Hybrid/Remote Lead Data Engineer Contract Job Trends

Lead Data Engineer
UK > Work from Home

The median Lead Data Engineer daily rate for remote or hybrid work is £550, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 19 September 2025.

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

6 months to
19 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 300 318 391
Rank change year-on-year +18 +73 +186
Contract jobs requiring a Lead Data Engineer 8 14 26
As % of all contract jobs with a WFH option 0.081% 0.11% 0.13%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.087% 0.12% 0.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 6 13 21
10th Percentile £481 £470 £550
25th Percentile £516 £506 £613
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £650
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% -7.69% +8.33%
75th Percentile £594 £625 £750
90th Percentile £638 £770 £850
UK median daily rate £550 £600 £650
% change year-on-year -8.33% -7.69% +1.56%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
Work from Home

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies with WFH or hybrid options. 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 Work from Home with a recognized job title 9,210 11,890 19,123
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 93.80% 93.47% 94.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,076 7,604 13,506
10th Percentile £325 £325 £338
25th Percentile £413 £420 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £745
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 292 296 442
10th Percentile £13.30 £19.59 £16.98
25th Percentile £20.50 £31.25 £25.71
Median hourly rate £40.50 £45.00 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% -10.00% +3.63%
75th Percentile £65.00 £67.14 £68.75
90th Percentile £68.00 £75.00 £79.19
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -41.51% -3.37% +71.15%

Lead Data Engineer
Trend for Jobs with a WFH Option

Job vacancies with remote working options which featured Lead Data Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Lead Data Engineer trend for jobs with Hybrid/Remote/WFH options

Lead Data Engineer
Daily Rate Trend for Jobs with Hybrid Work Options

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for remote Lead Data Engineer job vacancies.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for remote Lead Data Engineer job vacancies

Lead Data Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram for Jobs with a WFH Option

Daily rate distribution for jobs with remote working options citing Lead Data Engineer over the 6 months to 19 September 2025.

Lead Data Engineer daily rate histogram for jobs with a WFH option

Lead Data Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in Job Vacancies with WFH Options

For the 6 months to 19 September 2025, Lead Data Engineer contract 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 contract jobs with hybrid or remote work options featuring Lead Data Engineer in the job title.

1 7 (87.50%) Data Engineering
2 6 (75.00%) SQL
3 5 (62.50%) Python
3 5 (62.50%) Analytics
4 4 (50.00%) Azure
4 4 (50.00%) AWS
4 4 (50.00%) Data Modelling
4 4 (50.00%) Azure Data Factory
4 4 (50.00%) Databricks
4 4 (50.00%) Data Pipeline
5 3 (37.50%) Social Skills
5 3 (37.50%) CI/CD
5 3 (37.50%) ETL
5 3 (37.50%) Microsoft
5 3 (37.50%) Migration
5 3 (37.50%) Data Integration
6 2 (25.00%) Data Architecture
6 2 (25.00%) Artificial Intelligence
6 2 (25.00%) Oracle
6 2 (25.00%) Master Data Management
6 2 (25.00%) Scala
6 2 (25.00%) DevOps
6 2 (25.00%) Data Ingestion
6 2 (25.00%) Data Lake
6 2 (25.00%) Analytical Skills
6 2 (25.00%) Snowflake
6 2 (25.00%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 2 (25.00%) Apache Airflow
7 1 (12.50%) Workday
7 1 (12.50%) GDPR

Lead Data Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities with WFH Options 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 2 (25.00%) Apache Airflow
Business Applications
1 1 (12.50%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 4 (50.00%) AWS
1 4 (50.00%) Azure
1 4 (50.00%) Azure Data Factory
2 2 (25.00%) Azure Synapse Analytics
2 2 (25.00%) Snowflake
3 1 (12.50%) Amazon Kinesis
3 1 (12.50%) Dagster
3 1 (12.50%) dbt
3 1 (12.50%) Dynamics 365
3 1 (12.50%) GCP
3 1 (12.50%) GitHub
3 1 (12.50%) GitHub Actions
3 1 (12.50%) Microsoft Purview
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (25.00%) Data Lake
2 1 (12.50%) Azure SQL Database
2 1 (12.50%) BigQuery
2 1 (12.50%) Data Warehouse
2 1 (12.50%) MySQL
2 1 (12.50%) PostgreSQL
2 1 (12.50%) Relational Database
2 1 (12.50%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 1 (12.50%) Git
General
1 3 (37.50%) Social Skills
2 2 (25.00%) Analytical Skills
3 1 (12.50%) Finance
3 1 (12.50%) Legal
3 1 (12.50%) Presentation Skills
3 1 (12.50%) Public Sector
3 1 (12.50%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (12.50%) Jinja
1 1 (12.50%) Kafka
1 1 (12.50%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 1 (12.50%) Cloud Native
1 1 (12.50%) Data Structures
1 1 (12.50%) Enterprise Software
Processes & Methodologies
1 7 (87.50%) Data Engineering
2 5 (62.50%) Analytics
3 4 (50.00%) Data Modelling
3 4 (50.00%) Data Pipeline
4 3 (37.50%) CI/CD
4 3 (37.50%) Data Integration
4 3 (37.50%) ETL
4 3 (37.50%) Migration
5 2 (25.00%) Artificial Intelligence
5 2 (25.00%) Data Architecture
5 2 (25.00%) Data Ingestion
5 2 (25.00%) DevOps
5 2 (25.00%) Master Data Management
6 1 (12.50%) Data Deduplication
6 1 (12.50%) Data Science
6 1 (12.50%) Data-Driven Decision Making
6 1 (12.50%) Decision-Making
6 1 (12.50%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1 (12.50%) Problem-Solving
6 1 (12.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 6 (75.00%) SQL
2 5 (62.50%) Python
3 2 (25.00%) Scala
4 1 (12.50%) Java
Qualifications
1 1 (12.50%) Computer Science Degree
1 1 (12.50%) Degree
1 1 (12.50%) SC Cleared
1 1 (12.50%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (12.50%) GDPR
1 1 (12.50%) HIPAA
1 1 (12.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
Systems Management
1 1 (12.50%) Terraform
Vendors
1 4 (50.00%) Databricks
2 3 (37.50%) Microsoft
3 2 (25.00%) Oracle
4 1 (12.50%) Salesforce
4 1 (12.50%) SAP
4 1 (12.50%) ServiceNow
4 1 (12.50%) Workday