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 23 January 2026.

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

6 months to
23 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 168 150 173
Rank change year-on-year -18 +23 -63
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Developer 631 574 603
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.66% 1.81% 1.38%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.82% 1.95% 1.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 447 373 433
10th Percentile £406 £422 £425
25th Percentile £450 £500 £480
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -10.16%
75th Percentile £650 £700 £700
90th Percentile £850 £838 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 1 9
10th Percentile - - £43.55
25th Percentile £85.00 - £56.25
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 - - £75.50
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 34,674 29,426 40,527
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.44% 92.86% 93.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,946 18,016 26,864
10th Percentile £300 £288 £275
25th Percentile £406 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £477 £500
% change year-on-year -0.31% -4.70% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,058 877 1,975
10th Percentile £14.38 £15.91 £13.41
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £17.72
Median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £39.55
Median % change year-on-year -15.38% -17.83% +13.00%
75th Percentile £60.60 £62.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.85 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.59 £31.64 £40.28
% change year-on-year -19.11% -21.44% +34.25%

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 23 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 23 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 -24 541 £550 -7.95% 462
London -21 328 £619 -1.00% 133
Work from Home +3 218 £591 -1.50% 239
UK excluding London -24 215 £500 - 395
North of England -26 73 £550 +7.84% 87
South West +32 54 £475 -13.64% 45
Yorkshire -26 38 £631 +20.24% 27
South East -35 33 £500 -8.26% 146
North West -21 32 £505 +1.00% 47
Midlands -35 26 £510 - 43
West Midlands -35 20 £525 +1.45% 20
East of England -23 17 £500 -13.42% 49
Scotland -20 12 £513 +15.49% 13
North East -7 9 £488 +1.04% 13
East Midlands -25 6 £493 -3.43% 22
Wales 0 4 £638 +27.50% 14
Northern Ireland -1 4 £544 -9.38% 6

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

For the 6 months to 23 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.

