Senior Developer Contract Job Trends in England

Senior Developer
UK > England

The median Senior Developer daily rate in England is £550, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 24 February 2026.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 161 147 175
Rank change year-on-year -14 +28 -61
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Developer 585 456 525
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.67% 1.80% 1.39%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.82% 1.93% 1.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 408 309 385
10th Percentile £400 £445 £415
25th Percentile £455 £513 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £588
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +2.13% -9.62%
75th Percentile £675 £725 £720
90th Percentile £888 £850 £838
UK median daily rate £525 £600 £575
% change year-on-year -12.50% +4.35% -8.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 1 10
10th Percentile - - £46.15
25th Percentile £85.00 - £56.25
Median hourly rate £90.00 £77.19 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +16.60% +28.65% -4.00%
75th Percentile £95.00 - £72.50
90th Percentile - - £74.63
UK median hourly rate £90.00 £77.19 £60.00
% change year-on-year +16.60% +28.65% -4.00%

All Contract IT Job Roles
England

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in England. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in England with a recognized job title 32,138 23,598 35,085
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.87% 92.97% 92.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,392 14,950 23,516
10th Percentile £305 £300 £272
25th Percentile £410 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.29% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £746
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,058 716 2,160
10th Percentile £15.00 £16.24 £13.23
25th Percentile £18.87 £22.00 £16.30
Median hourly rate £33.34 £36.25 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -8.04% +3.57% -12.50%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £74.68 £75.38 £71.87
UK median hourly rate £32.00 £35.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -8.57% - -10.88%

Senior Developer
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Senior Developer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

Senior Developer job vacancy trend in England

Senior Developer
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Senior Developer job vacancies in England.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Senior Developer job vacancies in England

Senior Developer
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Senior Developer in England over the 6 months to 24 February 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Senior Developer in England

Senior Developer
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Senior Developer job vacancies in England.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Senior Developer job vacancies in England

Senior Developer
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Senior Developer within the England region over the 6 months to 24 February 2026. 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
London -9 366 £600 -4.38% 106
North of England -47 70 £550 +4.76% 91
South West +18 54 £475 -20.89% 27
South East -29 38 £500 +11.11% 62
Yorkshire -32 36 £575 +9.52% 31
North West -33 33 £500 -4.76% 49
Midlands -42 30 £525 +0.48% 31
East of England -17 21 £500 -23.08% 7
West Midlands -46 21 £525 -4.55% 23
East Midlands -23 9 £520 - 8
North East -11 6 £525 -11.02% 12
Senior Developer
UK

Senior Developer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England

For the 6 months to 24 February 2026, Senior Developer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the England region featuring Senior Developer in the job title.

1 188 (32.14%) Java
2 180 (30.77%) AWS
3 177 (30.26%) Agile
4 146 (24.96%) SQL
5 143 (24.44%) Microservices
6 141 (24.10%) CI/CD
7 136 (23.25%) Azure
8 134 (22.91%) Python
9 127 (21.71%) Security Cleared
10 118 (20.17%) DevOps
11 116 (19.83%) SC Cleared
12 115 (19.66%) JavaScript
13 114 (19.49%) Kafka
14 112 (19.15%) Docker
15 105 (17.95%) Kubernetes
16 97 (16.58%) Problem-Solving
17 80 (13.68%) TDD
18 78 (13.33%) Spring
19 76 (12.99%) React
19 76 (12.99%) Software Engineering
20 68 (11.62%) Scrum
21 67 (11.45%) Git
21 67 (11.45%) Spring Boot
21 67 (11.45%) Test Automation
22 65 (11.11%) Containerisation
23 59 (10.09%) Analytics
24 57 (9.74%) .NET
24 57 (9.74%) C#
24 57 (9.74%) Oracle
25 55 (9.40%) Open Source

