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 20 January 2026.

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

6 months to
20 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 166 145 174
Rank change year-on-year -21 +29 -63
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Developer 620 570 603
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.66% 1.82% 1.39%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.82% 1.96% 1.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 441 367 433
10th Percentile £406 £422 £425
25th Percentile £450 £500 £480
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £580 £575
Median % change year-on-year -9.48% +0.87% -9.80%
75th Percentile £650 £700 £700
90th Percentile £850 £840 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 1 9
10th Percentile - - £43.55
25th Percentile - - £56.25
Median hourly rate - £77.19 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year - +28.65% -4.00%
75th Percentile - - £72.50
90th Percentile - - £75.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £77.19 £52.50
% change year-on-year - +47.03% -16.00%

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 34,080 29,041 40,349
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.42% 92.85% 93.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,578 17,726 26,798
10th Percentile £300 £291 £275
25th Percentile £406 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £480 £500
% change year-on-year -1.04% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,009 879 1,867
10th Percentile £14.38 £15.92 £13.87
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £17.75
Median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £40.28
Median % change year-on-year -15.38% -19.30% +15.07%
75th Percentile £60.00 £62.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -22.62% -23.53% +41.67%

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 20 January 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
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 20 January 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 -27 530 £550 -7.76% 456
London -23 320 £619 -1.00% 122
Work from Home +8 214 £589 -1.79% 249
UK excluding London -19 212 £500 - 407
North of England -26 72 £550 +7.84% 89
South West +34 54 £475 -13.64% 44
Yorkshire -27 38 £631 +20.24% 30
South East -36 33 £500 -8.26% 144
North West -18 31 £500 - 45
Midlands -29 24 £505 +1.00% 49
West Midlands -22 19 £525 - 23
East of England -19 17 £500 -13.42% 46
Scotland -15 12 £513 +13.89% 14
North East -6 9 £488 +1.04% 14
East Midlands -25 5 £475 -5.00% 26
Northern Ireland +2 4 £544 -9.38% 6
Wales -2 4 £638 +27.50% 23

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

For the 6 months to 20 January 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.

1 208 (33.55%) Java
2 200 (32.26%) AWS
3 192 (30.97%) Agile
4 158 (25.48%) Microservices
5 154 (24.84%) Azure
6 150 (24.19%) CI/CD
7 148 (23.87%) DevOps
8 146 (23.55%) Security Cleared
9 143 (23.06%) Python
10 141 (22.74%) SQL
11 128 (20.65%) SC Cleared
12 123 (19.84%) Kafka
13 122 (19.68%) Docker
14 119 (19.19%) Problem-Solving
15 118 (19.03%) Kubernetes
16 113 (18.23%) JavaScript
17 94 (15.16%) Spring
18 80 (12.90%) Containerisation
19 79 (12.74%) React
19 79 (12.74%) Spring Boot
20 75 (12.10%) C#
21 74 (11.94%) Software Engineering
22 73 (11.77%) TDD
23 71 (11.45%) Git
24 70 (11.29%) Test Automation
25 69 (11.13%) .NET
26 68 (10.97%) Scrum
27 67 (10.81%) Full-Stack Development
28 65 (10.48%) Azure DevOps
29 62 (10.00%) Analytics

