Lead Developer Contract Job Trends

Lead Developer
UK

The median Lead Developer daily rate in the UK is £560, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 24 October 2025.

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

6 months to
24 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 393 340 443
Rank change year-on-year -53 +103 +4
Contract jobs requiring a Lead Developer 164 217 196
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.49% 0.59% 0.41%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.54% 0.63% 0.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 116 159 146
10th Percentile £455 £460 £425
25th Percentile £505 £522 £502
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £560 £625 £600
Median % change year-on-year -10.40% +4.17% +4.35%
75th Percentile £714 £756 £708
90th Percentile £778 £888 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £556 £575
% change year-on-year -1.12% -3.26% +8.80%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 1 0
Median hourly rate - £52.50 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £52.50 -

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
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 30,539 34,435 44,982
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.82% 92.89% 93.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,320 20,765 30,716
10th Percentile £278 £300 £300
25th Percentile £402 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,692 1,358 1,529
10th Percentile £13.80 £15.05 £14.60
25th Percentile £17.30 £20.30 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -37.13% -10.11% +64.78%
75th Percentile £50.19 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.65 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.00 £40.00 £43.90
% change year-on-year -37.50% -8.88% +90.87%

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 24 October 2025.

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 24 October 2025. 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 -79 137 £598 -4.36% 132
London -47 83 £650 -4.76% 58
Work from Home +4 81 £600 -14.29% 93
UK excluding London -28 56 £550 -1.12% 97
North of England -20 26 £596 +8.27% 31
Yorkshire -17 17 £596 +8.27% 6
Midlands -29 10 £475 -13.64% 11
South West +12 7 £550 -1.12% 6
Scotland +8 7 £447 - 1
North West -15 7 £525 -16.27% 20
West Midlands -16 7 £475 -13.64% 10
South East -14 5 £550 -12.00% 36
East Midlands - 3 - - 1
North East - 2 £618 - 5
East of England -3 1 £550 +51.72% 12

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

For the 6 months to 24 October 2025, 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 81 (49.39%) Agile
2 78 (47.56%) Java
3 64 (39.02%) AWS
4 59 (35.98%) CI/CD
5 57 (34.76%) DevOps
6 50 (30.49%) Azure
7 48 (29.27%) Microservices
8 43 (26.22%) TDD
9 39 (23.78%) Mentoring
10 37 (22.56%) Problem-Solving
11 35 (21.34%) TypeScript
12 34 (20.73%) JavaScript
12 34 (20.73%) PostgreSQL
12 34 (20.73%) SQL
13 33 (20.12%) Docker
14 32 (19.51%) Spring Boot
15 31 (18.90%) Software Engineering
15 31 (18.90%) Spring
16 30 (18.29%) React
17 29 (17.68%) C#
17 29 (17.68%) Kafka
18 27 (16.46%) Containerisation
18 27 (16.46%) Technical Leadership
19 25 (15.24%) .NET
19 25 (15.24%) Security Cleared
20 24 (14.63%) Azure DevOps
20 24 (14.63%) Scrum
21 23 (14.02%) Jenkins
21 23 (14.02%) Node.js
22 21 (12.80%) BDD

