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 17 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 39 45
Rank change year-on-year -10 +6 -9
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 91 91 90
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 3.94% 5.21% 4.16%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.65% 5.57% 4.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 70 53 45
10th Percentile £453 £470 £435
25th Percentile £516 £540 £488
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £638 £575
Median % change year-on-year -5.88% +10.87% -8.00%
75th Percentile £700 £800 £750
90th Percentile £764 £835 £860
Central London median daily rate £600 £631 £550
% change year-on-year -4.95% +14.77% -15.38%
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 1,957 1,635 1,957
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 84.72% 93.59% 90.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,332 1,027 1,378
10th Percentile £363 £353 £350
25th Percentile £450 £463 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £565
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% +1.77% -5.83%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £688
90th Percentile £775 £775 £813
Central London median daily rate £550 £564 £550
% change year-on-year -2.44% +2.50% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 13 12
10th Percentile £17.99 £22.00 £19.95
25th Percentile £18.75 £23.75 £20.22
Median hourly rate £29.78 £28.15 £25.63
Median % change year-on-year +5.80% +9.85% -26.79%
75th Percentile £49.78 £43.75 £40.00
90th Percentile £59.72 £60.75 £41.65
Central London median hourly rate £27.00 £29.07 £27.81
% change year-on-year -7.12% +4.53% -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 17 May 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 17 May 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
3 1 (1.10%) Smallworld
Applications
1 2 (2.20%) Chatbot
2 1 (1.10%) Maya
Business Applications
1 2 (2.20%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (1.10%) Aladdin
2 1 (1.10%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (1.10%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 1 (1.10%) Orchestrade
Cloud Services
1 27 (29.67%) AWS
2 24 (26.37%) Azure
3 14 (15.38%) GitHub
4 10 (10.99%) GCP
5 6 (6.59%) Anthropic Claude
6 5 (5.49%) Azure DevOps
7 3 (3.30%) dbt
7 3 (3.30%) Entra ID
7 3 (3.30%) GitHub Actions
7 3 (3.30%) GitHub Copilot
7 3 (3.30%) Power Platform
7 3 (3.30%) Serverless
7 3 (3.30%) Snowflake
8 2 (2.20%) Azure Stack
8 2 (2.20%) Cloud Run
8 2 (2.20%) Google Gemini
8 2 (2.20%) Microsoft 365
8 2 (2.20%) PaaS
8 2 (2.20%) Power Automate
8 2 (2.20%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.10%) HTTP
1 1 (1.10%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (6.59%) NoSQL
2 5 (5.49%) Relational Database
3 4 (4.40%) PostgreSQL
4 3 (3.30%) Pinecone
4 3 (3.30%) Weaviate
5 2 (2.20%) BigQuery
5 2 (2.20%) Data Warehouse
5 2 (2.20%) MongoDB
5 2 (2.20%) Power BI
5 2 (2.20%) SQL Server
6 1 (1.10%) Apache Cassandra
6 1 (1.10%) Data Hub
6 1 (1.10%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 6 (6.59%) Git
2 4 (4.40%) GitLab
2 4 (4.40%) Jenkins
3 3 (3.30%) Cypress.io
3 3 (3.30%) JUnit
3 3 (3.30%) Mockito
4 2 (2.20%) CircleCI
4 2 (2.20%) Claude Code
4 2 (2.20%) Gradle
4 2 (2.20%) Liquibase
4 2 (2.20%) Mocha
4 2 (2.20%) webpack
5 1 (1.10%) Jaeger
5 1 (1.10%) JIRA
5 1 (1.10%) Maven
General
1 31 (34.07%) Finance
2 10 (10.99%) Banking
2 10 (10.99%) Social Skills
3 5 (5.49%) Manufacturing
4 4 (4.40%) Public Sector
5 3 (3.30%) Analytical Skills
5 3 (3.30%) Investment Banking
5 3 (3.30%) Retail
6 2 (2.20%) Advertising
6 2 (2.20%) Back Office
6 2 (2.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 2 (2.20%) Influencing Skills
