Lead Developer Job Trends in England

Lead Developer
UK > England

The median Lead Developer salary in England is £82,500 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 9 May 2026.

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

6 months to
9 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 271 402 255
Rank change year-on-year +131 -147 +73
Permanent jobs requiring a Lead Developer 531 249 970
As % of all permanent jobs in England 0.66% 0.64% 1.15%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.71% 0.72% 1.22%
Number of salaries quoted 445 190 890
10th Percentile £55,750 £51,125 £50,000
25th Percentile £70,000 £60,000 £57,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £82,500 £70,000 £75,000
Median % change year-on-year +17.86% -6.67% -6.25%
75th Percentile £100,000 £85,938 £93,063
90th Percentile £114,000 £100,250 £115,000
UK median annual salary £82,500 £70,000 £72,500
% change year-on-year +17.86% -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 75,121 34,825 79,350
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.02% 89.40% 94.45%
Number of salaries quoted 50,043 21,141 60,357
10th Percentile £30,000 £30,000 £28,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £41,250 £38,125
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £59,500 £54,000
Median % change year-on-year -7.56% +10.19% -11.18%
75th Percentile £75,000 £78,750 £71,991
90th Percentile £96,250 £100,000 £91,250
UK median annual salary £55,000 £58,000 £52,777
% change year-on-year -5.17% +9.90% -12.04%

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 9 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 9 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 +61 214 £95,000 +15.15% 21
North of England +2 111 £75,000 +7.14% 16
North West +26 85 £70,000 - 8
South East +31 79 £90,000 +33.33% 19
Midlands -9 51 £70,000 +3.70% 11
South West -19 50 £65,000 +8.33%
West Midlands -18 27 £70,000 +3.70% 5
East Midlands -11 24 £70,000 +5.66% 6
East of England +9 22 £60,100 -19.87% 2
Yorkshire -42 16 £75,000 +7.14% 6
North East -37 10 £67,500 -15.63% 2
Lead Developer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 9 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.

