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 28 February 2026.

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

6 months to
28 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 161 153 168
Rank change year-on-year -8 +15 -50
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Developer 589 459 537
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.66% 1.79% 1.42%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.80% 1.92% 1.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 410 314 386
10th Percentile £400 £425 £416
25th Percentile £456 £513 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £581
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +3.23% -10.58%
75th Percentile £657 £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 13
10th Percentile - - £49.97
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 - - £80.75
UK median hourly rate £90.00 £77.19 £59.45
% change year-on-year +16.60% +29.83% -4.88%

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 32,663 23,861 35,129
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.93% 92.91% 92.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,724 15,180 23,561
10th Percentile £306 £300 £270
25th Percentile £412 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £640
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 2,100 745 2,165
10th Percentile £15.18 £16.24 £13.23
25th Percentile £19.00 £22.00 £16.30
Median hourly rate £35.00 £36.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.78% +2.86% -12.50%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.40 £71.90
UK median hourly rate £33.50 £34.75 £35.00
% change year-on-year -3.60% -0.71% -12.50%

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 28 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 28 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 -13 368 £600 -4.38% 87
North of England -48 66 £538 +2.38% 57
South West +11 54 £475 -20.89% 19
South East -27 42 £505 +12.93% 48
North West -37 33 £500 -4.76% 31
Yorkshire -44 32 £575 +11.11% 22
Midlands -41 30 £525 +0.72% 21
East of England -18 23 £500 -23.08% 11
West Midlands -41 21 £525 -4.55% 19
East Midlands -15 9 £520 - 2
North East -10 6 £525 -11.02% 5
Senior Developer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 28 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.

