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 13 June 2026.

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

6 months to
13 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 428 355 407
Rank change year-on-year -73 +52 +72
Contract jobs requiring a Lead Developer 216 173 180
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.43% 0.59% 0.41%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.47% 0.64% 0.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 177 122 143
10th Percentile £419 £419 £453
25th Percentile £513 £509 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £569 £650
Median % change year-on-year +1.10% -12.50% +8.33%
75th Percentile £750 £685 £881
90th Percentile £838 £750 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £574 £525 £600
% change year-on-year +9.24% -12.50% +2.13%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 1 0
Median hourly rate - £72.50 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - -

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 46,221 27,241 40,562
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.39% 92.30% 92.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,120 17,531 26,073
10th Percentile £325 £290 £280
25th Percentile £413 £402 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.80% -4.76% -2.42%
75th Percentile £623 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,085 1,148 2,936
10th Percentile £15.24 £14.00 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.75 £17.79 £16.30
Median hourly rate £42.69 £27.70 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +54.10% -26.13% -16.67%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £61.81
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +76.94% -37.13% -4.94%

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 13 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 13 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 -95 173 £575 -4.17% 73
London -59 84 £700 +6.87% 20
UK excluding London -83 83 £574 +9.24% 57
Work from Home -81 75 £713 +18.75% 39
North of England -31 48 £575 +9.52% 18
North West -18 26 £570 -5.00% 14
Midlands -54 16 £550 +8.47% 14
North East -21 14 £650 +2.36% 2
Yorkshire -56 8 £561 +6.90% 2
East Midlands - 8 £476 - 4
South East -58 7 £625 +13.64% 13
West Midlands -59 7 £525 +3.54% 10
South West -23 6 £525 -19.85% 4
Scotland -23 3 - - 1
East of England -25 3 £550 +4.76% 7

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

For the 6 months to 13 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 95 (43.98%) Agile
2 90 (41.67%) AWS
3 75 (34.72%) Java
4 67 (31.02%) Node.js
5 66 (30.56%) Azure
6 61 (28.24%) JavaScript
6 61 (28.24%) Software Engineering
7 60 (27.78%) CI/CD
8 58 (26.85%) React
9 57 (26.39%) Mentoring
10 54 (25.00%) TypeScript
11 50 (23.15%) DevOps
12 46 (21.30%) Full-Stack Development
12 46 (21.30%) Python
13 44 (20.37%) Docker
14 42 (19.44%) Security Cleared
15 40 (18.52%) Microservices
16 38 (17.59%) Redux
16 38 (17.59%) SC Cleared
16 38 (17.59%) Technical Leadership
17 36 (16.67%) Investment Management
17 36 (16.67%) Portfolio Management
18 35 (16.20%) Kubernetes
19 34 (15.74%) Containerisation
19 34 (15.74%) Spring
20 33 (15.28%) Kafka
21 32 (14.81%) Spring Boot
22 31 (14.35%) GCP
22 31 (14.35%) PostgreSQL
23 26 (12.04%) GraphQL

