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 23 June 2026.

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

6 months to
23 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 414 360 397
Rank change year-on-year -54 +37 +75
Contract jobs requiring a Lead Developer 232 179 189
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.46% 0.60% 0.43%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.49% 0.65% 0.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 189 129 151
10th Percentile £424 £433 £450
25th Percentile £513 £503 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £550 £650
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% -15.38% +8.33%
75th Percentile £750 £688 £888
90th Percentile £838 £750 -
UK excluding London median daily rate £575 £525 £600
% change year-on-year +9.52% -12.50% +3.23%

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 46,904 27,610 40,551
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.36% 92.14% 92.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,521 17,729 25,983
10th Percentile £325 £288 £281
25th Percentile £414 £402 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.50% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.60% -1.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,134 1,203 2,979
10th Percentile £15.38 £13.85 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.44 £16.37
Median hourly rate £43.25 £27.38 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +57.99% -27.00% -14.77%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% -1.23%

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 23 June 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 15 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 23 June 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 -84 187 £575 -2.54% 67
London -68 91 £700 +6.06% 21
UK excluding London -72 91 £575 +9.52% 50
Work from Home -58 80 £725 +20.83% 40
North of England -42 51 £575 +9.52% 15
North West -20 29 £572 -4.67% 11
Midlands -48 16 £550 +8.47% 14
North East -22 14 £650 +2.36% 2
South West -33 8 £525 -19.85% 5
Yorkshire -55 8 £561 +6.90% 2
South East -56 8 £625 +13.64% 12
East Midlands - 8 £476 - 4
West Midlands -63 7 £525 +3.54% 10
Scotland -22 5 - - 1
East of England -25 3 £550 +4.76% 2

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

For the 6 months to 23 June 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.

1 101 (43.53%) AWS
2 100 (43.10%) Agile
3 79 (34.05%) Java
4 71 (30.60%) Node.js
5 70 (30.17%) Azure
6 65 (28.02%) CI/CD
7 63 (27.16%) JavaScript
8 61 (26.29%) Software Engineering
9 59 (25.43%) Mentoring
10 58 (25.00%) React
10 58 (25.00%) TypeScript
11 55 (23.71%) Security Cleared
12 54 (23.28%) DevOps
13 51 (21.98%) Full-Stack Development
14 49 (21.12%) Docker
14 49 (21.12%) Python
15 48 (20.69%) SC Cleared
16 46 (19.83%) Microservices
17 44 (18.97%) Technical Leadership
18 39 (16.81%) Kubernetes
18 39 (16.81%) Redux
19 37 (15.95%) Containerisation
19 37 (15.95%) Spring
20 36 (15.52%) Investment Management
20 36 (15.52%) Portfolio Management
21 35 (15.09%) Spring Boot
22 33 (14.22%) Kafka
22 33 (14.22%) PostgreSQL
23 30 (12.93%) GCP
23 30 (12.93%) REST

