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 26 August 2026.

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

6 months to
26 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 176 180 111
Rank change year-on-year +4 -69 +34
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Developer 857 527 813
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.60% 1.61% 2.09%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.73% 1.77% 2.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 563 381 575
10th Percentile £405 £400 £400
25th Percentile £456 £449 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year - - -12.00%
75th Percentile £708 £700 £700
90th Percentile £938 £813 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £525 £500
% change year-on-year - +5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 0 9
10th Percentile £37.25 - £39.00
25th Percentile £44.93 - £54.85
Median hourly rate £45.56 - £58.91
75th Percentile £46.18 - £62.96
90th Percentile £47.69 - £83.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.56 - £58.91

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 49,591 29,856 36,116
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.45% 91.25% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,677 18,858 22,961
10th Percentile £325 £278 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
75th Percentile £625 £622 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,535 1,578 1,930
10th Percentile £14.96 £13.68 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.51 £17.08 £19.50
Median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +65.94% -41.51% -1.44%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.83 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £71.47 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.30 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +68.19% -41.51% +7.50%

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 26 August 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 26 August 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 26 August 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 -1 703 £588 +2.17% 292
London -7 422 £648 -0.38% 143
UK excluding London +16 323 £525 - 182
Work from Home -41 224 £525 -5.83% 151
North of England +4 126 £588 +11.90% 60
Yorkshire 0 62 £550 - 19
Midlands -11 58 £506 +1.25% 37
North West -11 56 £625 +25.00% 28
Scotland +10 48 £410 +1.49% 16
West Midlands -22 46 £513 -6.82% 18
South West -26 44 £513 -6.82% 15
South East -71 35 £440 -16.75% 32
East Midlands -11 11 £500 +9.89% 18
North East -34 10 £750 +53.85% 13
East of England -28 7 £500 - 11
Northern Ireland 0 4 £650 +30.00% 9
Wales -15 2 £469 +44.23% 5

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

For the 6 months to 26 August 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.

1 276 (32.21%) CI/CD
2 268 (31.27%) Agile
3 263 (30.69%) Java
4 184 (21.47%) Azure
5 178 (20.77%) Python
6 175 (20.42%) SQL
7 174 (20.30%) AWS
8 159 (18.55%) C#
9 157 (18.32%) Microservices
10 154 (17.97%) DevOps
11 148 (17.27%) JavaScript
12 140 (16.34%) Security Cleared
13 136 (15.87%) TypeScript
14 133 (15.52%) React
15 132 (15.40%) REST
16 128 (14.94%) SC Cleared
17 123 (14.35%) .NET
18 117 (13.65%) Full-Stack Development
18 117 (13.65%) Git
19 112 (13.07%) Docker
20 109 (12.72%) Test Automation
21 108 (12.60%) RESTful
22 107 (12.49%) Spring
23 101 (11.79%) Software Engineering
24 96 (11.20%) Kubernetes
25 89 (10.39%) Problem-Solving
26 87 (10.15%) AI
27 86 (10.04%) Spring Boot
28 82 (9.57%) Continuous Improvement
28 82 (9.57%) GitHub

