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 21 October 2025.

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

6 months to
21 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 184 114 173
Rank change year-on-year -70 +59 -61
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Developer 515 754 726
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.54% 2.03% 1.52%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.69% 2.19% 1.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 352 513 529
10th Percentile £400 £392 £425
25th Percentile £450 £463 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year - -8.33% -5.51%
75th Percentile £700 £688 £725
90th Percentile £811 £825 £850
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 3 4
10th Percentile - £40.29 £51.38
25th Percentile - £48.22 £55.31
Median hourly rate - £61.43 £66.25
Median % change year-on-year - -7.28% -11.67%
75th Percentile - £74.47 £74.69
90th Percentile - £82.29 £76.38
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 30,403 34,425 45,004
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.87% 92.91% 93.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,210 20,754 30,743
10th Percentile £278 £300 £300
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 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,679 1,378 1,527
10th Percentile £13.80 £15.02 £14.60
25th Percentile £17.30 £20.30 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -37.13% -10.11% +67.17%
75th Percentile £50.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.75 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.42 £40.33 £43.90
% change year-on-year -39.44% -8.14% +95.11%

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 21 October 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 21 October 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 -61 452 £559 +1.59% 470
London -65 271 £650 +10.17% 187
Work from Home -34 205 £550 -4.35% 298
UK excluding London -17 181 £525 +5.00% 385
North of England -12 64 £538 +7.50% 108
South East +8 41 £473 -14.00% 145
Yorkshire -7 38 £600 +15.94% 31
South West +12 32 £557 +14.26% 40
North West -23 22 £500 - 62
Midlands -26 18 £518 +3.50% 34
East of England +2 14 £535 +42.67% 21
Scotland -22 12 £413 -17.50% 22
East Midlands -3 10 £500 +9.59% 16
North East -2 8 £544 +27.94% 16
West Midlands -31 8 £600 +20.00% 17
Wales -2 4 £254 -51.67% 12
Northern Ireland -9 1 £450 -18.18% 11

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

For the 6 months to 21 October 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.

