Lead Developer Contracts

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 30 April 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

 6 months to
30 Apr 2025		 Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 344 435 476
Rank change year-on-year +91 +41 -44
Contract jobs requiring a Lead Developer 180 167 240
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.62% 0.38% 0.40%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.67% 0.41% 0.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 132 133 157
10th Percentile £419 £402 £461
25th Percentile £505 £500 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £625 £600
Median % change year-on-year -8.00% +4.17% -
75th Percentile £690 £745 £675
90th Percentile £750 £888 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -12.50% - +12.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 0 2
10th Percentile £73.38 - -
25th Percentile £80.33 - £61.25
Median hourly rate £96.21 - £62.50
75th Percentile £102.00 - £63.75
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £102.00 - £62.50

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 27,050 40,453 56,471
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.52% 92.79% 94.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,687 26,352 39,474
10th Percentile £300 £275 £313
25th Percentile £406 £409 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.78% +2.86%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £493 £500
% change year-on-year -3.55% -1.50% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,031 2,658 1,569
10th Percentile £14.20 £12.86 £14.29
25th Percentile £18.51 £16.30 £19.50
Median hourly rate £29.07 £36.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -19.25% -20.00% +91.86%
75th Percentile £62.50 £60.75 £65.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.75 £38.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -25.32% -9.41% +117.95%

Lead Developer
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured Lead Developer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Lead Developer in the UK

Lead Developer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Lead Developer.

Daily rate trend for Lead Developer in the UK

Lead Developer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Lead Developer over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Lead Developer in the UK

Lead Developer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Lead Developer.

Hourly rate trend for Lead Developer in the UK

Lead Developer
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Lead Developer over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Lead Developer in the UK

Lead Developer
Top 16 Contract 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 30 April 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 +70 153 £600 -7.69% 119
London +44 100 £650 -1.89% 46
Work from Home +40 70 £572 -8.56% 103
UK excluding London +52 51 £525 -12.50% 80
North of England +29 17 £525 -19.23% 33
Scotland +18 14 £370 -20.38% 2
Yorkshire +16 9 £525 -19.23% 7
Midlands +22 8 £539 -17.06% 10
North West +12 8 £638 +15.91% 23
West Midlands +14 7 £557 -14.30% 3
South East +34 6 £550 +10.00% 17
South West +47 4 £740 +28.70% 11
East of England +29 1 £525 -12.50% 2
East Midlands +10 1 £500 -20.00% 7
North East 0 1 £475 - 3
Wales - 1 £213 - 4

Lead Developer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 30 April 2025, Lead Developer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Lead Developer in the job title.

1 63 (35.00%) Java
2 61 (33.89%) Agile
3 56 (31.11%) AWS
4 54 (30.00%) CI/CD
5 51 (28.33%) Azure
6 49 (27.22%) DevOps
7 43 (23.89%) TDD
7 43 (23.89%) SQL
8 42 (23.33%) Security Cleared
9 40 (22.22%) SC Cleared
10 39 (21.67%) Mentoring
10 39 (21.67%) Full-Stack Development
11 38 (21.11%) Microservices
11 38 (21.11%) Spring
12 37 (20.56%) Social Skills
13 36 (20.00%) Docker
14 35 (19.44%) Spring Boot
14 35 (19.44%) PostgreSQL
15 32 (17.78%) .NET
15 32 (17.78%) Kubernetes
16 31 (17.22%) JavaScript
17 29 (16.11%) C#
17 29 (16.11%) Python
17 29 (16.11%) BDD
17 29 (16.11%) Problem-Solving
17 29 (16.11%) Containerisation
18 26 (14.44%) Public Sector
18 26 (14.44%) Software Engineering
19 25 (13.89%) React
20 24 (13.33%) JUnit

