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 11 July 2026.

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

6 months to
11 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 415 363 398
Rank change year-on-year -52 +35 +64
Contract jobs requiring a Lead Developer 260 193 195
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.49% 0.59% 0.45%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.53% 0.65% 0.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 200 141 149
10th Percentile £450 £415 £400
25th Percentile £514 £500 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £550 £650
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% -15.38% +8.33%
75th Percentile £750 £725 £888
90th Percentile £838 £780 -
UK excluding London median daily rate £574 £525 £550
% change year-on-year +9.24% -4.55% -5.38%
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
% change year-on-year - - -16.00%

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 48,916 29,817 39,992
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.49% 91.88% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,647 19,017 25,745
10th Percentile £325 £288 £288
25th Percentile £418 £401 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.50% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £494
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.85% -1.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,278 1,379 2,732
10th Percentile £15.92 £13.75 £13.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.31 £16.86
Median hourly rate £43.25 £26.50 £39.53
Median % change year-on-year +63.21% -32.95% -8.08%
75th Percentile £67.50 £56.25 £62.97
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% +1.07%

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 11 July 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 11 July 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 -65 201 £575 -4.17% 36
London -44 104 £700 +3.70% 18
UK excluding London -72 94 £574 +9.24% 24
Work from Home -70 86 £713 +18.75% 20
North of England -48 46 £575 +9.52% 7
North West -32 28 £572 +8.95% 4
Midlands -57 17 £550 +8.47% 7
North East -22 11 £650 +2.36% 2
South West -33 11 £525 -19.85% 1
Scotland -12 8 £563 +81.16% 2
East Midlands -15 8 £476 - 2
South East -58 8 £625 +13.64% 6
West Midlands -70 8 £575 +13.40% 5
Yorkshire -55 7 £561 +6.90% 1
East of England -22 4 £540 +2.86% 2
Wales - 1 £750 -

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

For the 6 months to 11 July 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.

1 115 (44.23%) AWS
2 112 (43.08%) Agile
3 89 (34.23%) Java
4 81 (31.15%) Security Cleared
5 78 (30.00%) Azure
5 78 (30.00%) CI/CD
6 74 (28.46%) Node.js
7 69 (26.54%) JavaScript
8 68 (26.15%) SC Cleared
9 65 (25.00%) Mentoring
9 65 (25.00%) Software Engineering
10 64 (24.62%) DevOps
11 61 (23.46%) React
12 57 (21.92%) TypeScript
13 54 (20.77%) Docker
14 53 (20.38%) Microservices
15 50 (19.23%) Technical Leadership
16 49 (18.85%) Full-Stack Development
17 47 (18.08%) Python
18 44 (16.92%) Kubernetes
18 44 (16.92%) SQL
19 43 (16.54%) Redux
20 42 (16.15%) Containerisation
21 40 (15.38%) Spring
22 39 (15.00%) Spring Boot
23 38 (14.62%) REST
24 36 (13.85%) Investment Management
24 36 (13.85%) Portfolio Management
24 36 (13.85%) PostgreSQL
25 35 (13.46%) .NET

