Lead Developer Job Trends in London

Lead Developer
England > London

The median Lead Developer salary in London is £95,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 17 February 2026.

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

6 months to
17 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 255 293 185
Rank change year-on-year +38 -108 +90
Permanent jobs requiring a Lead Developer 139 129 352
As % of all permanent jobs in London 0.89% 0.87% 1.66%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.98% 0.95% 1.75%
Number of salaries quoted 110 88 303
10th Percentile £75,000 £56,250 £71,250
25th Percentile £76,063 £60,000 £80,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £95,000 £76,750 £92,500
Median % change year-on-year +23.78% -17.03% +2.78%
75th Percentile £122,500 £98,750 £115,000
90th Percentile £150,000 £145,000 £150,000
England median annual salary £76,250 £68,525 £80,000
% change year-on-year +11.27% -14.34% -

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 14,203 13,595 20,092
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 91.33% 91.51% 94.48%
Number of salaries quoted 9,442 7,810 16,239
10th Percentile £36,250 £42,500 £39,420
25th Percentile £50,084 £56,250 £52,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £72,500 £75,000 £72,500
Median % change year-on-year -3.33% +3.45% -0.81%
75th Percentile £95,000 £97,500 £95,000
90th Percentile £111,250 £120,000 £115,000
England median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -11.29%

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 17 February 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 17 February 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 +33 25 £105,000 +20.00% 8
North London - 4 £80,000 - 5
West London - 4 - -
Lead Developer
England

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

For the 6 months to 17 February 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 69 (49.64%) Python
2 56 (40.29%) Agile
3 53 (38.13%) AWS
4 42 (30.22%) AI
5 40 (28.78%) Mentoring
6 39 (28.06%) CI/CD
7 38 (27.34%) Full-Stack Development
7 38 (27.34%) React
8 34 (24.46%) Azure
9 29 (20.86%) Node.js
10 28 (20.14%) Software Engineering
11 25 (17.99%) Java
11 25 (17.99%) Technical Leadership
11 25 (17.99%) TypeScript
12 23 (16.55%) Code Quality
12 23 (16.55%) JavaScript
13 22 (15.83%) Continuous Improvement
13 22 (15.83%) RESTful
14 19 (13.67%) Coaching
14 19 (13.67%) Investment Management
14 19 (13.67%) QA
14 19 (13.67%) Scrum
14 19 (13.67%) TDD
14 19 (13.67%) User Stories
15 18 (12.95%) Acceptance Criteria
15 18 (12.95%) GCP
15 18 (12.95%) Portfolio Management
15 18 (12.95%) Problem-Solving
15 18 (12.95%) Redux
15 18 (12.95%) Serverless