Lead Developer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 7 (3.89%) Confluence
2 6 (3.33%) SAS
3 5 (2.78%) CMS
4 4 (2.22%) JBoss
4 4 (2.22%) Tomcat
5 2 (1.11%) Camunda
5 2 (1.11%) Headless CMS
5 2 (1.11%) SharePoint
6 1 (0.56%) Anypoint
6 1 (0.56%) Apache Solr
6 1 (0.56%) Apache Spark
6 1 (0.56%) Appian
6 1 (0.56%) nginx
6 1 (0.56%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 1 (0.56%) WebLogic
Applications
1 2 (1.11%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 2 (1.11%) BASE24
2 1 (0.56%) Endur
2 1 (0.56%) SAP CX
2 1 (0.56%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 56 (31.11%) AWS
2 51 (28.33%) Azure
3 20 (11.11%) Azure DevOps
4 19 (10.56%) Power Platform
5 13 (7.22%) PowerApps
5 13 (7.22%) Serverless
6 11 (6.11%) GCP
6 11 (6.11%) Power Automate
7 7 (3.89%) Cloud Computing
7 7 (3.89%) GitHub
8 6 (3.33%) Azure Functions
8 6 (3.33%) Azure Logic Apps
8 6 (3.33%) Slack
9 5 (2.78%) Amazon S3
10 4 (2.22%) Amazon SQS
10 4 (2.22%) GitHub Actions
11 3 (1.67%) AWS KMS
11 3 (1.67%) Azure Key Vault
11 3 (1.67%) dbt
11 3 (1.67%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.67%) HTTP
2 2 (1.11%) ATM
2 2 (1.11%) SMS
3 1 (0.56%) X.21
Database & Business Intelligence
1 35 (19.44%) PostgreSQL
2 17 (9.44%) MongoDB
3 16 (8.89%) MySQL
4 15 (8.33%) Redis
5 13 (7.22%) Oracle Database
5 13 (7.22%) Relational Database
6 12 (6.67%) Power BI
7 10 (5.56%) SQL Server
8 9 (5.00%) NoSQL
9 6 (3.33%) Apache Cassandra
9 6 (3.33%) Elasticsearch
10 4 (2.22%) Data Warehouse
10 4 (2.22%) DynamoDB
11 3 (1.67%) Geospatial Data
11 3 (1.67%) Neo4j
12 2 (1.11%) Amazon Athena
12 2 (1.11%) Amazon Aurora
12 2 (1.11%) Amazon RDS
12 2 (1.11%) NonStop SQL
13 1 (0.56%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 24 (13.33%) JUnit
2 19 (10.56%) Git
3 13 (7.22%) JIRA
4 12 (6.67%) Jenkins
5 11 (6.11%) Gradle
5 11 (6.11%) Mockito
6 9 (5.00%) Maven
7 7 (3.89%) Cucumber
8 6 (3.33%) Jasmine
8 6 (3.33%) Liquibase
9 5 (2.78%) SonarQube
10 4 (2.22%) GitLab
10 4 (2.22%) Selenium
11 3 (1.67%) Eclipse
11 3 (1.67%) IntelliJ
12 2 (1.11%) Bitbucket Server
12 2 (1.11%) NUnit
12 2 (1.11%) TestNG
13 1 (0.56%) Terragrunt
13 1 (0.56%) VersaTest
General
1 37 (20.56%) Social Skills
2 26 (14.44%) Public Sector
3 19 (10.56%) Banking
4 16 (8.89%) Analytical Skills
5 15 (8.33%) Finance
6 12 (6.67%) Investment Banking
7 7 (3.89%) Telecoms
8 4 (2.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 4 (2.22%) Pharmaceutical
9 3 (1.67%) Marketing
9 3 (1.67%) Publishing
10 2 (1.11%) Electronics
10 2 (1.11%) Games
10 2 (1.11%) Manufacturing
10 2 (1.11%) Military
10 2 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
10 2 (1.11%) Retail
11 1 (0.56%) Back Office
11 1 (0.56%) Front Office
11 1 (0.56%) Law
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (21.11%) Spring
2 35 (19.44%) Spring Boot
3 32 (17.78%) .NET
4 25 (13.89%) React
5 23 (12.78%) AngularJS
5 23 (12.78%) Kafka
6 22 (12.22%) RESTful
7 21 (11.67%) Node.js
8 20 (11.11%) HTML
8 20 (11.11%) Swagger
9 19 (10.56%) OpenAPI
10 17 (9.44%) CSS
10 17 (9.44%) REST
11 13 (7.22%) .NET Core
12 12 (6.67%) ActiveMQ
12 12 (6.67%) ASP.NET
13 11 (6.11%) Vue
13 11 (6.11%) Web Services
14 10 (5.56%) OAuth
