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 28 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 40 52
Rank change year-on-year -10 +12 -8
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 79 90 92
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 4.19% 4.82% 3.78%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.71% 5.25% 4.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 65 47 51
10th Percentile £416 £442 £425
25th Percentile £513 £484 £531
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £613 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year +11.36% -8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £688 £613 £731
90th Percentile £788 £810 £813
Central London median daily rate £606 £550 £575
% change year-on-year +10.23% -4.35% -11.20%

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 1,677 1,713 2,179
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 88.97% 91.80% 89.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,175 1,043 1,557
10th Percentile £351 £363 £350
25th Percentile £425 £463 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £575 £570
Median % change year-on-year -7.83% +0.88% -4.20%
75th Percentile £675 £684 £688
90th Percentile £775 £788 £800
Central London median daily rate £540 £575 £563
% change year-on-year -6.09% +2.22% -3.02%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 9 13
10th Percentile £19.98 £13.45 £17.00
25th Percentile £20.66 £22.00 £18.93
Median hourly rate £31.00 £32.50 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -4.62% +18.18% -21.43%
75th Percentile £42.65 £43.75 £46.75
90th Percentile £49.83 £112.00 £69.05
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 28 January 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 3 (3.80%) Confluence
2 2 (2.53%) Apache Spark
3 1 (1.27%) Apache
3 1 (1.27%) Cloud Foundry
3 1 (1.27%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (1.27%) Smallworld
Business Applications
1 1 (1.27%) Dynamics CRM
1 1 (1.27%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 30 (37.97%) AWS
2 18 (22.78%) Azure
3 11 (13.92%) GCP
4 7 (8.86%) AWS Lambda
4 7 (8.86%) Serverless
5 6 (7.59%) Amazon S3
5 6 (7.59%) Power Platform
6 5 (6.33%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 4 (5.06%) GitHub
7 4 (5.06%) Google Gemini
8 3 (3.80%) Dynamics 365
8 3 (3.80%) Snowflake
9 2 (2.53%) Amazon ECS
9 2 (2.53%) Azure DevOps
9 2 (2.53%) Cloud Run
9 2 (2.53%) GitHub Actions
9 2 (2.53%) OpenShift
9 2 (2.53%) PaaS
9 2 (2.53%) Power Automate
9 2 (2.53%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.27%) DNS
1 1 (1.27%) Firewall
1 1 (1.27%) HTTP
1 1 (1.27%) MPLS
1 1 (1.27%) Software-Defined Networking
1 1 (1.27%) tcpdump
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (8.86%) Relational Database
2 4 (5.06%) MongoDB
3 3 (3.80%) Power BI
4 2 (2.53%) DynamoDB
4 2 (2.53%) Hadoop
4 2 (2.53%) NoSQL
4 2 (2.53%) PostgreSQL
5 1 (1.27%) Amazon Redshift
5 1 (1.27%) Apache Cassandra
5 1 (1.27%) Big Data
5 1 (1.27%) BigQuery
5 1 (1.27%) Data Lake
5 1 (1.27%) DB2
5 1 (1.27%) Delta Lake
5 1 (1.27%) MemSQL
5 1 (1.27%) Metadata
5 1 (1.27%) MySQL
5 1 (1.27%) Pinecone
5 1 (1.27%) Sybase IQ
Development Applications
1 8 (10.13%) GitLab
2 5 (6.33%) Jenkins
3 4 (5.06%) Git
4 3 (3.80%) JIRA
4 3 (3.80%) SonarQube
5 2 (2.53%) Cypress.io
5 2 (2.53%) Gradle
5 2 (2.53%) JUnit
5 2 (2.53%) Postman
5 2 (2.53%) TeamCity
6 1 (1.27%) Bitbucket
6 1 (1.27%) Cucumber
6 1 (1.27%) Hamcrest
6 1 (1.27%) Jaeger
6 1 (1.27%) Maven
6 1 (1.27%) MLflow
6 1 (1.27%) Mockito
6 1 (1.27%) MSTest
6 1 (1.27%) Serenity BDD
6 1 (1.27%) SpecFlow
General
1 19 (24.05%) Social Skills
2 18 (22.78%) Finance
3 16 (20.25%) Banking
4 5 (6.33%) Analytical Skills
4 5 (6.33%) Front Office
4 5 (6.33%) Manufacturing
4 5 (6.33%) Retail Banking
5 4 (5.06%) Investment Banking
