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 17 June 2026.

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

6 months to
17 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 427 358 413
Rank change year-on-year -69 +55 +61
Contract jobs requiring a Lead Developer 220 175 183
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.44% 0.59% 0.42%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.47% 0.64% 0.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 180 124 146
10th Percentile £420 £426 £429
25th Percentile £513 £507 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £556 £650
Median % change year-on-year +3.37% -14.42% +8.33%
75th Percentile £750 £685 £884
90th Percentile £838 £750 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £572 £525 £600
% change year-on-year +8.95% -12.50% +3.23%
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 46,477 27,381 40,501
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.36% 92.25% 92.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,258 17,617 25,961
10th Percentile £325 £289 £280
25th Percentile £413 £402 £407
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £624 £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 3,104 1,172 2,957
10th Percentile £15.25 £13.87 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.86 £17.75 £16.37
Median hourly rate £43.61 £27.45 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +58.85% -26.80% -16.67%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% -1.45%

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 17 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 17 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 -81 179 £575 -3.36% 73
London -59 86 £700 +6.87% 20
UK excluding London -72 86 £572 +8.95% 58
Work from Home -67 75 £725 +22.11% 44
North of England -38 48 £575 +9.52% 17
North West -20 26 £570 -5.00% 13
Midlands -54 16 £550 +8.47% 17
North East -19 14 £650 +2.36% 2
South West -28 8 £525 -19.85% 5
South East -53 8 £625 +13.64% 14
Yorkshire -59 8 £561 +6.90% 2
East Midlands - 8 £476 - 6
West Midlands -60 7 £525 +3.54% 11
Scotland -21 3 - - 1
East of England -25 3 £550 +4.76% 4

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

For the 6 months to 17 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 (43.18%) Agile
2 92 (41.82%) AWS
3 74 (33.64%) Java
4 68 (30.91%) Azure
5 66 (30.00%) Node.js
6 62 (28.18%) JavaScript
7 61 (27.73%) CI/CD
7 61 (27.73%) Software Engineering
8 58 (26.36%) React
9 56 (25.45%) Mentoring
10 55 (25.00%) TypeScript
11 51 (23.18%) DevOps
12 48 (21.82%) Full-Stack Development
13 47 (21.36%) Python
14 45 (20.45%) Docker
15 44 (20.00%) Security Cleared
16 41 (18.64%) Microservices
17 39 (17.73%) SC Cleared
17 39 (17.73%) Technical Leadership
18 38 (17.27%) Redux
19 36 (16.36%) Investment Management
19 36 (16.36%) Kubernetes
19 36 (16.36%) Portfolio Management
20 35 (15.91%) Containerisation
21 34 (15.45%) Spring
22 33 (15.00%) Kafka
23 32 (14.55%) Spring Boot
24 31 (14.09%) GCP
24 31 (14.09%) PostgreSQL
25 27 (12.27%) .NET

