Lead Developer Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Lead Developer
UK > UK excluding London

The median Lead Developer salary in the UK excluding London is £74,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 31 December 2025.

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

6 months to
31 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 323 298 319
Rank change year-on-year -25 +21 -52
Permanent jobs requiring a Lead Developer 200 301 239
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.48% 0.80% 0.78%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.53% 0.86% 0.82%
Number of salaries quoted 171 229 211
10th Percentile £55,000 £38,750 £53,750
25th Percentile £65,000 £47,000 £61,375
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £74,000 £65,000 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year +13.85% -7.14% -
75th Percentile £80,000 £73,750 £80,625
90th Percentile £90,000 £80,000 £86,250
UK median annual salary £76,250 £67,500 £80,000
% change year-on-year +12.96% -15.63% -

All Permanent IT Job Roles
UK excluding London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies in the UK excluding 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 the UK excluding London with a recognized job title 37,904 34,869 29,181
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 90.34% 93.17% 95.28%
Number of salaries quoted 22,945 17,378 22,098
10th Percentile £28,000 £31,250 £28,000
25th Percentile £34,750 £40,000 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £52,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £65,000 £68,750 £66,250
90th Percentile £80,000 £82,500 £80,000
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -

Lead Developer
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding 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 the UK excluding London.

Lead Developer job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Lead Developer
Salary Trend in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution trend for Lead Developer job vacancies in the UK excluding London.

Salary distribution trend for Lead Developer job vacancies in the UK excluding London

Lead Developer
Salary Histogram in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution for jobs citing Lead Developer in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 31 December 2025.

Salary histogram for Lead Developer in the UK excluding London

Lead Developer
Job Locations in the UK excluding 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 UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 31 December 2025. 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
North of England -11 71 £70,000 +27.56% 94
South East +22 44 £87,500 +19.86% 96
Midlands +17 40 £75,000 +57.89% 65
North West -5 37 £70,000 +27.27% 48
West Midlands +18 31 £74,000 +57.45% 32
Yorkshire +5 28 £77,500 +64.89% 36
South West -2 25 £70,000 +48.94% 49
East of England +13 9 £71,250 -25.00% 53
East Midlands -5 9 £75,000 +11.11% 30
North East +6 6 £68,500 +5.38% 10
Wales -1 6 £75,000 +11.11% 9
Scotland -2 4 £60,000 -7.69% 14
Northern Ireland -12 1 £95,000 +22.58% 5
Lead Developer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 31 December 2025, 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 UK excluding London region featuring Lead Developer in the job title.

1 65 (32.50%) Azure
2 55 (27.50%) AWS
3 52 (26.00%) .NET
3 52 (26.00%) Mentoring
4 47 (23.50%) C#
5 46 (23.00%) Technical Leadership
6 44 (22.00%) Agile
7 33 (16.50%) Full-Stack Development
7 33 (16.50%) React
8 32 (16.00%) Software Engineering
9 30 (15.00%) SaaS
10 29 (14.50%) Continuous Improvement
11 27 (13.50%) Microservices
12 26 (13.00%) CI/CD
12 26 (13.00%) Python
13 24 (12.00%) DevOps
13 24 (12.00%) Roadmaps
14 21 (10.50%) AI
14 21 (10.50%) JavaScript
15 20 (10.00%) Java
15 20 (10.00%) Microsoft
15 20 (10.00%) Problem-Solving
15 20 (10.00%) TypeScript
16 19 (9.50%) SQL Server
17 18 (9.00%) SQL
18 17 (8.50%) .NET Framework
18 17 (8.50%) MongoDB
19 16 (8.00%) Clean Code
19 16 (8.00%) Design Patterns
19 16 (8.00%) Serverless

