Backend Developer Contract Job Trends

Backend Developer
UK

The median Backend Developer daily rate in the UK is £518, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 22 April 2026.

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

6 months to
22 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 475 453 473
Rank change year-on-year -22 +20 +24
Contract jobs requiring a Backend Developer 142 73 115
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.31% 0.25% 0.26%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.33% 0.27% 0.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 97 58 73
10th Percentile £400 £400 £325
25th Percentile £420 £409 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £508 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.92% +1.55% -16.67%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £550
90th Percentile £700 £741 £635
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £425
% change year-on-year -3.06% +15.29% -17.07%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 6
10th Percentile - - £55.63
25th Percentile - - £56.25
Median hourly rate - - £58.75
75th Percentile - - £70.00
90th Percentile - - £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £55.00

All Contract IT Job Roles
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. 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 UK with a recognized job title 42,785 27,291 40,291
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.29% 92.62% 92.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,469 17,875 26,294
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -1.90% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £748
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +2.63% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,747 1,005 2,616
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.41 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.87 £16.25
Median hourly rate £42.25 £30.20 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +39.90% -13.71% -22.22%
75th Percentile £65.74 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.10 £75.40 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.85 £29.23 £36.50
% change year-on-year +50.00% -19.92% -15.12%

Backend Developer
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Backend Developer job vacancy trend in the UK

Backend Developer
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Backend Developer job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Backend Developer job vacancies in the UK

Backend Developer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Backend Developer over the 6 months to 22 April 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Backend Developer in the UK

Backend Developer
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Backend Developer job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Backend Developer job vacancies in the UK

Backend Developer
Top 14 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Backend Developer within the UK over the 6 months to 22 April 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
England -57 123 £514 +2.75% 37
London -16 77 £521 +15.78% 18
UK excluding London -60 48 £475 -3.06% 20
Work from Home -19 41 £525 +4.84% 21
North of England -50 23 £475 -5.28% 4
North West -29 18 £475 -5.28% 3
South West -27 13 £450 -18.18% 4
Scotland - 5 £425 - 1
Yorkshire - 5 £520 - 1
Midlands - 5 £700 - 3
South East -53 4 £538 +31.42% 8
West Midlands - 4 £700 - 2
East of England -33 2 £510 +4.08%
East Midlands - 1 - - 1

Backend Developer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 22 April 2026, Backend 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 featuring Backend Developer in the job title.

1 74 (52.11%) Java
2 65 (45.77%) Microservices
3 53 (37.32%) CI/CD
4 49 (34.51%) Python
5 45 (31.69%) DevOps
6 40 (28.17%) Agile
7 36 (25.35%) AWS
8 35 (24.65%) Spring
9 32 (22.54%) Docker
10 31 (21.83%) Kubernetes
10 31 (21.83%) Spring Boot
11 29 (20.42%) AI
12 28 (19.72%) SQL
13 27 (19.01%) Containerisation
13 27 (19.01%) Event-Driven
13 27 (19.01%) Security Cleared
14 26 (18.31%) Problem-Solving
15 25 (17.61%) RESTful
16 24 (16.90%) Continuous Improvement
16 24 (16.90%) TypeScript
17 23 (16.20%) Azure
17 23 (16.20%) SC Cleared
18 22 (15.49%) Kotlin
18 22 (15.49%) Serverless
19 21 (14.79%) PostgreSQL
20 20 (14.08%) Kafka
20 20 (14.08%) REST
21 19 (13.38%) API Design
21 19 (13.38%) Code Quality
22 18 (12.68%) Clean Code

