Lead Developer Job Trends in England

Lead Developer
UK > England

The median Lead Developer salary in England is £82,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 15 May 2026.

The table below compares current salary benchmarking and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
15 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 272 412 247
Rank change year-on-year +140 -165 +80
Permanent jobs requiring a Lead Developer 537 239 969
As % of all permanent jobs in England 0.66% 0.61% 1.15%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.71% 0.69% 1.22%
Number of salaries quoted 446 184 889
10th Percentile £55,750 £51,625 £50,000
25th Percentile £70,000 £60,000 £57,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £82,000 £70,000 £72,500
Median % change year-on-year +17.14% -3.45% -9.38%
75th Percentile £100,000 £86,250 £93,250
90th Percentile £113,750 £106,875 £115,000
UK median annual salary £82,000 £70,000 £72,500
% change year-on-year +17.14% -3.45% -9.38%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
England

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies in England. 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 permanent jobs in our overall sample.

Permanent vacancies in England with a recognized job title 75,487 34,868 79,376
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.24% 89.50% 94.47%
Number of salaries quoted 50,840 20,779 60,307
10th Percentile £30,000 £30,000 £28,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £41,250 £38,125
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £58,000 £53,847
Median % change year-on-year -5.17% +7.71% -11.44%
75th Percentile £75,000 £78,574 £71,980
90th Percentile £96,250 £100,000 £91,250
UK median annual salary £55,000 £57,500 £52,508
% change year-on-year -4.35% +9.51% -12.49%

Lead Developer
Job Vacancy Trend in England

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

Lead Developer job vacancy trend in England

Lead Developer
Salary Trend in England

Salary distribution trend for Lead Developer job vacancies in England.

Salary distribution trend for Lead Developer job vacancies in England

Lead Developer
Salary Histogram in England

Salary distribution for jobs citing Lead Developer in England over the 6 months to 15 May 2026.

Salary histogram for Lead Developer in England

Lead Developer
Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Lead Developer within the England region over the 6 months to 15 May 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
London +64 217 £95,000 +13.43% 29
North of England +34 113 £73,750 +5.36% 31
North West +45 86 £71,250 +1.79% 16
South East +28 78 £90,000 +28.57% 19
Midlands -3 53 £70,000 +3.70% 10
South West -23 50 £65,000 +8.33%
West Midlands -13 28 £70,000 +3.70% 5
East Midlands -7 25 £70,000 +5.66% 5
East of England +4 22 £60,100 -19.87% 1
Yorkshire -42 17 £75,000 +7.14% 7
North East -27 10 £67,500 -15.63% 8
Lead Developer
UK

Lead Developer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England

For the 6 months to 15 May 2026, Lead Developer 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 permanent job ads across the England region featuring Lead Developer in the job title.

1 178 (33.15%) Full-Stack Development
2 124 (23.09%) AWS
3 111 (20.67%) Agile
4 110 (20.48%) JavaScript
5 107 (19.93%) TypeScript
6 105 (19.55%) React
6 105 (19.55%) Software Engineering
7 100 (18.62%) Mentoring
8 97 (18.06%) .NET
9 96 (17.88%) C#
10 94 (17.50%) Python
11 89 (16.57%) Technical Leadership
12 88 (16.39%) Azure
12 88 (16.39%) Node.js
13 70 (13.04%) SaaS
14 67 (12.48%) AI
15 64 (11.92%) CI/CD
16 63 (11.73%) DevOps
17 60 (11.17%) Java
18 54 (10.06%) Continuous Improvement
19 51 (9.50%) RESTful
20 47 (8.75%) Microservices
21 45 (8.38%) SQL
22 41 (7.64%) Problem-Solving
23 40 (7.45%) GraphQL
23 40 (7.45%) Microsoft
24 39 (7.26%) Portfolio Management
24 39 (7.26%) Redux
25 38 (7.08%) Coaching
25 38 (7.08%) Investment Management

