Lead Job Trends in Scotland

Leader
UK > Scotland

The median Leader salary in Scotland is £75,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 8 October 2026.

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

6 months to
8 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 43 17
Rank change year-on-year +35 -26 +27
Permanent jobs requiring a Lead 331 148 285
As % of all permanent jobs in Scotland 7.88% 5.70% 8.21%
As % of the Job Titles category 8.65% 6.97% 8.52%
Number of salaries quoted 196 60 146
10th Percentile £40,000 £32,000 £30,625
25th Percentile £55,000 £53,125 £45,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £75,000 £69,692 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.62% +7.22% -7.14%
75th Percentile £100,000 £82,305 £80,000
90th Percentile - £85,250 £97,987
UK median annual salary £77,647 £75,000 £70,000
% change year-on-year +3.53% +7.14% -4.44%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
Scotland

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies in Scotland. 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 Scotland with a recognized job title 3,827 2,123 3,345
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 91.16% 81.81% 96.31%
Number of salaries quoted 2,174 888 1,708
10th Percentile £30,000 £25,600 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £31,750 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £45,000 £53,000
Median % change year-on-year +22.22% -15.09% +0.95%
75th Percentile £70,000 £65,750 £70,000
90th Percentile £90,000 £83,892 £80,000
UK median annual salary £58,500 £54,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year +7.34% -0.91% -8.33%

Lead
Job Vacancy Trend in Scotland

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings featuring 'Lead' in the job title relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in Scotland.

Lead job vacancy trend in Scotland

Lead
Salary Trend in Scotland

Salary distribution trend for Lead job vacancies in Scotland.

Salary distribution trend for Lead job vacancies in Scotland

Lead
Salary Histogram in Scotland

Salary distribution for jobs citing Lead in Scotland over the 6 months to 8 October 2026.

Salary histogram for Lead in Scotland

Lead
Job Locations in Scotland

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Lead within the Scotland region over the 6 months to 8 October 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
Glasgow +17 184 £77,513 +3.35% 410
Edinburgh +38 102 £75,000 -2.87% 222
Highlands +9 11 £65,000 - 7
South Lanarkshire - 6 £72,500 -
Stirling - 6 £34,000 - 7
West Lothian -7 4 £30,000 -27.27% 20
Midlothian - 4 - - 3
Fife - 4 £50,000 - 14
North Lanarkshire +5 3 £36,500 +1.39% 9
Clackmannanshire -12 1 - -
Lanarkshire - 1 £100,000 - 6
Lead
UK

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

For the 6 months to 8 October 2026, Lead 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 Scotland region featuring Lead in the job title.

1 95 (28.70%) Software Engineering
2 67 (20.24%) Agile
3 57 (17.22%) AI
4 45 (13.60%) AWS
5 34 (10.27%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 30 (9.06%) Azure
6 30 (9.06%) DevOps
7 28 (8.46%) CI/CD
7 28 (8.46%) Mentoring
8 26 (7.85%) Analytics
8 26 (7.85%) Decision-Making
8 26 (7.85%) Infrastructure as Code
9 25 (7.55%) Continuous Improvement
10 24 (7.25%) Problem-Solving
10 24 (7.25%) Technical Leadership
11 23 (6.95%) LLM
12 22 (6.65%) Security Cleared
13 20 (6.04%) BPSS Clearance
13 20 (6.04%) Microsoft
13 20 (6.04%) Site Reliability Engineering
14 19 (5.74%) Observability
15 18 (5.44%) Accessibility
15 18 (5.44%) Data Engineering
15 18 (5.44%) Risk Management
16 17 (5.14%) Code Quality
16 17 (5.14%) JavaScript
16 17 (5.14%) Stakeholder Management
16 17 (5.14%) Validation
17 15 (4.53%) Degree
17 15 (4.53%) Machine Learning

