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 18 May 2026.

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

6 months to
18 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 164 164 141
Rank change year-on-year 0 -23 -8
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Developer 753 516 707
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.57% 1.76% 1.66%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.70% 1.90% 1.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 475 371 514
10th Percentile £406 £400 £410
25th Percentile £475 £466 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £598 £575
Median % change year-on-year -7.95% +3.91% -8.00%
75th Percentile £675 £725 £738
90th Percentile £883 £838 £863
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -2.38% +5.00% -11.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 1 12
10th Percentile £37.25 - £40.00
25th Percentile £43.01 - £51.14
Median hourly rate £45.56 £77.19 £58.91
Median % change year-on-year -40.98% +31.04% -5.75%
75th Percentile £58.38 - £72.50
90th Percentile £95.00 - £81.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.56 £77.19 £58.91
% change year-on-year -40.98% +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 44,273 27,145 39,538
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.32% 92.37% 92.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,095 17,684 25,719
10th Percentile £325 £293 £280
25th Percentile £413 £406 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -2.82%
75th Percentile £615 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,901 1,049 2,672
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.00 £12.82
25th Percentile £20.31 £18.13 £16.29
Median hourly rate £43.00 £28.15 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +52.75% -22.88% -18.89%
75th Percentile £67.25 £61.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £27.13 £40.00
% change year-on-year +65.90% -32.19% -5.88%

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 May 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 18 May 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 18 May 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 -9 630 £575 -4.17% 260
London +4 419 £625 -3.85% 85
UK excluding London -39 226 £513 -2.38% 197
Work from Home -22 205 £560 -6.67% 319
North of England -23 89 £525 - 64
Yorkshire -23 47 £575 +9.52% 22
North West -21 42 £494 -17.71% 31
Midlands -42 39 £513 -6.82% 23
South East -52 34 £560 +2.75% 59
West Midlands -41 31 £513 -6.82% 16
South West -16 22 £410 -31.67% 23
East of England -21 21 £500 -23.08% 21
Scotland -21 18 £411 -3.24% 4
East Midlands -23 7 £525 +28.05% 7
Northern Ireland +2 5 £650 +30.00% 3
North East -19 2 £538 +43.33% 12
Wales -13 1 - - 4

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

For the 6 months to 18 May 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.

1 236 (31.34%) Java
2 213 (28.29%) AWS
3 191 (25.37%) CI/CD
4 179 (23.77%) Agile
5 165 (21.91%) Python
6 144 (19.12%) Microservices
7 141 (18.73%) Azure
8 128 (17.00%) SQL
9 125 (16.60%) Security Cleared
10 120 (15.94%) Docker
11 118 (15.67%) SC Cleared
12 114 (15.14%) DevOps
12 114 (15.14%) Kubernetes
13 103 (13.68%) JavaScript
14 101 (13.41%) React
15 97 (12.88%) Kafka
16 96 (12.75%) Spring
17 90 (11.95%) Containerisation
18 88 (11.69%) .NET
19 85 (11.29%) Spring Boot
20 81 (10.76%) C#
21 79 (10.49%) Test Automation
22 78 (10.36%) TypeScript
23 77 (10.23%) Full-Stack Development
24 76 (10.09%) Software Engineering
25 75 (9.96%) TDD
26 73 (9.69%) Git
26 73 (9.69%) Problem-Solving
27 67 (8.90%) RESTful
28 60 (7.97%) Code Quality

