Lead Developer Contract Job Trends

Lead Developer
UK

The median Lead Developer daily rate in the UK is £600, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 5 May 2026.

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

6 months to
5 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 438 350 424
Rank change year-on-year -88 +74 +66
Contract jobs requiring a Lead Developer 189 177 169
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.40% 0.60% 0.39%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.43% 0.65% 0.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 156 131 135
10th Percentile £415 £415 £400
25th Percentile £525 £504 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £575 £625
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% -8.00% +4.17%
75th Percentile £778 £699 £748
90th Percentile £850 £750 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £572 £525 £600
% change year-on-year +8.95% -12.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 4 0
Median hourly rate - £96.21 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £102.00 -

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 43,868 27,092 40,027
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.28% 92.49% 92.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,987 17,695 26,061
10th Percentile £316 £300 £280
25th Percentile £413 £406 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.94% -1.90% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.58% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,833 1,048 2,666
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.18 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.38 £18.50 £16.30
Median hourly rate £44.00 £29.00 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +51.72% -20.55% -18.89%
75th Percentile £66.25 £62.50 £61.29
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.56 £28.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +62.70% -30.00% -5.35%

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 5 May 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 13 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 5 May 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 -116 149 £600 - 68
London -81 74 £750 +14.50% 21
Work from Home -38 70 £750 +29.31% 43
UK excluding London -73 69 £572 +8.95% 54
North of England -28 47 £572 +8.95% 26
North West -18 25 £570 -10.59% 8
North East -7 12 £613 +28.95% 9
Yorkshire -45 10 £563 +7.14% 9
South East -54 9 £600 +9.09% 16
Midlands -69 9 £508 -5.77% 6
West Midlands -57 8 £492 -11.77% 3
South West -40 2 £688 -7.09%
East of England -43 2 - - 4

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

For the 6 months to 5 May 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 82 (43.39%) Agile
2 75 (39.68%) AWS
3 69 (36.51%) Java
4 66 (34.92%) Azure
5 63 (33.33%) Node.js
6 60 (31.75%) React
7 56 (29.63%) JavaScript
8 54 (28.57%) Software Engineering
9 53 (28.04%) TypeScript
10 51 (26.98%) Mentoring
11 50 (26.46%) Python
12 47 (24.87%) CI/CD
13 46 (24.34%) Full-Stack Development
14 38 (20.11%) Redux
15 37 (19.58%) Docker
16 36 (19.05%) Investment Management
16 36 (19.05%) Portfolio Management
17 35 (18.52%) DevOps
18 33 (17.46%) GCP
18 33 (17.46%) Security Cleared
19 32 (16.93%) Technical Leadership
20 31 (16.40%) Containerisation
20 31 (16.40%) Microservices
20 31 (16.40%) SC Cleared
21 30 (15.87%) Spring
22 28 (14.81%) Kafka
22 28 (14.81%) Kubernetes
22 28 (14.81%) PostgreSQL
23 26 (13.76%) GraphQL
23 26 (13.76%) Spring Boot

