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 30 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 57 38 50
Rank change year-on-year -19 +12 -8
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 89 99 83
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 3.64% 5.63% 3.92%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.25% 6.00% 4.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 63 64 50
10th Percentile £453 £504 £462
25th Percentile £501 £554 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £660 £638
Median % change year-on-year -12.88% +3.53% -1.92%
75th Percentile £717 £800 £747
90th Percentile £775 £864 £875
Central London median daily rate £575 £660 £588
% change year-on-year -12.88% +12.34% -9.62%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £55.81 - -
Median hourly rate £57.77 - -
75th Percentile £67.36 - -
90th Percentile £71.94 - -
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 2,095 1,649 1,929
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 85.76% 93.80% 91.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,416 1,053 1,338
10th Percentile £363 £350 £363
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £688
90th Percentile £775 £775 £800
Central London median daily rate £550 £550 £550
% change year-on-year - - -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 20 15
10th Percentile £17.60 £17.02 £20.04
25th Percentile £18.18 £24.43 £20.36
Median hourly rate £19.50 £29.75 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -34.45% +10.19% -22.86%
75th Percentile £42.83 £50.75 £40.92
90th Percentile £59.72 £66.25 £67.35
Central London median hourly rate £26.39 £31.00 £27.81
% change year-on-year -14.89% +11.47% -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 30 June 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
Hourly Rate Histogram in the City of London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Software Engineering in the City of London over the 6 months to 30 June 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Software Engineering in the City of London

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 (3.37%) Apache Airflow
2 2 (2.25%) Apache Spark
2 2 (2.25%) SharePoint
3 1 (1.12%) Apache
3 1 (1.12%) Camunda
Applications
1 2 (2.25%) Chatbot
2 1 (1.12%) Maya
Business Applications
1 4 (4.49%) Oracle EBS
2 2 (2.25%) Orchestrade
3 1 (1.12%) Aladdin
3 1 (1.12%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (1.12%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 26 (29.21%) AWS
1 26 (29.21%) Azure
2 18 (20.22%) GitHub
3 9 (10.11%) GCP
4 6 (6.74%) Anthropic Claude
4 6 (6.74%) Azure DevOps
5 5 (5.62%) Power Platform
6 4 (4.49%) Azure AKS
6 4 (4.49%) dbt
6 4 (4.49%) GitHub Actions
6 4 (4.49%) PaaS
6 4 (4.49%) Snowflake
7 3 (3.37%) Azure Cosmos DB
7 3 (3.37%) Entra ID
7 3 (3.37%) GitHub Copilot
8 2 (2.25%) Azure Stack
8 2 (2.25%) Power Automate
8 2 (2.25%) PowerApps
8 2 (2.25%) Serverless
8 2 (2.25%) Vertex AI
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (7.87%) NoSQL
2 6 (6.74%) Relational Database
3 5 (5.62%) PostgreSQL
4 4 (4.49%) Pinecone
5 3 (3.37%) MongoDB
5 3 (3.37%) Power BI
5 3 (3.37%) SQL Server
5 3 (3.37%) Weaviate
6 2 (2.25%) Data Warehouse
6 2 (2.25%) Elasticsearch
7 1 (1.12%) Amazon Aurora
7 1 (1.12%) Apache Cassandra
7 1 (1.12%) BigQuery
7 1 (1.12%) Data Hub
7 1 (1.12%) Db2
7 1 (1.12%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 11 (12.36%) Git
2 3 (3.37%) CircleCI
2 3 (3.37%) Cypress.io
2 3 (3.37%) Gradle
2 3 (3.37%) Jenkins
2 3 (3.37%) JUnit
2 3 (3.37%) Mockito
3 2 (2.25%) Claude Code
3 2 (2.25%) GitLab
3 2 (2.25%) Liquibase
3 2 (2.25%) Mocha
3 2 (2.25%) webpack
4 1 (1.12%) CocoaPods
4 1 (1.12%) Cucumber
4 1 (1.12%) JIRA
4 1 (1.12%) Maven
4 1 (1.12%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
4 1 (1.12%) Visual Studio
4 1 (1.12%) XCTest
4 1 (1.12%) XCUITest
General
1 33 (37.08%) Finance
2 20 (22.47%) Social Skills
3 12 (13.48%) Banking
4 8 (8.99%) Analytical Skills
5 5 (5.62%) Public Sector
6 4 (4.49%) Influencing Skills
