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 23 April 2026.

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

6 months to
23 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 172 161 153
Rank change year-on-year -11 -8 -29
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Developer 737 521 697
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.59% 1.76% 1.59%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.72% 1.90% 1.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 487 382 493
10th Percentile £409 £409 £411
25th Percentile £456 £481 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £600 £575
Median % change year-on-year -12.50% +4.35% -8.00%
75th Percentile £650 £733 £725
90th Percentile £850 £838 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £528 £500
% change year-on-year -5.21% +5.50% -13.04%
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 42,836 27,359 40,556
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.28% 92.64% 92.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,486 17,911 26,489
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -1.90% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +2.63% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,746 1,013 2,627
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.44 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.51 £16.25
Median hourly rate £42.50 £30.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +41.67% -14.29% -22.22%
75th Percentile £65.60 £63.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.00 £28.88 £37.18
% change year-on-year +52.38% -22.34% -12.52%

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 23 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 23 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 -18 623 £550 -8.33% 239
London -7 388 £625 -3.85% 90
UK excluding London -23 248 £500 -5.21% 197
Work from Home -5 210 £600 - 137
North of England -34 74 £525 -11.02% 67
South West +12 52 £475 -20.83% 13
Midlands -39 42 £500 -6.76% 20
South East -41 39 £560 +5.66% 54
Yorkshire -30 38 £575 -4.17% 18
North West -25 37 £500 -9.09% 42
West Midlands -42 34 £485 -11.82% 13
East of England -22 20 £500 -23.08% 21
Scotland -16 17 £475 +11.76% 18
East Midlands -30 7 £525 +14.13% 7
Northern Ireland +3 5 £638 +27.50% 4
Wales -9 2 £638 +6.25% 7
North East -21 1 £450 -23.73% 9

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

For the 6 months to 23 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.

1 234 (31.75%) Java
2 214 (29.04%) AWS
3 195 (26.46%) Agile
4 177 (24.02%) CI/CD
5 160 (21.71%) Python
6 158 (21.44%) Security Cleared
7 152 (20.62%) SC Cleared
8 148 (20.08%) Azure
9 144 (19.54%) Microservices
10 140 (19.00%) SQL
11 136 (18.45%) DevOps
12 122 (16.55%) JavaScript
13 121 (16.42%) Docker
14 114 (15.47%) Kubernetes
15 100 (13.57%) Kafka
16 93 (12.62%) Spring
17 90 (12.21%) React
18 85 (11.53%) Containerisation
19 84 (11.40%) Spring Boot
20 77 (10.45%) Problem-Solving
21 75 (10.18%) .NET
22 73 (9.91%) Software Engineering
23 72 (9.77%) Git
24 71 (9.63%) Test Automation
25 70 (9.50%) TDD
26 68 (9.23%) Full-Stack Development
27 65 (8.82%) TypeScript
28 63 (8.55%) RESTful
28 63 (8.55%) Scrum
29 62 (8.41%) C#

