Lead Contracts in the South West

Leader
England > South West

The median Leader daily rate in the South West is £650, 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 36 18 38
Rank change year-on-year -18 +20 +14
Contract jobs requiring a Lead 86 268 194
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the South West 5.13% 8.38% 5.35%
As % of the Job Titles category 5.56% 8.98% 5.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 63 119 143
10th Percentile £470 £360 £390
25th Percentile £550 £413 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £650 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -8.33% +7.14%
75th Percentile £675 £669 £725
90th Percentile - £775 £798
England median daily rate £585 £585 £600
% change year-on-year - -2.50% +2.39%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 44 14
10th Percentile £57.50 £26.75 £56.50
25th Percentile £61.25 £55.00 £63.16
Median hourly rate £70.00 £70.00 £65.50
Median % change year-on-year - +6.87% +55.95%
75th Percentile £76.25 £72.88 £65.75
90th Percentile £78.50 £74.00 £101.25
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
South West

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the South 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 South West with a recognized job title 1,546 2,986 3,354
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.13% 93.34% 92.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,007 1,903 2,516
10th Percentile £220 £208 £263
25th Percentile £386 £381 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% +5.00%
75th Percentile £614 £620 £638
90th Percentile £688 £700 £713
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 142 400 267
10th Percentile £18.51 £14.00 £18.09
25th Percentile £26.62 £27.50 £50.62
Median hourly rate £63.50 £55.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +15.45% -15.38% +38.30%
75th Percentile £68.00 £71.25 £75.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.50 £85.00
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 South West

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

Job vacancy trend for Lead in the South West

Lead
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the South West

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

Daily rate trend for Lead in the South West

Lead
Daily Rate Histogram in the South West

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

Daily rate histogram for Lead in the South West

Lead
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the South West

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

Hourly rate trend for Lead in the South West

Lead
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South West

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Lead in the South West over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Lead in the South West

Lead
Contract Job Locations in the South 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 South 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
Wiltshire -10 27 £619 -11.57% 24
Bristol -11 25 £544 -5.43% 79
Somerset +8 17 £650 +85.71% 20
Gloucestershire -6 14 £630 +22.93% 55
Lead
England

Lead Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the South 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 South West region featuring Lead in the job title.

1 43 (50.00%) Security Cleared
2 32 (37.21%) SC Cleared
3 27 (31.40%) Finance
4 23 (26.74%) Social Skills
5 21 (24.42%) Agile
6 18 (20.93%) Public Sector
7 16 (18.60%) Systems Engineering
7 16 (18.60%) AWS
8 15 (17.44%) Collaborative Working
9 14 (16.28%) Business Strategy
9 14 (16.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 13 (15.12%) Management Information System
10 13 (15.12%) Contract Negotiation
10 13 (15.12%) Problem-Solving
11 12 (13.95%) Roadmaps
11 12 (13.95%) Enterprise Architecture
11 12 (13.95%) DevOps
11 12 (13.95%) Target Operating Model
12 11 (12.79%) Analytical Skills
12 11 (12.79%) Continuous Improvement
13 10 (11.63%) Terraform
13 10 (11.63%) SQL
13 10 (11.63%) Product Ownership
14 9 (10.47%) CI/CD
14 9 (10.47%) Decision-Making
14 9 (10.47%) SAP
14 9 (10.47%) Python
14 9 (10.47%) Manufacturing
14 9 (10.47%) Project Management
14 9 (10.47%) Software Testing

