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 15 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
15 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 34 25 30
Rank change year-on-year -9 +5 +8
Contract jobs requiring a Lead 180 270 318
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the North of England 5.47% 5.84% 5.61%
As % of the Job Titles category 5.85% 6.27% 5.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 129 172 193
10th Percentile £358 £413 £400
25th Percentile £425 £500 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £584 £550
Median % change year-on-year -10.03% +6.09% +10.00%
75th Percentile £625 £675 £650
90th Percentile £718 £850 £745
England median daily rate £585 £588 £600
% change year-on-year -0.43% -2.08% +3.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 11 15
10th Percentile £88.26 - £10.09
25th Percentile £93.41 - £15.67
Median hourly rate £102.00 £15.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +580.00% -57.14% -26.32%
75th Percentile - £24.63 £43.75
90th Percentile - £46.18 £57.05
England median hourly rate £70.00 £61.01 £53.99
% change year-on-year +14.74% +13.01% +47.08%

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 3,079 4,309 5,414
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 93.62% 93.21% 95.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,037 2,698 3,808
10th Percentile £230 £263 £279
25th Percentile £365 £388 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.59% -2.50% +5.26%
75th Percentile £551 £582 £600
90th Percentile £645 £675 £680
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -0.10% -4.55% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 166 396 158
10th Percentile £12.82 £11.04 £14.25
25th Percentile £16.25 £12.53 £18.50
Median hourly rate £24.50 £20.76 £30.54
Median % change year-on-year +18.04% -32.04% +58.69%
75th Percentile £49.69 £46.18 £49.48
90th Percentile £76.88 £62.50 £66.21
England median hourly rate £30.20 £37.18 £45.00
% change year-on-year -18.77% -17.38% +95.65%

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 15 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 15 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 -6 107 £530 -10.17% 448
Yorkshire -10 56 £525 -8.70% 248
North East +6 19 £558 +4.69% 68
Lead
England

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

For the 6 months to 15 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 52 (28.89%) Social Skills
2 43 (23.89%) Agile
3 41 (22.78%) Stakeholder Management
4 37 (20.56%) Finance
5 30 (16.67%) Problem-Solving
6 27 (15.00%) AWS
7 26 (14.44%) SC Cleared
7 26 (14.44%) Security Cleared
8 23 (12.78%) Change Management
8 23 (12.78%) SAP
8 23 (12.78%) CI/CD
9 22 (12.22%) DevOps
10 21 (11.67%) Java
10 21 (11.67%) Project Management
11 20 (11.11%) JIRA
11 20 (11.11%) Roadmaps
12 19 (10.56%) Public Sector
12 19 (10.56%) Terraform
13 16 (8.89%) Analytical Skills
13 16 (8.89%) Microservices
14 15 (8.33%) Continuous Improvement
14 15 (8.33%) PRINCE2
14 15 (8.33%) Python
15 14 (7.78%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 14 (7.78%) Node.js
15 14 (7.78%) Docker
15 14 (7.78%) Decision-Making
16 12 (6.67%) Kubernetes
16 12 (6.67%) ITIL
16 12 (6.67%) Microsoft

