Senior Developer Contract Job Trends in the South East

Senior Developer
England > South East

The median Senior Developer daily rate in the South East is £525, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 19 September 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 128 142 178
Rank change year-on-year +14 +36 +24
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Developer 34 39 37
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the South East 0.97% 0.85% 0.66%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.08% 0.92% 0.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 25 25 24
10th Percentile £394 £390 £403
25th Percentile £438 £463 £441
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 - £600
90th Percentile - £638 £696
England median daily rate £575 £550 £650
% change year-on-year +4.55% -15.38% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 1 0
Median hourly rate - £85.00 -
England median hourly rate - £61.43 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -8.99% -10.00%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
South East

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the South East. 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 the South East with a recognized job title 3,146 4,253 5,305
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.14% 92.30% 94.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,032 2,533 3,589
10th Percentile £204 £245 £212
25th Percentile £363 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £510 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% +2.00% -
75th Percentile £598 £625 £613
90th Percentile £650 £688 £700
England median daily rate £508 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -3.33% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 278 312 250
10th Percentile £13.43 £16.03 £16.00
25th Percentile £15.50 £30.41 £21.05
Median hourly rate £25.15 £57.43 £50.71
Median % change year-on-year -56.20% +13.24% +111.29%
75th Percentile £57.50 £75.00 £66.25
90th Percentile £71.95 £80.00 £75.67
England median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £45.00
% change year-on-year -45.54% +2.62% +73.08%

Senior Developer
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

Job postings that featured Senior Developer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the South East.

Job vacancy trend for Senior Developer in the South East

Senior Developer
Daily Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Senior Developer job vacancies in the South East.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Senior Developer job vacancies in the South East

Senior Developer
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Senior Developer in the South East over the 6 months to 19 September 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Senior Developer in the South East

Senior Developer
Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Senior Developer job vacancies in the South East.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Senior Developer job vacancies in the South East

Senior Developer
Contract Job Locations in the South East

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Senior Developer within the South East region over the 6 months to 19 September 2025. 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
Thames Valley -2 15 £535 -2.73% 17
Berkshire 0 10 £600 +9.09% 7
Surrey +13 7 £515 - 15
Hampshire +10 7 £585 +6.36% 8
Buckinghamshire +10 5 £527 +31.69% 3
East Sussex - 4 £450 - 1
West Sussex - 1 £325 - 1
Senior Developer
England

Senior Developer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the South East

For the 6 months to 19 September 2025, Senior Developer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the South East region featuring Senior Developer in the job title.

1 15 (44.12%) CI/CD
1 15 (44.12%) Python
2 14 (41.18%) Agile
2 14 (41.18%) RESTful
3 12 (35.29%) DevOps
4 11 (32.35%) AWS
5 10 (29.41%) Security Cleared
6 9 (26.47%) JavaScript
6 9 (26.47%) API Development
7 8 (23.53%) C#
7 8 (23.53%) .NET
7 8 (23.53%) SC Cleared
7 8 (23.53%) Azure
8 7 (20.59%) Java
8 7 (20.59%) Workflow
8 7 (20.59%) Kubernetes
8 7 (20.59%) .NET Core
8 7 (20.59%) Serverless
9 6 (17.65%) Public Sector
9 6 (17.65%) GCP
9 6 (17.65%) Docker
9 6 (17.65%) AngularJS
9 6 (17.65%) Data Modelling
9 6 (17.65%) Node.js
9 6 (17.65%) QA
10 5 (14.71%) Artificial Intelligence
10 5 (14.71%) SQL
10 5 (14.71%) Linux
10 5 (14.71%) PostgreSQL
10 5 (14.71%) Relational Database

