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 24 February 2026.

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

6 months to
24 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 163 148 177
Rank change year-on-year -15 +29 -57
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Developer 687 539 605
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.68% 1.78% 1.36%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.83% 1.92% 1.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 478 355 431
10th Percentile £400 £425 £413
25th Percentile £450 £504 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £600 £575
Median % change year-on-year -12.50% +4.35% -8.00%
75th Percentile £650 £700 £714
90th Percentile £850 £838 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £521
% change year-on-year -4.76% +0.72% -9.35%
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 37,601 28,063 41,310
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.77% 92.89% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,630 17,563 27,190
10th Percentile £306 £293 £275
25th Percentile £408 £406 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +1.32% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,287 822 2,342
10th Percentile £14.61 £16.25 £13.15
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £16.30
Median hourly rate £32.00 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -8.57% - -10.88%
75th Percentile £63.75 £64.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £71.99
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £32.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year -7.69% -7.14% -5.74%

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 24 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 24 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 -14 585 £550 -8.33% 298
London -9 366 £600 -4.38% 107
Work from Home +25 246 £589 -1.79% 167
UK excluding London -28 227 £500 -4.76% 240
North of England -47 70 £550 +4.76% 92
South West +18 54 £475 -20.89% 26
South East -29 38 £500 +11.11% 64
Yorkshire -32 36 £575 +9.52% 33
North West -33 33 £500 -4.76% 50
Midlands -42 30 £525 +0.48% 31
East of England -17 21 £500 -23.08% 8
West Midlands -46 21 £525 -4.55% 23
Scotland -15 14 £475 +5.56% 14
East Midlands -23 9 £520 - 8
North East -11 6 £525 -11.02% 10
Wales -2 4 £638 +27.50% 5
Northern Ireland +1 3 £638 +6.25% 2

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

For the 6 months to 24 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 (31.88%) AWS
2 216 (31.44%) Java
3 199 (28.97%) Agile
4 164 (23.87%) CI/CD
5 162 (23.58%) Microservices
6 157 (22.85%) Azure
6 157 (22.85%) Python
7 156 (22.71%) SQL
8 151 (21.98%) Security Cleared
9 140 (20.38%) DevOps
10 136 (19.80%) SC Cleared
11 132 (19.21%) JavaScript
12 124 (18.05%) Docker
12 124 (18.05%) Kafka
13 118 (17.18%) Kubernetes
14 115 (16.74%) Problem-Solving
15 94 (13.68%) Spring
16 90 (13.10%) React
17 84 (12.23%) TDD
18 81 (11.79%) Spring Boot
19 80 (11.64%) Software Engineering
20 79 (11.50%) Containerisation
21 76 (11.06%) Git
22 75 (10.92%) Test Automation
23 73 (10.63%) Scrum
24 72 (10.48%) .NET
25 71 (10.33%) C#
26 66 (9.61%) Full-Stack Development
27 64 (9.32%) Analytics
28 62 (9.02%) TypeScript