Senior Developer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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 10 (1.71%) Confluence
2 7 (1.20%) CMS
3 5 (0.85%) SharePoint
4 4 (0.68%) Ethereum
4 4 (0.68%) Hyperledger
4 4 (0.68%) Jupyter
5 3 (0.51%) Headless CMS
5 3 (0.51%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.34%) Microsoft Exchange
7 1 (0.17%) Anypoint
7 1 (0.17%) Apache Airflow
7 1 (0.17%) Appian
7 1 (0.17%) Mendix
7 1 (0.17%) nginx
7 1 (0.17%) Oracle Application Server
7 1 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 1 (0.17%) SAS
7 1 (0.17%) Smallworld
7 1 (0.17%) Umbraco
7 1 (0.17%) WebLogic
Applications
1 14 (2.39%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.34%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 3 (0.51%) Endur
2 2 (0.34%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.17%) FLEXCUBE
3 1 (0.17%) IBM Planning Analytics
3 1 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.17%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 1 (0.17%) Oracle Retail
3 1 (0.17%) R3 Corda
3 1 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 180 (30.77%) AWS
2 136 (23.25%) Azure
3 51 (8.72%) Azure DevOps
4 43 (7.35%) GitHub
5 30 (5.13%) Power Platform
6 27 (4.62%) GCP
7 26 (4.44%) Serverless
8 19 (3.25%) Power Automate
9 16 (2.74%) PowerApps
10 15 (2.56%) Azure Service Bus
11 14 (2.39%) AWS Lambda
12 13 (2.22%) Amazon EC2
12 13 (2.22%) Dynamics 365
12 13 (2.22%) GitHub Actions
13 12 (2.05%) Amazon S3
13 12 (2.05%) Amazon SQS
14 10 (1.71%) AWS CloudFormation
14 10 (1.71%) Copilot Studio
14 10 (1.71%) Microsoft Copilot
15 9 (1.54%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 6 (1.03%) HTTP
2 5 (0.85%) Kerberos
3 2 (0.34%) Firewall
4 1 (0.17%) DNS
4 1 (0.17%) Ethernet
4 1 (0.17%) Internet
4 1 (0.17%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 53 (9.06%) PostgreSQL
2 38 (6.50%) SQL Server
3 37 (6.32%) MongoDB
4 36 (6.15%) NoSQL
5 35 (5.98%) Relational Database
6 32 (5.47%) Apache Cassandra
7 21 (3.59%) Power BI
8 16 (2.74%) DynamoDB
9 12 (2.05%) DB2
10 10 (1.71%) Amazon RDS
10 10 (1.71%) Data Warehouse
11 9 (1.54%) Data Hub
11 9 (1.54%) MySQL
12 8 (1.37%) Data Lake
13 7 (1.20%) Oracle BI EE
14 6 (1.03%) HBase
14 6 (1.03%) Redis
15 5 (0.85%) Oracle Database
15 5 (0.85%) RDBMS
15 5 (0.85%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 67 (11.45%) Git
2 34 (5.81%) JUnit
2 34 (5.81%) Oracle APEX
3 33 (5.64%) Jenkins
4 22 (3.76%) GitLab
5 21 (3.59%) JIRA
6 17 (2.91%) Mockito
7 15 (2.56%) Maven
8 11 (1.88%) Gradle
9 9 (1.54%) Cucumber
10 8 (1.37%) Artifactory
10 8 (1.37%) SonarQube
11 7 (1.20%) Sonatype Nexus
12 6 (1.03%) SpecFlow
13 5 (0.85%) Mocha
14 4 (0.68%) Bitbucket
14 4 (0.68%) Postman
15 3 (0.51%) Lerna
15 3 (0.51%) Selenium
15 3 (0.51%) webpack
General
1 132 (22.56%) Social Skills
2 124 (21.20%) Finance
3 86 (14.70%) Banking
4 69 (11.79%) Public Sector
5 42 (7.18%) Analytical Skills
6 37 (6.32%) Investment Banking
7 23 (3.93%) Front Office
8 12 (2.05%) Financial Institution
9 5 (0.85%) Law
9 5 (0.85%) Presentation Skills
10 4 (0.68%) Health Technology
10 4 (0.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 4 (0.68%) Retail Banking
11 3 (0.51%) Legal
11 3 (0.51%) Military
11 3 (0.51%) Pharmaceutical
11 3 (0.51%) Telecoms
12 2 (0.34%) Documentation Skills
12 2 (0.34%) Marketing
12 2 (0.34%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 114 (19.49%) Kafka
2 78 (13.33%) Spring
3 76 (12.99%) React
4 67 (11.45%) Spring Boot
5 57 (9.74%) .NET
6 52 (8.89%) REST
7 49 (8.38%) Node.js
8 48 (8.21%) AngularJS
9 46 (7.86%) HTML
10 45 (7.69%) RESTful
11 44 (7.52%) CSS
12 30 (5.13%) gRPC
13 27 (4.62%) Web Services
14 18 (3.08%) .NET Framework
15 16 (2.74%) .NET Core
16 15 (2.56%) Playwright
16 15 (2.56%) RabbitMQ