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 (2.44%) Tomcat
2 3 (1.83%) Confluence
3 2 (1.22%) Apache
4 1 (0.61%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.61%) LiveLink
4 1 (0.61%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.61%) Traefik
Applications
1 2 (1.22%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 3 (1.83%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.61%) ION Anvil
2 1 (0.61%) Maximo
2 1 (0.61%) Oracle Applications
2 1 (0.61%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.61%) Shopify
2 1 (0.61%) TRIRIGA
Cloud Services
1 64 (39.02%) AWS
2 50 (30.49%) Azure
3 24 (14.63%) Azure DevOps
4 14 (8.54%) GCP
5 9 (5.49%) Amazon SQS
6 8 (4.88%) Serverless
7 7 (4.27%) Amazon S3
7 7 (4.27%) Entra ID
7 7 (4.27%) GitHub
8 6 (3.66%) AWS Lambda
8 6 (3.66%) Cloud Functions
8 6 (3.66%) Cloud Run
9 5 (3.05%) Amazon EC2
9 5 (3.05%) GitHub Actions
9 5 (3.05%) Power Platform
10 4 (2.44%) Amazon ECS
10 4 (2.44%) Amazon EKS
11 3 (1.83%) Azure Logic Apps
11 3 (1.83%) Dynamics 365
11 3 (1.83%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.61%) Network Security
1 1 (0.61%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (20.73%) PostgreSQL
2 14 (8.54%) Relational Database
3 13 (7.93%) Redis
4 9 (5.49%) SQL Server
5 8 (4.88%) MongoDB
6 7 (4.27%) DynamoDB
7 5 (3.05%) Amazon Aurora
7 5 (3.05%) Amazon RDS
7 5 (3.05%) NoSQL
8 4 (2.44%) MySQL
9 2 (1.22%) BigQuery
9 2 (1.22%) Data Warehouse
9 2 (1.22%) EDRMS
9 2 (1.22%) Oracle Database
10 1 (0.61%) BusinessObjects
10 1 (0.61%) Hasura
10 1 (0.61%) Power BI
10 1 (0.61%) Spark SQL
10 1 (0.61%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 23 (14.02%) Jenkins
2 16 (9.76%) Git
3 13 (7.93%) JUnit
4 9 (5.49%) Mockito
5 8 (4.88%) SonarQube
6 6 (3.66%) GitLab
6 6 (3.66%) Gradle
7 5 (3.05%) JIRA
7 5 (3.05%) Liquibase
7 5 (3.05%) Maven
8 4 (2.44%) Bitbucket
9 3 (1.83%) Subversion
10 2 (1.22%) Artifactory
10 2 (1.22%) CircleCI
11 1 (0.61%) Android Studio
11 1 (0.61%) Bundler
11 1 (0.61%) ESLint
11 1 (0.61%) Jaeger
11 1 (0.61%) Karma Test Runner
11 1 (0.61%) webpack
General
1 33 (20.12%) Social Skills
2 32 (19.51%) Finance
3 28 (17.07%) Public Sector
4 22 (13.41%) Banking
5 14 (8.54%) Analytical Skills
6 10 (6.10%) Front Office
6 10 (6.10%) Investment Banking
7 9 (5.49%) Marketing
8 5 (3.05%) Electronics
8 5 (3.05%) Manufacturing
8 5 (3.05%) Telecoms
9 4 (2.44%) Automotive
10 2 (1.22%) Aerospace
10 2 (1.22%) Financial Institution
10 2 (1.22%) Military
10 2 (1.22%) Retail
10 2 (1.22%) Spanish Language
11 1 (0.61%) Documentation Skills
11 1 (0.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.61%) Influencing Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (19.51%) Spring Boot
2 31 (18.90%) Spring
3 30 (18.29%) React
4 29 (17.68%) Kafka
5 25 (15.24%) .NET
6 23 (14.02%) Node.js
7 20 (12.20%) RESTful
8 17 (10.37%) .NET Core
9 16 (9.76%) REST
10 15 (9.15%) GraphQL
11 14 (8.54%) ActiveMQ
12 11 (6.71%) AngularJS
13 10 (6.10%) HTML
14 9 (5.49%) CSS
14 9 (5.49%) Redux
15 8 (4.88%) React Native
