Developer Contracts

Developer
UK

The median Developer daily rate in the UK is £521, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 3 April 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
3 Apr 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 8 5 4
Rank change year-on-year -3 -1 0
Contract jobs requiring a Developer 4,057 6,148 10,776
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 13.95% 13.93% 17.24%
As % of the Job Titles category 15.04% 15.01% 18.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,843 4,447 8,078
10th Percentile £363 £325 £400
25th Percentile £413 £413 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £521 £513 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.66% -6.82% -
75th Percentile £638 £650 £700
90th Percentile £788 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £450 £500
% change year-on-year +2.22% -10.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 30 69 116
10th Percentile £25.25 £35.00 £35.00
25th Percentile £35.14 £46.25 £50.95
Median hourly rate £56.13 £60.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year -6.46% -4.00% +19.05%
75th Percentile £73.44 £82.50 £71.82
90th Percentile £87.06 £90.00 £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £60.70 £60.00
% change year-on-year +7.08% +1.17% +11.63%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
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 26,982 40,962 59,132
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.76% 92.78% 94.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,736 26,805 41,307
10th Percentile £300 £275 £310
25th Percentile £406 £408 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £544
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -3.40% +3.52%
75th Percentile £628 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £740 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £489 £500
% change year-on-year -2.86% -2.20% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 943 2,528 1,673
10th Percentile £15.00 £12.86 £14.30
25th Percentile £20.47 £16.25 £19.06
Median hourly rate £32.50 £33.00 £44.00
Median % change year-on-year -1.52% -25.00% +95.17%
75th Percentile £64.50 £60.00 £65.75
90th Percentile £76.25 £71.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.64 £33.00 £42.00
% change year-on-year -4.12% -21.43% +115.83%

Developer
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for Developer in the UK

Developer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Developer.

Daily rate trend for Developer in the UK

Developer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Developer over the 6 months to 3 April 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Developer in the UK

Developer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Developer.

Hourly rate trend for Developer in the UK

Developer
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Developer over the 6 months to 3 April 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Developer in the UK

Developer
Top 17 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Developer within the UK over the 6 months to 3 April 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
England -5 3,201 £525 - 2,518
London -2 2,092 £575 - 1,357
Work from Home -2 1,647 £521 +4.20% 1,615
UK excluding London -4 1,347 £460 +2.22% 1,443
North of England -7 363 £475 +4.97% 421
Scotland +1 332 £450 -4.15% 128
South East -8 236 £454 -4.42% 430
North West -4 224 £500 +5.26% 258
Midlands -8 151 £458 +7.65% 188
South West -8 125 £450 - 131
West Midlands -11 104 £469 +10.35% 108
Yorkshire -12 98 £460 -0.54% 121
East of England +3 82 £488 +12.83% 115
East Midlands -3 47 £425 +9.68% 77
North East -5 46 £460 +2.22% 45
Northern Ireland +8 39 £410 -20.00% 21
Wales -13 30 £475 +8.57% 31

Developer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 3 April 2025, 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 featuring Developer in the job title.

1 1,120 (27.61%) Agile
2 1,039 (25.61%) SQL
3 1,009 (24.87%) Java
4 974 (24.01%) Finance
5 951 (23.44%) Python
6 907 (22.36%) AWS
7 843 (20.78%) JavaScript
8 811 (19.99%) Social Skills
9 755 (18.61%) Azure
10 714 (17.60%) CI/CD
11 683 (16.84%) DevOps
12 675 (16.64%) React
13 671 (16.54%) Problem-Solving
14 630 (15.53%) C#
15 587 (14.47%) Security Cleared
16 586 (14.44%) .NET
17 557 (13.73%) Banking
18 534 (13.16%) Full-Stack Development
19 516 (12.72%) TypeScript
20 503 (12.40%) SC Cleared
21 483 (11.91%) HTML
22 465 (11.46%) Microservices
23 456 (11.24%) CSS
24 444 (10.94%) Kubernetes
25 440 (10.85%) Software Engineering
26 437 (10.77%) Docker
27 429 (10.57%) Git
28 383 (9.44%) Public Sector
29 379 (9.34%) Microsoft
30 376 (9.27%) Analytical Skills

