Maintenance Engineer Salaries in Leeds Q4 2022

In the back end of 2022, I did some research into the salaries maintenance engineers in Leeds can expect. As a specialist maintenance engineer recruiter, I’ve been able to learn a lot about what candidates want from their employers.  However, I wanted to create a concrete analysis of engineers’ pay in Leeds. I completed the research by collecting data from: 

• Advertised jobs on Indeed, CV Library, Jobsite and LinkedIn. 
• Engineers I speak with. 

• The roles that I work on. 

I was also very specific with the roles I reviewed, as I wanted this to be a true reflection of the market I recruit in. I don’t work on facilities or domestic maintenance engineer roles, so this data is from an industrial, manufacturing or engineering background.  Additionally, I analysed the pay for the most sought-after shifts – based on the engineers I’m in touch with. 

So, let’s get into what I uncovered. 

How much can Maintenance Engineers earn in Leeds? 

This is the first question that I wanted to answer, so focused on the jobs regardless of shift. For the roles I reviewed on job boards, the salary for an engineer sat at £39,741.62. This sat higher than the average salary Indeed predicts. A reason for this could be that it also includes facilities maintenance roles- which are often labelled as ‘Maintenance Engineer’. These jobs, however, do pay less than the roles that I recruit for. 

A few of these advertised roles spoke about the added earning potential for engineers. With overtime being the most frequently mentioned enhancement. However, none of these engineers spoke about how much extra engineers would earn off the back of it. 

Just because companies are advertising these salaries doesn’t mean that engineers are on them. Typically, the roles on job boards are on the lower side. And don’t forget salaries are negotiable, so engineers could be receiving a higher wage for the role advertised at a lower salary. 

You can get a better picture of how much Maintenance Engineers’ salaries are in Leeds by speaking to those in work.  

To help with this, I wanted to share the salaries of the engineers that I speak with. I was able to work out that the average was £41,285.71. That’s £1,544.09 more than what companies are advertising and works out as an extra £128.67 per month for engineers in Leeds. Which, in the current climate, can be a lot for candidates.  

Here’s a video of me explaining how much engineers I’m speaking with are earning at the moment:

How does this differ from Engineers’ expectations?  

It’s important to know engineers’ perceptions of the market and not just what they want. Seeing and understanding what the general thoughts are on maintenance engineer salaries are crucial to fully understand what a fair salary is.  

We collect this type of data through speaking with engineers and hearing their thoughts on salary for different shifts. But it’s also important to take in other information like what they’re on currently, in what role, in which market, what is their desired salary, and more.  

Another way in which we collect this data is through market research. Creating polls on LinkedIn is a great way to understand the stance of engineers. I’ve noted two great polls, both of which received over 100 votes.  

In this first poll, 63% of people surveyed believe a days-based role for maintenance engineers should be paid above £42,000 annually. 

Similarly, for the second poll, with a 4 on 4 off shift, 76% of respondents believe £40,000-£45,000 and above is the correct salary for an engineer working this shift.  

This carries through with the general feedback I’m getting from engineers I speak with, where the majority are looking for salary increases as they don’t believe they’re on a fair salary for their shift pattern.  

Why are Engineer Salaries increasing? 

As a recruiter for Maintenance Engineers in Leeds, I have seen how much salaries have changed over the past year. I have certainly seen a gradual rise in these – and right now, most engineers I speak to are on more than their job title is advertised for across the job boards. Salaries are increasing for several reasons.  

Here is a little more insight into the top two reasons for salaries increasing in Leeds. 

Reason 1 – The Cost of Living Crisis 

The number one culprit is the cost-of-living crisis. With inflation rates extremely high at 10.7% in the latest figures from November, people need more money for their everyday costs. According to the ONS, food inflation rates hit 16.5% in November. Food is a key outgoing for people, everyone is paying for food. If food prices are increasing, it has a massive impact on a considerable proportion of their income.  

Although food clearly isn’t the only commodity draining wages. Data from UK Land and Registry states that house prices have increased by 17.7% from July 2021 to July 2022. This paired with all other consumer costs create the Consumer Price Index – including Housing costs (CPIH). This measures the general costs of goods and services over time. Looking at CPIH is also important when considering giving a pay rise, as it gives an example of how much wages should increase.  

