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 15 May 2026.

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

6 months to
15 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 59 80 100
Rank change year-on-year +21 +20 +13
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,515 728 810
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.72% 3.01% 2.22%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.03% 3.25% 2.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,080 556 623
10th Percentile £381 £357 £243
25th Percentile £425 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.09%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £663 £719 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 45 9 43
10th Percentile £19.34 £44.64 £37.50
25th Percentile £41.25 £51.25 £49.25
Median hourly rate £52.50 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year -19.23% -3.70% +5.47%
75th Percentile £75.00 £78.70 £80.00
90th Percentile £77.40 £93.75 -
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -19.23% - +1.56%

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 37,605 22,375 33,819
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.33% 92.47% 92.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,373 14,887 22,423
10th Percentile £316 £300 £281
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £510 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,580 908 2,438
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.00 £12.87
25th Percentile £20.90 £18.51 £16.30
Median hourly rate £46.14 £30.20 £37.18
Median % change year-on-year +52.78% -18.77% -17.38%
75th Percentile £67.50 £63.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £43.09 £28.60 £37.18
% change year-on-year +50.66% -23.08% -17.38%

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 15 May 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 15 May 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 15 May 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 +23 839 £523 -0.48% 134
Midlands +38 297 £469 +1.96% 51
West Midlands +34 278 £469 -1.26% 34
North of England -17 189 £465 +0.54% 82
North West +6 124 £480 +3.78% 37
South East -6 91 £500 +8.11% 89
South West +4 67 £500 +1.27% 34
Yorkshire -33 50 £465 +3.33% 23
East Midlands -21 19 £475 +15.85% 17
East of England -31 16 £565 +79.37% 4
North East -21 15 £463 +8.82% 25
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 15 May 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.

1 826 (54.52%) SQL
2 682 (45.02%) Python
3 626 (41.32%) Data Pipeline
4 593 (39.14%) ETL
5 583 (38.48%) Analytics
6 573 (37.82%) Data Engineering
7 536 (35.38%) Data Modelling
8 534 (35.25%) Azure
9 448 (29.57%) Security Cleared
10 410 (27.06%) AWS
11 405 (26.73%) SC Cleared
12 388 (25.61%) Data Quality
13 368 (24.29%) CI/CD
14 358 (23.63%) Databricks
15 334 (22.05%) Business Intelligence
16 282 (18.61%) DevOps
17 281 (18.55%) Agile
18 263 (17.36%) Power Platform
19 258 (17.03%) Data Warehouse
20 249 (16.44%) Power BI
21 228 (15.05%) PySpark
22 227 (14.98%) Azure Data Factory
23 213 (14.06%) Data Governance
24 211 (13.93%) Problem-Solving
25 200 (13.20%) Microsoft
26 184 (12.15%) Migration
27 171 (11.29%) AI
28 168 (11.09%) Data Integration
29 165 (10.89%) Data Lake
29 165 (10.89%) Git