Lead Developer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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 6 (1.12%) SharePoint
2 5 (0.93%) Anypoint
2 5 (0.93%) Appian
2 5 (0.93%) Confluence
2 5 (0.93%) Mule
3 2 (0.37%) WordPress
4 1 (0.19%) CMS
Business Applications
1 7 (1.30%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.19%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 124 (23.09%) AWS
2 88 (16.39%) Azure
3 70 (13.04%) SaaS
4 34 (6.33%) Serverless
5 27 (5.03%) AWS Lambda
6 25 (4.66%) Power Platform
7 23 (4.28%) Dynamics 365
7 23 (4.28%) GCP
8 20 (3.72%) Amazon S3
9 16 (2.98%) Amazon SQS
9 16 (2.98%) Azure Logic Apps
10 13 (2.42%) Azure DevOps
11 9 (1.68%) Amazon ECS
11 9 (1.68%) Amazon EventBridge
12 8 (1.49%) AWS CloudFormation
12 8 (1.49%) GitHub
13 7 (1.30%) Microsoft 365
13 7 (1.30%) PowerApps
14 6 (1.12%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 6 (1.12%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.56%) Broadband
2 1 (0.19%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (6.15%) SQL Server
2 31 (5.77%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (1.86%) MongoDB
4 9 (1.68%) DynamoDB
4 9 (1.68%) MySQL
5 6 (1.12%) Amazon RDS
6 5 (0.93%) DB2
6 5 (0.93%) Redis
7 4 (0.74%) Amazon Redshift
7 4 (0.74%) Power BI
7 4 (0.74%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 3 (0.56%) MariaDB
8 3 (0.56%) Metadata
8 3 (0.56%) NoSQL
8 3 (0.56%) Spatial Data
9 1 (0.19%) Azure SQL Database
9 1 (0.19%) Elasticsearch
9 1 (0.19%) InterSystems Cache
9 1 (0.19%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 15 (2.79%) Git
2 6 (1.12%) Cypress.io
2 6 (1.12%) Jenkins
2 6 (1.12%) JIRA
2 6 (1.12%) Maven
3 5 (0.93%) Bitbucket
3 5 (0.93%) GitLab
4 4 (0.74%) webpack
5 3 (0.56%) ESLint
5 3 (0.56%) JUnit
5 3 (0.56%) NUnit
5 3 (0.56%) SonarQube
5 3 (0.56%) Vite
6 2 (0.37%) Cucumber
6 2 (0.37%) Mockito
6 2 (0.37%) Selenium
6 2 (0.37%) XCUITest
7 1 (0.19%) SpecFlow
7 1 (0.19%) Subversion
7 1 (0.19%) TeamCity
General
1 79 (14.71%) Finance
2 47 (8.75%) Social Skills
3 42 (7.82%) Front Office
4 17 (3.17%) Tech for Good
5 16 (2.98%) Analytical Skills
6 14 (2.61%) Banking
7 11 (2.05%) Health Technology
8 10 (1.86%) Public Sector
9 9 (1.68%) Games
10 7 (1.30%) Law
10 7 (1.30%) Publishing
11 6 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
11 6 (1.12%) Organisational Skills
12 5 (0.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 5 (0.93%) Retail
13 4 (0.74%) Local Government
13 4 (0.74%) Pharmaceutical
14 2 (0.37%) General Ledger
14 2 (0.37%) Investment Banking
14 2 (0.37%) Marketing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 105 (19.55%) React
2 97 (18.06%) .NET
3 88 (16.39%) Node.js
4 51 (9.50%) RESTful
5 40 (7.45%) GraphQL
6 39 (7.26%) Redux
7 29 (5.40%) .NET Core
7 29 (5.40%) Kafka
7 29 (5.40%) Vue
8 26 (4.84%) AngularJS
8 26 (4.84%) ASP.NET
8 26 (4.84%) React Native
9 24 (4.47%) Spring
10 21 (3.91%) HTML
10 21 (3.91%) Laravel
11 20 (3.72%) CSS
12 16 (2.98%) .NET Framework
13 14 (2.61%) Spring Boot
