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 2 July 2026.

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

6 months to
2 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 167 156 123
Rank change year-on-year -11 -33 +20
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Developer 803 546 813
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.56% 1.76% 1.87%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.69% 1.92% 2.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 492 392 597
10th Percentile £403 £400 £396
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 £725 £725 £711
90th Percentile £938 £825 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £525 £475
% change year-on-year -2.38% +10.53% -13.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 1 13
10th Percentile £37.25 - £36.00
25th Percentile £44.93 - £40.00
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 - £82.90
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 47,563 28,496 40,366
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.42% 92.02% 93.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,794 18,232 25,937
10th Percentile £325 £288 £285
25th Percentile £415 £402 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,217 1,276 2,865
10th Percentile £15.72 £13.82 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.41 £16.58
Median hourly rate £43.00 £26.75 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +60.75% -28.67% -12.79%
75th Percentile £67.50 £56.30 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% -

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 2 July 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 2 July 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 2 July 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 -11 679 £575 -4.17% 236
London -13 421 £625 -3.85% 97
UK excluding London -16 292 £513 -2.38% 190
Work from Home -53 209 £560 -6.67% 144
North of England 0 108 £575 +9.52% 43
Yorkshire 0 56 £550 +4.76% 8
North West -21 47 £510 -7.27% 28
Midlands -24 46 £513 -4.21% 28
South East -51 43 £560 +4.67% 56
Scotland -3 38 £410 -12.11% 16
West Midlands -36 38 £513 -6.82% 22
South West -21 37 £500 -16.67% 11
East of England -13 15 £500 -23.08% 12
East Midlands -16 7 £525 +15.38% 6
North East -24 7 £875 +133.33% 7
Northern Ireland 0 4 £650 +30.00% 9
Wales -15 2 £525 +61.54% 15

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

For the 6 months to 2 July 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.

