Lead Contracts in the North West

Leader
England > North West

The median Leader daily rate in the North West is £488, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 28 June 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
28 Jun 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 27 29 25
Rank change year-on-year +2 -4 +9
Contract jobs requiring a Lead 127 153 184
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the North West 6.26% 5.52% 6.06%
As % of the Job Titles category 6.75% 5.84% 6.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 95 101 123
10th Percentile £335 £375 £383
25th Percentile £372 £444 £444
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £582 £550
Median % change year-on-year -16.24% +5.82% +15.79%
75th Percentile £644 £694 £650
90th Percentile £788 £850 £698
England median daily rate £600 £588 £600
% change year-on-year +2.13% -2.08% +2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 11 14
10th Percentile - - £10.09
25th Percentile £50.76 - £12.88
Median hourly rate £54.51 £15.00 £37.80
Median % change year-on-year +263.40% -60.31% -36.69%
75th Percentile £58.27 £35.38 £43.75
90th Percentile - £45.00 £46.18
England median hourly rate £65.00 £50.00 £52.97
% change year-on-year +30.00% -5.61% +26.12%

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 1,882 2,619 2,884
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.76% 94.41% 94.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,252 1,620 2,022
10th Percentile £271 £267 £294
25th Percentile £375 £382 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% +5.26%
75th Percentile £553 £575 £587
90th Percentile £660 £665 £675
England median daily rate £513 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.38% -4.55% +2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 132 302 138
10th Percentile £13.00 £11.19 £14.46
25th Percentile £14.18 £15.00 £17.92
Median hourly rate £29.01 £32.70 £29.00
Median % change year-on-year -11.28% +12.75% +16.00%
75th Percentile £60.00 £47.50 £43.75
90th Percentile £78.63 £71.44 £58.03
England median hourly rate £28.50 £39.55 £44.00
% change year-on-year -27.94% -10.11% +76.00%

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 28 June 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 28 June 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 76 £500 -16.94% 227
Cheshire -5 32 £460 -18.87% 39
Lancashire -2 10 £553 +144.20% 83
Merseyside +4 6 £425 +19.30% 20
Cumbria -3 2 £741 +27.23% 16
Lead
England

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

For the 6 months to 28 June 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 33 (25.98%) Social Skills
2 23 (18.11%) Agile
3 20 (15.75%) AWS
4 19 (14.96%) Finance
4 19 (14.96%) Stakeholder Management
5 18 (14.17%) Security Cleared
5 18 (14.17%) Problem-Solving
6 15 (11.81%) CI/CD
6 15 (11.81%) Project Management
7 14 (11.02%) ITIL
7 14 (11.02%) SC Cleared
8 13 (10.24%) SaaS
8 13 (10.24%) Node.js
8 13 (10.24%) Continuous Improvement
8 13 (10.24%) DevOps
8 13 (10.24%) Analytical Skills
9 12 (9.45%) Microservices
9 12 (9.45%) Java
9 12 (9.45%) Risk Management
9 12 (9.45%) Change Management
10 11 (8.66%) Docker
10 11 (8.66%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 10 (7.87%) JIRA
11 10 (7.87%) Service Management
11 10 (7.87%) Migration
11 10 (7.87%) Microsoft
11 10 (7.87%) Containerisation
11 10 (7.87%) Product Ownership
12 9 (7.09%) Technical Leadership
12 9 (7.09%) Mentoring

