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 1 July 2026.

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

6 months to
1 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 422 349 407
Rank change year-on-year -73 +58 +57
Contract jobs requiring a Lead Developer 240 187 189
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.47% 0.61% 0.44%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.51% 0.66% 0.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 191 136 147
10th Percentile £450 £414 £400
25th Percentile £525 £502 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £556 £650
Median % change year-on-year +3.37% -14.42% +8.33%
75th Percentile £750 £699 £888
90th Percentile £838 £750 -
UK excluding London median daily rate £575 £525 £556
% change year-on-year +9.52% -5.62% -3.26%
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
% change year-on-year - - -16.00%

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 47,495 28,303 40,138
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.41% 92.03% 92.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,760 18,119 25,771
10th Percentile £325 £288 £283
25th Percentile £415 £401 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -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% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,210 1,268 2,866
10th Percentile £15.72 £13.77 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.41 £16.50
Median hourly rate £43.00 £26.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +62.26% -29.33% -12.79%
75th Percentile £67.50 £56.25 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% -

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 July 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 1 July 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 -81 192 £575 -3.36% 58
London -68 96 £725 +8.21% 26
UK excluding London -69 91 £575 +9.52% 38
Work from Home -67 82 £725 +20.83% 33
North of England -47 49 £575 +9.52% 10
North West -20 28 £572 +8.95% 5
Midlands -54 17 £550 +8.47% 9
North East -20 13 £650 +2.36% 2
South West -32 8 £525 -19.85% 6
Yorkshire -54 8 £561 +6.90% 3
West Midlands -57 8 £575 +13.40% 6
South East -60 8 £625 +13.64% 10
East Midlands - 8 £476 - 3
Scotland -12 6 £375 +20.77%
East of England -19 3 £550 +4.76% 2

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

For the 6 months to 1 July 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.

1 105 (43.75%) Agile
1 105 (43.75%) AWS
2 83 (34.58%) Java
3 72 (30.00%) Azure
4 71 (29.58%) CI/CD
5 69 (28.75%) Node.js
6 64 (26.67%) Security Cleared
7 62 (25.83%) JavaScript
7 62 (25.83%) Software Engineering
8 61 (25.42%) Mentoring
9 59 (24.58%) React
9 59 (24.58%) TypeScript
10 55 (22.92%) DevOps
10 55 (22.92%) SC Cleared
11 52 (21.67%) Docker
12 51 (21.25%) Full-Stack Development
13 48 (20.00%) Microservices
14 46 (19.17%) Python
14 46 (19.17%) Technical Leadership
15 42 (17.50%) Kubernetes
15 42 (17.50%) Redux
16 40 (16.67%) Containerisation
17 39 (16.25%) Spring
18 36 (15.00%) Investment Management
18 36 (15.00%) Portfolio Management
18 36 (15.00%) Spring Boot
19 35 (14.58%) PostgreSQL
20 33 (13.75%) Kafka
20 33 (13.75%) REST
20 33 (13.75%) SQL

