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 21 October 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 40 62 55
Rank change year-on-year +22 -7 -16
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 85 68 106
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 5.01% 3.23% 3.70%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.30% 3.51% 4.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 56 39 59
10th Percentile £413 £461 £463
25th Percentile £525 £486 £583
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £650 £568 £675
Median % change year-on-year +14.54% -15.93% +8.00%
75th Percentile £738 £738 £775
90th Percentile £838 £885 £875
Central London median daily rate £650 £568 £681
% change year-on-year +14.54% -16.70% +10.55%
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 1,603 1,936 2,567
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 94.52% 91.88% 89.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,099 1,194 1,786
10th Percentile £325 £375 £363
25th Percentile £421 £463 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £598
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% -3.77% +3.91%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £700
90th Percentile £763 £786 £813
Central London median daily rate £550 £575 £588
% change year-on-year -4.35% -2.13% +2.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 17 17
10th Percentile £16.85 £16.70 £14.25
25th Percentile £20.18 £23.13 £17.00
Median hourly rate £26.57 £42.50 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -37.48% +54.55% -36.05%
75th Percentile £36.00 £112.00 £46.75
90th Percentile £63.75 £137.50 £59.30
Central London median hourly rate £27.04 £35.00 £26.75
% change year-on-year -22.76% +30.84% -37.06%

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 21 October 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 6 (7.06%) Confluence
2 1 (1.18%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (1.18%) Apache Spark
2 1 (1.18%) JBoss
2 1 (1.18%) Luigi
2 1 (1.18%) Microsoft Exchange
2 1 (1.18%) Oracle Workflow
Business Applications
1 2 (2.35%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (1.18%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 1 (1.18%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 27 (31.76%) AWS
2 18 (21.18%) Azure
3 9 (10.59%) Amazon CloudWatch
3 9 (10.59%) Amazon S3
3 9 (10.59%) AWS Lambda
3 9 (10.59%) Serverless
4 5 (5.88%) AWS Step Functions
4 5 (5.88%) GCP
5 4 (4.71%) Amazon Cognito
5 4 (4.71%) Amazon EventBridge
5 4 (4.71%) Amazon SQS
5 4 (4.71%) Datadog
5 4 (4.71%) Dynamics 365
5 4 (4.71%) Power Platform
6 3 (3.53%) Azure DevOps
6 3 (3.53%) Snowflake
7 2 (2.35%) Amazon ECS
7 2 (2.35%) PaaS
7 2 (2.35%) Power Automate
7 2 (2.35%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 2 (2.35%) tcpdump
2 1 (1.18%) DNS
2 1 (1.18%) Firewall
2 1 (1.18%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (7.06%) DynamoDB
2 5 (5.88%) Relational Database
3 4 (4.71%) DB2
3 4 (4.71%) MongoDB
4 3 (3.53%) Hadoop
4 3 (3.53%) MemSQL
4 3 (3.53%) NoSQL
4 3 (3.53%) Sybase IQ
5 2 (2.35%) MySQL
5 2 (2.35%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (2.35%) Power BI
6 1 (1.18%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (1.18%) KDB
6 1 (1.18%) Oracle Database
6 1 (1.18%) Pinecone
Development Applications
1 6 (7.06%) Jenkins
1 6 (7.06%) JIRA
2 4 (4.71%) GitLab
2 4 (4.71%) Gradle
3 3 (3.53%) Git
3 3 (3.53%) SonarQube
4 2 (2.35%) MLflow
4 2 (2.35%) TeamCity
5 1 (1.18%) Cucumber
5 1 (1.18%) Cypress.io
5 1 (1.18%) Gatling
5 1 (1.18%) Hamcrest
5 1 (1.18%) JUnit
5 1 (1.18%) Postman
5 1 (1.18%) Selenium
5 1 (1.18%) Serenity BDD
5 1 (1.18%) SpecFlow
General
1 30 (35.29%) Social Skills
2 26 (30.59%) Finance
3 18 (21.18%) Banking
4 10 (11.76%) Front Office
5 8 (9.41%) Analytical Skills
6 7 (8.24%) Retail Banking
7 6 (7.06%) Investment Banking
8 3 (3.53%) Financial Institution
8 3 (3.53%) Retail
8 3 (3.53%) Telecoms
9 2 (2.35%) Corporate Banking
9 2 (2.35%) Games
9 2 (2.35%) Public Sector
10 1 (1.18%) Back Office
