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 £519, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 25 March 2026.

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

6 months to
25 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 160 125 170
Rank change year-on-year -35 +45 -8
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Developer 40 28 27
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 0.74% 0.96% 0.48%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.81% 1.03% 0.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 28 14 15
10th Percentile £437 £336 £463
25th Percentile £469 £422 £493
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £450 £523
Median % change year-on-year +15.28% -13.88% -0.48%
75th Percentile £595 £575 £591
90th Percentile £620 £600 £650
England median daily rate £538 £600 £590
% change year-on-year -10.42% +1.69% -9.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 1 2
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - £54.85
Median hourly rate - £77.19 £58.91
Median % change year-on-year - +31.04% -
75th Percentile - - £62.96
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £90.00 £77.19 £58.91
% change year-on-year +16.60% +31.04% -5.75%

All Contract IT Job Roles
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 4,936 2,722 5,209
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.31% 92.87% 92.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,119 1,800 3,156
10th Percentile £290 £244 £213
25th Percentile £413 £400 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% - -
75th Percentile £610 £613 £610
90th Percentile £700 £675 £688
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 447 143 438
10th Percentile £15.25 £16.95 £12.85
25th Percentile £19.17 £23.50 £18.23
Median hourly rate £41.56 £42.50 £44.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.22% -3.41% -2.22%
75th Percentile £81.00 £63.38 £62.35
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.00 £75.16
England median hourly rate £40.00 £35.00 £32.50
% change year-on-year +14.29% +7.69% -23.53%

Senior Developer
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Senior Developer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East.

Senior Developer job vacancy trend 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 25 March 2026.

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 25 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
Thames Valley -45 16 £560 +21.08% 26
Hampshire -26 11 £473 +22.30% 9
Buckinghamshire -15 9 £578 +5.96% 10
Berkshire -48 6 £506 +10.96% 9
East Sussex +2 4 £565 - 2
Surrey -8 3 £413 - 9
West Sussex -12 3 £575 +36.26% 2
Middlesex - 2 £552 -
Oxfordshire - 1 - - 7
Sussex - 1 £525 -
Home Counties - 1 - -
Senior Developer
England

Senior Developer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East

For the 6 months to 25 March 2026, Senior 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 South East region featuring Senior Developer in the job title.

1 21 (52.50%) CI/CD
2 17 (42.50%) Agile
3 15 (37.50%) Microservices
4 14 (35.00%) Git
5 13 (32.50%) AWS
5 13 (32.50%) Jenkins
6 12 (30.00%) GitHub
6 12 (30.00%) Java
6 12 (30.00%) Kubernetes
6 12 (30.00%) NoSQL
6 12 (30.00%) Python
6 12 (30.00%) SC Cleared
6 12 (30.00%) Security Cleared
7 10 (25.00%) Kafka
7 10 (25.00%) PostgreSQL
7 10 (25.00%) Problem-Solving
8 9 (22.50%) RabbitMQ
9 8 (20.00%) .NET
9 8 (20.00%) Azure
9 8 (20.00%) C#
9 8 (20.00%) DevOps
9 8 (20.00%) Docker
9 8 (20.00%) JavaScript
9 8 (20.00%) REST
9 8 (20.00%) Test Automation
10 7 (17.50%) Go
10 7 (17.50%) Gradle
10 7 (17.50%) Grafana
10 7 (17.50%) MongoDB
10 7 (17.50%) SOA

