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 25 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 41 31 43
Rank change year-on-year -10 +12 -7
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 827 923 928
As % of all contract jobs in London 5.87% 5.88% 4.68%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.36% 6.57% 5.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 550 686 707
10th Percentile £400 £448 £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 £825 £788
90th Percentile £850 £888 £850
England median daily rate £550 £600 £608
% change year-on-year -8.33% -1.28% +1.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 7 9
10th Percentile £27.32 £47.95 £40.62
25th Percentile £46.00 £56.34 £40.82
Median hourly rate £66.00 £67.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.22% +12.50% +8.63%
75th Percentile £80.00 £71.13 £65.11
90th Percentile £87.50 £75.22 £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 13,004 14,059 17,800
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 92.24% 89.51% 89.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,538 9,063 12,765
10th Percentile £335 £350 £355
25th Percentile £425 £450 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £550 £569
Median % change year-on-year -3.18% -3.34% -3.56%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £688
90th Percentile £775 £800 £800
England median daily rate £505 £525 £545
% change year-on-year -3.81% -3.67% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 255 170 240
10th Percentile £18.09 £17.25 £18.56
25th Percentile £24.50 £23.98 £21.50
Median hourly rate £29.00 £37.50 £35.96
Median % change year-on-year -22.67% +4.30% -8.97%
75th Percentile £47.50 £55.56 £60.00
90th Percentile £68.62 £80.75 £75.13
England median hourly rate £25.15 £36.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year -30.14% -20.00% +25.00%

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 25 November 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 25 November 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 25 November 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 +17 105 £619 +7.61% 87
West London -1 18 £625 +8.70% 22
South London -5 10 £530 -26.13% 19
East London +1 5 £813 +47.39% 16
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 64 (7.74%) Apache Airflow
2 57 (6.89%) Apache
3 34 (4.11%) Confluence
4 27 (3.26%) Apache Spark
5 7 (0.85%) CMS
6 5 (0.60%) JBoss
7 2 (0.24%) Appian
7 2 (0.24%) Magnolia
7 2 (0.24%) Sitecore CMS
7 2 (0.24%) WordPress
8 1 (0.12%) CICS
8 1 (0.12%) Cloud Foundry
8 1 (0.12%) IIS
8 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Exchange
8 1 (0.12%) nginx
8 1 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
8 1 (0.12%) SharePoint
8 1 (0.12%) Tomcat
Applications
1 13 (1.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (0.97%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 6 (0.73%) Microsoft Office
4 5 (0.60%) Chatbot
5 3 (0.36%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 8 (0.97%) Aladdin
1 8 (0.97%) Temenos T24
2 3 (0.36%) Fidessa
2 3 (0.36%) FLEXCUBE
2 3 (0.36%) Oracle BPM
2 3 (0.36%) thinkFolio
3 2 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.12%) ION Anvil
4 1 (0.12%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.12%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 329 (39.78%) AWS
2 161 (19.47%) Azure
3 100 (12.09%) GCP
4 80 (9.67%) Serverless
5 75 (9.07%) GitHub
