Lead Contract Job Trends in London

Leader
England > London

The median Leader daily rate in London is £575, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 17 June 2026.

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

6 months to
17 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 24 30 30
Rank change year-on-year +6 0 +4
Contract jobs requiring a Lead 1,635 828 1,108
As % of all contract jobs in London 8.64% 6.69% 6.29%
As % of the Job Titles category 9.31% 7.16% 6.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,099 568 765
10th Percentile £413 £449 £425
25th Percentile £484 £513 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £625 £610
Median % change year-on-year -8.00% +2.54% -2.48%
75th Percentile £700 £725 £750
90th Percentile £813 £841 £875
England median daily rate £575 £600 £588
% change year-on-year -4.17% +2.13% -2.08%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 5 11
10th Percentile £31.56 £19.60 -
25th Percentile £61.25 £37.00 £35.00
Median hourly rate £70.00 £40.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +75.00% +6.67% -21.05%
75th Percentile £76.75 £67.50 £62.19
90th Percentile £94.64 £69.00 £71.88
England median hourly rate £82.50 £70.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year +17.86% +27.27% -

All Contract IT Job Roles
London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in London. 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 London with a recognized job title 17,565 11,566 16,515
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.87% 93.51% 93.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,581 7,842 11,869
10th Percentile £358 £341 £325
25th Percentile £433 £425 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.18% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £675
90th Percentile £763 £799 £800
England median daily rate £520 £513 £525
% change year-on-year +1.46% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 295 169 324
10th Percentile £18.75 £19.89 £16.00
25th Percentile £25.15 £24.00 £20.17
Median hourly rate £39.50 £32.89 £27.81
Median % change year-on-year +20.10% +18.27% -24.37%
75th Percentile £63.10 £50.75 £46.49
90th Percentile £78.67 £65.00 £66.85
England median hourly rate £45.00 £28.75 £39.55
% change year-on-year +56.52% -27.31% -12.11%

Lead
Job Vacancy Trend in London

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

Lead job vacancy trend in London

Lead
Daily Rate Trend in London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Lead job vacancies in London.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Lead job vacancies in London

Lead
Daily Rate Histogram in London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Lead in London over the 6 months to 17 June 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Lead in London

Lead
Hourly Rate Trend in London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Lead job vacancies in London.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Lead job vacancies in London

Lead
Hourly Rate Histogram in London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Lead in London over the 6 months to 17 June 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Lead in London

Lead
Contract Job Locations in London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Lead within the London region over the 6 months to 17 June 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
Central London +3 179 £600 -4.00% 110
West London +16 48 £650 +92.59% 37
South London -10 12 £500 -28.57% 8
East London -13 5 £450 -23.08% 13
North London +3 3 £448 -18.64% 3
Lead
England

Lead Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in London

For the 6 months to 17 June 2026, Lead 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 across the London region featuring Lead in the job title.

1 331 (20.24%) Stakeholder Management
2 305 (18.65%) Agile
3 303 (18.53%) AWS
4 301 (18.41%) Migration
5 264 (16.15%) Security Cleared
6 245 (14.98%) Azure
7 230 (14.07%) SC Cleared
8 227 (13.88%) Python
9 226 (13.82%) CI/CD
10 225 (13.76%) DevOps
11 221 (13.52%) AI
12 209 (12.78%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 188 (11.50%) Continuous Improvement
13 188 (11.50%) Technical Leadership
14 180 (11.01%) Data Migration
15 168 (10.28%) SQL
16 163 (9.97%) Analytics
17 158 (9.66%) Roadmaps
18 157 (9.60%) Microsoft
19 156 (9.54%) ERP
20 152 (9.30%) Decision-Making
21 140 (8.56%) Problem-Solving
22 136 (8.32%) Mentoring
23 134 (8.20%) Validation
24 132 (8.07%) Data Modelling
25 128 (7.83%) SAP
26 124 (7.58%) Software Engineering
27 123 (7.52%) Oracle
28 115 (7.03%) User Acceptance Testing
29 107 (6.54%) Data Quality

