Backend Developer Contract Job Trends in London

Backend Developer
England > London

The median Backend Developer daily rate in London is £525, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 18 September 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 306 312 319
Rank change year-on-year +6 +7 +88
Contract jobs requiring a Backend Developer 56 72 121
As % of all contract jobs advertised in London 0.42% 0.44% 0.56%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.45% 0.47% 0.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 29 46 82
10th Percentile £367 £415 £451
25th Percentile £425 £452 £511
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £650
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -23.08% +4.00%
75th Percentile £638 £525 £700
90th Percentile £708 £588 £821
England median daily rate £545 £475 £600
% change year-on-year +14.74% -20.83% +4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 0
10th Percentile £57.65 - -
25th Percentile £61.63 - -
Median hourly rate £73.50 - -
75th Percentile £78.75 - -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £73.50 £55.00 -
% change year-on-year +33.64% - -

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in London. 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 London with a recognized job title 12,462 15,317 20,545
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.67% 94.03% 94.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,353 10,248 14,977
10th Percentile £331 £340 £350
25th Percentile £425 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £543 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year -1.27% -4.35% -
75th Percentile £675 £675 £694
90th Percentile £775 £800 £800
England median daily rate £508 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -3.33% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 206 181 229
10th Percentile £17.00 £17.50 £18.13
25th Percentile £23.00 £23.80 £22.29
Median hourly rate £30.25 £35.00 £37.34
Median % change year-on-year -13.57% -6.27% +14.89%
75th Percentile £51.13 £56.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £66.54 £71.88 £76.50
England median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £45.00
% change year-on-year -45.54% +2.62% +73.08%

Backend Developer
Job Vacancy Trend in London

Job postings that featured Backend Developer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in London.

Job vacancy trend for Backend Developer in London

Backend Developer
Daily Rate Trend in London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Backend Developer job vacancies in London.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Backend Developer job vacancies in London

Backend Developer
Daily Rate Histogram in London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Backend Developer in London over the 6 months to 18 September 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Backend Developer in London

Backend Developer
Hourly Rate Trend in London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Backend Developer job vacancies in London.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Backend Developer job vacancies in London

Backend Developer
Hourly Rate Histogram in London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Backend Developer in London over the 6 months to 18 September 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Backend Developer in London

Backend Developer
Contract Job Locations in London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Backend Developer within the London region over the 6 months to 18 September 2025. 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
Central London -1 8 £575 +15.00% 4
East London +9 4 £540 +24.14% 2
West London - 3 £449 - 1
Backend Developer
England

Backend Developer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in London

For the 6 months to 18 September 2025, Backend Developer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the London region featuring Backend Developer in the job title.

1 24 (42.86%) CI/CD
2 22 (39.29%) DevOps
3 20 (35.71%) Microservices
3 20 (35.71%) Agile
4 19 (33.93%) Java
4 19 (33.93%) Python
4 19 (33.93%) Kubernetes
5 18 (32.14%) Docker
5 18 (32.14%) AWS
6 17 (30.36%) TypeScript
6 17 (30.36%) Problem-Solving
7 15 (26.79%) Azure
8 14 (25.00%) RESTful
9 13 (23.21%) JavaScript
10 12 (21.43%) SQL
10 12 (21.43%) PostgreSQL
10 12 (21.43%) Git
11 11 (19.64%) Node.js
11 11 (19.64%) Finance
11 11 (19.64%) Spring
11 11 (19.64%) GraphQL
11 11 (19.64%) Full-Stack Development
12 10 (17.86%) Data Pipeline
12 10 (17.86%) Serverless
12 10 (17.86%) Software Engineering
12 10 (17.86%) Containerisation
13 9 (16.07%) Social Skills
13 9 (16.07%) Banking
13 9 (16.07%) GitHub
13 9 (16.07%) Spring Boot

