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 22 September 2026.

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

6 months to
22 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 174 177 114
Rank change year-on-year +3 -63 +45
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Developer 894 513 794
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.64% 1.58% 2.09%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.78% 1.74% 2.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 581 365 542
10th Percentile £400 £400 £400
25th Percentile £450 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year - - -12.00%
75th Percentile £725 £700 £688
90th Percentile £938 £795 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £525 £508
% change year-on-year -2.38% +3.45% -3.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 0 3
10th Percentile £37.25 - £40.29
25th Percentile £44.93 - £48.22
Median hourly rate £45.56 - £61.43
75th Percentile £46.18 - £74.47
90th Percentile £47.69 - £82.29
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.56 - £60.00

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 50,343 29,565 35,332
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.26% 91.03% 92.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,778 18,648 21,690
10th Percentile £325 £278 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £630 £625 £638
90th Percentile £731 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,866 1,577 1,631
10th Percentile £14.56 £13.75 £14.73
25th Percentile £20.25 £17.29 £20.50
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.80 £51.80 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £69.79 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.11 £43.90
% change year-on-year +69.26% -42.80% +0.34%

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 22 September 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
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Senior Developer over the 6 months to 22 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Senior Developer 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 22 September 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 -12 719 £600 +4.35% 599
London -4 413 £650 - 306
UK excluding London +14 349 £513 -2.38% 376
Work from Home -36 246 £525 -7.28% 324
North of England +6 144 £588 +6.82% 117
Midlands +6 73 £491 -8.18% 73
Yorkshire -9 71 £515 -14.17% 27
West Midlands +2 61 £513 -14.58% 61
North West -15 61 £625 +25.00% 65
Scotland +8 50 £410 +0.49% 38
South West -23 43 £525 -4.55% 20
South East -64 34 £428 -17.69% 72
North East -25 14 £450 -7.69% 25
East Midlands -10 11 - - 12
East of England -37 6 £388 -22.50% 17
Northern Ireland +3 2 £650 +31.05% 27
Wales -11 2 £469 +44.23% 12

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

For the 6 months to 22 September 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.

1 296 (33.11%) CI/CD
2 281 (31.43%) Agile
3 263 (29.42%) Java
4 190 (21.25%) Python
5 182 (20.36%) SQL
6 177 (19.80%) AWS
7 176 (19.69%) Azure
8 168 (18.79%) C#
9 163 (18.23%) Microservices
10 154 (17.23%) DevOps
11 153 (17.11%) JavaScript
12 149 (16.67%) Security Cleared
13 145 (16.22%) REST
14 140 (15.66%) TypeScript
15 135 (15.10%) Git
16 133 (14.88%) SC Cleared
17 129 (14.43%) React
18 126 (14.09%) .NET
19 118 (13.20%) Software Engineering
19 118 (13.20%) Test Automation
20 114 (12.75%) Full-Stack Development
21 112 (12.53%) Docker
21 112 (12.53%) Spring
22 102 (11.41%) AI
22 102 (11.41%) RESTful
23 97 (10.85%) Problem-Solving
24 95 (10.63%) Spring Boot
25 94 (10.51%) Kubernetes
26 89 (9.96%) Microsoft
27 88 (9.84%) Continuous Improvement

