Lead Developer Contract Job Trends

Lead Developer
UK

The median Lead Developer daily rate in the UK is £572, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 9 February 2026.

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

6 months to
9 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 439 327 435
Rank change year-on-year -112 +108 +49
Contract jobs requiring a Lead Developer 154 204 165
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.39% 0.66% 0.37%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.43% 0.71% 0.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 116 147 129
10th Percentile £413 £461 £400
25th Percentile £505 £513 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £572 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -4.67% - -
75th Percentile £676 £699 £730
90th Percentile £775 £774 £785
UK excluding London median daily rate £570 £580 £600
% change year-on-year -1.72% -3.33% -
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 35,687 28,709 41,983
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.52% 92.95% 93.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,471 17,591 27,699
10th Percentile £300 £290 £275
25th Percentile £406 £406 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £716 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £477 £489
% change year-on-year -0.42% -2.45% -2.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,179 837 2,322
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.91 £13.15
25th Percentile £18.76 £21.25 £16.54
Median hourly rate £30.00 £34.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -11.76% -2.86% -
75th Percentile £61.54 £63.75 £61.25
90th Percentile £71.99 £75.00 £72.73
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.85 £32.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year -11.23% -7.14% -

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 9 February 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 14 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 9 February 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 -129 118 £575 -8.00% 88
UK excluding London -58 64 £570 -1.72% 61
Work from Home -18 60 £600 +3.90% 54
London -110 53 £600 -3.23% 37
North of England -33 40 £574 -0.26% 16
North West -10 19 £570 -15.56% 13
Yorkshire -56 14 £695 +29.30% 1
South East -37 8 £525 -19.23% 23
Midlands -44 8 £529 -1.58% 7
North East -8 7 £575 +21.05% 2
West Midlands -45 7 £508 -11.65% 4
Scotland +7 3 £424 -19.29% 1
East of England - 3 £550 - 2
South West -18 2 £575 -12.21% 12

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

For the 6 months to 9 February 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 57 (37.01%) Java
2 45 (29.22%) Agile
3 43 (27.92%) AWS
3 43 (27.92%) CI/CD
4 42 (27.27%) Azure
4 42 (27.27%) Mentoring
5 37 (24.03%) Docker
6 34 (22.08%) Microservices
6 34 (22.08%) Node.js
6 34 (22.08%) TypeScript
7 33 (21.43%) React
8 32 (20.78%) DevOps
9 30 (19.48%) Containerisation
10 29 (18.83%) JavaScript
10 29 (18.83%) Python
10 29 (18.83%) Spring
11 28 (18.18%) Software Engineering
12 27 (17.53%) Problem-Solving
12 27 (17.53%) Spring Boot
13 25 (16.23%) Security Cleared
14 24 (15.58%) Kubernetes
14 24 (15.58%) Technical Leadership
15 23 (14.94%) SQL
16 22 (14.29%) Full-Stack Development
16 22 (14.29%) SC Cleared
17 21 (13.64%) Performance Optimisation
18 19 (12.34%) GCP
19 18 (11.69%) Jenkins
19 18 (11.69%) Microsoft
20 16 (10.39%) BPSS Clearance

