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 24 September 2026.

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

6 months to
24 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 66 133 97
Rank change year-on-year +67 -36 +25
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,676 615 774
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.60% 2.21% 2.38%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.90% 2.42% 2.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,116 447 543
10th Percentile £378 £363 £375
25th Percentile £425 £425 £458
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -6.82% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £638
90th Percentile £675 £700 £718
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 65 12 8
10th Percentile £21.25 £25.25 £49.25
25th Percentile £30.96 £32.94 £57.31
Median hourly rate £41.56 £48.00 £80.00
Median % change year-on-year -13.43% -40.00% +29.55%
75th Percentile £68.00 £66.88 £84.38
90th Percentile £70.00 £107.00 £97.50
UK median hourly rate £43.03 £52.50 £80.00
% change year-on-year -18.04% -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 42,964 25,407 30,277
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.24% 91.30% 92.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,510 16,379 18,703
10th Percentile £325 £278 £300
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.11%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £735 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,556 1,389 1,420
10th Percentile £14.82 £13.75 £14.84
25th Percentile £20.75 £17.44 £21.37
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -45.54% +2.62%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.75 £67.50
90th Percentile £79.50 £70.16 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% -3.37%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 +32 831 £530 +0.95% 909
Midlands +78 341 £469 +1.41% 131
West Midlands +65 268 £469 -6.20% 85
North of England +32 208 £515 +8.42% 286
South East +27 126 £459 +2.00% 199
North West +18 109 £525 +10.53% 166
South West +25 107 £525 +5.00% 90
Yorkshire +14 80 £500 - 76
East Midlands +31 73 £419 -9.46% 46
East of England +4 40 £475 -20.83% 58
North East -31 20 £450 +9.09% 45
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 24 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.

1 856 (51.07%) SQL
2 736 (43.91%) Data Pipeline
3 713 (42.54%) Python
4 648 (38.66%) Data Engineering
5 590 (35.20%) Data Modelling
6 587 (35.02%) ETL
7 574 (34.25%) Analytics
8 534 (31.86%) AWS
9 511 (30.49%) Azure
10 438 (26.13%) Data Quality
11 436 (26.01%) Security Cleared
12 410 (24.46%) CI/CD
13 375 (22.37%) SC Cleared
14 335 (19.99%) Databricks
15 292 (17.42%) Agile
16 280 (16.71%) Data Warehouse
17 279 (16.65%) Migration
18 275 (16.41%) DevOps
19 264 (15.75%) Business Intelligence
20 262 (15.63%) AI
21 230 (13.72%) Data Governance
22 227 (13.54%) PySpark
23 222 (13.25%) Data Transformation
24 221 (13.19%) Microsoft
24 221 (13.19%) Validation
25 213 (12.71%) dbt
26 212 (12.65%) Power Platform
27 211 (12.59%) Snowflake
28 207 (12.35%) Power BI
29 206 (12.29%) 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
1 189 (11.28%) Apache Airflow
2 143 (8.53%) Apache Spark
3 118 (7.04%) Apache
4 46 (2.74%) SAS
5 34 (2.03%) Confluence
