Senior Backend Developer Contract Job Trends

Senior Backend Developer
UK

The median Senior Backend Developer daily rate in the UK is £650, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 14 December 2025.

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

6 months to
14 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 570 556 579
Rank change year-on-year -14 +23 +167
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Backend Developer 11 8 33
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.030% 0.023% 0.074%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.033% 0.025% 0.079%
Number of daily rates quoted 8 3 21
10th Percentile £312 £515 £425
25th Percentile £506 £538 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £650 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year +8.33% - -11.11%
75th Percentile £788 £675 £675
90th Percentile - £705 -
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 - £425
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 4
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - £56.25
Median hourly rate - - £58.75
75th Percentile - - £65.00
90th Percentile - - £69.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - -

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 33,137 32,079 41,606
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.94% 92.76% 93.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,987 19,722 27,981
10th Percentile £290 £300 £292
25th Percentile £404 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £644
90th Percentile £723 £738 £740
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,959 1,044 1,467
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.48 £15.16
25th Percentile £17.98 £21.05 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.47 £35.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -27.23% -21.35% +48.33%
75th Percentile £57.50 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.46 £73.28 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year -22.62% -27.78% +80.00%

Senior Backend Developer
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Senior Backend Developer job vacancy trend in the UK

Senior Backend Developer
Daily Rate Trend

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

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

Senior Backend Developer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Senior Backend Developer over the 6 months to 14 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Senior Backend Developer in the UK

Senior Backend Developer
Hourly Rate Trend

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

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

Senior Backend Developer
Top 7 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Senior Backend Developer within the UK over the 6 months to 14 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
England -35 10 £600 - 22
London +2 7 £775 +29.17% 11
Work from Home +16 3 £700 - 11
UK excluding London -45 3 £500 - 14
South East - 2 £575 - 7
North of England -37 1 £425 - 5
North West - 1 £425 - 5

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

For the 6 months to 14 December 2025, Senior 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 Senior Backend Developer in the job title.

1 7 (63.64%) Docker
2 6 (54.55%) DevOps
3 5 (45.45%) AWS
3 5 (45.45%) CI/CD
3 5 (45.45%) Containerisation
3 5 (45.45%) GCP
3 5 (45.45%) Kubernetes
3 5 (45.45%) Python
4 4 (36.36%) AI
4 4 (36.36%) Code Quality
4 4 (36.36%) FastAPI
4 4 (36.36%) GitHub
4 4 (36.36%) Google
4 4 (36.36%) Mentoring
4 4 (36.36%) Microservices
4 4 (36.36%) SQL
4 4 (36.36%) Test Automation
5 3 (27.27%) Agile
5 3 (27.27%) Azure
5 3 (27.27%) Git
5 3 (27.27%) Infrastructure as Code
5 3 (27.27%) Java
5 3 (27.27%) Jenkins
5 3 (27.27%) Machine Learning
5 3 (27.27%) Node.js
5 3 (27.27%) Software Engineering
5 3 (27.27%) TDD
5 3 (27.27%) Unit Testing
6 2 (18.18%) Amazon EC2
6 2 (18.18%) Amazon S3

Senior 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:

Cloud Services
1 5 (45.45%) AWS
1 5 (45.45%) GCP
2 4 (36.36%) GitHub
3 3 (27.27%) Azure
4 2 (18.18%) Amazon EC2
4 2 (18.18%) Amazon S3
4 2 (18.18%) GitHub Actions
4 2 (18.18%) SaaS
5 1 (9.09%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 1 (9.09%) Amazon ECR
5 1 (9.09%) Amazon ECS
5 1 (9.09%) Amazon ELB
5 1 (9.09%) Amazon OpenSearch
5 1 (9.09%) AWS CloudFormation
5 1 (9.09%) Azure DevOps
5 1 (9.09%) Azure Key Vault
5 1 (9.09%) Azure Service Bus
5 1 (9.09%) Cloud Run
5 1 (9.09%) Datadog
5 1 (9.09%) Virtual Private Cloud
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (18.18%) NoSQL
1 2 (18.18%) PostgreSQL
2 1 (9.09%) Amazon RDS
2 1 (9.09%) Azure SQL Database
2 1 (9.09%) Big Data
2 1 (9.09%) DynamoDB
2 1 (9.09%) HBase
2 1 (9.09%) MongoDB
2 1 (9.09%) MySQL
2 1 (9.09%) Redis
2 1 (9.09%) Relational Database
2 1 (9.09%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 3 (27.27%) Git
1 3 (27.27%) Jenkins
2 1 (9.09%) Artifactory
2 1 (9.09%) Cucumber
2 1 (9.09%) Gatling
2 1 (9.09%) Gradle
2 1 (9.09%) JMeter
2 1 (9.09%) JUnit
2 1 (9.09%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 3 (27.27%) Pharmaceutical
2 2 (18.18%) Banking
2 2 (18.18%) Finance
3 1 (9.09%) Manufacturing
3 1 (9.09%) Social Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (36.36%) FastAPI
2 3 (27.27%) Node.js
3 2 (18.18%) GraphQL
3 2 (18.18%) HTML
3 2 (18.18%) RabbitMQ
3 2 (18.18%) RESTful
4 1 (9.09%) .NET
4 1 (9.09%) .NET Core
4 1 (9.09%) Apache NiFi
4 1 (9.09%) CSS
4 1 (9.09%) Django
4 1 (9.09%) Jest
4 1 (9.09%) LangGraph
4 1 (9.09%) OAuth
4 1 (9.09%) OpenAPI
4 1 (9.09%) OpenID
4 1 (9.09%) Playwright
4 1 (9.09%) Spring
4 1 (9.09%) Vitest
4 1 (9.09%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 4 (36.36%) Cloud Native
2 3 (27.27%) Life Science
3 1 (9.09%) Distributed Systems
Processes & Methodologies
1 6 (54.55%) DevOps
2 5 (45.45%) CI/CD
2 5 (45.45%) Containerisation
3 4 (36.36%) AI
3 4 (36.36%) Code Quality
3 4 (36.36%) Mentoring
3 4 (36.36%) Microservices
3 4 (36.36%) Test Automation
4 3 (27.27%) Agile
4 3 (27.27%) Infrastructure as Code
4 3 (27.27%) Machine Learning
4 3 (27.27%) Software Engineering
4 3 (27.27%) TDD
4 3 (27.27%) Unit Testing
5 2 (18.18%) API Design
5 2 (18.18%) Event-Driven
5 2 (18.18%) Performance Tuning
5 2 (18.18%) Problem-Solving
6 1 (9.09%) API Management
6 1 (9.09%) Business Strategy
Programming Languages
1 5 (45.45%) Python
2 4 (36.36%) SQL
3 3 (27.27%) Java
4 2 (18.18%) JavaScript
4 2 (18.18%) TypeScript
5 1 (9.09%) Bicep
5 1 (9.09%) C#
5 1 (9.09%) Go
5 1 (9.09%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1 (9.09%) Computer Science Degree
1 1 (9.09%) Degree
1 1 (9.09%) DV Cleared
1 1 (9.09%) OCP
1 1 (9.09%) Oracle Certification
1 1 (9.09%) SC Cleared
1 1 (9.09%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (18.18%) QA
2 1 (9.09%) GDPR
2 1 (9.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 1 (9.09%) NIST
System Software
1 7 (63.64%) Docker
Systems Management
1 5 (45.45%) Kubernetes
2 2 (18.18%) Grafana
2 2 (18.18%) Terraform
3 1 (9.09%) Argo
3 1 (9.09%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 4 (36.36%) Google