Developer Contract Job Trends in London

Developer
England > London

The median Developer daily rate in London is £525, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 5 March 2026.

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

6 months to
5 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 5 4
Rank change year-on-year -5 -1 -1
Contract jobs requiring a Developer 2,209 2,211 2,929
As % of all contract jobs in London 13.59% 16.66% 16.21%
As % of the Job Titles category 14.69% 17.79% 17.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,555 1,540 2,235
10th Percentile £381 £385 £400
25th Percentile £425 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £570 £575
Median % change year-on-year -7.89% -0.87% -8.00%
75th Percentile £650 £713 £750
90th Percentile £800 £850 £850
England median daily rate £500 £537 £525
% change year-on-year -6.89% +2.29% -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 7 13
10th Percentile £34.27 £35.45 £33.03
25th Percentile £35.00 £36.25 £56.25
Median hourly rate £50.50 £39.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.49% -35.00% +4.35%
75th Percentile £73.44 £48.50 £72.50
90th Percentile £95.00 £57.75 £73.42
England median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year -2.87% +4.00% -

All Contract IT Job Roles
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 15,038 12,428 16,831
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.54% 93.65% 93.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,080 8,197 12,150
10th Percentile £350 £338 £325
25th Percentile £425 £435 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £675
90th Percentile £750 £800 £788
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 231 141 335
10th Percentile £18.07 £21.21 £15.97
25th Percentile £23.00 £24.66 £19.03
Median hourly rate £34.50 £35.00 £28.50
Median % change year-on-year -1.44% +22.81% -18.57%
75th Percentile £59.99 £52.00 £48.03
90th Percentile £76.58 £78.40 £65.00
England median hourly rate £35.00 £35.45 £33.07
% change year-on-year -1.26% +7.20% -19.41%

Developer
Job Vacancy Trend in London

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

Developer job vacancy trend in London

Developer
Daily Rate Trend in London

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

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Developer job vacancies in London

Developer
Daily Rate Histogram in London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Developer in London over the 6 months to 5 March 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Developer in London

Developer
Hourly Rate Trend in London

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

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Developer job vacancies in London

Developer
Hourly Rate Histogram in London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Developer in London over the 6 months to 5 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Developer in London

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 Developer within the London region over the 6 months to 5 March 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
Central London -8 278 £525 -8.70% 271
South London -5 44 £510 -30.85% 22
West London -19 18 £455 +11.12% 37
East London -5 8 £625 +56.25% 27
Developer
England

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

For the 6 months to 5 March 2026, 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 Developer in the job title.

1 562 (25.44%) Java
2 546 (24.72%) Agile
3 542 (24.54%) Python
4 529 (23.95%) SQL
5 507 (22.95%) CI/CD
6 484 (21.91%) Azure
7 457 (20.69%) AWS
8 413 (18.70%) JavaScript
9 396 (17.93%) C#
10 379 (17.16%) Security Cleared
11 361 (16.34%) React
12 354 (16.03%) Problem-Solving
13 348 (15.75%) DevOps
14 315 (14.26%) .NET
15 304 (13.76%) SC Cleared
16 297 (13.44%) Full-Stack Development
17 293 (13.26%) Docker
17 293 (13.26%) Microservices
18 279 (12.63%) Kubernetes
19 274 (12.40%) TypeScript
20 245 (11.09%) Microsoft
21 242 (10.96%) Software Engineering
22 240 (10.86%) REST
23 236 (10.68%) Analytics
24 226 (10.23%) Git
25 222 (10.05%) Kafka
26 219 (9.91%) Node.js
27 206 (9.33%) Power Platform
28 199 (9.01%) HTML
29 195 (8.83%) RESTful

