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 13 November 2025.

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

6 months to
13 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 176 122 176
Rank change year-on-year -54 +54 -65
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Developer 583 718 677
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.64% 1.97% 1.46%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.81% 2.12% 1.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 422 478 489
10th Percentile £400 £393 £424
25th Percentile £450 £466 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year - -8.33% -5.88%
75th Percentile £675 £685 £720
90th Percentile £788 £813 £850
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £523
% change year-on-year - -4.31% -10.84%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 3 6
10th Percentile - £40.29 £52.50
25th Percentile - £48.22 £56.25
Median hourly rate - £61.43 £58.75
Median % change year-on-year - +4.56% -21.67%
75th Percentile - £74.47 £70.94
90th Percentile - £82.29 £75.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £60.00 £52.50
% change year-on-year - +14.29% -30.00%

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 32,276 33,867 43,312
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.91% 92.88% 93.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,494 20,433 29,418
10th Percentile £278 £300 £294
25th Percentile £402 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,854 1,264 1,533
10th Percentile £14.06 £15.13 £14.94
25th Percentile £17.79 £20.30 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +60.48%
75th Percentile £52.50 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +85.42%

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 13 November 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 13 November 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 -48 526 £550 - 492
London -51 297 £650 +8.33% 217
UK excluding London -22 228 £500 - 331
Work from Home -25 216 £578 +0.52% 304
North of England -24 66 £550 +10.00% 100
South West +38 63 £475 -9.52% 38
South East +4 47 £500 -4.76% 90
Yorkshire -13 38 £638 +23.19% 21
North West -28 24 £505 +1.00% 72
Midlands -35 24 £513 +2.50% 50
East of England -15 15 £535 +33.75% 18
West Midlands -32 15 £531 +6.25% 19
Scotland -24 11 £481 -3.75% 17
East Midlands -6 9 £505 +10.68% 29
North East -6 8 £544 +27.94% 7
Wales -3 5 £325 -38.10% 19
Northern Ireland -8 2 £544 -1.14% 5

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

For the 6 months to 13 November 2025, 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.

1 248 (42.54%) Agile
2 198 (33.96%) Java
3 188 (32.25%) SQL
4 178 (30.53%) Azure
5 171 (29.33%) AWS
6 167 (28.64%) DevOps
7 161 (27.62%) Microservices
8 154 (26.42%) CI/CD
9 142 (24.36%) Problem-Solving
10 133 (22.81%) Python
11 121 (20.75%) Kafka
12 113 (19.38%) Docker
13 110 (18.87%) JavaScript
13 110 (18.87%) Security Cleared
14 106 (18.18%) C#
15 101 (17.32%) Kubernetes
16 97 (16.64%) Spring
17 92 (15.78%) SC Cleared
18 88 (15.09%) .NET
18 88 (15.09%) Scrum
19 87 (14.92%) RESTful
20 81 (13.89%) TDD
21 78 (13.38%) React
22 74 (12.69%) Azure DevOps
23 73 (12.52%) Software Engineering
24 72 (12.35%) Git
25 71 (12.18%) PostgreSQL
25 71 (12.18%) Spring Boot
26 70 (12.01%) Full-Stack Development
27 64 (10.98%) Analytics

