Lead Developer Job Trends in London

Lead Developer
England > London

The median Lead Developer salary in London is £85,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 11 January 2026.

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

6 months to
11 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 258 291 205
Rank change year-on-year +33 -86 +83
Permanent jobs requiring a Lead Developer 117 133 289
As % of all permanent jobs in London 0.84% 0.86% 1.57%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.92% 0.93% 1.65%
Number of salaries quoted 82 99 237
10th Percentile £75,000 £47,000 £63,750
25th Percentile £76,000 £61,250 £82,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £85,000 £85,000 £92,500
Median % change year-on-year - -8.11% +2.78%
75th Percentile £110,000 £103,750 £120,000
90th Percentile £122,500 £145,000 £150,000
England median annual salary £76,000 £67,500 £80,000
% change year-on-year +12.59% -15.63% -

All Permanent IT Job Roles
London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies in London. 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 London with a recognized job title 12,669 14,355 17,481
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 91.07% 92.71% 95.21%
Number of salaries quoted 8,394 8,303 14,076
10th Percentile £36,000 £42,500 £41,250
25th Percentile £50,000 £56,000 £55,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £72,500 £75,000 £75,000
Median % change year-on-year -3.33% - +3.45%
75th Percentile £95,000 £96,250 £95,000
90th Percentile £113,750 £120,000 £115,000
England median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £58,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +3.45% -5.69%

Lead Developer
Job Vacancy Trend in London

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 London.

Lead Developer job vacancy trend in London

Lead Developer
Salary Trend in London

Salary distribution trend for Lead Developer job vacancies in London.

Salary distribution trend for Lead Developer job vacancies in London

Lead Developer
Salary Histogram in London

Salary distribution for jobs citing Lead Developer in London over the 6 months to 11 January 2026.

Salary histogram for Lead Developer in London

Lead Developer
Job Locations in London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Lead Developer within the London region over the 6 months to 11 January 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
Central London +39 24 £110,000 +25.71% 6
West London - 4 - - 1
North London - 3 £80,000 - 4
Lead Developer
England

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

For the 6 months to 11 January 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 London region featuring Lead Developer in the job title.

1 52 (44.44%) Python
2 41 (35.04%) CI/CD
3 40 (34.19%) Agile
4 36 (30.77%) AI
4 36 (30.77%) AWS
5 33 (28.21%) Full-Stack Development
5 33 (28.21%) Mentoring
6 30 (25.64%) Azure
7 23 (19.66%) Code Quality
7 23 (19.66%) React
8 22 (18.80%) QA
8 22 (18.80%) Scrum
9 20 (17.09%) Coaching
9 20 (17.09%) Technical Leadership
10 19 (16.24%) Continuous Improvement
10 19 (16.24%) Process Improvement
10 19 (16.24%) RESTful
10 19 (16.24%) Serverless
10 19 (16.24%) TDD
11 18 (15.38%) Amazon S3
11 18 (15.38%) Amazon SQS
11 18 (15.38%) AWS Lambda
11 18 (15.38%) Docker
11 18 (15.38%) User Stories
12 17 (14.53%) Acceptance Criteria
12 17 (14.53%) Problem-Solving
13 16 (13.68%) Continuous Integration
13 16 (13.68%) Java
13 16 (13.68%) SQL
14 15 (12.82%) Containerisation

