Leader
UK

The median Leader salary in the UK is £70,000 per year according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months to 14 May 2024.

The first table below provides salary benchmarking and summary statistics including a comparison to same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
14 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 17 30 37
Rank change year-on-year +13 +7 -6
Permanent jobs requiring a Lead 8,528 7,458 13,290
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 8.61% 7.43% 8.31%
As % of the Job Titles category 9.10% 8.12% 8.65%
Number of salaries quoted 5,952 5,204 6,746
10th Percentile £41,250 £46,750 £43,271
25th Percentile £53,250 £57,438 £55,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £72,500 £72,500
Median % change year-on-year -3.45% - +3.57%
75th Percentile £86,250 £95,000 £95,000
90th Percentile £105,000 £115,000 £108,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £65,000 £65,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year - +8.33% -

All Permanent IT Job Vacancies
UK

The following table is for comparison with the above and includes summary statistics for all permanent 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 permanent jobs in our overall sample.

Permanent vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 93,739 91,836 153,630
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.65% 91.52% 96.11%
Number of salaries quoted 67,104 57,926 84,939
10th Percentile £28,500 £32,500 £32,500
25th Percentile £38,500 £45,000 £42,604
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,500 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -12.50% - +9.09%
75th Percentile £71,250 £80,750 £78,750
90th Percentile £90,000 £100,000 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £53,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -5.66% +6.00% +5.26%

Lead
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for Lead in the UK

Lead
Salary Trend

3-month moving average salary quoted in jobs citing Lead.

Salary trend for Lead in the UK

Lead
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Lead over the 6 months to 14 May 2024.

Salary histogram for Lead in the UK

Lead
Top 18 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Lead within the UK over the 6 months to 14 May 2024. 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England +10 7,002 £70,000 -6.67% 1,854
UK excluding London +17 5,962 £65,000 - 1,208
Work from Home +8 3,316 £75,000 +3.45% 790
London +13 2,162 £87,500 -2.78% 695
North of England +28 1,666 £70,000 - 337
South East +16 1,174 £62,500 -7.41% 262
Scotland +17 1,023 £63,500 -9.29% 68
Midlands +4 909 £60,000 - 212
North West +24 827 £70,000 - 186
South West +21 649 £61,000 -6.87% 186
West Midlands +2 618 £65,000 +8.33% 121
Yorkshire +28 617 £70,000 - 103
East of England +30 360 £60,000 +4.35% 127
East Midlands +24 288 £50,000 -13.04% 89
North East +38 222 £70,000 +40.00% 50
Wales +16 135 £65,000 +1.77% 31
Northern Ireland +30 48 £77,500 +29.17% 16
Isle of Man - 4 £54,000 -

Lead Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 14 May 2024, Lead 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 permanent job ads featuring Lead in the job title.

1 2,616 (30.68%) Agile
2 2,345 (27.50%) Finance
3 1,705 (19.99%) Social Skills
4 1,588 (18.62%) AWS
5 1,573 (18.45%) Mentoring
6 1,527 (17.91%) Software Engineering
7 1,515 (17.77%) Azure
8 1,256 (14.73%) Java
9 1,175 (13.78%) SQL
10 1,162 (13.63%) Problem-Solving
11 1,129 (13.24%) CI/CD
12 1,109 (13.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 1,028 (12.05%) Marketing
14 999 (11.71%) Law
15 991 (11.62%) Microsoft
16 980 (11.49%) Degree
17 940 (11.02%) SDLC
18 917 (10.75%) Coaching
19 889 (10.42%) Python
20 872 (10.23%) DevOps
21 789 (9.25%) JavaScript
22 730 (8.56%) Roadmaps
23 706 (8.28%) Artificial Intelligence
24 687 (8.06%) Operational Stability
25 686 (8.04%) C#
26 684 (8.02%) .NET
27 672 (7.88%) Analytics
28 665 (7.80%) Project Management
29 619 (7.26%) Machine Learning
30 591 (6.93%) Security Cleared

