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 18 January 2026.

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

6 months to
18 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 4 5
Rank change year-on-year -7 +1 -2
Contract jobs requiring a Developer 1,988 2,389 2,889
As % of all contract jobs in London 13.86% 17.06% 15.87%
As % of the Job Titles category 14.98% 18.23% 17.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,381 1,627 2,226
10th Percentile £381 £382 £400
25th Percentile £425 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £600
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% -4.17% -4.00%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £750
90th Percentile £800 £850 £850
England median daily rate £500 £545 £550
% change year-on-year -8.21% -0.95% -6.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 7 13
10th Percentile - £35.45 £33.03
25th Percentile £35.00 £36.25 £56.25
Median hourly rate £55.00 £39.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +41.03% -35.00% +4.35%
75th Percentile £73.69 £51.63 £72.50
90th Percentile £78.75 £91.90 £73.73
England median hourly rate £55.00 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -15.38% - +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 13,269 13,107 16,957
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.51% 93.57% 93.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,794 8,428 12,231
10th Percentile £350 £339 £325
25th Percentile £425 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -5.98%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £675
90th Percentile £750 £800 £788
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 219 143 258
10th Percentile £18.25 £20.15 £16.25
25th Percentile £23.55 £23.80 £19.10
Median hourly rate £32.45 £35.00 £31.61
Median % change year-on-year -7.29% +10.74% -7.04%
75th Percentile £62.63 £53.75 £53.69
90th Percentile £76.58 £80.35 £70.60
England median hourly rate £28.00 £35.00 £41.23
% change year-on-year -20.00% -15.11% +17.80%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 -8 265 £525 -9.48% 170
South London -12 28 £510 -34.19% 31
West London -24 16 £455 +11.12% 25
East London -5 12 £1,000 +150.00% 17
Developer
England

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

For the 6 months to 18 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.

1 513 (25.80%) SQL
2 511 (25.70%) Agile
3 506 (25.45%) Java
4 482 (24.25%) CI/CD
5 479 (24.09%) Python
6 428 (21.53%) Azure
7 396 (19.92%) AWS
8 381 (19.16%) Problem-Solving
9 380 (19.11%) C#
10 363 (18.26%) JavaScript
11 332 (16.70%) DevOps
11 332 (16.70%) Security Cleared
12 292 (14.69%) .NET
13 291 (14.64%) React
14 288 (14.49%) Microservices
15 284 (14.29%) Docker
16 274 (13.78%) Kubernetes
17 271 (13.63%) SC Cleared
18 264 (13.28%) Full-Stack Development
19 241 (12.12%) Microsoft
20 239 (12.02%) REST
21 234 (11.77%) Analytics
22 223 (11.22%) Git
23 206 (10.36%) Power Platform
24 205 (10.31%) TypeScript
25 193 (9.71%) Software Engineering
26 185 (9.31%) Business Intelligence
27 184 (9.26%) RESTful
28 182 (9.15%) HTML
28 182 (9.15%) Kafka

