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 15 September 2026.

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

6 months to
15 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 431 386 353
Rank change year-on-year -45 -33 +93
Contract jobs requiring a Lead Developer 259 173 213
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.48% 0.53% 0.56%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.52% 0.59% 0.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 187 120 166
10th Percentile £453 £450 £463
25th Percentile £500 £502 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £562 £550 £625
Median % change year-on-year +2.18% -12.00% +8.70%
75th Percentile £638 £705 £875
90th Percentile £750 £782 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £575 £525 £550
% change year-on-year +9.52% -4.55% -4.35%
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 50,255 29,550 35,480
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.36% 91.04% 93.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,827 18,649 21,961
10th Percentile £325 £278 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £625 £620 £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 3,770 1,552 1,702
10th Percentile £14.59 £13.69 £14.73
25th Percentile £20.25 £17.00 £20.50
Median hourly rate £42.15 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.59% -41.51% -1.96%
75th Percentile £67.50 £51.83 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% +6.95%

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 15 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 15 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 -91 176 £561 -2.39% 205
UK excluding London -64 103 £575 +9.52% 115
London -89 82 £550 -15.38% 112
Work from Home -85 63 £560 -6.67% 95
North of England -45 46 £650 +23.81% 37
North West -25 25 £575 +9.52% 13
Midlands -36 21 £488 +2.63% 29
Scotland -7 18 £475 -0.21% 10
North East -27 12 £650 +2.36% 8
West Midlands -49 12 £481 +1.32% 19
East Midlands -5 9 £550 - 10
Yorkshire -38 9 £625 +19.05% 16
South West -49 9 £525 -4.55% 6
South East -64 5 £600 +9.09% 13
East of England -26 4 £503 -4.29% 7
Wales - 2 £750 - 7

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

For the 6 months to 15 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 94 (36.29%) Agile
1 94 (36.29%) AWS
1 94 (36.29%) CI/CD
2 91 (35.14%) Security Cleared
3 78 (30.12%) SC Cleared
4 74 (28.57%) Java
5 65 (25.10%) DevOps
6 63 (24.32%) Azure
7 61 (23.55%) Microservices
8 60 (23.17%) Docker
8 60 (23.17%) Technical Leadership
9 59 (22.78%) Mentoring
10 50 (19.31%) SQL
11 46 (17.76%) JavaScript
12 45 (17.37%) Git
12 45 (17.37%) REST
13 44 (16.99%) Spring
13 44 (16.99%) Spring Boot
14 43 (16.60%) Node.js
15 41 (15.83%) Kubernetes
16 40 (15.44%) Containerisation
17 38 (14.67%) .NET
18 37 (14.29%) Code Quality
18 37 (14.29%) Full-Stack Development
18 37 (14.29%) Software Engineering
19 36 (13.90%) C#
20 32 (12.36%) Microsoft
20 32 (12.36%) Problem-Solving
21 31 (11.97%) BPSS Clearance
22 30 (11.58%) Test Automation

