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 16 September 2026.

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

6 months to
16 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 64 126 101
Rank change year-on-year +62 -25 +24
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,661 620 764
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.60% 2.23% 2.34%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.90% 2.44% 2.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,104 449 538
10th Percentile £381 £379 £368
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -9.09% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £638
90th Percentile £675 £695 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 72 13 9
10th Percentile £19.34 £25.34 £49.25
25th Percentile £30.72 £35.25 £60.00
Median hourly rate £41.56 £52.50 £80.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.85% -34.38% +29.55%
75th Percentile £68.00 £62.50 -
90th Percentile £70.00 £104.00 £97.50
UK median hourly rate £41.56 £52.50 £80.00
% change year-on-year -20.85% -34.38% +29.55%

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 42,569 25,363 30,417
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.32% 91.35% 93.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,370 16,372 19,015
10th Percentile £325 £280 £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 £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,430 1,358 1,485
10th Percentile £14.96 £13.75 £14.60
25th Percentile £21.14 £17.33 £21.25
Median hourly rate £44.46 £25.15 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +76.76% -45.54% +3.20%
75th Percentile £68.00 £54.00 £67.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £71.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -2.01%

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 16 September 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 16 September 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 16 September 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 +25 830 £525 - 982
Midlands +79 341 £469 +4.22% 130
West Midlands +63 271 £469 +6.59% 89
North of England +22 200 £500 +5.26% 300
South East +27 131 £459 -4.62% 203
North West +20 110 £525 +10.53% 166
South West +11 99 £525 +5.00% 97
Yorkshire -1 73 £475 -6.17% 95
East Midlands +37 70 £450 +1.98% 41
East of England +13 40 £463 -38.33% 75
North East -27 18 £510 +20.71% 39
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 16 September 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.

1 843 (50.75%) SQL
2 732 (44.07%) Data Pipeline
3 705 (42.44%) Python
4 646 (38.89%) Data Engineering
5 581 (34.98%) Data Modelling
6 577 (34.74%) ETL
7 576 (34.68%) Analytics
8 522 (31.43%) AWS
9 506 (30.46%) Azure
10 433 (26.07%) Data Quality
11 428 (25.77%) Security Cleared
12 410 (24.68%) CI/CD
13 370 (22.28%) SC Cleared
14 327 (19.69%) Databricks
15 287 (17.28%) Agile
16 280 (16.86%) Data Warehouse
17 271 (16.32%) DevOps
17 271 (16.32%) Migration
18 267 (16.07%) Business Intelligence
19 251 (15.11%) AI
20 236 (14.21%) Data Governance
21 231 (13.91%) PySpark
22 218 (13.12%) Data Transformation
23 215 (12.94%) Microsoft
24 214 (12.88%) Power Platform
25 211 (12.70%) Power BI
26 205 (12.34%) dbt
26 205 (12.34%) Validation
27 204 (12.28%) Snowflake
28 199 (11.98%) Data Integration