Developer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities 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
1 124 (3.06%) SharePoint
2 96 (2.37%) Confluence
3 71 (1.75%) Apache
4 52 (1.28%) CMS
5 51 (1.26%) Apache Spark
6 48 (1.18%) Apache Airflow
7 22 (0.54%) SAS
8 20 (0.49%) Anypoint
9 19 (0.47%) Headless CMS
10 18 (0.44%) IIS
11 16 (0.39%) Camunda
12 15 (0.37%) Moodle
13 13 (0.32%) Oracle Coherence
13 13 (0.32%) Tomcat
13 13 (0.32%) Umbraco
14 12 (0.30%) Mule
15 11 (0.27%) Jupyter
15 11 (0.27%) nginx
15 11 (0.27%) WebLogic
15 11 (0.27%) WordPress
Applications
1 83 (2.05%) Microsoft Excel
2 28 (0.69%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (0.25%) Chatbot
4 7 (0.17%) Adobe XD
5 6 (0.15%) Sketch
6 5 (0.12%) Camtasia
6 5 (0.12%) MS Visio
6 5 (0.12%) Trello
7 4 (0.099%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 4 (0.099%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.049%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 2 (0.049%) InfoPath
9 1 (0.025%) FileZilla
9 1 (0.025%) Photoshop
9 1 (0.025%) Siemens NX
9 1 (0.025%) SOLIDWORKS
9 1 (0.025%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 42 (1.04%) Dynamics CRM
2 28 (0.69%) SAP S/4HANA
3 20 (0.49%) Endur
4 13 (0.32%) Oracle EBS
4 13 (0.32%) Oracle Payables
4 13 (0.32%) SAP HR
5 12 (0.30%) Oracle General Ledger
5 12 (0.30%) Oracle Receivables
6 11 (0.27%) Oracle Cash Management
7 9 (0.22%) Oracle Assets
8 7 (0.17%) SAP CO
8 7 (0.17%) SAP FI
8 7 (0.17%) SAP FI/CO
8 7 (0.17%) SAP Payroll
9 6 (0.15%) BASE24
10 5 (0.12%) Oracle EBS R12
11 4 (0.099%) Cognos Business Intelligence
11 4 (0.099%) Oracle Applications
11 4 (0.099%) Oracle Financials
11 4 (0.099%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 907 (22.36%) AWS
2 755 (18.61%) Azure
3 332 (8.18%) Power Platform
4 208 (5.13%) GCP
5 207 (5.10%) Serverless
6 182 (4.49%) PowerApps
7 181 (4.46%) Power Automate
8 174 (4.29%) Azure DevOps
9 157 (3.87%) GitHub
10 121 (2.98%) Dynamics 365
11 106 (2.61%) Amazon S3
11 106 (2.61%) AWS Lambda
12 79 (1.95%) Microsoft 365
13 71 (1.75%) Azure Functions
14 68 (1.68%) Azure Logic Apps
15 60 (1.48%) SaaS
16 57 (1.40%) Amazon SQS
17 52 (1.28%) GitHub Actions
18 51 (1.26%) dbt
19 46 (1.13%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 53 (1.31%) HTTP
2 14 (0.35%) Firewall
2 14 (0.35%) Internet
3 13 (0.32%) FIX Connectivity
4 12 (0.30%) SSL
5 11 (0.27%) Wireless
6 9 (0.22%) DNS
6 9 (0.22%) Intranet
6 9 (0.22%) SMTP
7 7 (0.17%) POP3
8 6 (0.15%) TCP/IP
9 5 (0.12%) ATM
10 4 (0.099%) 5G
10 4 (0.099%) HTTPS
10 4 (0.099%) Multicast
10 4 (0.099%) RFID
10 4 (0.099%) SMS
10 4 (0.099%) VPN
11 3 (0.074%) Cisco ISE
11 3 (0.074%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 344 (8.48%) PostgreSQL
2 255 (6.29%) SQL Server
3 243 (5.99%) Relational Database
4 227 (5.60%) MongoDB
5 185 (4.56%) Power BI
6 150 (3.70%) NoSQL
7 144 (3.55%) MySQL
8 105 (2.59%) Oracle Database
9 81 (2.00%) Redis
10 61 (1.50%) DynamoDB
11 60 (1.48%) Amazon Athena
12 56 (1.38%) Data Warehouse
12 56 (1.38%) DB2
13 55 (1.36%) Big Data
14 49 (1.21%) Amazon RDS
15 48 (1.18%) Apache Cassandra
15 48 (1.18%) Tableau
16 45 (1.11%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 44 (1.08%) Hadoop
