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

6 months to
4 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 35 48
Rank change year-on-year -12 +13 +2
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 83 103 91
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 4.13% 5.73% 3.89%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.65% 6.25% 4.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 65 54 46
10th Percentile £406 £433 £438
25th Percentile £513 £488 £541
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £559 £613
Median % change year-on-year +2.95% -8.82% -5.77%
75th Percentile £688 £689 £750
90th Percentile £788 £825 £838
Central London median daily rate £575 £559 £575
% change year-on-year +2.95% -2.87% -10.85%
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 1,785 1,649 2,096
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 88.76% 91.71% 89.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,229 1,025 1,493
10th Percentile £356 £363 £350
25th Percentile £433 £463 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £543 £575 £568
Median % change year-on-year -5.65% +1.32% -5.42%
75th Percentile £669 £684 £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 21 10 13
10th Percentile £18.75 £22.00 £17.00
25th Percentile £20.18 £26.25 £18.93
Median hourly rate £28.00 £35.50 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.13% +42.00% -28.57%
75th Percentile £47.50 £47.50 £41.84
90th Percentile £59.72 £112.00 £49.55
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 4 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 (2.41%) Apache Spark
2 1 (1.20%) Apache
2 1 (1.20%) Cloud Foundry
2 1 (1.20%) Confluence
2 1 (1.20%) SharePoint
2 1 (1.20%) Smallworld
Applications
1 1 (1.20%) Maya
Business Applications
1 1 (1.20%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 32 (38.55%) AWS
2 17 (20.48%) Azure
3 11 (13.25%) GCP
4 9 (10.84%) GitHub
5 4 (4.82%) AWS Lambda
5 4 (4.82%) Google Gemini
5 4 (4.82%) Power Platform
5 4 (4.82%) Serverless
6 3 (3.61%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 3 (3.61%) Amazon S3
6 3 (3.61%) GitHub Actions
7 2 (2.41%) Amazon SageMaker
7 2 (2.41%) Azure DevOps
7 2 (2.41%) Cloud Run
7 2 (2.41%) Entra ID
7 2 (2.41%) GitHub Copilot
7 2 (2.41%) Snowflake
8 1 (1.20%) Anthropic Claude
8 1 (1.20%) AWS Control Tower
8 1 (1.20%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.20%) HTTP
1 1 (1.20%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (9.64%) Relational Database
2 5 (6.02%) MongoDB
3 4 (4.82%) NoSQL
3 4 (4.82%) PostgreSQL
4 2 (2.41%) Apache Cassandra
4 2 (2.41%) BigQuery
4 2 (2.41%) Hadoop
4 2 (2.41%) Power BI
5 1 (1.20%) Amazon Redshift
5 1 (1.20%) Big Data
5 1 (1.20%) Data Hub
5 1 (1.20%) Data Lake
5 1 (1.20%) Delta Lake
5 1 (1.20%) Elasticsearch
5 1 (1.20%) MemSQL
5 1 (1.20%) Metadata
5 1 (1.20%) Pinecone
5 1 (1.20%) SQL Server
5 1 (1.20%) Sybase IQ
5 1 (1.20%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 9 (10.84%) GitLab
2 5 (6.02%) Git
2 5 (6.02%) Jenkins
3 3 (3.61%) Cypress.io
3 3 (3.61%) JUnit
4 2 (2.41%) Gradle
4 2 (2.41%) Mockito
4 2 (2.41%) Postman
4 2 (2.41%) TeamCity
5 1 (1.20%) Bitbucket
5 1 (1.20%) CircleCI
5 1 (1.20%) Claude Code
5 1 (1.20%) Gatling
5 1 (1.20%) Hamcrest
5 1 (1.20%) Jaeger
5 1 (1.20%) MLflow
5 1 (1.20%) Serenity BDD
5 1 (1.20%) SonarQube
5 1 (1.20%) Vite
5 1 (1.20%) webpack
General
1 21 (25.30%) Finance
2 18 (21.69%) Social Skills
3 14 (16.87%) Banking
4 6 (7.23%) Analytical Skills
5 5 (6.02%) Manufacturing
6 4 (4.82%) Pharmaceutical
7 3 (3.61%) Front Office
7 3 (3.61%) Investment Banking
8 2 (2.41%) Public Sector
8 2 (2.41%) Retail Banking
9 1 (1.20%) Advertising
9 1 (1.20%) Aerospace