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 6 (2.73%) Confluence
2 4 (1.82%) SAS
3 3 (1.36%) Tomcat
4 2 (0.91%) Appian
4 2 (0.91%) CMS
4 2 (0.91%) IIS
4 2 (0.91%) JBoss
4 2 (0.91%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.91%) ThingWorx
4 2 (0.91%) WebLogic
5 1 (0.45%) Apache
5 1 (0.45%) nginx
5 1 (0.45%) SharePoint
Business Applications
1 3 (1.36%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.91%) Remedy AR System
2 2 (0.91%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.45%) Magento
3 1 (0.45%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.45%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 92 (41.82%) AWS
2 68 (30.91%) Azure
3 31 (14.09%) GCP
4 14 (6.36%) GitHub
5 11 (5.00%) Serverless
6 9 (4.09%) GitHub Actions
7 8 (3.64%) Azure DevOps
7 8 (3.64%) Power Platform
8 6 (2.73%) Amazon SQS
8 6 (2.73%) AWS Lambda
8 6 (2.73%) Dynamics 365
8 6 (2.73%) Salesforce Service Cloud
9 5 (2.27%) Amazon S3
9 5 (2.27%) Power Automate
9 5 (2.27%) PowerApps
10 4 (1.82%) Amazon EC2
10 4 (1.82%) Azure AKS
10 4 (1.82%) Azure Logic Apps
10 4 (1.82%) Azure Service Bus
11 3 (1.36%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 2 (0.91%) MQTT
2 1 (0.45%) DNS
2 1 (0.45%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (14.09%) PostgreSQL
2 8 (3.64%) Relational Database
2 8 (3.64%) SQL Server
3 5 (2.27%) MongoDB
4 4 (1.82%) Geospatial Data
4 4 (1.82%) Oracle Database
5 3 (1.36%) Data Hub
5 3 (1.36%) DocumentDB
5 3 (1.36%) Power BI
5 3 (1.36%) Redis
6 2 (0.91%) Amazon RDS
6 2 (0.91%) DynamoDB
6 2 (0.91%) Elasticsearch
6 2 (0.91%) GIS
6 2 (0.91%) MySQL
6 2 (0.91%) NoSQL
6 2 (0.91%) Oracle Reports
6 2 (0.91%) SAS Data Integration Studio
7 1 (0.45%) QGIS
7 1 (0.45%) Spatial Data
Development Applications
1 12 (5.45%) Git
1 12 (5.45%) Jenkins
2 11 (5.00%) JIRA
3 10 (4.55%) GitLab
4 6 (2.73%) JUnit
5 5 (2.27%) Mockito
6 4 (1.82%) Maven
7 2 (0.91%) MSI
7 2 (0.91%) Oracle Forms
7 2 (0.91%) PVCS
7 2 (0.91%) SonarQube
7 2 (0.91%) SpecFlow
7 2 (0.91%) Subversion
8 1 (0.45%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.45%) Claude Code
8 1 (0.45%) Gradle
8 1 (0.45%) Liquibase
8 1 (0.45%) Storybook
8 1 (0.45%) Vite
8 1 (0.45%) webpack
General
1 57 (25.91%) Finance
2 49 (22.27%) Public Sector
3 37 (16.82%) Front Office
4 22 (10.00%) Social Skills
5 7 (3.18%) Analytical Skills
6 5 (2.27%) Banking
6 5 (2.27%) Documentation Skills
7 4 (1.82%) Telecoms
8 3 (1.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 3 (1.36%) Military
9 2 (0.91%) Influencing Skills
9 2 (0.91%) Investment Banking
9 2 (0.91%) Marketing
10 1 (0.45%) Games
10 1 (0.45%) Law
10 1 (0.45%) Local Government
10 1 (0.45%) Police
10 1 (0.45%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 66 (30.00%) Node.js
2 58 (26.36%) React
3 38 (17.27%) Redux
4 34 (15.45%) Spring
5 33 (15.00%) Kafka
6 32 (14.55%) Spring Boot
7 27 (12.27%) .NET
7 27 (12.27%) REST
8 26 (11.82%) GraphQL
9 17 (7.73%) RESTful
10 15 (6.82%) Vue
11 13 (5.91%) AngularJS
12 7 (3.18%) Nunjucks
12 7 (3.18%) SOAP
13 6 (2.73%) Flutter
13 6 (2.73%) Lightning Web Components