1 213 (41.36%) Agile
2 186 (36.12%) Java
3 162 (31.46%) AWS
4 158 (30.68%) SQL
5 153 (29.71%) Azure
6 150 (29.13%) Microservices
7 148 (28.74%) CI/CD
8 138 (26.80%) DevOps
9 134 (26.02%) Problem-Solving
10 113 (21.94%) Python
11 111 (21.55%) C#
11 111 (21.55%) Kafka
12 104 (20.19%) Docker
13 94 (18.25%) Kubernetes
14 92 (17.86%) .NET
15 91 (17.67%) Spring
16 87 (16.89%) JavaScript
17 84 (16.31%) RESTful
18 79 (15.34%) React
18 79 (15.34%) TDD
19 70 (13.59%) Linux
19 70 (13.59%) TypeScript
20 69 (13.40%) Full-Stack Development
20 69 (13.40%) PostgreSQL
21 66 (12.82%) Mentoring
22 65 (12.62%) Scrum
22 65 (12.62%) Spring Boot
23 63 (12.23%) Security Cleared
23 63 (12.23%) Software Engineering
24 62 (12.04%) 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 14 (2.72%) Confluence
2 12 (2.33%) CMS
3 5 (0.97%) SharePoint
4 3 (0.58%) Alfresco
4 3 (0.58%) Apache
4 3 (0.58%) Apache Spark
4 3 (0.58%) Camunda
4 3 (0.58%) Jupyter
5 2 (0.39%) Anypoint
5 2 (0.39%) Headless CMS
6 1 (0.19%) SAS
6 1 (0.19%) Smallworld
Applications
1 8 (1.55%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 4 (0.78%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (0.58%) Endur
3 2 (0.39%) Remedy ITSM
3 2 (0.39%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.19%) Oracle BPM
4 1 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
4 1 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.19%) SAP FI
4 1 (0.19%) SAP Travel Management
Cloud Services
1 162 (31.46%) AWS
2 153 (29.71%) Azure
3 49 (9.51%) Azure DevOps
3 49 (9.51%) GitHub
4 40 (7.77%) GCP
5 37 (7.18%) Serverless
6 34 (6.60%) Power Platform
7 20 (3.88%) AWS Lambda
8 19 (3.69%) GitHub Actions
9 18 (3.50%) Amazon S3
9 18 (3.50%) PowerApps
10 17 (3.30%) Power Automate
11 15 (2.91%) Azure Service Bus
12 14 (2.72%) Dynamics 365
13 13 (2.52%) SaaS
14 12 (2.33%) Azure Logic Apps
15 11 (2.14%) Amazon EC2
15 11 (2.14%) Azure AKS
15 11 (2.14%) Azure Functions
16 10 (1.94%) Firebase
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.78%) Kerberos
1 4 (0.78%) SAN
1 4 (0.78%) TCP/IP
2 3 (0.58%) SSL
3 2 (0.39%) HTTP
3 2 (0.39%) VPN
4 1 (0.19%) BGP
4 1 (0.19%) Ethernet
4 1 (0.19%) Ethernet VPN
4 1 (0.19%) Firewall
4 1 (0.19%) Internet
4 1 (0.19%) MPLS
4 1 (0.19%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 69 (13.40%) PostgreSQL
2 59 (11.46%) Relational Database
3 56 (10.87%) MongoDB
4 50 (9.71%) SQL Server
5 30 (5.83%) NoSQL
6 21 (4.08%) Redis
7 20 (3.88%) DB2
8 19 (3.69%) Power BI
9 18 (3.50%) MySQL
10 15 (2.91%) Apache Cassandra
11 13 (2.52%) Azure SQL Database
11 13 (2.52%) DynamoDB
12 10 (1.94%) Data Lake
13 8 (1.55%) Amazon RDS
13 8 (1.55%) KDB
13 8 (1.55%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 7 (1.36%) Kdb+
14 7 (1.36%) RDBMS
15 6 (1.17%) Data Warehouse
16 5 (0.97%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 59 (11.46%) Git
2 51 (9.90%) JUnit
3 38 (7.38%) Jenkins
4 30 (5.83%) GitLab
4 30 (5.83%) JIRA
5 29 (5.63%) Mockito
6 15 (2.91%) Gradle
7 13 (2.52%) Maven
8 12 (2.33%) SpecFlow
9 9 (1.75%) Postman
10 8 (1.55%) Cucumber
11 7 (1.36%) Artifactory
12 6 (1.17%) Bitbucket
12 6 (1.17%) Liquibase
12 6 (1.17%) Mocha
12 6 (1.17%) Team Foundation Server
13 5 (0.97%) NUnit
13 5 (0.97%) Sonatype Nexus
13 5 (0.97%) TeamCity
13 5 (0.97%) Visual Studio
General
1 173 (33.59%) Finance
2 137 (26.60%) Social Skills
3 94 (18.25%) Banking
4 59 (11.46%) Analytical Skills
5 55 (10.68%) Public Sector
6 54 (10.49%) Investment Banking
7 27 (5.24%) Front Office
8 12 (2.33%) Marketing
9 10 (1.94%) Manufacturing
10 7 (1.36%) Back Office
11 6 (1.17%) Electronics
11 6 (1.17%) Telecoms
12 5 (0.97%) Military
13 4 (0.78%) Financial Institution
14 3 (0.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 3 (0.58%) Presentation Skills
15 2 (0.39%) Automotive
15 2 (0.39%) Documentation Skills
15 2 (0.39%) Health Technology
15 2 (0.39%) Law
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 111 (21.55%) Kafka
2 92 (17.86%) .NET
3 91 (17.67%) Spring
4 84 (16.31%) RESTful
5 79 (15.34%) React
6 65 (12.62%) Spring Boot
7 58 (11.26%) REST
8 49 (9.51%) Node.js
9 48 (9.32%) AngularJS
10 39 (7.57%) HTML
11 32 (6.21%) Web Services
12 31 (6.02%) .NET Core
13 30 (5.83%) CSS