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 21 (2.35%) Confluence
2 12 (1.34%) Apache Spark
3 8 (0.89%) Apache
3 8 (0.89%) Oracle Workflow
3 8 (0.89%) SharePoint
3 8 (0.89%) WordPress
4 6 (0.67%) CMS
5 5 (0.56%) Camunda
6 3 (0.34%) Ethereum
6 3 (0.34%) Hyperledger
7 2 (0.22%) Appian
7 2 (0.22%) Cloud Foundry
7 2 (0.22%) Mendix
7 2 (0.22%) Moodle
7 2 (0.22%) Oracle Application Server
7 2 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 2 (0.22%) WebLogic
8 1 (0.11%) HCL Domino
8 1 (0.11%) HCL Notes
8 1 (0.11%) IIS
Applications
1 7 (0.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.11%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 17 (1.90%) Teamcenter
2 14 (1.57%) Dynamics CRM
3 11 (1.23%) Oracle EBS
4 7 (0.78%) NetSuite
5 6 (0.67%) Endur
6 5 (0.56%) Oracle Financials
7 4 (0.45%) Oracle FAH
7 4 (0.45%) Oracle General Ledger
7 4 (0.45%) Oracle Payables
7 4 (0.45%) Oracle Receivables
8 3 (0.34%) Oracle Applications
8 3 (0.34%) Quorum
8 3 (0.34%) R3 Corda
8 3 (0.34%) Ripple
8 3 (0.34%) Shopify
9 2 (0.22%) Aladdin
9 2 (0.22%) Oracle iProcurement
9 2 (0.22%) SAP HCM
9 2 (0.22%) SAP Payroll
9 2 (0.22%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 177 (19.80%) AWS
2 176 (19.69%) Azure
3 88 (9.84%) GitHub
4 57 (6.38%) GitHub Actions
5 52 (5.82%) Power Platform
6 49 (5.48%) Azure DevOps
7 41 (4.59%) GCP
8 40 (4.47%) Serverless
9 38 (4.25%) Power Automate
10 23 (2.57%) Dynamics 365
11 20 (2.24%) PowerApps
12 17 (1.90%) Amazon S3
13 16 (1.79%) GitHub Copilot
14 15 (1.68%) Amazon SQS
15 14 (1.57%) AWS Lambda
16 13 (1.45%) OpenShift
17 11 (1.23%) Azure Functions
18 10 (1.12%) Azure Service Bus
19 9 (1.01%) Anthropic Claude
19 9 (1.01%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.45%) Broadband
1 4 (0.45%) Multicast
2 3 (0.34%) HTTP
3 1 (0.11%) CTI
3 1 (0.11%) Ethernet
3 1 (0.11%) MQTT
3 1 (0.11%) NFC
3 1 (0.11%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 71 (7.94%) PostgreSQL
2 69 (7.72%) SQL Server
3 58 (6.49%) Relational Database
4 42 (4.70%) MongoDB
5 36 (4.03%) Power BI
6 27 (3.02%) NoSQL
7 21 (2.35%) Oracle Database
8 15 (1.68%) Data Warehouse
8 15 (1.68%) RDBMS
9 14 (1.57%) DynamoDB
10 13 (1.45%) Redis
11 12 (1.34%) Azure SQL Database
11 12 (1.34%) MySQL
12 11 (1.23%) KDB
13 9 (1.01%) Amazon RDS
14 8 (0.89%) Geospatial Data
14 8 (0.89%) Kdb+
14 8 (0.89%) Oracle Reports
15 7 (0.78%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 6 (0.67%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 135 (15.10%) Git
2 60 (6.71%) Jenkins
3 36 (4.03%) JIRA
4 29 (3.24%) Maven
4 29 (3.24%) Mockito
5 28 (3.13%) GitLab
6 27 (3.02%) JUnit
7 19 (2.13%) SonarQube
8 14 (1.57%) Gradle
9 10 (1.12%) Claude Code
9 10 (1.12%) REST Assured
10 9 (1.01%) Oracle Forms
11 6 (0.67%) Bitbucket
11 6 (0.67%) Visual Studio Code
12 5 (0.56%) Cucumber
12 5 (0.56%) MSI
12 5 (0.56%) Vite
13 4 (0.45%) Xcode
13 4 (0.45%) XCTest
13 4 (0.45%) XCUITest
General
1 204 (22.82%) Finance
2 178 (19.91%) Social Skills
3 145 (16.22%) Public Sector
4 118 (13.20%) Banking
5 78 (8.72%) Front Office
6 76 (8.50%) Analytical Skills
7 58 (6.49%) Investment Banking
8 35 (3.91%) Retail
9 31 (3.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 13 (1.45%) Financial Institution
10 13 (1.45%) Military
11 12 (1.34%) Back Office
12 10 (1.12%) Games
12 10 (1.12%) Law
13 8 (0.89%) Legal
14 7 (0.78%) Telecoms
15 6 (0.67%) Manufacturing
15 6 (0.67%) Organisational Skills
16 5 (0.56%) Local Government
17 3 (0.34%) Publishing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 145 (16.22%) REST
2 129 (14.43%) React
3 126 (14.09%) .NET
4 112 (12.53%) Spring
5 102 (11.41%) RESTful
6 95 (10.63%) Spring Boot
7 70 (7.83%) Kafka
8 60 (6.71%) HTML
9 58 (6.49%) Node.js
10 55 (6.15%) Redux
11 53 (5.93%) Terraform
12 51 (5.70%) CSS
13 48 (5.37%) SOAP
14 46 (5.15%) AngularJS
15 40 (4.47%) JSON
16 39 (4.36%) Django
17 38 (4.25%) Web Services
18 36 (4.03%) HTML5
19 29 (3.24%) .NET Core