Lead Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Scotland 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 3 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
1 3 (0.91%) Apache Spark
1 3 (0.91%) Confluence
2 1 (0.30%) Cloud Foundry
2 1 (0.30%) SharePoint
Applications
1 7 (2.11%) Simulink
2 1 (0.30%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 3 (0.91%) Teamcenter
2 1 (0.30%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 45 (13.60%) AWS
2 30 (9.06%) Azure
3 11 (3.32%) GCP
4 8 (2.42%) SaaS
5 7 (2.11%) Microsoft 365
6 6 (1.81%) PaaS
7 5 (1.51%) Datadog
7 5 (1.51%) Power Platform
8 4 (1.21%) Amazon Bedrock
8 4 (1.21%) GitHub
9 3 (0.91%) Amazon ECS
9 3 (0.91%) Amazon EKS
9 3 (0.91%) Amazon SageMaker
9 3 (0.91%) dbt
9 3 (0.91%) GitHub Actions
10 2 (0.60%) Azure DevOps
11 1 (0.30%) BlazeMeter
11 1 (0.30%) BrowserStack
11 1 (0.30%) Dynamics 365
11 1 (0.30%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.91%) Internet
2 2 (0.60%) Broadband
3 1 (0.30%) DNS
3 1 (0.30%) Firewall
3 1 (0.30%) Kerberos
3 1 (0.30%) Network Security
3 1 (0.30%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (3.63%) SQL Server Analysis Services
2 5 (1.51%) Tableau
3 4 (1.21%) Power BI
4 3 (0.91%) Metadata
5 2 (0.60%) Amazon Aurora
5 2 (0.60%) Amazon RDS
5 2 (0.60%) Data Lake
5 2 (0.60%) SQL Server
6 1 (0.30%) Azure SQL Database
6 1 (0.30%) DynamoDB
6 1 (0.30%) MariaDB
6 1 (0.30%) MySQL
6 1 (0.30%) PostgreSQL
6 1 (0.30%) RDBMS
6 1 (0.30%) Redis
6 1 (0.30%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 6 (1.81%) Rational DOORS
2 5 (1.51%) JIRA
3 4 (1.21%) GitLab
4 3 (0.91%) Jenkins
5 1 (0.30%) Claude Code
5 1 (0.30%) Cucumber
5 1 (0.30%) Cypress.io
5 1 (0.30%) Flyway
5 1 (0.30%) JMeter
5 1 (0.30%) Liquibase
5 1 (0.30%) Selenium
5 1 (0.30%) SonarQube
General
1 89 (26.89%) Finance
2 34 (10.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 28 (8.46%) Social Skills
4 21 (6.34%) Law
5 19 (5.74%) Marketing
6 13 (3.93%) Aerospace
7 12 (3.63%) Analytical Skills
8 11 (3.32%) Financial Institution
9 10 (3.02%) Banking
10 9 (2.72%) Influencing Skills
10 9 (2.72%) Public Sector
11 8 (2.42%) Games
12 4 (1.21%) Private Banking
13 3 (0.91%) Retail
13 3 (0.91%) Telecoms
14 1 (0.30%) Legal
14 1 (0.30%) Tech for Good
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (2.72%) Terraform
2 8 (2.42%) Jakarta EE
2 8 (2.42%) JSP
2 8 (2.42%) Next.js
2 8 (2.42%) React
3 6 (1.81%) AWS CDK
4 5 (1.51%) .NET
5 4 (1.21%) Hugging Face
5 4 (1.21%) PyTorch
5 4 (1.21%) Unreal Engine
6 3 (0.91%) CrewAI
6 3 (0.91%) Kafka
6 3 (0.91%) LangChain
6 3 (0.91%) LangGraph
6 3 (0.91%) OpenTelemetry
6 3 (0.91%) Ray
6 3 (0.91%) Spring
6 3 (0.91%) Spring Boot
6 3 (0.91%) vLLM
7 2 (0.60%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 28 (8.46%) Cloud Native
2 10 (3.02%) Algorithms
3 9 (2.72%) AI Agents
4 8 (2.42%) Public Cloud
5 6 (1.81%) Enterprise Software
