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 20 March 2026.

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

6 months to
20 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 6 4
Rank change year-on-year -4 -2 -1
Contract jobs requiring a Developer 2,196 2,109 3,005
As % of all contract jobs in London 13.31% 16.53% 16.56%
As % of the Job Titles category 14.39% 17.65% 17.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,542 1,508 2,301
10th Percentile £381 £385 £400
25th Percentile £425 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -7.26%
75th Percentile £650 £716 £750
90th Percentile £800 £850 £850
England median daily rate £500 £534 £525
% change year-on-year -6.28% +1.62% -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 6 12
10th Percentile £34.27 £35.19 £31.37
25th Percentile £35.00 £36.44 £53.75
Median hourly rate £49.25 £46.25 £58.75
Median % change year-on-year +6.49% -21.28% +2.17%
75th Percentile £57.50 £55.25 £68.38
90th Percentile £95.00 £58.38 £72.50
England median hourly rate £63.14 £63.00 £62.00
% change year-on-year +0.21% +1.61% -0.80%

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 15,265 11,951 16,907
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.54% 93.67% 93.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,232 8,093 12,205
10th Percentile £350 £338 £325
25th Percentile £425 £430 £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 240 145 337
10th Percentile £18.23 £21.08 £15.98
25th Percentile £21.87 £24.66 £19.57
Median hourly rate £34.75 £35.89 £28.50
Median % change year-on-year -3.18% +25.93% -18.57%
75th Percentile £60.50 £53.75 £47.50
90th Percentile £76.58 £78.04 £65.00
England median hourly rate £37.50 £35.00 £32.50
% change year-on-year +7.14% +7.69% -23.53%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 -4 289 £525 -8.70% 193
South London -1 41 £511 -44.73% 16
West London -22 17 £509 +24.45% 30
East London -12 5 £416 +4.00% 25
Developer
England

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

For the 6 months to 20 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.