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 9 (1.22%) Confluence
2 6 (0.81%) Apache Spark
2 6 (0.81%) nginx
3 5 (0.68%) Apache
3 5 (0.68%) CMS
3 5 (0.68%) SharePoint
4 4 (0.54%) Ethereum
4 4 (0.54%) Headless CMS
4 4 (0.54%) Hyperledger
5 3 (0.41%) Apache Airflow
5 3 (0.41%) IIS
5 3 (0.41%) Mendix
5 3 (0.41%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 3 (0.41%) Oracle Workflow
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
Applications
1 10 (1.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 13 (1.76%) Teamcenter
2 5 (0.68%) Endur
3 2 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.27%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.14%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.14%) FLEXCUBE
4 1 (0.14%) IBM Planning Analytics
4 1 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
4 1 (0.14%) Oracle Cash Management
4 1 (0.14%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.14%) Oracle General Ledger
4 1 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
4 1 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
4 1 (0.14%) Oracle Retail
4 1 (0.14%) R3 Corda
4 1 (0.14%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.14%) SAP BRIM
4 1 (0.14%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.14%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 214 (29.04%) AWS
2 148 (20.08%) Azure
3 60 (8.14%) Azure DevOps
4 48 (6.51%) GitHub
5 38 (5.16%) Serverless
6 34 (4.61%) Power Platform
7 27 (3.66%) GCP
8 24 (3.26%) GitHub Actions
9 23 (3.12%) Amazon SQS
10 22 (2.99%) Power Automate
11 21 (2.85%) AWS Lambda
12 17 (2.31%) Amazon EC2
12 17 (2.31%) PowerApps
13 16 (2.17%) Azure Service Bus
14 14 (1.90%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 14 (1.90%) Amazon S3
15 13 (1.76%) Amazon EKS
15 13 (1.76%) Copilot Studio
16 12 (1.63%) Dynamics 365
16 12 (1.63%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 8 (1.09%) HTTP
2 4 (0.54%) Reverse Proxy
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%) Kerberos
5 1 (0.14%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 52 (7.06%) PostgreSQL
2 38 (5.16%) MongoDB
3 36 (4.88%) SQL Server
4 31 (4.21%) NoSQL
5 30 (4.07%) Apache Cassandra
6 28 (3.80%) Power BI
6 28 (3.80%) Relational Database
7 19 (2.58%) DynamoDB
8 17 (2.31%) MySQL
9 16 (2.17%) Data Hub
10 14 (1.90%) Data Warehouse
11 11 (1.49%) Amazon RDS
12 7 (0.95%) Oracle BI EE
13 6 (0.81%) Amazon Aurora
13 6 (0.81%) Big Data
14 5 (0.68%) KDB
15 4 (0.54%) DB2
15 4 (0.54%) Oracle Database
16 3 (0.41%) Amazon Athena
16 3 (0.41%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 72 (9.77%) Git
2 33 (4.48%) Jenkins
3 32 (4.34%) Oracle APEX
4 24 (3.26%) JUnit
5 20 (2.71%) Maven
6 19 (2.58%) JIRA
7 17 (2.31%) GitLab
7 17 (2.31%) Mockito
8 13 (1.76%) SonarQube
9 10 (1.36%) Gradle
10 6 (0.81%) Cypress.io
11 5 (0.68%) Bitbucket
12 4 (0.54%) Sonatype Nexus
13 3 (0.41%) Cucumber
13 3 (0.41%) webpack
14 2 (0.27%) Artifactory
14 2 (0.27%) Bitbucket Server
14 2 (0.27%) fastlane
14 2 (0.27%) Snyk
14 2 (0.27%) SpecFlow
General
1 125 (16.96%) Finance
2 124 (16.82%) Social Skills
3 117 (15.88%) Public Sector
4 98 (13.30%) Banking
5 38 (5.16%) Investment Banking
6 30 (4.07%) Analytical Skills
7 28 (3.80%) Front Office
8 15 (2.04%) Financial Institution
9 6 (0.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 6 (0.81%) Retail
10 5 (0.68%) Telecoms
11 4 (0.54%) Organisational Skills
12 3 (0.41%) Games
12 3 (0.41%) Health Technology
12 3 (0.41%) Law
12 3 (0.41%) Legal
12 3 (0.41%) Military
12 3 (0.41%) Pharmaceutical
12 3 (0.41%) Police
12 3 (0.41%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 100 (13.57%) Kafka
2 93 (12.62%) Spring
3 90 (12.21%) React
4 84 (11.40%) Spring Boot
5 75 (10.18%) .NET
6 63 (8.55%) RESTful
7 56 (7.60%) Node.js
8 54 (7.33%) REST
9 51 (6.92%) AngularJS
10 46 (6.24%) HTML
11 42 (5.70%) CSS
