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 15 April 2026.

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

6 months to
15 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 277 368 244
Rank change year-on-year +91 -124 +76
Permanent jobs requiring a Lead Developer 501 275 942
As % of all permanent jobs in England 0.66% 0.75% 1.16%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.71% 0.84% 1.23%
Number of salaries quoted 428 220 861
10th Percentile £56,100 £47,000 £53,346
25th Percentile £70,000 £57,188 £59,250
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 £93,750
90th Percentile £115,000 £100,000 £115,000
UK median annual salary £80,000 £70,000 £75,000
% change year-on-year +14.29% -6.67% -6.25%

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 70,166 32,905 76,780
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.55% 89.49% 94.44%
Number of salaries quoted 45,949 21,226 59,150
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £28,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £42,500 £38,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £54,500
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +10.09% -9.17%
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £72,500
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £91,250
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £54,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +11.11% -10.00%

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 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 15 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 +51 196 £95,000 +18.75% 28
North of England -24 109 £75,000 +15.38% 11
North West +3 83 £71,000 +9.23% 6
South East +2 68 £90,000 +30.91% 18
South West -22 53 £65,000 +8.33% 6
Midlands -10 52 £70,000 +7.69% 5
West Midlands -1 31 £70,000 +47.37% 2
East Midlands -34 21 £70,000 +3.70% 3
East of England -12 19 £65,000 -16.13% 3
Yorkshire -51 16 £76,250 +8.93% 4
North East -22 10 £67,500 +20.00% 2
Lead Developer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 15 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.

1 155 (30.94%) Full-Stack Development
2 118 (23.55%) AWS
3 114 (22.75%) Agile
4 105 (20.96%) Python
5 101 (20.16%) Software Engineering
6 98 (19.56%) Mentoring
6 98 (19.56%) React
7 95 (18.96%) JavaScript
8 94 (18.76%) Azure
9 91 (18.16%) .NET
10 86 (17.17%) C#
11 84 (16.77%) TypeScript
12 79 (15.77%) Technical Leadership
13 73 (14.57%) Node.js
14 63 (12.57%) SaaS
15 59 (11.78%) CI/CD
16 55 (10.98%) AI
17 53 (10.58%) Java
18 49 (9.78%) SQL
19 47 (9.38%) Continuous Improvement
20 45 (8.98%) DevOps
21 43 (8.58%) RESTful
22 42 (8.38%) Coaching
23 41 (8.18%) Serverless
24 39 (7.78%) Portfolio Management
25 38 (7.58%) Redux
26 36 (7.19%) Investment Management
27 35 (6.99%) Microservices
28 34 (6.79%) GraphQL
28 34 (6.79%) Problem-Solving