1 213 (33.76%) Java
2 200 (31.70%) AWS
3 197 (31.22%) Agile
4 161 (25.52%) Microservices
5 157 (24.88%) Azure
6 154 (24.41%) CI/CD
7 149 (23.61%) DevOps
7 149 (23.61%) Security Cleared
8 144 (22.82%) Python
9 143 (22.66%) SQL
10 131 (20.76%) SC Cleared
11 124 (19.65%) Kafka
12 122 (19.33%) Docker
13 120 (19.02%) Problem-Solving
14 118 (18.70%) Kubernetes
15 115 (18.23%) JavaScript
16 99 (15.69%) Spring
17 84 (13.31%) Spring Boot
18 81 (12.84%) React
19 80 (12.68%) Containerisation
20 76 (12.04%) Software Engineering
21 75 (11.89%) C#
22 74 (11.73%) Git
22 74 (11.73%) TDD
23 72 (11.41%) Scrum
24 71 (11.25%) .NET
24 71 (11.25%) Test Automation
25 68 (10.78%) Full-Stack Development
26 66 (10.46%) RESTful
27 65 (10.30%) 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 17 (2.69%) Confluence
2 6 (0.95%) nginx
3 5 (0.79%) CMS
3 5 (0.79%) SharePoint
4 4 (0.63%) Jupyter
5 3 (0.48%) Ethereum
5 3 (0.48%) Hyperledger
5 3 (0.48%) SAS
6 2 (0.32%) Mendix
6 2 (0.32%) Microsoft Exchange
6 2 (0.32%) Tomcat
7 1 (0.16%) Anypoint
7 1 (0.16%) Appian
7 1 (0.16%) Headless CMS
7 1 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
7 1 (0.16%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 1 (0.16%) Smallworld
7 1 (0.16%) Umbraco
7 1 (0.16%) WebLogic
7 1 (0.16%) WordPress
Applications
1 10 (1.58%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 5 (0.79%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (0.48%) Endur
3 2 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
4 1 (0.16%) FLEXCUBE
4 1 (0.16%) IBM Planning Analytics
4 1 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.16%) Oracle Retail
4 1 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.16%) SAP BRIM
4 1 (0.16%) SAP FI
4 1 (0.16%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.16%) SAP Travel Management
Cloud Services
1 200 (31.70%) AWS
2 157 (24.88%) Azure
3 65 (10.30%) Azure DevOps
4 49 (7.77%) GitHub
5 38 (6.02%) Serverless
6 32 (5.07%) GCP
7 30 (4.75%) Power Platform
8 19 (3.01%) AWS Lambda
9 17 (2.69%) Dynamics 365
9 17 (2.69%) Power Automate
10 16 (2.54%) Amazon EC2
10 16 (2.54%) Amazon SQS
10 16 (2.54%) Azure Service Bus
11 14 (2.22%) Amazon EKS
11 14 (2.22%) GitHub Actions
12 13 (2.06%) PowerApps
12 13 (2.06%) SaaS
13 12 (1.90%) Azure AKS
14 11 (1.74%) Amazon ECS
15 10 (1.58%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.79%) Kerberos
2 4 (0.63%) HTTP
2 4 (0.63%) SSL
3 3 (0.48%) Reverse Proxy
4 2 (0.32%) Firewall
4 2 (0.32%) VPN
5 1 (0.16%) DNS
5 1 (0.16%) FTP
5 1 (0.16%) Internet
5 1 (0.16%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 56 (8.87%) PostgreSQL
2 50 (7.92%) MongoDB
3 40 (6.34%) Relational Database
4 38 (6.02%) NoSQL
5 37 (5.86%) SQL Server
6 30 (4.75%) Apache Cassandra
7 19 (3.01%) Power BI
8 16 (2.54%) Data Hub
9 15 (2.38%) DynamoDB
10 13 (2.06%) DB2
11 12 (1.90%) Data Warehouse
12 10 (1.58%) Redis
13 9 (1.43%) Amazon RDS
14 8 (1.27%) Data Lake
14 8 (1.27%) MySQL
15 7 (1.11%) Oracle BI EE
16 6 (0.95%) HBase
16 6 (0.95%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 5 (0.79%) Couchbase
17 5 (0.79%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 74 (11.73%) Git
2 40 (6.34%) Jenkins
2 40 (6.34%) JUnit
3 34 (5.39%) GitLab
3 34 (5.39%) Oracle APEX
4 32 (5.07%) JIRA
5 23 (3.65%) Mockito
6 13 (2.06%) Maven
7 12 (1.90%) Gradle
8 9 (1.43%) Artifactory
9 8 (1.27%) Cucumber
9 8 (1.27%) Postman
10 7 (1.11%) Sonatype Nexus
10 7 (1.11%) SpecFlow
11 6 (0.95%) Cypress.io
11 6 (0.95%) Mocha
11 6 (0.95%) SonarQube
12 5 (0.79%) Bitbucket
13 3 (0.48%) git-flow
13 3 (0.48%) Lerna
General
1 147 (23.30%) Social Skills
2 139 (22.03%) Finance
3 93 (14.74%) Banking
4 91 (14.42%) Public Sector
5 50 (7.92%) Analytical Skills
6 35 (5.55%) Investment Banking
7 21 (3.33%) Front Office
8 13 (2.06%) Financial Institution
9 6 (0.95%) Military
10 5 (0.79%) Manufacturing
10 5 (0.79%) Presentation Skills
10 5 (0.79%) Telecoms
11 4 (0.63%) Health Technology
11 4 (0.63%) Law
11 4 (0.63%) Pharmaceutical
11 4 (0.63%) Retail Banking
12 3 (0.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 3 (0.48%) Marketing
13 2 (0.32%) Documentation Skills
13 2 (0.32%) Organisational Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 124 (19.65%) Kafka
2 99 (15.69%) Spring
3 84 (13.31%) Spring Boot
