Lead Jobs in the UK excluding London

Leader
UK > UK excluding London

The median Leader salary in the UK excluding London is £65,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 12 May 2025.

The table below provides salary benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 30 20 37
Rank change year-on-year -10 +17 +1
Permanent jobs requiring a Lead 2,627 5,961 4,039
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 6.70% 8.40% 6.75%
As % of the Job Titles category 7.40% 8.86% 7.57%
Number of salaries quoted 1,537 4,006 2,687
10th Percentile £42,500 £39,375 £42,500
25th Percentile £53,750 £50,000 £52,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £65,000 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year - - +8.33%
75th Percentile £79,250 £80,000 £78,750
90th Percentile £95,000 £87,500 £93,300
UK median annual salary £72,500 £70,000 £72,500
% change year-on-year +3.57% -3.45% -

All Permanent IT Job Vacancies
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 35,502 67,301 53,387
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 90.58% 94.80% 89.17%
Number of salaries quoted 18,783 47,644 30,431
10th Percentile £27,377 £26,750 £29,750
25th Percentile £37,574 £35,000 £38,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,000 £50,000 £53,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -5.66% +6.00%
75th Percentile £65,000 £63,750 £68,750
90th Percentile £77,500 £76,250 £81,250
UK median annual salary £57,000 £52,500 £60,000
% change year-on-year +8.57% -12.50% -

Lead
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Job postings that featured Lead in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Job vacancy trend for Lead in the UK excluding London

Lead
Salary Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average salary quoted in jobs citing Lead in the UK excluding London.

Salary trend for Lead in the UK excluding London

Lead
Salary Histogram in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution for jobs citing Lead in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 12 May 2025.

Salary histogram for Lead in the UK excluding London

Lead
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 within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 12 May 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 -13 918 £60,000 -14.29% 590
South East +3 734 £67,500 +8.00% 780
North West -6 714 £57,836 -17.38% 364
Midlands -22 365 £60,000 - 275
West Midlands -18 246 £60,000 -7.69% 171
South West -10 211 £70,000 +14.29% 267
Scotland -28 173 £70,000 +10.24% 128
East of England -22 172 £61,500 +2.50% 229
Yorkshire -23 172 £69,509 -0.70% 175
East Midlands -29 119 £60,000 +20.00% 90
Wales -8 53 £67,629 +4.04% 58
North East -30 32 £48,000 -31.67% 56
Northern Ireland -6 2 - - 33
Isle of Man +12 1 £50,000 -7.41% 2
Lead
UK

Lead Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London

For the 6 months to 12 May 2025, Lead job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all permanent job ads across the UK excluding London region featuring Lead in the job title.

1 699 (26.61%) Social Skills
2 666 (25.35%) Agile
3 646 (24.59%) Mentoring
4 608 (23.14%) Degree
5 578 (22.00%) BPSS Clearance
6 510 (19.41%) Problem-Solving
7 481 (18.31%) Roadmaps
8 480 (18.27%) Finance
9 453 (17.24%) Azure
10 449 (17.09%) Coaching
11 393 (14.96%) AWS
12 388 (14.77%) Microsoft
13 359 (13.67%) Software Engineering
14 343 (13.06%) Law
15 338 (12.87%) DevOps
16 337 (12.83%) Systems Engineering
17 325 (12.37%) Continuous Improvement
18 316 (12.03%) Analytics
19 312 (11.88%) Project Management
20 294 (11.19%) Python
21 289 (11.00%) Java
22 283 (10.77%) Analytical Skills
23 277 (10.54%) Stakeholder Management
24 267 (10.16%) JavaScript
25 259 (9.86%) Computer Science
26 251 (9.55%) SQL
27 240 (9.14%) Product Management
28 237 (9.02%) CI/CD
29 234 (8.91%) Technical Leadership
30 223 (8.49%) Manufacturing