Lead Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in London 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 37 (2.26%) Confluence
2 28 (1.71%) Apache Spark
3 21 (1.28%) SharePoint
4 15 (0.92%) Apache
5 11 (0.67%) CMS
6 10 (0.61%) Apache Airflow
7 8 (0.49%) SAS
8 5 (0.31%) Appian
8 5 (0.31%) Microsoft Exchange
8 5 (0.31%) Tomcat
9 4 (0.24%) Jupyter
9 4 (0.24%) nginx
9 4 (0.24%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 3 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
10 3 (0.18%) WebSphere
11 2 (0.12%) ArcGIS
11 2 (0.12%) IIS
11 2 (0.12%) Oracle Spatial
11 2 (0.12%) SharePoint 2013
12 1 (0.061%) Cloud Foundry
Applications
1 20 (1.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (0.92%) Chatbot
3 10 (0.61%) Microsoft Project
4 9 (0.55%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.24%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 4 (0.24%) Microsoft Office
5 4 (0.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 2 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.061%) PrintSoft PReS
Business Applications
1 56 (3.43%) SAP S/4HANA
2 14 (0.86%) NetSuite
2 14 (0.86%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
3 12 (0.73%) Oracle ERP
3 12 (0.73%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 11 (0.67%) Oracle Receivables
5 10 (0.61%) Workday HCM
6 9 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
6 9 (0.55%) Oracle EBS
6 9 (0.55%) Oracle Payables
7 7 (0.43%) Oracle General Ledger
7 7 (0.43%) Payment Gateway
8 6 (0.37%) Aladdin
8 6 (0.37%) Finacle
9 5 (0.31%) Oracle Financials
10 4 (0.24%) Oracle FAH
10 4 (0.24%) SAP HCM
11 3 (0.18%) Oracle Assets
11 3 (0.18%) Oracle EBS R12
11 3 (0.18%) SAP FI-AR
Cloud Services
1 303 (18.53%) AWS
2 245 (14.98%) Azure
3 102 (6.24%) Power Platform
4 91 (5.57%) GCP
5 62 (3.79%) Amazon S3
6 55 (3.36%) Azure DevOps
6 55 (3.36%) Serverless
7 54 (3.30%) Dynamics 365
8 47 (2.87%) AWS Lambda
8 47 (2.87%) GitHub
9 42 (2.57%) OCI
10 37 (2.26%) AWS CloudFormation
10 37 (2.26%) SaaS
11 32 (1.96%) GitHub Actions
12 30 (1.83%) Snowflake
13 25 (1.53%) Microsoft 365
14 24 (1.47%) Salesforce Service Cloud
15 23 (1.41%) Amazon ECS
16 20 (1.22%) Amazon EKS
17 17 (1.04%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 12 (0.73%) WAN
2 11 (0.67%) Firewall
2 11 (0.67%) Network Security
3 9 (0.55%) Wi-Fi
4 7 (0.43%) LAN
5 6 (0.37%) NGFW
5 6 (0.37%) SD-WAN
5 6 (0.37%) Wireless
6 5 (0.31%) Internet
6 5 (0.31%) VPN
7 4 (0.24%) HTTP
8 3 (0.18%) BGP
8 3 (0.18%) OSPF
8 3 (0.18%) TCP/IP
9 2 (0.12%) FTP
9 2 (0.12%) Kerberos
9 2 (0.12%) VLAN
10 1 (0.061%) Cisco IPT
10 1 (0.061%) Intrusion Detection
10 1 (0.061%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 88 (5.38%) Power BI
2 35 (2.14%) Data Warehouse
2 35 (2.14%) Metadata
3 34 (2.08%) PostgreSQL
3 34 (2.08%) SQL Server
4 29 (1.77%) Data Lake
5 18 (1.10%) Amazon Athena
6 17 (1.04%) Big Data
6 17 (1.04%) BigQuery
6 17 (1.04%) DynamoDB
7 15 (0.92%) Amazon RDS
8 13 (0.80%) Relational Database
9 11 (0.67%) Oracle Reports
9 11 (0.67%) Snowflake Schema
9 11 (0.67%) Tableau
10 10 (0.61%) Data Mart
10 10 (0.61%) OLTP
11 9 (0.55%) NoSQL
11 9 (0.55%) Oracle Database
