Technical Leader Contracts

Technical Lead
UK

The median Technical Lead daily rate in the UK is £620, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 30 April 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Apr 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 375 314 325
Rank change year-on-year -61 +11 +76
Contract jobs requiring a Technical Leader 146 307 459
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.50% 0.70% 0.77%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.54% 0.76% 0.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 105 214 297
10th Percentile £431 £446 £491
25th Percentile £519 £513 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £620 £611 £625
Median % change year-on-year +1.43% -2.20% +6.38%
75th Percentile £713 £758 £725
90th Percentile £800 £850 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -8.33% - +9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 3 0
Median hourly rate - £28.25 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £28.25 -

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 27,050 40,453 56,471
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.52% 92.79% 94.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,687 26,352 39,474
10th Percentile £300 £275 £313
25th Percentile £406 £409 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.78% +2.86%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £493 £500
% change year-on-year -3.55% -1.50% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,031 2,658 1,569
10th Percentile £14.20 £12.86 £14.29
25th Percentile £18.51 £16.30 £19.50
Median hourly rate £29.07 £36.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -19.25% -20.00% +91.86%
75th Percentile £62.50 £60.75 £65.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.75 £38.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -25.32% -9.41% +117.95%

Technical Leader
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured Technical Leader in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Technical Leader in the UK

Technical Leader
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Technical Leader.

Daily rate trend for Technical Leader in the UK

Technical Leader
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Technical Leader over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Technical Leader in the UK

Technical Leader
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Technical Leader.

Hourly rate trend for Technical Leader in the UK

Technical Leader
Top 15 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Technical Leader within the UK over the 6 months to 30 April 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 -64 122 £625 - 128
London -29 86 £634 -2.50% 63
Work from Home -3 46 £620 -0.80% 85
UK excluding London -13 44 £550 -8.33% 65
Midlands +24 13 £524 -15.31% 11
West Midlands +15 9 £524 -27.72% 6
North of England -6 9 £700 -17.65% 22
South East +37 7 £615 +11.82% 14
Scotland -1 6 £625 +21.95% 2
North West -24 5 £775 -8.82% 16
South West +33 4 £600 - 9
Yorkshire +16 4 £600 +1.69% 4
East Midlands +11 4 £450 -10.00% 5
East of England +28 3 £190 -68.33% 6
Wales - 2 £250 - 1

Technical Leader Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 30 April 2025, Technical Leader contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Technical Leader in the job title.

1 56 (38.36%) Social Skills
2 53 (36.30%) Azure
3 48 (32.88%) Agile
4 41 (28.08%) DevOps
5 39 (26.71%) Microsoft
6 38 (26.03%) Technical Leadership
7 35 (23.97%) Java
7 35 (23.97%) AWS
8 31 (21.23%) Problem-Solving
9 29 (19.86%) Security Cleared
9 29 (19.86%) .NET
9 29 (19.86%) SQL
10 22 (15.07%) JavaScript
11 21 (14.38%) OO
11 21 (14.38%) Python
12 20 (13.70%) Mentoring
13 19 (13.01%) Power Platform
13 19 (13.01%) C#
13 19 (13.01%) SC Cleared
14 18 (12.33%) Finance
14 18 (12.33%) Public Sector
15 16 (10.96%) Azure DevOps
16 15 (10.27%) TDD
16 15 (10.27%) Configuration Management
17 14 (9.59%) Software Engineering
17 14 (9.59%) CI/CD
18 13 (8.90%) Design Patterns
18 13 (8.90%) Dynamics 365
18 13 (8.90%) Data Modelling
19 12 (8.22%) OOD

