Senior Contract Job Trends in the South West

Senior
England > South West

The median Senior daily rate in the South West is £519, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 21 December 2025.

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

6 months to
21 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 25 22 29
Rank change year-on-year -3 +7 +7
Contract jobs requiring a Senior 163 153 165
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 6.99% 7.31% 5.62%
As % of the Job Titles category 7.75% 7.78% 5.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 120 96 105
10th Percentile £398 £425 £375
25th Percentile £450 £486 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £573 £575
Median % change year-on-year -9.39% -0.43% +2.22%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £638
90th Percentile £700 £700 £716
England median daily rate £550 £585 £575
% change year-on-year -5.98% +1.74% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 10 10
10th Percentile - £60.18 £47.48
25th Percentile £15.60 £60.75 £60.00
Median hourly rate £51.21 £66.26 £66.01
Median % change year-on-year -22.71% +0.38% +46.69%
75th Percentile £79.00 £74.00 £70.66
90th Percentile £93.75 £75.00 £84.68
England median hourly rate £47.50 £45.59 £54.47
% change year-on-year +4.19% -16.31% +21.05%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
South West

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the South West. 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 West with a recognized job title 2,103 1,966 2,766
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.22% 93.89% 94.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,223 1,223 1,816
10th Percentile £230 £213 £250
25th Percentile £400 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £528
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -5.21% +0.48%
75th Percentile £644 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £718 £706
England median daily rate £510 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -2.86% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 291 138 290
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.62 £18.50
25th Percentile £20.74 £50.88 £45.00
Median hourly rate £37.50 £65.00 £58.75
Median % change year-on-year -42.31% +10.65% -9.62%
75th Percentile £65.00 £70.25 £70.00
90th Percentile £67.25 £74.13 £83.40
England median hourly rate £26.30 £35.00 £45.21
% change year-on-year -24.86% -22.58% +39.11%

Senior
Job Vacancy Trend in the South West

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

Senior job vacancy trend in the South West

Senior
Daily Rate Trend in the South West

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

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

Senior
Daily Rate Histogram in the South West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Senior in the South West over the 6 months to 21 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Senior in the South West

Senior
Hourly Rate Trend in the South West

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

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

Senior
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South West

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Senior in the South West over the 6 months to 21 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Senior in the South West

Senior
Contract Job Locations in the South West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Senior within the South West region over the 6 months to 21 December 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
Gloucestershire +18 64 £475 -13.64% 27
Bristol +3 56 £485 -7.62% 77
Wiltshire -5 17 £650 +10.17% 21
Somerset -14 15 £600 +4.35% 36
Devon -13 8 £290 -52.49% 10
Dorset +4 3 - - 19
Senior
England

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

For the 6 months to 21 December 2025, Senior 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 West region featuring Senior in the job title.

1 97 (59.51%) Security Cleared
2 85 (52.15%) SC Cleared
3 66 (40.49%) Azure
3 66 (40.49%) DevOps
4 58 (35.58%) Agile
5 47 (28.83%) SQL
6 38 (23.31%) Scrum
7 36 (22.09%) JavaScript
7 36 (22.09%) Oracle
8 35 (21.47%) Azure DevOps
8 35 (21.47%) Python
9 34 (20.86%) Oracle APEX
9 34 (20.86%) Validation
10 30 (18.40%) PL/SQL
11 28 (17.18%) Collaborative Working
11 28 (17.18%) Requirements Analysis
11 28 (17.18%) Software Delivery
12 27 (16.56%) Web Application Development
13 24 (14.72%) AWS
14 22 (13.50%) CI/CD
15 20 (12.27%) ETL
16 19 (11.66%) Azure Certification
16 19 (11.66%) Google
16 19 (11.66%) Kubernetes
17 18 (11.04%) GCP
17 18 (11.04%) Problem-Solving
18 17 (10.43%) Docker
19 15 (9.20%) Data Engineering
19 15 (9.20%) Data Pipeline
19 15 (9.20%) GitHub

