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 £500, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 29 November 2025.

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

6 months to
29 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 130 133 171
Rank change year-on-year +3 +38 -3
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Developer 46 46 37
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 1.10% 1.14% 0.70%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.22% 1.22% 0.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 37 28 24
10th Percentile £362 £387 £406
25th Percentile £438 £398 £459
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £521
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +0.72% -5.23%
75th Percentile £575 £550 £588
90th Percentile £600 - £600
England median daily rate £550 £550 £600
% change year-on-year - -8.33% -7.69%

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 3,760 3,760 4,974
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 89.91% 92.86% 94.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,403 2,282 3,246
10th Percentile £210 £243 £208
25th Percentile £393 £400 £390
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £510 £513
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% -0.49% +2.50%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £613
90th Percentile £675 £687 £688
England median daily rate £505 £525 £535
% change year-on-year -3.81% -1.87% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 381 191 252
10th Percentile £13.75 £17.63 £16.03
25th Percentile £16.17 £24.18 £24.00
Median hourly rate £25.00 £54.00 £51.24
Median % change year-on-year -53.70% +5.39% +36.63%
75th Percentile £57.50 £70.00 £66.25
90th Percentile £81.00 £75.16 £76.53
England median hourly rate £25.32 £39.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year -35.08% -13.33% +38.46%

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 29 November 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 29 November 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 -17 19 £529 +0.67% 31
Hampshire +3 13 £469 +5.75% 17
Berkshire -22 11 £600 +14.29% 12
East Sussex +9 7 £450 - 3
Buckinghamshire +6 7 £513 +8.47% 8
Surrey +6 3 £613 - 2
West Sussex -12 2 £500 +18.48% 1
Middlesex - 2 £552 -
Oxfordshire - 1 - - 11
Sussex - 1 £525 - 2
Senior Developer
England

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

For the 6 months to 29 November 2025, 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 22 (47.83%) Agile
2 21 (45.65%) CI/CD
3 17 (36.96%) Python
4 15 (32.61%) AWS
4 15 (32.61%) GitHub
4 15 (32.61%) Microservices
4 15 (32.61%) Problem-Solving
5 14 (30.43%) DevOps
5 14 (30.43%) Kubernetes
5 14 (30.43%) RESTful
6 13 (28.26%) Jenkins
6 13 (28.26%) NoSQL
6 13 (28.26%) PostgreSQL
7 12 (26.09%) Git
8 11 (23.91%) C#
8 11 (23.91%) Java
8 11 (23.91%) Kafka
9 10 (21.74%) .NET
9 10 (21.74%) RabbitMQ
10 9 (19.57%) Azure
10 9 (19.57%) Continuous Integration
10 9 (19.57%) Docker
10 9 (19.57%) Event-Driven
10 9 (19.57%) GCP
10 9 (19.57%) GitHub Actions
10 9 (19.57%) REST
10 9 (19.57%) Security Cleared
11 8 (17.39%) API Development
11 8 (17.39%) Test Automation
12 7 (15.22%) .NET Core

