Data Engineer Contract Job Trends in England

Data Engineer
UK > England

The median Data Engineer daily rate in England is £500, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 28 August 2026.

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

 6 months to
28 Aug 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 60 126 100
Rank change year-on-year +66 -26 +21
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,703 616 772
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.72% 2.24% 2.33%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.02% 2.44% 2.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,135 449 553
10th Percentile £375 £380 £288
25th Percentile £425 £428 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £638
90th Percentile £666 £694 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 81 13 21
10th Percentile £19.34 £25.34 £49.25
25th Percentile £30.96 £35.25 £60.00
Median hourly rate £41.56 £52.50 £75.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.85% -30.00% +5.26%
75th Percentile £70.00 £62.50 £80.00
90th Percentile £73.75 £79.74 -
UK median hourly rate £44.50 £52.50 £75.00
% change year-on-year -15.24% -30.00% +5.26%

All Contract IT Job Roles
England

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in 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 England with a recognized job title 42,312 25,215 30,856
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.44% 91.52% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,438 16,269 19,890
10th Percentile £325 £281 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £632 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,251 1,363 1,685
10th Percentile £15.13 £13.70 £14.16
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.44 £20.50
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £44.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -42.84% +0.32%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £66.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +65.94% -41.51% -0.73%

Data Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in England

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

Data Engineer job vacancy trend in England

Data Engineer
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Data Engineer job vacancies in England.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Data Engineer job vacancies in England

Data Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Data Engineer in England over the 6 months to 28 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Data Engineer in England

Data Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Data Engineer job vacancies in England.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Data Engineer job vacancies in England

Data Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Data Engineer in England over the 6 months to 28 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Data Engineer in England

Data Engineer
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Data Engineer within the England region over the 6 months to 28 August 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
London +33 846 £525 - 309
Midlands +75 361 £467 +0.97% 56
West Midlands +61 302 £469 -6.20% 31
North of England +33 222 £490 +3.16% 104
South East +32 130 £459 -3.87% 120
North West +34 126 £525 +10.53% 47
South West +18 89 £525 +5.00% 35
Yorkshire -2 76 £465 -2.11% 25
East Midlands +23 59 £450 +1.98% 25
East of England +11 37 £450 - 17
North East -25 21 £515 +21.89% 33
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 28 August 2026, 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 England region featuring Data Engineer in the job title.

1 853 (50.09%) SQL
2 733 (43.04%) Data Pipeline
3 711 (41.75%) Python
4 651 (38.23%) Data Engineering
5 595 (34.94%) Analytics
6 584 (34.29%) ETL
7 571 (33.53%) Data Modelling
8 530 (31.12%) Azure
9 520 (30.53%) AWS
10 446 (26.19%) Security Cleared
11 424 (24.90%) Data Quality
12 410 (24.08%) CI/CD
13 391 (22.96%) SC Cleared
14 330 (19.38%) Databricks
15 293 (17.20%) Agile
16 286 (16.79%) Business Intelligence
17 284 (16.68%) Data Warehouse
18 280 (16.44%) DevOps
19 273 (16.03%) Migration
20 243 (14.27%) PySpark
21 229 (13.45%) AI
22 228 (13.39%) Data Governance
23 226 (13.27%) Power Platform
24 222 (13.04%) Power BI
25 221 (12.98%) Microsoft
26 209 (12.27%) Validation
27 208 (12.21%) Data Transformation
28 205 (12.04%) Azure Data Factory
29 200 (11.74%) Data Integration
30 199 (11.69%) Snowflake

