How to find contract developer jobs
Published: 2020-01-02 11:24:45

---
title: How to find contract developer jobs
published: true
tags: 
canonical_url: https://timwise.co.uk/2019/06/26/how-to-find-contract-dev-jobs/
---

Before you dive in, you might want to look at my [page on dealing with recruiters](https://timwise.co.uk/recruiters/), especially if you are going to be dealing with multiple recruiters at once.

In rough order of the success I’ve had with them over the 7 years of contracting:

## JobServe

[https://www.jobserve.com/gb/en/Job-Search/](https://www.jobserve.com/gb/en/Job-Search/)

By far the most reliable source of leads. Slightly shonky website, bit fiddly to use but it seems that all the recruiters post their wares here.

Tactics:

- Upload a pdf cv
- Run a not particularly tight search (e.g. asp.net as a keyword with 50 mile radius, ordered by distance)
- Blindly send your cv to all of them without worrying too much or bothering to address the post.

![searching jobserve](https://timwise.co.uk/images/blog/jobserve-search.png)

This might sound lazy, but in my experience I almost never hear back about the advertised role, but what this does do is let recruiters that specialize in your particular skills know you are actively looking, which is a lot easier for them to make use of than hoping to tempt someone who isn’t.

## StackOverflow jobs

[https://stackoverflow.com/jobs?j=contract](https://stackoverflow.com/jobs?j=contract)

The kind of work I like is very rare on here, **but** I had one of my best ever contracts through this, and made a good friend who I’m still in touch with after a fair few years. I’d say the quality of companies on here is generally higher than average.

## LinkedIn

By posting regularly the progress of my search and asking contacts for help I have had some luck getting referrals. I’ve never used LinkedIn’s proper job posting system but it’s probably worth checking out.

It’s worth being careful if you are looking before leaving. I tend to not look till I’ve finished the previous contract and had some time to refresh so that hasn’t been an issue for me.

## Recruiters

It’s probably worth reaching out to recruiters directly.

They cold email us so no reason not to go the other way when you need a job. Could work out for everyone.

Here’s a useful list that you could use as a source of leads as well as a way of filtering all the inbound email into a folder[https://github.com/alexmbird/uk-it-recruiter-domains/blob/master/domains.txt](https://github.com/alexmbird/uk-it-recruiter-domains/blob/master/domains.txt)

## Others

These are ones I’ve come across that you might want to cover if you are looking to not miss anything, but I haven’t either used or succeeded with these myself. Suggestions for additions to this list welcome, just drop me an email or [raise a PR](https://github.com/timabell/timwise.co.uk/edit/master/_posts/2019-06-26-how-to-find-contract-dev-jobs.md).

- [https://jobs.github.com/](https://jobs.github.com/)
- [https://www.upwork.com/](https://www.upwork.com/) - seems to be low paid commodity labour on an international market largely, however I think some people have managed to break through this and become in demand. At that point you’re basically an entrepreneur. 
  - [https://www.quora.com/What-should-I-do-to-increase-my-earnings-on-Upwork-when-I-have-been-registered-on-it-for-over-a-year-and-have-done-only-one-10-job-for-which-I-received-a-five-star-rating](https://www.quora.com/What-should-I-do-to-increase-my-earnings-on-Upwork-when-I-have-been-registered-on-it-for-over-a-year-and-have-done-only-one-10-job-for-which-I-received-a-five-star-rating)
- [https://www.cwjobs.co.uk/](https://www.cwjobs.co.uk/)
- [https://www.monster.co.uk/](https://www.monster.co.uk/)
- [https://remoteok.io/](https://remoteok.io/)
- [https://snap.hr/](https://snap.hr/)
- [https://www.icontract.co.uk/](https://www.icontract.co.uk/)
- [https://www.contractspy.co.uk/](https://www.contractspy.co.uk/)

## Places to find even more

- [https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-job-boards-for-software-engineers](https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-job-boards-for-software-engineers)

## About this post

Someone I know is looking for work (hello!) so rather than just emailing I thought I’d make a more permanent list of all the places I’ve come across for finding work as a contract developer.

For context, I’m a backend developer, specialising in Microsoft ASP.NET / C# & SQL Server databases, with a smattering of other things (t-shaped people as they say).

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Originally posted at: <https://timwise.co.uk/2019/06/26/how-to-find-contract-dev-jobs/>