Lead Developer Contract Job Trends

Lead Developer
UK

The median Lead Developer daily rate in the UK is £575, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 28 May 2026.

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

6 months to
28 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 433 351 419
Rank change year-on-year -82 +68 +53
Contract jobs requiring a Lead Developer 196 170 167
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.40% 0.59% 0.39%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.43% 0.64% 0.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 166 118 136
10th Percentile £413 £440 £400
25th Percentile £513 £501 £514
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £556 £650
Median % change year-on-year +3.37% -14.42% +8.33%
75th Percentile £769 £688 £850
90th Percentile £844 £750 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £575 £525 £600
% change year-on-year +9.52% -12.50% +1.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 1 0
Median hourly rate - £72.50 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - -

All Contract IT Job Roles
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 45,082 26,443 39,660
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.31% 92.30% 92.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,504 17,178 25,818
10th Percentile £325 £290 £280
25th Percentile £413 £405 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.99% -3.33% -2.78%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,000 1,028 2,760
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.00 £12.80
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.09 £16.30
Median hourly rate £42.50 £27.97 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +51.98% -23.38% -18.89%
75th Percentile £66.63 £60.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.54
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.61 £25.30 £40.00
% change year-on-year +72.35% -36.75% -5.88%

Lead Developer
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Lead Developer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Lead Developer job vacancy trend in the UK

Lead Developer
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Lead Developer job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Lead Developer job vacancies in the UK

Lead Developer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Lead Developer over the 6 months to 28 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Lead Developer in the UK

Lead Developer
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Lead Developer job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Lead Developer job vacancies in the UK

Lead Developer
Top 14 Contract Job Locations

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 over the 6 months to 28 May 2026. 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 -106 158 £575 -4.17% 80
London -76 77 £700 +4.87% 25
UK excluding London -70 74 £575 +9.52% 61
Work from Home -62 71 £700 +27.27% 43
North of England -42 47 £575 +3.14% 29
North West -21 25 £570 -10.59% 13
North East -15 14 £650 +2.36% 7
Midlands -59 14 £513 +2.50% 14
South East -50 9 £600 +9.09% 15
Yorkshire -58 8 £561 +6.90% 9
East Midlands -20 7 £476 -4.80% 8
West Midlands -65 6 £475 -6.32% 6
East of England -28 2 - - 4
South West -30 2 £688 -7.09%

Lead Developer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 28 May 2026, Lead Developer 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 featuring Lead Developer in the job title.

1 88 (44.90%) Agile
2 77 (39.29%) AWS
3 67 (34.18%) Java
4 64 (32.65%) Azure
4 64 (32.65%) Node.js
5 60 (30.61%) JavaScript
6 59 (30.10%) Software Engineering
7 58 (29.59%) React
8 54 (27.55%) CI/CD
9 52 (26.53%) Mentoring
10 51 (26.02%) TypeScript
11 44 (22.45%) Python
12 43 (21.94%) DevOps
12 43 (21.94%) Full-Stack Development
13 39 (19.90%) Docker
14 38 (19.39%) Redux
15 36 (18.37%) Investment Management
15 36 (18.37%) Microservices
15 36 (18.37%) Portfolio Management
16 34 (17.35%) Technical Leadership
17 33 (16.84%) Security Cleared
18 32 (16.33%) Containerisation
18 32 (16.33%) GCP
19 31 (15.82%) SC Cleared
20 30 (15.31%) Kafka
20 30 (15.31%) Kubernetes
20 30 (15.31%) Spring
21 29 (14.80%) Spring Boot
22 27 (13.78%) PostgreSQL
23 26 (13.27%) GraphQL

