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 11 December 2025.

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

6 months to
11 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 179 136 176
Rank change year-on-year -43 +40 -69
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Developer 575 677 663
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.58% 1.90% 1.46%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.74% 2.04% 1.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 419 443 476
10th Percentile £400 £390 £425
25th Percentile £450 £475 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £560 £600
Median % change year-on-year -1.79% -6.67% -6.25%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £716
90th Percentile £793 £823 £844
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £550
% change year-on-year - -9.09% -6.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 7
10th Percentile - - £53.25
25th Percentile - - £56.25
Median hourly rate - - £60.00
75th Percentile - - £68.13
90th Percentile - - £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £52.50
% change year-on-year - - -34.38%

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 32,988 33,120 42,501
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.93% 92.74% 93.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,924 20,243 28,641
10th Percentile £285 £300 £294
25th Percentile £403 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £645
90th Percentile £725 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £495 £500
% change year-on-year -4.04% -1.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,924 1,136 1,517
10th Percentile £14.22 £15.36 £15.16
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.75 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £34.75 £44.00
Median % change year-on-year -27.63% -21.02% +40.98%
75th Percentile £56.81 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.75 £73.66 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £44.50
% change year-on-year -22.62% -26.97% +78.00%

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 December 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 11 December 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 -28 515 £550 -4.35% 431
London -36 297 £631 +5.21% 125
UK excluding London -23 222 £500 - 372
Work from Home -23 214 £591 +2.74% 234
North of England -35 66 £550 +10.00% 82
South West +22 56 £475 -11.63% 34
South East -13 44 £500 -4.76% 136
Yorkshire -26 37 £638 +23.19% 28
North West -20 25 £510 +2.00% 41
Midlands -29 24 £513 +2.50% 46
East of England -11 18 £500 +25.00% 43
West Midlands -26 16 £525 +5.00% 27
Scotland -21 12 £475 -2.46% 17
North East -2 8 £544 +27.94% 13
East Midlands -14 8 £510 +11.78% 17
Northern Ireland -4 4 £544 +8.10% 9
Wales -1 3 £638 +27.50% 12

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

For the 6 months to 11 December 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.

1 230 (40.00%) Agile
2 201 (34.96%) Java
3 174 (30.26%) AWS
4 163 (28.35%) SQL
5 162 (28.17%) Azure
6 161 (28.00%) DevOps
7 157 (27.30%) CI/CD
8 156 (27.13%) Microservices
9 140 (24.35%) Python
10 134 (23.30%) Problem-Solving
11 121 (21.04%) Kafka
11 121 (21.04%) Security Cleared
12 112 (19.48%) Docker
13 105 (18.26%) Kubernetes
14 104 (18.09%) SC Cleared
15 103 (17.91%) JavaScript
16 93 (16.17%) Spring
17 92 (16.00%) C#
18 81 (14.09%) Scrum
19 80 (13.91%) RESTful
20 77 (13.39%) .NET
21 76 (13.22%) Git
22 74 (12.87%) Spring Boot
23 73 (12.70%) Software Engineering
24 72 (12.52%) React
25 70 (12.17%) Azure DevOps
26 69 (12.00%) Analytics
26 69 (12.00%) TDD
27 67 (11.65%) Containerisation
28 66 (11.48%) Full-Stack Development