Lead Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 61 (2.32%) Confluence
2 57 (2.17%) SharePoint
3 22 (0.84%) Microsoft Exchange
4 14 (0.53%) CMS
5 13 (0.49%) Apache Spark
6 12 (0.46%) Umbraco
7 9 (0.34%) Kinematics
8 8 (0.30%) Apache
8 8 (0.30%) SAS
9 7 (0.27%) IIS
10 6 (0.23%) Apache Airflow
11 5 (0.19%) IBM Domino
12 4 (0.15%) ArcGIS
12 4 (0.15%) nginx
12 4 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
13 3 (0.11%) Apache Solr
14 2 (0.076%) Headless CMS
15 1 (0.038%) DNN
15 1 (0.038%) Sitecore CMS
15 1 (0.038%) SugarCRM
Applications
1 97 (3.69%) Microsoft Office
2 54 (2.06%) Simulink
3 30 (1.14%) Microsoft Excel
4 14 (0.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.27%) Microsoft Project
6 6 (0.23%) Windchill
7 4 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 3 (0.11%) Oracle Smart View
8 3 (0.11%) Sketch
8 3 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
9 2 (0.076%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.076%) Adobe XD
9 2 (0.076%) Moqups
10 1 (0.038%) Chatbot
10 1 (0.038%) OrCAD
10 1 (0.038%) Photoshop
10 1 (0.038%) Trello
Business Applications
1 38 (1.45%) Infor LN
1 38 (1.45%) SAP BPC
2 13 (0.49%) Magento
2 13 (0.49%) Shopify
3 9 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
4 7 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
4 7 (0.27%) SAP S/4HANA
5 6 (0.23%) Oracle Applications
5 6 (0.23%) Teamcenter
6 4 (0.15%) Oracle ERP
6 4 (0.15%) Oracle Financials
7 3 (0.11%) Oracle EBS R12
7 3 (0.11%) Oracle Payables
8 2 (0.076%) BASE24
8 2 (0.076%) Oracle Assets
8 2 (0.076%) Oracle Cash Management
8 2 (0.076%) Oracle General Ledger
8 2 (0.076%) Oracle Payroll
8 2 (0.076%) Oracle Receivables
8 2 (0.076%) SAP Business One
Cloud Services
1 453 (17.24%) Azure
2 393 (14.96%) AWS
3 139 (5.29%) GCP
4 127 (4.83%) SaaS
5 107 (4.07%) Power Platform
6 103 (3.92%) Microsoft 365
7 65 (2.47%) Pulumi
8 56 (2.13%) Serverless
9 55 (2.09%) Snowflake
10 47 (1.79%) Azure DevOps
11 39 (1.48%) Power Automate
12 35 (1.33%) AWS Lambda
13 31 (1.18%) GitHub
13 31 (1.18%) PowerApps
14 28 (1.07%) Amazon SQS
14 28 (1.07%) PaaS
15 24 (0.91%) Azure Data Factory
16 23 (0.88%) AWS CloudFormation
16 23 (0.88%) Entra ID
17 22 (0.84%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 135 (5.14%) Broadband
2 78 (2.97%) Firewall
3 51 (1.94%) Network Security
4 46 (1.75%) TCP/IP
4 46 (1.75%) VPN
5 44 (1.67%) WAN
6 34 (1.29%) Wi-Fi
7 33 (1.26%) LAN
8 31 (1.18%) Internet
9 20 (0.76%) 5G
10 19 (0.72%) Intrusion Detection
11 17 (0.65%) SMTP
12 16 (0.61%) DNS
12 16 (0.61%) SD-WAN
12 16 (0.61%) VLAN
13 14 (0.53%) Bluetooth
13 14 (0.53%) DKIM
13 14 (0.53%) DMARC
14 11 (0.42%) LTE
15 10 (0.38%) FTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 135 (5.14%) NoSQL
2 106 (4.04%) Tableau
3 92 (3.50%) Relational Database
4 90 (3.43%) Power BI
5 77 (2.93%) RDBMS
6 68 (2.59%) Data Lake
7 59 (2.25%) Data Warehouse
8 57 (2.17%) SQL Server
9 55 (2.09%) Big Data
10 47 (1.79%) Metadata
11 41 (1.56%) PostgreSQL
12 39 (1.48%) MongoDB
13 35 (1.33%) BigQuery
14 27 (1.03%) Data Mining
15 24 (0.91%) MySQL
16 16 (0.61%) Elasticsearch
17 12 (0.46%) Looker
18 11 (0.42%) Amazon RDS
18 11 (0.42%) SQL Server Reporting Services