14 5 (2.27%) Django
14 5 (2.27%) OpenAPI
14 5 (2.27%) OpenID
14 5 (2.27%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 37 (16.82%) Fixed Income
2 18 (8.18%) Cloud Native
3 17 (7.73%) Derivative
4 16 (7.27%) Equities
5 10 (4.55%) Product Ownership
6 9 (4.09%) Enterprise Software
7 8 (3.64%) Distributed Systems
8 7 (3.18%) Legacy Systems
9 4 (1.82%) Virtual Team
10 3 (1.36%) Credit Risk
10 3 (1.36%) Mobile App
10 3 (1.36%) NHS
10 3 (1.36%) Onboarding
11 2 (0.91%) Client/Server
11 2 (0.91%) CMDB
11 2 (0.91%) Data Protection Act
11 2 (0.91%) Data Structures
11 2 (0.91%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 2 (0.91%) N-Tier
11 2 (0.91%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 10 (4.55%) Android
2 9 (4.09%) Apple iOS
3 4 (1.82%) Linux
3 4 (1.82%) Windows
4 1 (0.45%) Mac OS
4 1 (0.45%) Solaris
4 1 (0.45%) VMS
4 1 (0.45%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 95 (43.18%) Agile
2 61 (27.73%) CI/CD
2 61 (27.73%) Software Engineering
3 56 (25.45%) Mentoring
4 51 (23.18%) DevOps
5 48 (21.82%) Full-Stack Development
6 41 (18.64%) Microservices
7 39 (17.73%) Technical Leadership
8 36 (16.36%) Investment Management
8 36 (16.36%) Portfolio Management
9 35 (15.91%) Containerisation
10 25 (11.36%) Code Quality
11 20 (9.09%) Continuous Improvement
11 20 (9.09%) Infrastructure as Code
11 20 (9.09%) Order Management
12 18 (8.18%) Line Management
13 17 (7.73%) Event-Driven
13 17 (7.73%) Test Automation
14 16 (7.27%) Asset Management
14 16 (7.27%) Fintech
Programming Languages
1 74 (33.64%) Java
2 62 (28.18%) JavaScript
3 55 (25.00%) TypeScript
4 47 (21.36%) Python
5 24 (10.91%) C#
5 24 (10.91%) SQL
6 21 (9.55%) Go
7 10 (4.55%) Kotlin
8 8 (3.64%) Swift
9 6 (2.73%) Apex Code
9 6 (2.73%) Bicep
9 6 (2.73%) T-SQL
10 3 (1.36%) PL/SQL
10 3 (1.36%) PowerShell
10 3 (1.36%) Scala
11 2 (0.91%) ABAP
11 2 (0.91%) Dart
11 2 (0.91%) Ruby
11 2 (0.91%) Shell Script
12 1 (0.45%) Objective-C
Qualifications
1 44 (20.00%) Security Cleared
2 39 (17.73%) SC Cleared
3 19 (8.64%) BPSS Clearance
4 2 (0.91%) Microsoft Certification
5 1 (0.45%) Azure Certification
5 1 (0.45%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (0.45%) Degree
5 1 (0.45%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (5.91%) Accessibility
1 13 (5.91%) QA
2 3 (1.36%) NCSC
2 3 (1.36%) WCAG
3 1 (0.45%) GDPR
3 1 (0.45%) SLA
System Software
1 45 (20.45%) Docker
2 1 (0.45%) Apache ZooKeeper
2 1 (0.45%) Oracle RAC
2 1 (0.45%) VMware ESXi
2 1 (0.45%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 36 (16.36%) Kubernetes
2 22 (10.00%) Terraform
3 4 (1.82%) Grafana
4 2 (0.91%) Kibana
5 1 (0.45%) Oracle RMAN
5 1 (0.45%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 26 (11.82%) Microsoft
2 9 (4.09%) Salesforce
3 7 (3.18%) Informatica
3 7 (3.18%) Oracle
4 5 (2.27%) IBM
5 4 (1.82%) Blue Prism
6 3 (1.36%) Adobe
6 3 (1.36%) SAP
7 2 (0.91%) Anaplan
7 2 (0.91%) BMC
7 2 (0.91%) DataFlux
7 2 (0.91%) Guidewire
7 2 (0.91%) Kepware
7 2 (0.91%) OpenAI
7 2 (0.91%) Remedy
8 1 (0.45%) ESRI
8 1 (0.45%) Google
8 1 (0.45%) HubSpot
8 1 (0.45%) Liquidlogic
8 1 (0.45%) VMware