Software Engineering Contract Job Trends in London

Software Engineering
England > London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in London requiring Software Engineering skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 4 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 39 31 45
Rank change year-on-year -8 +14 -10
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 832 917 864
As % of all contract jobs in London 5.79% 5.83% 4.50%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.31% 6.49% 5.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 550 681 653
10th Percentile £400 £450 £463
25th Percentile £500 £550 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £675 £650
Median % change year-on-year -7.41% +3.85% -
75th Percentile £750 £838 £788
90th Percentile £850 £888 £850
England median daily rate £550 £601 £606
% change year-on-year -8.41% -0.83% +0.92%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 5 9
10th Percentile £30.54 £46.30 £40.62
25th Percentile £43.63 £51.25 £40.82
Median hourly rate £58.94 £67.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.69% +12.50% +4.35%
75th Percentile £78.75 £71.00 £65.11
90th Percentile £87.50 £71.15 £73.00
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

All Process and Methodology Skills
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 London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 13,187 14,123 17,197
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 91.80% 89.82% 89.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,685 9,134 12,308
10th Percentile £338 £350 £356
25th Percentile £425 £450 £459
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £526 £550 £567
Median % change year-on-year -4.45% -3.04% -3.86%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £688
90th Percentile £763 £800 £800
England median daily rate £500 £525 £545
% change year-on-year -4.76% -3.67% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 248 166 231
10th Percentile £18.25 £17.25 £18.78
25th Percentile £24.58 £23.80 £21.75
Median hourly rate £29.75 £37.25 £36.28
Median % change year-on-year -20.13% +2.67% -7.57%
75th Percentile £47.56 £53.75 £60.63
90th Percentile £66.50 £80.75 £76.25
England median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +18.90%

Software Engineering
Job Vacancy Trend in London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Software Engineering relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in London.

Software Engineering job vacancy trend in London

Software Engineering
Daily Rate Trend in London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in London citing Software Engineering.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in London citing Software Engineering

Software Engineering
Daily Rate Histogram in London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Software Engineering in London over the 6 months to 4 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Software Engineering in London

Software Engineering
Hourly Rate Trend in London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in London citing Software Engineering.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in London citing Software Engineering

Software Engineering
Hourly Rate Histogram in London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Software Engineering in London over the 6 months to 4 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Software Engineering in London

Software Engineering
Contract Job Locations in London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Software Engineering within the London region over the 6 months to 4 December 2025. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 6 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
Central London +18 106 £619 +8.32% 78
West London +2 25 £603 +4.78% 17
South London -4 14 £530 -26.90% 30
East London 0 5 £813 +54.03% 17
Software Engineering
England