12 29 (3.93%) gRPC
13 27 (3.66%) Web Services
14 25 (3.39%) Redux
15 17 (2.31%) .NET Core
15 17 (2.31%) Django
16 15 (2.04%) .NET Framework
16 15 (2.04%) SOAP
17 14 (1.90%) HTML5
18 13 (1.76%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 55 (7.46%) Distributed Systems
2 50 (6.78%) Cloud Native
3 24 (3.26%) Product Ownership
4 23 (3.12%) Derivative
5 21 (2.85%) Fixed Income
6 19 (2.58%) Equities
6 19 (2.58%) Greenfield Project
7 14 (1.90%) Algorithms
8 13 (1.76%) Market Risk
9 12 (1.63%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 12 (1.63%) Management Information System
10 11 (1.49%) Mobile App
11 9 (1.22%) Onboarding
12 8 (1.09%) Equity Derivative
12 8 (1.09%) Legacy Systems
13 6 (0.81%) AI Agents
13 6 (0.81%) Data Structures
14 4 (0.54%) Legacy Applications
14 4 (0.54%) NHS
15 3 (0.41%) Animation
Operating Systems
1 41 (5.56%) Linux
2 25 (3.39%) Unix
3 18 (2.44%) Windows
4 14 (1.90%) Android
5 9 (1.22%) Mac OS
6 6 (0.81%) Apple iOS
7 5 (0.68%) Mac OS X
8 2 (0.27%) Windows Server
9 1 (0.14%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 195 (26.46%) Agile
2 177 (24.02%) CI/CD
3 144 (19.54%) Microservices
4 136 (18.45%) DevOps
5 85 (11.53%) Containerisation
6 77 (10.45%) Problem-Solving
7 73 (9.91%) Software Engineering
8 71 (9.63%) Test Automation
9 70 (9.50%) TDD
10 68 (9.23%) Full-Stack Development
11 63 (8.55%) Scrum
12 56 (7.60%) Code Quality
13 50 (6.78%) Analytics
14 45 (6.11%) Infrastructure as Code
14 45 (6.11%) Validation
15 44 (5.97%) Mentoring
16 42 (5.70%) Data Modelling
16 42 (5.70%) Front End Development
17 41 (5.56%) Open Source
18 40 (5.43%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 234 (31.75%) Java
2 160 (21.71%) Python
3 140 (19.00%) SQL
4 122 (16.55%) JavaScript
5 65 (8.82%) TypeScript
6 62 (8.41%) C#
7 44 (5.97%) Go
8 36 (4.88%) PL/SQL
9 28 (3.80%) Kotlin
10 26 (3.53%) Ruby
11 14 (1.90%) C++
12 9 (1.22%) PowerShell
13 8 (1.09%) Shell Script
14 7 (0.95%) Bash
15 6 (0.81%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 5 (0.68%) PHP
17 4 (0.54%) Apex Code
17 4 (0.54%) VBA
18 3 (0.41%) R
18 3 (0.41%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 158 (21.44%) Security Cleared
2 152 (20.62%) SC Cleared
3 24 (3.26%) BPSS Clearance
4 18 (2.44%) Degree
5 7 (0.95%) Computer Science Degree
6 6 (0.81%) DV Cleared
7 5 (0.68%) Numerate Degree
8 4 (0.54%) AWS Certification
9 3 (0.41%) AWS Certified Developer
10 2 (0.27%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (0.27%) OCP
10 2 (0.27%) Oracle Certification
11 1 (0.14%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 1 (0.14%) Azure Certification
11 1 (0.14%) CISSP
11 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (4.07%) Accessibility
2 27 (3.66%) QA
3 17 (2.31%) WCAG
4 11 (1.49%) Data Quality
5 2 (0.27%) GDPR
5 2 (0.27%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.14%) HMG Security Policy Framework
6 1 (0.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 121 (16.42%) Docker
2 2 (0.27%) Active Directory
2 2 (0.27%) GridGain
2 2 (0.27%) Oracle RAC
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
1 114 (15.47%) Kubernetes
2 47 (6.38%) Terraform
3 21 (2.85%) Grafana
4 15 (2.04%) Ansible
5 14 (1.90%) Prometheus
6 8 (1.09%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.14%) Argo
7 1 (0.14%) CloudHub
7 1 (0.14%) Control-M
7 1 (0.14%) HAProxy
7 1 (0.14%) Kibana
7 1 (0.14%) SELinux
7 1 (0.14%) Sysdig
7 1 (0.14%) systemd
Vendors
1 58 (7.87%) Oracle
2 41 (5.56%) Microsoft
3 19 (2.58%) ServiceNow
4 15 (2.04%) Google
5 13 (1.76%) Salesforce
6 9 (1.22%) Databricks
6 9 (1.22%) SAP
7 8 (1.09%) Avaloq
8 6 (0.81%) Guidewire
8 6 (0.81%) Sybase
9 4 (0.54%) ForgeRock
9 4 (0.54%) Jaspersoft
9 4 (0.54%) Pega
10 3 (0.41%) Apple
10 3 (0.41%) Cognizant
10 3 (0.41%) New Relic
10 3 (0.41%) Okta
10 3 (0.41%) Splunk
11 2 (0.27%) GoCardless
11 2 (0.27%) OpenAI