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 September 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 179 110 153
Rank change year-on-year -69 +43 -35
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Developer 529 815 833
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 1.61% 2.13% 1.68%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.76% 2.29% 1.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 379 561 621
10th Percentile £400 £400 £425
25th Percentile £463 £463 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £625
Median % change year-on-year - -12.00% -1.96%
75th Percentile £700 £700 £750
90th Percentile £803 £825 £850
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £504 £530
% change year-on-year +4.22% -4.95% -7.83%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 3 2
10th Percentile - £40.29 £59.00
25th Percentile - £48.22 £61.25
Median hourly rate - £61.43 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -8.99% -10.00%
75th Percentile - £74.47 £73.75
90th Percentile - £82.29 £76.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £60.00 -

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 29,996 35,551 46,729
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.07% 92.96% 94.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,952 21,923 31,999
10th Percentile £278 £300 £300
25th Percentile £400 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £621 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,570 1,683 1,490
10th Percentile £13.75 £14.73 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.30 £20.30 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £43.88
Median % change year-on-year -41.51% -2.01% +68.77%
75th Percentile £52.50 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £45.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year -44.11% +5.88% +93.18%

Senior Developer
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured Senior Developer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Senior Developer 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 September 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 September 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 -62 453 £575 +4.55% 293
London -62 279 £650 +8.33% 110
Work from Home -43 219 £558 -3.04% 229
UK excluding London -15 173 £525 +4.22% 247
North of England +3 58 £550 +15.79% 76
South East +17 35 £527 -4.23% 81
Yorkshire +7 34 £600 +11.63% 30
South West +23 29 £550 +4.76% 29
North West -13 23 £500 +5.26% 38
Scotland -25 18 £408 -18.40% 13
Midlands -22 16 £520 +4.00% 26
East of England +5 11 £500 +33.33% 12
West Midlands -24 9 £600 +20.00% 13
East Midlands -1 7 £455 -0.27% 11
Northern Ireland -2 5 £500 -9.09% 6
North East -4 4 £488 +14.71% 10
Wales +3 3 £325 -44.37% 11

Senior Developer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 17 September 2025, Senior Developer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Senior Developer in the job title.

1 202 (38.19%) Agile
2 199 (37.62%) Java
3 171 (32.33%) Finance
4 146 (27.60%) SQL
4 146 (27.60%) AWS
5 140 (26.47%) CI/CD
6 138 (26.09%) Azure
7 136 (25.71%) Microservices
8 130 (24.57%) DevOps
9 120 (22.68%) Social Skills
10 115 (21.74%) Problem-Solving
11 110 (20.79%) C#
12 109 (20.60%) Python
13 105 (19.85%) Docker
14 102 (19.28%) Banking
15 94 (17.77%) Kafka
16 91 (17.20%) .NET
17 89 (16.82%) Kubernetes
18 87 (16.45%) JavaScript
19 86 (16.26%) TDD
20 84 (15.88%) RESTful
21 82 (15.50%) Spring
21 82 (15.50%) React
22 78 (14.74%) TypeScript
23 70 (13.23%) Full-Stack Development
24 69 (13.04%) PostgreSQL
25 67 (12.67%) Linux
26 64 (12.10%) Relational Database
27 60 (11.34%) Investment Banking
28 59 (11.15%) Git