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 (3.02%) Confluence
2 4 (1.72%) SAS
3 3 (1.29%) CMS
3 3 (1.29%) Tomcat
4 2 (0.86%) Appian
4 2 (0.86%) IIS
4 2 (0.86%) JBoss
4 2 (0.86%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.86%) ThingWorx
4 2 (0.86%) WebLogic
5 1 (0.43%) Apache
5 1 (0.43%) nginx
5 1 (0.43%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.43%) WordPress
Business Applications
1 3 (1.29%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.86%) Remedy AR System
2 2 (0.86%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.43%) Magento
3 1 (0.43%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.43%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 101 (43.53%) AWS
2 70 (30.17%) Azure
3 30 (12.93%) GCP
4 15 (6.47%) GitHub
5 14 (6.03%) Serverless
6 10 (4.31%) GitHub Actions
7 9 (3.88%) Azure DevOps
8 8 (3.45%) Power Platform
9 6 (2.59%) AWS Lambda
9 6 (2.59%) Dynamics 365
9 6 (2.59%) Salesforce Service Cloud
10 5 (2.16%) Amazon S3
10 5 (2.16%) Amazon SQS
10 5 (2.16%) Power Automate
10 5 (2.16%) PowerApps
11 4 (1.72%) Amazon EC2
11 4 (1.72%) Azure AKS
11 4 (1.72%) Azure Logic Apps
11 4 (1.72%) Azure Service Bus
12 3 (1.29%) Amazon ECR
Communications & Networking
1 2 (0.86%) MQTT
2 1 (0.43%) DNS
2 1 (0.43%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (14.22%) PostgreSQL
2 8 (3.45%) Relational Database
2 8 (3.45%) SQL Server
3 7 (3.02%) MongoDB
4 6 (2.59%) Oracle Database
5 5 (2.16%) Redis
6 4 (1.72%) Geospatial Data
7 3 (1.29%) Data Hub
7 3 (1.29%) DocumentDB
7 3 (1.29%) Oracle Reports
7 3 (1.29%) Power BI
8 2 (0.86%) Amazon RDS
8 2 (0.86%) DynamoDB
8 2 (0.86%) Elasticsearch
8 2 (0.86%) GIS
8 2 (0.86%) MySQL
8 2 (0.86%) NoSQL
8 2 (0.86%) SAS Data Integration Studio
9 1 (0.43%) QGIS
9 1 (0.43%) Spatial Data
Development Applications
1 16 (6.90%) Git
2 14 (6.03%) Jenkins
2 14 (6.03%) JIRA
3 10 (4.31%) GitLab
4 7 (3.02%) JUnit
4 7 (3.02%) Maven
5 5 (2.16%) Mockito
6 3 (1.29%) Oracle Forms
6 3 (1.29%) PVCS
6 3 (1.29%) Subversion
7 2 (0.86%) Gradle
7 2 (0.86%) MSI
7 2 (0.86%) SonarQube
7 2 (0.86%) SpecFlow
8 1 (0.43%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.43%) Claude Code
8 1 (0.43%) GoCD
8 1 (0.43%) Liquibase
8 1 (0.43%) Mocha
8 1 (0.43%) Storybook
General
1 60 (25.86%) Finance
2 53 (22.84%) Public Sector
3 37 (15.95%) Front Office
4 26 (11.21%) Social Skills
5 8 (3.45%) Analytical Skills
5 8 (3.45%) Banking
6 5 (2.16%) Documentation Skills
7 4 (1.72%) Military
7 4 (1.72%) Telecoms
8 3 (1.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 3 (1.29%) Investment Banking
9 2 (0.86%) Influencing Skills
9 2 (0.86%) Marketing
10 1 (0.43%) Games
10 1 (0.43%) Law
10 1 (0.43%) Local Government
10 1 (0.43%) Police
10 1 (0.43%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 71 (30.60%) Node.js
2 58 (25.00%) React
3 39 (16.81%) Redux
4 37 (15.95%) Spring
5 35 (15.09%) Spring Boot
6 33 (14.22%) Kafka
7 30 (12.93%) REST
8 27 (11.64%) .NET
9 25 (10.78%) GraphQL
10 17 (7.33%) RESTful
11 15 (6.47%) AngularJS
12 13 (5.60%) Vue
13 7 (3.02%) Nunjucks
13 7 (3.02%) SOAP
14 6 (2.59%) Django
14 6 (2.59%) Flutter