16 6 (3.66%) OpenAPI
16 6 (3.66%) SOAP
16 6 (3.66%) Swagger
16 6 (3.66%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 17 (10.37%) Cloud Native
2 15 (9.15%) Product Ownership
3 10 (6.10%) Fixed Income
4 7 (4.27%) Legacy Systems
5 6 (3.66%) Algorithms
5 6 (3.66%) Data Protection Act
6 5 (3.05%) Data Structures
6 5 (3.05%) Greenfield Project
6 5 (3.05%) Onboarding
7 4 (2.44%) Enterprise Software
8 3 (1.83%) Mainframe
9 2 (1.22%) Legacy Applications
9 2 (1.22%) Management Information System
9 2 (1.22%) Virtual Team
10 1 (0.61%) Legacy Code
10 1 (0.61%) Low-Code
10 1 (0.61%) Mobile App
10 1 (0.61%) NHS
10 1 (0.61%) Public Cloud
10 1 (0.61%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 8 (4.88%) Linux
2 6 (3.66%) Android
3 5 (3.05%) Unix
4 4 (2.44%) Apple iOS
5 3 (1.83%) Mac OS X
6 2 (1.22%) Windows Server 2016
7 1 (0.61%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 81 (49.39%) Agile
2 59 (35.98%) CI/CD
3 57 (34.76%) DevOps
4 48 (29.27%) Microservices
5 43 (26.22%) TDD
6 39 (23.78%) Mentoring
7 37 (22.56%) Problem-Solving
8 31 (18.90%) Software Engineering
9 27 (16.46%) Containerisation
9 27 (16.46%) Technical Leadership
10 24 (14.63%) Scrum
11 21 (12.80%) BDD
12 19 (11.59%) Full-Stack Development
13 16 (9.76%) Computer Science
13 16 (9.76%) Performance Optimisation
14 15 (9.15%) SOLID
15 14 (8.54%) Migration
15 14 (8.54%) Test Automation
16 13 (7.93%) Design Patterns
16 13 (7.93%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 78 (47.56%) Java
2 35 (21.34%) TypeScript
3 34 (20.73%) JavaScript
3 34 (20.73%) SQL
4 29 (17.68%) C#
5 21 (12.80%) Python
6 10 (6.10%) Go
7 8 (4.88%) PowerShell
8 7 (4.27%) Kotlin
9 5 (3.05%) Ruby
10 4 (2.44%) C++
11 2 (1.22%) Bicep
11 2 (1.22%) PHP
11 2 (1.22%) PL/SQL
11 2 (1.22%) Swift
12 1 (0.61%) Apex Code
12 1 (0.61%) Bash
12 1 (0.61%) Groovy
12 1 (0.61%) Objective-C
12 1 (0.61%) Perl
Qualifications
1 25 (15.24%) Security Cleared
2 21 (12.80%) SC Cleared
3 18 (10.98%) Degree
4 10 (6.10%) Numerate Degree
5 7 (4.27%) BPSS Clearance
6 6 (3.66%) Computer Science Degree
7 3 (1.83%) AWS Certification
7 3 (1.83%) DV Cleared
8 1 (0.61%) Microsoft Certification
8 1 (0.61%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (3.66%) Accessibility
2 4 (2.44%) QA
System Software
1 33 (20.12%) Docker
2 7 (4.27%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 21 (12.80%) Terraform
2 18 (10.98%) Kubernetes
3 5 (3.05%) Single Sign-On
4 4 (2.44%) Grafana
5 2 (1.22%) Istio
5 2 (1.22%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.61%) Ansible
6 1 (0.61%) Control-M
6 1 (0.61%) Kiali
Vendors
1 14 (8.54%) Microsoft
2 8 (4.88%) Google
3 7 (4.27%) Virgin Media
4 6 (3.66%) SAP
5 5 (3.05%) Autodesk
5 5 (3.05%) Okta
6 4 (2.44%) Oracle
7 2 (1.22%) Adobe
7 2 (1.22%) Checkmarx
7 2 (1.22%) OpenAI
7 2 (1.22%) Salesforce
7 2 (1.22%) Splunk
8 1 (0.61%) AppDynamics
8 1 (0.61%) CA Agile Central
8 1 (0.61%) Databricks
8 1 (0.61%) Dynatrace
8 1 (0.61%) ION Trading
8 1 (0.61%) MuleSoft
8 1 (0.61%) ServiceNow
8 1 (0.61%) xMatters