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 9 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 46 62
Rank change year-on-year -2 +16 -23
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 106 86 68
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 4.64% 4.81% 3.29%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.24% 5.11% 3.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 74 54 45
10th Percentile £454 £413 £482
25th Percentile £513 £563 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £656 £588
Median % change year-on-year -8.57% +11.70% -9.62%
75th Percentile £737 £738 £738
90th Percentile £850 £838 £890
Central London median daily rate £575 £650 £581
% change year-on-year -11.54% +11.83% -10.58%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 1 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £65.00 £26.25 -
Median hourly rate £70.00 £27.50 -
Median % change year-on-year +154.55% - -
75th Percentile £75.00 £28.75 -
90th Percentile - - -
Central London median hourly rate £70.00 £27.50 -
% change year-on-year +154.55% - -

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 2,021 1,682 1,904
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 88.41% 94.12% 92.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,392 1,108 1,233
10th Percentile £372 £325 £386
25th Percentile £456 £424 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £688
90th Percentile £775 £775 £788
Central London median daily rate £550 £550 £575
% change year-on-year - -4.35% -3.77%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 22 16
10th Percentile - £17.35 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.60 £23.98 £19.79
Median hourly rate £21.00 £28.33 £26.63
Median % change year-on-year -25.86% +6.38% -3.18%
75th Percentile £32.05 £53.50 £82.19
90th Percentile £50.59 £63.75 £137.50
Central London median hourly rate £25.07 £29.07 £27.00
% change year-on-year -13.78% +7.67% -1.82%

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 9 September 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 6 (5.66%) Apache Airflow
2 5 (4.72%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.94%) Apache
3 1 (0.94%) Camunda
3 1 (0.94%) Ethereum
3 1 (0.94%) Hyperledger
3 1 (0.94%) Jupyter
3 1 (0.94%) SharePoint
Applications
1 2 (1.89%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 5 (4.72%) Oracle EBS
2 2 (1.89%) Orchestrade
3 1 (0.94%) Distributed Ledger
3 1 (0.94%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.94%) R3 Corda
3 1 (0.94%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 34 (32.08%) Azure
2 33 (31.13%) AWS
3 18 (16.98%) GCP
3 18 (16.98%) GitHub
4 8 (7.55%) Snowflake
5 7 (6.60%) Azure DevOps
6 6 (5.66%) Anthropic Claude
6 6 (5.66%) dbt
7 5 (4.72%) Azure Data Factory
7 5 (4.72%) GitHub Copilot
7 5 (4.72%) PaaS
7 5 (4.72%) Power Platform
8 4 (3.77%) Serverless
9 3 (2.83%) Amazon S3
9 3 (2.83%) Azure AI
9 3 (2.83%) Azure Databricks
9 3 (2.83%) GitHub Actions
10 2 (1.89%) AWS Lambda
10 2 (1.89%) Azure AKS
11 1 (0.94%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.94%) Asterisk PBX
1 1 (0.94%) RTCP
1 1 (0.94%) RTP
1 1 (0.94%) VoIP
1 1 (0.94%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (5.66%) SQL Server
2 5 (4.72%) NoSQL
2 5 (4.72%) Relational Database
3 4 (3.77%) Data Warehouse
3 4 (3.77%) Pinecone
3 4 (3.77%) PostgreSQL
4 3 (2.83%) ClickHouse
4 3 (2.83%) Milvus
4 3 (2.83%) Power BI
4 3 (2.83%) Weaviate
5 2 (1.89%) Chroma
5 2 (1.89%) MongoDB
6 1 (0.94%) Amazon Athena
6 1 (0.94%) Amazon Aurora
6 1 (0.94%) Amazon RDS
6 1 (0.94%) Data Lake
6 1 (0.94%) Db2
6 1 (0.94%) Delta Lake
6 1 (0.94%) DynamoDB
6 1 (0.94%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 15 (14.15%) Git
2 3 (2.83%) Gradle
2 3 (2.83%) Jenkins
2 3 (2.83%) JUnit
3 2 (1.89%) CircleCI
3 2 (1.89%) Claude Code
3 2 (1.89%) Cypress.io
3 2 (1.89%) Liquibase
3 2 (1.89%) Mockito
4 1 (0.94%) CocoaPods
4 1 (0.94%) Cucumber
4 1 (0.94%) GitLab
4 1 (0.94%) JIRA
4 1 (0.94%) MLflow
4 1 (0.94%) Mocha
4 1 (0.94%) REST Assured
4 1 (0.94%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
4 1 (0.94%) webpack
4 1 (0.94%) XCTest
4 1 (0.94%) XCUITest
General
1 38 (35.85%) Finance
2 33 (31.13%) Social Skills
3 14 (13.21%) Banking
4 13 (12.26%) Analytical Skills
5 11 (10.38%) Front Office
