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 18 February 2026.

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

6 months to
18 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 167 149 177
Rank change year-on-year -18 +28 -60
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Developer 673 542 596
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.66% 1.77% 1.34%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.81% 1.90% 1.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 471 357 423
10th Percentile £400 £425 £414
25th Percentile £450 £500 £482
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £600 £575
Median % change year-on-year -12.50% +4.35% -9.09%
75th Percentile £650 £700 £717
90th Percentile £850 £838 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 1 11
10th Percentile - - £40.00
25th Percentile £85.00 - £52.50
Median hourly rate £90.00 £77.19 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +16.60% +28.65% -4.00%
75th Percentile £95.00 - £72.50
90th Percentile - - £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £77.19 £52.50
% change year-on-year - +47.03% -16.00%

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 37,174 28,501 41,310
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.66% 92.92% 93.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,390 17,648 27,150
10th Percentile £305 £288 £275
25th Percentile £406 £406 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £478 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +0.53% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,257 809 2,323
10th Percentile £14.57 £16.25 £13.15
25th Percentile £18.82 £21.46 £16.50
Median hourly rate £30.00 £34.11 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.05% -2.54% -9.09%
75th Percentile £61.84 £63.75 £61.25
90th Percentile £72.52 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.60 £32.50 £35.58
% change year-on-year -8.92% -8.64% +1.64%

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 18 February 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 18 February 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 -17 572 £550 -8.33% 322
London -12 362 £611 -2.98% 124
Work from Home +22 243 £594 -1.00% 185
UK excluding London -42 218 £500 -4.76% 251
North of England -35 71 £550 +4.76% 98
South West +16 55 £475 -20.83% 26
Yorkshire -27 38 £600 +14.29% 36
North West -30 31 £500 -4.76% 52
South East -34 31 £500 +11.11% 72
Midlands -42 28 £525 +0.48% 27
West Midlands -40 20 £525 -4.55% 18
East of England -26 19 £500 -23.08% 10
Scotland -20 14 £475 +5.56% 13
North East -8 8 £525 +8.81% 11
East Midlands -18 8 £520 - 9
Wales -1 4 £638 +27.50% 6
Northern Ireland 0 3 £638 +6.25% 1

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

For the 6 months to 18 February 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.

1 222 (32.99%) Java
2 215 (31.95%) AWS
3 198 (29.42%) Agile
4 162 (24.07%) Microservices
5 156 (23.18%) Azure
5 156 (23.18%) CI/CD
6 155 (23.03%) SQL
7 153 (22.73%) Python
8 143 (21.25%) Security Cleared
9 140 (20.80%) DevOps
10 130 (19.32%) Kafka
11 128 (19.02%) SC Cleared
12 127 (18.87%) JavaScript
13 123 (18.28%) Docker
14 119 (17.68%) Kubernetes
15 118 (17.53%) Problem-Solving
16 94 (13.97%) Spring
17 85 (12.63%) React
17 85 (12.63%) TDD
18 80 (11.89%) Software Engineering
18 80 (11.89%) Spring Boot
19 79 (11.74%) Test Automation
20 78 (11.59%) Containerisation
21 72 (10.70%) Git
21 72 (10.70%) Scrum
22 69 (10.25%) .NET
23 68 (10.10%) C#
24 67 (9.96%) Full-Stack Development
25 66 (9.81%) Analytics
26 60 (8.92%) Azure DevOps

