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 23 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 38 47
Rank change year-on-year -10 +9 -6
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 91 97 85
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 3.76% 5.61% 3.96%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.39% 5.99% 4.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 66 63 49
10th Percentile £456 £503 £461
25th Percentile £513 £559 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £660 £625
Median % change year-on-year -12.88% +5.60% -3.85%
75th Percentile £721 £800 £750
90th Percentile £775 £868 £875
Central London median daily rate £575 £660 £581
% change year-on-year -12.88% +13.55% -10.58%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £55.81 - -
Median hourly rate £57.77 - -
75th Percentile £67.36 - -
90th Percentile £71.94 - -
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 2,072 1,620 1,949
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 85.66% 93.75% 90.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,398 1,032 1,358
10th Percentile £363 £350 £363
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £551 £575
Median % change year-on-year -0.18% -4.17% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £688
90th Percentile £775 £775 £800
Central London median daily rate £550 £550 £550
% change year-on-year - - -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 30 16 14
10th Percentile £17.56 £19.25 £20.01
25th Percentile £18.75 £24.43 £20.29
Median hourly rate £24.47 £29.75 £26.63
Median % change year-on-year -17.76% +11.74% -23.93%
75th Percentile £42.91 £52.50 £40.00
90th Percentile £60.25 £76.25 £47.73
Central London median hourly rate £27.50 £30.04 £27.81
% change year-on-year -8.44% +8.00% -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 23 June 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
Hourly Rate Histogram in the City of London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Software Engineering in the City of London over the 6 months to 23 June 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Software Engineering in the City of London

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 (3.30%) Apache Airflow
2 2 (2.20%) Apache Spark
2 2 (2.20%) SharePoint
3 1 (1.10%) Apache
3 1 (1.10%) Camunda
Applications
1 2 (2.20%) Chatbot
2 1 (1.10%) Maya
Business Applications
1 3 (3.30%) Oracle EBS
2 2 (2.20%) Orchestrade
3 1 (1.10%) Aladdin
3 1 (1.10%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (1.10%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 27 (29.67%) Azure
2 25 (27.47%) AWS
3 16 (17.58%) GitHub
4 9 (9.89%) GCP
5 6 (6.59%) Anthropic Claude
5 6 (6.59%) Azure DevOps
6 5 (5.49%) Power Platform
7 4 (4.40%) Azure AKS
7 4 (4.40%) dbt
7 4 (4.40%) Snowflake
8 3 (3.30%) Entra ID
8 3 (3.30%) GitHub Actions
8 3 (3.30%) GitHub Copilot
8 3 (3.30%) PaaS
9 2 (2.20%) Amazon S3
9 2 (2.20%) Azure Cosmos DB
9 2 (2.20%) Microsoft 365
9 2 (2.20%) Power Automate
9 2 (2.20%) PowerApps
9 2 (2.20%) Vertex AI
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (6.59%) NoSQL
1 6 (6.59%) Relational Database
2 5 (5.49%) PostgreSQL
3 4 (4.40%) Pinecone
4 3 (3.30%) MongoDB
4 3 (3.30%) Power BI
4 3 (3.30%) SQL Server
4 3 (3.30%) Weaviate
5 2 (2.20%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (1.10%) Amazon Aurora
6 1 (1.10%) Apache Cassandra
6 1 (1.10%) BigQuery
6 1 (1.10%) Data Hub
6 1 (1.10%) Db2
6 1 (1.10%) DynamoDB
6 1 (1.10%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 10 (10.99%) Git
2 3 (3.30%) CircleCI
2 3 (3.30%) Cypress.io
2 3 (3.30%) Gradle
2 3 (3.30%) Jenkins
2 3 (3.30%) JUnit
2 3 (3.30%) Mockito
3 2 (2.20%) Claude Code
3 2 (2.20%) GitLab
3 2 (2.20%) Liquibase
3 2 (2.20%) Mocha
3 2 (2.20%) webpack
4 1 (1.10%) CocoaPods
4 1 (1.10%) Cucumber
4 1 (1.10%) JIRA
4 1 (1.10%) Maven
4 1 (1.10%) REST Assured
4 1 (1.10%) Visual Studio
4 1 (1.10%) XCTest
4 1 (1.10%) XCUITest
General
1 32 (35.16%) Finance
2 18 (19.78%) Social Skills
3 11 (12.09%) Banking
4 6 (6.59%) Analytical Skills
5 5 (5.49%) Public Sector
6 3 (3.30%) Advertising
