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 May 2026.

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

6 months to
21 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 162 165 141
Rank change year-on-year +3 -24 -12
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Developer 766 509 707
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.59% 1.75% 1.66%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.72% 1.89% 1.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 481 367 514
10th Percentile £406 £400 £410
25th Percentile £475 £472 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% - -8.00%
75th Percentile £675 £725 £743
90th Percentile £888 £825 £863
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £525 £494
% change year-on-year -2.38% +6.33% -12.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 1 12
10th Percentile £37.25 - £40.00
25th Percentile £44.93 - £51.14
Median hourly rate £45.56 £77.19 £58.91
Median % change year-on-year -40.98% +31.04% -5.75%
75th Percentile £46.18 - £72.50
90th Percentile £95.00 - £81.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.56 £77.19 £58.91
% change year-on-year -40.98% +31.04% -5.75%

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 44,544 26,886 39,472
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.32% 92.37% 92.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,258 17,494 25,719
10th Percentile £325 £293 £280
25th Percentile £413 £405 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -3.23%
75th Percentile £615 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £489
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.86% -2.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,901 1,057 2,674
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.00 £12.83
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.13 £16.30
Median hourly rate £42.69 £27.99 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +52.50% -23.32% -18.89%
75th Percentile £66.50 £60.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £26.34 £40.00
% change year-on-year +70.88% -34.16% -5.88%

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 May 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 21 May 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 21 May 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 -9 642 £575 -4.17% 242
London +7 419 £625 -3.85% 77
UK excluding London -30 239 £513 -2.38% 190
Work from Home -29 204 £575 -4.17% 141
North of England -14 94 £525 - 67
Yorkshire -13 51 £575 +9.52% 23
North West -19 43 £494 -17.71% 33
Midlands -36 40 £513 -6.82% 19
South East -41 37 £560 -2.61% 55
West Midlands -41 32 £513 -6.82% 11
South West -23 25 £443 -26.25% 17
East of England -15 21 £500 -23.08% 18
Scotland -24 18 £411 -3.24% 4
East Midlands -23 7 £525 +28.05% 8
Northern Ireland 0 6 £650 +30.00% 8
North East -22 2 £538 +43.33% 12
Wales -11 1 - - 3

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

For the 6 months to 21 May 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.

1 240 (31.33%) Java
2 221 (28.85%) AWS
3 199 (25.98%) CI/CD
4 185 (24.15%) Agile
5 169 (22.06%) Python
6 146 (19.06%) Microservices
7 142 (18.54%) Azure
8 134 (17.49%) SQL
9 126 (16.45%) Security Cleared
10 125 (16.32%) Docker
11 119 (15.54%) SC Cleared
12 117 (15.27%) DevOps
13 116 (15.14%) Kubernetes
14 106 (13.84%) JavaScript
15 101 (13.19%) React
16 96 (12.53%) Spring
17 94 (12.27%) Kafka
18 89 (11.62%) Containerisation
19 87 (11.36%) .NET
20 85 (11.10%) Spring Boot
21 81 (10.57%) C#
21 81 (10.57%) Full-Stack Development
22 79 (10.31%) Git
22 79 (10.31%) TDD
23 78 (10.18%) Test Automation
24 77 (10.05%) Software Engineering
24 77 (10.05%) TypeScript
25 72 (9.40%) RESTful
26 70 (9.14%) Problem-Solving
27 62 (8.09%) REST

