Lead Developer Contract Job Trends

Lead Developer
UK

The median Lead Developer daily rate in the UK is £600, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 11 April 2026.

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

6 months to
11 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 452 343 430
Rank change year-on-year -109 +87 +38
Contract jobs requiring a Lead Developer 183 184 165
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.40% 0.63% 0.38%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.43% 0.68% 0.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 145 132 131
10th Percentile £413 £419 £400
25th Percentile £525 £513 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £594 £600
Median % change year-on-year +1.05% -1.04% -
75th Percentile £788 £699 £738
90th Percentile £850 £795 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £571 £525 £600
% change year-on-year +8.76% -12.50% -
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 42,225 27,079 40,770
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.26% 92.67% 92.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,249 17,802 26,661
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £407 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +2.63% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,659 969 2,573
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.84 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.09 £20.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £41.06 £31.64 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.76% -9.60% -21.40%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.25 £71.89
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.13 £30.20 £35.00
% change year-on-year +39.49% -13.71% -16.82%

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 11 April 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 13 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 11 April 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 -108 146 £600 - 83
London -104 75 £750 +20.00% 32
Work from Home -25 73 £700 +16.67% 46
UK excluding London -81 67 £571 +8.76% 60
North of England -38 44 £570 +8.57% 25
North West -11 25 £570 -10.59% 18
Yorkshire -47 12 £563 +7.14% 2
Midlands -62 10 £508 -5.77% 8
South East -51 9 £600 +9.09% 15
West Midlands -60 9 £492 -11.77% 6
North East -10 7 £575 +21.05% 6
South West -32 2 £688 -7.09% 8
East of England - 2 - -

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

For the 6 months to 11 April 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 78 (42.62%) Agile
2 73 (39.89%) Java
3 72 (39.34%) AWS
4 64 (34.97%) Node.js
5 60 (32.79%) Azure
6 56 (30.60%) React
7 53 (28.96%) TypeScript
8 52 (28.42%) JavaScript
9 50 (27.32%) Mentoring
10 49 (26.78%) CI/CD
10 49 (26.78%) Python
11 47 (25.68%) Software Engineering
12 42 (22.95%) Full-Stack Development
13 38 (20.77%) Docker
13 38 (20.77%) Redux
14 36 (19.67%) Investment Management
14 36 (19.67%) Portfolio Management
15 35 (19.13%) DevOps
16 33 (18.03%) Microservices
17 31 (16.94%) GCP
17 31 (16.94%) Spring
18 30 (16.39%) Kafka
18 30 (16.39%) PostgreSQL
19 29 (15.85%) Containerisation
20 28 (15.30%) GraphQL
20 28 (15.30%) Security Cleared
20 28 (15.30%) Spring Boot
21 25 (13.66%) Kubernetes
21 25 (13.66%) SC Cleared
22 24 (13.11%) Technical Leadership

