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 11 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 36 51
Rank change year-on-year -14 +15 -5
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 82 94 89
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 4.29% 5.17% 3.74%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.82% 5.65% 4.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 63 47 48
10th Percentile £415 £442 £459
25th Percentile £513 £484 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £550 £625
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -12.00% -3.85%
75th Percentile £700 £644 £750
90th Percentile £788 £810 £838
Central London median daily rate £600 £550 £600
% change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -7.34%
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 1,702 1,663 2,124
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 89.06% 91.47% 89.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,180 996 1,520
10th Percentile £352 £363 £350
25th Percentile £428 £463 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £575 £569
Median % change year-on-year -6.52% +1.05% -5.17%
75th Percentile £675 £679 £688
90th Percentile £775 £778 £800
Central London median daily rate £550 £575 £563
% change year-on-year -4.35% +2.22% -4.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 8 13
10th Percentile £20.10 £22.00 £17.00
25th Percentile £23.30 £28.94 £18.93
Median hourly rate £34.00 £40.50 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -16.05% +62.00% -28.57%
75th Percentile £45.08 £64.56 £46.75
90th Percentile £54.94 £112.00 £69.05
Central London median hourly rate £26.11 £35.00 £27.81
% change year-on-year -25.40% +25.85% -17.60%

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 11 February 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 3 (3.66%) Confluence
2 2 (2.44%) Apache Spark
3 1 (1.22%) Apache
3 1 (1.22%) Cloud Foundry
3 1 (1.22%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (1.22%) Smallworld
Business Applications
1 1 (1.22%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 31 (37.80%) AWS
2 17 (20.73%) Azure
3 11 (13.41%) GCP
4 5 (6.10%) AWS Lambda
4 5 (6.10%) Power Platform
4 5 (6.10%) Serverless
5 4 (4.88%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 4 (4.88%) Amazon S3
5 4 (4.88%) Google Gemini
6 3 (3.66%) GitHub
6 3 (3.66%) Snowflake
7 2 (2.44%) Amazon SageMaker
7 2 (2.44%) Azure DevOps
7 2 (2.44%) Cloud Run
7 2 (2.44%) Dynamics 365
7 2 (2.44%) OpenShift
7 2 (2.44%) PaaS
7 2 (2.44%) Power Automate
7 2 (2.44%) PowerApps
8 1 (1.22%) Amazon Kinesis
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.22%) DNS
1 1 (1.22%) Firewall
1 1 (1.22%) HTTP
1 1 (1.22%) MPLS
1 1 (1.22%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (9.76%) Relational Database
2 4 (4.88%) MongoDB
3 3 (3.66%) Power BI
4 2 (2.44%) BigQuery
4 2 (2.44%) Hadoop
4 2 (2.44%) NoSQL
4 2 (2.44%) PostgreSQL
5 1 (1.22%) Amazon Redshift
5 1 (1.22%) Apache Cassandra
5 1 (1.22%) Big Data
5 1 (1.22%) Data Hub
5 1 (1.22%) Data Lake
5 1 (1.22%) DB2
5 1 (1.22%) Delta Lake
5 1 (1.22%) MemSQL
5 1 (1.22%) Metadata
5 1 (1.22%) MySQL
5 1 (1.22%) Pinecone
5 1 (1.22%) Sybase IQ
5 1 (1.22%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 8 (9.76%) GitLab
2 4 (4.88%) Jenkins
3 3 (3.66%) Git
3 3 (3.66%) JIRA
3 3 (3.66%) SonarQube
4 2 (2.44%) Cypress.io
4 2 (2.44%) Gradle
4 2 (2.44%) JUnit
4 2 (2.44%) Postman
4 2 (2.44%) TeamCity
5 1 (1.22%) Gatling
5 1 (1.22%) Hamcrest
5 1 (1.22%) Jaeger
5 1 (1.22%) Maven
5 1 (1.22%) MLflow
5 1 (1.22%) Mockito
5 1 (1.22%) MSTest
5 1 (1.22%) Selenium
5 1 (1.22%) Serenity BDD
5 1 (1.22%) Vite
General
1 20 (24.39%) Finance
2 19 (23.17%) Social Skills
3 17 (20.73%) Banking
4 5 (6.10%) Analytical Skills
4 5 (6.10%) Front Office
4 5 (6.10%) Manufacturing
4 5 (6.10%) Retail Banking
5 4 (4.88%) Investment Banking
