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 4 January 2026.

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

6 months to
4 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 259 299 200
Rank change year-on-year +40 -99 +97
Permanent jobs requiring a Lead Developer 114 136 282
As % of all permanent jobs in London 0.83% 0.87% 1.58%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.91% 0.94% 1.66%
Number of salaries quoted 79 102 231
10th Percentile £75,000 £47,425 £63,750
25th Percentile £76,000 £60,625 £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 £104,375 £120,000
90th Percentile £122,500 £144,250 £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 12,497 14,461 16,982
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 90.89% 92.76% 95.19%
Number of salaries quoted 8,279 8,384 13,705
10th Percentile £35,750 £42,500 £41,250
25th Percentile £50,000 £55,000 £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 £95,000 £95,000
90th Percentile £115,000 £120,000 £115,000
England median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -1.78%

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 4 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 4 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 +37 20 £107,500 +24.64% 6
West London - 4 - - 1
North London - 1 £80,000 - 4
Lead Developer
England

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

For the 6 months to 4 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 (45.61%) Python
2 44 (38.60%) CI/CD
3 41 (35.96%) Agile
4 37 (32.46%) AWS
5 33 (28.95%) Azure
5 33 (28.95%) Mentoring
6 32 (28.07%) AI
7 31 (27.19%) Full-Stack Development
8 23 (20.18%) Code Quality
9 22 (19.30%) QA
9 22 (19.30%) React
9 22 (19.30%) Scrum
10 20 (17.54%) Coaching
10 20 (17.54%) TDD
10 20 (17.54%) Technical Leadership
11 19 (16.67%) Continuous Improvement
11 19 (16.67%) Docker
11 19 (16.67%) Problem-Solving
11 19 (16.67%) Process Improvement
11 19 (16.67%) RESTful
11 19 (16.67%) Serverless
12 18 (15.79%) Amazon S3
12 18 (15.79%) Amazon SQS
12 18 (15.79%) AWS Lambda
12 18 (15.79%) SQL
12 18 (15.79%) User Stories
13 17 (14.91%) Acceptance Criteria
13 17 (14.91%) Containerisation
14 16 (14.04%) Continuous Integration
14 16 (14.04%) DevOps

