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 10 August 2026.

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

 6 months to
10 Aug 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 57 122 94
Rank change year-on-year +65 -28 +23
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,756 642 782
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.85% 2.31% 2.36%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.17% 2.52% 2.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,184 463 578
10th Percentile £384 £369 £263
25th Percentile £425 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £595 £630
90th Percentile £663 £700 £691
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £520
% change year-on-year - -3.85% -5.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 84 12 29
10th Percentile £19.91 £19.00 £38.65
25th Percentile £30.96 £38.19 £52.50
Median hourly rate £43.75 £52.50 £80.00
Median % change year-on-year -16.67% -34.38% +23.08%
75th Percentile £70.00 £66.55 -
90th Percentile £75.00 £79.87 -
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £75.00
% change year-on-year -4.76% -30.00% +15.38%

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 42,140 25,508 30,829
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.51% 91.65% 92.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,526 16,531 20,304
10th Percentile £325 £285 £300
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £630 £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 3,165 1,327 1,793
10th Percentile £15.25 £13.53 £14.16
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.48 £21.25
Median hourly rate £42.65 £25.30 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.58% -43.78% +5.88%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £66.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% +1.18%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 +41 853 £525 - 436
Midlands +73 401 £465 +1.09% 82
West Midlands +66 347 £460 -4.17% 52
North of England +39 235 £500 +5.26% 144
North West +31 138 £525 +10.53% 71
South East +8 128 £465 +3.33% 151
South West +3 85 £525 +10.53% 50
Yorkshire -3 75 £465 -4.62% 36
East Midlands +28 54 £500 +19.05% 30
East of England +7 36 £520 +61.74% 31
North East -25 23 £515 +22.62% 39
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 10 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.

1 886 (50.46%) SQL
2 750 (42.71%) Data Pipeline
3 719 (40.95%) Python
4 649 (36.96%) Data Engineering
5 627 (35.71%) Analytics
6 613 (34.91%) ETL
7 586 (33.37%) Data Modelling
8 540 (30.75%) Azure
9 506 (28.82%) AWS
10 483 (27.51%) Security Cleared
11 432 (24.60%) Data Quality
12 425 (24.20%) SC Cleared
13 418 (23.80%) CI/CD
14 321 (18.28%) Databricks
15 313 (17.82%) Business Intelligence
16 311 (17.71%) Agile
17 293 (16.69%) Data Warehouse
17 293 (16.69%) DevOps
18 274 (15.60%) Migration
19 239 (13.61%) Power Platform
20 235 (13.38%) Data Governance
21 230 (13.10%) Power BI
22 226 (12.87%) PySpark
23 225 (12.81%) Microsoft
24 219 (12.47%) AI
24 219 (12.47%) Azure Data Factory
25 211 (12.02%) Problem-Solving
26 208 (11.85%) Data Integration
27 207 (11.79%) Validation
28 198 (11.28%) Data Transformation