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 (2.36%) Confluence
2 1 (0.79%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 1 (0.79%) Camunda
2 1 (0.79%) CMS
2 1 (0.79%) Liferay
2 1 (0.79%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 2 (1.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.79%) CATIA
2 1 (0.79%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.79%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (1.57%) Finacle
1 2 (1.57%) Kondor
2 1 (0.79%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.79%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 20 (15.75%) AWS
2 13 (10.24%) SaaS
3 7 (5.51%) Azure
3 7 (5.51%) Serverless
4 6 (4.72%) OpenShift
5 5 (3.94%) IaaS
5 5 (3.94%) PaaS
6 4 (3.15%) GitHub
7 3 (2.36%) Amazon ECS
7 3 (2.36%) Amazon EKS
7 3 (2.36%) AWS Lambda
7 3 (2.36%) BrowserStack
7 3 (2.36%) Power Platform
7 3 (2.36%) SuccessFactors
8 2 (1.57%) Amazon EventBridge
8 2 (1.57%) Amazon MSK
8 2 (1.57%) Dynamics 365
8 2 (1.57%) Figma
8 2 (1.57%) GCP
8 2 (1.57%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 4 (3.15%) Firewall
2 3 (2.36%) DHCP
3 2 (1.57%) DMZ
3 2 (1.57%) DNS
3 2 (1.57%) Intrusion Detection
3 2 (1.57%) Network Security
3 2 (1.57%) VPN
4 1 (0.79%) Ethernet
4 1 (0.79%) FlexRay
4 1 (0.79%) HTTP
4 1 (0.79%) Internet
4 1 (0.79%) SD-WAN
4 1 (0.79%) TCP/IP
4 1 (0.79%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (3.94%) MongoDB
1 5 (3.94%) Relational Database
2 3 (2.36%) DynamoDB
2 3 (2.36%) NoSQL
3 2 (1.57%) Amazon Aurora
3 2 (1.57%) Amazon RDS
3 2 (1.57%) DocumentDB
3 2 (1.57%) Power BI
3 2 (1.57%) Tableau
4 1 (0.79%) Amazon Athena
4 1 (0.79%) Data Lake
4 1 (0.79%) Data Warehouse
4 1 (0.79%) Pinecone
4 1 (0.79%) PostgreSQL
4 1 (0.79%) SAP HANA
4 1 (0.79%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 10 (7.87%) JIRA
2 4 (3.15%) GitLab
3 3 (2.36%) Selenium
4 2 (1.57%) JUnit
5 1 (0.79%) Git
5 1 (0.79%) Jenkins
5 1 (0.79%) Octopus Deploy
5 1 (0.79%) ScriptRunner
5 1 (0.79%) TeamCity
General
1 33 (25.98%) Social Skills
2 19 (14.96%) Finance
3 13 (10.24%) Analytical Skills
4 8 (6.30%) Public Sector
5 6 (4.72%) Banking
5 6 (4.72%) Pharmaceutical
6 5 (3.94%) Influencing Skills
7 4 (3.15%) Legal
7 4 (3.15%) Retail
8 3 (2.36%) Automotive
8 3 (2.36%) Law
8 3 (2.36%) Manufacturing
8 3 (2.36%) Military
9 2 (1.57%) Back Office
9 2 (1.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 2 (1.57%) Marketing
9 2 (1.57%) Organisational Skills
10 1 (0.79%) Documentation Skills
10 1 (0.79%) Public Speaking
10 1 (0.79%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (10.24%) Node.js
2 8 (6.30%) AngularJS
2 8 (6.30%) Kafka
3 5 (3.94%) Spring Boot
4 3 (2.36%) .NET
4 3 (2.36%) JSON
4 3 (2.36%) React
4 3 (2.36%) REST
5 2 (1.57%) Spring
6 1 (0.79%) .NET Core
6 1 (0.79%) CSS
6 1 (0.79%) CSS3
6 1 (0.79%) Elastic Stack
6 1 (0.79%) GraphQL
6 1 (0.79%) HTML
6 1 (0.79%) HTML5
6 1 (0.79%) J2EE
6 1 (0.79%) jBPM
6 1 (0.79%) Middleware
6 1 (0.79%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 10 (7.87%) Product Ownership