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 (0.72%) Confluence
Business Applications
1 3 (2.16%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (1.44%) NEC Housing
Cloud Services
1 53 (38.13%) AWS
2 34 (24.46%) Azure
3 18 (12.95%) GCP
3 18 (12.95%) Serverless
4 17 (12.23%) Amazon S3
4 17 (12.23%) Amazon SQS
4 17 (12.23%) AWS Lambda
5 16 (11.51%) SaaS
6 11 (7.91%) GitHub
7 10 (7.19%) Power Platform
8 7 (5.04%) Azure Data Factory
9 5 (3.60%) GitHub Copilot
10 4 (2.88%) Dynamics 365
11 3 (2.16%) Amazon Cognito
11 3 (2.16%) Amazon EventBridge
11 3 (2.16%) Azure Cosmos DB
11 3 (2.16%) Azure Logic Apps
11 3 (2.16%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 3 (2.16%) Power Automate
11 3 (2.16%) PowerApps
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (12.23%) PostgreSQL
2 10 (7.19%) NoSQL
3 9 (6.47%) Power BI
3 9 (6.47%) SQL Server
4 6 (4.32%) Relational Database
5 5 (3.60%) MongoDB
6 4 (2.88%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 3 (2.16%) Data Lake
7 3 (2.16%) SQL Server Analysis Services
8 2 (1.44%) RDBMS
9 1 (0.72%) Azure SQL Database
9 1 (0.72%) Data Warehouse
9 1 (0.72%) DB2
Development Applications
1 7 (5.04%) Git
2 3 (2.16%) ESLint
3 2 (1.44%) Jenkins
3 2 (1.44%) Visual Studio
3 2 (1.44%) webpack
4 1 (0.72%) Bitbucket
4 1 (0.72%) Cucumber
4 1 (0.72%) Cypress.io
4 1 (0.72%) JIRA
4 1 (0.72%) JUnit
4 1 (0.72%) Selenium
4 1 (0.72%) TeamCity
4 1 (0.72%) Vite
General
1 41 (29.50%) Social Skills
2 31 (22.30%) Finance
3 26 (18.71%) Front Office
4 19 (13.67%) Tech for Good
5 15 (10.79%) Health Technology
5 15 (10.79%) Publishing
6 14 (10.07%) Influencing Skills
6 14 (10.07%) Organisational Skills
7 10 (7.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 5 (3.60%) Marketing
9 4 (2.88%) Banking
9 4 (2.88%) Retail
10 3 (2.16%) Public Sector
11 2 (1.44%) Analytical Skills
11 2 (1.44%) Electronics
11 2 (1.44%) General Ledger
11 2 (1.44%) Manufacturing
11 2 (1.44%) Presentation Skills
11 2 (1.44%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.72%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (27.34%) React
2 29 (20.86%) Node.js
3 22 (15.83%) RESTful
4 18 (12.95%) Redux
5 14 (10.07%) GraphQL
5 14 (10.07%) Kafka
6 13 (9.35%) FastAPI
6 13 (9.35%) Flask
6 13 (9.35%) Vue
7 12 (8.63%) REST
8 11 (7.91%) Django
9 9 (6.47%) AngularJS
10 8 (5.76%) Laravel
11 6 (4.32%) .NET
11 6 (4.32%) CSS
11 6 (4.32%) Hugging Face
11 6 (4.32%) Tailwind CSS
12 4 (2.88%) .NET Core
12 4 (2.88%) Alpine.js
12 4 (2.88%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 20 (14.39%) Fixed Income
2 13 (9.35%) Cloud Native
3 12 (8.63%) Derivative
4 8 (5.76%) Equities
5 7 (5.04%) Distributed Systems
6 5 (3.60%) Algorithms
6 5 (3.60%) PropTech
7 3 (2.16%) Credit Risk
7 3 (2.16%) Low-Code
8 2 (1.44%) Educational Technology
8 2 (1.44%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 2 (1.44%) Legacy Systems
8 2 (1.44%) Market Risk
8 2 (1.44%) Self-Motivation
9 1 (0.72%) Client/Server
9 1 (0.72%) Data Structures
9 1 (0.72%) Enterprise Software
9 1 (0.72%) Greenfield Project
9 1 (0.72%) Linux Command Line
9 1 (0.72%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 4 (2.88%) Android
1 4 (2.88%) Apple iOS
2 1 (0.72%) Linux
2 1 (0.72%) Unix
2 1 (0.72%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 56 (40.29%) Agile
2 42 (30.22%) AI
3 40 (28.78%) Mentoring
4 39 (28.06%) CI/CD
5 38 (27.34%) Full-Stack Development
6 28 (20.14%) Software Engineering
7 25 (17.99%) Technical Leadership
8 23 (16.55%) Code Quality
9 22 (15.83%) Continuous Improvement
10 19 (13.67%) Coaching
10 19 (13.67%) Investment Management
10 19 (13.67%) Scrum
10 19 (13.67%) TDD
10 19 (13.67%) User Stories
11 18 (12.95%) Acceptance Criteria
11 18 (12.95%) Portfolio Management
11 18 (12.95%) Problem-Solving
12 17 (12.23%) Microservices
13 16 (11.51%) Process Improvement
14 15 (10.79%) Continuous Integration
Programming Languages
1 69 (49.64%) Python
2 25 (17.99%) Java
2 25 (17.99%) TypeScript
3 23 (16.55%) JavaScript
4 16 (11.51%) SQL
5 11 (7.91%) Go
6 10 (7.19%) C#
7 9 (6.47%) PHP
8 3 (2.16%) Apex Code
8 3 (2.16%) Kotlin
9 2 (1.44%) C++
9 2 (1.44%) Scala
10 1 (0.72%) C
10 1 (0.72%) RPG
10 1 (0.72%) SOQL
10 1 (0.72%) SOSL
Qualifications
1 2 (1.44%) Computer Science Degree
1 2 (1.44%) Degree
2 1 (0.72%) ITIL Certification
2 1 (0.72%) Master's Degree
2 1 (0.72%) SC Cleared
2 1 (0.72%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (13.67%) QA
2 2 (1.44%) Accessibility
2 2 (1.44%) GAAP
2 2 (1.44%) IFRS
2 2 (1.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 1 (0.72%) Data Quality
System Software
1 14 (10.07%) Docker
Systems Management
1 10 (7.19%) Kubernetes
2 2 (1.44%) Terraform
Vendors
1 7 (5.04%) OpenAI
2 3 (2.16%) Databricks
2 3 (2.16%) Microsoft
2 3 (2.16%) Salesforce
3 2 (1.44%) Google
3 2 (1.44%) NEC
3 2 (1.44%) Northgate
3 2 (1.44%) SAP
3 2 (1.44%) Workday
4 1 (0.72%) IBM
4 1 (0.72%) Informatica
4 1 (0.72%) Revolut