Lead Developer Contract Job Trends

Lead Developer
UK

The median Lead Developer daily rate in the UK is £562, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 September 2026.

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

6 months to
1 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 428 385 389
Rank change year-on-year -43 +4 +69
Contract jobs requiring a Lead Developer 250 172 198
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.47% 0.53% 0.51%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.50% 0.58% 0.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 183 121 156
10th Percentile £451 £438 £463
25th Percentile £500 £500 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £562 £550 £650
Median % change year-on-year +2.18% -15.38% +13.04%
75th Percentile £650 £703 £888
90th Percentile £750 £780 -
UK excluding London median daily rate £575 £525 £544
% change year-on-year +9.52% -3.45% -5.43%
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 49,606 29,880 35,937
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.46% 91.25% 93.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,580 18,873 22,662
10th Percentile £325 £281 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.69%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,581 1,559 1,838
10th Percentile £14.96 £13.69 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.53 £17.04 £20.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.81 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.33 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.95
% change year-on-year +68.99% -42.78% +11.13%

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 1 September 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 1 September 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 -98 169 £570 -0.87% 130
UK excluding London -55 96 £575 +9.52% 60
London -81 81 £550 -16.98% 84
Work from Home -78 60 £560 -6.67% 64
North of England -41 46 £650 +23.81% 14
North West -35 25 £575 +35.29% 7
Scotland -9 18 £475 -5.94% 4
Midlands -54 14 £550 +15.79% 17
North East -35 11 £650 +2.36% 2
Yorkshire -39 10 £594 +13.10% 5
East Midlands -8 9 £550 - 8
South West -37 9 £525 -4.55% 4
West Midlands -55 5 £550 +15.79% 9
South East -62 5 £600 +9.09% 12
East of England -19 4 £503 -4.29% 2
Wales - 2 £750 - 4

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

For the 6 months to 1 September 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 90 (36.00%) AWS
2 89 (35.60%) Security Cleared
3 84 (33.60%) Agile
3 84 (33.60%) CI/CD
4 74 (29.60%) SC Cleared
5 69 (27.60%) Java
6 61 (24.40%) DevOps
7 59 (23.60%) Azure
8 56 (22.40%) Technical Leadership
9 55 (22.00%) Microservices
10 54 (21.60%) Docker
10 54 (21.60%) Mentoring
11 50 (20.00%) SQL
12 43 (17.20%) Node.js
13 42 (16.80%) JavaScript
14 40 (16.00%) Spring
14 40 (16.00%) Spring Boot
15 39 (15.60%) .NET
15 39 (15.60%) Kubernetes
15 39 (15.60%) REST
16 37 (14.80%) Full-Stack Development
17 36 (14.40%) Containerisation
17 36 (14.40%) Git
17 36 (14.40%) Software Engineering
18 34 (13.60%) Code Quality
19 33 (13.20%) C#
20 28 (11.20%) BPSS Clearance
20 28 (11.20%) Microsoft
21 27 (10.80%) Event-Driven
21 27 (10.80%) Terraform