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 71 (3.21%) SharePoint
2 43 (1.95%) Confluence
3 20 (0.91%) CMS
4 18 (0.81%) IIS
5 16 (0.72%) Microsoft Exchange
6 15 (0.68%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 14 (0.63%) HCL Notes
8 12 (0.54%) Mendix
9 11 (0.50%) Apache
9 11 (0.50%) Ethereum
10 10 (0.45%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 10 (0.45%) MQSeries
11 9 (0.41%) Headless CMS
12 8 (0.36%) Apache Spark
12 8 (0.36%) Hyperledger
13 7 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
13 7 (0.32%) JBoss
13 7 (0.32%) WebLogic
14 6 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
14 6 (0.27%) WebSphere
Applications
1 49 (2.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (0.45%) Chatbot
3 5 (0.23%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (0.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.14%) Adobe XD
4 3 (0.14%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.045%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 41 (1.86%) Dynamics CRM
2 18 (0.81%) Endur
3 13 (0.59%) Fidessa
4 11 (0.50%) Oracle ERP
5 7 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
6 6 (0.27%) BusinessWorks
6 6 (0.27%) Temenos T24
7 5 (0.23%) BASE24
7 5 (0.23%) Oracle Financials
7 5 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
8 4 (0.18%) Oracle 11i
8 4 (0.18%) ProductWriter
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
10 2 (0.091%) Adobe Campaign
10 2 (0.091%) Aladdin
10 2 (0.091%) Cloudability
10 2 (0.091%) Magento
10 2 (0.091%) Oracle General Ledger
10 2 (0.091%) Orchestrade
Cloud Services
1 484 (21.91%) Azure
2 457 (20.69%) AWS
3 206 (9.33%) Power Platform
4 171 (7.74%) GitHub
5 140 (6.34%) Azure DevOps
6 119 (5.39%) GCP
6 119 (5.39%) Serverless
7 103 (4.66%) Power Automate
8 93 (4.21%) PowerApps
9 78 (3.53%) Dynamics 365
10 76 (3.44%) GitHub Actions
11 57 (2.58%) Azure Functions
12 56 (2.54%) AWS Lambda
13 55 (2.49%) Azure Logic Apps
14 54 (2.44%) Microsoft 365
15 53 (2.40%) Amazon S3
15 53 (2.40%) Entra ID
16 47 (2.13%) Azure Service Bus
17 39 (1.77%) Azure AKS
18 37 (1.67%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.04%) HTTP
2 12 (0.54%) FIX Connectivity
2 12 (0.54%) Internet
3 8 (0.36%) Network Security
4 7 (0.32%) SSL
4 7 (0.32%) TCP/IP
5 6 (0.27%) HTTPS
6 5 (0.23%) CTI
6 5 (0.23%) Firewall
6 5 (0.23%) SMS
6 5 (0.23%) VoIP
7 4 (0.18%) DNS
8 3 (0.14%) 3GPP
8 3 (0.14%) Multicast
8 3 (0.14%) MVNO
8 3 (0.14%) SMPP
9 2 (0.091%) DHCP
9 2 (0.091%) RTMP
9 2 (0.091%) SSH
10 1 (0.045%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 181 (8.19%) SQL Server
2 155 (7.02%) PostgreSQL
3 136 (6.16%) Power BI
4 119 (5.39%) Relational Database
5 90 (4.07%) NoSQL
6 71 (3.21%) Oracle Database
7 68 (3.08%) MongoDB
8 40 (1.81%) Apache Cassandra
9 38 (1.72%) MySQL
10 37 (1.67%) Data Warehouse
11 27 (1.22%) Data Lake
12 25 (1.13%) Amazon RDS
12 25 (1.13%) KDB
12 25 (1.13%) RDBMS
13 24 (1.09%) DB2
13 24 (1.09%) Kdb+
14 23 (1.04%) DynamoDB
15 22 (1.00%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 20 (0.91%) Azure SQL Database