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 (2.74%) Confluence
2 6 (0.97%) nginx
3 5 (0.81%) CMS
3 5 (0.81%) SharePoint
4 4 (0.65%) Jupyter
5 3 (0.48%) SAS
6 2 (0.32%) Mendix
6 2 (0.32%) Microsoft Exchange
6 2 (0.32%) Tomcat
7 1 (0.16%) Anypoint
7 1 (0.16%) Appian
7 1 (0.16%) Headless CMS
7 1 (0.16%) IIS
7 1 (0.16%) JBoss
7 1 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
7 1 (0.16%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 1 (0.16%) Smallworld
7 1 (0.16%) Umbraco
7 1 (0.16%) WebLogic
7 1 (0.16%) WordPress
Applications
1 10 (1.61%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 5 (0.81%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (0.48%) Endur
3 2 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
3 2 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.16%) FLEXCUBE
4 1 (0.16%) IBM Planning Analytics
4 1 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.16%) Oracle Retail
4 1 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.16%) SAP BRIM
4 1 (0.16%) SAP FI
4 1 (0.16%) SAP Travel Management
Cloud Services
1 200 (32.26%) AWS
2 154 (24.84%) Azure
3 65 (10.48%) Azure DevOps
4 50 (8.06%) GitHub
5 38 (6.13%) Serverless
6 33 (5.32%) GCP
7 29 (4.68%) Power Platform
8 19 (3.06%) AWS Lambda
9 17 (2.74%) Dynamics 365
9 17 (2.74%) Power Automate
10 16 (2.58%) Amazon EC2
10 16 (2.58%) Amazon SQS
10 16 (2.58%) Azure Service Bus
11 15 (2.42%) GitHub Actions
12 14 (2.26%) Amazon EKS
13 13 (2.10%) PowerApps
13 13 (2.10%) SaaS
14 12 (1.94%) Azure AKS
15 11 (1.77%) Amazon ECS
16 10 (1.61%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.81%) Kerberos
2 4 (0.65%) SSL
3 3 (0.48%) Reverse Proxy
4 2 (0.32%) Firewall
4 2 (0.32%) VPN
5 1 (0.16%) DNS
5 1 (0.16%) FTP
5 1 (0.16%) HTTP
5 1 (0.16%) Internet
5 1 (0.16%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 55 (8.87%) PostgreSQL
2 47 (7.58%) MongoDB
3 38 (6.13%) Relational Database
4 37 (5.97%) SQL Server
5 35 (5.65%) NoSQL
6 30 (4.84%) Apache Cassandra
7 18 (2.90%) Power BI
8 16 (2.58%) Data Hub
9 15 (2.42%) DynamoDB
10 13 (2.10%) DB2
11 12 (1.94%) Data Warehouse
12 10 (1.61%) Redis
13 9 (1.45%) Amazon RDS
14 8 (1.29%) Data Lake
14 8 (1.29%) MySQL
15 7 (1.13%) Oracle BI EE
16 6 (0.97%) HBase
16 6 (0.97%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 5 (0.81%) Couchbase
17 5 (0.81%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 71 (11.45%) Git
2 40 (6.45%) Jenkins
3 37 (5.97%) JUnit
4 34 (5.48%) GitLab
4 34 (5.48%) Oracle APEX
5 29 (4.68%) JIRA
6 23 (3.71%) Mockito
7 13 (2.10%) Maven
8 12 (1.94%) Gradle
9 9 (1.45%) Artifactory
10 8 (1.29%) Cucumber
10 8 (1.29%) Postman
11 7 (1.13%) Sonatype Nexus
11 7 (1.13%) SpecFlow
12 6 (0.97%) Cypress.io
12 6 (0.97%) Mocha
12 6 (0.97%) SonarQube
13 5 (0.81%) Bitbucket
14 3 (0.48%) QUnit
14 3 (0.48%) TeamCity
General
1 146 (23.55%) Social Skills
2 138 (22.26%) Finance
3 89 (14.35%) Banking
4 87 (14.03%) Public Sector
5 49 (7.90%) Analytical Skills
6 35 (5.65%) Investment Banking
7 21 (3.39%) Front Office
8 13 (2.10%) Financial Institution
9 5 (0.81%) Manufacturing
9 5 (0.81%) Military
9 5 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
10 4 (0.65%) Law
10 4 (0.65%) Pharmaceutical
10 4 (0.65%) Retail Banking
10 4 (0.65%) Telecoms
11 3 (0.48%) Health Technology
11 3 (0.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (0.48%) Marketing
12 2 (0.32%) Documentation Skills
12 2 (0.32%) Organisational Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 123 (19.84%) Kafka
2 94 (15.16%) Spring
3 79 (12.74%) React
3 79 (12.74%) Spring Boot
4 69 (11.13%) .NET
5 62 (10.00%) RESTful
6 53 (8.55%) AngularJS
7 51 (8.23%) Node.js
8 50 (8.06%) REST
9 49 (7.90%) HTML
10 41 (6.61%) CSS
11 33 (5.32%) Web Services
12 23 (3.71%) gRPC
13 22 (3.55%) JSON
14 21 (3.39%) .NET Framework
14 21 (3.39%) RabbitMQ
15 19 (3.06%) Next.js
16 17 (2.74%) Jest
16 17 (2.74%) Playwright
