Senior Developer Contract Job Trends

Senior Developer
UK

The median Senior Developer daily rate in the UK is £550, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 17 November 2025.

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

6 months to
17 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 175 124 173
Rank change year-on-year -51 +49 -62
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Developer 569 721 688
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.62% 1.99% 1.46%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.78% 2.14% 1.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 417 477 498
10th Percentile £405 £391 £425
25th Percentile £450 £463 £494
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year - -8.33% -5.88%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £720
90th Percentile £805 £805 £850
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £523
% change year-on-year - -4.31% -9.48%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 3 6
10th Percentile - £40.29 £52.50
25th Percentile - £48.22 £56.25
Median hourly rate - £61.43 £58.75
Median % change year-on-year - +4.56% -
75th Percentile - £74.47 £70.94
90th Percentile - £82.29 £75.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £60.00 £52.50
% change year-on-year - +14.29% -

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 31,941 33,701 43,995
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.96% 92.86% 93.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,258 20,316 29,858
10th Percentile £278 £300 £293
25th Percentile £402 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,871 1,257 1,563
10th Percentile £14.13 £15.20 £15.16
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.30 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £36.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -30.14% -19.10% +60.48%
75th Percentile £53.99 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.75 £77.34
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +85.42%

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 17 November 2025.

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 17 November 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 -56 514 £550 - 531
London -46 289 £650 +9.24% 246
UK excluding London -28 223 £500 - 334
Work from Home -25 212 £582 +5.73% 337
North of England -30 66 £550 +10.00% 111
South West +38 60 £475 -9.52% 33
South East +1 47 £500 -4.76% 93
Yorkshire -18 38 £638 +21.43% 25
Midlands -29 24 £513 +2.50% 52
North West -29 24 £505 +1.00% 79
West Midlands -31 16 £525 +5.00% 19
East of England -13 15 £535 +38.06% 17
Scotland -29 10 £481 -3.75% 16
North East -6 8 £544 +27.94% 7
East Midlands -11 8 £510 +11.78% 31
Wales -1 4 £410 -21.90% 17
Northern Ireland -8 2 £544 -1.14% 3

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

For the 6 months to 17 November 2025, 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 (41.48%) Agile
2 192 (33.74%) Java
3 178 (31.28%) SQL
4 173 (30.40%) Azure
5 167 (29.35%) AWS
6 163 (28.65%) DevOps
7 155 (27.24%) Microservices
8 153 (26.89%) CI/CD
9 136 (23.90%) Problem-Solving
10 130 (22.85%) Python
11 119 (20.91%) Kafka
12 111 (19.51%) Security Cleared
13 109 (19.16%) Docker
14 105 (18.45%) JavaScript
15 100 (17.57%) C#
16 98 (17.22%) Kubernetes
17 94 (16.52%) SC Cleared
18 91 (15.99%) Spring
19 84 (14.76%) RESTful
19 84 (14.76%) Scrum
20 82 (14.41%) .NET
21 78 (13.71%) TDD
22 75 (13.18%) React
23 72 (12.65%) Git
24 71 (12.48%) Azure DevOps
24 71 (12.48%) PostgreSQL
25 69 (12.13%) Software Engineering
25 69 (12.13%) Spring Boot
26 67 (11.78%) Full-Stack Development
27 64 (11.25%) Analytics

