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 £72,500 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 29 December 2025.

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

6 months to
29 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 328 303 323
Rank change year-on-year -25 +20 -50
Permanent jobs requiring a Lead Developer 198 301 242
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.47% 0.81% 0.78%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.52% 0.86% 0.82%
Number of salaries quoted 169 229 214
10th Percentile £55,000 £38,750 £54,125
25th Percentile £65,000 £47,000 £61,313
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £72,500 £65,000 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year +11.54% -7.14% -
75th Percentile £80,000 £74,000 £80,000
90th Percentile £90,000 £80,000 £86,250
UK median annual salary £76,000 £67,500 £80,000
% change year-on-year +12.59% -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 38,047 34,909 29,415
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 90.35% 93.37% 95.30%
Number of salaries quoted 23,097 17,390 22,253
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 29 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 29 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 -18 72 £70,000 +27.56% 61
South East +25 42 £87,500 +19.86% 75
Midlands +10 38 £74,500 +56.84% 38
North West -8 36 £70,000 +27.27% 28
West Midlands +11 31 £74,000 +57.45% 17
Yorkshire +8 30 £76,250 +62.23% 27
South West -1 25 £70,000 +48.94% 39
East of England +21 9 £71,250 -25.00% 44
Wales -7 7 £75,000 +11.11% 7
East Midlands -8 7 £75,000 +11.11% 20
North East +9 6 £68,500 +5.38% 6
Scotland -1 4 £60,000 -7.69% 5
Northern Ireland -16 1 £95,000 +22.58% 1
Lead Developer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 29 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 66 (33.33%) Azure
2 54 (27.27%) AWS
3 52 (26.26%) .NET
3 52 (26.26%) Mentoring
4 47 (23.74%) C#
5 45 (22.73%) Technical Leadership
6 44 (22.22%) Agile
7 31 (15.66%) Full-Stack Development
7 31 (15.66%) React
7 31 (15.66%) Software Engineering
8 30 (15.15%) SaaS
9 28 (14.14%) Continuous Improvement
9 28 (14.14%) Microservices
10 25 (12.63%) CI/CD
11 24 (12.12%) DevOps
11 24 (12.12%) Python
12 23 (11.62%) Roadmaps
13 21 (10.61%) Java
13 21 (10.61%) Microsoft
14 20 (10.10%) AI
14 20 (10.10%) JavaScript
14 20 (10.10%) TypeScript
15 19 (9.60%) SQL Server
16 18 (9.09%) MongoDB
16 18 (9.09%) Problem-Solving
17 17 (8.59%) .NET Framework
17 17 (8.59%) Clean Code
17 17 (8.59%) SQL
18 16 (8.08%) Design Patterns
19 14 (7.07%) Apple iOS