Senior Developer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 14 (2.65%) Moodle
2 12 (2.27%) CMS
3 11 (2.08%) Confluence
4 5 (0.95%) Apache
4 5 (0.95%) Apache Spark
5 4 (0.76%) Headless CMS
5 4 (0.76%) SharePoint
6 3 (0.57%) Alfresco
6 3 (0.57%) Camunda
6 3 (0.57%) GemFire
6 3 (0.57%) Oracle Coherence
7 2 (0.38%) Anypoint
7 2 (0.38%) Umbraco
8 1 (0.19%) SAS
Applications
1 5 (0.95%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 3 (0.57%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.19%) Endur
3 1 (0.19%) NetSuite
3 1 (0.19%) Oracle BPM
3 1 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
3 1 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 146 (27.60%) AWS
2 138 (26.09%) Azure
3 47 (8.88%) Azure DevOps
4 44 (8.32%) Serverless
5 35 (6.62%) GitHub
6 31 (5.86%) GCP
7 29 (5.48%) Power Platform
8 25 (4.73%) AWS Lambda
9 19 (3.59%) Amazon S3
10 16 (3.02%) PowerApps
11 15 (2.84%) GitHub Actions
12 14 (2.65%) AWS CloudFormation
12 14 (2.65%) Azure Service Bus
13 13 (2.46%) Amazon EC2
14 12 (2.27%) Dynamics 365
14 12 (2.27%) Power Automate
15 11 (2.08%) SaaS
16 10 (1.89%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 10 (1.89%) Amazon SQS
16 10 (1.89%) Firebase
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.76%) SAN
1 4 (0.76%) TCP/IP
2 3 (0.57%) SSL
3 2 (0.38%) HTTP
3 2 (0.38%) VPN
4 1 (0.19%) BGP
4 1 (0.19%) Ethernet
4 1 (0.19%) Ethernet VPN
4 1 (0.19%) Firewall
4 1 (0.19%) MPLS
4 1 (0.19%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 69 (13.04%) PostgreSQL
2 64 (12.10%) Relational Database
3 56 (10.59%) MongoDB
4 50 (9.45%) SQL Server
5 21 (3.97%) DB2
6 20 (3.78%) MySQL
7 17 (3.21%) NoSQL
8 16 (3.02%) Redis
9 14 (2.65%) Azure SQL Database
9 14 (2.65%) Power BI
10 11 (2.08%) DynamoDB
10 11 (2.08%) RDBMS
11 10 (1.89%) Amazon RDS
12 9 (1.70%) Apache Cassandra
13 8 (1.51%) Data Lake
14 7 (1.32%) KDB
15 6 (1.13%) Kdb+
15 6 (1.13%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 3 (0.57%) Delta Lake
16 3 (0.57%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 59 (11.15%) Git
2 48 (9.07%) JUnit
3 34 (6.43%) Jenkins
4 30 (5.67%) Mockito
5 29 (5.48%) JIRA
6 21 (3.97%) GitLab
7 13 (2.46%) Gradle
8 12 (2.27%) Postman
9 10 (1.89%) Bitbucket
9 10 (1.89%) Maven
9 10 (1.89%) SpecFlow
10 9 (1.70%) Liquibase
11 7 (1.32%) TeamCity
11 7 (1.32%) webpack
12 6 (1.13%) Team Foundation Server
13 5 (0.95%) NUnit
13 5 (0.95%) Visual Studio
14 4 (0.76%) MSTest
15 3 (0.57%) Cypress.io
15 3 (0.57%) PHPUnit
General
1 171 (32.33%) Finance
2 120 (22.68%) Social Skills
3 102 (19.28%) Banking
4 60 (11.34%) Investment Banking
5 53 (10.02%) Analytical Skills
5 53 (10.02%) Public Sector
6 30 (5.67%) Front Office
7 12 (2.27%) Marketing
8 9 (1.70%) Manufacturing
9 7 (1.32%) Back Office
9 7 (1.32%) Telecoms
10 6 (1.13%) Electronics
10 6 (1.13%) Financial Institution
11 4 (0.76%) Aerospace
11 4 (0.76%) Legal
12 3 (0.57%) Games
12 3 (0.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 3 (0.57%) Military
13 2 (0.38%) Documentation Skills
13 2 (0.38%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 94 (17.77%) Kafka
2 91 (17.20%) .NET
3 84 (15.88%) RESTful
4 82 (15.50%) React
4 82 (15.50%) Spring
5 59 (11.15%) Spring Boot
6 47 (8.88%) AngularJS
6 47 (8.88%) Node.js
7 44 (8.32%) REST
8 33 (6.24%) .NET Core
9 29 (5.48%) HTML
10 28 (5.29%) CSS
10 28 (5.29%) Web Services
11 27 (5.10%) JSON
12 20 (3.78%) .NET Framework
13 19 (3.59%) ASP.NET
13 19 (3.59%) JMS
13 19 (3.59%) XML
14 18 (3.40%) GraphQL
15 17 (3.21%) Next.js
Miscellaneous
1 31 (5.86%) Derivative
2 28 (5.29%) Cloud Native
3 26 (4.91%) Distributed Systems
4 23 (4.35%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 22 (4.16%) Data Structures
6 21 (3.97%) Equities
7 20 (3.78%) Market Risk