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 10 (1.33%) Confluence
2 9 (1.20%) Apache Spark
3 8 (1.06%) Apache
4 6 (0.80%) CMS
4 6 (0.80%) nginx
5 4 (0.53%) Ethereum
5 4 (0.53%) Headless CMS
5 4 (0.53%) Hyperledger
5 4 (0.53%) Mendix
5 4 (0.53%) Oracle Workflow
5 4 (0.53%) SharePoint
6 3 (0.40%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.40%) IIS
6 3 (0.40%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 3 (0.40%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.27%) Microsoft Exchange
7 2 (0.27%) SAS
7 2 (0.27%) WebLogic
7 2 (0.27%) WordPress
8 1 (0.13%) LiveCycle
Applications
1 9 (1.20%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 17 (2.26%) Teamcenter
2 5 (0.66%) Endur
3 3 (0.40%) Aladdin
3 3 (0.40%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 3 (0.40%) SimCorp Dimension
4 1 (0.13%) Dynamics CRM
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%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 213 (28.29%) AWS
2 141 (18.73%) Azure
3 56 (7.44%) GitHub
4 43 (5.71%) Serverless
5 39 (5.18%) Azure DevOps
6 38 (5.05%) Power Platform
7 34 (4.52%) GitHub Actions
8 30 (3.98%) GCP
9 27 (3.59%) Amazon SQS
10 24 (3.19%) Power Automate
11 23 (3.05%) AWS Lambda
12 19 (2.52%) Azure Service Bus
12 19 (2.52%) PowerApps
13 18 (2.39%) Amazon EC2
14 15 (1.99%) Amazon S3
15 14 (1.86%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 14 (1.86%) Amazon EKS
15 14 (1.86%) Copilot Studio
16 13 (1.73%) Microsoft Copilot
17 12 (1.59%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 7 (0.93%) HTTP
2 6 (0.80%) Multicast
3 4 (0.53%) Reverse Proxy
4 2 (0.27%) Ethernet
4 2 (0.27%) NFC
4 2 (0.27%) RTP
4 2 (0.27%) SSL
5 1 (0.13%) DNS
5 1 (0.13%) Firewall
5 1 (0.13%) FTP
5 1 (0.13%) TCP/IP
5 1 (0.13%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 52 (6.91%) PostgreSQL
2 39 (5.18%) SQL Server
3 38 (5.05%) MongoDB
4 37 (4.91%) Relational Database
5 33 (4.38%) Power BI
6 31 (4.12%) NoSQL
7 25 (3.32%) Apache Cassandra
8 18 (2.39%) DynamoDB
9 17 (2.26%) MySQL
10 14 (1.86%) Data Warehouse
11 11 (1.46%) Amazon RDS
12 10 (1.33%) KDB
13 7 (0.93%) Data Hub
13 7 (0.93%) Kdb+
13 7 (0.93%) Oracle BI EE
14 6 (0.80%) Azure SQL Database
14 6 (0.80%) Oracle Database
14 6 (0.80%) Redis
15 5 (0.66%) Amazon Aurora
15 5 (0.66%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 73 (9.69%) Git
2 33 (4.38%) Jenkins
3 27 (3.59%) GitLab
4 25 (3.32%) Maven
5 24 (3.19%) JIRA
6 20 (2.66%) JUnit
7 17 (2.26%) Mockito
8 16 (2.12%) SonarQube
9 14 (1.86%) Gradle
10 5 (0.66%) Snyk
11 4 (0.53%) Bitbucket
11 4 (0.53%) Cypress.io
12 3 (0.40%) TeamCity
13 2 (0.27%) ClearCase
13 2 (0.27%) DbUnit
13 2 (0.27%) jMock
13 2 (0.27%) Oracle APEX
13 2 (0.27%) SpecFlow
13 2 (0.27%) webpack
13 2 (0.27%) Xcode
General
1 130 (17.26%) Finance
2 119 (15.80%) Public Sector
3 103 (13.68%) Social Skills
4 99 (13.15%) Banking
5 38 (5.05%) Investment Banking
6 36 (4.78%) Front Office
7 34 (4.52%) Analytical Skills
8 22 (2.92%) Financial Institution
9 11 (1.46%) Retail
10 9 (1.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 8 (1.06%) Military
12 6 (0.80%) Telecoms
13 5 (0.66%) Manufacturing
14 4 (0.53%) Games
14 4 (0.53%) Organisational Skills
15 3 (0.40%) Back Office
15 3 (0.40%) Health Technology
15 3 (0.40%) Law
15 3 (0.40%) Legal
15 3 (0.40%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 101 (13.41%) React
2 97 (12.88%) Kafka
3 96 (12.75%) Spring
4 88 (11.69%) .NET
5 85 (11.29%) Spring Boot
6 67 (8.90%) RESTful
7 60 (7.97%) REST
8 58 (7.70%) Node.js
9 50 (6.64%) AngularJS
9 50 (6.64%) HTML
10 45 (5.98%) CSS
11 30 (3.98%) Redux
12 28 (3.72%) Web Services
13 24 (3.19%) Django
13 24 (3.19%) gRPC
