Developer Contract Job Trends

Developer
UK

The median Developer daily rate in the UK is £500, according to job vacancies posted in the 3 months leading up to 9 September 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

3 months to
9 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 14 6 6
Rank change year-on-year -8 0 -2
Contract jobs requiring a Developer 1,859 2,678 3,350
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 10.96% 14.28% 13.97%
As % of the Job Titles category 12.11% 15.39% 14.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,294 1,817 2,428
10th Percentile £325 £327 £363
25th Percentile £405 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £675
90th Percentile £750 £785 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £460 £475
% change year-on-year +0.54% -3.16% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 32 20 41
10th Percentile £43.75 £30.00 £26.78
25th Percentile £52.50 £55.00 £50.00
Median hourly rate £55.00 £65.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.38% +8.33% -4.00%
75th Percentile £57.81 £65.94 £70.00
90th Percentile £71.50 £76.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £65.00 £59.03
% change year-on-year -15.38% +10.11% -5.55%

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 15,353 17,401 22,447
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.51% 92.80% 93.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,721 10,407 15,175
10th Percentile £275 £300 £300
25th Percentile £400 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £621 £638 £650
90th Percentile £723 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 845 637 778
10th Percentile £13.75 £15.10 £15.11
25th Percentile £17.30 £19.50 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £34.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -26.03% -20.00% +70.00%
75th Percentile £55.00 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.00 £71.25 £77.65
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £33.00 £41.10
% change year-on-year -23.79% -19.70% +88.94%

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
Daily Rate Trend

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

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

Developer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Developer over the 3 months to 9 September 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Developer in the UK

Developer
Hourly Rate Trend

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

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

Developer
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Developer over the 3 months to 9 September 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Developer in the UK

Developer
Top 17 Contract Job 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 3 months to 9 September 2025. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 3 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 3 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England -9 1,546 £501 -4.67% 1,843
London -8 896 £540 -1.82% 579
UK excluding London -9 708 £463 +0.54% 1,608
Work from Home -6 646 £500 +1.01% 1,104
North of England -8 248 £445 -1.11% 447
Yorkshire -7 133 £488 +2.63% 146
South East -2 121 £500 -4.76% 475
Scotland -2 108 £464 +1.92% 78
North West -7 108 £425 -1.73% 241
Midlands -14 97 £463 -2.63% 260
South West -10 56 £450 -14.29% 166
East of England -11 52 £525 +45.83% 136
West Midlands -26 52 £500 - 146
East Midlands +5 45 £416 -0.60% 110
Wales -2 19 £475 +11.76% 50
North East -6 10 £444 +4.41% 67
Northern Ireland -9 9 £438 -2.78% 12

Developer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 9 September 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 1,359 (33.70%) Agile
2 1,145 (28.39%) Java
3 1,065 (26.41%) SQL
4 996 (24.70%) Finance
5 953 (23.63%) AWS
6 914 (22.66%) Python
7 873 (21.65%) Social Skills
8 845 (20.95%) CI/CD
9 838 (20.78%) JavaScript
10 832 (20.63%) Azure
11 786 (19.49%) DevOps
12 733 (18.18%) Problem-Solving
13 686 (17.01%) React
14 638 (15.82%) C#
15 601 (14.90%) Microservices
16 562 (13.94%) Full-Stack Development
17 552 (13.69%) TypeScript
18 549 (13.61%) Security Cleared
19 538 (13.34%) Banking
20 534 (13.24%) Git
21 526 (13.04%) .NET
22 484 (12.00%) Software Engineering
23 469 (11.63%) Docker
24 452 (11.21%) REST
25 441 (10.93%) Kubernetes
26 439 (10.89%) SC Cleared
27 429 (10.64%) Microsoft
28 418 (10.36%) TDD
29 411 (10.19%) Spring
30 407 (10.09%) RESTful

