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 28 April 2026.

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

6 months to
28 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 168 162 148
Rank change year-on-year -6 -14 -21
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Developer 744 516 711
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.58% 1.76% 1.64%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.72% 1.90% 1.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 487 378 507
10th Percentile £408 £409 £410
25th Percentile £463 £483 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £600 £575
Median % change year-on-year -12.50% +4.35% -8.00%
75th Percentile £650 £737 £725
90th Percentile £860 £838 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £530 £500
% change year-on-year -5.66% +6.00% -13.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 1 14
10th Percentile £39.55 - £40.00
25th Percentile £43.01 - £54.85
Median hourly rate £67.78 £77.19 £58.20
Median % change year-on-year -12.19% +32.62% -6.88%
75th Percentile £95.00 - £70.12
90th Percentile - - £79.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.53 £77.19 £58.91
% change year-on-year -44.91% +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 43,373 27,176 40,178
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.32% 92.58% 92.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,766 17,790 26,166
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £407 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.00% -1.82% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £491
% change year-on-year +2.63% -3.19% -1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,810 1,031 2,642
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.20 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.51 £16.30
Median hourly rate £43.39 £29.25 £35.83
Median % change year-on-year +48.35% -18.36% -20.38%
75th Percentile £65.60 £62.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £28.75 £37.50
% change year-on-year +56.52% -23.33% -11.76%

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 28 April 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 28 April 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 28 April 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 -12 627 £560 -6.67% 245
London -2 393 £625 -3.85% 82
UK excluding London -29 248 £500 -5.66% 215
Work from Home -4 211 £600 - 133
North of England -42 77 £563 -4.66% 71
Midlands -39 46 £506 -7.95% 26
South West 0 45 £475 -20.83% 17
Yorkshire -37 40 £575 -4.17% 21
North West -20 38 £505 -15.83% 38
West Midlands -38 38 £485 -11.82% 18
South East -52 38 £560 +5.66% 56
East of England -26 21 £500 -23.08% 20
Scotland -22 17 £475 +11.76% 19
East Midlands -32 7 £525 +0.96% 8
Northern Ireland +5 5 £638 +27.50% 4
Wales -11 2 £638 +6.25% 7
North East -21 1 £450 -23.73% 14

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

For the 6 months to 28 April 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.

1 232 (31.18%) Java
2 211 (28.36%) AWS
3 192 (25.81%) Agile
4 179 (24.06%) CI/CD
5 163 (21.91%) Python
6 153 (20.56%) Security Cleared
7 147 (19.76%) SC Cleared
8 144 (19.35%) Azure
9 142 (19.09%) Microservices
10 133 (17.88%) SQL
11 131 (17.61%) DevOps
12 121 (16.26%) Docker
13 119 (15.99%) JavaScript
14 115 (15.46%) Kubernetes
15 99 (13.31%) Kafka
16 93 (12.50%) React
17 91 (12.23%) Spring
18 85 (11.42%) Containerisation
19 82 (11.02%) Spring Boot
20 80 (10.75%) .NET
21 78 (10.48%) Problem-Solving
22 72 (9.68%) Git
22 72 (9.68%) Test Automation
23 71 (9.54%) TDD
24 70 (9.41%) Software Engineering
25 69 (9.27%) Full-Stack Development
26 68 (9.14%) TypeScript
27 66 (8.87%) C#
28 63 (8.47%) RESTful
29 58 (7.80%) Scrum