Lead Developer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 4 (2.04%) SAS
2 3 (1.53%) Tomcat
3 2 (1.02%) Appian
3 2 (1.02%) ArcGIS
3 2 (1.02%) Confluence
3 2 (1.02%) IIS
3 2 (1.02%) JBoss
3 2 (1.02%) Oracle SOA Suite
3 2 (1.02%) ThingWorx
3 2 (1.02%) WebLogic
4 1 (0.51%) Apache
4 1 (0.51%) CMS
4 1 (0.51%) nginx
4 1 (0.51%) SharePoint
Business Applications
1 2 (1.02%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.51%) Magento
2 1 (0.51%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.51%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 77 (39.29%) AWS
2 64 (32.65%) Azure
3 32 (16.33%) GCP
4 10 (5.10%) GitHub
4 10 (5.10%) Serverless
5 9 (4.59%) GitHub Actions
6 8 (4.08%) Power Platform
7 7 (3.57%) Amazon SQS
8 6 (3.06%) Azure AKS
8 6 (3.06%) Azure DevOps
8 6 (3.06%) Salesforce Service Cloud
9 5 (2.55%) Amazon S3
9 5 (2.55%) Azure Monitor
9 5 (2.55%) Azure Service Bus
9 5 (2.55%) Dynamics 365
10 4 (2.04%) Amazon EC2
10 4 (2.04%) AWS CloudFormation
10 4 (2.04%) AWS Lambda
10 4 (2.04%) Azure Cosmos DB
10 4 (2.04%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.02%) MQTT
2 1 (0.51%) DNS
2 1 (0.51%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (13.78%) PostgreSQL
2 7 (3.57%) Relational Database
2 7 (3.57%) SQL Server
3 4 (2.04%) Data Hub
3 4 (2.04%) MongoDB
3 4 (2.04%) Power BI
4 3 (1.53%) Azure SQL Database
4 3 (1.53%) DocumentDB
5 2 (1.02%) Amazon RDS
5 2 (1.02%) Data Warehouse
5 2 (1.02%) DynamoDB
5 2 (1.02%) Elasticsearch
5 2 (1.02%) Geospatial Data
5 2 (1.02%) GIS
5 2 (1.02%) MySQL
5 2 (1.02%) NoSQL
5 2 (1.02%) Oracle Database
5 2 (1.02%) SAS Data Integration Studio
6 1 (0.51%) Amazon Aurora
6 1 (0.51%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 9 (4.59%) Jenkins
2 8 (4.08%) Git
3 7 (3.57%) GitLab
3 7 (3.57%) JIRA
4 5 (2.55%) JUnit
5 4 (2.04%) Mockito
6 3 (1.53%) Maven
7 2 (1.02%) SonarQube
7 2 (1.02%) SpecFlow
8 1 (0.51%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.51%) Claude Code
8 1 (0.51%) Cypress.io
8 1 (0.51%) Gradle
8 1 (0.51%) Liquibase
8 1 (0.51%) Mocha
8 1 (0.51%) Selenium
8 1 (0.51%) Storybook
8 1 (0.51%) Vite
8 1 (0.51%) webpack
General
1 54 (27.55%) Finance
2 40 (20.41%) Public Sector
3 37 (18.88%) Front Office
4 20 (10.20%) Social Skills
5 7 (3.57%) Analytical Skills
6 5 (2.55%) Documentation Skills
7 3 (1.53%) Banking
7 3 (1.53%) Telecoms
8 2 (1.02%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.51%) Investment Banking
9 1 (0.51%) Local Government
9 1 (0.51%) Marketing
9 1 (0.51%) Military
9 1 (0.51%) Police
9 1 (0.51%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 64 (32.65%) Node.js
2 58 (29.59%) React
3 38 (19.39%) Redux
4 30 (15.31%) Kafka
4 30 (15.31%) Spring
5 29 (14.80%) Spring Boot
6 26 (13.27%) GraphQL
7 22 (11.22%) REST
8 19 (9.69%) .NET
9 15 (7.65%) Vue
10 14 (7.14%) RESTful
11 13 (6.63%) AngularJS
12 8 (4.08%) OAuth
13 7 (3.57%) Nunjucks
14 6 (3.06%) Flutter
14 6 (3.06%) Lightning Web Components
14 6 (3.06%) OAuth2
14 6 (3.06%) OpenID
14 6 (3.06%) SOAP
15 4 (2.04%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 37 (18.88%) Fixed Income