Senior Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South West 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 5 (3.07%) SharePoint
2 3 (1.84%) Confluence
2 3 (1.84%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (1.23%) Apache
3 2 (1.23%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.61%) Oracle Service Bus
4 1 (0.61%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 6 (3.68%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (2.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (1.23%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.61%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 1 (0.61%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.61%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.61%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 2 (1.23%) Primavera
2 1 (0.61%) ContrOCC
2 1 (0.61%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.61%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.61%) Teamcenter
2 1 (0.61%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 66 (40.49%) Azure
2 35 (21.47%) Azure DevOps
3 24 (14.72%) AWS
4 18 (11.04%) GCP
5 15 (9.20%) GitHub
6 13 (7.98%) Azure Data Factory
7 10 (6.13%) Entra ID
8 7 (4.29%) Power Platform
9 6 (3.68%) Azure Stack
9 6 (3.68%) Microsoft Copilot
10 5 (3.07%) Microsoft 365
10 5 (3.07%) Serverless
11 4 (2.45%) SaaS
12 3 (1.84%) Amazon EC2
13 2 (1.23%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 2 (1.23%) Amazon ELB
13 2 (1.23%) Amazon S3
13 2 (1.23%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 2 (1.23%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 1 (0.61%) Amazon EventBridge
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.84%) SSL
2 2 (1.23%) DHCP
2 2 (1.23%) DNS
2 2 (1.23%) Firewall
2 2 (1.23%) Network Security
2 2 (1.23%) TCP/IP
2 2 (1.23%) VPN
3 1 (0.61%) PABX
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (7.98%) Elasticsearch
1 13 (7.98%) PostgreSQL
2 9 (5.52%) Big Data
3 7 (4.29%) Power BI
4 6 (3.68%) BigQuery
5 4 (2.45%) SQL Server
6 3 (1.84%) NoSQL
7 2 (1.23%) Hadoop
7 2 (1.23%) MongoDB
7 2 (1.23%) Tableau
8 1 (0.61%) Data Lake
8 1 (0.61%) Geospatial Data
8 1 (0.61%) Looker
8 1 (0.61%) Metadata
8 1 (0.61%) Neo4j
8 1 (0.61%) TigerGraph
Development Applications
1 34 (20.86%) Oracle APEX
2 7 (4.29%) Cypress.io
2 7 (4.29%) Jenkins
2 7 (4.29%) Postman
3 6 (3.68%) GitLab
3 6 (3.68%) JIRA
4 5 (3.07%) Git
4 5 (3.07%) REST Assured
4 5 (3.07%) Selenium
5 3 (1.84%) Artifactory
6 2 (1.23%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.61%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.61%) CMake
7 1 (0.61%) Cucumber
7 1 (0.61%) GoogleTest
7 1 (0.61%) Maven
7 1 (0.61%) Oracle Forms
7 1 (0.61%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 50 (30.67%) Social Skills
2 22 (13.50%) Finance
2 22 (13.50%) Public Sector
3 8 (4.91%) Aerospace
3 8 (4.91%) Banking
4 7 (4.29%) Military
5 6 (3.68%) Analytical Skills
6 4 (2.45%) Local Government
7 3 (1.84%) Automotive
7 3 (1.84%) Organisational Skills
8 2 (1.23%) Publishing
8 2 (1.23%) Telecoms
9 1 (0.61%) Billing
9 1 (0.61%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.61%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.61%) Legal
9 1 (0.61%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.61%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (7.98%) Kafka
2 12 (7.36%) Keycloak
3 6 (3.68%) React
4 5 (3.07%) Android SDK
4 5 (3.07%) Node.js
5 4 (2.45%) REST
6 3 (1.84%) JDBC
6 3 (1.84%) JSON
7 2 (1.23%) Apache NiFi
7 2 (1.23%) Elastic Stack
7 2 (1.23%) HTML
7 2 (1.23%) HTML5
