Lead Software Engineer Contracts

Lead Software Engineer
UK

The median Lead Software Engineer daily rate in the UK is £625, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 20 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
20 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 510 531 656
Rank change year-on-year +21 +125 +69
Contract jobs requiring a Lead Software Engineer 15 53 40
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.051% 0.12% 0.070%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.056% 0.13% 0.074%
Number of daily rates quoted 11 43 19
10th Percentile £500 £563 £523
25th Percentile £506 £663 £575
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £825 £650
Median % change year-on-year -24.24% +26.92% -5.80%
75th Percentile £703 £888 £806
90th Percentile £825 - £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £675 £600
% change year-on-year -25.93% +12.50% +4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 1 2
10th Percentile - - £56.83
25th Percentile £87.50 £63.12 £57.71
Median hourly rate £90.00 £67.79 £62.09
Median % change year-on-year +32.77% +9.17% +77.41%
75th Percentile £92.50 £72.45 £68.15
90th Percentile - - £70.02
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £67.79 £62.09
% change year-on-year - +9.17% -

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. 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 with a recognized job title 26,988 39,486 54,195
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.35% 92.79% 94.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,538 25,721 37,839
10th Percentile £293 £280 £313
25th Percentile £406 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £543
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% -3.23% +3.33%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,058 2,674 1,507
10th Percentile £14.00 £12.83 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.13 £16.30 £19.21
Median hourly rate £28.00 £36.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -23.29% -18.89% +87.50%
75th Percentile £61.09 £61.30 £65.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.90 £76.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.75 £40.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year -33.13% -5.88% +112.50%

Lead Software Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for Lead Software Engineer in the UK

Lead Software Engineer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Lead Software Engineer.

Daily rate trend for Lead Software Engineer in the UK

Lead Software Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Lead Software Engineer over the 6 months to 20 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Lead Software Engineer in the UK

Lead Software Engineer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Lead Software Engineer.

Hourly rate trend for Lead Software Engineer in the UK

Lead Software Engineer
Top 9 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Lead Software Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 20 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
England +26 12 £625 -24.24% 190
Work from Home +23 7 £625 -24.24% 110
UK excluding London +44 6 £500 -25.93% 126
London +17 6 £694 -15.91% 100
North of England - 3 £500 - 44
South West +43 2 £425 -37.04% 5
North West - 2 £500 - 31
South East +37 1 - - 41
Yorkshire - 1 £525 - 8

Lead Software Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 20 May 2025, Lead Software Engineer 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 featuring Lead Software Engineer in the job title.

1 14 (93.33%) Software Engineering
2 8 (53.33%) Java
2 8 (53.33%) CI/CD
3 7 (46.67%) Python
3 7 (46.67%) AWS
3 7 (46.67%) Mentoring
4 6 (40.00%) Docker
4 6 (40.00%) Agile
5 5 (33.33%) TDD
5 5 (33.33%) SC Cleared
5 5 (33.33%) Security Cleared
5 5 (33.33%) Test Automation
5 5 (33.33%) Finance
5 5 (33.33%) SQL
5 5 (33.33%) DevOps
5 5 (33.33%) MongoDB
5 5 (33.33%) Microservices
5 5 (33.33%) Terraform
5 5 (33.33%) Serverless
6 4 (26.67%) Kubernetes
6 4 (26.67%) Spring Boot
6 4 (26.67%) Kafka
6 4 (26.67%) JavaScript
6 4 (26.67%) Linux
6 4 (26.67%) Stakeholder Management
6 4 (26.67%) PostgreSQL
6 4 (26.67%) Software Testing
6 4 (26.67%) Amazon ECS
6 4 (26.67%) Containerisation
7 3 (20.00%) GitHub Actions

