Senior Developer Contract Job Trends

Senior Developer
UK

The median Senior Developer daily rate in the UK is £560, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 11 June 2026.

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

6 months to
11 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 163 160 133
Rank change year-on-year -3 -27 +3
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Developer 816 528 754
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.64% 1.80% 1.73%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.77% 1.95% 1.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 516 372 548
10th Percentile £406 £400 £409
25th Percentile £475 £475 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £560 £575 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.61% +4.55% -12.00%
75th Percentile £709 £721 £725
90th Percentile £938 £825 £863
UK excluding London median daily rate £523 £525 £475
% change year-on-year -0.48% +10.53% -13.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 1 14
10th Percentile £37.25 - £36.50
25th Percentile £44.93 - £43.71
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 - £82.85
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 46,065 27,116 40,535
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.33% 92.32% 92.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,032 17,461 26,079
10th Percentile £325 £288 £280
25th Percentile £413 £402 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.55% -4.76% -2.60%
75th Percentile £621 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,078 1,132 2,932
10th Percentile £15.13 £13.87 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.75 £17.79 £16.30
Median hourly rate £43.00 £27.70 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +55.23% -26.13% -16.67%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £61.60
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% -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 11 June 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 11 June 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 11 June 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 -7 694 £575 -4.17% 164
London -2 448 £625 -3.85% 65
UK excluding London -12 266 £523 -0.48% 133
Work from Home -38 214 £560 -4.68% 111
North of England -13 100 £575 +9.52% 32
Yorkshire -11 52 £575 +9.52% 3
North West -19 44 £510 +2.00% 22
Midlands -41 44 £513 -6.82% 15
South East -50 40 £560 +6.31% 41
West Midlands -39 37 £513 -6.82% 10
South West -11 36 £513 -14.58% 12
Scotland -23 25 £431 +1.47% 10
East of England -18 15 £500 -23.08% 14
East Midlands -24 6 £525 +28.05% 5
Northern Ireland +3 4 £650 +30.00% 3
North East -25 4 £875 +133.33% 7
Wales -14 2 £525 +61.54% 7

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

For the 6 months to 11 June 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.

1 259 (31.74%) Java
2 214 (26.23%) CI/CD
3 208 (25.49%) AWS
4 205 (25.12%) Agile
5 176 (21.57%) Python
6 167 (20.47%) Azure
7 152 (18.63%) Microservices
8 146 (17.89%) SQL
9 133 (16.30%) JavaScript
10 129 (15.81%) React
11 125 (15.32%) DevOps
12 123 (15.07%) Security Cleared
13 121 (14.83%) C#
14 117 (14.34%) Docker
15 114 (13.97%) SC Cleared
15 114 (13.97%) TypeScript
16 106 (12.99%) Kubernetes
17 101 (12.38%) .NET
18 94 (11.52%) Spring
19 93 (11.40%) Full-Stack Development
20 90 (11.03%) Git
21 88 (10.78%) Software Engineering
22 84 (10.29%) Kafka
22 84 (10.29%) REST
22 84 (10.29%) RESTful
22 84 (10.29%) Spring Boot
23 82 (10.05%) Containerisation
24 80 (9.80%) Test Automation
25 78 (9.56%) TDD
26 70 (8.58%) Problem-Solving

