Lead Developer Contract Job Trends in the West Midlands

Lead Developer
England > West Midlands

The median Lead Developer daily rate in the West Midlands is £488, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 13 October 2026.

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

6 months to
13 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 163 120 100
Rank change year-on-year -43 -20 +18
Contract jobs requiring a Lead Developer 13 7 10
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 0.36% 0.37% 0.54%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.40% 0.42% 0.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 7 2 3
10th Percentile - - £395
25th Percentile £455 - £444
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.63% -13.64% -20.00%
75th Percentile £569 - £638
90th Percentile £588 - £675
England median daily rate £550 £590 £640
% change year-on-year -6.78% -7.81% +6.67%

All Contract IT Job Roles
West Midlands

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the West Midlands. 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 West Midlands with a recognized job title 3,249 1,675 1,741
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.98% 89.48% 93.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,942 1,086 1,095
10th Percentile £325 £247 £210
25th Percentile £413 £385 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% - +5.26%
75th Percentile £590 £588 £612
90th Percentile £684 £683 £709
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -3.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 246 109 60
10th Percentile £14.13 £12.62 £12.58
25th Percentile £17.74 £15.75 £14.18
Median hourly rate £25.00 £25.15 £21.80
Median % change year-on-year -0.60% +15.39% -3.75%
75th Percentile £45.00 £37.50 £32.26
90th Percentile £67.84 £50.00 £48.88
England median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -6.89%

Lead Developer
Job Vacancy Trend in the West Midlands

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Lead Developer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands.

Lead Developer job vacancy trend in the West Midlands

Lead Developer
Daily Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Lead Developer job vacancies in the West Midlands.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Lead Developer job vacancies in the West Midlands

Lead Developer
Hourly Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Lead Developer job vacancies in the West Midlands.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Lead Developer job vacancies in the West Midlands

Lead Developer
Contract Job Locations in the West Midlands

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 West Midlands region over the 6 months to 13 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
Solihull -13 4 - - 1
Coventry - 4 £460 -
Shropshire - 3 £575 - 1
Birmingham -1 2 - - 11
Lead Developer
England

Lead Developer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the West Midlands

For the 6 months to 13 October 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 across the West Midlands region featuring Lead Developer in the job title.

1 10 (76.92%) CI/CD
1 10 (76.92%) Front End Development
2 8 (61.54%) Agile
2 8 (61.54%) AWS
2 8 (61.54%) Continuous Improvement
2 8 (61.54%) Git
2 8 (61.54%) Java
2 8 (61.54%) Spring
2 8 (61.54%) Spring Boot
2 8 (61.54%) Technical Leadership
3 7 (53.85%) SC Cleared
3 7 (53.85%) Security Cleared
4 6 (46.15%) Accessibility
4 6 (46.15%) Code Quality
4 6 (46.15%) Containerisation
4 6 (46.15%) JPA
4 6 (46.15%) JUnit
4 6 (46.15%) Maven
4 6 (46.15%) Mentoring
4 6 (46.15%) Microservices
4 6 (46.15%) Mockito
4 6 (46.15%) Scrum
5 5 (38.46%) C#
5 5 (38.46%) Data Modelling
5 5 (38.46%) Microsoft
5 5 (38.46%) Problem-Solving
5 5 (38.46%) Relational Database
5 5 (38.46%) REST
5 5 (38.46%) SDLC
5 5 (38.46%) SOAP

Lead Developer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the West Midlands 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 4 (30.77%) Confluence
1 4 (30.77%) SharePoint
2 1 (7.69%) Oracle Workflow
Business Applications
1 4 (30.77%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 8 (61.54%) AWS
2 4 (30.77%) Azure
2 4 (30.77%) Azure DevOps
2 4 (30.77%) Azure Functions
2 4 (30.77%) Dynamics 365
2 4 (30.77%) Power Automate
2 4 (30.77%) Power Platform
2 4 (30.77%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 1 (7.69%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (38.46%) Relational Database
2 4 (30.77%) PostgreSQL
2 4 (30.77%) SQL Server
3 2 (15.38%) MongoDB
4 1 (7.69%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 8 (61.54%) Git
2 6 (46.15%) JUnit
2 6 (46.15%) Maven
2 6 (46.15%) Mockito
3 4 (30.77%) Jenkins
3 4 (30.77%) JIRA
3 4 (30.77%) SonarQube
4 2 (15.38%) GitLab
5 1 (7.69%) Oracle Forms
General
1 8 (61.54%) Public Sector
1 8 (61.54%) Social Skills
2 5 (38.46%) Analytical Skills
3 4 (30.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 4 (30.77%) Organisational Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (61.54%) Spring
1 8 (61.54%) Spring Boot
2 6 (46.15%) JPA
3 5 (38.46%) REST
3 5 (38.46%) SOAP
3 5 (38.46%) Web Services
3 5 (38.46%) XML
4 4 (30.77%) ActiveMQ
4 4 (30.77%) AngularJS
4 4 (30.77%) Hibernate
4 4 (30.77%) JSON
4 4 (30.77%) RESTful
4 4 (30.77%) Spring Cloud
4 4 (30.77%) XSLT
5 2 (15.38%) Kafka
5 2 (15.38%) OpenAPI
6 1 (7.69%) .NET
6 1 (7.69%) .NET Framework
6 1 (7.69%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 5 (38.46%) Management Information System
2 4 (30.77%) Cloud Native
2 4 (30.77%) Self-Motivation
2 4 (30.77%) Taxonomies
2 4 (30.77%) Virtual Team
3 1 (7.69%) LIMS
Operating Systems
1 1 (7.69%) Windows
1 1 (7.69%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 10 (76.92%) CI/CD
1 10 (76.92%) Front End Development
2 8 (61.54%) Agile
2 8 (61.54%) Continuous Improvement
2 8 (61.54%) Technical Leadership
3 6 (46.15%) Code Quality
3 6 (46.15%) Containerisation
3 6 (46.15%) Mentoring
3 6 (46.15%) Microservices
3 6 (46.15%) Scrum
4 5 (38.46%) Data Modelling
4 5 (38.46%) Problem-Solving
4 5 (38.46%) SDLC
5 4 (30.77%) AI
5 4 (30.77%) CRM
5 4 (30.77%) Information Security
5 4 (30.77%) Service Management
5 4 (30.77%) Stakeholder Management
5 4 (30.77%) TDD
5 4 (30.77%) Technical Architecture
Programming Languages
1 8 (61.54%) Java
2 5 (38.46%) C#
3 4 (30.77%) JavaScript
3 4 (30.77%) TypeScript
4 3 (23.08%) SQL
5 2 (15.38%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 7 (53.85%) SC Cleared
1 7 (53.85%) Security Cleared
2 4 (30.77%) Microsoft Certification
3 2 (15.38%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (46.15%) Accessibility
2 4 (30.77%) GDPR
2 4 (30.77%) WCAG
3 3 (23.08%) QA
4 1 (7.69%) 21 CFR Part 11
4 1 (7.69%) GMP
4 1 (7.69%) GxP
4 1 (7.69%) ISO/IEC 17025
System Software
1 4 (30.77%) Docker
Systems Management
1 4 (30.77%) Grafana
1 4 (30.77%) Prometheus
2 2 (15.38%) Kibana
2 2 (15.38%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 5 (38.46%) Microsoft
2 1 (7.69%) Oracle