Data Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in 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
1 180 (10.57%) Apache Airflow
2 137 (8.04%) Apache Spark
3 107 (6.28%) Apache
4 55 (3.23%) SAS
5 32 (1.88%) Confluence
6 17 (1.00%) Palantir Foundry
7 12 (0.70%) SharePoint
8 9 (0.53%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.18%) Apache Superset
10 1 (0.059%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.059%) Liferay
10 1 (0.059%) Luigi
10 1 (0.059%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.059%) nginx
10 1 (0.059%) PowerExchange
10 1 (0.059%) R Markdown
Applications
1 24 (1.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.41%) Spreadsheet
3 5 (0.29%) Notepad++
4 4 (0.23%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.059%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 12 (0.70%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.35%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.29%) Infor LN
3 5 (0.29%) NetSuite
3 5 (0.29%) Sage X3
4 4 (0.23%) SAP S/4HANA
5 3 (0.18%) SimCorp Dimension
5 3 (0.18%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 2 (0.12%) BambooHR
6 2 (0.12%) Maximo
7 1 (0.059%) FIS Private Capital Suite
7 1 (0.059%) MIS ActiveH
7 1 (0.059%) Oracle 11i
7 1 (0.059%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.059%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.059%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.059%) Raiser’s Edge
7 1 (0.059%) SAP BPC
7 1 (0.059%) SAP CAR
7 1 (0.059%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 530 (31.12%) Azure
2 520 (30.53%) AWS
3 226 (13.27%) Power Platform
4 205 (12.04%) Azure Data Factory
5 199 (11.69%) Snowflake
6 195 (11.45%) dbt
7 157 (9.22%) GCP
8 153 (8.98%) Amazon S3
9 130 (7.63%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 124 (7.28%) Azure DevOps
11 111 (6.52%) Serverless
12 106 (6.22%) GitHub
13 98 (5.75%) AWS Lambda
14 42 (2.47%) GitHub Actions
15 39 (2.29%) Amazon EMR
16 31 (1.82%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 26 (1.53%) AWS Step Functions
18 24 (1.41%) AWS CloudFormation
19 23 (1.35%) Fivetran
19 23 (1.35%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 30 (1.76%) VPN
2 29 (1.70%) BGP
2 29 (1.70%) DMZ
2 29 (1.70%) DNS
2 29 (1.70%) Multicast
3 11 (0.65%) Structured Cabling
4 7 (0.41%) Firewall
5 5 (0.29%) PuTTY
5 5 (0.29%) WinSCP
6 4 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.23%) Wireless
7 3 (0.18%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 284 (16.68%) Data Warehouse
2 222 (13.04%) Power BI
3 153 (8.98%) Data Lake
4 115 (6.75%) Metadata
5 97 (5.70%) Amazon Redshift
6 95 (5.58%) BigQuery
7 81 (4.76%) Delta Lake
8 77 (4.52%) SQL Server
9 73 (4.29%) Amazon Athena
10 69 (4.05%) Pentaho
11 63 (3.70%) Tableau
12 59 (3.46%) Big Data
13 53 (3.11%) PostgreSQL
14 51 (2.99%) Relational Database
15 50 (2.94%) Snowflake Schema
16 48 (2.82%) Azure SQL Database
17 45 (2.64%) NoSQL
18 37 (2.17%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 36 (2.11%) Oracle Database
20 34 (2.00%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 141 (8.28%) Git
2 80 (4.70%) GitLab
3 54 (3.17%) JIRA
4 31 (1.82%) Jenkins
5 11 (0.65%) MLflow
6 7 (0.41%) Postman
7 5 (0.29%) Artifactory
7 5 (0.29%) Bitbucket
8 4 (0.23%) ERwin
8 4 (0.23%) Selenium
9 3 (0.18%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 3 (0.18%) Newman
9 3 (0.18%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.18%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.12%) Claude Code
10 2 (0.12%) ER Studio
10 2 (0.12%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 2 (0.12%) Terragrunt
10 2 (0.12%) Yeoman
11 1 (0.059%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 278 (16.32%) Finance
2 270 (15.85%) Social Skills
3 195 (11.45%) Analytical Skills
4 144 (8.46%) Public Sector
5 102 (5.99%) Banking
6 31 (1.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 24 (1.41%) Telecoms
8 22 (1.29%) Retail
9 20 (1.17%) Marketing
10 19 (1.12%) Automotive
11 18 (1.06%) Aerospace
11 18 (1.06%) Manufacturing
12 17 (1.00%) Front Office
12 17 (1.00%) Investment Banking
13 15 (0.88%) Documentation Skills
13 15 (0.88%) Pharmaceutical
14 11 (0.65%) Law
15 10 (0.59%) Financial Institution
16 8 (0.47%) Legal
16 8 (0.47%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 243 (14.27%) PySpark
2 172 (10.10%) Terraform
3 117 (6.87%) Kafka
4 30 (1.76%) Pandas
5 25 (1.47%) JSON
5 25 (1.47%) REST
