Technical Leader Contract Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Technical Lead
UK > UK excluding London

The median Technical Lead daily rate in the UK excluding London is £518, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 31 December 2025.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 300 275 321
Rank change year-on-year -25 +46 0
Contract jobs requiring a Technical Leader 99 81 88
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.54% 0.55% 0.45%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.60% 0.60% 0.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 66 43 65
10th Percentile £400 £312 £400
25th Percentile £413 £419 £486
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £563
Median % change year-on-year -1.29% -6.67% -10.00%
75th Percentile £622 £675 £688
90th Percentile £734 £779 £730
UK median daily rate £575 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -4.17% - -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 1 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - £53.75 £27.63
Median hourly rate - £57.50 £28.25
Median % change year-on-year - +103.54% -
75th Percentile - £61.25 £28.88
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate £70.00 £57.50 £28.25
% change year-on-year +21.74% +103.54% -

All Contract IT Job Roles
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 16,535 13,499 18,107
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.38% 92.35% 93.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,172 8,023 11,756
10th Percentile £213 £213 £213
25th Percentile £375 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.06% -3.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £676 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,650 757 1,273
10th Percentile £13.95 £15.22 £14.16
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.24 £18.67
Median hourly rate £25.15 £31.76 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -20.81% -31.23% +77.62%
75th Percentile £58.63 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £71.51 £77.00
UK median hourly rate £26.00 £32.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year -20.00% -27.78% +38.46%

Technical Leader
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Technical Leader' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Technical Leader job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Technical Leader
Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Technical Leader job vacancies in the UK excluding London.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Technical Leader job vacancies in the UK excluding London

Technical Leader
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Technical Leader in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 31 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Technical Leader in the UK excluding London

Technical Leader
Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Technical Leader job vacancies in the UK excluding London.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Technical Leader job vacancies in the UK excluding London

Technical Leader
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 Technical Leader within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 31 December 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 -47 26 £500 -4.76% 26
South East -3 25 £481 -18.47% 21
Scotland +18 16 £723 +1.94% 1
Yorkshire -41 16 £500 -4.76% 12
Midlands -43 11 £556 +23.61% 5
South West -2 10 £540 +5.37% 6
North West -23 9 £380 -44.32% 12
West Midlands -30 9 £525 -14.29% 1
Wales -1 7 £518 -11.91% 2
East of England -16 4 £575 -23.33% 6
East Midlands -24 2 £588 +46.88% 4
North East - 2 £519 - 2
Technical Leader
UK

Technical Leader Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London

For the 6 months to 31 December 2025, Technical Leader contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the UK excluding London region featuring Technical Leader in the job title.

1 29 (29.29%) Agile
2 28 (28.28%) AWS
3 25 (25.25%) Problem-Solving
4 21 (21.21%) Security Cleared
5 20 (20.20%) CI/CD
6 18 (18.18%) Azure
6 18 (18.18%) Mentoring
7 15 (15.15%) Node.js
7 15 (15.15%) TypeScript
8 14 (14.14%) AI
8 14 (14.14%) DevOps
8 14 (14.14%) GitHub
8 14 (14.14%) Java
8 14 (14.14%) Kubernetes
8 14 (14.14%) Microsoft
8 14 (14.14%) Terraform
9 13 (13.13%) Roadmaps
9 13 (13.13%) Serverless
10 12 (12.12%) Python
10 12 (12.12%) Scrum
10 12 (12.12%) Strategic Roadmap
10 12 (12.12%) Technical Leadership
11 11 (11.11%) Analytics
11 11 (11.11%) React
11 11 (11.11%) SC Cleared
11 11 (11.11%) SQL
11 11 (11.11%) Stakeholder Management
12 10 (10.10%) Continuous Integration
12 10 (10.10%) JavaScript
12 10 (10.10%) ServiceNow