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 (4.55%) SharePoint
2 3 (1.95%) ArcGIS
3 2 (1.30%) Appian
3 2 (1.30%) IIS
3 2 (1.30%) JBoss
3 2 (1.30%) Oracle SOA Suite
3 2 (1.30%) Tomcat
3 2 (1.30%) WebLogic
4 1 (0.65%) Apache
4 1 (0.65%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.65%) Confluence
4 1 (0.65%) LiveLink
4 1 (0.65%) Traefik
Applications
1 2 (1.30%) Chatbot
Cloud Services
1 43 (27.92%) AWS
2 42 (27.27%) Azure
3 19 (12.34%) GCP
4 14 (9.09%) GitHub
5 12 (7.79%) GitHub Actions
6 10 (6.49%) Power Platform
6 10 (6.49%) Serverless
7 8 (5.19%) Amazon Bedrock
8 6 (3.90%) Amazon SQS
8 6 (3.90%) Azure AI
9 5 (3.25%) Amazon S3
9 5 (3.25%) AWS Lambda
9 5 (3.25%) Azure AKS
9 5 (3.25%) Azure Service Bus
9 5 (3.25%) Cloud Functions
9 5 (3.25%) Cloud Run
10 4 (2.60%) Amazon ECR
10 4 (2.60%) Azure DevOps
10 4 (2.60%) Azure Monitor
11 3 (1.95%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.65%) Network Security
1 1 (0.65%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (10.39%) PostgreSQL
2 10 (6.49%) Relational Database
3 7 (4.55%) SQL Server
4 4 (2.60%) MongoDB
4 4 (2.60%) MySQL
4 4 (2.60%) Oracle Database
5 3 (1.95%) Azure SQL Database
5 3 (1.95%) Data Hub
5 3 (1.95%) DynamoDB
5 3 (1.95%) Geospatial Data
5 3 (1.95%) GIS
5 3 (1.95%) NoSQL
6 2 (1.30%) Data Warehouse
6 2 (1.30%) DocumentDB
6 2 (1.30%) EDRMS
6 2 (1.30%) Power BI
7 1 (0.65%) Amazon Aurora
7 1 (0.65%) Data Lake
7 1 (0.65%) Spark SQL
7 1 (0.65%) Tick Data
Development Applications
1 18 (11.69%) Jenkins
2 9 (5.84%) GitLab
3 7 (4.55%) Git
4 6 (3.90%) JUnit
5 5 (3.25%) Mockito
6 4 (2.60%) JIRA
7 3 (1.95%) Gradle
8 2 (1.30%) CircleCI
8 2 (1.30%) Cypress.io
8 2 (1.30%) Liquibase
8 2 (1.30%) Maven
8 2 (1.30%) Selenium
8 2 (1.30%) SonarQube
8 2 (1.30%) webpack
9 1 (0.65%) Bitbucket
9 1 (0.65%) Cucumber
9 1 (0.65%) Jasmine
9 1 (0.65%) Mocha
9 1 (0.65%) SpecFlow
9 1 (0.65%) Xcode
General
1 30 (19.48%) Social Skills
2 24 (15.58%) Public Sector
3 20 (12.99%) Finance
4 12 (7.79%) Analytical Skills
5 9 (5.84%) Front Office
6 6 (3.90%) Banking
7 3 (1.95%) Telecoms
8 2 (1.30%) Military
8 2 (1.30%) Retail
9 1 (0.65%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.65%) Local Government
9 1 (0.65%) Organisational Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (22.08%) Node.js
2 33 (21.43%) React
3 29 (18.83%) Spring
4 27 (17.53%) Spring Boot
5 15 (9.74%) GraphQL
5 15 (9.74%) Kafka
5 15 (9.74%) REST
6 14 (9.09%) RESTful
7 11 (7.14%) .NET
8 10 (6.49%) AngularJS
8 10 (6.49%) Redux
9 9 (5.84%) Vue
10 8 (5.19%) LangChain
10 8 (5.19%) OAuth
11 6 (3.90%) Flutter
11 6 (3.90%) HTML
11 6 (3.90%) OAuth2
12 5 (3.25%) CSS
12 5 (3.25%) Jest
12 5 (3.25%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 20 (12.99%) Cloud Native
2 15 (9.74%) Product Ownership
3 9 (5.84%) Fixed Income
4 8 (5.19%) Data Structures
5 7 (4.55%) Low-Code
6 6 (3.90%) Algorithms
7 5 (3.25%) Credit Risk
8 4 (2.60%) Derivative
8 4 (2.60%) Enterprise Software
8 4 (2.60%) Equities
9 3 (1.95%) Legacy Systems
10 2 (1.30%) Client/Server
10 2 (1.30%) Data Protection Act
10 2 (1.30%) N-Tier
10 2 (1.30%) Onboarding
11 1 (0.65%) Animation
11 1 (0.65%) CMDB
11 1 (0.65%) NHS
11 1 (0.65%) PKI
11 1 (0.65%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 9 (5.84%) Apple iOS
2 8 (5.19%) Android
3 7 (4.55%) Linux
4 3 (1.95%) Mac OS X
4 3 (1.95%) Unix
5 2 (1.30%) Windows Server 2016
6 1 (0.65%) VMS
6 1 (0.65%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 45 (29.22%) Agile
2 43 (27.92%) CI/CD
3 42 (27.27%) Mentoring
4 34 (22.08%) Microservices
5 32 (20.78%) DevOps
6 30 (19.48%) Containerisation
7 28 (18.18%) Software Engineering
8 27 (17.53%) Problem-Solving
9 24 (15.58%) Technical Leadership
10 22 (14.29%) Full-Stack Development
11 21 (13.64%) Performance Optimisation
12 16 (10.39%) Test Automation
13 15 (9.74%) TDD
14 14 (9.09%) Design Patterns
14 14 (9.09%) Scrum
15 13 (8.44%) Code Quality
15 13 (8.44%) Event-Driven
15 13 (8.44%) Infrastructure as Code
16 12 (7.79%) AI
16 12 (7.79%) Secure Coding
Programming Languages
1 57 (37.01%) Java
2 34 (22.08%) TypeScript
3 29 (18.83%) JavaScript
3 29 (18.83%) Python
4 23 (14.94%) SQL
5 14 (9.09%) C#
6 9 (5.84%) Kotlin
6 9 (5.84%) Swift
7 8 (5.19%) Go
8 2 (1.30%) Bicep
8 2 (1.30%) C++
8 2 (1.30%) Dart
8 2 (1.30%) Objective-C
8 2 (1.30%) PHP
8 2 (1.30%) PowerShell
9 1 (0.65%) Apex Code
9 1 (0.65%) C
9 1 (0.65%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 1 (0.65%) R
9 1 (0.65%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 25 (16.23%) Security Cleared
2 22 (14.29%) SC Cleared
3 16 (10.39%) BPSS Clearance
4 12 (7.79%) Degree
5 9 (5.84%) Computer Science Degree
6 3 (1.95%) AWS Certification
7 2 (1.30%) DBS Check
7 2 (1.30%) DV Cleared
8 1 (0.65%) Microsoft Certification
8 1 (0.65%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (3.25%) QA
2 4 (2.60%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.65%) SLA
3 1 (0.65%) WCAG
System Software
1 37 (24.03%) Docker
Systems Management
1 24 (15.58%) Kubernetes
2 15 (9.74%) Terraform
3 2 (1.30%) Ansible
4 1 (0.65%) Grafana
4 1 (0.65%) HP Fortify
4 1 (0.65%) Istio
4 1 (0.65%) Kibana
Vendors
1 18 (11.69%) Microsoft
2 6 (3.90%) Foundry
2 6 (3.90%) Google
3 5 (3.25%) Oracle
4 3 (1.95%) Adobe
4 3 (1.95%) Anaplan
4 3 (1.95%) ESRI
4 3 (1.95%) ServiceNow
5 2 (1.30%) OpenAI
6 1 (0.65%) Apple
6 1 (0.65%) Ariba
6 1 (0.65%) Databricks
6 1 (0.65%) Liquidlogic
6 1 (0.65%) Salesforce
6 1 (0.65%) SAP
6 1 (0.65%) Virgin Media