7 3 (3.37%) Advertising
7 3 (3.37%) Back Office
7 3 (3.37%) Investment Banking
7 3 (3.37%) Retail
8 2 (2.25%) Legal
8 2 (2.25%) Presentation Skills
9 1 (1.12%) Aerospace
9 1 (1.12%) Corporate Banking
9 1 (1.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (1.12%) Pharmaceutical
9 1 (1.12%) Retail Banking
9 1 (1.12%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 31 (34.83%) Software Engineer
2 19 (21.35%) Developer
3 16 (17.98%) Senior
4 8 (8.99%) Lead
4 8 (8.99%) Senior Software Engineer
5 7 (7.87%) Architect
6 6 (6.74%) Data Engineer
6 6 (6.74%) Full-Stack Engineer
6 6 (6.74%) Technical Architect
7 5 (5.62%) Java Engineer
7 5 (5.62%) Senior Developer
8 4 (4.49%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
8 4 (4.49%) Engineering Specialist
8 4 (4.49%) Java Developer
9 3 (3.37%) C# Developer
9 3 (3.37%) Full-Stack Software Engineer
9 3 (3.37%) Junior
9 3 (3.37%) Senior C# Developer
9 3 (3.37%) Software Asset Manager
9 3 (3.37%) Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (16.85%) React
1 15 (16.85%) Spring
2 14 (15.73%) REST
3 11 (12.36%) Spring Boot
4 10 (11.24%) Kafka
5 7 (7.87%) .NET
5 7 (7.87%) GraphQL
5 7 (7.87%) LangChain
6 6 (6.74%) LangGraph
6 6 (6.74%) Playwright
7 5 (5.62%) Node.js
8 4 (4.49%) AngularJS
8 4 (4.49%) Jest
8 4 (4.49%) React Native
8 4 (4.49%) RESTful
8 4 (4.49%) Web Services
9 3 (3.37%) DOM
9 3 (3.37%) HTML
9 3 (3.37%) LlamaIndex
9 3 (3.37%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 18 (20.22%) Cloud Native
2 16 (17.98%) Distributed Systems
3 7 (7.87%) AI Agents
4 5 (5.62%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 5 (5.62%) Product Ownership
5 3 (3.37%) Mobile App
6 2 (2.25%) Derivative
6 2 (2.25%) Equities
6 2 (2.25%) Self-Motivation
7 1 (1.12%) Analytical Mindset
7 1 (1.12%) Autonomous Agent
7 1 (1.12%) Clustering
7 1 (1.12%) CMDB
7 1 (1.12%) Distributed Computing
7 1 (1.12%) Enterprise Software
7 1 (1.12%) Genomics
7 1 (1.12%) Greenfield Project
7 1 (1.12%) NHS
7 1 (1.12%) Onboarding
7 1 (1.12%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 3 (3.37%) Apple iOS
1 3 (3.37%) Linux
2 2 (2.25%) Android
2 2 (2.25%) Embedded Linux
3 1 (1.12%) Unix
3 1 (1.12%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 41 (46.07%) CI/CD
2 27 (30.34%) AI
3 25 (28.09%) Agile
4 22 (24.72%) DevOps
4 22 (24.72%) Microservices
5 18 (20.22%) Containerisation
5 18 (20.22%) Full-Stack Development
5 18 (20.22%) Observability
6 15 (16.85%) Test Automation
7 13 (14.61%) LLM
8 12 (13.48%) Platform Engineering
9 11 (12.36%) Data Engineering
9 11 (12.36%) Generative AI
9 11 (12.36%) Machine Learning
10 10 (11.24%) TDD
11 9 (10.11%) Analytics
11 9 (10.11%) Event-Driven
11 9 (10.11%) Problem-Solving
12 8 (8.99%) Data Science
12 8 (8.99%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 26 (29.21%) Java
2 24 (26.97%) SQL
3 20 (22.47%) Python
4 17 (19.10%) TypeScript
5 11 (12.36%) C#
6 8 (8.99%) JavaScript
7 4 (4.49%) C++
7 4 (4.49%) Ruby
8 3 (3.37%) Go
9 2 (2.25%) COBOL
10 1 (1.12%) Korn
10 1 (1.12%) Kotlin
10 1 (1.12%) Scala
10 1 (1.12%) Shell Script
10 1 (1.12%) Swift
Qualifications
1 18 (20.22%) Security Cleared
2 17 (19.10%) SC Cleared
3 6 (6.74%) Degree
4 2 (2.25%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (1.12%) AWS Certification
5 1 (1.12%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 1 (1.12%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (3.37%) Data Quality
1 3 (3.37%) GDPR
2 2 (2.25%) Accessibility
2 2 (2.25%) EMIR
2 2 (2.25%) MiFID
3 1 (1.12%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (1.12%) NIST
3 1 (1.12%) QA
3 1 (1.12%) WCAG
System Software
1 19 (21.35%) Docker
2 2 (2.25%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 18 (20.22%) Kubernetes
2 2 (2.25%) Grafana
2 2 (2.25%) Terraform
3 1 (1.12%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 8 (8.99%) Microsoft
2 6 (6.74%) Oracle
3 5 (5.62%) IBM
4 3 (3.37%) Google
5 1 (1.12%) Apple
5 1 (1.12%) Databricks
5 1 (1.12%) Dynatrace
5 1 (1.12%) MuleSoft
5 1 (1.12%) OpenAI
5 1 (1.12%) Pega
5 1 (1.12%) Remedy
5 1 (1.12%) Salesforce
5 1 (1.12%) Sybase