19 8 (0.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 123 (4.68%) JIRA
2 65 (2.47%) Git
2 65 (2.47%) Jaeger
3 55 (2.09%) Jenkins
4 47 (1.79%) Selenium
5 45 (1.71%) Oracle Forms
6 44 (1.67%) Rational DOORS
7 23 (0.88%) GitLab
8 19 (0.72%) Cypress.io
9 16 (0.61%) Maven
10 12 (0.46%) TeamCity
11 11 (0.42%) Postman
12 10 (0.38%) Cucumber
13 9 (0.34%) webpack
14 8 (0.30%) JUnit
14 8 (0.30%) SoapUI
14 8 (0.30%) SonarQube
14 8 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
15 7 (0.27%) Bitbucket
15 7 (0.27%) JMeter
General
1 699 (26.61%) Social Skills
2 480 (18.27%) Finance
3 343 (13.06%) Law
4 283 (10.77%) Analytical Skills
5 223 (8.49%) Manufacturing
6 177 (6.74%) Aerospace
7 153 (5.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 142 (5.41%) Banking
9 111 (4.23%) Electronics
10 94 (3.58%) Influencing Skills
11 91 (3.46%) Retail
12 88 (3.35%) Aeronautics
13 71 (2.70%) Public Sector
14 56 (2.13%) Marketing
15 44 (1.67%) Legal
16 42 (1.60%) Police
17 37 (1.41%) Games
17 37 (1.41%) Organisational Skills
18 34 (1.29%) Presentation Skills
19 26 (0.99%) Multimedia
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 138 (5.25%) React
2 124 (4.72%) .NET
3 68 (2.59%) CSS
3 68 (2.59%) Elastic Stack
4 67 (2.55%) Kafka
4 67 (2.55%) Node.js
5 65 (2.47%) OpenTelemetry
5 65 (2.47%) RESTful
6 59 (2.25%) HTML
7 51 (1.94%) AngularJS
8 36 (1.37%) REST
9 35 (1.33%) .NET Core
10 34 (1.29%) Spring Boot
11 28 (1.07%) OAuth
12 24 (0.91%) Spring
13 23 (0.88%) Laravel
14 22 (0.84%) GraphQL
15 20 (0.76%) Web Services
15 20 (0.76%) XML
16 19 (0.72%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 131 (4.99%) Management Information System
2 118 (4.49%) Product Ownership
3 67 (2.55%) Algorithms
4 56 (2.13%) Cloud Native
4 56 (2.13%) IoT
5 42 (1.60%) Legacy Systems
6 39 (1.48%) SCADA
7 37 (1.41%) Social Media
8 36 (1.37%) Enterprise Software
9 34 (1.29%) Distributed Systems
10 32 (1.22%) Mobile App
10 32 (1.22%) Private Cloud
11 30 (1.14%) Public Cloud
12 25 (0.95%) Client/Server
12 25 (0.95%) Operational Technology
13 24 (0.91%) Driving Licence
14 22 (0.84%) Self-Motivation
15 21 (0.80%) Data Centre
15 21 (0.80%) Onboarding
16 20 (0.76%) Robotics
Operating Systems
1 162 (6.17%) Windows
2 155 (5.90%) Linux
3 92 (3.50%) Unix
4 40 (1.52%) Windows Server
5 25 (0.95%) Windows Vista
6 23 (0.88%) Android
7 17 (0.65%) Apple iOS
8 8 (0.30%) VMS
9 7 (0.27%) Windows 10
10 2 (0.076%) Debian
10 2 (0.076%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 2 (0.076%) Windows Server 2016
10 2 (0.076%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.038%) CentOS
11 1 (0.038%) CoreOS
11 1 (0.038%) Embedded Linux
11 1 (0.038%) Mac OS
11 1 (0.038%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.038%) Windows 7
11 1 (0.038%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 666 (25.35%) Agile
2 646 (24.59%) Mentoring
3 510 (19.41%) Problem-Solving
4 481 (18.31%) Roadmaps
5 449 (17.09%) Coaching
6 359 (13.67%) Software Engineering
7 338 (12.87%) DevOps
8 337 (12.83%) Systems Engineering
9 325 (12.37%) Continuous Improvement
10 316 (12.03%) Analytics
11 312 (11.88%) Project Management
12 277 (10.54%) Stakeholder Management