Technical Leader Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 4 (2.74%) Apache
2 3 (2.05%) Apache Spark
2 3 (2.05%) Confluence
3 2 (1.37%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (1.37%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.68%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.68%) CMS
4 1 (0.68%) IIS
4 1 (0.68%) Magnolia
4 1 (0.68%) nginx
4 1 (0.68%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 1 (0.68%) Tomcat
4 1 (0.68%) WebLogic
Applications
1 1 (0.68%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 8 (5.48%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.68%) Maximo
2 1 (0.68%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.68%) SAP CX
2 1 (0.68%) SAP EWM
2 1 (0.68%) SAP Hybris
2 1 (0.68%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 53 (36.30%) Azure
2 35 (23.97%) AWS
3 19 (13.01%) Power Platform
4 16 (10.96%) Azure DevOps
5 13 (8.90%) Dynamics 365
6 11 (7.53%) Cloud Computing
6 11 (7.53%) PowerApps
7 10 (6.85%) GCP
8 7 (4.79%) Serverless
9 6 (4.11%) GitHub
9 6 (4.11%) OpenShift
10 4 (2.74%) Amazon S3
10 4 (2.74%) Azure Service Bus
10 4 (2.74%) Entra ID
11 3 (2.05%) AWS CloudFormation
11 3 (2.05%) AWS Lambda
11 3 (2.05%) Azure Functions
11 3 (2.05%) Power Automate
12 2 (1.37%) Datadog
12 2 (1.37%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 3 (2.05%) Firewall
2 2 (1.37%) Cisco Firepower
2 2 (1.37%) VPN
3 1 (0.68%) BGP
3 1 (0.68%) Multicast
3 1 (0.68%) OSPF
3 1 (0.68%) VLAN
3 1 (0.68%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (3.42%) Data Lake
1 5 (3.42%) PostgreSQL
2 4 (2.74%) Data Warehouse
2 4 (2.74%) Power BI
3 2 (1.37%) Amazon RDS
3 2 (1.37%) Big Data
3 2 (1.37%) Snowflake Schema
3 2 (1.37%) SQL Server
3 2 (1.37%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 2 (1.37%) Star Schema
4 1 (0.68%) Amazon Redshift
4 1 (0.68%) Azure SQL Database
4 1 (0.68%) Delta Lake
4 1 (0.68%) Hadoop
4 1 (0.68%) Oracle Database
4 1 (0.68%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 11 (7.53%) Git
2 7 (4.79%) Jenkins
3 5 (3.42%) SonarQube
4 4 (2.74%) JIRA
5 3 (2.05%) Ant
5 3 (2.05%) Gradle
5 3 (2.05%) Maven
6 2 (1.37%) JMeter
7 1 (0.68%) CircleCI
7 1 (0.68%) Oracle Forms
7 1 (0.68%) Subversion
General
1 56 (38.36%) Social Skills
2 18 (12.33%) Finance
2 18 (12.33%) Public Sector
3 12 (8.22%) Back Office
4 6 (4.11%) Analytical Skills
5 4 (2.74%) Banking
6 3 (2.05%) Billing
6 3 (2.05%) Financial Institution
6 3 (2.05%) Law
6 3 (2.05%) Organisational Skills
6 3 (2.05%) Retail
7 2 (1.37%) Manufacturing
7 2 (1.37%) Pharmaceutical
8 1 (0.68%) Dutch Language
8 1 (0.68%) Front Office
8 1 (0.68%) Games
8 1 (0.68%) General Ledger
8 1 (0.68%) Investment Banking
8 1 (0.68%) Marketing
8 1 (0.68%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (19.86%) .NET
2 7 (4.79%) HTML
2 7 (4.79%) Spring
3 6 (4.11%) CSS
3 6 (4.11%) React
4 5 (3.42%) Kafka
4 5 (3.42%) REST
4 5 (3.42%) SOAP
4 5 (3.42%) Spring Boot
5 4 (2.74%) AngularJS
5 4 (2.74%) Lightning Web Components
5 4 (2.74%) Node.js
5 4 (2.74%) PySpark
5 4 (2.74%) Visualforce
6 3 (2.05%) .NET Core
6 3 (2.05%) .NET Framework
6 3 (2.05%) Entity Framework
6 3 (2.05%) JSP
6 3 (2.05%) Material-UI
6 3 (2.05%) Thymeleaf
Miscellaneous
1 12 (8.22%) Product Ownership
2 8 (5.48%) Public Cloud
3 5 (3.42%) EPoS
3 5 (3.42%) Legacy Systems
3 5 (3.42%) Low-Code
3 5 (3.42%) Onboarding