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 16 (2.74%) Confluence
2 10 (1.72%) CMS
3 6 (1.03%) SharePoint
4 4 (0.69%) Jupyter
5 3 (0.51%) Anypoint
6 2 (0.34%) Alfresco
6 2 (0.34%) Apache Spark
6 2 (0.34%) Camunda
7 1 (0.17%) Apache
7 1 (0.17%) Headless CMS
7 1 (0.17%) SAS
7 1 (0.17%) Smallworld
Applications
1 9 (1.54%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.17%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 5 (0.86%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (0.69%) Endur
3 2 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
3 2 (0.34%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.17%) Oracle BPM
4 1 (0.17%) Payment Gateway
4 1 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.17%) SAP FI
4 1 (0.17%) SAP Travel Management
Cloud Services
1 178 (30.53%) Azure
2 171 (29.33%) AWS
3 74 (12.69%) Azure DevOps
4 52 (8.92%) GitHub
5 39 (6.69%) GCP
6 37 (6.35%) Power Platform
6 37 (6.35%) Serverless
7 22 (3.77%) AWS Lambda
8 20 (3.43%) Amazon S3
9 19 (3.26%) Power Automate
10 18 (3.09%) GitHub Actions
10 18 (3.09%) PowerApps
11 16 (2.74%) SaaS
12 15 (2.57%) Amazon EC2
12 15 (2.57%) Dynamics 365
13 13 (2.23%) AWS CloudFormation
13 13 (2.23%) Azure Service Bus
14 12 (2.06%) Amazon ECS
14 12 (2.06%) Amazon SQS
14 12 (2.06%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.86%) Kerberos
2 4 (0.69%) SAN
2 4 (0.69%) TCP/IP
3 3 (0.51%) HTTP
3 3 (0.51%) SSL
3 3 (0.51%) VPN
4 2 (0.34%) Firewall
5 1 (0.17%) BGP
5 1 (0.17%) Ethernet
5 1 (0.17%) Ethernet VPN
5 1 (0.17%) Internet
5 1 (0.17%) MPLS
5 1 (0.17%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 71 (12.18%) PostgreSQL
2 62 (10.63%) Relational Database
3 55 (9.43%) MongoDB
4 47 (8.06%) SQL Server
5 32 (5.49%) NoSQL
6 21 (3.60%) Apache Cassandra
6 21 (3.60%) DB2
6 21 (3.60%) Power BI
7 17 (2.92%) DynamoDB
8 16 (2.74%) Redis
9 14 (2.40%) MySQL
10 12 (2.06%) Amazon RDS
10 12 (2.06%) Data Lake
11 11 (1.89%) Azure SQL Database
11 11 (1.89%) RDBMS
12 9 (1.54%) Data Hub
13 8 (1.37%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 6 (1.03%) Data Warehouse
14 6 (1.03%) HBase
14 6 (1.03%) KDB
Development Applications
1 72 (12.35%) Git
2 53 (9.09%) JUnit
3 42 (7.20%) Jenkins
4 32 (5.49%) Oracle APEX
5 31 (5.32%) JIRA
6 28 (4.80%) GitLab
7 26 (4.46%) Mockito
8 14 (2.40%) Gradle
9 13 (2.23%) Maven
10 12 (2.06%) SpecFlow
11 10 (1.72%) Cucumber
12 9 (1.54%) Artifactory
12 9 (1.54%) Postman
13 7 (1.20%) Bitbucket
13 7 (1.20%) Sonatype Nexus
14 6 (1.03%) Mocha
15 5 (0.86%) Cypress.io
15 5 (0.86%) Liquibase
15 5 (0.86%) TeamCity
16 4 (0.69%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 177 (30.36%) Finance
2 169 (28.99%) Social Skills
3 96 (16.47%) Banking
4 67 (11.49%) Analytical Skills
5 66 (11.32%) Public Sector
6 50 (8.58%) Investment Banking
7 30 (5.15%) Front Office
8 12 (2.06%) Marketing
9 10 (1.72%) Manufacturing
10 6 (1.03%) Back Office
10 6 (1.03%) Electronics
10 6 (1.03%) Telecoms
11 5 (0.86%) Military
12 4 (0.69%) Financial Institution
12 4 (0.69%) Presentation Skills
13 3 (0.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 3 (0.51%) Pharmaceutical
14 2 (0.34%) Documentation Skills
14 2 (0.34%) Health Technology
14 2 (0.34%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 121 (20.75%) Kafka
2 97 (16.64%) Spring
3 88 (15.09%) .NET
4 87 (14.92%) RESTful
5 78 (13.38%) React
6 71 (12.18%) Spring Boot
7 60 (10.29%) REST
8 49 (8.40%) Node.js
9 48 (8.23%) AngularJS
10 39 (6.69%) HTML
11 33 (5.66%) Web Services
12 31 (5.32%) .NET Core
12 31 (5.32%) CSS
13 24 (4.12%) .NET Framework
13 24 (4.12%) JSON
14 23 (3.95%) RabbitMQ
15 21 (3.60%) Playwright
16 19 (3.26%) Jest
16 19 (3.26%) JMS
17 15 (2.57%) ActiveMQ
Miscellaneous
1 40 (6.86%) Cloud Native
2 34 (5.83%) Distributed Systems
3 32 (5.49%) Derivative
4 28 (4.80%) Equities
5 26 (4.46%) Product Ownership
6 24 (4.12%) Data Structures
