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 13 January 2026.

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

6 months to
13 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 165 143 175
Rank change year-on-year -22 +32 -71
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Developer 530 477 533
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.69% 1.79% 1.47%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.85% 1.93% 1.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 381 315 387
10th Percentile £409 £425 £425
25th Percentile £450 £504 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £590 £588
Median % change year-on-year -6.78% +0.43% -9.62%
75th Percentile £688 £725 £700
90th Percentile £850 £850 £850
UK median daily rate £525 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.70% - -11.54%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 9
10th Percentile - - £43.55
25th Percentile - - £56.25
Median hourly rate - - £60.00
75th Percentile - - £72.50
90th Percentile - - £75.50
UK median hourly rate - - £60.00
% change year-on-year - - -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 28,680 24,687 33,875
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.56% 92.87% 93.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,294 15,278 23,057
10th Percentile £300 £300 £275
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,747 749 1,537
10th Percentile £14.41 £15.73 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £19.05
Median hourly rate £27.50 £35.00 £43.50
Median % change year-on-year -21.43% -19.54% +24.29%
75th Percentile £61.25 £64.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.83 £74.77 £76.25
UK median hourly rate £26.50 £32.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -18.46% -23.53% +26.87%

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 13 January 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 13 January 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 -25 320 £625 +1.42% 114
North of England -27 72 £550 +6.28% 85
South West +20 55 £475 -13.64% 48
Yorkshire -20 38 £631 +20.24% 31
North West -18 31 £500 - 40
South East -27 31 £473 +2.27% 142
Midlands -31 26 £513 +2.50% 41
West Midlands -25 19 £525 +5.00% 16
East of England -19 17 £500 -13.42% 47
North East -2 9 £488 -17.37% 14
East Midlands -15 7 £510 +11.78% 24
Senior Developer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 13 January 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.

1 189 (35.66%) Java
2 174 (32.83%) Agile
2 174 (32.83%) AWS
3 147 (27.74%) Microservices
4 139 (26.23%) SQL
5 135 (25.47%) Azure
5 135 (25.47%) CI/CD
6 128 (24.15%) DevOps
7 126 (23.77%) Python
7 126 (23.77%) Security Cleared
8 117 (22.08%) Kafka
9 114 (21.51%) Docker
10 110 (20.75%) Problem-Solving
10 110 (20.75%) SC Cleared
11 108 (20.38%) Kubernetes
12 99 (18.68%) JavaScript
13 80 (15.09%) Spring
14 71 (13.40%) React
15 70 (13.21%) Software Engineering
15 70 (13.21%) TDD
16 66 (12.45%) Containerisation
17 65 (12.26%) Spring Boot
18 64 (12.08%) Git
18 64 (12.08%) Scrum
19 63 (11.89%) C#
19 63 (11.89%) Test Automation
20 60 (11.32%) Analytics
20 60 (11.32%) PostgreSQL
21 59 (11.13%) Azure DevOps
22 58 (10.94%) .NET