17 19 (0.86%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 226 (10.23%) Git
2 103 (4.66%) Jenkins
2 103 (4.66%) JIRA
3 64 (2.90%) GitLab
4 58 (2.63%) JUnit
5 33 (1.49%) Maven
6 30 (1.36%) Visual Studio
7 22 (1.00%) Gradle
7 22 (1.00%) Mockito
8 19 (0.86%) Bitbucket
9 16 (0.72%) Sonatype Nexus
10 15 (0.68%) TeamCity
10 15 (0.68%) webpack
11 14 (0.63%) Cucumber
11 14 (0.63%) SonarQube
12 13 (0.59%) Android Studio
12 13 (0.59%) Cypress.io
12 13 (0.59%) Selenium
12 13 (0.59%) SpecFlow
13 11 (0.50%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 629 (28.47%) Finance
2 432 (19.56%) Social Skills
3 332 (15.03%) Banking
4 233 (10.55%) Front Office
5 209 (9.46%) Public Sector
6 156 (7.06%) Analytical Skills
7 127 (5.75%) Investment Banking
8 56 (2.54%) Financial Institution
9 20 (0.91%) Documentation Skills
10 19 (0.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 18 (0.81%) Marketing
12 17 (0.77%) Law
13 12 (0.54%) Back Office
14 11 (0.50%) Telecoms
15 9 (0.41%) Local Government
15 9 (0.41%) Presentation Skills
16 8 (0.36%) Billing
16 8 (0.36%) Private Banking
16 8 (0.36%) Retail
17 7 (0.32%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 361 (16.34%) React
2 315 (14.26%) .NET
3 240 (10.86%) REST
4 222 (10.05%) Kafka
5 219 (9.91%) Node.js
6 199 (9.01%) HTML
7 195 (8.83%) RESTful
8 182 (8.24%) AngularJS
9 180 (8.15%) Spring
10 177 (8.01%) CSS
11 133 (6.02%) Spring Boot
12 88 (3.98%) .NET Framework
13 84 (3.80%) Web Services
14 80 (3.62%) SOAP
15 79 (3.58%) Redux
16 76 (3.44%) GraphQL
17 70 (3.17%) JSON
18 69 (3.12%) Vue
19 65 (2.94%) XML
20 50 (2.26%) Next.js
Miscellaneous
1 129 (5.84%) Equities
2 114 (5.16%) Derivative
3 103 (4.66%) Fixed Income
3 103 (4.66%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 85 (3.85%) Algorithms
5 83 (3.76%) Cloud Native
6 79 (3.58%) Distributed Systems
7 75 (3.40%) Data Structures
8 65 (2.94%) Product Ownership
9 44 (1.99%) Greenfield Project
10 42 (1.90%) Management Information System
10 42 (1.90%) Mobile App
11 41 (1.86%) Legacy Systems
12 40 (1.81%) Data Protection Act
13 37 (1.67%) AI Agents
14 30 (1.36%) Hedge funds
15 29 (1.31%) Equity Derivative
16 28 (1.27%) Low-Code
17 27 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
18 26 (1.18%) Market Risk
Operating Systems
1 134 (6.07%) Linux
2 72 (3.26%) Windows
3 51 (2.31%) Unix
4 36 (1.63%) Android
5 31 (1.40%) Apple iOS
6 22 (1.00%) Windows Server
7 5 (0.23%) AIX
7 5 (0.23%) Mac OS
7 5 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 4 (0.18%) zOS
9 3 (0.14%) CentOS
9 3 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
10 1 (0.045%) VMS
10 1 (0.045%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 546 (24.72%) Agile
2 507 (22.95%) CI/CD
3 354 (16.03%) Problem-Solving
4 348 (15.75%) DevOps
5 297 (13.44%) Full-Stack Development
6 293 (13.26%) Microservices
7 242 (10.96%) Software Engineering
8 236 (10.68%) Analytics
9 192 (8.69%) AI
9 192 (8.69%) Business Intelligence
10 182 (8.24%) Containerisation
11 173 (7.83%) Test Automation
12 144 (6.52%) Data Modelling
13 139 (6.29%) TDD
14 135 (6.11%) Front End Development
15 131 (5.93%) Scrum
