Lead Developer Contract Job Trends

Lead Developer
UK

The median Lead Developer daily rate in the UK is £570, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 4 August 2026.

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

6 months to
4 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 427 370 377
Rank change year-on-year -57 +7 +73
Contract jobs requiring a Lead Developer 251 182 199
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.47% 0.55% 0.51%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.51% 0.60% 0.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 195 129 150
10th Percentile £458 £413 £407
25th Percentile £513 £500 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £570 £550 £638
Median % change year-on-year +3.64% -13.73% +10.87%
75th Percentile £744 £688 £888
90th Percentile £800 £750 -
UK excluding London median daily rate £575 £525 £538
% change year-on-year +9.52% -2.33% -6.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - £51.25
Median hourly rate - - £52.50
75th Percentile - - £53.75
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £52.50

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 48,942 30,093 36,428
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.61% 91.45% 92.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,465 19,115 23,531
10th Percentile £331 £282 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,396 1,494 2,063
10th Percentile £15.25 £13.60 £14.16
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.99 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.10 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £43.90
% change year-on-year +78.93% -42.71% +17.07%

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 4 August 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 16 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 4 August 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 -75 180 £575 - 115
London -47 101 £700 +3.70% 60
UK excluding London -78 81 £575 +9.52% 63
Work from Home -65 79 £725 +20.83% 46
North of England -35 40 £638 +21.43% 28
North West -37 19 £575 +35.29% 14
Scotland -14 12 £377 -12.33% 5
Midlands -53 12 £550 +15.79% 14
North East -30 11 £650 +2.36% 4
South West -41 10 £525 -4.55% 2
Yorkshire -43 10 £561 +6.90% 10
East Midlands -3 8 £476 - 8
West Midlands -63 4 £575 +21.05% 6
South East -69 4 £600 +9.09% 8
East of England -15 3 £530 +0.95% 2
Wales - 2 £750 - 3

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

For the 6 months to 4 August 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.

1 111 (44.22%) AWS
2 108 (43.03%) Agile
3 87 (34.66%) Security Cleared
4 83 (33.07%) Java
5 78 (31.08%) CI/CD
6 74 (29.48%) SC Cleared
7 73 (29.08%) Node.js
8 67 (26.69%) Azure
9 66 (26.29%) JavaScript
10 61 (24.30%) Mentoring
11 59 (23.51%) DevOps
11 59 (23.51%) Software Engineering
12 56 (22.31%) React
13 52 (20.72%) Full-Stack Development
14 51 (20.32%) Microservices
14 51 (20.32%) Technical Leadership
14 51 (20.32%) TypeScript
15 49 (19.52%) Docker
16 43 (17.13%) Python
16 43 (17.13%) SQL
17 39 (15.54%) Kubernetes
18 38 (15.14%) Redux
18 38 (15.14%) REST
19 36 (14.34%) .NET
19 36 (14.34%) Containerisation
19 36 (14.34%) Kafka
20 34 (13.55%) Spring
20 34 (13.55%) Spring Boot
21 32 (12.75%) Git
21 32 (12.75%) Investment Management

