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 1 January 2026.

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

6 months to
1 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 164 145 162
Rank change year-on-year -19 +17 -62
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Developer 538 506 546
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.70% 1.80% 1.50%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.86% 1.94% 1.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 394 324 398
10th Percentile £403 £422 £425
25th Percentile £450 £500 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £586 £600
Median % change year-on-year -6.18% -2.29% -7.69%
75th Percentile £700 £725 £715
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 7
10th Percentile - - £53.25
25th Percentile - - £56.25
Median hourly rate - - £60.00
75th Percentile - - £67.50
90th Percentile - - £73.00
UK median hourly rate - - £60.00
% change year-on-year - - -25.00%

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 28,978 26,109 33,858
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.40% 92.88% 93.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,528 16,189 23,132
10th Percentile £300 £300 £281
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -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 1,750 814 1,430
10th Percentile £14.38 £15.91 £14.54
25th Percentile £18.26 £21.23 £20.00
Median hourly rate £27.21 £35.00 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year -22.26% -23.71% +40.01%
75th Percentile £61.23 £64.73 £65.00
90th Percentile £73.41 £74.31 £77.00
UK median hourly rate £26.00 £32.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year -20.00% -27.78% +41.93%

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 1 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 1 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 -28 320 £625 +3.09% 221
North of England -29 68 £550 +6.28% 111
South West +33 57 £475 -13.64% 30
Yorkshire -29 38 £631 +20.24% 30
South East -16 34 £473 +2.27% 105
North West -24 27 £500 - 67
Midlands -24 26 £513 +2.50% 31
East of England -12 22 £500 -5.66% 29
West Midlands -21 19 £525 +5.00% 16
North East -1 9 £488 -17.37% 14
East Midlands -15 7 £510 +11.78% 14
Senior Developer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 1 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.

1 190 (35.32%) Java
2 181 (33.64%) Agile
3 174 (32.34%) AWS
4 145 (26.95%) SQL
5 143 (26.58%) CI/CD
6 141 (26.21%) Microservices
7 138 (25.65%) Azure
8 135 (25.09%) DevOps
9 132 (24.54%) Python
10 120 (22.30%) Kafka
10 120 (22.30%) Security Cleared
11 118 (21.93%) Problem-Solving
12 111 (20.63%) Docker
13 106 (19.70%) Kubernetes
14 104 (19.33%) SC Cleared
15 102 (18.96%) JavaScript
16 81 (15.06%) Spring
17 72 (13.38%) React
18 70 (13.01%) Software Engineering
19 69 (12.83%) Git
20 68 (12.64%) TDD
21 67 (12.45%) C#
22 66 (12.27%) PostgreSQL
23 65 (12.08%) Containerisation
23 65 (12.08%) Scrum
24 64 (11.90%) Analytics
24 64 (11.90%) Spring Boot
25 63 (11.71%) Test Automation
26 62 (11.52%) .NET
26 62 (11.52%) Azure DevOps

