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

6 months to
23 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 47 45 54
Rank change year-on-year -2 +9 -12
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 85 83 89
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 4.62% 4.04% 3.55%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.10% 4.38% 3.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 62 37 48
10th Percentile £400 £442 £444
25th Percentile £513 £463 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £530 £650
Median % change year-on-year +17.92% -18.46% -
75th Percentile £722 £613 £756
90th Percentile £788 £770 £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 1,667 1,895 2,242
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 90.55% 92.17% 89.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,173 1,156 1,601
10th Percentile £338 £363 £363
25th Percentile £419 £464 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -6.09% - -0.86%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £688
90th Percentile £759 £788 £800
Central London median daily rate £550 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -4.35% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 15 10
10th Percentile £20.02 £15.80 £17.00
25th Percentile £20.82 £22.00 £17.48
Median hourly rate £28.00 £42.50 £26.25
Median % change year-on-year -34.12% +61.90% -38.95%
75th Percentile £41.94 £102.25 £44.56
90th Percentile £54.95 £127.30 £74.13
Central London median hourly rate £26.31 £35.00 £26.00
% change year-on-year -24.84% +34.62% -35.80%

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 23 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 (3.53%) Confluence
2 2 (2.35%) Apache Spark
3 1 (1.18%) Apache
3 1 (1.18%) Cloud Foundry
3 1 (1.18%) JBoss
3 1 (1.18%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (1.18%) Oracle Workflow
3 1 (1.18%) Smallworld
Business Applications
1 2 (2.35%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 1 (1.18%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (1.18%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 30 (35.29%) AWS
2 17 (20.00%) Azure
3 12 (14.12%) GCP
4 7 (8.24%) AWS Lambda
4 7 (8.24%) Serverless
5 6 (7.06%) Amazon S3
5 6 (7.06%) Power Platform
6 5 (5.88%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 4 (4.71%) GitHub
7 4 (4.71%) Google Gemini
8 3 (3.53%) Dynamics 365
8 3 (3.53%) Snowflake
9 2 (2.35%) Amazon ECS
9 2 (2.35%) Azure DevOps
9 2 (2.35%) Cloud Run
9 2 (2.35%) GitHub Actions
9 2 (2.35%) OpenShift
9 2 (2.35%) PaaS
9 2 (2.35%) Power Automate
9 2 (2.35%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.18%) DNS
1 1 (1.18%) Firewall
1 1 (1.18%) HTTP
1 1 (1.18%) MPLS
1 1 (1.18%) Software-Defined Networking
1 1 (1.18%) tcpdump
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (9.41%) Relational Database
2 5 (5.88%) MongoDB
3 4 (4.71%) Hadoop
3 4 (4.71%) NoSQL
4 3 (3.53%) DB2
4 3 (3.53%) MemSQL
4 3 (3.53%) Power BI
4 3 (3.53%) Sybase IQ
5 2 (2.35%) DynamoDB
5 2 (2.35%) PostgreSQL
6 1 (1.18%) Amazon Redshift
6 1 (1.18%) Apache Cassandra
6 1 (1.18%) Big Data
6 1 (1.18%) BigQuery
6 1 (1.18%) Data Lake
6 1 (1.18%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (1.18%) Delta Lake
6 1 (1.18%) KDB
6 1 (1.18%) MySQL
6 1 (1.18%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 7 (8.24%) GitLab
2 5 (5.88%) Jenkins
3 4 (4.71%) Git
4 3 (3.53%) Gradle
4 3 (3.53%) JIRA
4 3 (3.53%) SonarQube
5 2 (2.35%) Cypress.io
5 2 (2.35%) JUnit
5 2 (2.35%) Postman
5 2 (2.35%) TeamCity
6 1 (1.18%) Bitbucket
6 1 (1.18%) Cucumber
6 1 (1.18%) Hamcrest
6 1 (1.18%) Jaeger
6 1 (1.18%) Mockito
6 1 (1.18%) MSTest
6 1 (1.18%) Selenium
6 1 (1.18%) Serenity BDD
6 1 (1.18%) SpecFlow
6 1 (1.18%) Vite
General
1 25 (29.41%) Social Skills
2 22 (25.88%) Finance
3 15 (17.65%) Banking
4 10 (11.76%) Analytical Skills
5 8 (9.41%) Front Office
6 5 (5.88%) Retail Banking
7 4 (4.71%) Investment Banking
7 4 (4.71%) Manufacturing
7 4 (4.71%) Pharmaceutical
8 3 (3.53%) Financial Institution
8 3 (3.53%) Games