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
1 149 (9.83%) Apache Spark
2 137 (9.04%) Apache Airflow
3 87 (5.74%) Apache
4 74 (4.88%) SAS
5 26 (1.72%) Confluence
6 9 (0.59%) Palantir Foundry
7 7 (0.46%) Jupyter
8 5 (0.33%) Microsoft Exchange
9 3 (0.20%) SharePoint
10 1 (0.066%) Apache Superset
10 1 (0.066%) Appian
10 1 (0.066%) Camunda
10 1 (0.066%) Luigi
10 1 (0.066%) R Markdown
Applications
1 17 (1.12%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.33%) Notepad++
3 4 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.13%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 5 (0.33%) Aladdin
2 2 (0.13%) BambooHR
2 2 (0.13%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.13%) SAP BPC
2 2 (0.13%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.13%) SimCorp Dimension
3 1 (0.066%) Actimize
3 1 (0.066%) Elite 3E
3 1 (0.066%) iTrent
3 1 (0.066%) NEC Housing
3 1 (0.066%) Oracle 11i
3 1 (0.066%) Oracle Assets
3 1 (0.066%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.066%) Raiser’s Edge
3 1 (0.066%) SAP Business ByDesign
Cloud Services
1 534 (35.25%) Azure
2 410 (27.06%) AWS
3 263 (17.36%) Power Platform
4 227 (14.98%) Azure Data Factory
5 158 (10.43%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 146 (9.64%) Snowflake
7 139 (9.17%) GCP
8 135 (8.91%) Amazon S3
9 131 (8.65%) dbt
10 130 (8.58%) Azure DevOps
11 111 (7.33%) GitHub
12 87 (5.74%) Serverless
13 72 (4.75%) AWS Lambda
14 51 (3.37%) GitHub Actions
15 32 (2.11%) AWS CloudFormation
16 28 (1.85%) Matillion
17 25 (1.65%) Amazon Kinesis
18 24 (1.58%) OpenShift
19 21 (1.39%) Dagster
20 20 (1.32%) Amazon EMR
Communications & Networking
1 33 (2.18%) DNS
1 33 (2.18%) VPN
2 32 (2.11%) BGP
2 32 (2.11%) DMZ
2 32 (2.11%) Multicast
3 10 (0.66%) Structured Cabling
4 5 (0.33%) PuTTY
4 5 (0.33%) WinSCP
5 4 (0.26%) Firewall
6 2 (0.13%) Wi-Fi
6 2 (0.13%) Wireless
7 1 (0.066%) 4G
7 1 (0.066%) 5G
7 1 (0.066%) Network Security
7 1 (0.066%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 258 (17.03%) Data Warehouse
2 249 (16.44%) Power BI
3 165 (10.89%) Data Lake
4 115 (7.59%) SQL Server
5 91 (6.01%) Delta Lake
6 85 (5.61%) BigQuery
7 83 (5.48%) Amazon Redshift
7 83 (5.48%) Metadata
8 82 (5.41%) Pentaho
9 80 (5.28%) Azure SQL Database
10 68 (4.49%) Tableau
11 63 (4.16%) Big Data
12 61 (4.03%) PostgreSQL
13 60 (3.96%) NoSQL
14 59 (3.89%) Snowflake Schema
15 57 (3.76%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 52 (3.43%) Amazon Athena
17 38 (2.51%) Hadoop
17 38 (2.51%) Relational Database
18 35 (2.31%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 165 (10.89%) Git
2 73 (4.82%) JIRA
3 67 (4.42%) GitLab
4 58 (3.83%) Jenkins
5 16 (1.06%) MLflow
6 2 (0.13%) Artifactory
6 2 (0.13%) Bitbucket
6 2 (0.13%) SonarQube
6 2 (0.13%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.13%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
6 2 (0.13%) Visual Studio
7 1 (0.066%) ER Studio
7 1 (0.066%) ERwin
7 1 (0.066%) Jaeger
7 1 (0.066%) JUnit
7 1 (0.066%) Poetry
7 1 (0.066%) Selenium
7 1 (0.066%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (0.066%) Terragrunt
General
1 255 (16.83%) Finance
2 229 (15.12%) Social Skills
3 159 (10.50%) Analytical Skills
4 127 (8.38%) Public Sector
5 82 (5.41%) Banking
6 29 (1.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 23 (1.52%) Investment Banking
8 21 (1.39%) Telecoms
9 19 (1.25%) Marketing
10 18 (1.19%) Retail
11 16 (1.06%) Documentation Skills
11 16 (1.06%) Manufacturing
12 14 (0.92%) Pharmaceutical
13 13 (0.86%) Aerospace
14 11 (0.73%) Front Office
14 11 (0.73%) Publishing
15 8 (0.53%) Military
16 5 (0.33%) Games
16 5 (0.33%) Law
16 5 (0.33%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 228 (15.05%) PySpark
2 139 (9.17%) Kafka
3 47 (3.10%) Pandas
4 27 (1.78%) JSON
5 25 (1.65%) Great Expectations
5 25 (1.65%) YAML
6 23 (1.52%) REST
7 21 (1.39%) Spring
7 21 (1.39%) Spring Boot
8 14 (0.92%) Apache Beam
9 13 (0.86%) Apache Avro
9 13 (0.86%) PyTorch
9 13 (0.86%) scikit-learn
10 12 (0.79%) Node.js
10 12 (0.79%) React