8 17 (3.21%) Greenfield Project
8 17 (3.21%) Management Information System
8 17 (3.21%) Product Ownership
9 13 (2.46%) Fixed Income
10 10 (1.89%) Mobile App
11 9 (1.70%) Self-Motivation
12 8 (1.51%) Enterprise Software
13 7 (1.32%) Legacy Systems
14 6 (1.13%) Algorithms
15 5 (0.95%) Hedge funds
16 4 (0.76%) Data Protection Act
16 4 (0.76%) NHS
16 4 (0.76%) Video on Demand
Operating Systems
1 67 (12.67%) Linux
2 25 (4.73%) Unix
3 19 (3.59%) Android
4 14 (2.65%) Mac OS X
5 13 (2.46%) Windows
6 12 (2.27%) Apple iOS
7 4 (0.76%) Debian
7 4 (0.76%) Ubuntu
7 4 (0.76%) Windows Server
7 4 (0.76%) Windows Server 2016
8 2 (0.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 1 (0.19%) CentOS
9 1 (0.19%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.19%) tvOS
9 1 (0.19%) watchOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 202 (38.19%) Agile
2 140 (26.47%) CI/CD
3 136 (25.71%) Microservices
4 130 (24.57%) DevOps
5 115 (21.74%) Problem-Solving
6 86 (16.26%) TDD
7 70 (13.23%) Full-Stack Development
8 59 (11.15%) Containerisation
9 57 (10.78%) Mentoring
9 57 (10.78%) Scrum
10 55 (10.40%) Software Engineering
11 53 (10.02%) Analytics
12 47 (8.88%) Event-Driven
13 45 (8.51%) API Development
14 41 (7.75%) SDLC
15 40 (7.56%) Test Automation
16 38 (7.18%) Clean Code
17 37 (6.99%) BDD
18 35 (6.62%) Performance Tuning
19 34 (6.43%) Event-Driven Architecture
Programming Languages
1 199 (37.62%) Java
2 146 (27.60%) SQL
3 110 (20.79%) C#
4 109 (20.60%) Python
5 87 (16.45%) JavaScript
6 78 (14.74%) TypeScript
7 22 (4.16%) Shell Script
8 18 (3.40%) C++
9 15 (2.84%) Kotlin
10 13 (2.46%) Ruby
11 11 (2.08%) PowerShell
12 9 (1.70%) Go
12 9 (1.70%) PL/SQL
13 8 (1.51%) PHP
14 7 (1.32%) Bash
15 6 (1.13%) Apex Code
16 5 (0.95%) ABAP
17 4 (0.76%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 4 (0.76%) Scala
17 4 (0.76%) VBA
Qualifications
1 57 (10.78%) Security Cleared
2 46 (8.70%) SC Cleared
3 38 (7.18%) Degree
4 19 (3.59%) Computer Science Degree
5 13 (2.46%) BPSS Clearance
6 8 (1.51%) AWS Certification
7 6 (1.13%) Master's Degree
8 4 (0.76%) AWS Certified Developer
9 3 (0.57%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 3 (0.57%) DBS Check
9 3 (0.57%) Microsoft Certification
9 3 (0.57%) Numerate Degree
10 2 (0.38%) DV Cleared
10 2 (0.38%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
11 1 (0.19%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 1 (0.19%) Azure Certification
11 1 (0.19%) MCPD
11 1 (0.19%) MCSD
11 1 (0.19%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (4.16%) QA
2 17 (3.21%) Accessibility
3 8 (1.51%) Data Quality
4 2 (0.38%) WCAG
5 1 (0.19%) Disclosure Scotland
5 1 (0.19%) HL7
5 1 (0.19%) HMG Security Policy Framework
5 1 (0.19%) ISO 22301
5 1 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 20000
5 1 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 105 (19.85%) Docker
2 4 (0.76%) Active Directory
2 4 (0.76%) GridGain
3 3 (0.57%) zsh
4 1 (0.19%) Apache ZooKeeper
4 1 (0.19%) Lustre
4 1 (0.19%) Postfix
4 1 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 89 (16.82%) Kubernetes
2 46 (8.70%) Terraform
3 7 (1.32%) Prometheus
4 6 (1.13%) Ansible
4 6 (1.13%) Grafana
5 4 (0.76%) Kibana
6 3 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.19%) CloudHub
7 1 (0.19%) Packer
7 1 (0.19%) Rundeck
Vendors
1 34 (6.43%) Microsoft
2 22 (4.16%) Oracle
2 22 (4.16%) Sybase
3 17 (3.21%) Databricks
4 16 (3.02%) Google
5 15 (2.84%) Salesforce
6 13 (2.46%) ServiceNow
7 10 (1.89%) Atlassian
7 10 (1.89%) SAP
8 6 (1.13%) Red Hat
9 5 (0.95%) Virgin Media
10 4 (0.76%) Adobe
10 4 (0.76%) Dynatrace
10 4 (0.76%) IFS
10 4 (0.76%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
10 4 (0.76%) VMware
11 3 (0.57%) Apple
11 3 (0.57%) HP
11 3 (0.57%) Remedy
11 3 (0.57%) Splunk