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 14 November 2025.

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

6 months to
14 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 398 342 447
Rank change year-on-year -56 +105 +16
Contract jobs requiring a Lead Developer 169 219 193
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.48% 0.60% 0.42%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.52% 0.64% 0.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 123 160 146
10th Percentile £463 £463 £425
25th Percentile £513 £525 £502
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £614 £600
Median % change year-on-year -6.31% +2.29% -
75th Percentile £716 £738 £722
90th Percentile £775 £888 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £563 £575
% change year-on-year -2.22% -2.17% +5.02%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 2 0
Median hourly rate - £71.46 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £71.46 -

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 32,306 34,076 43,561
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.91% 92.86% 93.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,507 20,574 29,610
10th Percentile £278 £300 £294
25th Percentile £402 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £622 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,870 1,280 1,541
10th Percentile £14.19 £15.19 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.30 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +55.05%
75th Percentile £53.75 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +83.51%

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 14 November 2025.

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 14 November 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 -81 141 £596 -4.72% 121
London -46 80 £650 - 53
Work from Home -11 76 £600 -4.00% 73
UK excluding London -22 63 £550 -2.22% 78
North of England -23 32 £593 +7.77% 29
Yorkshire -27 20 £695 +27.82% 9
Midlands -24 13 £475 -11.63% 15
West Midlands -29 10 £475 -11.63% 12
North West -13 8 £525 -13.08% 16
Scotland -2 7 £447 -20.60% 5
South West -2 5 £550 -1.12% 4
South East -16 5 £550 -15.38% 16
North East - 4 £583 - 4
East Midlands - 3 - - 3
East of England -16 1 £550 +51.72% 9

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

For the 6 months to 14 November 2025, 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 80 (47.34%) Java
2 74 (43.79%) Agile
3 63 (37.28%) AWS
4 58 (34.32%) CI/CD
5 50 (29.59%) DevOps
6 49 (28.99%) Microservices
7 48 (28.40%) Azure
8 41 (24.26%) TDD
9 40 (23.67%) Mentoring
10 36 (21.30%) Docker
10 36 (21.30%) Problem-Solving
11 35 (20.71%) TypeScript
12 33 (19.53%) JavaScript
13 32 (18.93%) Security Cleared
13 32 (18.93%) Software Engineering
13 32 (18.93%) Spring
13 32 (18.93%) Spring Boot
14 31 (18.34%) SQL
15 30 (17.75%) PostgreSQL
16 29 (17.16%) Technical Leadership
17 28 (16.57%) Containerisation
17 28 (16.57%) Kafka
18 27 (15.98%) Node.js
18 27 (15.98%) Python
18 27 (15.98%) React
18 27 (15.98%) SC Cleared
19 24 (14.20%) C#
20 23 (13.61%) Jenkins
21 22 (13.02%) Scrum
22 21 (12.43%) Terraform