9 1 (1.20%) Back Office
9 1 (1.20%) Financial Institution
9 1 (1.20%) Games
9 1 (1.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (1.20%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (1.20%) Presentation Skills
9 1 (1.20%) Retail
Job Titles
1 28 (33.73%) Software Engineer
2 22 (26.51%) Senior
3 15 (18.07%) Developer
4 12 (14.46%) Lead
5 8 (9.64%) Python Engineer
6 6 (7.23%) .NET Software Engineer
6 6 (7.23%) Architect
6 6 (7.23%) Senior Software Engineer
7 5 (6.02%) Data Scientist
7 5 (6.02%) Hardware Engineer
7 5 (6.02%) Integration Engineer
7 5 (6.02%) Java Engineer
7 5 (6.02%) Senior Developer
7 5 (6.02%) Software Integration Engineer
7 5 (6.02%) Technical Leader
8 4 (4.82%) DevOps Engineer
8 4 (4.82%) Java Developer
8 4 (4.82%) Python Developer
9 3 (3.61%) Java Software Engineer
9 3 (3.61%) Senior Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (16.87%) React
2 12 (14.46%) .NET
3 9 (10.84%) Node.js
3 9 (10.84%) REST
3 9 (10.84%) RESTful
4 8 (9.64%) AngularJS
5 6 (7.23%) Kafka
5 6 (7.23%) LangChain
5 6 (7.23%) LangGraph
5 6 (7.23%) Spring
6 5 (6.02%) HTML
7 4 (4.82%) CSS
7 4 (4.82%) GraphQL
7 4 (4.82%) OpenTelemetry
8 3 (3.61%) DOM
8 3 (3.61%) FastAPI
8 3 (3.61%) Playwright
8 3 (3.61%) React Native
8 3 (3.61%) Spring Boot
8 3 (3.61%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 15 (18.07%) Cloud Native
2 8 (9.64%) Life Science
3 6 (7.23%) Distributed Systems
3 6 (7.23%) Product Ownership
3 6 (7.23%) Virtual Team
4 5 (6.02%) AI Agents
5 4 (4.82%) Legacy Systems
6 3 (3.61%) Mobile App
7 2 (2.41%) Data Structures
7 2 (2.41%) Enterprise Software
7 2 (2.41%) Onboarding
8 1 (1.20%) Algorithms
8 1 (1.20%) Analytical Mindset
8 1 (1.20%) Distributed Computing
8 1 (1.20%) Hedge funds
8 1 (1.20%) Linux Command Line
8 1 (1.20%) Online Games
8 1 (1.20%) Robotics
8 1 (1.20%) Security Posture
8 1 (1.20%) TWAP
Operating Systems
1 2 (2.41%) Linux
1 2 (2.41%) Windows
2 1 (1.20%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 30 (36.14%) CI/CD
2 23 (27.71%) AI
3 18 (21.69%) Test Automation
4 17 (20.48%) Agile
4 17 (20.48%) DevOps
4 17 (20.48%) Microservices
4 17 (20.48%) Problem-Solving
5 15 (18.07%) Full-Stack Development
6 13 (15.66%) Code Quality
6 13 (15.66%) Data Science
6 13 (15.66%) Generative AI
7 12 (14.46%) Design Patterns
8 11 (13.25%) Machine Learning
9 10 (12.05%) Observability
10 9 (10.84%) Containerisation
11 8 (9.64%) Infrastructure as Code
12 7 (8.43%) Computer Science
12 7 (8.43%) SDLC
12 7 (8.43%) TDD
12 7 (8.43%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 30 (36.14%) Python
2 24 (28.92%) Java
3 14 (16.87%) SQL
4 8 (9.64%) JavaScript
4 8 (9.64%) TypeScript
5 7 (8.43%) C#
6 3 (3.61%) C++
7 2 (2.41%) COBOL
7 2 (2.41%) Go
7 2 (2.41%) Rust
8 1 (1.20%) PowerShell
8 1 (1.20%) R
8 1 (1.20%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 15 (18.07%) Security Cleared
2 14 (16.87%) SC Cleared
3 10 (12.05%) Degree
4 3 (3.61%) Computer Science Degree
5 2 (2.41%) AWS Certification
5 2 (2.41%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 1 (1.20%) DBS Check
6 1 (1.20%) DV Cleared
6 1 (1.20%) Master's Degree
6 1 (1.20%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (3.61%) Data Quality
2 1 (1.20%) Accessibility
2 1 (1.20%) GDPR
2 1 (1.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 1 (1.20%) NIST
2 1 (1.20%) WCAG
System Software
1 20 (24.10%) Docker
2 1 (1.20%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 18 (21.69%) Kubernetes
2 5 (6.02%) Terraform
3 3 (3.61%) Ansible
3 3 (3.61%) Grafana
4 2 (2.41%) Prometheus
5 1 (1.20%) Argo
5 1 (1.20%) Istio
Vendors
1 7 (8.43%) Google
1 7 (8.43%) Microsoft
2 4 (4.82%) Oracle
3 3 (3.61%) Databricks
4 2 (2.41%) Splunk
5 1 (1.20%) Dynatrace
5 1 (1.20%) IBM