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 11 June 2026.

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

6 months to
11 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 434 356 409
Rank change year-on-year -78 +53 +59
Contract jobs requiring a Lead Developer 212 173 182
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.42% 0.59% 0.42%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.46% 0.64% 0.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 177 122 143
10th Percentile £419 £419 £453
25th Percentile £513 £509 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £575 £650
Median % change year-on-year - -11.54% +8.33%
75th Percentile £750 £687 £881
90th Percentile £838 £750 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £572 £525 £600
% change year-on-year +8.95% -12.50% +4.35%
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 46,065 27,116 40,535
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.33% 92.32% 92.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,032 17,461 26,079
10th Percentile £325 £288 £280
25th Percentile £413 £402 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.55% -4.76% -2.60%
75th Percentile £621 £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 3,078 1,132 2,932
10th Percentile £15.13 £13.87 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.75 £17.79 £16.30
Median hourly rate £43.00 £27.70 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +55.23% -26.13% -16.67%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £61.60
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% -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 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 11 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 -83 170 £575 -4.17% 73
London -74 83 £700 +6.06% 18
UK excluding London -75 79 £572 +8.95% 56
Work from Home -63 75 £713 +18.75% 39
North of England -48 48 £575 +9.52% 18
North West -25 26 £570 -5.00% 14
Midlands -62 15 £513 +1.07% 14
North East -15 14 £650 +2.36% 1
Yorkshire -55 8 £561 +6.90% 3
East Midlands - 8 £476 - 4
South West -25 6 £525 -29.05% 5
South East -57 6 £625 +13.64% 11
West Midlands -65 6 £475 -6.32% 10
East of England -22 3 £550 +4.76% 8
Scotland -24 1 - - 1

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

For the 6 months to 11 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 95 (44.81%) Agile
2 87 (41.04%) AWS
3 74 (34.91%) Java
4 68 (32.08%) Node.js
5 65 (30.66%) Azure
6 61 (28.77%) JavaScript
6 61 (28.77%) Software Engineering
7 58 (27.36%) CI/CD
7 58 (27.36%) React
8 55 (25.94%) Mentoring
9 54 (25.47%) TypeScript
10 49 (23.11%) DevOps
11 45 (21.23%) Full-Stack Development
11 45 (21.23%) Python
12 44 (20.75%) Docker
13 41 (19.34%) Security Cleared
14 39 (18.40%) Microservices
15 38 (17.92%) Redux
16 37 (17.45%) SC Cleared
16 37 (17.45%) Technical Leadership
17 36 (16.98%) Investment Management
17 36 (16.98%) Portfolio Management
18 34 (16.04%) Containerisation
19 33 (15.57%) Kubernetes
19 33 (15.57%) Spring
20 32 (15.09%) Kafka
21 31 (14.62%) PostgreSQL
21 31 (14.62%) Spring Boot