7 2 (1.23%) Next.js
7 2 (1.23%) OAuth
7 2 (1.23%) OAuth2
7 2 (1.23%) SAML
7 2 (1.23%) SOAP
8 1 (0.61%) .NET Core
8 1 (0.61%) Flutter
8 1 (0.61%) JSON Schema
Miscellaneous
1 16 (9.82%) Hybrid Cloud
2 8 (4.91%) Self-Motivation
3 5 (3.07%) Product Ownership
4 4 (2.45%) Cloud Native
4 4 (2.45%) Data Protection Act
5 3 (1.84%) Management Information System
5 3 (1.84%) Onboarding
5 3 (1.84%) PKI
5 3 (1.84%) Public Cloud
6 2 (1.23%) Analytical Mindset
6 2 (1.23%) Legacy Systems
6 2 (1.23%) Mobile App
6 2 (1.23%) PMI
6 2 (1.23%) Raspberry Pi
7 1 (0.61%) Linux Command Line
7 1 (0.61%) Reference Data
7 1 (0.61%) Replication
7 1 (0.61%) Robotics
7 1 (0.61%) SCADA
7 1 (0.61%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 8 (4.91%) Android
2 6 (3.68%) Windows
3 5 (3.07%) Linux
4 3 (1.84%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.61%) Apple iOS
5 1 (0.61%) Robot Operating System
5 1 (0.61%) Unix
5 1 (0.61%) Windows 10
5 1 (0.61%) Windows Server 2016
5 1 (0.61%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 66 (40.49%) DevOps
2 58 (35.58%) Agile
3 38 (23.31%) Scrum
4 34 (20.86%) Validation
5 28 (17.18%) Collaborative Working
5 28 (17.18%) Requirements Analysis
5 28 (17.18%) Software Delivery
6 27 (16.56%) Web Application Development
7 22 (13.50%) CI/CD
8 20 (12.27%) ETL
9 18 (11.04%) Problem-Solving
10 15 (9.20%) Data Engineering
10 15 (9.20%) Data Pipeline
11 14 (8.59%) AI
12 13 (7.98%) Containerisation
12 13 (7.98%) Continuous Improvement
12 13 (7.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 12 (7.36%) Analytics
13 12 (7.36%) Batch Processing
13 12 (7.36%) DataOps
Programming Languages
1 47 (28.83%) SQL
2 36 (22.09%) JavaScript
3 35 (21.47%) Python
4 30 (18.40%) PL/SQL
5 14 (8.59%) Java
6 13 (7.98%) Go
7 7 (4.29%) TypeScript
8 5 (3.07%) Kotlin
8 5 (3.07%) PowerShell
9 4 (2.45%) Bash
10 3 (1.84%) Ada
11 2 (1.23%) C#
11 2 (1.23%) C++
12 1 (0.61%) Bicep
12 1 (0.61%) Cypher
12 1 (0.61%) R
12 1 (0.61%) Scala
Qualifications
1 97 (59.51%) Security Cleared
2 85 (52.15%) SC Cleared
3 19 (11.66%) Azure Certification
4 8 (4.91%) DV Cleared
5 7 (4.29%) Degree
6 6 (3.68%) Network+ Certification
7 3 (1.84%) BPSS Clearance
8 2 (1.23%) Computer Science Degree
8 2 (1.23%) ISEB
8 2 (1.23%) ITIL Certification
8 2 (1.23%) PMI Certification
9 1 (0.61%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 1 (0.61%) CEH
9 1 (0.61%) Cisco Certification
9 1 (0.61%) CISM
9 1 (0.61%) CISSP
9 1 (0.61%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (5.52%) QA
2 4 (2.45%) Data Quality
2 4 (2.45%) PMO
3 3 (1.84%) SLA
4 2 (1.23%) Accessibility
4 2 (1.23%) COBIT
4 2 (1.23%) GDPR
5 1 (0.61%) ISO 22301
5 1 (0.61%) NIST
5 1 (0.61%) PERC
5 1 (0.61%) Software Quality Assurance
5 1 (0.61%) WCAG
System Software
1 17 (10.43%) Docker
2 4 (2.45%) Active Directory
3 2 (1.23%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 19 (11.66%) Kubernetes
2 8 (4.91%) Terraform
3 6 (3.68%) Ansible
4 3 (1.84%) Grafana
4 3 (1.84%) Prometheus
5 2 (1.23%) Istio
5 2 (1.23%) SCCM
5 2 (1.23%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.61%) Argo
6 1 (0.61%) Kibana
6 1 (0.61%) logstash
6 1 (0.61%) Nagios
6 1 (0.61%) Rancher
Vendors
1 36 (22.09%) Oracle
2 19 (11.66%) Google
3 9 (5.52%) Microsoft
4 3 (1.84%) SAP
4 3 (1.84%) ServiceNow
5 2 (1.23%) CheckPoint
5 2 (1.23%) F5
5 2 (1.23%) Palo Alto
6 1 (0.61%) Adobe
6 1 (0.61%) BMC
6 1 (0.61%) Databricks
6 1 (0.61%) HP
6 1 (0.61%) Ivanti
6 1 (0.61%) NetApp
6 1 (0.61%) Progress
6 1 (0.61%) PTC
6 1 (0.61%) Red Hat
6 1 (0.61%) Remedy
6 1 (0.61%) Salesforce
6 1 (0.61%) Workday