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 6 (2.40%) SharePoint
2 5 (2.00%) Confluence
2 5 (2.00%) IIS
3 4 (1.60%) CMS
3 4 (1.60%) Oracle Workflow
3 4 (1.60%) SAS
4 2 (0.80%) ThingWorx
5 1 (0.40%) Headless CMS
5 1 (0.40%) nginx
5 1 (0.40%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 1 (0.40%) Tomcat
5 1 (0.40%) WordPress
Applications
1 4 (1.60%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.80%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 4 (1.60%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (1.20%) Remedy AR System
2 3 (1.20%) Remedy ITSM
3 2 (0.80%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.40%) IntelliMatch
4 1 (0.40%) SAP IS-U
Cloud Services
1 90 (36.00%) AWS
2 59 (23.60%) Azure
3 23 (9.20%) Serverless
4 17 (6.80%) Azure DevOps
5 13 (5.20%) GitHub
6 11 (4.40%) GCP
7 10 (4.00%) Power Platform
8 8 (3.20%) GitHub Actions
9 7 (2.80%) AWS Lambda
9 7 (2.80%) SaaS
9 7 (2.80%) Salesforce Service Cloud
10 6 (2.40%) Power Automate
11 5 (2.00%) Amazon Cognito
11 5 (2.00%) AWS CloudFormation
11 5 (2.00%) Dynamics 365
12 4 (1.60%) Amazon S3
12 4 (1.60%) Azure Functions
12 4 (1.60%) Azure Key Vault
12 4 (1.60%) Azure Service Bus
12 4 (1.60%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 5 (2.00%) HTTP
2 2 (0.80%) CTI
2 2 (0.80%) MQTT
3 1 (0.40%) DNS
3 1 (0.40%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (8.40%) PostgreSQL
2 18 (7.20%) SQL Server
3 14 (5.60%) MongoDB
4 8 (3.20%) Oracle Reports
5 6 (2.40%) Oracle Database
5 6 (2.40%) Redis
5 6 (2.40%) Relational Database
6 5 (2.00%) MS Access
6 5 (2.00%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 4 (1.60%) DynamoDB
7 4 (1.60%) Geospatial Data
7 4 (1.60%) Metadata
7 4 (1.60%) NoSQL
8 2 (0.80%) Couchbase
8 2 (0.80%) GIS
8 2 (0.80%) Power BI
8 2 (0.80%) SAS Data Integration Studio
9 1 (0.40%) Data Warehouse
9 1 (0.40%) Oracle Database 10g
9 1 (0.40%) Oracle Database 11g
Development Applications
1 36 (14.40%) Git
2 23 (9.20%) Jenkins
3 16 (6.40%) Maven
4 14 (5.60%) GitLab
5 12 (4.80%) JIRA
6 9 (3.60%) JUnit
7 7 (2.80%) Oracle Forms
8 6 (2.40%) GoCD
8 6 (2.40%) Gradle
9 5 (2.00%) Team Foundation Server
10 4 (1.60%) JProfiler
10 4 (1.60%) Visual Studio
11 3 (1.20%) Mockito
11 3 (1.20%) PVCS
11 3 (1.20%) SonarQube
11 3 (1.20%) Subversion
12 2 (0.80%) Bundler
12 2 (0.80%) MSI
12 2 (0.80%) SpecFlow
12 2 (0.80%) tSQLt
General
1 66 (26.40%) Public Sector
2 38 (15.20%) Social Skills
3 31 (12.40%) Finance
4 14 (5.60%) Banking
5 8 (3.20%) Analytical Skills
6 5 (2.00%) Documentation Skills
6 5 (2.00%) Investment Banking
6 5 (2.00%) Military
7 4 (1.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 4 (1.60%) Legal
7 4 (1.60%) Legal Technology
8 3 (1.20%) Retail
8 3 (1.20%) Telecoms
9 2 (0.80%) Local Government
10 1 (0.40%) Financial Institution
10 1 (0.40%) Front Office
10 1 (0.40%) Games
10 1 (0.40%) Law
10 1 (0.40%) Marketing
10 1 (0.40%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (17.20%) Node.js
2 40 (16.00%) Spring
2 40 (16.00%) Spring Boot
3 39 (15.60%) .NET
3 39 (15.60%) REST
4 27 (10.80%) Terraform
5 25 (10.00%) React
6 23 (9.20%) HTML
7 21 (8.40%) Kafka
8 16 (6.40%) RESTful
9 15 (6.00%) CSS
10 13 (5.20%) AngularJS
11 11 (4.40%) SOAP
11 11 (4.40%) XML
12 10 (4.00%) HTML5
12 10 (4.00%) Vue
13 9 (3.60%) Jest
13 9 (3.60%) Nunjucks
14 8 (3.20%) Flask
14 8 (3.20%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 20 (8.00%) Cloud Native