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 (2.60%) Confluence
2 6 (1.12%) SharePoint
3 5 (0.93%) CMS
4 4 (0.74%) Jupyter
5 2 (0.37%) Anypoint
5 2 (0.37%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.19%) Apache Spark
6 1 (0.19%) Headless CMS
6 1 (0.19%) nginx
6 1 (0.19%) Oracle Application Server
6 1 (0.19%) SAS
6 1 (0.19%) Smallworld
6 1 (0.19%) Tomcat
Applications
1 10 (1.86%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 3 (0.56%) Endur
2 2 (0.37%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.37%) 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 (32.34%) AWS
2 138 (25.65%) Azure
3 62 (11.52%) Azure DevOps
4 50 (9.29%) GitHub
5 33 (6.13%) GCP
6 25 (4.65%) Power Platform
6 25 (4.65%) Serverless
7 16 (2.97%) GitHub Actions
8 13 (2.42%) Azure AKS
8 13 (2.42%) Power Automate
9 12 (2.23%) Amazon S3
9 12 (2.23%) AWS Lambda
10 9 (1.67%) Amazon EC2
10 9 (1.67%) Amazon SQS
10 9 (1.67%) AWS CloudFormation
10 9 (1.67%) Azure Service Bus
10 9 (1.67%) Datadog
10 9 (1.67%) Dynamics 365
10 9 (1.67%) PowerApps
10 9 (1.67%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.93%) Kerberos
2 3 (0.56%) SSL
3 2 (0.37%) Firewall
3 2 (0.37%) HTTP
4 1 (0.19%) Internet
4 1 (0.19%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 66 (12.27%) PostgreSQL
2 47 (8.74%) MongoDB
3 42 (7.81%) Relational Database
4 38 (7.06%) SQL Server
5 31 (5.76%) NoSQL
6 27 (5.02%) Apache Cassandra
7 14 (2.60%) DB2
7 14 (2.60%) DynamoDB
7 14 (2.60%) Power BI
8 12 (2.23%) MySQL
9 11 (2.04%) Redis
10 10 (1.86%) Data Warehouse
11 9 (1.67%) Data Lake
12 8 (1.49%) Data Hub
12 8 (1.49%) RDBMS
13 7 (1.30%) Amazon RDS
14 6 (1.12%) Big Data
14 6 (1.12%) HBase
14 6 (1.12%) Oracle BI EE
15 5 (0.93%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 69 (12.83%) Git
2 35 (6.51%) Jenkins
2 35 (6.51%) JUnit
2 35 (6.51%) Oracle APEX
3 24 (4.46%) GitLab
3 24 (4.46%) JIRA
4 21 (3.90%) Mockito
5 13 (2.42%) Maven
6 12 (2.23%) Gradle
7 9 (1.67%) Artifactory
7 9 (1.67%) Cucumber
8 8 (1.49%) Postman
9 7 (1.30%) Sonatype Nexus
9 7 (1.30%) SpecFlow
10 6 (1.12%) Mocha
11 5 (0.93%) Bitbucket
11 5 (0.93%) SonarQube
11 5 (0.93%) webpack
12 4 (0.74%) TeamCity
13 3 (0.56%) QUnit
General
1 147 (27.32%) Finance
2 144 (26.77%) Social Skills
3 90 (16.73%) Banking
4 64 (11.90%) Public Sector
5 49 (9.11%) Analytical Skills
6 43 (7.99%) Investment Banking
7 26 (4.83%) Front Office
8 12 (2.23%) Financial Institution
9 5 (0.93%) Presentation Skills
10 4 (0.74%) Law
10 4 (0.74%) Military
10 4 (0.74%) Pharmaceutical
11 3 (0.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (0.56%) Manufacturing
11 3 (0.56%) Marketing
11 3 (0.56%) Retail Banking
12 2 (0.37%) Automotive
12 2 (0.37%) Documentation Skills
12 2 (0.37%) Local Government
12 2 (0.37%) Publishing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 120 (22.30%) Kafka
2 81 (15.06%) Spring
3 72 (13.38%) React
4 64 (11.90%) Spring Boot
5 62 (11.52%) .NET
6 55 (10.22%) RESTful
7 48 (8.92%) REST
8 45 (8.36%) HTML
9 44 (8.18%) AngularJS
9 44 (8.18%) Node.js
10 39 (7.25%) CSS
11 26 (4.83%) Web Services
12 24 (4.46%) JSON
13 23 (4.28%) gRPC
14 19 (3.53%) .NET Core
14 19 (3.53%) RabbitMQ
15 18 (3.35%) .NET Framework
16 16 (2.97%) Playwright
17 15 (2.79%) Next.js
18 14 (2.60%) Jest
Miscellaneous
1 46 (8.55%) Distributed Systems
2 36 (6.69%) Derivative
3 35 (6.51%) Cloud Native
4 31 (5.76%) Equities
5 21 (3.90%) Market Risk
6 20 (3.72%) Management Information System
7 19 (3.53%) Algorithms
8 18 (3.35%) Data Structures
9 17 (3.16%) Fixed Income
