Technical Leader Contract Job Trends

Technical Lead
UK

The median Technical Lead daily rate in the UK is £625, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 9 October 2026.

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

6 months to
9 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 299 355 334
Rank change year-on-year +56 -21 +2
Contract jobs requiring a Technical Leader 463 205 242
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.85% 0.62% 0.64%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.92% 0.68% 0.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 306 129 155
10th Percentile £463 £386 £405
25th Percentile £513 £500 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% - -7.69%
75th Percentile £730 £675 £763
90th Percentile £781 £750 £850
UK excluding London median daily rate £625 £520 £589
% change year-on-year +20.19% -11.68% -4.07%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 0 3
10th Percentile £38.10 - £46.75
25th Percentile £66.25 - £49.38
Median hourly rate £67.50 - £57.50
75th Percentile £68.75 - £61.25
90th Percentile £78.17 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 - £53.75
% change year-on-year - - +10.57%

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 50,176 30,117 35,319
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.07% 90.80% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,458 18,999 21,350
10th Percentile £325 £275 £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 £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £494
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.85% -1.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4,042 1,639 1,491
10th Percentile £14.32 £13.75 £14.85
25th Percentile £19.36 £17.30 £20.30
Median hourly rate £41.71 £25.15 £41.57
Median % change year-on-year +65.84% -39.49% -6.60%
75th Percentile £67.50 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £68.00 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.71 £25.00 £42.96
% change year-on-year +66.84% -41.80% -3.47%

Technical Leader
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Technical Leader' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Technical Leader job vacancy trend in the UK

Technical Leader
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Technical Leader job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Technical Leader job vacancies in the UK

Technical Leader
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Technical Leader over the 6 months to 9 October 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Technical Leader in the UK

Technical Leader
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Technical Leader job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Technical Leader job vacancies in the UK

Technical Leader
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Technical Leader over the 6 months to 9 October 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Technical Leader in the UK

Technical Leader
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 Technical Leader within the UK over the 6 months to 9 October 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 +53 406 £625 +4.17% 672
UK excluding London +14 211 £625 +20.19% 352
London +9 202 £613 +2.08% 329
Work from Home -11 116 £569 -5.21% 261
South East +1 68 £625 +66.67% 80
North of England -43 49 £625 +25.00% 94
South West -3 39 £720 +35.21% 34
Yorkshire -18 35 £537 +22.05% 28
Midlands -26 31 £697 +33.37% 53
West Midlands -28 29 £723 +38.68% 40
North West -45 14 £725 +41.33% 61
East of England -25 11 £503 -12.61% 36
Scotland -33 10 £505 -30.10% 42
Wales -8 5 £555 +7.25% 3
North East -38 3 £725 +45.00% 5
East Midlands -18 2 £400 -31.91% 13

Technical Leader Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 9 October 2026, Technical Leader 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 Technical Leader in the job title.

1 180 (38.88%) Technical Leadership
2 144 (31.10%) Agile
3 128 (27.65%) AWS
4 124 (26.78%) Azure
5 120 (25.92%) Stakeholder Management
6 108 (23.33%) Security Cleared
7 107 (23.11%) CI/CD
8 105 (22.68%) DevOps
9 82 (17.71%) Python
10 72 (15.55%) Mentoring
11 71 (15.33%) Migration
12 70 (15.12%) Problem-Solving
12 70 (15.12%) SC Cleared
13 66 (14.25%) Roadmaps
14 64 (13.82%) Software Engineering
15 60 (12.96%) SQL
16 58 (12.53%) Decision-Making
17 57 (12.31%) Microsoft
18 54 (11.66%) Continuous Improvement
19 53 (11.45%) Kubernetes
20 51 (11.02%) Infrastructure as Code
21 49 (10.58%) Stakeholder Engagement
22 47 (10.15%) JavaScript
23 46 (9.94%) AI
24 44 (9.50%) Docker
25 39 (8.42%) Observability
26 38 (8.21%) Data Modelling
26 38 (8.21%) Enterprise Architecture
26 38 (8.21%) Java
26 38 (8.21%) React