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 7 (2.79%) Confluence
2 6 (2.39%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.99%) IIS
4 4 (1.59%) SAS
5 3 (1.20%) CMS
5 3 (1.20%) Oracle Workflow
6 2 (0.80%) ThingWorx
7 1 (0.40%) nginx
7 1 (0.40%) Tomcat
7 1 (0.40%) WordPress
Applications
1 4 (1.59%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.80%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 3 (1.20%) Dynamics CRM
1 3 (1.20%) Remedy AR System
1 3 (1.20%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.40%) IntelliMatch
2 1 (0.40%) Magento
2 1 (0.40%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.40%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 111 (44.22%) AWS
2 67 (26.69%) Azure
3 25 (9.96%) GCP
4 16 (6.37%) Azure DevOps
4 16 (6.37%) Serverless
5 14 (5.58%) GitHub
6 8 (3.19%) GitHub Actions
6 8 (3.19%) Power Platform
7 6 (2.39%) AWS Lambda
7 6 (2.39%) Salesforce Service Cloud
8 5 (1.99%) Amazon Cognito
8 5 (1.99%) Amazon S3
8 5 (1.99%) Dynamics 365
8 5 (1.99%) Power Automate
8 5 (1.99%) PowerApps
9 4 (1.59%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 4 (1.59%) AWS CloudFormation
9 4 (1.59%) Azure Key Vault
9 4 (1.59%) SaaS
10 3 (1.20%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.59%) HTTP
2 2 (0.80%) CTI
2 2 (0.80%) MQTT
3 1 (0.40%) DNS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (12.75%) PostgreSQL
2 14 (5.58%) SQL Server
3 11 (4.38%) MongoDB
4 7 (2.79%) Oracle Reports
5 6 (2.39%) Oracle Database
5 6 (2.39%) Redis
5 6 (2.39%) Relational Database
6 5 (1.99%) MS Access
6 5 (1.99%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 4 (1.59%) DynamoDB
7 4 (1.59%) Geospatial Data
7 4 (1.59%) Metadata
8 2 (0.80%) Amazon RDS
8 2 (0.80%) GIS
8 2 (0.80%) NoSQL
8 2 (0.80%) Power BI
8 2 (0.80%) SAS Data Integration Studio
9 1 (0.40%) Couchbase
9 1 (0.40%) Elasticsearch
9 1 (0.40%) Oracle Database 11g
Development Applications
1 32 (12.75%) Git
2 24 (9.56%) Jenkins
3 16 (6.37%) Maven
4 14 (5.58%) JIRA
5 11 (4.38%) GitLab
6 10 (3.98%) JUnit
7 7 (2.79%) Gradle
8 6 (2.39%) GoCD
8 6 (2.39%) Oracle Forms
9 5 (1.99%) Team Foundation Server
10 4 (1.59%) JProfiler
10 4 (1.59%) Mockito
10 4 (1.59%) Visual Studio
11 3 (1.20%) PVCS
11 3 (1.20%) SonarQube
11 3 (1.20%) Subversion
12 2 (0.80%) MSI
12 2 (0.80%) SpecFlow
12 2 (0.80%) Storybook
13 1 (0.40%) Vite
General
1 60 (23.90%) Finance
1 60 (23.90%) Public Sector
2 33 (13.15%) Front Office
3 27 (10.76%) Social Skills
4 12 (4.78%) Banking
5 7 (2.79%) Analytical Skills
6 5 (1.99%) Documentation Skills
6 5 (1.99%) Investment Banking
6 5 (1.99%) Military
7 3 (1.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 3 (1.20%) Telecoms
8 2 (0.80%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (0.80%) Local Government
8 2 (0.80%) Marketing
8 2 (0.80%) Retail
9 1 (0.40%) Games
9 1 (0.40%) Law
9 1 (0.40%) Legal
9 1 (0.40%) Legal Technology
9 1 (0.40%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 73 (29.08%) Node.js
2 56 (22.31%) React
3 38 (15.14%) Redux
3 38 (15.14%) REST
4 36 (14.34%) .NET
4 36 (14.34%) Kafka
5 34 (13.55%) Spring
5 34 (13.55%) Spring Boot
6 24 (9.56%) GraphQL
7 18 (7.17%) AngularJS
8 17 (6.77%) HTML
9 14 (5.58%) RESTful
10 10 (3.98%) SOAP
10 10 (3.98%) Vue
11 9 (3.59%) CSS
11 9 (3.59%) XML
12 8 (3.19%) HTML5
12 8 (3.19%) Jest
12 8 (3.19%) Nunjucks