1 258 (32.13%) Java
2 226 (28.14%) Agile
3 224 (27.90%) CI/CD
4 184 (22.91%) AWS
5 167 (20.80%) Azure
5 167 (20.80%) Python
6 165 (20.55%) Microservices
7 151 (18.80%) SQL
8 138 (17.19%) JavaScript
9 133 (16.56%) DevOps
10 129 (16.06%) C#
10 129 (16.06%) Security Cleared
11 127 (15.82%) React
12 125 (15.57%) TypeScript
13 121 (15.07%) SC Cleared
14 116 (14.45%) Docker
15 103 (12.83%) .NET
15 103 (12.83%) Kubernetes
16 98 (12.20%) Git
17 97 (12.08%) Full-Stack Development
18 95 (11.83%) REST
18 95 (11.83%) RESTful
19 91 (11.33%) Spring
19 91 (11.33%) Test Automation
20 89 (11.08%) Software Engineering
21 82 (10.21%) Kafka
22 81 (10.09%) Spring Boot
23 79 (9.84%) Containerisation
23 79 (9.84%) TDD
24 77 (9.59%) 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 13 (1.62%) Confluence
2 10 (1.25%) Apache Spark
3 8 (1.00%) Apache
4 7 (0.87%) Ethereum
4 7 (0.87%) Hyperledger
5 6 (0.75%) CMS
6 5 (0.62%) Oracle Workflow
7 4 (0.50%) Headless CMS
8 3 (0.37%) Apache Airflow
8 3 (0.37%) Appian
8 3 (0.37%) IIS
8 3 (0.37%) Mendix
8 3 (0.37%) Moodle
8 3 (0.37%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 2 (0.25%) Cloud Foundry
9 2 (0.25%) SharePoint
9 2 (0.25%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.25%) WebLogic
10 1 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
10 1 (0.12%) Umbraco
Applications
1 6 (0.75%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.12%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 17 (2.12%) Teamcenter
2 6 (0.75%) Endur
3 4 (0.50%) R3 Corda
4 3 (0.37%) Aladdin
4 3 (0.37%) NetSuite
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%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.25%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.25%) Orchestrade
6 1 (0.12%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.12%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.12%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.12%) Oracle Cash Management
6 1 (0.12%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.12%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.12%) SAP Payroll
6 1 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 184 (22.91%) AWS
2 167 (20.80%) Azure
3 60 (7.47%) GitHub
4 46 (5.73%) Serverless
5 40 (4.98%) Power Platform
6 39 (4.86%) GCP
6 39 (4.86%) GitHub Actions
7 38 (4.73%) Azure DevOps
8 25 (3.11%) Power Automate
9 24 (2.99%) AWS Lambda
10 21 (2.62%) Amazon S3
10 21 (2.62%) Amazon SQS
10 21 (2.62%) PowerApps
11 17 (2.12%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 17 (2.12%) Azure Service Bus
12 16 (1.99%) Amazon ECS
13 15 (1.87%) Amazon EC2
14 14 (1.74%) Copilot Studio
14 14 (1.74%) Dynamics 365
15 13 (1.62%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 8 (1.00%) HTTP
2 6 (0.75%) Multicast
3 3 (0.37%) NFC
4 2 (0.25%) Ethernet
4 2 (0.25%) RTP
5 1 (0.12%) Broadband
5 1 (0.12%) CTI
5 1 (0.12%) DNS
5 1 (0.12%) MQTT
5 1 (0.12%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 57 (7.10%) PostgreSQL
2 46 (5.73%) Relational Database
2 46 (5.73%) SQL Server
3 37 (4.61%) MongoDB
4 35 (4.36%) Power BI
5 31 (3.86%) NoSQL
6 20 (2.49%) DynamoDB
7 16 (1.99%) Apache Cassandra
7 16 (1.99%) MySQL
8 14 (1.74%) Amazon RDS
9 12 (1.49%) Oracle Database
10 11 (1.37%) Data Warehouse
11 10 (1.25%) KDB
12 8 (1.00%) Azure SQL Database
12 8 (1.00%) Redis
13 7 (0.87%) Amazon Aurora
13 7 (0.87%) Kdb+
13 7 (0.87%) RDBMS
14 6 (0.75%) Data Lake
14 6 (0.75%) Geospatial Data
Development Applications
1 98 (12.20%) Git
2 49 (6.10%) Jenkins
3 26 (3.24%) JIRA
3 26 (3.24%) JUnit
4 25 (3.11%) Maven
4 25 (3.11%) Mockito
5 22 (2.74%) GitLab
6 14 (1.74%) SonarQube
7 13 (1.62%) Gradle
8 5 (0.62%) Oracle Forms
8 5 (0.62%) Snyk
8 5 (0.62%) Xcode
9 4 (0.50%) Ant
9 4 (0.50%) Bitbucket
9 4 (0.50%) Cucumber
9 4 (0.50%) Eclipse
9 4 (0.50%) MSI
9 4 (0.50%) Vite
9 4 (0.50%) XCTest
9 4 (0.50%) XCUITest
General
1 173 (21.54%) Finance
2 126 (15.69%) Banking
3 121 (15.07%) Public Sector
4 114 (14.20%) Social Skills
5 64 (7.97%) Investment Banking
6 62 (7.72%) Front Office
7 49 (6.10%) Analytical Skills
8 19 (2.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 19 (2.37%) Retail
9 14 (1.74%) Financial Institution
10 11 (1.37%) Military
11 10 (1.25%) Legal
12 7 (0.87%) Games
12 7 (0.87%) Law
13 6 (0.75%) Manufacturing
14 5 (0.62%) Telecoms
15 4 (0.50%) Back Office