Technical Leader 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 (2.16%) Apache
1 10 (2.16%) Apache Airflow
2 7 (1.51%) Confluence
3 6 (1.30%) Microsoft Exchange
3 6 (1.30%) SAS
4 5 (1.08%) ArcGIS
5 4 (0.86%) Apache Spark
5 4 (0.86%) SharePoint
5 4 (0.86%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.43%) Anypoint
6 2 (0.43%) Apache Superset
6 2 (0.43%) Liferay
7 1 (0.22%) Camunda
7 1 (0.22%) Cloud Foundry
7 1 (0.22%) CMS
7 1 (0.22%) EPiServer
7 1 (0.22%) IIS
Applications
1 9 (1.94%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.43%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 2 (0.43%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.43%) Windchill
3 1 (0.22%) 1Password
3 1 (0.22%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 9 (1.94%) SAP S/4HANA
2 7 (1.51%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.65%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.43%) Aladdin
4 2 (0.43%) Fidessa
4 2 (0.43%) Infor M3
4 2 (0.43%) Oracle ERP
4 2 (0.43%) Payment Gateway
4 2 (0.43%) SAP EWM
4 2 (0.43%) SAP MDG
4 2 (0.43%) SAP Oil and Gas
4 2 (0.43%) SAP SD
4 2 (0.43%) Teamcenter
5 1 (0.22%) Actimize
5 1 (0.22%) NetSuite
5 1 (0.22%) Postilion
5 1 (0.22%) SAP IS-U
5 1 (0.22%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 128 (27.65%) AWS
2 124 (26.78%) Azure
3 36 (7.78%) GCP
4 31 (6.70%) Power Platform
5 30 (6.48%) Serverless
6 24 (5.18%) AWS Lambda
7 23 (4.97%) Amazon S3
8 22 (4.75%) Amazon ECS
8 22 (4.75%) GitHub
9 20 (4.32%) Entra ID
10 18 (3.89%) Azure DevOps
11 17 (3.67%) Microsoft 365
12 16 (3.46%) GitHub Actions
13 15 (3.24%) OpenShift
14 14 (3.02%) SaaS
15 13 (2.81%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 12 (2.59%) Dynamics 365
17 10 (2.16%) Snowflake
18 9 (1.94%) Azure Data Factory
18 9 (1.94%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 11 (2.38%) Firewall
2 6 (1.30%) BGP
3 5 (1.08%) DNS
3 5 (1.08%) Network Security
3 5 (1.08%) SD-WAN
3 5 (1.08%) WAN
4 4 (0.86%) Ethernet VPN
4 4 (0.86%) HTTP
4 4 (0.86%) NX-OS
4 4 (0.86%) TCP/IP
4 4 (0.86%) VXLAN
5 3 (0.65%) Cisco ASA
5 3 (0.65%) Cisco Firepower
5 3 (0.65%) Cisco Nexus
5 3 (0.65%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
5 3 (0.65%) IPsec
5 3 (0.65%) LAN
5 3 (0.65%) MPLS
5 3 (0.65%) OSPF
5 3 (0.65%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (4.10%) DynamoDB
2 17 (3.67%) Amazon RDS
2 17 (3.67%) Data Lake
2 17 (3.67%) PostgreSQL
2 17 (3.67%) Power BI
3 16 (3.46%) SQL Server
4 14 (3.02%) Data Warehouse
5 12 (2.59%) Delta Lake
6 11 (2.38%) Metadata
6 11 (2.38%) Relational Database
7 6 (1.30%) BigQuery
7 6 (1.30%) MySQL
7 6 (1.30%) NoSQL
7 6 (1.30%) Redis
8 5 (1.08%) GIS
8 5 (1.08%) Semantic Layer
9 4 (0.86%) Amazon Redshift
9 4 (0.86%) Data Vault
10 3 (0.65%) Elasticsearch
10 3 (0.65%) Parquet
Development Applications
1 30 (6.48%) Git
2 23 (4.97%) Jenkins
3 12 (2.59%) JIRA
4 5 (1.08%) GitLab