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 17 (2.96%) Confluence
2 8 (1.39%) SharePoint
3 7 (1.22%) CMS
4 4 (0.70%) Jupyter
5 3 (0.52%) Anypoint
6 2 (0.35%) Microsoft Exchange
7 1 (0.17%) Apache Spark
7 1 (0.17%) Headless CMS
7 1 (0.17%) nginx
7 1 (0.17%) SAS
7 1 (0.17%) Smallworld
7 1 (0.17%) WordPress
Applications
1 7 (1.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.17%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 4 (0.70%) Dynamics CRM
1 4 (0.70%) Endur
2 2 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.35%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.17%) IBM Planning Analytics
3 1 (0.17%) Oracle Retail
3 1 (0.17%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.17%) SAP BRIM
3 1 (0.17%) SAP FI
3 1 (0.17%) SAP Travel Management
Cloud Services
1 174 (30.26%) AWS
2 162 (28.17%) Azure
3 70 (12.17%) Azure DevOps
4 51 (8.87%) GitHub
5 39 (6.78%) GCP
6 33 (5.74%) Power Platform
6 33 (5.74%) Serverless
7 21 (3.65%) GitHub Actions
8 20 (3.48%) AWS Lambda
9 17 (2.96%) Power Automate
10 15 (2.61%) Amazon S3
10 15 (2.61%) PowerApps
10 15 (2.61%) SaaS
11 14 (2.43%) Azure AKS
12 13 (2.26%) Amazon SQS
12 13 (2.26%) Dynamics 365
13 12 (2.09%) Amazon EC2
13 12 (2.09%) Amazon ECS
13 12 (2.09%) Azure Service Bus
14 10 (1.74%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.87%) Kerberos
2 4 (0.70%) SAN
2 4 (0.70%) SSL
2 4 (0.70%) TCP/IP
2 4 (0.70%) VPN
3 2 (0.35%) Firewall
3 2 (0.35%) HTTP
4 1 (0.17%) BGP
4 1 (0.17%) Ethernet VPN
4 1 (0.17%) FTP
4 1 (0.17%) Internet
4 1 (0.17%) MPLS
4 1 (0.17%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 63 (10.96%) PostgreSQL
2 52 (9.04%) MongoDB
3 48 (8.35%) Relational Database
4 36 (6.26%) NoSQL
4 36 (6.26%) SQL Server
5 23 (4.00%) Apache Cassandra
6 20 (3.48%) Power BI
7 18 (3.13%) DB2
8 17 (2.96%) DynamoDB
9 14 (2.43%) Redis
10 12 (2.09%) Data Hub
11 11 (1.91%) Data Lake
11 11 (1.91%) MySQL
11 11 (1.91%) RDBMS
12 9 (1.57%) Amazon RDS
13 8 (1.39%) Azure SQL Database
14 7 (1.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 6 (1.04%) Big Data
15 6 (1.04%) HBase
16 5 (0.87%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 76 (13.22%) Git
2 46 (8.00%) JUnit
3 41 (7.13%) Jenkins
4 34 (5.91%) Oracle APEX
5 31 (5.39%) JIRA
6 29 (5.04%) GitLab
7 23 (4.00%) Mockito
8 14 (2.43%) Maven
9 13 (2.26%) Gradle
10 10 (1.74%) Cucumber
11 9 (1.57%) Artifactory
11 9 (1.57%) SpecFlow
12 8 (1.39%) Postman
13 7 (1.22%) Bitbucket
13 7 (1.22%) Sonatype Nexus
14 6 (1.04%) Mocha
15 5 (0.87%) Cypress.io
15 5 (0.87%) webpack
16 4 (0.70%) TeamCity
17 3 (0.52%) QUnit
General
1 158 (27.48%) Social Skills
2 156 (27.13%) Finance
3 92 (16.00%) Banking
4 69 (12.00%) Public Sector
5 61 (10.61%) Analytical Skills
6 48 (8.35%) Investment Banking
7 34 (5.91%) Front Office
8 5 (0.87%) Marketing
8 5 (0.87%) Military
8 5 (0.87%) Presentation Skills
9 4 (0.70%) Financial Institution
9 4 (0.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 4 (0.70%) Manufacturing
10 3 (0.52%) Automotive
10 3 (0.52%) Back Office
10 3 (0.52%) Law
10 3 (0.52%) Pharmaceutical
11 2 (0.35%) Documentation Skills
11 2 (0.35%) Organisational Skills
11 2 (0.35%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 121 (21.04%) Kafka
2 93 (16.17%) Spring
3 80 (13.91%) RESTful
4 77 (13.39%) .NET
5 74 (12.87%) Spring Boot
6 72 (12.52%) React
7 56 (9.74%) REST
8 48 (8.35%) Node.js
9 42 (7.30%) AngularJS
10 38 (6.61%) HTML
11 31 (5.39%) CSS
12 30 (5.22%) Web Services
13 26 (4.52%) JSON
14 24 (4.17%) .NET Core
15 23 (4.00%) .NET Framework
15 23 (4.00%) RabbitMQ
16 18 (3.13%) JMS
16 18 (3.13%) Playwright
17 17 (2.96%) gRPC
17 17 (2.96%) Jest
Miscellaneous
1 39 (6.78%) Cloud Native
2 38 (6.61%) Distributed Systems
3 34 (5.91%) Derivative
4 29 (5.04%) Equities
5 22 (3.83%) Data Structures
6 21 (3.65%) Product Ownership
7 20 (3.48%) Fixed Income
7 20 (3.48%) Greenfield Project