Lead Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the South 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 4 (4.65%) Confluence
2 1 (1.16%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 1 (1.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (2.33%) BASE24
1 2 (2.33%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (1.16%) OpenText VIM for SAP
2 1 (1.16%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (1.16%) Oracle EBS R12
2 1 (1.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 1 (1.16%) SAP ERP
2 1 (1.16%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 16 (18.60%) AWS
2 7 (8.14%) Azure
3 5 (5.81%) Serverless
4 4 (4.65%) Azure DevOps
5 3 (3.49%) AWS Lambda
6 2 (2.33%) Amazon S3
6 2 (2.33%) Azure Event Grid
6 2 (2.33%) Azure Functions
7 1 (1.16%) Akamai
7 1 (1.16%) Amazon Cognito
7 1 (1.16%) Amazon EKS
7 1 (1.16%) Amazon GuardDuty
7 1 (1.16%) AWS Control Tower
7 1 (1.16%) dbt
7 1 (1.16%) GitHub
7 1 (1.16%) Microsoft 365
7 1 (1.16%) OCI
7 1 (1.16%) Power Platform
7 1 (1.16%) SaaS
7 1 (1.16%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 2 (2.33%) ATM
2 1 (1.16%) DHCP
2 1 (1.16%) DNS
2 1 (1.16%) HTTP
2 1 (1.16%) Network Security
2 1 (1.16%) TCP/IP
2 1 (1.16%) Unified Communications
2 1 (1.16%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (9.30%) MongoDB
2 4 (4.65%) Metadata
3 3 (3.49%) Amazon RDS
3 3 (3.49%) NoSQL
3 3 (3.49%) RDBMS
3 3 (3.49%) Relational Database
4 2 (2.33%) Amazon Athena
4 2 (2.33%) Amazon Aurora
4 2 (2.33%) Data Lake
4 2 (2.33%) DynamoDB
4 2 (2.33%) MySQL
4 2 (2.33%) NonStop SQL
4 2 (2.33%) PostgreSQL
4 2 (2.33%) Redis
4 2 (2.33%) SQL Server
5 1 (1.16%) Data Warehouse
5 1 (1.16%) Oracle Database
5 1 (1.16%) Power BI
5 1 (1.16%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 5 (5.81%) Jenkins
1 5 (5.81%) JIRA
2 4 (4.65%) Cucumber
2 4 (4.65%) Cypress.io
3 1 (1.16%) Git
3 1 (1.16%) GitLab
3 1 (1.16%) VersaTest
General
1 27 (31.40%) Finance
2 23 (26.74%) Social Skills
3 18 (20.93%) Public Sector
4 11 (12.79%) Analytical Skills
5 9 (10.47%) Manufacturing
6 7 (8.14%) Marketing
7 6 (6.98%) Electronics
7 6 (6.98%) Telecoms
8 5 (5.81%) Influencing Skills
9 4 (4.65%) Presentation Skills
10 1 (1.16%) Banking
10 1 (1.16%) Legal
10 1 (1.16%) Military
10 1 (1.16%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (4.65%) Oracle Fusion
2 3 (3.49%) .NET
2 3 (3.49%) Kafka
3 2 (2.33%) .NET Framework
3 2 (2.33%) AngularJS
3 2 (2.33%) Hugging Face
3 2 (2.33%) OpenAPI
3 2 (2.33%) PyTorch
3 2 (2.33%) Swagger
4 1 (1.16%) .NET Core
4 1 (1.16%) Elastic Stack
4 1 (1.16%) Node.js
4 1 (1.16%) OAuth
4 1 (1.16%) OpenID
4 1 (1.16%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 13 (15.12%) Management Information System
2 10 (11.63%) Product Ownership
3 6 (6.98%) Hybrid Cloud
4 3 (3.49%) Onboarding
5 2 (2.33%) Data Centre
5 2 (2.33%) EMV
6 1 (1.16%) Analytical Mindset
6 1 (1.16%) CESG
6 1 (1.16%) Credit Risk
6 1 (1.16%) Cyber Threat
6 1 (1.16%) Legacy Applications
6 1 (1.16%) Marketing Technology
6 1 (1.16%) Replication
6 1 (1.16%) Security Posture
6 1 (1.16%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 6 (6.98%) Linux
2 1 (1.16%) CentOS
2 1 (1.16%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 21 (24.42%) Agile
2 16 (18.60%) Systems Engineering
3 15 (17.44%) Collaborative Working
4 14 (16.28%) Business Strategy
4 14 (16.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
5 13 (15.12%) Contract Negotiation
5 13 (15.12%) Problem-Solving
6 12 (13.95%) DevOps
6 12 (13.95%) Enterprise Architecture
6 12 (13.95%) Roadmaps
6 12 (13.95%) Target Operating Model
7 11 (12.79%) Continuous Improvement
8 9 (10.47%) CI/CD
8 9 (10.47%) Decision-Making
8 9 (10.47%) Mentoring
8 9 (10.47%) Migration
8 9 (10.47%) Programme Management
8 9 (10.47%) Project Management
8 9 (10.47%) Software Testing
9 8 (9.30%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 10 (11.63%) SQL
2 9 (10.47%) Python
3 7 (8.14%) JavaScript
4 5 (5.81%) Java
5 3 (3.49%) C#
6 2 (2.33%) COBOL
6 2 (2.33%) PL/SQL
7 1 (1.16%) C++
7 1 (1.16%) Perl
7 1 (1.16%) PowerShell
7 1 (1.16%) Ruby
7 1 (1.16%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 43 (50.00%) Security Cleared
2 32 (37.21%) SC Cleared
3 8 (9.30%) DV Cleared
4 5 (5.81%) BPSS Clearance
5 3 (3.49%) Degree
6 2 (2.33%) AWS Certification
7 1 (1.16%) APMG
7 1 (1.16%) CEH
7 1 (1.16%) CISA
7 1 (1.16%) CISM
7 1 (1.16%) CISMP
7 1 (1.16%) CISSP
7 1 (1.16%) CompTIA Security+
7 1 (1.16%) Computer Science Degree
7 1 (1.16%) ISACA
7 1 (1.16%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (8.14%) Data Quality
2 4 (4.65%) PMO
3 3 (3.49%) Def Stans
4 2 (2.33%) QA
5 1 (1.16%) CRD IV
5 1 (1.16%) Cyber Essentials
5 1 (1.16%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 1 (1.16%) GDPR
5 1 (1.16%) Government Security Classifications
5 1 (1.16%) HIPAA
5 1 (1.16%) IFRS
5 1 (1.16%) IFRS 9
5 1 (1.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 1 (1.16%) JSP 440
5 1 (1.16%) NIST
System Software
1 3 (3.49%) VMware Infrastructure
2 1 (1.16%) Active Directory
2 1 (1.16%) Docker
Systems Management
1 10 (11.63%) Terraform
2 4 (4.65%) Kubernetes
3 2 (2.33%) Grafana
4 1 (1.16%) Ansible
4 1 (1.16%) Microsoft Intune
4 1 (1.16%) Puppet
4 1 (1.16%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 9 (10.47%) SAP
2 8 (9.30%) Oracle
3 5 (5.81%) MuleSoft
4 4 (4.65%) Microsoft
5 3 (3.49%) Atlassian
5 3 (3.49%) SnapLogic
5 3 (3.49%) VMware
6 2 (2.33%) Ariba
6 2 (2.33%) HP
6 2 (2.33%) NVIDIA
6 2 (2.33%) Pega
7 1 (1.16%) Red Hat
7 1 (1.16%) Workday