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 12 May 2026.

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

6 months to
12 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 176 165 140
Rank change year-on-year -11 -25 -11
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Developer 728 519 712
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.53% 1.78% 1.66%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.66% 1.92% 1.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 459 375 516
10th Percentile £406 £403 £410
25th Percentile £474 £475 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +4.35% -8.00%
75th Percentile £675 £736 £725
90th Percentile £888 £838 £863
UK excluding London median daily rate £511 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -2.62% +5.00% -11.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 1 12
10th Percentile £37.25 - £40.00
25th Percentile £41.09 - £51.14
Median hourly rate £45.56 £77.19 £58.91
Median % change year-on-year -40.98% +31.04% -5.75%
75th Percentile £70.59 - £72.50
90th Percentile £95.00 - £81.50
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 43,836 26,998 39,901
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.28% 92.47% 92.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,861 17,609 25,964
10th Percentile £319 £300 £280
25th Percentile £413 £406 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £507 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.07% -2.38% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +4.21% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,872 1,048 2,673
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.00 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.34 £16.30
Median hourly rate £44.00 £28.60 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +53.85% -23.73% -16.67%
75th Percentile £66.63 £62.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.56 £27.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +65.65% -31.25% -5.73%

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 12 May 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 12 May 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 12 May 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 -30 609 £575 -4.17% 282
London +2 402 £625 -3.85% 100
UK excluding London -51 220 £511 -2.62% 212
Work from Home -32 203 £574 -4.38% 143
North of England -32 81 £550 -6.78% 72
Yorkshire -28 42 £575 +2.22% 25
Midlands -32 41 £513 -6.82% 21
North West -23 39 £494 -17.71% 33
South East -48 35 £560 +8.74% 67
West Midlands -47 33 £513 -6.82% 14
South West -21 23 £410 -31.67% 19
East of England -22 21 £500 -23.08% 23
Scotland -22 17 £413 -2.94% 8
East Midlands -28 7 £525 +14.13% 7
Northern Ireland +4 4 - - 5
North East -18 2 £538 +11.40% 15
Wales -12 1 - - 1

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

For the 6 months to 12 May 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.

1 234 (32.14%) Java
2 212 (29.12%) AWS
3 185 (25.41%) CI/CD
4 177 (24.31%) Agile
5 159 (21.84%) Python
6 144 (19.78%) Microservices
7 135 (18.54%) Azure
8 125 (17.17%) SQL
9 120 (16.48%) Docker
9 120 (16.48%) Security Cleared
10 114 (15.66%) DevOps
10 114 (15.66%) Kubernetes
11 113 (15.52%) SC Cleared
12 101 (13.87%) JavaScript
13 100 (13.74%) React
14 98 (13.46%) Kafka
15 95 (13.05%) Spring
16 90 (12.36%) Containerisation
17 84 (11.54%) Spring Boot
18 83 (11.40%) .NET
19 79 (10.85%) Test Automation
20 76 (10.44%) TypeScript
21 75 (10.30%) C#
21 75 (10.30%) Software Engineering
21 75 (10.30%) TDD
22 73 (10.03%) Problem-Solving
23 72 (9.89%) Full-Stack Development
24 71 (9.75%) Git
25 65 (8.93%) RESTful
26 61 (8.38%) Code Quality