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 (2.69%) Confluence
1 7 (2.69%) IIS
2 6 (2.31%) SharePoint
3 4 (1.54%) SAS
4 3 (1.15%) CMS
4 3 (1.15%) Oracle Workflow
4 3 (1.15%) Tomcat
5 2 (0.77%) Appian
5 2 (0.77%) JBoss
5 2 (0.77%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 2 (0.77%) ThingWorx
5 2 (0.77%) WebLogic
6 1 (0.38%) Apache
6 1 (0.38%) nginx
6 1 (0.38%) WordPress
Applications
1 4 (1.54%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.77%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 3 (1.15%) Dynamics CRM
1 3 (1.15%) Remedy AR System
1 3 (1.15%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.38%) IntelliMatch
2 1 (0.38%) Magento
2 1 (0.38%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.38%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 115 (44.23%) AWS
2 78 (30.00%) Azure
3 31 (11.92%) GCP
4 17 (6.54%) Serverless
5 16 (6.15%) GitHub
6 15 (5.77%) Azure DevOps
7 10 (3.85%) GitHub Actions
8 8 (3.08%) AWS Lambda
8 8 (3.08%) Power Platform
9 7 (2.69%) Amazon S3
10 6 (2.31%) Dynamics 365
10 6 (2.31%) Salesforce Service Cloud
11 5 (1.92%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 5 (1.92%) Amazon Cognito
11 5 (1.92%) Amazon SQS
11 5 (1.92%) Azure AKS
11 5 (1.92%) Azure Service Bus
11 5 (1.92%) Power Automate
11 5 (1.92%) PowerApps
12 4 (1.54%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.54%) HTTP
2 2 (0.77%) CTI
2 2 (0.77%) MQTT
3 1 (0.38%) DNS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (13.85%) PostgreSQL
2 13 (5.00%) SQL Server
3 11 (4.23%) Relational Database
4 8 (3.08%) Oracle Database
5 7 (2.69%) MongoDB
5 7 (2.69%) Oracle Reports
6 5 (1.92%) MS Access
6 5 (1.92%) Redis
6 5 (1.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 4 (1.54%) DynamoDB
7 4 (1.54%) Geospatial Data
7 4 (1.54%) Metadata
8 3 (1.15%) Data Hub
8 3 (1.15%) DocumentDB
8 3 (1.15%) Power BI
9 2 (0.77%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (0.77%) Elasticsearch
9 2 (0.77%) GIS
9 2 (0.77%) NoSQL
9 2 (0.77%) SAS Data Integration Studio
Development Applications
1 28 (10.77%) Git
2 23 (8.85%) Jenkins
3 15 (5.77%) JIRA
4 14 (5.38%) Maven
5 13 (5.00%) GitLab
6 10 (3.85%) JUnit
7 6 (2.31%) Mockito
7 6 (2.31%) Oracle Forms
8 5 (1.92%) Team Foundation Server
9 4 (1.54%) Gradle
9 4 (1.54%) Visual Studio
10 3 (1.15%) GoCD
10 3 (1.15%) PVCS
10 3 (1.15%) SonarQube
10 3 (1.15%) SpecFlow
10 3 (1.15%) Storybook
10 3 (1.15%) Subversion
11 2 (0.77%) MSI
12 1 (0.38%) Cypress.io
12 1 (0.38%) Selenium
General
1 67 (25.77%) Finance
2 60 (23.08%) Public Sector
3 37 (14.23%) Front Office
4 29 (11.15%) Social Skills
5 12 (4.62%) Analytical Skills
5 12 (4.62%) Banking
6 5 (1.92%) Documentation Skills
6 5 (1.92%) Investment Banking
6 5 (1.92%) Military
6 5 (1.92%) Telecoms
7 3 (1.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 2 (0.77%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (0.77%) Marketing
9 1 (0.38%) Games
9 1 (0.38%) Law
9 1 (0.38%) Local Government
9 1 (0.38%) Police
9 1 (0.38%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 74 (28.46%) Node.js
2 61 (23.46%) React
3 43 (16.54%) Redux
4 40 (15.38%) Spring
5 39 (15.00%) Spring Boot
6 38 (14.62%) REST
7 35 (13.46%) .NET
8 34 (13.08%) Kafka
9 27 (10.38%) GraphQL
10 18 (6.92%) RESTful
11 17 (6.54%) AngularJS
12 14 (5.38%) HTML
13 11 (4.23%) SOAP
14 9 (3.46%) Vue
15 8 (3.08%) JPA
15 8 (3.08%) Nunjucks
15 8 (3.08%) XML
16 7 (2.69%) Hibernate
16 7 (2.69%) HTML5
