Technical Leadership Contract Job Trends

Technical Leadership
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Technical Leadership skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 6 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 55 152 193
Rank change year-on-year +97 +41 +32
Contract jobs citing Technical Leadership 2,196 625 479
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.02% 1.90% 1.27%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.76% 2.10% 1.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,411 418 264
10th Percentile £425 £413 £400
25th Percentile £500 £475 £487
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £595 £570 £600
Median % change year-on-year +4.39% -5.00% -4.00%
75th Percentile £700 £672 £688
90th Percentile £785 £741 £779
UK excluding London median daily rate £575 £530 £535
% change year-on-year +8.49% -0.93% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 75 11 4
10th Percentile £61.75 - £27.30
25th Percentile £71.88 £70.16 £49.13
Median hourly rate £85.40 £81.00 £63.75
Median % change year-on-year +5.43% +27.06% +155.00%
75th Percentile £96.00 - £69.38
90th Percentile £110.75 - £72.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £90.00 £81.00 £63.75
% change year-on-year +11.11% +27.06% +218.75%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

Technical Leadership falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 46,176 29,707 32,376
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.50% 90.53% 85.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,774 18,450 19,527
10th Percentile £325 £297 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,315 1,863 1,324
10th Percentile £13.69 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.14 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £38.50 £25.15 £41.08
Median % change year-on-year +53.08% -38.77% -3.91%
75th Percentile £65.41 £43.21 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.40 £65.00 £74.31
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.72 £22.32 £42.50
% change year-on-year +73.52% -47.49% -

Technical Leadership
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Technical Leadership relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Technical Leadership job vacancy trend in the UK

Technical Leadership
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Technical Leadership.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Technical Leadership

Technical Leadership
Daily Rate Histogram

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

Daily rate histogram for Technical Leadership in the UK

Technical Leadership
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Technical Leadership.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Technical Leadership

Technical Leadership
Hourly Rate Histogram

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

Hourly rate histogram for Technical Leadership in the UK

Technical Leadership
Top 18 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 Leadership within the UK over the 6 months to 6 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 +96 1,867 £600 +4.35% 3,748
UK excluding London +92 1,053 £575 +8.49% 2,397
London +69 843 £625 +4.17% 1,610
Work from Home +71 612 £588 +6.82% 1,916
North of England +48 296 £575 +0.88% 542
South East +62 266 £560 +11.94% 628
Midlands +61 208 £575 +17.11% 343
West Midlands +59 184 £575 +6.98% 192
South West +55 171 £638 +2.00% 274
North West +27 146 £575 +0.88% 294
Yorkshire +43 123 £550 -15.38% 156
Scotland +3 68 £500 -4.76% 224
East of England -4 38 £550 -1.85% 258
North East -19 29 £525 -4.55% 98
East Midlands -3 23 £515 +12.57% 151
Wales +1 21 £600 +25.65% 82
Channel Islands - 5 £700 -
Northern Ireland +4 1 £550 -43.59% 59

