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 1 January 2026.

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

6 months to
1 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -5 0 -2
Contract jobs requiring a Developer 1,998 2,464 2,930
As % of all contract jobs in London 13.86% 16.86% 16.10%
As % of the Job Titles category 15.00% 18.04% 17.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,378 1,672 2,254
10th Percentile £375 £376 £400
25th Percentile £425 £450 £474
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £565 £600
Median % change year-on-year -7.08% -5.83% -4.00%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £750
90th Percentile £800 £849 £850
England median daily rate £500 £534 £550
% change year-on-year -6.37% -2.91% -6.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 8 13
10th Percentile £34.27 £35.53 £33.03
25th Percentile £47.63 £36.50 £56.25
Median hourly rate £56.25 £40.25 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +39.75% -32.92% +4.35%
75th Percentile £77.06 £80.50 £72.50
90th Percentile £79.28 £137.50 £73.73
England median hourly rate £57.50 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -11.54% - +6.12%

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 13,324 13,661 17,008
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.41% 93.46% 93.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,838 8,810 12,270
10th Percentile £350 £337 £325
25th Percentile £425 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £550 £553
Median % change year-on-year -3.64% -0.62% -4.25%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £675
90th Percentile £750 £799 £788
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 224 150 218
10th Percentile £17.50 £19.76 £17.00
25th Percentile £22.88 £23.80 £21.31
Median hourly rate £31.00 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -11.44% - +2.94%
75th Percentile £57.81 £53.75 £57.88
90th Percentile £76.58 £80.75 £72.15
England median hourly rate £27.21 £35.00 £45.88
% change year-on-year -22.26% -23.71% +40.01%

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 1 January 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 1 January 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 1 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
Central London -6 265 £525 -10.26% 149
South London -18 21 £510 -31.97% 10
West London -23 16 £475 +16.14% 20
East London -1 14 £625 +56.25% 16
Developer
England

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

For the 6 months to 1 January 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.

