Senior Contract Job Trends

Senior
UK

The median Senior daily rate in the UK is £550, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 30 September 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 22 16 19
Rank change year-on-year -6 +3 +1
Contract jobs requiring a Senior 2,635 3,422 3,950
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 8.02% 9.10% 8.04%
As % of the Job Titles category 8.82% 9.79% 8.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,718 2,070 2,811
10th Percentile £400 £388 £403
25th Percentile £451 £463 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £570 £590
Median % change year-on-year -3.47% -3.43% +0.43%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £695
90th Percentile £788 £800 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 79 115 97
10th Percentile £33.69 £22.43 £17.72
25th Percentile £42.97 £32.91 £18.93
Median hourly rate £52.50 £50.00 £56.06
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -10.81% +24.58%
75th Percentile £63.75 £69.50 £70.66
90th Percentile £85.45 £74.44 £78.30
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £47.50 £56.06
% change year-on-year +5.26% -15.27% +24.58%

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 29,864 34,946 46,232
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.95% 92.92% 94.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,882 21,159 31,667
10th Percentile £275 £300 £300
25th Percentile £400 £413 £418
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £749 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,601 1,550 1,507
10th Percentile £13.75 £14.85 £14.60
25th Percentile £17.30 £20.81 £18.97
Median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -41.51% -3.37% +71.15%
75th Percentile £51.25 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.55 £74.88 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.08 £43.00 £43.95
% change year-on-year -41.69% -2.16% +95.33%

Senior
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured Senior in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Senior 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 30 September 2025.

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 30 September 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Senior in the UK

Senior
Top 18 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 30 September 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 -6 2,273 £559 -2.83% 2,468
London -3 1,302 £600 - 1,073
UK excluding London -4 981 £500 -4.76% 1,849
Work from Home -5 915 £575 - 1,636
North of England +5 326 £516 +1.26% 520
South East -7 236 £500 -9.09% 589
North West -1 167 £500 -1.23% 304
Midlands -16 144 £525 -8.06% 226
Yorkshire +23 142 £525 +0.96% 160
West Midlands -16 115 £538 -8.51% 139
South West +3 114 £551 -2.04% 178
Scotland -19 107 £450 -7.60% 141
East of England -22 50 £600 +20.00% 151
North East -1 30 £535 -7.76% 59
East Midlands -7 29 £485 -3.00% 87
Northern Ireland -1 16 £475 +22.58% 26
Wales -8 12 £375 -25.00% 38
Channel Islands -6 1 - -

Senior Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 30 September 2025, Senior contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Senior in the job title.

1 799 (30.32%) Agile
2 718 (27.25%) Social Skills
3 675 (25.62%) Finance
4 639 (24.25%) AWS
5 553 (20.99%) Python
6 461 (17.50%) SQL
7 460 (17.46%) CI/CD
8 449 (17.04%) Azure
9 446 (16.93%) DevOps
10 428 (16.24%) Security Cleared
11 419 (15.90%) Problem-Solving
12 376 (14.27%) Java
13 311 (11.80%) SC Cleared
14 304 (11.54%) Stakeholder Management
15 294 (11.16%) Banking
16 287 (10.89%) Software Engineering
17 276 (10.47%) Public Sector
18 274 (10.40%) Microsoft
19 272 (10.32%) Kubernetes
20 269 (10.21%) Microservices
21 265 (10.06%) Analytical Skills
22 262 (9.94%) Docker
23 243 (9.22%) Degree
24 238 (9.03%) Terraform
25 237 (8.99%) Mentoring
26 236 (8.96%) Analytics
27 211 (8.01%) Linux
28 207 (7.86%) Infrastructure as Code
29 205 (7.78%) JavaScript
30 203 (7.70%) TypeScript