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 9 (5.00%) Confluence
2 3 (1.67%) Apache
3 2 (1.11%) Apache Spark
3 2 (1.11%) Camunda
3 2 (1.11%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.56%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 1 (0.56%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.56%) CMS
4 1 (0.56%) Liferay
4 1 (0.56%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 5 (2.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (1.67%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (1.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.56%) CATIA
4 1 (0.56%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 6 (3.33%) Kondor
2 5 (2.78%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (1.67%) Finacle
4 1 (0.56%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.56%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.56%) SAP CO
4 1 (0.56%) SAP CRM
4 1 (0.56%) SAP FI
4 1 (0.56%) SAP FI/CO
4 1 (0.56%) SAP GRC
4 1 (0.56%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 27 (15.00%) AWS
2 10 (5.56%) Serverless
2 10 (5.56%) SuccessFactors
3 8 (4.44%) Azure
4 5 (2.78%) GitHub
5 4 (2.22%) Power Platform
5 4 (2.22%) Salesforce Service Cloud
6 3 (1.67%) Amazon EKS
6 3 (1.67%) Amazon EventBridge
6 3 (1.67%) AWS Lambda
6 3 (1.67%) GCP
6 3 (1.67%) Kong
6 3 (1.67%) SaaS
6 3 (1.67%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
7 2 (1.11%) Amazon ECS
7 2 (1.11%) Amazon MSK
7 2 (1.11%) Amazon SQS
7 2 (1.11%) Azure DevOps
7 2 (1.11%) GitHub Actions
7 2 (1.11%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 4 (2.22%) Firewall
2 3 (1.67%) DHCP
3 2 (1.11%) DMZ
3 2 (1.11%) DNS
3 2 (1.11%) VPN
4 1 (0.56%) Cisco Firepower
4 1 (0.56%) Ethernet
4 1 (0.56%) FlexRay
4 1 (0.56%) HTTP
4 1 (0.56%) Intrusion Detection
4 1 (0.56%) Network Security
4 1 (0.56%) SD-WAN
4 1 (0.56%) TCP/IP
4 1 (0.56%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (2.78%) MongoDB
2 4 (2.22%) NoSQL
3 3 (1.67%) DynamoDB
3 3 (1.67%) Electronic Patient Records
3 3 (1.67%) PostgreSQL
3 3 (1.67%) Power BI
4 2 (1.11%) Amazon Aurora
4 2 (1.11%) DocumentDB
4 2 (1.11%) Metadata
4 2 (1.11%) SAP HANA
4 2 (1.11%) Tableau
5 1 (0.56%) Amazon RDS
5 1 (0.56%) Apache Cassandra
5 1 (0.56%) BigQuery
5 1 (0.56%) Delta Lake
5 1 (0.56%) Flink
5 1 (0.56%) GIS
5 1 (0.56%) RDBMS
5 1 (0.56%) Redis
5 1 (0.56%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 20 (11.11%) JIRA
2 11 (6.11%) GitLab
3 4 (2.22%) Git
4 3 (1.67%) Cucumber
4 3 (1.67%) Jenkins
4 3 (1.67%) JUnit
4 3 (1.67%) Selenium
5 2 (1.11%) Eclipse
5 2 (1.11%) Maven
5 2 (1.11%) Rational Rhapsody
6 1 (0.56%) Jaeger
6 1 (0.56%) Jasmine
6 1 (0.56%) Katalon Studio
6 1 (0.56%) Octopus Deploy
6 1 (0.56%) ScriptRunner
6 1 (0.56%) TeamCity
6 1 (0.56%) Visual Studio
6 1 (0.56%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 52 (28.89%) Social Skills
2 37 (20.56%) Finance
3 19 (10.56%) Public Sector
4 16 (8.89%) Analytical Skills
5 11 (6.11%) Banking
6 9 (5.00%) Presentation Skills
7 7 (3.89%) Manufacturing
7 7 (3.89%) Pharmaceutical
8 5 (2.78%) Legal
8 5 (2.78%) Marketing
9 4 (2.22%) Organisational Skills
9 4 (2.22%) Telecoms
10 3 (1.67%) Automotive
10 3 (1.67%) Electronics
10 3 (1.67%) Investment Banking
11 2 (1.11%) Digital Healthcare
11 2 (1.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 2 (1.11%) Influencing Skills
11 2 (1.11%) Law
11 2 (1.11%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (7.78%) Node.js
2 10 (5.56%) Spring Boot
3 7 (3.89%) Kafka
4 5 (2.78%) Spring
5 4 (2.22%) AngularJS
5 4 (2.22%) Jest
5 4 (2.22%) Lambda Expressions
5 4 (2.22%) React