Backend Developer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in London by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 3 (5.36%) Jupyter
2 2 (3.57%) Apache
3 1 (1.79%) Apache Spark
3 1 (1.79%) CMS
3 1 (1.79%) Headless CMS
Cloud Services
1 18 (32.14%) AWS
2 15 (26.79%) Azure
3 10 (17.86%) Serverless
4 9 (16.07%) GitHub
5 8 (14.29%) GitHub Actions
6 6 (10.71%) Azure DevOps
7 4 (7.14%) Amazon EC2
7 4 (7.14%) AWS Lambda
7 4 (7.14%) Azure Service Bus
7 4 (7.14%) Entra ID
8 3 (5.36%) Amazon Bedrock
8 3 (5.36%) Amazon S3
8 3 (5.36%) Amazon SageMaker
8 3 (5.36%) AWS Step Functions
9 2 (3.57%) Amazon Kinesis
9 2 (3.57%) Amazon SQS
9 2 (3.57%) Snowflake
10 1 (1.79%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 1 (1.79%) Azure Functions
10 1 (1.79%) GCP
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.79%) tcpdump
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (21.43%) PostgreSQL
2 6 (10.71%) SQL Server
3 5 (8.93%) NoSQL
4 4 (7.14%) MySQL
4 4 (7.14%) Redis
5 3 (5.36%) Amazon RDS
5 3 (5.36%) DynamoDB
6 2 (3.57%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (1.79%) Apache Cassandra
7 1 (1.79%) Big Data
7 1 (1.79%) Elasticsearch
7 1 (1.79%) Flink
7 1 (1.79%) Hadoop
7 1 (1.79%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 12 (21.43%) Git
2 7 (12.50%) Jenkins
3 3 (5.36%) MLflow
4 2 (3.57%) Bitbucket
4 2 (3.57%) Gradle
4 2 (3.57%) Maven
4 2 (3.57%) Terragrunt
5 1 (1.79%) Eclipse
5 1 (1.79%) IntelliJ
5 1 (1.79%) JIRA
5 1 (1.79%) JMeter
5 1 (1.79%) JUnit
5 1 (1.79%) Mockito
5 1 (1.79%) NeoLoad
5 1 (1.79%) Postman
5 1 (1.79%) Selenium
5 1 (1.79%) SoapUI
General
1 11 (19.64%) Finance
2 9 (16.07%) Banking
2 9 (16.07%) Social Skills
3 6 (10.71%) Public Sector
4 2 (3.57%) Analytical Skills
4 2 (3.57%) Investment Banking
4 2 (3.57%) Marketing
5 1 (1.79%) Financial Institution
5 1 (1.79%) Front Office
5 1 (1.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 1 (1.79%) Legal
5 1 (1.79%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (25.00%) RESTful
2 11 (19.64%) GraphQL
2 11 (19.64%) Node.js
2 11 (19.64%) Spring
3 9 (16.07%) Spring Boot
4 7 (12.50%) XML
5 6 (10.71%) Hibernate
5 6 (10.71%) React
6 5 (8.93%) .NET
6 5 (8.93%) CSS
6 5 (8.93%) FastAPI
6 5 (8.93%) HTML
7 4 (7.14%) .NET Core
7 4 (7.14%) ASP.NET
7 4 (7.14%) ASP.NET Core
7 4 (7.14%) Kafka
7 4 (7.14%) REST
8 3 (5.36%) Lambda Expressions
8 3 (5.36%) PyTorch
8 3 (5.36%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 6 (10.71%) Distributed Systems
2 4 (7.14%) Cloud Native
3 2 (3.57%) Derivative
3 2 (3.57%) Hedge funds
3 2 (3.57%) Mobile App
3 2 (3.57%) Onboarding
3 2 (3.57%) Virtual Team
4 1 (1.79%) Acoustics
4 1 (1.79%) Data Protection Act
4 1 (1.79%) Enterprise Software
4 1 (1.79%) Legacy Systems
4 1 (1.79%) Linux Command Line
4 1 (1.79%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 4 (7.14%) Android
1 4 (7.14%) Apple iOS
2 1 (1.79%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 24 (42.86%) CI/CD
2 22 (39.29%) DevOps
3 20 (35.71%) Agile
3 20 (35.71%) Microservices
4 17 (30.36%) Problem-Solving
5 11 (19.64%) Full-Stack Development
6 10 (17.86%) Containerisation
6 10 (17.86%) Data Pipeline
6 10 (17.86%) Software Engineering
7 8 (14.29%) Scrum
8 7 (12.50%) API Development
8 7 (12.50%) Artificial Intelligence
8 7 (12.50%) B2C
8 7 (12.50%) Machine Learning
8 7 (12.50%) TDD
9 5 (8.93%) Analytics
9 5 (8.93%) Continuous Improvement
9 5 (8.93%) Front End Development
9 5 (8.93%) Mentoring
9 5 (8.93%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 19 (33.93%) Java
1 19 (33.93%) Python
2 17 (30.36%) TypeScript
3 13 (23.21%) JavaScript
4 12 (21.43%) SQL
5 6 (10.71%) C#
6 4 (7.14%) Bicep
6 4 (7.14%) PowerShell
7 3 (5.36%) Go
8 2 (3.57%) Ruby
8 2 (3.57%) Shell Script
9 1 (1.79%) Bash
9 1 (1.79%) C++
9 1 (1.79%) PHP
9 1 (1.79%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 4 (7.14%) AWS Certification
2 3 (5.36%) Computer Science Degree
2 3 (5.36%) Degree
2 3 (5.36%) Security Cleared
3 2 (3.57%) Azure Certification
3 2 (3.57%) DBS Check
3 2 (3.57%) SC Cleared
4 1 (1.79%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (7.14%) QA
2 2 (3.57%) GDPR
System Software
1 18 (32.14%) Docker
2 4 (7.14%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 19 (33.93%) Kubernetes
2 5 (8.93%) Terraform
3 4 (7.14%) Grafana
3 4 (7.14%) Prometheus
4 3 (5.36%) Kibana
5 1 (1.79%) Ansible
5 1 (1.79%) logstash
Vendors
1 6 (10.71%) Microsoft
2 3 (5.36%) Dataiku
2 3 (5.36%) DataRobot
3 2 (3.57%) Google
3 2 (3.57%) Oracle
4 1 (1.79%) Databricks
4 1 (1.79%) Virgin Media