6 7 (6.60%) Influencing Skills
7 6 (5.66%) Investment Banking
7 6 (5.66%) Public Sector
8 4 (3.77%) Back Office
8 4 (3.77%) Legal
9 3 (2.83%) Pharmaceutical
9 3 (2.83%) Retail
10 2 (1.89%) Advertising
10 2 (1.89%) Local Government
10 2 (1.89%) Telecoms
11 1 (0.94%) Corporate Banking
11 1 (0.94%) Financial Institution
11 1 (0.94%) Military
11 1 (0.94%) Publishing
11 1 (0.94%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 25 (23.58%) Software Engineer
2 24 (22.64%) Developer
3 22 (20.75%) Senior
4 12 (11.32%) Data Engineer
5 9 (8.49%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
5 9 (8.49%) C# Developer
5 9 (8.49%) Senior Developer
6 7 (6.60%) Architect
6 7 (6.60%) Senior C# Developer
7 5 (4.72%) Engineering Specialist
7 5 (4.72%) Technical Architect
8 4 (3.77%) Azure Engineer
8 4 (3.77%) Java Developer
8 4 (3.77%) Lead
8 4 (3.77%) Platform Engineer
8 4 (3.77%) Python Engineer
8 4 (3.77%) Senior Data Engineer
8 4 (3.77%) Senior Software Engineer
9 3 (2.83%) DevOps Engineer
9 3 (2.83%) Software Asset Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (14.15%) .NET
2 13 (12.26%) React
2 13 (12.26%) Terraform
3 12 (11.32%) Spring
3 12 (11.32%) Spring Boot
4 10 (9.43%) Kafka
5 8 (7.55%) REST
6 6 (5.66%) LangChain
6 6 (5.66%) RESTful
7 5 (4.72%) AngularJS
7 5 (4.72%) Web Services
8 4 (3.77%) FastAPI
8 4 (3.77%) LangGraph
8 4 (3.77%) LlamaIndex
8 4 (3.77%) Node.js
8 4 (3.77%) Playwright
9 3 (2.83%) CrewAI
9 3 (2.83%) GraphQL
9 3 (2.83%) PyTorch
9 3 (2.83%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 28 (26.42%) Cloud Native
2 16 (15.09%) Distributed Systems
3 8 (7.55%) AI Agents
3 8 (7.55%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 5 (4.72%) Enterprise Software
4 5 (4.72%) Fixed Income
4 5 (4.72%) Product Ownership
5 4 (3.77%) Derivative
6 3 (2.83%) Distributed Computing
6 3 (2.83%) Life Science
6 3 (2.83%) Self-Motivation
7 2 (1.89%) Distributed Applications
7 2 (1.89%) Distributed Architecture
7 2 (1.89%) Equities
7 2 (1.89%) Genomics
7 2 (1.89%) Onboarding
8 1 (0.94%) Autonomous Agent
8 1 (0.94%) Freedom of Information
8 1 (0.94%) Grid Computing
8 1 (0.94%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 4 (3.77%) Linux
2 3 (2.83%) Apple iOS
3 2 (1.89%) Android
3 2 (1.89%) Embedded Linux
3 2 (1.89%) Unix
4 1 (0.94%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 56 (52.83%) CI/CD
2 41 (38.68%) AI
3 32 (30.19%) DevOps
4 29 (27.36%) Agile
5 23 (21.70%) Test Automation
6 22 (20.75%) Containerisation
7 21 (19.81%) Machine Learning
7 21 (19.81%) Microservices
7 21 (19.81%) Observability
8 20 (18.87%) Infrastructure as Code
9 18 (16.98%) LLM
10 17 (16.04%) Platform Engineering
11 16 (15.09%) Data Engineering
12 15 (14.15%) Analytics
12 15 (14.15%) Generative AI
13 13 (12.26%) Continuous Improvement
13 13 (12.26%) Event-Driven
13 13 (12.26%) Problem-Solving
13 13 (12.26%) SDLC
13 13 (12.26%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 43 (40.57%) Python
2 31 (29.25%) SQL
3 27 (25.47%) Java
4 23 (21.70%) C#
5 16 (15.09%) TypeScript
6 7 (6.60%) JavaScript
7 5 (4.72%) Ruby
8 4 (3.77%) C++
8 4 (3.77%) Go
8 4 (3.77%) Korn
8 4 (3.77%) Scala
9 3 (2.83%) Bicep
9 3 (2.83%) Kotlin
10 2 (1.89%) PowerShell
11 1 (0.94%) Bash
11 1 (0.94%) DAML
11 1 (0.94%) Rust
11 1 (0.94%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.94%) Swift
11 1 (0.94%) VBA
Qualifications
1 17 (16.04%) Security Cleared
2 15 (14.15%) SC Cleared
3 5 (4.72%) Degree
4 2 (1.89%) DV Cleared
5 1 (0.94%) AWS Certification
5 1 (0.94%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 1 (0.94%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (0.94%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (7.55%) Data Quality
2 5 (4.72%) GDPR
3 2 (1.89%) Accessibility
3 2 (1.89%) EMIR
3 2 (1.89%) MiFID
3 2 (1.89%) QA
System Software
1 22 (20.75%) Docker
2 1 (0.94%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 19 (17.92%) Kubernetes
2 2 (1.89%) Grafana
3 1 (0.94%) Kubeflow
3 1 (0.94%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 8 (7.55%) Oracle
2 7 (6.60%) Google
2 7 (6.60%) Microsoft
3 6 (5.66%) Databricks
4 4 (3.77%) IBM
5 2 (1.89%) Foundry
5 2 (1.89%) OpenAI
6 1 (0.94%) Apple
6 1 (0.94%) Metaswitch
6 1 (0.94%) MuleSoft
6 1 (0.94%) Pega
6 1 (0.94%) Remedy
6 1 (0.94%) Salesforce
6 1 (0.94%) Sybase