Lead Software Developer Contract Job Trends in the North West

Lead Software Developer
England > North West

The median Lead Software Developer daily rate in the North West is £572, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 30 April 2026.

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

6 months to
30 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 154 - -
Rank change year-on-year - - -
Contract jobs requiring a Lead Software Developer 7 0 0
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 0.22% - -
As % of the Job Titles category 0.24% - -
Number of daily rates quoted 7 0 0
10th Percentile £547 - -
25th Percentile £570 - -
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £572 - -
75th Percentile £574 - -
90th Percentile £575 - -
England median daily rate £750 £683 £825
% change year-on-year +9.89% -17.27% +32.00%

All Contract IT Job Roles
North West

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the North West. 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 West with a recognized job title 2,937 1,808 2,621
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.04% 92.62% 94.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,719 1,202 1,712
10th Percentile £261 £250 £276
25th Percentile £375 £378 £390
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £475 £493
Median % change year-on-year -2.11% -3.65% -1.40%
75th Percentile £575 £563 £585
90th Percentile £670 £652 £675
England median daily rate £510 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -2.86% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 297 107 266
10th Percentile £19.00 £13.00 £11.07
25th Percentile £25.49 £17.72 £13.50
Median hourly rate £45.56 £30.40 £26.53
Median % change year-on-year +49.85% +14.61% -13.15%
75th Percentile £71.91 £59.95 £46.18
90th Percentile £84.25 £84.15 £63.75
England median hourly rate £47.00 £31.64 £35.96
% change year-on-year +48.55% -12.01% -20.09%

Lead Software Developer
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

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

Lead Software Developer job vacancy trend in the North West

Lead Software Developer
Daily Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Lead Software Developer job vacancies in the North West.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Lead Software Developer job vacancies in the North West

Lead Software Developer
Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Lead Software Developer job vacancies in the North West.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Lead Software Developer job vacancies in the North West

Lead Software Developer
Contract Job Locations in the North West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Lead Software Developer within the North West region over the 6 months to 30 April 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
Manchester - 7 £572 - 3
Lead Software Developer
England

Lead Software Developer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North West

For the 6 months to 30 April 2026, Lead Software Developer 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 North West region featuring Lead Software Developer in the job title.

1 6 (85.71%) CI/CD
1 6 (85.71%) DevOps
1 6 (85.71%) Docker
1 6 (85.71%) Kubernetes
2 5 (71.43%) AWS
2 5 (71.43%) Azure
2 5 (71.43%) Java
2 5 (71.43%) Microservices
3 4 (57.14%) Agile
3 4 (57.14%) Node.js
3 4 (57.14%) Spring
4 3 (42.86%) API Development
4 3 (42.86%) Code Quality
4 3 (42.86%) Containerisation
4 3 (42.86%) Grafana
4 3 (42.86%) Mentoring
4 3 (42.86%) REST
4 3 (42.86%) SC Cleared
4 3 (42.86%) Security Cleared
4 3 (42.86%) Spring Boot
4 3 (42.86%) Technical Leadership
4 3 (42.86%) Terraform
4 3 (42.86%) Test Automation
5 2 (28.57%) Amazon EC2
5 2 (28.57%) Amazon ECR
5 2 (28.57%) Amazon S3
5 2 (28.57%) Amazon SQS
5 2 (28.57%) AWS Lambda
5 2 (28.57%) Continuous Improvement
5 2 (28.57%) DocumentDB

Lead Software Developer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North West 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:

Cloud Services
1 5 (71.43%) AWS
1 5 (71.43%) Azure
2 2 (28.57%) Amazon EC2
2 2 (28.57%) Amazon ECR
2 2 (28.57%) Amazon S3
2 2 (28.57%) Amazon SQS
2 2 (28.57%) AWS Lambda
2 2 (28.57%) Serverless
3 1 (14.29%) Amazon CloudWatch
3 1 (14.29%) Azure AKS
3 1 (14.29%) Azure Monitor
3 1 (14.29%) GCP
3 1 (14.29%) GitHub
3 1 (14.29%) GitHub Actions
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (28.57%) DocumentDB
2 1 (14.29%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 2 (28.57%) GitLab
2 1 (14.29%) Git
2 1 (14.29%) Jenkins
2 1 (14.29%) Mocha
General
1 7 (100.00%) Public Sector
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (57.14%) Node.js
1 4 (57.14%) Spring
2 3 (42.86%) REST
2 3 (42.86%) Spring Boot
3 2 (28.57%) Nunjucks
4 1 (14.29%) AngularJS
4 1 (14.29%) ARM Templates
4 1 (14.29%) Elastic Stack
4 1 (14.29%) Express.js
4 1 (14.29%) GraphQL
4 1 (14.29%) Jest
4 1 (14.29%) OpenTelemetry
4 1 (14.29%) React
4 1 (14.29%) RESTful
4 1 (14.29%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 4 (57.14%) Cloud Native
2 1 (14.29%) Distributed Systems
2 1 (14.29%) Legacy Systems
2 1 (14.29%) NHS
2 1 (14.29%) Product Ownership
Processes & Methodologies
1 6 (85.71%) CI/CD
1 6 (85.71%) DevOps
2 5 (71.43%) Microservices
3 4 (57.14%) Agile
4 3 (42.86%) API Development
4 3 (42.86%) Code Quality
4 3 (42.86%) Containerisation
4 3 (42.86%) Mentoring
4 3 (42.86%) Technical Leadership
4 3 (42.86%) Test Automation
5 2 (28.57%) Continuous Improvement
5 2 (28.57%) Event-Driven
5 2 (28.57%) Full-Stack Development
5 2 (28.57%) Infrastructure as Code
5 2 (28.57%) Integration Patterns
5 2 (28.57%) Observability
5 2 (28.57%) Secure Coding
5 2 (28.57%) SFIA
6 1 (14.29%) Pair Programming
6 1 (14.29%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 5 (71.43%) Java
2 2 (28.57%) JavaScript
2 2 (28.57%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 3 (42.86%) SC Cleared
1 3 (42.86%) Security Cleared
2 1 (14.29%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (14.29%) Accessibility
1 1 (14.29%) QA
System Software
1 6 (85.71%) Docker
Systems Management
1 6 (85.71%) Kubernetes
2 3 (42.86%) Grafana
2 3 (42.86%) Terraform
3 1 (14.29%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 1 (14.29%) Microsoft