6 23 (1.35%) Great Expectations
7 22 (1.29%) Spring
7 22 (1.29%) Spring Boot
8 18 (1.06%) XML
9 15 (0.88%) React
10 14 (0.82%) Apache Beam
11 13 (0.76%) YAML
12 12 (0.70%) RESTful
13 11 (0.65%) pytest
14 10 (0.59%) .NET
14 10 (0.59%) Microsoft Graph
15 9 (0.53%) Apache Avro
16 8 (0.47%) LangChain
16 8 (0.47%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 131 (7.69%) Cloud Native
2 75 (4.40%) Legacy Systems
3 44 (2.58%) Data Structures
4 37 (2.17%) Onboarding
5 25 (1.47%) Product Ownership
6 21 (1.23%) Distributed Systems
6 21 (1.23%) Greenfield Project
7 19 (1.12%) NHS
7 19 (1.12%) Reference Data
8 17 (1.00%) Reinsurance
9 14 (0.82%) Management Information System
10 13 (0.76%) AI Agents
11 12 (0.70%) Data Protection Act
12 11 (0.65%) Algorithms
12 11 (0.65%) Virtual Team
13 10 (0.59%) Clustering
14 9 (0.53%) Life Science
14 9 (0.53%) Self-Motivation
15 8 (0.47%) Driving Licence
15 8 (0.47%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 56 (3.29%) Unix
2 46 (2.70%) Linux
3 4 (0.23%) Windows
4 2 (0.12%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.12%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.059%) Robot Operating System
5 1 (0.059%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 733 (43.04%) Data Pipeline
2 651 (38.23%) Data Engineering
3 595 (34.94%) Analytics
4 584 (34.29%) ETL
5 571 (33.53%) Data Modelling
6 410 (24.08%) CI/CD
7 293 (17.20%) Agile
8 286 (16.79%) Business Intelligence
9 280 (16.44%) DevOps
10 273 (16.03%) Migration
11 229 (13.45%) AI
12 228 (13.39%) Data Governance
13 209 (12.27%) Validation
14 208 (12.21%) Data Transformation
15 200 (11.74%) Data Integration
16 189 (11.10%) Problem-Solving
17 160 (9.40%) Decision-Making
18 146 (8.57%) Infrastructure as Code
19 137 (8.04%) Data Science
20 135 (7.93%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 853 (50.09%) SQL
2 711 (41.75%) Python
3 98 (5.75%) Java
4 60 (3.52%) Scala
5 46 (2.70%) PL/SQL
6 31 (1.82%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 31 (1.82%) Shell Script
7 24 (1.41%) T-SQL
8 23 (1.35%) Bash
9 21 (1.23%) PowerShell
10 17 (1.00%) JavaScript
11 15 (0.88%) C#
12 10 (0.59%) R
13 8 (0.47%) Bicep
14 7 (0.41%) TypeScript
15 5 (0.29%) Go
16 4 (0.23%) Korn
17 2 (0.12%) COBOL
17 2 (0.12%) Cypher
17 2 (0.12%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 446 (26.19%) Security Cleared
2 391 (22.96%) SC Cleared
3 39 (2.29%) Degree
4 35 (2.06%) BPSS Clearance
5 21 (1.23%) DV Cleared
6 20 (1.17%) Azure Certification
6 20 (1.17%) Computer Science Degree
7 12 (0.70%) AWS Certification
8 9 (0.53%) City & Guilds
9 8 (0.47%) DBS Check
10 7 (0.41%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 7 (0.41%) SnowPro
11 6 (0.35%) Master's Degree
12 5 (0.29%) BICSI Certification
13 4 (0.23%) CISM
13 4 (0.23%) CISSP
13 4 (0.23%) Microsoft Certification
14 3 (0.18%) CEH
15 1 (0.059%) CISA
15 1 (0.059%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 424 (24.90%) Data Quality
2 61 (3.58%) QA
3 40 (2.35%) GDPR
4 15 (0.88%) Accessibility
5 11 (0.65%) SLA
6 6 (0.35%) FATCA
7 5 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 4 (0.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 3 (0.18%) HIPAA
9 3 (0.18%) MiFID
10 2 (0.12%) EMIR
10 2 (0.12%) SNOMED CT
10 2 (0.12%) WCAG
11 1 (0.059%) Disclosure Scotland
11 1 (0.059%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.059%) GxP
11 1 (0.059%) IFRS
11 1 (0.059%) IFRS 17
11 1 (0.059%) IFRS 9
11 1 (0.059%) PMO
System Software
1 102 (5.99%) Docker
2 4 (0.23%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.12%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.059%) RACF
Systems Management
1 73 (4.29%) Kubernetes
2 32 (1.88%) Grafana
3 15 (0.88%) Ansible
4 10 (0.59%) Control-M
5 7 (0.41%) Kibana
6 4 (0.23%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.12%) Apache Ranger
7 2 (0.12%) Puppet
7 2 (0.12%) Thomson Reuters DACS
8 1 (0.059%) logstash
8 1 (0.059%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 330 (19.38%) Databricks
2 221 (12.98%) Microsoft
3 137 (8.04%) Oracle
4 101 (5.93%) Informatica
5 91 (5.34%) Talend
6 64 (3.76%) Google
7 52 (3.05%) Denodo
8 30 (1.76%) Cisco
8 30 (1.76%) F5
9 27 (1.59%) Salesforce
10 26 (1.53%) Palantir
11 25 (1.47%) SAP
12 21 (1.23%) Foundry
13 14 (0.82%) Cloudera
14 12 (0.70%) Splunk
15 11 (0.65%) Bloomberg
16 10 (0.59%) IBM
16 10 (0.59%) ServiceNow
17 9 (0.53%) Sage
18 8 (0.47%) InterSystems
572 Data Engineer jobs in England