1 542 (27.13%) Agile
1 542 (27.13%) SQL
2 516 (25.83%) Java
3 482 (24.12%) Python
4 478 (23.92%) CI/CD
5 442 (22.12%) Azure
6 414 (20.72%) AWS
7 393 (19.67%) Problem-Solving
8 390 (19.52%) C#
9 369 (18.47%) JavaScript
10 343 (17.17%) DevOps
11 301 (15.07%) .NET
12 300 (15.02%) Security Cleared
13 298 (14.91%) Microservices
14 289 (14.46%) React
15 277 (13.86%) Docker
15 277 (13.86%) Kubernetes
16 263 (13.16%) Full-Stack Development
17 252 (12.61%) Microsoft
18 244 (12.21%) REST
18 244 (12.21%) SC Cleared
19 238 (11.91%) Git
20 236 (11.81%) Analytics
21 211 (10.56%) Power Platform
21 211 (10.56%) TypeScript
22 202 (10.11%) Software Engineering
23 190 (9.51%) Kafka
24 182 (9.11%) Business Intelligence
25 181 (9.06%) HTML
26 179 (8.96%) 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 65 (3.25%) SharePoint
2 37 (1.85%) Confluence
3 21 (1.05%) CMS
4 20 (1.00%) HCL Notes
5 16 (0.80%) IIS
6 14 (0.70%) Apache Airflow
6 14 (0.70%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 13 (0.65%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 12 (0.60%) Oracle Workflow
9 10 (0.50%) MQSeries
10 9 (0.45%) Apache
10 9 (0.45%) Apache Spark
11 8 (0.40%) Mendix
11 8 (0.40%) Microsoft Exchange
12 6 (0.30%) Ethereum
12 6 (0.30%) Headless CMS
12 6 (0.30%) WebLogic
12 6 (0.30%) WebSphere
13 5 (0.25%) Anypoint
13 5 (0.25%) Tomcat
Applications
1 59 (2.95%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (0.50%) Chatbot
3 7 (0.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.30%) Microsoft Office
5 4 (0.20%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.050%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.050%) Oracle Smart View
6 1 (0.050%) Trello
Business Applications
1 36 (1.80%) Dynamics CRM
2 16 (0.80%) Endur
3 15 (0.75%) Oracle EBS
4 11 (0.55%) Oracle Payables
5 10 (0.50%) Fidessa
5 10 (0.50%) Oracle Assets
5 10 (0.50%) Oracle EBS R12
5 10 (0.50%) Oracle ERP
6 9 (0.45%) Oracle General Ledger
7 8 (0.40%) Oracle Financials
8 6 (0.30%) BusinessWorks
8 6 (0.30%) Magento
8 6 (0.30%) Temenos T24
9 5 (0.25%) Aladdin
10 4 (0.20%) Oracle 11i
10 4 (0.20%) Oracle E-Business Tax
10 4 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
10 4 (0.20%) ProductWriter
11 3 (0.15%) BASE24
11 3 (0.15%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 442 (22.12%) Azure
2 414 (20.72%) AWS
3 211 (10.56%) Power Platform
4 152 (7.61%) GitHub
5 138 (6.91%) Azure DevOps
6 120 (6.01%) Serverless
7 110 (5.51%) GCP
8 104 (5.21%) Power Automate
9 100 (5.01%) PowerApps
10 71 (3.55%) GitHub Actions
11 66 (3.30%) Dynamics 365
12 64 (3.20%) Azure Logic Apps
13 63 (3.15%) Azure Functions
14 56 (2.80%) Microsoft 365
15 51 (2.55%) AWS Lambda
16 44 (2.20%) Entra ID
17 42 (2.10%) Amazon S3
17 42 (2.10%) Azure Service Bus
18 40 (2.00%) Azure Monitor
19 37 (1.85%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 21 (1.05%) HTTP
2 12 (0.60%) SSL
3 11 (0.55%) HTTPS
4 10 (0.50%) Internet
5 7 (0.35%) FIX Connectivity
5 7 (0.35%) Network Security
5 7 (0.35%) TCP/IP
6 6 (0.30%) Firewall
6 6 (0.30%) Multicast
7 5 (0.25%) CTI
7 5 (0.25%) VoIP
8 4 (0.20%) DNS
8 4 (0.20%) SMS
9 3 (0.15%) VPN
10 2 (0.10%) 3GPP
10 2 (0.10%) DHCP
10 2 (0.10%) MVNO
10 2 (0.10%) SMPP
10 2 (0.10%) SSH
10 2 (0.10%) tcpdump
Database & Business Intelligence
1 171 (8.56%) SQL Server