16 129 (5.84%) Unit Testing
17 119 (5.39%) Design Patterns
18 112 (5.07%) Low Latency
19 109 (4.93%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 562 (25.44%) Java
2 542 (24.54%) Python
3 529 (23.95%) SQL
4 413 (18.70%) JavaScript
5 396 (17.93%) C#
6 274 (12.40%) TypeScript
7 105 (4.75%) C++
8 89 (4.03%) Go
9 81 (3.67%) PL/SQL
10 54 (2.44%) T-SQL
11 52 (2.35%) Kotlin
12 40 (1.81%) Apex Code
13 37 (1.67%) PowerShell
14 36 (1.63%) Shell Script
15 35 (1.58%) Ruby
16 31 (1.40%) VB
17 30 (1.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 30 (1.36%) VBA
18 23 (1.04%) C
19 21 (0.95%) PHP
Qualifications
1 379 (17.16%) Security Cleared
2 304 (13.76%) SC Cleared
3 118 (5.34%) Degree
4 50 (2.26%) Computer Science Degree
5 29 (1.31%) DV Cleared
6 25 (1.13%) BPSS Clearance
7 23 (1.04%) Master's Degree
8 12 (0.54%) Numerate Degree
9 6 (0.27%) AWS Certification
9 6 (0.27%) Microsoft Certification
10 5 (0.23%) Azure Certification
10 5 (0.23%) PhD
11 4 (0.18%) Oracle Certification
12 3 (0.14%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 3 (0.14%) CTC Cleared
13 2 (0.091%) AWS Certified Developer
13 2 (0.091%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 2 (0.091%) OCP
13 2 (0.091%) Postgraduate
14 1 (0.045%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 100 (4.53%) QA
2 73 (3.30%) Accessibility
3 35 (1.58%) Data Quality
4 34 (1.54%) WCAG
5 14 (0.63%) GDPR
6 7 (0.32%) ISO 8583
6 7 (0.32%) SLA
7 6 (0.27%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 5 (0.23%) SEPA
9 4 (0.18%) GRC
9 4 (0.18%) PCI DSS
10 3 (0.14%) ISO 20022
10 3 (0.14%) PSD2
11 2 (0.091%) HL7
11 2 (0.091%) PMO
12 1 (0.045%) HIPAA
12 1 (0.045%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 1 (0.045%) MiFID
System Software
1 293 (13.26%) Docker
2 29 (1.31%) Active Directory
3 4 (0.18%) HDFS
4 3 (0.14%) zsh
5 2 (0.091%) GridGain
5 2 (0.091%) OpenAM
5 2 (0.091%) OpenDJ
5 2 (0.091%) OpenIDM
5 2 (0.091%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.091%) VMware ESXi
5 2 (0.091%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (0.045%) FreeRADIUS
6 1 (0.045%) Oracle RAC
6 1 (0.045%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 279 (12.63%) Kubernetes
2 83 (3.76%) Terraform
3 33 (1.49%) Ansible
4 24 (1.09%) Grafana
5 18 (0.81%) Prometheus
6 12 (0.54%) Argo
6 12 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
7 7 (0.32%) Control-M
8 6 (0.27%) TIBCO Hawk
9 5 (0.23%) SCCM
10 3 (0.14%) Podman
11 2 (0.091%) CloudHub
11 2 (0.091%) Docker Swarm
11 2 (0.091%) Kibana
11 2 (0.091%) Progress Chef
11 2 (0.091%) rkt
12 1 (0.045%) CA Endevor
12 1 (0.045%) Istio
12 1 (0.045%) Nessus
12 1 (0.045%) Oracle Identity Management
Vendors
1 245 (11.09%) Microsoft
2 183 (8.28%) Oracle
3 69 (3.12%) Salesforce
4 64 (2.90%) ServiceNow
5 36 (1.63%) Databricks
6 35 (1.58%) Citrix
6 35 (1.58%) IBM
7 32 (1.45%) Google
7 32 (1.45%) SAP
8 31 (1.40%) OpenAI
9 26 (1.18%) Adobe
10 21 (0.95%) Guidewire
10 21 (0.95%) MuleSoft
11 18 (0.81%) Sybase
12 17 (0.77%) Red Hat
13 14 (0.63%) Foundry
13 14 (0.63%) Lotus
14 13 (0.59%) Solace
15 11 (0.50%) OpenLink
15 11 (0.50%) Pega