Senior Developer Contract Job Trends

Senior Developer
UK

The median Senior Developer daily rate in the UK is £525, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 3 April 2026.

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

6 months to
3 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 161 160 159
Rank change year-on-year -1 -1 -35
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Developer 733 510 660
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.63% 1.75% 1.49%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.77% 1.89% 1.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 489 377 465
10th Percentile £406 £412 £410
25th Percentile £450 £500 £488
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £600 £575
Median % change year-on-year -12.50% +4.35% -8.00%
75th Percentile £644 £725 £725
90th Percentile £850 £838 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -12.28%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 1 14
10th Percentile - - £40.00
25th Percentile £85.00 - £54.85
Median hourly rate £90.00 £77.19 £58.20
Median % change year-on-year +16.60% +32.62% -6.88%
75th Percentile £95.00 - £70.12
90th Percentile - - £79.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £77.19 £58.91
% change year-on-year - +31.04% -5.75%

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 41,358 26,984 40,963
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.19% 92.80% 92.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,778 17,737 26,805
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -3.45%
75th Percentile £613 £629 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £740
UK excluding London median daily rate £486 £475 £489
% change year-on-year +2.37% -2.86% -2.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,581 943 2,528
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.00 £12.86
25th Percentile £19.85 £20.47 £16.25
Median hourly rate £40.00 £32.50 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +23.08% -1.52% -25.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.25 £71.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.16 £31.64 £33.00
% change year-on-year +26.91% -4.12% -21.43%

Senior Developer
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Senior Developer job vacancy trend in the UK

Senior Developer
Daily Rate Trend

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

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

Senior Developer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Senior Developer over the 6 months to 3 April 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Senior Developer in the UK

Senior Developer
Hourly Rate Trend

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

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

Senior 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 Senior Developer within the UK over the 6 months to 3 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 -12 616 £550 -8.33% 301
London -11 389 £610 -6.23% 100
UK excluding London -31 242 £500 -4.76% 237
Work from Home -7 217 £600 - 135
North of England -41 74 £525 -4.55% 82
South West +15 52 £475 -20.83% 22
South East -41 39 £538 +17.81% 57
Yorkshire -38 37 £575 -4.17% 34
North West -42 35 £500 -4.76% 40
Midlands -47 33 £506 -5.59% 35
West Midlands -52 25 £485 -11.82% 23
East of England -30 22 £500 -23.08% 22
Scotland -9 18 £475 +11.76% 12
East Midlands -26 7 £525 +0.96% 12
Northern Ireland -3 5 £638 +27.50% 1
North East -11 5 £525 -11.02% 9
Wales -8 3 £638 +6.25% 10

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

For the 6 months to 3 April 2026, Senior 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 Developer in the job title.

1 236 (32.20%) Java
2 230 (31.38%) AWS
3 208 (28.38%) Agile
4 182 (24.83%) CI/CD
5 164 (22.37%) Azure
6 161 (21.96%) Python
7 157 (21.42%) Security Cleared
8 156 (21.28%) SQL
9 154 (21.01%) Microservices
10 151 (20.60%) DevOps
11 146 (19.92%) SC Cleared
12 130 (17.74%) JavaScript
13 127 (17.33%) Docker
14 122 (16.64%) Kubernetes
15 116 (15.83%) Kafka
16 100 (13.64%) React
16 100 (13.64%) Spring
17 97 (13.23%) Problem-Solving
18 88 (12.01%) Spring Boot
19 84 (11.46%) Containerisation
20 82 (11.19%) Git
21 77 (10.50%) TDD
21 77 (10.50%) Test Automation
22 76 (10.37%) Software Engineering
23 75 (10.23%) .NET
24 71 (9.69%) TypeScript
25 70 (9.55%) Full-Stack Development
26 69 (9.41%) Scrum
27 66 (9.00%) Azure DevOps
28 65 (8.87%) RESTful

