Senior Contract Job Trends

Senior
UK

The median Senior daily rate in the UK is £538, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 19 April 2026.

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

6 months to
19 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 19 21 19
Rank change year-on-year +2 -2 -1
Contract jobs requiring a Senior 4,349 2,540 3,500
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 9.42% 8.63% 8.01%
As % of the Job Titles category 10.21% 9.32% 8.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,825 1,706 2,306
10th Percentile £400 £388 £400
25th Percentile £451 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £550 £564
Median % change year-on-year -2.27% -2.48% -4.33%
75th Percentile £645 £675 £675
90th Percentile £750 £788 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £515 £525 £520
% change year-on-year -2.00% +0.96% -3.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 157 66 180
10th Percentile £28.18 £20.24 £20.02
25th Percentile £41.25 £28.60 £32.50
Median hourly rate £57.50 £52.75 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +9.00% +11.05% +5.56%
75th Percentile £75.40 £69.69 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.40 £81.25 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.50 £55.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year +0.91% +15.79% +5.56%

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 42,592 27,248 40,561
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.22% 92.60% 92.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,414 17,867 26,505
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -1.90% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +2.63% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,707 994 2,611
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.55 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.35 £19.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £41.94 £30.45 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +37.73% -13.00% -22.22%
75th Percentile £65.60 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.70 £75.43 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.00 £29.53 £36.27
% change year-on-year +45.64% -18.60% -14.17%

Senior
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Senior' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Senior job vacancy trend in the UK

Senior
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Senior job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Senior job vacancies in the UK

Senior
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Senior over the 6 months to 19 April 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Senior in the UK

Senior
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Senior job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Senior job vacancies in the UK

Senior
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Senior over the 6 months to 19 April 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Senior in the UK

Senior
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 within the UK over the 6 months to 19 April 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 +2 3,738 £550 -2.22% 2,517
London +3 2,017 £575 -3.36% 1,105
UK excluding London +2 1,808 £515 -2.00% 1,693
Work from Home +2 1,164 £550 -2.65% 1,132
North of England +3 505 £500 - 414
South East +7 472 £550 -4.35% 547
Midlands +10 310 £525 - 267
North West -2 242 £486 -2.75% 252
West Midlands +4 232 £537 -2.32% 166
Yorkshire +3 216 £513 -4.21% 126
South West +2 205 £475 -13.64% 154
East of England +10 156 £500 -11.11% 179
Scotland -3 119 £513 +17.14% 103
East Midlands +8 74 £500 +1.01% 100
North East +11 57 £475 -11.05% 39
Wales -3 37 £700 +55.56% 35
Northern Ireland +19 36 £400 -20.00% 22

Senior Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 19 April 2026, Senior 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 in the job title.

1 945 (21.73%) Agile
2 919 (21.13%) Security Cleared
3 835 (19.20%) Azure
4 763 (17.54%) AWS
5 741 (17.04%) Python
6 712 (16.37%) CI/CD
7 709 (16.30%) SC Cleared
8 691 (15.89%) DevOps
9 569 (13.08%) SQL
10 473 (10.88%) Stakeholder Management
11 468 (10.76%) Problem-Solving
12 448 (10.30%) Java
13 446 (10.26%) Microsoft
14 422 (9.70%) AI
15 411 (9.45%) Software Engineering
16 375 (8.62%) Kubernetes
17 369 (8.48%) Analytics
18 364 (8.37%) Migration
19 343 (7.89%) Terraform
20 330 (7.59%) Microservices
21 324 (7.45%) Docker
22 319 (7.34%) Continuous Improvement
23 302 (6.94%) Test Automation
24 297 (6.83%) Infrastructure as Code
25 286 (6.58%) Decision-Making
26 283 (6.51%) Data Modelling
27 272 (6.25%) Stakeholder Engagement
28 245 (5.63%) Containerisation
29 241 (5.54%) GCP
30 239 (5.50%) Degree