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 7 (15.22%) Confluence
2 1 (2.17%) Anypoint
2 1 (2.17%) Apache Spark
2 1 (2.17%) CMS
2 1 (2.17%) Headless CMS
2 1 (2.17%) Jupyter
2 1 (2.17%) Smallworld
Business Applications
1 1 (2.17%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 15 (32.61%) AWS
1 15 (32.61%) GitHub
2 9 (19.57%) Azure
2 9 (19.57%) GCP
2 9 (19.57%) GitHub Actions
3 6 (13.04%) Datadog
4 5 (10.87%) Azure DevOps
5 3 (6.52%) Serverless
6 2 (4.35%) Amazon EC2
6 2 (4.35%) Amazon S3
6 2 (4.35%) AWS CloudFormation
6 2 (4.35%) Azure Logic Apps
6 2 (4.35%) Dynamics 365
6 2 (4.35%) Google Kubernetes Engine
6 2 (4.35%) Power Platform
7 1 (2.17%) Amazon ECR
7 1 (2.17%) Amazon OpenSearch
7 1 (2.17%) Azure Monitor
7 1 (2.17%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 1 (2.17%) Kontent
Communications & Networking
1 5 (10.87%) Kerberos
2 4 (8.70%) SAN
3 3 (6.52%) TCP/IP
4 2 (4.35%) VPN
5 1 (2.17%) BGP
5 1 (2.17%) Ethernet VPN
5 1 (2.17%) Firewall
5 1 (2.17%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (28.26%) NoSQL
1 13 (28.26%) PostgreSQL
2 7 (15.22%) MongoDB
3 6 (13.04%) DynamoDB
3 6 (13.04%) HBase
4 4 (8.70%) Apache Cassandra
4 4 (8.70%) Couchbase
4 4 (8.70%) Relational Database
5 2 (4.35%) Big Data
5 2 (4.35%) BigQuery
5 2 (4.35%) Data Warehouse
5 2 (4.35%) MySQL
5 2 (4.35%) SQL Server
6 1 (2.17%) Amazon RDS
6 1 (2.17%) Azure SQL Database
6 1 (2.17%) Data Lake
6 1 (2.17%) Data Vault
6 1 (2.17%) GIS
6 1 (2.17%) Power BI
6 1 (2.17%) Redis
Development Applications
1 13 (28.26%) Jenkins
2 12 (26.09%) Git
3 7 (15.22%) JIRA
4 6 (13.04%) Artifactory
4 6 (13.04%) Cucumber
4 6 (13.04%) Gradle
4 6 (13.04%) JUnit
4 6 (13.04%) Sonatype Nexus
5 5 (10.87%) GitLab
6 1 (2.17%) Bitbucket
6 1 (2.17%) Gatling
6 1 (2.17%) JMeter
6 1 (2.17%) Maven
General
1 10 (21.74%) Analytical Skills
2 9 (19.57%) Social Skills
3 5 (10.87%) Public Sector
4 3 (6.52%) Finance
5 1 (2.17%) Automotive
5 1 (2.17%) Health Technology
5 1 (2.17%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (30.43%) RESTful
2 11 (23.91%) Kafka
3 10 (21.74%) .NET
3 10 (21.74%) RabbitMQ
4 9 (19.57%) REST
5 7 (15.22%) .NET Core
6 6 (13.04%) AngularJS
6 6 (13.04%) Spring
6 6 (13.04%) Spring Boot
7 5 (10.87%) ASP.NET
7 5 (10.87%) FastAPI
8 4 (8.70%) ASP.NET Core
8 4 (8.70%) React
9 3 (6.52%) .NET Framework
9 3 (6.52%) HTML
9 3 (6.52%) Node.js
9 3 (6.52%) Web Services
10 2 (4.35%) CSS
10 2 (4.35%) jQuery
10 2 (4.35%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 2 (4.35%) Distributed Systems
1 2 (4.35%) Mobile App
2 1 (2.17%) Analytical Mindset
2 1 (2.17%) Cloud Native
2 1 (2.17%) Enterprise Software
2 1 (2.17%) FMCG
Operating Systems
1 5 (10.87%) Linux
2 4 (8.70%) Android
2 4 (8.70%) Apple iOS
2 4 (8.70%) Debian
2 4 (8.70%) Ubuntu
2 4 (8.70%) Windows
2 4 (8.70%) Windows Server
2 4 (8.70%) Windows Server 2016
3 2 (4.35%) Unix
4 1 (2.17%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 22 (47.83%) Agile
2 21 (45.65%) CI/CD
3 15 (32.61%) Microservices
3 15 (32.61%) Problem-Solving
4 14 (30.43%) DevOps
5 9 (19.57%) Continuous Integration
5 9 (19.57%) Event-Driven
6 8 (17.39%) API Development
6 8 (17.39%) Test Automation
7 7 (15.22%) Computer Science
7 7 (15.22%) Data Modelling
8 6 (13.04%) AI
8 6 (13.04%) SOA
8 6 (13.04%) TDD
9 5 (10.87%) Containerisation
9 5 (10.87%) Design Patterns
9 5 (10.87%) Generative AI
9 5 (10.87%) Observability
9 5 (10.87%) Software Engineering
10 4 (8.70%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 17 (36.96%) Python
2 11 (23.91%) C#
2 11 (23.91%) Java
3 7 (15.22%) JavaScript
4 5 (10.87%) SQL
5 4 (8.70%) Go
6 1 (2.17%) Kotlin
6 1 (2.17%) Magik
6 1 (2.17%) Objective-C
6 1 (2.17%) PowerShell
6 1 (2.17%) Ruby
6 1 (2.17%) Shell Script
6 1 (2.17%) Swift
6 1 (2.17%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 9 (19.57%) Security Cleared
2 6 (13.04%) Computer Science Degree
2 6 (13.04%) Degree
2 6 (13.04%) OCP
2 6 (13.04%) Oracle Certification
2 6 (13.04%) SC Cleared
3 2 (4.35%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (13.04%) QA
2 3 (6.52%) Data Quality
3 1 (2.17%) GDPR
3 1 (2.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (2.17%) NIST
System Software
1 9 (19.57%) Docker
Systems Management
1 14 (30.43%) Kubernetes
2 7 (15.22%) Grafana
3 1 (2.17%) Argo
3 1 (2.17%) CloudHub
3 1 (2.17%) Prometheus
3 1 (2.17%) Terraform
Vendors
1 5 (10.87%) Atlassian
1 5 (10.87%) Databricks
2 4 (8.70%) Microsoft
2 4 (8.70%) Red Hat
2 4 (8.70%) Virgin Media
2 4 (8.70%) VMware
3 2 (4.35%) Google
4 1 (2.17%) Apple
4 1 (2.17%) Cisco
4 1 (2.17%) Informatica
4 1 (2.17%) MuleSoft
4 1 (2.17%) Oracle
4 1 (2.17%) Remedy
4 1 (2.17%) Salesforce