1 542 (24.68%) Python
2 537 (24.45%) Java
3 536 (24.41%) Agile
4 516 (23.50%) SQL
5 503 (22.91%) CI/CD
6 490 (22.31%) Azure
7 449 (20.45%) AWS
8 397 (18.08%) JavaScript
9 394 (17.94%) Security Cleared
10 379 (17.26%) C#
11 357 (16.26%) DevOps
11 357 (16.26%) React
12 323 (14.71%) Problem-Solving
13 318 (14.48%) SC Cleared
14 307 (13.98%) .NET
15 292 (13.30%) Docker
16 285 (12.98%) Full-Stack Development
17 278 (12.66%) Microservices
17 278 (12.66%) TypeScript
18 264 (12.02%) Kubernetes
19 247 (11.25%) Microsoft
20 243 (11.07%) REST
21 234 (10.66%) Analytics
22 233 (10.61%) Software Engineering
23 227 (10.34%) Git
24 219 (9.97%) Kafka
25 214 (9.74%) Power Platform
26 209 (9.52%) Node.js
27 202 (9.20%) AI
28 191 (8.70%) 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 83 (3.78%) SharePoint
2 45 (2.05%) Confluence
3 20 (0.91%) CMS
4 18 (0.82%) IIS
5 16 (0.73%) Microsoft Exchange
6 15 (0.68%) Apache
6 15 (0.68%) HCL Notes
7 13 (0.59%) Mendix
8 12 (0.55%) Apache Spark
9 11 (0.50%) Ethereum
10 9 (0.41%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 9 (0.41%) Headless CMS
10 9 (0.41%) JBoss
10 9 (0.41%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 8 (0.36%) Hyperledger
12 7 (0.32%) WebLogic
13 6 (0.27%) Anypoint
13 6 (0.27%) CICS
13 6 (0.27%) MQSeries
13 6 (0.27%) WebSphere
Applications
1 44 (2.00%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.32%) 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 (0.046%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 46 (2.09%) Dynamics CRM
2 18 (0.82%) Endur
3 13 (0.59%) Fidessa
4 12 (0.55%) Temenos T24
5 7 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
6 6 (0.27%) BusinessWorks
6 6 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
6 6 (0.27%) Oracle Financials
7 5 (0.23%) BASE24
7 5 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
8 4 (0.18%) Oracle 11i
8 4 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
9 3 (0.14%) Findur
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle Cash Management
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle General Ledger
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
9 3 (0.14%) ProductWriter
10 2 (0.091%) Magento
Cloud Services
1 490 (22.31%) Azure
2 449 (20.45%) AWS
3 214 (9.74%) Power Platform
4 160 (7.29%) GitHub
5 146 (6.65%) Azure DevOps
6 127 (5.78%) Serverless
7 116 (5.28%) Power Automate
8 108 (4.92%) GCP
9 104 (4.74%) PowerApps
10 84 (3.83%) Dynamics 365
11 72 (3.28%) GitHub Actions
12 61 (2.78%) AWS Lambda
13 60 (2.73%) Microsoft 365
14 58 (2.64%) Azure Logic Apps
15 57 (2.60%) Azure Functions
16 56 (2.55%) Amazon S3
17 49 (2.23%) Entra ID
18 48 (2.19%) Azure Service Bus
19 38 (1.73%) Microsoft Copilot
20 35 (1.59%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.05%) HTTP
2 14 (0.64%) FIX Connectivity
3 12 (0.55%) Internet
4 8 (0.36%) Network Security
5 6 (0.27%) SSL
5 6 (0.27%) TCP/IP
6 5 (0.23%) CTI
6 5 (0.23%) Firewall
6 5 (0.23%) SMS
6 5 (0.23%) VoIP
7 4 (0.18%) HTTPS
7 4 (0.18%) Multicast
8 3 (0.14%) 3GPP
8 3 (0.14%) DNS
8 3 (0.14%) MVNO
8 3 (0.14%) RTP
8 3 (0.14%) SMPP
9 2 (0.091%) DHCP
9 2 (0.091%) RTMP
9 2 (0.091%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 165 (7.51%) SQL Server
2 144 (6.56%) PostgreSQL
3 131 (5.97%) Power BI
4 120 (5.46%) Relational Database
5 80 (3.64%) NoSQL
6 68 (3.10%) Oracle Database
7 63 (2.87%) MongoDB
8 39 (1.78%) Apache Cassandra
9 38 (1.73%) Data Warehouse
10 31 (1.41%) MySQL
11 27 (1.23%) KDB
12 26 (1.18%) RDBMS
13 25 (1.14%) Amazon RDS
13 25 (1.14%) DynamoDB
13 25 (1.14%) Kdb+
14 23 (1.05%) Data Lake
15 22 (1.00%) DB2
16 19 (0.87%) Metadata
16 19 (0.87%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 18 (0.82%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 227 (10.34%) Git
2 105 (4.78%) Jenkins
3 104 (4.74%) JIRA
4 61 (2.78%) GitLab
5 56 (2.55%) JUnit
6 32 (1.46%) Maven
7 30 (1.37%) Visual Studio
8 25 (1.14%) Mockito
9 21 (0.96%) Bitbucket
9 21 (0.96%) Gradle
10 16 (0.73%) TeamCity
10 16 (0.73%) webpack
11 15 (0.68%) Cucumber
11 15 (0.68%) Sonatype Nexus
12 14 (0.64%) Cypress.io
13 13 (0.59%) Selenium
13 13 (0.59%) SonarQube
14 12 (0.55%) Android Studio
15 11 (0.50%) Team Foundation Server
16 10 (0.46%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 600 (27.32%) Finance
2 391 (17.81%) Social Skills
3 319 (14.53%) Banking
4 229 (10.43%) Front Office
5 225 (10.25%) Public Sector
6 153 (6.97%) Analytical Skills
7 118 (5.37%) Investment Banking
8 48 (2.19%) Financial Institution
9 21 (0.96%) Documentation Skills
10 18 (0.82%) Marketing
11 17 (0.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 15 (0.68%) Law
13 12 (0.55%) Local Government
14 11 (0.50%) Back Office
15 9 (0.41%) Presentation Skills
15 9 (0.41%) Publishing
15 9 (0.41%) Telecoms
16 7 (0.32%) Military
16 7 (0.32%) Pharmaceutical