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 61 (3.07%) SharePoint
2 42 (2.11%) Confluence
3 20 (1.01%) CMS
4 19 (0.96%) HCL Notes
5 14 (0.70%) IIS
5 14 (0.70%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 13 (0.65%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 11 (0.55%) Apache Airflow
7 11 (0.55%) Mendix
8 10 (0.50%) Apache
8 10 (0.50%) MQSeries
9 9 (0.45%) Oracle Workflow
10 8 (0.40%) Apache Spark
11 7 (0.35%) 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%) Tomcat
14 4 (0.20%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 53 (2.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (0.55%) Chatbot
3 7 (0.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.30%) Microsoft Office
5 4 (0.20%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.10%) Adobe XD
7 1 (0.050%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.050%) Oracle Smart View
7 1 (0.050%) Trello
Business Applications
1 39 (1.96%) Dynamics CRM
2 16 (0.80%) Endur
3 13 (0.65%) Fidessa
4 11 (0.55%) Oracle EBS
4 11 (0.55%) Oracle ERP
5 9 (0.45%) Oracle Payables
6 8 (0.40%) Oracle Assets
6 8 (0.40%) Oracle Financials
7 7 (0.35%) Oracle General Ledger
8 6 (0.30%) BusinessWorks
8 6 (0.30%) Oracle EBS R12
8 6 (0.30%) Payment Gateway
8 6 (0.30%) Temenos T24
9 5 (0.25%) BASE24
10 4 (0.20%) Oracle 11i
10 4 (0.20%) ProductWriter
11 3 (0.15%) Aladdin
11 3 (0.15%) Oracle E-Business Tax
11 3 (0.15%) Oracle Receivables
11 3 (0.15%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 428 (21.53%) Azure
2 396 (19.92%) AWS
3 206 (10.36%) Power Platform
4 158 (7.95%) GitHub
5 133 (6.69%) Azure DevOps
6 128 (6.44%) Serverless
7 104 (5.23%) Power Automate
8 99 (4.98%) GCP
9 97 (4.88%) PowerApps
10 76 (3.82%) Dynamics 365
11 72 (3.62%) GitHub Actions
12 68 (3.42%) Azure Logic Apps
13 65 (3.27%) Azure Functions
14 57 (2.87%) AWS Lambda
15 50 (2.52%) Microsoft 365
16 49 (2.46%) Azure Service Bus
17 45 (2.26%) Amazon S3
18 43 (2.16%) Entra ID
19 40 (2.01%) Azure Monitor
20 35 (1.76%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 19 (0.96%) HTTP
2 12 (0.60%) SSL
3 11 (0.55%) HTTPS
4 10 (0.50%) Internet
5 8 (0.40%) FIX Connectivity
5 8 (0.40%) Network Security
6 7 (0.35%) TCP/IP
7 5 (0.25%) CTI
7 5 (0.25%) Firewall
7 5 (0.25%) SMS
7 5 (0.25%) VoIP
8 4 (0.20%) DNS
8 4 (0.20%) Multicast
9 3 (0.15%) 3GPP
9 3 (0.15%) MVNO
9 3 (0.15%) SMPP
10 2 (0.10%) DHCP
10 2 (0.10%) SSH
10 2 (0.10%) tcpdump
10 2 (0.10%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 161 (8.10%) SQL Server
2 133 (6.69%) PostgreSQL
3 132 (6.64%) Power BI
4 118 (5.94%) Relational Database
5 84 (4.23%) NoSQL
6 65 (3.27%) Oracle Database
7 63 (3.17%) MongoDB
8 41 (2.06%) Data Warehouse
9 38 (1.91%) Apache Cassandra
10 33 (1.66%) MySQL
11 25 (1.26%) Amazon RDS
11 25 (1.26%) Data Lake
11 25 (1.26%) DB2
11 25 (1.26%) RDBMS
12 22 (1.11%) KDB
12 22 (1.11%) Oracle Reports
13 21 (1.06%) Azure SQL Database
13 21 (1.06%) DynamoDB
13 21 (1.06%) Kdb+
13 21 (1.06%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 223 (11.22%) Git
2 94 (4.73%) Jenkins
2 94 (4.73%) JIRA
3 65 (3.27%) GitLab
4 51 (2.57%) JUnit
5 30 (1.51%) Maven
6 29 (1.46%) Visual Studio
7 24 (1.21%) Bitbucket
8 21 (1.06%) Gradle
9 17 (0.86%) Cucumber
10 16 (0.80%) Mockito
10 16 (0.80%) Sonatype Nexus
11 15 (0.75%) Selenium
12 14 (0.70%) SpecFlow
13 13 (0.65%) Cypress.io
13 13 (0.65%) TeamCity
14 11 (0.55%) webpack
15 10 (0.50%) Android Studio
15 10 (0.50%) Octopus Deploy
15 10 (0.50%) SonarQube
General
1 572 (28.77%) Finance
2 444 (22.33%) Social Skills
3 333 (16.75%) Banking
4 180 (9.05%) Front Office
5 172 (8.65%) Public Sector
6 158 (7.95%) Analytical Skills
7 128 (6.44%) Investment Banking
8 62 (3.12%) Financial Institution
9 23 (1.16%) Marketing
10 18 (0.91%) Law
11 17 (0.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 16 (0.80%) Documentation Skills
13 12 (0.60%) Back Office
14 10 (0.50%) General Ledger
15 9 (0.45%) Presentation Skills
15 9 (0.45%) Telecoms
16 8 (0.40%) Billing
16 8 (0.40%) Military
16 8 (0.40%) Private Banking
16 8 (0.40%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 292 (14.69%) .NET
2 291 (14.64%) React
3 239 (12.02%) REST
4 184 (9.26%) RESTful
5 182 (9.15%) HTML
5 182 (9.15%) Kafka
6 167 (8.40%) CSS
7 162 (8.15%) AngularJS
7 162 (8.15%) Node.js
8 160 (8.05%) Spring
9 121 (6.09%) Spring Boot
10 87 (4.38%) SOAP
11 85 (4.28%) JSON
12 74 (3.72%) Web Services
13 72 (3.62%) .NET Framework
13 72 (3.62%) XML
14 64 (3.22%) Vue