10 14 (2.60%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 14 (2.60%) Greenfield Project
11 13 (2.42%) Product Ownership
12 11 (2.04%) Legacy Systems
13 8 (1.49%) Equity Derivative
14 6 (1.12%) Linux Command Line
14 6 (1.12%) Mobile App
14 6 (1.12%) NHS
14 6 (1.12%) Onboarding
15 5 (0.93%) Enterprise Software
15 5 (0.93%) Hedge funds
Operating Systems
1 50 (9.29%) Linux
2 23 (4.28%) Unix
3 16 (2.97%) Android
4 13 (2.42%) Mac OS X
5 10 (1.86%) Apple iOS
6 2 (0.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.37%) Windows
7 1 (0.19%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.19%) tvOS
7 1 (0.19%) watchOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 181 (33.64%) Agile
2 143 (26.58%) CI/CD
3 141 (26.21%) Microservices
4 135 (25.09%) DevOps
5 118 (21.93%) Problem-Solving
6 70 (13.01%) Software Engineering
7 68 (12.64%) TDD
8 65 (12.08%) Containerisation
8 65 (12.08%) Scrum
9 64 (11.90%) Analytics
10 63 (11.71%) Test Automation
11 62 (11.52%) Full-Stack Development
12 58 (10.78%) Open Source
13 48 (8.92%) Event-Driven
14 46 (8.55%) SDLC
15 40 (7.43%) Risk Management
16 39 (7.25%) Mentoring
17 37 (6.88%) Performance Tuning
18 36 (6.69%) Unit Testing
18 36 (6.69%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 190 (35.32%) Java
2 145 (26.95%) SQL
3 132 (24.54%) Python
4 102 (18.96%) JavaScript
5 67 (12.45%) C#
6 45 (8.36%) TypeScript
7 42 (7.81%) PL/SQL
8 31 (5.76%) Go
9 18 (3.35%) Kotlin
10 15 (2.79%) C++
10 15 (2.79%) Shell Script
11 13 (2.42%) Ruby
12 9 (1.67%) PHP
12 9 (1.67%) PowerShell
13 8 (1.49%) Bash
14 4 (0.74%) Objective-C
14 4 (0.74%) Swift
15 3 (0.56%) Apex Code
16 2 (0.37%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 2 (0.37%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 120 (22.30%) Security Cleared
2 104 (19.33%) SC Cleared
3 41 (7.62%) Degree
4 20 (3.72%) Computer Science Degree
5 17 (3.16%) BPSS Clearance
6 8 (1.49%) Numerate Degree
7 6 (1.12%) Master's Degree
7 6 (1.12%) OCP
7 6 (1.12%) Oracle Certification
8 5 (0.93%) AWS Certification
9 3 (0.56%) AWS Certified Developer
9 3 (0.56%) DBS Check
9 3 (0.56%) MCP
9 3 (0.56%) Microsoft Certification
10 2 (0.37%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (0.37%) Azure Certification
10 2 (0.37%) DV Cleared
11 1 (0.19%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 1 (0.19%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (4.46%) Accessibility
2 15 (2.79%) QA
3 12 (2.23%) WCAG
4 11 (2.04%) Data Quality
5 3 (0.56%) EU AI Act
5 3 (0.56%) NIST
6 2 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.19%) GDPR
7 1 (0.19%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 1 (0.19%) ISO 22301
7 1 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 111 (20.63%) Docker
2 5 (0.93%) 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
1 106 (19.70%) Kubernetes
2 25 (4.65%) Terraform
3 15 (2.79%) Grafana
4 7 (1.30%) Single Sign-On
5 6 (1.12%) Ansible
6 4 (0.74%) Prometheus
7 3 (0.56%) Kibana
8 1 (0.19%) Argo
8 1 (0.19%) CloudHub
8 1 (0.19%) Control-M
8 1 (0.19%) HAProxy
8 1 (0.19%) Packer
8 1 (0.19%) Rundeck
Vendors
1 58 (10.78%) Oracle
2 27 (5.02%) Microsoft
3 21 (3.90%) Google
4 15 (2.79%) Sybase
5 14 (2.60%) Databricks
6 12 (2.23%) ServiceNow
7 7 (1.30%) Atlassian
8 6 (1.12%) Salesforce
9 5 (0.93%) Apple
10 4 (0.74%) Guidewire
11 3 (0.56%) BMC
11 3 (0.56%) Dataiku
11 3 (0.56%) Foundry
12 2 (0.37%) CA Agile Central
12 2 (0.37%) Cognizant
12 2 (0.37%) Confluent
12 2 (0.37%) MuleSoft
12 2 (0.37%) Red Hat
12 2 (0.37%) Remedy
12 2 (0.37%) Virgin Media