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 (1.00%) Appian
1 5 (1.00%) SharePoint
2 2 (0.40%) Confluence
2 2 (0.40%) WordPress
3 1 (0.20%) Anypoint
3 1 (0.20%) CMS
3 1 (0.20%) Mule
Business Applications
1 9 (1.80%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.40%) NEC Housing
3 1 (0.20%) Magento
3 1 (0.20%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 118 (23.55%) AWS
2 94 (18.76%) Azure
3 63 (12.57%) SaaS
4 41 (8.18%) Serverless
5 32 (6.39%) AWS Lambda
6 28 (5.59%) Amazon S3
7 24 (4.79%) GCP
8 21 (4.19%) Amazon SQS
9 19 (3.79%) Power Platform
10 17 (3.39%) Dynamics 365
11 16 (3.19%) Azure Logic Apps
12 12 (2.40%) Azure DevOps
12 12 (2.40%) GitHub
13 8 (1.60%) PowerApps
14 7 (1.40%) Power Automate
15 6 (1.20%) Amazon ECS
15 6 (1.20%) Amazon EventBridge
16 5 (1.00%) AWS CloudFormation
16 5 (1.00%) Entra ID
16 5 (1.00%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 2 (0.40%) Network Security
2 1 (0.20%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (5.59%) SQL Server
2 26 (5.19%) PostgreSQL
3 9 (1.80%) MySQL
4 8 (1.60%) NoSQL
5 6 (1.20%) DynamoDB
5 6 (1.20%) Power BI
6 5 (1.00%) MongoDB
7 4 (0.80%) Amazon Redshift
7 4 (0.80%) DB2
8 3 (0.60%) Amazon RDS
8 3 (0.60%) MariaDB
8 3 (0.60%) Relational Database
8 3 (0.60%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 2 (0.40%) Metadata
10 1 (0.20%) Azure SQL Database
10 1 (0.20%) Elasticsearch
10 1 (0.20%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 17 (3.39%) Git
2 6 (1.20%) Cypress.io
3 5 (1.00%) Bitbucket
3 5 (1.00%) Jenkins
4 4 (0.80%) GitLab
4 4 (0.80%) Maven
4 4 (0.80%) webpack
5 3 (0.60%) ESLint
5 3 (0.60%) JIRA
5 3 (0.60%) NUnit
5 3 (0.60%) SonarQube
5 3 (0.60%) Vite
6 2 (0.40%) Cucumber
6 2 (0.40%) Selenium
6 2 (0.40%) Subversion
6 2 (0.40%) Visual Studio
6 2 (0.40%) XCUITest
7 1 (0.20%) JUnit
7 1 (0.20%) SpecFlow
7 1 (0.20%) TeamCity
General
1 67 (13.37%) Finance
2 50 (9.98%) Social Skills
3 40 (7.98%) Front Office
4 28 (5.59%) Tech for Good
5 19 (3.79%) Health Technology
6 15 (2.99%) Organisational Skills
6 15 (2.99%) Publishing
7 14 (2.79%) Analytical Skills
7 14 (2.79%) Influencing Skills
8 10 (2.00%) Public Sector
9 8 (1.60%) Games
10 6 (1.20%) Banking
10 6 (1.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 5 (1.00%) Law
12 4 (0.80%) Local Government
12 4 (0.80%) Pharmaceutical
12 4 (0.80%) Retail
13 2 (0.40%) Aerospace
13 2 (0.40%) General Ledger
13 2 (0.40%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 98 (19.56%) React
2 91 (18.16%) .NET
3 73 (14.57%) Node.js
4 43 (8.58%) RESTful
5 38 (7.58%) Redux
6 34 (6.79%) GraphQL
7 30 (5.99%) .NET Core
8 28 (5.59%) Vue
9 27 (5.39%) AngularJS
10 26 (5.19%) HTML
10 26 (5.19%) Kafka
11 24 (4.79%) CSS
12 23 (4.59%) React Native
13 22 (4.39%) ASP.NET
14 21 (4.19%) Laravel
15 17 (3.39%) .NET Framework
15 17 (3.39%) Spring
16 14 (2.79%) REST
17 13 (2.59%) Spring Boot
18 9 (1.80%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 36 (7.19%) Fixed Income
2 22 (4.39%) Cloud Native
2 22 (4.39%) Product Ownership
3 17 (3.39%) Derivative
3 17 (3.39%) Mobile App
4 16 (3.19%) Equities
5 14 (2.79%) Distributed Systems
6 13 (2.59%) PropTech
7 11 (2.20%) Enterprise Software
8 8 (1.60%) Greenfield Project
9 6 (1.20%) Credit Risk
10 5 (1.00%) Legacy Applications
10 5 (1.00%) Low-Code
11 4 (0.80%) Legacy Systems
12 3 (0.60%) Algorithms
12 3 (0.60%) AS400
12 3 (0.60%) Data Structures
12 3 (0.60%) iSeries
12 3 (0.60%) Photography
13 2 (0.40%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 33 (6.59%) Apple iOS
2 25 (4.99%) Android
3 2 (0.40%) Linux
3 2 (0.40%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 155 (30.94%) Full-Stack Development
2 114 (22.75%) Agile
3 101 (20.16%) Software Engineering
4 98 (19.56%) Mentoring
5 79 (15.77%) Technical Leadership
6 59 (11.78%) CI/CD
7 55 (10.98%) AI
8 47 (9.38%) Continuous Improvement
9 45 (8.98%) DevOps
10 42 (8.38%) Coaching
11 39 (7.78%) Portfolio Management
12 36 (7.19%) Investment Management
13 35 (6.99%) Microservices
14 34 (6.79%) Problem-Solving
15 28 (5.59%) Line Management
15 28 (5.59%) Scrum
16 26 (5.19%) Fintech
17 23 (4.59%) Code Quality
17 23 (4.59%) TDD
18 21 (4.19%) Design Patterns
Programming Languages
1 105 (20.96%) Python
2 95 (18.96%) JavaScript
3 86 (17.17%) C#
4 84 (16.77%) TypeScript
5 53 (10.58%) Java
6 49 (9.78%) SQL
7 23 (4.59%) Go
8 16 (3.19%) PHP
9 11 (2.20%) Swift
10 9 (1.80%) C++
11 7 (1.40%) Kotlin
12 6 (1.20%) Bicep
13 4 (0.80%) C
13 4 (0.80%) RPG
14 3 (0.60%) COBOL
15 2 (0.40%) Apex Code
15 2 (0.40%) Bash
15 2 (0.40%) Groovy
15 2 (0.40%) T-SQL
16 1 (0.20%) R
Qualifications
1 16 (3.19%) Degree
2 5 (1.00%) DBS Check
3 4 (0.80%) Computer Science Degree
3 4 (0.80%) Security Cleared
4 2 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
4 2 (0.40%) PhD
4 2 (0.40%) SC Cleared
5 1 (0.20%) AWS Certification
5 1 (0.20%) AWS Certified Developer
5 1 (0.20%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (5.59%) QA
2 8 (1.60%) Accessibility
3 4 (0.80%) Data Quality
4 2 (0.40%) GAAP
4 2 (0.40%) IFRS
4 2 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 1 (0.20%) GDPR
System Software
1 23 (4.59%) Docker
2 3 (0.60%) Firmware
3 1 (0.20%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 13 (2.59%) Kubernetes
2 11 (2.20%) Terraform
3 3 (0.60%) Ansible
3 3 (0.60%) HP Fortify
4 1 (0.20%) Grafana
4 1 (0.20%) Kibana
4 1 (0.20%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 32 (6.39%) Microsoft
2 7 (1.40%) OpenAI
3 6 (1.20%) Salesforce
4 5 (1.00%) Apple
5 3 (0.60%) DevExpress
5 3 (0.60%) HubSpot
6 2 (0.40%) Foundry
6 2 (0.40%) NEC
6 2 (0.40%) Northgate
6 2 (0.40%) Workday
7 1 (0.20%) Adobe
7 1 (0.20%) Databricks
7 1 (0.20%) Google
7 1 (0.20%) IBM
7 1 (0.20%) MuleSoft
7 1 (0.20%) Revolut
7 1 (0.20%) SAP