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 10 (3.86%) SharePoint
2 9 (3.47%) Confluence
3 5 (1.93%) IIS
4 4 (1.54%) Oracle Workflow
4 4 (1.54%) SAS
5 3 (1.16%) CMS
6 2 (0.77%) ThingWorx
7 1 (0.39%) Headless CMS
7 1 (0.39%) nginx
7 1 (0.39%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 1 (0.39%) Tomcat
7 1 (0.39%) WordPress
Applications
1 4 (1.54%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.77%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 7 (2.70%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (1.16%) Remedy AR System
2 3 (1.16%) Remedy ITSM
3 2 (0.77%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.39%) IntelliMatch
4 1 (0.39%) SAP IS-U
Cloud Services
1 94 (36.29%) AWS
2 63 (24.32%) Azure
3 26 (10.04%) Serverless
4 20 (7.72%) Azure DevOps
5 14 (5.41%) Power Platform
6 13 (5.02%) GitHub
7 12 (4.63%) GCP
8 10 (3.86%) Power Automate
9 8 (3.09%) Dynamics 365
9 8 (3.09%) GitHub Actions
10 7 (2.70%) AWS Lambda
10 7 (2.70%) Azure Functions
10 7 (2.70%) SaaS
11 6 (2.32%) AWS CloudFormation
11 6 (2.32%) Salesforce Service Cloud
12 5 (1.93%) Amazon Cognito
13 4 (1.54%) Amazon ECS
13 4 (1.54%) Azure Key Vault
13 4 (1.54%) Azure Service Bus
13 4 (1.54%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.93%) HTTP
2 2 (0.77%) CTI
2 2 (0.77%) MQTT
3 1 (0.39%) DNS
3 1 (0.39%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (10.04%) PostgreSQL
2 21 (8.11%) SQL Server
3 15 (5.79%) MongoDB
4 10 (3.86%) Relational Database
5 8 (3.09%) Oracle Reports
6 7 (2.70%) Redis
7 6 (2.32%) Oracle Database
8 5 (1.93%) MS Access
8 5 (1.93%) NoSQL
8 5 (1.93%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 4 (1.54%) DynamoDB
9 4 (1.54%) Geospatial Data
9 4 (1.54%) Metadata
10 2 (0.77%) Couchbase
10 2 (0.77%) GIS
10 2 (0.77%) Power BI
10 2 (0.77%) SAS Data Integration Studio
11 1 (0.39%) Data Warehouse
11 1 (0.39%) Oracle Database 10g
11 1 (0.39%) Oracle Database 11g
Development Applications
1 45 (17.37%) Git
2 27 (10.42%) Jenkins
3 20 (7.72%) Maven
4 16 (6.18%) JIRA
5 14 (5.41%) GitLab
6 13 (5.02%) JUnit
7 7 (2.70%) Mockito
7 7 (2.70%) Oracle Forms
7 7 (2.70%) SonarQube
8 6 (2.32%) GoCD
8 6 (2.32%) Gradle
9 5 (1.93%) Team Foundation Server
10 4 (1.54%) JProfiler
10 4 (1.54%) Visual Studio
11 3 (1.16%) PVCS
11 3 (1.16%) Subversion
12 2 (0.77%) IntelliJ
12 2 (0.77%) MSI
12 2 (0.77%) SpecFlow
12 2 (0.77%) tSQLt
General
1 74 (28.57%) Public Sector
2 47 (18.15%) Social Skills
3 30 (11.58%) Finance
4 14 (5.41%) Banking
5 13 (5.02%) Analytical Skills
6 7 (2.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 6 (2.32%) Military
8 5 (1.93%) Documentation Skills
8 5 (1.93%) Investment Banking
9 4 (1.54%) Legal
9 4 (1.54%) Legal Technology
9 4 (1.54%) Organisational Skills
10 3 (1.16%) Retail
10 3 (1.16%) Telecoms
11 2 (0.77%) Local Government
12 1 (0.39%) Financial Institution
12 1 (0.39%) Front Office
12 1 (0.39%) Games
12 1 (0.39%) Law
12 1 (0.39%) Marketing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (17.37%) REST
2 44 (16.99%) Spring
2 44 (16.99%) Spring Boot
3 43 (16.60%) Node.js
4 38 (14.67%) .NET
5 28 (10.81%) Terraform
6 25 (9.65%) React
7 23 (8.88%) HTML
8 21 (8.11%) Kafka
8 21 (8.11%) RESTful
9 17 (6.56%) AngularJS
10 15 (5.79%) CSS
10 15 (5.79%) SOAP
11 14 (5.41%) XML
12 10 (3.86%) HTML5
12 10 (3.86%) JPA
12 10 (3.86%) JSON
12 10 (3.86%) Vue
12 10 (3.86%) Web Services