22 30 (14.15%) GCP
23 26 (12.26%) 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 (1.89%) Confluence
1 4 (1.89%) SAS
2 3 (1.42%) Tomcat
3 2 (0.94%) Appian
3 2 (0.94%) CMS
3 2 (0.94%) IIS
3 2 (0.94%) JBoss
3 2 (0.94%) Oracle SOA Suite
3 2 (0.94%) ThingWorx
3 2 (0.94%) WebLogic
4 1 (0.47%) Apache
4 1 (0.47%) nginx
4 1 (0.47%) SharePoint
Business Applications
1 3 (1.42%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.47%) Magento
2 1 (0.47%) Remedy AR System
2 1 (0.47%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.47%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.47%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 87 (41.04%) AWS
2 65 (30.66%) Azure
3 30 (14.15%) GCP
4 12 (5.66%) GitHub
5 11 (5.19%) Serverless
6 8 (3.77%) GitHub Actions
6 8 (3.77%) Power Platform
7 7 (3.30%) Azure DevOps
8 6 (2.83%) Amazon SQS
8 6 (2.83%) AWS Lambda
8 6 (2.83%) Dynamics 365
8 6 (2.83%) Salesforce Service Cloud
9 5 (2.36%) Amazon S3
9 5 (2.36%) Power Automate
9 5 (2.36%) PowerApps
10 4 (1.89%) Amazon EC2
10 4 (1.89%) Azure AKS
10 4 (1.89%) Azure Logic Apps
10 4 (1.89%) Azure Service Bus
11 3 (1.42%) Amazon ECR
Communications & Networking
1 2 (0.94%) MQTT
2 1 (0.47%) DNS
2 1 (0.47%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (14.62%) PostgreSQL
2 8 (3.77%) Relational Database
3 7 (3.30%) SQL Server
4 5 (2.36%) MongoDB
5 4 (1.89%) Data Hub
6 3 (1.42%) DocumentDB
6 3 (1.42%) Geospatial Data
6 3 (1.42%) Oracle Database
6 3 (1.42%) Power BI
7 2 (0.94%) Amazon RDS
7 2 (0.94%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.94%) DynamoDB
7 2 (0.94%) Elasticsearch
7 2 (0.94%) GIS
7 2 (0.94%) MySQL
7 2 (0.94%) NoSQL
7 2 (0.94%) Redis
7 2 (0.94%) SAS Data Integration Studio
8 1 (0.47%) Azure SQL Database
8 1 (0.47%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 11 (5.19%) Jenkins
2 10 (4.72%) Git
2 10 (4.72%) JIRA
3 8 (3.77%) GitLab
4 5 (2.36%) JUnit
5 4 (1.89%) Mockito
6 3 (1.42%) Maven
7 2 (0.94%) SonarQube
7 2 (0.94%) SpecFlow
8 1 (0.47%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.47%) Claude Code
8 1 (0.47%) Gradle
8 1 (0.47%) Liquibase
8 1 (0.47%) Mocha
8 1 (0.47%) MSI
8 1 (0.47%) Oracle Forms
8 1 (0.47%) PVCS
8 1 (0.47%) Storybook
8 1 (0.47%) Vite
8 1 (0.47%) webpack
General
1 57 (26.89%) Finance
2 46 (21.70%) Public Sector
3 37 (17.45%) Front Office
4 23 (10.85%) Social Skills
5 7 (3.30%) Analytical Skills
6 5 (2.36%) Documentation Skills
7 4 (1.89%) Banking
8 3 (1.42%) Military
8 3 (1.42%) Telecoms
9 2 (0.94%) Influencing Skills
9 2 (0.94%) Investment Banking
9 2 (0.94%) Marketing
10 1 (0.47%) Games
10 1 (0.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 1 (0.47%) Local Government
10 1 (0.47%) Police
10 1 (0.47%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 68 (32.08%) Node.js
2 58 (27.36%) React
3 38 (17.92%) Redux
4 33 (15.57%) Spring
5 32 (15.09%) Kafka
6 31 (14.62%) Spring Boot
7 26 (12.26%) GraphQL
8 25 (11.79%) REST
9 23 (10.85%) .NET
10 15 (7.08%) RESTful
10 15 (7.08%) Vue
11 13 (6.13%) AngularJS
12 7 (3.30%) Nunjucks
13 6 (2.83%) Flutter
13 6 (2.83%) Lightning Web Components
13 6 (2.83%) SOAP
