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 25 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 35 49
Rank change year-on-year -15 +14 +1
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 82 102 89
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 4.14% 5.59% 3.79%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.65% 6.10% 4.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 64 53 47
10th Percentile £405 £431 £440
25th Percentile £510 £484 £544
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £565 £625
Median % change year-on-year +1.77% -9.60% -3.85%
75th Percentile £688 £690 £750
90th Percentile £788 £825 £838
Central London median daily rate £575 £565 £598
% change year-on-year +1.77% -5.47% -7.69%
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 1,763 1,672 2,098
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 89.00% 91.62% 89.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,217 1,028 1,495
10th Percentile £356 £363 £350
25th Percentile £426 £463 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £575 £570
Median % change year-on-year -6.52% +0.88% -5.00%
75th Percentile £664 £688 £688
90th Percentile £771 £775 £800
Central London median daily rate £550 £575 £551
% change year-on-year -4.35% +4.36% -6.21%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 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 £45.08 £47.50 £41.84
90th Percentile £54.94 £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 25 February 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%) Smallworld
Applications
1 1 (1.22%) Maya
Business Applications
1 1 (1.22%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 30 (36.59%) AWS
2 16 (19.51%) Azure
3 11 (13.41%) GCP
4 7 (8.54%) GitHub
5 4 (4.88%) AWS Lambda
5 4 (4.88%) Google Gemini
5 4 (4.88%) Serverless
6 3 (3.66%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 3 (3.66%) Amazon S3
6 3 (3.66%) Power Platform
7 2 (2.44%) Amazon SageMaker
7 2 (2.44%) Cloud Run
7 2 (2.44%) GitHub Actions
7 2 (2.44%) GitHub Copilot
7 2 (2.44%) Snowflake
8 1 (1.22%) Anthropic Claude
8 1 (1.22%) AWS Control Tower
8 1 (1.22%) Azure AI
8 1 (1.22%) Collibra
8 1 (1.22%) Vertex AI
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
3 3 (3.66%) NoSQL
3 3 (3.66%) PostgreSQL
4 2 (2.44%) BigQuery
4 2 (2.44%) Hadoop
5 1 (1.22%) Amazon Redshift
5 1 (1.22%) Apache Cassandra
5 1 (1.22%) Big Data
5 1 (1.22%) Data Hub
5 1 (1.22%) Data Lake
5 1 (1.22%) Delta Lake
5 1 (1.22%) Elasticsearch
5 1 (1.22%) MemSQL
5 1 (1.22%) Metadata
5 1 (1.22%) MySQL
5 1 (1.22%) Pinecone
5 1 (1.22%) Power BI
5 1 (1.22%) Sybase IQ
5 1 (1.22%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 8 (9.76%) GitLab
2 5 (6.10%) Git
3 4 (4.88%) Jenkins
4 3 (3.66%) Cypress.io
5 2 (2.44%) Gradle
5 2 (2.44%) JUnit
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%) Jaeger
6 1 (1.22%) JIRA
6 1 (1.22%) Maven
6 1 (1.22%) MLflow
6 1 (1.22%) Selenium
6 1 (1.22%) Serenity BDD
6 1 (1.22%) SonarQube
6 1 (1.22%) Vite
6 1 (1.22%) webpack
General
1 18 (21.95%) Finance
2 16 (19.51%) Social Skills
3 15 (18.29%) Banking
4 6 (7.32%) Analytical Skills
5 5 (6.10%) Manufacturing
6 4 (4.88%) Front Office
6 4 (4.88%) Pharmaceutical
7 3 (3.66%) Investment Banking
8 2 (2.44%) Public Sector