13 259 (9.86%) Computer Science
14 240 (9.14%) Product Management
15 237 (9.02%) CI/CD
16 234 (8.91%) Technical Leadership
17 215 (8.18%) Business Intelligence
18 194 (7.38%) Line Management
19 191 (7.27%) Containerisation
20 189 (7.19%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 294 (11.19%) Python
2 289 (11.00%) Java
3 267 (10.16%) JavaScript
4 251 (9.55%) SQL
5 210 (7.99%) C#
6 121 (4.61%) Bash
7 103 (3.92%) TypeScript
8 87 (3.31%) Go
9 78 (2.97%) C
10 60 (2.28%) PowerShell
11 56 (2.13%) C++
12 52 (1.98%) MATLAB
13 42 (1.60%) PHP
14 22 (0.84%) Rust
15 21 (0.80%) Ada
16 18 (0.69%) R
17 16 (0.61%) Ruby
18 14 (0.53%) Bicep
19 11 (0.42%) Kotlin
20 10 (0.38%) Scala
Qualifications
1 608 (23.14%) Degree
2 578 (22.00%) BPSS Clearance
3 138 (5.25%) Computer Science Degree
4 116 (4.42%) Security Cleared
5 110 (4.19%) HND
6 81 (3.08%) AWS Certification
7 68 (2.59%) SC Cleared
8 59 (2.25%) HNC
9 44 (1.67%) ACCA
9 44 (1.67%) CIMA
10 32 (1.22%) DV Cleared
10 32 (1.22%) Master's Degree
11 29 (1.10%) DBS Check
12 25 (0.95%) Chartered Engineer
12 25 (0.95%) Six Sigma Green Belt
13 24 (0.91%) CISSP
13 24 (0.91%) PMI Certification
13 24 (0.91%) Six Sigma Black Belt
14 23 (0.88%) PMP
15 20 (0.76%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 102 (3.88%) Data Quality
2 98 (3.73%) QA
3 89 (3.39%) ISO 9001
4 80 (3.05%) AQAP
5 69 (2.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 57 (2.17%) Accessibility
7 52 (1.98%) GDPR
8 49 (1.87%) NIST
9 47 (1.79%) IFRS
10 38 (1.45%) GAAP
11 37 (1.41%) SLA
12 26 (0.99%) PMO
13 25 (0.95%) NCSC
14 24 (0.91%) PCI DSS
15 21 (0.80%) Cyber Essentials
16 15 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
17 13 (0.49%) COBIT
18 10 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
18 10 (0.38%) California Consumer Privacy Act
18 10 (0.38%) Def Stans
System Software
1 183 (6.97%) Docker
2 39 (1.48%) Active Directory
3 36 (1.37%) VMware Infrastructure
4 23 (0.88%) Firmware
5 22 (0.84%) Hyper-V
5 22 (0.84%) Virtual Machines
6 15 (0.57%) vSphere
7 7 (0.27%) Embedded Firmware
8 5 (0.19%) HDFS
9 3 (0.11%) BitLocker
10 2 (0.076%) pfSense
10 2 (0.076%) Virtual Desktop
10 2 (0.076%) VMware NSX
11 1 (0.038%) Postfix
11 1 (0.038%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 189 (7.19%) Kubernetes
2 180 (6.85%) Terraform
3 116 (4.42%) Ansible
4 76 (2.89%) Prometheus
5 68 (2.59%) Argo
6 65 (2.47%) Kustomize
7 31 (1.18%) Puppet
8 16 (0.61%) Progress Chef
9 14 (0.53%) Microsoft Intune
9 14 (0.53%) QRadar
9 14 (0.53%) Single Sign-On
10 12 (0.46%) Grafana
11 10 (0.38%) SCCM
12 6 (0.23%) ArcSight ESM
13 4 (0.15%) Functional Safety
14 3 (0.11%) EMC VPLEX
15 2 (0.076%) cPanel
15 2 (0.076%) Iperf
15 2 (0.076%) Kubeflow
15 2 (0.076%) RSA Archer
Vendors
1 388 (14.77%) Microsoft
2 205 (7.80%) SAP
3 128 (4.87%) Oracle
4 117 (4.45%) Google
5 91 (3.46%) Siemens
6 77 (2.93%) ServiceNow
7 57 (2.17%) VMware
8 50 (1.90%) MathWorks
9 49 (1.87%) Salesforce
10 43 (1.64%) Cognos
11 42 (1.60%) Databricks
12 41 (1.56%) Cisco
13 38 (1.45%) Infor
14 31 (1.18%) Informatica
15 29 (1.10%) IBM
16 23 (0.88%) Splunk
17 22 (0.84%) Concur
18 21 (0.80%) Workday
19 20 (0.76%) OpenAI
19 20 (0.76%) Rockwell