Senior Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 100 (3.80%) Apache Airflow
2 82 (3.11%) Apache
3 79 (3.00%) Confluence
4 35 (1.33%) SharePoint
5 30 (1.14%) Apache Spark
6 22 (0.83%) Microsoft Exchange
7 18 (0.68%) CMS
8 13 (0.49%) OpenStack
9 10 (0.38%) JBoss
10 9 (0.34%) WebSphere
10 9 (0.34%) WebSphere Application Server
11 6 (0.23%) Alfresco
11 6 (0.23%) Anypoint
11 6 (0.23%) IIS
11 6 (0.23%) WebLogic
12 5 (0.19%) Headless CMS
12 5 (0.19%) iPlanet
13 4 (0.15%) Camunda
13 4 (0.15%) Moodle
13 4 (0.15%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 74 (2.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 34 (1.29%) Microsoft Office
3 29 (1.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 29 (1.10%) Microsoft Project
4 18 (0.68%) MS Visio
5 13 (0.49%) Maya
5 13 (0.49%) NUKE
6 11 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
7 5 (0.19%) AutoCAD
7 5 (0.19%) Navisworks
7 5 (0.19%) Revit
7 5 (0.19%) Trello
8 4 (0.15%) Photoshop
8 4 (0.15%) Sketch
9 3 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 3 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
9 3 (0.11%) Adobe XD
9 3 (0.11%) Simulink
10 2 (0.076%) Adobe After Effects
10 2 (0.076%) Notion
Business Applications
1 31 (1.18%) SAP S/4HANA
2 16 (0.61%) Dynamics CRM
3 14 (0.53%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.49%) Endur
5 10 (0.38%) Oracle ERP
6 9 (0.34%) Oracle EBS R12
7 8 (0.30%) SAP MM
8 7 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
9 6 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
10 5 (0.19%) Oracle General Ledger
10 5 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
10 5 (0.19%) SAP ERP
10 5 (0.19%) SAP FI
11 4 (0.15%) Oracle BPM
11 4 (0.15%) Salesforce CRM
11 4 (0.15%) SAP IBP
11 4 (0.15%) Shopify
12 3 (0.11%) Aladdin
12 3 (0.11%) Oracle Payables
12 3 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 639 (24.25%) AWS
2 449 (17.04%) Azure
3 188 (7.13%) GCP
4 126 (4.78%) GitHub
5 123 (4.67%) Power Platform
6 122 (4.63%) Serverless
7 92 (3.49%) Azure DevOps
8 88 (3.34%) Amazon S3
9 87 (3.30%) dbt
9 87 (3.30%) SaaS
10 83 (3.15%) Snowflake
11 70 (2.66%) GitHub Actions
12 69 (2.62%) AWS Lambda
13 64 (2.43%) Amazon EC2
14 59 (2.24%) Microsoft 365
15 49 (1.86%) Entra ID
16 46 (1.75%) AWS CloudFormation
17 41 (1.56%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 36 (1.37%) Amazon EKS
19 32 (1.21%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 116 (4.40%) Firewall
2 62 (2.35%) DNS
2 62 (2.35%) TCP/IP
3 60 (2.28%) Network Security
4 53 (2.01%) VPN
5 36 (1.37%) BGP
6 35 (1.33%) SSL
6 35 (1.33%) WAN
7 33 (1.25%) Wireless
8 24 (0.91%) LAN
9 23 (0.87%) OSPF
10 22 (0.83%) SD-WAN
11 21 (0.80%) DHCP
12 19 (0.72%) MPLS
13 16 (0.61%) Intrusion Detection
14 13 (0.49%) Ethernet
14 13 (0.49%) HTTP
14 13 (0.49%) Multicast
15 12 (0.46%) SAN
15 12 (0.46%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 107 (4.06%) PostgreSQL
2 102 (3.87%) Power BI
3 90 (3.42%) Data Lake
4 85 (3.23%) SQL Server
5 82 (3.11%) MongoDB
6 79 (3.00%) Relational Database
7 62 (2.35%) NoSQL
8 56 (2.13%) Data Warehouse
9 46 (1.75%) Amazon Athena
10 44 (1.67%) Apache Arrow
10 44 (1.67%) Apache Iceberg
10 44 (1.67%) Apache Ignite
10 44 (1.67%) Dremio
11 36 (1.37%) BigQuery
12 34 (1.29%) Amazon RDS
12 34 (1.29%) Big Data
13 33 (1.25%) Apache Cassandra