6 5 (1.51%) Management Information System
6 5 (1.51%) Private Cloud
7 4 (1.21%) FPGA
7 4 (1.21%) Verilog
7 4 (1.21%) VHDL
8 3 (0.91%) Data Structures
8 3 (0.91%) Life Science
8 3 (0.91%) Renewable Energy
9 2 (0.60%) Credit Risk
9 2 (0.60%) Cyber Threat
9 2 (0.60%) Cyberattack
9 2 (0.60%) Onboarding
9 2 (0.60%) Product Ownership
10 1 (0.30%) Data Protection Act
10 1 (0.30%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 5 (1.51%) Windows
2 3 (0.91%) Windows Server
3 1 (0.30%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 95 (28.70%) Software Engineering
2 67 (20.24%) Agile
3 57 (17.22%) AI
4 34 (10.27%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 30 (9.06%) DevOps
6 28 (8.46%) CI/CD
6 28 (8.46%) Mentoring
7 26 (7.85%) Analytics
7 26 (7.85%) Decision-Making
7 26 (7.85%) Infrastructure as Code
8 25 (7.55%) Continuous Improvement
9 24 (7.25%) Problem-Solving
9 24 (7.25%) Technical Leadership
10 23 (6.95%) LLM
11 20 (6.04%) Site Reliability Engineering
12 19 (5.74%) Observability
13 18 (5.44%) Data Engineering
13 18 (5.44%) Risk Management
14 17 (5.14%) Stakeholder Management
14 17 (5.14%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 17 (5.14%) JavaScript
2 15 (4.53%) TypeScript
3 14 (4.23%) Java
3 14 (4.23%) Python
4 7 (2.11%) MATLAB
5 4 (1.21%) SystemVerilog
6 2 (0.60%) PowerShell
6 2 (0.60%) SQL
7 1 (0.30%) C#
7 1 (0.30%) Go
7 1 (0.30%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 22 (6.65%) Security Cleared
2 20 (6.04%) BPSS Clearance
3 15 (4.53%) Degree
4 14 (4.23%) DV Cleared
4 14 (4.23%) SC Cleared
5 8 (2.42%) PhD
6 4 (1.21%) Master's Degree
7 3 (0.91%) AWS Certification
7 3 (0.91%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 3 (0.91%) CCA
7 3 (0.91%) Chartered Engineer
8 1 (0.30%) CISA
8 1 (0.30%) CISM
8 1 (0.30%) CISSP
8 1 (0.30%) Computer Science Degree
8 1 (0.30%) CRISC
8 1 (0.30%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
8 1 (0.30%) ITIL Certification
8 1 (0.30%) PgMP
8 1 (0.30%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (5.44%) Accessibility
2 12 (3.63%) QA
3 4 (1.21%) Data Quality
4 3 (0.91%) GRC
5 2 (0.60%) GDPR
6 1 (0.30%) ISO 19650
6 1 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (0.30%) PMO
System Software
1 4 (1.21%) Active Directory
1 4 (1.21%) Firmware
2 3 (0.91%) Docker
3 1 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 12 (3.63%) Kubernetes
2 7 (2.11%) Grafana
2 7 (2.11%) Prometheus
3 5 (1.51%) Microsoft Intune
4 3 (0.91%) Ansible
4 3 (0.91%) Argo
Vendors
1 20 (6.04%) Microsoft
2 7 (2.11%) Siemens
3 5 (1.51%) Alteryx
3 5 (1.51%) Autodesk
3 5 (1.51%) Intel
4 4 (1.21%) Dynatrace
4 4 (1.21%) Google
4 4 (1.21%) Xilinx
5 3 (0.91%) IBM
5 3 (0.91%) NVIDIA
5 3 (0.91%) Splunk
5 3 (0.91%) VMware
6 2 (0.60%) Databricks
6 2 (0.60%) YouTube
7 1 (0.30%) Canon
7 1 (0.30%) F5
7 1 (0.30%) Meraki
7 1 (0.30%) New Relic
7 1 (0.30%) OneTrust
7 1 (0.30%) Tenable