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 17 February 2026.

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

6 months to
17 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 167 152 178
Rank change year-on-year -15 +26 -63
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Developer 567 456 518
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.65% 1.78% 1.37%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.80% 1.91% 1.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 399 308 378
10th Percentile £401 £425 £423
25th Percentile £455 £513 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £590
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +1.69% -9.23%
75th Percentile £675 £728 £720
90th Percentile £888 £850 £850
UK median daily rate £525 £600 £575
% change year-on-year -12.50% +4.35% -9.45%
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 31,465 23,850 35,291
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.75% 93.03% 93.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,965 14,903 23,634
10th Percentile £302 £294 £275
25th Percentile £409 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.29% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £643
90th Percentile £725 £750 £747
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,017 693 2,141
10th Percentile £15.00 £16.25 £13.19
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.50 £16.54
Median hourly rate £31.65 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.57% - -12.01%
75th Percentile £63.75 £65.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £73.41 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £34.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -11.76% -2.86% -6.67%

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 17 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 17 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 -9 358 £619 -1.79% 128
North of England -40 70 £563 +7.14% 92
South West +14 55 £475 -20.83% 27
Yorkshire -27 37 £625 +19.05% 34
North West -30 31 £500 -4.76% 48
South East -31 31 £500 +11.11% 70
Midlands -42 28 £525 +0.48% 28
West Midlands -40 20 £525 -4.55% 17
East of England -24 19 £500 -23.08% 11
North East -8 8 £525 +8.81% 11
East Midlands -18 8 £520 - 11
Senior Developer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 17 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.

1 192 (33.86%) Java
2 176 (31.04%) AWS
3 173 (30.51%) Agile
4 145 (25.57%) SQL
5 141 (24.87%) Microservices
6 133 (23.46%) Azure
7 132 (23.28%) CI/CD
8 131 (23.10%) Python
9 119 (20.99%) Security Cleared
10 118 (20.81%) Kafka
11 116 (20.46%) DevOps
12 110 (19.40%) Docker
13 109 (19.22%) JavaScript
14 108 (19.05%) SC Cleared
15 105 (18.52%) Kubernetes
16 101 (17.81%) Problem-Solving
17 80 (14.11%) TDD
18 78 (13.76%) Spring
19 74 (13.05%) Software Engineering
20 71 (12.52%) React
21 70 (12.35%) Test Automation
22 67 (11.82%) Scrum
23 66 (11.64%) Spring Boot
24 64 (11.29%) Containerisation
25 63 (11.11%) Git
26 60 (10.58%) Analytics
27 57 (10.05%) Oracle
28 56 (9.88%) Open Source
29 54 (9.52%) PostgreSQL
30 53 (9.35%) .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 10 (1.76%) Confluence
2 5 (0.88%) CMS
2 5 (0.88%) SharePoint
3 4 (0.71%) Ethereum
3 4 (0.71%) Hyperledger
3 4 (0.71%) Jupyter
4 3 (0.53%) Tomcat
5 2 (0.35%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.18%) Anypoint
6 1 (0.18%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.18%) Headless CMS
6 1 (0.18%) IIS
6 1 (0.18%) JBoss