6 3 (3.30%) Back Office
6 3 (3.30%) Influencing Skills
6 3 (3.30%) Investment Banking
6 3 (3.30%) Retail
7 2 (2.20%) Legal
7 2 (2.20%) Presentation Skills
8 1 (1.10%) Aerospace
8 1 (1.10%) Corporate Banking
8 1 (1.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (1.10%) Manufacturing
8 1 (1.10%) Pharmaceutical
8 1 (1.10%) Retail Banking
8 1 (1.10%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 33 (36.26%) Software Engineer
2 18 (19.78%) Developer
3 15 (16.48%) Senior
4 10 (10.99%) Lead
5 8 (8.79%) Senior Software Engineer
6 6 (6.59%) Architect
6 6 (6.59%) Data Engineer
6 6 (6.59%) Full-Stack Engineer
7 5 (5.49%) Java Engineer
7 5 (5.49%) Technical Architect
8 4 (4.40%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
8 4 (4.40%) Engineering Specialist
8 4 (4.40%) Java Developer
8 4 (4.40%) Senior Developer
8 4 (4.40%) Technical Leader
9 3 (3.30%) Data Scientist
9 3 (3.30%) Full-Stack Software Engineer
9 3 (3.30%) Junior
9 3 (3.30%) Software Asset Manager
9 3 (3.30%) Software Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (16.48%) React
2 14 (15.38%) Spring
3 13 (14.29%) REST
4 10 (10.99%) Kafka
4 10 (10.99%) Spring Boot
5 9 (9.89%) LangChain
6 8 (8.79%) LangGraph
7 7 (7.69%) .NET
8 6 (6.59%) GraphQL
8 6 (6.59%) Playwright
9 5 (5.49%) Node.js
10 4 (4.40%) Jest
10 4 (4.40%) React Native
10 4 (4.40%) RESTful
11 3 (3.30%) AngularJS
11 3 (3.30%) DOM
11 3 (3.30%) HTML
11 3 (3.30%) LlamaIndex
11 3 (3.30%) Web Services
12 2 (2.20%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 16 (17.58%) Cloud Native
2 14 (15.38%) Distributed Systems
3 9 (9.89%) AI Agents
4 7 (7.69%) Product Ownership
5 4 (4.40%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 3 (3.30%) Mobile App
7 2 (2.20%) Derivative
7 2 (2.20%) Life Science
7 2 (2.20%) Self-Motivation
8 1 (1.10%) Analytical Mindset
8 1 (1.10%) Autonomous Agent
8 1 (1.10%) Clustering
8 1 (1.10%) CMDB
8 1 (1.10%) Distributed Computing
8 1 (1.10%) Enterprise Software
8 1 (1.10%) Genomics
8 1 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
8 1 (1.10%) NHS
8 1 (1.10%) Onboarding
8 1 (1.10%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 3 (3.30%) Apple iOS
1 3 (3.30%) Linux
2 2 (2.20%) Android
2 2 (2.20%) Embedded Linux
3 1 (1.10%) Unix
3 1 (1.10%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 39 (42.86%) CI/CD
2 29 (31.87%) AI
3 25 (27.47%) Agile
4 21 (23.08%) DevOps
5 20 (21.98%) Microservices
6 19 (20.88%) Full-Stack Development
7 17 (18.68%) Containerisation
8 16 (17.58%) Observability
9 14 (15.38%) Generative AI
9 14 (15.38%) Test Automation
10 13 (14.29%) LLM
11 11 (12.09%) Data Engineering
11 11 (12.09%) Data Science
11 11 (12.09%) Machine Learning
11 11 (12.09%) Platform Engineering
11 11 (12.09%) Problem-Solving
12 9 (9.89%) Analytics
12 9 (9.89%) TDD
13 8 (8.79%) Event-Driven
14 7 (7.69%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 24 (26.37%) Java
2 23 (25.27%) SQL
3 19 (20.88%) Python
4 17 (18.68%) TypeScript
5 10 (10.99%) C#
6 7 (7.69%) JavaScript
7 3 (3.30%) C++
7 3 (3.30%) Go
7 3 (3.30%) Ruby
8 2 (2.20%) COBOL
9 1 (1.10%) Korn
9 1 (1.10%) Kotlin
9 1 (1.10%) Scala
9 1 (1.10%) Shell Script
9 1 (1.10%) Swift
Qualifications
1 19 (20.88%) Security Cleared
2 18 (19.78%) SC Cleared
3 5 (5.49%) Degree
4 2 (2.20%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (1.10%) AWS Certification
5 1 (1.10%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 1 (1.10%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (3.30%) Data Quality
1 3 (3.30%) GDPR
2 2 (2.20%) Accessibility
2 2 (2.20%) EMIR
2 2 (2.20%) MiFID
3 1 (1.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (1.10%) NIST
3 1 (1.10%) WCAG
System Software
1 18 (19.78%) Docker
2 2 (2.20%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 17 (18.68%) Kubernetes
2 2 (2.20%) Grafana
2 2 (2.20%) Terraform
3 1 (1.10%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 8 (8.79%) Microsoft
2 4 (4.40%) IBM
2 4 (4.40%) Oracle
3 3 (3.30%) Google
4 1 (1.10%) Apple
4 1 (1.10%) Databricks
4 1 (1.10%) Dynatrace
4 1 (1.10%) MuleSoft
4 1 (1.10%) OpenAI
4 1 (1.10%) Pega
4 1 (1.10%) Remedy
4 1 (1.10%) Salesforce
4 1 (1.10%) Sybase