Technical Leader Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 7 (7.07%) WebLogic
2 5 (5.05%) Apache
2 5 (5.05%) Apache Airflow
3 4 (4.04%) CMS
4 3 (3.03%) Apache Spark
5 2 (2.02%) Confluence
6 1 (1.01%) Anypoint
6 1 (1.01%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (1.01%) Mule
6 1 (1.01%) Mule ESB
Applications
1 2 (2.02%) Chatbot
2 1 (1.01%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 4 (4.04%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (3.03%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (2.02%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (2.02%) Oracle EBS R12
4 1 (1.01%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 28 (28.28%) AWS
2 18 (18.18%) Azure
3 14 (14.14%) GitHub
4 13 (13.13%) Serverless
5 9 (9.09%) GitHub Actions
6 8 (8.08%) GCP
7 6 (6.06%) Amazon ECS
7 6 (6.06%) AWS Lambda
8 5 (5.05%) Amazon S3
8 5 (5.05%) Power Platform
9 4 (4.04%) Amazon SageMaker
9 4 (4.04%) Azure DevOps
9 4 (4.04%) Figma
9 4 (4.04%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
10 3 (3.03%) AWS CloudFormation
10 3 (3.03%) AWS Step Functions
10 3 (3.03%) Dynamics 365
10 3 (3.03%) IaaS
10 3 (3.03%) npm
10 3 (3.03%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 3 (3.03%) VoIP
2 2 (2.02%) 2G
2 2 (2.02%) 5G
2 2 (2.02%) LTE
2 2 (2.02%) Mobile Backhaul
2 2 (2.02%) Wi-Fi
3 1 (1.01%) LAN
3 1 (1.01%) MPLS
3 1 (1.01%) SD-WAN
3 1 (1.01%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (7.07%) SQL Server
2 5 (5.05%) Oracle Database
3 4 (4.04%) DynamoDB
3 4 (4.04%) NoSQL
3 4 (4.04%) PostgreSQL
3 4 (4.04%) Power BI
4 3 (3.03%) Data Lake
4 3 (3.03%) Delta Lake
4 3 (3.03%) Metadata
4 3 (3.03%) MongoDB
5 2 (2.02%) Amazon Athena
5 2 (2.02%) Amazon Aurora
5 2 (2.02%) Amazon RDS
5 2 (2.02%) Data Warehouse
5 2 (2.02%) Tableau
6 1 (1.01%) Azure SQL Database
6 1 (1.01%) Elasticsearch
6 1 (1.01%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 7 (7.07%) CircleCI
1 7 (7.07%) Git
2 6 (6.06%) GitLab
2 6 (6.06%) Jenkins
3 5 (5.05%) Oracle Forms
4 4 (4.04%) JIRA
4 4 (4.04%) Storybook
5 3 (3.03%) MLflow
6 2 (2.02%) Cypress.io
6 2 (2.02%) Selenium
6 2 (2.02%) SonarQube
6 2 (2.02%) Subversion
6 2 (2.02%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (1.01%) Cucumber
7 1 (1.01%) Maven
7 1 (1.01%) Poetry
7 1 (1.01%) Pylint
General
1 21 (21.21%) Social Skills
2 16 (16.16%) Public Sector
3 7 (7.07%) Telecoms
4 5 (5.05%) Retail
5 4 (4.04%) Finance
6 3 (3.03%) Analytical Skills
7 1 (1.01%) Banking
7 1 (1.01%) Documentation Skills
7 1 (1.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (1.01%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (15.15%) Node.js
2 11 (11.11%) React
3 6 (6.06%) .NET
3 6 (6.06%) LangChain
3 6 (6.06%) Next.js
3 6 (6.06%) RESTful
3 6 (6.06%) SOAP
3 6 (6.06%) Spring
4 5 (5.05%) Express.js
4 5 (5.05%) Kafka
4 5 (5.05%) REST
4 5 (5.05%) Spring Boot
5 4 (4.04%) Bootstrap
5 4 (4.04%) CSS
5 4 (4.04%) CSS3
5 4 (4.04%) HTML
5 4 (4.04%) HTML5
5 4 (4.04%) PySpark
5 4 (4.04%) Redux