10 1 (1.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 1 (1.18%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (1.18%) Legal
10 1 (1.18%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 24 (28.24%) Software Engineer
2 16 (18.82%) Developer
2 16 (18.82%) Senior
3 13 (15.29%) Lead
4 6 (7.06%) Java Developer
4 6 (7.06%) Python Engineer
5 4 (4.71%) Architect
5 4 (4.71%) Python Developer
5 4 (4.71%) Senior Software Engineer
5 4 (4.71%) Software Design Engineer
6 3 (3.53%) Angular Developer
6 3 (3.53%) C++ Software Engineer
6 3 (3.53%) Data Engineer
6 3 (3.53%) Engineering Manager
6 3 (3.53%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
6 3 (3.53%) Java Engineer
6 3 (3.53%) Java Software Engineer
6 3 (3.53%) Principal Engineer
6 3 (3.53%) Solutions Architect
7 2 (2.35%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (18.82%) .NET
2 15 (17.65%) AngularJS
3 14 (16.47%) React
4 8 (9.41%) HTML
5 7 (8.24%) RESTful
6 6 (7.06%) CSS
6 6 (7.06%) HTML5
6 6 (7.06%) Node.js
7 5 (5.88%) Kafka
7 5 (5.88%) Spring
8 4 (4.71%) FIX Protocol
8 4 (4.71%) GraphQL
8 4 (4.71%) OpenTelemetry
8 4 (4.71%) WebSockets
9 3 (3.53%) Blazor
9 3 (3.53%) FastAPI
9 3 (3.53%) Next.js
9 3 (3.53%) REST
9 3 (3.53%) Spring Boot
10 2 (2.35%) Unity (Game Engine)
Miscellaneous
1 8 (9.41%) Cloud Native
2 7 (8.24%) Algorithms
3 6 (7.06%) Data Structures
3 6 (7.06%) Virtual Team
4 5 (5.88%) Distributed Systems
4 5 (5.88%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 4 (4.71%) Enterprise Software
5 4 (4.71%) Hedge funds
6 3 (3.53%) Derivative
6 3 (3.53%) Greenfield Project
6 3 (3.53%) Legacy Systems
6 3 (3.53%) Linux Command Line
7 2 (2.35%) 3D Graphics
7 2 (2.35%) AI Agents
7 2 (2.35%) Low-Code
7 2 (2.35%) Onboarding
7 2 (2.35%) Reference Data
7 2 (2.35%) Self-Motivation
7 2 (2.35%) Virtual Reality
8 1 (1.18%) VWAP
Operating Systems
1 12 (14.12%) Linux
2 4 (4.71%) Windows
3 3 (3.53%) Unix
4 2 (2.35%) Windows Server
5 1 (1.18%) Android
5 1 (1.18%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 24 (28.24%) Agile
2 23 (27.06%) CI/CD
3 18 (21.18%) DevOps
4 14 (16.47%) Event-Driven
5 13 (15.29%) Code Quality
6 12 (14.12%) Mentoring
6 12 (14.12%) Problem-Solving
7 11 (12.94%) Design Patterns
7 11 (12.94%) Event-Driven Architecture
7 11 (12.94%) Full-Stack Development
8 10 (11.76%) Technical Leadership
9 9 (10.59%) Computer Science
9 9 (10.59%) Infrastructure as Code
9 9 (10.59%) Microservices
9 9 (10.59%) Scrum
9 9 (10.59%) Test Automation
10 8 (9.41%) Analytics
10 8 (9.41%) Performance Optimisation
11 7 (8.24%) Front End Development
11 7 (8.24%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 38 (44.71%) Python
2 27 (31.76%) Java
3 20 (23.53%) SQL
4 12 (14.12%) C#
5 9 (10.59%) TypeScript
6 8 (9.41%) C++
7 7 (8.24%) JavaScript
8 3 (3.53%) Go
9 2 (2.35%) PHP
9 2 (2.35%) Rust
10 1 (1.18%) C
10 1 (1.18%) COBOL
10 1 (1.18%) Fortran
10 1 (1.18%) MATLAB
10 1 (1.18%) PL/SQL
10 1 (1.18%) PowerShell
10 1 (1.18%) R
10 1 (1.18%) RPG
Qualifications
1 10 (11.76%) Degree
2 5 (5.88%) Computer Science Degree
3 3 (3.53%) Security Cleared
4 2 (2.35%) Postgraduate
4 2 (2.35%) SC Cleared
5 1 (1.18%) BPSS Clearance
5 1 (1.18%) CFA
5 1 (1.18%) DV Cleared
5 1 (1.18%) Master's Degree
5 1 (1.18%) MBA
5 1 (1.18%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (3.53%) QA
2 2 (2.35%) Data Quality
3 1 (1.18%) EMIR
3 1 (1.18%) GDPR
3 1 (1.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (1.18%) MiFID
3 1 (1.18%) SOC 2
System Software
1 10 (11.76%) Docker
2 1 (1.18%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 11 (12.94%) Kubernetes
2 5 (5.88%) Ansible
3 4 (4.71%) Prometheus
4 2 (2.35%) Terraform
5 1 (1.18%) Kubeflow
5 1 (1.18%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 10 (11.76%) Microsoft
2 6 (7.06%) Oracle
3 2 (2.35%) DevExpress
3 2 (2.35%) DocuSign
4 1 (1.18%) Alteryx
4 1 (1.18%) Avaloq
4 1 (1.18%) Databricks
4 1 (1.18%) FNZ
4 1 (1.18%) ForgeRock
4 1 (1.18%) Foundry
4 1 (1.18%) IBM
4 1 (1.18%) ION Trading
4 1 (1.18%) Ping Identity
4 1 (1.18%) Planview
4 1 (1.18%) Splunk
4 1 (1.18%) Temenos