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 13 (1.93%) Confluence
2 6 (0.89%) nginx
3 5 (0.74%) CMS
3 5 (0.74%) SharePoint
4 4 (0.59%) Ethereum
4 4 (0.59%) Hyperledger
4 4 (0.59%) Jupyter
5 3 (0.45%) Mendix
5 3 (0.45%) SAS
5 3 (0.45%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.30%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (0.30%) Microsoft Exchange
7 1 (0.15%) Anypoint
7 1 (0.15%) Appian
7 1 (0.15%) Headless CMS
7 1 (0.15%) LiveCycle
7 1 (0.15%) Oracle Application Server
7 1 (0.15%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 1 (0.15%) Umbraco
7 1 (0.15%) WordPress
Applications
1 14 (2.08%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 5 (0.74%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (0.45%) Endur
3 2 (0.30%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.15%) FLEXCUBE
4 1 (0.15%) IBM Planning Analytics
4 1 (0.15%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.15%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.15%) Oracle Retail
4 1 (0.15%) R3 Corda
4 1 (0.15%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.15%) SAP BRIM
4 1 (0.15%) SAP FI
4 1 (0.15%) SAP Travel Management
Cloud Services
1 215 (31.95%) AWS
2 156 (23.18%) Azure
3 60 (8.92%) Azure DevOps
4 45 (6.69%) GitHub
5 40 (5.94%) Serverless
6 35 (5.20%) Power Platform
7 32 (4.75%) GCP
8 23 (3.42%) AWS Lambda
8 23 (3.42%) Power Automate
9 19 (2.82%) PowerApps
10 18 (2.67%) Dynamics 365
11 17 (2.53%) Amazon EKS
11 17 (2.53%) Amazon SQS
12 16 (2.38%) Amazon EC2
12 16 (2.38%) Azure Service Bus
13 14 (2.08%) Amazon ECS
13 14 (2.08%) SaaS
14 12 (1.78%) GitHub Actions
15 10 (1.49%) Amazon S3
15 10 (1.49%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 6 (0.89%) HTTP
2 5 (0.74%) Kerberos
3 3 (0.45%) Reverse Proxy
4 2 (0.30%) Firewall
4 2 (0.30%) SSL
4 2 (0.30%) VPN
5 1 (0.15%) DNS
5 1 (0.15%) Ethernet
5 1 (0.15%) FTP
5 1 (0.15%) Internet
5 1 (0.15%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 57 (8.47%) PostgreSQL
2 51 (7.58%) MongoDB
3 39 (5.79%) NoSQL
3 39 (5.79%) Relational Database
4 38 (5.65%) SQL Server
5 34 (5.05%) Apache Cassandra
6 23 (3.42%) Power BI
7 16 (2.38%) Data Hub
8 15 (2.23%) DynamoDB
9 13 (1.93%) MySQL
10 12 (1.78%) Data Warehouse
11 11 (1.63%) DB2
12 9 (1.34%) Data Lake
13 8 (1.19%) Amazon RDS
14 7 (1.04%) Oracle BI EE
14 7 (1.04%) Redis
15 6 (0.89%) HBase
15 6 (0.89%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 5 (0.74%) Delta Lake
16 5 (0.74%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 72 (10.70%) Git
2 34 (5.05%) JUnit
2 34 (5.05%) Oracle APEX
3 33 (4.90%) Jenkins
4 30 (4.46%) GitLab
5 27 (4.01%) JIRA
6 22 (3.27%) Mockito
7 14 (2.08%) Maven
8 11 (1.63%) Gradle
9 9 (1.34%) Cucumber
10 8 (1.19%) Artifactory
11 7 (1.04%) SonarQube
11 7 (1.04%) Sonatype Nexus
12 5 (0.74%) Cypress.io
12 5 (0.74%) Mocha
12 5 (0.74%) SpecFlow
13 4 (0.59%) Bitbucket
13 4 (0.59%) Postman
14 3 (0.45%) git-flow
14 3 (0.45%) webpack
General
1 145 (21.55%) Social Skills
2 142 (21.10%) Finance
3 98 (14.56%) Banking
4 95 (14.12%) Public Sector
5 50 (7.43%) Analytical Skills
6 41 (6.09%) Investment Banking
7 23 (3.42%) Front Office
8 12 (1.78%) Financial Institution
9 5 (0.74%) Law
9 5 (0.74%) Presentation Skills
10 4 (0.59%) Health Technology
10 4 (0.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 4 (0.59%) Military
10 4 (0.59%) Retail Banking
10 4 (0.59%) Telecoms
11 3 (0.45%) Legal
11 3 (0.45%) Manufacturing
11 3 (0.45%) Pharmaceutical
11 3 (0.45%) Police
12 2 (0.30%) Organisational Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 130 (19.32%) Kafka
2 94 (13.97%) Spring
3 85 (12.63%) React
4 80 (11.89%) Spring Boot
5 69 (10.25%) .NET
6 59 (8.77%) Node.js
7 55 (8.17%) REST
8 54 (8.02%) RESTful
9 53 (7.88%) HTML
10 50 (7.43%) AngularJS
11 48 (7.13%) CSS
12 32 (4.75%) Web Services
13 31 (4.61%) gRPC
14 19 (2.82%) Jest
15 18 (2.67%) .NET Framework
16 17 (2.53%) Next.js