Senior Developer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East 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 3 (7.50%) Confluence
2 1 (2.50%) Appian
2 1 (2.50%) CMS
2 1 (2.50%) IIS
2 1 (2.50%) JBoss
2 1 (2.50%) Jupyter
2 1 (2.50%) Oracle SOA Suite
2 1 (2.50%) Smallworld
2 1 (2.50%) Tomcat
2 1 (2.50%) Umbraco
2 1 (2.50%) WebLogic
Business Applications
1 1 (2.50%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 13 (32.50%) AWS
2 12 (30.00%) GitHub
3 8 (20.00%) Azure
4 6 (15.00%) Datadog
5 5 (12.50%) GitHub Actions
6 4 (10.00%) GCP
7 3 (7.50%) Azure DevOps
8 2 (5.00%) AWS CloudFormation
8 2 (5.00%) Dynamics 365
8 2 (5.00%) Firebase
8 2 (5.00%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 2 (5.00%) Power Platform
9 1 (2.50%) Amazon ECR
9 1 (2.50%) Amazon ECS
9 1 (2.50%) Amazon ELB
9 1 (2.50%) Amazon OpenSearch
9 1 (2.50%) Azure AI
9 1 (2.50%) Azure Service Bus
9 1 (2.50%) Google Play
9 1 (2.50%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 5 (12.50%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (30.00%) NoSQL
2 10 (25.00%) PostgreSQL
3 7 (17.50%) MongoDB
4 6 (15.00%) DynamoDB
4 6 (15.00%) HBase
5 3 (7.50%) Apache Cassandra
5 3 (7.50%) Couchbase
5 3 (7.50%) Relational Database
6 2 (5.00%) BigQuery
6 2 (5.00%) GIS
7 1 (2.50%) Big Data
7 1 (2.50%) Oracle Database
7 1 (2.50%) Power BI
7 1 (2.50%) SQL Server
7 1 (2.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 14 (35.00%) Git
2 13 (32.50%) Jenkins
3 7 (17.50%) Gradle
4 6 (15.00%) Artifactory
4 6 (15.00%) Cucumber
4 6 (15.00%) JUnit
4 6 (15.00%) Sonatype Nexus
5 5 (12.50%) GitLab
6 3 (7.50%) JIRA
7 2 (5.00%) fastlane
8 1 (2.50%) Android Studio
8 1 (2.50%) Crashlytics
8 1 (2.50%) Gatling
8 1 (2.50%) JMeter
8 1 (2.50%) Selenium
8 1 (2.50%) SpecFlow
8 1 (2.50%) Xcode
General
1 6 (15.00%) Analytical Skills
1 6 (15.00%) Social Skills
2 4 (10.00%) Public Sector
3 2 (5.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 1 (2.50%) Finance
4 1 (2.50%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (25.00%) Kafka
2 9 (22.50%) RabbitMQ
3 8 (20.00%) .NET
3 8 (20.00%) REST
4 7 (17.50%) Spring
5 6 (15.00%) RESTful
5 6 (15.00%) Spring Boot
6 4 (10.00%) React
7 3 (7.50%) SOAP
8 2 (5.00%) .NET Core
8 2 (5.00%) HTML
8 2 (5.00%) Node.js
8 2 (5.00%) OAuth
8 2 (5.00%) UIKit
8 2 (5.00%) Web Services
9 1 (2.50%) Android SDK
9 1 (2.50%) AngularJS
9 1 (2.50%) Entity Framework
9 1 (2.50%) Express.js
9 1 (2.50%) iOS SDK
Miscellaneous
1 4 (10.00%) Distributed Systems
1 4 (10.00%) Mobile App
2 3 (7.50%) Product Ownership
3 2 (5.00%) Cloud Native
4 1 (2.50%) Algorithms
4 1 (2.50%) Analytical Mindset
4 1 (2.50%) Client/Server
4 1 (2.50%) CMDB
4 1 (2.50%) Data Structures
4 1 (2.50%) Enterprise Software
4 1 (2.50%) FMCG
4 1 (2.50%) N-Tier
4 1 (2.50%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 3 (7.50%) Apple iOS
2 2 (5.00%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 21 (52.50%) CI/CD
2 17 (42.50%) Agile
3 15 (37.50%) Microservices
4 10 (25.00%) Problem-Solving
5 8 (20.00%) DevOps
5 8 (20.00%) Test Automation
6 7 (17.50%) SOA
7 6 (15.00%) Event-Driven
7 6 (15.00%) TDD
8 5 (12.50%) Computer Science
8 5 (12.50%) Containerisation
8 5 (12.50%) Continuous Integration
8 5 (12.50%) Observability
8 5 (12.50%) OWASP
8 5 (12.50%) Scrum
8 5 (12.50%) Software Engineering
8 5 (12.50%) Unit Testing
8 5 (12.50%) User Experience
9 4 (10.00%) Kanban
9 4 (10.00%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 12 (30.00%) Java
1 12 (30.00%) Python
2 8 (20.00%) C#
2 8 (20.00%) JavaScript
3 7 (17.50%) Go
4 3 (7.50%) SQL
5 2 (5.00%) Swift
5 2 (5.00%) TypeScript
6 1 (2.50%) Kotlin
6 1 (2.50%) Magik
6 1 (2.50%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 12 (30.00%) SC Cleared
1 12 (30.00%) Security Cleared
2 6 (15.00%) OCP
2 6 (15.00%) Oracle Certification
3 4 (10.00%) Computer Science Degree
3 4 (10.00%) Degree
4 3 (7.50%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (7.50%) WCAG
2 2 (5.00%) Accessibility
3 1 (2.50%) GDPR
3 1 (2.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (2.50%) NIST
3 1 (2.50%) QA
System Software
1 8 (20.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 12 (30.00%) Kubernetes
2 7 (17.50%) Grafana
3 2 (5.00%) Terraform
4 1 (2.50%) Argo
4 1 (2.50%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 4 (10.00%) ServiceNow
2 3 (7.50%) Atlassian
2 3 (7.50%) Google
3 2 (5.00%) Dynatrace
3 2 (5.00%) Microsoft
4 1 (2.50%) Apple
4 1 (2.50%) ESRI
4 1 (2.50%) OpenAI
4 1 (2.50%) Oracle