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 4 April 2026.

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

6 months to
4 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 294 352 240
Rank change year-on-year +58 -112 +74
Permanent jobs requiring a Lead Developer 468 281 927
As % of all permanent jobs in England 0.65% 0.77% 1.17%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.71% 0.86% 1.24%
Number of salaries quoted 400 224 846
10th Percentile £56,250 £47,000 £53,346
25th Percentile £70,000 £56,250 £60,000
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 £95,000
90th Percentile £138,000 £99,625 £114,375
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 65,916 32,846 74,851
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.25% 89.81% 94.39%
Number of salaries quoted 43,453 21,228 58,232
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £28,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £42,500 £38,591
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -9.19%
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £72,500
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £91,363
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £54,650
% change year-on-year -8.33% +9.79% -8.92%

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 4 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 4 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 +37 182 £95,000 +20.63% 32
North of England -26 100 £75,000 +15.38% 25
North West -3 77 £71,000 +9.23% 18
South East +2 63 £90,000 +30.91% 15
South West -7 52 £65,000 +8.33% 8
Midlands -18 50 £70,000 +7.69% 8
West Midlands +2 32 £70,000 +48.15% 6
East Midlands -34 18 £75,000 +11.11% 2
East of England -16 17 £65,000 -16.13%
Yorkshire -46 14 £80,000 +14.29% 2
North East -16 9 £66,250 +17.78% 6
Lead Developer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 4 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.

1 139 (29.70%) Full-Stack Development
2 113 (24.15%) AWS
3 110 (23.50%) Agile
4 109 (23.29%) Python
5 99 (21.15%) Software Engineering
6 93 (19.87%) Azure
6 93 (19.87%) Mentoring
7 92 (19.66%) React
8 91 (19.44%) JavaScript
9 82 (17.52%) .NET
10 78 (16.67%) TypeScript
11 74 (15.81%) C#
12 72 (15.38%) Technical Leadership
13 70 (14.96%) Node.js
14 60 (12.82%) SaaS
15 58 (12.39%) AI
16 57 (12.18%) CI/CD
17 52 (11.11%) Java
18 47 (10.04%) SQL
19 44 (9.40%) Continuous Improvement
20 41 (8.76%) Serverless
21 39 (8.33%) DevOps
21 39 (8.33%) Portfolio Management
22 38 (8.12%) Coaching
23 37 (7.91%) Redux
23 37 (7.91%) RESTful
24 36 (7.69%) Investment Management
25 35 (7.48%) Problem-Solving
26 34 (7.26%) Microservices
27 32 (6.84%) GraphQL