18 41 (1.01%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 429 (10.57%) Git
2 235 (5.79%) Jenkins
3 222 (5.47%) JIRA
4 144 (3.55%) JUnit
5 82 (2.02%) GitLab
6 66 (1.63%) Maven
7 51 (1.26%) Cucumber
8 48 (1.18%) Gradle
9 47 (1.16%) Bitbucket
10 43 (1.06%) Subversion
11 42 (1.04%) webpack
12 41 (1.01%) Mockito
13 40 (0.99%) Visual Studio
14 39 (0.96%) Selenium
15 37 (0.91%) Cypress.io
16 34 (0.84%) TeamCity
17 30 (0.74%) Jasmine
18 28 (0.69%) SonarQube
19 25 (0.62%) Postman
20 20 (0.49%) Ant
General
1 974 (24.01%) Finance
2 811 (19.99%) Social Skills
3 557 (13.73%) Banking
4 383 (9.44%) Public Sector
5 376 (9.27%) Analytical Skills
6 304 (7.49%) Front Office
7 290 (7.15%) Investment Banking
8 88 (2.17%) Marketing
9 83 (2.05%) Telecoms
10 58 (1.43%) Retail
11 56 (1.38%) Manufacturing
12 48 (1.18%) Financial Institution
13 46 (1.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 36 (0.89%) Back Office
15 32 (0.79%) Pharmaceutical
16 30 (0.74%) Electronics
17 27 (0.67%) Organisational Skills
18 26 (0.64%) Documentation Skills
19 25 (0.62%) Military
20 24 (0.59%) Law
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 675 (16.64%) React
2 586 (14.44%) .NET
3 483 (11.91%) HTML
4 456 (11.24%) CSS
5 368 (9.07%) AngularJS
6 353 (8.70%) RESTful
7 352 (8.68%) Spring
8 332 (8.18%) Node.js
9 281 (6.93%) REST
10 269 (6.63%) Kafka
10 269 (6.63%) Spring Boot
11 191 (4.71%) Web Services
12 154 (3.80%) SOAP
13 140 (3.45%) XML
14 132 (3.25%) .NET Framework
14 132 (3.25%) HTML5
15 131 (3.23%) JSON
16 129 (3.18%) Redux
17 125 (3.08%) Vue
18 118 (2.91%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 149 (3.67%) Derivative
2 133 (3.28%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 126 (3.11%) Equities
3 126 (3.11%) Fixed Income
4 110 (2.71%) Algorithms
5 99 (2.44%) Data Structures
6 89 (2.19%) Product Ownership
7 87 (2.14%) Mobile App
8 82 (2.02%) Greenfield Project
9 77 (1.90%) Distributed Systems
10 76 (1.87%) Onboarding
11 72 (1.77%) Hedge funds
12 57 (1.40%) Enterprise Software
13 50 (1.23%) Market Risk
14 47 (1.16%) Data Protection Act
15 45 (1.11%) Legacy Systems
16 39 (0.96%) Cloud Native
16 39 (0.96%) CMDB
16 39 (0.96%) Equity Derivative
17 37 (0.91%) Legacy Applications
Operating Systems
1 296 (7.30%) Linux
2 126 (3.11%) Windows
3 97 (2.39%) Unix
4 88 (2.17%) Android
5 56 (1.38%) Apple iOS
6 28 (0.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 7 (0.17%) Windows Server
8 5 (0.12%) Mac OS X
8 5 (0.12%) Ubuntu
9 4 (0.099%) Mac OS
10 3 (0.074%) Solaris
11 2 (0.049%) CentOS
11 2 (0.049%) Debian
11 2 (0.049%) Embedded Linux
11 2 (0.049%) OpenVMS
11 2 (0.049%) zOS
12 1 (0.025%) AIX
12 1 (0.025%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,120 (27.61%) Agile
2 714 (17.60%) CI/CD
3 683 (16.84%) DevOps
4 671 (16.54%) Problem-Solving
5 534 (13.16%) Full-Stack Development
6 465 (11.46%) Microservices
7 440 (10.85%) Software Engineering
8 354 (8.73%) TDD
9 315 (7.76%) User Experience
10 303 (7.47%) Front End Development
11 261 (6.43%) Test Automation
12 258 (6.36%) SDLC
13 254 (6.26%) Business Intelligence
14 244 (6.01%) Unit Testing
15 237 (5.84%) Scrum
16 235 (5.79%) Analytics
17 226 (5.57%) Containerisation
18 204 (5.03%) Code Quality
19 202 (4.98%) Computer Science