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 (1.87%) Confluence
2 12 (1.40%) Apache Spark
3 9 (1.05%) Apache
3 9 (1.05%) Oracle Workflow
4 8 (0.93%) WordPress
5 7 (0.82%) CMS
6 5 (0.58%) SharePoint
7 3 (0.35%) Ethereum
7 3 (0.35%) Hyperledger
7 3 (0.35%) Moodle
8 2 (0.23%) Appian
8 2 (0.23%) Cloud Foundry
8 2 (0.23%) Headless CMS
8 2 (0.23%) IIS
8 2 (0.23%) Mendix
8 2 (0.23%) Oracle Application Server
8 2 (0.23%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 2 (0.23%) WebLogic
9 1 (0.12%) HCL Domino
9 1 (0.12%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 5 (0.58%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.12%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 17 (1.98%) Teamcenter
2 11 (1.28%) Oracle EBS
3 9 (1.05%) Dynamics CRM
4 7 (0.82%) NetSuite
5 6 (0.70%) Endur
6 5 (0.58%) Oracle Financials
6 5 (0.58%) Oracle General Ledger
6 5 (0.58%) Oracle Payables
6 5 (0.58%) Oracle Receivables
7 4 (0.47%) Oracle FAH
8 3 (0.35%) Aladdin
8 3 (0.35%) Oracle Applications
8 3 (0.35%) Oracle Assets
8 3 (0.35%) Quorum
8 3 (0.35%) R3 Corda
8 3 (0.35%) Ripple
8 3 (0.35%) Shopify
8 3 (0.35%) SimCorp Dimension
9 2 (0.23%) Oracle iProcurement
9 2 (0.23%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 184 (21.47%) Azure
2 174 (20.30%) AWS
3 82 (9.57%) GitHub
4 53 (6.18%) GitHub Actions
5 50 (5.83%) Power Platform
6 47 (5.48%) Azure DevOps
7 43 (5.02%) GCP
8 41 (4.78%) Serverless
9 34 (3.97%) Power Automate
10 21 (2.45%) PowerApps
11 20 (2.33%) Dynamics 365
12 17 (1.98%) Amazon S3
12 17 (1.98%) Amazon SQS
13 16 (1.87%) AWS Lambda
14 14 (1.63%) GitHub Copilot
15 13 (1.52%) OpenShift
16 12 (1.40%) Azure Service Bus
17 10 (1.17%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 9 (1.05%) Azure Functions
18 9 (1.05%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 6 (0.70%) Multicast
2 4 (0.47%) Broadband
3 3 (0.35%) HTTP
3 3 (0.35%) NFC
4 2 (0.23%) RTP
5 1 (0.12%) CTI
5 1 (0.12%) Ethernet
5 1 (0.12%) MQTT
5 1 (0.12%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 64 (7.47%) PostgreSQL
2 61 (7.12%) SQL Server
3 55 (6.42%) Relational Database
4 39 (4.55%) Power BI
5 36 (4.20%) MongoDB
6 27 (3.15%) NoSQL
7 21 (2.45%) Oracle Database
8 17 (1.98%) DynamoDB
9 16 (1.87%) Data Warehouse
10 13 (1.52%) MySQL
10 13 (1.52%) RDBMS
11 12 (1.40%) Redis
12 11 (1.28%) Azure SQL Database
13 10 (1.17%) KDB
14 9 (1.05%) Amazon RDS
15 8 (0.93%) Geospatial Data
15 8 (0.93%) Oracle Reports
16 7 (0.82%) Amazon Aurora
16 7 (0.82%) Apache Cassandra
16 7 (0.82%) Kdb+
Development Applications
1 117 (13.65%) Git
2 57 (6.65%) Jenkins
3 30 (3.50%) JIRA
4 28 (3.27%) GitLab
4 28 (3.27%) Maven
5 26 (3.03%) Mockito
6 25 (2.92%) JUnit
7 15 (1.75%) SonarQube
8 14 (1.63%) Gradle
9 9 (1.05%) Oracle Forms
10 8 (0.93%) Bitbucket
10 8 (0.93%) Claude Code
11 6 (0.70%) REST Assured
11 6 (0.70%) Visual Studio Code
12 5 (0.58%) Cucumber
12 5 (0.58%) MSI
12 5 (0.58%) Xcode
13 4 (0.47%) Cypress.io
13 4 (0.47%) Vite
13 4 (0.47%) XCUITest
General
1 185 (21.59%) Finance
2 163 (19.02%) Social Skills
3 138 (16.10%) Public Sector
4 123 (14.35%) Banking
5 70 (8.17%) Front Office
6 65 (7.58%) Analytical Skills
7 61 (7.12%) Investment Banking
8 36 (4.20%) Retail
9 27 (3.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 14 (1.63%) Financial Institution
10 14 (1.63%) Military
11 11 (1.28%) Games
12 10 (1.17%) Back Office
13 8 (0.93%) Legal
14 7 (0.82%) Law
14 7 (0.82%) Telecoms
15 6 (0.70%) Manufacturing
16 5 (0.58%) Local Government
17 3 (0.35%) Organisational Skills
17 3 (0.35%) Prime Brokerage
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 133 (15.52%) React
2 132 (15.40%) REST
3 123 (14.35%) .NET
4 108 (12.60%) RESTful
5 107 (12.49%) Spring
6 86 (10.04%) Spring Boot
7 65 (7.58%) Kafka
8 57 (6.65%) HTML
8 57 (6.65%) Node.js
9 56 (6.53%) Redux
10 54 (6.30%) Terraform
11 49 (5.72%) CSS
12 45 (5.25%) AngularJS
13 43 (5.02%) SOAP
14 37 (4.32%) Django
15 34 (3.97%) JSON
16 33 (3.85%) HTML5
16 33 (3.85%) Web Services