Inflation rates aren’t the tell all when it comes to how your employees are affected in the cost of living crisis. The CPIH should help build upon this. The same data shows the CPIH to have increased from 0.5% in August 2020 to 8.8% in July 2022. 

Reason 2 – Businesses wages are stagnating  

Engineers in jobs aren’t getting pay rises because some companies have tightened the purse strings a little. Additionally, some companies don’t have their finger on the pulse of what is going on in the market. So aren’t aware that their salaries are below the market average. As a result, it’s leading engineers to look elsewhere.  

Additionally, there are quite a few companies offering counteroffers at the minute. However, managers need to be offering pay rises to their engineers before they go to hand their notice in. Waiting for it to build up to a problem and affect the team shouldn’t be an option. As it will encourage an ongoing cycle of hiring and rehiring. 

Salaries per shift 

Now that I’ve spoken about the average in the whole of Leeds, I wanted to talk about how much engineers can earn for certain shifts.  

4 on 4 off and Day Shift

There are two shift patterns engineers I’m hearing from are wanting at the moment. Maintenance engineers in Leeds are wanting Days roles (Monday to Friday) or 4 on 4 off shifts. In general, these are the ones engineers are after as they are more suited to family life.

With a Mon-Fri, you have the weekends to spend with family. But with a 4 on 4 off shift, it’s basically just a 5-day working week cut into 4 days, and you get 4 days off afterwards. Both shifts are very high in demand though, so it’s difficult for engineers to land one. I’m finding engineers are needing to look just that bit further out, as there can often be the perfect role for them just out of their area. 

The average for a Day shift in Leeds was the lowest shift average we recorded at £37,376. As the best shift pattern, it isn’t too surprising that it’s paid the lowest. But interesting when considering the poll results I mentioned earlier, where 63% of respondents believed above £42,000 was the fair salary for a Days role.  On top of this, the average salary of the engineers I’m speaking with is £39,937– that’s over £2,500 more than what companies are advertising. These engineers are currently in work and none of them would move roles for a pay drop. So, even though days will always be a lower-paid shift, businesses need to look at either increasing the base wage or adding additional benefits to the overall package to encourage engineers to the business.

Almost £4,000 higher than the Days average, 4 on 4 off shifts averaged at £41,412 for Leeds. This is interesting because it’s one of the highest salary averages we found. But similarly to the Days shift, 76% of poll respondents believed the 4 on 4 off shift should be paid £40K-£45K and more. Like with the day shift, what engineers are currently on is more than what employers are advertising, with 4 on 4 off sitting at an average salary of £45,428. A 4k difference is immense and it just shows how businesses are reacting to try and retain the engineers they’ve got.

Double Days Shift

This shift pattern in Leeds is offering £40,250, according to our research. That’s only £2,775 more than a Days shift. For most engineers, that difference wouldn’t be worth doing. They value work-life balance more than the extra few thousand.  Furthermore, the average salary of engineers working this shift sat at £41,000. So few engineers I speak with were on this shift (or even wanted to work this shift). So, this could contribute to the minimal differences between advertised vs actual salaries.

In summary 

Maintenance engineers’ salaries in Leeds should be representing a fair wage for engineers in this market. So, it’s great to see that employers are starting to listen to engineers and the market to properly compensate for this integral business function. Engineers need to be recognised for their work and pay increases need to be made quickly to avoid missing links in your team. Truthfully, I was expecting the salaries in my patch to be lower than my colleagues in the West Midlands and Warwickshire, as the north has lagged a little when it comes to salaries. So, it was interesting to see that the salaries weren’t far from those in the Midlands. Again, this is another good sign of employers listening to the market.

Keeping up with the markets will help you to understand and then put measures in place to pay engineers a fair wage that will retain them. You can learn about the markets and current trends through our blogs that include hiring insights and my LinkedIn profile, where I give my verdict on the industry and encourage conversations with engineers. 

Future research opportunities 

For this article, I didn’t go into a bias breakdown as I instead wanted to focus on shift. As this is what most engineers come to me asking. Additionally, I wanted to do some more collect more data on 3 shifts, as this is something that a lot of clients want information on. However, this is a very unpreferable shift type for engineers and I struggled to find data. Maybe it’ll be something we can achieve in Q2 of 2023? 

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