16 7 (2.69%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 38 (14.62%) Fixed Income
2 21 (8.08%) Cloud Native
3 19 (7.31%) Derivative
4 16 (6.15%) Equities
5 13 (5.00%) Product Ownership
6 12 (4.62%) Legacy Systems
7 11 (4.23%) Enterprise Software
8 10 (3.85%) Distributed Systems
9 5 (1.92%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 5 (1.92%) Replication
10 4 (1.54%) Onboarding
10 4 (1.54%) Virtual Team
11 3 (1.15%) CMDB
11 3 (1.15%) Credit Risk
11 3 (1.15%) Greenfield Project
11 3 (1.15%) Legacy Applications
11 3 (1.15%) LIMS
11 3 (1.15%) Management Information System
11 3 (1.15%) Mobile App
11 3 (1.15%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 12 (4.62%) Windows
2 9 (3.46%) Android
3 8 (3.08%) Apple iOS
4 4 (1.54%) Linux
5 3 (1.15%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.38%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.38%) Solaris
6 1 (0.38%) VMS
6 1 (0.38%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 112 (43.08%) Agile
2 78 (30.00%) CI/CD
3 65 (25.00%) Mentoring
3 65 (25.00%) Software Engineering
4 64 (24.62%) DevOps
5 53 (20.38%) Microservices
6 50 (19.23%) Technical Leadership
7 49 (18.85%) Full-Stack Development
8 42 (16.15%) Containerisation
9 36 (13.85%) Investment Management
9 36 (13.85%) Portfolio Management
10 29 (11.15%) Code Quality
11 25 (9.62%) Infrastructure as Code
11 25 (9.62%) Problem-Solving
12 22 (8.46%) Event-Driven
13 21 (8.08%) Test Automation
14 20 (7.69%) Continuous Improvement
14 20 (7.69%) Order Management
15 18 (6.92%) Line Management
15 18 (6.92%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 89 (34.23%) Java
2 69 (26.54%) JavaScript
3 57 (21.92%) TypeScript
4 47 (18.08%) Python
5 44 (16.92%) SQL
6 31 (11.92%) C#
7 20 (7.69%) Go
8 11 (4.23%) T-SQL
9 9 (3.46%) PL/SQL
10 8 (3.08%) Kotlin
11 7 (2.69%) Bicep
11 7 (2.69%) Swift
12 6 (2.31%) Apex Code
13 5 (1.92%) VB.NET
13 5 (1.92%) VBA
14 4 (1.54%) XPath
15 3 (1.15%) Ruby
15 3 (1.15%) Scala
15 3 (1.15%) Shell Script
15 3 (1.15%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 81 (31.15%) Security Cleared
2 68 (26.15%) SC Cleared
3 27 (10.38%) BPSS Clearance
4 2 (0.77%) AWS Certification
4 2 (0.77%) AWS Certified Developer
4 2 (0.77%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
4 2 (0.77%) DV Cleared
4 2 (0.77%) Microsoft Certification
5 1 (0.38%) Azure Certification
5 1 (0.38%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (0.38%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (7.31%) QA
2 17 (6.54%) Accessibility
3 4 (1.54%) WCAG
4 3 (1.15%) 21 CFR Part 11
4 3 (1.15%) GMP
4 3 (1.15%) GxP
4 3 (1.15%) ISO/IEC 17025
4 3 (1.15%) NCSC
5 2 (0.77%) GDPR
6 1 (0.38%) SLA
System Software
1 54 (20.77%) Docker
2 1 (0.38%) Apache ZooKeeper
2 1 (0.38%) Oracle RAC
2 1 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
2 1 (0.38%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 44 (16.92%) Kubernetes
2 26 (10.00%) Terraform
3 4 (1.54%) Grafana
4 3 (1.15%) Ansible
4 3 (1.15%) Kibana
5 1 (0.38%) Oracle RMAN
5 1 (0.38%) Prometheus
5 1 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 30 (11.54%) Microsoft
2 20 (7.69%) Oracle
3 9 (3.46%) Salesforce
4 7 (2.69%) Informatica
5 5 (1.92%) IBM
6 4 (1.54%) Blue Prism
7 3 (1.15%) BMC
7 3 (1.15%) Remedy
7 3 (1.15%) SAP
7 3 (1.15%) ServiceNow
8 2 (0.77%) Adobe
8 2 (0.77%) Anaplan
8 2 (0.77%) DataFlux
8 2 (0.77%) Guidewire
8 2 (0.77%) Kepware
8 2 (0.77%) MuleSoft
8 2 (0.77%) OpenAI
9 1 (0.38%) HubSpot
9 1 (0.38%) Jaspersoft
9 1 (0.38%) Liquidlogic