6 18 (1.07%) Palantir Foundry
7 14 (0.84%) SharePoint
8 12 (0.72%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.18%) Apache Superset
9 3 (0.18%) 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 (1.37%) 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 12 (0.72%) 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%) FIS Private Capital Suite
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%) Markit EDM
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
1 534 (31.86%) AWS
2 511 (30.49%) Azure
3 213 (12.71%) dbt
4 212 (12.65%) Power Platform
5 211 (12.59%) Snowflake
6 198 (11.81%) Azure Data Factory
7 173 (10.32%) GCP
8 154 (9.19%) Amazon S3
9 116 (6.92%) Azure DevOps
10 115 (6.86%) Serverless
11 113 (6.74%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 101 (6.03%) AWS Lambda
13 97 (5.79%) GitHub
14 55 (3.28%) Azure Databricks
15 45 (2.68%) Amazon EMR
16 44 (2.63%) GitHub Actions
17 36 (2.15%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 29 (1.73%) AWS Step Functions
19 28 (1.67%) Microsoft Purview
20 24 (1.43%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.37%) BGP
1 23 (1.37%) DMZ
1 23 (1.37%) DNS
1 23 (1.37%) Multicast
1 23 (1.37%) VPN
2 6 (0.36%) Firewall
3 5 (0.30%) PuTTY
3 5 (0.30%) WinSCP
4 4 (0.24%) Structured Cabling
4 4 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
4 4 (0.24%) Wireless
5 3 (0.18%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 280 (16.71%) Data Warehouse
2 207 (12.35%) Power BI
3 136 (8.11%) Data Lake
4 118 (7.04%) Metadata
5 101 (6.03%) BigQuery
6 85 (5.07%) Amazon Redshift
7 78 (4.65%) Delta Lake
8 74 (4.42%) Amazon Athena
9 71 (4.24%) SQL Server
10 61 (3.64%) Pentaho
10 61 (3.64%) PostgreSQL
11 57 (3.40%) Big Data
12 55 (3.28%) Tableau
13 50 (2.98%) Relational Database
14 48 (2.86%) NoSQL
14 48 (2.86%) Snowflake Schema
15 40 (2.39%) Oracle Database
16 37 (2.21%) Amazon RDS
17 34 (2.03%) Azure SQL Database
18 33 (1.97%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 153 (9.13%) Git
2 76 (4.53%) GitLab
3 50 (2.98%) JIRA
4 27 (1.61%) Jenkins
5 15 (0.89%) MLflow
6 8 (0.48%) Bitbucket
6 8 (0.48%) Postman
7 6 (0.36%) Selenium
8 5 (0.30%) Artifactory
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
1 280 (16.71%) Social Skills
2 267 (15.93%) Finance
3 189 (11.28%) Analytical Skills
4 149 (8.89%) Public Sector
5 107 (6.38%) Banking
6 27 (1.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 26 (1.55%) Retail
8 22 (1.31%) Automotive
9 19 (1.13%) Telecoms
10 18 (1.07%) Aerospace
10 18 (1.07%) Front Office
11 17 (1.01%) Investment Banking
11 17 (1.01%) Manufacturing
12 16 (0.95%) Marketing
13 15 (0.89%) Pharmaceutical
14 14 (0.84%) Documentation Skills
15 12 (0.72%) Law
15 12 (0.72%) Military
16 10 (0.60%) Back Office
16 10 (0.60%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 227 (13.54%) PySpark
2 180 (10.74%) Terraform
3 105 (6.26%) Kafka
4 25 (1.49%) Pandas
4 25 (1.49%) REST
5 24 (1.43%) JSON
6 21 (1.25%) Spring
6 21 (1.25%) Spring Boot
7 18 (1.07%) Great Expectations
8 17 (1.01%) XML
9 16 (0.95%) Apache Beam
10 13 (0.78%) pytest
11 12 (0.72%) React
11 12 (0.72%) RESTful
12 11 (0.66%) LangChain
12 11 (0.66%) PyTorch
13 10 (0.60%) .NET
13 10 (0.60%) Microsoft Graph
14 8 (0.48%) Apache Avro
14 8 (0.48%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 135 (8.05%) Cloud Native