17 28 (3.27%) .NET Core
18 27 (3.15%) CSS3
Miscellaneous
1 60 (7.00%) Cloud Native
2 56 (6.53%) Distributed Systems
3 54 (6.30%) Product Ownership
4 49 (5.72%) Fixed Income
5 48 (5.60%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 41 (4.78%) Equities
7 36 (4.20%) Greenfield Project
8 25 (2.92%) Enterprise Software
9 18 (2.10%) Data Structures
10 16 (1.87%) CMDB
11 15 (1.75%) Onboarding
12 14 (1.63%) Legacy Systems
12 14 (1.63%) Mobile App
13 13 (1.52%) Derivative
14 12 (1.40%) AI Agents
14 12 (1.40%) Algorithms
15 7 (0.82%) Market Risk
16 6 (0.70%) Spread Betting
17 5 (0.58%) Low-Code
17 5 (0.58%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 49 (5.72%) Linux
2 47 (5.48%) Unix
3 21 (2.45%) Windows
4 12 (1.40%) Android
5 11 (1.28%) Apple iOS
6 7 (0.82%) AIX
7 6 (0.70%) Windows Server
8 5 (0.58%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.47%) Mac OS X
10 1 (0.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 276 (32.21%) CI/CD
2 268 (31.27%) Agile
3 157 (18.32%) Microservices
4 154 (17.97%) DevOps
5 117 (13.65%) Full-Stack Development
6 109 (12.72%) Test Automation
7 101 (11.79%) Software Engineering
8 89 (10.39%) Problem-Solving
9 87 (10.15%) AI
10 82 (9.57%) Continuous Improvement
11 79 (9.22%) Containerisation
12 74 (8.63%) Data Modelling
13 72 (8.40%) Mentoring
14 71 (8.28%) Scrum
15 70 (8.17%) TDD
16 69 (8.05%) Event-Driven
17 65 (7.58%) Business Intelligence
17 65 (7.58%) Code Quality
18 64 (7.47%) Migration
19 57 (6.65%) Low Latency
Programming Languages
1 263 (30.69%) Java
2 178 (20.77%) Python
3 175 (20.42%) SQL
4 159 (18.55%) C#
5 148 (17.27%) JavaScript
6 136 (15.87%) TypeScript
7 25 (2.92%) Apex Code
8 23 (2.68%) PL/SQL
8 23 (2.68%) Ruby
9 19 (2.22%) C++
10 18 (2.10%) Shell Script
11 16 (1.87%) Kotlin
12 13 (1.52%) SOQL
13 9 (1.05%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 9 (1.05%) Go
13 9 (1.05%) PHP
13 9 (1.05%) Scala
13 9 (1.05%) Swift
14 8 (0.93%) Bicep
14 8 (0.93%) C
Qualifications
1 140 (16.34%) Security Cleared
2 128 (14.94%) SC Cleared
3 36 (4.20%) Degree
4 20 (2.33%) Computer Science Degree
5 18 (2.10%) BPSS Clearance
6 8 (0.93%) Microsoft Certification
7 5 (0.58%) DV Cleared
8 4 (0.47%) Numerate Degree
9 3 (0.35%) Master's Degree
10 2 (0.23%) AWS Certification
10 2 (0.23%) AWS Certified Developer
11 1 (0.12%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 1 (0.12%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 1 (0.12%) Azure Certification
11 1 (0.12%) DBS Check
11 1 (0.12%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 51 (5.95%) Accessibility
2 48 (5.60%) QA
3 26 (3.03%) WCAG
4 21 (2.45%) Data Quality
5 7 (0.82%) GDPR
6 5 (0.58%) NCSC
7 2 (0.23%) Basel III
7 2 (0.23%) ISO 20022
7 2 (0.23%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.12%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.12%) GRC
8 1 (0.12%) ISO 15022
8 1 (0.12%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.12%) SEPA
8 1 (0.12%) Solvency II
System Software
1 112 (13.07%) Docker
2 6 (0.70%) Active Directory
3 5 (0.58%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.23%) Apache ZooKeeper
4 2 (0.23%) GridGain
4 2 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
4 2 (0.23%) Postfix
5 1 (0.12%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 96 (11.20%) Kubernetes
2 20 (2.33%) Grafana
3 16 (1.87%) Prometheus
4 14 (1.63%) Ansible
5 4 (0.47%) Argo
6 2 (0.23%) Bosun
6 2 (0.23%) Consul
6 2 (0.23%) Single Sign-On
6 2 (0.23%) Zipkin
7 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.12%) SELinux
7 1 (0.12%) systemd
Vendors
1 81 (9.45%) Microsoft
2 69 (8.05%) Oracle
3 45 (5.25%) Salesforce
4 28 (3.27%) ServiceNow
5 20 (2.33%) Databricks
6 15 (1.75%) Google
7 14 (1.63%) MuleSoft
8 13 (1.52%) Avaloq
9 10 (1.17%) Blue Prism
9 10 (1.17%) IBM
10 7 (0.82%) SAP
11 6 (0.70%) Solace
12 5 (0.58%) BeyondTrust
12 5 (0.58%) Bomgar
12 5 (0.58%) Jaspersoft
12 5 (0.58%) VMware
13 3 (0.35%) Atlassian
13 3 (0.35%) OpenAI
13 3 (0.35%) SimCorp
13 3 (0.35%) Splunk