Developer Contract Job Trends in London

Developer
England > London

The median Developer daily rate in London is £535, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 October 2026.

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

6 months to
1 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 8 4
Rank change year-on-year -10 -4 0
Contract jobs requiring a Developer 2,180 1,971 3,083
As % of all contract jobs in London 10.72% 14.64% 19.14%
As % of the Job Titles category 11.50% 15.78% 20.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,469 1,397 2,160
10th Percentile £400 £375 £375
25th Percentile £435 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £535 £550 £563
Median % change year-on-year -2.73% -2.22% -6.25%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £725
90th Percentile £800 £850 £850
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 9 8
10th Percentile £41.10 £33.06 £35.53
25th Percentile £50.00 £55.00 £36.50
Median hourly rate £55.00 £70.00 £51.47
Median % change year-on-year -21.43% +36.01% -27.05%
75th Percentile £62.25 £78.75 £90.63
90th Percentile £80.50 £84.70 £137.50
England median hourly rate £55.00 £55.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year - -15.38% +6.70%

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 18,962 12,491 15,139
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 93.22% 92.75% 93.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,257 8,339 9,944
10th Percentile £360 £330 £340
25th Percentile £450 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £545 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.92% -0.91% -4.35%
75th Percentile £660 £668 £675
90th Percentile £775 £775 £800
England median daily rate £525 £512 £525
% change year-on-year +2.54% -2.48% -4.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 409 201 175
10th Percentile £17.00 £17.00 £17.35
25th Percentile £21.93 £22.75 £23.98
Median hourly rate £40.00 £28.13 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +42.22% -19.64% -6.27%
75th Percentile £63.75 £49.50 £57.50
90th Percentile £81.25 £65.00 £77.75
England median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% -0.46%

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 October 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 October 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 October 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 -11 238 £541 -5.87% 152
South London +6 39 £550 -1.38% 14
East London -2 11 £875 +62.04% 9
West London -41 6 £380 -6.58% 27
North London - 2 £550 - 3
Developer
England

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

For the 6 months to 1 October 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.

1 594 (27.25%) Agile
2 577 (26.47%) CI/CD
3 548 (25.14%) SQL
4 493 (22.61%) Java
5 446 (20.46%) Python
6 425 (19.50%) Azure
7 404 (18.53%) Security Cleared
8 386 (17.71%) DevOps
9 381 (17.48%) C#
10 364 (16.70%) REST
11 348 (15.96%) SC Cleared
12 341 (15.64%) AWS
13 335 (15.37%) JavaScript
14 316 (14.50%) .NET
15 298 (13.67%) Problem-Solving
16 291 (13.35%) Microservices
17 279 (12.80%) React
18 272 (12.48%) Microsoft
19 269 (12.34%) Full-Stack Development
20 265 (12.16%) AI
21 260 (11.93%) TypeScript
22 239 (10.96%) Git
23 232 (10.64%) Power Platform
24 229 (10.50%) Software Engineering
25 218 (10.00%) Docker
26 210 (9.63%) Spring
27 205 (9.40%) RESTful
28 204 (9.36%) Kubernetes
29 202 (9.27%) Test Automation
30 192 (8.81%) Oracle