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 (2.92%) Confluence
2 4 (1.67%) SAS
3 3 (1.25%) CMS
3 3 (1.25%) IIS
3 3 (1.25%) Tomcat
4 2 (0.83%) Appian
4 2 (0.83%) JBoss
4 2 (0.83%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.83%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.83%) ThingWorx
4 2 (0.83%) WebLogic
5 1 (0.42%) Apache
5 1 (0.42%) nginx
5 1 (0.42%) Oracle Workflow
5 1 (0.42%) WordPress
Business Applications
1 3 (1.25%) Dynamics CRM
1 3 (1.25%) Remedy AR System
1 3 (1.25%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.42%) IntelliMatch
2 1 (0.42%) Magento
2 1 (0.42%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.42%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 105 (43.75%) AWS
2 72 (30.00%) Azure
3 30 (12.50%) GCP
4 16 (6.67%) GitHub
5 15 (6.25%) Serverless
6 11 (4.58%) Azure DevOps
7 10 (4.17%) GitHub Actions
8 8 (3.33%) Power Platform
9 6 (2.50%) AWS Lambda
9 6 (2.50%) Dynamics 365
9 6 (2.50%) Salesforce Service Cloud
10 5 (2.08%) Amazon S3
10 5 (2.08%) Amazon SQS
10 5 (2.08%) Azure AKS
10 5 (2.08%) Azure Service Bus
10 5 (2.08%) Power Automate
10 5 (2.08%) PowerApps
11 4 (1.67%) Amazon EC2
12 3 (1.25%) Amazon Cognito
12 3 (1.25%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 2 (0.83%) HTTP
1 2 (0.83%) MQTT
2 1 (0.42%) DNS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 35 (14.58%) PostgreSQL
2 9 (3.75%) Relational Database
2 9 (3.75%) SQL Server
3 7 (2.92%) MongoDB
4 6 (2.50%) Oracle Database
5 5 (2.08%) Redis
6 4 (1.67%) Geospatial Data
6 4 (1.67%) Oracle Reports
7 3 (1.25%) Data Hub
7 3 (1.25%) DocumentDB
7 3 (1.25%) Power BI
8 2 (0.83%) Amazon RDS
8 2 (0.83%) DynamoDB
8 2 (0.83%) Elasticsearch
8 2 (0.83%) GIS
8 2 (0.83%) Metadata
8 2 (0.83%) MySQL
8 2 (0.83%) NoSQL
8 2 (0.83%) SAS Data Integration Studio
9 1 (0.42%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 19 (7.92%) Git
2 16 (6.67%) Jenkins
3 15 (6.25%) JIRA
4 11 (4.58%) GitLab
5 10 (4.17%) Maven
6 9 (3.75%) JUnit
7 6 (2.50%) Mockito
8 4 (1.67%) Oracle Forms
9 3 (1.25%) Gradle
9 3 (1.25%) PVCS
9 3 (1.25%) SpecFlow
9 3 (1.25%) Storybook
9 3 (1.25%) Subversion
10 2 (0.83%) GoCD
10 2 (0.83%) MSI
10 2 (0.83%) SonarQube
11 1 (0.42%) Bitbucket
11 1 (0.42%) IntelliJ
11 1 (0.42%) Liquibase
11 1 (0.42%) Selenium
General
1 63 (26.25%) Finance
2 55 (22.92%) Public Sector
3 37 (15.42%) Front Office
4 28 (11.67%) Social Skills
5 10 (4.17%) Analytical Skills
5 10 (4.17%) Banking
6 5 (2.08%) Documentation Skills
6 5 (2.08%) Investment Banking
6 5 (2.08%) Telecoms
7 4 (1.67%) Military
8 3 (1.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 2 (0.83%) Influencing Skills
9 2 (0.83%) Marketing
10 1 (0.42%) Games
10 1 (0.42%) Law
10 1 (0.42%) Local Government
10 1 (0.42%) Police
10 1 (0.42%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (28.75%) Node.js
2 59 (24.58%) React
3 42 (17.50%) Redux
4 39 (16.25%) Spring
5 36 (15.00%) Spring Boot
6 33 (13.75%) Kafka
6 33 (13.75%) REST
7 29 (12.08%) .NET
8 27 (11.25%) GraphQL
9 18 (7.50%) RESTful
10 15 (6.25%) AngularJS
11 10 (4.17%) Vue
12 9 (3.75%) SOAP
13 7 (2.92%) HTML
13 7 (2.92%) Jest
13 7 (2.92%) JPA
13 7 (2.92%) Nunjucks
13 7 (2.92%) OpenAPI
14 6 (2.50%) Flutter
