Lead Developer Contract Job Trends

Lead Developer
UK

The median Lead Developer daily rate in the UK is £562, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 3 September 2026.

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

6 months to
3 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 429 387 360
Rank change year-on-year -42 -27 +89
Contract jobs requiring a Lead Developer 253 169 196
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.47% 0.52% 0.51%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.51% 0.57% 0.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 183 117 154
10th Percentile £451 £458 £463
25th Percentile £500 £503 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £562 £558 £650
Median % change year-on-year +0.81% -14.23% +13.04%
75th Percentile £650 £719 £888
90th Percentile £750 £788 -
UK excluding London median daily rate £575 £532 £544
% change year-on-year +8.07% -2.15% -5.43%
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 49,563 29,654 35,643
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.43% 91.23% 93.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,606 18,697 22,460
10th Percentile £325 £280 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.69%
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 3,581 1,558 1,825
10th Percentile £14.90 £13.68 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.50 £17.02 £20.00
Median hourly rate £42.25 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.99% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.83 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £71.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.95
% change year-on-year +68.99% -42.78% +11.13%

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 3 September 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 3 September 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 -98 172 £570 -0.87% 130
UK excluding London -54 99 £575 +8.07% 65
London -73 83 £550 -16.98% 82
Work from Home -73 60 £560 -6.67% 58
North of England -32 45 £650 +23.81% 13
North West -25 25 £575 +35.29% 6
Scotland -10 18 £475 -15.56% 4
Midlands -45 18 £550 +15.79% 21
North East -32 11 £650 +2.36% 2
East Midlands -13 9 £550 - 9
South West -38 9 £525 -4.55% 5
Yorkshire -44 9 £625 +19.05% 5
West Midlands -51 9 £513 +7.89% 12
South East -66 5 £600 +9.09% 9
East of England -18 4 £503 -4.29% 3
Wales - 2 £750 - 6

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

For the 6 months to 3 September 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 93 (36.76%) AWS
2 89 (35.18%) Security Cleared
3 88 (34.78%) CI/CD
4 87 (34.39%) Agile
5 75 (29.64%) SC Cleared
6 72 (28.46%) Java
7 62 (24.51%) DevOps
8 59 (23.32%) Azure
9 58 (22.92%) Microservices
10 57 (22.53%) Docker
10 57 (22.53%) Technical Leadership
11 55 (21.74%) Mentoring
12 50 (19.76%) SQL
13 43 (17.00%) JavaScript
13 43 (17.00%) Node.js
13 43 (17.00%) Spring
13 43 (17.00%) Spring Boot
14 42 (16.60%) REST
15 40 (15.81%) Git
16 39 (15.42%) .NET
16 39 (15.42%) Containerisation
16 39 (15.42%) Kubernetes
17 37 (14.62%) Full-Stack Development
18 36 (14.23%) Code Quality
18 36 (14.23%) Software Engineering
19 34 (13.44%) C#
20 29 (11.46%) Microsoft
21 28 (11.07%) BPSS Clearance
21 28 (11.07%) Problem-Solving
22 27 (10.67%) Event-Driven