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 10 (1.31%) Confluence
2 9 (1.17%) Apache Spark
3 8 (1.04%) Apache
4 6 (0.78%) CMS
4 6 (0.78%) nginx
5 4 (0.52%) Ethereum
5 4 (0.52%) Headless CMS
5 4 (0.52%) Hyperledger
5 4 (0.52%) Mendix
5 4 (0.52%) Oracle Workflow
6 3 (0.39%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.39%) IIS
6 3 (0.39%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 3 (0.39%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.26%) Cloud Foundry
7 2 (0.26%) SAS
7 2 (0.26%) SharePoint
7 2 (0.26%) WebLogic
7 2 (0.26%) WordPress
8 1 (0.13%) LiveCycle
Applications
1 9 (1.17%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 17 (2.22%) Teamcenter
2 5 (0.65%) Endur
3 3 (0.39%) Aladdin
3 3 (0.39%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 3 (0.39%) SimCorp Dimension
4 1 (0.13%) Adobe Campaign
4 1 (0.13%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.13%) FLEXCUBE
4 1 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
4 1 (0.13%) Oracle Cash Management
4 1 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.13%) Oracle General Ledger
4 1 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
4 1 (0.13%) Oracle Receivables
4 1 (0.13%) Oracle Retail
4 1 (0.13%) R3 Corda
4 1 (0.13%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.13%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.13%) SDL Web 8
4 1 (0.13%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 221 (28.85%) AWS
2 142 (18.54%) Azure
3 59 (7.70%) GitHub
4 46 (6.01%) Serverless
5 38 (4.96%) Power Platform
6 37 (4.83%) Azure DevOps
7 34 (4.44%) GitHub Actions
8 32 (4.18%) GCP
9 30 (3.92%) Amazon SQS
10 25 (3.26%) AWS Lambda
11 24 (3.13%) Power Automate
12 21 (2.74%) Amazon EC2
13 19 (2.48%) PowerApps
14 18 (2.35%) Amazon S3
14 18 (2.35%) Azure Service Bus
15 16 (2.09%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 14 (1.83%) Amazon EKS
16 14 (1.83%) Copilot Studio
17 13 (1.70%) Amazon ECS
17 13 (1.70%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 8 (1.04%) HTTP
2 6 (0.78%) Multicast
3 4 (0.52%) Reverse Proxy
4 2 (0.26%) Ethernet
4 2 (0.26%) NFC
4 2 (0.26%) RTP
4 2 (0.26%) SSL
5 1 (0.13%) DNS
5 1 (0.13%) Firewall
5 1 (0.13%) TCP/IP
5 1 (0.13%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 56 (7.31%) PostgreSQL
2 41 (5.35%) SQL Server
3 39 (5.09%) Relational Database
4 38 (4.96%) MongoDB
5 33 (4.31%) Power BI
6 32 (4.18%) NoSQL
7 24 (3.13%) Apache Cassandra
8 21 (2.74%) DynamoDB
9 17 (2.22%) MySQL
10 15 (1.96%) Amazon RDS
11 14 (1.83%) Data Warehouse
12 10 (1.31%) KDB
13 7 (0.91%) Amazon Aurora
13 7 (0.91%) Data Hub
13 7 (0.91%) Kdb+
13 7 (0.91%) Oracle BI EE
14 6 (0.78%) Azure SQL Database
14 6 (0.78%) Oracle Database
14 6 (0.78%) Redis
14 6 (0.78%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 79 (10.31%) Git
2 39 (5.09%) Jenkins
3 26 (3.39%) GitLab
4 25 (3.26%) Maven
5 24 (3.13%) JIRA
6 23 (3.00%) JUnit
7 20 (2.61%) Mockito
8 18 (2.35%) SonarQube
9 13 (1.70%) Gradle
10 5 (0.65%) Snyk
11 4 (0.52%) Bitbucket
11 4 (0.52%) Cypress.io
11 4 (0.52%) git-flow
12 3 (0.39%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 3 (0.39%) Cucumber
12 3 (0.39%) DbUnit
12 3 (0.39%) jMock
12 3 (0.39%) Team Foundation Server
12 3 (0.39%) TeamCity
12 3 (0.39%) Xcode
General
1 134 (17.49%) Finance
2 121 (15.80%) Public Sector
3 104 (13.58%) Social Skills
4 100 (13.05%) Banking
5 38 (4.96%) Investment Banking
6 36 (4.70%) Analytical Skills
7 34 (4.44%) Front Office
8 22 (2.87%) Financial Institution
9 11 (1.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 11 (1.44%) Retail
10 9 (1.17%) Military
11 5 (0.65%) Law
11 5 (0.65%) Legal
11 5 (0.65%) Manufacturing
11 5 (0.65%) Telecoms
12 4 (0.52%) Games
12 4 (0.52%) Health Technology
12 4 (0.52%) Organisational Skills
13 3 (0.39%) Documentation Skills
13 3 (0.39%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 101 (13.19%) React
2 96 (12.53%) Spring
3 94 (12.27%) Kafka
4 87 (11.36%) .NET
5 85 (11.10%) Spring Boot
6 72 (9.40%) RESTful
7 62 (8.09%) REST
8 60 (7.83%) Node.js
9 53 (6.92%) AngularJS