9 2 (2.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 2 (2.35%) Public Sector
10 1 (1.18%) Back Office
10 1 (1.18%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (1.18%) Legal
10 1 (1.18%) Retail
Job Titles
1 25 (29.41%) Software Engineer
2 20 (23.53%) Senior
3 17 (20.00%) Developer
4 10 (11.76%) Lead
4 10 (11.76%) Python Engineer
5 6 (7.06%) Architect
5 6 (7.06%) Integration Engineer
5 6 (7.06%) Java Developer
6 5 (5.88%) Python Developer
6 5 (5.88%) Senior Developer
6 5 (5.88%) Senior Software Engineer
7 4 (4.71%) .NET Software Engineer
7 4 (4.71%) Data Scientist
7 4 (4.71%) Hardware Engineer
7 4 (4.71%) Software Integration Engineer
8 3 (3.53%) Backend Developer
8 3 (3.53%) C++ Software Engineer
8 3 (3.53%) DevOps Engineer
8 3 (3.53%) Python Software Engineer
8 3 (3.53%) Senior Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (17.65%) .NET
2 10 (11.76%) React
3 9 (10.59%) Node.js
3 9 (10.59%) RESTful
4 6 (7.06%) AngularJS
5 4 (4.71%) CSS
5 4 (4.71%) FastAPI
5 4 (4.71%) HTML
5 4 (4.71%) Kafka
6 3 (3.53%) FIX Protocol
6 3 (3.53%) LangChain
6 3 (3.53%) LangGraph
6 3 (3.53%) OpenTelemetry
6 3 (3.53%) Spring
7 2 (2.35%) HTML5
7 2 (2.35%) JSON
7 2 (2.35%) NumPy
7 2 (2.35%) REST
7 2 (2.35%) Unity (Game Engine)
7 2 (2.35%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 14 (16.47%) Cloud Native
2 8 (9.41%) Virtual Team
3 7 (8.24%) Life Science
4 5 (5.88%) Algorithms
4 5 (5.88%) Data Structures
5 4 (4.71%) Enterprise Software
5 4 (4.71%) Hedge funds
5 4 (4.71%) Legacy Systems
6 3 (3.53%) AI Agents
6 3 (3.53%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 2 (2.35%) 3D Graphics
7 2 (2.35%) Distributed Computing
7 2 (2.35%) Distributed Systems
7 2 (2.35%) Greenfield Project
7 2 (2.35%) Linux Command Line
7 2 (2.35%) Onboarding
7 2 (2.35%) Product Ownership
7 2 (2.35%) Self-Motivation
7 2 (2.35%) Virtual Reality
8 1 (1.18%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 8 (9.41%) Linux
2 6 (7.06%) Windows
3 2 (2.35%) Unix
3 2 (2.35%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 28 (32.94%) CI/CD
2 18 (21.18%) Agile
2 18 (21.18%) DevOps
3 16 (18.82%) Problem-Solving
3 16 (18.82%) Test Automation
4 15 (17.65%) AI
5 13 (15.29%) Code Quality
5 13 (15.29%) Design Patterns
6 12 (14.12%) Microservices
7 11 (12.94%) Machine Learning
8 10 (11.76%) Containerisation
9 9 (10.59%) Data Science
9 9 (10.59%) SDLC
10 8 (9.41%) Computer Science
10 8 (9.41%) Generative AI
10 8 (9.41%) Infrastructure as Code
11 7 (8.24%) Mentoring
11 7 (8.24%) Unit Testing
12 6 (7.06%) Analytics
12 6 (7.06%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 42 (49.41%) Python
2 26 (30.59%) Java
3 18 (21.18%) SQL
4 12 (14.12%) C#
5 9 (10.59%) C++
6 7 (8.24%) JavaScript
7 4 (4.71%) Go
7 4 (4.71%) TypeScript
8 2 (2.35%) PHP
8 2 (2.35%) PowerShell
8 2 (2.35%) R
8 2 (2.35%) Rust
9 1 (1.18%) Fortran
9 1 (1.18%) MATLAB
9 1 (1.18%) PL/SQL
9 1 (1.18%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 13 (15.29%) Degree
2 9 (10.59%) Security Cleared
3 8 (9.41%) SC Cleared
4 3 (3.53%) Computer Science Degree
5 2 (2.35%) AWS Certification
5 2 (2.35%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 2 (2.35%) Postgraduate
6 1 (1.18%) BPSS Clearance
6 1 (1.18%) DBS Check
6 1 (1.18%) DV Cleared
6 1 (1.18%) Master's Degree
6 1 (1.18%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (2.35%) Data Quality
2 1 (1.18%) GDPR
2 1 (1.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 1 (1.18%) QA
2 1 (1.18%) SOC 2
System Software
1 17 (20.00%) Docker
2 1 (1.18%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 16 (18.82%) Kubernetes
2 7 (8.24%) Terraform
3 4 (4.71%) Ansible
4 2 (2.35%) Grafana
5 1 (1.18%) Argo
5 1 (1.18%) Istio
5 1 (1.18%) Microsoft Intune
5 1 (1.18%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 10 (11.76%) Microsoft
2 7 (8.24%) Google
3 6 (7.06%) Oracle
4 3 (3.53%) Databricks
5 2 (2.35%) DevExpress
5 2 (2.35%) DocuSign
5 2 (2.35%) Splunk
6 1 (1.18%) Alteryx
6 1 (1.18%) ForgeRock
6 1 (1.18%) Foundry
6 1 (1.18%) ION Trading
6 1 (1.18%) Ping Identity
6 1 (1.18%) Temenos