Lead Developer Contract Job Trends

Lead Developer
UK

The median Lead Developer daily rate in the UK is £570, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 22 July 2026.

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

6 months to
22 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 415 357 389
Rank change year-on-year -58 +32 +85
Contract jobs requiring a Lead Developer 257 190 190
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.49% 0.58% 0.46%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.53% 0.64% 0.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 199 140 140
10th Percentile £458 £415 £407
25th Percentile £513 £500 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £570 £550 £650
Median % change year-on-year +3.64% -15.38% +13.04%
75th Percentile £750 £720 £888
90th Percentile £838 £753 -
UK excluding London median daily rate £572 £525 £538
% change year-on-year +8.95% -2.33% -6.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - £51.25
Median hourly rate - - £52.50
75th Percentile - - £53.75
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £52.50

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 48,829 29,898 38,441
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.59% 91.63% 93.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,477 19,026 24,867
10th Percentile £325 £283 £295
25th Percentile £420 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.02%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £725 £730 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,287 1,429 2,436
10th Percentile £15.75 £13.75 £13.49
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £18.00
Median hourly rate £43.69 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +73.72% -37.13% -8.57%
75th Percentile £67.84 £55.00 £64.25
90th Percentile £80.52 £73.75 £74.47
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £41.81
% change year-on-year +78.93% -39.85% +4.53%

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 22 July 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 16 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 22 July 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 -69 191 £575 -2.46% 73
London -61 103 £713 +6.34% 29
UK excluding London -85 88 £572 +8.95% 52
Work from Home -71 82 £725 +20.83% 42
North of England -54 41 £575 +9.52% 19
North West -32 23 £572 -4.67% 8
Midlands -52 16 £550 +15.79% 15
North East -26 11 £650 +2.36% 4
Scotland -18 10 £377 +1.82% 4
South West -36 10 £525 -19.85% 2
East Midlands -7 8 £476 - 4
Yorkshire -53 7 £561 +6.90% 7
West Midlands -59 7 £575 +21.05% 11
South East -60 6 £613 +11.36% 8
East of England -16 5 £530 +0.95% 2
Wales - 1 £750 - 1

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

For the 6 months to 22 July 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.

1 113 (43.97%) AWS
2 111 (43.19%) Agile
3 85 (33.07%) Java
3 85 (33.07%) Security Cleared
4 76 (29.57%) Node.js
5 75 (29.18%) Azure
5 75 (29.18%) CI/CD
6 72 (28.02%) SC Cleared
7 67 (26.07%) JavaScript
8 64 (24.90%) Software Engineering
9 63 (24.51%) Mentoring
10 62 (24.12%) DevOps
11 61 (23.74%) React
12 57 (22.18%) TypeScript
13 51 (19.84%) Microservices
13 51 (19.84%) Technical Leadership
14 50 (19.46%) Full-Stack Development
15 49 (19.07%) Docker
16 46 (17.90%) Python
17 42 (16.34%) Redux
18 41 (15.95%) SQL
19 40 (15.56%) Kubernetes
20 37 (14.40%) PostgreSQL
20 37 (14.40%) REST
20 37 (14.40%) Spring
20 37 (14.40%) Spring Boot
21 36 (14.01%) Containerisation
21 36 (14.01%) Investment Management
21 36 (14.01%) Portfolio Management
22 35 (13.62%) .NET