Lead Software Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities 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 (13.33%) Confluence
2 1 (6.67%) Apache
Cloud Services
1 7 (46.67%) AWS
2 5 (33.33%) Serverless
3 4 (26.67%) Amazon ECS
4 3 (20.00%) Azure
4 3 (20.00%) GitHub
4 3 (20.00%) GitHub Actions
5 2 (13.33%) Amazon EKS
5 2 (13.33%) Amazon EventBridge
5 2 (13.33%) Amazon MSK
5 2 (13.33%) Amazon SQS
5 2 (13.33%) AWS Lambda
5 2 (13.33%) Azure DevOps
5 2 (13.33%) Slack
6 1 (6.67%) Azure AKS
6 1 (6.67%) Azure Event Grid
6 1 (6.67%) Azure Functions
6 1 (6.67%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 2 (13.33%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (33.33%) MongoDB
2 4 (26.67%) PostgreSQL
3 2 (13.33%) Amazon Aurora
3 2 (13.33%) Apache Cassandra
3 2 (13.33%) DocumentDB
3 2 (13.33%) DynamoDB
3 2 (13.33%) MySQL
3 2 (13.33%) NoSQL
3 2 (13.33%) SQL Server
4 1 (6.67%) Oracle Database
4 1 (6.67%) Redis
4 1 (6.67%) Relational Database
4 1 (6.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 3 (20.00%) Git
2 2 (13.33%) Cucumber
2 2 (13.33%) Jasmine
2 2 (13.33%) JIRA
2 2 (13.33%) JUnit
3 1 (6.67%) Gradle
3 1 (6.67%) Rational DOORS
3 1 (6.67%) VectorCAST
General
1 5 (33.33%) Finance
2 2 (13.33%) Public Sector
2 2 (13.33%) Social Skills
3 1 (6.67%) Advertising
3 1 (6.67%) Aerospace
3 1 (6.67%) Banking
3 1 (6.67%) Electronics
3 1 (6.67%) Financial Institution
3 1 (6.67%) Manufacturing
3 1 (6.67%) Marketing
3 1 (6.67%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (26.67%) Kafka
1 4 (26.67%) Spring Boot
2 3 (20.00%) .NET
2 3 (20.00%) Node.js
2 3 (20.00%) OpenAPI
2 3 (20.00%) Spring
2 3 (20.00%) Swagger
3 2 (13.33%) RESTful
3 2 (13.33%) Spring Batch
3 2 (13.33%) Spring Security
4 1 (6.67%) .NET Framework
4 1 (6.67%) AngularJS
4 1 (6.67%) Apache Avro
4 1 (6.67%) AWS CDK
4 1 (6.67%) gRPC
4 1 (6.67%) Jest
4 1 (6.67%) JSON
4 1 (6.67%) Protocol Buffers
4 1 (6.67%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 2 (13.33%) Cloud Native
1 2 (13.33%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
2 1 (6.67%) Distributed Computing
2 1 (6.67%) Hedge funds
Operating Systems
1 4 (26.67%) Linux
2 2 (13.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 14 (93.33%) Software Engineering
2 8 (53.33%) CI/CD
3 7 (46.67%) Mentoring
4 6 (40.00%) Agile
5 5 (33.33%) DevOps
5 5 (33.33%) Microservices
5 5 (33.33%) TDD
5 5 (33.33%) Test Automation
6 4 (26.67%) Containerisation
6 4 (26.67%) Software Testing
6 4 (26.67%) Stakeholder Management
7 3 (20.00%) BDD
7 3 (20.00%) Technical Leadership
8 2 (13.33%) API Design
8 2 (13.33%) Continuous Delivery
8 2 (13.33%) Event-Driven Architecture
8 2 (13.33%) High Availability
8 2 (13.33%) Kernel Tuning
8 2 (13.33%) OWASP
8 2 (13.33%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 8 (53.33%) Java
2 7 (46.67%) Python
3 5 (33.33%) SQL
4 4 (26.67%) JavaScript
5 2 (13.33%) Bash
5 2 (13.33%) TypeScript
6 1 (6.67%) C
6 1 (6.67%) C#
6 1 (6.67%) C++
6 1 (6.67%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 5 (33.33%) SC Cleared
1 5 (33.33%) Security Cleared
2 2 (13.33%) Degree
3 1 (6.67%) Computer Science Degree
3 1 (6.67%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (6.67%) Accessibility
1 1 (6.67%) DO-178B
1 1 (6.67%) GDPR
1 1 (6.67%) ISO 26262
1 1 (6.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 6 (40.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 5 (33.33%) Terraform
2 4 (26.67%) Kubernetes
3 1 (6.67%) Istio
Vendors
1 1 (6.67%) Google
1 1 (6.67%) Microsoft
1 1 (6.67%) Oracle
1 1 (6.67%) SAP