Senior 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
1 102 (2.35%) Confluence
2 67 (1.54%) SharePoint
3 59 (1.36%) Microsoft Exchange
4 52 (1.20%) Apache Airflow
5 50 (1.15%) Apache Spark
6 46 (1.06%) Apache
7 20 (0.46%) CMS
8 14 (0.32%) SAS
9 8 (0.18%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 7 (0.16%) Jupyter
10 7 (0.16%) nginx
11 6 (0.14%) Headless CMS
11 6 (0.14%) Sitecore CMS
12 5 (0.11%) Appian
12 5 (0.11%) Camunda
12 5 (0.11%) Drupal
12 5 (0.11%) Ethereum
12 5 (0.11%) Hyperledger
12 5 (0.11%) Tomcat
12 5 (0.11%) WebSphere
Applications
1 73 (1.68%) Microsoft Excel
2 40 (0.92%) Microsoft Project
3 35 (0.80%) Microsoft Office
4 33 (0.76%) MS Visio
5 29 (0.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 9 (0.21%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 7 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
8 6 (0.14%) Simulink
9 5 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
9 5 (0.11%) Photoshop
10 4 (0.092%) Sketch
11 3 (0.069%) Adobe XD
11 3 (0.069%) Final Cut Pro
12 2 (0.046%) Adobe After Effects
12 2 (0.046%) InDesign
12 2 (0.046%) InVision
12 2 (0.046%) Trello
13 1 (0.023%) MicroStation
13 1 (0.023%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 46 (1.06%) SAP S/4HANA
2 24 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
3 14 (0.32%) SAP MM
3 14 (0.32%) Shopify
4 13 (0.30%) Teamcenter
5 10 (0.23%) NEC Housing
6 9 (0.21%) NetSuite
7 8 (0.18%) Endur
7 8 (0.18%) Remedy ITSM
8 7 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
9 6 (0.14%) Aladdin
9 6 (0.14%) Salesforce CRM
10 5 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
11 4 (0.092%) Maximo
11 4 (0.092%) Oracle Payables
11 4 (0.092%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 4 (0.092%) Oracle Receivables
11 4 (0.092%) Primavera
11 4 (0.092%) SAP IBP
12 3 (0.069%) Algo Collateral
Cloud Services
1 835 (19.20%) Azure
2 763 (17.54%) AWS
3 241 (5.54%) GCP
4 224 (5.15%) GitHub
5 218 (5.01%) Power Platform
6 211 (4.85%) Azure DevOps
7 152 (3.50%) Serverless
8 136 (3.13%) SaaS
9 127 (2.92%) GitHub Actions
10 120 (2.76%) Microsoft 365
11 89 (2.05%) AWS Lambda
12 88 (2.02%) Amazon S3
13 84 (1.93%) Entra ID
14 75 (1.72%) Azure Data Factory
15 67 (1.54%) dbt
16 64 (1.47%) Snowflake
17 61 (1.40%) Amazon EKS
18 56 (1.29%) AWS CloudFormation
18 56 (1.29%) Azure Synapse Analytics
19 51 (1.17%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 144 (3.31%) Firewall
2 85 (1.95%) WAN
3 75 (1.72%) DNS
4 64 (1.47%) LAN
5 62 (1.43%) VPN
6 61 (1.40%) Network Security
7 49 (1.13%) BGP
8 46 (1.06%) OSPF
9 40 (0.92%) DHCP
10 34 (0.78%) TCP/IP
11 26 (0.60%) SD-WAN
12 25 (0.57%) HTTP
13 24 (0.55%) VLAN
14 23 (0.53%) MPLS
15 22 (0.51%) Multicast
15 22 (0.51%) Wi-Fi
16 21 (0.48%) VXLAN
17 19 (0.44%) SSL
18 18 (0.41%) Ethernet VPN
18 18 (0.41%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 186 (4.28%) Power BI
2 147 (3.38%) PostgreSQL
3 135 (3.10%) SQL Server
4 94 (2.16%) Data Warehouse
5 78 (1.79%) Relational Database
6 72 (1.66%) MongoDB
7 65 (1.49%) NoSQL
8 64 (1.47%) Data Lake
9 60 (1.38%) Tableau
10 52 (1.20%) Metadata
11 48 (1.10%) Delta Lake
12 41 (0.94%) Amazon RDS
13 40 (0.92%) BigQuery
14 35 (0.80%) Big Data
14 35 (0.80%) MySQL
15 34 (0.78%) DynamoDB
16 33 (0.76%) Apache Cassandra
17 28 (0.64%) Azure SQL Database