Backend Developer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 (3.52%) Apache Spark
2 3 (2.11%) Ethereum
2 3 (2.11%) Hyperledger
3 2 (1.41%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 1 (0.70%) Apache
4 1 (0.70%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.70%) Confluence
Business Applications
1 1 (0.70%) R3 Corda
Cloud Services
1 36 (25.35%) AWS
2 23 (16.20%) Azure
3 22 (15.49%) Serverless
4 18 (12.68%) GCP
5 17 (11.97%) GitHub
6 13 (9.15%) Azure DevOps
7 12 (8.45%) AWS Lambda
8 10 (7.04%) Azure AKS
8 10 (7.04%) GitHub Actions
9 9 (6.34%) Amazon ECS
9 9 (6.34%) Azure Key Vault
10 7 (4.93%) Amazon S3
10 7 (4.93%) Entra ID
11 6 (4.23%) Amazon EKS
11 6 (4.23%) Amazon OpenSearch
11 6 (4.23%) Datadog
12 5 (3.52%) Azure Functions
13 4 (2.82%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 4 (2.82%) Azure API Management
13 4 (2.82%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 3 (2.11%) HTTP
2 1 (0.70%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (14.79%) PostgreSQL
2 14 (9.86%) NoSQL
3 7 (4.93%) Relational Database
4 6 (4.23%) MongoDB
5 5 (3.52%) Elasticsearch
5 5 (3.52%) Flink
5 5 (3.52%) Redis
6 3 (2.11%) Azure SQL Database
7 2 (1.41%) Big Data
7 2 (1.41%) Data Lake
7 2 (1.41%) DynamoDB
7 2 (1.41%) Power BI
7 2 (1.41%) SQL Server
8 1 (0.70%) Apache Hudi
8 1 (0.70%) Apache Iceberg
8 1 (0.70%) Bigtable
8 1 (0.70%) Delta Lake
8 1 (0.70%) Hazelcast
8 1 (0.70%) MySQL
8 1 (0.70%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 13 (9.15%) Git
2 9 (6.34%) JUnit
3 7 (4.93%) JIRA
4 6 (4.23%) Jenkins
5 3 (2.11%) Gradle
5 3 (2.11%) IntelliJ
5 3 (2.11%) Liquibase
5 3 (2.11%) Mockito
6 2 (1.41%) GitLab
6 2 (1.41%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.70%) Artifactory
7 1 (0.70%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.70%) Cucumber
7 1 (0.70%) fastlane
7 1 (0.70%) Gatling
7 1 (0.70%) JMeter
7 1 (0.70%) Snyk
7 1 (0.70%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (0.70%) Visual Studio Code
7 1 (0.70%) XCTest
General
1 19 (13.38%) Finance
2 11 (7.75%) Public Sector
3 10 (7.04%) Analytical Skills
3 10 (7.04%) Banking
4 9 (6.34%) Social Skills
5 5 (3.52%) Pharmaceutical
6 3 (2.11%) Police
7 2 (1.41%) Automotive
7 2 (1.41%) Documentation Skills
7 2 (1.41%) Investment Banking
7 2 (1.41%) Legal
8 1 (0.70%) Front Office
8 1 (0.70%) Games
8 1 (0.70%) Health Technology
8 1 (0.70%) Law
8 1 (0.70%) Marketing
8 1 (0.70%) Military
8 1 (0.70%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (24.65%) Spring
2 31 (21.83%) Spring Boot
3 25 (17.61%) RESTful
4 20 (14.08%) Kafka
4 20 (14.08%) REST
5 18 (12.68%) React
6 17 (11.97%) Node.js
7 16 (11.27%) FastAPI
8 14 (9.86%) AngularJS
9 10 (7.04%) .NET
9 10 (7.04%) GraphQL
10 8 (5.63%) HTML
10 8 (5.63%) OAuth
10 8 (5.63%) OAuth2
10 8 (5.63%) WireMock
11 7 (4.93%) CSS
11 7 (4.93%) gRPC
11 7 (4.93%) OSGi
12 6 (4.23%) .NET Core
12 6 (4.23%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 32 (22.54%) Cloud Native
2 13 (9.15%) Mobile App
3 9 (6.34%) Distributed Systems
4 8 (5.63%) Analytical Mindset
5 7 (4.93%) Product Ownership
6 5 (3.52%) Data Protection Act
6 5 (3.52%) Enterprise Software
7 4 (2.82%) Algorithms
8 3 (2.11%) AI Agents
8 3 (2.11%) Life Science
9 2 (1.41%) Data Structures
9 2 (1.41%) Greenfield Project
9 2 (1.41%) Virtual Team
10 1 (0.70%) Blockchain
10 1 (0.70%) Distributed Architecture
10 1 (0.70%) Legacy Code
10 1 (0.70%) Legacy Systems
10 1 (0.70%) Renewable Energy
10 1 (0.70%) Security Posture
10 1 (0.70%) Sports Betting
Operating Systems
1 1 (0.70%) Android
1 1 (0.70%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 65 (45.77%) Microservices
2 53 (37.32%) CI/CD
3 45 (31.69%) DevOps
4 40 (28.17%) Agile
5 29 (20.42%) AI
6 27 (19.01%) Containerisation
6 27 (19.01%) Event-Driven
7 26 (18.31%) Problem-Solving
8 24 (16.90%) Continuous Improvement
9 19 (13.38%) API Design
9 19 (13.38%) Code Quality
10 18 (12.68%) Clean Code
10 18 (12.68%) Test Automation
11 15 (10.56%) Event-Driven Architecture
11 15 (10.56%) Mentoring
11 15 (10.56%) TDD
12 14 (9.86%) Data Pipeline
12 14 (9.86%) LLM
12 14 (9.86%) Software Engineering
13 13 (9.15%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 74 (52.11%) Java
2 49 (34.51%) Python
3 28 (19.72%) SQL
4 24 (16.90%) TypeScript
5 22 (15.49%) Kotlin
6 18 (12.68%) JavaScript
7 17 (11.97%) C#
8 10 (7.04%) Go
9 4 (2.82%) Bicep
10 2 (1.41%) Elixir
10 2 (1.41%) Gremlin
10 2 (1.41%) Ruby
10 2 (1.41%) SPARQL
11 1 (0.70%) Objective-C
11 1 (0.70%) PHP
11 1 (0.70%) PL/SQL
11 1 (0.70%) Scala
11 1 (0.70%) Swift
Qualifications
1 27 (19.01%) Security Cleared
2 23 (16.20%) SC Cleared
3 5 (3.52%) DV Cleared
4 2 (1.41%) BPSS Clearance
5 1 (0.70%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (0.70%) Degree
5 1 (0.70%) OCP
5 1 (0.70%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (3.52%) QA
2 3 (2.11%) Accessibility
3 2 (1.41%) WCAG
System Software
1 32 (22.54%) Docker
2 2 (1.41%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 31 (21.83%) Kubernetes
2 10 (7.04%) Prometheus
3 8 (5.63%) Terraform
4 7 (4.93%) Grafana
5 1 (0.70%) Argo
Vendors
1 14 (9.86%) Microsoft
2 11 (7.75%) Google
3 10 (7.04%) Databricks
4 3 (2.11%) ForgeRock
4 3 (2.11%) Okta
4 3 (2.11%) OpenAI
5 2 (1.41%) Adobe
5 2 (1.41%) Checkmarx
6 1 (0.70%) Oracle