Lead Contract Job Trends in Sheffield

Leader
South Yorkshire > Sheffield

The median Leader daily rate in Sheffield is £485, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 26 September 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
26 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 45 33 17
Rank change year-on-year -12 -16 +5
Contract jobs requiring a Lead 26 24 43
As % of all contract jobs advertised in Sheffield 4.55% 5.90% 10.49%
As % of the Job Titles category 5.02% 6.80% 11.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 18 10 22
10th Percentile £389 £521 £473
25th Percentile £406 £543 £575
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £625 £651
Median % change year-on-year -22.40% -3.94% +0.10%
75th Percentile £578 £688 £720
90th Percentile £658 £764 £775
South Yorkshire median daily rate £495 £600 £625
% change year-on-year -17.50% -4.00% +3.39%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
Sheffield

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in Sheffield. 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 Sheffield with a recognized job title 518 353 383
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.56% 86.73% 93.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 349 188 248
10th Percentile £284 £309 £375
25th Percentile £380 £433 £467
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £535 £587
Median % change year-on-year -11.21% -8.93% +11.90%
75th Percentile £538 £588 £663
90th Percentile £615 £641 £745
South Yorkshire median daily rate £475 £523 £575
% change year-on-year -9.09% -9.13% +15.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 6 5
10th Percentile £14.78 £15.88 £14.67
25th Percentile £16.18 £20.13 £18.25
Median hourly rate £18.50 £21.00 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year -11.90% +5.00% +5.26%
75th Percentile £21.83 £21.88 £22.75
90th Percentile £23.82 £22.00 £27.85
South Yorkshire median hourly rate £18.50 £21.00 £20.25
% change year-on-year -11.90% +3.70% +6.58%

Lead
Job Vacancy Trend in Sheffield

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

Job vacancy trend for Lead in Sheffield

Lead
Daily Rate Trend in Sheffield

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Lead job vacancies in Sheffield.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Lead job vacancies in Sheffield

Lead
Daily Rate Histogram in Sheffield

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Lead in Sheffield over the 6 months to 26 September 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Lead in Sheffield

Lead
Hourly Rate Trend in Sheffield

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Lead job vacancies in Sheffield.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Lead job vacancies in Sheffield

Lead Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in Sheffield

For the 6 months to 26 September 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 Sheffield region featuring Lead in the job title.

1 14 (53.85%) Agile
2 9 (34.62%) Banking
2 9 (34.62%) Finance
3 6 (23.08%) Confluence
3 6 (23.08%) Stakeholder Engagement
3 6 (23.08%) Microservices
3 6 (23.08%) Social Skills
4 5 (19.23%) The Twelve-Factor App
4 5 (19.23%) Mentoring
4 5 (19.23%) Java
4 5 (19.23%) TDD
5 4 (15.38%) Stakeholder Management
5 4 (15.38%) JavaScript
5 4 (15.38%) Microsoft
5 4 (15.38%) DevOps
5 4 (15.38%) Node.js
5 4 (15.38%) BDD
5 4 (15.38%) Project Governance
5 4 (15.38%) CI/CD
6 3 (11.54%) Onboarding
6 3 (11.54%) Presentation Skills
6 3 (11.54%) Architectural Design
6 3 (11.54%) Problem-Solving
6 3 (11.54%) Swift
6 3 (11.54%) React Native
6 3 (11.54%) Kotlin
6 3 (11.54%) Data Protection Act
6 3 (11.54%) Data Protection
6 3 (11.54%) Waterfall
6 3 (11.54%) Mobile App