2 59 (3.52%) Legacy Systems
3 51 (3.04%) Data Structures
4 42 (2.51%) Onboarding
5 24 (1.43%) Product Ownership
6 21 (1.25%) Distributed Systems
7 20 (1.19%) AI Agents
8 19 (1.13%) Greenfield Project
8 19 (1.13%) NHS
9 17 (1.01%) Management Information System
9 17 (1.01%) Reference Data
10 15 (0.89%) Reinsurance
11 13 (0.78%) Algorithms
12 11 (0.66%) Virtual Team
13 9 (0.54%) Data Fabric
14 8 (0.48%) Data Protection Act
14 8 (0.48%) Distributed Computing
14 8 (0.48%) Enterprise Software
14 8 (0.48%) Life Science
14 8 (0.48%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 53 (3.16%) Unix
2 39 (2.33%) 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
1 736 (43.91%) Data Pipeline
2 648 (38.66%) Data Engineering
3 590 (35.20%) Data Modelling
4 587 (35.02%) ETL
5 574 (34.25%) Analytics
6 410 (24.46%) CI/CD
7 292 (17.42%) Agile
8 279 (16.65%) Migration
9 275 (16.41%) DevOps
10 264 (15.75%) Business Intelligence
11 262 (15.63%) AI
12 230 (13.72%) Data Governance
13 222 (13.25%) Data Transformation
14 221 (13.19%) Validation
15 206 (12.29%) Data Integration
16 178 (10.62%) Problem-Solving
17 159 (9.49%) Decision-Making
18 157 (9.37%) Infrastructure as Code
18 157 (9.37%) Lakehouse
19 145 (8.65%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 856 (51.07%) SQL
2 713 (42.54%) Python
3 90 (5.37%) Java
4 66 (3.94%) Scala
5 43 (2.57%) PL/SQL
6 30 (1.79%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 27 (1.61%) T-SQL
8 26 (1.55%) PowerShell
8 26 (1.55%) Shell Script
9 22 (1.31%) Bash
10 18 (1.07%) JavaScript
11 13 (0.78%) R
12 10 (0.60%) Bicep
12 10 (0.60%) C#
12 10 (0.60%) TypeScript
13 9 (0.54%) Go
14 5 (0.30%) Korn
15 3 (0.18%) Kusto Query Language
16 2 (0.12%) COBOL
16 2 (0.12%) Cypher
Qualifications
1 436 (26.01%) Security Cleared
2 375 (22.37%) SC Cleared
3 39 (2.33%) BPSS Clearance
4 38 (2.27%) Degree
5 29 (1.73%) DV Cleared
6 24 (1.43%) Azure Certification
7 19 (1.13%) Computer Science Degree
8 13 (0.78%) AWS Certification
9 8 (0.48%) DBS Check
10 7 (0.42%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 7 (0.42%) Master's Degree
11 6 (0.36%) SnowPro
12 4 (0.24%) CISM
12 4 (0.24%) CISSP
12 4 (0.24%) City & Guilds
12 4 (0.24%) Microsoft Certification
13 3 (0.18%) CEH
14 1 (0.060%) PMI Certification
14 1 (0.060%) PMP
14 1 (0.060%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 438 (26.13%) Data Quality
2 66 (3.94%) QA
3 33 (1.97%) GDPR
4 15 (0.89%) 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 (6.21%) Docker
2 3 (0.18%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.12%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.060%) HDFS
4 1 (0.060%) RACF
Systems Management
1 75 (4.47%) Kubernetes
2 23 (1.37%) Grafana
3 15 (0.89%) Ansible
4 11 (0.66%) Control-M
5 9 (0.54%) Kibana
6 4 (0.24%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.12%) Puppet
8 1 (0.060%) logstash
8 1 (0.060%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 335 (19.99%) Databricks
2 221 (13.19%) Microsoft
3 143 (8.53%) Oracle
4 88 (5.25%) Informatica
5 80 (4.77%) Talend
6 77 (4.59%) Google
7 43 (2.57%) Denodo
8 29 (1.73%) Salesforce
9 28 (1.67%) Palantir
10 26 (1.55%) Foundry
11 25 (1.49%) SAP
12 23 (1.37%) Cisco
12 23 (1.37%) F5
13 12 (0.72%) Splunk
14 9 (0.54%) Bloomberg
15 8 (0.48%) Cloudera
15 8 (0.48%) OpenAI
15 8 (0.48%) Sage
16 7 (0.42%) Alteryx
16 7 (0.42%) IBM