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 15 (2.64%) Confluence
2 10 (1.76%) CMS
3 6 (1.05%) SharePoint
4 4 (0.70%) Jupyter
5 3 (0.53%) Anypoint
6 2 (0.35%) Alfresco
6 2 (0.35%) Apache Spark
6 2 (0.35%) Camunda
7 1 (0.18%) Apache
7 1 (0.18%) Headless CMS
7 1 (0.18%) SAS
7 1 (0.18%) Smallworld
Applications
1 9 (1.58%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 5 (0.88%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (0.70%) Endur
3 2 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
3 2 (0.35%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
4 1 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.18%) SAP FI
4 1 (0.18%) SAP Travel Management
Cloud Services
1 173 (30.40%) Azure
2 167 (29.35%) AWS
3 71 (12.48%) Azure DevOps
4 50 (8.79%) GitHub
5 38 (6.68%) GCP
6 36 (6.33%) Power Platform
6 36 (6.33%) Serverless
7 22 (3.87%) AWS Lambda
8 20 (3.51%) Amazon S3
9 18 (3.16%) GitHub Actions
9 18 (3.16%) Power Automate
10 17 (2.99%) PowerApps
11 16 (2.81%) SaaS
12 14 (2.46%) Dynamics 365
13 13 (2.28%) Amazon EC2
14 12 (2.11%) Amazon ECS
14 12 (2.11%) Amazon SQS
14 12 (2.11%) Azure Service Bus
15 11 (1.93%) Azure AKS
15 11 (1.93%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.88%) Kerberos
2 4 (0.70%) SAN
2 4 (0.70%) TCP/IP
3 3 (0.53%) HTTP
3 3 (0.53%) SSL
3 3 (0.53%) VPN
4 2 (0.35%) Firewall
5 1 (0.18%) BGP
5 1 (0.18%) Ethernet
5 1 (0.18%) Ethernet VPN
5 1 (0.18%) Internet
5 1 (0.18%) MPLS
5 1 (0.18%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 71 (12.48%) PostgreSQL
2 60 (10.54%) Relational Database
3 54 (9.49%) MongoDB
4 45 (7.91%) SQL Server
5 32 (5.62%) NoSQL
6 21 (3.69%) Power BI
7 20 (3.51%) Apache Cassandra
7 20 (3.51%) DB2
8 17 (2.99%) DynamoDB
9 16 (2.81%) Redis
10 14 (2.46%) MySQL
11 12 (2.11%) Amazon RDS
11 12 (2.11%) Data Lake
12 11 (1.93%) Azure SQL Database
12 11 (1.93%) RDBMS
13 9 (1.58%) Data Hub
14 8 (1.41%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 6 (1.05%) Data Warehouse
15 6 (1.05%) HBase
16 5 (0.88%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 72 (12.65%) Git
2 51 (8.96%) JUnit
3 42 (7.38%) Jenkins
4 33 (5.80%) Oracle APEX
5 29 (5.10%) JIRA
6 28 (4.92%) GitLab
7 25 (4.39%) Mockito
8 14 (2.46%) Gradle
9 13 (2.28%) Maven
10 10 (1.76%) Cucumber
10 10 (1.76%) SpecFlow
11 9 (1.58%) Artifactory
11 9 (1.58%) Postman
12 7 (1.23%) Bitbucket
12 7 (1.23%) Sonatype Nexus
13 6 (1.05%) Mocha
14 5 (0.88%) Cypress.io
14 5 (0.88%) Liquibase
15 4 (0.70%) Team Foundation Server
15 4 (0.70%) TeamCity
General
1 167 (29.35%) Finance
2 161 (28.30%) Social Skills
3 92 (16.17%) Banking
4 64 (11.25%) Analytical Skills
5 62 (10.90%) Public Sector
6 49 (8.61%) Investment Banking
7 31 (5.45%) Front Office
8 9 (1.58%) Marketing
9 7 (1.23%) Manufacturing
10 6 (1.05%) Back Office
11 5 (0.88%) Military
12 4 (0.70%) Financial Institution
12 4 (0.70%) Presentation Skills
13 3 (0.53%) Electronics
13 3 (0.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 3 (0.53%) Pharmaceutical
13 3 (0.53%) Telecoms
14 2 (0.35%) Documentation Skills
14 2 (0.35%) Health Technology
14 2 (0.35%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 119 (20.91%) Kafka
2 91 (15.99%) Spring
3 84 (14.76%) RESTful
4 82 (14.41%) .NET
5 75 (13.18%) React
6 69 (12.13%) Spring Boot
7 59 (10.37%) REST
8 49 (8.61%) Node.js
9 46 (8.08%) AngularJS
10 40 (7.03%) HTML
11 33 (5.80%) Web Services
12 32 (5.62%) CSS
13 28 (4.92%) .NET Core
14 24 (4.22%) JSON
15 23 (4.04%) RabbitMQ
16 21 (3.69%) .NET Framework
17 19 (3.34%) Jest
17 19 (3.34%) Playwright
18 17 (2.99%) JMS
19 15 (2.64%) ActiveMQ
Miscellaneous
1 40 (7.03%) Cloud Native
2 34 (5.98%) Distributed Systems
3 33 (5.80%) Derivative
4 27 (4.75%) Equities
5 23 (4.04%) Data Structures
5 23 (4.04%) Product Ownership
6 22 (3.87%) Market Risk
7 21 (3.69%) Greenfield Project
8 19 (3.34%) Management Information System