16 17 (2.53%) RabbitMQ
17 15 (2.23%) JAX-RS
17 15 (2.23%) Redux
18 14 (2.08%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 54 (8.02%) Cloud Native
2 46 (6.84%) Distributed Systems
3 30 (4.46%) Derivative
4 26 (3.86%) Equities
4 26 (3.86%) Greenfield Project
4 26 (3.86%) Product Ownership
5 24 (3.57%) Algorithms
6 20 (2.97%) Market Risk
7 19 (2.82%) Management Information System
8 17 (2.53%) Data Structures
9 12 (1.78%) Fixed Income
9 12 (1.78%) Mobile App
10 11 (1.63%) Legacy Systems
11 9 (1.34%) Onboarding
12 8 (1.19%) Equity Derivative
12 8 (1.19%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 7 (1.04%) Legacy Applications
14 6 (0.89%) Enterprise Software
14 6 (0.89%) Linux Command Line
15 5 (0.74%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 52 (7.73%) Linux
2 28 (4.16%) Unix
3 16 (2.38%) Android
4 14 (2.08%) Mac OS X
5 10 (1.49%) Windows
6 9 (1.34%) Apple iOS
7 4 (0.59%) Mac OS
8 2 (0.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 2 (0.30%) Windows Server
9 1 (0.15%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 198 (29.42%) Agile
2 162 (24.07%) Microservices
3 156 (23.18%) CI/CD
4 140 (20.80%) DevOps
5 118 (17.53%) Problem-Solving
6 85 (12.63%) TDD
7 80 (11.89%) Software Engineering
8 79 (11.74%) Test Automation
9 78 (11.59%) Containerisation
10 72 (10.70%) Scrum
11 67 (9.96%) Full-Stack Development
12 66 (9.81%) Analytics
13 58 (8.62%) Open Source
14 51 (7.58%) SDLC
15 48 (7.13%) Infrastructure as Code
16 46 (6.84%) Code Quality
16 46 (6.84%) Mentoring
17 45 (6.69%) Front End Development
18 39 (5.79%) User Experience
19 38 (5.65%) Unit Testing
Programming Languages
1 222 (32.99%) Java
2 155 (23.03%) SQL
3 153 (22.73%) Python
4 127 (18.87%) JavaScript
5 68 (10.10%) C#
6 57 (8.47%) TypeScript
7 43 (6.39%) Go
8 39 (5.79%) PL/SQL
9 26 (3.86%) Kotlin
10 20 (2.97%) Ruby
11 17 (2.53%) C++
12 14 (2.08%) Bash
13 11 (1.63%) PowerShell
13 11 (1.63%) Shell Script
14 6 (0.89%) PHP
15 4 (0.59%) ABAP
15 4 (0.59%) VBA
16 3 (0.45%) Apex Code
16 3 (0.45%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 3 (0.45%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 143 (21.25%) Security Cleared
2 128 (19.02%) SC Cleared
3 33 (4.90%) Degree
4 26 (3.86%) BPSS Clearance
5 16 (2.38%) Computer Science Degree
6 8 (1.19%) Numerate Degree
7 6 (0.89%) OCP
7 6 (0.89%) Oracle Certification
8 5 (0.74%) AWS Certification
9 3 (0.45%) Azure Certification
9 3 (0.45%) Master's Degree
9 3 (0.45%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 2 (0.30%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 2 (0.30%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (0.30%) DV Cleared
11 1 (0.15%) AWS Certified Developer
11 1 (0.15%) CISSP
11 1 (0.15%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (4.31%) Accessibility
2 17 (2.53%) Data Quality
3 16 (2.38%) QA
3 16 (2.38%) WCAG
4 4 (0.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 3 (0.45%) EU AI Act
5 3 (0.45%) NIST
6 2 (0.30%) GDPR
7 1 (0.15%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 123 (18.28%) Docker
2 5 (0.74%) zsh
3 2 (0.30%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.15%) GridGain
4 1 (0.15%) OpenAM
4 1 (0.15%) OpenDJ
4 1 (0.15%) OpenIDM
Systems Management
1 119 (17.68%) Kubernetes
2 36 (5.35%) Terraform
3 21 (3.12%) Grafana
4 14 (2.08%) Ansible
5 9 (1.34%) Prometheus
5 9 (1.34%) Single Sign-On
6 3 (0.45%) Kibana
7 1 (0.15%) Argo
7 1 (0.15%) CloudHub
7 1 (0.15%) Control-M
7 1 (0.15%) HAProxy
7 1 (0.15%) Sysdig
Vendors
1 58 (8.62%) Oracle
2 41 (6.09%) Microsoft
3 20 (2.97%) Google
4 12 (1.78%) Sybase
5 10 (1.49%) Databricks
5 10 (1.49%) SAP
5 10 (1.49%) ServiceNow
6 9 (1.34%) Salesforce
7 6 (0.89%) Guidewire
8 5 (0.74%) Atlassian
9 4 (0.59%) IBM
9 4 (0.59%) Pega
10 3 (0.45%) Apple
10 3 (0.45%) Cognizant
10 3 (0.45%) Dataiku
10 3 (0.45%) Foundry
11 2 (0.30%) CA Agile Central
11 2 (0.30%) ForgeRock
11 2 (0.30%) New Relic
11 2 (0.30%) OpenAI