6 3 (3.03%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 9 (9.09%) Legacy Systems
2 8 (8.08%) Product Ownership
3 4 (4.04%) Algorithms
3 4 (4.04%) CCTV
3 4 (4.04%) CMDB
3 4 (4.04%) Driving Licence
4 3 (3.03%) Data Protection Act
5 2 (2.02%) AI Agents
5 2 (2.02%) Cloud Native
5 2 (2.02%) Enterprise Software
5 2 (2.02%) IoT
5 2 (2.02%) Mobile App
5 2 (2.02%) Onboarding
5 2 (2.02%) Security Posture
6 1 (1.01%) Digital Signage
6 1 (1.01%) Distributed Architecture
6 1 (1.01%) Distributed Systems
6 1 (1.01%) Hybrid Cloud
6 1 (1.01%) Life Science
6 1 (1.01%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 6 (6.06%) Linux
2 4 (4.04%) Windows
3 1 (1.01%) Apple iOS
3 1 (1.01%) CentOS
3 1 (1.01%) Mac OS
3 1 (1.01%) Mac OS X
3 1 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (1.01%) Ubuntu
3 1 (1.01%) Unix
3 1 (1.01%) VMS
3 1 (1.01%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 29 (29.29%) Agile
2 25 (25.25%) Problem-Solving
3 20 (20.20%) CI/CD
4 18 (18.18%) Mentoring
5 14 (14.14%) AI
5 14 (14.14%) DevOps
6 13 (13.13%) Roadmaps
7 12 (12.12%) Scrum
7 12 (12.12%) Strategic Roadmap
7 12 (12.12%) Technical Leadership
8 11 (11.11%) Analytics
8 11 (11.11%) Stakeholder Management
9 10 (10.10%) Continuous Integration
10 9 (9.09%) Code Quality
10 9 (9.09%) Generative AI
10 9 (9.09%) Infrastructure as Code
10 9 (9.09%) Migration
10 9 (9.09%) TDD
11 8 (8.08%) Data Science
11 8 (8.08%) Domain-Driven Design
Programming Languages
1 15 (15.15%) TypeScript
2 14 (14.14%) Java
3 12 (12.12%) Python
4 11 (11.11%) SQL
5 10 (10.10%) JavaScript
6 2 (2.02%) C#
6 2 (2.02%) C++
6 2 (2.02%) R
7 1 (1.01%) Bicep
7 1 (1.01%) Perl
7 1 (1.01%) PL/SQL
7 1 (1.01%) PowerShell
7 1 (1.01%) Ruby
7 1 (1.01%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 21 (21.21%) Security Cleared
2 11 (11.11%) SC Cleared
3 4 (4.04%) CCNA
3 4 (4.04%) Cisco Certification
4 3 (3.03%) DV Cleared
5 2 (2.02%) Degree
6 1 (1.01%) APMP
6 1 (1.01%) BPSS Clearance
6 1 (1.01%) FFIEC
6 1 (1.01%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (5.05%) QA
2 4 (4.04%) Accessibility
3 2 (2.02%) Data Quality
3 2 (2.02%) GRC
3 2 (2.02%) WCAG
4 1 (1.01%) Cyber Essentials
4 1 (1.01%) HL7
4 1 (1.01%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (1.01%) NIST
4 1 (1.01%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 1 (1.01%) SLA
System Software
1 5 (5.05%) Docker
2 1 (1.01%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 14 (14.14%) Kubernetes
1 14 (14.14%) Terraform
2 7 (7.07%) Grafana
2 7 (7.07%) Prometheus
3 3 (3.03%) Ansible
4 2 (2.02%) CEMLI
5 1 (1.01%) AirWatch
5 1 (1.01%) HP Fortify
5 1 (1.01%) Jamf Pro
5 1 (1.01%) Puppet
5 1 (1.01%) SCCM
Vendors
1 14 (14.14%) Microsoft
2 10 (10.10%) ServiceNow
3 9 (9.09%) Oracle
4 7 (7.07%) Databricks
5 6 (6.06%) Salesforce
6 3 (3.03%) Atlassian
7 2 (2.02%) AppDynamics
7 2 (2.02%) Splunk
8 1 (1.01%) Ariba
8 1 (1.01%) BT
8 1 (1.01%) CenturyLink
8 1 (1.01%) Dynatrace
8 1 (1.01%) Google
8 1 (1.01%) Meraki
8 1 (1.01%) Palo Alto
8 1 (1.01%) Red Hat
8 1 (1.01%) SAP
8 1 (1.01%) Virgin Media