9 18 (3.16%) Fixed Income
9 18 (3.16%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 16 (2.81%) Algorithms
11 11 (1.93%) Legacy Systems
12 8 (1.41%) Mobile App
13 6 (1.05%) Linux Command Line
14 5 (0.88%) Enterprise Software
14 5 (0.88%) Hedge funds
15 4 (0.70%) Data Fabric
15 4 (0.70%) Equity Derivative
15 4 (0.70%) Legacy Applications
Operating Systems
1 62 (10.90%) Linux
2 27 (4.75%) Unix
3 17 (2.99%) Android
4 14 (2.46%) Mac OS X
5 12 (2.11%) Apple iOS
6 8 (1.41%) Windows
7 4 (0.70%) Debian
7 4 (0.70%) Ubuntu
7 4 (0.70%) Windows Server
7 4 (0.70%) Windows Server 2016
8 2 (0.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 1 (0.18%) CentOS
9 1 (0.18%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.18%) tvOS
9 1 (0.18%) watchOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 236 (41.48%) Agile
2 163 (28.65%) DevOps
3 155 (27.24%) Microservices
4 153 (26.89%) CI/CD
5 136 (23.90%) Problem-Solving
6 84 (14.76%) Scrum
7 78 (13.71%) TDD
8 69 (12.13%) Software Engineering
9 67 (11.78%) Full-Stack Development
10 64 (11.25%) Analytics
11 60 (10.54%) Containerisation
12 57 (10.02%) Mentoring
12 57 (10.02%) Test Automation
13 52 (9.14%) Open Source
14 47 (8.26%) Clean Code
15 46 (8.08%) Event-Driven
16 45 (7.91%) Performance Tuning
17 43 (7.56%) SDLC
18 40 (7.03%) API Development
18 40 (7.03%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 192 (33.74%) Java
2 178 (31.28%) SQL
3 130 (22.85%) Python
4 105 (18.45%) JavaScript
5 100 (17.57%) C#
6 60 (10.54%) TypeScript
7 38 (6.68%) PL/SQL
8 22 (3.87%) Go
9 19 (3.34%) Kotlin
10 18 (3.16%) Shell Script
11 16 (2.81%) C++
11 16 (2.81%) Ruby
12 9 (1.58%) PHP
13 8 (1.41%) Bash
13 8 (1.41%) PowerShell
14 6 (1.05%) Apex Code
15 5 (0.88%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 5 (0.88%) Swift
16 4 (0.70%) ABAP
16 4 (0.70%) Objective-C
Qualifications
1 111 (19.51%) Security Cleared
2 94 (16.52%) SC Cleared
3 45 (7.91%) Degree
4 26 (4.57%) Computer Science Degree
5 14 (2.46%) BPSS Clearance
6 7 (1.23%) AWS Certification
7 6 (1.05%) Master's Degree
7 6 (1.05%) OCP
7 6 (1.05%) Oracle Certification
8 4 (0.70%) Numerate Degree
9 3 (0.53%) AWS Certified Developer
9 3 (0.53%) DBS Check
9 3 (0.53%) DV Cleared
9 3 (0.53%) MCP
9 3 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
10 2 (0.35%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (0.35%) Azure Certification
11 1 (0.18%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 1 (0.18%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (4.92%) Accessibility
2 24 (4.22%) QA
3 13 (2.28%) Data Quality
4 11 (1.93%) WCAG
5 4 (0.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 3 (0.53%) EU AI Act
6 3 (0.53%) NIST
7 1 (0.18%) GDPR
7 1 (0.18%) HL7
7 1 (0.18%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 1 (0.18%) ISO 22301
7 1 (0.18%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 109 (19.16%) Docker
2 5 (0.88%) zsh
3 1 (0.18%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.18%) GridGain
3 1 (0.18%) Lustre
3 1 (0.18%) Postfix
3 1 (0.18%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 98 (17.22%) Kubernetes
2 37 (6.50%) Terraform
3 15 (2.64%) Grafana
4 8 (1.41%) Ansible
5 5 (0.88%) Prometheus
6 4 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
7 3 (0.53%) Kibana
8 2 (0.35%) CloudHub
9 1 (0.18%) Argo
9 1 (0.18%) Packer
9 1 (0.18%) Rundeck
Vendors
1 51 (8.96%) Oracle
2 35 (6.15%) Microsoft
3 21 (3.69%) Databricks
3 21 (3.69%) Sybase
4 19 (3.34%) Google
5 15 (2.64%) ServiceNow
6 14 (2.46%) Salesforce
7 11 (1.93%) Atlassian
8 7 (1.23%) SAP
9 6 (1.05%) Dataiku
9 6 (1.05%) Red Hat
10 5 (0.88%) Apple
10 5 (0.88%) Virgin Media
11 4 (0.70%) CA Agile Central
11 4 (0.70%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
11 4 (0.70%) VMware
12 3 (0.53%) Foundry
12 3 (0.53%) HP
12 3 (0.53%) MuleSoft
12 3 (0.53%) Remedy