12 8 (0.49%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 98 (5.99%) JIRA
2 31 (1.90%) Git
3 30 (1.83%) Jenkins
4 27 (1.65%) GitLab
5 11 (0.67%) Selenium
6 10 (0.61%) Cypress.io
6 10 (0.61%) REST Assured
6 10 (0.61%) Zephyr
7 9 (0.55%) JMeter
8 7 (0.43%) Eclipse
9 6 (0.37%) LoadRunner
10 4 (0.24%) Appium
10 4 (0.24%) Cucumber
11 3 (0.18%) Ant
11 3 (0.18%) Gatling
11 3 (0.18%) Postman
11 3 (0.18%) SpecFlow
11 3 (0.18%) Visual Studio Code
12 2 (0.12%) ScriptRunner
12 2 (0.12%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 528 (32.29%) Finance
2 339 (20.73%) Social Skills
3 179 (10.95%) Public Sector
4 135 (8.26%) Banking
5 114 (6.97%) Analytical Skills
6 54 (3.30%) Retail
7 53 (3.24%) Front Office
8 46 (2.81%) Law
9 44 (2.69%) Influencing Skills
9 44 (2.69%) Legal
10 32 (1.96%) Marketing
11 24 (1.47%) Organisational Skills
12 23 (1.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 23 (1.41%) Telecoms
13 21 (1.28%) Manufacturing
14 18 (1.10%) Documentation Skills
15 16 (0.98%) Local Government
15 16 (0.98%) Presentation Skills
16 15 (0.92%) Financial Institution
17 14 (0.86%) Investment Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 77 (4.71%) React
2 67 (4.10%) Kafka
3 58 (3.55%) Node.js
4 46 (2.81%) .NET
4 46 (2.81%) Oracle Fusion
5 38 (2.32%) Redux
6 34 (2.08%) Middleware
7 29 (1.77%) REST
8 27 (1.65%) GraphQL
9 21 (1.28%) Lightning Web Components
10 20 (1.22%) PySpark
11 18 (1.10%) AngularJS
11 18 (1.10%) Spring
12 16 (0.98%) Playwright
12 16 (0.98%) SOAP
13 15 (0.92%) Spring Boot
14 11 (0.67%) Web Services
15 10 (0.61%) ADO
15 10 (0.61%) HTML
15 10 (0.61%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 104 (6.36%) Cloud Native
2 84 (5.14%) Product Ownership
3 70 (4.28%) Legacy Systems
4 58 (3.55%) Onboarding
5 50 (3.06%) Fixed Income
6 40 (2.45%) Data Structures
7 33 (2.02%) AI Agents
8 28 (1.71%) Equities
9 27 (1.65%) Distributed Systems
10 24 (1.47%) Derivative
11 23 (1.41%) Data Centre
11 23 (1.41%) Virtual Team
12 19 (1.16%) Self-Motivation
13 15 (0.92%) Data Protection Act
13 15 (0.92%) Management Information System
14 14 (0.86%) Reference Data
15 13 (0.80%) Security Posture
16 12 (0.73%) Taxonomies
17 11 (0.67%) e-Learning
17 11 (0.67%) Learning Management System
Operating Systems
1 42 (2.57%) Windows
2 37 (2.26%) Linux
3 9 (0.55%) Windows Server
4 8 (0.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 4 (0.24%) Mac OS
5 4 (0.24%) Solaris
5 4 (0.24%) Unix
5 4 (0.24%) Windows Server 2008
6 3 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
7 1 (0.061%) AIX
7 1 (0.061%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.061%) Windows Server 2012
7 1 (0.061%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 331 (20.24%) Stakeholder Management
2 305 (18.65%) Agile
3 301 (18.41%) Migration
4 226 (13.82%) CI/CD
5 225 (13.76%) DevOps
6 221 (13.52%) AI
7 209 (12.78%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 188 (11.50%) Continuous Improvement
8 188 (11.50%) Technical Leadership
9 180 (11.01%) Data Migration
10 163 (9.97%) Analytics
11 158 (9.66%) Roadmaps
12 156 (9.54%) ERP
13 152 (9.30%) Decision-Making
14 140 (8.56%) Problem-Solving