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 (1.34%) Confluence
2 6 (0.81%) Apache Spark
2 6 (0.81%) CMS
2 6 (0.81%) nginx
3 5 (0.67%) Apache
3 5 (0.67%) SharePoint
4 4 (0.54%) Ethereum
4 4 (0.54%) Headless CMS
4 4 (0.54%) Hyperledger
5 3 (0.40%) Apache Airflow
5 3 (0.40%) IIS
5 3 (0.40%) Mendix
5 3 (0.40%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 3 (0.40%) Oracle Workflow
5 3 (0.40%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.27%) Microsoft Exchange
6 2 (0.27%) SAS
6 2 (0.27%) WebLogic
6 2 (0.27%) WordPress
7 1 (0.13%) JBoss
Applications
1 10 (1.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 16 (2.15%) Teamcenter
2 5 (0.67%) Endur
3 2 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.27%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.13%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.13%) FLEXCUBE
4 1 (0.13%) IBM Planning Analytics
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 BRIM
4 1 (0.13%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.13%) SDL Web 8
4 1 (0.13%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 211 (28.36%) AWS
2 144 (19.35%) Azure
3 56 (7.53%) Azure DevOps
4 47 (6.32%) GitHub
5 38 (5.11%) Serverless
6 35 (4.70%) Power Platform
7 25 (3.36%) GitHub Actions
8 24 (3.23%) GCP
9 23 (3.09%) Amazon SQS
9 23 (3.09%) Power Automate
10 21 (2.82%) AWS Lambda
11 17 (2.28%) PowerApps
12 16 (2.15%) Amazon EC2
12 16 (2.15%) Azure Service Bus
13 14 (1.88%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 14 (1.88%) Amazon S3
14 13 (1.75%) Amazon EKS
14 13 (1.75%) Copilot Studio
15 12 (1.61%) Dynamics 365
15 12 (1.61%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 8 (1.08%) HTTP
2 4 (0.54%) Reverse Proxy
3 3 (0.40%) Multicast
4 2 (0.27%) Ethernet
4 2 (0.27%) Firewall
4 2 (0.27%) NFC
4 2 (0.27%) RTP
4 2 (0.27%) SSL
4 2 (0.27%) VPN
5 1 (0.13%) DNS
5 1 (0.13%) FTP
5 1 (0.13%) Kerberos
5 1 (0.13%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 51 (6.85%) PostgreSQL
2 37 (4.97%) MongoDB
2 37 (4.97%) SQL Server
3 30 (4.03%) NoSQL
4 29 (3.90%) Apache Cassandra
4 29 (3.90%) Power BI
4 29 (3.90%) Relational Database
5 18 (2.42%) DynamoDB
6 17 (2.28%) MySQL
7 16 (2.15%) Data Hub
8 14 (1.88%) Data Warehouse
9 10 (1.34%) Amazon RDS
10 7 (0.94%) Oracle BI EE
11 6 (0.81%) KDB
12 5 (0.67%) Amazon Aurora
12 5 (0.67%) Big Data
12 5 (0.67%) Oracle Database
13 4 (0.54%) DB2
13 4 (0.54%) Kdb+
14 3 (0.40%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 72 (9.68%) Git
2 32 (4.30%) Jenkins
3 25 (3.36%) Oracle APEX
4 22 (2.96%) JUnit
5 21 (2.82%) JIRA
6 20 (2.69%) Maven
7 19 (2.55%) GitLab
8 17 (2.28%) Mockito
9 13 (1.75%) SonarQube
10 9 (1.21%) Gradle
11 5 (0.67%) Bitbucket
11 5 (0.67%) Cypress.io
12 3 (0.40%) Sonatype Nexus
12 3 (0.40%) TeamCity
12 3 (0.40%) webpack
13 2 (0.27%) Bitbucket Server
13 2 (0.27%) DbUnit
13 2 (0.27%) fastlane
13 2 (0.27%) Snyk
13 2 (0.27%) Vite
General
1 124 (16.67%) Finance
2 118 (15.86%) Public Sector
3 115 (15.46%) Social Skills
4 97 (13.04%) Banking
5 38 (5.11%) Investment Banking
6 31 (4.17%) Analytical Skills
6 31 (4.17%) Front Office
7 15 (2.02%) Financial Institution
8 7 (0.94%) Retail
9 6 (0.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 5 (0.67%) Telecoms
11 4 (0.54%) Military
11 4 (0.54%) Organisational Skills
12 3 (0.40%) Games
12 3 (0.40%) Health Technology
12 3 (0.40%) Law
12 3 (0.40%) Legal
12 3 (0.40%) Police
12 3 (0.40%) Retail Banking
13 2 (0.27%) Manufacturing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 99 (13.31%) Kafka
2 93 (12.50%) React
3 91 (12.23%) Spring
4 82 (11.02%) Spring Boot
5 80 (10.75%) .NET
6 63 (8.47%) RESTful
7 57 (7.66%) Node.js
8 54 (7.26%) REST
9 50 (6.72%) AngularJS
10 48 (6.45%) HTML
11 44 (5.91%) CSS
12 28 (3.76%) gRPC
12 28 (3.76%) Web Services
13 27 (3.63%) Redux
14 18 (2.42%) .NET Core
14 18 (2.42%) .NET Framework