1 183 (31.07%) Java
2 182 (30.90%) AWS
3 174 (29.54%) Agile
4 143 (24.28%) SQL
5 141 (23.94%) CI/CD
6 140 (23.77%) Microservices
7 137 (23.26%) Azure
8 131 (22.24%) Python
9 128 (21.73%) Security Cleared
10 120 (20.37%) DevOps
11 117 (19.86%) SC Cleared
12 115 (19.52%) Kafka
13 114 (19.35%) JavaScript
14 112 (19.02%) Docker
15 106 (18.00%) Kubernetes
16 93 (15.79%) Problem-Solving
17 77 (13.07%) Software Engineering
17 77 (13.07%) Spring
17 77 (13.07%) TDD
18 76 (12.90%) React
19 68 (11.54%) Git
20 67 (11.38%) Scrum
20 67 (11.38%) Spring Boot
21 66 (11.21%) Containerisation
22 64 (10.87%) Test Automation
23 58 (9.85%) C#
24 57 (9.68%) .NET
24 57 (9.68%) Analytics
25 56 (9.51%) Oracle
26 55 (9.34%) 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 (1.70%) Confluence
2 7 (1.19%) 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%) Appian
7 1 (0.17%) IIS
7 1 (0.17%) JBoss
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%) Smallworld
7 1 (0.17%) Umbraco
7 1 (0.17%) WebLogic
Applications
1 13 (2.21%) 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
1 182 (30.90%) AWS
2 137 (23.26%) Azure
3 54 (9.17%) Azure DevOps
4 42 (7.13%) GitHub
5 31 (5.26%) Power Platform
6 27 (4.58%) GCP
7 25 (4.24%) Serverless
8 19 (3.23%) Power Automate
9 16 (2.72%) Azure Service Bus
9 16 (2.72%) PowerApps
10 13 (2.21%) Amazon EC2
10 13 (2.21%) AWS Lambda
10 13 (2.21%) Dynamics 365
10 13 (2.21%) GitHub Actions
11 12 (2.04%) Amazon S3
11 12 (2.04%) Amazon SQS
12 10 (1.70%) AWS CloudFormation
12 10 (1.70%) Copilot Studio
12 10 (1.70%) Microsoft Copilot
13 9 (1.53%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 6 (1.02%) 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 54 (9.17%) PostgreSQL
2 37 (6.28%) SQL Server
3 36 (6.11%) NoSQL
4 35 (5.94%) MongoDB
4 35 (5.94%) Relational Database
5 33 (5.60%) Apache Cassandra
6 22 (3.74%) Power BI
7 16 (2.72%) DynamoDB
8 11 (1.87%) DB2
9 10 (1.70%) Amazon RDS
10 9 (1.53%) Data Hub
10 9 (1.53%) Data Warehouse
10 9 (1.53%) MySQL
11 8 (1.36%) Data Lake
12 7 (1.19%) Oracle BI EE
13 6 (1.02%) HBase
13 6 (1.02%) Redis
14 5 (0.85%) RDBMS
14 5 (0.85%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 4 (0.68%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 68 (11.54%) Git
2 34 (5.77%) Oracle APEX
3 33 (5.60%) Jenkins
4 32 (5.43%) JUnit
5 22 (3.74%) GitLab
6 20 (3.40%) JIRA
7 17 (2.89%) Maven
8 16 (2.72%) Mockito
9 11 (1.87%) Gradle
10 9 (1.53%) Cucumber
11 8 (1.36%) Artifactory
11 8 (1.36%) SonarQube
12 7 (1.19%) Sonatype Nexus
13 6 (1.02%) SpecFlow
14 5 (0.85%) Mocha
15 4 (0.68%) Bitbucket
16 3 (0.51%) Lerna
16 3 (0.51%) Postman
16 3 (0.51%) Selenium
16 3 (0.51%) webpack
General
1 128 (21.73%) Social Skills
2 121 (20.54%) Finance
3 82 (13.92%) Banking
4 69 (11.71%) Public Sector
5 40 (6.79%) Analytical Skills
6 35 (5.94%) Investment Banking
7 23 (3.90%) Front Office
8 12 (2.04%) Financial Institution
9 5 (0.85%) Law
10 4 (0.68%) Health Technology
10 4 (0.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 4 (0.68%) Presentation Skills
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
1 115 (19.52%) Kafka
2 77 (13.07%) Spring
3 76 (12.90%) React
4 67 (11.38%) Spring Boot
5 57 (9.68%) .NET
6 53 (9.00%) REST
7 50 (8.49%) Node.js
8 48 (8.15%) AngularJS
9 46 (7.81%) HTML
10 45 (7.64%) RESTful
11 44 (7.47%) CSS
12 31 (5.26%) gRPC
13 26 (4.41%) Web Services
14 17 (2.89%) .NET Core
14 17 (2.89%) .NET Framework
14 17 (2.89%) RabbitMQ
15 14 (2.38%) Jest
15 14 (2.38%) Pandas
15 14 (2.38%) Playwright
15 14 (2.38%) Redux
Miscellaneous
1 47 (7.98%) Distributed Systems
2 34 (5.77%) Cloud Native
3 28 (4.75%) Derivative
4 24 (4.07%) Equities
5 21 (3.57%) Product Ownership
6 20 (3.40%) Algorithms
7 18 (3.06%) Market Risk
8 17 (2.89%) Management Information System
9 16 (2.72%) Greenfield Project
10 13 (2.21%) Data Structures
11 12 (2.04%) Fixed Income
11 12 (2.04%) Mobile App
12 11 (1.87%) Legacy Systems
13 8 (1.36%) Equity Derivative
13 8 (1.36%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 7 (1.19%) Onboarding
15 6 (1.02%) AI Agents
15 6 (1.02%) Enterprise Software
16 5 (0.85%) Linux Command Line
17 4 (0.68%) Legacy Applications
Operating Systems
1 40 (6.79%) Linux
2 17 (2.89%) Unix
3 16 (2.72%) Android
4 11 (1.87%) Windows
5 9 (1.53%) Apple iOS
6 8 (1.36%) Mac OS X
7 5 (0.85%) Mac OS
8 2 (0.34%) Windows Server
9 1 (0.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 1 (0.17%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 174 (29.54%) Agile
2 141 (23.94%) CI/CD
3 140 (23.77%) Microservices
4 120 (20.37%) DevOps
5 93 (15.79%) Problem-Solving
6 77 (13.07%) Software Engineering
6 77 (13.07%) TDD
7 67 (11.38%) Scrum
8 66 (11.21%) Containerisation
9 64 (10.87%) Test Automation
10 57 (9.68%) Analytics
11 55 (9.34%) Open Source
12 54 (9.17%) Full-Stack Development
13 45 (7.64%) SDLC
14 43 (7.30%) Design Patterns
15 42 (7.13%) Code Quality
15 42 (7.13%) Mentoring
16 37 (6.28%) Event-Driven
17 34 (5.77%) Front End Development
17 34 (5.77%) Software Delivery
Programming Languages
1 183 (31.07%) Java
2 143 (24.28%) SQL
3 131 (22.24%) Python
4 114 (19.35%) JavaScript
5 58 (9.85%) C#
6 55 (9.34%) TypeScript
7 43 (7.30%) Go
8 39 (6.62%) PL/SQL
9 23 (3.90%) Kotlin
10 20 (3.40%) Ruby
11 16 (2.72%) C++
12 10 (1.70%) Shell Script
13 9 (1.53%) PowerShell
14 6 (1.02%) 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%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 128 (21.73%) Security Cleared
2 117 (19.86%) SC Cleared
3 28 (4.75%) Degree
4 14 (2.38%) BPSS Clearance
5 12 (2.04%) Computer Science Degree
6 8 (1.36%) Numerate Degree
7 6 (1.02%) OCP
7 6 (1.02%) 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
12 1 (0.17%) CISSP
12 1 (0.17%) Master's Degree
12 1 (0.17%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (4.75%) Accessibility
2 18 (3.06%) WCAG
3 15 (2.55%) Data Quality
4 12 (2.04%) 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 (19.02%) 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
1 106 (18.00%) Kubernetes
2 26 (4.41%) Terraform
3 17 (2.89%) Grafana
4 9 (1.53%) Single Sign-On
5 6 (1.02%) 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 56 (9.51%) Oracle
2 34 (5.77%) Microsoft
3 17 (2.89%) Google
3 17 (2.89%) ServiceNow
4 12 (2.04%) Sybase
5 10 (1.70%) Databricks
6 9 (1.53%) Salesforce
7 7 (1.19%) SAP
8 6 (1.02%) Guidewire
9 4 (0.68%) Atlassian
9 4 (0.68%) Pega
10 3 (0.51%) Cognizant
10 3 (0.51%) Dataiku
10 3 (0.51%) Foundry
11 2 (0.34%) Apple
11 2 (0.34%) CA Agile Central
11 2 (0.34%) ForgeRock
11 2 (0.34%) IBM
11 2 (0.34%) New Relic
12 1 (0.17%) Dell