17 16 (2.58%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 49 (7.90%) Cloud Native
2 48 (7.74%) Distributed Systems
3 30 (4.84%) Derivative
4 27 (4.35%) Equities
5 24 (3.87%) Greenfield Project
6 20 (3.23%) Product Ownership
7 19 (3.06%) Algorithms
7 19 (3.06%) Market Risk
8 18 (2.90%) Management Information System
9 17 (2.74%) Data Structures
10 15 (2.42%) Fixed Income
11 10 (1.61%) Mobile App
12 9 (1.45%) Legacy Systems
13 8 (1.29%) Equity Derivative
14 7 (1.13%) Legacy Applications
14 7 (1.13%) Onboarding
15 6 (0.97%) Enterprise Software
15 6 (0.97%) Linux Command Line
15 6 (0.97%) NHS
16 5 (0.81%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 51 (8.23%) Linux
2 26 (4.19%) Unix
3 17 (2.74%) Android
4 14 (2.26%) Mac OS X
5 10 (1.61%) Apple iOS
6 4 (0.65%) Windows
7 2 (0.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.16%) Windows 10
8 1 (0.16%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 192 (30.97%) Agile
2 158 (25.48%) Microservices
3 150 (24.19%) CI/CD
4 148 (23.87%) DevOps
5 119 (19.19%) Problem-Solving
6 80 (12.90%) Containerisation
7 74 (11.94%) Software Engineering
8 73 (11.77%) TDD
9 70 (11.29%) Test Automation
10 68 (10.97%) Scrum
11 67 (10.81%) Full-Stack Development
12 62 (10.00%) Analytics
13 57 (9.19%) Open Source
14 46 (7.42%) Infrastructure as Code
15 44 (7.10%) SDLC
16 43 (6.94%) Event-Driven
17 40 (6.45%) Unit Testing
18 39 (6.29%) Front End Development
19 38 (6.13%) Collaborative Working
19 38 (6.13%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 208 (33.55%) Java
2 143 (23.06%) Python
3 141 (22.74%) SQL
4 113 (18.23%) JavaScript
5 75 (12.10%) C#
6 45 (7.26%) TypeScript
7 38 (6.13%) Go
7 38 (6.13%) PL/SQL
8 21 (3.39%) Kotlin
9 18 (2.90%) Ruby
10 16 (2.58%) C++
11 13 (2.10%) Bash
11 13 (2.10%) Shell Script
12 12 (1.94%) PowerShell
13 6 (0.97%) PHP
14 4 (0.65%) Swift
15 3 (0.48%) ABAP
15 3 (0.48%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 3 (0.48%) Objective-C
15 3 (0.48%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 146 (23.55%) Security Cleared
2 128 (20.65%) SC Cleared
3 39 (6.29%) Degree
4 28 (4.52%) BPSS Clearance
5 19 (3.06%) Computer Science Degree
6 8 (1.29%) Numerate Degree
7 6 (0.97%) AWS Certification
7 6 (0.97%) OCP
7 6 (0.97%) Oracle Certification
8 5 (0.81%) Master's Degree
9 3 (0.48%) AWS Certified Developer
9 3 (0.48%) MCP
10 2 (0.32%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (0.32%) Azure Certification
10 2 (0.32%) DV Cleared
11 1 (0.16%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 1 (0.16%) Microsoft Certification
11 1 (0.16%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (4.52%) Accessibility
2 17 (2.74%) QA
3 13 (2.10%) WCAG
4 12 (1.94%) Data Quality
5 4 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 3 (0.48%) EU AI Act
6 3 (0.48%) NIST
7 1 (0.16%) GDPR
7 1 (0.16%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 122 (19.68%) Docker
2 5 (0.81%) zsh
3 2 (0.32%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.16%) GridGain
4 1 (0.16%) Lustre
4 1 (0.16%) OpenAM
4 1 (0.16%) OpenDJ
4 1 (0.16%) OpenIDM
4 1 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 118 (19.03%) Kubernetes
2 39 (6.29%) Terraform
3 20 (3.23%) Grafana
4 15 (2.42%) Ansible
5 9 (1.45%) Single Sign-On
6 8 (1.29%) Prometheus
7 3 (0.48%) Kibana
8 1 (0.16%) Argo
8 1 (0.16%) CloudHub
8 1 (0.16%) Control-M
8 1 (0.16%) HAProxy
8 1 (0.16%) Packer
8 1 (0.16%) Rundeck
8 1 (0.16%) Sysdig
Vendors
1 55 (8.87%) Oracle
2 28 (4.52%) Microsoft
3 21 (3.39%) Google
4 14 (2.26%) Sybase
5 13 (2.10%) ServiceNow
6 10 (1.61%) Databricks
7 6 (0.97%) SAP
8 5 (0.81%) Atlassian
8 5 (0.81%) Guidewire
8 5 (0.81%) Salesforce
9 4 (0.65%) Apple
9 4 (0.65%) IBM
10 3 (0.48%) BMC
10 3 (0.48%) Cognizant
10 3 (0.48%) Dataiku
10 3 (0.48%) Foundry
10 3 (0.48%) Pega
11 2 (0.32%) CA Agile Central
11 2 (0.32%) Computacenter
11 2 (0.32%) Confluent