15 17 (2.28%) SOAP
16 16 (2.15%) Django
17 15 (2.02%) HTML5
18 13 (1.75%) CSS3
Miscellaneous
1 56 (7.53%) Distributed Systems
2 51 (6.85%) Cloud Native
3 24 (3.23%) Derivative
4 23 (3.09%) Product Ownership
5 21 (2.82%) Fixed Income
6 19 (2.55%) Equities
7 18 (2.42%) Greenfield Project
8 14 (1.88%) Algorithms
9 13 (1.75%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 13 (1.75%) Market Risk
10 12 (1.61%) Management Information System
11 11 (1.48%) Mobile App
12 9 (1.21%) Onboarding
13 8 (1.08%) Equity Derivative
13 8 (1.08%) Legacy Systems
14 6 (0.81%) AI Agents
14 6 (0.81%) Data Structures
15 4 (0.54%) Legacy Applications
15 4 (0.54%) NHS
16 3 (0.40%) Animation
Operating Systems
1 41 (5.51%) Linux
2 25 (3.36%) Unix
3 18 (2.42%) Windows
4 14 (1.88%) Android
5 9 (1.21%) Mac OS
6 6 (0.81%) Apple iOS
7 5 (0.67%) Mac OS X
8 2 (0.27%) Windows Server
9 1 (0.13%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 192 (25.81%) Agile
2 179 (24.06%) CI/CD
3 142 (19.09%) Microservices
4 131 (17.61%) DevOps
5 85 (11.42%) Containerisation
6 78 (10.48%) Problem-Solving
7 72 (9.68%) Test Automation
8 71 (9.54%) TDD
9 70 (9.41%) Software Engineering
10 69 (9.27%) Full-Stack Development
11 58 (7.80%) Scrum
12 57 (7.66%) Code Quality
13 52 (6.99%) Analytics
14 47 (6.32%) Mentoring
15 45 (6.05%) Infrastructure as Code
16 44 (5.91%) Data Modelling
16 44 (5.91%) Front End Development
17 42 (5.65%) Migration
17 42 (5.65%) Technical Leadership
18 41 (5.51%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 232 (31.18%) Java
2 163 (21.91%) Python
3 133 (17.88%) SQL
4 119 (15.99%) JavaScript
5 68 (9.14%) TypeScript
6 66 (8.87%) C#
7 43 (5.78%) Go
8 29 (3.90%) PL/SQL
9 28 (3.76%) Kotlin
10 26 (3.49%) Ruby
11 14 (1.88%) C++
12 9 (1.21%) PowerShell
13 8 (1.08%) Shell Script
14 7 (0.94%) Bash
15 6 (0.81%) Apex Code
15 6 (0.81%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 4 (0.54%) PHP
16 4 (0.54%) VBA
17 3 (0.40%) R
17 3 (0.40%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 153 (20.56%) Security Cleared
2 147 (19.76%) SC Cleared
3 25 (3.36%) BPSS Clearance
4 19 (2.55%) Degree
5 7 (0.94%) Computer Science Degree
6 6 (0.81%) DV Cleared
7 5 (0.67%) Numerate Degree
8 4 (0.54%) AWS Certification
9 3 (0.40%) AWS Certified Developer
10 2 (0.27%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 1 (0.13%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 1 (0.13%) Azure Certification
11 1 (0.13%) CISSP
11 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Certification
11 1 (0.13%) OCP
11 1 (0.13%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (4.03%) Accessibility
2 26 (3.49%) QA
3 18 (2.42%) WCAG
4 11 (1.48%) Data Quality
5 2 (0.27%) GDPR
5 2 (0.27%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.13%) HMG Security Policy Framework
6 1 (0.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 121 (16.26%) Docker
2 2 (0.27%) Active Directory
2 2 (0.27%) GridGain
2 2 (0.27%) Oracle RAC
2 2 (0.27%) Postfix
3 1 (0.13%) OpenAM
3 1 (0.13%) OpenDJ
3 1 (0.13%) OpenIDM
3 1 (0.13%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 115 (15.46%) Kubernetes
2 47 (6.32%) Terraform
3 20 (2.69%) Grafana
4 15 (2.02%) Ansible
5 14 (1.88%) Prometheus
6 8 (1.08%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.13%) Argo
7 1 (0.13%) CloudHub
7 1 (0.13%) Control-M
7 1 (0.13%) HAProxy
7 1 (0.13%) Kibana
7 1 (0.13%) SELinux
7 1 (0.13%) Sysdig
7 1 (0.13%) systemd
Vendors
1 52 (6.99%) Oracle
2 41 (5.51%) Microsoft
3 19 (2.55%) ServiceNow
4 15 (2.02%) Salesforce
5 14 (1.88%) Google
6 10 (1.34%) Databricks
7 9 (1.21%) SAP
8 8 (1.08%) Avaloq
9 6 (0.81%) Guidewire
9 6 (0.81%) Sybase
10 5 (0.67%) ForgeRock
11 4 (0.54%) Jaspersoft
11 4 (0.54%) Okta
11 4 (0.54%) Pega
12 3 (0.40%) Apple
12 3 (0.40%) Cognizant
12 3 (0.40%) New Relic
12 3 (0.40%) Splunk
13 2 (0.27%) Dynatrace
13 2 (0.27%) IBM