6 59 (7.13%) dbt
7 51 (6.17%) Snowflake
8 45 (5.44%) GitHub Actions
9 36 (4.35%) AWS Lambda
10 33 (3.99%) Power Platform
11 30 (3.63%) Amazon S3
12 27 (3.26%) Azure DevOps
13 20 (2.42%) AWS Step Functions
14 19 (2.30%) SaaS
15 18 (2.18%) Amazon ECS
15 18 (2.18%) AWS CloudFormation
16 14 (1.69%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 14 (1.69%) Datadog
17 13 (1.57%) Amazon Kinesis
17 13 (1.57%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 6 (0.73%) 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
4 2 (0.24%) TCP/IP
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%) SSH
5 1 (0.12%) SSL
5 1 (0.12%) VoWiFi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 72 (8.71%) PostgreSQL
2 52 (6.29%) Amazon Athena
3 49 (5.93%) Apache Arrow
3 49 (5.93%) Apache Iceberg
3 49 (5.93%) Dremio
4 47 (5.68%) Data Lake
5 38 (4.59%) NoSQL
6 37 (4.47%) Big Data
7 36 (4.35%) Apache Cassandra
8 32 (3.87%) Apache Ignite
9 31 (3.75%) SQL Server
10 29 (3.51%) Hadoop
11 26 (3.14%) MongoDB
12 24 (2.90%) Power BI
13 23 (2.78%) Relational Database
14 21 (2.54%) Elasticsearch
15 18 (2.18%) MySQL
16 16 (1.93%) Amazon RDS
17 15 (1.81%) Data Warehouse
17 15 (1.81%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 91 (11.00%) Git
2 57 (6.89%) Jenkins
3 45 (5.44%) JIRA
4 32 (3.87%) GitLab
5 18 (2.18%) Cypress.io
6 15 (1.81%) Cucumber
6 15 (1.81%) JUnit
7 13 (1.57%) Gradle
8 12 (1.45%) SonarQube
8 12 (1.45%) TeamCity
9 9 (1.09%) Selenium
10 8 (0.97%) Bitbucket
11 7 (0.85%) Maven
11 7 (0.85%) Mockito
12 6 (0.73%) MLflow
13 5 (0.60%) CircleCI
13 5 (0.60%) Postman
14 3 (0.36%) Lerna
15 2 (0.24%) rollup.js
15 2 (0.24%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 284 (34.34%) Finance
2 180 (21.77%) Social Skills
3 133 (16.08%) Banking
4 107 (12.94%) Front Office
5 81 (9.79%) Investment Banking
6 49 (5.93%) Analytical Skills
7 45 (5.44%) Public Sector
8 17 (2.06%) Pharmaceutical
9 16 (1.93%) Financial Institution
10 13 (1.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 10 (1.21%) Back Office
12 9 (1.09%) Retail Banking
13 7 (0.85%) Influencing Skills
13 7 (0.85%) Retail
13 7 (0.85%) Telecoms
14 6 (0.73%) Documentation Skills
14 6 (0.73%) Military
14 6 (0.73%) Publishing
15 5 (0.60%) Games
15 5 (0.60%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 315 (38.09%) Software Engineer
2 256 (30.96%) Developer
3 183 (22.13%) Senior
4 90 (10.88%) Python Engineer
5 83 (10.04%) Senior Software Engineer
6 73 (8.83%) Java Engineer
7 72 (8.71%) Java Software Engineer
8 67 (8.10%) AWS Engineer
9 66 (7.98%) Python Software Engineer
10 65 (7.86%) Python Developer
11 60 (7.26%) AWS Software Engineer
12 58 (7.01%) Lead
13 47 (5.68%) Java Developer
14 46 (5.56%) Senior Developer
15 44 (5.32%) Developer/Software Engineer
16 36 (4.35%) AWS Developer
16 36 (4.35%) Data Engineer
16 36 (4.35%) Senior Java Engineer
16 36 (4.35%) Senior Java Software Engineer
17 32 (3.87%) Full-Stack Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 158 (19.11%) React
2 156 (18.86%) Kafka
3 107 (12.94%) Node.js
4 78 (9.43%) NumPy
5 77 (9.31%) Pandas
6 75 (9.07%) AngularJS
6 75 (9.07%) gRPC
7 74 (8.95%) .NET
8 68 (8.22%) SciPy
9 53 (6.41%) REST
9 53 (6.41%) RESTful
10 49 (5.93%) Vue
11 46 (5.56%) Spring
12 43 (5.20%) FastAPI
13 40 (4.84%) GraphQL
14 32 (3.87%) CSS
14 32 (3.87%) HTML
14 32 (3.87%) Protocol Buffers
15 30 (3.63%) Spring Boot
16 25 (3.02%) Redux
Miscellaneous
1 100 (12.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