6 1 (0.18%) nginx
6 1 (0.18%) Oracle Application Server
6 1 (0.18%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 1 (0.18%) SAS
6 1 (0.18%) Smallworld
6 1 (0.18%) Umbraco
6 1 (0.18%) WebLogic
Applications
1 14 (2.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 3 (0.53%) Endur
2 2 (0.35%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.18%) FLEXCUBE
3 1 (0.18%) IBM Planning Analytics
3 1 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.18%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 1 (0.18%) Oracle Retail
3 1 (0.18%) R3 Corda
3 1 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 176 (31.04%) AWS
2 133 (23.46%) Azure
3 52 (9.17%) Azure DevOps
4 41 (7.23%) GitHub
5 28 (4.94%) GCP
5 28 (4.94%) Power Platform
6 23 (4.06%) Serverless
7 18 (3.17%) Power Automate
8 15 (2.65%) PowerApps
9 13 (2.29%) AWS Lambda
9 13 (2.29%) Dynamics 365
10 12 (2.12%) Azure Service Bus
11 11 (1.94%) GitHub Actions
12 10 (1.76%) Amazon EC2
12 10 (1.76%) Amazon SQS
13 9 (1.59%) Amazon S3
13 9 (1.59%) AWS CloudFormation
13 9 (1.59%) Datadog
13 9 (1.59%) Microsoft Copilot
13 9 (1.59%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 6 (1.06%) HTTP
2 5 (0.88%) Kerberos
3 2 (0.35%) Firewall
4 1 (0.18%) DNS
4 1 (0.18%) Ethernet
4 1 (0.18%) Internet
4 1 (0.18%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 54 (9.52%) PostgreSQL
2 43 (7.58%) MongoDB
3 38 (6.70%) SQL Server
4 36 (6.35%) Relational Database
5 34 (6.00%) NoSQL
6 32 (5.64%) Apache Cassandra
7 19 (3.35%) Power BI
8 14 (2.47%) DynamoDB
9 11 (1.94%) DB2
10 10 (1.76%) Data Warehouse
11 9 (1.59%) Data Hub
11 9 (1.59%) Data Lake
11 9 (1.59%) MySQL
12 7 (1.23%) Amazon RDS
12 7 (1.23%) Oracle BI EE
13 6 (1.06%) HBase
13 6 (1.06%) Redis
13 6 (1.06%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 5 (0.88%) Oracle Database
14 5 (0.88%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 63 (11.11%) Git
2 34 (6.00%) Oracle APEX
3 31 (5.47%) Jenkins
3 31 (5.47%) JUnit
4 22 (3.88%) GitLab
5 21 (3.70%) JIRA
6 20 (3.53%) Mockito
7 14 (2.47%) Maven
8 11 (1.94%) Gradle
9 9 (1.59%) Cucumber
10 8 (1.41%) Artifactory
11 7 (1.23%) SonarQube
11 7 (1.23%) Sonatype Nexus
12 5 (0.88%) Mocha
12 5 (0.88%) SpecFlow
13 4 (0.71%) Bitbucket
14 3 (0.53%) Lerna
14 3 (0.53%) Postman
14 3 (0.53%) webpack
15 2 (0.35%) fastlane
General
1 133 (23.46%) Social Skills
2 127 (22.40%) Finance
3 91 (16.05%) Banking
4 65 (11.46%) Public Sector
5 43 (7.58%) Analytical Skills
6 40 (7.05%) Investment Banking
7 23 (4.06%) Front Office
8 12 (2.12%) Financial Institution
9 5 (0.88%) Law
9 5 (0.88%) Presentation Skills
10 4 (0.71%) Health Technology
10 4 (0.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 4 (0.71%) Retail Banking
11 3 (0.53%) Legal
11 3 (0.53%) Military
11 3 (0.53%) Pharmaceutical
11 3 (0.53%) Telecoms
12 2 (0.35%) Documentation Skills
12 2 (0.35%) Marketing
12 2 (0.35%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 118 (20.81%) Kafka
2 78 (13.76%) Spring
3 71 (12.52%) React
4 66 (11.64%) Spring Boot
5 53 (9.35%) .NET
6 48 (8.47%) REST
7 47 (8.29%) Node.js
8 44 (7.76%) AngularJS
8 44 (7.76%) HTML
9 42 (7.41%) CSS
10 41 (7.23%) RESTful
11 30 (5.29%) gRPC
12 27 (4.76%) Web Services
13 17 (3.00%) .NET Framework
14 14 (2.47%) .NET Core
14 14 (2.47%) JAX-RS
14 14 (2.47%) Jest
14 14 (2.47%) Pandas
14 14 (2.47%) Playwright
15 13 (2.29%) Next.js
Miscellaneous
1 43 (7.58%) Distributed Systems
2 38 (6.70%) Cloud Native
3 30 (5.29%) Derivative
4 26 (4.59%) Equities
5 21 (3.70%) Product Ownership
6 20 (3.53%) Algorithms