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 7 (2.72%) Confluence
2 6 (2.33%) IIS
2 6 (2.33%) SharePoint
3 4 (1.56%) SAS
4 3 (1.17%) CMS
4 3 (1.17%) Oracle Workflow
5 2 (0.78%) ThingWorx
5 2 (0.78%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.39%) Appian
6 1 (0.39%) JBoss
6 1 (0.39%) nginx
6 1 (0.39%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 1 (0.39%) WebLogic
6 1 (0.39%) WordPress
Applications
1 4 (1.56%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.78%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 3 (1.17%) Dynamics CRM
1 3 (1.17%) Remedy AR System
1 3 (1.17%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.39%) IntelliMatch
2 1 (0.39%) Magento
2 1 (0.39%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.39%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 113 (43.97%) AWS
2 75 (29.18%) Azure
3 30 (11.67%) GCP
4 16 (6.23%) Azure DevOps
4 16 (6.23%) GitHub
5 15 (5.84%) Serverless
6 10 (3.89%) GitHub Actions
7 8 (3.11%) Power Platform
8 7 (2.72%) AWS Lambda
9 6 (2.33%) Amazon S3
9 6 (2.33%) Dynamics 365
9 6 (2.33%) Salesforce Service Cloud
10 5 (1.95%) Amazon Cognito
10 5 (1.95%) Power Automate
10 5 (1.95%) PowerApps
11 4 (1.56%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 4 (1.56%) Amazon SQS
11 4 (1.56%) AWS CloudFormation
12 3 (1.17%) Amazon EC2
12 3 (1.17%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.56%) HTTP
2 2 (0.78%) CTI
2 2 (0.78%) MQTT
3 1 (0.39%) DNS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (14.40%) PostgreSQL
2 13 (5.06%) SQL Server
3 10 (3.89%) MongoDB
4 8 (3.11%) Relational Database
5 7 (2.72%) Oracle Database
5 7 (2.72%) Oracle Reports
6 6 (2.33%) Redis
7 5 (1.95%) MS Access
7 5 (1.95%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 4 (1.56%) DynamoDB
8 4 (1.56%) Geospatial Data
8 4 (1.56%) Metadata
9 3 (1.17%) Power BI
10 2 (0.78%) Amazon RDS
10 2 (0.78%) Data Hub
10 2 (0.78%) DocumentDB
10 2 (0.78%) GIS
10 2 (0.78%) NoSQL
10 2 (0.78%) SAS Data Integration Studio
11 1 (0.39%) Couchbase
Development Applications
1 30 (11.67%) Git
2 24 (9.34%) Jenkins
3 15 (5.84%) JIRA
3 15 (5.84%) Maven
4 12 (4.67%) GitLab
5 11 (4.28%) JUnit
6 6 (2.33%) Gradle
6 6 (2.33%) Oracle Forms
7 5 (1.95%) GoCD
7 5 (1.95%) Mockito
7 5 (1.95%) Team Foundation Server
8 4 (1.56%) Visual Studio
9 3 (1.17%) JProfiler
9 3 (1.17%) PVCS
9 3 (1.17%) SonarQube
9 3 (1.17%) Storybook
9 3 (1.17%) Subversion
10 2 (0.78%) MSI
10 2 (0.78%) SpecFlow
11 1 (0.39%) Bitbucket
General
1 66 (25.68%) Finance
2 58 (22.57%) Public Sector
3 37 (14.40%) Front Office
4 27 (10.51%) Social Skills
5 12 (4.67%) Analytical Skills
5 12 (4.67%) Banking
6 5 (1.95%) Documentation Skills
6 5 (1.95%) Investment Banking
6 5 (1.95%) Military
7 4 (1.56%) Telecoms
8 3 (1.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 3 (1.17%) Retail
9 2 (0.78%) Influencing Skills
9 2 (0.78%) Local Government
9 2 (0.78%) Marketing
10 1 (0.39%) Games
10 1 (0.39%) Law
10 1 (0.39%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 76 (29.57%) Node.js
2 61 (23.74%) React
3 42 (16.34%) Redux
4 37 (14.40%) REST
4 37 (14.40%) Spring
4 37 (14.40%) Spring Boot
5 35 (13.62%) .NET
5 35 (13.62%) Kafka
6 24 (9.34%) GraphQL
7 18 (7.00%) AngularJS
8 15 (5.84%) RESTful
9 14 (5.45%) HTML
10 11 (4.28%) SOAP
11 9 (3.50%) XML
12 8 (3.11%) Jest
12 8 (3.11%) Nunjucks
12 8 (3.11%) Vue
13 7 (2.72%) HTML5
13 7 (2.72%) JPA
