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 4 May 2026.

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

6 months to
4 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 6 4
Rank change year-on-year -4 -2 -1
Contract jobs requiring a Developer 2,228 2,071 3,046
As % of all contract jobs in London 12.61% 16.48% 17.21%
As % of the Job Titles category 13.60% 17.64% 18.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,576 1,505 2,343
10th Percentile £388 £385 £385
25th Percentile £425 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -4.17%
75th Percentile £650 £750 £750
90th Percentile £800 £862 £850
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 4 6
10th Percentile - £39.76 £36.88
25th Percentile £35.00 £47.47 £58.75
Median hourly rate £52.50 £53.50 £64.75
Median % change year-on-year -1.87% -17.37% +12.61%
75th Percentile £65.63 £56.81 £71.13
90th Percentile £95.00 £59.63 £72.50
England median hourly rate £55.00 £61.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -9.84% -6.15% +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 16,386 11,740 16,506
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.74% 93.40% 93.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,903 8,049 11,935
10th Percentile £350 £341 £325
25th Percentile £425 £430 £443
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £650 £680 £675
90th Percentile £751 £800 £800
England median daily rate £511 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -2.67% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 270 145 336
10th Percentile £18.75 £20.33 £16.01
25th Percentile £24.03 £24.00 £20.02
Median hourly rate £37.50 £34.65 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +8.23% +26.00% -22.54%
75th Percentile £63.08 £50.75 £43.75
90th Percentile £76.58 £64.50 £65.00
England median hourly rate £47.00 £30.62 £36.50
% change year-on-year +53.52% -16.12% -18.03%

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 4 May 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 4 May 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 4 May 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 -5 301 £530 -9.40% 164
South London -1 45 £513 -44.59% 5
West London -18 18 £497 +9.35% 12
East London -5 8 £416 -6.53% 16
Developer
England

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

For the 6 months to 4 May 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.

1 532 (23.88%) Agile
2 527 (23.65%) Java
3 512 (22.98%) Python
4 487 (21.86%) CI/CD
5 481 (21.59%) SQL
6 472 (21.18%) Azure
7 431 (19.34%) AWS
8 417 (18.72%) Security Cleared
9 399 (17.91%) C#
10 373 (16.74%) JavaScript
11 346 (15.53%) SC Cleared
12 343 (15.39%) DevOps
13 320 (14.36%) React
14 317 (14.23%) .NET
15 281 (12.61%) Docker
16 278 (12.48%) Microservices
17 270 (12.12%) Full-Stack Development
18 258 (11.58%) Problem-Solving
19 257 (11.54%) TypeScript
20 246 (11.04%) Kubernetes
21 239 (10.73%) Microsoft
22 237 (10.64%) Software Engineering
23 230 (10.32%) REST
24 216 (9.69%) AI
25 208 (9.34%) Power Platform
26 196 (8.80%) Kafka
26 196 (8.80%) Oracle
27 192 (8.62%) Analytics
28 188 (8.44%) Node.js
29 187 (8.39%) Containerisation

