Lead Developer Contract Job Trends

Lead Developer
UK

The median Lead Developer daily rate in the UK is £600, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 11 May 2026.

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

6 months to
11 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 440 343 416
Rank change year-on-year -97 +73 +57
Contract jobs requiring a Lead Developer 186 177 167
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.39% 0.60% 0.39%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.42% 0.65% 0.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 156 128 134
10th Percentile £413 £414 £400
25th Percentile £522 £504 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £550 £625
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -12.00% +4.17%
75th Percentile £788 £690 £769
90th Percentile £850 £750 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £575 £525 £600
% change year-on-year +9.52% -12.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 4 0
Median hourly rate - £96.21 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £102.00 -

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 43,945 27,196 39,894
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.28% 92.49% 92.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,960 17,736 25,958
10th Percentile £319 £300 £280
25th Percentile £413 £406 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.46% -2.38% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £493 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.68% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,864 1,058 2,674
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.00 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.37 £18.50 £16.30
Median hourly rate £44.25 £28.51 £37.34
Median % change year-on-year +55.24% -23.66% -17.02%
75th Percentile £67.25 £62.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.59 £27.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +65.76% -31.25% -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 11 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 13 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 11 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 -117 148 £600 - 73
London -73 74 £750 +14.94% 26
Work from Home -35 69 £750 +30.43% 34
UK excluding London -71 68 £575 +9.52% 56
North of England -37 48 £574 +9.24% 22
North West -24 26 £570 -10.59% 13
North East -5 13 £650 +36.84% 3
Yorkshire -52 9 £561 +6.90% 6
South East -54 9 £600 +9.09% 20
Midlands -66 7 £513 -4.94% 10
West Midlands -61 6 £475 -14.73% 5
East of England -29 2 - - 2
South West -36 2 £688 -7.09%

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

For the 6 months to 11 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 84 (45.16%) Agile
2 77 (41.40%) AWS
3 66 (35.48%) Java
4 64 (34.41%) Node.js
5 62 (33.33%) Azure
6 60 (32.26%) React
7 56 (30.11%) JavaScript
8 55 (29.57%) Software Engineering
9 53 (28.49%) TypeScript
10 50 (26.88%) CI/CD
11 49 (26.34%) Mentoring
12 46 (24.73%) Full-Stack Development
12 46 (24.73%) Python
13 38 (20.43%) DevOps
13 38 (20.43%) Docker
13 38 (20.43%) Redux
14 36 (19.35%) Investment Management
14 36 (19.35%) Portfolio Management
15 33 (17.74%) GCP
16 32 (17.20%) Security Cleared
17 31 (16.67%) Containerisation
17 31 (16.67%) Microservices
18 30 (16.13%) SC Cleared
18 30 (16.13%) Spring
18 30 (16.13%) Technical Leadership
19 29 (15.59%) Kubernetes
20 28 (15.05%) Kafka
20 28 (15.05%) PostgreSQL
21 26 (13.98%) GraphQL
21 26 (13.98%) Spring Boot