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 90 (2.23%) SharePoint
2 77 (1.91%) Confluence
3 69 (1.71%) CMS
4 54 (1.34%) Apache Spark
5 49 (1.21%) Apache Airflow
6 46 (1.14%) Apache
7 30 (0.74%) Oracle Workflow
8 23 (0.57%) Tomcat
9 21 (0.52%) Headless CMS
10 20 (0.50%) CICS
11 17 (0.42%) Moodle
12 16 (0.40%) WordPress
13 15 (0.37%) nginx
14 14 (0.35%) Anypoint
14 14 (0.35%) JBoss
15 12 (0.30%) IIS
16 11 (0.27%) Camunda
16 11 (0.27%) Documentum
16 11 (0.27%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 10 (0.25%) SAS
Applications
1 106 (2.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.32%) Chatbot
3 10 (0.25%) Microsoft Office
4 7 (0.17%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
5 6 (0.15%) Adobe Illustrator
5 6 (0.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.15%) Photoshop
6 4 (0.099%) Microsoft Project
7 3 (0.074%) 3ds Max
7 3 (0.074%) Siemens NX
8 2 (0.050%) InfoPath
8 2 (0.050%) Simulink
8 2 (0.050%) Sketch
9 1 (0.025%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.025%) Adobe XD
9 1 (0.025%) Oracle Smart View
9 1 (0.025%) Stateflow
9 1 (0.025%) Trello
Business Applications
1 53 (1.31%) Dynamics CRM
2 26 (0.64%) Oracle EBS
3 20 (0.50%) Oracle EBS R12
4 18 (0.45%) Oracle BPM
4 18 (0.45%) VisionPLUS
5 15 (0.37%) Aladdin
5 15 (0.37%) Oracle Payables
6 13 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
7 12 (0.30%) Endur
7 12 (0.30%) Oracle Assets
7 12 (0.30%) Oracle General Ledger
8 10 (0.25%) SAP HR
9 9 (0.22%) Magento
9 9 (0.22%) Oracle Financials
10 8 (0.20%) OpenText MBPM
11 7 (0.17%) FLEXCUBE
11 7 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
12 6 (0.15%) Shopify
13 5 (0.12%) NetSuite
13 5 (0.12%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 953 (23.63%) AWS
2 832 (20.63%) Azure
3 328 (8.13%) Power Platform
4 255 (6.32%) Serverless
5 245 (6.07%) Azure DevOps
6 243 (6.03%) GCP
7 206 (5.11%) GitHub
8 152 (3.77%) PowerApps
9 148 (3.67%) Power Automate
10 131 (3.25%) AWS Lambda
11 122 (3.03%) Amazon S3
12 111 (2.75%) Dynamics 365
13 83 (2.06%) GitHub Actions
14 69 (1.71%) Amazon SQS
15 62 (1.54%) Amazon EC2
16 60 (1.49%) Microsoft 365
17 59 (1.46%) Azure Logic Apps
18 58 (1.44%) Azure Functions
18 58 (1.44%) Azure Service Bus
19 52 (1.29%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 56 (1.39%) HTTP
2 26 (0.64%) HTTPS
3 21 (0.52%) SSL
3 21 (0.52%) TCP/IP
4 15 (0.37%) DNS
5 13 (0.32%) Internet
6 11 (0.27%) Multicast
7 6 (0.15%) DHCP
7 6 (0.15%) Firewall
7 6 (0.15%) Intranet
7 6 (0.15%) SAN
7 6 (0.15%) SMTP
7 6 (0.15%) VPN
8 5 (0.12%) MQTT
9 4 (0.099%) DKIM
9 4 (0.099%) POP3
9 4 (0.099%) Wireless
10 3 (0.074%) LAN
10 3 (0.074%) SMS
10 3 (0.074%) tcpdump
Database & Business Intelligence
1 393 (9.74%) PostgreSQL
2 295 (7.31%) SQL Server
3 254 (6.30%) Relational Database
4 214 (5.31%) MongoDB
5 189 (4.69%) Power BI
6 167 (4.14%) NoSQL
7 114 (2.83%) MySQL
8 94 (2.33%) Oracle Database
9 74 (1.83%) Data Warehouse
10 69 (1.71%) DB2
11 65 (1.61%) Amazon RDS
12 60 (1.49%) Redis
13 56 (1.39%) Big Data
13 56 (1.39%) DynamoDB
14 47 (1.17%) Tableau
15 45 (1.12%) Amazon Athena
16 44 (1.09%) Apache Cassandra
16 44 (1.09%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 42 (1.04%) Hadoop
18 40 (0.99%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 534 (13.24%) Git
