Lead Developer Job Trends in England

Lead Developer
UK > England

The median Lead Developer salary in England is £80,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 29 April 2026.

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

6 months to
29 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 274 381 245
Rank change year-on-year +107 -136 +85
Permanent jobs requiring a Lead Developer 525 258 952
As % of all permanent jobs in England 0.66% 0.68% 1.15%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.71% 0.77% 1.21%
Number of salaries quoted 445 203 873
10th Percentile £55,750 £50,000 £50,617
25th Percentile £70,000 £57,500 £57,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £70,000 £75,000
Median % change year-on-year +14.29% -6.67% -6.25%
75th Percentile £100,000 £85,000 £93,250
90th Percentile £114,000 £100,000 £112,500
UK median annual salary £80,000 £70,000 £72,500
% change year-on-year +14.29% -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 74,036 33,691 78,502
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.85% 88.93% 94.42%
Number of salaries quoted 48,620 21,281 59,900
10th Percentile £30,000 £30,580 £28,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £42,000 £38,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £54,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +11.11% -10.84%
75th Percentile £75,000 £78,750 £72,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £91,000
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £53,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +13.21% -11.67%

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 29 April 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 29 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
London +59 204 £95,000 +18.75% 23
North of England +6 115 £75,000 +15.38% 14
North West +8 88 £73,750 +13.46% 6
South East +13 71 £90,000 +30.91% 15
Midlands -2 53 £70,000 +7.69% 5
South West -14 53 £65,000 +8.33%
West Midlands -12 30 £70,000 +12.00% 3
East of England 0 25 £60,100 -19.87% 3
East Midlands -36 23 £70,000 +5.66% 2
Yorkshire -50 17 £75,000 +7.14% 4
North East -30 10 £67,500 +42.11% 4
Lead Developer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 29 April 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.

1 162 (30.86%) Full-Stack Development
2 119 (22.67%) AWS
3 114 (21.71%) Agile
4 106 (20.19%) Software Engineering
5 100 (19.05%) Python
6 99 (18.86%) Mentoring
6 99 (18.86%) React
7 95 (18.10%) JavaScript
8 93 (17.71%) .NET
9 92 (17.52%) Azure
10 91 (17.33%) C#
10 91 (17.33%) TypeScript
11 87 (16.57%) Technical Leadership
12 78 (14.86%) Node.js
13 66 (12.57%) SaaS
14 59 (11.24%) AI
15 56 (10.67%) CI/CD
16 54 (10.29%) Java
17 52 (9.90%) DevOps
18 51 (9.71%) Continuous Improvement
19 48 (9.14%) SQL
20 45 (8.57%) Coaching
21 44 (8.38%) RESTful
22 42 (8.00%) Microservices
23 39 (7.43%) Portfolio Management
23 39 (7.43%) Serverless
24 38 (7.24%) Redux
25 36 (6.86%) Investment Management
26 35 (6.67%) GraphQL
26 35 (6.67%) Microsoft