14 32 (1.21%) Tableau
15 29 (1.10%) MySQL
16 24 (0.91%) DB2
Development Applications
1 174 (6.60%) Jenkins
2 160 (6.07%) JIRA
3 138 (5.24%) Git
4 114 (4.33%) GitLab
5 55 (2.09%) JUnit
6 45 (1.71%) Postman
7 32 (1.21%) Mockito
8 31 (1.18%) Cypress.io
9 29 (1.10%) Selenium
10 20 (0.76%) Liquibase
11 18 (0.68%) Cucumber
12 17 (0.65%) CircleCI
12 17 (0.65%) Maven
13 16 (0.61%) Gradle
14 15 (0.57%) SoapUI
15 14 (0.53%) TeamCity
16 13 (0.49%) REST Assured
16 13 (0.49%) SpecFlow
17 11 (0.42%) Sonatype Nexus
18 9 (0.34%) ScriptRunner
General
1 718 (27.25%) Social Skills
2 675 (25.62%) Finance
3 294 (11.16%) Banking
4 276 (10.47%) Public Sector
5 265 (10.06%) Analytical Skills
6 130 (4.93%) Investment Banking
7 101 (3.83%) Front Office
8 61 (2.31%) Marketing
9 54 (2.05%) Retail
10 49 (1.86%) Telecoms
11 48 (1.82%) Manufacturing
11 48 (1.82%) Military
12 47 (1.78%) Legal
13 43 (1.63%) Influencing Skills
14 42 (1.59%) Presentation Skills
15 41 (1.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 37 (1.40%) Law
17 36 (1.37%) Documentation Skills
18 34 (1.29%) Games
19 28 (1.06%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 179 (6.79%) Kafka
2 150 (5.69%) React
3 128 (4.86%) RESTful
4 125 (4.74%) .NET
5 106 (4.02%) REST
6 102 (3.87%) Node.js
7 100 (3.80%) Spring
8 79 (3.00%) gRPC
9 71 (2.69%) Spring Boot
10 70 (2.66%) AngularJS
11 65 (2.47%) HTML
12 60 (2.28%) Web Services
13 57 (2.16%) Pandas
14 54 (2.05%) CSS
14 54 (2.05%) JSON
15 50 (1.90%) GraphQL
16 49 (1.86%) NumPy
17 46 (1.75%) Protocol Buffers
18 44 (1.67%) SciPy
19 43 (1.63%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 132 (5.01%) Cloud Native
2 111 (4.21%) Product Ownership
3 84 (3.19%) Management Information System
4 83 (3.15%) Derivative
5 82 (3.11%) Distributed Systems
6 77 (2.92%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 73 (2.77%) Onboarding
8 71 (2.69%) Equities
9 65 (2.47%) Fixed Income
10 52 (1.97%) Hedge funds
11 47 (1.78%) Data Centre
12 44 (1.67%) Mobile App
12 44 (1.67%) Pricing Data
13 41 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
13 41 (1.56%) Self-Motivation
14 40 (1.52%) Public Cloud
15 39 (1.48%) Data Structures
15 39 (1.48%) Market Risk
15 39 (1.48%) Virtual Team
16 38 (1.44%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 211 (8.01%) Linux
2 121 (4.59%) Windows
3 94 (3.57%) Unix
4 44 (1.67%) Android
5 34 (1.29%) Apple iOS
6 28 (1.06%) Windows Server
7 24 (0.91%) Mac OS
8 20 (0.76%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 15 (0.57%) Mac OS X
10 14 (0.53%) Ubuntu
11 6 (0.23%) CentOS
11 6 (0.23%) VMS
11 6 (0.23%) Windows 10
12 5 (0.19%) Debian
13 4 (0.15%) Windows Server 2016
14 3 (0.11%) AIX
14 3 (0.11%) FreeRTOS
14 3 (0.11%) Solaris
14 3 (0.11%) SUSE
14 3 (0.11%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 799 (30.32%) Agile
2 460 (17.46%) CI/CD
3 446 (16.93%) DevOps
4 419 (15.90%) Problem-Solving
5 304 (11.54%) Stakeholder Management
6 287 (10.89%) Software Engineering
7 269 (10.21%) Microservices
8 237 (8.99%) Mentoring
9 236 (8.96%) Analytics
10 207 (7.86%) Infrastructure as Code
11 202 (7.67%) Test Automation
12 201 (7.63%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 194 (7.36%) Migration
14 164 (6.22%) Containerisation
15 163 (6.19%) Scrum
16 158 (6.00%) Continuous Improvement
17 152 (5.77%) Project Management