4 81 (12.84%) React
5 71 (11.25%) .NET
6 66 (10.46%) RESTful
7 57 (9.03%) AngularJS
8 54 (8.56%) REST
9 51 (8.08%) Node.js
10 49 (7.77%) HTML
11 41 (6.50%) CSS
12 33 (5.23%) Web Services
13 26 (4.12%) gRPC
14 22 (3.49%) .NET Framework
14 22 (3.49%) JSON
15 20 (3.17%) RabbitMQ
16 19 (3.01%) Next.js
17 17 (2.69%) Jest
17 17 (2.69%) Playwright
18 16 (2.54%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 49 (7.77%) Cloud Native
2 48 (7.61%) Distributed Systems
3 30 (4.75%) Derivative
4 27 (4.28%) Equities
5 25 (3.96%) Greenfield Project
6 24 (3.80%) Product Ownership
7 19 (3.01%) Algorithms
7 19 (3.01%) Market Risk
8 18 (2.85%) Management Information System
9 17 (2.69%) Data Structures
10 14 (2.22%) Fixed Income
11 10 (1.58%) Legacy Systems
11 10 (1.58%) Mobile App
12 8 (1.27%) Equity Derivative
13 7 (1.11%) Legacy Applications
13 7 (1.11%) Onboarding
14 6 (0.95%) Enterprise Software
14 6 (0.95%) Linux Command Line
15 5 (0.79%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 5 (0.79%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 50 (7.92%) Linux
2 26 (4.12%) Unix
3 17 (2.69%) Android
4 14 (2.22%) Mac OS X
5 10 (1.58%) Apple iOS
6 5 (0.79%) Windows
7 2 (0.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 2 (0.32%) Windows Server
8 1 (0.16%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 197 (31.22%) Agile
2 161 (25.52%) Microservices
3 154 (24.41%) CI/CD
4 149 (23.61%) DevOps
5 120 (19.02%) Problem-Solving
6 80 (12.68%) Containerisation
7 76 (12.04%) Software Engineering
8 74 (11.73%) TDD
9 72 (11.41%) Scrum
10 71 (11.25%) Test Automation
11 68 (10.78%) Full-Stack Development
12 62 (9.83%) Analytics
13 58 (9.19%) Open Source
14 46 (7.29%) SDLC
15 45 (7.13%) Infrastructure as Code
16 43 (6.81%) Unit Testing
17 42 (6.66%) Event-Driven
18 40 (6.34%) Mentoring
19 39 (6.18%) Code Quality
19 39 (6.18%) Front End Development
Programming Languages
1 213 (33.76%) Java
2 144 (22.82%) Python
3 143 (22.66%) SQL
4 115 (18.23%) JavaScript
5 75 (11.89%) C#
6 49 (7.77%) TypeScript
7 38 (6.02%) Go
7 38 (6.02%) PL/SQL
8 21 (3.33%) Kotlin
9 19 (3.01%) Ruby
10 15 (2.38%) C++
11 13 (2.06%) Bash
11 13 (2.06%) Shell Script
12 12 (1.90%) PowerShell
13 6 (0.95%) PHP
14 4 (0.63%) Swift
15 3 (0.48%) Apex Code
15 3 (0.48%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 3 (0.48%) Objective-C
15 3 (0.48%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 149 (23.61%) Security Cleared
2 131 (20.76%) SC Cleared
3 39 (6.18%) Degree
4 28 (4.44%) BPSS Clearance
5 18 (2.85%) Computer Science Degree
6 8 (1.27%) Numerate Degree
7 7 (1.11%) AWS Certification
8 6 (0.95%) OCP
8 6 (0.95%) Oracle Certification
9 4 (0.63%) Master's Degree
10 3 (0.48%) AWS Certified Developer
10 3 (0.48%) Azure Certification
10 3 (0.48%) MCP
11 2 (0.32%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 2 (0.32%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 2 (0.32%) DV Cleared
12 1 (0.16%) CISSP
12 1 (0.16%) Microsoft Certification
12 1 (0.16%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (4.60%) Accessibility
2 17 (2.69%) QA
3 13 (2.06%) Data Quality
3 13 (2.06%) WCAG
4 4 (0.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 3 (0.48%) EU AI Act
5 3 (0.48%) NIST
6 2 (0.32%) GDPR
7 1 (0.16%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 122 (19.33%) Docker
2 5 (0.79%) zsh
3 2 (0.32%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.16%) GridGain
4 1 (0.16%) Lustre
4 1 (0.16%) OpenAM
4 1 (0.16%) OpenDJ
4 1 (0.16%) OpenIDM
4 1 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 118 (18.70%) Kubernetes
2 38 (6.02%) Terraform
3 20 (3.17%) Grafana
4 14 (2.22%) Ansible
5 10 (1.58%) Single Sign-On
6 8 (1.27%) Prometheus
7 3 (0.48%) Kibana
8 1 (0.16%) Argo
8 1 (0.16%) CloudHub
8 1 (0.16%) Control-M
8 1 (0.16%) HAProxy
8 1 (0.16%) Packer
8 1 (0.16%) Rundeck
8 1 (0.16%) Sysdig
Vendors
1 56 (8.87%) Oracle
2 28 (4.44%) Microsoft
3 21 (3.33%) Google
4 14 (2.22%) ServiceNow
4 14 (2.22%) Sybase
5 10 (1.58%) Databricks
6 7 (1.11%) Salesforce
7 5 (0.79%) Atlassian
7 5 (0.79%) Guidewire
7 5 (0.79%) SAP
8 4 (0.63%) Apple
8 4 (0.63%) IBM
8 4 (0.63%) Pega
9 3 (0.48%) BMC
9 3 (0.48%) Cognizant
9 3 (0.48%) Dataiku
9 3 (0.48%) Foundry
10 2 (0.32%) CA Agile Central
10 2 (0.32%) Computacenter
10 2 (0.32%) Confluent