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 11 April 2026.

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

6 months to
11 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 169 160 161
Rank change year-on-year -9 +1 -38
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Developer 742 521 668
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.62% 1.78% 1.52%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.76% 1.92% 1.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 487 384 466
10th Percentile £406 £409 £410
25th Percentile £453 £500 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £600 £575
Median % change year-on-year -12.50% +4.35% -8.00%
75th Percentile £644 £725 £725
90th Percentile £850 £834 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £530 £500
% change year-on-year -5.66% +6.00% -12.28%
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 42,225 27,079 40,770
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.26% 92.67% 92.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,249 17,802 26,661
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £407 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +2.63% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,659 969 2,573
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.84 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.09 £20.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £41.06 £31.64 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.76% -9.60% -21.40%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.25 £71.89
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.13 £30.20 £35.00
% change year-on-year +39.49% -13.71% -16.82%

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 11 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 11 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 -7 624 £550 -8.33% 301
London -9 389 £610 -6.23% 100
UK excluding London -28 249 £500 -5.66% 237
Work from Home -8 219 £600 - 135
North of England -37 75 £525 -11.02% 82
South West +11 51 £475 -20.83% 22
South East -40 42 £560 +8.84% 57
Yorkshire -25 39 £575 -4.17% 34
Midlands -44 38 £485 -11.82% 35
North West -22 36 £500 -9.09% 40
West Midlands -47 30 £485 -11.82% 23
East of England -25 21 £500 -23.08% 22
Scotland -13 18 £475 +11.76% 12
East Midlands -36 7 £525 +0.96% 12
Northern Ireland -2 5 £638 +27.50% 1
North East -16 3 £525 -11.02% 9
Wales -8 2 £638 +6.25% 10

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

For the 6 months to 11 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.