12 8 (3.19%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 34 (13.55%) Fixed Income
2 19 (7.57%) Cloud Native
3 15 (5.98%) Derivative
4 13 (5.18%) Product Ownership
5 12 (4.78%) Distributed Systems
5 12 (4.78%) Equities
5 12 (4.78%) Legacy Systems
6 10 (3.98%) Enterprise Software
7 6 (2.39%) Legacy Applications
7 6 (2.39%) LIMS
8 5 (1.99%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 5 (1.99%) Onboarding
8 5 (1.99%) Replication
9 4 (1.59%) Greenfield Project
9 4 (1.59%) Management Information System
9 4 (1.59%) NHS
9 4 (1.59%) Virtual Team
10 3 (1.20%) CMDB
10 3 (1.20%) Mobile App
11 2 (0.80%) IVR
Operating Systems
1 11 (4.38%) Windows
2 5 (1.99%) Android
3 3 (1.20%) Apple iOS
3 3 (1.20%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.40%) Linux
4 1 (0.40%) Mac OS
4 1 (0.40%) Solaris
4 1 (0.40%) VMS
4 1 (0.40%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 108 (43.03%) Agile
2 78 (31.08%) CI/CD
3 61 (24.30%) Mentoring
4 59 (23.51%) DevOps
4 59 (23.51%) Software Engineering
5 52 (20.72%) Full-Stack Development
6 51 (20.32%) Microservices
6 51 (20.32%) Technical Leadership
7 36 (14.34%) Containerisation
8 32 (12.75%) Investment Management
8 32 (12.75%) Portfolio Management
9 27 (10.76%) Code Quality
10 25 (9.96%) Infrastructure as Code
10 25 (9.96%) Problem-Solving
11 23 (9.16%) Event-Driven
12 21 (8.37%) Order Management
12 21 (8.37%) Scrum
13 20 (7.97%) Test Automation
14 19 (7.57%) Continuous Improvement
14 19 (7.57%) Front End Development
Programming Languages
1 83 (33.07%) Java
2 66 (26.29%) JavaScript
3 51 (20.32%) TypeScript
4 43 (17.13%) Python
4 43 (17.13%) SQL
5 30 (11.95%) C#
6 20 (7.97%) Go
7 11 (4.38%) T-SQL
8 9 (3.59%) PL/SQL
9 7 (2.79%) Bicep
10 6 (2.39%) Apex Code
10 6 (2.39%) Ruby
11 5 (1.99%) Kotlin
11 5 (1.99%) VB.NET
11 5 (1.99%) VBA
12 4 (1.59%) Scala
12 4 (1.59%) XPath
13 3 (1.20%) VBScript
14 2 (0.80%) ABAP
14 2 (0.80%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 87 (34.66%) Security Cleared
2 74 (29.48%) SC Cleared
3 25 (9.96%) BPSS Clearance
4 2 (0.80%) AWS Certification
4 2 (0.80%) AWS Certified Developer
4 2 (0.80%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
4 2 (0.80%) DV Cleared
4 2 (0.80%) Microsoft Certification
5 1 (0.40%) Azure Certification
5 1 (0.40%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (0.40%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (7.17%) Accessibility
1 18 (7.17%) QA
2 4 (1.59%) 21 CFR Part 11
2 4 (1.59%) GMP
2 4 (1.59%) GxP
2 4 (1.59%) ISO/IEC 17025
2 4 (1.59%) WCAG
3 3 (1.20%) GDPR
3 3 (1.20%) NCSC
System Software
1 49 (19.52%) Docker
2 1 (0.40%) Apache ZooKeeper
2 1 (0.40%) Oracle RAC
2 1 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
2 1 (0.40%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 39 (15.54%) Kubernetes
2 25 (9.96%) Terraform
3 6 (2.39%) Ansible
4 3 (1.20%) Grafana
5 2 (0.80%) Kibana
6 1 (0.40%) Oracle RMAN
6 1 (0.40%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.40%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 27 (10.76%) Microsoft
2 22 (8.76%) Oracle
3 10 (3.98%) Salesforce
4 7 (2.79%) Informatica
5 5 (1.99%) IBM
6 4 (1.59%) Blue Prism
7 3 (1.20%) BMC
7 3 (1.20%) Remedy
7 3 (1.20%) ServiceNow
8 2 (0.80%) Adobe
8 2 (0.80%) DataFlux
8 2 (0.80%) Guidewire
8 2 (0.80%) Kepware
8 2 (0.80%) MuleSoft
8 2 (0.80%) OpenAI
8 2 (0.80%) SAP
9 1 (0.40%) Genesys
9 1 (0.40%) HubSpot
9 1 (0.40%) Jaspersoft
9 1 (0.40%) Red Hat