Lead Contracts in the North of England

Leader
England > North of England

The median Leader daily rate in the North of England is £525, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 May 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
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 39 26 29
Rank change year-on-year -13 +3 +5
Contract jobs requiring a Lead 167 280 330
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the North of England 5.07% 5.87% 5.66%
As % of the Job Titles category 5.43% 6.30% 5.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 117 175 198
10th Percentile £349 £413 £400
25th Percentile £425 £500 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £582 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.79% +5.82% +10.00%
75th Percentile £600 £675 £650
90th Percentile £713 £850 £775
England median daily rate £585 £585 £600
% change year-on-year - -2.50% +2.39%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 11 14
10th Percentile £84.38 - £10.09
25th Percentile £84.67 - £12.88
Median hourly rate £96.85 £15.00 £26.66
Median % change year-on-year +545.63% -43.73% +6.62%
75th Percentile £102.00 £24.63 £43.75
90th Percentile - £46.18 £58.73
England median hourly rate £70.00 £62.02 £55.00
% change year-on-year +12.87% +12.76% +57.14%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
North of England

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the North of England. 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 North of England with a recognized job title 3,078 4,441 5,553
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 93.41% 93.14% 95.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,038 2,789 3,920
10th Percentile £230 £263 £285
25th Percentile £364 £385 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.29% -4.00% +5.26%
75th Percentile £550 £580 £600
90th Percentile £646 £673 £680
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 163 394 162
10th Percentile £12.86 £11.02 £13.96
25th Percentile £16.16 £12.53 £18.82
Median hourly rate £24.50 £19.34 £30.54
Median % change year-on-year +26.68% -36.67% +65.08%
75th Percentile £49.38 £45.97 £49.40
90th Percentile £80.22 £60.00 £65.68
England median hourly rate £30.62 £36.31 £45.00
% change year-on-year -15.67% -19.32% +100.00%

Lead
Job Vacancy Trend in the North of England

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

Job vacancy trend for Lead in the North of England

Lead
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the North of England

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Lead in the North of England.

Daily rate trend for Lead in the North of England

Lead
Daily Rate Histogram in the North of England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Lead in the North of England over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Lead in the North of England

Lead
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the North of England

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Lead in the North of England.

Hourly rate trend for Lead in the North of England

Lead
Contract Job Locations in the North of England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Lead within the North of England region over the 6 months to 1 May 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
North West -7 98 £528 -10.59% 380
Yorkshire -17 52 £516 -10.26% 199
North East +7 19 £550 +6.54% 68
Lead
England

Lead Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the North of England

For the 6 months to 1 May 2025, Lead 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 across the North of England region featuring Lead in the job title.

1 46 (27.54%) Social Skills
2 42 (25.15%) Agile
3 34 (20.36%) Finance
3 34 (20.36%) Stakeholder Management
4 28 (16.77%) Problem-Solving
5 27 (16.17%) AWS
6 24 (14.37%) SC Cleared
6 24 (14.37%) Security Cleared
7 23 (13.77%) SAP
8 22 (13.17%) Project Management
8 22 (13.17%) Change Management
8 22 (13.17%) Roadmaps
9 21 (12.57%) CI/CD
9 21 (12.57%) DevOps
10 20 (11.98%) Java
11 19 (11.38%) JIRA
11 19 (11.38%) Terraform
11 19 (11.38%) Public Sector
12 15 (8.98%) PRINCE2
12 15 (8.98%) Python
12 15 (8.98%) Analytical Skills
12 15 (8.98%) Continuous Improvement
13 14 (8.38%) Node.js
13 14 (8.38%) Microservices
14 13 (7.78%) Microsoft
15 12 (7.19%) PMI Certification
15 12 (7.19%) JavaScript
15 12 (7.19%) GitLab
15 12 (7.19%) Kubernetes
15 12 (7.19%) Docker