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 5 (0.95%) Appian
1 5 (0.95%) SharePoint
2 3 (0.57%) Anypoint
2 3 (0.57%) Mule
3 2 (0.38%) Confluence
3 2 (0.38%) WordPress
4 1 (0.19%) CMS
Business Applications
1 8 (1.52%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.38%) NEC Housing
3 1 (0.19%) Magento
3 1 (0.19%) NetSuite
3 1 (0.19%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 119 (22.67%) AWS
2 92 (17.52%) Azure
3 66 (12.57%) SaaS
4 39 (7.43%) Serverless
5 32 (6.10%) AWS Lambda
6 25 (4.76%) Amazon S3
7 22 (4.19%) GCP
8 21 (4.00%) Amazon SQS
9 20 (3.81%) Power Platform
10 19 (3.62%) Dynamics 365
11 16 (3.05%) Azure Logic Apps
12 11 (2.10%) Azure DevOps
13 9 (1.71%) Amazon ECS
13 9 (1.71%) Amazon EventBridge
14 8 (1.52%) AWS CloudFormation
14 8 (1.52%) GitHub
15 6 (1.14%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 6 (1.14%) Datadog
15 6 (1.14%) PowerApps
16 5 (0.95%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.19%) Broadband
1 1 (0.19%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (5.33%) SQL Server
2 25 (4.76%) PostgreSQL
3 9 (1.71%) DynamoDB
3 9 (1.71%) MySQL
4 6 (1.14%) Amazon RDS
5 5 (0.95%) DB2
5 5 (0.95%) MongoDB
5 5 (0.95%) NoSQL
5 5 (0.95%) Power BI
6 4 (0.76%) Amazon Redshift
6 4 (0.76%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 3 (0.57%) MariaDB
8 2 (0.38%) Metadata
8 2 (0.38%) Relational Database
9 1 (0.19%) Azure SQL Database
9 1 (0.19%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 15 (2.86%) Git
2 6 (1.14%) Cypress.io
3 5 (0.95%) Bitbucket
3 5 (0.95%) Jenkins
4 4 (0.76%) GitLab
4 4 (0.76%) Maven
4 4 (0.76%) webpack
5 3 (0.57%) ESLint
5 3 (0.57%) JIRA
5 3 (0.57%) NUnit
5 3 (0.57%) SonarQube
5 3 (0.57%) Vite
6 2 (0.38%) Cucumber
6 2 (0.38%) Selenium
6 2 (0.38%) XCUITest
7 1 (0.19%) JUnit
7 1 (0.19%) Postman
7 1 (0.19%) SpecFlow
7 1 (0.19%) Subversion
7 1 (0.19%) TeamCity
General
1 67 (12.76%) Finance
2 46 (8.76%) Social Skills
3 40 (7.62%) Front Office
4 24 (4.57%) Tech for Good
5 17 (3.24%) Analytical Skills
6 16 (3.05%) Health Technology
7 12 (2.29%) Organisational Skills
7 12 (2.29%) Publishing
8 11 (2.10%) Influencing Skills
9 9 (1.71%) Banking
10 8 (1.52%) Games
10 8 (1.52%) Public Sector
11 7 (1.33%) Law
12 6 (1.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 5 (0.95%) Retail
14 4 (0.76%) Local Government
14 4 (0.76%) Pharmaceutical
15 2 (0.38%) General Ledger
15 2 (0.38%) Presentation Skills
16 1 (0.19%) Investment Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 99 (18.86%) React
2 93 (17.71%) .NET
3 78 (14.86%) Node.js
4 44 (8.38%) RESTful
5 38 (7.24%) Redux
6 35 (6.67%) GraphQL
7 30 (5.71%) .NET Core
7 30 (5.71%) Kafka
8 26 (4.95%) AngularJS
8 26 (4.95%) Vue
9 24 (4.57%) React Native
10 22 (4.19%) ASP.NET
10 22 (4.19%) HTML
11 21 (4.00%) CSS
11 21 (4.00%) Laravel
12 19 (3.62%) Spring
13 17 (3.24%) .NET Framework
14 13 (2.48%) Spring Boot
15 11 (2.10%) REST
16 8 (1.52%) SwiftUI
Miscellaneous
1 36 (6.86%) Fixed Income
2 27 (5.14%) Cloud Native
3 26 (4.95%) Product Ownership
4 17 (3.24%) Derivative
4 17 (3.24%) Distributed Systems
4 17 (3.24%) Mobile App
5 16 (3.05%) Equities
6 15 (2.86%) Enterprise Software
7 13 (2.48%) PropTech
8 9 (1.71%) Legacy Applications
9 8 (1.52%) Greenfield Project
10 6 (1.14%) Credit Risk
11 5 (0.95%) Legacy Systems
11 5 (0.95%) Low-Code
12 4 (0.76%) AS400
13 3 (0.57%) Algorithms
13 3 (0.57%) iSeries
13 3 (0.57%) Operational Technology
13 3 (0.57%) Photography
14 2 (0.38%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 33 (6.29%) Apple iOS
2 25 (4.76%) Android
3 2 (0.38%) Windows
4 1 (0.19%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 162 (30.86%) Full-Stack Development
2 114 (21.71%) Agile
3 106 (20.19%) Software Engineering
4 99 (18.86%) Mentoring
5 87 (16.57%) Technical Leadership
6 59 (11.24%) AI
7 56 (10.67%) CI/CD
8 52 (9.90%) DevOps
9 51 (9.71%) Continuous Improvement
10 45 (8.57%) Coaching
11 42 (8.00%) Microservices
12 39 (7.43%) Portfolio Management
13 36 (6.86%) Investment Management
14 35 (6.67%) Problem-Solving
15 28 (5.33%) Fintech
16 26 (4.95%) Line Management
17 24 (4.57%) Design Patterns
17 24 (4.57%) Scrum
18 23 (4.38%) Event-Driven
19 22 (4.19%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 100 (19.05%) Python
2 95 (18.10%) JavaScript
3 91 (17.33%) C#
3 91 (17.33%) TypeScript
4 54 (10.29%) Java
5 48 (9.14%) SQL
6 23 (4.38%) Go
7 16 (3.05%) PHP
8 11 (2.10%) Swift
9 10 (1.90%) C++
10 7 (1.33%) Kotlin
11 6 (1.14%) Bicep
11 6 (1.14%) RPG
12 4 (0.76%) C
13 3 (0.57%) COBOL
13 3 (0.57%) T-SQL
14 2 (0.38%) Bash
14 2 (0.38%) Groovy
15 1 (0.19%) PowerShell
15 1 (0.19%) R
Qualifications
1 19 (3.62%) Degree
2 9 (1.71%) DBS Check
3 4 (0.76%) Computer Science Degree
4 3 (0.57%) ITIL Certification
4 3 (0.57%) Security Cleared
5 2 (0.38%) SC Cleared
6 1 (0.19%) AWS Certification
6 1 (0.19%) AWS Certified Developer
6 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Certification
6 1 (0.19%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (4.95%) QA
2 8 (1.52%) Accessibility
3 5 (0.95%) Data Quality
4 2 (0.38%) GAAP
4 2 (0.38%) IFRS
4 2 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 1 (0.19%) GDPR
System Software
1 22 (4.19%) Docker
2 3 (0.57%) Firmware
3 1 (0.19%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 16 (3.05%) Kubernetes
2 10 (1.90%) Terraform
3 3 (0.57%) Ansible
3 3 (0.57%) HP Fortify
4 1 (0.19%) Grafana
4 1 (0.19%) Kibana
4 1 (0.19%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 35 (6.67%) Microsoft
2 7 (1.33%) OpenAI
3 6 (1.14%) HubSpot
3 6 (1.14%) Salesforce
4 5 (0.95%) Apple
5 3 (0.57%) DevExpress
5 3 (0.57%) IBM
5 3 (0.57%) MuleSoft
6 2 (0.38%) Foundry
6 2 (0.38%) NEC
6 2 (0.38%) Northgate
6 2 (0.38%) Workday
7 1 (0.19%) Adobe
7 1 (0.19%) Citrix
7 1 (0.19%) Databricks
7 1 (0.19%) Revolut