Senior 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 11 (1.50%) Confluence
2 6 (0.82%) CMS
2 6 (0.82%) nginx
2 6 (0.82%) SharePoint
3 5 (0.68%) Apache
3 5 (0.68%) Apache Spark
4 4 (0.55%) Ethereum
4 4 (0.55%) Headless CMS
4 4 (0.55%) Hyperledger
4 4 (0.55%) Jupyter
5 3 (0.41%) Apache Airflow
5 3 (0.41%) IIS
5 3 (0.41%) Mendix
5 3 (0.41%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.27%) Microsoft Exchange
6 2 (0.27%) SAS
6 2 (0.27%) WebLogic
6 2 (0.27%) WordPress
7 1 (0.14%) LiveCycle
7 1 (0.14%) Moodle
Applications
1 14 (1.91%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 4 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.27%) Endur
2 2 (0.27%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 2 (0.27%) Teamcenter
3 1 (0.14%) Aladdin
3 1 (0.14%) FLEXCUBE
3 1 (0.14%) IBM Planning Analytics
3 1 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
3 1 (0.14%) Oracle Cash Management
3 1 (0.14%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.14%) Oracle General Ledger
3 1 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
3 1 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
3 1 (0.14%) Oracle Retail
3 1 (0.14%) R3 Corda
3 1 (0.14%) Salesforce CRM
3 1 (0.14%) SAP BRIM
3 1 (0.14%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.14%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 230 (31.38%) AWS
2 164 (22.37%) Azure
3 66 (9.00%) Azure DevOps
4 49 (6.68%) GitHub
5 44 (6.00%) Serverless
6 37 (5.05%) Power Platform
7 30 (4.09%) GCP
8 25 (3.41%) AWS Lambda
9 24 (3.27%) Amazon SQS
10 22 (3.00%) GitHub Actions
11 20 (2.73%) Amazon EC2
11 20 (2.73%) Power Automate
12 17 (2.32%) Amazon S3
12 17 (2.32%) Azure Service Bus
13 16 (2.18%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 16 (2.18%) PowerApps
14 15 (2.05%) Dynamics 365
15 14 (1.91%) Amazon ECS
16 13 (1.77%) Amazon EKS
17 10 (1.36%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 8 (1.09%) HTTP
2 4 (0.55%) Reverse Proxy
3 3 (0.41%) Kerberos
3 3 (0.41%) Multicast
4 2 (0.27%) Ethernet
4 2 (0.27%) Firewall
4 2 (0.27%) NFC
4 2 (0.27%) RTP
4 2 (0.27%) SSL
4 2 (0.27%) VPN
5 1 (0.14%) DNS
5 1 (0.14%) FTP
5 1 (0.14%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 54 (7.37%) PostgreSQL
2 42 (5.73%) NoSQL
3 40 (5.46%) MongoDB
4 37 (5.05%) Relational Database
4 37 (5.05%) SQL Server
5 34 (4.64%) Apache Cassandra
6 29 (3.96%) Power BI
7 23 (3.14%) DynamoDB
8 16 (2.18%) Data Hub
8 16 (2.18%) MySQL
9 14 (1.91%) Amazon RDS
9 14 (1.91%) Data Warehouse
10 8 (1.09%) DB2
11 7 (0.95%) Oracle BI EE
12 6 (0.82%) Big Data
12 6 (0.82%) KDB
12 6 (0.82%) Redis
13 5 (0.68%) Amazon Aurora
13 5 (0.68%) Oracle Database
14 4 (0.55%) Kdb+
Development Applications
1 82 (11.19%) Git
2 35 (4.77%) Jenkins
3 33 (4.50%) JUnit
4 32 (4.37%) Oracle APEX
5 23 (3.14%) GitLab
5 23 (3.14%) JIRA
5 23 (3.14%) Maven
6 18 (2.46%) Mockito
7 13 (1.77%) SonarQube
8 12 (1.64%) Gradle
9 7 (0.95%) Cucumber
9 7 (0.95%) Cypress.io
10 6 (0.82%) Sonatype Nexus
11 5 (0.68%) Artifactory
11 5 (0.68%) Bitbucket
11 5 (0.68%) Mocha
12 3 (0.41%) fastlane
12 3 (0.41%) Selenium
12 3 (0.41%) SpecFlow
12 3 (0.41%) webpack
General
1 143 (19.51%) Social Skills
2 134 (18.28%) Finance
3 117 (15.96%) Public Sector
4 97 (13.23%) Banking
5 40 (5.46%) Analytical Skills
6 37 (5.05%) Investment Banking
7 28 (3.82%) Front Office
8 15 (2.05%) Financial Institution
9 6 (0.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 6 (0.82%) Retail
10 5 (0.68%) Organisational Skills
10 5 (0.68%) Telecoms
11 4 (0.55%) Law
12 3 (0.41%) Games
12 3 (0.41%) Health Technology
12 3 (0.41%) Legal
12 3 (0.41%) Manufacturing
12 3 (0.41%) Military
12 3 (0.41%) Pharmaceutical
12 3 (0.41%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 116 (15.83%) Kafka
2 100 (13.64%) React
2 100 (13.64%) Spring
3 88 (12.01%) Spring Boot
4 75 (10.23%) .NET
5 65 (8.87%) RESTful
6 60 (8.19%) Node.js
7 59 (8.05%) REST
8 55 (7.50%) AngularJS
9 54 (7.37%) HTML
10 50 (6.82%) CSS
11 31 (4.23%) gRPC
