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 30 January 2026.

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

6 months to
30 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 169 140 181
Rank change year-on-year -29 +41 -70
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Developer 647 580 595
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.67% 1.84% 1.34%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.83% 1.98% 1.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 455 380 427
10th Percentile £402 £422 £425
25th Percentile £450 £500 £480
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £588 £575
Median % change year-on-year -10.64% +2.17% -9.98%
75th Percentile £650 £700 £700
90th Percentile £850 £838 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £521 £525
% change year-on-year -4.08% -0.71% -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 35,358 29,223 41,314
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.46% 92.91% 93.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,294 17,866 27,352
10th Percentile £300 £293 £275
25th Percentile £405 £409 £411
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £477 £495
% change year-on-year -0.42% -3.64% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,104 859 2,166
10th Percentile £14.39 £15.98 £13.25
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £17.00
Median hourly rate £28.90 £32.50 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year -11.09% -10.96% +4.29%
75th Percentile £61.18 £62.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £74.89 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £31.76 £37.50
% change year-on-year -13.41% -15.31% +25.00%

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 30 January 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 30 January 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 -39 553 £550 -8.33% 315
London -22 340 £619 -1.00% 134
Work from Home +4 227 £600 - 192
UK excluding London -21 217 £500 -4.08% 240
North of England -34 72 £575 +13.86% 66
South West +20 55 £475 -13.64% 28
Yorkshire -30 38 £631 +3.06% 19
South East -33 33 £500 +8.11% 86
North West -17 31 £510 +2.00% 38
Midlands -35 27 £505 -2.88% 28
West Midlands -24 21 £513 -0.97% 18
East of England -22 17 £500 -13.42% 19
Scotland -22 13 £475 +5.56% 9
North East -7 9 £488 +1.04% 9
East Midlands -24 6 £493 -5.29% 10
Wales +1 4 £638 +27.50% 5
Northern Ireland +1 4 £544 -9.38% 1

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

For the 6 months to 30 January 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.