Software Engineering
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in 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 59 (7.09%) Apache Airflow
2 58 (6.97%) Apache
3 31 (3.73%) Apache Spark
3 31 (3.73%) Confluence
4 7 (0.84%) CMS
5 4 (0.48%) JBoss
6 2 (0.24%) Appian
6 2 (0.24%) Magnolia
6 2 (0.24%) Sitecore CMS
6 2 (0.24%) WordPress
7 1 (0.12%) CICS
7 1 (0.12%) Cloud Foundry
7 1 (0.12%) IIS
7 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Exchange
7 1 (0.12%) nginx
7 1 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
7 1 (0.12%) SharePoint
7 1 (0.12%) Smallworld
7 1 (0.12%) Tomcat
Applications
1 13 (1.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (0.96%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 6 (0.72%) Microsoft Office
4 5 (0.60%) Chatbot
5 3 (0.36%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 8 (0.96%) Aladdin
1 8 (0.96%) Temenos T24
2 3 (0.36%) Fidessa
2 3 (0.36%) thinkFolio
3 2 (0.24%) FLEXCUBE
3 2 (0.24%) Oracle BPM
4 1 (0.12%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.12%) ION Anvil
4 1 (0.12%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.12%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 325 (39.06%) AWS
2 163 (19.59%) Azure
3 98 (11.78%) GCP
4 75 (9.01%) GitHub
4 75 (9.01%) Serverless
5 54 (6.49%) dbt
6 48 (5.77%) Snowflake
7 46 (5.53%) GitHub Actions
8 35 (4.21%) Power Platform
9 34 (4.09%) AWS Lambda
10 33 (3.97%) Amazon S3
11 29 (3.49%) Azure DevOps
12 22 (2.64%) AWS CloudFormation
13 19 (2.28%) Amazon ECS
13 19 (2.28%) AWS Step Functions
13 19 (2.28%) SaaS
14 15 (1.80%) Datadog
15 14 (1.68%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 14 (1.68%) CloudFront
16 13 (1.56%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 6 (0.72%) Firewall
2 4 (0.48%) Network Security
2 4 (0.48%) tcpdump
3 3 (0.36%) VPN
4 2 (0.24%) HTTP
4 2 (0.24%) HTTPS
5 1 (0.12%) DNS
5 1 (0.12%) Ethernet
5 1 (0.12%) Internet
5 1 (0.12%) Modbus
5 1 (0.12%) MPLS
5 1 (0.12%) Multicast
5 1 (0.12%) Radio Access Network
5 1 (0.12%) RS-232
5 1 (0.12%) RS-485
5 1 (0.12%) SMS
5 1 (0.12%) Software-Defined Networking
5 1 (0.12%) SSH
5 1 (0.12%) SSL
5 1 (0.12%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 66 (7.93%) PostgreSQL
2 51 (6.13%) Amazon Athena
3 49 (5.89%) Data Lake
4 45 (5.41%) Apache Arrow
4 45 (5.41%) Apache Iceberg
4 45 (5.41%) Dremio
5 39 (4.69%) Apache Cassandra
5 39 (4.69%) NoSQL
6 36 (4.33%) Big Data
7 32 (3.85%) SQL Server
8 30 (3.61%) Apache Ignite
9 29 (3.49%) Hadoop
10 27 (3.25%) Power BI
11 26 (3.13%) MongoDB
12 24 (2.88%) Relational Database
13 21 (2.52%) Elasticsearch
14 17 (2.04%) Amazon RDS
14 17 (2.04%) Metadata
14 17 (2.04%) MySQL
15 15 (1.80%) Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 85 (10.22%) Git
2 56 (6.73%) Jenkins
3 42 (5.05%) JIRA
4 32 (3.85%) GitLab
5 18 (2.16%) Cypress.io
6 15 (1.80%) JUnit
7 14 (1.68%) Cucumber
8 13 (1.56%) Gradle
9 12 (1.44%) SonarQube
10 9 (1.08%) Selenium
10 9 (1.08%) TeamCity
11 8 (0.96%) Mockito
12 7 (0.84%) Bitbucket
13 6 (0.72%) Maven
13 6 (0.72%) MLflow
14 5 (0.60%) CircleCI
14 5 (0.60%) Postman
15 3 (0.36%) Lerna
16 2 (0.24%) GoCD
16 2 (0.24%) rollup.js
General
1 276 (33.17%) Finance
2 173 (20.79%) Social Skills
3 129 (15.50%) Banking
4 98 (11.78%) Front Office
5 79 (9.50%) Investment Banking
6 48 (5.77%) Analytical Skills
7 45 (5.41%) Public Sector
8 17 (2.04%) Financial Institution
8 17 (2.04%) Pharmaceutical
9 13 (1.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 10 (1.20%) Back Office
11 9 (1.08%) Retail Banking
12 8 (0.96%) Influencing Skills
13 7 (0.84%) Retail
14 6 (0.72%) Documentation Skills
14 6 (0.72%) Games
14 6 (0.72%) Publishing
15 5 (0.60%) Marketing
15 5 (0.60%) Military
15 5 (0.60%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 321 (38.58%) Software Engineer
2 244 (29.33%) Developer
3 195 (23.44%) Senior
4 88 (10.58%) Python Engineer
4 88 (10.58%) Senior Software Engineer
5 67 (8.05%) Java Engineer
6 66 (7.93%) Java Software Engineer
7 64 (7.69%) AWS Engineer
8 63 (7.57%) Python Software Engineer
9 61 (7.33%) Python Developer
10 57 (6.85%) AWS Software Engineer
11 56 (6.73%) Lead
12 50 (6.01%) Senior Developer
13 46 (5.53%) Java Developer
14 41 (4.93%) Developer/Software Engineer
15 38 (4.57%) Data Engineer
16 33 (3.97%) Senior Java Engineer
16 33 (3.97%) Senior Java Software Engineer
17 32 (3.85%) AWS Developer
18 29 (3.49%) Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 163 (19.59%) Kafka
2 149 (17.91%) React