6 20 (3.53%) Market Risk
7 19 (3.35%) Management Information System
8 16 (2.82%) Greenfield Project
9 15 (2.65%) Data Structures
10 12 (2.12%) Fixed Income
10 12 (2.12%) Mobile App
11 11 (1.94%) Legacy Systems
12 8 (1.41%) Equity Derivative
12 8 (1.41%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 7 (1.23%) Onboarding
14 6 (1.06%) Enterprise Software
14 6 (1.06%) Linux Command Line
15 5 (0.88%) AI Agents
16 4 (0.71%) Legacy Applications
Operating Systems
1 48 (8.47%) Linux
2 24 (4.23%) Unix
3 16 (2.82%) Android
4 13 (2.29%) Mac OS X
5 9 (1.59%) Apple iOS
5 9 (1.59%) Windows
6 3 (0.53%) Mac OS
7 2 (0.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 2 (0.35%) Windows Server
8 1 (0.18%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 173 (30.51%) Agile
2 141 (24.87%) Microservices
3 132 (23.28%) CI/CD
4 116 (20.46%) DevOps
5 101 (17.81%) Problem-Solving
6 80 (14.11%) TDD
7 74 (13.05%) Software Engineering
8 70 (12.35%) Test Automation
9 67 (11.82%) Scrum
10 64 (11.29%) Containerisation
11 60 (10.58%) Analytics
12 56 (9.88%) Open Source
13 52 (9.17%) Full-Stack Development
14 46 (8.11%) SDLC
15 40 (7.05%) Code Quality
15 40 (7.05%) Mentoring
16 38 (6.70%) Design Patterns
17 35 (6.17%) Event-Driven
17 35 (6.17%) Risk Management
18 34 (6.00%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 192 (33.86%) Java
2 145 (25.57%) SQL
3 131 (23.10%) Python
4 109 (19.22%) JavaScript
5 53 (9.35%) C#
6 50 (8.82%) TypeScript
7 39 (6.88%) Go
7 39 (6.88%) PL/SQL
8 22 (3.88%) Kotlin
9 19 (3.35%) Ruby
10 16 (2.82%) C++
11 10 (1.76%) Shell Script
12 9 (1.59%) PowerShell
13 8 (1.41%) Bash
14 5 (0.88%) PHP
15 4 (0.71%) VBA
16 3 (0.53%) Apex Code
16 3 (0.53%) Swift
17 2 (0.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 2 (0.35%) Objective-C
Qualifications
1 119 (20.99%) Security Cleared
2 108 (19.05%) SC Cleared
3 31 (5.47%) Degree
4 15 (2.65%) BPSS Clearance
5 14 (2.47%) Computer Science Degree
6 8 (1.41%) Numerate Degree
7 6 (1.06%) OCP
7 6 (1.06%) Oracle Certification
8 4 (0.71%) AWS Certification
9 3 (0.53%) Azure Certification
9 3 (0.53%) Master's Degree
9 3 (0.53%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 2 (0.35%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 2 (0.35%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (0.35%) DV Cleared
11 1 (0.18%) AWS Certified Developer
11 1 (0.18%) CISSP
11 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (4.41%) Accessibility
2 16 (2.82%) WCAG
3 15 (2.65%) Data Quality
4 11 (1.94%) QA
5 3 (0.53%) EU AI Act
5 3 (0.53%) NIST
6 2 (0.35%) GDPR
7 1 (0.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 110 (19.40%) Docker
2 5 (0.88%) zsh
3 1 (0.18%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.18%) GridGain
3 1 (0.18%) OpenAM
3 1 (0.18%) OpenDJ
3 1 (0.18%) OpenIDM
Systems Management
1 105 (18.52%) Kubernetes
2 19 (3.35%) Terraform
3 16 (2.82%) Grafana
4 8 (1.41%) Single Sign-On
5 5 (0.88%) Ansible
6 4 (0.71%) Prometheus
7 3 (0.53%) Kibana
8 1 (0.18%) Argo
8 1 (0.18%) CloudHub
8 1 (0.18%) Control-M
8 1 (0.18%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 57 (10.05%) Oracle
2 34 (6.00%) Microsoft
3 19 (3.35%) Google
4 12 (2.12%) Sybase
5 10 (1.76%) ServiceNow
6 9 (1.59%) Databricks
6 9 (1.59%) Salesforce
7 6 (1.06%) Guidewire
7 6 (1.06%) SAP
8 4 (0.71%) Atlassian
8 4 (0.71%) Pega
9 3 (0.53%) Cognizant
9 3 (0.53%) Dataiku
9 3 (0.53%) Foundry
10 2 (0.35%) Apple
10 2 (0.35%) CA Agile Central
10 2 (0.35%) IBM
10 2 (0.35%) New Relic
10 2 (0.35%) Red Hat
11 1 (0.18%) Cognos