5 4 (4.88%) Pharmaceutical
6 2 (2.44%) Financial Institution
7 1 (1.22%) Aerospace
7 1 (1.22%) Back Office
7 1 (1.22%) Games
7 1 (1.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (1.22%) Influencing Skills
7 1 (1.22%) Legal
7 1 (1.22%) Public Sector
7 1 (1.22%) Retail
Job Titles
1 28 (34.15%) Software Engineer
2 23 (28.05%) Senior
3 14 (17.07%) Lead
4 12 (14.63%) Developer
5 8 (9.76%) Python Engineer
6 7 (8.54%) Senior Software Engineer
7 6 (7.32%) Architect
7 6 (7.32%) Data Scientist
7 6 (7.32%) Integration Engineer
8 5 (6.10%) .NET Software Engineer
8 5 (6.10%) Hardware Engineer
8 5 (6.10%) Senior Developer
8 5 (6.10%) Software Integration Engineer
8 5 (6.10%) Technical Leader
9 4 (4.88%) Java Developer
9 4 (4.88%) Java Engineer
9 4 (4.88%) Python Developer
10 3 (3.66%) Backend Developer
10 3 (3.66%) DevOps Engineer
10 3 (3.66%) Senior Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (15.85%) .NET
2 11 (13.41%) React
3 8 (9.76%) Node.js
3 8 (9.76%) RESTful
4 7 (8.54%) AngularJS
4 7 (8.54%) LangChain
4 7 (8.54%) LangGraph
5 4 (4.88%) CSS
5 4 (4.88%) HTML
5 4 (4.88%) Kafka
5 4 (4.88%) OpenTelemetry
5 4 (4.88%) REST
6 3 (3.66%) FastAPI
6 3 (3.66%) Playwright
6 3 (3.66%) Spring
6 3 (3.66%) XML
7 2 (2.44%) JSON
7 2 (2.44%) NumPy
7 2 (2.44%) PyTorch
7 2 (2.44%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 15 (18.29%) Cloud Native
2 8 (9.76%) Life Science
3 6 (7.32%) Product Ownership
3 6 (7.32%) Virtual Team
4 5 (6.10%) AI Agents
4 5 (6.10%) Distributed Systems
5 4 (4.88%) Legacy Systems
6 2 (2.44%) Algorithms
6 2 (2.44%) Data Structures
6 2 (2.44%) Enterprise Software
6 2 (2.44%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 2 (2.44%) Mobile App
6 2 (2.44%) Onboarding
6 2 (2.44%) Self-Motivation
7 1 (1.22%) Derivative
7 1 (1.22%) Device Driver
7 1 (1.22%) Equities
7 1 (1.22%) Hybrid Cloud
7 1 (1.22%) Media Streaming
7 1 (1.22%) Robotics
Operating Systems
1 4 (4.88%) Windows
2 2 (2.44%) Linux
2 2 (2.44%) Windows Server
3 1 (1.22%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 23 (28.05%) CI/CD
2 22 (26.83%) AI
3 17 (20.73%) Test Automation
4 16 (19.51%) Problem-Solving
5 14 (17.07%) Data Science
5 14 (17.07%) DevOps
5 14 (17.07%) Generative AI
5 14 (17.07%) Microservices
6 13 (15.85%) Agile
7 12 (14.63%) Full-Stack Development
8 11 (13.41%) Code Quality
8 11 (13.41%) Design Patterns
8 11 (13.41%) Machine Learning
9 8 (9.76%) Containerisation
9 8 (9.76%) Technical Leadership
10 7 (8.54%) Data Pipeline
10 7 (8.54%) Infrastructure as Code
11 6 (7.32%) Analytics
11 6 (7.32%) Decision-Making
11 6 (7.32%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 34 (41.46%) Python
2 25 (30.49%) Java
3 14 (17.07%) SQL
4 6 (7.32%) JavaScript
5 5 (6.10%) C#
6 3 (3.66%) C++
6 3 (3.66%) Go
6 3 (3.66%) TypeScript
7 2 (2.44%) COBOL
7 2 (2.44%) PowerShell
7 2 (2.44%) Rust
8 1 (1.22%) R
8 1 (1.22%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 13 (15.85%) Security Cleared
2 12 (14.63%) SC Cleared
3 10 (12.20%) Degree
4 2 (2.44%) AWS Certification
4 2 (2.44%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
4 2 (2.44%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (1.22%) DBS Check
5 1 (1.22%) DV Cleared
5 1 (1.22%) Master's Degree
5 1 (1.22%) MBA
5 1 (1.22%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (3.66%) Data Quality
2 1 (1.22%) NIST
2 1 (1.22%) QA
System Software
1 17 (20.73%) Docker
2 1 (1.22%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 16 (19.51%) Kubernetes
2 5 (6.10%) Terraform
3 3 (3.66%) Ansible
4 2 (2.44%) Grafana
5 1 (1.22%) Argo
5 1 (1.22%) Istio
5 1 (1.22%) Microsoft Intune
5 1 (1.22%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 7 (8.54%) Google
1 7 (8.54%) Microsoft
2 4 (4.88%) Oracle
3 3 (3.66%) Databricks
4 2 (2.44%) DocuSign
4 2 (2.44%) Splunk
5 1 (1.22%) Alteryx
5 1 (1.22%) ForgeRock
5 1 (1.22%) Foundry
5 1 (1.22%) Ping Identity