2 143 (7.16%) PostgreSQL
3 132 (6.61%) Power BI
4 122 (6.11%) Relational Database
5 87 (4.35%) NoSQL
6 70 (3.50%) MongoDB
7 68 (3.40%) Oracle Database
8 40 (2.00%) Data Warehouse
9 39 (1.95%) Apache Cassandra
10 32 (1.60%) MySQL
11 28 (1.40%) DB2
12 27 (1.35%) RDBMS
13 26 (1.30%) Data Lake
14 25 (1.25%) Oracle Reports
15 23 (1.15%) Azure SQL Database
15 23 (1.15%) KDB
16 21 (1.05%) Amazon RDS
16 21 (1.05%) Kdb+
16 21 (1.05%) Power Query
16 21 (1.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 238 (11.91%) Git
2 96 (4.80%) JIRA
3 89 (4.45%) Jenkins
4 59 (2.95%) GitLab
5 51 (2.55%) JUnit
6 32 (1.60%) Maven
7 27 (1.35%) Bitbucket
8 25 (1.25%) Visual Studio
9 22 (1.10%) Gradle
10 17 (0.85%) Cucumber
10 17 (0.85%) Mockito
11 16 (0.80%) Selenium
12 15 (0.75%) TeamCity
12 15 (0.75%) webpack
13 14 (0.70%) SpecFlow
14 13 (0.65%) Sonatype Nexus
15 12 (0.60%) Xcode
16 11 (0.55%) Cypress.io
17 10 (0.50%) Android Studio
17 10 (0.50%) SonarQube
General
1 610 (30.53%) Finance
2 464 (23.22%) Social Skills
3 340 (17.02%) Banking
4 184 (9.21%) Front Office
5 167 (8.36%) Public Sector
6 159 (7.96%) Analytical Skills
7 136 (6.81%) Investment Banking
8 58 (2.90%) Financial Institution
9 25 (1.25%) Marketing
10 19 (0.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 17 (0.85%) Law
12 16 (0.80%) Documentation Skills
13 15 (0.75%) Back Office
14 12 (0.60%) General Ledger
15 9 (0.45%) Retail
15 9 (0.45%) Telecoms
16 8 (0.40%) Military
16 8 (0.40%) Private Banking
17 7 (0.35%) Billing
17 7 (0.35%) Pharmaceutical
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 301 (15.07%) .NET
2 289 (14.46%) React
3 244 (12.21%) REST
4 190 (9.51%) Kafka
5 181 (9.06%) HTML
6 179 (8.96%) RESTful
7 174 (8.71%) CSS
8 167 (8.36%) AngularJS
9 158 (7.91%) Node.js
10 156 (7.81%) Spring
11 125 (6.26%) Spring Boot
12 91 (4.55%) JSON
13 88 (4.40%) SOAP
14 75 (3.75%) Web Services
14 75 (3.75%) XML
15 71 (3.55%) .NET Framework
16 69 (3.45%) Vue
17 54 (2.70%) NumPy
18 53 (2.65%) FastAPI
18 53 (2.65%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 117 (5.86%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
2 107 (5.36%) Equities
3 104 (5.21%) Derivative
4 96 (4.80%) Cloud Native
5 89 (4.45%) Distributed Systems
6 81 (4.05%) Algorithms
7 72 (3.60%) Data Structures
8 64 (3.20%) Fixed Income
9 56 (2.80%) Product Ownership
10 48 (2.40%) Data Protection Act
11 42 (2.10%) Greenfield Project
12 41 (2.05%) Hedge funds
12 41 (2.05%) Management Information System
13 40 (2.00%) Mobile App
14 31 (1.55%) Legacy Systems
15 29 (1.45%) Enterprise Software
15 29 (1.45%) Market Risk
16 28 (1.40%) Low-Code
17 27 (1.35%) Onboarding
18 25 (1.25%) Equity Derivative
Operating Systems
1 152 (7.61%) Linux
2 70 (3.50%) Windows
3 54 (2.70%) Unix
4 39 (1.95%) Android
5 34 (1.70%) Apple iOS
6 16 (0.80%) Windows Server
7 7 (0.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 6 (0.30%) Mac OS
9 5 (0.25%) AIX
10 4 (0.20%) CentOS
11 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.050%) tvOS
12 1 (0.050%) VMS
12 1 (0.050%) watchOS
12 1 (0.050%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 542 (27.13%) Agile
2 478 (23.92%) CI/CD
3 393 (19.67%) Problem-Solving
4 343 (17.17%) DevOps
5 298 (14.91%) Microservices
6 263 (13.16%) Full-Stack Development
7 236 (11.81%) Analytics