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 (3.16%) Confluence
2 7 (2.77%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.98%) IIS
4 4 (1.58%) Oracle Workflow
4 4 (1.58%) SAS
5 3 (1.19%) CMS
6 2 (0.79%) ThingWorx
7 1 (0.40%) Headless CMS
7 1 (0.40%) nginx
7 1 (0.40%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 1 (0.40%) Tomcat
7 1 (0.40%) WordPress
Applications
1 4 (1.58%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.79%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 5 (1.98%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (1.19%) Remedy AR System
2 3 (1.19%) Remedy ITSM
3 2 (0.79%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.40%) IntelliMatch
4 1 (0.40%) SAP IS-U
Cloud Services
1 93 (36.76%) AWS
2 59 (23.32%) Azure
3 24 (9.49%) Serverless
4 18 (7.11%) Azure DevOps
5 13 (5.14%) GitHub
6 11 (4.35%) GCP
6 11 (4.35%) Power Platform
7 8 (3.16%) GitHub Actions
8 7 (2.77%) AWS Lambda
8 7 (2.77%) Power Automate
8 7 (2.77%) SaaS
8 7 (2.77%) Salesforce Service Cloud
9 6 (2.37%) Dynamics 365
10 5 (1.98%) Amazon Cognito
10 5 (1.98%) AWS CloudFormation
10 5 (1.98%) Azure Functions
11 4 (1.58%) Amazon ECS
11 4 (1.58%) Amazon S3
11 4 (1.58%) Azure Service Bus
11 4 (1.58%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.98%) HTTP
2 2 (0.79%) CTI
2 2 (0.79%) MQTT
3 1 (0.40%) DNS
3 1 (0.40%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (9.49%) PostgreSQL
2 19 (7.51%) SQL Server
3 14 (5.53%) MongoDB
4 9 (3.56%) Relational Database
5 8 (3.16%) Oracle Reports
6 6 (2.37%) Oracle Database
6 6 (2.37%) Redis
7 5 (1.98%) MS Access
7 5 (1.98%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 4 (1.58%) DynamoDB
8 4 (1.58%) Geospatial Data
8 4 (1.58%) Metadata
8 4 (1.58%) NoSQL
9 2 (0.79%) Couchbase
9 2 (0.79%) GIS
9 2 (0.79%) Power BI
9 2 (0.79%) SAS Data Integration Studio
10 1 (0.40%) Data Warehouse
10 1 (0.40%) Oracle Database 10g
10 1 (0.40%) Oracle Database 11g
Development Applications
1 40 (15.81%) Git
2 26 (10.28%) Jenkins
3 19 (7.51%) Maven
4 15 (5.93%) JIRA
5 14 (5.53%) GitLab
6 12 (4.74%) JUnit
7 7 (2.77%) Oracle Forms
8 6 (2.37%) GoCD
8 6 (2.37%) Gradle
8 6 (2.37%) Mockito
8 6 (2.37%) SonarQube
9 5 (1.98%) Team Foundation Server
10 4 (1.58%) JProfiler
10 4 (1.58%) Visual Studio
11 3 (1.19%) PVCS
11 3 (1.19%) Subversion
12 2 (0.79%) Bundler
12 2 (0.79%) MSI
12 2 (0.79%) SpecFlow
12 2 (0.79%) tSQLt
General
1 70 (27.67%) Public Sector
2 42 (16.60%) Social Skills
3 31 (12.25%) Finance
4 14 (5.53%) Banking
5 11 (4.35%) Analytical Skills
6 5 (1.98%) Documentation Skills
6 5 (1.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 5 (1.98%) Investment Banking
6 5 (1.98%) Military
7 4 (1.58%) Legal
7 4 (1.58%) Legal Technology
8 3 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
8 3 (1.19%) Retail
8 3 (1.19%) Telecoms
9 2 (0.79%) Local Government
10 1 (0.40%) Financial Institution
10 1 (0.40%) Front Office
10 1 (0.40%) Games
10 1 (0.40%) Law
10 1 (0.40%) Marketing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (17.00%) Node.js
1 43 (17.00%) Spring
1 43 (17.00%) Spring Boot
2 42 (16.60%) REST
3 39 (15.42%) .NET
4 27 (10.67%) Terraform
5 25 (9.88%) React
6 23 (9.09%) HTML
7 21 (8.30%) Kafka
8 19 (7.51%) RESTful
9 16 (6.32%) AngularJS
10 15 (5.93%) CSS
11 14 (5.53%) SOAP
12 12 (4.74%) XML
13 10 (3.95%) HTML5