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
1 175 (9.97%) Apache Airflow
2 141 (8.03%) Apache Spark
3 104 (5.92%) Apache
4 76 (4.33%) SAS
5 39 (2.22%) Confluence
6 13 (0.74%) Palantir Foundry
7 12 (0.68%) SharePoint
8 10 (0.57%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.17%) Apache Superset
10 2 (0.11%) Microsoft Exchange
11 1 (0.057%) ArcGIS
11 1 (0.057%) Liferay
11 1 (0.057%) Luigi
11 1 (0.057%) R Markdown
Applications
1 23 (1.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.28%) Notepad++
2 5 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
3 4 (0.23%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.057%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 12 (0.68%) Aladdin
2 7 (0.40%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.28%) Infor LN
3 5 (0.28%) NetSuite
3 5 (0.28%) Sage X3
4 3 (0.17%) SAP BPC
4 3 (0.17%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.17%) SimCorp Dimension
5 2 (0.11%) BambooHR
5 2 (0.11%) Maximo
6 1 (0.057%) iTrent
6 1 (0.057%) Oracle 11i
6 1 (0.057%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.057%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.057%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.057%) Raiser’s Edge
6 1 (0.057%) SAP Business ByDesign
6 1 (0.057%) SAP CAR
6 1 (0.057%) SAP EWM
6 1 (0.057%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 540 (30.75%) Azure
2 506 (28.82%) AWS
3 239 (13.61%) Power Platform
4 219 (12.47%) Azure Data Factory
5 191 (10.88%) Snowflake
6 189 (10.76%) dbt
7 159 (9.05%) GCP
8 142 (8.09%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 140 (7.97%) Amazon S3
10 128 (7.29%) Azure DevOps
11 100 (5.69%) GitHub
12 96 (5.47%) Serverless
13 82 (4.67%) AWS Lambda
14 42 (2.39%) GitHub Actions
15 36 (2.05%) Amazon EMR
16 27 (1.54%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 25 (1.42%) Matillion
18 24 (1.37%) Amazon Kinesis
18 24 (1.37%) Dagster
18 24 (1.37%) Fivetran
Communications & Networking
1 32 (1.82%) VPN
2 31 (1.77%) BGP
2 31 (1.77%) DMZ
2 31 (1.77%) DNS
2 31 (1.77%) Multicast
3 9 (0.51%) Structured Cabling
4 7 (0.40%) Firewall
5 5 (0.28%) PuTTY
5 5 (0.28%) WinSCP
6 4 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.23%) Wireless
7 3 (0.17%) Intrusion Detection
8 1 (0.057%) 4G
8 1 (0.057%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 293 (16.69%) Data Warehouse
2 230 (13.10%) Power BI
3 154 (8.77%) Data Lake
4 99 (5.64%) Metadata
5 96 (5.47%) BigQuery
6 95 (5.41%) Amazon Redshift
7 91 (5.18%) Pentaho
8 88 (5.01%) SQL Server
9 82 (4.67%) Delta Lake
10 64 (3.64%) Tableau
11 63 (3.59%) Amazon Athena
12 62 (3.53%) Big Data
13 58 (3.30%) PostgreSQL
14 53 (3.02%) Snowflake Schema
15 50 (2.85%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 49 (2.79%) Azure SQL Database
17 48 (2.73%) Relational Database
18 47 (2.68%) NoSQL
19 35 (1.99%) Hadoop
20 33 (1.88%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 159 (9.05%) Git
2 86 (4.90%) GitLab
3 70 (3.99%) JIRA
4 45 (2.56%) Jenkins
5 9 (0.51%) MLflow
6 7 (0.40%) Postman
7 6 (0.34%) Bitbucket
8 5 (0.28%) Artifactory
8 5 (0.28%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.17%) Newman
9 3 (0.17%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.11%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 2 (0.11%) ER Studio
10 2 (0.11%) ERwin
10 2 (0.11%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 2 (0.11%) Yeoman
11 1 (0.057%) Octopus Deploy
11 1 (0.057%) Selenium
11 1 (0.057%) Terragrunt
11 1 (0.057%) Toad
General
1 292 (16.63%) Finance
2 276 (15.72%) Social Skills
3 202 (11.50%) Analytical Skills
4 163 (9.28%) Public Sector
5 103 (5.87%) Banking
6 30 (1.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 25 (1.42%) Telecoms
8 23 (1.31%) Retail
9 22 (1.25%) Marketing
10 20 (1.14%) Manufacturing
11 19 (1.08%) Automotive
11 19 (1.08%) Documentation Skills
12 18 (1.03%) Investment Banking
13 17 (0.97%) Aerospace
13 17 (0.97%) Front Office
14 15 (0.85%) Pharmaceutical
15 9 (0.51%) Billing
15 9 (0.51%) Military
16 8 (0.46%) Legal
16 8 (0.46%) Publishing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 226 (12.87%) PySpark
2 120 (6.83%) Kafka
3 33 (1.88%) Pandas
4 26 (1.48%) JSON
5 24 (1.37%) REST
6 21 (1.20%) Spring
6 21 (1.20%) Spring Boot
7 20 (1.14%) Great Expectations
8 16 (0.91%) XML
8 16 (0.91%) YAML
9 15 (0.85%) Apache Beam