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 5 (2.31%) Confluence
2 4 (1.85%) SAS
3 3 (1.39%) Tomcat
4 2 (0.93%) Appian
4 2 (0.93%) CMS
4 2 (0.93%) IIS
4 2 (0.93%) JBoss
4 2 (0.93%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.93%) ThingWorx
4 2 (0.93%) WebLogic
5 1 (0.46%) Apache
5 1 (0.46%) nginx
5 1 (0.46%) SharePoint
Business Applications
1 3 (1.39%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.46%) Magento
2 1 (0.46%) Remedy AR System
2 1 (0.46%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.46%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.46%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 90 (41.67%) AWS
2 66 (30.56%) Azure
3 31 (14.35%) GCP
4 13 (6.02%) GitHub
5 11 (5.09%) Serverless
6 9 (4.17%) GitHub Actions
7 8 (3.70%) Power Platform
8 7 (3.24%) Azure DevOps
9 6 (2.78%) Amazon SQS
9 6 (2.78%) AWS Lambda
9 6 (2.78%) Dynamics 365
9 6 (2.78%) Salesforce Service Cloud
10 5 (2.31%) Amazon S3
10 5 (2.31%) Power Automate
10 5 (2.31%) PowerApps
11 4 (1.85%) Amazon EC2
11 4 (1.85%) Azure AKS
11 4 (1.85%) Azure Logic Apps
11 4 (1.85%) Azure Service Bus
12 3 (1.39%) Amazon ECR
Communications & Networking
1 2 (0.93%) MQTT
2 1 (0.46%) DNS
2 1 (0.46%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (14.35%) PostgreSQL
2 8 (3.70%) Relational Database
3 7 (3.24%) SQL Server
4 5 (2.31%) MongoDB
5 4 (1.85%) Data Hub
5 4 (1.85%) Oracle Database
6 3 (1.39%) DocumentDB
6 3 (1.39%) Geospatial Data
6 3 (1.39%) Power BI
6 3 (1.39%) Redis
7 2 (0.93%) Amazon RDS
7 2 (0.93%) DynamoDB
7 2 (0.93%) Elasticsearch
7 2 (0.93%) GIS
7 2 (0.93%) MySQL
7 2 (0.93%) NoSQL
7 2 (0.93%) Oracle Reports
7 2 (0.93%) SAS Data Integration Studio
8 1 (0.46%) Amazon Aurora
8 1 (0.46%) QGIS
Development Applications
1 12 (5.56%) Jenkins
2 11 (5.09%) Git
2 11 (5.09%) JIRA
3 10 (4.63%) GitLab
4 6 (2.78%) JUnit
5 5 (2.31%) Mockito
6 4 (1.85%) Maven
7 2 (0.93%) Oracle Forms
7 2 (0.93%) PVCS
7 2 (0.93%) SonarQube
7 2 (0.93%) SpecFlow
7 2 (0.93%) Subversion
8 1 (0.46%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.46%) Claude Code
8 1 (0.46%) Gradle
8 1 (0.46%) Liquibase
8 1 (0.46%) Mocha
8 1 (0.46%) Storybook
8 1 (0.46%) Vite
8 1 (0.46%) webpack
General
1 57 (26.39%) Finance
2 47 (21.76%) Public Sector
3 37 (17.13%) Front Office
4 23 (10.65%) Social Skills
5 8 (3.70%) Analytical Skills
6 5 (2.31%) Banking
6 5 (2.31%) Documentation Skills
7 3 (1.39%) Military
7 3 (1.39%) Telecoms
8 2 (0.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 2 (0.93%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (0.93%) Investment Banking
8 2 (0.93%) Marketing
9 1 (0.46%) Games
9 1 (0.46%) Law
9 1 (0.46%) Local Government
9 1 (0.46%) Police
9 1 (0.46%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 67 (31.02%) Node.js
2 58 (26.85%) React
3 38 (17.59%) Redux
4 34 (15.74%) Spring
5 33 (15.28%) Kafka
6 32 (14.81%) Spring Boot
7 26 (12.04%) GraphQL
8 25 (11.57%) REST
9 24 (11.11%) .NET
10 16 (7.41%) RESTful
11 15 (6.94%) Vue
12 13 (6.02%) AngularJS
13 7 (3.24%) Nunjucks
14 6 (2.78%) Flutter
14 6 (2.78%) Lightning Web Components
14 6 (2.78%) SOAP
15 5 (2.31%) Django
15 5 (2.31%) OAuth
