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 vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 18 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 42 61 44
Rank change year-on-year +19 -17 -3
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 86 71 150
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the City of London 4.88% 3.38% 5.04%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.18% 3.67% 5.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 55 45 82
10th Percentile £413 £482 £463
25th Percentile £563 £500 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £663 £588 £654
Median % change year-on-year +12.77% -10.20% +6.60%
75th Percentile £738 £738 £769
90th Percentile £838 £875 £875
Central London median daily rate £650 £581 £650
% change year-on-year +11.83% -10.58% +6.56%
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 1,661 1,932 2,687
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 94.21% 92.09% 90.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,107 1,224 1,857
10th Percentile £325 £375 £363
25th Percentile £419 £475 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £600
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% -4.17% +4.35%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £705
90th Percentile £763 £788 £813
Central London median daily rate £550 £575 £600
% change year-on-year -4.35% -4.17% +4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 17 16
10th Percentile £17.35 £15.20 £14.25
25th Percentile £23.98 £20.22 £16.02
Median hourly rate £28.33 £27.00 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.91% +8.00% -41.86%
75th Percentile £53.50 £78.75 £44.87
90th Percentile £63.75 £137.50 £60.88
Central London median hourly rate £31.25 £35.00 £26.00
% change year-on-year -10.71% +34.62% -38.82%

Software Engineering
Job Vacancy Trend in the City of London

Job postings citing Software Engineering as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the City of London.