17 6 (0.27%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 357 (16.26%) React
2 307 (13.98%) .NET
3 243 (11.07%) REST
4 219 (9.97%) Kafka
5 209 (9.52%) Node.js
6 191 (8.70%) RESTful
7 189 (8.61%) HTML
8 178 (8.11%) AngularJS
9 173 (7.88%) Spring
10 169 (7.70%) CSS
11 131 (5.97%) Spring Boot
12 83 (3.78%) Web Services
13 80 (3.64%) .NET Framework
13 80 (3.64%) Redux
14 75 (3.42%) SOAP
15 73 (3.32%) GraphQL
16 70 (3.19%) JSON
17 66 (3.01%) Vue
18 58 (2.64%) XML
19 48 (2.19%) Django
Miscellaneous
1 129 (5.87%) Equities
2 112 (5.10%) Derivative
3 103 (4.69%) Fixed Income
4 94 (4.28%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 87 (3.96%) Cloud Native
6 82 (3.73%) Distributed Systems
7 79 (3.60%) Algorithms
8 68 (3.10%) Data Structures
9 60 (2.73%) Product Ownership
10 45 (2.05%) Greenfield Project
11 40 (1.82%) Data Protection Act
12 38 (1.73%) Legacy Systems
12 38 (1.73%) Mobile App
13 37 (1.68%) Management Information System
14 36 (1.64%) AI Agents
15 33 (1.50%) Hedge funds
16 30 (1.37%) Equity Derivative
17 28 (1.28%) Low-Code
18 26 (1.18%) Market Risk
19 25 (1.14%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 125 (5.69%) Linux
2 65 (2.96%) Windows
3 57 (2.60%) Unix
4 32 (1.46%) Android
5 28 (1.28%) Apple iOS
6 22 (1.00%) Windows Server
7 5 (0.23%) AIX
7 5 (0.23%) zOS
8 4 (0.18%) Mac OS
9 3 (0.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 1 (0.046%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 536 (24.41%) Agile
2 503 (22.91%) CI/CD
3 357 (16.26%) DevOps
4 323 (14.71%) Problem-Solving
5 285 (12.98%) Full-Stack Development
6 278 (12.66%) Microservices
7 234 (10.66%) Analytics
8 233 (10.61%) Software Engineering
9 202 (9.20%) AI
10 183 (8.33%) Business Intelligence
11 177 (8.06%) Containerisation
12 176 (8.01%) Test Automation
13 158 (7.19%) Data Modelling
14 144 (6.56%) TDD
15 137 (6.24%) Front End Development
16 129 (5.87%) Unit Testing
17 123 (5.60%) Scrum
18 120 (5.46%) Low Latency
19 117 (5.33%) Design Patterns
20 107 (4.87%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 542 (24.68%) Python
2 537 (24.45%) Java
3 516 (23.50%) SQL
4 397 (18.08%) JavaScript
5 379 (17.26%) C#
6 278 (12.66%) TypeScript
7 95 (4.33%) C++
8 90 (4.10%) Go
9 75 (3.42%) PL/SQL
10 53 (2.41%) T-SQL
11 48 (2.19%) Kotlin
12 44 (2.00%) Apex Code
13 40 (1.82%) Shell Script
14 38 (1.73%) Ruby
15 31 (1.41%) PowerShell
16 29 (1.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 27 (1.23%) VB
18 26 (1.18%) VBA
19 19 (0.87%) C
20 16 (0.73%) Swift
Qualifications
1 394 (17.94%) Security Cleared
2 318 (14.48%) SC Cleared
3 113 (5.15%) Degree
4 47 (2.14%) Computer Science Degree
5 31 (1.41%) DV Cleared
6 28 (1.28%) BPSS Clearance
7 22 (1.00%) Master's Degree
8 12 (0.55%) Numerate Degree
9 7 (0.32%) Microsoft Certification
10 6 (0.27%) Azure Certification
11 5 (0.23%) AWS Certification
11 5 (0.23%) PhD
12 4 (0.18%) Oracle Certification
13 3 (0.14%) CTC Cleared
14 2 (0.091%) AWS Certified Developer
14 2 (0.091%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 2 (0.091%) OCP
14 2 (0.091%) Postgraduate
15 1 (0.046%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
15 1 (0.046%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 99 (4.51%) QA
2 78 (3.55%) Accessibility
3 38 (1.73%) WCAG
4 33 (1.50%) Data Quality
5 15 (0.68%) GDPR
6 8 (0.36%) SLA
7 7 (0.32%) ISO 8583
8 6 (0.27%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 5 (0.23%) SEPA
10 4 (0.18%) GRC
10 4 (0.18%) PCI DSS
10 4 (0.18%) PMO
11 3 (0.14%) ISO 20022
11 3 (0.14%) PSD2
12 2 (0.091%) HL7
13 1 (0.046%) HIPAA
13 1 (0.046%) MiFID
System Software
1 292 (13.30%) Docker
2 26 (1.18%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.14%) GridGain
3 3 (0.14%) HDFS
4 2 (0.091%) OpenAM
4 2 (0.091%) OpenDJ
4 2 (0.091%) OpenIDM
4 2 (0.091%) Virtual Machines
4 2 (0.091%) VMware ESXi
5 1 (0.046%) FreeRADIUS
5 1 (0.046%) Oracle RAC
5 1 (0.046%) Postfix
5 1 (0.046%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.046%) zsh
Systems Management
1 264 (12.02%) Kubernetes
2 84 (3.83%) Terraform
3 31 (1.41%) Ansible
4 26 (1.18%) Grafana
5 17 (0.77%) Prometheus
6 12 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
7 11 (0.50%) Argo
8 6 (0.27%) TIBCO Hawk
9 5 (0.23%) SCCM
10 3 (0.14%) Control-M
11 2 (0.091%) CA Endevor
11 2 (0.091%) CloudHub
11 2 (0.091%) Podman
11 2 (0.091%) rkt
12 1 (0.046%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 247 (11.25%) Microsoft
2 176 (8.01%) Oracle
3 77 (3.51%) Salesforce
4 66 (3.01%) ServiceNow
5 38 (1.73%) SAP
6 35 (1.59%) Citrix
6 35 (1.59%) IBM
7 32 (1.46%) Databricks
8 31 (1.41%) Google
8 31 (1.41%) OpenAI
9 26 (1.18%) Adobe
10 25 (1.14%) MuleSoft
11 20 (0.91%) Guidewire
12 18 (0.82%) Sybase
13 15 (0.68%) Foundry
13 15 (0.68%) Lotus
14 14 (0.64%) Solace
15 13 (0.59%) Pega
15 13 (0.59%) Red Hat
16 12 (0.55%) OpenLink