18 25 (0.57%) Amazon Athena
18 25 (0.57%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 189 (4.35%) Git
2 181 (4.16%) JIRA
3 147 (3.38%) Jenkins
4 123 (2.83%) GitLab
5 52 (1.20%) Selenium
6 46 (1.06%) JUnit
7 35 (0.80%) Oracle APEX
8 31 (0.71%) Maven
9 29 (0.67%) Cypress.io
10 27 (0.62%) JMeter
11 26 (0.60%) Cucumber
12 22 (0.51%) MLflow
12 22 (0.51%) Mockito
13 20 (0.46%) Gradle
13 20 (0.46%) Postman
14 19 (0.44%) SonarQube
15 14 (0.32%) Sonatype Nexus
16 12 (0.28%) Bitbucket
16 12 (0.28%) NUnit
16 12 (0.28%) WebDriver
General
1 893 (20.53%) Social Skills
2 853 (19.61%) Finance
3 517 (11.89%) Public Sector
4 324 (7.45%) Analytical Skills
5 320 (7.36%) Banking
6 113 (2.60%) Retail
7 79 (1.82%) Marketing
8 69 (1.59%) Legal
9 66 (1.52%) Front Office
9 66 (1.52%) Influencing Skills
10 62 (1.43%) Organisational Skills
11 60 (1.38%) Investment Banking
12 59 (1.36%) Financial Institution
13 55 (1.26%) Local Government
13 55 (1.26%) Military
14 47 (1.08%) Documentation Skills
14 47 (1.08%) Telecoms
15 46 (1.06%) Law
16 45 (1.03%) Aerospace
17 37 (0.85%) Manufacturing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 231 (5.31%) Kafka
2 179 (4.12%) React
3 155 (3.56%) Spring
4 141 (3.24%) REST
4 141 (3.24%) Spring Boot
5 140 (3.22%) .NET
6 125 (2.87%) Node.js
7 105 (2.41%) RESTful
8 83 (1.91%) AngularJS
9 79 (1.82%) PySpark
10 68 (1.56%) Playwright
11 66 (1.52%) HTML
12 63 (1.45%) CSS
13 62 (1.43%) GraphQL
14 56 (1.29%) OAuth
15 49 (1.13%) Pandas
16 46 (1.06%) Oracle Fusion
16 46 (1.06%) Web Services
17 39 (0.90%) Middleware
18 38 (0.87%) gRPC
Miscellaneous
1 230 (5.29%) Cloud Native
2 152 (3.50%) Distributed Systems
3 137 (3.15%) Product Ownership
4 101 (2.32%) Onboarding
5 100 (2.30%) Data Centre
6 89 (2.05%) Management Information System
7 68 (1.56%) Greenfield Project
8 61 (1.40%) Data Structures
9 52 (1.20%) Algorithms
10 51 (1.17%) Mobile App
11 50 (1.15%) AI Agents
12 49 (1.13%) Legacy Systems
13 45 (1.03%) Data Protection Act
13 45 (1.03%) Public Cloud
14 44 (1.01%) Hybrid Cloud
15 43 (0.99%) PKI
16 41 (0.94%) Derivative
17 40 (0.92%) Virtual Team
18 39 (0.90%) Self-Motivation
19 35 (0.80%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 224 (5.15%) Linux
2 172 (3.95%) Windows
3 75 (1.72%) Unix
4 48 (1.10%) Android
4 48 (1.10%) Apple iOS
5 39 (0.90%) Windows Server
6 24 (0.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 23 (0.53%) Windows 10
8 21 (0.48%) Mac OS
9 13 (0.30%) VMS
10 10 (0.23%) Embedded Linux
11 7 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
12 6 (0.14%) Ubuntu
13 5 (0.11%) Mac OS X
13 5 (0.11%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
13 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2016
14 4 (0.092%) Oracle Linux
14 4 (0.092%) Solaris
14 4 (0.092%) Windows Server 2012
15 3 (0.069%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 945 (21.73%) Agile
2 712 (16.37%) CI/CD
3 691 (15.89%) DevOps
4 473 (10.88%) Stakeholder Management
5 468 (10.76%) Problem-Solving
6 422 (9.70%) AI
7 411 (9.45%) Software Engineering
8 369 (8.48%) Analytics
9 364 (8.37%) Migration
10 330 (7.59%) Microservices
11 319 (7.34%) Continuous Improvement
12 302 (6.94%) Test Automation
13 297 (6.83%) Infrastructure as Code
14 286 (6.58%) Decision-Making
15 283 (6.51%) Data Modelling
