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 19 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 53 39 47
Rank change year-on-year -14 +8 -4
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 87 100 90
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 4.17% 5.63% 3.83%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.73% 6.13% 4.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 69 54 43
10th Percentile £416 £463 £430
25th Percentile £501 £516 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £575 £598
Median % change year-on-year - -3.80% -8.05%
75th Percentile £688 £707 £750
90th Percentile £788 £825 £838
Central London median daily rate £575 £575 £575
% change year-on-year - - -11.54%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £55.81 - -
Median hourly rate £57.77 - -
75th Percentile £59.72 - -
90th Percentile - - -
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 1,839 1,630 2,108
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 88.24% 91.83% 89.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,270 1,038 1,503
10th Percentile £356 £375 £350
25th Percentile £438 £463 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £570
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% +0.88% -5.00%
75th Percentile £669 £688 £688
90th Percentile £775 £775 £800
Central London median daily rate £550 £575 £550
% change year-on-year -4.35% +4.55% -6.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 10 12
10th Percentile £18.75 £22.00 £19.03
25th Percentile £19.11 £26.25 £20.15
Median hourly rate £27.75 £33.58 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -17.35% +3.31% -7.14%
75th Percentile £46.29 £47.50 £43.07
90th Percentile £59.13 £112.00 £49.90
Central London median hourly rate £26.11 £31.75 £27.81
% change year-on-year -17.76% +14.17% -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 19 March 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 2 (2.30%) Apache Spark
2 1 (1.15%) Apache
2 1 (1.15%) Cloud Foundry
2 1 (1.15%) SharePoint
2 1 (1.15%) Smallworld
Applications
1 1 (1.15%) Maya
Business Applications
1 2 (2.30%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (1.15%) Aladdin
2 1 (1.15%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 31 (35.63%) AWS
2 21 (24.14%) Azure
3 13 (14.94%) GitHub
4 11 (12.64%) GCP
5 5 (5.75%) Azure DevOps
5 5 (5.75%) Google Gemini
6 4 (4.60%) Power Platform
6 4 (4.60%) Serverless
7 3 (3.45%) Anthropic Claude
7 3 (3.45%) AWS Lambda
7 3 (3.45%) GitHub Actions
7 3 (3.45%) GitHub Copilot
8 2 (2.30%) Amazon S3
8 2 (2.30%) Amazon SageMaker
8 2 (2.30%) Azure AKS
8 2 (2.30%) Azure Cosmos DB
8 2 (2.30%) Cloud Run
8 2 (2.30%) dbt
8 2 (2.30%) Entra ID
8 2 (2.30%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.15%) HTTP
1 1 (1.15%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (10.34%) Relational Database
2 4 (4.60%) MongoDB
2 4 (4.60%) NoSQL
2 4 (4.60%) PostgreSQL
3 2 (2.30%) Apache Cassandra
3 2 (2.30%) BigQuery
3 2 (2.30%) Data Warehouse
3 2 (2.30%) Power BI
4 1 (1.15%) Amazon Redshift
4 1 (1.15%) Big Data
4 1 (1.15%) Data Hub
4 1 (1.15%) Data Lake
4 1 (1.15%) Delta Lake
4 1 (1.15%) Elasticsearch
4 1 (1.15%) Hadoop
4 1 (1.15%) Metadata
4 1 (1.15%) MySQL
4 1 (1.15%) Pinecone
4 1 (1.15%) SQL Server
4 1 (1.15%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 8 (9.20%) Git
1 8 (9.20%) GitLab
2 4 (4.60%) Jenkins
3 3 (3.45%) Cypress.io
4 2 (2.30%) CircleCI
4 2 (2.30%) Claude Code
4 2 (2.30%) Gradle
4 2 (2.30%) JUnit
4 2 (2.30%) Mocha
4 2 (2.30%) Mockito
4 2 (2.30%) TeamCity
4 2 (2.30%) webpack
5 1 (1.15%) Bitbucket
5 1 (1.15%) Jaeger
5 1 (1.15%) Maven
5 1 (1.15%) MSTest
5 1 (1.15%) Postman
5 1 (1.15%) Vite
General
1 26 (29.89%) Finance
2 17 (19.54%) Social Skills
3 13 (14.94%) Banking
4 7 (8.05%) Analytical Skills
