Lead Data Engineer Job Trends

Lead Data Engineer
UK

The median Lead Data Engineer salary in the UK is £90,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 10 October 2026.

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

6 months to
10 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 552 615 610
Rank change year-on-year +63 -5 -38
Permanent jobs requiring a Lead Data Engineer 256 52 142
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.22% 0.11% 0.20%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.23% 0.12% 0.20%
Number of salaries quoted 171 43 131
10th Percentile £70,000 £65,500 £59,098
25th Percentile £80,000 £72,500 £70,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £90,000 £80,000 £90,000
Median % change year-on-year +12.50% -11.11% +5.88%
75th Percentile £100,000 £98,750 £107,500
90th Percentile £105,000 £104,000 £110,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £90,000 £72,750 £80,000
% change year-on-year +23.71% -9.06% +6.67%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies. 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 with a recognized job title 109,405 44,412 69,302
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.66% 89.84% 95.38%
Number of salaries quoted 74,287 25,750 39,695
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,000 £31,250
25th Percentile £40,750 £35,500 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £58,396 £53,688 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +8.77% -2.39% -8.33%
75th Percentile £76,250 £73,750 £75,000
90th Percentile £98,750 £95,000 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £46,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +19.57% -8.00% -4.76%

Lead Data Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Lead Data Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

Lead Data Engineer
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for Lead Data Engineer job vacancies in the UK.

Salary distribution trend for Lead Data Engineer job vacancies in the UK

Lead Data Engineer
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Lead Data Engineer over the 6 months to 10 October 2026.

Salary histogram for Lead Data Engineer in the UK

Lead Data Engineer
Top 16 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Lead Data Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 10 October 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
England +63 241 £90,000 +12.50% 194
UK excluding London -22 130 £90,000 +23.71% 90
London +48 122 £90,000 -5.26% 118
North of England -21 48 £85,000 +21.43% 41
Work from Home -22 48 £90,000 +20.00% 60
Yorkshire -6 32 £82,500 +17.86% 10
South West -47 29 £90,000 - 7
Midlands -24 25 £90,000 +23.71% 6
West Midlands -30 20 £90,000 +38.46% 3
South East -44 13 £90,000 +14.29% 15
North East -62 10 £100,000 +29.03% 6
Scotland +15 6 £100,000 - 17
North West -18 6 £90,000 +5.88% 25
Wales - 6 £95,000 - 2
East Midlands -34 5 - - 3
East of England -34 3 - - 1

Lead Data Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 10 October 2026, Lead Data Engineer 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 featuring Lead Data Engineer in the job title.

1 97 (37.89%) Data Engineering
2 80 (31.25%) Python
3 69 (26.95%) SQL
4 67 (26.17%) Azure
5 59 (23.05%) Data Pipeline
6 52 (20.31%) AI
7 47 (18.36%) Data Quality
8 41 (16.02%) CI/CD
9 40 (15.63%) Data Modelling
10 38 (14.84%) Databricks
11 35 (13.67%) Data Architecture
11 35 (13.67%) DevOps
12 34 (13.28%) ETL
13 33 (12.89%) Agile
13 33 (12.89%) Analytics
13 33 (12.89%) AWS
13 33 (12.89%) Technical Leadership
14 32 (12.50%) Microsoft
15 31 (12.11%) Observability
16 30 (11.72%) Mentoring
17 27 (10.55%) Data Warehouse
17 27 (10.55%) Decision-Making
17 27 (10.55%) Lakehouse
18 26 (10.16%) Apache Spark
18 26 (10.16%) Azure Data Factory
19 25 (9.77%) Data Governance
19 25 (9.77%) Data Science
20 24 (9.38%) Platform Engineering
21 23 (8.98%) GCP
22 22 (8.59%) Apache

