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 29 October 2025.

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

6 months to
29 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 321 346 331
Rank change year-on-year +25 -15 +46
Contract jobs requiring a Backend Developer 49 33 92
As % of all contract jobs in London 0.36% 0.21% 0.45%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.39% 0.22% 0.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 26 24 63
10th Percentile £368 £400 £425
25th Percentile £466 £409 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £456 £650
Median % change year-on-year +15.07% -29.81% +4.00%
75th Percentile £634 £506 £700
90th Percentile £738 £560 £825
England median daily rate £540 £409 £575
% change year-on-year +32.03% -28.87% -0.86%
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 - -

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 12,616 14,822 19,117
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.46% 94.06% 93.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,381 9,606 13,906
10th Percentile £333 £343 £350
25th Percentile £425 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £545 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -4.35% -
75th Percentile £663 £675 £688
90th Percentile £775 £800 £800
England median daily rate £510 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -2.86% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 221 161 209
10th Percentile £17.08 £17.25 £18.13
25th Percentile £22.50 £23.80 £22.00
Median hourly rate £27.40 £37.50 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year -26.93% -7.41% +24.62%
75th Percentile £47.50 £58.75 £61.53
90th Percentile £67.50 £80.75 £76.50
England median hourly rate £25.15 £42.03 £45.88
% change year-on-year -40.16% -8.39% +55.53%

Backend Developer
Job Vacancy Trend in London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Backend Developer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in London.

Backend Developer job vacancy trend 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 29 October 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 29 October 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 29 October 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 +9 8 £525 +5.00% 8
East London +6 4 £540 +27.06% 2
West London -9 2 £512 +25.18% 3
Backend Developer
England

Backend Developer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in London

For the 6 months to 29 October 2025, Backend 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 London region featuring Backend Developer in the job title.

1 25 (51.02%) CI/CD
2 22 (44.90%) DevOps
3 21 (42.86%) Java
3 21 (42.86%) Kubernetes
3 21 (42.86%) Microservices
4 20 (40.82%) Agile
5 19 (38.78%) Problem-Solving
6 18 (36.73%) Azure
6 18 (36.73%) Docker
7 17 (34.69%) AWS
7 17 (34.69%) RESTful
7 17 (34.69%) SQL
8 15 (30.61%) Python
9 14 (28.57%) TypeScript
10 13 (26.53%) Git
11 12 (24.49%) Containerisation
12 11 (22.45%) JavaScript
12 11 (22.45%) Node.js
12 11 (22.45%) Software Engineering
12 11 (22.45%) Spring
13 10 (20.41%) GraphQL
14 9 (18.37%) Data Pipeline
14 9 (18.37%) GitHub
14 9 (18.37%) PostgreSQL
14 9 (18.37%) Serverless
14 9 (18.37%) Spring Boot
15 8 (16.33%) Azure DevOps
15 8 (16.33%) Front End Development
15 8 (16.33%) Hibernate
15 8 (16.33%) Microsoft

