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 9 May 2026.

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

6 months to
9 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 280 384 281
Rank change year-on-year +104 -103 +65
Permanent jobs requiring a Lead Developer 337 137 662
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.51% 0.48% 0.96%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.55% 0.54% 1.02%
Number of salaries quoted 287 119 622
10th Percentile £55,000 £46,250 £48,750
25th Percentile £65,000 £55,625 £55,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £72,500 £67,500 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.41% +3.85% -3.70%
75th Percentile £90,000 £77,500 £78,750
90th Percentile £100,000 £83,750 £90,000
UK median annual salary £82,500 £70,000 £72,500
% change year-on-year +17.86% -3.45% -9.38%

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 61,245 25,370 64,986
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.42% 88.97% 94.73%
Number of salaries quoted 39,864 14,579 47,406
10th Percentile £30,000 £27,750 £26,750
25th Percentile £36,188 £36,250 £35,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £52,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -5.66%
75th Percentile £68,750 £67,500 £63,750
90th Percentile £85,000 £82,500 £77,500
UK median annual salary £55,000 £58,000 £52,777
% change year-on-year -5.17% +9.90% -12.04%

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 9 May 2026.

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 9 May 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
North of England +2 111 £75,000 +7.14% 22
North West +26 85 £70,000 - 11
South East +31 79 £90,000 +33.33% 22
Midlands -9 51 £70,000 +3.70% 9
South West -19 50 £65,000 +8.33%
West Midlands -18 27 £70,000 +3.70% 5
East Midlands -11 24 £70,000 +5.66% 4
East of England +9 22 £60,100 -19.87% 2
Yorkshire -42 16 £75,000 +7.14% 9
Northern Ireland -20 14 £87,500 -
North East -37 10 £67,500 -15.63% 2
Scotland -5 8 £70,000 +38.61% 4
Wales -37 2 £75,000 - 1
Lead Developer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 9 May 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 UK excluding London region featuring Lead Developer in the job title.

1 113 (33.53%) Full-Stack Development
2 78 (23.15%) .NET
3 62 (18.40%) C#
4 58 (17.21%) AWS
5 57 (16.91%) TypeScript
6 55 (16.32%) JavaScript
7 54 (16.02%) Mentoring
8 52 (15.43%) Technical Leadership
9 50 (14.84%) Azure
10 49 (14.54%) Software Engineering
11 47 (13.95%) SaaS
12 44 (13.06%) Node.js
13 41 (12.17%) Agile
14 37 (10.98%) React
15 36 (10.68%) DevOps
16 33 (9.79%) Microservices
17 31 (9.20%) CI/CD
18 30 (8.90%) SQL
19 27 (8.01%) Continuous Improvement
20 26 (7.72%) .NET Core
21 25 (7.42%) Java
21 25 (7.42%) SQL Server
22 24 (7.12%) ASP.NET
22 24 (7.12%) Coaching
23 22 (6.53%) Infrastructure as Code
24 21 (6.23%) AI
24 21 (6.23%) Serverless
25 20 (5.93%) Degree
26 19 (5.64%) AWS Lambda
26 19 (5.64%) Design Patterns

