Lead Data Engineer Contract Job Trends in the North of England

Lead Data Engineer
England > North of England

The median Lead Data Engineer daily rate in the North of England is £550, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 3 February 2026.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 214 156 184
Rank change year-on-year -58 +28 +49
Contract jobs requiring a Lead Data Engineer 5 5 3
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 0.099% 0.15% 0.059%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.11% 0.16% 0.064%
Number of daily rates quoted 4 4 2
10th Percentile - £533 £479
25th Percentile - £544 £499
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £539
Median % change year-on-year - +2.14% -13.15%
75th Percentile £572 £609 £572
90th Percentile £611 £671 £589
England median daily rate £575 £600 £580
% change year-on-year -4.17% +3.45% -9.90%

All Contract IT Job Roles
North of England

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the North of England. 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 contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the North of England with a recognized job title 4,647 3,070 4,717
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.87% 92.33% 93.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,064 1,811 3,057
10th Percentile £213 £231 £263
25th Percentile £369 £363 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £468 £465 £487
Median % change year-on-year +0.65% -4.52% -2.60%
75th Percentile £550 £572 £583
90th Percentile £650 £656 £672
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 279 138 354
10th Percentile £15.90 £15.22 £11.77
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.58 £13.50
Median hourly rate £41.94 £27.13 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +54.62% +29.17% -17.34%
75th Percentile £57.50 £42.25 £46.18
90th Percentile £72.80 £69.79 £56.99
England median hourly rate £30.00 £35.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -14.29% - -

Lead Data Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the North of England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Lead Data Engineer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England.

Lead Data Engineer job vacancy trend in the North of England

Lead Data Engineer
Daily Rate Trend in the North of England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Lead Data Engineer job vacancies in the North of England.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Lead Data Engineer job vacancies in the North of England

Lead Data Engineer
Contract Job Locations in the North of England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Lead Data Engineer within the North of England region over the 6 months to 3 February 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
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
North East -13 2 £588 +6.82%
North West -33 2 £550 - 3
Yorkshire - 1 - - 4
Lead Data Engineer
England

Lead Data Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North of England

For the 6 months to 3 February 2026, Lead Data Engineer contract 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 contract job ads across the North of England region featuring Lead Data Engineer in the job title.

1 5 (100.00%) Data Engineering
2 3 (60.00%) Agile
2 3 (60.00%) Business Intelligence
2 3 (60.00%) Databricks
2 3 (60.00%) Python
2 3 (60.00%) SC Cleared
2 3 (60.00%) Security Cleared
2 3 (60.00%) Technical Leadership
3 2 (40.00%) Azure
3 2 (40.00%) CI/CD
3 2 (40.00%) Continuous Improvement
3 2 (40.00%) DevOps
3 2 (40.00%) Git
3 2 (40.00%) Mentoring
3 2 (40.00%) Power BI
3 2 (40.00%) Power Platform
3 2 (40.00%) PySpark
3 2 (40.00%) SQL
3 2 (40.00%) Terraform
4 1 (20.00%) Amazon Athena
4 1 (20.00%) Amazon EMR
4 1 (20.00%) Amazon Redshift
4 1 (20.00%) Amazon S3
4 1 (20.00%) Analytics
4 1 (20.00%) Apache
4 1 (20.00%) Apache Spark
4 1 (20.00%) AWS
4 1 (20.00%) AWS Step Functions
4 1 (20.00%) Azure Data Factory
4 1 (20.00%) Azure DevOps

Lead Data Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North of England 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 1 (20.00%) Apache
1 1 (20.00%) Apache Spark
Cloud Services
1 2 (40.00%) Azure
1 2 (40.00%) Power Platform
2 1 (20.00%) Amazon EMR
2 1 (20.00%) Amazon S3
2 1 (20.00%) AWS
2 1 (20.00%) AWS Step Functions
2 1 (20.00%) Azure Data Factory
2 1 (20.00%) Azure DevOps
2 1 (20.00%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (40.00%) Power BI
2 1 (20.00%) Amazon Athena
2 1 (20.00%) Amazon Redshift
2 1 (20.00%) Big Data
2 1 (20.00%) Data Lake
2 1 (20.00%) Delta Lake
2 1 (20.00%) Hadoop
2 1 (20.00%) Parquet
2 1 (20.00%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 2 (40.00%) Git
General
1 1 (20.00%) Analytical Skills
1 1 (20.00%) Finance
1 1 (20.00%) Public Sector
1 1 (20.00%) Social Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (40.00%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 1 (20.00%) Legacy Systems
1 1 (20.00%) Product Ownership
Processes & Methodologies
1 5 (100.00%) Data Engineering
2 3 (60.00%) Agile
2 3 (60.00%) Business Intelligence
2 3 (60.00%) Technical Leadership
3 2 (40.00%) CI/CD
3 2 (40.00%) Continuous Improvement
3 2 (40.00%) DevOps
3 2 (40.00%) Mentoring
4 1 (20.00%) Analytics
4 1 (20.00%) Data Analysis
4 1 (20.00%) Data Architecture
4 1 (20.00%) Data Governance
4 1 (20.00%) Data Pipeline
4 1 (20.00%) DataOps
4 1 (20.00%) Digital Transformation Programme
4 1 (20.00%) Information Security
4 1 (20.00%) Infrastructure as Code
4 1 (20.00%) Kalman Filter
4 1 (20.00%) MLOps
4 1 (20.00%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 3 (60.00%) Python
2 2 (40.00%) SQL
3 1 (20.00%) Bicep
3 1 (20.00%) Java
Qualifications
1 3 (60.00%) SC Cleared
1 3 (60.00%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (20.00%) Data Quality
1 1 (20.00%) GDPR
1 1 (20.00%) NCSC
Systems Management
1 2 (40.00%) Terraform
Vendors
1 3 (60.00%) Databricks