15 9 (5.00%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 8 (4.44%) Market Risk
1 8 (4.44%) Product Ownership
2 5 (2.78%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
3 4 (2.22%) Cloud Native
3 4 (2.22%) Public Cloud
4 3 (1.67%) Derivative
4 3 (1.67%) Enterprise Software
4 3 (1.67%) Greenfield Project
4 3 (1.67%) Low-Code
4 3 (1.67%) Mobile App
5 2 (1.11%) Data Protection Act
5 2 (1.11%) EMV
5 2 (1.11%) Legacy Applications
5 2 (1.11%) Legacy Systems
5 2 (1.11%) Management Information System
5 2 (1.11%) PKI
6 1 (0.56%) Data Structures
6 1 (0.56%) Distributed Systems
6 1 (0.56%) Linux Command Line
6 1 (0.56%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 20 (11.11%) Linux
2 6 (3.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 5 (2.78%) Windows
4 3 (1.67%) Android
4 3 (1.67%) Windows Server
5 2 (1.11%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 61 (33.89%) Agile
2 54 (30.00%) CI/CD
3 49 (27.22%) DevOps
4 43 (23.89%) TDD
5 39 (21.67%) Full-Stack Development
5 39 (21.67%) Mentoring
6 38 (21.11%) Microservices
7 29 (16.11%) BDD
7 29 (16.11%) Containerisation
7 29 (16.11%) Problem-Solving
8 26 (14.44%) Software Engineering
9 17 (9.44%) Technical Leadership
10 15 (8.33%) API Development
11 14 (7.78%) Business Intelligence
11 14 (7.78%) Continuous Integration
11 14 (7.78%) Migration
11 14 (7.78%) Scrum
12 13 (7.22%) Computer Science
13 12 (6.67%) Mathematics
13 12 (6.67%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 63 (35.00%) Java
2 43 (23.89%) SQL
3 31 (17.22%) JavaScript
4 29 (16.11%) C#
4 29 (16.11%) Python
5 23 (12.78%) TypeScript
6 8 (4.44%) PL/SQL
7 7 (3.89%) Bash
7 7 (3.89%) PowerShell
8 5 (2.78%) Apex Code
8 5 (2.78%) Kotlin
9 4 (2.22%) Shell Script
10 3 (1.67%) C
10 3 (1.67%) COBOL
11 2 (1.11%) ABAP
11 2 (1.11%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 2 (1.11%) Go
12 1 (0.56%) Bicep
12 1 (0.56%) C++
12 1 (0.56%) DataWeave
Qualifications
1 42 (23.33%) Security Cleared
2 40 (22.22%) SC Cleared
3 14 (7.78%) Degree
4 10 (5.56%) Numerate Degree
5 8 (4.44%) DV Cleared
6 2 (1.11%) AWS Certification
7 1 (0.56%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 1 (0.56%) Azure Certification
7 1 (0.56%) BC Cleared
7 1 (0.56%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (6.11%) Accessibility
2 8 (4.44%) QA
3 2 (1.11%) ISO/IEC 20000
3 2 (1.11%) WCAG
4 1 (0.56%) Basel II
4 1 (0.56%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 36 (20.00%) Docker
2 4 (2.22%) Active Directory
3 2 (1.11%) Postfix
4 1 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 32 (17.78%) Kubernetes
2 17 (9.44%) Terraform
3 5 (2.78%) Grafana
3 5 (2.78%) Prometheus
4 3 (1.67%) Kibana
5 2 (1.11%) Ansible
6 1 (0.56%) Argo
6 1 (0.56%) CloudHub
6 1 (0.56%) Istio
Vendors
1 16 (8.89%) Microsoft
1 16 (8.89%) Oracle
2 7 (3.89%) Google
3 6 (3.33%) Salesforce
3 6 (3.33%) SAP
4 3 (1.67%) ServiceNow
4 3 (1.67%) Splunk
5 2 (1.11%) HP
5 2 (1.11%) Virgin Media
6 1 (0.56%) Atlassian
6 1 (0.56%) Blue Prism
6 1 (0.56%) CA Agile Central
6 1 (0.56%) Databricks
6 1 (0.56%) Jaspersoft
6 1 (0.56%) MuleSoft
6 1 (0.56%) New Relic
6 1 (0.56%) OpenLink
6 1 (0.56%) OutSystems
6 1 (0.56%) Red Hat
6 1 (0.56%) TIBCO
145 Lead Developer jobs Nationwide