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 80 (3.59%) SharePoint
2 48 (2.15%) Confluence
3 24 (1.08%) IIS
4 20 (0.90%) Apache
4 20 (0.90%) CMS
5 17 (0.76%) Apache Spark
5 17 (0.76%) HCL Notes
6 15 (0.67%) Mendix
6 15 (0.67%) Microsoft Exchange
7 9 (0.40%) Ethereum
7 9 (0.40%) JBoss
8 8 (0.36%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 8 (0.36%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 7 (0.31%) Camunda
9 7 (0.31%) CICS
10 6 (0.27%) Headless CMS
10 6 (0.27%) SAS
11 5 (0.22%) Appian
11 5 (0.22%) Hyperledger
11 5 (0.22%) Tomcat
Applications
1 40 (1.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.22%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (0.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 3 (0.13%) Adobe XD
3 3 (0.13%) Chatbot
3 3 (0.13%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.045%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 46 (2.06%) Dynamics CRM
2 20 (0.90%) Endur
3 11 (0.49%) Temenos T24
4 10 (0.45%) Fidessa
5 7 (0.31%) Payment Gateway
5 7 (0.31%) SAP S/4HANA
6 6 (0.27%) Oracle Financials
7 5 (0.22%) BASE24
7 5 (0.22%) Oracle ERP
7 5 (0.22%) ProductWriter
8 4 (0.18%) Findur
8 4 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
8 4 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
9 3 (0.13%) BusinessWorks
9 3 (0.13%) Oracle 11i
9 3 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
9 3 (0.13%) Oracle Cash Management
9 3 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
9 3 (0.13%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 3 (0.13%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 472 (21.18%) Azure
2 431 (19.34%) AWS
3 208 (9.34%) Power Platform
4 143 (6.42%) GitHub
5 131 (5.88%) Azure DevOps
6 121 (5.43%) Power Automate
6 121 (5.43%) Serverless
7 108 (4.85%) PowerApps
8 102 (4.58%) GCP
9 94 (4.22%) Dynamics 365
10 71 (3.19%) GitHub Actions
11 66 (2.96%) AWS Lambda
12 61 (2.74%) Amazon S3
13 57 (2.56%) Microsoft 365
14 49 (2.20%) Azure Logic Apps
15 47 (2.11%) Azure Service Bus
16 43 (1.93%) Azure Functions
17 42 (1.89%) Azure AKS
17 42 (1.89%) Entra ID
18 36 (1.62%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 29 (1.30%) HTTP
2 19 (0.85%) FIX Connectivity
3 13 (0.58%) Internet
4 6 (0.27%) Network Security
5 5 (0.22%) SMS
6 4 (0.18%) Multicast
7 3 (0.13%) 3GPP
7 3 (0.13%) HTTPS
7 3 (0.13%) MVNO
7 3 (0.13%) RTP
7 3 (0.13%) SMPP
7 3 (0.13%) SSL
7 3 (0.13%) TCP/IP
8 2 (0.090%) DNS
8 2 (0.090%) Ethernet
8 2 (0.090%) Firewall
8 2 (0.090%) FTP
8 2 (0.090%) RTMP
9 1 (0.045%) 5G
9 1 (0.045%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 164 (7.36%) SQL Server
2 131 (5.88%) PostgreSQL
3 118 (5.30%) Power BI
4 108 (4.85%) Relational Database
5 73 (3.28%) Oracle Database
6 66 (2.96%) NoSQL
7 59 (2.65%) MongoDB
8 41 (1.84%) Data Warehouse
9 32 (1.44%) Apache Cassandra
10 29 (1.30%) DynamoDB
11 28 (1.26%) MySQL
12 27 (1.21%) KDB
13 22 (0.99%) Amazon RDS
13 22 (0.99%) Data Lake
14 19 (0.85%) Metadata
14 19 (0.85%) Redis
14 19 (0.85%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 18 (0.81%) Kdb+
15 18 (0.81%) RDBMS
16 17 (0.76%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 181 (8.12%) Git
2 108 (4.85%) Jenkins
3 102 (4.58%) JIRA
4 58 (2.60%) GitLab
5 48 (2.15%) JUnit
6 26 (1.17%) Mockito
6 26 (1.17%) Visual Studio
7 24 (1.08%) Maven
8 20 (0.90%) Gradle
8 20 (0.90%) TeamCity
9 18 (0.81%) Bitbucket
10 13 (0.58%) Cypress.io
10 13 (0.58%) Selenium
11 12 (0.54%) SonarQube
12 11 (0.49%) Cucumber
12 11 (0.49%) Octopus Deploy
13 10 (0.45%) Team Foundation Server
13 10 (0.45%) Vite
13 10 (0.45%) webpack
14 9 (0.40%) Claude Code
General
1 595 (26.71%) Finance
2 356 (15.98%) Social Skills
3 309 (13.87%) Banking
4 237 (10.64%) Public Sector
5 225 (10.10%) Front Office
6 130 (5.83%) Analytical Skills
7 118 (5.30%) Investment Banking
8 52 (2.33%) Financial Institution
9 24 (1.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 22 (0.99%) Documentation Skills
11 18 (0.81%) Publishing
12 17 (0.76%) Marketing
13 14 (0.63%) Back Office
13 14 (0.63%) Local Government
14 13 (0.58%) Law
15 11 (0.49%) Telecoms
16 9 (0.40%) Presentation Skills
17 7 (0.31%) Retail
18 6 (0.27%) Automotive
18 6 (0.27%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 320 (14.36%) React
2 317 (14.23%) .NET
3 230 (10.32%) REST
4 196 (8.80%) Kafka
5 188 (8.44%) Node.js
6 187 (8.39%) RESTful
7 181 (8.12%) HTML
8 173 (7.76%) Spring
9 157 (7.05%) CSS
10 152 (6.82%) AngularJS
11 143 (6.42%) Spring Boot
12 91 (4.08%) .NET Framework
