Senior Developer Contract Job Trends in England

Senior Developer
UK > England

The median Senior Developer daily rate in England is £548, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 4 January 2026.

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

6 months to
4 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 167 145 166
Rank change year-on-year -22 +21 -64
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Developer 531 497 539
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.69% 1.81% 1.48%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.85% 1.95% 1.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 389 322 394
10th Percentile £407 £422 £425
25th Percentile £450 £501 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £548 £589 £598
Median % change year-on-year -7.01% -1.46% -8.08%
75th Percentile £700 £725 £714
90th Percentile £851 £850 £838
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 28,766 25,517 33,884
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.44% 92.85% 93.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,412 15,793 23,116
10th Percentile £300 £300 £280
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.67% - -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 1,738 801 1,461
10th Percentile £14.38 £15.92 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.30 £21.25 £19.25
Median hourly rate £27.50 £35.00 £44.78
Median % change year-on-year -21.43% -21.83% +33.66%
75th Percentile £62.50 £64.73 £65.00
90th Percentile £73.49 £74.87 £76.53
UK median hourly rate £26.50 £32.50 £44.50
% change year-on-year -18.46% -26.97% +36.92%

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 4 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 4 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 -21 318 £625 +1.42% 182
North of England -24 68 £550 +6.28% 146
South West +33 56 £475 -13.64% 70
Yorkshire -22 38 £631 +20.24% 64
South East -26 33 £473 +2.27% 219
North West -19 27 £500 - 62
Midlands -30 26 £513 +2.50% 100
East of England -11 20 £500 -5.66% 93
West Midlands -33 19 £525 +5.00% 49
North East -5 9 £488 -17.37% 20
East Midlands -20 7 £510 +11.78% 45
Senior Developer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 4 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.