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 (3.26%) SharePoint
2 40 (1.83%) Confluence
3 25 (1.15%) IIS
4 23 (1.06%) CMS
5 19 (0.87%) Camunda
6 15 (0.69%) Oracle Workflow
7 14 (0.64%) Anypoint
7 14 (0.64%) Mule
8 12 (0.55%) Apache
8 12 (0.55%) Apache Spark
8 12 (0.55%) Ethereum
9 11 (0.50%) SAS
10 9 (0.41%) nginx
11 8 (0.37%) WebLogic
12 6 (0.28%) Apache Airflow
12 6 (0.28%) Appian
13 4 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 4 (0.18%) Hyperledger
13 4 (0.18%) Solana
13 4 (0.18%) WordPress
Applications
1 36 (1.65%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.32%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (0.23%) Chatbot
3 5 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
4 3 (0.14%) Windchill
5 2 (0.092%) Adobe XD
5 2 (0.092%) CPLEX
5 2 (0.092%) Sketch
6 1 (0.046%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.046%) Oracle Smart View
6 1 (0.046%) Simulink
6 1 (0.046%) S-PLUS
6 1 (0.046%) Trello
Business Applications
1 40 (1.83%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (0.78%) Oracle EBS
3 14 (0.64%) NetSuite
4 9 (0.41%) Oracle Financials
4 9 (0.41%) Oracle General Ledger
4 9 (0.41%) Oracle Payables
4 9 (0.41%) Oracle Receivables
5 7 (0.32%) Endur
5 7 (0.32%) Oracle Assets
5 7 (0.32%) Oracle Internet Expenses
5 7 (0.32%) Oracle iProcurement
6 6 (0.28%) Aladdin
6 6 (0.28%) Oracle FAH
6 6 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
7 5 (0.23%) OpenText MBPM
7 5 (0.23%) Oracle BPM
7 5 (0.23%) Orchestrade
7 5 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
7 5 (0.23%) ProductWriter
7 5 (0.23%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 425 (19.50%) Azure
2 341 (15.64%) AWS
3 232 (10.64%) Power Platform
4 142 (6.51%) GitHub
5 120 (5.50%) Azure DevOps
5 120 (5.50%) PowerApps
6 119 (5.46%) Power Automate
7 111 (5.09%) Dynamics 365
8 100 (4.59%) Serverless
9 97 (4.45%) GCP
10 74 (3.39%) GitHub Actions
11 51 (2.34%) Azure Service Bus
11 51 (2.34%) Microsoft Copilot
12 48 (2.20%) Amazon S3
13 41 (1.88%) Azure Functions
13 41 (1.88%) Copilot Studio
14 40 (1.83%) Azure Logic Apps
15 39 (1.79%) AWS Lambda
16 35 (1.61%) Salesforce Service Cloud
17 32 (1.47%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 20 (0.92%) HTTP
2 14 (0.64%) Internet
3 12 (0.55%) FIX Connectivity
4 4 (0.18%) Multicast
4 4 (0.18%) SMS
4 4 (0.18%) SSL
5 3 (0.14%) FTP
6 2 (0.092%) 4G
6 2 (0.092%) 5G
6 2 (0.092%) CTI
6 2 (0.092%) DNS
6 2 (0.092%) HTTPS
6 2 (0.092%) Intranet
6 2 (0.092%) NFC
6 2 (0.092%) SSH
6 2 (0.092%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.046%) Bluetooth
7 1 (0.046%) OpenLDAP
7 1 (0.046%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 189 (8.67%) SQL Server
2 154 (7.06%) Power BI
3 137 (6.28%) PostgreSQL
4 111 (5.09%) Relational Database
5 66 (3.03%) NoSQL
6 58 (2.66%) Data Warehouse
6 58 (2.66%) MongoDB
7 52 (2.39%) Oracle Database
8 42 (1.93%) MySQL
9 38 (1.74%) Redis
10 32 (1.47%) Azure SQL Database
11 31 (1.42%) Power Query