2 97 (11.73%) Cloud Native
3 93 (11.25%) Fixed Income
4 68 (8.22%) Distributed Systems
5 66 (7.98%) Hedge funds
6 61 (7.38%) Equities
7 45 (5.44%) Derivative
8 32 (3.87%) Pricing Data
9 28 (3.39%) Data Structures
10 26 (3.14%) Product Ownership
11 24 (2.90%) Algorithms
11 24 (2.90%) Virtual Team
12 20 (2.42%) Data Protection Act
12 20 (2.42%) Greenfield Project
13 15 (1.81%) Genomics
14 14 (1.69%) Legacy Systems
14 14 (1.69%) Onboarding
15 13 (1.57%) AI Agents
15 13 (1.57%) Linux Command Line
15 13 (1.57%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 105 (12.70%) Linux
2 38 (4.59%) Unix
3 19 (2.30%) Windows
4 14 (1.69%) Android
5 11 (1.33%) 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
1 366 (44.26%) Agile
2 263 (31.80%) CI/CD
3 176 (21.28%) DevOps
4 137 (16.57%) Microservices
5 126 (15.24%) AI
6 117 (14.15%) Problem-Solving
7 110 (13.30%) Infrastructure as Code
7 110 (13.30%) Test Automation
8 101 (12.21%) Machine Learning
9 90 (10.88%) Full-Stack Development
10 88 (10.64%) Containerisation
11 87 (10.52%) Computer Science
12 83 (10.04%) Clean Code
13 82 (9.92%) Mentoring
14 79 (9.55%) Investment Management
15 70 (8.46%) Fintech
16 66 (7.98%) Asset Management
17 62 (7.50%) Data Pipeline
18 60 (7.26%) Scrum
19 59 (7.13%) Open Source
Programming Languages
1 369 (44.62%) Python
2 256 (30.96%) Java
3 187 (22.61%) JavaScript
4 171 (20.68%) TypeScript
5 162 (19.59%) SQL
6 131 (15.84%) C#
7 116 (14.03%) C++
8 72 (8.71%) Go
9 28 (3.39%) Rust
10 17 (2.06%) Ruby
11 12 (1.45%) C
12 10 (1.21%) Bash
12 10 (1.21%) PHP
12 10 (1.21%) PowerShell
13 9 (1.09%) Bicep
13 9 (1.09%) PL/SQL
14 8 (0.97%) Kotlin
14 8 (0.97%) Scala
15 7 (0.85%) JSX
16 5 (0.60%) R
Qualifications
1 111 (13.42%) Security Cleared
2 99 (11.97%) Degree
3 96 (11.61%) SC Cleared
4 37 (4.47%) Computer Science Degree
5 33 (3.99%) DV Cleared
6 17 (2.06%) Master's Degree
7 9 (1.09%) AWS Certification
7 9 (1.09%) MCP
8 7 (0.85%) PhD
9 6 (0.73%) BPSS Clearance
10 5 (0.60%) Azure Certification
11 3 (0.36%) CISSP
11 3 (0.36%) EMC Certification
11 3 (0.36%) HNC
11 3 (0.36%) HND
11 3 (0.36%) ISTQB
11 3 (0.36%) Postgraduate
12 2 (0.24%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 2 (0.24%) CISM
12 2 (0.24%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 35 (4.23%) QA
2 22 (2.66%) Data Quality
3 11 (1.33%) Accessibility
4 10 (1.21%) GDPR
5 4 (0.48%) MiFID
5 4 (0.48%) SLA
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
6 3 (0.36%) WCAG
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%) ISO 19650
8 1 (0.12%) SOC 2
System Software
1 179 (21.64%) Docker
2 9 (1.09%) Active Directory
3 4 (0.48%) 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
1 170 (20.56%) Kubernetes
2 85 (10.28%) Terraform
3 29 (3.51%) Grafana
4 24 (2.90%) Prometheus
5 21 (2.54%) Ansible
6 5 (0.60%) Kibana
7 4 (0.48%) Argo
8 3 (0.36%) Functional Safety
9 2 (0.24%) Kubeflow
9 2 (0.24%) Puppet
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
10 1 (0.12%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 54 (6.53%) Microsoft
2 40 (4.84%) Oracle
3 34 (4.11%) Google
4 28 (3.39%) Databricks
5 23 (2.78%) Foundry
6 14 (1.69%) Palantir
7 13 (1.57%) Cloudera
8 10 (1.21%) Temenos
9 9 (1.09%) OpenAI
10 6 (0.73%) Salesforce
11 5 (0.60%) Atlassian
11 5 (0.60%) Cisco
11 5 (0.60%) DocuSign
11 5 (0.60%) Dynatrace
12 4 (0.48%) Alteryx
12 4 (0.48%) Murex
12 4 (0.48%) Splunk
13 3 (0.36%) EMC
13 3 (0.36%) IBM
13 3 (0.36%) Red Hat