12 30 (4.09%) Web Services
13 24 (3.27%) Redux
14 18 (2.46%) .NET Core
14 18 (2.46%) Jest
14 18 (2.46%) RabbitMQ
15 17 (2.32%) .NET Framework
15 17 (2.32%) Django
15 17 (2.32%) HTML5
Miscellaneous
1 57 (7.78%) Distributed Systems
2 51 (6.96%) Cloud Native
3 28 (3.82%) Product Ownership
4 26 (3.55%) Derivative
5 24 (3.27%) Equities
6 22 (3.00%) Algorithms
7 21 (2.86%) Greenfield Project
8 20 (2.73%) Fixed Income
9 15 (2.05%) Market Risk
10 14 (1.91%) Management Information System
11 13 (1.77%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 12 (1.64%) Mobile App
13 10 (1.36%) Data Structures
13 10 (1.36%) Onboarding
14 9 (1.23%) Equity Derivative
14 9 (1.23%) Legacy Systems
15 6 (0.82%) AI Agents
16 5 (0.68%) Legacy Applications
17 4 (0.55%) Animation
17 4 (0.55%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 41 (5.59%) Linux
2 23 (3.14%) Unix
3 17 (2.32%) Windows
4 14 (1.91%) Android
5 9 (1.23%) Mac OS
6 7 (0.95%) Apple iOS
7 5 (0.68%) Mac OS X
8 2 (0.27%) Windows Server
9 1 (0.14%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 208 (28.38%) Agile
2 182 (24.83%) CI/CD
3 154 (21.01%) Microservices
4 151 (20.60%) DevOps
5 97 (13.23%) Problem-Solving
6 84 (11.46%) Containerisation
7 77 (10.50%) TDD
7 77 (10.50%) Test Automation
8 76 (10.37%) Software Engineering
9 70 (9.55%) Full-Stack Development
10 69 (9.41%) Scrum
11 64 (8.73%) Code Quality
12 58 (7.91%) Analytics
13 51 (6.96%) Open Source
14 49 (6.68%) Mentoring
15 47 (6.41%) Front End Development
16 45 (6.14%) Infrastructure as Code
16 45 (6.14%) SDLC
17 41 (5.59%) User Experience
17 41 (5.59%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 236 (32.20%) Java
2 161 (21.96%) Python
3 156 (21.28%) SQL
4 130 (17.74%) JavaScript
5 71 (9.69%) TypeScript
6 64 (8.73%) C#
7 46 (6.28%) Go
8 36 (4.91%) PL/SQL
9 30 (4.09%) Kotlin
10 25 (3.41%) Ruby
11 17 (2.32%) C++
12 10 (1.36%) PowerShell
12 10 (1.36%) Shell Script
13 6 (0.82%) Bash
13 6 (0.82%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 5 (0.68%) Apex Code
15 4 (0.55%) PHP
15 4 (0.55%) VBA
16 3 (0.41%) R
16 3 (0.41%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 157 (21.42%) Security Cleared
2 146 (19.92%) SC Cleared
3 26 (3.55%) Degree
4 24 (3.27%) BPSS Clearance
5 11 (1.50%) Computer Science Degree
6 8 (1.09%) Numerate Degree
7 5 (0.68%) AWS Certification
8 4 (0.55%) DV Cleared
8 4 (0.55%) OCP
8 4 (0.55%) Oracle Certification
9 3 (0.41%) AWS Certified Developer
10 2 (0.27%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (0.27%) Microsoft Certification
11 1 (0.14%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 1 (0.14%) Azure Certification
11 1 (0.14%) CISSP
11 1 (0.14%) Master's Degree
11 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 38 (5.18%) Accessibility
2 25 (3.41%) QA
3 24 (3.27%) WCAG
4 12 (1.64%) Data Quality
5 2 (0.27%) GDPR
5 2 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (0.27%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.14%) EU AI Act
6 1 (0.14%) HMG Security Policy Framework
6 1 (0.14%) NIST
System Software
1 127 (17.33%) Docker
2 2 (0.27%) Active Directory
2 2 (0.27%) GridGain
2 2 (0.27%) Postfix
3 1 (0.14%) OpenAM
3 1 (0.14%) OpenDJ
3 1 (0.14%) OpenIDM
3 1 (0.14%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 122 (16.64%) Kubernetes
2 45 (6.14%) Terraform
3 24 (3.27%) Grafana
4 17 (2.32%) Ansible
5 13 (1.77%) Prometheus
6 8 (1.09%) Single Sign-On
7 3 (0.41%) Kibana
8 1 (0.14%) CloudHub
8 1 (0.14%) Control-M
8 1 (0.14%) HAProxy
8 1 (0.14%) SELinux
8 1 (0.14%) Sysdig
8 1 (0.14%) systemd
Vendors
1 58 (7.91%) Oracle
2 41 (5.59%) Microsoft
3 19 (2.59%) ServiceNow
4 16 (2.18%) Google
5 14 (1.91%) Salesforce
6 10 (1.36%) Databricks
6 10 (1.36%) Sybase
7 9 (1.23%) SAP
8 6 (0.82%) Avaloq
8 6 (0.82%) Guidewire
9 4 (0.55%) Apple
9 4 (0.55%) Atlassian
9 4 (0.55%) ForgeRock
9 4 (0.55%) IBM
9 4 (0.55%) Pega
10 3 (0.41%) Ab Initio
10 3 (0.41%) Cognizant
10 3 (0.41%) Dataiku
10 3 (0.41%) Jaspersoft
10 3 (0.41%) Splunk