12 26 (1.19%) Elasticsearch
12 26 (1.19%) KDB
13 25 (1.15%) DynamoDB
13 25 (1.15%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 22 (1.01%) Star Schema
15 18 (0.83%) Amazon RDS
15 18 (0.83%) Data Lake
15 18 (0.83%) Kdb+
Development Applications
1 239 (10.96%) Git
2 137 (6.28%) Jenkins
3 97 (4.45%) JIRA
4 80 (3.67%) GitLab
5 49 (2.25%) Gradle
6 47 (2.16%) JUnit
7 45 (2.06%) Maven
8 34 (1.56%) Visual Studio
9 27 (1.24%) Mockito
10 23 (1.06%) SonarQube
11 18 (0.83%) Cypress.io
11 18 (0.83%) REST Assured
12 17 (0.78%) Bitbucket
13 15 (0.69%) Vite
14 13 (0.60%) Claude Code
15 11 (0.50%) Storybook
15 11 (0.50%) TeamCity
16 10 (0.46%) Selenium
17 9 (0.41%) Cucumber
17 9 (0.41%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 639 (29.31%) Finance
2 399 (18.30%) Social Skills
3 378 (17.34%) Banking
4 185 (8.49%) Public Sector
5 182 (8.35%) Front Office
6 175 (8.03%) Analytical Skills
7 163 (7.48%) Investment Banking
8 55 (2.52%) Marketing
9 48 (2.20%) Financial Institution
10 47 (2.16%) Retail
11 40 (1.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 27 (1.24%) Back Office
13 20 (0.92%) Law
14 18 (0.83%) Publishing
15 15 (0.69%) Presentation Skills
16 12 (0.55%) Private Banking
17 11 (0.50%) Documentation Skills
17 11 (0.50%) Games
17 11 (0.50%) Manufacturing
17 11 (0.50%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 364 (16.70%) REST
2 316 (14.50%) .NET
3 279 (12.80%) React
4 210 (9.63%) Spring
5 205 (9.40%) RESTful
6 168 (7.71%) Spring Boot
7 153 (7.02%) Kafka
8 150 (6.88%) HTML
9 144 (6.61%) CSS
10 113 (5.18%) Node.js
11 110 (5.05%) SOAP
12 95 (4.36%) AngularJS
13 91 (4.17%) Web Services
14 87 (3.99%) JSON
15 81 (3.72%) Terraform
16 70 (3.21%) Redux
16 70 (3.21%) XML
17 69 (3.17%) .NET Framework
18 61 (2.80%) OAuth
19 58 (2.66%) HTML5
Miscellaneous
1 137 (6.28%) Cloud Native
2 105 (4.82%) Distributed Systems
3 104 (4.77%) Derivative
4 86 (3.94%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 86 (3.94%) Product Ownership
5 69 (3.17%) Equities
6 63 (2.89%) Enterprise Software
7 60 (2.75%) Fixed Income
8 52 (2.39%) Data Structures
9 43 (1.97%) Greenfield Project
10 42 (1.93%) Legacy Systems
11 41 (1.88%) AI Agents
12 35 (1.61%) Algorithms
12 35 (1.61%) Self-Motivation
13 31 (1.42%) Mobile App
14 30 (1.38%) Low-Code
15 28 (1.28%) Management Information System
16 27 (1.24%) Onboarding
17 23 (1.06%) CMDB
18 22 (1.01%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 100 (4.59%) Linux
2 71 (3.26%) Unix
3 47 (2.16%) Windows
4 34 (1.56%) Apple iOS
5 20 (0.92%) Android
6 10 (0.46%) Windows Server
7 2 (0.092%) Mac OS X
7 2 (0.092%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 2 (0.092%) zOS
8 1 (0.046%) Embedded Linux
8 1 (0.046%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 594 (27.25%) Agile
2 577 (26.47%) CI/CD
3 386 (17.71%) DevOps
4 298 (13.67%) Problem-Solving
5 291 (13.35%) Microservices
6 269 (12.34%) Full-Stack Development
7 265 (12.16%) AI