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 (1.01%) WordPress
Business Applications
1 9 (4.55%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.51%) Magento
2 1 (0.51%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.51%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 66 (33.33%) Azure
2 54 (27.27%) AWS
3 30 (15.15%) SaaS
4 14 (7.07%) Power Platform
5 13 (6.57%) Serverless
6 11 (5.56%) GCP
7 10 (5.05%) Dynamics 365
8 9 (4.55%) Azure DevOps
8 9 (4.55%) PowerApps
9 7 (3.54%) Amazon S3
9 7 (3.54%) AWS Lambda
10 5 (2.53%) Microsoft 365
11 4 (2.02%) GitHub
12 3 (1.52%) Amazon ECR
12 3 (1.52%) Amazon ECS
12 3 (1.52%) Apigee
12 3 (1.52%) AWS CloudFormation
12 3 (1.52%) AWS Step Functions
12 3 (1.52%) Azure Service Bus
12 3 (1.52%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.01%) Network Security
2 1 (0.51%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (9.60%) SQL Server
2 18 (9.09%) MongoDB
3 12 (6.06%) MySQL
3 12 (6.06%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (4.04%) NoSQL
5 3 (1.52%) DynamoDB
6 2 (1.01%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.51%) Amazon Redshift
7 1 (0.51%) Azure SQL Database
7 1 (0.51%) ClickHouse
7 1 (0.51%) Redis
Development Applications
1 7 (3.54%) Git
2 4 (2.02%) SonarQube
3 3 (1.52%) Cypress.io
3 3 (1.52%) GitLab
3 3 (1.52%) Jenkins
3 3 (1.52%) Maven
3 3 (1.52%) Xcode
4 2 (1.01%) Subversion
4 2 (1.01%) Visual Studio
5 1 (0.51%) Cucumber
5 1 (0.51%) Selenium
5 1 (0.51%) Storybook
5 1 (0.51%) XCUITest
General
1 18 (9.09%) Social Skills
2 10 (5.05%) Marketing
2 10 (5.05%) Public Sector
3 9 (4.55%) Retail
4 7 (3.54%) Analytical Skills
5 6 (3.03%) Tech for Good
6 4 (2.02%) Finance
6 4 (2.02%) Games
7 3 (1.52%) Electronics
7 3 (1.52%) Organisational Skills
8 2 (1.01%) Aerospace
8 2 (1.01%) Health Technology
8 2 (1.01%) Military
9 1 (0.51%) Automotive
9 1 (0.51%) Local Government
9 1 (0.51%) Pharmaceutical
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 52 (26.26%) .NET
2 31 (15.66%) React
3 17 (8.59%) .NET Framework
4 13 (6.57%) RESTful
5 12 (6.06%) .NET Core
6 10 (5.05%) ASP.NET
7 9 (4.55%) HTML
8 8 (4.04%) AngularJS
8 8 (4.04%) Node.js
8 8 (4.04%) Spring
8 8 (4.04%) Spring Boot
9 6 (3.03%) CSS
9 6 (3.03%) Laravel
10 5 (2.53%) Next.js
10 5 (2.53%) React Native
10 5 (2.53%) Vue
11 4 (2.02%) FastAPI
11 4 (2.02%) Jest
11 4 (2.02%) REST
11 4 (2.02%) SwiftUI
Miscellaneous
1 13 (6.57%) Product Ownership
2 11 (5.56%) Distributed Systems
3 9 (4.55%) Marketing Technology
3 9 (4.55%) Mobile App
4 8 (4.04%) Greenfield Project
5 5 (2.53%) AI Agents
5 5 (2.53%) Clustering
5 5 (2.53%) Enterprise Software
5 5 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
6 4 (2.02%) Cloud Native
7 2 (1.01%) Data Structures
7 2 (1.01%) Sports Betting
8 1 (0.51%) Animation
8 1 (0.51%) Credit Risk
8 1 (0.51%) Mainframe
8 1 (0.51%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 14 (7.07%) Apple iOS
2 7 (3.54%) Android
3 2 (1.01%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 52 (26.26%) Mentoring
2 45 (22.73%) Technical Leadership
3 44 (22.22%) Agile
4 31 (15.66%) Full-Stack Development
4 31 (15.66%) Software Engineering
5 28 (14.14%) Continuous Improvement
5 28 (14.14%) Microservices
6 25 (12.63%) CI/CD
7 24 (12.12%) DevOps
8 23 (11.62%) Roadmaps
9 20 (10.10%) AI
10 18 (9.09%) Problem-Solving
11 17 (8.59%) Clean Code
12 16 (8.08%) Design Patterns
13 13 (6.57%) Technology Roadmap
14 12 (6.06%) Coaching
14 12 (6.06%) E-Commerce
15 11 (5.56%) Containerisation
15 11 (5.56%) Front End Development
15 11 (5.56%) iOS Development
Programming Languages
1 47 (23.74%) C#
2 24 (12.12%) Python
3 21 (10.61%) Java
4 20 (10.10%) JavaScript
4 20 (10.10%) TypeScript
5 17 (8.59%) SQL
6 8 (4.04%) PHP
7 6 (3.03%) Scala
8 5 (2.53%) Swift
9 4 (2.02%) C++
10 3 (1.52%) Go
11 2 (1.01%) Bash
11 2 (1.01%) C
11 2 (1.01%) Groovy
11 2 (1.01%) Kotlin
12 1 (0.51%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 8 (4.04%) Degree
2 5 (2.53%) Security Cleared
3 3 (1.52%) SC Cleared
4 2 (1.01%) PhD
5 1 (0.51%) AWS Certification
5 1 (0.51%) AWS Certified Developer
5 1 (0.51%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (6.06%) QA
2 5 (2.53%) Accessibility
System Software
1 14 (7.07%) Docker
2 2 (1.01%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 6 (3.03%) Terraform
2 5 (2.53%) Kubernetes
3 3 (1.52%) HP Fortify
4 2 (1.01%) Ansible
Vendors
1 21 (10.61%) Microsoft
2 2 (1.01%) Oracle
3 1 (0.51%) Adobe
3 1 (0.51%) Apple
3 1 (0.51%) Foundry
3 1 (0.51%) Salesforce