3 104 (12.50%) Node.js
4 77 (9.25%) gRPC
5 74 (8.89%) .NET
5 74 (8.89%) NumPy
6 73 (8.77%) Pandas
7 68 (8.17%) AngularJS
8 63 (7.57%) SciPy
9 51 (6.13%) REST
10 48 (5.77%) RESTful
11 46 (5.53%) Vue
12 43 (5.17%) FastAPI
12 43 (5.17%) Spring
13 39 (4.69%) GraphQL
14 30 (3.61%) CSS
14 30 (3.61%) Protocol Buffers
15 29 (3.49%) HTML
15 29 (3.49%) Spring Boot
16 27 (3.25%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 103 (12.38%) Cloud Native
2 91 (10.94%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 84 (10.10%) Fixed Income
4 72 (8.65%) Distributed Systems
5 62 (7.45%) Hedge funds
6 55 (6.61%) Equities
7 44 (5.29%) Derivative
8 31 (3.73%) Product Ownership
9 30 (3.61%) Pricing Data
10 28 (3.37%) Data Structures
11 24 (2.88%) Algorithms
12 23 (2.76%) Virtual Team
13 20 (2.40%) Data Protection Act
13 20 (2.40%) Greenfield Project
14 15 (1.80%) AI Agents
14 15 (1.80%) Genomics
15 14 (1.68%) Legacy Systems
15 14 (1.68%) Onboarding
16 13 (1.56%) Self-Motivation
17 12 (1.44%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 105 (12.62%) Linux
2 38 (4.57%) Unix
3 18 (2.16%) Windows
4 13 (1.56%) Android
5 11 (1.32%) Apple iOS
6 5 (0.60%) Mac OS
7 3 (0.36%) Windows Server
8 2 (0.24%) VMS
9 1 (0.12%) FreeRTOS
9 1 (0.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
9 1 (0.12%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 361 (43.39%) Agile
2 270 (32.45%) CI/CD
3 180 (21.63%) DevOps
4 139 (16.71%) Microservices
5 132 (15.87%) AI
6 117 (14.06%) Infrastructure as Code
7 115 (13.82%) Problem-Solving
8 111 (13.34%) Test Automation
9 103 (12.38%) Machine Learning
10 92 (11.06%) Containerisation
11 87 (10.46%) Computer Science
11 87 (10.46%) Full-Stack Development
12 80 (9.62%) Mentoring
13 76 (9.13%) Clean Code
14 72 (8.65%) Investment Management
15 64 (7.69%) Fintech
15 64 (7.69%) Scrum
16 63 (7.57%) Data Pipeline
17 62 (7.45%) Open Source
18 59 (7.09%) Asset Management
Programming Languages
1 370 (44.47%) Python
2 247 (29.69%) Java
3 179 (21.51%) JavaScript
4 165 (19.83%) TypeScript
5 161 (19.35%) SQL
6 133 (15.99%) C#
7 116 (13.94%) C++
8 80 (9.62%) Go
9 29 (3.49%) Rust
10 18 (2.16%) Ruby
11 11 (1.32%) C
12 10 (1.20%) PHP
13 9 (1.08%) Bash
13 9 (1.08%) Bicep
14 8 (0.96%) PL/SQL
14 8 (0.96%) PowerShell
15 7 (0.84%) JSX
15 7 (0.84%) Kotlin
16 6 (0.72%) Scala
17 5 (0.60%) R
Qualifications
1 112 (13.46%) Security Cleared
2 101 (12.14%) Degree
3 96 (11.54%) SC Cleared
4 38 (4.57%) Computer Science Degree
5 34 (4.09%) DV Cleared
6 18 (2.16%) Master's Degree
7 10 (1.20%) MCP
8 9 (1.08%) AWS Certification
9 7 (0.84%) PhD
10 6 (0.72%) Azure Certification
11 5 (0.60%) BPSS Clearance
12 3 (0.36%) CISSP
12 3 (0.36%) EMC Certification
12 3 (0.36%) HNC
12 3 (0.36%) HND
12 3 (0.36%) ISTQB
12 3 (0.36%) Postgraduate
13 2 (0.24%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 2 (0.24%) CISM
13 2 (0.24%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 35 (4.21%) QA
2 25 (3.00%) Data Quality
3 13 (1.56%) GDPR
4 12 (1.44%) Accessibility
5 4 (0.48%) MiFID
5 4 (0.48%) SLA
5 4 (0.48%) WCAG
6 3 (0.36%) Def Stans
6 3 (0.36%) IEC 61508
6 3 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 15288
6 3 (0.36%) NIST
6 3 (0.36%) SEPA
7 2 (0.24%) EU AI Act
7 2 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.24%) PMO
8 1 (0.12%) EMIR
8 1 (0.12%) GxP
8 1 (0.12%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.12%) SOC 2
System Software
1 185 (22.24%) Docker
2 9 (1.08%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.36%) zsh
4 1 (0.12%) Embedded Firmware
4 1 (0.12%) Firmware
4 1 (0.12%) KVM
4 1 (0.12%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 178 (21.39%) Kubernetes
2 98 (11.78%) Terraform
3 34 (4.09%) Grafana
4 28 (3.37%) Prometheus
5 22 (2.64%) Ansible
6 5 (0.60%) Kibana
7 4 (0.48%) Argo
8 3 (0.36%) Functional Safety
8 3 (0.36%) Puppet
9 2 (0.24%) Kubeflow
9 2 (0.24%) rkt
10 1 (0.12%) CA Endevor
10 1 (0.12%) Fluentd
10 1 (0.12%) HP ALM
10 1 (0.12%) HP Quality Center
10 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Intune
10 1 (0.12%) Packer
Vendors
1 56 (6.73%) Microsoft
2 36 (4.33%) Google
2 36 (4.33%) Oracle
3 30 (3.61%) Databricks
4 23 (2.76%) Foundry
5 15 (1.80%) Palantir
6 13 (1.56%) Cloudera
7 10 (1.20%) Temenos
8 9 (1.08%) OpenAI
9 6 (0.72%) Dynatrace
9 6 (0.72%) Salesforce
10 5 (0.60%) Cisco
10 5 (0.60%) DocuSign
11 4 (0.48%) Alteryx
11 4 (0.48%) Atlassian
11 4 (0.48%) Murex
11 4 (0.48%) Splunk
12 3 (0.36%) EMC
12 3 (0.36%) PagerDuty
12 3 (0.36%) Portware