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 13 (1.89%) Confluence
2 7 (1.02%) CMS
3 6 (0.87%) nginx
4 5 (0.73%) SharePoint
5 4 (0.58%) Ethereum
5 4 (0.58%) Hyperledger
5 4 (0.58%) Jupyter
6 3 (0.44%) Headless CMS
6 3 (0.44%) Mendix
6 3 (0.44%) SAS
6 3 (0.44%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.29%) Apache Airflow
7 2 (0.29%) Microsoft Exchange
8 1 (0.15%) LiveCycle
8 1 (0.15%) Oracle Application Server
8 1 (0.15%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 1 (0.15%) Smallworld
8 1 (0.15%) Umbraco
8 1 (0.15%) WebLogic
8 1 (0.15%) WordPress
Applications
1 14 (2.04%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 5 (0.73%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (0.44%) Endur
3 2 (0.29%) 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
1 219 (31.88%) AWS
2 157 (22.85%) Azure
3 58 (8.44%) Azure DevOps
4 47 (6.84%) GitHub
5 43 (6.26%) Serverless
6 37 (5.39%) Power Platform
7 32 (4.66%) GCP
8 24 (3.49%) AWS Lambda
8 24 (3.49%) Power Automate
9 20 (2.91%) PowerApps
10 19 (2.77%) Amazon EC2
10 19 (2.77%) Amazon SQS
10 19 (2.77%) Azure Service Bus
11 18 (2.62%) Amazon EKS
11 18 (2.62%) Dynamics 365
12 16 (2.33%) Amazon ECS
13 14 (2.04%) GitHub Actions
14 13 (1.89%) Amazon S3
14 13 (1.89%) SaaS
15 11 (1.60%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 6 (0.87%) HTTP
2 5 (0.73%) Kerberos
3 3 (0.44%) Reverse Proxy
4 2 (0.29%) Firewall
4 2 (0.29%) SSL
4 2 (0.29%) 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 57 (8.30%) PostgreSQL
2 44 (6.40%) MongoDB
3 41 (5.97%) NoSQL
4 38 (5.53%) Relational Database
4 38 (5.53%) SQL Server
5 33 (4.80%) Apache Cassandra
6 25 (3.64%) Power BI
7 17 (2.47%) DynamoDB
8 16 (2.33%) Data Hub
9 13 (1.89%) MySQL
10 12 (1.75%) Data Warehouse
10 12 (1.75%) DB2
11 11 (1.60%) Amazon RDS
12 8 (1.16%) Data Lake
13 7 (1.02%) Oracle BI EE
13 7 (1.02%) Redis
14 6 (0.87%) HBase
15 5 (0.73%) Couchbase
15 5 (0.73%) RDBMS
15 5 (0.73%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 76 (11.06%) Git
2 37 (5.39%) JUnit
3 35 (5.09%) Jenkins
4 34 (4.95%) Oracle APEX
5 30 (4.37%) GitLab
6 27 (3.93%) JIRA
7 18 (2.62%) Mockito
8 15 (2.18%) Maven
9 11 (1.60%) Gradle
10 9 (1.31%) Cucumber
11 8 (1.16%) Artifactory
11 8 (1.16%) SonarQube
12 7 (1.02%) Sonatype Nexus
13 6 (0.87%) SpecFlow
14 5 (0.73%) Cypress.io
14 5 (0.73%) Mocha
15 4 (0.58%) Bitbucket
15 4 (0.58%) Postman
16 3 (0.44%) git-flow
16 3 (0.44%) Lerna
General
1 145 (21.11%) Social Skills
2 137 (19.94%) Finance
3 99 (14.41%) Public Sector
4 94 (13.68%) Banking
5 48 (6.99%) Analytical Skills
6 38 (5.53%) Investment Banking
7 23 (3.35%) Front Office
8 12 (1.75%) Financial Institution
9 5 (0.73%) Law
9 5 (0.73%) Presentation Skills
10 4 (0.58%) Health Technology
10 4 (0.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 4 (0.58%) Military
10 4 (0.58%) Retail Banking
10 4 (0.58%) Telecoms
11 3 (0.44%) Legal
11 3 (0.44%) Manufacturing
11 3 (0.44%) Pharmaceutical
11 3 (0.44%) Police
12 2 (0.29%) Organisational Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 124 (18.05%) Kafka
2 94 (13.68%) Spring
3 90 (13.10%) React
4 81 (11.79%) Spring Boot
5 72 (10.48%) .NET
6 61 (8.88%) Node.js
7 60 (8.73%) REST
8 57 (8.30%) RESTful
9 55 (8.01%) HTML
10 54 (7.86%) AngularJS
11 50 (7.28%) CSS
12 32 (4.66%) Web Services
13 30 (4.37%) gRPC
14 19 (2.77%) .NET Framework
14 19 (2.77%) Jest
14 19 (2.77%) RabbitMQ
15 17 (2.47%) Next.js
16 16 (2.33%) .NET Core
16 16 (2.33%) Redux
17 15 (2.18%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 53 (7.71%) Cloud Native
2 49 (7.13%) Distributed Systems
3 29 (4.22%) Derivative
4 26 (3.78%) Greenfield Project