Lead Data Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 26 (10.16%) Apache Spark
2 22 (8.59%) Apache
3 16 (6.25%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.39%) Apache Solr
Business Applications
1 1 (0.39%) Academy Revenues and Benefits
Cloud Services
1 67 (26.17%) Azure
2 33 (12.89%) AWS
3 26 (10.16%) Azure Data Factory
4 23 (8.98%) GCP
5 22 (8.59%) SaaS
6 14 (5.47%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 13 (5.08%) Serverless
8 9 (3.52%) Azure DevOps
9 8 (3.13%) Amazon OpenSearch
10 7 (2.73%) Power Platform
11 6 (2.34%) AWS Lambda
11 6 (2.34%) Azure AI
11 6 (2.34%) Azure Databricks
11 6 (2.34%) Azure Functions
11 6 (2.34%) Azure Monitor
11 6 (2.34%) dbt
12 5 (1.95%) Azure Logic Apps
12 5 (1.95%) Snowflake
13 4 (1.56%) Amazon S3
13 4 (1.56%) GitHub
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (10.55%) Data Warehouse
2 18 (7.03%) PostgreSQL
3 15 (5.86%) Data Lake
4 14 (5.47%) NoSQL
5 12 (4.69%) Metadata
6 11 (4.30%) Azure SQL Database
7 10 (3.91%) Spark SQL
8 8 (3.13%) Elasticsearch
8 8 (3.13%) Relational Database
9 7 (2.73%) Power BI
10 6 (2.34%) BigQuery
11 5 (1.95%) MySQL
12 4 (1.56%) Amazon Redshift
12 4 (1.56%) Big Data
12 4 (1.56%) GIS
13 3 (1.17%) Hadoop
13 3 (1.17%) MongoDB
13 3 (1.17%) Redis
14 2 (0.78%) Star Schema
14 2 (0.78%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 9 (3.52%) Git
2 3 (1.17%) Jenkins
3 2 (0.78%) GitLab
General
1 31 (12.11%) Finance
2 18 (7.03%) Social Skills
3 11 (4.30%) Public Sector
4 10 (3.91%) Retail
5 8 (3.13%) Analytical Skills
5 8 (3.13%) Influencing Skills
6 5 (1.95%) Automotive
7 4 (1.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 3 (1.17%) Legal
9 2 (0.78%) Law
9 2 (0.78%) Local Government
10 1 (0.39%) Marketing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (5.86%) Terraform
2 14 (5.47%) PySpark
3 12 (4.69%) Kafka
4 6 (2.34%) ARM Templates
4 6 (2.34%) REST
5 3 (1.17%) Apache NiFi
6 2 (0.78%) JSON
6 2 (0.78%) Spring
6 2 (0.78%) Spring Boot
7 1 (0.39%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 9 (3.52%) Cloud Native
1 9 (3.52%) Product Ownership
2 5 (1.95%) Public Cloud
3 4 (1.56%) Data Structures
3 4 (1.56%) Distributed Computing
4 3 (1.17%) NHS
5 2 (0.78%) Analytical Mindset
5 2 (0.78%) Blog
6 1 (0.39%) AI Agents
6 1 (0.39%) Culture of Ownership
6 1 (0.39%) Distributed Systems
6 1 (0.39%) Freedom of Information
6 1 (0.39%) Hedge funds
6 1 (0.39%) Legacy Systems
6 1 (0.39%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 2 (0.78%) Linux
1 2 (0.78%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 97 (37.89%) Data Engineering
2 59 (23.05%) Data Pipeline
3 52 (20.31%) AI
4 41 (16.02%) CI/CD
5 40 (15.63%) Data Modelling
6 35 (13.67%) Data Architecture
6 35 (13.67%) DevOps
7 34 (13.28%) ETL
8 33 (12.89%) Agile
8 33 (12.89%) Analytics
8 33 (12.89%) Technical Leadership
9 31 (12.11%) Observability
10 30 (11.72%) Mentoring
11 27 (10.55%) Decision-Making
11 27 (10.55%) Lakehouse
12 25 (9.77%) Data Governance
12 25 (9.77%) Data Science
13 24 (9.38%) Platform Engineering
14 22 (8.59%) Data Ingestion
15 20 (7.81%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 80 (31.25%) Python
2 69 (26.95%) SQL
3 8 (3.13%) Java
4 5 (1.95%) Scala
5 4 (1.56%) T-SQL
6 3 (1.17%) Groovy
7 2 (0.78%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 15 (5.86%) Security Cleared
2 12 (4.69%) SC Cleared
3 8 (3.13%) Degree
4 7 (2.73%) DV Cleared
5 6 (2.34%) Computer Science Degree
5 6 (2.34%) Microsoft Certification
6 2 (0.78%) Azure Certification
7 1 (0.39%) AWS Certification
7 1 (0.39%) BPSS Clearance
7 1 (0.39%) CREST Certified
7 1 (0.39%) Master's Degree
7 1 (0.39%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 47 (18.36%) Data Quality
2 7 (2.73%) GDPR
3 3 (1.17%) SLA
4 1 (0.39%) Accessibility
4 1 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials
4 1 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
4 1 (0.39%) IASME
4 1 (0.39%) ISO 9001
4 1 (0.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 2 (0.78%) Docker
Systems Management
1 3 (1.17%) Ansible
1 3 (1.17%) Packer
Vendors
1 38 (14.84%) Databricks
2 32 (12.50%) Microsoft
3 7 (2.73%) Workday
4 5 (1.95%) Google
5 1 (0.39%) Ab Initio
5 1 (0.39%) Actian
5 1 (0.39%) Informatica
5 1 (0.39%) YouTube