Lead Developer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in London 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 1 (0.85%) Confluence
Business Applications
1 3 (2.56%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (1.71%) NEC Housing
3 1 (0.85%) Endur
Cloud Services
1 36 (30.77%) AWS
2 30 (25.64%) Azure
3 19 (16.24%) Serverless
4 18 (15.38%) Amazon S3
4 18 (15.38%) Amazon SQS
4 18 (15.38%) AWS Lambda
5 11 (9.40%) GitHub
6 10 (8.55%) GCP
6 10 (8.55%) Power Platform
6 10 (8.55%) SaaS
7 7 (5.98%) Azure Data Factory
8 6 (5.13%) Azure Cosmos DB
9 5 (4.27%) GitHub Copilot
10 4 (3.42%) Dynamics 365
11 3 (2.56%) Amazon Cognito
11 3 (2.56%) Amazon EventBridge
11 3 (2.56%) Azure Logic Apps
11 3 (2.56%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 3 (2.56%) Power Automate
11 3 (2.56%) PowerApps
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (10.26%) NoSQL
2 10 (8.55%) PostgreSQL
3 9 (7.69%) Power BI
3 9 (7.69%) SQL Server
4 8 (6.84%) Relational Database
5 5 (4.27%) MongoDB
6 4 (3.42%) RDBMS
6 4 (3.42%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 3 (2.56%) Data Lake
7 3 (2.56%) Data Warehouse
7 3 (2.56%) SQL Server Analysis Services
8 2 (1.71%) Tick Data
9 1 (0.85%) Azure SQL Database
9 1 (0.85%) DB2
Development Applications
1 6 (5.13%) Git
2 3 (2.56%) ESLint
3 2 (1.71%) Jenkins
3 2 (1.71%) Visual Studio
4 1 (0.85%) Bitbucket
4 1 (0.85%) Cucumber
4 1 (0.85%) JIRA
4 1 (0.85%) Selenium
4 1 (0.85%) TeamCity
4 1 (0.85%) webpack
General
1 39 (33.33%) Social Skills
2 19 (16.24%) Tech for Good
3 16 (13.68%) Health Technology
3 16 (13.68%) Publishing
4 15 (12.82%) Influencing Skills
4 15 (12.82%) Organisational Skills
5 13 (11.11%) Finance
6 10 (8.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 8 (6.84%) Front Office
8 7 (5.98%) Marketing
9 5 (4.27%) Analytical Skills
9 5 (4.27%) Public Sector
10 4 (3.42%) Banking
10 4 (3.42%) Electronics
10 4 (3.42%) Manufacturing
10 4 (3.42%) Retail
10 4 (3.42%) Telecoms
11 2 (1.71%) General Ledger
11 2 (1.71%) Presentation Skills
12 1 (0.85%) Investment Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (19.66%) React
2 19 (16.24%) RESTful
3 15 (12.82%) FastAPI
3 15 (12.82%) Flask
4 13 (11.11%) REST
5 11 (9.40%) Django
5 11 (9.40%) Node.js
6 10 (8.55%) Vue
7 6 (5.13%) .NET
7 6 (5.13%) AngularJS
7 6 (5.13%) Blazor
7 6 (5.13%) Hugging Face
7 6 (5.13%) Laravel
8 5 (4.27%) SOAP
8 5 (4.27%) Tailwind CSS
9 4 (3.42%) .NET Core
9 4 (3.42%) Alpine.js
9 4 (3.42%) CSS
9 4 (3.42%) Flutter
9 4 (3.42%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 16 (13.68%) Cloud Native
2 7 (5.98%) Distributed Systems
3 5 (4.27%) Algorithms
4 4 (3.42%) Derivative
5 3 (2.56%) Credit Risk
5 3 (2.56%) Low-Code
6 2 (1.71%) Educational Technology
6 2 (1.71%) Fixed Income
6 2 (1.71%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 2 (1.71%) Market Risk
6 2 (1.71%) Renewable Energy
6 2 (1.71%) Self-Motivation
7 1 (0.85%) Client/Server
7 1 (0.85%) Data Structures
7 1 (0.85%) Enterprise Software
7 1 (0.85%) Greenfield Project
7 1 (0.85%) Legacy Systems
7 1 (0.85%) Linux Command Line
7 1 (0.85%) Management Information System
7 1 (0.85%) PropTech
Operating Systems
1 1 (0.85%) Linux
1 1 (0.85%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 41 (35.04%) CI/CD
2 40 (34.19%) Agile
3 36 (30.77%) AI
4 33 (28.21%) Full-Stack Development
4 33 (28.21%) Mentoring
5 23 (19.66%) Code Quality
6 22 (18.80%) Scrum
7 20 (17.09%) Coaching
7 20 (17.09%) Technical Leadership
8 19 (16.24%) Continuous Improvement
8 19 (16.24%) Process Improvement
8 19 (16.24%) TDD
9 18 (15.38%) User Stories
10 17 (14.53%) Acceptance Criteria
10 17 (14.53%) Problem-Solving
11 16 (13.68%) Continuous Integration
12 15 (12.82%) Containerisation
12 15 (12.82%) Extreme Programming
12 15 (12.82%) Pair Programming
12 15 (12.82%) Time Management
Programming Languages
1 52 (44.44%) Python
2 16 (13.68%) Java
2 16 (13.68%) SQL
3 12 (10.26%) C#
4 7 (5.98%) PHP
5 6 (5.13%) Kotlin
5 6 (5.13%) TypeScript
6 5 (4.27%) Scala
7 4 (3.42%) Go
7 4 (3.42%) JavaScript
8 2 (1.71%) Apex Code
9 1 (0.85%) C++
9 1 (0.85%) RPG
9 1 (0.85%) SOQL
9 1 (0.85%) SOSL
Qualifications
1 2 (1.71%) Computer Science Degree
1 2 (1.71%) Degree
2 1 (0.85%) ITIL Certification
2 1 (0.85%) Master's Degree
2 1 (0.85%) SC Cleared
2 1 (0.85%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (18.80%) QA
2 2 (1.71%) GAAP
2 2 (1.71%) IFRS
2 2 (1.71%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 1 (0.85%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.85%) Data Quality
System Software
1 18 (15.38%) Docker
Systems Management
1 11 (9.40%) Kubernetes
2 4 (3.42%) Terraform
Vendors
1 6 (5.13%) OpenAI
2 5 (4.27%) Databricks
3 4 (3.42%) Google
3 4 (3.42%) SAP
4 3 (2.56%) Microsoft
5 2 (1.71%) NEC
5 2 (1.71%) Northgate
5 2 (1.71%) Salesforce
5 2 (1.71%) Workday
6 1 (0.85%) IBM
6 1 (0.85%) Informatica
6 1 (0.85%) OpenLink
6 1 (0.85%) ServiceNow