Senior Developer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the South East by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 3 (8.82%) Confluence
2 1 (2.94%) Anypoint
2 1 (2.94%) Apache Spark
2 1 (2.94%) CMS
2 1 (2.94%) Headless CMS
2 1 (2.94%) Moodle
Cloud Services
1 11 (32.35%) AWS
2 8 (23.53%) Azure
3 7 (20.59%) Serverless
4 6 (17.65%) GCP
5 5 (14.71%) Azure DevOps
6 4 (11.76%) Amazon EC2
6 4 (11.76%) GitHub
6 4 (11.76%) GitHub Actions
7 3 (8.82%) Amazon S3
8 2 (5.88%) Amazon ECS
8 2 (5.88%) Amazon EKS
8 2 (5.88%) AWS CloudFormation
8 2 (5.88%) AWS Lambda
8 2 (5.88%) Azure Logic Apps
9 1 (2.94%) Azure Data Factory
9 1 (2.94%) Azure Monitor
9 1 (2.94%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 1 (2.94%) CloudFront
9 1 (2.94%) Dynamics 365
9 1 (2.94%) Kontent
Communications & Networking
1 4 (11.76%) SAN
2 3 (8.82%) TCP/IP
3 2 (5.88%) VPN
4 1 (2.94%) BGP
4 1 (2.94%) Ethernet VPN
4 1 (2.94%) Firewall
4 1 (2.94%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (14.71%) PostgreSQL
1 5 (14.71%) Relational Database
2 3 (8.82%) MySQL
3 2 (5.88%) Amazon RDS
3 2 (5.88%) RDBMS
4 1 (2.94%) Azure SQL Database
4 1 (2.94%) Data Lake
4 1 (2.94%) Data Vault
4 1 (2.94%) Data Warehouse
4 1 (2.94%) MongoDB
4 1 (2.94%) NoSQL
4 1 (2.94%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 4 (11.76%) Git
2 3 (8.82%) GitLab
2 3 (8.82%) Jenkins
2 3 (8.82%) JIRA
3 2 (5.88%) JMeter
3 2 (5.88%) JUnit
3 2 (5.88%) Mockito
4 1 (2.94%) Bitbucket
4 1 (2.94%) Maven
General
1 6 (17.65%) Public Sector
2 4 (11.76%) Aerospace
2 4 (11.76%) Social Skills
3 2 (5.88%) Analytical Skills
3 2 (5.88%) Finance
4 1 (2.94%) Automotive
4 1 (2.94%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (41.18%) RESTful
2 8 (23.53%) .NET
3 7 (20.59%) .NET Core
4 6 (17.65%) AngularJS
4 6 (17.65%) Node.js
5 4 (11.76%) ASP.NET
5 4 (11.76%) ASP.NET Core
5 4 (11.76%) FastAPI
5 4 (11.76%) HTML
5 4 (11.76%) JSON
5 4 (11.76%) React
5 4 (11.76%) REST
6 3 (8.82%) jQuery
6 3 (8.82%) Web Services
6 3 (8.82%) XML
7 2 (5.88%) .NET Framework
7 2 (5.88%) ActiveMQ
7 2 (5.88%) Hibernate
7 2 (5.88%) Ruby on Rails
7 2 (5.88%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 2 (5.88%) Distributed Systems
2 1 (2.94%) Enterprise Software
2 1 (2.94%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 5 (14.71%) Linux
2 4 (11.76%) Debian
2 4 (11.76%) Ubuntu
2 4 (11.76%) Windows
2 4 (11.76%) Windows Server
2 4 (11.76%) Windows Server 2016
3 2 (5.88%) Android
3 2 (5.88%) Apple iOS
3 2 (5.88%) Unix
4 1 (2.94%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 15 (44.12%) CI/CD
2 14 (41.18%) Agile
3 12 (35.29%) DevOps
4 9 (26.47%) API Development
5 7 (20.59%) Workflow
6 6 (17.65%) Data Modelling
7 5 (14.71%) Artificial Intelligence
7 5 (14.71%) Microservices
7 5 (14.71%) Problem-Solving
8 4 (11.76%) CQRS
8 4 (11.76%) Data Engineering
8 4 (11.76%) Design Patterns
8 4 (11.76%) Event-Driven
8 4 (11.76%) Event-Driven Architecture
8 4 (11.76%) Generative AI
9 3 (8.82%) Continuous Integration
9 3 (8.82%) Front End Development
9 3 (8.82%) ITIL
9 3 (8.82%) Mentoring
9 3 (8.82%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 15 (44.12%) Python
2 9 (26.47%) JavaScript
3 8 (23.53%) C#
4 7 (20.59%) Java
5 5 (14.71%) SQL
6 4 (11.76%) ABAP
7 3 (8.82%) Perl
8 2 (5.88%) Ruby
8 2 (5.88%) Shell Script
9 1 (2.94%) Kotlin
9 1 (2.94%) Objective-C
9 1 (2.94%) Swift
9 1 (2.94%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 10 (29.41%) Security Cleared
2 8 (23.53%) SC Cleared
3 3 (8.82%) BPSS Clearance
4 1 (2.94%) AWS Certification
4 1 (2.94%) Computer Science Degree
4 1 (2.94%) Degree
4 1 (2.94%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (17.65%) QA
2 2 (5.88%) Data Quality
System Software
1 6 (17.65%) Docker
Systems Management
1 7 (20.59%) Kubernetes
2 2 (5.88%) Kibana
3 1 (2.94%) Ansible
3 1 (2.94%) CloudHub
3 1 (2.94%) Grafana
3 1 (2.94%) Prometheus
3 1 (2.94%) Terraform
Vendors
1 5 (14.71%) Databricks
2 4 (11.76%) Adobe
2 4 (11.76%) Red Hat
2 4 (11.76%) Virgin Media
2 4 (11.76%) VMware
3 3 (8.82%) Microsoft
3 3 (8.82%) SAP
4 2 (5.88%) Atlassian
4 2 (5.88%) Dynatrace
4 2 (5.88%) Splunk
5 1 (2.94%) Apple
5 1 (2.94%) Cisco
5 1 (2.94%) MuleSoft
5 1 (2.94%) Oracle
5 1 (2.94%) Remedy
5 1 (2.94%) Salesforce