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 2 May 2026.

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

6 months to
2 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 276 375 254
Rank change year-on-year +99 -121 +77
Permanent jobs requiring a Lead Developer 522 250 961
As % of all permanent jobs in England 0.65% 0.66% 1.15%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.70% 0.74% 1.22%
Number of salaries quoted 441 196 881
10th Percentile £55,750 £50,625 £50,250
25th Percentile £70,000 £60,000 £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 £115,000 £100,000 £115,000
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 74,369 33,693 78,830
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.85% 89.14% 94.44%
Number of salaries quoted 48,888 21,310 60,127
10th Percentile £30,000 £30,500 £28,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £42,000 £38,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £54,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +11.11% -11.13%
75th Percentile £75,000 £78,750 £72,433
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £91,250
UK median annual salary £55,000 £59,648 £53,000
% change year-on-year -7.79% +12.54% -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 2 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 2 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 +56 205 £95,000 +18.75% 25
North of England 0 112 £75,000 +8.30% 22
North West +20 86 £72,500 +11.54% 9
South East +25 75 £90,000 +30.91% 17
Midlands -1 52 £70,000 +5.66% 5
South West -20 51 £65,000 +8.33%
West Midlands -3 29 £70,000 +7.69% 3
East of England 0 23 £60,100 -19.87% 4
East Midlands -29 23 £70,000 +5.66% 2
Yorkshire -52 16 £75,000 +7.14% 6
North East -30 10 £67,500 -15.63% 7
Lead Developer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 2 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.