2 258 (6.40%) Jenkins
3 239 (5.93%) JIRA
4 188 (4.66%) JUnit
5 141 (3.50%) GitLab
6 88 (2.18%) Mockito
7 86 (2.13%) Maven
8 83 (2.06%) Gradle
9 68 (1.69%) Bitbucket
10 64 (1.59%) Cucumber
10 64 (1.59%) SonarQube
11 61 (1.51%) Cypress.io
12 43 (1.07%) Visual Studio
13 32 (0.79%) webpack
14 31 (0.77%) Sonatype Nexus
15 30 (0.74%) Subversion
16 28 (0.69%) TeamCity
17 27 (0.67%) Liquibase
17 27 (0.67%) Selenium
18 26 (0.64%) IntelliJ
General
1 996 (24.70%) Finance
2 873 (21.65%) Social Skills
3 538 (13.34%) Banking
4 403 (9.99%) Public Sector
5 366 (9.08%) Analytical Skills
6 285 (7.07%) Front Office
7 234 (5.80%) Investment Banking
8 65 (1.61%) Marketing
9 60 (1.49%) Telecoms
10 58 (1.44%) Financial Institution
11 55 (1.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 48 (1.19%) Manufacturing
13 38 (0.94%) Documentation Skills
14 37 (0.92%) Retail
15 31 (0.77%) Military
16 30 (0.74%) Legal
17 27 (0.67%) Back Office
18 24 (0.60%) Pharmaceutical
19 22 (0.55%) Electronics
19 22 (0.55%) Law
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 686 (17.01%) React
2 526 (13.04%) .NET
3 452 (11.21%) REST
4 411 (10.19%) Spring
5 407 (10.09%) RESTful
6 404 (10.02%) HTML
7 391 (9.70%) Node.js
8 388 (9.62%) CSS
9 373 (9.25%) AngularJS
10 344 (8.53%) Kafka
11 321 (7.96%) Spring Boot
12 185 (4.59%) SOAP
13 169 (4.19%) Web Services
14 153 (3.79%) JSON
15 135 (3.35%) .NET Framework
16 134 (3.32%) Vue
17 130 (3.22%) Redux
18 128 (3.17%) XML
19 121 (3.00%) GraphQL
20 116 (2.88%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 181 (4.49%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
2 147 (3.64%) Equities
3 146 (3.62%) Fixed Income
4 136 (3.37%) Distributed Systems
5 132 (3.27%) Data Structures
6 122 (3.03%) Cloud Native
6 122 (3.03%) Mobile App
7 115 (2.85%) Algorithms
8 100 (2.48%) Derivative
9 87 (2.16%) Product Ownership
10 84 (2.08%) Greenfield Project
11 76 (1.88%) Onboarding
12 70 (1.74%) Data Protection Act
13 65 (1.61%) Legacy Systems
14 61 (1.51%) Hedge funds
15 55 (1.36%) Enterprise Software
16 53 (1.31%) Virtual Team
17 45 (1.12%) Management Information System
18 41 (1.02%) Market Risk
19 35 (0.87%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 348 (8.63%) Linux
2 128 (3.17%) Unix
3 115 (2.85%) Android
4 102 (2.53%) Windows
5 67 (1.66%) Apple iOS
6 18 (0.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 17 (0.42%) Mac OS X
8 11 (0.27%) Windows Server
9 8 (0.20%) Mac OS
10 7 (0.17%) AIX
11 5 (0.12%) CentOS
11 5 (0.12%) Debian
11 5 (0.12%) Ubuntu
11 5 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
12 4 (0.099%) Solaris
13 3 (0.074%) VME
13 3 (0.074%) VMS
13 3 (0.074%) zOS
14 2 (0.050%) MVS
15 1 (0.025%) watchOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,359 (33.70%) Agile
2 845 (20.95%) CI/CD
3 786 (19.49%) DevOps
4 733 (18.18%) Problem-Solving
5 601 (14.90%) Microservices
6 562 (13.94%) Full-Stack Development
7 484 (12.00%) Software Engineering
8 418 (10.36%) TDD
9 368 (9.12%) Scrum
10 327 (8.11%) Test Automation
11 301 (7.46%) User Experience
12 280 (6.94%) Front End Development
13 275 (6.82%) Containerisation
14 270 (6.69%) Clean Code
15 262 (6.50%) Business Intelligence
16 247 (6.12%) Analytics
16 247 (6.12%) SDLC
17 242 (6.00%) Computer Science