Lead 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
1 229 (2.69%) Apache Spark
2 173 (2.03%) Apache Airflow
3 158 (1.85%) SharePoint
4 146 (1.71%) Confluence
5 137 (1.61%) Apache
6 96 (1.13%) Microsoft Exchange
7 58 (0.68%) CMS
8 47 (0.55%) WebLogic
9 38 (0.45%) Tuxedo
10 33 (0.39%) Cloud Foundry
11 32 (0.38%) FileNet
12 31 (0.36%) IIS
13 28 (0.33%) Drupal
14 21 (0.25%) GemFire
15 18 (0.21%) WordPress
16 12 (0.14%) Appian
16 12 (0.14%) SAS
17 10 (0.12%) OpenStack
17 10 (0.12%) WebSphere
18 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
Applications
1 139 (1.63%) Microsoft Office
2 133 (1.56%) Microsoft Excel
3 49 (0.57%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 25 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
5 19 (0.22%) Chatbot
6 17 (0.20%) Windchill
7 16 (0.19%) Simulink
8 15 (0.18%) Sketch
9 14 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
10 10 (0.12%) MS Visio
11 7 (0.082%) Oracle Smart View
12 6 (0.070%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 6 (0.070%) EViews
13 4 (0.047%) CANalyzer
14 3 (0.035%) AutoCAD
15 2 (0.023%) Adobe Illustrator
15 2 (0.023%) InVision
15 2 (0.023%) Notion
15 2 (0.023%) Photoshop
15 2 (0.023%) Trello
Business Applications
1 109 (1.28%) Dynamics CRM
2 47 (0.55%) SAP S/4HANA
3 46 (0.54%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 21 (0.25%) Aladdin
5 20 (0.23%) Shopify
5 20 (0.23%) Workday HCM
6 18 (0.21%) thinkFolio
7 17 (0.20%) Teamcenter
8 12 (0.14%) Primavera
8 12 (0.14%) SAP GRC
9 11 (0.13%) SAP FI
10 10 (0.12%) SAP CO
10 10 (0.12%) SAP FI/CO
11 8 (0.094%) Dynamics AX
12 7 (0.082%) HFM
12 7 (0.082%) Hyperion Planning
12 7 (0.082%) SAP IBP
13 6 (0.070%) Oracle Applications
13 6 (0.070%) Oracle EBS
13 6 (0.070%) Oracle General Ledger
Cloud Services
1 1,588 (18.62%) AWS
2 1,515 (17.77%) Azure
3 400 (4.69%) Microsoft 365
4 389 (4.56%) Power Platform
5 327 (3.83%) GCP
6 310 (3.64%) SaaS
7 266 (3.12%) Azure DevOps
8 187 (2.19%) Serverless
9 155 (1.82%) Dynamics 365
10 142 (1.67%) Snowflake
11 133 (1.56%) dbt
12 117 (1.37%) GitHub
13 114 (1.34%) Amazon S3
14 103 (1.21%) AWS Lambda
15 100 (1.17%) Power Automate
16 94 (1.10%) PowerApps
17 90 (1.06%) Amazon SQS
18 89 (1.04%) Entra ID
19 88 (1.03%) Amazon ECS
20 87 (1.02%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 238 (2.79%) Firewall
2 192 (2.25%) Broadband
3 135 (1.58%) DNS
4 119 (1.40%) TCP/IP
5 108 (1.27%) WAN
6 84 (0.98%) SSL
7 82 (0.96%) Kerberos
8 79 (0.93%) Network Security
9 65 (0.76%) LAN
10 55 (0.64%) VPN
11 53 (0.62%) SD-WAN
12 52 (0.61%) BGP
13 50 (0.59%) Wireless
14 46 (0.54%) Internet
15 41 (0.48%) Intrusion Detection
16 37 (0.43%) DHCP
17 35 (0.41%) Software-Defined Radio
18 32 (0.38%) SAN
19 28 (0.33%) Wi-Fi
20 22 (0.26%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 377 (4.42%) SQL Server
2 355 (4.16%) NoSQL
3 306 (3.59%) Power BI
4 206 (2.42%) Relational Database
5 194 (2.27%) Big Data
6 171 (2.01%) Data Lake
7 163 (1.91%) Data Warehouse
8 155 (1.82%) MySQL
9 132 (1.55%) Tableau
10 118 (1.38%) Amazon RDS
11 99 (1.16%) Amazon Athena
12 98 (1.15%) Apache Arrow
13 96 (1.13%) MongoDB
14 95 (1.11%) Dremio
15 93 (1.09%) Elasticsearch
16 92 (1.08%) Apache Ignite
17 86 (1.01%) RDBMS
18 85 (1.00%) Metadata
19 78 (0.91%) Apache Cassandra
20 70 (0.82%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 370 (4.34%) Git
2 259 (3.04%) JIRA
3 232 (2.72%) Jenkins