7 20 (3.48%) Market Risk
8 19 (3.30%) Management Information System
9 18 (3.13%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 16 (2.78%) Algorithms
11 11 (1.91%) Legacy Systems
12 7 (1.22%) Mobile App
13 6 (1.04%) Legacy Applications
13 6 (1.04%) Linux Command Line
14 5 (0.87%) Enterprise Software
14 5 (0.87%) Hedge funds
15 4 (0.70%) Data Fabric
15 4 (0.70%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 57 (9.91%) Linux
2 27 (4.70%) Unix
3 19 (3.30%) Android
4 14 (2.43%) Mac OS X
5 13 (2.26%) Apple iOS
6 8 (1.39%) Windows
7 4 (0.70%) Debian
7 4 (0.70%) Ubuntu
7 4 (0.70%) Windows Server
7 4 (0.70%) Windows Server 2016
8 2 (0.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 1 (0.17%) CentOS
9 1 (0.17%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.17%) tvOS
9 1 (0.17%) watchOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 230 (40.00%) Agile
2 161 (28.00%) DevOps
3 157 (27.30%) CI/CD
4 156 (27.13%) Microservices
5 134 (23.30%) Problem-Solving
6 81 (14.09%) Scrum
7 73 (12.70%) Software Engineering
8 69 (12.00%) Analytics
8 69 (12.00%) TDD
9 67 (11.65%) Containerisation
10 66 (11.48%) Full-Stack Development
11 62 (10.78%) Test Automation
12 53 (9.22%) Open Source
13 50 (8.70%) Mentoring
14 46 (8.00%) Event-Driven
15 44 (7.65%) Clean Code
15 44 (7.65%) SDLC
16 43 (7.48%) Performance Tuning
17 41 (7.13%) Infrastructure as Code
17 41 (7.13%) Unit Testing
Programming Languages
1 201 (34.96%) Java
2 163 (28.35%) SQL
3 140 (24.35%) Python
4 103 (17.91%) JavaScript
5 92 (16.00%) C#
6 56 (9.74%) TypeScript
7 38 (6.61%) PL/SQL
8 24 (4.17%) Go
9 20 (3.48%) Kotlin
10 17 (2.96%) Shell Script
11 14 (2.43%) C++
11 14 (2.43%) Ruby
12 10 (1.74%) PHP
13 9 (1.57%) Bash
14 8 (1.39%) PowerShell
15 6 (1.04%) Apex Code
16 5 (0.87%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 5 (0.87%) Swift
17 4 (0.70%) Objective-C
17 4 (0.70%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 121 (21.04%) Security Cleared
2 104 (18.09%) SC Cleared
3 44 (7.65%) Degree
4 25 (4.35%) Computer Science Degree
5 18 (3.13%) BPSS Clearance
6 6 (1.04%) AWS Certification
6 6 (1.04%) Master's Degree
6 6 (1.04%) OCP
6 6 (1.04%) Oracle Certification
7 4 (0.70%) Numerate Degree
8 3 (0.52%) AWS Certified Developer
8 3 (0.52%) DBS Check
8 3 (0.52%) DV Cleared
8 3 (0.52%) MCP
8 3 (0.52%) Microsoft Certification
9 2 (0.35%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 2 (0.35%) Azure Certification
10 1 (0.17%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 1 (0.17%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (5.04%) Accessibility
2 27 (4.70%) QA
3 13 (2.26%) Data Quality
4 11 (1.91%) WCAG
5 4 (0.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 3 (0.52%) EU AI Act
6 3 (0.52%) NIST
7 1 (0.17%) GDPR
7 1 (0.17%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 1 (0.17%) ISO 22301
7 1 (0.17%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 112 (19.48%) Docker
2 5 (0.87%) zsh
3 1 (0.17%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.17%) GridGain
3 1 (0.17%) Lustre
3 1 (0.17%) OpenAM
3 1 (0.17%) OpenDJ
3 1 (0.17%) OpenIDM
3 1 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 105 (18.26%) Kubernetes
2 37 (6.43%) Terraform
3 14 (2.43%) Grafana
4 9 (1.57%) Ansible
5 5 (0.87%) Single Sign-On
6 4 (0.70%) Prometheus
7 3 (0.52%) Kibana
8 2 (0.35%) CloudHub
9 1 (0.17%) Argo
9 1 (0.17%) Control-M
9 1 (0.17%) Packer
9 1 (0.17%) Rundeck
Vendors
1 52 (9.04%) Oracle
2 31 (5.39%) Microsoft
3 23 (4.00%) Google
4 21 (3.65%) Databricks
5 19 (3.30%) Sybase
6 15 (2.61%) ServiceNow
7 13 (2.26%) Salesforce
8 8 (1.39%) Atlassian
9 6 (1.04%) Apple
9 6 (1.04%) Red Hat
10 5 (0.87%) Dataiku
10 5 (0.87%) SAP
10 5 (0.87%) Virgin Media
11 4 (0.70%) CA Agile Central
11 4 (0.70%) IBM
11 4 (0.70%) VMware
12 3 (0.52%) BMC
12 3 (0.52%) Foundry
12 3 (0.52%) HP
12 3 (0.52%) Remedy