1 174 (32.77%) Full-Stack Development
2 119 (22.41%) AWS
3 112 (21.09%) Agile
4 105 (19.77%) JavaScript
5 103 (19.40%) Software Engineering
5 103 (19.40%) TypeScript
6 101 (19.02%) React
7 98 (18.46%) Python
8 96 (18.08%) Mentoring
9 95 (17.89%) .NET
10 94 (17.70%) C#
11 89 (16.76%) Azure
12 86 (16.20%) Node.js
13 85 (16.01%) Technical Leadership
14 68 (12.81%) SaaS
15 67 (12.62%) AI
16 63 (11.86%) CI/CD
17 60 (11.30%) DevOps
18 55 (10.36%) Java
19 53 (9.98%) Continuous Improvement
20 48 (9.04%) RESTful
21 47 (8.85%) SQL
22 44 (8.29%) Microservices
23 40 (7.53%) Coaching
23 40 (7.53%) Microsoft
23 40 (7.53%) Problem-Solving
24 39 (7.34%) Portfolio Management
25 38 (7.16%) GraphQL
25 38 (7.16%) Redux
26 37 (6.97%) 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 (1.13%) SharePoint
2 5 (0.94%) Appian
3 4 (0.75%) Anypoint
3 4 (0.75%) Confluence
3 4 (0.75%) Mule
4 2 (0.38%) WordPress
5 1 (0.19%) CMS
Business Applications
1 8 (1.51%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.19%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 119 (22.41%) AWS
2 89 (16.76%) Azure
3 68 (12.81%) SaaS
4 36 (6.78%) Serverless
5 29 (5.46%) AWS Lambda
6 25 (4.71%) Power Platform
7 23 (4.33%) Dynamics 365
7 23 (4.33%) GCP
8 22 (4.14%) Amazon S3
9 18 (3.39%) Amazon SQS
10 17 (3.20%) Azure Logic Apps
11 13 (2.45%) Azure DevOps
12 9 (1.69%) Amazon ECS
12 9 (1.69%) Amazon EventBridge
12 9 (1.69%) GitHub
13 8 (1.51%) AWS CloudFormation
13 8 (1.51%) PowerApps
14 7 (1.32%) Power Automate
15 6 (1.13%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 6 (1.13%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.56%) Broadband
2 1 (0.19%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (6.03%) SQL Server
2 29 (5.46%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (1.88%) MongoDB
4 9 (1.69%) DynamoDB
4 9 (1.69%) MySQL
5 6 (1.13%) Amazon RDS
6 5 (0.94%) DB2
6 5 (0.94%) Power BI
6 5 (0.94%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 4 (0.75%) Amazon Redshift
7 4 (0.75%) NoSQL
8 3 (0.56%) MariaDB
8 3 (0.56%) Metadata
8 3 (0.56%) Redis
9 2 (0.38%) Relational Database
9 2 (0.38%) Spatial Data
10 1 (0.19%) Azure SQL Database
10 1 (0.19%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 16 (3.01%) Git
2 6 (1.13%) Cypress.io
3 5 (0.94%) Bitbucket
3 5 (0.94%) Jenkins
3 5 (0.94%) JIRA
3 5 (0.94%) Maven
4 4 (0.75%) GitLab
4 4 (0.75%) webpack
5 3 (0.56%) ESLint
5 3 (0.56%) NUnit
5 3 (0.56%) SonarQube
5 3 (0.56%) Vite
6 2 (0.38%) Cucumber
6 2 (0.38%) JUnit
6 2 (0.38%) Selenium
6 2 (0.38%) XCUITest
7 1 (0.19%) Mockito
7 1 (0.19%) Postman
7 1 (0.19%) SpecFlow
7 1 (0.19%) TeamCity
General
1 73 (13.75%) Finance
2 46 (8.66%) Social Skills
3 41 (7.72%) Front Office
4 19 (3.58%) Tech for Good
5 16 (3.01%) Analytical Skills
6 13 (2.45%) Health Technology
7 12 (2.26%) Banking
8 9 (1.69%) Games
8 9 (1.69%) Publishing
9 8 (1.51%) Influencing Skills
9 8 (1.51%) Organisational Skills
9 8 (1.51%) Public Sector
10 7 (1.32%) Law
11 6 (1.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 4 (0.75%) Local Government
12 4 (0.75%) Pharmaceutical
12 4 (0.75%) Retail
13 2 (0.38%) General Ledger
13 2 (0.38%) Investment Banking
13 2 (0.38%) Marketing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 101 (19.02%) React
2 95 (17.89%) .NET
3 86 (16.20%) Node.js
4 48 (9.04%) RESTful
5 38 (7.16%) GraphQL
5 38 (7.16%) Redux
6 30 (5.65%) .NET Core
7 29 (5.46%) Kafka
8 28 (5.27%) Vue
9 26 (4.90%) AngularJS
9 26 (4.90%) ASP.NET
10 25 (4.71%) React Native
11 21 (3.95%) HTML
11 21 (3.95%) Laravel
11 21 (3.95%) Spring
12 20 (3.77%) CSS
13 17 (3.20%) .NET Framework
14 12 (2.26%) REST
14 12 (2.26%) Spring Boot
15 9 (1.69%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 36 (6.78%) Fixed Income
2 29 (5.46%) Cloud Native
3 25 (4.71%) Product Ownership
4 18 (3.39%) Derivative
5 17 (3.20%) Mobile App
6 16 (3.01%) Distributed Systems
6 16 (3.01%) Equities
7 14 (2.64%) Enterprise Software
8 13 (2.45%) PropTech
9 9 (1.69%) Legacy Applications
10 8 (1.51%) Greenfield Project
10 8 (1.51%) Low-Code
11 5 (0.94%) Credit Risk
11 5 (0.94%) Legacy Systems
12 4 (0.75%) AS400
13 3 (0.56%) Algorithms
13 3 (0.56%) iSeries
13 3 (0.56%) Operational Technology
13 3 (0.56%) Photography
13 3 (0.56%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 32 (6.03%) Apple iOS
2 24 (4.52%) Android
3 2 (0.38%) Linux
3 2 (0.38%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 174 (32.77%) Full-Stack Development
2 112 (21.09%) Agile
3 103 (19.40%) Software Engineering
4 96 (18.08%) Mentoring
5 85 (16.01%) Technical Leadership
6 67 (12.62%) AI
7 63 (11.86%) CI/CD
8 60 (11.30%) DevOps
9 53 (9.98%) Continuous Improvement
10 44 (8.29%) Microservices
11 40 (7.53%) Coaching
11 40 (7.53%) Problem-Solving
12 39 (7.34%) Portfolio Management
13 37 (6.97%) Investment Management
14 28 (5.27%) Fintech
15 24 (4.52%) Infrastructure as Code
15 24 (4.52%) Line Management
15 24 (4.52%) Scrum
16 23 (4.33%) Design Patterns
17 22 (4.14%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 105 (19.77%) JavaScript
2 103 (19.40%) TypeScript
3 98 (18.46%) Python
4 94 (17.70%) C#
5 55 (10.36%) Java
6 47 (8.85%) SQL
7 25 (4.71%) Go
8 14 (2.64%) PHP
9 11 (2.07%) C++
9 11 (2.07%) Swift
10 6 (1.13%) Bicep
10 6 (1.13%) Kotlin
10 6 (1.13%) RPG
11 5 (0.94%) C
12 3 (0.56%) Bash
12 3 (0.56%) COBOL
12 3 (0.56%) T-SQL
13 2 (0.38%) Groovy
13 2 (0.38%) PowerShell
14 1 (0.19%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 22 (4.14%) Degree
2 9 (1.69%) DBS Check
3 7 (1.32%) Computer Science Degree
4 5 (0.94%) Security Cleared
5 4 (0.75%) ITIL Certification
5 4 (0.75%) 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 24 (4.52%) QA
2 8 (1.51%) Accessibility
3 5 (0.94%) 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 23 (4.33%) Docker
2 3 (0.56%) Firmware
3 1 (0.19%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 18 (3.39%) Kubernetes
2 10 (1.88%) Terraform
3 3 (0.56%) Ansible
3 3 (0.56%) HP Fortify
4 1 (0.19%) Grafana
4 1 (0.19%) Kibana
4 1 (0.19%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 40 (7.53%) Microsoft
2 8 (1.51%) OpenAI
3 7 (1.32%) Salesforce
4 6 (1.13%) HubSpot
5 5 (0.94%) Apple
6 4 (0.75%) MuleSoft
7 3 (0.56%) DevExpress
7 3 (0.56%) IBM
8 2 (0.38%) Bloomberg
8 2 (0.38%) Foundry
8 2 (0.38%) Oracle
8 2 (0.38%) Workday
9 1 (0.19%) Citrix
9 1 (0.19%) Refinitiv
9 1 (0.19%) Reuters
9 1 (0.19%) Revolut