Job vacancy trend for Software Engineering 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 18 September 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 and Capabilities in the City of London by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 6 (6.98%) Confluence
2 1 (1.16%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (1.16%) Apache Spark
2 1 (1.16%) JBoss
2 1 (1.16%) Luigi
2 1 (1.16%) Microsoft Exchange
2 1 (1.16%) Oracle Workflow
Business Applications
1 2 (2.33%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (1.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 1 (1.16%) Salesforce CRM
2 1 (1.16%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 29 (33.72%) AWS
2 19 (22.09%) Azure
3 11 (12.79%) AWS Lambda
3 11 (12.79%) Serverless
4 10 (11.63%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 10 (11.63%) Amazon S3
5 7 (8.14%) AWS Step Functions
6 5 (5.81%) Amazon Cognito
6 5 (5.81%) Amazon EventBridge
6 5 (5.81%) Amazon SQS
6 5 (5.81%) Datadog
6 5 (5.81%) GCP
7 4 (4.65%) AWS CloudFormation
7 4 (4.65%) Dynamics 365
7 4 (4.65%) Power Platform
8 3 (3.49%) Azure DevOps
8 3 (3.49%) GitHub
8 3 (3.49%) GitHub Actions
9 2 (2.33%) OpenShift
9 2 (2.33%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 2 (2.33%) tcpdump
2 1 (1.16%) DNS
2 1 (1.16%) Firewall
2 1 (1.16%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (9.30%) DynamoDB
2 4 (4.65%) DB2
2 4 (4.65%) MongoDB
3 3 (3.49%) Hadoop
3 3 (3.49%) MemSQL
3 3 (3.49%) NoSQL
3 3 (3.49%) PostgreSQL
3 3 (3.49%) Relational Database
3 3 (3.49%) Sybase IQ
4 2 (2.33%) KDB
4 2 (2.33%) MySQL
4 2 (2.33%) Power BI
5 1 (1.16%) Amazon Aurora
5 1 (1.16%) Amazon RDS
5 1 (1.16%) Data Warehouse
5 1 (1.16%) Geospatial Data
5 1 (1.16%) Oracle Database
5 1 (1.16%) Pinecone
Development Applications
1 7 (8.14%) JIRA
2 5 (5.81%) Jenkins
3 4 (4.65%) Git
4 3 (3.49%) GitLab
4 3 (3.49%) SonarQube
5 2 (2.33%) Gradle
5 2 (2.33%) MLflow
6 1 (1.16%) CircleCI
6 1 (1.16%) Cucumber
6 1 (1.16%) Cypress.io
6 1 (1.16%) Gatling
6 1 (1.16%) Hamcrest
6 1 (1.16%) JUnit
6 1 (1.16%) Postman
6 1 (1.16%) Selenium
6 1 (1.16%) Serenity BDD
6 1 (1.16%) SpecFlow
General
1 30 (34.88%) Social Skills
2 25 (29.07%) Finance
3 15 (17.44%) Banking
4 12 (13.95%) Analytical Skills
5 9 (10.47%) Front Office
6 6 (6.98%) Investment Banking
6 6 (6.98%) Retail Banking
7 4 (4.65%) Retail
8 3 (3.49%) Corporate Banking
8 3 (3.49%) Financial Institution
8 3 (3.49%) Telecoms
9 2 (2.33%) Games
9 2 (2.33%) Public Sector
10 1 (1.16%) Back Office
10 1 (1.16%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 1 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (1.16%) Legal
10 1 (1.16%) Pharmaceutical
10 1 (1.16%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 24 (27.91%) Software Engineer
2 19 (22.09%) Developer
3 12 (13.95%) Lead
4 11 (12.79%) Senior
5 7 (8.14%) Java Developer
6 5 (5.81%) Architect
6 5 (5.81%) Python Developer
7 4 (4.65%) Principal Engineer
7 4 (4.65%) Python Engineer
7 4 (4.65%) Senior Software Engineer
7 4 (4.65%) Software Design Engineer
8 3 (3.49%) Angular Developer
8 3 (3.49%) C++ Software Engineer
8 3 (3.49%) Data Engineer
8 3 (3.49%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
8 3 (3.49%) Full-Stack Developer
8 3 (3.49%) Full-Stack Python Developer
8 3 (3.49%) Gen AI Developer
8 3 (3.49%) Java Engineer
8 3 (3.49%) React Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (16.28%) AngularJS
2 13 (15.12%) .NET
2 13 (15.12%) React
3 8 (9.30%) HTML
4 7 (8.14%) Node.js
5 6 (6.98%) GraphQL
5 6 (6.98%) RESTful
5 6 (6.98%) Spring
6 5 (5.81%) CSS
6 5 (5.81%) HTML5
6 5 (5.81%) OpenTelemetry
6 5 (5.81%) WebSockets
7 4 (4.65%) FastAPI
7 4 (4.65%) Kafka
7 4 (4.65%) REST
8 3 (3.49%) Blazor
8 3 (3.49%) Flask
8 3 (3.49%) Next.js
8 3 (3.49%) Spring Boot
8 3 (3.49%) SQLAlchemy
Miscellaneous
1 8 (9.30%) Algorithms
1 8 (9.30%) Cloud Native
2 7 (8.14%) Data Structures
3 5 (5.81%) Distributed Systems
3 5 (5.81%) Enterprise Software
3 5 (5.81%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 4 (4.65%) Greenfield Project
4 4 (4.65%) Hedge funds
5 3 (3.49%) Linux Command Line
5 3 (3.49%) Self-Motivation
5 3 (3.49%) Virtual Team
6 2 (2.33%) 3D Graphics
6 2 (2.33%) AI Agents
6 2 (2.33%) Analytical Mindset
6 2 (2.33%) Derivative
6 2 (2.33%) Fixed Income
6 2 (2.33%) Legacy Systems
6 2 (2.33%) Low-Code
6 2 (2.33%) Reference Data
6 2 (2.33%) Virtual Reality
Operating Systems
1 13 (15.12%) Linux
2 4 (4.65%) Windows
3 3 (3.49%) Unix
4 2 (2.33%) Windows Server
5 1 (1.16%) Android
5 1 (1.16%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 26 (30.23%) Agile
2 22 (25.58%) CI/CD
3 19 (22.09%) DevOps
4 15 (17.44%) Event-Driven
5 14 (16.28%) Infrastructure as Code
5 14 (16.28%) Problem-Solving
6 13 (15.12%) Full-Stack Development
6 13 (15.12%) Mentoring
7 12 (13.95%) Event-Driven Architecture
8 11 (12.79%) Code Quality
8 11 (12.79%) Computer Science
8 11 (12.79%) Technical Leadership
9 10 (11.63%) Scrum
10 9 (10.47%) Artificial Intelligence
10 9 (10.47%) Performance Optimisation
11 8 (9.30%) Analytics
11 8 (9.30%) Design Patterns
12 7 (8.14%) Clean Code
12 7 (8.14%) Front End Development
12 7 (8.14%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 39 (45.35%) Python
2 25 (29.07%) Java
3 21 (24.42%) SQL
4 13 (15.12%) C#
5 9 (10.47%) JavaScript
6 8 (9.30%) C++
6 8 (9.30%) TypeScript
7 4 (4.65%) Go
8 2 (2.33%) PHP
9 1 (1.16%) Bash
9 1 (1.16%) C
9 1 (1.16%) COBOL
9 1 (1.16%) Fortran
9 1 (1.16%) MATLAB
9 1 (1.16%) PL/SQL
9 1 (1.16%) PowerShell
9 1 (1.16%) R
9 1 (1.16%) RPG
9 1 (1.16%) Rust
9 1 (1.16%) Scala
Qualifications
1 12 (13.95%) Degree
2 7 (8.14%) Computer Science Degree
3 3 (3.49%) Security Cleared
4 2 (2.33%) Postgraduate
4 2 (2.33%) SC Cleared
5 1 (1.16%) BPSS Clearance
5 1 (1.16%) CFA
5 1 (1.16%) DV Cleared
5 1 (1.16%) Master's Degree
5 1 (1.16%) MBA
5 1 (1.16%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (3.49%) QA
2 2 (2.33%) Data Quality
3 1 (1.16%) EMIR
3 1 (1.16%) GDPR
3 1 (1.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (1.16%) MiFID
3 1 (1.16%) SOC 2
System Software
1 7 (8.14%) Docker
2 1 (1.16%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 10 (11.63%) Kubernetes
2 6 (6.98%) Terraform
3 5 (5.81%) Prometheus
4 4 (4.65%) Ansible
5 1 (1.16%) Argo
5 1 (1.16%) Kubeflow
5 1 (1.16%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 9 (10.47%) Microsoft
2 7 (8.14%) Oracle
3 2 (2.33%) DevExpress
3 2 (2.33%) DocuSign
3 2 (2.33%) ION Trading
4 1 (1.16%) Alteryx
4 1 (1.16%) Avaloq
4 1 (1.16%) Databricks
4 1 (1.16%) FNZ
4 1 (1.16%) ForgeRock
4 1 (1.16%) Foundry
4 1 (1.16%) IBM
4 1 (1.16%) Ping Identity
4 1 (1.16%) Planview
4 1 (1.16%) Salesforce
4 1 (1.16%) Splunk
4 1 (1.16%) Temenos