13 10 (3.95%) Vue
14 9 (3.56%) Jest
14 9 (3.56%) JPA
14 9 (3.56%) Nunjucks
14 9 (3.56%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 23 (9.09%) Cloud Native
2 14 (5.53%) Product Ownership
3 13 (5.14%) Distributed Systems
4 11 (4.35%) Enterprise Software
5 10 (3.95%) Legacy Systems
5 10 (3.95%) LIMS
6 7 (2.77%) Legacy Applications
6 7 (2.77%) Management Information System
6 7 (2.77%) Onboarding
7 5 (1.98%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 5 (1.98%) Greenfield Project
7 5 (1.98%) Replication
8 4 (1.58%) NHS
8 4 (1.58%) Self-Motivation
8 4 (1.58%) Virtual Team
9 3 (1.19%) CMDB
9 3 (1.19%) Derivative
9 3 (1.19%) Mobile App
10 2 (0.79%) Data Protection Act
10 2 (0.79%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 12 (4.74%) Windows
2 4 (1.58%) Android
2 4 (1.58%) Windows Server
3 2 (0.79%) Apple iOS
3 2 (0.79%) Linux
3 2 (0.79%) Unix
4 1 (0.40%) Solaris
4 1 (0.40%) VMS
4 1 (0.40%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 88 (34.78%) CI/CD
2 87 (34.39%) Agile
3 62 (24.51%) DevOps
4 58 (22.92%) Microservices
5 57 (22.53%) Technical Leadership
6 55 (21.74%) Mentoring
7 39 (15.42%) Containerisation
8 37 (14.62%) Full-Stack Development
9 36 (14.23%) Code Quality
9 36 (14.23%) Software Engineering
10 28 (11.07%) Problem-Solving
11 27 (10.67%) Event-Driven
12 26 (10.28%) Front End Development
12 26 (10.28%) Infrastructure as Code
12 26 (10.28%) Test Automation
13 24 (9.49%) Scrum
14 23 (9.09%) Continuous Improvement
15 22 (8.70%) Data Modelling
16 21 (8.30%) TDD
17 19 (7.51%) Event-Driven Architecture
Programming Languages
1 72 (28.46%) Java
2 50 (19.76%) SQL
3 43 (17.00%) JavaScript
4 34 (13.44%) C#
5 22 (8.70%) Python
6 21 (8.30%) TypeScript
7 13 (5.14%) T-SQL
8 9 (3.56%) PL/SQL
9 7 (2.77%) Apex Code
9 7 (2.77%) Bicep
10 5 (1.98%) Ruby
10 5 (1.98%) VB.NET
10 5 (1.98%) VBA
11 4 (1.58%) Kotlin
11 4 (1.58%) Scala
11 4 (1.58%) Shell Script
11 4 (1.58%) XPath
12 3 (1.19%) ABAP
12 3 (1.19%) VBScript
13 1 (0.40%) C++
Qualifications
1 89 (35.18%) Security Cleared
2 75 (29.64%) SC Cleared
3 28 (11.07%) BPSS Clearance
4 4 (1.58%) Microsoft Certification
5 2 (0.79%) AWS Certification
5 2 (0.79%) AWS Certified Developer
5 2 (0.79%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 2 (0.79%) Azure Certification
5 2 (0.79%) Degree
5 2 (0.79%) DV Cleared
6 1 (0.40%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (8.70%) Accessibility
2 18 (7.11%) QA
3 7 (2.77%) WCAG
4 5 (1.98%) 21 CFR Part 11
4 5 (1.98%) GMP
4 5 (1.98%) GxP
4 5 (1.98%) ISO/IEC 17025
5 4 (1.58%) GDPR
6 3 (1.19%) Data Quality
6 3 (1.19%) NCSC
7 1 (0.40%) ISO 15022
7 1 (0.40%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 57 (22.53%) 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 (15.42%) Kubernetes
2 6 (2.37%) Ansible
3 4 (1.58%) Grafana
3 4 (1.58%) Prometheus
4 2 (0.79%) Kibana
5 1 (0.40%) Oracle RMAN
5 1 (0.40%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 29 (11.46%) Microsoft
2 25 (9.88%) Oracle
3 11 (4.35%) Salesforce
4 7 (2.77%) Informatica
5 6 (2.37%) IBM
6 4 (1.58%) Blue Prism
7 3 (1.19%) BMC
7 3 (1.19%) Guidewire
7 3 (1.19%) Remedy
7 3 (1.19%) SAP
7 3 (1.19%) ServiceNow
8 2 (0.79%) Adobe
8 2 (0.79%) DataFlux
8 2 (0.79%) Kepware
8 2 (0.79%) MuleSoft
8 2 (0.79%) OpenAI
9 1 (0.40%) Databricks
9 1 (0.40%) Genesys
9 1 (0.40%) HubSpot
9 1 (0.40%) Splunk