1 238 (32.08%) Java
2 227 (30.59%) AWS
3 203 (27.36%) Agile
4 184 (24.80%) CI/CD
5 167 (22.51%) Python
6 160 (21.56%) Security Cleared
7 159 (21.43%) Azure
8 156 (21.02%) SQL
9 151 (20.35%) SC Cleared
10 150 (20.22%) Microservices
11 147 (19.81%) DevOps
12 126 (16.98%) JavaScript
13 125 (16.85%) Docker
14 118 (15.90%) Kubernetes
15 113 (15.23%) Kafka
16 96 (12.94%) Spring
17 94 (12.67%) Problem-Solving
18 92 (12.40%) React
19 85 (11.46%) Spring Boot
20 84 (11.32%) Containerisation
21 82 (11.05%) Git
22 80 (10.78%) .NET
23 77 (10.38%) TDD
24 75 (10.11%) Test Automation
25 73 (9.84%) Software Engineering
26 69 (9.30%) Full-Stack Development
27 67 (9.03%) C#
28 66 (8.89%) TypeScript
29 65 (8.76%) Scrum
30 64 (8.63%) 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 11 (1.48%) Confluence
2 6 (0.81%) CMS
2 6 (0.81%) nginx
2 6 (0.81%) SharePoint
3 5 (0.67%) Apache
3 5 (0.67%) Apache Spark
4 4 (0.54%) Ethereum
4 4 (0.54%) Headless CMS
4 4 (0.54%) Hyperledger
4 4 (0.54%) Jupyter
5 3 (0.40%) Apache Airflow
5 3 (0.40%) IIS
5 3 (0.40%) Mendix
5 3 (0.40%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 3 (0.40%) Oracle Workflow
5 3 (0.40%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.27%) Microsoft Exchange
6 2 (0.27%) SAS
6 2 (0.27%) WebLogic
6 2 (0.27%) WordPress
Applications
1 13 (1.75%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 10 (1.35%) Teamcenter
2 3 (0.40%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.27%) Endur
3 2 (0.27%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.13%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.13%) FLEXCUBE
4 1 (0.13%) IBM Planning Analytics
4 1 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
4 1 (0.13%) Oracle Cash Management
4 1 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.13%) Oracle General Ledger
4 1 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
4 1 (0.13%) Oracle Receivables
4 1 (0.13%) Oracle Retail
4 1 (0.13%) R3 Corda
4 1 (0.13%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.13%) SAP BRIM
4 1 (0.13%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.13%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 227 (30.59%) AWS
2 159 (21.43%) Azure
3 64 (8.63%) Azure DevOps
4 47 (6.33%) GitHub
5 43 (5.80%) Serverless
6 36 (4.85%) Power Platform
7 28 (3.77%) GCP
8 25 (3.37%) Amazon SQS
8 25 (3.37%) AWS Lambda
9 22 (2.96%) GitHub Actions
10 21 (2.83%) Amazon EC2
11 20 (2.70%) Power Automate
12 18 (2.43%) Amazon S3
13 17 (2.29%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 16 (2.16%) Azure Service Bus
15 15 (2.02%) PowerApps
16 14 (1.89%) Amazon ECS
16 14 (1.89%) Dynamics 365
17 13 (1.75%) Amazon EKS
18 10 (1.35%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 8 (1.08%) HTTP
2 4 (0.54%) Reverse Proxy
3 3 (0.40%) Multicast
4 2 (0.27%) Ethernet
4 2 (0.27%) Firewall
4 2 (0.27%) Kerberos
4 2 (0.27%) NFC
4 2 (0.27%) RTP
4 2 (0.27%) SSL
4 2 (0.27%) VPN
5 1 (0.13%) DNS
5 1 (0.13%) FTP
5 1 (0.13%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 55 (7.41%) PostgreSQL
2 39 (5.26%) MongoDB
3 37 (4.99%) NoSQL
3 37 (4.99%) SQL Server
4 36 (4.85%) Relational Database
5 33 (4.45%) Apache Cassandra
6 29 (3.91%) Power BI
7 23 (3.10%) DynamoDB
8 17 (2.29%) MySQL
9 16 (2.16%) Data Hub
10 15 (2.02%) Amazon RDS
11 14 (1.89%) Data Warehouse
12 8 (1.08%) DB2
13 7 (0.94%) Oracle BI EE
14 6 (0.81%) Amazon Aurora
14 6 (0.81%) Big Data
14 6 (0.81%) KDB
15 4 (0.54%) Kdb+
15 4 (0.54%) Oracle Database
15 4 (0.54%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 82 (11.05%) Git
2 35 (4.72%) Jenkins
3 32 (4.31%) Oracle APEX
4 30 (4.04%) JUnit
5 22 (2.96%) JIRA
6 21 (2.83%) Maven
7 20 (2.70%) GitLab
8 17 (2.29%) Mockito
9 14 (1.89%) SonarQube
10 10 (1.35%) Gradle
11 6 (0.81%) Cypress.io
12 5 (0.67%) Bitbucket
12 5 (0.67%) Sonatype Nexus
13 4 (0.54%) Artifactory
13 4 (0.54%) Cucumber
14 3 (0.40%) fastlane
14 3 (0.40%) webpack
15 2 (0.27%) Bitbucket Server
15 2 (0.27%) Mocha
15 2 (0.27%) SpecFlow
General
1 135 (18.19%) Social Skills
2 130 (17.52%) Finance
3 120 (16.17%) Public Sector
4 98 (13.21%) Banking
5 42 (5.66%) Analytical Skills
6 39 (5.26%) Investment Banking
7 29 (3.91%) Front Office
8 16 (2.16%) Financial Institution
9 6 (0.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 6 (0.81%) Retail
10 5 (0.67%) Organisational Skills
10 5 (0.67%) Telecoms