13 7 (2.72%) OpenAPI
Miscellaneous
1 38 (14.79%) Fixed Income
2 19 (7.39%) Cloud Native
2 19 (7.39%) Derivative
3 16 (6.23%) Equities
4 13 (5.06%) Product Ownership
5 12 (4.67%) Legacy Systems
6 11 (4.28%) Distributed Systems
7 10 (3.89%) Enterprise Software
8 6 (2.33%) Legacy Applications
9 5 (1.95%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 5 (1.95%) Replication
10 4 (1.56%) Greenfield Project
10 4 (1.56%) LIMS
10 4 (1.56%) Management Information System
10 4 (1.56%) Onboarding
10 4 (1.56%) Virtual Team
11 3 (1.17%) CMDB
11 3 (1.17%) Credit Risk
11 3 (1.17%) Mobile App
11 3 (1.17%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 12 (4.67%) Windows
2 7 (2.72%) Android
3 5 (1.95%) Apple iOS
4 3 (1.17%) Windows Server
5 2 (0.78%) Linux
6 1 (0.39%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.39%) Solaris
6 1 (0.39%) VMS
6 1 (0.39%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 111 (43.19%) Agile
2 75 (29.18%) CI/CD
3 64 (24.90%) Software Engineering
4 63 (24.51%) Mentoring
5 62 (24.12%) DevOps
6 51 (19.84%) Microservices
6 51 (19.84%) Technical Leadership
7 50 (19.46%) Full-Stack Development
8 36 (14.01%) Containerisation
8 36 (14.01%) Investment Management
8 36 (14.01%) Portfolio Management
9 25 (9.73%) Code Quality
9 25 (9.73%) Problem-Solving
10 24 (9.34%) Infrastructure as Code
11 22 (8.56%) Event-Driven
12 21 (8.17%) Order Management
13 19 (7.39%) Continuous Improvement
13 19 (7.39%) Scrum
14 18 (7.00%) Line Management
14 18 (7.00%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 85 (33.07%) Java
2 67 (26.07%) JavaScript
3 57 (22.18%) TypeScript
4 46 (17.90%) Python
5 41 (15.95%) SQL
6 30 (11.67%) C#
7 20 (7.78%) Go
8 11 (4.28%) T-SQL
9 9 (3.50%) PL/SQL
10 7 (2.72%) Bicep
11 6 (2.33%) Apex Code
11 6 (2.33%) Kotlin
12 5 (1.95%) Ruby
12 5 (1.95%) VB.NET
12 5 (1.95%) VBA
13 4 (1.56%) Swift
13 4 (1.56%) XPath
14 3 (1.17%) Scala
14 3 (1.17%) VBScript
15 2 (0.78%) ABAP
Qualifications
1 85 (33.07%) Security Cleared
2 72 (28.02%) SC Cleared
3 26 (10.12%) BPSS Clearance
4 2 (0.78%) AWS Certification
4 2 (0.78%) AWS Certified Developer
4 2 (0.78%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
4 2 (0.78%) DV Cleared
4 2 (0.78%) Microsoft Certification
5 1 (0.39%) Azure Certification
5 1 (0.39%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (0.39%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (7.00%) Accessibility
1 18 (7.00%) QA
2 4 (1.56%) 21 CFR Part 11
2 4 (1.56%) GMP
2 4 (1.56%) GxP
2 4 (1.56%) ISO/IEC 17025
2 4 (1.56%) WCAG
3 3 (1.17%) NCSC
4 2 (0.78%) GDPR
System Software
1 49 (19.07%) Docker
2 1 (0.39%) Apache ZooKeeper
2 1 (0.39%) Oracle RAC
2 1 (0.39%) VMware ESXi
2 1 (0.39%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 40 (15.56%) Kubernetes
2 25 (9.73%) Terraform
3 5 (1.95%) Ansible
4 3 (1.17%) Grafana
5 2 (0.78%) Kibana
6 1 (0.39%) Oracle RMAN
6 1 (0.39%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.39%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 28 (10.89%) Microsoft
2 22 (8.56%) Oracle
3 10 (3.89%) Salesforce
4 7 (2.72%) Informatica
5 5 (1.95%) IBM
6 4 (1.56%) Blue Prism
7 3 (1.17%) BMC
7 3 (1.17%) Remedy
7 3 (1.17%) ServiceNow
8 2 (0.78%) Adobe
8 2 (0.78%) DataFlux
8 2 (0.78%) Guidewire
8 2 (0.78%) Kepware
8 2 (0.78%) MuleSoft
8 2 (0.78%) OpenAI
8 2 (0.78%) SAP
9 1 (0.39%) Anaplan
9 1 (0.39%) Genesys
9 1 (0.39%) HubSpot
9 1 (0.39%) Liquidlogic