15 4 (0.50%) Health Technology
16 3 (0.37%) Organisational Skills
16 3 (0.37%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 127 (15.82%) React
2 103 (12.83%) .NET
3 95 (11.83%) REST
3 95 (11.83%) RESTful
4 91 (11.33%) Spring
5 82 (10.21%) Kafka
6 81 (10.09%) Spring Boot
7 60 (7.47%) Redux
8 52 (6.48%) AngularJS
9 51 (6.35%) HTML
10 49 (6.10%) Node.js
11 44 (5.48%) CSS
12 32 (3.99%) Web Services
13 31 (3.86%) SOAP
14 28 (3.49%) .NET Core
15 27 (3.36%) Django
16 23 (2.86%) HTML5
17 22 (2.74%) RabbitMQ
18 20 (2.49%) .NET Framework
18 20 (2.49%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 55 (6.85%) Cloud Native
2 53 (6.60%) Distributed Systems
3 49 (6.10%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 45 (5.60%) Fixed Income
5 41 (5.11%) Product Ownership
6 40 (4.98%) Greenfield Project
7 39 (4.86%) Equities
8 20 (2.49%) Mobile App
9 16 (1.99%) Algorithms
10 15 (1.87%) CMDB
11 13 (1.62%) Data Structures
11 13 (1.62%) Derivative
12 11 (1.37%) AI Agents
12 11 (1.37%) Onboarding
13 10 (1.25%) Enterprise Software
13 10 (1.25%) Legacy Systems
14 5 (0.62%) Blockchain
14 5 (0.62%) Low-Code
14 5 (0.62%) Management Information System
14 5 (0.62%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 49 (6.10%) Linux
2 33 (4.11%) Unix
3 23 (2.86%) Windows
4 12 (1.49%) Apple iOS
5 11 (1.37%) Android
6 9 (1.12%) Mac OS
7 7 (0.87%) Mac OS X
8 3 (0.37%) Windows Server
9 1 (0.12%) AIX
9 1 (0.12%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 226 (28.14%) Agile
2 224 (27.90%) CI/CD
3 165 (20.55%) Microservices
4 133 (16.56%) DevOps
5 97 (12.08%) Full-Stack Development
6 91 (11.33%) Test Automation
7 89 (11.08%) Software Engineering
8 79 (9.84%) Containerisation
8 79 (9.84%) TDD
9 77 (9.59%) Problem-Solving
10 65 (8.09%) Data Modelling
11 64 (7.97%) Mentoring
12 62 (7.72%) Scrum
13 58 (7.22%) Code Quality
14 57 (7.10%) AI
14 57 (7.10%) Event-Driven
15 52 (6.48%) Design Patterns
16 50 (6.23%) Continuous Improvement
16 50 (6.23%) Low Latency
17 49 (6.10%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 258 (32.13%) Java
2 167 (20.80%) Python
3 151 (18.80%) SQL
4 138 (17.19%) JavaScript
5 129 (16.06%) C#
6 125 (15.57%) TypeScript
7 25 (3.11%) Kotlin
8 24 (2.99%) Go
9 22 (2.74%) Ruby
10 21 (2.62%) C++
11 14 (1.74%) Apex Code
12 10 (1.25%) PL/SQL
12 10 (1.25%) Swift
13 8 (1.00%) C
13 8 (1.00%) Shell Script
13 8 (1.00%) SOQL
14 7 (0.87%) PowerShell
14 7 (0.87%) SOSL
15 6 (0.75%) Bicep
15 6 (0.75%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 129 (16.06%) Security Cleared
2 121 (15.07%) SC Cleared
3 24 (2.99%) Degree
4 12 (1.49%) Computer Science Degree
5 11 (1.37%) BPSS Clearance
6 7 (0.87%) DV Cleared
7 5 (0.62%) AWS Certification
8 4 (0.50%) AWS Certified Developer
9 3 (0.37%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 3 (0.37%) Microsoft Certification
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 36 (4.48%) Accessibility
2 35 (4.36%) QA
3 24 (2.99%) WCAG
4 16 (1.99%) Data Quality
5 4 (0.50%) NCSC
6 3 (0.37%) GDPR
7 2 (0.25%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.12%) Basel III
8 1 (0.12%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.12%) GRC
8 1 (0.12%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 1 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.12%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.12%) Solvency II
System Software
1 116 (14.45%) Docker
2 7 (0.87%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.25%) Apache ZooKeeper
3 2 (0.25%) GridGain
3 2 (0.25%) Oracle RAC
3 2 (0.25%) Postfix
4 1 (0.12%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.12%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 103 (12.83%) Kubernetes
2 54 (6.72%) Terraform
3 18 (2.24%) Grafana
4 13 (1.62%) Prometheus
5 10 (1.25%) Ansible
6 6 (0.75%) Single Sign-On
7 4 (0.50%) Argo
8 2 (0.25%) Consul
8 2 (0.25%) Zipkin
9 1 (0.12%) SELinux
9 1 (0.12%) systemd
Vendors
1 60 (7.47%) Microsoft
2 37 (4.61%) Oracle
3 32 (3.99%) ServiceNow
4 25 (3.11%) Salesforce
5 13 (1.62%) SAP
6 12 (1.49%) Avaloq
6 12 (1.49%) Google
7 11 (1.37%) Databricks
8 6 (0.75%) Jaspersoft
8 6 (0.75%) MuleSoft
8 6 (0.75%) Sybase
9 5 (0.62%) Blue Prism
9 5 (0.62%) IBM
10 4 (0.50%) ForgeRock
10 4 (0.50%) OpenAI
10 4 (0.50%) Solace
11 3 (0.37%) Atlassian
11 3 (0.37%) Okta
11 3 (0.37%) Pega
11 3 (0.37%) Splunk