10 50 (6.53%) HTML
11 45 (5.87%) CSS
12 30 (3.92%) Redux
13 29 (3.79%) Web Services
14 24 (3.13%) Django
15 23 (3.00%) gRPC
16 20 (2.61%) OAuth
17 19 (2.48%) .NET Core
17 19 (2.48%) SOAP
18 16 (2.09%) .NET Framework
19 15 (1.96%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 62 (8.09%) Distributed Systems
2 55 (7.18%) Cloud Native
3 28 (3.66%) Product Ownership
4 23 (3.00%) Greenfield Project
5 20 (2.61%) Derivative
5 20 (2.61%) Fixed Income
5 20 (2.61%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 17 (2.22%) Equities
7 16 (2.09%) Algorithms
8 14 (1.83%) Mobile App
9 11 (1.44%) Onboarding
10 10 (1.31%) Management Information System
11 8 (1.04%) Market Risk
12 7 (0.91%) Data Structures
12 7 (0.91%) Equity Derivative
13 6 (0.78%) AI Agents
13 6 (0.78%) Legacy Systems
14 5 (0.65%) NHS
15 4 (0.52%) Legacy Applications
15 4 (0.52%) Sports Betting
Operating Systems
1 45 (5.87%) Linux
2 27 (3.52%) Unix
3 17 (2.22%) Windows
4 10 (1.31%) Android
5 9 (1.17%) Apple iOS
5 9 (1.17%) Mac OS
6 5 (0.65%) Mac OS X
7 2 (0.26%) Windows Server
8 1 (0.13%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 199 (25.98%) CI/CD
2 185 (24.15%) Agile
3 146 (19.06%) Microservices
4 117 (15.27%) DevOps
5 89 (11.62%) Containerisation
6 81 (10.57%) Full-Stack Development
7 79 (10.31%) TDD
8 78 (10.18%) Test Automation
9 77 (10.05%) Software Engineering
10 70 (9.14%) Problem-Solving
11 58 (7.57%) Code Quality
11 58 (7.57%) Data Modelling
12 54 (7.05%) Mentoring
13 51 (6.66%) Event-Driven
14 49 (6.40%) Infrastructure as Code
14 49 (6.40%) Migration
15 48 (6.27%) Front End Development
16 47 (6.14%) Business Intelligence
17 46 (6.01%) Analytics
18 45 (5.87%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 240 (31.33%) Java
2 169 (22.06%) Python
3 134 (17.49%) SQL
4 106 (13.84%) JavaScript
5 81 (10.57%) C#
6 77 (10.05%) TypeScript
7 36 (4.70%) Go
8 28 (3.66%) Ruby
9 22 (2.87%) Kotlin
10 19 (2.48%) C++
11 9 (1.17%) Apex Code
11 9 (1.17%) PL/SQL
12 8 (1.04%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 8 (1.04%) Shell Script
13 7 (0.91%) Bash
13 7 (0.91%) PowerShell
14 6 (0.78%) Swift
15 4 (0.52%) PHP
15 4 (0.52%) R
15 4 (0.52%) VBA
Qualifications
1 126 (16.45%) Security Cleared
2 119 (15.54%) SC Cleared
3 28 (3.66%) Degree
4 25 (3.26%) BPSS Clearance
5 12 (1.57%) Computer Science Degree
6 7 (0.91%) DV Cleared
7 5 (0.65%) AWS Certification
8 4 (0.52%) AWS Certified Developer
8 4 (0.52%) Numerate Degree
9 3 (0.39%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (0.26%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 1 (0.13%) Azure Certification
11 1 (0.13%) CISSP
11 1 (0.13%) Master's Degree
11 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Certification
11 1 (0.13%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (3.92%) Accessibility
2 25 (3.26%) QA
3 18 (2.35%) WCAG
4 11 (1.44%) Data Quality
5 2 (0.26%) GDPR
5 2 (0.26%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.13%) HMG Security Policy Framework
6 1 (0.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (0.13%) Solvency II
System Software
1 125 (16.32%) Docker
2 3 (0.39%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.26%) GridGain
3 2 (0.26%) Oracle RAC
3 2 (0.26%) Postfix
4 1 (0.13%) OpenAM
4 1 (0.13%) OpenDJ
4 1 (0.13%) OpenIDM
4 1 (0.13%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 116 (15.14%) Kubernetes
2 53 (6.92%) Terraform
3 25 (3.26%) Grafana
4 19 (2.48%) Prometheus
5 16 (2.09%) Ansible
6 8 (1.04%) Single Sign-On
7 4 (0.52%) Argo
8 2 (0.26%) Consul
8 2 (0.26%) Zipkin
9 1 (0.13%) Control-M
9 1 (0.13%) HAProxy
9 1 (0.13%) SELinux
9 1 (0.13%) Sysdig
9 1 (0.13%) systemd
Vendors
1 47 (6.14%) Microsoft
2 32 (4.18%) Oracle
3 17 (2.22%) Salesforce
4 14 (1.83%) ServiceNow
5 11 (1.44%) Avaloq
5 11 (1.44%) Databricks
5 11 (1.44%) Google
6 9 (1.17%) SAP
7 6 (0.78%) Guidewire
7 6 (0.78%) Jaspersoft
7 6 (0.78%) Sybase
8 5 (0.65%) ForgeRock
9 4 (0.52%) Okta
9 4 (0.52%) Pega
9 4 (0.52%) Solace
10 3 (0.39%) Apple
10 3 (0.39%) Atlassian
10 3 (0.39%) Cognizant
10 3 (0.39%) New Relic
10 3 (0.39%) Splunk