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 8 (4.37%) SharePoint
2 3 (1.64%) ArcGIS
2 3 (1.64%) Tomcat
3 2 (1.09%) Appian
3 2 (1.09%) Confluence
3 2 (1.09%) IIS
3 2 (1.09%) JBoss
3 2 (1.09%) Oracle SOA Suite
3 2 (1.09%) WebLogic
4 1 (0.55%) Apache
4 1 (0.55%) CMS
4 1 (0.55%) nginx
Business Applications
1 1 (0.55%) Magento
1 1 (0.55%) SAP S/4HANA
1 1 (0.55%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 72 (39.34%) AWS
2 60 (32.79%) Azure
3 31 (16.94%) GCP
4 15 (8.20%) GitHub
5 13 (7.10%) GitHub Actions
6 12 (6.56%) Power Platform
6 12 (6.56%) Serverless
7 7 (3.83%) Amazon Bedrock
7 7 (3.83%) Amazon SQS
8 6 (3.28%) Amazon S3
8 6 (3.28%) AWS Lambda
8 6 (3.28%) Azure AI
8 6 (3.28%) Azure DevOps
9 5 (2.73%) Azure AKS
9 5 (2.73%) Azure Monitor
9 5 (2.73%) Azure Service Bus
10 4 (2.19%) Amazon ECR
10 4 (2.19%) Azure Cosmos DB
10 4 (2.19%) Azure Functions
10 4 (2.19%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.55%) HTTP
1 1 (0.55%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (16.39%) PostgreSQL
2 7 (3.83%) Relational Database
2 7 (3.83%) SQL Server
3 5 (2.73%) DynamoDB
4 4 (2.19%) Data Hub
4 4 (2.19%) Power BI
5 3 (1.64%) Azure SQL Database
5 3 (1.64%) Geospatial Data
5 3 (1.64%) GIS
5 3 (1.64%) NoSQL
6 2 (1.09%) Amazon Aurora
6 2 (1.09%) Amazon RDS
6 2 (1.09%) Data Warehouse
6 2 (1.09%) DocumentDB
6 2 (1.09%) Elasticsearch
6 2 (1.09%) MongoDB
6 2 (1.09%) MySQL
6 2 (1.09%) Oracle Database
6 2 (1.09%) Redis
7 1 (0.55%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 13 (7.10%) Jenkins
2 9 (4.92%) GitLab
3 8 (4.37%) Git
4 6 (3.28%) JIRA
4 6 (3.28%) JUnit
5 5 (2.73%) Mockito
6 4 (2.19%) Maven
7 3 (1.64%) SonarQube
8 2 (1.09%) Bitbucket
8 2 (1.09%) CircleCI
8 2 (1.09%) Cypress.io
8 2 (1.09%) Gradle
8 2 (1.09%) Selenium
9 1 (0.55%) Android Studio
9 1 (0.55%) Cucumber
9 1 (0.55%) Liquibase
9 1 (0.55%) Mocha
9 1 (0.55%) SpecFlow
9 1 (0.55%) Storybook
9 1 (0.55%) Vite
General
1 47 (25.68%) Finance
2 37 (20.22%) Front Office
3 33 (18.03%) Public Sector
4 22 (12.02%) Social Skills
5 10 (5.46%) Analytical Skills
6 3 (1.64%) Telecoms
7 2 (1.09%) Banking
7 2 (1.09%) Influencing Skills
7 2 (1.09%) Retail
8 1 (0.55%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (0.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (0.55%) Investment Banking
8 1 (0.55%) Local Government
8 1 (0.55%) Marketing
8 1 (0.55%) Military
8 1 (0.55%) Organisational Skills
8 1 (0.55%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 64 (34.97%) Node.js
2 56 (30.60%) React
3 38 (20.77%) Redux
4 31 (16.94%) Spring
5 30 (16.39%) Kafka
6 28 (15.30%) GraphQL
6 28 (15.30%) Spring Boot
7 17 (9.29%) REST
8 14 (7.65%) RESTful
9 13 (7.10%) .NET
10 12 (6.56%) AngularJS
10 12 (6.56%) Vue
11 6 (3.28%) Flutter
11 6 (3.28%) LangChain
11 6 (3.28%) Nunjucks
11 6 (3.28%) OAuth
11 6 (3.28%) SOAP
12 5 (2.73%) Express.js
12 5 (2.73%) Hibernate
12 5 (2.73%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 37 (20.22%) Fixed Income
2 16 (8.74%) Cloud Native
2 16 (8.74%) Derivative
2 16 (8.74%) Equities
3 13 (7.10%) Product Ownership
4 8 (4.37%) Low-Code
5 5 (2.73%) Credit Risk
6 4 (2.19%) Distributed Systems
6 4 (2.19%) Legacy Systems
7 3 (1.64%) Data Structures
7 3 (1.64%) Enterprise Software
7 3 (1.64%) Virtual Team
8 2 (1.09%) Algorithms
8 2 (1.09%) Client/Server
8 2 (1.09%) Data Protection Act
8 2 (1.09%) Mobile App
8 2 (1.09%) NHS
8 2 (1.09%) N-Tier
8 2 (1.09%) Onboarding
8 2 (1.09%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 11 (6.01%) Android
1 11 (6.01%) Apple iOS
2 4 (2.19%) Linux
3 2 (1.09%) Windows
4 1 (0.55%) Mac OS
4 1 (0.55%) Solaris
4 1 (0.55%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 78 (42.62%) Agile
2 50 (27.32%) Mentoring
3 49 (26.78%) CI/CD
4 47 (25.68%) Software Engineering
5 42 (22.95%) Full-Stack Development
6 36 (19.67%) Investment Management
6 36 (19.67%) Portfolio Management
7 35 (19.13%) DevOps
8 33 (18.03%) Microservices
9 29 (15.85%) Containerisation
10 24 (13.11%) Technical Leadership
11 20 (10.93%) Code Quality
11 20 (10.93%) Order Management
12 17 (9.29%) Problem-Solving
13 16 (8.74%) Asset Management
13 16 (8.74%) Fintech
13 16 (8.74%) Line Management
13 16 (8.74%) Test Automation
14 15 (8.20%) Event-Driven
14 15 (8.20%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 73 (39.89%) Java
2 53 (28.96%) TypeScript
3 52 (28.42%) JavaScript
4 49 (26.78%) Python
5 21 (11.48%) Go
6 20 (10.93%) SQL
7 15 (8.20%) C#
8 10 (5.46%) Kotlin
8 10 (5.46%) Swift
9 3 (1.64%) Apex Code
10 2 (1.09%) ABAP
10 2 (1.09%) Bicep
10 2 (1.09%) Dart
10 2 (1.09%) Objective-C
10 2 (1.09%) PowerShell
10 2 (1.09%) Scala
11 1 (0.55%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 1 (0.55%) R
11 1 (0.55%) Ruby
11 1 (0.55%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 28 (15.30%) Security Cleared
2 25 (13.66%) SC Cleared
3 13 (7.10%) BPSS Clearance
4 8 (4.37%) Degree
5 6 (3.28%) Computer Science Degree
6 2 (1.09%) DBS Check
7 1 (0.55%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (4.92%) QA
2 6 (3.28%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.55%) GDPR
3 1 (0.55%) NCSC
3 1 (0.55%) SLA
3 1 (0.55%) WCAG
System Software
1 38 (20.77%) Docker
2 1 (0.55%) Oracle RAC
2 1 (0.55%) VMware ESXi
2 1 (0.55%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 25 (13.66%) Kubernetes
2 15 (8.20%) Terraform
3 4 (2.19%) Grafana
4 1 (0.55%) Ansible
4 1 (0.55%) HP Fortify
4 1 (0.55%) Kibana
4 1 (0.55%) Oracle RMAN
4 1 (0.55%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 19 (10.38%) Microsoft
2 6 (3.28%) Foundry
3 5 (2.73%) Adobe
3 5 (2.73%) Oracle
4 3 (1.64%) Anaplan
4 3 (1.64%) ESRI
4 3 (1.64%) Salesforce
4 3 (1.64%) SAP
4 3 (1.64%) ServiceNow
5 2 (1.09%) Google
6 1 (0.55%) Ariba
6 1 (0.55%) Databricks
6 1 (0.55%) Guidewire
6 1 (0.55%) IBM
6 1 (0.55%) Jaspersoft
6 1 (0.55%) Liquidlogic
6 1 (0.55%) OpenAI
6 1 (0.55%) Red Hat
6 1 (0.55%) Virgin Media
6 1 (0.55%) VMware