16 272 (6.25%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 245 (5.63%) Containerisation
18 239 (5.50%) Roadmaps
19 232 (5.33%) Mentoring
20 229 (5.27%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 741 (17.04%) Python
2 569 (13.08%) SQL
3 448 (10.30%) Java
4 212 (4.87%) JavaScript
5 200 (4.60%) TypeScript
6 180 (4.14%) C#
7 141 (3.24%) PowerShell
8 101 (2.32%) Go
9 61 (1.40%) Bash
10 51 (1.17%) C++
11 48 (1.10%) Kotlin
12 47 (1.08%) Ruby
13 43 (0.99%) PL/SQL
14 26 (0.60%) Bicep
14 26 (0.60%) R
14 26 (0.60%) Scala
15 22 (0.51%) Rust
16 21 (0.48%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 20 (0.46%) Shell Script
18 18 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 919 (21.13%) Security Cleared
2 709 (16.30%) SC Cleared
3 239 (5.50%) Degree
4 128 (2.94%) DV Cleared
5 112 (2.58%) BPSS Clearance
6 46 (1.06%) PMI Certification
7 45 (1.03%) PMP
8 44 (1.01%) Azure Certification
9 41 (0.94%) Computer Science Degree
10 39 (0.90%) Cisco Certification
11 32 (0.74%) Microsoft Certification
12 29 (0.67%) AWS Certification
13 28 (0.64%) Master's Degree
14 27 (0.62%) CISSP
15 26 (0.60%) ISTQB
16 24 (0.55%) CCNP
17 22 (0.51%) ACCA
18 20 (0.46%) CIMA
19 19 (0.44%) CBAP
20 13 (0.30%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 191 (4.39%) QA
2 175 (4.02%) Data Quality
3 122 (2.81%) Accessibility
4 60 (1.38%) GDPR
5 49 (1.13%) PMO
6 43 (0.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 40 (0.92%) SLA
8 38 (0.87%) NIST
9 37 (0.85%) WCAG
10 28 (0.64%) NCSC
11 26 (0.60%) GRC
12 23 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials
13 19 (0.44%) Actionable Recommendations
14 11 (0.25%) IFRS
15 9 (0.21%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 8 (0.18%) COBIT
16 8 (0.18%) DO-254
16 8 (0.18%) SOC 2
17 7 (0.16%) GxP
17 7 (0.16%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 324 (7.45%) Docker
2 115 (2.64%) Active Directory
3 64 (1.47%) VMware Infrastructure
4 29 (0.67%) VMware NSX
5 22 (0.51%) Virtual Machines
6 21 (0.48%) vSphere
7 17 (0.39%) Hyper-V
7 17 (0.39%) Virtual Desktop
8 16 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
9 11 (0.25%) Firmware
10 6 (0.14%) RACF
11 5 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
11 5 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
12 4 (0.092%) HDFS
12 4 (0.092%) Microsoft App-V
12 4 (0.092%) NFS
13 3 (0.069%) BitLocker
13 3 (0.069%) Ceph
13 3 (0.069%) Sendmail
13 3 (0.069%) Squid
Systems Management
1 375 (8.62%) Kubernetes
2 343 (7.89%) Terraform
3 124 (2.85%) Ansible
4 117 (2.69%) Grafana
5 93 (2.14%) Prometheus
6 61 (1.40%) Microsoft Intune
7 31 (0.71%) SCCM
8 30 (0.69%) Argo
9 29 (0.67%) Single Sign-On
10 22 (0.51%) Istio
11 15 (0.34%) FortiGate
11 15 (0.34%) Puppet
12 14 (0.32%) Kibana
13 11 (0.25%) vCenter Server
14 6 (0.14%) Jamf Pro
14 6 (0.14%) Kiali
14 6 (0.14%) PowerCLI
15 5 (0.11%) Endace
15 5 (0.11%) Nagios
15 5 (0.11%) Packer
Vendors
1 446 (10.26%) Microsoft
2 189 (4.35%) Oracle
3 177 (4.07%) SAP
4 152 (3.50%) Databricks
5 114 (2.62%) Google
6 104 (2.39%) VMware
7 99 (2.28%) Salesforce
8 95 (2.18%) Cisco
9 83 (1.91%) ServiceNow
10 57 (1.31%) Splunk
11 45 (1.03%) Palo Alto
12 43 (0.99%) F5
13 40 (0.92%) Juniper
14 32 (0.74%) Adobe
14 32 (0.74%) Fortinet
15 30 (0.69%) Red Hat
16 28 (0.64%) Citrix
17 25 (0.57%) CheckPoint
18 22 (0.51%) OpenAI
19 21 (0.48%) Dynatrace