Lead Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in Sheffield 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 6 (23.08%) Confluence
2 1 (3.85%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (11.54%) Microsoft Office
1 3 (11.54%) Microsoft Project
1 3 (11.54%) MS Visio
2 2 (7.69%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (3.85%) Spreadsheet
Cloud Services
1 2 (7.69%) AWS
1 2 (7.69%) Azure
1 2 (7.69%) GCP
2 1 (3.85%) Entra ID
2 1 (3.85%) GitHub
2 1 (3.85%) Google Ads
Communications & Networking
1 1 (3.85%) DNS
1 1 (3.85%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
1 1 (3.85%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (7.69%) BigQuery
2 1 (3.85%) RDBMS
2 1 (3.85%) Relational Database
2 1 (3.85%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 2 (7.69%) JIRA
1 2 (7.69%) Selenium
2 1 (3.85%) GitLab
2 1 (3.85%) Jaeger
2 1 (3.85%) Jenkins
General
1 9 (34.62%) Banking
1 9 (34.62%) Finance
2 6 (23.08%) Social Skills
3 3 (11.54%) Presentation Skills
4 1 (3.85%) Analytical Skills
4 1 (3.85%) Influencing Skills
4 1 (3.85%) Investment Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (15.38%) Node.js
2 3 (11.54%) React Native
3 2 (7.69%) Jest
3 2 (7.69%) Spring Boot
4 1 (3.85%) LDAP
4 1 (3.85%) OAuth
4 1 (3.85%) SailPoint
4 1 (3.85%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 3 (11.54%) Data Protection Act
1 3 (11.54%) Mobile App
1 3 (11.54%) Onboarding
2 1 (3.85%) Algorithms
2 1 (3.85%) Cloud Native
2 1 (3.85%) Data Centre
2 1 (3.85%) Data Structures
2 1 (3.85%) Derivative
2 1 (3.85%) Enterprise Software
2 1 (3.85%) Equities
2 1 (3.85%) Fixed Income
2 1 (3.85%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
2 1 (3.85%) Legacy Systems
2 1 (3.85%) Machine to Machine
Operating Systems
1 2 (7.69%) Linux
2 1 (3.85%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 14 (53.85%) Agile
2 6 (23.08%) Microservices
2 6 (23.08%) Stakeholder Engagement
3 5 (19.23%) Mentoring
3 5 (19.23%) TDD
3 5 (19.23%) The Twelve-Factor App
4 4 (15.38%) BDD
4 4 (15.38%) CI/CD
4 4 (15.38%) DevOps
4 4 (15.38%) Project Governance
4 4 (15.38%) Stakeholder Management
5 3 (11.54%) Architectural Design
5 3 (11.54%) Coaching
5 3 (11.54%) Data Protection
5 3 (11.54%) Mobile Development
5 3 (11.54%) Problem-Solving
5 3 (11.54%) Strategic Planning
5 3 (11.54%) User Experience
5 3 (11.54%) Validation
5 3 (11.54%) Waterfall
Programming Languages
1 5 (19.23%) Java
2 4 (15.38%) JavaScript
3 3 (11.54%) Kotlin
3 3 (11.54%) Objective-C
3 3 (11.54%) Swift
4 2 (7.69%) PowerShell
4 2 (7.69%) Python
4 2 (7.69%) SQL
5 1 (3.85%) Bash
5 1 (3.85%) Groovy
5 1 (3.85%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 3 (11.54%) Degree
2 2 (7.69%) CISM
3 1 (3.85%) CISA
3 1 (3.85%) CISSP
3 1 (3.85%) Computer Science Degree
3 1 (3.85%) SAP Certification
3 1 (3.85%) VCAP
3 1 (3.85%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (7.69%) NIST
2 1 (3.85%) GDPR
2 1 (3.85%) GRC
2 1 (3.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 1 (3.85%) PMO
2 1 (3.85%) QA
System Software
1 3 (11.54%) Docker
2 1 (3.85%) VMware ESXi
2 1 (3.85%) VMware Infrastructure
2 1 (3.85%) VMware NSX
2 1 (3.85%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 2 (7.69%) Kubernetes
1 2 (7.69%) Terraform
2 1 (3.85%) Control-M
2 1 (3.85%) Grafana
2 1 (3.85%) Istio
2 1 (3.85%) Kiali
2 1 (3.85%) PowerCLI
2 1 (3.85%) Single Sign-On
2 1 (3.85%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 4 (15.38%) Microsoft
2 1 (3.85%) AppDynamics
2 1 (3.85%) Broadcom
2 1 (3.85%) Databricks
2 1 (3.85%) F5
2 1 (3.85%) SAP
2 1 (3.85%) Splunk
2 1 (3.85%) VMware
2 1 (3.85%) xMatters