13 9 (3.47%) Nunjucks
Miscellaneous
1 25 (9.65%) Cloud Native
2 14 (5.41%) Product Ownership
3 13 (5.02%) Distributed Systems
4 11 (4.25%) Enterprise Software
5 10 (3.86%) Legacy Systems
5 10 (3.86%) LIMS
6 9 (3.47%) Management Information System
7 8 (3.09%) Legacy Applications
8 7 (2.70%) Onboarding
9 6 (2.32%) Virtual Team
10 5 (1.93%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 5 (1.93%) Greenfield Project
10 5 (1.93%) Replication
10 5 (1.93%) Self-Motivation
11 4 (1.54%) NHS
11 4 (1.54%) Taxonomies
12 3 (1.16%) CMDB
12 3 (1.16%) Derivative
12 3 (1.16%) Mobile App
13 2 (0.77%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 12 (4.63%) Windows
2 4 (1.54%) Android
2 4 (1.54%) Windows Server
3 3 (1.16%) Linux
4 2 (0.77%) Apple iOS
4 2 (0.77%) Unix
5 1 (0.39%) Mac OS
5 1 (0.39%) Solaris
5 1 (0.39%) VMS
5 1 (0.39%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 94 (36.29%) Agile
1 94 (36.29%) CI/CD
2 65 (25.10%) DevOps
3 61 (23.55%) Microservices
4 60 (23.17%) Technical Leadership
5 59 (22.78%) Mentoring
6 40 (15.44%) Containerisation
7 37 (14.29%) Code Quality
7 37 (14.29%) Full-Stack Development
7 37 (14.29%) Software Engineering
8 32 (12.36%) Problem-Solving
9 30 (11.58%) Test Automation
10 29 (11.20%) Front End Development
11 27 (10.42%) Continuous Improvement
11 27 (10.42%) Event-Driven
11 27 (10.42%) Infrastructure as Code
12 25 (9.65%) Scrum
13 23 (8.88%) Data Modelling
13 23 (8.88%) TDD
14 21 (8.11%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 74 (28.57%) Java
2 50 (19.31%) SQL
3 46 (17.76%) JavaScript
4 36 (13.90%) C#
5 23 (8.88%) TypeScript
6 21 (8.11%) Python
7 13 (5.02%) T-SQL
8 9 (3.47%) PL/SQL
9 7 (2.70%) Bicep
10 6 (2.32%) Apex Code
11 5 (1.93%) Ruby
11 5 (1.93%) Scala
11 5 (1.93%) VB.NET
11 5 (1.93%) VBA
12 4 (1.54%) Kotlin
12 4 (1.54%) Shell Script
12 4 (1.54%) XPath
13 3 (1.16%) ABAP
13 3 (1.16%) VBScript
14 1 (0.39%) PHP
Qualifications
1 91 (35.14%) Security Cleared
2 78 (30.12%) SC Cleared
3 31 (11.97%) BPSS Clearance
4 6 (2.32%) Microsoft Certification
5 3 (1.16%) Azure Certification
6 2 (0.77%) AWS Certification
6 2 (0.77%) AWS Certified Developer
6 2 (0.77%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 2 (0.77%) Degree
6 2 (0.77%) DV Cleared
7 1 (0.39%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (10.04%) Accessibility
2 19 (7.34%) QA
3 10 (3.86%) WCAG
4 6 (2.32%) GDPR
5 5 (1.93%) 21 CFR Part 11
5 5 (1.93%) GMP
5 5 (1.93%) GxP
5 5 (1.93%) ISO/IEC 17025
6 3 (1.16%) Data Quality
6 3 (1.16%) NCSC
7 1 (0.39%) ISO 15022
7 1 (0.39%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 60 (23.17%) Docker
2 1 (0.39%) Apache ZooKeeper
2 1 (0.39%) Oracle RAC
2 1 (0.39%) VMware ESXi
2 1 (0.39%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 41 (15.83%) Kubernetes
2 6 (2.32%) Ansible
3 5 (1.93%) Grafana
3 5 (1.93%) Prometheus
4 2 (0.77%) Kibana
5 1 (0.39%) Oracle RMAN
5 1 (0.39%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 32 (12.36%) Microsoft
2 25 (9.65%) Oracle
3 10 (3.86%) Salesforce
4 7 (2.70%) Informatica
5 6 (2.32%) IBM
6 4 (1.54%) Blue Prism
7 3 (1.16%) BMC
7 3 (1.16%) Guidewire
7 3 (1.16%) OpenAI
7 3 (1.16%) Remedy
7 3 (1.16%) SAP
7 3 (1.16%) ServiceNow
8 2 (0.77%) Adobe
8 2 (0.77%) DataFlux
8 2 (0.77%) Kepware
8 2 (0.77%) MuleSoft
9 1 (0.39%) Databricks
9 1 (0.39%) Dynatrace
9 1 (0.39%) Genesys
9 1 (0.39%) HubSpot