1 221 (34.16%) Java
2 206 (31.84%) AWS
3 202 (31.22%) Agile
4 166 (25.66%) Microservices
5 160 (24.73%) CI/CD
6 159 (24.57%) Azure
7 151 (23.34%) DevOps
7 151 (23.34%) SQL
8 147 (22.72%) Security Cleared
9 146 (22.57%) Python
10 131 (20.25%) Kafka
11 129 (19.94%) SC Cleared
12 123 (19.01%) Docker
13 120 (18.55%) Kubernetes
13 120 (18.55%) Problem-Solving
14 116 (17.93%) JavaScript
15 104 (16.07%) Spring
16 88 (13.60%) React
16 88 (13.60%) Spring Boot
17 82 (12.67%) Containerisation
18 78 (12.06%) TDD
19 77 (11.90%) Software Engineering
20 76 (11.75%) C#
21 75 (11.59%) Git
22 74 (11.44%) Scrum
23 73 (11.28%) .NET
23 73 (11.28%) Test Automation
24 70 (10.82%) Full-Stack Development
25 67 (10.36%) RESTful
26 66 (10.20%) 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 15 (2.32%) Confluence
2 6 (0.93%) nginx
3 5 (0.77%) CMS
4 4 (0.62%) Ethereum
4 4 (0.62%) Hyperledger
4 4 (0.62%) Jupyter
4 4 (0.62%) SharePoint
5 3 (0.46%) SAS
5 3 (0.46%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.31%) Mendix
6 2 (0.31%) Microsoft Exchange
7 1 (0.15%) Anypoint
7 1 (0.15%) Apache Airflow
7 1 (0.15%) Appian
7 1 (0.15%) Headless CMS
7 1 (0.15%) Oracle Application Server
7 1 (0.15%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 1 (0.15%) Smallworld
7 1 (0.15%) Umbraco
7 1 (0.15%) WordPress
Applications
1 10 (1.55%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 5 (0.77%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (0.46%) Endur
3 2 (0.31%) 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
1 206 (31.84%) AWS
2 159 (24.57%) Azure
3 66 (10.20%) Azure DevOps
4 49 (7.57%) GitHub
5 38 (5.87%) Serverless
6 32 (4.95%) GCP
7 30 (4.64%) Power Platform
8 19 (2.94%) AWS Lambda
9 17 (2.63%) Azure Service Bus
9 17 (2.63%) Power Automate
10 16 (2.47%) Amazon EC2
10 16 (2.47%) Amazon SQS
10 16 (2.47%) Dynamics 365
11 14 (2.16%) Amazon EKS
11 14 (2.16%) GitHub Actions
12 13 (2.01%) PowerApps
12 13 (2.01%) SaaS
13 12 (1.85%) Azure AKS
14 11 (1.70%) Amazon ECS
15 10 (1.55%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 6 (0.93%) HTTP
2 5 (0.77%) Kerberos
3 3 (0.46%) Reverse Proxy
4 2 (0.31%) Firewall
4 2 (0.31%) SSL
4 2 (0.31%) 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 (8.81%) PostgreSQL
2 54 (8.35%) MongoDB
3 41 (6.34%) Relational Database
4 40 (6.18%) NoSQL
5 39 (6.03%) SQL Server
6 31 (4.79%) Apache Cassandra
7 19 (2.94%) Power BI
8 16 (2.47%) Data Hub
9 15 (2.32%) DynamoDB
10 13 (2.01%) DB2
11 12 (1.85%) Data Warehouse
12 11 (1.70%) MySQL
13 10 (1.55%) Redis
14 9 (1.39%) Amazon RDS
14 9 (1.39%) Data Lake
15 7 (1.08%) Oracle BI EE
16 6 (0.93%) HBase
16 6 (0.93%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 5 (0.77%) Couchbase
17 5 (0.77%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 75 (11.59%) Git
2 41 (6.34%) Jenkins
2 41 (6.34%) JUnit
3 34 (5.26%) GitLab
3 34 (5.26%) Oracle APEX
4 31 (4.79%) JIRA
5 23 (3.55%) Mockito
6 14 (2.16%) Maven
7 12 (1.85%) Gradle
8 9 (1.39%) Artifactory
8 9 (1.39%) Cucumber
9 8 (1.24%) Postman
10 7 (1.08%) SonarQube
10 7 (1.08%) Sonatype Nexus
10 7 (1.08%) SpecFlow
11 6 (0.93%) Bitbucket
11 6 (0.93%) Cypress.io
11 6 (0.93%) Mocha
12 3 (0.46%) QUnit
12 3 (0.46%) webpack
General
1 150 (23.18%) Social Skills
2 145 (22.41%) Finance
3 96 (14.84%) Banking
4 93 (14.37%) Public Sector
5 50 (7.73%) Analytical Skills
6 38 (5.87%) Investment Banking
7 23 (3.55%) Front Office
8 12 (1.85%) Financial Institution
9 5 (0.77%) Military
9 5 (0.77%) Presentation Skills
9 5 (0.77%) Telecoms
10 4 (0.62%) Health Technology
10 4 (0.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 4 (0.62%) Law
10 4 (0.62%) Manufacturing
10 4 (0.62%) Retail Banking
11 3 (0.46%) Legal
11 3 (0.46%) Marketing
11 3 (0.46%) Pharmaceutical
12 2 (0.31%) Organisational Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 131 (20.25%) Kafka
2 104 (16.07%) Spring
3 88 (13.60%) React
3 88 (13.60%) Spring Boot
4 73 (11.28%) .NET
5 67 (10.36%) RESTful
6 59 (9.12%) AngularJS
7 55 (8.50%) REST
8 53 (8.19%) Node.js
9 50 (7.73%) HTML
10 44 (6.80%) CSS
11 31 (4.79%) Web Services