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 (3.55%) SharePoint
2 4 (2.37%) Tomcat
3 2 (1.18%) Apache
3 2 (1.18%) Confluence
4 1 (0.59%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.59%) LiveLink
4 1 (0.59%) Traefik
Applications
1 2 (1.18%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 3 (1.78%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.59%) ION Anvil
2 1 (0.59%) Maximo
2 1 (0.59%) Oracle Applications
2 1 (0.59%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.59%) Shopify
2 1 (0.59%) TRIRIGA
Cloud Services
1 63 (37.28%) AWS
2 48 (28.40%) Azure
3 17 (10.06%) Azure DevOps
4 15 (8.88%) GCP
5 10 (5.92%) Power Platform
6 9 (5.33%) Amazon SQS
7 8 (4.73%) Amazon S3
7 8 (4.73%) GitHub
7 8 (4.73%) Serverless
8 7 (4.14%) Amazon Bedrock
9 6 (3.55%) AWS Lambda
9 6 (3.55%) Cloud Functions
9 6 (3.55%) Cloud Run
10 5 (2.96%) Amazon EC2
10 5 (2.96%) Azure AI
10 5 (2.96%) Entra ID
10 5 (2.96%) GitHub Actions
11 4 (2.37%) Amazon ECS
12 3 (1.78%) Amazon EKS
12 3 (1.78%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.59%) Network Security
1 1 (0.59%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (17.75%) PostgreSQL
2 14 (8.28%) Relational Database
3 10 (5.92%) Redis
4 9 (5.33%) MongoDB
5 8 (4.73%) SQL Server
6 7 (4.14%) DynamoDB
7 6 (3.55%) NoSQL
8 5 (2.96%) Amazon Aurora
8 5 (2.96%) Amazon RDS
9 4 (2.37%) MySQL
10 2 (1.18%) BigQuery
10 2 (1.18%) Data Warehouse
10 2 (1.18%) EDRMS
10 2 (1.18%) Oracle Database
11 1 (0.59%) BusinessObjects
11 1 (0.59%) Hasura
11 1 (0.59%) Power BI
11 1 (0.59%) Spark SQL
11 1 (0.59%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 23 (13.61%) Jenkins
2 16 (9.47%) Git
3 13 (7.69%) JUnit
4 9 (5.33%) Mockito
5 8 (4.73%) SonarQube
6 6 (3.55%) GitLab
6 6 (3.55%) Gradle
7 5 (2.96%) Liquibase
7 5 (2.96%) Maven
8 4 (2.37%) JIRA
9 3 (1.78%) Bitbucket
9 3 (1.78%) Subversion
10 2 (1.18%) Artifactory
10 2 (1.18%) CircleCI
11 1 (0.59%) Android Studio
11 1 (0.59%) Cucumber
11 1 (0.59%) ESLint
11 1 (0.59%) Jasmine
11 1 (0.59%) Karma Test Runner
11 1 (0.59%) Xcode
General
1 34 (20.12%) Social Skills
2 29 (17.16%) Public Sector
3 26 (15.38%) Finance
4 18 (10.65%) Banking
5 15 (8.88%) Analytical Skills
6 10 (5.92%) Front Office
7 8 (4.73%) Investment Banking
8 6 (3.55%) Marketing
9 4 (2.37%) Automotive
10 3 (1.78%) Retail
11 2 (1.18%) Aerospace
11 2 (1.18%) Electronics
11 2 (1.18%) Financial Institution
11 2 (1.18%) Manufacturing
11 2 (1.18%) Military
11 2 (1.18%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.59%) Documentation Skills
12 1 (0.59%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.59%) Law
12 1 (0.59%) Spanish Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (18.93%) Spring
1 32 (18.93%) Spring Boot
2 28 (16.57%) Kafka
3 27 (15.98%) Node.js
3 27 (15.98%) React
4 19 (11.24%) .NET
5 17 (10.06%) RESTful
6 15 (8.88%) GraphQL
6 15 (8.88%) REST
7 12 (7.10%) ActiveMQ
8 11 (6.51%) .NET Core
9 10 (5.92%) AngularJS
10 9 (5.33%) Redux
11 8 (4.73%) HTML
12 7 (4.14%) CSS
12 7 (4.14%) LangChain
13 6 (3.55%) OAuth
13 6 (3.55%) OpenAPI
13 6 (3.55%) React Native
13 6 (3.55%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 17 (10.06%) Cloud Native
2 16 (9.47%) Product Ownership
3 10 (5.92%) Fixed Income
4 8 (4.73%) Algorithms
5 7 (4.14%) Data Structures
5 7 (4.14%) Legacy Systems
5 7 (4.14%) Low-Code
6 6 (3.55%) Data Protection Act
7 5 (2.96%) Greenfield Project
8 4 (2.37%) Enterprise Software
9 3 (1.78%) Mainframe
9 3 (1.78%) Onboarding
10 2 (1.18%) Credit Risk
10 2 (1.18%) Legacy Applications
10 2 (1.18%) Management Information System
11 1 (0.59%) Animation
11 1 (0.59%) Distributed Systems
11 1 (0.59%) Mobile App
11 1 (0.59%) NHS
11 1 (0.59%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 8 (4.73%) Linux
2 5 (2.96%) Android
2 5 (2.96%) Unix
3 4 (2.37%) Apple iOS
4 3 (1.78%) Mac OS X
5 2 (1.18%) Windows Server 2016
6 1 (0.59%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 74 (43.79%) Agile
2 58 (34.32%) CI/CD
3 50 (29.59%) DevOps
4 49 (28.99%) Microservices
5 41 (24.26%) TDD
6 40 (23.67%) Mentoring
7 36 (21.30%) Problem-Solving
8 32 (18.93%) Software Engineering
9 29 (17.16%) Technical Leadership
10 28 (16.57%) Containerisation
11 22 (13.02%) Scrum
12 18 (10.65%) Computer Science
12 18 (10.65%) Full-Stack Development
12 18 (10.65%) Performance Optimisation
13 17 (10.06%) BDD
14 15 (8.88%) Design Patterns
14 15 (8.88%) Test Automation
15 14 (8.28%) Migration
16 13 (7.69%) SOLID
17 12 (7.10%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 80 (47.34%) Java
2 35 (20.71%) TypeScript
3 33 (19.53%) JavaScript
4 31 (18.34%) SQL
5 27 (15.98%) Python
6 24 (14.20%) C#
7 10 (5.92%) Go
8 7 (4.14%) Kotlin
9 4 (2.37%) C++
9 4 (2.37%) PowerShell
9 4 (2.37%) Ruby
10 3 (1.78%) Swift
11 2 (1.18%) PHP
11 2 (1.18%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.59%) Apex Code
12 1 (0.59%) Bash
12 1 (0.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.59%) Objective-C
12 1 (0.59%) Perl
12 1 (0.59%) R
Qualifications
1 32 (18.93%) Security Cleared
2 27 (15.98%) SC Cleared
3 20 (11.83%) Degree
4 10 (5.92%) Computer Science Degree
5 9 (5.33%) BPSS Clearance
6 8 (4.73%) Numerate Degree
7 3 (1.78%) AWS Certification
7 3 (1.78%) DV Cleared
8 1 (0.59%) Microsoft Certification
8 1 (0.59%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (3.55%) Accessibility
2 5 (2.96%) QA
System Software
1 36 (21.30%) Docker
2 5 (2.96%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 21 (12.43%) Terraform
2 19 (11.24%) Kubernetes
3 4 (2.37%) Grafana
3 4 (2.37%) Single Sign-On
4 2 (1.18%) Ansible
4 2 (1.18%) Istio
4 2 (1.18%) Prometheus
5 1 (0.59%) Control-M
5 1 (0.59%) Kiali
Vendors
1 14 (8.28%) Microsoft
2 8 (4.73%) Google
3 5 (2.96%) Foundry
3 5 (2.96%) Virgin Media
4 4 (2.37%) Autodesk
4 4 (2.37%) Okta
4 4 (2.37%) Oracle
5 3 (1.78%) SAP
6 2 (1.18%) Adobe
6 2 (1.18%) Checkmarx
6 2 (1.18%) OpenAI
6 2 (1.18%) Salesforce
6 2 (1.18%) Splunk
7 1 (0.59%) AppDynamics
7 1 (0.59%) CA Agile Central
7 1 (0.59%) Databricks
7 1 (0.59%) Dynatrace
7 1 (0.59%) MuleSoft
7 1 (0.59%) ServiceNow
7 1 (0.59%) xMatters