15 136 (8.32%) Mentoring
16 134 (8.20%) Validation
17 132 (8.07%) Data Modelling
18 124 (7.58%) Software Engineering
19 115 (7.03%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 227 (13.88%) Python
2 168 (10.28%) SQL
3 96 (5.87%) Java
4 88 (5.38%) TypeScript
5 79 (4.83%) JavaScript
6 42 (2.57%) C#
7 21 (1.28%) PowerShell
8 20 (1.22%) Apex Code
8 20 (1.22%) Go
9 14 (0.86%) PL/SQL
10 13 (0.80%) Bash
11 10 (0.61%) Scala
12 8 (0.49%) T-SQL
13 7 (0.43%) Bicep
13 7 (0.43%) Kotlin
14 6 (0.37%) Ruby
15 5 (0.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 4 (0.24%) R
16 4 (0.24%) SAS Macro
16 4 (0.24%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 264 (16.15%) Security Cleared
2 230 (14.07%) SC Cleared
3 83 (5.08%) Degree
4 26 (1.59%) Computer Science Degree
5 25 (1.53%) PMP
6 22 (1.35%) Azure Certification
6 22 (1.35%) DV Cleared
7 21 (1.28%) CISSP
8 19 (1.16%) PMI Certification
9 18 (1.10%) Master's Degree
10 16 (0.98%) BPSS Clearance
11 12 (0.73%) AWS Certification
12 11 (0.67%) Cisco Certification
12 11 (0.67%) CISM
13 9 (0.55%) DBS Check
14 8 (0.49%) CTC Cleared
14 8 (0.49%) Microsoft Certification
15 6 (0.37%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 6 (0.37%) APMP
16 5 (0.31%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 107 (6.54%) Data Quality
2 96 (5.87%) QA
3 48 (2.94%) PMO
4 42 (2.57%) GDPR
5 24 (1.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 23 (1.41%) Accessibility
7 19 (1.16%) NIST
8 17 (1.04%) GRC
9 16 (0.98%) SLA
10 14 (0.86%) IFRS
11 11 (0.67%) NCSC
12 10 (0.61%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 9 (0.55%) GAAP
14 8 (0.49%) WCAG
15 7 (0.43%) ISO 20022
16 6 (0.37%) Basel III
16 6 (0.37%) IFRS 17
17 4 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials
17 4 (0.24%) IFRS 9
17 4 (0.24%) Solvency II
System Software
1 60 (3.67%) Docker
2 21 (1.28%) Active Directory
3 4 (0.24%) Virtual Machines
4 3 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
4 3 (0.18%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.061%) Apache ZooKeeper
5 1 (0.061%) NFS
5 1 (0.061%) Oracle RAC
5 1 (0.061%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
5 1 (0.061%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 99 (6.06%) Terraform
2 79 (4.83%) Kubernetes
3 21 (1.28%) Ansible
3 21 (1.28%) Grafana
3 21 (1.28%) Prometheus
4 8 (0.49%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
5 6 (0.37%) Kibana
6 5 (0.31%) Microsoft Intune
6 5 (0.31%) Single Sign-On
7 4 (0.24%) Kubeflow
7 4 (0.24%) SCCM
8 3 (0.18%) Control-M
8 3 (0.18%) Istio
9 2 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 2 (0.12%) Argo
9 2 (0.12%) CASB
9 2 (0.12%) SCOM
10 1 (0.061%) EMC VPLEX
10 1 (0.061%) Tivoli
10 1 (0.061%) vMotion
Vendors
1 157 (9.60%) Microsoft
2 128 (7.83%) SAP
3 123 (7.52%) Oracle
4 67 (4.10%) Salesforce
5 44 (2.69%) Google
6 42 (2.57%) Databricks
6 42 (2.57%) Workday
7 32 (1.96%) ServiceNow
8 28 (1.71%) Conga
9 16 (0.98%) Informatica
10 15 (0.92%) MuleSoft
11 14 (0.86%) IBM
11 14 (0.86%) Splunk
12 12 (0.73%) Adobe
13 10 (0.61%) Ariba
13 10 (0.61%) Avaloq
13 10 (0.61%) Pega
14 8 (0.49%) Temenos
15 6 (0.37%) GoldenSource
15 6 (0.37%) Red Hat