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 3 (1.61%) ArcGIS
1 3 (1.61%) SAS
1 3 (1.61%) SharePoint
1 3 (1.61%) Tomcat
2 2 (1.08%) Appian
2 2 (1.08%) Confluence
2 2 (1.08%) IIS
2 2 (1.08%) JBoss
2 2 (1.08%) Oracle SOA Suite
2 2 (1.08%) ThingWorx
2 2 (1.08%) WebLogic
3 1 (0.54%) Apache
3 1 (0.54%) CMS
3 1 (0.54%) nginx
Business Applications
1 1 (0.54%) Magento
1 1 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
1 1 (0.54%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 77 (41.40%) AWS
2 62 (33.33%) Azure
3 33 (17.74%) GCP
4 12 (6.45%) GitHub
4 12 (6.45%) Serverless
5 11 (5.91%) GitHub Actions
6 8 (4.30%) Amazon SQS
7 7 (3.76%) Azure DevOps
7 7 (3.76%) Power Platform
8 6 (3.23%) Amazon S3
8 6 (3.23%) Azure AKS
8 6 (3.23%) Azure Service Bus
9 5 (2.69%) AWS CloudFormation
9 5 (2.69%) AWS Lambda
9 5 (2.69%) Azure Monitor
10 4 (2.15%) Amazon ECR
10 4 (2.15%) Azure Cosmos DB
10 4 (2.15%) Azure Functions
10 4 (2.15%) Azure Logic Apps
10 4 (2.15%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.08%) MQTT
2 1 (0.54%) DNS
2 1 (0.54%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (15.05%) PostgreSQL
2 9 (4.84%) SQL Server
3 7 (3.76%) Relational Database
4 4 (2.15%) Data Hub
4 4 (2.15%) Power BI
5 3 (1.61%) Azure SQL Database
5 3 (1.61%) DocumentDB
5 3 (1.61%) DynamoDB
5 3 (1.61%) Geospatial Data
5 3 (1.61%) GIS
6 2 (1.08%) Amazon RDS
6 2 (1.08%) Data Warehouse
6 2 (1.08%) Elasticsearch
6 2 (1.08%) MongoDB
6 2 (1.08%) MySQL
6 2 (1.08%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.54%) NoSQL
7 1 (0.54%) SAS Data Integration Studio
7 1 (0.54%) Spark SQL
7 1 (0.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 11 (5.91%) Jenkins
2 8 (4.30%) Git
2 8 (4.30%) GitLab
3 7 (3.76%) JIRA
4 5 (2.69%) JUnit
5 4 (2.15%) Maven
5 4 (2.15%) Mockito
6 3 (1.61%) SonarQube
7 2 (1.08%) Cypress.io
7 2 (1.08%) Selenium
7 2 (1.08%) SpecFlow
8 1 (0.54%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.54%) Claude Code
8 1 (0.54%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.54%) Gradle
8 1 (0.54%) Liquibase
8 1 (0.54%) Mocha
8 1 (0.54%) Storybook
8 1 (0.54%) Vite
8 1 (0.54%) webpack
General
1 51 (27.42%) Finance
2 37 (19.89%) Front Office
3 35 (18.82%) Public Sector
4 17 (9.14%) Social Skills
5 7 (3.76%) Analytical Skills
6 3 (1.61%) Documentation Skills
6 3 (1.61%) Telecoms
7 2 (1.08%) Banking
7 2 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
8 1 (0.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (0.54%) Investment Banking
8 1 (0.54%) Local Government
8 1 (0.54%) Marketing
8 1 (0.54%) Military
8 1 (0.54%) Police
8 1 (0.54%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 64 (34.41%) Node.js
2 60 (32.26%) React
3 38 (20.43%) Redux
4 30 (16.13%) Spring
5 28 (15.05%) Kafka
6 26 (13.98%) GraphQL
6 26 (13.98%) Spring Boot
7 18 (9.68%) REST
8 15 (8.06%) .NET
8 15 (8.06%) AngularJS
8 15 (8.06%) Vue
9 14 (7.53%) RESTful
10 7 (3.76%) Nunjucks
10 7 (3.76%) OAuth
11 6 (3.23%) Flutter
11 6 (3.23%) SOAP
12 5 (2.69%) .NET Core
12 5 (2.69%) Express.js
12 5 (2.69%) Hibernate