14 6 (2.50%) Lightning Web Components
Miscellaneous
1 38 (15.83%) Fixed Income
2 21 (8.75%) Cloud Native
3 19 (7.92%) Derivative
4 16 (6.67%) Equities
5 12 (5.00%) Product Ownership
6 11 (4.58%) Legacy Systems
7 10 (4.17%) Enterprise Software
8 9 (3.75%) Distributed Systems
9 5 (2.08%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 4 (1.67%) Virtual Team
11 3 (1.25%) CMDB
11 3 (1.25%) Credit Risk
11 3 (1.25%) Mobile App
11 3 (1.25%) NHS
11 3 (1.25%) Onboarding
12 2 (0.83%) Client/Server
12 2 (0.83%) Data Structures
12 2 (0.83%) N-Tier
12 2 (0.83%) Public Cloud
12 2 (0.83%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 10 (4.17%) Android
2 9 (3.75%) Apple iOS
3 6 (2.50%) Windows
4 4 (1.67%) Linux
5 1 (0.42%) Mac OS
5 1 (0.42%) Solaris
5 1 (0.42%) VMS
5 1 (0.42%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.42%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 105 (43.75%) Agile
2 71 (29.58%) CI/CD
3 62 (25.83%) Software Engineering
4 61 (25.42%) Mentoring
5 55 (22.92%) DevOps
6 51 (21.25%) Full-Stack Development
7 48 (20.00%) Microservices
8 46 (19.17%) Technical Leadership
9 40 (16.67%) Containerisation
10 36 (15.00%) Investment Management
10 36 (15.00%) Portfolio Management
11 26 (10.83%) Code Quality
12 22 (9.17%) Infrastructure as Code
12 22 (9.17%) Problem-Solving
13 21 (8.75%) Event-Driven
14 20 (8.33%) Continuous Improvement
14 20 (8.33%) Order Management
15 19 (7.92%) Test Automation
16 18 (7.50%) Line Management
17 17 (7.08%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 83 (34.58%) Java
2 62 (25.83%) JavaScript
3 59 (24.58%) TypeScript
4 46 (19.17%) Python
5 33 (13.75%) SQL
6 25 (10.42%) C#
7 20 (8.33%) Go
8 9 (3.75%) Kotlin
9 8 (3.33%) Swift
10 7 (2.92%) Bicep
10 7 (2.92%) T-SQL
11 6 (2.50%) Apex Code
12 5 (2.08%) PL/SQL
13 3 (1.25%) Ruby
13 3 (1.25%) Scala
13 3 (1.25%) Shell Script
14 2 (0.83%) ABAP
14 2 (0.83%) Dart
15 1 (0.42%) PowerShell
15 1 (0.42%) XPath
Qualifications
1 64 (26.67%) Security Cleared
2 55 (22.92%) SC Cleared
3 21 (8.75%) BPSS Clearance
4 2 (0.83%) DV Cleared
4 2 (0.83%) Microsoft Certification
5 1 (0.42%) Azure Certification
5 1 (0.42%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (0.42%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (6.67%) Accessibility
2 15 (6.25%) QA
3 4 (1.67%) WCAG
4 3 (1.25%) NCSC
5 1 (0.42%) 21 CFR Part 11
5 1 (0.42%) GDPR
5 1 (0.42%) GMP
5 1 (0.42%) GxP
5 1 (0.42%) ISO/IEC 17025
5 1 (0.42%) SLA
System Software
1 52 (21.67%) Docker
2 1 (0.42%) Apache ZooKeeper
2 1 (0.42%) Oracle RAC
2 1 (0.42%) VMware ESXi
2 1 (0.42%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 42 (17.50%) Kubernetes
2 24 (10.00%) Terraform
3 4 (1.67%) Grafana
4 3 (1.25%) Kibana
5 2 (0.83%) Ansible
6 1 (0.42%) Oracle RMAN
6 1 (0.42%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 27 (11.25%) Microsoft
2 12 (5.00%) Oracle
3 9 (3.75%) Salesforce
4 7 (2.92%) Informatica
5 5 (2.08%) IBM
6 4 (1.67%) Blue Prism
7 3 (1.25%) BMC
7 3 (1.25%) Remedy
7 3 (1.25%) SAP
8 2 (0.83%) Adobe
8 2 (0.83%) Anaplan
8 2 (0.83%) DataFlux
8 2 (0.83%) Guidewire
8 2 (0.83%) Kepware
8 2 (0.83%) OpenAI
8 2 (0.83%) ServiceNow
9 1 (0.42%) Genesys
9 1 (0.42%) HubSpot
9 1 (0.42%) Liquidlogic
9 1 (0.42%) MuleSoft