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

6 months to
18 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 46 49 53
Rank change year-on-year +3 +4 -13
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 88 82 91
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 4.88% 3.98% 3.56%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.37% 4.32% 3.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 65 36 51
10th Percentile £400 £439 £463
25th Percentile £513 £463 £556
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £530 £650
Median % change year-on-year +17.92% -18.46% -
75th Percentile £738 £613 £775
90th Percentile £788 £775 £838
Central London median daily rate £625 £530 £650
% change year-on-year +17.92% -18.46% +4.00%
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 and 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 1,638 1,897 2,284
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 90.85% 92.04% 89.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,161 1,158 1,637
10th Percentile £340 £363 £363
25th Percentile £421 £465 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% - -0.86%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £688
90th Percentile £756 £788 £804
Central London median daily rate £550 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -4.35% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 15 11
10th Percentile £19.98 £15.80 £17.00
25th Percentile £24.36 £22.00 £17.97
Median hourly rate £31.00 £42.50 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -27.06% +70.00% -41.86%
75th Percentile £43.33 £102.25 £42.38
90th Percentile £55.25 £127.30 £73.75
Central London median hourly rate £26.57 £35.00 £25.50
% change year-on-year -24.09% +37.25% -37.04%

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 18 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 (3.41%) Confluence
2 2 (2.27%) Apache Spark
3 1 (1.14%) Apache
3 1 (1.14%) Cloud Foundry
3 1 (1.14%) JBoss
3 1 (1.14%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (1.14%) Oracle Workflow
3 1 (1.14%) Smallworld
Business Applications
1 2 (2.27%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 1 (1.14%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (1.14%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 30 (34.09%) AWS
2 19 (21.59%) Azure
3 12 (13.64%) GCP
4 7 (7.95%) AWS Lambda
4 7 (7.95%) Serverless
5 6 (6.82%) Amazon S3
5 6 (6.82%) Power Platform
6 5 (5.68%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 4 (4.55%) GitHub
7 4 (4.55%) Google Gemini
8 3 (3.41%) Dynamics 365
8 3 (3.41%) Snowflake
9 2 (2.27%) Amazon ECS
9 2 (2.27%) Azure DevOps
9 2 (2.27%) Cloud Run
9 2 (2.27%) GitHub Actions
9 2 (2.27%) OpenShift
9 2 (2.27%) PaaS
9 2 (2.27%) Power Automate
9 2 (2.27%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.14%) DNS
1 1 (1.14%) Firewall
1 1 (1.14%) HTTP
1 1 (1.14%) MPLS
1 1 (1.14%) Software-Defined Networking
1 1 (1.14%) tcpdump
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (9.09%) Relational Database
2 5 (5.68%) MongoDB
3 4 (4.55%) Hadoop
3 4 (4.55%) NoSQL
4 3 (3.41%) DB2
4 3 (3.41%) MemSQL
4 3 (3.41%) Power BI
4 3 (3.41%) Sybase IQ
5 2 (2.27%) DynamoDB
5 2 (2.27%) PostgreSQL
6 1 (1.14%) Amazon Redshift
6 1 (1.14%) Apache Cassandra
6 1 (1.14%) Big Data
6 1 (1.14%) BigQuery
6 1 (1.14%) Data Lake
6 1 (1.14%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (1.14%) Delta Lake
6 1 (1.14%) KDB
6 1 (1.14%) MySQL
6 1 (1.14%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 7 (7.95%) GitLab
2 5 (5.68%) Jenkins
3 4 (4.55%) Git
3 4 (4.55%) Gradle
4 3 (3.41%) JIRA
4 3 (3.41%) SonarQube
5 2 (2.27%) Cypress.io
5 2 (2.27%) JUnit
5 2 (2.27%) Postman
5 2 (2.27%) TeamCity
6 1 (1.14%) Bitbucket
6 1 (1.14%) Cucumber
6 1 (1.14%) Hamcrest
6 1 (1.14%) Jaeger
6 1 (1.14%) MLflow
6 1 (1.14%) Mockito
6 1 (1.14%) MSTest
6 1 (1.14%) Selenium
6 1 (1.14%) Serenity BDD
6 1 (1.14%) SpecFlow
General
1 27 (30.68%) Social Skills
2 26 (29.55%) Finance
3 15 (17.05%) Banking
4 11 (12.50%) Analytical Skills
5 8 (9.09%) Front Office
6 5 (5.68%) Retail Banking
7 4 (4.55%) Investment Banking
7 4 (4.55%) Pharmaceutical