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 (0.88%) Confluence
Business Applications
1 3 (2.63%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (1.75%) NEC Housing
3 1 (0.88%) Endur
Cloud Services
1 37 (32.46%) AWS
2 33 (28.95%) Azure
3 19 (16.67%) Serverless
4 18 (15.79%) Amazon S3
4 18 (15.79%) Amazon SQS
4 18 (15.79%) AWS Lambda
5 10 (8.77%) GCP
5 10 (8.77%) GitHub
5 10 (8.77%) Power Platform
6 9 (7.89%) SaaS
7 7 (6.14%) Azure Cosmos DB
7 7 (6.14%) Azure Data Factory
8 5 (4.39%) GitHub Copilot
9 4 (3.51%) Dynamics 365
10 3 (2.63%) Amazon Cognito
10 3 (2.63%) Amazon EventBridge
10 3 (2.63%) Azure Logic Apps
10 3 (2.63%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 3 (2.63%) Power Automate
10 3 (2.63%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.88%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (10.53%) NoSQL
2 10 (8.77%) PostgreSQL
3 9 (7.89%) Power BI
3 9 (7.89%) SQL Server
4 8 (7.02%) Relational Database
5 5 (4.39%) MongoDB
6 4 (3.51%) RDBMS
6 4 (3.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 4 (3.51%) Tick Data
7 3 (2.63%) Data Lake
7 3 (2.63%) Data Warehouse
7 3 (2.63%) SQL Server Analysis Services
8 1 (0.88%) Azure SQL Database
8 1 (0.88%) DB2
Development Applications
1 8 (7.02%) Git
2 3 (2.63%) ESLint
3 2 (1.75%) Jenkins
3 2 (1.75%) Visual Studio
4 1 (0.88%) Bitbucket
4 1 (0.88%) Cucumber
4 1 (0.88%) JIRA
4 1 (0.88%) Selenium
4 1 (0.88%) TeamCity
4 1 (0.88%) webpack
General
1 41 (35.96%) Social Skills
2 17 (14.91%) Tech for Good
3 16 (14.04%) Health Technology
3 16 (14.04%) Publishing
4 15 (13.16%) Finance
4 15 (13.16%) Influencing Skills
4 15 (13.16%) Organisational Skills
5 11 (9.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 7 (6.14%) Marketing
7 6 (5.26%) Front Office
8 5 (4.39%) Analytical Skills
8 5 (4.39%) Public Sector
9 4 (3.51%) Banking
9 4 (3.51%) Electronics
9 4 (3.51%) Manufacturing
9 4 (3.51%) Retail
9 4 (3.51%) Telecoms
10 2 (1.75%) Back Office
10 2 (1.75%) General Ledger
10 2 (1.75%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (19.30%) React
2 19 (16.67%) RESTful
3 14 (12.28%) FastAPI
3 14 (12.28%) Flask
4 13 (11.40%) REST
5 11 (9.65%) Node.js
6 10 (8.77%) Django
6 10 (8.77%) Vue
7 7 (6.14%) Blazor
8 6 (5.26%) .NET
8 6 (5.26%) AngularJS
8 6 (5.26%) Laravel
9 5 (4.39%) Hugging Face
9 5 (4.39%) SOAP
9 5 (4.39%) Tailwind CSS
10 4 (3.51%) .NET Core
10 4 (3.51%) Alpine.js
10 4 (3.51%) CSS
10 4 (3.51%) Flutter
10 4 (3.51%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 18 (15.79%) Cloud Native
2 7 (6.14%) Distributed Systems
3 5 (4.39%) Algorithms
4 4 (3.51%) Derivative
5 3 (2.63%) Credit Risk
5 3 (2.63%) Low-Code
5 3 (2.63%) Self-Motivation
6 2 (1.75%) Educational Technology
6 2 (1.75%) Fixed Income
6 2 (1.75%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 2 (1.75%) Hedge funds
6 2 (1.75%) Legacy Systems
6 2 (1.75%) Market Risk
6 2 (1.75%) Renewable Energy
7 1 (0.88%) Client/Server
7 1 (0.88%) Data Structures
7 1 (0.88%) Enterprise Software
7 1 (0.88%) IoT
7 1 (0.88%) Management Information System
7 1 (0.88%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 1 (0.88%) Linux
1 1 (0.88%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 44 (38.60%) CI/CD
2 41 (35.96%) Agile
3 33 (28.95%) Mentoring
4 32 (28.07%) AI
5 31 (27.19%) Full-Stack Development
6 23 (20.18%) Code Quality
7 22 (19.30%) Scrum
8 20 (17.54%) Coaching
8 20 (17.54%) TDD
8 20 (17.54%) Technical Leadership
9 19 (16.67%) Continuous Improvement
9 19 (16.67%) Problem-Solving
9 19 (16.67%) Process Improvement
10 18 (15.79%) User Stories
11 17 (14.91%) Acceptance Criteria
11 17 (14.91%) Containerisation
12 16 (14.04%) Continuous Integration
12 16 (14.04%) DevOps
13 15 (13.16%) Pair Programming
13 15 (13.16%) Time Management
Programming Languages
1 52 (45.61%) Python
2 18 (15.79%) SQL
3 16 (14.04%) Java
4 15 (13.16%) C#
5 7 (6.14%) TypeScript
6 6 (5.26%) Kotlin
6 6 (5.26%) PHP
7 5 (4.39%) Scala
8 4 (3.51%) Go
8 4 (3.51%) JavaScript
9 2 (1.75%) Apex Code
10 1 (0.88%) C++
10 1 (0.88%) RPG
10 1 (0.88%) Ruby
10 1 (0.88%) SOQL
10 1 (0.88%) SOSL
Qualifications
1 2 (1.75%) Computer Science Degree
1 2 (1.75%) Degree
2 1 (0.88%) ITIL Certification
2 1 (0.88%) Master's Degree
2 1 (0.88%) SC Cleared
2 1 (0.88%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (19.30%) QA
2 2 (1.75%) GAAP
2 2 (1.75%) IFRS
2 2 (1.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 1 (0.88%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.88%) Data Quality
System Software
1 19 (16.67%) Docker
Systems Management
1 12 (10.53%) Kubernetes
2 4 (3.51%) Terraform
Vendors
1 5 (4.39%) Databricks
1 5 (4.39%) OpenAI
2 4 (3.51%) Google
2 4 (3.51%) SAP
3 3 (2.63%) Microsoft
4 2 (1.75%) NEC
4 2 (1.75%) Northgate
4 2 (1.75%) Salesforce
4 2 (1.75%) Workday
5 1 (0.88%) IBM
5 1 (0.88%) Informatica
5 1 (0.88%) OpenLink
5 1 (0.88%) ServiceNow