14 19 (2.52%) .NET Core
15 18 (2.39%) .NET Framework
16 17 (2.26%) OAuth
16 17 (2.26%) SOAP
17 15 (1.99%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 62 (8.23%) Distributed Systems
2 53 (7.04%) Cloud Native
3 26 (3.45%) Product Ownership
4 23 (3.05%) Greenfield Project
5 21 (2.79%) Fixed Income
6 20 (2.66%) Derivative
7 19 (2.52%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 18 (2.39%) Equities
9 15 (1.99%) Algorithms
10 12 (1.59%) Mobile App
11 10 (1.33%) Management Information System
12 9 (1.20%) Onboarding
13 8 (1.06%) Market Risk
14 7 (0.93%) Data Structures
14 7 (0.93%) Equity Derivative
14 7 (0.93%) Legacy Systems
15 6 (0.80%) AI Agents
16 5 (0.66%) NHS
17 4 (0.53%) Legacy Applications
17 4 (0.53%) Sports Betting
Operating Systems
1 44 (5.84%) Linux
2 27 (3.59%) Unix
3 17 (2.26%) Windows
4 9 (1.20%) Android
4 9 (1.20%) Mac OS
5 7 (0.93%) Apple iOS
6 5 (0.66%) Mac OS X
7 2 (0.27%) Windows Server
8 1 (0.13%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 191 (25.37%) CI/CD
2 179 (23.77%) Agile
3 144 (19.12%) Microservices
4 114 (15.14%) DevOps
5 90 (11.95%) Containerisation
6 79 (10.49%) Test Automation
7 77 (10.23%) Full-Stack Development
8 76 (10.09%) Software Engineering
9 75 (9.96%) TDD
10 73 (9.69%) Problem-Solving
11 60 (7.97%) Code Quality
12 57 (7.57%) Data Modelling
13 52 (6.91%) Mentoring
14 51 (6.77%) Infrastructure as Code
15 50 (6.64%) Analytics
16 49 (6.51%) Front End Development
17 48 (6.37%) Event-Driven
18 47 (6.24%) Business Intelligence
18 47 (6.24%) Migration
19 41 (5.44%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 236 (31.34%) Java
2 165 (21.91%) Python
3 128 (17.00%) SQL
4 103 (13.68%) JavaScript
5 81 (10.76%) C#
6 78 (10.36%) TypeScript
7 37 (4.91%) Go
8 26 (3.45%) Ruby
9 21 (2.79%) Kotlin
10 18 (2.39%) C++
11 9 (1.20%) PL/SQL
11 9 (1.20%) PowerShell
11 9 (1.20%) Shell Script
12 8 (1.06%) Apex Code
12 8 (1.06%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 7 (0.93%) Bash
14 4 (0.53%) R
14 4 (0.53%) Swift
14 4 (0.53%) T-SQL
14 4 (0.53%) VBA
Qualifications
1 125 (16.60%) Security Cleared
2 118 (15.67%) SC Cleared
3 24 (3.19%) Degree
4 23 (3.05%) BPSS Clearance
5 10 (1.33%) Computer Science Degree
6 6 (0.80%) DV Cleared
7 4 (0.53%) AWS Certification
7 4 (0.53%) Numerate Degree
8 3 (0.40%) AWS Certified Developer
9 2 (0.27%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 1 (0.13%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 1 (0.13%) Azure Certification
10 1 (0.13%) CISSP
10 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (3.98%) Accessibility
2 27 (3.59%) QA
3 18 (2.39%) WCAG
4 11 (1.46%) 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
1 120 (15.94%) Docker
2 3 (0.40%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.27%) GridGain
3 2 (0.27%) Oracle RAC
3 2 (0.27%) Postfix
4 1 (0.13%) OpenAM
4 1 (0.13%) OpenDJ
4 1 (0.13%) OpenIDM
4 1 (0.13%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 114 (15.14%) Kubernetes
2 55 (7.30%) Terraform
3 22 (2.92%) Grafana
4 17 (2.26%) Prometheus
5 14 (1.86%) Ansible
6 8 (1.06%) Single Sign-On
7 4 (0.53%) Argo
8 1 (0.13%) Control-M
8 1 (0.13%) HAProxy
8 1 (0.13%) Kibana
8 1 (0.13%) SELinux
8 1 (0.13%) Sysdig
8 1 (0.13%) systemd
Vendors
1 47 (6.24%) Microsoft
2 32 (4.25%) Oracle
3 16 (2.12%) Salesforce
4 14 (1.86%) ServiceNow
5 11 (1.46%) Avaloq
5 11 (1.46%) Databricks
6 10 (1.33%) Google
7 9 (1.20%) SAP
8 6 (0.80%) Guidewire
8 6 (0.80%) Sybase
9 5 (0.66%) ForgeRock
10 4 (0.53%) Jaspersoft
10 4 (0.53%) Okta
10 4 (0.53%) Pega
11 3 (0.40%) Apple
11 3 (0.40%) Cognizant
11 3 (0.40%) New Relic
11 3 (0.40%) SimCorp
11 3 (0.40%) Splunk
12 2 (0.27%) IBM