Backend Developer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in London 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 2 (4.08%) Apache
2 1 (2.04%) Apache Spark
2 1 (2.04%) Jupyter
Cloud Services
1 18 (36.73%) Azure
2 17 (34.69%) AWS
3 9 (18.37%) GitHub
3 9 (18.37%) Serverless
4 8 (16.33%) Azure DevOps
5 7 (14.29%) GitHub Actions
6 5 (10.20%) Entra ID
7 4 (8.16%) Amazon EC2
7 4 (8.16%) Azure Service Bus
7 4 (8.16%) GCP
8 3 (6.12%) Azure AKS
8 3 (6.12%) Azure App Service
8 3 (6.12%) Azure Functions
8 3 (6.12%) Azure Storage
9 2 (4.08%) Amazon Kinesis
9 2 (4.08%) Amazon S3
9 2 (4.08%) Amazon SQS
9 2 (4.08%) AWS Lambda
9 2 (4.08%) AWS Step Functions
9 2 (4.08%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 1 (2.04%) tcpdump
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (18.37%) PostgreSQL
2 8 (16.33%) NoSQL
3 6 (12.24%) SQL Server
4 4 (8.16%) Redis
5 3 (6.12%) Amazon RDS
5 3 (6.12%) MySQL
6 2 (4.08%) Data Warehouse
6 2 (4.08%) DynamoDB
6 2 (4.08%) MongoDB
7 1 (2.04%) Apache Cassandra
7 1 (2.04%) Azure SQL Database
7 1 (2.04%) Big Data
7 1 (2.04%) Data Lake
7 1 (2.04%) Elasticsearch
7 1 (2.04%) Flink
7 1 (2.04%) Hadoop
7 1 (2.04%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 13 (26.53%) Git
2 6 (12.24%) Jenkins
3 2 (4.08%) Gradle
3 2 (4.08%) JUnit
3 2 (4.08%) Maven
3 2 (4.08%) Mockito
4 1 (2.04%) Bitbucket
4 1 (2.04%) Eclipse
4 1 (2.04%) IntelliJ
4 1 (2.04%) JIRA
4 1 (2.04%) JMeter
4 1 (2.04%) Liquibase
4 1 (2.04%) MLflow
4 1 (2.04%) NeoLoad
4 1 (2.04%) Postman
4 1 (2.04%) Selenium
4 1 (2.04%) SoapUI
General
1 13 (26.53%) Social Skills
2 10 (20.41%) Finance
3 7 (14.29%) Banking
4 4 (8.16%) Public Sector
5 2 (4.08%) Analytical Skills
5 2 (4.08%) Front Office
5 2 (4.08%) Pharmaceutical
6 1 (2.04%) Documentation Skills
6 1 (2.04%) Financial Institution
6 1 (2.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 1 (2.04%) Legal
6 1 (2.04%) Marketing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (34.69%) RESTful
2 11 (22.45%) Node.js
2 11 (22.45%) Spring
3 10 (20.41%) GraphQL
4 9 (18.37%) Spring Boot
5 8 (16.33%) Hibernate
6 7 (14.29%) XML
7 6 (12.24%) .NET
7 6 (12.24%) React
8 5 (10.20%) .NET Core
8 5 (10.20%) CSS
8 5 (10.20%) HTML
9 4 (8.16%) ASP.NET
9 4 (8.16%) ASP.NET Core
9 4 (8.16%) FastAPI
9 4 (8.16%) REST
10 3 (6.12%) JPA
10 3 (6.12%) JWT
10 3 (6.12%) Kafka
10 3 (6.12%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 9 (18.37%) Cloud Native
2 6 (12.24%) Distributed Systems
3 2 (4.08%) Legacy Systems
3 2 (4.08%) Mobile App
3 2 (4.08%) Onboarding
3 2 (4.08%) Virtual Team
4 1 (2.04%) AI Agents
4 1 (2.04%) Enterprise Software
4 1 (2.04%) Genomics
4 1 (2.04%) Life Science
4 1 (2.04%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 4 (8.16%) Android
1 4 (8.16%) Apple iOS
2 1 (2.04%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 25 (51.02%) CI/CD
2 22 (44.90%) DevOps
3 21 (42.86%) Microservices
4 20 (40.82%) Agile
5 19 (38.78%) Problem-Solving
6 12 (24.49%) Containerisation
7 11 (22.45%) Software Engineering
8 9 (18.37%) Data Pipeline
9 8 (16.33%) Front End Development
9 8 (16.33%) Scrum
10 7 (14.29%) AI
10 7 (14.29%) Analytics
10 7 (14.29%) Continuous Improvement
10 7 (14.29%) Machine Learning
10 7 (14.29%) Test Automation
11 6 (12.24%) Event-Driven
11 6 (12.24%) TDD
12 5 (10.20%) B2C
12 5 (10.20%) Full-Stack Development
12 5 (10.20%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 21 (42.86%) Java
2 17 (34.69%) SQL
3 15 (30.61%) Python
4 14 (28.57%) TypeScript
5 11 (22.45%) JavaScript
6 6 (12.24%) C#
7 4 (8.16%) Bicep
7 4 (8.16%) Go
7 4 (8.16%) PowerShell
8 1 (2.04%) Bash
8 1 (2.04%) Kotlin
8 1 (2.04%) PHP
8 1 (2.04%) PL/SQL
8 1 (2.04%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 4 (8.16%) Security Cleared
2 3 (6.12%) Computer Science Degree
2 3 (6.12%) Degree
3 2 (4.08%) Azure Certification
3 2 (4.08%) BPSS Clearance
3 2 (4.08%) DBS Check
3 2 (4.08%) SC Cleared
4 1 (2.04%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (6.12%) QA
2 2 (4.08%) Accessibility
2 2 (4.08%) GDPR
System Software
1 18 (36.73%) Docker
2 5 (10.20%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 21 (42.86%) Kubernetes
2 4 (8.16%) Grafana
2 4 (8.16%) Prometheus
3 3 (6.12%) Kibana
4 1 (2.04%) Ansible
4 1 (2.04%) logstash
4 1 (2.04%) Terraform
Vendors
1 8 (16.33%) Microsoft
2 3 (6.12%) Databricks
2 3 (6.12%) Google
3 2 (4.08%) Oracle
4 1 (2.04%) Dataiku
4 1 (2.04%) DataRobot