15 52 (2.62%) NumPy
16 51 (2.57%) Pandas
17 50 (2.52%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 112 (5.63%) Equities
2 105 (5.28%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 102 (5.13%) Derivative
4 99 (4.98%) Cloud Native
5 82 (4.12%) Distributed Systems
6 79 (3.97%) Algorithms
7 69 (3.47%) Data Structures
8 59 (2.97%) Fixed Income
9 58 (2.92%) Product Ownership
10 46 (2.31%) Data Protection Act
11 42 (2.11%) Mobile App
12 41 (2.06%) Management Information System
13 40 (2.01%) Greenfield Project
14 35 (1.76%) Hedge funds
15 28 (1.41%) Equity Derivative
15 28 (1.41%) Legacy Systems
15 28 (1.41%) Low-Code
15 28 (1.41%) Market Risk
16 27 (1.36%) Enterprise Software
17 24 (1.21%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 148 (7.44%) Linux
2 67 (3.37%) Windows
3 51 (2.57%) Unix
4 40 (2.01%) Android
5 34 (1.71%) Apple iOS
6 16 (0.80%) Windows Server
7 7 (0.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 5 (0.25%) AIX
8 5 (0.25%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.20%) CentOS
10 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.050%) VMS
11 1 (0.050%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.050%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 511 (25.70%) Agile
2 482 (24.25%) CI/CD
3 381 (19.16%) Problem-Solving
4 332 (16.70%) DevOps
5 288 (14.49%) Microservices
6 264 (13.28%) Full-Stack Development
7 234 (11.77%) Analytics
8 193 (9.71%) Software Engineering
9 185 (9.31%) Business Intelligence
10 174 (8.75%) Containerisation
11 168 (8.45%) Test Automation
12 152 (7.65%) Scrum
13 144 (7.24%) AI
14 129 (6.49%) TDD
15 123 (6.19%) Front End Development
16 114 (5.73%) Design Patterns
17 113 (5.68%) Computer Science
18 111 (5.58%) Data Modelling
19 109 (5.48%) Clean Code
20 106 (5.33%) Unit Testing
Programming Languages
1 513 (25.80%) SQL
2 506 (25.45%) Java
3 479 (24.09%) Python
4 380 (19.11%) C#
5 363 (18.26%) JavaScript
6 205 (10.31%) TypeScript
7 120 (6.04%) C++
8 81 (4.07%) PL/SQL
9 61 (3.07%) Go
10 51 (2.57%) Kotlin
11 45 (2.26%) T-SQL
12 37 (1.86%) Apex Code
13 36 (1.81%) VB
14 35 (1.76%) PowerShell
15 32 (1.61%) Ruby
16 31 (1.56%) VBA
17 30 (1.51%) Shell Script
18 29 (1.46%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 21 (1.06%) C
20 20 (1.01%) PHP
Qualifications
1 332 (16.70%) Security Cleared
2 271 (13.63%) SC Cleared
3 125 (6.29%) Degree
4 61 (3.07%) Computer Science Degree
5 26 (1.31%) Master's Degree
6 20 (1.01%) BPSS Clearance
6 20 (1.01%) DV Cleared
7 13 (0.65%) Numerate Degree
8 9 (0.45%) AWS Certification
9 6 (0.30%) MCP
10 5 (0.25%) AWS Certified Developer
10 5 (0.25%) Microsoft Certification
10 5 (0.25%) PhD
11 4 (0.20%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 4 (0.20%) Oracle Certification
12 2 (0.10%) Azure Certification
12 2 (0.10%) OCP
12 2 (0.10%) Tableau Certification
13 1 (0.050%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 1 (0.050%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 85 (4.28%) QA
2 55 (2.77%) Accessibility
3 30 (1.51%) Data Quality
4 22 (1.11%) WCAG
5 13 (0.65%) GDPR
6 7 (0.35%) ISO 8583
7 6 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 6 (0.30%) SLA
8 5 (0.25%) SEPA
9 4 (0.20%) PCI DSS
10 3 (0.15%) GRC
10 3 (0.15%) ISO 20022
10 3 (0.15%) PSD2
11 2 (0.10%) HL7
12 1 (0.050%) Actionable Recommendations
12 1 (0.050%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 1 (0.050%) MiFID
12 1 (0.050%) PMO
System Software
1 284 (14.29%) Docker
2 31 (1.56%) Active Directory
3 7 (0.35%) 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
1 274 (13.78%) Kubernetes
2 80 (4.02%) Terraform
3 33 (1.66%) Ansible
4 19 (0.96%) Grafana
5 18 (0.91%) Prometheus
6 15 (0.75%) Single Sign-On
7 12 (0.60%) Argo
8 8 (0.40%) Control-M
9 6 (0.30%) TIBCO Hawk
10 3 (0.15%) Kibana
10 3 (0.15%) Podman
11 2 (0.10%) CloudHub
11 2 (0.10%) Docker Swarm
11 2 (0.10%) Istio
11 2 (0.10%) Progress Chef
11 2 (0.10%) Puppet
11 2 (0.10%) rkt
12 1 (0.050%) Microsoft Intune
12 1 (0.050%) Oracle Identity Management
12 1 (0.050%) Rundeck
Vendors
1 241 (12.12%) Microsoft
2 169 (8.50%) Oracle
3 66 (3.32%) Salesforce
4 53 (2.67%) ServiceNow
5 39 (1.96%) Google
6 38 (1.91%) Databricks
7 36 (1.81%) IBM
8 28 (1.41%) Adobe
9 26 (1.31%) Citrix
9 26 (1.31%) OpenAI
9 26 (1.31%) SAP
10 22 (1.11%) MuleSoft
11 20 (1.01%) Red Hat
12 19 (0.96%) Lotus
12 19 (0.96%) Sybase
13 14 (0.70%) Solace
14 13 (0.65%) Guidewire
15 12 (0.60%) OpenLink
16 10 (0.50%) Kofax
16 10 (0.50%) webMethods