If you're a UK manufacturer trying to set a competitive salary — or a skilled worker wondering whether you're underpaid — this is the data you actually need. We compiled live listings from across the UK in May 2026 and ran the numbers role by role, region by region.
The headline finding: mid-skilled manufacturing pay has finally cracked the £35k floor across most of the country, with the East Midlands and West Midlands clustered around the national median, and Scotland's chemicals and aerospace clusters pulling notably ahead.
The headline numbers
| Role | Typical range | Median | Premium regions |
|---|---|---|---|
| CNC Setter / Operator | £30k–£46k | £37k | West Midlands, East Midlands |
| Multi-Skilled Maintenance Engineer | £42k–£56k | £48k | North West, Scotland |
| TIG / Coded Welder | £36k–£52k | £42k | North West (BAE), Wales (Tata) |
| Production Team Leader | £32k–£44k | £37k | North West, Yorkshire & Humber |
| QA / Quality Inspector | £28k–£38k | £32k | South East, Wales |
| FLT / Forklift Driver | £24k–£32k | £28k | East Midlands, West Midlands |
| Process Operator (Chemicals) | £38k–£48k | £42k | Scotland (Grangemouth), North West |
| CNC Programmer | £42k–£54k | £47k | South East, North East |
| Composites Technician | £34k–£44k | £38k | South East (McLaren), South West |
| Electronics Assembler | £26k–£34k | £29k | South East, Scotland |
Numbers are gross annual full-time equivalent, before overtime and shift premiums. Hourly-paid roles converted at 39 hours × 50 weeks for comparison.
What drives the variation
Three factors explain almost all of the spread within any one job title:
1. Continental shifts add 25–40%. A CNC Setter on a 4-on 4-off pattern with night cover typically earns £8–12k more than the same role on Mon–Fri days. Greencore's nights premium on their Warrington line is 30%; Tata Steel's hot mill engineers see 35–40%.
2. Coded vs uncoded welding is the steepest pay step in manufacturing. A MIG welder on plate earns £30–34k. The same person, once coded TIG on stainless or duplex pipework, moves to £42–52k overnight. SC clearance (defence, BAE Barrow) adds another £4–6k.
3. Skills, not seniority, drive engineer pay. A "maintenance engineer" with no PLC experience tops out around £38k. Add Siemens S7 or Allen-Bradley fluency and you're at £45k. Add robotics (Kuka, Fanuc) and you're at £50k+. JLR Solihull's body-shop multi-skilled engineers cluster at £48–54k for exactly this reason.
Region by region
West Midlands stays the volume centre for automotive and CNC, with Birmingham/Coventry/Solihull cluster pay sitting roughly at the national median. JLR, Bentley (Crewe — technically North West but the supplier chain spreads into the West Mids), and the Tier-2 suppliers all benchmark off each other.
East Midlands punches above its size on CNC pay because of the aerospace cluster around Derby (Rolls-Royce) and the precision machining around Burton-on-Trent. Hinckley and Loughborough are FLT-driver heavy and pay competitively for hub roles.
North West is the region with the widest pay spread. Top-end: BAE Barrow (coded welders, programme leads), Bentley Crewe (engineering and tooling), Siemens Gamesa Newcastle area (wind technicians). Bottom-end: high concentration of FMCG production lines pulling hourly rates down.
Yorkshire & Humber is where food manufacturing dominates — Nestlé York, Coca-Cola Wakefield, the cluster around Leeds. Supervisor and team-leader rates are good (£38–44k) because line throughput drives the P&L visibly.
Scotland is the surprise outlier. INEOS Grangemouth process operators clear £41–47k on continental shifts, AstraZeneca QC techs in Macclesfield (technically North West but Scotland sees similar) match it, and Leonardo Edinburgh sets a defence-electronics floor that pulls the whole region up.
Wales has Tata Port Talbot anchoring metals pay and Airbus Broughton anchoring aerospace pay, with both running tight to national medians plus shift premium.
South East, South West, East of England — fewer giant plants, more diverse SME manufacturing. CNC programmer salaries are the highest in the country here because of the aerospace and motorsport clusters (Surrey, Hampshire, Oxfordshire).
London — almost no traditional manufacturing left; the listings on the board are mostly logistics/warehouse and a few specialist electronics or food-production sites. Pay tracks London weighting (+£3–5k) but role variety is narrow.
North East — Cummins Darlington, Nissan Sunderland (supplier base), Siemens Gamesa offshore wind. Strong on multi-skilled engineers and CNC programming.
What this means for employers
If you're posting a CNC role at £30k in Birmingham, you're going to get applications — but you're going to lose your best applicants to the listing across town at £36k. Pay survey data lags real listings by 12–18 months, so this matters: in 2024 a "competitive" CNC offer was £32k. In 2026 it's £37k.
The single highest-impact change you can make to your job ad is publishing the salary range. Listings with explicit salaries get 2–3× the application volume of "competitive" or "DOE" listings, and the applicants are pre-qualified — they know the floor.
What this means for skilled workers
Two takeaways:
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If you've been at the same plant 3+ years without a coded qualification step or a multi-skilled add-on, you're probably £4–8k below what you could earn elsewhere. The market re-prices skills every 18 months and most internal pay-review cycles don't keep up.
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The shift premium is a real choice, not just a number. A 25–40% premium for nights or 4-on 4-off sounds great on paper. Whether it's worth it depends on whether you'd actually pick the same trade-off again at year 5.
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