Lead Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the North of England 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 8 (4.79%) Confluence
2 3 (1.80%) Apache
2 3 (1.80%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (1.20%) Camunda
4 1 (0.60%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.60%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.60%) CMS
4 1 (0.60%) Liferay
4 1 (0.60%) nginx
4 1 (0.60%) Oracle Workflow
4 1 (0.60%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.60%) Traefik
Applications
1 5 (2.99%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (1.80%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (1.20%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (1.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.60%) CATIA
Business Applications
1 7 (4.19%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (3.59%) Kondor
3 3 (1.80%) Finacle
4 1 (0.60%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.60%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.60%) SAP CO
4 1 (0.60%) SAP CRM
4 1 (0.60%) SAP FI
4 1 (0.60%) SAP FI/CO
4 1 (0.60%) SAP GRC
4 1 (0.60%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 27 (16.17%) AWS
2 10 (5.99%) SuccessFactors
3 9 (5.39%) Serverless
4 8 (4.79%) Azure
5 5 (2.99%) Salesforce Service Cloud
6 4 (2.40%) Power Platform
6 4 (2.40%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
7 3 (1.80%) GitHub
7 3 (1.80%) Kong
7 3 (1.80%) SaaS
8 2 (1.20%) Amazon ECS
8 2 (1.20%) Amazon EKS
8 2 (1.20%) Amazon EventBridge
8 2 (1.20%) AWS Lambda
8 2 (1.20%) GCP
8 2 (1.20%) OpenShift
9 1 (0.60%) Amazon MSK
9 1 (0.60%) Dynamics 365
9 1 (0.60%) GitHub Actions
9 1 (0.60%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 4 (2.40%) DHCP
1 4 (2.40%) Firewall
2 3 (1.80%) DNS
2 3 (1.80%) VPN
3 2 (1.20%) DMZ
3 2 (1.20%) TCP/IP
3 2 (1.20%) WAN
4 1 (0.60%) Cisco Firepower
4 1 (0.60%) Ethernet
4 1 (0.60%) FlexRay
4 1 (0.60%) HTTP
4 1 (0.60%) Intrusion Detection
4 1 (0.60%) LAN
4 1 (0.60%) Network Security
4 1 (0.60%) SD-WAN
4 1 (0.60%) VLAN
4 1 (0.60%) VoIP
4 1 (0.60%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (2.40%) MongoDB
2 3 (1.80%) Electronic Patient Records
2 3 (1.80%) PostgreSQL
2 3 (1.80%) Power BI
3 2 (1.20%) DynamoDB
3 2 (1.20%) Metadata
3 2 (1.20%) NoSQL
3 2 (1.20%) SAP HANA
3 2 (1.20%) Tableau
4 1 (0.60%) Amazon Aurora
4 1 (0.60%) Amazon RDS
4 1 (0.60%) Apache Cassandra
4 1 (0.60%) Data Warehouse
4 1 (0.60%) Delta Lake
4 1 (0.60%) DocumentDB
4 1 (0.60%) GIS
4 1 (0.60%) Hadoop
4 1 (0.60%) MySQL
4 1 (0.60%) Oracle Reports
4 1 (0.60%) Redis
Development Applications
1 19 (11.38%) JIRA
2 12 (7.19%) GitLab
3 4 (2.40%) Git
3 4 (2.40%) Jenkins
4 3 (1.80%) Cucumber
4 3 (1.80%) JUnit
4 3 (1.80%) Rational Rhapsody
4 3 (1.80%) Selenium
5 2 (1.20%) Eclipse
5 2 (1.20%) Maven
6 1 (0.60%) Jasmine
6 1 (0.60%) Katalon Studio
6 1 (0.60%) Octopus Deploy
6 1 (0.60%) ScriptRunner
6 1 (0.60%) TeamCity
6 1 (0.60%) Visual Studio
6 1 (0.60%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 46 (27.54%) Social Skills
2 34 (20.36%) Finance
3 19 (11.38%) Public Sector
4 15 (8.98%) Analytical Skills
5 9 (5.39%) Banking
5 9 (5.39%) Presentation Skills
6 8 (4.79%) Manufacturing
6 8 (4.79%) Pharmaceutical
7 5 (2.99%) Legal
8 4 (2.40%) Marketing
8 4 (2.40%) Telecoms
9 3 (1.80%) Automotive
9 3 (1.80%) Electronics
10 2 (1.20%) Digital Healthcare
10 2 (1.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 2 (1.20%) Influencing Skills
10 2 (1.20%) Investment Banking
10 2 (1.20%) Law
10 2 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
10 2 (1.20%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (8.38%) Node.js
2 10 (5.99%) Spring Boot
3 6 (3.59%) Kafka
4 5 (2.99%) Spring
5 4 (2.40%) AngularJS
5 4 (2.40%) Jest
5 4 (2.40%) Lambda Expressions
5 4 (2.40%) Lightning Web Components
5 4 (2.40%) React
6 3 (1.80%) .NET
