Lead Developer Contracts in the UK excluding London

Lead Developer
UK > UK excluding London

The median Lead Developer daily rate in the UK excluding London is £525, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 3 August 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
3 Aug 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 315 328 351
Rank change year-on-year +13 +23 +39
Contract jobs requiring a Lead Developer 62 48 70
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 0.41% 0.26% 0.31%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.45% 0.28% 0.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 32 31 59
10th Percentile £315 £400 £443
25th Percentile £475 £500 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £575
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -6.52% +8.08%
75th Percentile £575 £603 £666
90th Percentile £624 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £550 £638 £575
% change year-on-year -13.73% +10.87% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 1 0
Median hourly rate - £52.50 -
UK median hourly rate - £52.50 -

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK excluding London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the UK excluding London. 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 UK excluding London with a recognized job title 13,827 16,897 21,123
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.37% 92.01% 94.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,468 10,365 14,318
10th Percentile £215 £219 £230
25th Percentile £363 £375 £390
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - +2.04%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £600
90th Percentile £650 £683 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -0.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,209 1,773 1,166
10th Percentile £13.37 £14.00 £13.98
25th Percentile £16.50 £18.35 £17.72
Median hourly rate £25.15 £43.90 £39.55
Median % change year-on-year -42.71% +11.00% +86.12%
75th Percentile £55.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £77.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £42.75
% change year-on-year -41.51% +0.58% +66.47%

Lead Developer
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Job postings that featured Lead Developer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Job vacancy trend for Lead Developer in the UK excluding London

Lead Developer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Lead Developer in the UK excluding London.

Daily rate trend for Lead Developer in the UK excluding London

Lead Developer
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Lead Developer in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 3 August 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Lead Developer in the UK excluding London

Lead Developer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Lead Developer in the UK excluding London.

Hourly rate trend for Lead Developer in the UK excluding London

Lead Developer
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Lead Developer within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 3 August 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
North of England -2 19 £525 -9.01% 35
Midlands -6 14 £475 +5.56% 26
Scotland +3 13 £430 - 7
Yorkshire -3 11 £525 -4.55% 11
West Midlands -6 11 £475 +5.56% 15
South West +27 8 £550 -1.12% 17
South East +17 7 £550 +10.00% 28
North West +3 7 £525 -13.08% 19
East Midlands - 3 - - 11
East of England +5 1 £525 +9.09% 9
North East - 1 £635 - 5
Lead Developer
UK

Lead Developer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London

For the 6 months to 3 August 2025, Lead Developer 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 UK excluding London region featuring Lead Developer in the job title.

1 22 (35.48%) Agile
2 19 (30.65%) Java
2 19 (30.65%) AWS
3 18 (29.03%) SQL
4 15 (24.19%) DevOps
5 14 (22.58%) Mentoring
5 14 (22.58%) Microservices
5 14 (22.58%) CI/CD
6 13 (20.97%) Public Sector
6 13 (20.97%) Spring Boot
6 13 (20.97%) TDD
6 13 (20.97%) Spring
7 12 (19.35%) JavaScript
7 12 (19.35%) SDLC
8 11 (17.74%) Azure
9 10 (16.13%) Python
10 9 (14.52%) SOAP
10 9 (14.52%) Scrum
10 9 (14.52%) Git
11 8 (12.90%) Security Cleared
11 8 (12.90%) Migration
11 8 (12.90%) C#
11 8 (12.90%) .NET
11 8 (12.90%) Terraform
11 8 (12.90%) Docker
12 7 (11.29%) React
12 7 (11.29%) Social Skills
12 7 (11.29%) PL/SQL
12 7 (11.29%) Node.js
12 7 (11.29%) REST