14 6 (2.59%) Jest
14 6 (2.59%) JPA
14 6 (2.59%) OpenAPI
14 6 (2.59%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 37 (15.95%) Fixed Income
2 20 (8.62%) Cloud Native
3 18 (7.76%) Derivative
4 16 (6.90%) Equities
5 11 (4.74%) Product Ownership
6 10 (4.31%) Enterprise Software
7 9 (3.88%) Legacy Systems
8 8 (3.45%) Distributed Systems
9 4 (1.72%) Virtual Team
10 3 (1.29%) Credit Risk
10 3 (1.29%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 3 (1.29%) Mobile App
10 3 (1.29%) NHS
10 3 (1.29%) Onboarding
11 2 (0.86%) Client/Server
11 2 (0.86%) CMDB
11 2 (0.86%) Data Structures
11 2 (0.86%) Industrial Internet of Things
11 2 (0.86%) N-Tier
11 2 (0.86%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 10 (4.31%) Android
2 9 (3.88%) Apple iOS
3 4 (1.72%) Linux
3 4 (1.72%) Windows
4 1 (0.43%) Mac OS
4 1 (0.43%) Solaris
4 1 (0.43%) VMS
4 1 (0.43%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 100 (43.10%) Agile
2 65 (28.02%) CI/CD
3 61 (26.29%) Software Engineering
4 59 (25.43%) Mentoring
5 54 (23.28%) DevOps
6 51 (21.98%) Full-Stack Development
7 46 (19.83%) Microservices
8 44 (18.97%) Technical Leadership
9 37 (15.95%) Containerisation
10 36 (15.52%) Investment Management
10 36 (15.52%) Portfolio Management
11 24 (10.34%) Code Quality
12 20 (8.62%) Continuous Improvement
12 20 (8.62%) Infrastructure as Code
12 20 (8.62%) Order Management
13 19 (8.19%) Test Automation
14 18 (7.76%) Event-Driven
14 18 (7.76%) Line Management
14 18 (7.76%) Problem-Solving
15 16 (6.90%) Fintech
Programming Languages
1 79 (34.05%) Java
2 63 (27.16%) JavaScript
3 58 (25.00%) TypeScript
4 49 (21.12%) Python
5 28 (12.07%) SQL
6 23 (9.91%) C#
7 20 (8.62%) Go
8 10 (4.31%) Kotlin
9 8 (3.45%) Swift
10 6 (2.59%) Apex Code
10 6 (2.59%) Bicep
10 6 (2.59%) T-SQL
11 4 (1.72%) PL/SQL
12 3 (1.29%) PowerShell
12 3 (1.29%) Scala
13 2 (0.86%) ABAP
13 2 (0.86%) Dart
13 2 (0.86%) Ruby
13 2 (0.86%) Shell Script
14 1 (0.43%) JSX
Qualifications
1 55 (23.71%) Security Cleared
2 48 (20.69%) SC Cleared
3 20 (8.62%) BPSS Clearance
4 2 (0.86%) Microsoft Certification
5 1 (0.43%) Azure Certification
5 1 (0.43%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (0.43%) Degree
5 1 (0.43%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (6.03%) Accessibility
2 13 (5.60%) QA
3 3 (1.29%) NCSC
3 3 (1.29%) WCAG
4 1 (0.43%) GDPR
4 1 (0.43%) SLA
System Software
1 49 (21.12%) Docker
2 1 (0.43%) Apache ZooKeeper
2 1 (0.43%) Oracle RAC
2 1 (0.43%) VMware ESXi
2 1 (0.43%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 39 (16.81%) Kubernetes
2 22 (9.48%) Terraform
3 4 (1.72%) Grafana
4 2 (0.86%) Kibana
5 1 (0.43%) Ansible
5 1 (0.43%) Oracle RMAN
5 1 (0.43%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 26 (11.21%) Microsoft
2 9 (3.88%) Oracle
2 9 (3.88%) Salesforce
3 7 (3.02%) Informatica
4 5 (2.16%) IBM
5 4 (1.72%) Blue Prism
6 3 (1.29%) SAP
7 2 (0.86%) Adobe
7 2 (0.86%) Anaplan
7 2 (0.86%) BMC
7 2 (0.86%) DataFlux
7 2 (0.86%) Guidewire
7 2 (0.86%) Kepware
7 2 (0.86%) OpenAI
7 2 (0.86%) Remedy
8 1 (0.43%) ESRI
8 1 (0.43%) HubSpot
8 1 (0.43%) Liquidlogic
8 1 (0.43%) MuleSoft
8 1 (0.43%) ServiceNow