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 20 June 2026.

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

6 months to
20 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 421 350 401
Rank change year-on-year -71 +51 +70
Contract jobs requiring a Lead Developer 230 178 188
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.45% 0.60% 0.43%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.49% 0.65% 0.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 188 128 150
10th Percentile £424 £431 £446
25th Percentile £513 £503 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £556 £650
Median % change year-on-year +3.37% -14.42% +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 46,784 27,533 40,775
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.37% 92.21% 92.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,447 17,712 26,117
10th Percentile £325 £288 £281
25th Percentile £414 £402 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,114 1,185 2,993
10th Percentile £15.25 £13.91 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.50 £16.37
Median hourly rate £44.94 £27.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +63.40% -26.67% -16.67%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £73.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% -3.61%

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 20 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 20 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 -61 187 £575 -3.36% 65
UK excluding London -76 92 £575 +9.52% 49
London -68 90 £700 +5.26% 21
Work from Home -64 80 £725 +20.83% 37
North of England -43 52 £575 +9.52% 14
North West -22 30 £572 -4.67% 10
Midlands -55 16 £550 +8.47% 14
North East -22 14 £650 +2.36% 2
South West -29 8 £525 -19.85% 5
South East -58 8 £625 +13.64% 11
Yorkshire -62 8 £561 +6.90% 2
East Midlands - 8 £476 - 4
West Midlands -65 7 £525 +3.54% 10
Scotland -16 5 - - 1
East of England -31 3 £550 +4.76% 3