1 186 (35.03%) Java
2 178 (33.52%) Agile
3 170 (32.02%) AWS
4 141 (26.55%) SQL
5 140 (26.37%) CI/CD
5 140 (26.37%) Microservices
6 137 (25.80%) Azure
7 132 (24.86%) DevOps
8 130 (24.48%) Python
9 124 (23.35%) Security Cleared
10 117 (22.03%) Kafka
11 115 (21.66%) Problem-Solving
12 110 (20.72%) Docker
13 108 (20.34%) SC Cleared
14 105 (19.77%) Kubernetes
15 101 (19.02%) JavaScript
16 79 (14.88%) Spring
17 71 (13.37%) React
18 68 (12.81%) Software Engineering
18 68 (12.81%) TDD
19 67 (12.62%) Git
20 65 (12.24%) C#
20 65 (12.24%) Containerisation
20 65 (12.24%) Scrum
21 63 (11.86%) PostgreSQL
21 63 (11.86%) Spring Boot
22 62 (11.68%) Analytics
22 62 (11.68%) Test Automation
23 61 (11.49%) .NET
24 60 (11.30%) 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 (2.64%) Confluence
2 6 (1.13%) SharePoint
3 5 (0.94%) CMS
4 4 (0.75%) Jupyter
5 2 (0.38%) Anypoint
5 2 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
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 (1.88%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 3 (0.56%) 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
1 170 (32.02%) AWS
2 137 (25.80%) Azure
3 60 (11.30%) Azure DevOps
4 50 (9.42%) GitHub
5 32 (6.03%) GCP
6 24 (4.52%) Power Platform
6 24 (4.52%) Serverless
7 16 (3.01%) GitHub Actions
8 13 (2.45%) Azure AKS
9 12 (2.26%) AWS Lambda
9 12 (2.26%) Power Automate
10 11 (2.07%) Amazon S3
10 11 (2.07%) Azure Service Bus
10 11 (2.07%) Dynamics 365
11 9 (1.69%) Amazon EC2
11 9 (1.69%) Amazon SQS
11 9 (1.69%) AWS CloudFormation
11 9 (1.69%) Datadog
11 9 (1.69%) PowerApps
11 9 (1.69%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.94%) Kerberos
2 3 (0.56%) SSL
3 2 (0.38%) Firewall
3 2 (0.38%) HTTP
4 1 (0.19%) Internet
4 1 (0.19%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 63 (11.86%) PostgreSQL
2 46 (8.66%) MongoDB
3 39 (7.34%) Relational Database
4 37 (6.97%) SQL Server
5 31 (5.84%) NoSQL
6 27 (5.08%) Apache Cassandra
7 14 (2.64%) DynamoDB
7 14 (2.64%) Power BI
8 13 (2.45%) DB2
9 11 (2.07%) MySQL
9 11 (2.07%) Redis
10 9 (1.69%) Data Warehouse
11 8 (1.51%) Data Hub
11 8 (1.51%) Data Lake
12 7 (1.32%) Amazon RDS
12 7 (1.32%) RDBMS
13 6 (1.13%) HBase
13 6 (1.13%) Oracle BI EE
14 5 (0.94%) Big Data
14 5 (0.94%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 67 (12.62%) Git
2 35 (6.59%) Jenkins
2 35 (6.59%) Oracle APEX
3 34 (6.40%) JUnit
4 24 (4.52%) GitLab
4 24 (4.52%) JIRA
5 21 (3.95%) Mockito
6 13 (2.45%) Maven
7 12 (2.26%) Gradle
8 9 (1.69%) Artifactory
8 9 (1.69%) Cucumber
9 8 (1.51%) Postman
10 7 (1.32%) Sonatype Nexus
10 7 (1.32%) SpecFlow
11 6 (1.13%) Mocha
12 5 (0.94%) Bitbucket
12 5 (0.94%) SonarQube
13 4 (0.75%) TeamCity
13 4 (0.75%) webpack
14 3 (0.56%) QUnit
General
1 142 (26.74%) Finance
2 140 (26.37%) Social Skills
3 87 (16.38%) Banking
4 62 (11.68%) Public Sector
5 47 (8.85%) Analytical Skills
6 40 (7.53%) Investment Banking
7 25 (4.71%) Front Office
8 12 (2.26%) 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 (0.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (0.56%) Manufacturing
11 3 (0.56%) Marketing
11 3 (0.56%) Retail Banking
12 2 (0.38%) Documentation Skills
12 2 (0.38%) Local Government
12 2 (0.38%) Publishing
12 2 (0.38%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 117 (22.03%) Kafka
2 79 (14.88%) Spring
3 71 (13.37%) React
4 63 (11.86%) Spring Boot
5 61 (11.49%) .NET
6 54 (10.17%) RESTful
7 47 (8.85%) REST
8 45 (8.47%) HTML
9 44 (8.29%) AngularJS
9 44 (8.29%) Node.js
10 39 (7.34%) CSS
11 26 (4.90%) Web Services
12 23 (4.33%) JSON
13 22 (4.14%) gRPC
14 19 (3.58%) .NET Core
14 19 (3.58%) RabbitMQ
15 18 (3.39%) .NET Framework
16 16 (3.01%) Playwright
17 15 (2.82%) Next.js
18 14 (2.64%) Jest
Miscellaneous
1 45 (8.47%) Distributed Systems
2 34 (6.40%) Derivative
3 33 (6.21%) Cloud Native
4 30 (5.65%) Equities
5 20 (3.77%) Market Risk
6 19 (3.58%) Algorithms
6 19 (3.58%) Management Information System
7 17 (3.20%) Data Structures
7 17 (3.20%) Fixed Income
8 14 (2.64%) Greenfield Project
9 13 (2.45%) Product Ownership
10 12 (2.26%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 11 (2.07%) Legacy Systems
12 8 (1.51%) Equity Derivative
13 6 (1.13%) Linux Command Line
13 6 (1.13%) NHS
13 6 (1.13%) Onboarding
14 5 (0.94%) Enterprise Software
14 5 (0.94%) Hedge funds
14 5 (0.94%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 49 (9.23%) Linux
2 23 (4.33%) Unix
3 16 (3.01%) Android
4 13 (2.45%) Mac OS X
5 10 (1.88%) Apple iOS
6 2 (0.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.38%) Windows
7 1 (0.19%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.19%) tvOS
7 1 (0.19%) watchOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 178 (33.52%) Agile
2 140 (26.37%) CI/CD
2 140 (26.37%) Microservices
3 132 (24.86%) DevOps
4 115 (21.66%) Problem-Solving
5 68 (12.81%) Software Engineering
5 68 (12.81%) TDD
6 65 (12.24%) Containerisation
6 65 (12.24%) Scrum
7 62 (11.68%) Analytics
7 62 (11.68%) Test Automation
8 60 (11.30%) Full-Stack Development
9 56 (10.55%) Open Source
10 45 (8.47%) Event-Driven
10 45 (8.47%) SDLC
11 39 (7.34%) Risk Management
12 37 (6.97%) Mentoring
13 36 (6.78%) Unit Testing
14 35 (6.59%) Performance Tuning
14 35 (6.59%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 186 (35.03%) Java
2 141 (26.55%) SQL
3 130 (24.48%) Python
4 101 (19.02%) JavaScript
5 65 (12.24%) C#
6 43 (8.10%) TypeScript
7 42 (7.91%) PL/SQL
8 31 (5.84%) Go
9 18 (3.39%) Kotlin
10 15 (2.82%) C++
11 14 (2.64%) Shell Script
12 13 (2.45%) Ruby
13 9 (1.69%) PHP
13 9 (1.69%) PowerShell
14 8 (1.51%) Bash
15 4 (0.75%) Objective-C
15 4 (0.75%) Swift
16 2 (0.38%) Apex Code
16 2 (0.38%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 2 (0.38%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 124 (23.35%) Security Cleared
2 108 (20.34%) SC Cleared
3 40 (7.53%) Degree
4 20 (3.77%) Computer Science Degree
5 17 (3.20%) 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 (0.56%) AWS Certified Developer
9 3 (0.56%) MCP
10 2 (0.38%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (0.38%) Azure Certification
10 2 (0.38%) DBS Check
10 2 (0.38%) DV Cleared
10 2 (0.38%) Microsoft Certification
11 1 (0.19%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 1 (0.19%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (4.52%) Accessibility
2 15 (2.82%) QA
3 12 (2.26%) WCAG
4 10 (1.88%) Data Quality
5 3 (0.56%) EU AI Act
5 3 (0.56%) NIST
6 1 (0.19%) GDPR
6 1 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 110 (20.72%) 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
1 105 (19.77%) Kubernetes
2 24 (4.52%) Terraform
3 15 (2.82%) Grafana
4 8 (1.51%) Single Sign-On
5 6 (1.13%) Ansible
6 4 (0.75%) 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 (10.92%) Oracle
2 25 (4.71%) Microsoft
3 21 (3.95%) Google
4 14 (2.64%) Sybase
5 12 (2.26%) Databricks
5 12 (2.26%) ServiceNow
6 6 (1.13%) Atlassian
7 5 (0.94%) Apple
7 5 (0.94%) Salesforce
8 4 (0.75%) Guidewire
9 3 (0.56%) BMC
9 3 (0.56%) Dataiku
9 3 (0.56%) Foundry
10 2 (0.38%) CA Agile Central
10 2 (0.38%) Cognizant
10 2 (0.38%) Confluent
10 2 (0.38%) MuleSoft
10 2 (0.38%) Red Hat
10 2 (0.38%) Remedy
10 2 (0.38%) Virgin Media