4 26 (3.78%) Product Ownership
5 25 (3.64%) Equities
6 24 (3.49%) Algorithms
7 19 (2.77%) Market Risk
8 18 (2.62%) Management Information System
9 16 (2.33%) Data Structures
10 12 (1.75%) Fixed Income
10 12 (1.75%) Mobile App
11 11 (1.60%) Legacy Systems
12 9 (1.31%) Onboarding
13 8 (1.16%) Equity Derivative
13 8 (1.16%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 7 (1.02%) Legacy Applications
15 6 (0.87%) AI Agents
15 6 (0.87%) Enterprise Software
16 5 (0.73%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 47 (6.84%) Linux
2 23 (3.35%) Unix
3 16 (2.33%) Android
4 10 (1.46%) Mac OS X
4 10 (1.46%) Windows
5 9 (1.31%) Apple iOS
6 4 (0.58%) Mac OS
7 2 (0.29%) Windows Server
8 1 (0.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.15%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 199 (28.97%) Agile
2 164 (23.87%) CI/CD
3 162 (23.58%) Microservices
4 140 (20.38%) DevOps
5 115 (16.74%) Problem-Solving
6 84 (12.23%) TDD
7 80 (11.64%) Software Engineering
8 79 (11.50%) Containerisation
9 75 (10.92%) Test Automation
10 73 (10.63%) Scrum
11 66 (9.61%) Full-Stack Development
12 64 (9.32%) Analytics
13 56 (8.15%) Open Source
14 50 (7.28%) SDLC
15 48 (6.99%) Code Quality
15 48 (6.99%) Infrastructure as Code
15 48 (6.99%) Mentoring
16 47 (6.84%) Front End Development
17 41 (5.97%) Design Patterns
18 40 (5.82%) AI
Programming Languages
1 216 (31.44%) Java
2 157 (22.85%) Python
3 156 (22.71%) SQL
4 132 (19.21%) JavaScript
5 71 (10.33%) C#
6 62 (9.02%) TypeScript
7 45 (6.55%) Go
8 39 (5.68%) PL/SQL
9 26 (3.78%) Kotlin
10 21 (3.06%) Ruby
11 17 (2.47%) C++
12 12 (1.75%) Bash
12 12 (1.75%) Shell Script
13 11 (1.60%) PowerShell
14 6 (0.87%) PHP
15 4 (0.58%) ABAP
15 4 (0.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 4 (0.58%) VBA
16 3 (0.44%) Swift
16 3 (0.44%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 151 (21.98%) Security Cleared
2 136 (19.80%) SC Cleared
3 32 (4.66%) Degree
4 26 (3.78%) BPSS Clearance
5 15 (2.18%) Computer Science Degree
6 8 (1.16%) Numerate Degree
7 6 (0.87%) AWS Certification
7 6 (0.87%) OCP
7 6 (0.87%) Oracle Certification
8 4 (0.58%) DV Cleared
9 3 (0.44%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 3 (0.44%) Azure Certification
9 3 (0.44%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 2 (0.29%) AWS Certified Developer
10 2 (0.29%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 2 (0.29%) Master's Degree
11 1 (0.15%) CISSP
11 1 (0.15%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (4.51%) Accessibility
2 18 (2.62%) WCAG
3 17 (2.47%) Data Quality
4 16 (2.33%) QA
5 4 (0.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 3 (0.44%) EU AI Act
6 3 (0.44%) NIST
7 2 (0.29%) GDPR
8 1 (0.15%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 124 (18.05%) Docker
2 4 (0.58%) zsh
3 2 (0.29%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.15%) GridGain
4 1 (0.15%) OpenAM
4 1 (0.15%) OpenDJ
4 1 (0.15%) OpenIDM
Systems Management
1 118 (17.18%) Kubernetes
2 39 (5.68%) Terraform
3 22 (3.20%) Grafana
4 14 (2.04%) Ansible
5 9 (1.31%) Prometheus
5 9 (1.31%) Single Sign-On
6 3 (0.44%) Kibana
7 1 (0.15%) Argo
7 1 (0.15%) CloudHub
7 1 (0.15%) Control-M
7 1 (0.15%) HAProxy
7 1 (0.15%) Sysdig
Vendors
1 58 (8.44%) Oracle
2 42 (6.11%) Microsoft
3 19 (2.77%) Google
4 14 (2.04%) ServiceNow
5 13 (1.89%) Sybase
6 11 (1.60%) Databricks
6 11 (1.60%) SAP
7 9 (1.31%) Salesforce
8 6 (0.87%) Guidewire
9 5 (0.73%) Atlassian
10 4 (0.58%) IBM
10 4 (0.58%) Pega
11 3 (0.44%) Apple
11 3 (0.44%) Cognizant
11 3 (0.44%) Dataiku
11 3 (0.44%) Foundry
12 2 (0.29%) Avaloq
12 2 (0.29%) ForgeRock
12 2 (0.29%) New Relic
12 2 (0.29%) OpenAI