18 211 (5.23%) Artificial Intelligence
19 209 (5.18%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 1,145 (28.39%) Java
2 1,065 (26.41%) SQL
3 914 (22.66%) Python
4 838 (20.78%) JavaScript
5 638 (15.82%) C#
6 552 (13.69%) TypeScript
7 152 (3.77%) C++
8 144 (3.57%) PL/SQL
9 118 (2.93%) Go
10 112 (2.78%) Kotlin
11 100 (2.48%) Shell Script
12 71 (1.76%) Apex Code
12 71 (1.76%) Ruby
13 68 (1.69%) PHP
14 66 (1.64%) VB
15 62 (1.54%) T-SQL
16 58 (1.44%) VBA
17 52 (1.29%) Scala
18 47 (1.17%) PowerShell
19 45 (1.12%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 549 (13.61%) Security Cleared
2 439 (10.89%) SC Cleared
3 261 (6.47%) Degree
4 130 (3.22%) Computer Science Degree
5 81 (2.01%) BPSS Clearance
6 41 (1.02%) DV Cleared
7 32 (0.79%) Master's Degree
8 28 (0.69%) AWS Certification
9 26 (0.64%) Numerate Degree
10 18 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
11 16 (0.40%) Azure Certification
12 13 (0.32%) AWS Certified Developer
13 12 (0.30%) PhD
14 8 (0.20%) DBS Check
15 6 (0.15%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 4 (0.099%) ITIL Certification
16 4 (0.099%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 3 (0.074%) CEH
17 3 (0.074%) OCP
17 3 (0.074%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 179 (4.44%) QA
2 125 (3.10%) Accessibility
3 68 (1.69%) Data Quality
4 31 (0.77%) WCAG
5 15 (0.37%) GDPR
6 11 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 9 (0.22%) Disclosure Scotland
7 9 (0.22%) HL7
8 8 (0.20%) NIST
8 8 (0.20%) SEPA
8 8 (0.20%) SLA
9 7 (0.17%) COBIT
10 6 (0.15%) ISO 20022
11 5 (0.12%) EMIR
11 5 (0.12%) GRC
11 5 (0.12%) PSD2
12 4 (0.099%) MiFID
12 4 (0.099%) NCSC
13 3 (0.074%) Def Stans
13 3 (0.074%) IEC 61508
System Software
1 469 (11.63%) Docker
2 38 (0.94%) Active Directory
3 12 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
4 9 (0.22%) HDFS
5 8 (0.20%) zsh
6 6 (0.15%) GridGain
6 6 (0.15%) Postfix
7 3 (0.074%) Apache ZooKeeper
7 3 (0.074%) Time Sharing Option
7 3 (0.074%) VMware Infrastructure
8 2 (0.050%) OpenAM
8 2 (0.050%) OpenDJ
8 2 (0.050%) OpenIDM
9 1 (0.025%) Firmware
9 1 (0.025%) GPFS
9 1 (0.025%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.025%) Lustre
9 1 (0.025%) NFS
9 1 (0.025%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 1 (0.025%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 441 (10.93%) Kubernetes
2 208 (5.16%) Terraform
3 95 (2.36%) Ansible
4 47 (1.17%) Grafana
5 40 (0.99%) Prometheus
6 26 (0.64%) Single Sign-On
7 11 (0.27%) Kibana
8 9 (0.22%) CA Endevor
8 9 (0.22%) Control-M
8 9 (0.22%) Podman
9 8 (0.20%) MIIS
10 7 (0.17%) CloudHub
11 6 (0.15%) Puppet
12 5 (0.12%) Docker Swarm
12 5 (0.12%) Istio
12 5 (0.12%) vCenter Server
13 4 (0.099%) Hadoop YARN
13 4 (0.099%) ITRS Geneos
14 3 (0.074%) Oozie
14 3 (0.074%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 429 (10.64%) Microsoft
2 340 (8.43%) Oracle
3 149 (3.69%) ServiceNow
4 127 (3.15%) Salesforce
5 105 (2.60%) SAP
6 85 (2.11%) Google
7 57 (1.41%) Sybase
8 51 (1.26%) IBM
9 45 (1.12%) Databricks
10 43 (1.07%) MuleSoft
11 41 (1.02%) Splunk
12 34 (0.84%) Virgin Media
13 27 (0.67%) Atlassian
13 27 (0.67%) webMethods
14 25 (0.62%) Adobe
15 24 (0.60%) Blue Prism
15 24 (0.60%) Siebel
16 20 (0.50%) Axway
16 20 (0.50%) Dynatrace
16 20 (0.50%) VMware