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 31 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 48 46 50
Rank change year-on-year -2 +4 -8
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 86 81 91
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 4.67% 3.98% 3.70%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.17% 4.32% 4.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 64 36 48
10th Percentile £400 £439 £444
25th Percentile £513 £463 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £530 £641
Median % change year-on-year +17.92% -17.35% -1.35%
75th Percentile £719 £613 £756
90th Percentile £788 £800 £838
Central London median daily rate £625 £530 £625
% change year-on-year +17.92% -15.20% -3.85%
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 & 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 1,663 1,873 2,199
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 90.33% 92.13% 89.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,167 1,140 1,573
10th Percentile £343 £363 £363
25th Percentile £423 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £543 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -5.65% - -2.13%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £688
90th Percentile £763 £788 £800
Central London median daily rate £550 £575 £570
% change year-on-year -4.35% +0.88% -0.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 14 10
10th Percentile £20.18 £15.35 £17.00
25th Percentile £22.18 £22.00 £17.48
Median hourly rate £31.00 £40.50 £26.25
Median % change year-on-year -23.46% +54.29% -30.46%
75th Percentile £42.47 £107.13 £44.56
90th Percentile £51.88 £129.85 £74.13
Central London median hourly rate £26.11 £35.00 £27.50
% change year-on-year -25.40% +27.27% -21.43%

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 31 December 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 3 (3.49%) Confluence
2 2 (2.33%) Apache Spark
3 1 (1.16%) Apache
3 1 (1.16%) Cloud Foundry
3 1 (1.16%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (1.16%) Smallworld
Business Applications
1 2 (2.33%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 1 (1.16%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 30 (34.88%) AWS
2 19 (22.09%) Azure
3 12 (13.95%) GCP
4 7 (8.14%) AWS Lambda
4 7 (8.14%) Serverless
5 6 (6.98%) Amazon S3
5 6 (6.98%) Power Platform
6 5 (5.81%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 4 (4.65%) GitHub
7 4 (4.65%) Google Gemini
8 3 (3.49%) Dynamics 365
8 3 (3.49%) Snowflake
9 2 (2.33%) Amazon ECS
9 2 (2.33%) Azure DevOps
9 2 (2.33%) Cloud Run
9 2 (2.33%) GitHub Actions
9 2 (2.33%) OpenShift
9 2 (2.33%) PaaS
9 2 (2.33%) Power Automate
9 2 (2.33%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.16%) DNS
1 1 (1.16%) Firewall
1 1 (1.16%) HTTP
1 1 (1.16%) MPLS
1 1 (1.16%) Software-Defined Networking
1 1 (1.16%) tcpdump
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (9.30%) Relational Database
2 5 (5.81%) MongoDB
3 4 (4.65%) Hadoop
3 4 (4.65%) NoSQL
4 3 (3.49%) DB2
4 3 (3.49%) MemSQL
4 3 (3.49%) Power BI
4 3 (3.49%) Sybase IQ
5 2 (2.33%) DynamoDB
5 2 (2.33%) PostgreSQL
6 1 (1.16%) Amazon Redshift
6 1 (1.16%) Apache Cassandra
6 1 (1.16%) Big Data
6 1 (1.16%) BigQuery
6 1 (1.16%) Data Lake
6 1 (1.16%) Delta Lake
6 1 (1.16%) KDB
6 1 (1.16%) Metadata
6 1 (1.16%) MySQL
6 1 (1.16%) Pinecone
Development Applications
1 7 (8.14%) GitLab
2 5 (5.81%) Jenkins
3 4 (4.65%) Git
4 3 (3.49%) JIRA
4 3 (3.49%) SonarQube
5 2 (2.33%) Cypress.io
5 2 (2.33%) Gradle
5 2 (2.33%) JUnit
5 2 (2.33%) Postman
5 2 (2.33%) TeamCity
6 1 (1.16%) Bitbucket
6 1 (1.16%) Cucumber
6 1 (1.16%) Hamcrest
6 1 (1.16%) Jaeger
6 1 (1.16%) MLflow
6 1 (1.16%) Mockito
6 1 (1.16%) MSTest
6 1 (1.16%) Serenity BDD
6 1 (1.16%) SpecFlow
6 1 (1.16%) Vite
General
1 24 (27.91%) Social Skills
2 20 (23.26%) Finance
3 15 (17.44%) Banking
4 9 (10.47%) Analytical Skills
5 7 (8.14%) Front Office
6 5 (5.81%) Manufacturing
6 5 (5.81%) Retail Banking
7 4 (4.65%) Investment Banking
7 4 (4.65%) Pharmaceutical