6 2 (2.20%) Pharmaceutical
6 2 (2.20%) Presentation Skills
7 1 (1.10%) Aerospace
7 1 (1.10%) Financial Institution
7 1 (1.10%) Games
7 1 (1.10%) Legal
7 1 (1.10%) Retail Banking
7 1 (1.10%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 40 (43.96%) Software Engineer
2 17 (18.68%) Developer
3 13 (14.29%) Senior
4 10 (10.99%) Lead
5 8 (8.79%) Senior Software Engineer
6 7 (7.69%) Architect
6 7 (7.69%) Data Engineer
7 6 (6.59%) .NET Software Engineer
8 5 (5.49%) Full-Stack Engineer
8 5 (5.49%) Hardware Engineer
8 5 (5.49%) Integration Engineer
8 5 (5.49%) Java Engineer
8 5 (5.49%) Software Integration Engineer
8 5 (5.49%) Technical Architect
9 4 (4.40%) Senior Developer
9 4 (4.40%) Technical Leader
10 3 (3.30%) Java Developer
10 3 (3.30%) Junior
10 3 (3.30%) Python Developer
10 3 (3.30%) Senior Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (15.38%) React
1 14 (15.38%) Spring
2 13 (14.29%) REST
3 10 (10.99%) Kafka
3 10 (10.99%) Spring Boot
4 8 (8.79%) .NET
4 8 (8.79%) LangChain
5 7 (7.69%) Node.js
6 6 (6.59%) GraphQL
6 6 (6.59%) LangGraph
7 5 (5.49%) Playwright
8 4 (4.40%) AngularJS
8 4 (4.40%) React Native
9 3 (3.30%) DOM
9 3 (3.30%) HTML
9 3 (3.30%) Jest
9 3 (3.30%) OpenTelemetry
9 3 (3.30%) PyTorch
9 3 (3.30%) RESTful
9 3 (3.30%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 16 (17.58%) Cloud Native
2 14 (15.38%) Distributed Systems
3 10 (10.99%) AI Agents
4 7 (7.69%) Life Science
5 6 (6.59%) Product Ownership
6 3 (3.30%) Mobile App
7 2 (2.20%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 1 (1.10%) Clustering
8 1 (1.10%) Data Structures
8 1 (1.10%) Derivative
8 1 (1.10%) Device Driver
8 1 (1.10%) Enterprise Software
8 1 (1.10%) Genomics
8 1 (1.10%) Hedge funds
8 1 (1.10%) Media Streaming
8 1 (1.10%) NHS
8 1 (1.10%) Onboarding
8 1 (1.10%) Online Games
8 1 (1.10%) Robotics
8 1 (1.10%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 3 (3.30%) Linux
2 2 (2.20%) Embedded Linux
2 2 (2.20%) Windows
3 1 (1.10%) Android
3 1 (1.10%) Apple iOS
3 1 (1.10%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 35 (38.46%) CI/CD
2 30 (32.97%) AI
3 22 (24.18%) Agile
3 22 (24.18%) DevOps
4 19 (20.88%) Microservices
5 17 (18.68%) Full-Stack Development
6 16 (17.58%) Containerisation
6 16 (17.58%) Observability
7 14 (15.38%) Generative AI
8 13 (14.29%) Machine Learning
9 12 (13.19%) Data Engineering
9 12 (13.19%) Data Science
10 11 (12.09%) LLM
10 11 (12.09%) Test Automation
11 10 (10.99%) Infrastructure as Code
11 10 (10.99%) Platform Engineering
12 9 (9.89%) Problem-Solving
12 9 (9.89%) TDD
13 8 (8.79%) Event-Driven
14 7 (7.69%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 25 (27.47%) Java
2 23 (25.27%) SQL
3 21 (23.08%) Python
4 14 (15.38%) TypeScript
5 10 (10.99%) C#
6 6 (6.59%) JavaScript
7 4 (4.40%) Go
8 3 (3.30%) C++
8 3 (3.30%) Ruby
9 2 (2.20%) COBOL
10 1 (1.10%) Korn
10 1 (1.10%) Scala
Qualifications
1 15 (16.48%) SC Cleared
1 15 (16.48%) Security Cleared
2 7 (7.69%) Degree
3 3 (3.30%) Computer Science Degree
4 1 (1.10%) AWS Certification
4 1 (1.10%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
4 1 (1.10%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (3.30%) Data Quality
1 3 (3.30%) GDPR
2 2 (2.20%) EMIR
2 2 (2.20%) MiFID
3 1 (1.10%) Accessibility
3 1 (1.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (1.10%) NIST
3 1 (1.10%) WCAG
System Software
1 19 (20.88%) Docker
2 2 (2.20%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 16 (17.58%) Kubernetes
2 5 (5.49%) Terraform
3 2 (2.20%) Grafana
3 2 (2.20%) Prometheus
4 1 (1.10%) Argo
4 1 (1.10%) Istio
Vendors
1 9 (9.89%) Microsoft
2 4 (4.40%) Google
3 3 (3.30%) Oracle
4 2 (2.20%) IBM
5 1 (1.10%) Databricks
5 1 (1.10%) Dynatrace
5 1 (1.10%) MuleSoft
5 1 (1.10%) OpenAI
5 1 (1.10%) Pega
5 1 (1.10%) Salesforce
5 1 (1.10%) Splunk