12 5 (2.69%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 37 (19.89%) Fixed Income
2 16 (8.60%) Cloud Native
2 16 (8.60%) Derivative
2 16 (8.60%) Equities
3 12 (6.45%) Product Ownership
4 6 (3.23%) Legacy Systems
5 4 (2.15%) Distributed Systems
5 4 (2.15%) Low-Code
6 3 (1.61%) Credit Risk
6 3 (1.61%) NHS
6 3 (1.61%) Virtual Team
7 2 (1.08%) Client/Server
7 2 (1.08%) Data Protection Act
7 2 (1.08%) Enterprise Software
7 2 (1.08%) Industrial Internet of Things
7 2 (1.08%) Mobile App
7 2 (1.08%) N-Tier
7 2 (1.08%) Onboarding
7 2 (1.08%) Public Cloud
7 2 (1.08%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 10 (5.38%) Android
2 9 (4.84%) Apple iOS
3 4 (2.15%) Linux
4 2 (1.08%) Windows
5 1 (0.54%) Mac OS
5 1 (0.54%) Solaris
5 1 (0.54%) VMS
5 1 (0.54%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 84 (45.16%) Agile
2 55 (29.57%) Software Engineering
3 50 (26.88%) CI/CD
4 49 (26.34%) Mentoring
5 46 (24.73%) Full-Stack Development
6 38 (20.43%) DevOps
7 36 (19.35%) Investment Management
7 36 (19.35%) Portfolio Management
8 31 (16.67%) Containerisation
8 31 (16.67%) Microservices
9 30 (16.13%) Technical Leadership
10 23 (12.37%) Code Quality
11 20 (10.75%) Order Management
12 17 (9.14%) Infrastructure as Code
13 16 (8.60%) Asset Management
13 16 (8.60%) Fintech
13 16 (8.60%) Line Management
14 15 (8.06%) Test Automation
15 14 (7.53%) Event-Driven
16 13 (6.99%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 66 (35.48%) Java
2 56 (30.11%) JavaScript
3 53 (28.49%) TypeScript
4 46 (24.73%) Python
5 22 (11.83%) SQL
6 21 (11.29%) Go
7 15 (8.06%) C#
8 9 (4.84%) Kotlin
9 8 (4.30%) Swift
10 6 (3.23%) Bicep
11 4 (2.15%) Apex Code
12 3 (1.61%) PowerShell
12 3 (1.61%) T-SQL
13 2 (1.08%) ABAP
13 2 (1.08%) Dart
13 2 (1.08%) Scala
14 1 (0.54%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 1 (0.54%) JSX
14 1 (0.54%) R
14 1 (0.54%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 32 (17.20%) Security Cleared
2 30 (16.13%) SC Cleared
3 16 (8.60%) BPSS Clearance
4 3 (1.61%) Degree
5 2 (1.08%) Computer Science Degree
5 2 (1.08%) DBS Check
5 2 (1.08%) Microsoft Certification
6 1 (0.54%) Azure Certification
6 1 (0.54%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (6.99%) QA
2 8 (4.30%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.54%) GDPR
3 1 (0.54%) NCSC
3 1 (0.54%) SLA
3 1 (0.54%) WCAG
System Software
1 38 (20.43%) Docker
2 1 (0.54%) Oracle RAC
2 1 (0.54%) VMware ESXi
2 1 (0.54%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 29 (15.59%) Kubernetes
2 19 (10.22%) Terraform
3 4 (2.15%) Grafana
4 1 (0.54%) HP Fortify
4 1 (0.54%) Kibana
4 1 (0.54%) Oracle RMAN
4 1 (0.54%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 20 (10.75%) Microsoft
2 6 (3.23%) Informatica
3 4 (2.15%) Oracle
3 4 (2.15%) Salesforce
4 3 (1.61%) Adobe
4 3 (1.61%) Anaplan
4 3 (1.61%) ESRI
4 3 (1.61%) SAP
4 3 (1.61%) ServiceNow
5 2 (1.08%) Foundry
5 2 (1.08%) Kepware
6 1 (0.54%) Ariba
6 1 (0.54%) Databricks
6 1 (0.54%) Guidewire
6 1 (0.54%) IBM
6 1 (0.54%) Jaspersoft
6 1 (0.54%) Liquidlogic
6 1 (0.54%) OpenAI
6 1 (0.54%) Red Hat
6 1 (0.54%) VMware