17 14 (2.39%) Jest
17 14 (2.39%) Pandas
17 14 (2.39%) Redux
Miscellaneous
1 47 (8.03%) Distributed Systems
2 37 (6.32%) Cloud Native
3 29 (4.96%) Derivative
4 25 (4.27%) Equities
5 21 (3.59%) Product Ownership
6 20 (3.42%) Algorithms
7 19 (3.25%) Market Risk
8 18 (3.08%) Management Information System
9 16 (2.74%) Greenfield Project
10 14 (2.39%) Data Structures
11 12 (2.05%) Fixed Income
11 12 (2.05%) Mobile App
12 11 (1.88%) Legacy Systems
13 8 (1.37%) Equity Derivative
13 8 (1.37%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 7 (1.20%) Onboarding
15 6 (1.03%) AI Agents
15 6 (1.03%) Enterprise Software
16 5 (0.85%) Linux Command Line
17 4 (0.68%) Legacy Applications
Operating Systems
1 44 (7.52%) Linux
2 20 (3.42%) Unix
3 16 (2.74%) Android
4 10 (1.71%) Mac OS X
4 10 (1.71%) Windows
5 9 (1.54%) Apple iOS
6 4 (0.68%) Mac OS
7 2 (0.34%) Windows Server
8 1 (0.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.17%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 177 (30.26%) Agile
2 143 (24.44%) Microservices
3 141 (24.10%) CI/CD
4 118 (20.17%) DevOps
5 97 (16.58%) Problem-Solving
6 80 (13.68%) TDD
7 76 (12.99%) Software Engineering
8 68 (11.62%) Scrum
9 67 (11.45%) Test Automation
10 65 (11.11%) Containerisation
11 59 (10.09%) Analytics
12 55 (9.40%) Open Source
13 51 (8.72%) Full-Stack Development
14 45 (7.69%) SDLC
15 42 (7.18%) Code Quality
15 42 (7.18%) Mentoring
16 41 (7.01%) Design Patterns
17 36 (6.15%) Event-Driven
18 34 (5.81%) Front End Development
18 34 (5.81%) Unit Testing
Programming Languages
1 188 (32.14%) Java
2 146 (24.96%) SQL
3 134 (22.91%) Python
4 115 (19.66%) JavaScript
5 57 (9.74%) C#
6 54 (9.23%) TypeScript
7 42 (7.18%) Go
8 39 (6.67%) PL/SQL
9 22 (3.76%) Kotlin
10 20 (3.42%) Ruby
11 16 (2.74%) C++
12 11 (1.88%) Shell Script
13 9 (1.54%) PowerShell
14 6 (1.03%) Bash
15 5 (0.85%) PHP
16 4 (0.68%) VBA
17 3 (0.51%) Apex Code
17 3 (0.51%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 3 (0.51%) Swift
18 2 (0.34%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 127 (21.71%) Security Cleared
2 116 (19.83%) SC Cleared
3 30 (5.13%) Degree
4 15 (2.56%) BPSS Clearance
5 13 (2.22%) Computer Science Degree
6 8 (1.37%) Numerate Degree
7 6 (1.03%) OCP
7 6 (1.03%) Oracle Certification
8 5 (0.85%) AWS Certification
9 4 (0.68%) DV Cleared
10 3 (0.51%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (0.51%) Azure Certification
10 3 (0.51%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 2 (0.34%) AWS Certified Developer
11 2 (0.34%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 2 (0.34%) Master's Degree
12 1 (0.17%) CISSP
12 1 (0.17%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (4.62%) Accessibility
2 18 (3.08%) WCAG
3 15 (2.56%) Data Quality
4 11 (1.88%) QA
5 3 (0.51%) EU AI Act
5 3 (0.51%) NIST
6 2 (0.34%) GDPR
7 1 (0.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 112 (19.15%) Docker
2 4 (0.68%) zsh
3 2 (0.34%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.17%) GridGain
4 1 (0.17%) OpenAM
4 1 (0.17%) OpenDJ
4 1 (0.17%) OpenIDM
Systems Management
1 105 (17.95%) Kubernetes
2 23 (3.93%) Terraform
3 17 (2.91%) Grafana
4 9 (1.54%) Single Sign-On
5 6 (1.03%) Ansible
6 4 (0.68%) Prometheus
7 3 (0.51%) Kibana
8 1 (0.17%) Argo
8 1 (0.17%) CloudHub
8 1 (0.17%) Control-M
8 1 (0.17%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 57 (9.74%) Oracle
2 35 (5.98%) Microsoft
3 18 (3.08%) Google
4 14 (2.39%) ServiceNow
5 13 (2.22%) Sybase
6 10 (1.71%) Databricks
7 9 (1.54%) Salesforce
8 7 (1.20%) SAP
9 6 (1.03%) Guidewire
10 4 (0.68%) Atlassian
10 4 (0.68%) Pega
11 3 (0.51%) Cognizant
11 3 (0.51%) Dataiku
11 3 (0.51%) Foundry
12 2 (0.34%) Apple
12 2 (0.34%) CA Agile Central
12 2 (0.34%) ForgeRock
12 2 (0.34%) IBM
12 2 (0.34%) New Relic
13 1 (0.17%) ESRI