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 5 (1.48%) Appian
2 4 (1.19%) SharePoint
3 3 (0.89%) Confluence
4 2 (0.59%) WordPress
5 1 (0.30%) CMS
Business Applications
1 4 (1.19%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.30%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 58 (17.21%) AWS
2 50 (14.84%) Azure
3 47 (13.95%) SaaS
4 21 (6.23%) Serverless
5 19 (5.64%) AWS Lambda
6 11 (3.26%) Amazon S3
7 9 (2.67%) Amazon ECS
7 9 (2.67%) AWS CloudFormation
8 8 (2.37%) Azure DevOps
9 7 (2.08%) Amazon SQS
10 6 (1.78%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 6 (1.78%) Amazon EventBridge
10 6 (1.78%) Datadog
10 6 (1.78%) Microsoft 365
10 6 (1.78%) Power Platform
11 4 (1.19%) Dynamics 365
12 3 (0.89%) Azure Key Vault
12 3 (0.89%) Figma
12 3 (0.89%) PowerApps
12 3 (0.89%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 2 (0.59%) Broadband
2 1 (0.30%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (7.42%) SQL Server
2 9 (2.67%) DynamoDB
3 6 (1.78%) Amazon RDS
4 5 (1.48%) MongoDB
5 4 (1.19%) Amazon Redshift
5 4 (1.19%) MySQL
5 4 (1.19%) PostgreSQL
6 3 (0.89%) DB2
6 3 (0.89%) Metadata
6 3 (0.89%) Redis
7 2 (0.59%) NoSQL
7 2 (0.59%) Spatial Data
8 1 (0.30%) Azure SQL Database
8 1 (0.30%) Elasticsearch
8 1 (0.30%) Power BI
8 1 (0.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 5 (1.48%) Git
1 5 (1.48%) Maven
2 4 (1.19%) Bitbucket
2 4 (1.19%) JIRA
3 3 (0.89%) Cypress.io
3 3 (0.89%) GitLab
3 3 (0.89%) Jenkins
3 3 (0.89%) NUnit
3 3 (0.89%) SonarQube
4 2 (0.59%) XCUITest
5 1 (0.30%) Cucumber
5 1 (0.30%) JUnit
5 1 (0.30%) Mockito
5 1 (0.30%) Postman
5 1 (0.30%) Selenium
5 1 (0.30%) SpecFlow
5 1 (0.30%) Subversion
General
1 24 (7.12%) Finance
2 11 (3.26%) Analytical Skills
3 7 (2.08%) Social Skills
4 6 (1.78%) Games
4 6 (1.78%) Tech for Good
5 4 (1.19%) Health Technology
5 4 (1.19%) Local Government
5 4 (1.19%) Pharmaceutical
5 4 (1.19%) Public Sector
6 3 (0.89%) Law
7 1 (0.30%) Aerospace
7 1 (0.30%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 78 (23.15%) .NET
2 44 (13.06%) Node.js
3 37 (10.98%) React
4 26 (7.72%) .NET Core
5 24 (7.12%) ASP.NET
6 19 (5.64%) Spring
7 16 (4.75%) AngularJS
8 15 (4.45%) .NET Framework
9 13 (3.86%) Vue
10 11 (3.26%) HTML
10 11 (3.26%) RESTful
11 8 (2.37%) React Native
11 8 (2.37%) Spring Boot
11 8 (2.37%) SwiftUI
12 7 (2.08%) CSS
12 7 (2.08%) Laravel
13 6 (1.78%) Kafka
13 6 (1.78%) OpenTelemetry
14 5 (1.48%) ASP.NET Core
14 5 (1.48%) Jest
Miscellaneous
1 23 (6.82%) Product Ownership
2 14 (4.15%) Mobile App
3 12 (3.56%) Distributed Systems
3 12 (3.56%) Enterprise Software
4 11 (3.26%) Cloud Native
5 9 (2.67%) Legacy Applications
6 7 (2.08%) Greenfield Project
7 4 (1.19%) Credit Risk
8 3 (0.89%) AS400
8 3 (0.89%) iSeries
8 3 (0.89%) Legacy Systems
8 3 (0.89%) Photography
9 2 (0.59%) Acoustics
9 2 (0.59%) AI Agents
9 2 (0.59%) Embedded Systems
10 1 (0.30%) Algorithms
10 1 (0.30%) Cyber Threat
10 1 (0.30%) Cyberattack
10 1 (0.30%) Legacy Code
10 1 (0.30%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 15 (4.45%) Apple iOS
2 7 (2.08%) Android
3 2 (0.59%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 113 (33.53%) Full-Stack Development
2 54 (16.02%) Mentoring
3 52 (15.43%) Technical Leadership
4 49 (14.54%) Software Engineering
5 41 (12.17%) Agile
6 36 (10.68%) DevOps
7 33 (9.79%) Microservices
8 31 (9.20%) CI/CD
9 27 (8.01%) Continuous Improvement
10 24 (7.12%) Coaching
11 22 (6.53%) Infrastructure as Code
12 21 (6.23%) AI
13 19 (5.64%) Design Patterns
14 16 (4.75%) Event-Driven
15 15 (4.45%) Event-Driven Architecture
15 15 (4.45%) Observability
15 15 (4.45%) Problem-Solving
15 15 (4.45%) Web Development
16 14 (4.15%) Architectural Patterns
17 13 (3.86%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 62 (18.40%) C#
2 57 (16.91%) TypeScript
3 55 (16.32%) JavaScript
4 30 (8.90%) SQL
5 25 (7.42%) Java
6 19 (5.64%) Python
7 8 (2.37%) C++
7 8 (2.37%) Swift
8 4 (1.19%) PHP
9 3 (0.89%) Bash
9 3 (0.89%) Bicep
9 3 (0.89%) C
9 3 (0.89%) COBOL
9 3 (0.89%) Kotlin
9 3 (0.89%) RPG
10 2 (0.59%) Groovy
10 2 (0.59%) PowerShell
11 1 (0.30%) Go
11 1 (0.30%) PL/SQL
11 1 (0.30%) R
Qualifications
1 20 (5.93%) Degree
2 9 (2.67%) DBS Check
3 7 (2.08%) Computer Science Degree
4 2 (0.59%) Security Cleared
5 1 (0.30%) AWS Certification
5 1 (0.30%) AWS Certified Developer
5 1 (0.30%) ITIL Certification
5 1 (0.30%) PhD
5 1 (0.30%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (2.67%) QA
2 3 (0.89%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.30%) Data Quality
3 1 (0.30%) GDPR
System Software
1 13 (3.86%) Docker
2 3 (0.89%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 10 (2.97%) Kubernetes
2 9 (2.67%) Terraform
3 3 (0.89%) HP Fortify
4 2 (0.59%) Ansible
5 1 (0.30%) Grafana
5 1 (0.30%) Kibana
5 1 (0.30%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 19 (5.64%) Microsoft
2 6 (1.78%) HubSpot
3 5 (1.48%) Apple
3 5 (1.48%) Salesforce
4 3 (0.89%) DevExpress
5 2 (0.59%) Foundry
6 1 (0.30%) OpenAI
6 1 (0.30%) Oracle
6 1 (0.30%) ServiceNow