Lead Developer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 2 (3.23%) Apache
1 2 (3.23%) Tomcat
2 1 (1.61%) Anypoint
2 1 (1.61%) Camunda
2 1 (1.61%) SharePoint
Business Applications
1 3 (4.84%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (3.23%) BASE24
3 1 (1.61%) Oracle Applications
Cloud Services
1 19 (30.65%) AWS
2 11 (17.74%) Azure
3 6 (9.68%) Azure DevOps
4 5 (8.06%) Amazon EC2
4 5 (8.06%) Amazon S3
4 5 (8.06%) Amazon SQS
4 5 (8.06%) GCP
5 4 (6.45%) Power Platform
6 3 (4.84%) AWS KMS
6 3 (4.84%) Dynamics 365
6 3 (4.84%) Route 53
7 2 (3.23%) Azure Logic Apps
7 2 (3.23%) Power Automate
7 2 (3.23%) PowerApps
7 2 (3.23%) Serverless
8 1 (1.61%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 1 (1.61%) Amazon ECS
8 1 (1.61%) Boomi
8 1 (1.61%) Figma
8 1 (1.61%) GitHub
Communications & Networking
1 2 (3.23%) ATM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (9.68%) PostgreSQL
2 5 (8.06%) Amazon Aurora
2 5 (8.06%) Amazon RDS
2 5 (8.06%) Oracle Database
3 3 (4.84%) Data Warehouse
3 3 (4.84%) DynamoDB
4 2 (3.23%) BigQuery
4 2 (3.23%) BusinessObjects
4 2 (3.23%) MySQL
4 2 (3.23%) NonStop SQL
4 2 (3.23%) Power BI
4 2 (3.23%) Relational Database
4 2 (3.23%) Tableau
5 1 (1.61%) MongoDB
5 1 (1.61%) NoSQL
5 1 (1.61%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 9 (14.52%) Git
2 6 (9.68%) Jenkins
2 6 (9.68%) SonarQube
3 5 (8.06%) JUnit
3 5 (8.06%) Maven
4 3 (4.84%) Mockito
5 2 (3.23%) JIRA
5 2 (3.23%) Subversion
6 1 (1.61%) Bitbucket Server
6 1 (1.61%) DbUnit
6 1 (1.61%) GitLab
6 1 (1.61%) Jaeger
6 1 (1.61%) jMock
6 1 (1.61%) TeamCity
6 1 (1.61%) VersaTest
General
1 13 (20.97%) Public Sector
2 7 (11.29%) Social Skills
3 6 (9.68%) Finance
3 6 (9.68%) Marketing
4 4 (6.45%) Analytical Skills
5 3 (4.84%) Automotive
5 3 (4.84%) Electronics
5 3 (4.84%) Manufacturing
5 3 (4.84%) Telecoms
6 1 (1.61%) Aerospace
6 1 (1.61%) Documentation Skills
6 1 (1.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 1 (1.61%) Influencing Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (20.97%) Spring
1 13 (20.97%) Spring Boot
2 9 (14.52%) SOAP
3 8 (12.90%) .NET
4 7 (11.29%) Node.js
4 7 (11.29%) React
4 7 (11.29%) REST
5 6 (9.68%) AngularJS
6 5 (8.06%) .NET Core
6 5 (8.06%) ActiveMQ
6 5 (8.06%) HTML
6 5 (8.06%) JPA
6 5 (8.06%) RESTful
6 5 (8.06%) Web Services
7 4 (6.45%) CSS
8 3 (4.84%) Bootstrap
8 3 (4.84%) Hibernate
8 3 (4.84%) React Native
8 3 (4.84%) Spring Batch
8 3 (4.84%) Spring Integration
Miscellaneous
1 5 (8.06%) Data Protection Act
1 5 (8.06%) Product Ownership
2 3 (4.84%) Cloud Native
2 3 (4.84%) Mainframe
3 2 (3.23%) EMV
3 2 (3.23%) Enterprise Software
3 2 (3.23%) Onboarding
3 2 (3.23%) Public Cloud
4 1 (1.61%) Distributed Systems
4 1 (1.61%) Low-Code
4 1 (1.61%) NHS
4 1 (1.61%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 4 (6.45%) Linux
2 3 (4.84%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 22 (35.48%) Agile
2 15 (24.19%) DevOps
3 14 (22.58%) CI/CD
3 14 (22.58%) Mentoring
3 14 (22.58%) Microservices
4 13 (20.97%) TDD
5 12 (19.35%) SDLC
6 9 (14.52%) Scrum
7 8 (12.90%) Migration
8 6 (9.68%) Containerisation
8 6 (9.68%) Problem-Solving
9 5 (8.06%) BDD
9 5 (8.06%) Business Intelligence
9 5 (8.06%) Data Protection
9 5 (8.06%) Deployment Automation
9 5 (8.06%) Project Planning
9 5 (8.06%) Stakeholder Management
10 4 (6.45%) OWASP
10 4 (6.45%) Pair Programming
10 4 (6.45%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 19 (30.65%) Java
2 18 (29.03%) SQL
3 12 (19.35%) JavaScript
4 10 (16.13%) Python
5 8 (12.90%) C#
6 7 (11.29%) PL/SQL
7 4 (6.45%) PowerShell
7 4 (6.45%) TypeScript
8 2 (3.23%) COBOL
8 2 (3.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 2 (3.23%) R
9 1 (1.61%) Apex Code
9 1 (1.61%) Bash
9 1 (1.61%) DataWeave
9 1 (1.61%) Go
9 1 (1.61%) Groovy
9 1 (1.61%) Perl
9 1 (1.61%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 8 (12.90%) Security Cleared
2 7 (11.29%) SC Cleared
3 2 (3.23%) BPSS Clearance
4 1 (1.61%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (3.23%) QA
System Software
1 8 (12.90%) Docker
2 1 (1.61%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 8 (12.90%) Terraform
2 5 (8.06%) Grafana
3 3 (4.84%) Kubernetes
3 3 (4.84%) Prometheus
4 1 (1.61%) CloudHub
4 1 (1.61%) Control-M
4 1 (1.61%) Istio
4 1 (1.61%) Kiali
Vendors
1 6 (9.68%) Oracle
2 5 (8.06%) SAP
3 4 (6.45%) Microsoft
4 2 (3.23%) Google
4 2 (3.23%) HP
4 2 (3.23%) MuleSoft
4 2 (3.23%) Salesforce
5 1 (1.61%) AppDynamics
5 1 (1.61%) Atlassian
5 1 (1.61%) Databricks
5 1 (1.61%) Dell
5 1 (1.61%) Jaspersoft
5 1 (1.61%) Splunk
5 1 (1.61%) TIBCO
5 1 (1.61%) Wonderware
5 1 (1.61%) xMatters