8 229 (10.50%) Software Engineering
9 202 (9.27%) Test Automation
10 183 (8.39%) Continuous Improvement
11 178 (8.17%) Business Intelligence
12 176 (8.07%) Event-Driven
13 169 (7.75%) Scrum
14 156 (7.16%) Containerisation
15 150 (6.88%) Data Modelling
16 146 (6.70%) SDLC
17 141 (6.47%) Code Quality
18 138 (6.33%) Analytics
19 136 (6.24%) TDD
20 126 (5.78%) Front End Development
Programming Languages
1 548 (25.14%) SQL
2 493 (22.61%) Java
3 446 (20.46%) Python
4 381 (17.48%) C#
5 335 (15.37%) JavaScript
6 260 (11.93%) TypeScript
7 95 (4.36%) PL/SQL
8 65 (2.98%) T-SQL
9 53 (2.43%) Apex Code
10 47 (2.16%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 42 (1.93%) Shell Script
12 40 (1.83%) Kotlin
13 38 (1.74%) C++
14 26 (1.19%) Bash
15 25 (1.15%) Scala
16 23 (1.06%) Swift
17 20 (0.92%) PowerShell
18 18 (0.83%) PHP
19 15 (0.69%) Groovy
19 15 (0.69%) VBA
Qualifications
1 404 (18.53%) Security Cleared
2 348 (15.96%) SC Cleared
3 111 (5.09%) Degree
4 61 (2.80%) Computer Science Degree
5 39 (1.79%) DV Cleared
6 33 (1.51%) BPSS Clearance
7 18 (0.83%) Master's Degree
8 16 (0.73%) Microsoft Certification
9 10 (0.46%) PhD
10 9 (0.41%) Azure Certification
11 6 (0.28%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 5 (0.23%) Numerate Degree
13 4 (0.18%) AWS Certification
14 2 (0.092%) CTC Cleared
14 2 (0.092%) DBS Check
15 1 (0.046%) CISSP
15 1 (0.046%) ITIL Certification
15 1 (0.046%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
15 1 (0.046%) PMI Certification
15 1 (0.046%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 147 (6.74%) QA
2 67 (3.07%) Accessibility
3 53 (2.43%) Data Quality
4 23 (1.06%) WCAG
5 11 (0.50%) GDPR
6 6 (0.28%) GRC
7 5 (0.23%) HL7
7 5 (0.23%) ISO 20022
8 4 (0.18%) SEPA
9 3 (0.14%) Basel III
9 3 (0.14%) EMIR
9 3 (0.14%) MiFID
9 3 (0.14%) SLA
9 3 (0.14%) Solvency II
10 2 (0.092%) 21 CFR Part 11
10 2 (0.092%) GMP
10 2 (0.092%) GxP
10 2 (0.092%) ISO 13485
10 2 (0.092%) ISO 15022
10 2 (0.092%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 218 (10.00%) Docker
2 7 (0.32%) Active Directory
3 4 (0.18%) Apache ZooKeeper
4 2 (0.092%) Postfix
4 2 (0.092%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 204 (9.36%) Kubernetes
2 31 (1.42%) Grafana
3 27 (1.24%) Ansible
4 23 (1.06%) Prometheus
5 11 (0.50%) Kibana
6 10 (0.46%) Control-M
7 4 (0.18%) Argo
7 4 (0.18%) Single Sign-On
8 3 (0.14%) Bosun
8 3 (0.14%) Istio
9 2 (0.092%) CloudHub
10 1 (0.046%) HP Fortify
10 1 (0.046%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 272 (12.48%) Microsoft
2 192 (8.81%) Oracle
3 125 (5.73%) Salesforce
4 97 (4.45%) ServiceNow
5 45 (2.06%) IBM
6 43 (1.97%) Databricks
7 41 (1.88%) Google
8 34 (1.56%) Citrix
8 34 (1.56%) MuleSoft
9 26 (1.19%) UiPath
10 25 (1.15%) SAP
11 24 (1.10%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
12 23 (1.06%) OpenAI
13 14 (0.64%) Adobe
14 13 (0.60%) Splunk
15 11 (0.50%) Sybase
15 11 (0.50%) webMethods
16 10 (0.46%) Avaloq
16 10 (0.46%) OutSystems
17 9 (0.41%) ION Trading