2 14 (5.60%) Product Ownership
3 13 (5.20%) Distributed Systems
4 11 (4.40%) Enterprise Software
5 10 (4.00%) Legacy Systems
5 10 (4.00%) LIMS
6 7 (2.80%) Legacy Applications
6 7 (2.80%) Onboarding
7 6 (2.40%) Management Information System
8 5 (2.00%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 5 (2.00%) Greenfield Project
8 5 (2.00%) Replication
9 4 (1.60%) NHS
10 3 (1.20%) CMDB
10 3 (1.20%) Derivative
10 3 (1.20%) Mobile App
10 3 (1.20%) Virtual Team
11 2 (0.80%) Data Centre
11 2 (0.80%) Industrial Internet of Things
11 2 (0.80%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 12 (4.80%) Windows
2 4 (1.60%) Android
2 4 (1.60%) Windows Server
3 2 (0.80%) Apple iOS
3 2 (0.80%) Linux
3 2 (0.80%) Unix
4 1 (0.40%) Solaris
4 1 (0.40%) VMS
4 1 (0.40%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 84 (33.60%) Agile
1 84 (33.60%) CI/CD
2 61 (24.40%) DevOps
3 56 (22.40%) Technical Leadership
4 55 (22.00%) Microservices
5 54 (21.60%) Mentoring
6 37 (14.80%) Full-Stack Development
7 36 (14.40%) Containerisation
7 36 (14.40%) Software Engineering
8 34 (13.60%) Code Quality
9 27 (10.80%) Event-Driven
10 26 (10.40%) Infrastructure as Code
11 25 (10.00%) Problem-Solving
12 23 (9.20%) Test Automation
13 22 (8.80%) Front End Development
14 21 (8.40%) Data Modelling
14 21 (8.40%) Scrum
15 19 (7.60%) Continuous Improvement
15 19 (7.60%) Event-Driven Architecture
16 18 (7.20%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 69 (27.60%) Java
2 50 (20.00%) SQL
3 42 (16.80%) JavaScript
4 33 (13.20%) C#
5 22 (8.80%) Python
6 18 (7.20%) TypeScript
7 13 (5.20%) T-SQL
8 9 (3.60%) PL/SQL
9 7 (2.80%) Apex Code
9 7 (2.80%) Bicep
10 6 (2.40%) Ruby
11 5 (2.00%) VB.NET
11 5 (2.00%) VBA
12 4 (1.60%) Kotlin
12 4 (1.60%) Scala
12 4 (1.60%) Shell Script
12 4 (1.60%) XPath
13 3 (1.20%) ABAP
13 3 (1.20%) VBScript
14 1 (0.40%) C++
Qualifications
1 89 (35.60%) Security Cleared
2 74 (29.60%) SC Cleared
3 28 (11.20%) BPSS Clearance
4 3 (1.20%) Microsoft Certification
5 2 (0.80%) AWS Certification
5 2 (0.80%) AWS Certified Developer
5 2 (0.80%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 2 (0.80%) Azure Certification
5 2 (0.80%) Degree
5 2 (0.80%) DV Cleared
6 1 (0.40%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (8.40%) Accessibility
2 18 (7.20%) QA
3 6 (2.40%) WCAG
4 5 (2.00%) 21 CFR Part 11
4 5 (2.00%) GMP
4 5 (2.00%) GxP
4 5 (2.00%) ISO/IEC 17025
5 3 (1.20%) Data Quality
5 3 (1.20%) GDPR
5 3 (1.20%) NCSC
6 1 (0.40%) ISO 15022
6 1 (0.40%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 54 (21.60%) Docker
2 1 (0.40%) Apache ZooKeeper
2 1 (0.40%) Oracle RAC
2 1 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
2 1 (0.40%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 39 (15.60%) Kubernetes
2 6 (2.40%) Ansible
3 2 (0.80%) Kibana
4 1 (0.40%) Grafana
4 1 (0.40%) Oracle RMAN
4 1 (0.40%) Prometheus
4 1 (0.40%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 28 (11.20%) Microsoft
2 25 (10.00%) Oracle
3 11 (4.40%) Salesforce
4 7 (2.80%) Informatica
5 6 (2.40%) IBM
6 4 (1.60%) Blue Prism
7 3 (1.20%) BMC
7 3 (1.20%) Guidewire
7 3 (1.20%) Remedy
7 3 (1.20%) SAP
7 3 (1.20%) ServiceNow
8 2 (0.80%) Adobe
8 2 (0.80%) DataFlux
8 2 (0.80%) Kepware
8 2 (0.80%) MuleSoft
8 2 (0.80%) OpenAI
9 1 (0.40%) Databricks
9 1 (0.40%) Genesys
9 1 (0.40%) HubSpot
9 1 (0.40%) Splunk