18 149 (5.65%) Artificial Intelligence
19 148 (5.62%) User Experience
20 139 (5.28%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 553 (20.99%) Python
2 461 (17.50%) SQL
3 376 (14.27%) Java
4 205 (7.78%) JavaScript
5 203 (7.70%) TypeScript
6 167 (6.34%) C#
7 85 (3.23%) Go
8 82 (3.11%) Bash
9 78 (2.96%) C++
10 71 (2.69%) PowerShell
11 42 (1.59%) Shell Script
12 36 (1.37%) Kotlin
13 27 (1.02%) PL/SQL
14 22 (0.83%) Scala
15 17 (0.65%) R
16 16 (0.61%) Groovy
17 14 (0.53%) PHP
18 13 (0.49%) Swift
18 13 (0.49%) Tcl
19 12 (0.46%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 428 (16.24%) Security Cleared
2 311 (11.80%) SC Cleared
3 243 (9.22%) Degree
4 75 (2.85%) Computer Science Degree
5 71 (2.69%) DV Cleared
6 54 (2.05%) BPSS Clearance
7 52 (1.97%) CISSP
8 44 (1.67%) Cisco Certification
9 39 (1.48%) PMI Certification
10 37 (1.40%) Master's Degree
11 36 (1.37%) PMP
12 34 (1.29%) AWS Certification
13 29 (1.10%) CCNP
14 26 (0.99%) Microsoft Certification
15 21 (0.80%) Azure Certification
15 21 (0.80%) CISM
16 16 (0.61%) CCIE
17 13 (0.49%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 12 (0.46%) ACCA
18 12 (0.46%) CIMA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 121 (4.59%) QA
2 88 (3.34%) Data Quality
3 70 (2.66%) Accessibility
4 65 (2.47%) GDPR
5 48 (1.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 31 (1.18%) NIST
7 30 (1.14%) PMO
8 17 (0.65%) SLA
9 15 (0.57%) NCSC
10 14 (0.53%) GRC
10 14 (0.53%) WCAG
11 9 (0.34%) PCI DSS
12 8 (0.30%) COBIT
12 8 (0.30%) HIPAA
13 7 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
13 7 (0.27%) Basel II
14 6 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
14 6 (0.23%) SOC 2
15 5 (0.19%) DO-254
16 4 (0.15%) P3O
System Software
1 262 (9.94%) Docker
2 62 (2.35%) Active Directory
3 30 (1.14%) VMware Infrastructure
4 15 (0.57%) Virtual Machines
5 7 (0.27%) Firmware
5 7 (0.27%) vSphere
6 5 (0.19%) Hyper-V
6 5 (0.19%) Tivoli Directory Server
6 5 (0.19%) Veritas Cluster Server
6 5 (0.19%) zsh
7 3 (0.11%) Apache ZooKeeper
7 3 (0.11%) Embedded Firmware
7 3 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
7 3 (0.11%) Virtual Desktop
7 3 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
8 2 (0.076%) GridGain
8 2 (0.076%) VMware NSX
9 1 (0.038%) Lustre
9 1 (0.038%) Postfix
9 1 (0.038%) UAG
Systems Management
1 272 (10.32%) Kubernetes
2 238 (9.03%) Terraform
3 123 (4.67%) Ansible
4 66 (2.50%) Grafana
5 54 (2.05%) Prometheus
6 31 (1.18%) Single Sign-On
7 20 (0.76%) Microsoft Intune
7 20 (0.76%) Puppet
8 18 (0.68%) SCCM
9 16 (0.61%) Progress Chef
10 13 (0.49%) FortiGate
11 11 (0.42%) Argo
12 10 (0.38%) Jamf Pro
13 9 (0.34%) Kibana
14 7 (0.27%) Cisco CUCM
14 7 (0.27%) logstash
14 7 (0.27%) Microsoft Clustering
14 7 (0.27%) SCOM
15 6 (0.23%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 5 (0.19%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 274 (10.40%) Microsoft
2 130 (4.93%) Oracle
3 114 (4.33%) SAP
4 102 (3.87%) Google
5 71 (2.69%) Databricks
6 69 (2.62%) Cisco
7 57 (2.16%) ServiceNow
8 53 (2.01%) Salesforce
9 52 (1.97%) Splunk
9 52 (1.97%) VMware
10 47 (1.78%) Palo Alto
11 37 (1.40%) F5
12 33 (1.25%) IBM
13 31 (1.18%) CheckPoint
14 27 (1.02%) Red Hat
15 25 (0.95%) Adobe
16 22 (0.83%) Atlassian
16 22 (0.83%) Fortinet
16 22 (0.83%) MuleSoft
17 21 (0.80%) Sybase