8 3 (3.41%) Financial Institution
8 3 (3.41%) Games
8 3 (3.41%) Manufacturing
9 2 (2.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 2 (2.27%) Public Sector
10 1 (1.14%) Back Office
10 1 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (1.14%) Legal
10 1 (1.14%) Retail
Job Titles
1 24 (27.27%) Software Engineer
2 20 (22.73%) Senior
3 18 (20.45%) Developer
4 12 (13.64%) Lead
5 10 (11.36%) Python Engineer
6 7 (7.95%) Java Developer
7 6 (6.82%) Architect
8 5 (5.68%) Integration Engineer
8 5 (5.68%) Python Developer
8 5 (5.68%) Senior Developer
8 5 (5.68%) Senior Software Engineer
9 4 (4.55%) Data Scientist
10 3 (3.41%) .NET Software Engineer
10 3 (3.41%) Backend Developer
10 3 (3.41%) C++ Software Engineer
10 3 (3.41%) DevOps Engineer
10 3 (3.41%) Hardware Engineer
10 3 (3.41%) Python Software Engineer
10 3 (3.41%) Senior Python Developer
10 3 (3.41%) Software Integration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (18.18%) .NET
2 10 (11.36%) React
3 9 (10.23%) Node.js
3 9 (10.23%) RESTful
4 6 (6.82%) AngularJS
5 4 (4.55%) CSS
5 4 (4.55%) FastAPI
5 4 (4.55%) HTML
5 4 (4.55%) Kafka
5 4 (4.55%) Spring
6 3 (3.41%) FIX Protocol
6 3 (3.41%) LangChain
6 3 (3.41%) LangGraph
6 3 (3.41%) OpenTelemetry
7 2 (2.27%) HTML5
7 2 (2.27%) JSON
7 2 (2.27%) NumPy
7 2 (2.27%) REST
7 2 (2.27%) Unity (Game Engine)
7 2 (2.27%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 14 (15.91%) Cloud Native
2 8 (9.09%) Virtual Team
3 6 (6.82%) Distributed Systems
3 6 (6.82%) Life Science
4 5 (5.68%) Algorithms
4 5 (5.68%) Data Structures
5 4 (4.55%) Enterprise Software
5 4 (4.55%) Hedge funds
5 4 (4.55%) Legacy Systems
6 3 (3.41%) AI Agents
6 3 (3.41%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 2 (2.27%) 3D Graphics
7 2 (2.27%) Derivative
7 2 (2.27%) Distributed Computing
7 2 (2.27%) Greenfield Project
7 2 (2.27%) Linux Command Line
7 2 (2.27%) Onboarding
7 2 (2.27%) Product Ownership
7 2 (2.27%) Self-Motivation
7 2 (2.27%) Virtual Reality
Operating Systems
1 9 (10.23%) Linux
2 6 (6.82%) Windows
3 3 (3.41%) Unix
4 2 (2.27%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 29 (32.95%) CI/CD
2 19 (21.59%) Agile
2 19 (21.59%) DevOps
3 17 (19.32%) Problem-Solving
4 16 (18.18%) Code Quality
4 16 (18.18%) Test Automation
5 15 (17.05%) AI
6 13 (14.77%) Design Patterns
7 12 (13.64%) Microservices
8 11 (12.50%) Machine Learning
9 10 (11.36%) Containerisation
9 10 (11.36%) Event-Driven
9 10 (11.36%) Mentoring
9 10 (11.36%) SDLC
10 9 (10.23%) Computer Science
10 9 (10.23%) Data Science
11 8 (9.09%) Full-Stack Development
11 8 (9.09%) Generative AI
11 8 (9.09%) Infrastructure as Code
12 7 (7.95%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 42 (47.73%) Python
2 27 (30.68%) Java
3 18 (20.45%) SQL
4 14 (15.91%) C#
5 9 (10.23%) C++
6 7 (7.95%) JavaScript
7 5 (5.68%) TypeScript
8 4 (4.55%) Go
9 2 (2.27%) PHP
9 2 (2.27%) PowerShell
9 2 (2.27%) R
9 2 (2.27%) Rust
10 1 (1.14%) Fortran
10 1 (1.14%) MATLAB
10 1 (1.14%) PL/SQL
10 1 (1.14%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 14 (15.91%) Degree
2 9 (10.23%) Security Cleared
3 8 (9.09%) SC Cleared
4 4 (4.55%) Computer Science Degree
5 2 (2.27%) AWS Certification
5 2 (2.27%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 2 (2.27%) Postgraduate
6 1 (1.14%) BPSS Clearance
6 1 (1.14%) DBS Check
6 1 (1.14%) DV Cleared
6 1 (1.14%) Master's Degree
6 1 (1.14%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (2.27%) Data Quality
2 1 (1.14%) GDPR
2 1 (1.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 1 (1.14%) QA
2 1 (1.14%) SOC 2
System Software
1 17 (19.32%) Docker
2 1 (1.14%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 16 (18.18%) Kubernetes
2 7 (7.95%) Terraform
3 4 (4.55%) Ansible
4 2 (2.27%) Grafana
5 1 (1.14%) Argo
5 1 (1.14%) Istio
5 1 (1.14%) Microsoft Intune
5 1 (1.14%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 10 (11.36%) Microsoft
2 7 (7.95%) Google
3 6 (6.82%) Oracle
4 3 (3.41%) Databricks
5 2 (2.27%) DevExpress
5 2 (2.27%) DocuSign
5 2 (2.27%) Splunk
6 1 (1.14%) Alteryx
6 1 (1.14%) ForgeRock
6 1 (1.14%) Foundry
6 1 (1.14%) ION Trading
6 1 (1.14%) Ping Identity
6 1 (1.14%) Temenos