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 (1.37%) Confluence
2 9 (1.24%) Apache Spark
3 8 (1.10%) Apache
4 6 (0.82%) CMS
4 6 (0.82%) nginx
5 4 (0.55%) Ethereum
5 4 (0.55%) Headless CMS
5 4 (0.55%) Hyperledger
5 4 (0.55%) SharePoint
6 3 (0.41%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.41%) IIS
6 3 (0.41%) Mendix
6 3 (0.41%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 3 (0.41%) Oracle Workflow
6 3 (0.41%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.27%) Microsoft Exchange
7 2 (0.27%) SAS
7 2 (0.27%) WebLogic
7 2 (0.27%) WordPress
8 1 (0.14%) LiveCycle
Applications
1 9 (1.24%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 17 (2.34%) Teamcenter
2 5 (0.69%) Endur
3 3 (0.41%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.27%) Aladdin
4 2 (0.27%) SimCorp Dimension
5 1 (0.14%) Dynamics CRM
5 1 (0.14%) FLEXCUBE
5 1 (0.14%) IBM Planning Analytics
5 1 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
5 1 (0.14%) Oracle Cash Management
5 1 (0.14%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.14%) Oracle General Ledger
5 1 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.14%) Oracle Retail
5 1 (0.14%) R3 Corda
5 1 (0.14%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.14%) SAP BRIM
5 1 (0.14%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.14%) SDL Web 8
Cloud Services
1 212 (29.12%) AWS
2 135 (18.54%) Azure
3 56 (7.69%) GitHub
4 41 (5.63%) Serverless
5 40 (5.49%) Azure DevOps
6 38 (5.22%) Power Platform
7 33 (4.53%) GitHub Actions
8 29 (3.98%) GCP
9 26 (3.57%) Amazon SQS
10 24 (3.30%) Power Automate
11 23 (3.16%) AWS Lambda
12 19 (2.61%) PowerApps
13 18 (2.47%) Azure Service Bus
14 17 (2.34%) Amazon EC2
15 15 (2.06%) Amazon S3
16 14 (1.92%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 14 (1.92%) Copilot Studio
17 13 (1.79%) Amazon EKS
17 13 (1.79%) Microsoft Copilot
18 12 (1.65%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 7 (0.96%) HTTP
2 5 (0.69%) Multicast
3 4 (0.55%) Reverse Proxy
4 2 (0.27%) Ethernet
4 2 (0.27%) NFC
4 2 (0.27%) RTP
4 2 (0.27%) SSL
5 1 (0.14%) DNS
5 1 (0.14%) Firewall
5 1 (0.14%) FTP
5 1 (0.14%) Kerberos
5 1 (0.14%) TCP/IP
5 1 (0.14%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 52 (7.14%) PostgreSQL
2 38 (5.22%) MongoDB
2 38 (5.22%) SQL Server
3 34 (4.67%) Relational Database
4 33 (4.53%) Power BI
5 32 (4.40%) NoSQL
6 26 (3.57%) Apache Cassandra
7 19 (2.61%) DynamoDB
8 17 (2.34%) MySQL
9 14 (1.92%) Data Warehouse
10 10 (1.37%) Amazon RDS
10 10 (1.37%) KDB
11 7 (0.96%) Data Hub
11 7 (0.96%) Kdb+
11 7 (0.96%) Oracle BI EE
12 6 (0.82%) Oracle Database
13 5 (0.69%) Amazon Aurora
13 5 (0.69%) Big Data
13 5 (0.69%) Redis
14 4 (0.55%) Flink
Development Applications
1 71 (9.75%) Git
2 33 (4.53%) Jenkins
3 26 (3.57%) GitLab
4 24 (3.30%) Maven
5 23 (3.16%) JIRA
6 21 (2.88%) JUnit
7 17 (2.34%) Mockito
8 16 (2.20%) SonarQube
9 14 (1.92%) Gradle
10 4 (0.55%) Bitbucket
10 4 (0.55%) Cypress.io
10 4 (0.55%) Snyk
11 3 (0.41%) Oracle APEX
11 3 (0.41%) Sonatype Nexus
11 3 (0.41%) TeamCity
11 3 (0.41%) webpack
12 2 (0.27%) Bitbucket Server
12 2 (0.27%) fastlane
12 2 (0.27%) git-flow
12 2 (0.27%) Storybook
General
1 125 (17.17%) Finance
2 113 (15.52%) Public Sector
3 100 (13.74%) Social Skills
4 95 (13.05%) Banking
5 39 (5.36%) Investment Banking
6 35 (4.81%) Front Office
7 32 (4.40%) Analytical Skills
8 19 (2.61%) Financial Institution
9 9 (1.24%) Retail
10 8 (1.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 7 (0.96%) Military
12 6 (0.82%) Telecoms
13 4 (0.55%) Games
13 4 (0.55%) Manufacturing
13 4 (0.55%) Organisational Skills
14 3 (0.41%) Health Technology
14 3 (0.41%) Law
14 3 (0.41%) Legal
14 3 (0.41%) Police
15 2 (0.27%) Back Office
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 100 (13.74%) React
2 98 (13.46%) Kafka
3 95 (13.05%) Spring
4 84 (11.54%) Spring Boot
5 83 (11.40%) .NET
6 65 (8.93%) RESTful
7 57 (7.83%) REST
8 56 (7.69%) Node.js
9 50 (6.87%) HTML
10 49 (6.73%) AngularJS
