Lead Contracts in the North West

Leader
England > North West

The median Leader daily rate in the North West is £528, 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 35 28 32
Rank change year-on-year -7 +4 +1
Contract jobs requiring a Lead 98 162 180
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the North West 4.98% 5.88% 5.64%
As % of the Job Titles category 5.38% 6.22% 5.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 76 113 114
10th Percentile £349 £375 £389
25th Percentile £413 £500 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £528 £590 £550
Median % change year-on-year -10.59% +7.27% +10.00%
75th Percentile £625 £694 £650
90th Percentile £738 £850 £775
England median daily rate £585 £585 £600
% change year-on-year - -2.50% +2.39%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 9 12
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - £10.09
Median hourly rate - £15.00 £24.16
Median % change year-on-year - -37.90% -20.15%
75th Percentile - £22.25 £37.19
90th Percentile - £34.00 £43.75
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 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 1,821 2,603 3,030
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.53% 94.48% 94.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,205 1,698 2,172
10th Percentile £250 £281 £300
25th Percentile £378 £393 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £493 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.65% -1.40% +5.26%
75th Percentile £563 £588 £588
90th Percentile £652 £675 £675
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 111 266 133
10th Percentile £13.00 £11.07 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.44 £13.50 £20.00
Median hourly rate £29.23 £26.53 £30.54
Median % change year-on-year +10.20% -13.15% +50.37%
75th Percentile £59.24 £46.18 £47.50
90th Percentile £83.41 £63.75 £65.00
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 West

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

Job vacancy trend for Lead in the North West

Lead
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the North West

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

Daily rate trend for Lead in the North West

Lead
Daily Rate Histogram in the North West

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

Daily rate histogram for Lead in the North West

Lead
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

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

Hourly rate trend for Lead in the North West

Lead
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 within the North West 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
Manchester -4 62 £500 -22.48% 186
Cheshire -9 18 £513 -12.39% 38
Lancashire +5 14 £538 +78.59% 102
Cumbria -8 3 £741 +27.23% 9
Merseyside -6 1 - - 21
Lead
England

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

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 West region featuring Lead in the job title.

1 25 (25.51%) Social Skills
2 19 (19.39%) Agile
3 16 (16.33%) SAP
4 15 (15.31%) Project Management
5 14 (14.29%) Finance
5 14 (14.29%) Stakeholder Management
5 14 (14.29%) AWS
6 11 (11.22%) Security Cleared
6 11 (11.22%) SC Cleared
6 11 (11.22%) JIRA
6 11 (11.22%) ITIL
6 11 (11.22%) Roadmaps
7 10 (10.20%) CI/CD
7 10 (10.20%) Change Management
7 10 (10.20%) SuccessFactors
8 9 (9.18%) DevOps
8 9 (9.18%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 9 (9.18%) Java
8 9 (9.18%) Microsoft
8 9 (9.18%) Banking
8 9 (9.18%) Problem-Solving
9 8 (8.16%) PRINCE2
9 8 (8.16%) Service Management
9 8 (8.16%) Node.js
9 8 (8.16%) Microservices
10 7 (7.14%) Analytical Skills
10 7 (7.14%) PMI Certification
10 7 (7.14%) Migration
10 7 (7.14%) Decision-Making
10 7 (7.14%) Public Sector