6 3 (1.67%) .NET
6 3 (1.67%) JDBC
6 3 (1.67%) Lightning Web Components
7 2 (1.11%) Apache POI
7 2 (1.11%) CSS
7 2 (1.11%) HTML
7 2 (1.11%) PySpark
7 2 (1.11%) pytest
7 2 (1.11%) RESTful
8 1 (0.56%) Pandas
8 1 (0.56%) Spark Streaming
8 1 (0.56%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 10 (5.56%) Product Ownership
2 7 (3.89%) Onboarding
3 5 (2.78%) Cloud Native
3 5 (2.78%) Data Protection Act
3 5 (2.78%) PMI
4 4 (2.22%) NHS
5 3 (1.67%) Legacy Systems
5 3 (1.67%) Management Information System
6 2 (1.11%) Analytical Mindset
6 2 (1.11%) Enterprise Software
6 2 (1.11%) Hybrid Cloud
6 2 (1.11%) Virtual Team
7 1 (0.56%) BYOD
7 1 (0.56%) Data Centre
7 1 (0.56%) Data Structures
7 1 (0.56%) Equities
7 1 (0.56%) Greenfield Project
7 1 (0.56%) Mobile App
7 1 (0.56%) Private Cloud
7 1 (0.56%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 9 (5.00%) Linux
2 5 (2.78%) Unix
3 3 (1.67%) Windows
3 3 (1.67%) Windows Server
4 2 (1.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 43 (23.89%) Agile
2 41 (22.78%) Stakeholder Management
3 30 (16.67%) Problem-Solving
4 23 (12.78%) Change Management
4 23 (12.78%) CI/CD
5 22 (12.22%) DevOps
6 21 (11.67%) Project Management
7 20 (11.11%) Roadmaps
8 16 (8.89%) Microservices
9 15 (8.33%) Continuous Improvement
9 15 (8.33%) PRINCE2
10 14 (7.78%) Decision-Making
10 14 (7.78%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 12 (6.67%) ITIL
12 11 (6.11%) Service Management
12 11 (6.11%) TDD
13 10 (5.56%) Migration
14 9 (5.00%) Business Intelligence
14 9 (5.00%) Mentoring
15 8 (4.44%) BDD
Programming Languages
1 21 (11.67%) Java
2 15 (8.33%) Python
3 11 (6.11%) JavaScript
4 9 (5.00%) SQL
5 6 (3.33%) TypeScript
6 3 (1.67%) Apex Code
6 3 (1.67%) Bash
6 3 (1.67%) PowerShell
7 2 (1.11%) Bicep
7 2 (1.11%) Groovy
8 1 (0.56%) C#
8 1 (0.56%) C++
8 1 (0.56%) Perl
8 1 (0.56%) Shell Script
8 1 (0.56%) VB
Qualifications
1 26 (14.44%) SC Cleared
1 26 (14.44%) Security Cleared
2 12 (6.67%) PMI Certification
3 7 (3.89%) Degree
3 7 (3.89%) PMP
4 6 (3.33%) BPSS Clearance
5 4 (2.22%) ISTQB
6 3 (1.67%) Master's Degree
7 2 (1.11%) APMG
7 2 (1.11%) ITIL Certification
7 2 (1.11%) SAP Certification
8 1 (0.56%) AWS Certification
8 1 (0.56%) Azure Certification
8 1 (0.56%) CBAP
8 1 (0.56%) CIMA
8 1 (0.56%) DBS Check
8 1 (0.56%) DV Cleared
8 1 (0.56%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 1 (0.56%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (5.56%) PMO
2 9 (5.00%) QA
3 5 (2.78%) Data Quality
4 4 (2.22%) Accessibility
4 4 (2.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 3 (1.67%) NIST
6 2 (1.11%) ISO/IEC 20000
6 2 (1.11%) PCI DSS
6 2 (1.11%) SLA
7 1 (0.56%) AUTOSAR
7 1 (0.56%) GDPR
7 1 (0.56%) GRC
7 1 (0.56%) GxP
7 1 (0.56%) HIPAA
7 1 (0.56%) ISO 31000
System Software
1 14 (7.78%) Docker
2 2 (1.11%) Active Directory
2 2 (1.11%) Virtual Desktop
3 1 (0.56%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 19 (10.56%) Terraform
2 12 (6.67%) Kubernetes
3 8 (4.44%) Ansible
4 3 (1.67%) Packer
5 2 (1.11%) Dell DRAC
5 2 (1.11%) Grafana
5 2 (1.11%) Progress Chef
6 1 (0.56%) Control-M
6 1 (0.56%) Istio
6 1 (0.56%) Kiali
6 1 (0.56%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.56%) Puppet
Vendors
1 23 (12.78%) SAP
2 12 (6.67%) Microsoft
3 7 (3.89%) ServiceNow
4 6 (3.33%) Salesforce
5 3 (1.67%) Ceridian
5 3 (1.67%) Databricks
5 3 (1.67%) FIS
5 3 (1.67%) Murex
6 2 (1.11%) Citrix
6 2 (1.11%) CyberArk
6 2 (1.11%) Dell
6 2 (1.11%) IBM
6 2 (1.11%) New Relic
6 2 (1.11%) Oracle
6 2 (1.11%) Splunk
6 2 (1.11%) Virgin Media
7 1 (0.56%) Adobe
7 1 (0.56%) Ariba
7 1 (0.56%) Cisco
7 1 (0.56%) TIBCO