Technical Leadership
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 51 (2.32%) SharePoint
2 48 (2.19%) Apache Airflow
3 44 (2.00%) Confluence
4 42 (1.91%) Apache
5 37 (1.68%) Microsoft Exchange
6 36 (1.64%) Apache Spark
7 24 (1.09%) SAS
8 16 (0.73%) CMS
9 15 (0.68%) Jupyter
10 7 (0.32%) nginx
11 6 (0.27%) Headless CMS
11 6 (0.27%) OpenStack
11 6 (0.27%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 6 (0.27%) Palantir Foundry
12 5 (0.23%) NetWeaver
13 3 (0.14%) Apache Pulsar
13 3 (0.14%) MTS
13 3 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
13 3 (0.14%) SAP EP
14 2 (0.091%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 7 (0.32%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (0.27%) Chatbot
3 5 (0.23%) MS Visio
3 5 (0.23%) Navisworks
3 5 (0.23%) Revit
4 4 (0.18%) AutoCAD
4 4 (0.18%) CPLEX
5 3 (0.14%) Microsoft Excel
6 2 (0.091%) EPLAN
6 2 (0.091%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.046%) EngageOne
7 1 (0.046%) Gliffy
7 1 (0.046%) ProjectWise
7 1 (0.046%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 36 (1.64%) SAP S/4HANA
2 22 (1.00%) Dynamics CRM
3 9 (0.41%) Payment Gateway
4 7 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
4 7 (0.32%) Primavera
5 6 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
6 4 (0.18%) Adobe Campaign
6 4 (0.18%) SAP ERP
7 3 (0.14%) NetSuite
7 3 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
7 3 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
7 3 (0.14%) SAP CRM
7 3 (0.14%) SAP HCM
7 3 (0.14%) SAP HR
7 3 (0.14%) SAP MDG
7 3 (0.14%) SAP Payroll
7 3 (0.14%) Teamcenter
8 2 (0.091%) Endur
8 2 (0.091%) Oracle HRMS
8 2 (0.091%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 755 (34.38%) Azure
2 715 (32.56%) AWS
3 263 (11.98%) GCP
4 171 (7.79%) GitHub
5 157 (7.15%) Serverless
6 153 (6.97%) Power Platform
7 128 (5.83%) Entra ID
8 118 (5.37%) Azure DevOps
9 102 (4.64%) GitHub Actions
10 101 (4.60%) Amazon S3
11 98 (4.46%) Microsoft 365
12 92 (4.19%) AWS Lambda
13 63 (2.87%) Snowflake
14 61 (2.78%) Dynamics 365
15 58 (2.64%) SaaS
16 57 (2.60%) Power Automate
17 56 (2.55%) Amazon EKS
18 53 (2.41%) Azure Data Factory
19 50 (2.28%) Amazon ECS
20 49 (2.23%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 120 (5.46%) Firewall
2 99 (4.51%) DNS
3 83 (3.78%) Network Security
4 65 (2.96%) WAN
5 57 (2.60%) DHCP
6 49 (2.23%) VPN
7 36 (1.64%) LAN
7 36 (1.64%) TCP/IP
8 33 (1.50%) SD-WAN
9 30 (1.37%) BGP
10 26 (1.18%) MPLS
11 25 (1.14%) VSAN
12 22 (1.00%) OSPF
13 19 (0.87%) Broadband
13 19 (0.87%) Software-Defined Networking
14 15 (0.68%) NGFW
15 14 (0.64%) 4G
15 14 (0.64%) 5G
15 14 (0.64%) SSL
15 14 (0.64%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 108 (4.92%) Metadata
2 87 (3.96%) Data Warehouse
3 85 (3.87%) Power BI
4 74 (3.37%) SQL Server
5 70 (3.19%) Data Lake
6 69 (3.14%) PostgreSQL
7 51 (2.32%) NoSQL
8 40 (1.82%) Amazon RDS
9 38 (1.73%) MongoDB
10 35 (1.59%) Delta Lake
11 34 (1.55%) BigQuery
12 31 (1.41%) DynamoDB
13 30 (1.37%) Oracle Database
13 30 (1.37%) Relational Database
14 26 (1.18%) Amazon Redshift
15 23 (1.05%) Amazon Aurora
16 17 (0.77%) Big Data
17 15 (0.68%) MySQL
17 15 (0.68%) Redis
17 15 (0.68%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 142 (6.47%) Git
2 115 (5.24%) Jenkins
3 83 (3.78%) GitLab
4 71 (3.23%) JIRA
5 34 (1.55%) Selenium
6 22 (1.00%) Claude Code
7 20 (0.91%) Cypress.io
8 18 (0.82%) Postman
9 17 (0.77%) Cucumber
9 17 (0.77%) Maven
10 16 (0.73%) JUnit
11 12 (0.55%) JMeter