Lead Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the North West 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 3 (3.06%) Confluence
2 2 (2.04%) Apache
2 2 (2.04%) Camunda
2 2 (2.04%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (1.02%) CMS
3 1 (1.02%) Liferay
Applications
1 4 (4.08%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (3.06%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (1.02%) CATIA
3 1 (1.02%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 6 (6.12%) Kondor
2 5 (5.10%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (3.06%) Finacle
4 1 (1.02%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 14 (14.29%) AWS
2 10 (10.20%) SuccessFactors
3 6 (6.12%) Serverless
4 4 (4.08%) Azure
4 4 (4.08%) Power Platform
5 2 (2.04%) Amazon EKS
5 2 (2.04%) AWS Lambda
5 2 (2.04%) GitHub
5 2 (2.04%) OpenShift
5 2 (2.04%) SaaS
6 1 (1.02%) Amazon Cognito
6 1 (1.02%) Amazon ECS
6 1 (1.02%) Amazon EventBridge
6 1 (1.02%) Amazon MSK
6 1 (1.02%) Dynamics 365
6 1 (1.02%) GCP
6 1 (1.02%) GitHub Actions
6 1 (1.02%) Power Automate
6 1 (1.02%) PowerApps
6 1 (1.02%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 3 (3.06%) DHCP
1 3 (3.06%) Firewall
2 2 (2.04%) DMZ
2 2 (2.04%) VPN
3 1 (1.02%) DNS
3 1 (1.02%) Ethernet
3 1 (1.02%) FlexRay
3 1 (1.02%) HTTP
3 1 (1.02%) Intrusion Detection
3 1 (1.02%) SD-WAN
3 1 (1.02%) TCP/IP
3 1 (1.02%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (3.06%) Power BI
2 2 (2.04%) DynamoDB
2 2 (2.04%) NoSQL
2 2 (2.04%) SAP HANA
2 2 (2.04%) Tableau
3 1 (1.02%) Amazon Aurora
3 1 (1.02%) Amazon RDS
3 1 (1.02%) DocumentDB
3 1 (1.02%) Metadata
3 1 (1.02%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 11 (11.22%) JIRA
2 6 (6.12%) GitLab
3 2 (2.04%) Cucumber
3 2 (2.04%) Eclipse
3 2 (2.04%) Jenkins
3 2 (2.04%) JUnit
3 2 (2.04%) Maven
3 2 (2.04%) Selenium
4 1 (1.02%) Git
4 1 (1.02%) Octopus Deploy
4 1 (1.02%) ScriptRunner
4 1 (1.02%) TeamCity
General
1 25 (25.51%) Social Skills
2 14 (14.29%) Finance
3 9 (9.18%) Banking
4 7 (7.14%) Analytical Skills
4 7 (7.14%) Public Sector
5 6 (6.12%) Pharmaceutical
6 4 (4.08%) Legal
6 4 (4.08%) Manufacturing
7 3 (3.06%) Automotive
8 2 (2.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 2 (2.04%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (2.04%) Investment Banking
8 2 (2.04%) Law
8 2 (2.04%) Organisational Skills
8 2 (2.04%) Presentation Skills
8 2 (2.04%) Retail
9 1 (1.02%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (1.02%) Marketing
9 1 (1.02%) Public Speaking
9 1 (1.02%) Publishing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (8.16%) Node.js
2 5 (5.10%) Kafka
2 5 (5.10%) Spring Boot
3 3 (3.06%) AngularJS
3 3 (3.06%) React
4 2 (2.04%) Apache POI
4 2 (2.04%) JDBC
4 2 (2.04%) Spring
5 1 (1.02%) .NET
5 1 (1.02%) CSS
5 1 (1.02%) CSS3
5 1 (1.02%) Elastic Stack
5 1 (1.02%) GraphQL
5 1 (1.02%) HTML
5 1 (1.02%) HTML5
5 1 (1.02%) J2EE
5 1 (1.02%) jBPM
5 1 (1.02%) Jest
5 1 (1.02%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 5 (5.10%) Product Ownership
2 3 (3.06%) Cloud Native
2 3 (3.06%) Onboarding
3 2 (2.04%) Analytical Mindset
3 2 (2.04%) Legacy Systems
3 2 (2.04%) Management Information System
4 1 (1.02%) BYOD
4 1 (1.02%) Data Centre
4 1 (1.02%) Data Protection Act
4 1 (1.02%) Data Structures
4 1 (1.02%) Enterprise Software
4 1 (1.02%) Greenfield Project
4 1 (1.02%) Mobile App
4 1 (1.02%) Operational Technology
4 1 (1.02%) PMI
4 1 (1.02%) Private Cloud
4 1 (1.02%) Social Media
4 1 (1.02%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 3 (3.06%) Linux
1 3 (3.06%) Windows
1 3 (3.06%) Windows Server
2 2 (2.04%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 19 (19.39%) Agile
2 15 (15.31%) Project Management
3 14 (14.29%) Stakeholder Management
4 11 (11.22%) ITIL
4 11 (11.22%) Roadmaps
5 10 (10.20%) Change Management
5 10 (10.20%) CI/CD
6 9 (9.18%) DevOps
6 9 (9.18%) Problem-Solving
6 9 (9.18%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 8 (8.16%) Microservices
7 8 (8.16%) PRINCE2
7 8 (8.16%) Service Management
8 7 (7.14%) Decision-Making
8 7 (7.14%) Migration
9 6 (6.12%) Planning and Forecasting
9 6 (6.12%) Test Planning
10 5 (5.10%) Continuous Improvement
10 5 (5.10%) Technical Leadership
11 4 (4.08%) Matrix Organization
Programming Languages
1 9 (9.18%) Java
2 5 (5.10%) SQL
3 4 (4.08%) JavaScript
3 4 (4.08%) Python
4 3 (3.06%) PowerShell
5 1 (1.02%) C++
5 1 (1.02%) Groovy
5 1 (1.02%) Perl
5 1 (1.02%) Shell Script
5 1 (1.02%) VB
Qualifications
1 11 (11.22%) SC Cleared
1 11 (11.22%) Security Cleared
2 7 (7.14%) PMI Certification
3 6 (6.12%) BPSS Clearance
3 6 (6.12%) PMP
4 4 (4.08%) Degree
5 2 (2.04%) APMG
5 2 (2.04%) ISTQB
5 2 (2.04%) ITIL Certification
5 2 (2.04%) SAP Certification
6 1 (1.02%) CIMA
6 1 (1.02%) DBS Check
6 1 (1.02%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (3.06%) Accessibility
2 2 (2.04%) Data Quality
2 2 (2.04%) ISO/IEC 20000
2 2 (2.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 2 (2.04%) NIST
2 2 (2.04%) PCI DSS
2 2 (2.04%) PMO
2 2 (2.04%) SLA
3 1 (1.02%) AUTOSAR
3 1 (1.02%) GDPR
3 1 (1.02%) GRC
3 1 (1.02%) QA
System Software
1 5 (5.10%) Docker
2 2 (2.04%) Active Directory
2 2 (2.04%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 5 (5.10%) Terraform
2 2 (2.04%) Ansible
2 2 (2.04%) Dell DRAC
2 2 (2.04%) Kubernetes
3 1 (1.02%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 16 (16.33%) SAP
2 9 (9.18%) Microsoft
3 3 (3.06%) Ceridian
3 3 (3.06%) FIS
3 3 (3.06%) Murex
3 3 (3.06%) ServiceNow
4 2 (2.04%) Citrix
4 2 (2.04%) CyberArk
4 2 (2.04%) Dell
4 2 (2.04%) Salesforce
5 1 (1.02%) Ariba
5 1 (1.02%) Atlassian
5 1 (1.02%) Databricks
5 1 (1.02%) MuleSoft
5 1 (1.02%) Splunk
5 1 (1.02%) TIBCO
5 1 (1.02%) Virgin Media
5 1 (1.02%) Workday