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 (1.23%) Apache Spark
2 9 (1.10%) Confluence
3 8 (0.98%) Apache
4 7 (0.86%) Ethereum
4 7 (0.86%) Hyperledger
5 6 (0.74%) CMS
6 5 (0.61%) Mendix
7 4 (0.49%) Headless CMS
7 4 (0.49%) Oracle Workflow
8 3 (0.37%) Apache Airflow
8 3 (0.37%) IIS
8 3 (0.37%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 3 (0.37%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.25%) Cloud Foundry
9 2 (0.25%) Moodle
9 2 (0.25%) SharePoint
9 2 (0.25%) WebLogic
10 1 (0.12%) SAS
10 1 (0.12%) Umbraco
10 1 (0.12%) WordPress
Applications
1 8 (0.98%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.12%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 17 (2.08%) Teamcenter
2 5 (0.61%) Endur
3 4 (0.49%) R3 Corda
4 3 (0.37%) Aladdin
4 3 (0.37%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.37%) Quorum
4 3 (0.37%) Ripple
4 3 (0.37%) Shopify
4 3 (0.37%) SimCorp Dimension
5 2 (0.25%) Orchestrade
6 1 (0.12%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.12%) Dynamics CRM
6 1 (0.12%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.12%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.12%) Oracle Cash Management
6 1 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.12%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.12%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.12%) SAP HCM
6 1 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 208 (25.49%) AWS
2 167 (20.47%) Azure
3 61 (7.48%) GitHub
4 46 (5.64%) Serverless
5 43 (5.27%) Power Platform
6 40 (4.90%) Azure DevOps
7 36 (4.41%) GitHub Actions
8 35 (4.29%) GCP
9 27 (3.31%) Power Automate
10 25 (3.06%) AWS Lambda
11 23 (2.82%) Amazon SQS
12 21 (2.57%) PowerApps
13 20 (2.45%) Amazon S3
13 20 (2.45%) Azure Service Bus
14 17 (2.08%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 16 (1.96%) Amazon ECS
15 16 (1.96%) Dynamics 365
16 15 (1.84%) Amazon EC2
17 14 (1.72%) Copilot Studio
18 13 (1.59%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 8 (0.98%) HTTP
2 6 (0.74%) Multicast
3 2 (0.25%) Ethernet
3 2 (0.25%) NFC
3 2 (0.25%) RTP
4 1 (0.12%) CTI
4 1 (0.12%) DNS
4 1 (0.12%) Firewall
4 1 (0.12%) MQTT
4 1 (0.12%) Reverse Proxy
4 1 (0.12%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 61 (7.48%) PostgreSQL
2 49 (6.00%) SQL Server
3 43 (5.27%) Relational Database
4 36 (4.41%) Power BI
5 32 (3.92%) MongoDB
6 28 (3.43%) NoSQL
7 21 (2.57%) Apache Cassandra
7 21 (2.57%) DynamoDB
8 18 (2.21%) MySQL
9 16 (1.96%) Data Warehouse
10 15 (1.84%) Amazon RDS
11 10 (1.23%) KDB
12 8 (0.98%) Azure SQL Database
13 7 (0.86%) Amazon Aurora
13 7 (0.86%) Kdb+
14 6 (0.74%) Data Lake
14 6 (0.74%) Oracle BI EE
14 6 (0.74%) Oracle Database
14 6 (0.74%) Redis
14 6 (0.74%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 90 (11.03%) Git
2 43 (5.27%) Jenkins
3 25 (3.06%) Maven
4 24 (2.94%) JIRA
5 23 (2.82%) JUnit
6 19 (2.33%) Mockito
7 18 (2.21%) GitLab
7 18 (2.21%) SonarQube
8 13 (1.59%) Gradle
9 5 (0.61%) Snyk
9 5 (0.61%) Xcode
10 4 (0.49%) Bitbucket
10 4 (0.49%) XCTest
10 4 (0.49%) XCUITest
11 3 (0.37%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 3 (0.37%) Bitbucket Server
11 3 (0.37%) Cucumber
11 3 (0.37%) Eclipse
11 3 (0.37%) git-flow
11 3 (0.37%) jMock
General
1 174 (21.32%) Finance
2 126 (15.44%) Banking
3 119 (14.58%) Public Sector
4 114 (13.97%) Social Skills
5 64 (7.84%) Investment Banking
6 59 (7.23%) Front Office
7 43 (5.27%) Analytical Skills
8 22 (2.70%) Financial Institution
9 18 (2.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 17 (2.08%) Retail
11 10 (1.23%) Legal
11 10 (1.23%) Military
12 8 (0.98%) Manufacturing
13 6 (0.74%) Law
14 5 (0.61%) Telecoms
15 4 (0.49%) Documentation Skills
15 4 (0.49%) Games
15 4 (0.49%) Health Technology
16 3 (0.37%) Organisational Skills
16 3 (0.37%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 129 (15.81%) React
2 101 (12.38%) .NET
3 94 (11.52%) Spring
4 84 (10.29%) Kafka
4 84 (10.29%) REST
4 84 (10.29%) RESTful
4 84 (10.29%) Spring Boot
5 58 (7.11%) AngularJS
6 54 (6.62%) Redux
7 53 (6.50%) HTML