10 13 (0.74%) React
11 12 (0.68%) Apache Avro
11 12 (0.68%) RESTful
12 11 (0.63%) pytest
13 10 (0.57%) Microsoft Graph
13 10 (0.57%) PyTorch
13 10 (0.57%) scikit-learn
14 7 (0.40%) Apache NiFi
14 7 (0.40%) Protocol Buffers
Miscellaneous
1 128 (7.29%) Cloud Native
2 74 (4.21%) Legacy Systems
3 53 (3.02%) Data Structures
4 32 (1.82%) Onboarding
5 24 (1.37%) Distributed Systems
5 24 (1.37%) Product Ownership
6 22 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
6 22 (1.25%) NHS
7 19 (1.08%) Reinsurance
8 17 (0.97%) Reference Data
9 12 (0.68%) Clustering
9 12 (0.68%) Data Protection Act
9 12 (0.68%) Management Information System
10 11 (0.63%) AI Agents
11 10 (0.57%) Algorithms
11 10 (0.57%) Life Science
11 10 (0.57%) Virtual Team
12 9 (0.51%) Driving Licence
12 9 (0.51%) Self-Motivation
13 8 (0.46%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 61 (3.47%) Unix
2 44 (2.51%) Linux
3 4 (0.23%) Windows
4 2 (0.11%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.11%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.057%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 750 (42.71%) Data Pipeline
2 649 (36.96%) Data Engineering
3 627 (35.71%) Analytics
4 613 (34.91%) ETL
5 586 (33.37%) Data Modelling
6 418 (23.80%) CI/CD
7 313 (17.82%) Business Intelligence
8 311 (17.71%) Agile
9 293 (16.69%) DevOps
10 274 (15.60%) Migration
11 235 (13.38%) Data Governance
12 219 (12.47%) AI
13 211 (12.02%) Problem-Solving
14 208 (11.85%) Data Integration
15 207 (11.79%) Validation
16 198 (11.28%) Data Transformation
17 177 (10.08%) Decision-Making
18 156 (8.88%) Data Science
19 140 (7.97%) Test Automation
20 134 (7.63%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 886 (50.46%) SQL
2 719 (40.95%) Python
3 101 (5.75%) Java
4 58 (3.30%) Scala
5 49 (2.79%) PL/SQL
6 33 (1.88%) Shell Script
7 31 (1.77%) T-SQL
8 30 (1.71%) Bash
9 27 (1.54%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 25 (1.42%) PowerShell
11 19 (1.08%) C#
12 15 (0.85%) JavaScript
13 13 (0.74%) R
14 11 (0.63%) Bicep
15 6 (0.34%) Go
15 6 (0.34%) TypeScript
16 3 (0.17%) Korn
17 2 (0.11%) HiveQL
17 2 (0.11%) Ruby
17 2 (0.11%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 483 (27.51%) Security Cleared
2 425 (24.20%) SC Cleared
3 41 (2.33%) BPSS Clearance
4 40 (2.28%) Degree
5 24 (1.37%) Azure Certification
6 21 (1.20%) DV Cleared
7 20 (1.14%) Computer Science Degree
8 10 (0.57%) AWS Certification
9 9 (0.51%) City & Guilds
9 9 (0.51%) DBS Check
10 6 (0.34%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 6 (0.34%) SnowPro
11 5 (0.28%) BICSI Certification
11 5 (0.28%) CISM
11 5 (0.28%) CISSP
11 5 (0.28%) Master's Degree
12 4 (0.23%) Microsoft Certification
13 3 (0.17%) CEH
14 1 (0.057%) CISA
14 1 (0.057%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 432 (24.60%) Data Quality
2 59 (3.36%) QA
3 43 (2.45%) GDPR
4 16 (0.91%) Accessibility
5 12 (0.68%) SLA
6 6 (0.34%) FATCA
7 5 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 4 (0.23%) HIPAA
8 4 (0.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 3 (0.17%) MiFID
10 2 (0.11%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 2 (0.11%) EMIR
10 2 (0.11%) GMP
10 2 (0.11%) SNOMED CT
10 2 (0.11%) WCAG
11 1 (0.057%) IFRS
11 1 (0.057%) IFRS 17
11 1 (0.057%) IFRS 9
11 1 (0.057%) PCI DSS
11 1 (0.057%) PMO
System Software
1 114 (6.49%) Docker
2 4 (0.23%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.11%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.11%) HDFS
4 1 (0.057%) RACF
Systems Management
1 163 (9.28%) Terraform
2 93 (5.30%) Kubernetes
3 33 (1.88%) Grafana
4 14 (0.80%) Ansible
5 8 (0.46%) Prometheus
6 7 (0.40%) Control-M
7 6 (0.34%) Kibana
8 2 (0.11%) Apache Ranger
8 2 (0.11%) Puppet
8 2 (0.11%) Rancher
8 2 (0.11%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.057%) Kubeflow
9 1 (0.057%) logstash
9 1 (0.057%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 321 (18.28%) Databricks
2 225 (12.81%) Microsoft
3 151 (8.60%) Oracle
4 122 (6.95%) Informatica
5 115 (6.55%) Talend
6 65 (3.70%) Google
7 62 (3.53%) Denodo
8 33 (1.88%) SAP
9 32 (1.82%) Cisco
9 32 (1.82%) F5
10 28 (1.59%) Salesforce
11 23 (1.31%) Palantir
12 22 (1.25%) Splunk
13 19 (1.08%) Cloudera
14 18 (1.03%) Foundry
15 15 (0.85%) ServiceNow
16 11 (0.63%) Sage
17 10 (0.57%) IBM
18 9 (0.51%) Bloomberg
19 8 (0.46%) InterSystems
852 Data Engineer jobs in England