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 14 (2.64%) Confluence
2 5 (0.94%) SharePoint
3 4 (0.75%) CMS
3 4 (0.75%) Jupyter
4 2 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (0.19%) Anypoint
5 1 (0.19%) Headless CMS
5 1 (0.19%) nginx
5 1 (0.19%) Oracle Application Server
5 1 (0.19%) SAS
5 1 (0.19%) Smallworld
5 1 (0.19%) Tomcat
Applications
1 10 (1.89%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 3 (0.57%) Endur
2 2 (0.38%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.19%) FLEXCUBE
3 1 (0.19%) IBM Planning Analytics
3 1 (0.19%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.19%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 1 (0.19%) Oracle Retail
3 1 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 174 (32.83%) AWS
2 135 (25.47%) Azure
3 59 (11.13%) Azure DevOps
4 50 (9.43%) GitHub
5 31 (5.85%) GCP
6 25 (4.72%) Serverless
7 21 (3.96%) Power Platform
8 16 (3.02%) GitHub Actions
9 13 (2.45%) AWS Lambda
9 13 (2.45%) Azure AKS
9 13 (2.45%) Azure Service Bus
9 13 (2.45%) Dynamics 365
10 11 (2.08%) Amazon EC2
10 11 (2.08%) Amazon S3
10 11 (2.08%) Power Automate
11 9 (1.70%) Amazon SQS
11 9 (1.70%) AWS CloudFormation
11 9 (1.70%) Datadog
11 9 (1.70%) SaaS
12 8 (1.51%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.94%) Kerberos
2 2 (0.38%) Firewall
2 2 (0.38%) HTTP
2 2 (0.38%) SSL
3 1 (0.19%) Internet
3 1 (0.19%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 60 (11.32%) PostgreSQL
2 44 (8.30%) MongoDB
3 37 (6.98%) Relational Database
3 37 (6.98%) SQL Server
4 33 (6.23%) NoSQL
5 29 (5.47%) Apache Cassandra
6 14 (2.64%) DB2
6 14 (2.64%) DynamoDB
7 13 (2.45%) Power BI
8 10 (1.89%) Data Warehouse
8 10 (1.89%) MySQL
8 10 (1.89%) Redis
9 9 (1.70%) Amazon RDS
10 8 (1.51%) Data Hub
10 8 (1.51%) Data Lake
11 7 (1.32%) Oracle BI EE
12 6 (1.13%) HBase
12 6 (1.13%) RDBMS
13 5 (0.94%) Delta Lake
13 5 (0.94%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 64 (12.08%) Git
2 36 (6.79%) Jenkins
3 35 (6.60%) JUnit
3 35 (6.60%) Oracle APEX
4 24 (4.53%) GitLab
5 23 (4.34%) JIRA
6 21 (3.96%) Mockito
7 13 (2.45%) Maven
8 12 (2.26%) Gradle
9 9 (1.70%) Artifactory
9 9 (1.70%) Cucumber
10 8 (1.51%) Postman
11 7 (1.32%) Sonatype Nexus
11 7 (1.32%) SpecFlow
12 6 (1.13%) Mocha
12 6 (1.13%) SonarQube
13 4 (0.75%) Bitbucket
13 4 (0.75%) TeamCity
14 3 (0.57%) QUnit
14 3 (0.57%) webpack
General
1 138 (26.04%) Social Skills
2 137 (25.85%) Finance
3 85 (16.04%) Banking
4 59 (11.13%) Public Sector
5 46 (8.68%) Analytical Skills
6 36 (6.79%) Investment Banking
7 24 (4.53%) Front Office
8 13 (2.45%) Financial Institution
9 5 (0.94%) Presentation Skills
10 4 (0.75%) Law
10 4 (0.75%) Military
10 4 (0.75%) Pharmaceutical
11 3 (0.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (0.57%) Manufacturing
11 3 (0.57%) Marketing
11 3 (0.57%) Retail Banking
12 2 (0.38%) Documentation Skills
12 2 (0.38%) Retail
12 2 (0.38%) Telecoms
13 1 (0.19%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 117 (22.08%) Kafka
2 80 (15.09%) Spring
3 71 (13.40%) React
4 65 (12.26%) Spring Boot
5 58 (10.94%) .NET
6 52 (9.81%) RESTful
7 46 (8.68%) AngularJS
7 46 (8.68%) REST
8 44 (8.30%) HTML
9 42 (7.92%) Node.js
10 38 (7.17%) CSS
11 26 (4.91%) Web Services
12 24 (4.53%) gRPC
13 22 (4.15%) JSON
14 19 (3.58%) RabbitMQ
15 18 (3.40%) .NET Framework
16 16 (3.02%) .NET Core
16 16 (3.02%) Playwright
17 15 (2.83%) Next.js
18 14 (2.64%) Jest
Miscellaneous
1 46 (8.68%) Distributed Systems
2 37 (6.98%) Cloud Native
3 31 (5.85%) Derivative
4 28 (5.28%) Equities