14 23 (4.47%) JSON
15 22 (4.27%) .NET Framework
16 21 (4.08%) Playwright
16 21 (4.08%) RabbitMQ
17 20 (3.88%) JMS
18 17 (3.30%) Jest
19 16 (3.11%) Next.js
Miscellaneous
1 38 (7.38%) Cloud Native
2 30 (5.83%) Derivative
2 30 (5.83%) Distributed Systems
3 26 (5.05%) Data Structures
4 25 (4.85%) Equities
5 24 (4.66%) Product Ownership
6 21 (4.08%) Market Risk
7 20 (3.88%) Greenfield Project
8 19 (3.69%) Management Information System
9 18 (3.50%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 15 (2.91%) Fixed Income
11 14 (2.72%) Algorithms
12 11 (2.14%) Legacy Systems
13 10 (1.94%) Mobile App
14 8 (1.55%) Enterprise Software
15 6 (1.17%) Linux Command Line
16 5 (0.97%) Hedge funds
16 5 (0.97%) Self-Motivation
17 4 (0.78%) Data Protection Act
17 4 (0.78%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 70 (13.59%) Linux
2 29 (5.63%) Unix
3 15 (2.91%) Android
4 14 (2.72%) Apple iOS
4 14 (2.72%) Mac OS X
5 9 (1.75%) Windows
6 4 (0.78%) Debian
6 4 (0.78%) Ubuntu
6 4 (0.78%) Windows Server
6 4 (0.78%) Windows Server 2016
7 2 (0.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.19%) CentOS
8 1 (0.19%) Mac OS
8 1 (0.19%) tvOS
8 1 (0.19%) watchOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 213 (41.36%) Agile
2 150 (29.13%) Microservices
3 148 (28.74%) CI/CD
4 138 (26.80%) DevOps
5 134 (26.02%) Problem-Solving
6 79 (15.34%) TDD
7 69 (13.40%) Full-Stack Development
8 66 (12.82%) Mentoring
9 65 (12.62%) Scrum
10 63 (12.23%) Software Engineering
11 62 (12.04%) Analytics
12 59 (11.46%) Containerisation
13 50 (9.71%) Test Automation
14 48 (9.32%) SDLC
15 46 (8.93%) Event-Driven
16 45 (8.74%) Clean Code
16 45 (8.74%) Open Source
17 42 (8.16%) Performance Tuning
18 39 (7.57%) API Development
18 39 (7.57%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 186 (36.12%) Java
2 158 (30.68%) SQL
3 113 (21.94%) Python
4 111 (21.55%) C#
5 87 (16.89%) JavaScript
6 70 (13.59%) TypeScript
7 21 (4.08%) Shell Script
8 18 (3.50%) C++
9 16 (3.11%) Go
10 13 (2.52%) PowerShell
11 12 (2.33%) Kotlin
11 12 (2.33%) PL/SQL
12 10 (1.94%) Ruby
13 9 (1.75%) Bash
14 8 (1.55%) PHP
15 6 (1.17%) Apex Code
16 5 (0.97%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 5 (0.97%) Swift
17 4 (0.78%) ABAP
17 4 (0.78%) Objective-C
Qualifications
1 63 (12.23%) Security Cleared
2 46 (8.93%) SC Cleared
3 44 (8.54%) Degree
4 25 (4.85%) Computer Science Degree
5 12 (2.33%) BPSS Clearance
6 8 (1.55%) AWS Certification
7 6 (1.17%) Master's Degree
8 4 (0.78%) OCP
8 4 (0.78%) Oracle Certification
9 3 (0.58%) AWS Certified Developer
9 3 (0.58%) DBS Check
9 3 (0.58%) DV Cleared
9 3 (0.58%) MCP
9 3 (0.58%) Microsoft Certification
10 2 (0.39%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (0.39%) Azure Certification
10 2 (0.39%) Numerate Degree
11 1 (0.19%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 1 (0.19%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (4.66%) Accessibility
1 24 (4.66%) QA
2 13 (2.52%) Data Quality
3 10 (1.94%) WCAG
4 4 (0.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 3 (0.58%) EU AI Act
5 3 (0.58%) NIST
6 1 (0.19%) GDPR
6 1 (0.19%) HL7
6 1 (0.19%) HMG Security Policy Framework
6 1 (0.19%) ISO 22301
6 1 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 104 (20.19%) Docker
2 5 (0.97%) zsh
3 3 (0.58%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.19%) Apache ZooKeeper
4 1 (0.19%) GridGain
4 1 (0.19%) Lustre
4 1 (0.19%) Postfix
4 1 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 94 (18.25%) Kubernetes
2 43 (8.35%) Terraform
3 16 (3.11%) Grafana
4 8 (1.55%) Prometheus
5 7 (1.36%) Ansible
6 4 (0.78%) Kibana
6 4 (0.78%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.19%) Argo
7 1 (0.19%) CloudHub
7 1 (0.19%) Packer
7 1 (0.19%) Rundeck
Vendors
1 40 (7.77%) Microsoft
2 23 (4.47%) Oracle
3 21 (4.08%) Sybase
4 19 (3.69%) Databricks
5 18 (3.50%) Google
6 13 (2.52%) Salesforce
7 10 (1.94%) SAP
8 9 (1.75%) Atlassian
8 9 (1.75%) ServiceNow
9 6 (1.17%) Dataiku
9 6 (1.17%) Red Hat
9 6 (1.17%) Virgin Media
10 5 (0.97%) Apple
11 4 (0.78%) IFS
11 4 (0.78%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
11 4 (0.78%) VMware
12 3 (0.58%) Foundry
12 3 (0.58%) HP
12 3 (0.58%) Remedy
13 2 (0.39%) BMC