5 5 (5.75%) Manufacturing
6 4 (4.60%) Public Sector
7 3 (3.45%) Pharmaceutical
8 2 (2.30%) Advertising
8 2 (2.30%) Front Office
8 2 (2.30%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (2.30%) Investment Banking
8 2 (2.30%) Retail Banking
9 1 (1.15%) Aerospace
9 1 (1.15%) Back Office
9 1 (1.15%) Financial Institution
9 1 (1.15%) Games
9 1 (1.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (1.15%) Presentation Skills
9 1 (1.15%) Retail
Job Titles
1 31 (35.63%) Software Engineer
2 22 (25.29%) Senior
3 17 (19.54%) Developer
4 11 (12.64%) Lead
5 8 (9.20%) Architect
5 8 (9.20%) Python Engineer
6 7 (8.05%) Senior Developer
7 6 (6.90%) .NET Software Engineer
7 6 (6.90%) Java Engineer
7 6 (6.90%) Senior Software Engineer
8 5 (5.75%) Data Scientist
8 5 (5.75%) Hardware Engineer
8 5 (5.75%) Integration Engineer
8 5 (5.75%) Software Integration Engineer
8 5 (5.75%) Technical Architect
8 5 (5.75%) Technical Leader
9 4 (4.60%) DevOps Engineer
9 4 (4.60%) Python Developer
10 3 (3.45%) AWS Engineer
10 3 (3.45%) Senior Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (16.09%) React
2 11 (12.64%) .NET
3 9 (10.34%) Node.js
3 9 (10.34%) REST
4 8 (9.20%) RESTful
5 7 (8.05%) AngularJS
5 7 (8.05%) Spring
6 6 (6.90%) Kafka
6 6 (6.90%) LangChain
6 6 (6.90%) LangGraph
7 5 (5.75%) HTML
7 5 (5.75%) Playwright
8 4 (4.60%) CSS
8 4 (4.60%) GraphQL
8 4 (4.60%) OpenTelemetry
9 3 (3.45%) DOM
9 3 (3.45%) FastAPI
9 3 (3.45%) Jest
9 3 (3.45%) React Native
9 3 (3.45%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 17 (19.54%) Cloud Native
2 10 (11.49%) Distributed Systems
3 8 (9.20%) Life Science
4 5 (5.75%) AI Agents
4 5 (5.75%) Product Ownership
4 5 (5.75%) Virtual Team
5 4 (4.60%) Legacy Systems
6 3 (3.45%) Mobile App
6 3 (3.45%) Onboarding
7 1 (1.15%) Clustering
7 1 (1.15%) Data Structures
7 1 (1.15%) Derivative
7 1 (1.15%) Enterprise Software
7 1 (1.15%) Equities
7 1 (1.15%) Hedge funds
7 1 (1.15%) Media Streaming
7 1 (1.15%) Online Games
7 1 (1.15%) Robotics
7 1 (1.15%) TWAP
7 1 (1.15%) VWAP
Operating Systems
1 2 (2.30%) Windows
2 1 (1.15%) Linux
2 1 (1.15%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 35 (40.23%) CI/CD
2 24 (27.59%) AI
3 22 (25.29%) DevOps
4 20 (22.99%) Agile
4 20 (22.99%) Microservices
4 20 (22.99%) Test Automation
5 16 (18.39%) Full-Stack Development
6 15 (17.24%) Problem-Solving
7 13 (14.94%) Generative AI
7 13 (14.94%) Observability
8 12 (13.79%) Code Quality
8 12 (13.79%) Data Science
9 11 (12.64%) Containerisation
9 11 (12.64%) Machine Learning
10 10 (11.49%) Design Patterns
10 10 (11.49%) Infrastructure as Code
11 9 (10.34%) TDD
12 8 (9.20%) Data Engineering
13 7 (8.05%) SDLC
13 7 (8.05%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 30 (34.48%) Python
2 25 (28.74%) Java
3 19 (21.84%) SQL
4 11 (12.64%) TypeScript
5 9 (10.34%) C#
6 8 (9.20%) JavaScript
7 3 (3.45%) C++
7 3 (3.45%) Ruby
8 2 (2.30%) COBOL
8 2 (2.30%) Go
8 2 (2.30%) Rust
9 1 (1.15%) PowerShell
9 1 (1.15%) R
Qualifications
1 16 (18.39%) Security Cleared
2 15 (17.24%) SC Cleared
3 9 (10.34%) Degree
4 3 (3.45%) Computer Science Degree
5 2 (2.30%) AWS Certification
5 2 (2.30%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 1 (1.15%) DBS Check
6 1 (1.15%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (2.30%) Data Quality
2 1 (1.15%) Accessibility
2 1 (1.15%) GDPR
2 1 (1.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 1 (1.15%) NIST
2 1 (1.15%) WCAG
System Software
1 19 (21.84%) Docker
2 1 (1.15%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 18 (20.69%) Kubernetes
2 5 (5.75%) Terraform
3 3 (3.45%) Ansible
3 3 (3.45%) Grafana
4 2 (2.30%) Prometheus
5 1 (1.15%) Argo
5 1 (1.15%) Istio
Vendors
1 9 (10.34%) Microsoft
2 7 (8.05%) Google
3 6 (6.90%) Oracle
4 2 (2.30%) Databricks
5 1 (1.15%) Dynatrace
5 1 (1.15%) IBM
5 1 (1.15%) Splunk