7 2 (1.20%) Apache POI
7 2 (1.20%) CSS
7 2 (1.20%) HTML
7 2 (1.20%) JDBC
7 2 (1.20%) PySpark
7 2 (1.20%) RESTful
8 1 (0.60%) CSS3
8 1 (0.60%) Pandas
8 1 (0.60%) pytest
8 1 (0.60%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 11 (6.59%) Product Ownership
2 7 (4.19%) Onboarding
3 5 (2.99%) PMI
4 4 (2.40%) Cloud Native
4 4 (2.40%) Data Protection Act
4 4 (2.40%) NHS
5 3 (1.80%) Legacy Systems
6 2 (1.20%) Analytical Mindset
6 2 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
6 2 (1.20%) Hybrid Cloud
6 2 (1.20%) Management Information System
6 2 (1.20%) Team-Oriented Environment
7 1 (0.60%) BYOD
7 1 (0.60%) Data Centre
7 1 (0.60%) Data Structures
7 1 (0.60%) Mobile App
7 1 (0.60%) PKI
7 1 (0.60%) Private Cloud
7 1 (0.60%) Social Media
7 1 (0.60%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 9 (5.39%) Linux
2 5 (2.99%) Unix
2 5 (2.99%) Windows
3 3 (1.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 3 (1.80%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.60%) CentOS
4 1 (0.60%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 42 (25.15%) Agile
2 34 (20.36%) Stakeholder Management
3 28 (16.77%) Problem-Solving
4 22 (13.17%) Change Management
4 22 (13.17%) Project Management
4 22 (13.17%) Roadmaps
5 21 (12.57%) CI/CD
5 21 (12.57%) DevOps
6 15 (8.98%) Continuous Improvement
6 15 (8.98%) PRINCE2
7 14 (8.38%) Microservices
8 11 (6.59%) Decision-Making
8 11 (6.59%) ITIL
8 11 (6.59%) Service Management
8 11 (6.59%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 10 (5.99%) TDD
10 8 (4.79%) Business Intelligence
10 8 (4.79%) Cybersecurity
10 8 (4.79%) Mentoring
10 8 (4.79%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 20 (11.98%) Java
2 15 (8.98%) Python
3 12 (7.19%) JavaScript
4 7 (4.19%) SQL
5 6 (3.59%) TypeScript
6 4 (2.40%) Apex Code
7 3 (1.80%) Bash
7 3 (1.80%) PowerShell
8 2 (1.20%) C#
9 1 (0.60%) Bicep
9 1 (0.60%) C++
9 1 (0.60%) Go
9 1 (0.60%) Groovy
9 1 (0.60%) Perl
9 1 (0.60%) Shell Script
9 1 (0.60%) VB
Qualifications
1 24 (14.37%) SC Cleared
1 24 (14.37%) Security Cleared
2 12 (7.19%) PMI Certification
3 8 (4.79%) Degree
4 7 (4.19%) PMP
5 6 (3.59%) BPSS Clearance
6 4 (2.40%) ISTQB
7 3 (1.80%) Master's Degree
8 2 (1.20%) APMG
8 2 (1.20%) AWS Certification
8 2 (1.20%) ITIL Certification
8 2 (1.20%) SAP Certification
9 1 (0.60%) Azure Certification
9 1 (0.60%) CBAP
9 1 (0.60%) CIMA
9 1 (0.60%) DBS Check
9 1 (0.60%) DV Cleared
9 1 (0.60%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 1 (0.60%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (5.99%) PMO
2 8 (4.79%) QA
3 4 (2.40%) Accessibility
3 4 (2.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 3 (1.80%) Data Quality
4 3 (1.80%) NIST
5 2 (1.20%) ISO/IEC 20000
5 2 (1.20%) PCI DSS
5 2 (1.20%) SLA
6 1 (0.60%) AUTOSAR
6 1 (0.60%) GDPR
6 1 (0.60%) GRC
6 1 (0.60%) NCSC
System Software
1 12 (7.19%) Docker
2 3 (1.80%) Active Directory
3 2 (1.20%) Virtual Desktop
4 1 (0.60%) Apache ZooKeeper
4 1 (0.60%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 19 (11.38%) Terraform
2 12 (7.19%) Kubernetes
3 7 (4.19%) Ansible
4 4 (2.40%) Packer
5 2 (1.20%) Dell DRAC
5 2 (1.20%) Grafana
5 2 (1.20%) Progress Chef
5 2 (1.20%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.60%) AppManager
6 1 (0.60%) Consul
6 1 (0.60%) HAProxy
6 1 (0.60%) Istio
6 1 (0.60%) Jamf Pro
6 1 (0.60%) linkerd
6 1 (0.60%) Puppet
6 1 (0.60%) Rancher
6 1 (0.60%) SCCM
6 1 (0.60%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 23 (13.77%) SAP
2 13 (7.78%) Microsoft
3 6 (3.59%) Salesforce
4 3 (1.80%) Ceridian
4 3 (1.80%) Databricks
4 3 (1.80%) Dell
4 3 (1.80%) FIS
4 3 (1.80%) IBM
4 3 (1.80%) Murex
4 3 (1.80%) ServiceNow
5 2 (1.20%) Ariba
5 2 (1.20%) Citrix
5 2 (1.20%) CyberArk
5 2 (1.20%) New Relic
5 2 (1.20%) Oracle
5 2 (1.20%) Splunk
5 2 (1.20%) Virgin Media
6 1 (0.60%) Apple
6 1 (0.60%) Cisco
6 1 (0.60%) TIBCO