8 2 (2.44%) Retail Banking
9 1 (1.22%) Advertising
9 1 (1.22%) Aerospace
9 1 (1.22%) Back Office
9 1 (1.22%) Financial Institution
9 1 (1.22%) Games
9 1 (1.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (1.22%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (1.22%) Legal
9 1 (1.22%) Retail
Job Titles
1 27 (32.93%) Software Engineer
2 23 (28.05%) Senior
3 15 (18.29%) Developer
4 11 (13.41%) Lead
5 8 (9.76%) Python Engineer
6 7 (8.54%) Senior Software Engineer
7 6 (7.32%) Architect
7 6 (7.32%) Data Scientist
8 5 (6.10%) .NET Software Engineer
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%) Java Developer
9 4 (4.88%) Java Engineer
9 4 (4.88%) Python Developer
10 3 (3.66%) AWS 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%) Node.js
3 9 (10.98%) RESTful
4 7 (8.54%) LangChain
4 7 (8.54%) LangGraph
5 6 (7.32%) AngularJS
5 6 (7.32%) REST
6 5 (6.10%) Kafka
6 5 (6.10%) Spring
7 4 (4.88%) CSS
7 4 (4.88%) HTML
7 4 (4.88%) OpenTelemetry
7 4 (4.88%) Playwright
8 3 (3.66%) FastAPI
8 3 (3.66%) GraphQL
8 3 (3.66%) XML
9 2 (2.44%) DOM
9 2 (2.44%) FIX Protocol
9 2 (2.44%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 15 (18.29%) Cloud Native
2 8 (9.76%) Life Science
3 6 (7.32%) Distributed Systems
3 6 (7.32%) Product Ownership
3 6 (7.32%) Virtual Team
4 5 (6.10%) AI Agents
5 4 (4.88%) Legacy Systems
6 2 (2.44%) Algorithms
6 2 (2.44%) Data Structures
6 2 (2.44%) Enterprise Software
6 2 (2.44%) Mobile App
6 2 (2.44%) Onboarding
7 1 (1.22%) Analytical Mindset
7 1 (1.22%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 1 (1.22%) Hedge funds
7 1 (1.22%) Linux Command Line
7 1 (1.22%) Online Games
7 1 (1.22%) Security Posture
7 1 (1.22%) TWAP
7 1 (1.22%) VWAP
Operating Systems
1 3 (3.66%) Windows
2 2 (2.44%) Linux
3 1 (1.22%) Unix
3 1 (1.22%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 26 (31.71%) CI/CD
2 24 (29.27%) AI
3 17 (20.73%) Test Automation
4 16 (19.51%) Microservices
4 16 (19.51%) Problem-Solving
5 15 (18.29%) Agile
5 15 (18.29%) DevOps
6 14 (17.07%) Data Science
6 14 (17.07%) Generative AI
7 13 (15.85%) Code Quality
7 13 (15.85%) Full-Stack Development
8 11 (13.41%) Design Patterns
8 11 (13.41%) Machine Learning
9 9 (10.98%) Containerisation
9 9 (10.98%) Observability
10 8 (9.76%) Infrastructure as Code
11 7 (8.54%) Computer Science
11 7 (8.54%) TDD
11 7 (8.54%) Technical Leadership
12 6 (7.32%) Unit Testing
Programming Languages
1 32 (39.02%) Python
2 24 (29.27%) Java
3 14 (17.07%) SQL
4 7 (8.54%) JavaScript
4 7 (8.54%) TypeScript
5 6 (7.32%) C#
6 3 (3.66%) C++
7 2 (2.44%) COBOL
7 2 (2.44%) Go
7 2 (2.44%) PowerShell
7 2 (2.44%) Rust
8 1 (1.22%) R
8 1 (1.22%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 14 (17.07%) Security Cleared
2 13 (15.85%) SC Cleared
3 11 (13.41%) 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
6 1 (1.22%) Master's Degree
6 1 (1.22%) MBA
6 1 (1.22%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (3.66%) 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%) QA
2 1 (1.22%) WCAG
System Software
1 19 (23.17%) Docker
Systems Management
1 17 (20.73%) 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
2 6 (7.32%) Microsoft
3 4 (4.88%) Oracle
4 3 (3.66%) Databricks
5 2 (2.44%) Splunk
6 1 (1.22%) Alteryx
6 1 (1.22%) Dynatrace
6 1 (1.22%) Foundry
6 1 (1.22%) IBM