1 169 (32.38%) Full-Stack Development
2 115 (22.03%) AWS
3 112 (21.46%) Agile
4 105 (20.11%) Software Engineering
5 101 (19.35%) Python
6 99 (18.97%) React
7 98 (18.77%) JavaScript
8 97 (18.58%) TypeScript
9 95 (18.20%) Mentoring
10 94 (18.01%) .NET
11 92 (17.62%) C#
12 91 (17.43%) Azure
13 82 (15.71%) Node.js
13 82 (15.71%) Technical Leadership
14 67 (12.84%) SaaS
15 61 (11.69%) AI
16 57 (10.92%) CI/CD
17 56 (10.73%) DevOps
18 52 (9.96%) Java
19 50 (9.58%) Continuous Improvement
20 47 (9.00%) SQL
21 45 (8.62%) RESTful
22 43 (8.24%) Coaching
23 40 (7.66%) Microservices
24 39 (7.47%) Portfolio Management
25 38 (7.28%) Redux
25 38 (7.28%) Serverless
26 37 (7.09%) Microsoft
27 36 (6.90%) GraphQL
27 36 (6.90%) 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 (1.15%) SharePoint
2 5 (0.96%) Appian
3 3 (0.57%) Anypoint
3 3 (0.57%) Confluence
3 3 (0.57%) Mule
4 2 (0.38%) WordPress
5 1 (0.19%) CMS
Business Applications
1 8 (1.53%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.19%) NEC Housing
2 1 (0.19%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 115 (22.03%) AWS
2 91 (17.43%) Azure
3 67 (12.84%) SaaS
4 38 (7.28%) Serverless
5 31 (5.94%) AWS Lambda
6 24 (4.60%) Amazon S3
7 22 (4.21%) GCP
7 22 (4.21%) Power Platform
8 20 (3.83%) Amazon SQS
8 20 (3.83%) Dynamics 365
9 16 (3.07%) Azure Logic Apps
10 13 (2.49%) Azure DevOps
11 9 (1.72%) Amazon ECS
11 9 (1.72%) Amazon EventBridge
11 9 (1.72%) GitHub
12 8 (1.53%) AWS CloudFormation
13 7 (1.34%) PowerApps
14 6 (1.15%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 6 (1.15%) Datadog
14 6 (1.15%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 2 (0.38%) Broadband
2 1 (0.19%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (5.56%) SQL Server
2 27 (5.17%) PostgreSQL
3 9 (1.72%) DynamoDB
3 9 (1.72%) MySQL
4 8 (1.53%) MongoDB
5 6 (1.15%) Amazon RDS
6 5 (0.96%) DB2
6 5 (0.96%) NoSQL
6 5 (0.96%) Power BI
7 4 (0.77%) Amazon Redshift
7 4 (0.77%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 3 (0.57%) MariaDB
8 3 (0.57%) Metadata
9 2 (0.38%) Relational Database
10 1 (0.19%) Azure SQL Database
10 1 (0.19%) Elasticsearch
10 1 (0.19%) Spatial Data
Development Applications
1 15 (2.87%) Git
2 6 (1.15%) Cypress.io
3 5 (0.96%) Bitbucket
3 5 (0.96%) Jenkins
4 4 (0.77%) GitLab
4 4 (0.77%) JIRA
4 4 (0.77%) Maven
4 4 (0.77%) webpack
5 3 (0.57%) ESLint
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 69 (13.22%) Finance
2 44 (8.43%) Social Skills
3 40 (7.66%) Front Office
4 22 (4.21%) Tech for Good
5 16 (3.07%) Analytical Skills
6 15 (2.87%) Health Technology
7 11 (2.11%) Banking
7 11 (2.11%) Publishing
8 10 (1.92%) Influencing Skills
8 10 (1.92%) Organisational Skills
9 8 (1.53%) Games
10 7 (1.34%) Law
10 7 (1.34%) Public Sector
11 6 (1.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 4 (0.77%) Local Government
12 4 (0.77%) Pharmaceutical
12 4 (0.77%) Retail
13 2 (0.38%) General Ledger
13 2 (0.38%) Investment Banking
13 2 (0.38%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 99 (18.97%) React
2 94 (18.01%) .NET
3 82 (15.71%) Node.js
4 45 (8.62%) RESTful
5 38 (7.28%) Redux
6 36 (6.90%) GraphQL
7 31 (5.94%) .NET Core
8 29 (5.56%) Kafka
9 27 (5.17%) AngularJS
10 26 (4.98%) Vue
11 25 (4.79%) ASP.NET
12 24 (4.60%) React Native
13 21 (4.02%) HTML
13 21 (4.02%) Laravel
14 20 (3.83%) CSS
15 18 (3.45%) Spring
16 17 (3.26%) .NET Framework
17 11 (2.11%) Spring Boot
18 10 (1.92%) REST
19 8 (1.53%) SwiftUI
Miscellaneous
1 36 (6.90%) Fixed Income
2 27 (5.17%) Cloud Native
3 25 (4.79%) Product Ownership
4 18 (3.45%) Derivative
5 17 (3.26%) Mobile App
6 16 (3.07%) Equities
7 15 (2.87%) Distributed Systems
7 15 (2.87%) Enterprise Software
8 13 (2.49%) PropTech
9 9 (1.72%) Legacy Applications
10 8 (1.53%) Greenfield Project
11 7 (1.34%) Low-Code
12 5 (0.96%) Credit Risk
12 5 (0.96%) Legacy Systems
13 4 (0.77%) AS400
14 3 (0.57%) Algorithms
14 3 (0.57%) iSeries
14 3 (0.57%) Operational Technology
14 3 (0.57%) Photography
15 2 (0.38%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 32 (6.13%) Apple iOS
2 24 (4.60%) Android
3 2 (0.38%) Windows
4 1 (0.19%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 169 (32.38%) Full-Stack Development
2 112 (21.46%) Agile
3 105 (20.11%) Software Engineering
4 95 (18.20%) Mentoring
5 82 (15.71%) Technical Leadership
6 61 (11.69%) AI
7 57 (10.92%) CI/CD
8 56 (10.73%) DevOps
9 50 (9.58%) Continuous Improvement
10 43 (8.24%) Coaching
11 40 (7.66%) Microservices
12 39 (7.47%) Portfolio Management
13 36 (6.90%) Investment Management
13 36 (6.90%) Problem-Solving
14 27 (5.17%) Fintech
15 24 (4.60%) Line Management
15 24 (4.60%) Scrum
16 23 (4.41%) Infrastructure as Code
17 22 (4.21%) Design Patterns
17 22 (4.21%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 101 (19.35%) Python
2 98 (18.77%) JavaScript
3 97 (18.58%) TypeScript
4 92 (17.62%) C#
5 52 (9.96%) Java
6 47 (9.00%) SQL
7 24 (4.60%) Go
8 14 (2.68%) PHP
9 11 (2.11%) C++
9 11 (2.11%) Swift
10 6 (1.15%) Bicep
10 6 (1.15%) Kotlin
10 6 (1.15%) RPG
11 5 (0.96%) C
12 3 (0.57%) COBOL
12 3 (0.57%) T-SQL
13 2 (0.38%) Bash
13 2 (0.38%) Groovy
13 2 (0.38%) PowerShell
14 1 (0.19%) R
Qualifications
1 19 (3.64%) Degree
2 9 (1.72%) DBS Check
3 4 (0.77%) 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 25 (4.79%) QA
2 8 (1.53%) Accessibility
3 5 (0.96%) 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 (4.21%) Docker
2 3 (0.57%) Firmware
3 1 (0.19%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 16 (3.07%) Kubernetes
2 10 (1.92%) 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 37 (7.09%) Microsoft
2 8 (1.53%) OpenAI
3 6 (1.15%) HubSpot
3 6 (1.15%) Salesforce
4 5 (0.96%) 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%) Workday
7 1 (0.19%) Bloomberg
7 1 (0.19%) Citrix
7 1 (0.19%) Databricks
7 1 (0.19%) NEC
7 1 (0.19%) Northgate
7 1 (0.19%) Oracle
7 1 (0.19%) Reuters
7 1 (0.19%) Revolut