5 4 (5.06%) Pharmaceutical
6 2 (2.53%) Financial Institution
7 1 (1.27%) Back Office
7 1 (1.27%) Games
7 1 (1.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (1.27%) Influencing Skills
7 1 (1.27%) Legal
7 1 (1.27%) Public Sector
7 1 (1.27%) Retail
Job Titles
1 24 (30.38%) Software Engineer
2 20 (25.32%) Senior
3 13 (16.46%) Lead
4 12 (15.19%) Developer
5 8 (10.13%) Python Engineer
6 6 (7.59%) Data Scientist
6 6 (7.59%) Integration Engineer
7 5 (6.33%) .NET Software Engineer
7 5 (6.33%) Architect
7 5 (6.33%) Hardware Engineer
7 5 (6.33%) Python Developer
7 5 (6.33%) Senior Developer
7 5 (6.33%) Software Integration Engineer
7 5 (6.33%) Technical Leader
8 4 (5.06%) Senior Software Engineer
9 3 (3.80%) AWS Engineer
9 3 (3.80%) DevOps Engineer
9 3 (3.80%) Java Developer
9 3 (3.80%) Java Engineer
9 3 (3.80%) Senior Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (17.72%) .NET
2 11 (13.92%) React
3 9 (11.39%) Node.js
3 9 (11.39%) RESTful
4 7 (8.86%) LangChain
4 7 (8.86%) LangGraph
5 6 (7.59%) AngularJS
6 5 (6.33%) CSS
6 5 (6.33%) HTML
7 4 (5.06%) FastAPI
8 3 (3.80%) OpenTelemetry
8 3 (3.80%) Playwright
8 3 (3.80%) REST
8 3 (3.80%) Spring
8 3 (3.80%) XML
9 2 (2.53%) FIX Protocol
9 2 (2.53%) HTML5
9 2 (2.53%) JSON
9 2 (2.53%) Kafka
9 2 (2.53%) NumPy
Miscellaneous
1 14 (17.72%) Cloud Native
2 8 (10.13%) Life Science
3 7 (8.86%) Virtual Team
4 6 (7.59%) AI Agents
4 6 (7.59%) Product Ownership
5 4 (5.06%) Legacy Systems
6 2 (2.53%) Algorithms
6 2 (2.53%) Data Structures
6 2 (2.53%) Distributed Systems
6 2 (2.53%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 2 (2.53%) Linux Command Line
6 2 (2.53%) Onboarding
6 2 (2.53%) Self-Motivation
7 1 (1.27%) Derivative
7 1 (1.27%) Device Driver
7 1 (1.27%) Equities
7 1 (1.27%) Media Streaming
7 1 (1.27%) Online Games
7 1 (1.27%) Robotics
7 1 (1.27%) VWAP
Operating Systems
1 4 (5.06%) Windows
2 3 (3.80%) Linux
3 2 (2.53%) Windows Server
4 1 (1.27%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 23 (29.11%) CI/CD
2 20 (25.32%) AI
3 16 (20.25%) DevOps
3 16 (20.25%) Problem-Solving
3 16 (20.25%) Test Automation
4 14 (17.72%) Data Science
5 13 (16.46%) Agile
5 13 (16.46%) Generative AI
5 13 (16.46%) Microservices
6 11 (13.92%) Code Quality
6 11 (13.92%) Design Patterns
6 11 (13.92%) Full-Stack Development
7 10 (12.66%) Machine Learning
8 9 (11.39%) Containerisation
9 8 (10.13%) Infrastructure as Code
10 7 (8.86%) Technical Leadership
10 7 (8.86%) Unit Testing
11 6 (7.59%) Computer Science
11 6 (7.59%) Decision-Making
11 6 (7.59%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 34 (43.04%) Python
2 22 (27.85%) Java
3 13 (16.46%) SQL
4 7 (8.86%) JavaScript
5 5 (6.33%) C#
6 4 (5.06%) TypeScript
7 3 (3.80%) C++
7 3 (3.80%) Go
8 2 (2.53%) COBOL
8 2 (2.53%) PowerShell
8 2 (2.53%) Rust
9 1 (1.27%) R
9 1 (1.27%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 12 (15.19%) Security Cleared
2 11 (13.92%) SC Cleared
3 10 (12.66%) Degree
4 2 (2.53%) AWS Certification
4 2 (2.53%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
4 2 (2.53%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (1.27%) DBS Check
5 1 (1.27%) DV Cleared
5 1 (1.27%) Master's Degree
5 1 (1.27%) MBA
5 1 (1.27%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (2.53%) Data Quality
2 1 (1.27%) QA
System Software
1 17 (21.52%) Docker
2 1 (1.27%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 15 (18.99%) Kubernetes
2 7 (8.86%) Terraform
3 4 (5.06%) Ansible
4 2 (2.53%) Grafana
5 1 (1.27%) Argo
5 1 (1.27%) Istio
5 1 (1.27%) Microsoft Intune
5 1 (1.27%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 8 (10.13%) Microsoft
2 7 (8.86%) Google
3 4 (5.06%) Oracle
4 3 (3.80%) Databricks
5 2 (2.53%) DocuSign
5 2 (2.53%) Splunk
6 1 (1.27%) Alteryx
6 1 (1.27%) ForgeRock
6 1 (1.27%) Foundry
6 1 (1.27%) Ping Identity