4 5 (1.08%) Terragrunt
5 4 (0.86%) Bitbucket
6 3 (0.65%) Ant
6 3 (0.65%) Eclipse
6 3 (0.65%) Visual Studio Code
7 2 (0.43%) MSI
7 2 (0.43%) Rational DOORS
7 2 (0.43%) Robot Framework
7 2 (0.43%) Sonatype Nexus
8 1 (0.22%) CA Gen
8 1 (0.22%) Claude Code
8 1 (0.22%) Hudson
8 1 (0.22%) MLflow
8 1 (0.22%) Rational Rhapsody
8 1 (0.22%) ScriptRunner
8 1 (0.22%) webpack
General
1 120 (25.92%) Social Skills
2 66 (14.25%) Finance
3 63 (13.61%) Public Sector
4 32 (6.91%) Analytical Skills
5 24 (5.18%) Banking
6 13 (2.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 10 (2.16%) Local Government
8 9 (1.94%) Front Office
8 9 (1.94%) Law
9 7 (1.51%) Investment Banking
10 6 (1.30%) Manufacturing
10 6 (1.30%) Marketing
11 5 (1.08%) Military
11 5 (1.08%) Presentation Skills
11 5 (1.08%) Telecoms
12 4 (0.86%) Aerospace
12 4 (0.86%) Billing
12 4 (0.86%) Organisational Skills
13 3 (0.65%) Automotive
13 3 (0.65%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (8.21%) React
1 38 (8.21%) Terraform
2 33 (7.13%) REST
3 27 (5.83%) .NET
4 22 (4.75%) HTML
4 22 (4.75%) Spring
5 21 (4.54%) RESTful
6 19 (4.10%) Spring Boot
7 17 (3.67%) FastAPI
8 16 (3.46%) CSS
8 16 (3.46%) OAuth
9 15 (3.24%) OpenID
10 14 (3.02%) Django
11 13 (2.81%) Kafka
11 13 (2.81%) Lightning Web Components
12 12 (2.59%) Middleware
12 12 (2.59%) OAuth2
12 12 (2.59%) SOAP
13 11 (2.38%) Next.js
13 11 (2.38%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 52 (11.23%) Cloud Native
2 47 (10.15%) Product Ownership
3 22 (4.75%) Data Centre
4 21 (4.54%) Onboarding
5 13 (2.81%) FMCG
6 12 (2.59%) AI Agents
7 10 (2.16%) Virtual Team
8 8 (1.73%) Distributed Systems
8 8 (1.73%) Hybrid Cloud
9 6 (1.30%) Data Protection Act
9 6 (1.30%) IoT
10 5 (1.08%) Fixed Income
10 5 (1.08%) Private Cloud
11 4 (0.86%) Analytical Mindset
11 4 (0.86%) Enterprise Software
11 4 (0.86%) Management Information System
11 4 (0.86%) Public Cloud
12 3 (0.65%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 3 (0.65%) Greenfield Project
12 3 (0.65%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 29 (6.26%) Windows
2 11 (2.38%) Windows Server
3 9 (1.94%) Linux
4 5 (1.08%) Unix
5 3 (0.65%) Android
6 2 (0.43%) Apple iOS
6 2 (0.43%) VMS
7 1 (0.22%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.22%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 180 (38.88%) Technical Leadership
2 144 (31.10%) Agile
3 120 (25.92%) Stakeholder Management
4 107 (23.11%) CI/CD
5 105 (22.68%) DevOps
6 72 (15.55%) Mentoring
7 71 (15.33%) Migration
8 70 (15.12%) Problem-Solving
9 66 (14.25%) Roadmaps
10 64 (13.82%) Software Engineering
11 58 (12.53%) Decision-Making
12 54 (11.66%) Continuous Improvement
13 51 (11.02%) Infrastructure as Code
14 49 (10.58%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 46 (9.94%) AI
16 39 (8.42%) Observability
17 38 (8.21%) Data Modelling
17 38 (8.21%) Enterprise Architecture
17 38 (8.21%) Technical Architecture
