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 £492, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 16 April 2026.

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

6 months to
16 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 146 90 98
Rank change year-on-year -56 +8 +40
Contract jobs requiring a Lead Developer 9 7 10
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 0.30% 0.52% 0.52%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.32% 0.57% 0.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 2 2 8
10th Percentile £467 £515 £520
25th Percentile £474 £519 £606
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £557 £650
Median % change year-on-year -11.77% -14.30% +8.33%
75th Percentile £503 £613 £675
90th Percentile £506 £628 £679
England median daily rate £600 £600 £625
% change year-on-year -0.04% -3.96% +1.79%

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 2,798 1,221 1,757
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.89% 90.11% 91.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,820 823 1,186
10th Percentile £306 £200 £258
25th Percentile £402 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £488 £475
Median % change year-on-year -1.44% +2.63% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £671 £650 £699
England median daily rate £508 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.33% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 130 69 136
10th Percentile £14.11 £12.62 £12.08
25th Percentile £21.47 £14.00 £15.00
Median hourly rate £30.00 £18.00 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +66.67% -18.18% +15.79%
75th Percentile £58.06 £28.18 £40.81
90th Percentile £68.00 £35.45 £55.63
England median hourly rate £45.00 £32.50 £34.53
% change year-on-year +38.46% -5.88% -21.17%

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 16 April 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
Shropshire -46 2 £508 -5.77%
Coventry - 2 - -
Solihull -14 1 £475 -17.39%
Birmingham -22 1 - -
Lead Developer
England

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

For the 6 months to 16 April 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 5 (55.56%) Credit Risk Modelling
1 5 (55.56%) Model Validation
2 4 (44.44%) Java
3 3 (33.33%) JPA
3 3 (33.33%) SC Cleared
3 3 (33.33%) Security Cleared
3 3 (33.33%) Spring
3 3 (33.33%) Spring Boot
3 3 (33.33%) SQL
4 2 (22.22%) Agile
4 2 (22.22%) AWS
4 2 (22.22%) Biometrics
4 2 (22.22%) CI/CD
4 2 (22.22%) Containerisation
4 2 (22.22%) Hibernate
4 2 (22.22%) JUnit
4 2 (22.22%) Maven
4 2 (22.22%) Mentoring
4 2 (22.22%) Microservices
4 2 (22.22%) Mockito
4 2 (22.22%) PostgreSQL
4 2 (22.22%) QA
4 2 (22.22%) REST
4 2 (22.22%) Scrum
4 2 (22.22%) SOAP
4 2 (22.22%) Spring Batch
4 2 (22.22%) Spring Integration
4 2 (22.22%) Technical Leadership
4 2 (22.22%) Web Services
5 1 (11.11%) ActiveMQ

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:

Cloud Services
1 2 (22.22%) AWS
2 1 (11.11%) Amazon CloudWatch
2 1 (11.11%) Amazon EC2
2 1 (11.11%) Amazon S3
2 1 (11.11%) Amazon SQS
2 1 (11.11%) AWS KMS
2 1 (11.11%) Route 53
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (22.22%) PostgreSQL
2 1 (11.11%) Amazon Aurora
2 1 (11.11%) Amazon RDS
2 1 (11.11%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 2 (22.22%) JUnit
1 2 (22.22%) Maven
1 2 (22.22%) Mockito
2 1 (11.11%) Git
2 1 (11.11%) GitLab
2 1 (11.11%) Jenkins
2 1 (11.11%) SonarQube
General
1 6 (66.67%) Analytical Skills
2 1 (11.11%) Public Sector
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (33.33%) JPA
1 3 (33.33%) Spring
1 3 (33.33%) Spring Boot
2 2 (22.22%) Hibernate
2 2 (22.22%) REST
2 2 (22.22%) SOAP
2 2 (22.22%) Spring Batch
2 2 (22.22%) Spring Integration
2 2 (22.22%) Web Services
3 1 (11.11%) ActiveMQ
3 1 (11.11%) AngularJS
3 1 (11.11%) Node.js
3 1 (11.11%) OpenAPI
3 1 (11.11%) Spring Cloud
Miscellaneous
1 5 (55.56%) Credit Risk
2 1 (11.11%) Legacy Systems
Processes & Methodologies
1 5 (55.56%) Credit Risk Modelling
1 5 (55.56%) Model Validation
2 2 (22.22%) Agile
2 2 (22.22%) Biometrics
2 2 (22.22%) CI/CD
2 2 (22.22%) Containerisation
2 2 (22.22%) Mentoring
2 2 (22.22%) Microservices
2 2 (22.22%) Scrum
2 2 (22.22%) Technical Leadership
3 1 (11.11%) Architectural Patterns
3 1 (11.11%) BPMN
3 1 (11.11%) Change Management
3 1 (11.11%) Code Quality
3 1 (11.11%) DevOps
3 1 (11.11%) Kanban
3 1 (11.11%) Performance Tuning
3 1 (11.11%) Refactoring
3 1 (11.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
3 1 (11.11%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 4 (44.44%) Java
2 3 (33.33%) SQL
3 1 (11.11%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 3 (33.33%) SC Cleared
1 3 (33.33%) Security Cleared
2 1 (11.11%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (22.22%) QA
System Software
1 1 (11.11%) Docker
Systems Management
1 1 (11.11%) Grafana
1 1 (11.11%) Kibana
1 1 (11.11%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 1 (11.11%) Jaspersoft