7 23 (3.95%) Market Risk
8 21 (3.60%) Greenfield Project
9 19 (3.26%) Management Information System
10 18 (3.09%) Fixed Income
10 18 (3.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 16 (2.74%) Algorithms
12 11 (1.89%) Legacy Systems
13 8 (1.37%) Mobile App
14 6 (1.03%) Enterprise Software
14 6 (1.03%) Linux Command Line
15 5 (0.86%) Hedge funds
16 4 (0.69%) Data Fabric
16 4 (0.69%) Equity Derivative
16 4 (0.69%) Legacy Applications
Operating Systems
1 64 (10.98%) Linux
2 29 (4.97%) Unix
3 17 (2.92%) Android
4 14 (2.40%) Mac OS X
5 12 (2.06%) Apple iOS
6 9 (1.54%) Windows
7 4 (0.69%) Debian
7 4 (0.69%) Ubuntu
7 4 (0.69%) Windows Server
7 4 (0.69%) Windows Server 2016
8 2 (0.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 1 (0.17%) CentOS
9 1 (0.17%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.17%) tvOS
9 1 (0.17%) watchOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 248 (42.54%) Agile
2 167 (28.64%) DevOps
3 161 (27.62%) Microservices
4 154 (26.42%) CI/CD
5 142 (24.36%) Problem-Solving
6 88 (15.09%) Scrum
7 81 (13.89%) TDD
8 73 (12.52%) Software Engineering
9 70 (12.01%) Full-Stack Development
10 64 (10.98%) Analytics
11 62 (10.63%) Containerisation
11 62 (10.63%) Mentoring
12 57 (9.78%) Test Automation
13 55 (9.43%) Open Source
14 50 (8.58%) Clean Code
15 46 (7.89%) Performance Tuning
15 46 (7.89%) SDLC
16 45 (7.72%) Event-Driven
17 43 (7.38%) Risk Management
18 42 (7.20%) API Development
Programming Languages
1 198 (33.96%) Java
2 188 (32.25%) SQL
3 133 (22.81%) Python
4 110 (18.87%) JavaScript
5 106 (18.18%) C#
6 63 (10.81%) TypeScript
7 39 (6.69%) PL/SQL
8 22 (3.77%) Go
9 19 (3.26%) Kotlin
9 19 (3.26%) Shell Script
10 18 (3.09%) C++
11 16 (2.74%) Ruby
12 11 (1.89%) PowerShell
13 9 (1.54%) PHP
14 8 (1.37%) Bash
15 6 (1.03%) Apex Code
16 5 (0.86%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 5 (0.86%) Swift
17 4 (0.69%) ABAP
17 4 (0.69%) Objective-C
Qualifications
1 110 (18.87%) Security Cleared
2 92 (15.78%) SC Cleared
3 48 (8.23%) Degree
4 27 (4.63%) Computer Science Degree
5 14 (2.40%) BPSS Clearance
6 7 (1.20%) AWS Certification
7 6 (1.03%) Master's Degree
7 6 (1.03%) OCP
7 6 (1.03%) Oracle Certification
8 4 (0.69%) Numerate Degree
9 3 (0.51%) AWS Certified Developer
9 3 (0.51%) DBS Check
9 3 (0.51%) DV Cleared
9 3 (0.51%) MCP
9 3 (0.51%) Microsoft Certification
10 2 (0.34%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (0.34%) Azure Certification
11 1 (0.17%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 1 (0.17%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (4.80%) Accessibility
2 25 (4.29%) QA
3 13 (2.23%) Data Quality
4 11 (1.89%) WCAG
5 4 (0.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 3 (0.51%) EU AI Act
6 3 (0.51%) NIST
7 1 (0.17%) GDPR
7 1 (0.17%) HL7
7 1 (0.17%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 1 (0.17%) ISO 22301
7 1 (0.17%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 113 (19.38%) Docker
2 5 (0.86%) zsh
3 1 (0.17%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.17%) GridGain
3 1 (0.17%) Lustre
3 1 (0.17%) Postfix
3 1 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 101 (17.32%) Kubernetes
2 40 (6.86%) Terraform
3 15 (2.57%) Grafana
4 8 (1.37%) Ansible
5 5 (0.86%) Prometheus
6 4 (0.69%) Single Sign-On
7 3 (0.51%) Kibana
8 2 (0.34%) CloudHub
9 1 (0.17%) Argo
9 1 (0.17%) Packer
9 1 (0.17%) Rundeck
Vendors
1 52 (8.92%) Oracle
2 39 (6.69%) Microsoft
3 22 (3.77%) Sybase
4 21 (3.60%) Databricks
5 20 (3.43%) Google
6 14 (2.40%) Salesforce
6 14 (2.40%) ServiceNow
7 11 (1.89%) Atlassian
8 10 (1.72%) SAP
9 6 (1.03%) Dataiku
9 6 (1.03%) Red Hat
10 5 (0.86%) Apple
10 5 (0.86%) Virgin Media
11 4 (0.69%) CA Agile Central
11 4 (0.69%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
11 4 (0.69%) VMware
12 3 (0.51%) Foundry
12 3 (0.51%) HP
12 3 (0.51%) MuleSoft
12 3 (0.51%) Remedy