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 2 February 2026.

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

6 months to
2 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 166 142 184
Rank change year-on-year -24 +42 -73
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Developer 646 570 608
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.68% 1.83% 1.35%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.84% 1.97% 1.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 456 371 435
10th Percentile £401 £422 £421
25th Percentile £450 £500 £480
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £588 £575
Median % change year-on-year -10.64% +2.17% -9.45%
75th Percentile £650 £700 £706
90th Percentile £850 £838 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -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 35,158 28,873 41,963
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.49% 92.93% 93.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,167 17,619 27,765
10th Percentile £300 £300 £275
25th Percentile £405 £408 £411
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £479 £495
% change year-on-year -0.84% -3.23% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,109 850 2,268
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.92 £13.23
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £16.86
Median hourly rate £29.61 £33.00 £35.95
Median % change year-on-year -10.27% -8.21% +2.71%
75th Percentile £61.25 £62.50 £61.75
90th Percentile £70.77 £75.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £31.76 £36.50
% change year-on-year -13.41% -12.99% +15.54%

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 2 February 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 2 February 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 -24 553 £550 -8.33% 307
London -21 342 £625 - 141
Work from Home +9 224 £600 - 182
UK excluding London -31 216 £500 -4.76% 218
North of England -27 71 £575 +9.52% 64
South West +20 55 £475 -13.64% 28
Yorkshire -34 36 £631 +3.06% 19
North West -26 32 £510 -0.49% 36
South East -34 32 £500 +8.11% 74
Midlands -34 28 £510 -1.92% 28
West Midlands -26 21 £513 -0.97% 19
East of England -23 18 £500 -20.00% 12
Scotland -22 12 £444 - 9
North East -8 9 £488 +1.04% 9
East Midlands -18 7 £510 -1.92% 9
Wales +2 4 £638 +27.50% 3
Northern Ireland +2 4 £544 -9.38%

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

For the 6 months to 2 February 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.