2 4 (3.15%) Cloud Native
2 4 (3.15%) Data Protection Act
2 4 (3.15%) Mobile App
3 3 (2.36%) Robotics
4 2 (1.57%) Analytical Mindset
4 2 (1.57%) Autonomous Agent
4 2 (1.57%) Data Structures
4 2 (1.57%) Hybrid Cloud
4 2 (1.57%) Low-Code
4 2 (1.57%) Management Information System
5 1 (0.79%) CSOC
5 1 (0.79%) Data Centre
5 1 (0.79%) Greenfield Project
5 1 (0.79%) Legacy Systems
5 1 (0.79%) Life Science
5 1 (0.79%) Onboarding
5 1 (0.79%) Operational Technology
5 1 (0.79%) Private Cloud
5 1 (0.79%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 8 (6.30%) Linux
1 8 (6.30%) Windows
2 3 (2.36%) Windows Server
3 2 (1.57%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 23 (18.11%) Agile
2 19 (14.96%) Stakeholder Management
3 18 (14.17%) Problem-Solving
4 15 (11.81%) CI/CD
4 15 (11.81%) Project Management
5 14 (11.02%) ITIL
6 13 (10.24%) Continuous Improvement
6 13 (10.24%) DevOps
7 12 (9.45%) Change Management
7 12 (9.45%) Microservices
7 12 (9.45%) Risk Management
8 11 (8.66%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 10 (7.87%) Containerisation
9 10 (7.87%) Migration
9 10 (7.87%) Service Management
10 9 (7.09%) Mentoring
10 9 (7.09%) Technical Leadership
11 8 (6.30%) Decision-Making
11 8 (6.30%) Scrum
12 7 (5.51%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 12 (9.45%) Java
2 8 (6.30%) Python
3 7 (5.51%) SQL
4 5 (3.94%) PHP
5 4 (3.15%) JavaScript
6 3 (2.36%) PowerShell
7 1 (0.79%) Bicep
7 1 (0.79%) C#
7 1 (0.79%) C++
7 1 (0.79%) Groovy
7 1 (0.79%) Perl
7 1 (0.79%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 18 (14.17%) Security Cleared
2 14 (11.02%) SC Cleared
3 4 (3.15%) PMI Certification
3 4 (3.15%) PMP
4 3 (2.36%) ITIL Certification
5 2 (1.57%) APMG
5 2 (1.57%) CCNP
5 2 (1.57%) Cisco Certification
5 2 (1.57%) Degree
6 1 (0.79%) AWS Certification
6 1 (0.79%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 1 (0.79%) BPSS Clearance
6 1 (0.79%) CCSA
6 1 (0.79%) CIMA
6 1 (0.79%) Computer Science Degree
6 1 (0.79%) DBS Check
6 1 (0.79%) DV Cleared
6 1 (0.79%) Master's Degree
6 1 (0.79%) SAP Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (3.94%) QA
2 2 (1.57%) ISO/IEC 20000
2 2 (1.57%) SLA
3 1 (0.79%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.79%) AUTOSAR
3 1 (0.79%) GDPR
3 1 (0.79%) GxP
3 1 (0.79%) HIPAA
3 1 (0.79%) ISO 31000
System Software
1 11 (8.66%) Docker
2 2 (1.57%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.79%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 7 (5.51%) Kubernetes
2 6 (4.72%) Terraform
3 5 (3.94%) Grafana
4 2 (1.57%) Dell DRAC
5 1 (0.79%) Ansible
Vendors
1 10 (7.87%) Microsoft
2 6 (4.72%) Oracle
3 5 (3.94%) AppDynamics
3 5 (3.94%) SAP
3 5 (3.94%) ServiceNow
4 3 (2.36%) Ceridian
4 3 (2.36%) Google
5 2 (1.57%) CyberArk
5 2 (1.57%) Dell
5 2 (1.57%) FIS
5 2 (1.57%) Murex
5 2 (1.57%) Palo Alto
5 2 (1.57%) Salesforce
5 2 (1.57%) Splunk
5 2 (1.57%) Zscaler
6 1 (0.79%) Atlassian
6 1 (0.79%) Databricks
6 1 (0.79%) EXASOL
6 1 (0.79%) MuleSoft
6 1 (0.79%) Workday