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 (1.07%) Appian
2 4 (0.85%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.43%) Confluence
3 2 (0.43%) WordPress
4 1 (0.21%) CMS
Business Applications
1 9 (1.92%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.43%) NEC Housing
3 1 (0.21%) Magento
3 1 (0.21%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 113 (24.15%) AWS
2 93 (19.87%) Azure
3 60 (12.82%) SaaS
4 41 (8.76%) Serverless
5 31 (6.62%) AWS Lambda
6 28 (5.98%) Amazon S3
7 26 (5.56%) GCP
8 20 (4.27%) Amazon SQS
9 18 (3.85%) Power Platform
10 15 (3.21%) Dynamics 365
11 14 (2.99%) Azure Logic Apps
11 14 (2.99%) GitHub
12 12 (2.56%) Azure DevOps
13 9 (1.92%) PowerApps
14 8 (1.71%) Power Automate
15 5 (1.07%) Amazon ECS
15 5 (1.07%) Amazon EventBridge
15 5 (1.07%) Entra ID
15 5 (1.07%) GitHub Copilot
16 4 (0.85%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 2 (0.43%) Network Security
2 1 (0.21%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (5.77%) PostgreSQL
2 25 (5.34%) SQL Server
3 8 (1.71%) NoSQL
4 7 (1.50%) MySQL
4 7 (1.50%) Power BI
5 6 (1.28%) MongoDB
6 5 (1.07%) DynamoDB
7 4 (0.85%) Amazon Redshift
7 4 (0.85%) DB2
7 4 (0.85%) Relational Database
8 3 (0.64%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 2 (0.43%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (0.43%) MariaDB
10 1 (0.21%) Azure SQL Database
10 1 (0.21%) Elasticsearch
10 1 (0.21%) Metadata
10 1 (0.21%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 18 (3.85%) Git
2 6 (1.28%) Cypress.io
3 5 (1.07%) Bitbucket
4 4 (0.85%) Jenkins
4 4 (0.85%) Maven
4 4 (0.85%) webpack
5 3 (0.64%) ESLint
5 3 (0.64%) GitLab
5 3 (0.64%) JIRA
5 3 (0.64%) NUnit
5 3 (0.64%) SonarQube
5 3 (0.64%) Vite
6 2 (0.43%) Cucumber
6 2 (0.43%) Selenium
6 2 (0.43%) Subversion
6 2 (0.43%) Visual Studio
6 2 (0.43%) XCUITest
7 1 (0.21%) JUnit
7 1 (0.21%) Postman
7 1 (0.21%) TeamCity
General
1 63 (13.46%) Finance
2 49 (10.47%) Social Skills
3 43 (9.19%) Front Office
4 28 (5.98%) Tech for Good
5 19 (4.06%) Health Technology
6 15 (3.21%) Organisational Skills
6 15 (3.21%) Publishing
7 14 (2.99%) Influencing Skills
8 13 (2.78%) Analytical Skills
9 9 (1.92%) Games
9 9 (1.92%) Public Sector
10 7 (1.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 6 (1.28%) Banking
12 4 (0.85%) Law
12 4 (0.85%) Local Government
12 4 (0.85%) Pharmaceutical
12 4 (0.85%) Retail
13 2 (0.43%) Aerospace
13 2 (0.43%) General Ledger
13 2 (0.43%) Marketing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 92 (19.66%) React
2 82 (17.52%) .NET
3 70 (14.96%) Node.js
4 37 (7.91%) Redux
4 37 (7.91%) RESTful
5 32 (6.84%) GraphQL
6 27 (5.77%) .NET Core
6 27 (5.77%) Vue
7 26 (5.56%) AngularJS
7 26 (5.56%) HTML
7 26 (5.56%) Kafka
8 23 (4.91%) CSS
9 21 (4.49%) React Native
10 19 (4.06%) Laravel
11 18 (3.85%) ASP.NET
12 17 (3.63%) .NET Framework
13 15 (3.21%) REST
14 14 (2.99%) Spring
15 13 (2.78%) Flask
16 12 (2.56%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 37 (7.91%) Fixed Income
2 20 (4.27%) Cloud Native
2 20 (4.27%) Product Ownership
3 18 (3.85%) Derivative
4 17 (3.63%) Mobile App
5 16 (3.42%) Distributed Systems
5 16 (3.42%) Equities
6 12 (2.56%) PropTech
7 8 (1.71%) Enterprise Software
7 8 (1.71%) Greenfield Project
8 6 (1.28%) Credit Risk
8 6 (1.28%) Low-Code
9 5 (1.07%) Algorithms
9 5 (1.07%) Data Structures
10 4 (0.85%) Legacy Applications
10 4 (0.85%) Legacy Systems
11 3 (0.64%) AI Agents
11 3 (0.64%) AS400
11 3 (0.64%) iSeries
11 3 (0.64%) Photography
Operating Systems
1 31 (6.62%) Apple iOS
2 23 (4.91%) Android
3 3 (0.64%) Linux
4 2 (0.43%) Windows
5 1 (0.21%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 139 (29.70%) Full-Stack Development
2 110 (23.50%) Agile
3 99 (21.15%) Software Engineering
4 93 (19.87%) Mentoring
5 72 (15.38%) Technical Leadership
6 58 (12.39%) AI
7 57 (12.18%) CI/CD
8 44 (9.40%) Continuous Improvement
9 39 (8.33%) DevOps
9 39 (8.33%) Portfolio Management
10 38 (8.12%) Coaching
11 36 (7.69%) Investment Management
12 35 (7.48%) Problem-Solving
13 34 (7.26%) Microservices
14 29 (6.20%) Line Management
15 26 (5.56%) Scrum
16 25 (5.34%) Fintech
17 22 (4.70%) Code Quality
17 22 (4.70%) TDD
18 20 (4.27%) Design Patterns
Programming Languages
1 109 (23.29%) Python
2 91 (19.44%) JavaScript
3 78 (16.67%) TypeScript
4 74 (15.81%) C#
5 52 (11.11%) Java
6 47 (10.04%) SQL
7 22 (4.70%) Go
8 15 (3.21%) PHP
9 11 (2.35%) Swift
10 10 (2.14%) C++
11 8 (1.71%) Kotlin
12 6 (1.28%) Bicep
13 4 (0.85%) C
13 4 (0.85%) RPG
14 3 (0.64%) COBOL
15 2 (0.43%) Apex Code
15 2 (0.43%) Bash
15 2 (0.43%) Groovy
16 1 (0.21%) R
16 1 (0.21%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 15 (3.21%) Degree
2 5 (1.07%) Computer Science Degree
3 4 (0.85%) DBS Check
4 2 (0.43%) ITIL Certification
4 2 (0.43%) PhD
4 2 (0.43%) Security Cleared
5 1 (0.21%) AWS Certification
5 1 (0.21%) AWS Certified Developer
5 1 (0.21%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (5.77%) QA
2 9 (1.92%) Accessibility
3 3 (0.64%) Data Quality
4 2 (0.43%) GAAP
4 2 (0.43%) IFRS
4 2 (0.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 1 (0.21%) GDPR
System Software
1 23 (4.91%) Docker
2 3 (0.64%) Firmware
3 1 (0.21%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 12 (2.56%) Kubernetes
2 10 (2.14%) Terraform
3 3 (0.64%) HP Fortify
4 2 (0.43%) Ansible
5 1 (0.21%) Grafana
5 1 (0.21%) Kibana
5 1 (0.21%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 31 (6.62%) Microsoft
2 7 (1.50%) OpenAI
3 6 (1.28%) Salesforce
4 5 (1.07%) Apple
5 3 (0.64%) DevExpress
6 2 (0.43%) Foundry
6 2 (0.43%) HubSpot
6 2 (0.43%) NEC
6 2 (0.43%) Northgate
6 2 (0.43%) Workday
7 1 (0.21%) Adobe
7 1 (0.21%) Databricks
7 1 (0.21%) Google
7 1 (0.21%) IBM
7 1 (0.21%) Revolut
7 1 (0.21%) SAP