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
1 186 (11.20%) Apache Airflow
2 135 (8.13%) Apache Spark
3 112 (6.74%) Apache
4 46 (2.77%) SAS
5 34 (2.05%) Confluence
6 16 (0.96%) Palantir Foundry
7 14 (0.84%) SharePoint
8 10 (0.60%) Jupyter
9 2 (0.12%) Apache Superset
9 2 (0.12%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.060%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.060%) Liferay
10 1 (0.060%) Luigi
10 1 (0.060%) nginx
10 1 (0.060%) Oracle Workflow
10 1 (0.060%) PowerExchange
10 1 (0.060%) R Markdown
Applications
1 23 (1.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (0.54%) Spreadsheet
3 5 (0.30%) Notepad++
4 3 (0.18%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.060%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.060%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 10 (0.60%) Aladdin
2 7 (0.42%) Dynamics CRM
3 6 (0.36%) NetSuite
4 5 (0.30%) Infor LN
4 5 (0.30%) Sage X3
4 5 (0.30%) SAP S/4HANA
5 3 (0.18%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 2 (0.12%) Maximo
6 2 (0.12%) SAP BPC
6 2 (0.12%) SAP Oil and Gas
6 2 (0.12%) SimCorp Dimension
7 1 (0.060%) BambooHR
7 1 (0.060%) Dynamics NAV
7 1 (0.060%) FIS Private Capital Suite
7 1 (0.060%) MIS ActiveH
7 1 (0.060%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.060%) Oracle Retail
7 1 (0.060%) Raiser’s Edge
7 1 (0.060%) SAP CAR
7 1 (0.060%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 522 (31.43%) AWS
2 506 (30.46%) Azure
3 214 (12.88%) Power Platform
4 205 (12.34%) dbt
5 204 (12.28%) Snowflake
6 195 (11.74%) Azure Data Factory
7 171 (10.30%) GCP
8 152 (9.15%) Amazon S3
9 115 (6.92%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 114 (6.86%) Azure DevOps
11 113 (6.80%) Serverless
12 103 (6.20%) GitHub
13 100 (6.02%) AWS Lambda
14 55 (3.31%) Azure Databricks
15 44 (2.65%) GitHub Actions
16 42 (2.53%) Amazon EMR
17 34 (2.05%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 27 (1.63%) AWS Step Functions
19 26 (1.57%) Microsoft Purview
20 25 (1.51%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.51%) BGP
1 25 (1.51%) DMZ
1 25 (1.51%) DNS
1 25 (1.51%) Multicast
1 25 (1.51%) VPN
2 10 (0.60%) Structured Cabling
3 6 (0.36%) Firewall
4 5 (0.30%) PuTTY
4 5 (0.30%) WinSCP
5 4 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
5 4 (0.24%) Wireless
6 3 (0.18%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 280 (16.86%) Data Warehouse
2 211 (12.70%) Power BI
3 135 (8.13%) Data Lake
4 120 (7.22%) Metadata
5 105 (6.32%) BigQuery
6 84 (5.06%) Amazon Redshift
7 75 (4.52%) Delta Lake
8 73 (4.39%) SQL Server
9 72 (4.33%) Amazon Athena
10 61 (3.67%) Pentaho
11 59 (3.55%) Tableau
12 57 (3.43%) PostgreSQL
13 55 (3.31%) Big Data
14 49 (2.95%) Relational Database
15 47 (2.83%) Snowflake Schema
16 45 (2.71%) NoSQL
17 40 (2.41%) Oracle Database
18 38 (2.29%) Amazon RDS
19 36 (2.17%) Azure SQL Database
20 32 (1.93%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 142 (8.55%) Git
2 78 (4.70%) GitLab
3 52 (3.13%) JIRA
4 27 (1.63%) Jenkins
5 14 (0.84%) MLflow
6 8 (0.48%) Postman
7 7 (0.42%) Bitbucket
8 5 (0.30%) Artifactory
8 5 (0.30%) Selenium
8 5 (0.30%) SonarQube
9 4 (0.24%) ERwin
10 3 (0.18%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 3 (0.18%) Claude Code
10 3 (0.18%) Newman
10 3 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 2 (0.12%) ER Studio
11 2 (0.12%) RStudio
11 2 (0.12%) Terragrunt
11 2 (0.12%) Yeoman
12 1 (0.060%) Toad
General
1 275 (16.56%) Social Skills
2 268 (16.13%) Finance
3 187 (11.26%) Analytical Skills
4 141 (8.49%) Public Sector
5 103 (6.20%) Banking
6 27 (1.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 26 (1.57%) Retail
8 22 (1.32%) Telecoms
9 21 (1.26%) Automotive
10 19 (1.14%) Aerospace
10 19 (1.14%) Marketing
11 17 (1.02%) Front Office
12 16 (0.96%) Manufacturing
13 15 (0.90%) Investment Banking
13 15 (0.90%) Pharmaceutical
14 14 (0.84%) Documentation Skills
15 11 (0.66%) Law
16 10 (0.60%) Financial Institution
16 10 (0.60%) Legal
16 10 (0.60%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 231 (13.91%) PySpark
2 179 (10.78%) Terraform
3 102 (6.14%) Kafka
4 25 (1.51%) JSON
4 25 (1.51%) Pandas
5 24 (1.44%) REST