4 153 (1.79%) Selenium
5 123 (1.44%) GitLab
6 120 (1.41%) Cypress.io
7 106 (1.24%) JUnit
8 80 (0.94%) Postman
9 76 (0.89%) Cucumber
10 72 (0.84%) Artifactory
11 71 (0.83%) Bitbucket
11 71 (0.83%) Visual Studio
12 36 (0.42%) SoapUI
13 33 (0.39%) WebDriver
14 30 (0.35%) CircleCI
15 29 (0.34%) Jasmine
15 29 (0.34%) JMeter
16 28 (0.33%) Team Foundation Server
17 24 (0.28%) TeamCity
18 23 (0.27%) Maven
General
1 2,345 (27.50%) Finance
2 1,705 (19.99%) Social Skills
3 1,109 (13.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 1,028 (12.05%) Marketing
5 999 (11.71%) Law
6 565 (6.63%) Analytical Skills
7 512 (6.00%) Banking
8 437 (5.12%) Public Sector
9 265 (3.11%) Investment Banking
10 261 (3.06%) Retail
11 244 (2.86%) Influencing Skills
12 235 (2.76%) Manufacturing
13 229 (2.69%) Legal
14 216 (2.53%) Advertising
15 146 (1.71%) Automotive
16 138 (1.62%) Presentation Skills
17 135 (1.58%) Telecoms
18 134 (1.57%) Front Office
19 119 (1.40%) Organisational Skills
20 116 (1.36%) Aerospace
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 684 (8.02%) .NET
2 584 (6.85%) React
3 344 (4.03%) Spring
4 340 (3.99%) HTML
5 333 (3.90%) CSS
6 259 (3.04%) Spring Boot
7 254 (2.98%) Kafka
8 232 (2.72%) AngularJS
9 231 (2.71%) Node.js
9 231 (2.71%) REST
10 228 (2.67%) JSON
11 210 (2.46%) RESTful
12 171 (2.01%) .NET Core
13 161 (1.89%) Web Services
14 132 (1.55%) XML
15 121 (1.42%) ASP.NET
16 118 (1.38%) Pandas
17 117 (1.37%) Vue
18 114 (1.34%) jQuery
19 107 (1.25%) NumPy
Miscellaneous
1 459 (5.38%) Cloud Native
2 381 (4.47%) Management Information System
3 300 (3.52%) Public Cloud
4 237 (2.78%) Product Ownership
5 185 (2.17%) Marketing Technology
6 151 (1.77%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 129 (1.51%) Algorithms
8 128 (1.50%) Fixed Income
9 126 (1.48%) Hedge funds
10 124 (1.45%) Self-Motivation
11 117 (1.37%) Derivative
12 115 (1.35%) Data Structures
13 112 (1.31%) Enterprise Software
14 106 (1.24%) Equities
15 104 (1.22%) Data Centre
16 103 (1.21%) Greenfield Project
17 99 (1.16%) Virtual Team
18 95 (1.11%) Distributed Systems
19 91 (1.07%) Onboarding
20 87 (1.02%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 516 (6.05%) Windows
2 406 (4.76%) Linux
3 163 (1.91%) Windows Server
4 96 (1.13%) Windows 10
5 65 (0.76%) Android
6 57 (0.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 52 (0.61%) Apple iOS
8 41 (0.48%) Unix
9 30 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
10 27 (0.32%) Windows Server 2016
11 23 (0.27%) Windows Server 2012
12 20 (0.23%) Ubuntu
13 15 (0.18%) Mac OS
14 14 (0.16%) Embedded Linux
14 14 (0.16%) Windows 7
15 13 (0.15%) CentOS
16 12 (0.14%) zOS
17 8 (0.094%) Debian
17 8 (0.094%) Solaris
18 5 (0.059%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,616 (30.68%) Agile
2 1,573 (18.45%) Mentoring
3 1,527 (17.91%) Software Engineering
4 1,162 (13.63%) Problem-Solving
5 1,129 (13.24%) CI/CD
6 940 (11.02%) SDLC
7 917 (10.75%) Coaching
8 872 (10.23%) DevOps
9 730 (8.56%) Roadmaps
10 706 (8.28%) Artificial Intelligence
11 687 (8.06%) Operational Stability
12 672 (7.88%) Analytics
13 665 (7.80%) Project Management
14 619 (7.26%) Machine Learning
15 586 (6.87%) Continuous Improvement
16 549 (6.44%) Community of Practice
17 491 (5.76%) Scrum
18 485 (5.69%) Stakeholder Management
19 480 (5.63%) Microservices
20 470 (5.51%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,256 (14.73%) Java