8 3 (3.49%) Financial Institution
8 3 (3.49%) Games
9 2 (2.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 2 (2.33%) Public Sector
10 1 (1.16%) Back Office
10 1 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (1.16%) Legal
10 1 (1.16%) Retail
Job Titles
1 25 (29.07%) Software Engineer
2 19 (22.09%) Senior
3 16 (18.60%) Developer
4 12 (13.95%) Lead
5 9 (10.47%) Python Engineer
6 7 (8.14%) Integration Engineer
7 6 (6.98%) Architect
8 5 (5.81%) .NET Software Engineer
8 5 (5.81%) Data Scientist
8 5 (5.81%) Hardware Engineer
8 5 (5.81%) Java Developer
8 5 (5.81%) Python Developer
8 5 (5.81%) Senior Developer
8 5 (5.81%) Software Integration Engineer
9 4 (4.65%) Senior Software Engineer
10 3 (3.49%) AWS Engineer
10 3 (3.49%) Backend Developer
10 3 (3.49%) DevOps Engineer
10 3 (3.49%) Senior Python Developer
10 3 (3.49%) Technical Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (18.60%) .NET
2 10 (11.63%) React
3 9 (10.47%) Node.js
3 9 (10.47%) RESTful
4 6 (6.98%) AngularJS
5 5 (5.81%) LangChain
5 5 (5.81%) LangGraph
6 4 (4.65%) CSS
6 4 (4.65%) FastAPI
6 4 (4.65%) HTML
6 4 (4.65%) Kafka
7 3 (3.49%) OpenTelemetry
7 3 (3.49%) Spring
8 2 (2.33%) Blazor
8 2 (2.33%) Playwright
8 2 (2.33%) PyTorch
8 2 (2.33%) REST
8 2 (2.33%) scikit-learn
8 2 (2.33%) Spring Boot
8 2 (2.33%) Unity (Game Engine)
Miscellaneous
1 14 (16.28%) Cloud Native
2 8 (9.30%) Life Science
2 8 (9.30%) Virtual Team
3 5 (5.81%) AI Agents
3 5 (5.81%) Algorithms
3 5 (5.81%) Data Structures
4 4 (4.65%) Enterprise Software
4 4 (4.65%) Legacy Systems
4 4 (4.65%) Product Ownership
5 3 (3.49%) Hedge funds
6 2 (2.33%) 3D Graphics
6 2 (2.33%) Distributed Computing
6 2 (2.33%) Distributed Systems
6 2 (2.33%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 2 (2.33%) Linux Command Line
6 2 (2.33%) Onboarding
6 2 (2.33%) Self-Motivation
6 2 (2.33%) Virtual Reality
7 1 (1.16%) Hybrid Cloud
7 1 (1.16%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 6 (6.98%) Linux
1 6 (6.98%) Windows
2 2 (2.33%) Unix
2 2 (2.33%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 28 (32.56%) CI/CD
2 18 (20.93%) DevOps
3 17 (19.77%) Agile
3 17 (19.77%) AI
3 17 (19.77%) Problem-Solving
4 16 (18.60%) Test Automation
5 13 (15.12%) Design Patterns
6 12 (13.95%) Code Quality
6 12 (13.95%) Data Science
6 12 (13.95%) Microservices
7 11 (12.79%) Generative AI
7 11 (12.79%) Machine Learning
8 10 (11.63%) Containerisation
9 9 (10.47%) SDLC
10 8 (9.30%) Full-Stack Development
10 8 (9.30%) Infrastructure as Code
11 7 (8.14%) Computer Science
11 7 (8.14%) Mentoring
11 7 (8.14%) Technical Leadership
11 7 (8.14%) Unit Testing
Programming Languages
1 40 (46.51%) Python
2 23 (26.74%) Java
3 17 (19.77%) SQL
4 11 (12.79%) C#
5 7 (8.14%) C++
5 7 (8.14%) JavaScript
6 4 (4.65%) TypeScript
7 3 (3.49%) Go
8 2 (2.33%) PHP
8 2 (2.33%) PowerShell
8 2 (2.33%) R
8 2 (2.33%) Rust
9 1 (1.16%) Fortran
9 1 (1.16%) MATLAB
9 1 (1.16%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 12 (13.95%) Degree
2 11 (12.79%) Security Cleared
3 10 (11.63%) SC Cleared
4 3 (3.49%) Computer Science Degree
5 2 (2.33%) AWS Certification
5 2 (2.33%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 2 (2.33%) Postgraduate
6 1 (1.16%) DBS Check
6 1 (1.16%) DV Cleared
6 1 (1.16%) Master's Degree
6 1 (1.16%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (2.33%) Data Quality
2 1 (1.16%) GDPR
2 1 (1.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 1 (1.16%) QA
2 1 (1.16%) SOC 2
System Software
1 17 (19.77%) Docker
2 1 (1.16%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 16 (18.60%) Kubernetes
2 7 (8.14%) Terraform
3 4 (4.65%) Ansible
4 2 (2.33%) Grafana
5 1 (1.16%) Argo
5 1 (1.16%) Istio
5 1 (1.16%) Microsoft Intune
5 1 (1.16%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 10 (11.63%) Microsoft
2 7 (8.14%) Google
3 5 (5.81%) Oracle
4 3 (3.49%) Databricks
5 2 (2.33%) DevExpress
5 2 (2.33%) DocuSign
5 2 (2.33%) Splunk
6 1 (1.16%) Alteryx
6 1 (1.16%) ForgeRock
6 1 (1.16%) Foundry
6 1 (1.16%) ION Trading
6 1 (1.16%) Ping Identity