8 51 (6.25%) Node.js
9 48 (5.88%) CSS
10 33 (4.04%) Web Services
11 27 (3.31%) Django
12 25 (3.06%) .NET Core
12 25 (3.06%) SOAP
13 20 (2.45%) OAuth
14 19 (2.33%) gRPC
15 18 (2.21%) .NET Framework
15 18 (2.21%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 59 (7.23%) Distributed Systems
2 54 (6.62%) Cloud Native
3 46 (5.64%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 46 (5.64%) Greenfield Project
4 41 (5.02%) Fixed Income
5 39 (4.78%) Equities
6 34 (4.17%) Product Ownership
7 20 (2.45%) Mobile App
8 19 (2.33%) Derivative
9 15 (1.84%) Algorithms
10 11 (1.35%) Onboarding
11 10 (1.23%) AI Agents
11 10 (1.23%) CMDB
12 9 (1.10%) Legacy Systems
13 8 (0.98%) Management Information System
14 7 (0.86%) Data Structures
14 7 (0.86%) Market Risk
15 6 (0.74%) Equity Derivative
15 6 (0.74%) NHS
16 5 (0.61%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 48 (5.88%) Linux
2 29 (3.55%) Unix
3 19 (2.33%) Windows
4 12 (1.47%) Apple iOS
5 10 (1.23%) Android
6 9 (1.10%) Mac OS
7 5 (0.61%) Mac OS X
8 2 (0.25%) Windows Server
9 1 (0.12%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 214 (26.23%) CI/CD
2 205 (25.12%) Agile
3 152 (18.63%) Microservices
4 125 (15.32%) DevOps
5 93 (11.40%) Full-Stack Development
6 88 (10.78%) Software Engineering
7 82 (10.05%) Containerisation
8 80 (9.80%) Test Automation
9 78 (9.56%) TDD
10 70 (8.58%) Problem-Solving
11 68 (8.33%) Data Modelling
12 60 (7.35%) Event-Driven
13 58 (7.11%) Code Quality
14 57 (6.99%) Scrum
15 56 (6.86%) Mentoring
16 55 (6.74%) AI
17 52 (6.37%) Front End Development
18 51 (6.25%) Business Intelligence
18 51 (6.25%) Design Patterns
19 50 (6.13%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 259 (31.74%) Java
2 176 (21.57%) Python
3 146 (17.89%) SQL
4 133 (16.30%) JavaScript
5 121 (14.83%) C#
6 114 (13.97%) TypeScript
7 30 (3.68%) Go
8 25 (3.06%) Ruby
9 23 (2.82%) C++
9 23 (2.82%) Kotlin
10 12 (1.47%) Apex Code
11 10 (1.23%) Swift
12 9 (1.10%) PowerShell
12 9 (1.10%) Shell Script
13 8 (0.98%) PL/SQL
14 7 (0.86%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 6 (0.74%) SOQL
15 6 (0.74%) SOSL
16 5 (0.61%) Bicep
16 5 (0.61%) R
Qualifications
1 123 (15.07%) Security Cleared
2 114 (13.97%) SC Cleared
3 27 (3.31%) Degree
4 16 (1.96%) BPSS Clearance
5 12 (1.47%) Computer Science Degree
6 7 (0.86%) DV Cleared
7 5 (0.61%) AWS Certification
8 4 (0.49%) AWS Certified Developer
9 3 (0.37%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 3 (0.37%) Microsoft Certification
9 3 (0.37%) Numerate Degree
10 2 (0.25%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 2 (0.25%) Master's Degree
11 1 (0.12%) Azure Certification
11 1 (0.12%) CISSP
11 1 (0.12%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (4.04%) Accessibility
2 30 (3.68%) QA
3 20 (2.45%) WCAG
4 14 (1.72%) Data Quality
5 2 (0.25%) GDPR
5 2 (0.25%) NCSC
5 2 (0.25%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.12%) Basel III
6 1 (0.12%) Disclosure Scotland
6 1 (0.12%) GRC
6 1 (0.12%) HMG Security Policy Framework
6 1 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (0.12%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 1 (0.12%) Solvency II
System Software
1 117 (14.34%) Docker
2 4 (0.49%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.25%) GridGain
3 2 (0.25%) Oracle RAC
3 2 (0.25%) Postfix
4 1 (0.12%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 106 (12.99%) Kubernetes
2 52 (6.37%) Terraform
3 19 (2.33%) Grafana
4 13 (1.59%) Prometheus
5 10 (1.23%) Ansible
6 8 (0.98%) Single Sign-On
7 4 (0.49%) Argo
8 2 (0.25%) Consul
8 2 (0.25%) Zipkin
9 1 (0.12%) HAProxy
9 1 (0.12%) SELinux
9 1 (0.12%) systemd
Vendors
1 57 (6.99%) Microsoft
2 31 (3.80%) Oracle
3 23 (2.82%) ServiceNow
4 21 (2.57%) Salesforce
5 12 (1.47%) Avaloq
6 11 (1.35%) Databricks
6 11 (1.35%) SAP
7 9 (1.10%) Google
8 6 (0.74%) Guidewire
8 6 (0.74%) Jaspersoft
8 6 (0.74%) Sybase
9 4 (0.49%) ForgeRock
9 4 (0.49%) Okta
9 4 (0.49%) Pega
9 4 (0.49%) Solace
10 3 (0.37%) Atlassian
10 3 (0.37%) Blue Prism
10 3 (0.37%) New Relic
10 3 (0.37%) SimCorp
10 3 (0.37%) Splunk