6 22 (1.32%) Spring
6 22 (1.32%) Spring Boot
7 19 (1.14%) Great Expectations
8 17 (1.02%) XML
9 16 (0.96%) Apache Beam
10 14 (0.84%) React
11 12 (0.72%) pytest
11 12 (0.72%) RESTful
12 10 (0.60%) .NET
12 10 (0.60%) LangChain
12 10 (0.60%) Microsoft Graph
12 10 (0.60%) PyTorch
13 9 (0.54%) Apache Avro
13 9 (0.54%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 135 (8.13%) Cloud Native
2 60 (3.61%) Legacy Systems
3 51 (3.07%) Data Structures
4 36 (2.17%) Onboarding
5 25 (1.51%) Product Ownership
6 21 (1.26%) Distributed Systems
7 20 (1.20%) AI Agents
7 20 (1.20%) Greenfield Project
7 20 (1.20%) NHS
8 17 (1.02%) Reference Data
9 16 (0.96%) Management Information System
9 16 (0.96%) Reinsurance
10 13 (0.78%) Algorithms
11 11 (0.66%) Virtual Team
12 9 (0.54%) Clustering
12 9 (0.54%) Data Fabric
12 9 (0.54%) Data Protection Act
13 8 (0.48%) Distributed Computing
13 8 (0.48%) Life Science
13 8 (0.48%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 51 (3.07%) Unix
2 39 (2.35%) Linux
3 2 (0.12%) Ubuntu
3 2 (0.12%) Windows
4 1 (0.060%) Robot Operating System
4 1 (0.060%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 732 (44.07%) Data Pipeline
2 646 (38.89%) Data Engineering
3 581 (34.98%) Data Modelling
4 577 (34.74%) ETL
5 576 (34.68%) Analytics
6 410 (24.68%) CI/CD
7 287 (17.28%) Agile
8 271 (16.32%) DevOps
8 271 (16.32%) Migration
9 267 (16.07%) Business Intelligence
10 251 (15.11%) AI
11 236 (14.21%) Data Governance
12 218 (13.12%) Data Transformation
13 205 (12.34%) Validation
14 199 (11.98%) Data Integration
15 180 (10.84%) Problem-Solving
16 159 (9.57%) Decision-Making
17 157 (9.45%) Lakehouse
18 151 (9.09%) Infrastructure as Code
19 143 (8.61%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 843 (50.75%) SQL
2 705 (42.44%) Python
3 97 (5.84%) Java
4 62 (3.73%) Scala
5 43 (2.59%) PL/SQL
6 31 (1.87%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 26 (1.57%) T-SQL
8 25 (1.51%) Shell Script
9 21 (1.26%) Bash
10 20 (1.20%) PowerShell
11 18 (1.08%) JavaScript
12 12 (0.72%) R
13 11 (0.66%) C#
14 9 (0.54%) Bicep
14 9 (0.54%) TypeScript
15 7 (0.42%) Go
16 5 (0.30%) Korn
17 3 (0.18%) Kusto Query Language
17 3 (0.18%) LookML
18 2 (0.12%) Cypher
Qualifications
1 428 (25.77%) Security Cleared
2 370 (22.28%) SC Cleared
3 40 (2.41%) Degree
4 36 (2.17%) BPSS Clearance
5 25 (1.51%) DV Cleared
6 22 (1.32%) Azure Certification
7 21 (1.26%) Computer Science Degree
8 13 (0.78%) AWS Certification
9 9 (0.54%) City & Guilds
10 8 (0.48%) DBS Check
11 7 (0.42%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 7 (0.42%) Master's Degree
11 7 (0.42%) SnowPro
12 5 (0.30%) BICSI Certification
13 4 (0.24%) CISM
13 4 (0.24%) CISSP
13 4 (0.24%) Microsoft Certification
14 3 (0.18%) CEH
15 1 (0.060%) PMI Certification
15 1 (0.060%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 433 (26.07%) Data Quality
2 64 (3.85%) QA
3 35 (2.11%) GDPR
4 15 (0.90%) Accessibility
5 9 (0.54%) SLA
6 6 (0.36%) FATCA
7 5 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 4 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
8 4 (0.24%) 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 (0.060%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 1 (0.060%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.060%) IFRS
11 1 (0.060%) IFRS 17
11 1 (0.060%) IFRS 9
11 1 (0.060%) PMO
System Software
1 104 (6.26%) Docker
2 3 (0.18%) Active Directory
2 3 (0.18%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (0.060%) RACF
Systems Management
1 76 (4.58%) Kubernetes
2 24 (1.44%) Grafana
3 15 (0.90%) Ansible
4 11 (0.66%) Control-M
5 7 (0.42%) Kibana
6 5 (0.30%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.12%) Puppet
8 1 (0.060%) logstash
8 1 (0.060%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 327 (19.69%) Databricks
2 215 (12.94%) Microsoft
3 138 (8.31%) Oracle
4 88 (5.30%) Informatica
5 81 (4.88%) Talend
6 75 (4.52%) Google
7 43 (2.59%) Denodo
8 29 (1.75%) Salesforce
9 25 (1.51%) Cisco
9 25 (1.51%) F5
9 25 (1.51%) Palantir
9 25 (1.51%) SAP
10 23 (1.38%) Foundry
11 12 (0.72%) Splunk
12 9 (0.54%) Bloomberg
13 8 (0.48%) Alteryx
13 8 (0.48%) Sage
14 7 (0.42%) Cloudera
14 7 (0.42%) IBM
14 7 (0.42%) InterSystems