12 28 (4.33%) gRPC
13 22 (3.40%) .NET Framework
14 20 (3.09%) JSON
15 19 (2.94%) Jest
15 19 (2.94%) Next.js
16 18 (2.78%) RabbitMQ
17 17 (2.63%) Playwright
18 16 (2.47%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 51 (7.88%) Cloud Native
2 50 (7.73%) Distributed Systems
3 31 (4.79%) Derivative
4 27 (4.17%) Equities
4 27 (4.17%) Greenfield Project
5 26 (4.02%) Product Ownership
6 20 (3.09%) Market Risk
7 19 (2.94%) Algorithms
7 19 (2.94%) Management Information System
8 17 (2.63%) Data Structures
9 15 (2.32%) Fixed Income
10 11 (1.70%) Mobile App
11 9 (1.39%) Legacy Systems
12 8 (1.24%) Equity Derivative
12 8 (1.24%) Onboarding
13 7 (1.08%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 7 (1.08%) Legacy Applications
14 6 (0.93%) Enterprise Software
14 6 (0.93%) Linux Command Line
15 5 (0.77%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 50 (7.73%) Linux
2 26 (4.02%) Unix
3 17 (2.63%) Android
4 14 (2.16%) Mac OS X
5 10 (1.55%) Apple iOS
6 5 (0.77%) Windows
7 2 (0.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 2 (0.31%) Windows Server
8 1 (0.15%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 202 (31.22%) Agile
2 166 (25.66%) Microservices
3 160 (24.73%) CI/CD
4 151 (23.34%) DevOps
5 120 (18.55%) Problem-Solving
6 82 (12.67%) Containerisation
7 78 (12.06%) TDD
8 77 (11.90%) Software Engineering
9 74 (11.44%) Scrum
10 73 (11.28%) Test Automation
11 70 (10.82%) Full-Stack Development
12 64 (9.89%) Analytics
13 59 (9.12%) Open Source
14 48 (7.42%) SDLC
15 46 (7.11%) Infrastructure as Code
16 44 (6.80%) Code Quality
16 44 (6.80%) Unit Testing
17 43 (6.65%) Event-Driven
18 42 (6.49%) Front End Development
19 41 (6.34%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 221 (34.16%) Java
2 151 (23.34%) SQL
3 146 (22.57%) Python
4 116 (17.93%) JavaScript
5 76 (11.75%) C#
6 53 (8.19%) TypeScript
7 39 (6.03%) Go
7 39 (6.03%) PL/SQL
8 22 (3.40%) Kotlin
9 21 (3.25%) Ruby
10 15 (2.32%) C++
11 13 (2.01%) Bash
11 13 (2.01%) Shell Script
12 12 (1.85%) PowerShell
13 6 (0.93%) PHP
14 4 (0.62%) ABAP
14 4 (0.62%) Swift
15 3 (0.46%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 3 (0.46%) Objective-C
15 3 (0.46%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 147 (22.72%) Security Cleared
2 129 (19.94%) SC Cleared
3 39 (6.03%) Degree
4 28 (4.33%) BPSS Clearance
5 18 (2.78%) Computer Science Degree
6 8 (1.24%) Numerate Degree
7 6 (0.93%) OCP
7 6 (0.93%) Oracle Certification
8 5 (0.77%) AWS Certification
9 4 (0.62%) Master's Degree
10 3 (0.46%) Azure Certification
10 3 (0.46%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 2 (0.31%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 2 (0.31%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 2 (0.31%) DV Cleared
12 1 (0.15%) AWS Certified Developer
12 1 (0.15%) CISSP
12 1 (0.15%) Microsoft Certification
12 1 (0.15%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (4.48%) Accessibility
2 17 (2.63%) QA
3 14 (2.16%) Data Quality
4 13 (2.01%) WCAG
5 4 (0.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 3 (0.46%) EU AI Act
6 3 (0.46%) NIST
7 2 (0.31%) GDPR
8 1 (0.15%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 123 (19.01%) Docker
2 5 (0.77%) zsh
3 2 (0.31%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.15%) GridGain
4 1 (0.15%) OpenAM
4 1 (0.15%) OpenDJ
4 1 (0.15%) OpenIDM
Systems Management
1 120 (18.55%) Kubernetes
2 37 (5.72%) Terraform
3 21 (3.25%) Grafana
4 14 (2.16%) Ansible
5 9 (1.39%) Prometheus
6 8 (1.24%) Single Sign-On
7 3 (0.46%) Kibana
8 1 (0.15%) Argo
8 1 (0.15%) CloudHub
8 1 (0.15%) Control-M
8 1 (0.15%) HAProxy
8 1 (0.15%) Rundeck
8 1 (0.15%) Sysdig
Vendors
1 59 (9.12%) Oracle
2 31 (4.79%) Microsoft
3 21 (3.25%) Google
4 14 (2.16%) Sybase
5 12 (1.85%) ServiceNow
6 11 (1.70%) Databricks
7 8 (1.24%) SAP
8 6 (0.93%) Guidewire
8 6 (0.93%) Salesforce
9 5 (0.77%) Atlassian
10 4 (0.62%) Apple
10 4 (0.62%) IBM
10 4 (0.62%) Pega
11 3 (0.46%) Cognizant
11 3 (0.46%) Dataiku
11 3 (0.46%) Foundry
12 2 (0.31%) Ab Initio
12 2 (0.31%) CA Agile Central
12 2 (0.31%) Confluent
12 2 (0.31%) Red Hat