4 4 (2.74%) Enterprise Software
4 4 (2.74%) Operational Technology
5 3 (2.05%) Algorithms
5 3 (2.05%) Data Structures
5 3 (2.05%) Distributed Systems
5 3 (2.05%) Hedge funds
6 2 (1.37%) Cloud Native
6 2 (1.37%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 2 (1.37%) NHS
6 2 (1.37%) Reinsurance
6 2 (1.37%) Renewable Energy
6 2 (1.37%) Solar Panel
7 1 (0.68%) BYOD
7 1 (0.68%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 11 (7.53%) Linux
2 4 (2.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 2 (1.37%) Unix
4 1 (0.68%) AIX
4 1 (0.68%) Android
4 1 (0.68%) Windows
4 1 (0.68%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 48 (32.88%) Agile
2 41 (28.08%) DevOps
3 38 (26.03%) Technical Leadership
4 31 (21.23%) Problem-Solving
5 21 (14.38%) OO
6 20 (13.70%) Mentoring
7 15 (10.27%) Configuration Management
7 15 (10.27%) TDD
8 14 (9.59%) CI/CD
8 14 (9.59%) Software Engineering
9 13 (8.90%) Data Modelling
9 13 (8.90%) Design Patterns
10 12 (8.22%) Clean Code
10 12 (8.22%) OOD
11 11 (7.53%) Continuous Integration
11 11 (7.53%) Database Optimisation
11 11 (7.53%) Migration
11 11 (7.53%) Roadmaps
11 11 (7.53%) Technical Architecture
11 11 (7.53%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 35 (23.97%) Java
2 29 (19.86%) SQL
3 22 (15.07%) JavaScript
4 21 (14.38%) Python
5 19 (13.01%) C#
6 12 (8.22%) PowerShell
7 8 (5.48%) TypeScript
8 7 (4.79%) Go
9 5 (3.42%) C
10 4 (2.74%) Apex Code
10 4 (2.74%) C++
11 2 (1.37%) Groovy
12 1 (0.68%) ABAP
12 1 (0.68%) Bash
12 1 (0.68%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.68%) T-SQL
12 1 (0.68%) VB
12 1 (0.68%) VB6
Qualifications
1 29 (19.86%) Security Cleared
2 19 (13.01%) SC Cleared
3 8 (5.48%) Degree
4 7 (4.79%) Computer Science Degree
4 7 (4.79%) DV Cleared
5 5 (3.42%) AWS Certification
5 5 (3.42%) Azure Certification
6 3 (2.05%) BPSS Clearance
6 3 (2.05%) Master's Degree
6 3 (2.05%) PMI Certification
6 3 (2.05%) PMP
7 2 (1.37%) Microsoft Certification
8 1 (0.68%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
8 1 (0.68%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 1 (0.68%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (5.48%) PCI DSS
2 2 (1.37%) Data Quality
2 2 (1.37%) QA
3 1 (0.68%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.68%) Disclosure Scotland
3 1 (0.68%) GDPR
3 1 (0.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (0.68%) NCSC
3 1 (0.68%) NIST
3 1 (0.68%) PMO
System Software
1 6 (4.11%) Docker
2 3 (2.05%) vSphere
3 2 (1.37%) Active Directory
3 2 (1.37%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (1.37%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.68%) Apache ZooKeeper
4 1 (0.68%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 12 (8.22%) Kubernetes
2 7 (4.79%) Ansible
3 4 (2.74%) Terraform
4 1 (0.68%) Grafana
4 1 (0.68%) Microsoft Intune
4 1 (0.68%) Progress Chef
4 1 (0.68%) Prometheus
4 1 (0.68%) Puppet
4 1 (0.68%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 39 (26.71%) Microsoft
2 8 (5.48%) Oracle
3 6 (4.11%) Salesforce
3 6 (4.11%) SAP
3 6 (4.11%) VMware
4 5 (3.42%) Google
5 4 (2.74%) Databricks
5 4 (2.74%) Red Hat
6 3 (2.05%) Cisco
6 3 (2.05%) ServiceNow
7 2 (1.37%) Fortinet
7 2 (1.37%) Siemens
7 2 (1.37%) StreamSets
8 1 (0.68%) Guidewire
8 1 (0.68%) OutSystems
8 1 (0.68%) Palantir
8 1 (0.68%) Palo Alto
8 1 (0.68%) Rollbar
8 1 (0.68%) Virgin Media
8 1 (0.68%) Workday