12 11 (0.50%) Storybook
13 10 (0.46%) REST Assured
13 10 (0.46%) WebDriver
14 9 (0.41%) MSI
14 9 (0.41%) Rational DOORS
14 9 (0.41%) Serenity BDD
14 9 (0.41%) Vite
15 8 (0.36%) MLflow
General
1 744 (33.88%) Social Skills
2 390 (17.76%) Public Sector
3 301 (13.71%) Finance
4 213 (9.70%) Analytical Skills
5 120 (5.46%) Banking
6 75 (3.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 71 (3.23%) Influencing Skills
8 56 (2.55%) Aerospace
9 51 (2.32%) Telecoms
10 46 (2.09%) Documentation Skills
11 43 (1.96%) Retail
12 40 (1.82%) Manufacturing
13 36 (1.64%) Marketing
14 24 (1.09%) Military
15 21 (0.96%) Front Office
16 20 (0.91%) Local Government
17 19 (0.87%) Law
17 19 (0.87%) Presentation Skills
18 17 (0.77%) Automotive
18 17 (0.77%) Legal
Job Titles
1 778 (35.43%) Architect
2 617 (28.10%) Lead
3 347 (15.80%) Senior
4 207 (9.43%) Developer
5 198 (9.02%) Solutions Architect
6 179 (8.15%) Technical Architect
6 179 (8.15%) Technical Leader
7 121 (5.51%) Data Engineer
8 100 (4.55%) Data Architect
9 73 (3.32%) Lead Architect
10 72 (3.28%) DevOps Engineer
11 70 (3.19%) Consultant
12 67 (3.05%) Cloud Architect
13 65 (2.96%) Cloud Engineer
14 63 (2.87%) Senior Architect
15 61 (2.78%) Lead Developer
15 61 (2.78%) Principal Engineer
16 60 (2.73%) Senior Developer
17 58 (2.64%) Platform Engineer
18 52 (2.37%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 294 (13.39%) Terraform
2 216 (9.84%) REST
3 142 (6.47%) Kafka
4 112 (5.10%) React
5 94 (4.28%) Spring
6 89 (4.05%) SOAP
7 88 (4.01%) Spring Boot
8 84 (3.83%) .NET
9 75 (3.42%) Node.js
10 68 (3.10%) OAuth
11 67 (3.05%) RESTful
12 64 (2.91%) Middleware
13 53 (2.41%) HTML
14 50 (2.28%) PySpark
15 49 (2.23%) JSON
15 49 (2.23%) OpenID
16 43 (1.96%) Django
16 43 (1.96%) LDAP
16 43 (1.96%) OAuth2
17 42 (1.91%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 329 (14.98%) Cloud Native
2 168 (7.65%) Product Ownership
3 145 (6.60%) Onboarding
4 107 (4.87%) Distributed Systems
5 90 (4.10%) Enterprise Software
6 78 (3.55%) Hybrid Cloud
7 74 (3.37%) Data Centre
8 68 (3.10%) Management Information System
9 64 (2.91%) Legacy Systems
10 59 (2.69%) AI Agents
11 49 (2.23%) PKI
12 41 (1.87%) Private Cloud
13 35 (1.59%) CMDB
14 34 (1.55%) Virtual Team
15 32 (1.46%) Public Cloud
16 29 (1.32%) Enterprise Cloud
17 27 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
17 27 (1.23%) Security Posture
18 26 (1.18%) Operational Technology
19 25 (1.14%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 182 (8.29%) Windows
2 130 (5.92%) Linux
3 83 (3.78%) Windows Server
4 22 (1.00%) Unix
5 16 (0.73%) Apple iOS
5 16 (0.73%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 16 (0.73%) Windows 10
6 14 (0.64%) Windows Server 2019
7 11 (0.50%) Android
8 6 (0.27%) AIX
9 5 (0.23%) Mac OS
9 5 (0.23%) Ubuntu
9 5 (0.23%) Windows Server 2012
10 4 (0.18%) Amazon Linux
10 4 (0.18%) VMS
10 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
11 3 (0.14%) CentOS
11 3 (0.14%) FreeRTOS
11 3 (0.14%) zOS
12 2 (0.091%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 719 (32.74%) CI/CD
2 670 (30.51%) Stakeholder Management
3 630 (28.69%) DevOps
4 596 (27.14%) Agile
5 574 (26.14%) Mentoring
6 434 (19.76%) Continuous Improvement
7 427 (19.44%) Roadmaps
8 410 (18.67%) AI
9 388 (17.67%) Problem-Solving
10 375 (17.08%) Infrastructure as Code
11 358 (16.30%) Migration
12 325 (14.80%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 274 (12.48%) Microservices
14 272 (12.39%) Decision-Making