2 17 (8.67%) Cloud Native
3 16 (8.16%) Derivative
3 16 (8.16%) Equities
4 10 (5.10%) Product Ownership
5 7 (3.57%) Distributed Systems
5 7 (3.57%) Legacy Systems
6 3 (1.53%) Credit Risk
6 3 (1.53%) Enterprise Software
6 3 (1.53%) Mobile App
6 3 (1.53%) NHS
6 3 (1.53%) Virtual Team
7 2 (1.02%) Client/Server
7 2 (1.02%) Data Protection Act
7 2 (1.02%) Industrial Internet of Things
7 2 (1.02%) N-Tier
7 2 (1.02%) Onboarding
7 2 (1.02%) Public Cloud
7 2 (1.02%) SCADA
8 1 (0.51%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 10 (5.10%) Android
2 9 (4.59%) Apple iOS
3 4 (2.04%) Linux
4 2 (1.02%) Windows
5 1 (0.51%) Mac OS
5 1 (0.51%) Solaris
5 1 (0.51%) VMS
5 1 (0.51%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 88 (44.90%) Agile
2 59 (30.10%) Software Engineering
3 54 (27.55%) CI/CD
4 52 (26.53%) Mentoring
5 43 (21.94%) DevOps
5 43 (21.94%) Full-Stack Development
6 36 (18.37%) Investment Management
6 36 (18.37%) Microservices
6 36 (18.37%) Portfolio Management
7 34 (17.35%) Technical Leadership
8 32 (16.33%) Containerisation
9 22 (11.22%) Code Quality
10 20 (10.20%) Order Management
11 18 (9.18%) Line Management
12 17 (8.67%) Infrastructure as Code
13 16 (8.16%) Asset Management
13 16 (8.16%) Continuous Improvement
13 16 (8.16%) Fintech
14 15 (7.65%) Event-Driven
14 15 (7.65%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 67 (34.18%) Java
2 60 (30.61%) JavaScript
3 51 (26.02%) TypeScript
4 44 (22.45%) Python
5 21 (10.71%) Go
5 21 (10.71%) SQL
6 20 (10.20%) C#
7 9 (4.59%) Kotlin
8 8 (4.08%) Swift
9 6 (3.06%) Apex Code
9 6 (3.06%) Bicep
10 3 (1.53%) PowerShell
10 3 (1.53%) Scala
10 3 (1.53%) T-SQL
11 2 (1.02%) ABAP
11 2 (1.02%) Dart
11 2 (1.02%) Ruby
12 1 (0.51%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.51%) R
12 1 (0.51%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 33 (16.84%) Security Cleared
2 31 (15.82%) SC Cleared
3 17 (8.67%) BPSS Clearance
4 2 (1.02%) DBS Check
4 2 (1.02%) Microsoft Certification
5 1 (0.51%) Azure Certification
5 1 (0.51%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (0.51%) Degree
5 1 (0.51%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (6.12%) QA
2 8 (4.08%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.51%) GDPR
3 1 (0.51%) NCSC
3 1 (0.51%) SLA
3 1 (0.51%) WCAG
System Software
1 39 (19.90%) Docker
2 1 (0.51%) Oracle RAC
2 1 (0.51%) VMware ESXi
2 1 (0.51%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 30 (15.31%) Kubernetes
2 19 (9.69%) Terraform
3 4 (2.04%) Grafana
4 1 (0.51%) Kibana
4 1 (0.51%) Oracle RMAN
4 1 (0.51%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 24 (12.24%) Microsoft
2 7 (3.57%) Informatica
3 6 (3.06%) Salesforce
4 4 (2.04%) Oracle
5 3 (1.53%) Adobe
5 3 (1.53%) Anaplan
5 3 (1.53%) IBM
5 3 (1.53%) SAP
5 3 (1.53%) ServiceNow
6 2 (1.02%) DataFlux
6 2 (1.02%) ESRI
6 2 (1.02%) Kepware
7 1 (0.51%) Ariba
7 1 (0.51%) Databricks
7 1 (0.51%) Google
7 1 (0.51%) Guidewire
7 1 (0.51%) Jaspersoft
7 1 (0.51%) Liquidlogic
7 1 (0.51%) Red Hat
7 1 (0.51%) VMware