cleared
5 1 (1.09%) Master's Degree
5 1 (1.09%) MBA
5 1 (1.09%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (3.26%) Data Quality
1 3 (3.26%) QA
2 1 (1.09%) EMIR
2 1 (1.09%) GDPR
2 1 (1.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 1 (1.09%) MiFID
2 1 (1.09%) SOC 2
System Software
1 15 (16.30%) Docker
2 1 (1.09%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 14 (15.22%) Kubernetes
2 5 (5.43%) Ansible
3 3 (3.26%) Prometheus
3 3 (3.26%) Terraform
4 1 (1.09%) Grafana
4 1 (1.09%) Kubeflow
4 1 (1.09%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 12 (13.04%) Microsoft
2 7 (7.61%) Oracle
3 5 (5.43%) Google
4 3 (3.26%) Databricks
5 2 (2.17%) DevExpress
5 2 (2.17%) DocuSign
6 1 (1.09%) Alteryx
6 1 (1.09%) Avaloq
6 1 (1.09%) FNZ
6 1 (1.09%) ForgeRock
6 1 (1.09%) Foundry
6 1 (1.09%) IBM
6 1 (1.09%) ION Trading
6 1 (1.09%) Ping Identity
6 1 (1.09%) Splunk
6 1 (1.09%) Temenos