14 12 (2.23%) REST
15 9 (1.68%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 36 (6.70%) Fixed Income
2 30 (5.59%) Cloud Native
3 26 (4.84%) Product Ownership
4 18 (3.35%) Derivative
5 17 (3.17%) Mobile App
6 16 (2.98%) Equities
7 15 (2.79%) Distributed Systems
8 14 (2.61%) Enterprise Software
9 13 (2.42%) PropTech
10 9 (1.68%) Legacy Applications
11 8 (1.49%) Low-Code
12 7 (1.30%) Greenfield Project
13 5 (0.93%) Credit Risk
13 5 (0.93%) Legacy Systems
14 4 (0.74%) AS400
15 3 (0.56%) iSeries
15 3 (0.56%) Operational Technology
15 3 (0.56%) Photography
15 3 (0.56%) Video\Live Streaming
16 2 (0.37%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 33 (6.15%) Apple iOS
2 25 (4.66%) Android
3 3 (0.56%) Linux
4 2 (0.37%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 178 (33.15%) Full-Stack Development
2 111 (20.67%) Agile
3 105 (19.55%) Software Engineering
4 100 (18.62%) Mentoring
5 89 (16.57%) Technical Leadership
6 67 (12.48%) AI
7 64 (11.92%) CI/CD
8 63 (11.73%) DevOps
9 54 (10.06%) Continuous Improvement
10 47 (8.75%) Microservices
11 41 (7.64%) Problem-Solving
12 39 (7.26%) Portfolio Management
13 38 (7.08%) Coaching
13 38 (7.08%) Investment Management
14 28 (5.21%) Fintech
15 25 (4.66%) Infrastructure as Code
16 24 (4.47%) Design Patterns
16 24 (4.47%) Line Management
17 23 (4.28%) Event-Driven
17 23 (4.28%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 110 (20.48%) JavaScript
2 107 (19.93%) TypeScript
3 96 (17.88%) C#
4 94 (17.50%) Python
5 60 (11.17%) Java
6 45 (8.38%) SQL
7 25 (4.66%) Go
8 14 (2.61%) PHP
9 11 (2.05%) C++
9 11 (2.05%) Swift
10 8 (1.49%) RPG
11 6 (1.12%) Bicep
11 6 (1.12%) Kotlin
12 5 (0.93%) C
13 4 (0.74%) Bash
14 3 (0.56%) COBOL
14 3 (0.56%) T-SQL
15 2 (0.37%) Groovy
15 2 (0.37%) PL/SQL
15 2 (0.37%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 22 (4.10%) Degree
2 9 (1.68%) DBS Check
2 9 (1.68%) Security Cleared
3 8 (1.49%) Computer Science Degree
3 8 (1.49%) SC Cleared
4 3 (0.56%) ITIL Certification
5 1 (0.19%) AWS Certification
5 1 (0.19%) AWS Certified Developer
5 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Certification
5 1 (0.19%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (3.91%) QA
2 8 (1.49%) Accessibility
3 6 (1.12%) Data Quality
4 2 (0.37%) GAAP
4 2 (0.37%) IFRS
4 2 (0.37%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 1 (0.19%) GDPR
System Software
1 23 (4.28%) Docker
2 3 (0.56%) Firmware
3 1 (0.19%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 20 (3.72%) Kubernetes
2 11 (2.05%) Terraform
3 4 (0.74%) Ansible
4 3 (0.56%) HP Fortify
5 1 (0.19%) Grafana
5 1 (0.19%) Kibana
5 1 (0.19%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 40 (7.45%) Microsoft
2 8 (1.49%) OpenAI
3 7 (1.30%) Salesforce
4 6 (1.12%) HubSpot
5 5 (0.93%) Apple
5 5 (0.93%) IBM
5 5 (0.93%) MuleSoft
6 3 (0.56%) Bloomberg
6 3 (0.56%) DevExpress
6 3 (0.56%) Oracle
7 2 (0.37%) Foundry
7 2 (0.37%) Refinitiv
7 2 (0.37%) Workday
8 1 (0.19%) Citrix
8 1 (0.19%) Google
8 1 (0.19%) Reuters
8 1 (0.19%) Revolut
8 1 (0.19%) TikTok