Data Engineer Contract Job Trends in England

Data Engineer
UK > England

The median Data Engineer daily rate in England is £513, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 19 January 2026.

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

6 months to
19 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 97 81 115
Rank change year-on-year -16 +34 +10
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 867 771 757
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.74% 2.89% 2.06%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.99% 3.11% 2.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 623 549 574
10th Percentile £360 £356 £393
25th Percentile £413 £435 £446
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £594 £625 £638
90th Percentile £700 £728 £692
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 8 18
10th Percentile £25.92 £36.75 £35.00
25th Percentile £31.31 £59.06 £42.20
Median hourly rate £40.50 £78.75 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year -48.57% +30.17% -13.57%
75th Percentile £76.56 £97.50 £65.94
90th Percentile £110.00 - £67.65
UK median hourly rate £43.50 £53.75 £60.50
% change year-on-year -19.07% -11.16% -3.97%

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 29,011 24,784 34,120
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.58% 92.98% 93.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,502 15,314 23,126
10th Percentile £300 £300 £275
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,790 757 1,685
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.92 £14.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £18.00
Median hourly rate £28.50 £35.00 £40.33
Median % change year-on-year -18.57% -13.21% +15.21%
75th Percentile £62.50 £64.73 £63.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £40.32
% change year-on-year -15.38% -19.39% +18.58%

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 19 January 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 19 January 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 19 January 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 +4 565 £525 -7.89% 147
North of England -40 97 £456 +1.39% 81
Midlands -15 96 £519 +6.08% 53
West Midlands -17 83 £525 +6.06% 31
North West -26 52 £403 -9.55% 42
South West +1 41 £550 +17.33% 52
South East -52 33 £475 -11.63% 157
Yorkshire -35 32 £500 +5.26% 26
North East -13 13 £450 -1.64% 15
East Midlands -18 13 £455 +24.91% 22
East of England -26 6 £625 +96.54% 56
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 19 January 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.