18 34 (7.34%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 82 (17.71%) Python
2 60 (12.96%) SQL
3 47 (10.15%) JavaScript
4 38 (8.21%) Java
5 32 (6.91%) TypeScript
6 23 (4.97%) PowerShell
7 17 (3.67%) C#
8 12 (2.59%) Apex Code
9 6 (1.30%) Bash
10 5 (1.08%) Bicep
11 4 (0.86%) Go
11 4 (0.86%) SOQL
12 3 (0.65%) C
12 3 (0.65%) C++
12 3 (0.65%) Shell Script
12 3 (0.65%) SOSL
13 2 (0.43%) ABAP
13 2 (0.43%) JSX
13 2 (0.43%) Korn
13 2 (0.43%) PHP
Qualifications
1 108 (23.33%) Security Cleared
2 70 (15.12%) SC Cleared
3 34 (7.34%) DV Cleared
4 20 (4.32%) Degree
5 13 (2.81%) AWS Certification
6 11 (2.38%) BPSS Clearance
7 8 (1.73%) Master's Degree
8 7 (1.51%) Cisco Certification
8 7 (1.51%) Computer Science Degree
8 7 (1.51%) PMI Certification
9 5 (1.08%) Azure Certification
9 5 (1.08%) CISSP
9 5 (1.08%) Microsoft Certification
9 5 (1.08%) PMP
10 4 (0.86%) CCNP
11 3 (0.65%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 3 (0.65%) CCSP
11 3 (0.65%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 2 (0.43%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 2 (0.43%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (7.99%) QA
2 27 (5.83%) Data Quality
3 17 (3.67%) Accessibility
4 11 (2.38%) NCSC
5 7 (1.51%) NIST
6 6 (1.30%) GDPR
7 5 (1.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 4 (0.86%) NIST 800
9 3 (0.65%) PMO
9 3 (0.65%) WCAG
10 2 (0.43%) Actionable Recommendations
10 2 (0.43%) Def Stans
10 2 (0.43%) GMP
10 2 (0.43%) ISO 13485
10 2 (0.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.22%) Disclosure Scotland
11 1 (0.22%) IFRS
11 1 (0.22%) ISO 9000
11 1 (0.22%) ITGC
11 1 (0.22%) SLA
System Software
1 44 (9.50%) Docker
2 11 (2.38%) VMware NSX
3 10 (2.16%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (1.94%) Active Directory
5 8 (1.73%) vCloud
5 8 (1.73%) VMware ESXi
5 8 (1.73%) vSphere
6 2 (0.43%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.22%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 53 (11.45%) Kubernetes
2 19 (4.10%) Ansible
3 8 (1.73%) SCCM
3 8 (1.73%) SCOM
3 8 (1.73%) vCenter Server
4 5 (1.08%) Grafana
5 4 (0.86%) Kibana
6 3 (0.65%) Microsoft Intune
7 2 (0.43%) Computer Incident Response Team
7 2 (0.43%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
8 1 (0.22%) Argo
8 1 (0.22%) Netcool
8 1 (0.22%) Netcool/OMNIbus
8 1 (0.22%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
8 1 (0.22%) Tivoli
8 1 (0.22%) Tivoli Monitoring
Vendors
1 57 (12.31%) Microsoft
2 25 (5.40%) VMware
3 20 (4.32%) Salesforce
4 18 (3.89%) SAP
5 15 (3.24%) Databricks
6 14 (3.02%) Cisco
7 12 (2.59%) Google
8 10 (2.16%) Oracle
9 9 (1.94%) Red Hat
10 7 (1.51%) MuleSoft
11 6 (1.30%) Informatica
11 6 (1.30%) Palo Alto
11 6 (1.30%) ServiceNow
12 5 (1.08%) AppDynamics
12 5 (1.08%) Guidewire
12 5 (1.08%) OneLogin
12 5 (1.08%) Splunk
13 4 (0.86%) CyberArk
13 4 (0.86%) MicroStrategy
13 4 (0.86%) Mistral