11 45 (6.18%) CSS
12 31 (4.26%) Redux
13 26 (3.57%) Web Services
14 25 (3.43%) gRPC
15 21 (2.88%) Django
16 18 (2.47%) .NET Core
16 18 (2.47%) .NET Framework
17 17 (2.34%) SOAP
18 16 (2.20%) OAuth
19 15 (2.06%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 61 (8.38%) Distributed Systems
2 54 (7.42%) Cloud Native
3 25 (3.43%) Product Ownership
4 22 (3.02%) Derivative
5 21 (2.88%) Greenfield Project
6 19 (2.61%) Fixed Income
7 18 (2.47%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 17 (2.34%) Equities
9 14 (1.92%) Algorithms
10 11 (1.51%) Management Information System
10 11 (1.51%) Mobile App
11 9 (1.24%) Market Risk
12 8 (1.10%) Onboarding
13 7 (0.96%) Data Structures
13 7 (0.96%) Equity Derivative
13 7 (0.96%) Legacy Systems
14 6 (0.82%) AI Agents
15 5 (0.69%) NHS
16 4 (0.55%) Legacy Applications
16 4 (0.55%) Sports Betting
Operating Systems
1 44 (6.04%) Linux
2 27 (3.71%) Unix
3 16 (2.20%) Windows
4 10 (1.37%) Android
5 9 (1.24%) Mac OS
6 6 (0.82%) Apple iOS
7 5 (0.69%) Mac OS X
8 2 (0.27%) Windows Server
9 1 (0.14%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 185 (25.41%) CI/CD
2 177 (24.31%) Agile
3 144 (19.78%) Microservices
4 114 (15.66%) DevOps
5 90 (12.36%) Containerisation
6 79 (10.85%) Test Automation
7 75 (10.30%) Software Engineering
7 75 (10.30%) TDD
8 73 (10.03%) Problem-Solving
9 72 (9.89%) Full-Stack Development
10 61 (8.38%) Code Quality
11 56 (7.69%) Data Modelling
12 50 (6.87%) Infrastructure as Code
12 50 (6.87%) Mentoring
13 49 (6.73%) Analytics
14 48 (6.59%) Event-Driven
14 48 (6.59%) Front End Development
15 45 (6.18%) Business Intelligence
15 45 (6.18%) Migration
16 41 (5.63%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 234 (32.14%) Java
2 159 (21.84%) Python
3 125 (17.17%) SQL
4 101 (13.87%) JavaScript
5 76 (10.44%) TypeScript
6 75 (10.30%) C#
7 39 (5.36%) Go
8 22 (3.02%) Kotlin
8 22 (3.02%) Ruby
9 17 (2.34%) C++
10 9 (1.24%) PL/SQL
10 9 (1.24%) PowerShell
10 9 (1.24%) Shell Script
11 8 (1.10%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 7 (0.96%) Apex Code
12 7 (0.96%) Bash
13 4 (0.55%) PHP
13 4 (0.55%) R
13 4 (0.55%) T-SQL
13 4 (0.55%) VBA
Qualifications
1 120 (16.48%) Security Cleared
2 113 (15.52%) SC Cleared
3 23 (3.16%) BPSS Clearance
3 23 (3.16%) Degree
4 10 (1.37%) Computer Science Degree
5 6 (0.82%) DV Cleared
6 4 (0.55%) AWS Certification
6 4 (0.55%) Numerate Degree
7 3 (0.41%) AWS Certified Developer
8 2 (0.27%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 1 (0.14%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 1 (0.14%) Azure Certification
9 1 (0.14%) CISSP
9 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Certification
9 1 (0.14%) OCP
9 1 (0.14%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (4.12%) Accessibility
2 26 (3.57%) QA
3 18 (2.47%) WCAG
4 11 (1.51%) Data Quality
5 2 (0.27%) GDPR
5 2 (0.27%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.14%) HMG Security Policy Framework
6 1 (0.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 120 (16.48%) Docker
2 3 (0.41%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.27%) GridGain
3 2 (0.27%) Oracle RAC
3 2 (0.27%) Postfix
4 1 (0.14%) OpenAM
4 1 (0.14%) OpenDJ
4 1 (0.14%) OpenIDM
4 1 (0.14%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 114 (15.66%) Kubernetes
2 53 (7.28%) Terraform
3 22 (3.02%) Grafana
4 16 (2.20%) Prometheus
5 14 (1.92%) Ansible
6 8 (1.10%) Single Sign-On
7 3 (0.41%) Argo
8 1 (0.14%) Control-M
8 1 (0.14%) HAProxy
8 1 (0.14%) Kibana
8 1 (0.14%) SELinux
8 1 (0.14%) Sysdig
8 1 (0.14%) systemd
Vendors
1 44 (6.04%) Microsoft
2 32 (4.40%) Oracle
3 16 (2.20%) ServiceNow
4 15 (2.06%) Salesforce
5 12 (1.65%) Google
6 10 (1.37%) Avaloq
6 10 (1.37%) Databricks
7 9 (1.24%) SAP
8 6 (0.82%) Guidewire
8 6 (0.82%) Sybase
9 5 (0.69%) ForgeRock
10 4 (0.55%) Jaspersoft
10 4 (0.55%) Okta
10 4 (0.55%) Pega
11 3 (0.41%) Apple
11 3 (0.41%) Cognizant
11 3 (0.41%) New Relic
11 3 (0.41%) Splunk
12 2 (0.27%) Dynatrace
12 2 (0.27%) IBM