14 5 (2.36%) Django
14 5 (2.36%) OAuth
14 5 (2.36%) OpenID
14 5 (2.36%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 37 (17.45%) Fixed Income
2 17 (8.02%) Derivative
3 16 (7.55%) Cloud Native
3 16 (7.55%) Equities
4 10 (4.72%) Product Ownership
5 8 (3.77%) Enterprise Software
6 7 (3.30%) Distributed Systems
6 7 (3.30%) Legacy Systems
7 4 (1.89%) Virtual Team
8 3 (1.42%) Credit Risk
8 3 (1.42%) Mobile App
8 3 (1.42%) NHS
8 3 (1.42%) Onboarding
9 2 (0.94%) Client/Server
9 2 (0.94%) Data Protection Act
9 2 (0.94%) Distributed Architecture
9 2 (0.94%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 2 (0.94%) Industrial Internet of Things
9 2 (0.94%) N-Tier
9 2 (0.94%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 10 (4.72%) Android
2 9 (4.25%) Apple iOS
3 4 (1.89%) Linux
4 3 (1.42%) Windows
5 1 (0.47%) Mac OS
5 1 (0.47%) Solaris
5 1 (0.47%) VMS
5 1 (0.47%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 95 (44.81%) Agile
2 61 (28.77%) Software Engineering
3 58 (27.36%) CI/CD
4 55 (25.94%) Mentoring
5 49 (23.11%) DevOps
6 45 (21.23%) Full-Stack Development
7 39 (18.40%) Microservices
8 37 (17.45%) Technical Leadership
9 36 (16.98%) Investment Management
9 36 (16.98%) Portfolio Management
10 34 (16.04%) Containerisation
11 23 (10.85%) Code Quality
12 20 (9.43%) Continuous Improvement
12 20 (9.43%) Order Management
13 19 (8.96%) Infrastructure as Code
14 18 (8.49%) Line Management
15 17 (8.02%) Test Automation
16 16 (7.55%) Asset Management
16 16 (7.55%) Event-Driven
16 16 (7.55%) Fintech
Programming Languages
1 74 (34.91%) Java
2 61 (28.77%) JavaScript
3 54 (25.47%) TypeScript
4 45 (21.23%) Python
5 22 (10.38%) C#
6 21 (9.91%) Go
6 21 (9.91%) SQL
7 10 (4.72%) Kotlin
8 8 (3.77%) Swift
9 6 (2.83%) Apex Code
10 5 (2.36%) Bicep
10 5 (2.36%) T-SQL
11 3 (1.42%) PowerShell
11 3 (1.42%) Scala
12 2 (0.94%) ABAP
12 2 (0.94%) Dart
12 2 (0.94%) PL/SQL
12 2 (0.94%) Ruby
13 1 (0.47%) JSX
13 1 (0.47%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 41 (19.34%) Security Cleared
2 37 (17.45%) SC Cleared
3 20 (9.43%) BPSS Clearance
4 2 (0.94%) Microsoft Certification
5 1 (0.47%) Azure Certification
5 1 (0.47%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (0.47%) Degree
5 1 (0.47%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (5.66%) Accessibility
1 12 (5.66%) QA
2 2 (0.94%) NCSC
2 2 (0.94%) WCAG
3 1 (0.47%) GDPR
3 1 (0.47%) SLA
System Software
1 44 (20.75%) Docker
2 1 (0.47%) Oracle RAC
2 1 (0.47%) VMware ESXi
2 1 (0.47%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 33 (15.57%) Kubernetes
2 21 (9.91%) Terraform
3 4 (1.89%) Grafana
4 1 (0.47%) Kibana
4 1 (0.47%) Oracle RMAN
4 1 (0.47%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 25 (11.79%) Microsoft
2 9 (4.25%) Salesforce
3 7 (3.30%) Informatica
4 5 (2.36%) Oracle
5 4 (1.89%) IBM
6 3 (1.42%) Adobe
6 3 (1.42%) Anaplan
6 3 (1.42%) Blue Prism
6 3 (1.42%) SAP
7 2 (0.94%) DataFlux
7 2 (0.94%) Kepware
8 1 (0.47%) Ariba
8 1 (0.47%) ESRI
8 1 (0.47%) Genesys
8 1 (0.47%) Google
8 1 (0.47%) Guidewire
8 1 (0.47%) HubSpot
8 1 (0.47%) Jaspersoft
8 1 (0.47%) Remedy
8 1 (0.47%) VMware