10 12 (0.79%) XML
11 11 (0.73%) Matplotlib
12 9 (0.59%) GeoJSON
12 9 (0.59%) NumPy
12 9 (0.59%) Polars
Miscellaneous
1 110 (7.26%) Cloud Native
2 42 (2.77%) Legacy Systems
3 31 (2.05%) Data Structures
4 28 (1.85%) Product Ownership
5 27 (1.78%) Greenfield Project
6 22 (1.45%) Distributed Systems
7 19 (1.25%) Clustering
8 16 (1.06%) Onboarding
9 15 (0.99%) Reinsurance
10 14 (0.92%) Data Protection Act
10 14 (0.92%) Replication
11 13 (0.86%) NHS
12 12 (0.79%) Distributed Computing
12 12 (0.79%) Self-Motivation
13 10 (0.66%) Public Cloud
14 8 (0.53%) AI Agents
14 8 (0.53%) Analytical Mindset
14 8 (0.53%) Hybrid Cloud
14 8 (0.53%) Life Science
14 8 (0.53%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 49 (3.23%) Unix
2 31 (2.05%) Linux
3 3 (0.20%) Windows
4 2 (0.13%) VMS
4 2 (0.13%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.066%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 626 (41.32%) Data Pipeline
2 593 (39.14%) ETL
3 583 (38.48%) Analytics
4 573 (37.82%) Data Engineering
5 536 (35.38%) Data Modelling
6 368 (24.29%) CI/CD
7 334 (22.05%) Business Intelligence
8 282 (18.61%) DevOps
9 281 (18.55%) Agile
10 213 (14.06%) Data Governance
11 211 (13.93%) Problem-Solving
12 184 (12.15%) Migration
13 171 (11.29%) AI
14 168 (11.09%) Data Integration
15 155 (10.23%) Data Science
16 154 (10.17%) Validation
17 134 (8.84%) Decision-Making
18 130 (8.58%) Data Architecture
19 128 (8.45%) Data Transformation
20 121 (7.99%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 826 (54.52%) SQL
2 682 (45.02%) Python
3 98 (6.47%) Java
4 84 (5.54%) Scala
5 40 (2.64%) PL/SQL
6 36 (2.38%) C#
7 35 (2.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 33 (2.18%) T-SQL
9 27 (1.78%) Bash
10 26 (1.72%) Shell Script
11 18 (1.19%) Bicep
12 17 (1.12%) R
13 15 (0.99%) PowerShell
14 13 (0.86%) JavaScript
15 8 (0.53%) Go
16 6 (0.40%) TypeScript
17 3 (0.20%) C
18 2 (0.13%) LookML
18 2 (0.13%) Ruby
18 2 (0.13%) VB
Qualifications
1 448 (29.57%) Security Cleared
2 405 (26.73%) SC Cleared
3 40 (2.64%) Degree
4 30 (1.98%) Azure Certification
5 29 (1.91%) BPSS Clearance
6 16 (1.06%) Computer Science Degree
7 13 (0.86%) DV Cleared
8 7 (0.46%) City & Guilds
8 7 (0.46%) DBS Check
9 6 (0.40%) AWS Certification
9 6 (0.40%) Master's Degree
9 6 (0.40%) Microsoft Certification
10 5 (0.33%) BICSI Certification
11 3 (0.20%) CTC Cleared
11 3 (0.20%) SnowPro
12 2 (0.13%) CISM
12 2 (0.13%) CISSP
13 1 (0.066%) CCIE
13 1 (0.066%) CCNP
13 1 (0.066%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 388 (25.61%) Data Quality
2 49 (3.23%) GDPR
3 47 (3.10%) QA
4 9 (0.59%) Accessibility
4 9 (0.59%) FATCA
4 9 (0.59%) SLA
5 5 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 5 (0.33%) MiFID
6 4 (0.26%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 3 (0.20%) GMP
7 3 (0.20%) HIPAA
8 2 (0.13%) EMIR
8 2 (0.13%) SNOMED CT
8 2 (0.13%) WCAG
9 1 (0.066%) Basel III
9 1 (0.066%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 1 (0.066%) GRC
9 1 (0.066%) GxP
9 1 (0.066%) NIST
9 1 (0.066%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 100 (6.60%) Docker
2 5 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.13%) HDFS
4 1 (0.066%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.066%) RACF
Systems Management
1 165 (10.89%) Terraform
2 91 (6.01%) Kubernetes
3 37 (2.44%) Grafana
4 12 (0.79%) Ansible
5 11 (0.73%) Prometheus
6 7 (0.46%) Kibana
7 3 (0.20%) Rancher
8 2 (0.13%) Apache Ranger
8 2 (0.13%) Kubeflow
8 2 (0.13%) logstash
8 2 (0.13%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.066%) Control-M
9 1 (0.066%) NetBackup
9 1 (0.066%) Puppet
Vendors
1 358 (23.63%) Databricks
2 200 (13.20%) Microsoft
3 134 (8.84%) Oracle
4 111 (7.33%) Talend
5 106 (7.00%) Informatica
6 65 (4.29%) Denodo
7 57 (3.76%) Google
8 35 (2.31%) Cisco
9 34 (2.24%) F5
10 26 (1.72%) SAP
11 22 (1.45%) Splunk
12 20 (1.32%) ServiceNow
13 17 (1.12%) Cloudera
14 14 (0.92%) Alteryx
15 12 (0.79%) Foundry
16 10 (0.66%) IBM
16 10 (0.66%) Palantir
17 8 (0.53%) Dynatrace
17 8 (0.53%) InterSystems
17 8 (0.53%) MuleSoft