8 202 (10.11%) Software Engineering
9 182 (9.11%) Business Intelligence
10 166 (8.31%) Test Automation
11 159 (7.96%) Containerisation
12 154 (7.71%) Scrum
13 139 (6.96%) AI
14 128 (6.41%) Front End Development
15 127 (6.36%) TDD
16 122 (6.11%) Computer Science
17 120 (6.01%) Clean Code
18 110 (5.51%) Design Patterns
19 109 (5.46%) SDLC
20 108 (5.41%) Low Latency
Programming Languages
1 542 (27.13%) SQL
2 516 (25.83%) Java
3 482 (24.12%) Python
4 390 (19.52%) C#
5 369 (18.47%) JavaScript
6 211 (10.56%) TypeScript
7 119 (5.96%) C++
8 86 (4.30%) PL/SQL
9 58 (2.90%) Go
10 56 (2.80%) Kotlin
11 49 (2.45%) T-SQL
12 40 (2.00%) Apex Code
13 38 (1.90%) VB
14 36 (1.80%) PowerShell
15 34 (1.70%) VBA
16 31 (1.55%) Ruby
16 31 (1.55%) Shell Script
17 26 (1.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 24 (1.20%) PHP
19 21 (1.05%) Swift
Qualifications
1 300 (15.02%) Security Cleared
2 244 (12.21%) SC Cleared
3 129 (6.46%) Degree
4 68 (3.40%) Computer Science Degree
5 27 (1.35%) Master's Degree
6 17 (0.85%) BPSS Clearance
6 17 (0.85%) DV Cleared
7 15 (0.75%) Numerate Degree
8 9 (0.45%) AWS Certification
9 5 (0.25%) MCP
9 5 (0.25%) Microsoft Certification
9 5 (0.25%) PhD
10 4 (0.20%) AWS Certified Developer
10 4 (0.20%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 4 (0.20%) Oracle Certification
11 3 (0.15%) Azure Certification
12 2 (0.10%) OCP
12 2 (0.10%) Tableau Certification
13 1 (0.050%) CTC Cleared
13 1 (0.050%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 84 (4.20%) QA
2 57 (2.85%) Accessibility
3 35 (1.75%) Data Quality
4 25 (1.25%) WCAG
5 12 (0.60%) GDPR
6 6 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 6 (0.30%) SLA
7 5 (0.25%) ISO 8583
7 5 (0.25%) SEPA
8 4 (0.20%) MiFID
9 3 (0.15%) EMIR
9 3 (0.15%) HL7
9 3 (0.15%) ISO 20022
9 3 (0.15%) PSD2
10 2 (0.10%) Actionable Recommendations
10 2 (0.10%) GRC
10 2 (0.10%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.10%) PMO
11 1 (0.050%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 277 (13.86%) Docker
2 30 (1.50%) Active Directory
3 8 (0.40%) zsh
4 5 (0.25%) HDFS
5 3 (0.15%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.10%) GridGain
6 2 (0.10%) OpenAM
6 2 (0.10%) OpenDJ
6 2 (0.10%) OpenIDM
6 2 (0.10%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.10%) VMware Infrastructure
7 1 (0.050%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 277 (13.86%) Kubernetes
2 87 (4.35%) Terraform
3 32 (1.60%) Ansible
4 21 (1.05%) Prometheus
5 19 (0.95%) Grafana
6 13 (0.65%) Single Sign-On
7 12 (0.60%) Argo
8 11 (0.55%) Control-M
9 6 (0.30%) TIBCO Hawk
10 4 (0.20%) Kibana
11 3 (0.15%) Podman
11 3 (0.15%) vCenter Server
12 2 (0.10%) CloudHub
12 2 (0.10%) Docker Swarm
12 2 (0.10%) Istio
12 2 (0.10%) ITRS Geneos
12 2 (0.10%) Progress Chef
12 2 (0.10%) Puppet
12 2 (0.10%) rkt
13 1 (0.050%) Oracle Identity Management
Vendors
1 252 (12.61%) Microsoft
2 177 (8.86%) Oracle
3 67 (3.35%) Salesforce
4 47 (2.35%) ServiceNow
5 43 (2.15%) Google
6 41 (2.05%) Databricks
7 37 (1.85%) IBM
8 25 (1.25%) Adobe
8 25 (1.25%) Citrix
8 25 (1.25%) SAP
9 24 (1.20%) OpenAI
10 23 (1.15%) MuleSoft
11 20 (1.00%) Lotus
11 20 (1.00%) Red Hat
12 19 (0.95%) Sybase
13 15 (0.75%) Solace
14 13 (0.65%) OpenLink
15 12 (0.60%) Bloomberg
16 11 (0.55%) Guidewire
16 11 (0.55%) ION Trading