20 197 (4.86%) Design Patterns
Programming Languages
1 1,039 (25.61%) SQL
2 1,009 (24.87%) Java
3 951 (23.44%) Python
4 843 (20.78%) JavaScript
5 630 (15.53%) C#
6 516 (12.72%) TypeScript
7 184 (4.54%) PL/SQL
8 168 (4.14%) C++
9 104 (2.56%) Kotlin
10 102 (2.51%) PHP
11 80 (1.97%) Scala
12 69 (1.70%) PowerShell
13 67 (1.65%) ABAP
13 67 (1.65%) Shell Script
14 65 (1.60%) Go
15 59 (1.45%) Apex Code
16 58 (1.43%) VBA
17 49 (1.21%) Ruby
18 45 (1.11%) Bash
19 43 (1.06%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 587 (14.47%) Security Cleared
2 503 (12.40%) SC Cleared
3 256 (6.31%) Degree
4 107 (2.64%) Computer Science Degree
5 54 (1.33%) BPSS Clearance
6 53 (1.31%) DV Cleared
7 35 (0.86%) AWS Certification
8 31 (0.76%) Numerate Degree
9 28 (0.69%) Master's Degree
10 25 (0.62%) AWS Certified Developer
11 15 (0.37%) Azure Certification
12 13 (0.32%) PhD
13 11 (0.27%) Microsoft Certification
14 6 (0.15%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 5 (0.12%) SAP Certification
16 4 (0.099%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
16 4 (0.099%) Sun Certification
17 3 (0.074%) CCNP
17 3 (0.074%) Cisco Certification
17 3 (0.074%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 125 (3.08%) QA
2 107 (2.64%) Accessibility
3 47 (1.16%) Data Quality
4 40 (0.99%) WCAG
5 26 (0.64%) Disclosure Scotland
6 13 (0.32%) HL7
7 12 (0.30%) GDPR
7 12 (0.30%) GRC
8 6 (0.15%) EMIR
8 6 (0.15%) MiFID
9 5 (0.12%) PCI DSS
10 4 (0.099%) Cyber Essentials
10 4 (0.099%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 4 (0.099%) PERC
10 4 (0.099%) PMO
10 4 (0.099%) SEPA
11 3 (0.074%) Def Stans
11 3 (0.074%) IEC 61508
11 3 (0.074%) SLA
12 2 (0.049%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 437 (10.77%) Docker
2 56 (1.38%) Active Directory
3 8 (0.20%) GridGain
4 7 (0.17%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (0.15%) Firmware
6 4 (0.099%) Apache ZooKeeper
6 4 (0.099%) HDFS
6 4 (0.099%) OpenAM
6 4 (0.099%) OpenDJ
6 4 (0.099%) OpenIDM
7 3 (0.074%) Postfix
7 3 (0.074%) VMware Infrastructure
8 1 (0.025%) Embedded Firmware
8 1 (0.025%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
8 1 (0.025%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 444 (10.94%) Kubernetes
2 190 (4.68%) Terraform
3 94 (2.32%) Ansible
4 26 (0.64%) Prometheus
5 25 (0.62%) Grafana
6 23 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
7 16 (0.39%) Kibana
8 12 (0.30%) CloudHub
9 8 (0.20%) Istio
9 8 (0.20%) MIIS
10 7 (0.17%) Argo
11 6 (0.15%) logstash
12 5 (0.12%) Puppet
13 4 (0.099%) Control-M
13 4 (0.099%) Progress Chef
14 2 (0.049%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 2 (0.049%) Docker Swarm
14 2 (0.049%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
14 2 (0.049%) Podman
14 2 (0.049%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 379 (9.34%) Microsoft
2 356 (8.77%) Oracle
3 180 (4.44%) ServiceNow
4 154 (3.80%) SAP
5 122 (3.01%) Salesforce
6 93 (2.29%) Google
7 55 (1.36%) Sybase
8 49 (1.21%) Virgin Media
9 44 (1.08%) Splunk
10 37 (0.91%) IBM
11 36 (0.89%) MuleSoft
12 35 (0.86%) Databricks
13 28 (0.69%) OutSystems
14 24 (0.59%) OpenAI
15 22 (0.54%) Adobe
16 20 (0.49%) TIBCO
17 18 (0.44%) Atlassian
18 17 (0.42%) OpenLink
19 16 (0.39%) Solace
20 13 (0.32%) Blue Prism