1 504 (58.13%) Python
1 504 (58.13%) SQL
2 384 (44.29%) Azure
3 375 (43.25%) Data Pipeline
4 358 (41.29%) ETL
5 351 (40.48%) Data Engineering
6 302 (34.83%) Analytics
7 300 (34.60%) Data Modelling
8 298 (34.37%) Databricks
9 269 (31.03%) AWS
10 256 (29.53%) CI/CD
11 248 (28.60%) Data Quality
12 225 (25.95%) Security Cleared
13 211 (24.34%) Business Intelligence
14 200 (23.07%) SC Cleared
15 194 (22.38%) DevOps
16 171 (19.72%) Power Platform
17 167 (19.26%) Power BI
18 165 (19.03%) Azure Data Factory
19 162 (18.69%) Agile
19 162 (18.69%) Data Warehouse
20 158 (18.22%) PySpark
21 140 (16.15%) Problem-Solving
22 132 (15.22%) Data Science
23 130 (14.99%) Data Governance
24 117 (13.49%) Snowflake
25 116 (13.38%) Git
26 115 (13.26%) Data Architecture
27 114 (13.15%) Microsoft
28 113 (13.03%) 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
1 107 (12.34%) Apache Airflow
2 99 (11.42%) Apache Spark
3 63 (7.27%) Apache
4 24 (2.77%) SAS
5 18 (2.08%) Confluence
6 6 (0.69%) Apache Pig
6 6 (0.69%) Oracle Application Server
7 5 (0.58%) IIS
8 4 (0.46%) Jupyter
8 4 (0.46%) Microsoft Exchange
9 3 (0.35%) SharePoint
10 2 (0.23%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.23%) Luigi
11 1 (0.12%) Apache Synapse
11 1 (0.12%) Appian
11 1 (0.12%) nginx
11 1 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 9 (1.04%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.23%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.12%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.23%) Aladdin
1 2 (0.23%) Maximo
2 1 (0.12%) Actimize
2 1 (0.12%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.12%) Elite 3E
2 1 (0.12%) Oracle BPM
2 1 (0.12%) SAP ERP
2 1 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 384 (44.29%) Azure
2 269 (31.03%) AWS
3 171 (19.72%) Power Platform
4 165 (19.03%) Azure Data Factory
5 117 (13.49%) Snowflake
6 102 (11.76%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 94 (10.84%) dbt
8 93 (10.73%) Amazon S3
8 93 (10.73%) GCP
9 86 (9.92%) GitHub
10 77 (8.88%) Serverless
11 67 (7.73%) Azure DevOps
12 53 (6.11%) AWS Lambda
13 46 (5.31%) GitHub Actions
14 31 (3.58%) AWS CloudFormation
15 22 (2.54%) SaaS
16 19 (2.19%) Amazon Kinesis
17 18 (2.08%) AWS Step Functions
18 14 (1.61%) Matillion
19 13 (1.50%) Prefect
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.58%) BGP
1 5 (0.58%) DMZ
1 5 (0.58%) DNS
1 5 (0.58%) Multicast
1 5 (0.58%) VPN
2 4 (0.46%) Firewall
3 3 (0.35%) SAN
4 1 (0.12%) Internet
4 1 (0.12%) Network Security
4 1 (0.12%) Software-Defined Networking
4 1 (0.12%) Structured Cabling
4 1 (0.12%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 167 (19.26%) Power BI
2 162 (18.69%) Data Warehouse
3 104 (12.00%) Data Lake
4 85 (9.80%) SQL Server
5 59 (6.81%) Azure SQL Database
6 55 (6.34%) Big Data
7 54 (6.23%) Delta Lake
7 54 (6.23%) PostgreSQL
8 53 (6.11%) Amazon Redshift
8 53 (6.11%) NoSQL
9 49 (5.65%) Metadata
10 45 (5.19%) BigQuery
11 39 (4.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 35 (4.04%) Hadoop
13 32 (3.69%) Pentaho
14 31 (3.58%) Amazon Athena
14 31 (3.58%) Tableau
15 29 (3.34%) Relational Database
16 27 (3.11%) Snowflake Schema
16 27 (3.11%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 116 (13.38%) Git
2 60 (6.92%) Jenkins
3 42 (4.84%) JIRA
4 35 (4.04%) GitLab
5 21 (2.42%) MLflow
6 6 (0.69%) DBeaver
7 2 (0.23%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.23%) Selenium
7 2 (0.23%) Visual Studio
7 2 (0.23%) Visual Studio Code
8 1 (0.12%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.12%) ERwin
8 1 (0.12%) Gradle
8 1 (0.12%) Jaeger
8 1 (0.12%) JUnit
8 1 (0.12%) Maven
8 1 (0.12%) Mockito
8 1 (0.12%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 1 (0.12%) Team Foundation Server
8 1 (0.12%) TeamCity
General
1 160 (18.45%) Social Skills
2 139 (16.03%) Finance
3 89 (10.27%) Analytical Skills
4 64 (7.38%) Public Sector
5 38 (4.38%) Banking
6 30 (3.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 15 (1.73%) Investment Banking
8 14 (1.61%) Front Office
9 13 (1.50%) Pharmaceutical
10 11 (1.27%) Retail
11 9 (1.04%) Marketing
12 7 (0.81%) Telecoms
13 6 (0.69%) Military
14 5 (0.58%) Law
14 5 (0.58%) Manufacturing
15 4 (0.46%) Back Office
15 4 (0.46%) Corporate Banking
15 4 (0.46%) Documentation Skills
15 4 (0.46%) Legal
16 3 (0.35%) Aerospace