20 28 (3.13%) CSS3
Miscellaneous
1 66 (7.38%) Cloud Native
2 56 (6.26%) Product Ownership
3 53 (5.93%) Distributed Systems
4 48 (5.37%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 47 (5.26%) Fixed Income
6 41 (4.59%) Equities
7 38 (4.25%) Greenfield Project
8 28 (3.13%) Enterprise Software
9 18 (2.01%) Data Structures
10 16 (1.79%) CMDB
11 15 (1.68%) Legacy Systems
11 15 (1.68%) Onboarding
12 13 (1.45%) AI Agents
12 13 (1.45%) Algorithms
13 12 (1.34%) Derivative
13 12 (1.34%) Mobile App
14 7 (0.78%) Management Information System
14 7 (0.78%) Market Risk
14 7 (0.78%) Spread Betting
15 6 (0.67%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 51 (5.70%) Linux
1 51 (5.70%) Unix
2 17 (1.90%) Windows
3 10 (1.12%) Apple iOS
4 9 (1.01%) AIX
4 9 (1.01%) Android
5 8 (0.89%) Windows Server
6 4 (0.45%) Mac OS X
7 1 (0.11%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 296 (33.11%) CI/CD
2 281 (31.43%) Agile
3 163 (18.23%) Microservices
4 154 (17.23%) DevOps
5 118 (13.20%) Software Engineering
5 118 (13.20%) Test Automation
6 114 (12.75%) Full-Stack Development
7 102 (11.41%) AI
8 97 (10.85%) Problem-Solving
9 88 (9.84%) Continuous Improvement
10 84 (9.40%) Containerisation
11 81 (9.06%) TDD
12 78 (8.72%) Scrum
13 74 (8.28%) Data Modelling
13 74 (8.28%) Event-Driven
13 74 (8.28%) Mentoring
14 64 (7.16%) Business Intelligence
15 63 (7.05%) Front End Development
15 63 (7.05%) Technical Leadership
16 62 (6.94%) Code Quality
Programming Languages
1 263 (29.42%) Java
2 190 (21.25%) Python
3 182 (20.36%) SQL
4 168 (18.79%) C#
5 153 (17.11%) JavaScript
6 140 (15.66%) TypeScript
7 25 (2.80%) Apex Code
8 23 (2.57%) PL/SQL
9 22 (2.46%) Ruby
10 21 (2.35%) Shell Script
11 19 (2.13%) C++
12 14 (1.57%) Kotlin
13 12 (1.34%) SOQL
14 10 (1.12%) C
14 10 (1.12%) Scala
15 8 (0.89%) Bicep
15 8 (0.89%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 8 (0.89%) PHP
15 8 (0.89%) Swift
16 7 (0.78%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 149 (16.67%) Security Cleared
2 133 (14.88%) SC Cleared
3 38 (4.25%) Degree
4 20 (2.24%) BPSS Clearance
5 18 (2.01%) Computer Science Degree
6 11 (1.23%) Microsoft Certification
7 8 (0.89%) DV Cleared
8 5 (0.56%) Azure Certification
9 4 (0.45%) Numerate Degree
10 3 (0.34%) Master's Degree
11 1 (0.11%) AWS Certification
11 1 (0.11%) AWS Certified Developer
11 1 (0.11%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 1 (0.11%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 1 (0.11%) DBS Check
11 1 (0.11%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 51 (5.70%) Accessibility
2 46 (5.15%) QA
3 29 (3.24%) WCAG
4 26 (2.91%) Data Quality
5 11 (1.23%) GDPR
6 5 (0.56%) NCSC
7 2 (0.22%) Basel III
7 2 (0.22%) ISO 20022
8 1 (0.11%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.11%) EMIR
8 1 (0.11%) GRC
8 1 (0.11%) ISO 15022
8 1 (0.11%) MiFID
8 1 (0.11%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.11%) SEPA
8 1 (0.11%) Solvency II
System Software
1 112 (12.53%) Docker
2 6 (0.67%) Active Directory
3 5 (0.56%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.22%) Apache ZooKeeper
4 2 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
4 2 (0.22%) Postfix
5 1 (0.11%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 94 (10.51%) Kubernetes
2 25 (2.80%) Grafana
3 20 (2.24%) Prometheus
4 14 (1.57%) Ansible
5 4 (0.45%) Argo
6 2 (0.22%) Bosun
6 2 (0.22%) Consul
6 2 (0.22%) Single Sign-On
6 2 (0.22%) Zipkin
7 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.11%) SELinux
7 1 (0.11%) systemd
Vendors
1 89 (9.96%) Microsoft
2 77 (8.61%) Oracle
3 45 (5.03%) Salesforce
4 30 (3.36%) ServiceNow
5 22 (2.46%) Databricks
6 14 (1.57%) Google
6 14 (1.57%) MuleSoft
7 11 (1.23%) Blue Prism
7 11 (1.23%) IBM
8 10 (1.12%) Avaloq
9 8 (0.89%) SAP
10 5 (0.56%) BeyondTrust
10 5 (0.56%) Bomgar
10 5 (0.56%) Jaspersoft
10 5 (0.56%) Solace
10 5 (0.56%) VMware
11 4 (0.45%) ION Trading
11 4 (0.45%) New Relic
11 4 (0.45%) Splunk
12 3 (0.34%) Atlassian