Lead Developer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding 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 2 (1.00%) WordPress
Business Applications
1 9 (4.50%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.50%) Magento
2 1 (0.50%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.50%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 65 (32.50%) Azure
2 55 (27.50%) AWS
3 30 (15.00%) SaaS
4 16 (8.00%) Serverless
5 14 (7.00%) Power Platform
6 11 (5.50%) GCP
7 10 (5.00%) Azure DevOps
7 10 (5.00%) Dynamics 365
8 9 (4.50%) Amazon S3
8 9 (4.50%) AWS Lambda
8 9 (4.50%) PowerApps
9 5 (2.50%) Microsoft 365
10 4 (2.00%) Azure Service Bus
10 4 (2.00%) GitHub
11 3 (1.50%) Amazon ECR
11 3 (1.50%) Amazon ECS
11 3 (1.50%) Apigee
11 3 (1.50%) AWS CloudFormation
11 3 (1.50%) AWS Step Functions
11 3 (1.50%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.00%) Network Security
2 1 (0.50%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (9.50%) SQL Server
2 17 (8.50%) MongoDB
3 12 (6.00%) MySQL
4 11 (5.50%) PostgreSQL
5 7 (3.50%) NoSQL
6 3 (1.50%) DynamoDB
7 2 (1.00%) Amazon Redshift
7 2 (1.00%) Oracle Database
8 1 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
8 1 (0.50%) ClickHouse
8 1 (0.50%) Redis
Development Applications
1 7 (3.50%) Git
2 4 (2.00%) SonarQube
3 3 (1.50%) Cypress.io
3 3 (1.50%) GitLab
3 3 (1.50%) Jenkins
3 3 (1.50%) Maven
3 3 (1.50%) Xcode
4 2 (1.00%) Subversion
4 2 (1.00%) Visual Studio
5 1 (0.50%) Cucumber
5 1 (0.50%) Selenium
5 1 (0.50%) Storybook
5 1 (0.50%) XCUITest
General
1 18 (9.00%) Social Skills
2 10 (5.00%) Marketing
2 10 (5.00%) Public Sector
3 9 (4.50%) Retail
4 8 (4.00%) Analytical Skills
5 6 (3.00%) Tech for Good
6 4 (2.00%) Finance
6 4 (2.00%) Games
7 3 (1.50%) Electronics
7 3 (1.50%) Organisational Skills
8 2 (1.00%) Aerospace
8 2 (1.00%) Health Technology
8 2 (1.00%) Local Government
8 2 (1.00%) Military
9 1 (0.50%) Automotive
9 1 (0.50%) Pharmaceutical
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 52 (26.00%) .NET
2 33 (16.50%) React
3 17 (8.50%) .NET Framework
4 13 (6.50%) RESTful
5 12 (6.00%) .NET Core
6 11 (5.50%) HTML
7 10 (5.00%) ASP.NET
8 9 (4.50%) Node.js
9 8 (4.00%) AngularJS
9 8 (4.00%) Spring
9 8 (4.00%) Spring Boot
10 7 (3.50%) CSS
11 6 (3.00%) Laravel
12 5 (2.50%) Next.js
12 5 (2.50%) React Native
12 5 (2.50%) Vue
13 4 (2.00%) FastAPI
13 4 (2.00%) Flask
13 4 (2.00%) Jest
13 4 (2.00%) SwiftUI
Miscellaneous
1 13 (6.50%) Product Ownership
2 11 (5.50%) Distributed Systems
3 9 (4.50%) Marketing Technology
3 9 (4.50%) Mobile App
4 8 (4.00%) Greenfield Project
5 5 (2.50%) AI Agents
5 5 (2.50%) Clustering
5 5 (2.50%) Enterprise Software
5 5 (2.50%) Legacy Systems
6 3 (1.50%) Cloud Native
7 2 (1.00%) Data Structures
7 2 (1.00%) Sports Betting
8 1 (0.50%) Animation
8 1 (0.50%) Credit Risk
8 1 (0.50%) Mainframe
8 1 (0.50%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 14 (7.00%) Apple iOS
2 7 (3.50%) Android
3 2 (1.00%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 52 (26.00%) Mentoring
2 46 (23.00%) Technical Leadership
3 44 (22.00%) Agile
4 33 (16.50%) Full-Stack Development
5 32 (16.00%) Software Engineering
6 29 (14.50%) Continuous Improvement
7 27 (13.50%) Microservices
8 26 (13.00%) CI/CD
9 24 (12.00%) DevOps
9 24 (12.00%) Roadmaps
10 21 (10.50%) AI
11 20 (10.00%) Problem-Solving
12 16 (8.00%) Clean Code
12 16 (8.00%) Design Patterns
13 13 (6.50%) Coaching
13 13 (6.50%) Technology Roadmap
14 12 (6.00%) E-Commerce
15 11 (5.50%) Containerisation
15 11 (5.50%) iOS Development
16 10 (5.00%) Architectural Patterns
Programming Languages
1 47 (23.50%) C#
2 26 (13.00%) Python
3 21 (10.50%) JavaScript
4 20 (10.00%) Java
4 20 (10.00%) TypeScript
5 18 (9.00%) SQL
6 8 (4.00%) PHP
7 6 (3.00%) Scala
8 5 (2.50%) Swift
9 4 (2.00%) C++
10 3 (1.50%) Go
11 2 (1.00%) Bash
11 2 (1.00%) C
11 2 (1.00%) Groovy
11 2 (1.00%) Kotlin
12 1 (0.50%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 9 (4.50%) Degree
2 4 (2.00%) Security Cleared
3 2 (1.00%) Computer Science Degree
3 2 (1.00%) PhD
3 2 (1.00%) SC Cleared
4 1 (0.50%) AWS Certification
4 1 (0.50%) AWS Certified Developer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (5.50%) QA
2 5 (2.50%) Accessibility
System Software
1 14 (7.00%) Docker
2 2 (1.00%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 6 (3.00%) Terraform
2 5 (2.50%) Kubernetes
3 3 (1.50%) HP Fortify
4 2 (1.00%) Ansible
Vendors
1 20 (10.00%) Microsoft
2 2 (1.00%) Oracle
3 1 (0.50%) Adobe
3 1 (0.50%) Apple
3 1 (0.50%) Foundry
3 1 (0.50%) Salesforce