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 (3.70%) SharePoint
2 3 (1.59%) ArcGIS
2 3 (1.59%) Tomcat
3 2 (1.06%) Appian
3 2 (1.06%) Confluence
3 2 (1.06%) IIS
3 2 (1.06%) JBoss
3 2 (1.06%) Oracle SOA Suite
3 2 (1.06%) SAS
3 2 (1.06%) ThingWorx
3 2 (1.06%) WebLogic
4 1 (0.53%) Apache
4 1 (0.53%) CMS
4 1 (0.53%) nginx
Business Applications
1 1 (0.53%) Magento
1 1 (0.53%) SAP S/4HANA
1 1 (0.53%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 75 (39.68%) AWS
2 66 (34.92%) Azure
3 33 (17.46%) GCP
4 11 (5.82%) GitHub
4 11 (5.82%) Power Platform
4 11 (5.82%) Serverless
5 10 (5.29%) GitHub Actions
6 7 (3.70%) Amazon Bedrock
6 7 (3.70%) Amazon SQS
7 6 (3.17%) Azure AI
7 6 (3.17%) Azure AKS
7 6 (3.17%) Azure DevOps
7 6 (3.17%) Azure Service Bus
8 5 (2.65%) Amazon S3
8 5 (2.65%) AWS CloudFormation
8 5 (2.65%) Azure Monitor
9 4 (2.12%) AWS Lambda
9 4 (2.12%) Azure Cosmos DB
9 4 (2.12%) Azure Functions
9 4 (2.12%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.06%) MQTT
2 1 (0.53%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (14.81%) PostgreSQL
2 8 (4.23%) SQL Server
3 7 (3.70%) Relational Database
4 4 (2.12%) Data Hub
4 4 (2.12%) Power BI
5 3 (1.59%) Azure SQL Database
5 3 (1.59%) DynamoDB
5 3 (1.59%) Geospatial Data
5 3 (1.59%) GIS
6 2 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
6 2 (1.06%) Data Warehouse
6 2 (1.06%) DocumentDB
6 2 (1.06%) Elasticsearch
6 2 (1.06%) MongoDB
6 2 (1.06%) MySQL
6 2 (1.06%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.53%) Amazon Aurora
7 1 (0.53%) Delta Lake
7 1 (0.53%) Redis
7 1 (0.53%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 11 (5.82%) Jenkins
2 7 (3.70%) Git
2 7 (3.70%) GitLab
2 7 (3.70%) JIRA
3 5 (2.65%) JUnit
4 4 (2.12%) Maven
4 4 (2.12%) Mockito
5 3 (1.59%) SonarQube
6 2 (1.06%) Cypress.io
6 2 (1.06%) Selenium
6 2 (1.06%) SpecFlow
7 1 (0.53%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.53%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.53%) Cucumber
7 1 (0.53%) Gradle
7 1 (0.53%) Liquibase
7 1 (0.53%) Mocha
7 1 (0.53%) Storybook
7 1 (0.53%) Vite
7 1 (0.53%) webpack
General
1 49 (25.93%) Finance
2 37 (19.58%) Front Office
3 34 (17.99%) Public Sector
4 19 (10.05%) Social Skills
5 9 (4.76%) Analytical Skills
6 3 (1.59%) Telecoms
7 2 (1.06%) Banking
7 2 (1.06%) Documentation Skills
7 2 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
8 1 (0.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (0.53%) Investment Banking
8 1 (0.53%) Local Government
8 1 (0.53%) Marketing
8 1 (0.53%) Military
8 1 (0.53%) Police
8 1 (0.53%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 63 (33.33%) Node.js
2 60 (31.75%) React
3 38 (20.11%) Redux
4 30 (15.87%) Spring
5 28 (14.81%) Kafka
6 26 (13.76%) GraphQL
6 26 (13.76%) Spring Boot
7 18 (9.52%) REST
8 15 (7.94%) AngularJS
8 15 (7.94%) Vue
9 14 (7.41%) .NET
9 14 (7.41%) RESTful
10 7 (3.70%) Nunjucks
10 7 (3.70%) OAuth
11 6 (3.17%) Flutter
11 6 (3.17%) LangChain
11 6 (3.17%) SOAP
12 5 (2.65%) .NET Core
12 5 (2.65%) Hibernate
12 5 (2.65%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 37 (19.58%) Fixed Income
2 16 (8.47%) Derivative
2 16 (8.47%) Equities
3 15 (7.94%) Cloud Native
4 14 (7.41%) Product Ownership
5 8 (4.23%) Low-Code
6 7 (3.70%) Legacy Systems
7 4 (2.12%) Credit Risk
7 4 (2.12%) Distributed Systems
8 3 (1.59%) Virtual Team
9 2 (1.06%) Client/Server
9 2 (1.06%) Data Protection Act
9 2 (1.06%) Data Structures
9 2 (1.06%) Enterprise Software
9 2 (1.06%) Industrial Internet of Things
9 2 (1.06%) Mobile App
9 2 (1.06%) NHS
9 2 (1.06%) N-Tier
9 2 (1.06%) Onboarding
9 2 (1.06%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 10 (5.29%) Android
2 9 (4.76%) Apple iOS
3 4 (2.12%) Linux
4 2 (1.06%) Windows
5 1 (0.53%) Mac OS
5 1 (0.53%) Solaris
5 1 (0.53%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 82 (43.39%) Agile
2 54 (28.57%) Software Engineering
3 51 (26.98%) Mentoring
4 47 (24.87%) CI/CD
5 46 (24.34%) Full-Stack Development
6 36 (19.05%) Investment Management
6 36 (19.05%) Portfolio Management
7 35 (18.52%) DevOps
8 32 (16.93%) Technical Leadership
9 31 (16.40%) Containerisation
9 31 (16.40%) Microservices
10 24 (12.70%) Code Quality
11 20 (10.58%) Order Management
12 16 (8.47%) Asset Management
12 16 (8.47%) Fintech
12 16 (8.47%) Line Management
13 15 (7.94%) Infrastructure as Code
13 15 (7.94%) Problem-Solving
13 15 (7.94%) Test Automation
14 14 (7.41%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 69 (36.51%) Java
2 56 (29.63%) JavaScript
3 53 (28.04%) TypeScript
4 50 (26.46%) Python
5 21 (11.11%) Go
5 21 (11.11%) SQL
6 15 (7.94%) C#
7 9 (4.76%) Kotlin
8 8 (4.23%) Swift
9 5 (2.65%) Bicep
10 4 (2.12%) Apex Code
11 2 (1.06%) ABAP
11 2 (1.06%) Dart
11 2 (1.06%) PowerShell
11 2 (1.06%) Scala
11 2 (1.06%) T-SQL
12 1 (0.53%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.53%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.53%) R
12 1 (0.53%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 33 (17.46%) Security Cleared
2 31 (16.40%) SC Cleared
3 16 (8.47%) BPSS Clearance
4 6 (3.17%) Degree
5 5 (2.65%) Computer Science Degree
6 2 (1.06%) DBS Check
7 1 (0.53%) DV Cleared
7 1 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (7.41%) QA
2 8 (4.23%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.53%) GDPR
3 1 (0.53%) NCSC
3 1 (0.53%) SLA
3 1 (0.53%) WCAG
System Software
1 37 (19.58%) Docker
2 1 (0.53%) Oracle RAC
2 1 (0.53%) VMware ESXi
2 1 (0.53%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 28 (14.81%) Kubernetes
2 18 (9.52%) Terraform
3 4 (2.12%) Grafana
4 1 (0.53%) HP Fortify
4 1 (0.53%) Kibana
4 1 (0.53%) Oracle RMAN
4 1 (0.53%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 22 (11.64%) Microsoft
2 6 (3.17%) Foundry
3 4 (2.12%) Informatica
3 4 (2.12%) Oracle
3 4 (2.12%) Salesforce
4 3 (1.59%) Adobe
4 3 (1.59%) Anaplan
4 3 (1.59%) ESRI
4 3 (1.59%) SAP
4 3 (1.59%) ServiceNow
5 2 (1.06%) Kepware
6 1 (0.53%) Ariba
6 1 (0.53%) Databricks
6 1 (0.53%) Guidewire
6 1 (0.53%) IBM
6 1 (0.53%) Jaspersoft
6 1 (0.53%) Liquidlogic
6 1 (0.53%) OpenAI
6 1 (0.53%) Red Hat
6 1 (0.53%) VMware