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 158 (18.22%) PySpark
2 91 (10.50%) Kafka
3 25 (2.88%) Pandas
4 20 (2.31%) REST
5 17 (1.96%) YAML
6 15 (1.73%) Apache NiFi
6 15 (1.73%) JSON
7 14 (1.61%) RESTful
8 13 (1.50%) NumPy
8 13 (1.50%) PyTorch
9 12 (1.38%) Keycloak
9 12 (1.38%) XML
10 10 (1.15%) Node.js
10 10 (1.15%) TensorFlow
11 9 (1.04%) HTML
11 9 (1.04%) Middleware
12 8 (0.92%) Flask
12 8 (0.92%) Great Expectations
12 8 (0.92%) pytest
12 8 (0.92%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 60 (6.92%) Cloud Native
2 26 (3.00%) Data Structures
2 26 (3.00%) Product Ownership
3 20 (2.31%) Legacy Systems
3 20 (2.31%) Replication
4 17 (1.96%) Algorithms
5 15 (1.73%) Greenfield Project
5 15 (1.73%) Onboarding
6 12 (1.38%) Reinsurance
7 11 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
7 11 (1.27%) Hybrid Cloud
8 8 (0.92%) Clustering
9 7 (0.81%) Distributed Computing
9 7 (0.81%) Life Science
9 7 (0.81%) Management Information System
10 5 (0.58%) Derivative
10 5 (0.58%) Distributed Systems
10 5 (0.58%) Genomics
10 5 (0.58%) Linux Command Line
10 5 (0.58%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 18 (2.08%) Linux
2 11 (1.27%) Unix
3 1 (0.12%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 375 (43.25%) Data Pipeline
2 358 (41.29%) ETL
3 351 (40.48%) Data Engineering
4 302 (34.83%) Analytics
5 300 (34.60%) Data Modelling
6 256 (29.53%) CI/CD
7 211 (24.34%) Business Intelligence
8 194 (22.38%) DevOps
9 162 (18.69%) Agile
10 140 (16.15%) Problem-Solving
11 132 (15.22%) Data Science
12 130 (14.99%) Data Governance
13 115 (13.26%) Data Architecture
14 113 (13.03%) Data Integration
15 108 (12.46%) AI
16 106 (12.23%) Machine Learning
17 95 (10.96%) Infrastructure as Code
18 81 (9.34%) Data Transformation
19 75 (8.65%) Migration
20 71 (8.19%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 504 (58.13%) Python
1 504 (58.13%) SQL
2 86 (9.92%) Scala
3 64 (7.38%) Java
4 23 (2.65%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 21 (2.42%) Bash
6 20 (2.31%) PL/SQL
7 17 (1.96%) T-SQL
8 16 (1.85%) C#
8 16 (1.85%) Go
9 15 (1.73%) R
10 12 (1.38%) Bicep
10 12 (1.38%) JavaScript
11 11 (1.27%) Shell Script
12 9 (1.04%) PowerShell
13 5 (0.58%) TypeScript
14 4 (0.46%) Korn
15 3 (0.35%) C++
16 2 (0.23%) VB
17 1 (0.12%) ABAP
Qualifications
1 225 (25.95%) Security Cleared
2 200 (23.07%) SC Cleared
3 30 (3.46%) Azure Certification
4 25 (2.88%) Degree
5 18 (2.08%) AWS Certification
6 16 (1.85%) DV Cleared
7 14 (1.61%) Computer Science Degree
8 8 (0.92%) BPSS Clearance
9 5 (0.58%) Master's Degree
9 5 (0.58%) Microsoft Certification
10 4 (0.46%) CTC Cleared
11 3 (0.35%) DBS Check
12 2 (0.23%) MCP
12 2 (0.23%) SnowPro
13 1 (0.12%) HND
13 1 (0.12%) PhD
13 1 (0.12%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 248 (28.60%) Data Quality
2 43 (4.96%) GDPR
3 14 (1.61%) QA
4 5 (0.58%) Accessibility
5 4 (0.46%) HIPAA
5 4 (0.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 4 (0.46%) MiFID
6 2 (0.23%) Dodd-Frank
6 2 (0.23%) EMIR
6 2 (0.23%) EU AI Act
6 2 (0.23%) NIST
6 2 (0.23%) SLA
7 1 (0.12%) Basel III
7 1 (0.12%) HL7
7 1 (0.12%) ISO 13485
7 1 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 20000
7 1 (0.12%) NCSC
7 1 (0.12%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 1 (0.12%) SOC 2
7 1 (0.12%) WCAG
System Software
1 75 (8.65%) Docker
2 10 (1.15%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (0.58%) zsh
4 3 (0.35%) Active Directory
5 1 (0.12%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 110 (12.69%) Terraform
2 76 (8.77%) Kubernetes
3 11 (1.27%) Ansible
4 10 (1.15%) Grafana
5 9 (1.04%) NetBackup
6 5 (0.58%) Prometheus
7 4 (0.46%) Kibana
8 3 (0.35%) Kubeflow
8 3 (0.35%) Puppet
9 2 (0.23%) Control-M
9 2 (0.23%) EMC NetWorker
9 2 (0.23%) logstash
9 2 (0.23%) Tivoli Storage Manager
10 1 (0.12%) Ambari
10 1 (0.12%) Argo
10 1 (0.12%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 298 (34.37%) Databricks
2 114 (13.15%) Microsoft
3 69 (7.96%) Oracle
4 42 (4.84%) Talend
5 32 (3.69%) Google
6 31 (3.58%) Informatica
7 25 (2.88%) Denodo
8 19 (2.19%) Foundry
8 19 (2.19%) Palantir
9 15 (1.73%) IBM
10 12 (1.38%) SAP
11 11 (1.27%) ServiceNow
12 10 (1.15%) Splunk
13 9 (1.04%) Cloudera
13 9 (1.04%) Commvault
13 9 (1.04%) Red Hat
13 9 (1.04%) Veritas
14 8 (0.92%) Cisco
15 7 (0.81%) Confluent
15 7 (0.81%) Virgin Media