2 1,175 (13.78%) SQL
3 889 (10.42%) Python
4 789 (9.25%) JavaScript
5 686 (8.04%) C#
6 518 (6.07%) TypeScript
7 188 (2.20%) PHP
8 182 (2.13%) C++
9 178 (2.09%) Scala
10 162 (1.90%) C
11 143 (1.68%) Go
12 122 (1.43%) PowerShell
13 76 (0.89%) Kotlin
14 73 (0.86%) R
15 66 (0.77%) COBOL
15 66 (0.77%) Micro Focus COBOL
16 65 (0.76%) Prolog
16 65 (0.76%) SPARQL
17 46 (0.54%) T-SQL
18 37 (0.43%) Bash
Qualifications
1 980 (11.49%) Degree
2 591 (6.93%) Security Cleared
3 344 (4.03%) SC Cleared
4 229 (2.69%) Computer Science Degree
5 144 (1.69%) Master's Degree
6 142 (1.67%) AWS Certification
7 137 (1.61%) Azure Certification
8 117 (1.37%) CISSP
9 116 (1.36%) DBS Check
10 94 (1.10%) BPSS Clearance
11 91 (1.07%) Cisco Certification
12 84 (0.98%) CISM
13 79 (0.93%) DV Cleared
14 75 (0.88%) Microsoft Certification
15 62 (0.73%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 54 (0.63%) PhD
17 42 (0.49%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 40 (0.47%) PMI Certification
19 38 (0.45%) CCNP
19 38 (0.45%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 419 (4.91%) QA
2 199 (2.33%) Data Quality
3 132 (1.55%) SLA
4 122 (1.43%) GDPR
5 114 (1.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 110 (1.29%) PMO
7 109 (1.28%) Accessibility
8 97 (1.14%) NIST
9 43 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials
10 30 (0.35%) GMP
10 30 (0.35%) GRC
11 29 (0.34%) PCI DSS
12 25 (0.29%) NCSC
13 16 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 14 (0.16%) IFRS
15 11 (0.13%) Def Stans
15 11 (0.13%) HL7
16 10 (0.12%) Sarbanes-Oxley
17 9 (0.11%) WCAG
18 8 (0.094%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 409 (4.80%) Docker
2 320 (3.75%) Active Directory
3 89 (1.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 61 (0.72%) Hyper-V
5 55 (0.64%) Firmware
6 34 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
7 28 (0.33%) vSphere
8 27 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
8 27 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
9 22 (0.26%) Embedded Firmware
10 10 (0.12%) HDFS
11 9 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
12 5 (0.059%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 3 (0.035%) BitLocker
13 3 (0.035%) Microsoft App-V
14 2 (0.023%) Ceph
14 2 (0.023%) XenDesktop
15 1 (0.012%) KVM
15 1 (0.012%) Lustre
15 1 (0.012%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 545 (6.39%) Kubernetes
2 335 (3.93%) Terraform
3 99 (1.16%) Grafana
4 95 (1.11%) Microsoft Intune
5 79 (0.93%) Prometheus
6 75 (0.88%) Ansible
7 59 (0.69%) SCCM
8 51 (0.60%) Puppet
9 45 (0.53%) Single Sign-On
10 30 (0.35%) Functional Safety
11 22 (0.26%) HAProxy
11 22 (0.26%) Kibana
11 22 (0.26%) vCenter Server
12 21 (0.25%) ITRS Geneos
12 21 (0.25%) Zipkin
13 16 (0.19%) Consul
13 16 (0.19%) FortiGate
14 15 (0.18%) Istio
15 13 (0.15%) Microsoft Clustering
16 12 (0.14%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 991 (11.62%) Microsoft
2 415 (4.87%) Oracle
3 191 (2.24%) SAP
4 175 (2.05%) Google
5 171 (2.01%) VMware
6 138 (1.62%) Databricks
7 137 (1.61%) ServiceNow
8 115 (1.35%) Splunk
9 114 (1.34%) Cisco
10 87 (1.02%) Dynatrace
11 84 (0.98%) Salesforce
12 69 (0.81%) Micro Focus
13 68 (0.80%) Atlassian
14 67 (0.79%) IBM
15 59 (0.69%) Citrix
16 46 (0.54%) Sparx
17 34 (0.40%) Meraki
17 34 (0.40%) Veeam
18 33 (0.39%) Workday
19 32 (0.38%) Qualtrics