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

For the 6 months to 20 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 99 (43.04%) Agile
1 99 (43.04%) AWS
2 77 (33.48%) Java
3 72 (31.30%) Node.js
4 69 (30.00%) Azure
5 64 (27.83%) CI/CD
5 64 (27.83%) JavaScript
6 60 (26.09%) Software Engineering
7 59 (25.65%) Mentoring
8 58 (25.22%) React
8 58 (25.22%) TypeScript
9 53 (23.04%) DevOps
9 53 (23.04%) Security Cleared
10 52 (22.61%) Full-Stack Development
11 49 (21.30%) Python
12 48 (20.87%) Docker
13 46 (20.00%) SC Cleared
14 45 (19.57%) Microservices
15 44 (19.13%) Technical Leadership
16 39 (16.96%) Redux
17 38 (16.52%) Kubernetes
18 36 (15.65%) Containerisation
18 36 (15.65%) Investment Management
18 36 (15.65%) Portfolio Management
18 36 (15.65%) Spring
19 33 (14.35%) PostgreSQL
19 33 (14.35%) Spring Boot
20 32 (13.91%) Kafka
21 30 (13.04%) GCP
22 29 (12.61%) 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 (3.04%) Confluence
2 4 (1.74%) SAS
3 3 (1.30%) CMS
3 3 (1.30%) Tomcat
4 2 (0.87%) Appian
4 2 (0.87%) IIS
4 2 (0.87%) JBoss
4 2 (0.87%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.87%) ThingWorx
4 2 (0.87%) 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 (1.30%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.87%) Remedy AR System
2 2 (0.87%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.43%) Magento
3 1 (0.43%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.43%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 99 (43.04%) AWS
2 69 (30.00%) Azure
3 30 (13.04%) GCP
4 15 (6.52%) GitHub
5 14 (6.09%) Serverless
6 10 (4.35%) GitHub Actions
7 9 (3.91%) Azure DevOps
8 8 (3.48%) Power Platform
9 6 (2.61%) AWS Lambda
9 6 (2.61%) Dynamics 365
9 6 (2.61%) Salesforce Service Cloud
10 5 (2.17%) Amazon S3
10 5 (2.17%) Amazon SQS
10 5 (2.17%) Power Automate
10 5 (2.17%) PowerApps
11 4 (1.74%) Amazon EC2
11 4 (1.74%) Azure AKS
11 4 (1.74%) Azure Logic Apps
11 4 (1.74%) Azure Service Bus
12 3 (1.30%) Amazon ECR
Communications & Networking
1 2 (0.87%) MQTT
2 1 (0.43%) DNS
2 1 (0.43%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (14.35%) PostgreSQL
2 8 (3.48%) Relational Database
2 8 (3.48%) SQL Server
3 7 (3.04%) MongoDB
4 6 (2.61%) Oracle Database
5 5 (2.17%) Redis
6 4 (1.74%) Geospatial Data
7 3 (1.30%) Data Hub
7 3 (1.30%) DocumentDB
7 3 (1.30%) Oracle Reports
7 3 (1.30%) Power BI
8 2 (0.87%) Amazon RDS
8 2 (0.87%) DynamoDB
8 2 (0.87%) Elasticsearch
8 2 (0.87%) GIS
8 2 (0.87%) MySQL
8 2 (0.87%) NoSQL
8 2 (0.87%) SAS Data Integration Studio
9 1 (0.43%) QGIS
9 1 (0.43%) Spatial Data
Development Applications
1 15 (6.52%) Git
2 14 (6.09%) Jenkins
2 14 (6.09%) JIRA
3 10 (4.35%) GitLab
4 7 (3.04%) JUnit
5 6 (2.61%) Maven
6 5 (2.17%) Mockito
7 3 (1.30%) Oracle Forms
7 3 (1.30%) PVCS
7 3 (1.30%) Subversion
8 2 (0.87%) Gradle
8 2 (0.87%) MSI
8 2 (0.87%) SonarQube
8 2 (0.87%) SpecFlow
9 1 (0.43%) Bitbucket
9 1 (0.43%) Claude Code
9 1 (0.43%) GoCD
9 1 (0.43%) Liquibase
9 1 (0.43%) Mocha
9 1 (0.43%) Storybook
General
1 60 (26.09%) Finance
2 52 (22.61%) Public Sector
3 37 (16.09%) Front Office
4 25 (10.87%) Social Skills
5 8 (3.48%) Analytical Skills
5 8 (3.48%) Banking
6 5 (2.17%) Documentation Skills
7 4 (1.74%) Military
7 4 (1.74%) Telecoms
8 3 (1.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 3 (1.30%) Investment Banking
9 2 (0.87%) Influencing Skills
9 2 (0.87%) 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 72 (31.30%) Node.js
2 58 (25.22%) React
3 39 (16.96%) Redux
4 36 (15.65%) Spring
5 33 (14.35%) Spring Boot
6 32 (13.91%) Kafka
7 29 (12.61%) REST
8 27 (11.74%) .NET
9 25 (10.87%) GraphQL
10 17 (7.39%) RESTful
11 14 (6.09%) AngularJS
11 14 (6.09%) Vue
12 7 (3.04%) Nunjucks
12 7 (3.04%) SOAP
13 6 (2.61%) Django
13 6 (2.61%) Flutter
13 6 (2.61%) Jest
13 6 (2.61%) JPA
13 6 (2.61%) OpenAPI
13 6 (2.61%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 37 (16.09%) Fixed Income
2 20 (8.70%) Cloud Native
3 18 (7.83%) Derivative
4 16 (6.96%) Equities
5 11 (4.78%) Product Ownership
6 9 (3.91%) Enterprise Software
6 9 (3.91%) Legacy Systems
7 8 (3.48%) Distributed Systems
8 4 (1.74%) Virtual Team
9 3 (1.30%) Credit Risk
9 3 (1.30%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 3 (1.30%) Mobile App
9 3 (1.30%) NHS
9 3 (1.30%) Onboarding
10 2 (0.87%) Client/Server
10 2 (0.87%) CMDB
10 2 (0.87%) Data Structures
10 2 (0.87%) Industrial Internet of Things
10 2 (0.87%) N-Tier
10 2 (0.87%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 10 (4.35%) Android
2 9 (3.91%) Apple iOS
3 4 (1.74%) Linux
3 4 (1.74%) 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 99 (43.04%) Agile
2 64 (27.83%) CI/CD
3 60 (26.09%) Software Engineering
4 59 (25.65%) Mentoring
5 53 (23.04%) DevOps
6 52 (22.61%) Full-Stack Development
7 45 (19.57%) Microservices
8 44 (19.13%) Technical Leadership
9 36 (15.65%) Containerisation
9 36 (15.65%) Investment Management
9 36 (15.65%) Portfolio Management
10 24 (10.43%) Code Quality
11 20 (8.70%) Continuous Improvement
11 20 (8.70%) Order Management
12 19 (8.26%) Infrastructure as Code
13 18 (7.83%) Line Management
13 18 (7.83%) Test Automation
14 17 (7.39%) Event-Driven
14 17 (7.39%) Problem-Solving
15 16 (6.96%) Fintech
Programming Languages
1 77 (33.48%) Java
2 64 (27.83%) JavaScript
3 58 (25.22%) TypeScript
4 49 (21.30%) Python
5 27 (11.74%) SQL
6 23 (10.00%) C#
7 20 (8.70%) Go
8 10 (4.35%) Kotlin
9 8 (3.48%) Swift
10 6 (2.61%) Apex Code
10 6 (2.61%) Bicep
10 6 (2.61%) T-SQL
11 4 (1.74%) PL/SQL
12 3 (1.30%) PowerShell
12 3 (1.30%) Scala
13 2 (0.87%) ABAP
13 2 (0.87%) Dart
13 2 (0.87%) Ruby
13 2 (0.87%) Shell Script
14 1 (0.43%) Objective-C
Qualifications
1 53 (23.04%) Security Cleared
2 46 (20.00%) SC Cleared
3 19 (8.26%) BPSS Clearance
4 2 (0.87%) 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 13 (5.65%) Accessibility
1 13 (5.65%) QA
2 3 (1.30%) NCSC
2 3 (1.30%) WCAG
3 1 (0.43%) GDPR
3 1 (0.43%) SLA
System Software
1 48 (20.87%) 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 38 (16.52%) Kubernetes
2 21 (9.13%) Terraform
3 4 (1.74%) Grafana
4 2 (0.87%) Kibana
5 1 (0.43%) Ansible
5 1 (0.43%) Oracle RMAN
5 1 (0.43%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 26 (11.30%) Microsoft
2 9 (3.91%) Oracle
2 9 (3.91%) Salesforce
3 7 (3.04%) Informatica
4 5 (2.17%) IBM
5 4 (1.74%) Blue Prism
6 3 (1.30%) SAP
7 2 (0.87%) Adobe
7 2 (0.87%) Anaplan
7 2 (0.87%) BMC
7 2 (0.87%) DataFlux
7 2 (0.87%) Guidewire
7 2 (0.87%) Kepware
7 2 (0.87%) OpenAI
7 2 (0.87%) 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%) VMware