5 19 (3.58%) Algorithms
5 19 (3.58%) Market Risk
6 18 (3.40%) Management Information System
7 16 (3.02%) Data Structures
7 16 (3.02%) Fixed Income
8 14 (2.64%) Greenfield Project
9 13 (2.45%) Product Ownership
10 11 (2.08%) Legacy Systems
11 10 (1.89%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 9 (1.70%) Mobile App
13 8 (1.51%) Equity Derivative
14 6 (1.13%) Linux Command Line
14 6 (1.13%) NHS
14 6 (1.13%) Onboarding
15 5 (0.94%) Enterprise Software
15 5 (0.94%) Hedge funds
Operating Systems
1 48 (9.06%) Linux
2 23 (4.34%) Unix
3 16 (3.02%) Android
4 13 (2.45%) Mac OS X
5 8 (1.51%) Apple iOS
6 2 (0.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.38%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 174 (32.83%) Agile
2 147 (27.74%) Microservices
3 135 (25.47%) CI/CD
4 128 (24.15%) DevOps
5 110 (20.75%) Problem-Solving
6 70 (13.21%) Software Engineering
6 70 (13.21%) TDD
7 66 (12.45%) Containerisation
8 64 (12.08%) Scrum
9 63 (11.89%) Test Automation
10 60 (11.32%) Analytics
11 57 (10.75%) Full-Stack Development
11 57 (10.75%) Open Source
12 46 (8.68%) Event-Driven
13 43 (8.11%) SDLC
14 38 (7.17%) Risk Management
15 35 (6.60%) Collaborative Working
15 35 (6.60%) Performance Tuning
15 35 (6.60%) Unit Testing
15 35 (6.60%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 189 (35.66%) Java
2 139 (26.23%) SQL
3 126 (23.77%) Python
4 99 (18.68%) JavaScript
5 63 (11.89%) C#
6 42 (7.92%) PL/SQL
7 40 (7.55%) TypeScript
8 34 (6.42%) Go
9 22 (4.15%) Kotlin
10 15 (2.83%) C++
11 14 (2.64%) Ruby
12 13 (2.45%) Shell Script
13 9 (1.70%) PHP
13 9 (1.70%) PowerShell
14 8 (1.51%) Bash
15 3 (0.57%) Objective-C
15 3 (0.57%) Swift
16 2 (0.38%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 2 (0.38%) Kusto Query Language
17 1 (0.19%) R
Qualifications
1 126 (23.77%) Security Cleared
2 110 (20.75%) SC Cleared
3 40 (7.55%) Degree
4 20 (3.77%) Computer Science Degree
5 17 (3.21%) BPSS Clearance
6 8 (1.51%) Numerate Degree
7 6 (1.13%) Master's Degree
7 6 (1.13%) OCP
7 6 (1.13%) Oracle Certification
8 5 (0.94%) AWS Certification
9 3 (0.57%) AWS Certified Developer
9 3 (0.57%) MCP
10 2 (0.38%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (0.38%) Azure Certification
10 2 (0.38%) DV Cleared
11 1 (0.19%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Certification
11 1 (0.19%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (4.53%) Accessibility
2 13 (2.45%) QA
3 12 (2.26%) WCAG
4 9 (1.70%) Data Quality
5 3 (0.57%) EU AI Act
5 3 (0.57%) NIST
6 1 (0.19%) GDPR
6 1 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 114 (21.51%) Docker
2 5 (0.94%) zsh
3 1 (0.19%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.19%) GridGain
3 1 (0.19%) Lustre
3 1 (0.19%) OpenAM
3 1 (0.19%) OpenDJ
3 1 (0.19%) OpenIDM
3 1 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 108 (20.38%) Kubernetes
2 24 (4.53%) Terraform
3 15 (2.83%) Grafana
4 8 (1.51%) Single Sign-On
5 6 (1.13%) Ansible
6 3 (0.57%) Kibana
6 3 (0.57%) Prometheus
7 1 (0.19%) Argo
7 1 (0.19%) CloudHub
7 1 (0.19%) Control-M
7 1 (0.19%) HAProxy
7 1 (0.19%) Packer
7 1 (0.19%) Rundeck
Vendors
1 58 (10.94%) Oracle
2 23 (4.34%) Microsoft
3 21 (3.96%) Google
4 15 (2.83%) Sybase
5 12 (2.26%) ServiceNow
6 10 (1.89%) Databricks
7 5 (0.94%) Atlassian
7 5 (0.94%) Guidewire
8 4 (0.75%) Salesforce
9 3 (0.57%) Apple
9 3 (0.57%) BMC
9 3 (0.57%) Cognizant
9 3 (0.57%) Dataiku
9 3 (0.57%) Foundry
10 2 (0.38%) CA Agile Central
10 2 (0.38%) Confluent
10 2 (0.38%) IBM
10 2 (0.38%) Pega
10 2 (0.38%) Red Hat
10 2 (0.38%) Remedy