13 89 (3.99%) Redux
14 79 (3.55%) Web Services
15 70 (3.14%) SOAP
16 68 (3.05%) GraphQL
17 67 (3.01%) JSON
18 55 (2.47%) Vue
19 50 (2.24%) Django
20 48 (2.15%) HTML5
Miscellaneous
1 115 (5.16%) Equities
2 113 (5.07%) Derivative
3 105 (4.71%) Fixed Income
4 98 (4.40%) Distributed Systems
5 85 (3.82%) Cloud Native
5 85 (3.82%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 55 (2.47%) Algorithms
7 53 (2.38%) Data Structures
8 47 (2.11%) Product Ownership
9 45 (2.02%) Greenfield Project
10 42 (1.89%) Data Protection Act
11 37 (1.66%) Low-Code
11 37 (1.66%) Management Information System
12 36 (1.62%) AI Agents
12 36 (1.62%) Legacy Systems
13 31 (1.39%) Hedge funds
13 31 (1.39%) Onboarding
14 27 (1.21%) Equity Derivative
15 25 (1.12%) Enterprise Software
16 23 (1.03%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 107 (4.80%) Linux
2 63 (2.83%) Windows
3 52 (2.33%) Unix
4 24 (1.08%) Android
5 21 (0.94%) Windows Server
6 17 (0.76%) Apple iOS
7 5 (0.22%) AIX
7 5 (0.22%) zOS
8 4 (0.18%) Mac OS
9 2 (0.090%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 1 (0.045%) Solaris
10 1 (0.045%) Windows 10
10 1 (0.045%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 532 (23.88%) Agile
2 487 (21.86%) CI/CD
3 343 (15.39%) DevOps
4 278 (12.48%) Microservices
5 270 (12.12%) Full-Stack Development
6 258 (11.58%) Problem-Solving
7 237 (10.64%) Software Engineering
8 216 (9.69%) AI
9 192 (8.62%) Analytics
10 187 (8.39%) Containerisation
11 179 (8.03%) Test Automation
12 167 (7.50%) Data Modelling
13 165 (7.41%) Business Intelligence
14 133 (5.97%) TDD
15 119 (5.34%) Scrum
16 115 (5.16%) Code Quality
16 115 (5.16%) Front End Development
17 114 (5.12%) Unit Testing
18 109 (4.89%) Mentoring
19 107 (4.80%) Design Patterns
Programming Languages
1 527 (23.65%) Java
2 512 (22.98%) Python
3 481 (21.59%) SQL
4 399 (17.91%) C#
5 373 (16.74%) JavaScript
6 257 (11.54%) TypeScript
7 80 (3.59%) PL/SQL
8 78 (3.50%) Go
9 66 (2.96%) C++
10 58 (2.60%) T-SQL
11 51 (2.29%) Apex Code
12 42 (1.89%) Shell Script
13 39 (1.75%) Kotlin
14 33 (1.48%) Ruby
15 31 (1.39%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 29 (1.30%) PowerShell
17 22 (0.99%) VBA
18 18 (0.81%) C
19 17 (0.76%) PHP
20 13 (0.58%) VB
Qualifications
1 417 (18.72%) Security Cleared
2 346 (15.53%) SC Cleared
3 99 (4.44%) Degree
4 37 (1.66%) Computer Science Degree
5 33 (1.48%) BPSS Clearance
5 33 (1.48%) DV Cleared
6 11 (0.49%) Master's Degree
7 8 (0.36%) Numerate Degree
8 7 (0.31%) AWS Certification
8 7 (0.31%) Azure Certification
8 7 (0.31%) Microsoft Certification
9 4 (0.18%) AWS Certified Developer
9 4 (0.18%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 4 (0.18%) PhD
10 3 (0.13%) Oracle Certification
11 2 (0.090%) CTC Cleared
11 2 (0.090%) Postgraduate
12 1 (0.045%) DBS Check
12 1 (0.045%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 1 (0.045%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 111 (4.98%) QA
2 59 (2.65%) Accessibility
3 35 (1.57%) Data Quality
4 29 (1.30%) WCAG
5 15 (0.67%) GDPR
6 7 (0.31%) ISO 8583
6 7 (0.31%) SLA
7 6 (0.27%) GRC
8 5 (0.22%) HL7
8 5 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 4 (0.18%) PCI DSS
9 4 (0.18%) PMO
9 4 (0.18%) SEPA
10 2 (0.090%) ISO 20022
10 2 (0.090%) PSD2
11 1 (0.045%) DICOM
11 1 (0.045%) GAAP
11 1 (0.045%) HIPAA
System Software
1 281 (12.61%) Docker
2 15 (0.67%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.13%) GridGain
4 2 (0.090%) HDFS
4 2 (0.090%) OpenAM
4 2 (0.090%) OpenDJ
4 2 (0.090%) OpenIDM
4 2 (0.090%) Oracle RAC
4 2 (0.090%) Postfix
4 2 (0.090%) VMware ESXi
5 1 (0.045%) FreeRADIUS
5 1 (0.045%) Varnish
5 1 (0.045%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 246 (11.04%) Kubernetes
2 91 (4.08%) Terraform
3 30 (1.35%) Ansible
3 30 (1.35%) Grafana
4 21 (0.94%) Prometheus
5 8 (0.36%) Single Sign-On
6 5 (0.22%) SCCM
7 4 (0.18%) Argo
8 3 (0.13%) TIBCO Hawk
9 2 (0.090%) CA Endevor
9 2 (0.090%) CloudHub
9 2 (0.090%) Control-M
9 2 (0.090%) Podman
10 1 (0.045%) HP ALM
10 1 (0.045%) Kibana
10 1 (0.045%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 239 (10.73%) Microsoft
2 196 (8.80%) Oracle
3 81 (3.64%) Salesforce
4 75 (3.37%) ServiceNow
5 41 (1.84%) SAP
6 39 (1.75%) Citrix
7 32 (1.44%) Databricks
8 31 (1.39%) IBM
9 25 (1.12%) MuleSoft
9 25 (1.12%) OpenAI
10 21 (0.94%) Adobe
10 21 (0.94%) Google
11 20 (0.90%) Guidewire
12 17 (0.76%) Lotus
12 17 (0.76%) Pega
13 15 (0.67%) Foundry
14 13 (0.58%) ForgeRock
15 12 (0.54%) Kofax
15 12 (0.54%) OpenLink
15 12 (0.54%) UiPath