1 219 (33.90%) Java
2 202 (31.27%) AWS
3 199 (30.80%) Agile
4 166 (25.70%) Microservices
5 158 (24.46%) Azure
6 157 (24.30%) CI/CD
7 150 (23.22%) SQL
8 147 (22.76%) DevOps
9 145 (22.45%) Security Cleared
10 144 (22.29%) Python
11 129 (19.97%) Kafka
12 128 (19.81%) SC Cleared
13 123 (19.04%) Docker
14 120 (18.58%) Kubernetes
15 117 (18.11%) Problem-Solving
16 114 (17.65%) JavaScript
17 103 (15.94%) Spring
18 88 (13.62%) Spring Boot
19 86 (13.31%) React
20 81 (12.54%) Containerisation
21 77 (11.92%) TDD
22 76 (11.76%) Software Engineering
23 74 (11.46%) C#
23 74 (11.46%) Git
24 73 (11.30%) .NET
24 73 (11.30%) Scrum
24 73 (11.30%) Test Automation
25 69 (10.68%) Full-Stack Development
26 67 (10.37%) RESTful
27 65 (10.06%) 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%) IIS
7 1 (0.15%) JBoss
7 1 (0.15%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 1 (0.15%) Smallworld
7 1 (0.15%) WebLogic
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
1 202 (31.27%) AWS
2 158 (24.46%) Azure
3 65 (10.06%) Azure DevOps
4 47 (7.28%) GitHub
5 37 (5.73%) Serverless
6 32 (4.95%) GCP
7 30 (4.64%) Power Platform
8 19 (2.94%) AWS Lambda
9 17 (2.63%) Amazon EC2
9 17 (2.63%) Amazon SQS
9 17 (2.63%) Azure Service Bus
9 17 (2.63%) Power Automate
10 16 (2.48%) Dynamics 365
11 14 (2.17%) Amazon EKS
12 13 (2.01%) GitHub Actions
12 13 (2.01%) PowerApps
12 13 (2.01%) SaaS
13 12 (1.86%) Azure AKS
14 10 (1.55%) Amazon ECS
14 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 55 (8.51%) PostgreSQL
2 52 (8.05%) MongoDB
3 41 (6.35%) Relational Database
4 40 (6.19%) NoSQL
4 40 (6.19%) SQL Server
5 31 (4.80%) Apache Cassandra
6 19 (2.94%) Power BI
7 16 (2.48%) Data Hub
8 15 (2.32%) DynamoDB
9 12 (1.86%) Data Warehouse
9 12 (1.86%) DB2
10 11 (1.70%) MySQL
11 9 (1.39%) Amazon RDS
11 9 (1.39%) Data Lake
12 8 (1.24%) Redis
13 7 (1.08%) Oracle BI EE
14 6 (0.93%) HBase
14 6 (0.93%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 5 (0.77%) Couchbase
15 5 (0.77%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 74 (11.46%) Git
2 40 (6.19%) JUnit
3 38 (5.88%) Jenkins
4 34 (5.26%) GitLab
4 34 (5.26%) Oracle APEX
5 28 (4.33%) JIRA
6 23 (3.56%) Mockito
7 14 (2.17%) Maven
8 12 (1.86%) Gradle
9 9 (1.39%) Artifactory
9 9 (1.39%) Cucumber
10 8 (1.24%) Postman
11 7 (1.08%) SonarQube
11 7 (1.08%) Sonatype Nexus
11 7 (1.08%) SpecFlow
12 6 (0.93%) Mocha
13 5 (0.77%) Cypress.io
14 4 (0.62%) Bitbucket
15 3 (0.46%) QUnit
15 3 (0.46%) webpack
General
1 148 (22.91%) Social Skills
2 140 (21.67%) Finance
3 97 (15.02%) Banking
4 93 (14.40%) Public Sector
5 47 (7.28%) Analytical Skills
6 39 (6.04%) Investment Banking
7 23 (3.56%) Front Office
8 12 (1.86%) 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%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 129 (19.97%) Kafka
2 103 (15.94%) Spring
3 88 (13.62%) Spring Boot
4 86 (13.31%) React
5 73 (11.30%) .NET
6 67 (10.37%) RESTful
7 59 (9.13%) AngularJS
8 54 (8.36%) REST
9 53 (8.20%) Node.js
10 50 (7.74%) HTML
11 44 (6.81%) CSS
12 30 (4.64%) Web Services
13 28 (4.33%) gRPC
14 22 (3.41%) .NET Framework
15 20 (3.10%) JSON
16 18 (2.79%) Jest
16 18 (2.79%) Next.js
16 18 (2.79%) RabbitMQ
17 16 (2.48%) .NET Core
17 16 (2.48%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 53 (8.20%) Cloud Native
2 50 (7.74%) Distributed Systems
3 30 (4.64%) Derivative
4 26 (4.02%) Equities
4 26 (4.02%) Greenfield Project
4 26 (4.02%) Product Ownership
5 19 (2.94%) Algorithms
5 19 (2.94%) Market Risk
6 18 (2.79%) Management Information System
7 16 (2.48%) Data Structures
8 15 (2.32%) Fixed Income
9 11 (1.70%) Mobile App
10 9 (1.39%) Legacy Systems
11 8 (1.24%) Equity Derivative
11 8 (1.24%) Onboarding
12 7 (1.08%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 7 (1.08%) Legacy Applications
13 6 (0.93%) Enterprise Software
13 6 (0.93%) Linux Command Line
14 5 (0.77%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 49 (7.59%) Linux
2 26 (4.02%) Unix
3 16 (2.48%) Android
4 14 (2.17%) Mac OS X
5 9 (1.39%) 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
1 199 (30.80%) Agile
2 166 (25.70%) Microservices
3 157 (24.30%) CI/CD
4 147 (22.76%) DevOps
5 117 (18.11%) Problem-Solving
6 81 (12.54%) Containerisation
7 77 (11.92%) TDD
8 76 (11.76%) Software Engineering
9 73 (11.30%) Scrum
9 73 (11.30%) Test Automation
10 69 (10.68%) Full-Stack Development
11 62 (9.60%) Analytics
12 58 (8.98%) Open Source
13 47 (7.28%) Infrastructure as Code
13 47 (7.28%) SDLC
14 44 (6.81%) Code Quality
14 44 (6.81%) Unit Testing
15 43 (6.66%) Event-Driven
16 42 (6.50%) Front End Development
16 42 (6.50%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 219 (33.90%) Java
2 150 (23.22%) SQL
3 144 (22.29%) Python
4 114 (17.65%) JavaScript
5 74 (11.46%) C#
6 51 (7.89%) TypeScript
7 39 (6.04%) Go
7 39 (6.04%) PL/SQL
8 22 (3.41%) Kotlin
9 21 (3.25%) Ruby
10 15 (2.32%) C++
11 13 (2.01%) Bash
12 12 (1.86%) PowerShell
12 12 (1.86%) Shell Script
13 6 (0.93%) PHP
14 4 (0.62%) ABAP
15 3 (0.46%) Apex Code
15 3 (0.46%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 3 (0.46%) Swift
15 3 (0.46%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 145 (22.45%) Security Cleared
2 128 (19.81%) SC Cleared
3 37 (5.73%) Degree
4 27 (4.18%) BPSS Clearance
5 16 (2.48%) 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 (4.49%) Accessibility
2 16 (2.48%) QA
3 14 (2.17%) 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 (19.04%) 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 (18.58%) Kubernetes
2 35 (5.42%) Terraform
3 21 (3.25%) Grafana
4 13 (2.01%) 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 (9.13%) Oracle
2 31 (4.80%) Microsoft
3 21 (3.25%) Google
4 13 (2.01%) ServiceNow
4 13 (2.01%) Sybase
5 11 (1.70%) Databricks
6 8 (1.24%) SAP
7 7 (1.08%) Salesforce
8 6 (0.93%) Guidewire
9 5 (0.77%) Atlassian
10 4 (0.62%) IBM
10 4 (0.62%) Pega
11 3 (0.46%) Apple
11 3 (0.46%) Cognizant
11 3 (0.46%) Dataiku
11 3 (0.46%) Foundry
12 2 (0.31%) CA Agile Central
12 2 (0.31%) Computacenter
12 2 (0.31%) Confluent
12 2 (0.31%) Red Hat