15 271 (12.34%) Data Modelling
15 271 (12.34%) Software Engineering
16 264 (12.02%) Analytics
17 244 (11.11%) Observability
18 235 (10.70%) Test Automation
19 233 (10.61%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 446 (20.31%) Python
2 270 (12.30%) SQL
3 244 (11.11%) Java
4 166 (7.56%) JavaScript
5 151 (6.88%) PowerShell
6 131 (5.97%) TypeScript
7 90 (4.10%) C#
8 77 (3.51%) Bash
9 35 (1.59%) Bicep
10 25 (1.14%) ABAP
11 24 (1.09%) Apex Code
12 15 (0.68%) Kotlin
13 14 (0.64%) Scala
14 13 (0.59%) Go
14 13 (0.59%) Shell Script
15 12 (0.55%) Groovy
16 11 (0.50%) C
17 10 (0.46%) PL/SQL
18 9 (0.41%) C++
19 6 (0.27%) PHP
Qualifications
1 761 (34.65%) Security Cleared
2 519 (23.63%) SC Cleared
3 215 (9.79%) DV Cleared
4 118 (5.37%) Degree
5 95 (4.33%) AWS Certification
6 93 (4.23%) Azure Certification
7 87 (3.96%) BPSS Clearance
8 63 (2.87%) Computer Science Degree
9 59 (2.69%) Microsoft Certification
10 50 (2.28%) Cisco Certification
11 40 (1.82%) CISSP
12 28 (1.28%) Master's Degree
12 28 (1.28%) TOGAF Certification
13 27 (1.23%) CCNP
14 24 (1.09%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 20 (0.91%) CCIE
16 14 (0.64%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 14 (0.64%) VCAP
17 11 (0.50%) CISM
17 11 (0.50%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 148 (6.74%) Data Quality
2 123 (5.60%) QA
3 104 (4.74%) Accessibility
4 75 (3.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 72 (3.28%) NIST
6 60 (2.73%) NCSC
7 56 (2.55%) GDPR
8 30 (1.37%) WCAG
9 23 (1.05%) Cyber Essentials
10 17 (0.77%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 16 (0.73%) Actionable Recommendations
11 16 (0.73%) GRC
12 9 (0.41%) PMO
13 7 (0.32%) ISO 9000
13 7 (0.32%) JSP 440
13 7 (0.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 6 (0.27%) ISO 20022
14 6 (0.27%) NIST 800
14 6 (0.27%) PCI DSS
14 6 (0.27%) SLA
System Software
1 231 (10.52%) Docker
2 179 (8.15%) Active Directory
3 127 (5.78%) VMware Infrastructure
4 69 (3.14%) VMware NSX
5 52 (2.37%) VMware ESXi
6 49 (2.23%) vSphere
7 35 (1.59%) Hyper-V
8 24 (1.09%) vCloud
9 21 (0.96%) Virtual Desktop
10 11 (0.50%) Virtual Machines
11 8 (0.36%) Virtual Servers
12 7 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
13 4 (0.18%) Firmware
13 4 (0.18%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 3 (0.14%) ACF2
14 3 (0.14%) Ceph
14 3 (0.14%) KVM
14 3 (0.14%) OpenAM
14 3 (0.14%) RACF
15 2 (0.091%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 337 (15.35%) Kubernetes
2 126 (5.74%) Ansible
3 43 (1.96%) Grafana
4 40 (1.82%) vCenter Server
5 39 (1.78%) Microsoft Intune
6 38 (1.73%) SCOM
7 34 (1.55%) Prometheus
8 24 (1.09%) Single Sign-On
9 18 (0.82%) VxRail
10 16 (0.73%) Argo
11 14 (0.64%) SCCM
12 13 (0.59%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 11 (0.50%) Control-M
13 11 (0.50%) Kubeflow
14 9 (0.41%) Kibana
15 8 (0.36%) Istio
16 7 (0.32%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
16 7 (0.32%) WMI
17 6 (0.27%) Data Guard
18 5 (0.23%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 469 (21.36%) Microsoft
2 176 (8.01%) VMware
3 139 (6.33%) Databricks
4 119 (5.42%) Oracle
5 108 (4.92%) Google
6 88 (4.01%) ServiceNow
7 83 (3.78%) SAP
8 73 (3.32%) Cisco
9 67 (3.05%) Salesforce
10 56 (2.55%) CyberArk
11 43 (1.96%) Splunk
12 40 (1.82%) Palo Alto
13 29 (1.32%) Fortinet
14 28 (1.28%) OpenAI
15 26 (1.18%) IBM
15 26 (1.18%) SolarWinds
16 24 (1.09%) Red Hat
17 20 (0.91%) MuleSoft
18 18 (0.82%) Foundry
19 17 (0.77%) Okta