15 5 (2.31%) OpenAPI
15 5 (2.31%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 37 (17.13%) Fixed Income
2 17 (7.87%) Cloud Native
2 17 (7.87%) Derivative
3 16 (7.41%) Equities
4 10 (4.63%) Product Ownership
5 9 (4.17%) Enterprise Software
6 8 (3.70%) Distributed Systems
7 7 (3.24%) Legacy Systems
8 4 (1.85%) Virtual Team
9 3 (1.39%) Credit Risk
9 3 (1.39%) Mobile App
9 3 (1.39%) NHS
10 2 (0.93%) Client/Server
10 2 (0.93%) Data Protection Act
10 2 (0.93%) Data Structures
10 2 (0.93%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 2 (0.93%) Industrial Internet of Things
10 2 (0.93%) N-Tier
10 2 (0.93%) Public Cloud
10 2 (0.93%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 10 (4.63%) Android
2 9 (4.17%) Apple iOS
3 4 (1.85%) Linux
4 3 (1.39%) Windows
5 1 (0.46%) Mac OS
5 1 (0.46%) Solaris
5 1 (0.46%) VMS
5 1 (0.46%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 95 (43.98%) Agile
2 61 (28.24%) Software Engineering
3 60 (27.78%) CI/CD
4 57 (26.39%) Mentoring
5 50 (23.15%) DevOps
6 46 (21.30%) Full-Stack Development
7 40 (18.52%) Microservices
8 38 (17.59%) Technical Leadership
9 36 (16.67%) Investment Management
9 36 (16.67%) Portfolio Management
10 34 (15.74%) Containerisation
11 24 (11.11%) Code Quality
12 20 (9.26%) Continuous Improvement
12 20 (9.26%) Order Management
13 19 (8.80%) Infrastructure as Code
14 18 (8.33%) Line Management
15 17 (7.87%) Event-Driven
15 17 (7.87%) Test Automation
16 16 (7.41%) Asset Management
16 16 (7.41%) Fintech
Programming Languages
1 75 (34.72%) Java
2 61 (28.24%) JavaScript
3 54 (25.00%) TypeScript
4 46 (21.30%) Python
5 23 (10.65%) SQL
6 22 (10.19%) C#
7 21 (9.72%) Go
8 10 (4.63%) Kotlin
9 8 (3.70%) Swift
10 6 (2.78%) Apex Code
11 5 (2.31%) Bicep
11 5 (2.31%) T-SQL
12 3 (1.39%) PL/SQL
12 3 (1.39%) PowerShell
12 3 (1.39%) Scala
13 2 (0.93%) ABAP
13 2 (0.93%) Dart
13 2 (0.93%) Ruby
13 2 (0.93%) Shell Script
14 1 (0.46%) Objective-C
Qualifications
1 42 (19.44%) Security Cleared
2 38 (17.59%) SC Cleared
3 20 (9.26%) BPSS Clearance
4 2 (0.93%) Microsoft Certification
5 1 (0.46%) Azure Certification
5 1 (0.46%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (0.46%) Degree
5 1 (0.46%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (6.02%) QA
2 12 (5.56%) Accessibility
3 2 (0.93%) NCSC
3 2 (0.93%) WCAG
4 1 (0.46%) GDPR
4 1 (0.46%) SLA
System Software
1 44 (20.37%) Docker
2 1 (0.46%) Apache ZooKeeper
2 1 (0.46%) Oracle RAC
2 1 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
2 1 (0.46%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 35 (16.20%) Kubernetes
2 21 (9.72%) Terraform
3 4 (1.85%) Grafana
4 2 (0.93%) Kibana
5 1 (0.46%) Oracle RMAN
5 1 (0.46%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 25 (11.57%) Microsoft
2 9 (4.17%) Salesforce
3 7 (3.24%) Informatica
3 7 (3.24%) Oracle
4 5 (2.31%) IBM
5 3 (1.39%) Adobe
5 3 (1.39%) Anaplan
5 3 (1.39%) Blue Prism
5 3 (1.39%) SAP
6 2 (0.93%) DataFlux
6 2 (0.93%) Kepware
6 2 (0.93%) OpenAI
7 1 (0.46%) ESRI
7 1 (0.46%) Google
7 1 (0.46%) Guidewire
7 1 (0.46%) HubSpot
7 1 (0.46%) Jaspersoft
7 1 (0.46%) Liquidlogic
7 1 (0.46%) Remedy
7 1 (0.46%) VMware