11 4 (0.54%) Law
12 3 (0.40%) Games
12 3 (0.40%) Legal
12 3 (0.40%) Manufacturing
12 3 (0.40%) Military
12 3 (0.40%) Pharmaceutical
12 3 (0.40%) Police
12 3 (0.40%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 113 (15.23%) Kafka
2 96 (12.94%) Spring
3 92 (12.40%) React
4 85 (11.46%) Spring Boot
5 80 (10.78%) .NET
6 63 (8.49%) RESTful
7 60 (8.09%) REST
8 59 (7.95%) Node.js
9 53 (7.14%) AngularJS
10 48 (6.47%) HTML
11 46 (6.20%) CSS
12 30 (4.04%) gRPC
12 30 (4.04%) Web Services
13 24 (3.23%) Redux
14 18 (2.43%) .NET Core
15 17 (2.29%) Django
15 17 (2.29%) Pandas
15 17 (2.29%) RabbitMQ
16 16 (2.16%) .NET Framework
16 16 (2.16%) HTML5
Miscellaneous
1 59 (7.95%) Distributed Systems
2 50 (6.74%) Cloud Native
3 26 (3.50%) Derivative
3 26 (3.50%) Product Ownership
4 23 (3.10%) Equities
5 21 (2.83%) Fixed Income
6 20 (2.70%) Greenfield Project
7 19 (2.56%) Algorithms
8 15 (2.02%) Market Risk
9 14 (1.89%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 14 (1.89%) Management Information System
10 12 (1.62%) Mobile App
11 10 (1.35%) Onboarding
12 9 (1.21%) Data Structures
12 9 (1.21%) Equity Derivative
12 9 (1.21%) Legacy Systems
13 6 (0.81%) AI Agents
14 5 (0.67%) Legacy Applications
15 4 (0.54%) Animation
15 4 (0.54%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 43 (5.80%) Linux
2 24 (3.23%) Unix
3 17 (2.29%) Windows
4 14 (1.89%) Android
5 9 (1.21%) Mac OS
6 7 (0.94%) Apple iOS
7 5 (0.67%) Mac OS X
8 2 (0.27%) Windows Server
9 1 (0.13%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 203 (27.36%) Agile
2 184 (24.80%) CI/CD
3 150 (20.22%) Microservices
4 147 (19.81%) DevOps
5 94 (12.67%) Problem-Solving
6 84 (11.32%) Containerisation
7 77 (10.38%) TDD
8 75 (10.11%) Test Automation
9 73 (9.84%) Software Engineering
10 69 (9.30%) Full-Stack Development
11 65 (8.76%) Scrum
12 62 (8.36%) Code Quality
13 58 (7.82%) Analytics
14 48 (6.47%) Mentoring
15 47 (6.33%) Open Source
16 44 (5.93%) SDLC
17 43 (5.80%) Infrastructure as Code
17 43 (5.80%) Validation
18 42 (5.66%) Data Modelling
18 42 (5.66%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 238 (32.08%) Java
2 167 (22.51%) Python
3 156 (21.02%) SQL
4 126 (16.98%) JavaScript
5 67 (9.03%) C#
6 66 (8.89%) TypeScript
7 47 (6.33%) Go
8 36 (4.85%) PL/SQL
9 29 (3.91%) Kotlin
10 26 (3.50%) Ruby
11 18 (2.43%) C++
12 10 (1.35%) PowerShell
12 10 (1.35%) Shell Script
13 7 (0.94%) Bash
14 6 (0.81%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 5 (0.67%) Apex Code
15 5 (0.67%) PHP
16 4 (0.54%) VBA
17 3 (0.40%) R
17 3 (0.40%) Swift
Qualifications
1 160 (21.56%) Security Cleared
2 151 (20.35%) SC Cleared
3 24 (3.23%) Degree
4 23 (3.10%) BPSS Clearance
5 11 (1.48%) Computer Science Degree
6 7 (0.94%) Numerate Degree
7 6 (0.81%) DV Cleared
8 5 (0.67%) AWS Certification
9 3 (0.40%) AWS Certified Developer
9 3 (0.40%) OCP
9 3 (0.40%) Oracle Certification
10 2 (0.27%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (0.27%) Microsoft Certification
11 1 (0.13%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 1 (0.13%) Azure Certification
11 1 (0.13%) CISSP
11 1 (0.13%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (4.58%) Accessibility
2 27 (3.64%) QA
3 20 (2.70%) WCAG
4 12 (1.62%) Data Quality
5 2 (0.27%) GDPR
5 2 (0.27%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.13%) HMG Security Policy Framework
6 1 (0.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 125 (16.85%) 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 (0.13%) OpenAM
3 1 (0.13%) OpenDJ
3 1 (0.13%) OpenIDM
3 1 (0.13%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 118 (15.90%) Kubernetes
2 45 (6.06%) Terraform
3 21 (2.83%) Grafana
4 16 (2.16%) Ansible
5 13 (1.75%) Prometheus
6 9 (1.21%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.13%) CloudHub
7 1 (0.13%) Control-M
7 1 (0.13%) HAProxy
7 1 (0.13%) Kibana
7 1 (0.13%) SELinux
7 1 (0.13%) Sysdig
7 1 (0.13%) systemd
Vendors
1 59 (7.95%) Oracle
2 41 (5.53%) Microsoft
3 19 (2.56%) ServiceNow
4 16 (2.16%) Google
5 14 (1.89%) Salesforce
6 10 (1.35%) Databricks
6 10 (1.35%) Sybase
7 9 (1.21%) SAP
8 6 (0.81%) Avaloq
8 6 (0.81%) Guidewire
9 4 (0.54%) Apple
9 4 (0.54%) Atlassian
9 4 (0.54%) ForgeRock
9 4 (0.54%) IBM
9 4 (0.54%) Jaspersoft
9 4 (0.54%) Pega
10 3 (0.40%) Ab Initio
10 3 (0.40%) Cognizant
10 3 (0.40%) Dataiku
10 3 (0.40%) Splunk