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 25 April 2026.

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

6 months to
25 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 64 80 96
Rank change year-on-year +16 +16 +15
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,435 750 848
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.60% 3.05% 2.28%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.90% 3.29% 2.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,028 573 663
10th Percentile £371 £358 £290
25th Percentile £424 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year - -1.96% -7.27%
75th Percentile £588 £609 £616
90th Percentile £650 £725 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 40 10 43
10th Percentile £19.34 £38.95 £37.50
25th Percentile £39.69 £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 £78.40 £80.00
90th Percentile £79.48 £93.75 -
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £58.75 £65.00
% change year-on-year -10.64% -9.62% +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 36,815 22,791 34,515
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.34% 92.69% 92.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,071 15,196 22,978
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £508 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.24% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £643
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £517 £525
% change year-on-year -3.29% -1.52% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,480 893 2,410
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.20 £12.91
25th Percentile £20.79 £18.74 £16.30
Median hourly rate £45.46 £31.64 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year +43.68% -10.87% -21.11%
75th Percentile £67.25 £64.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.69 £29.07 £35.50
% change year-on-year +46.84% -18.11% -21.11%

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 25 April 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 25 April 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 25 April 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 +24 791 £525 - 144
Midlands +29 276 £469 +0.32% 50
West Midlands +33 258 £469 -3.79% 42
North of England -9 183 £465 +0.54% 85
North West 0 115 £480 +3.78% 49
South East -22 82 £500 +2.56% 96
South West -19 58 £506 +1.20% 43
Yorkshire -32 53 £465 +3.33% 17
East Midlands -27 18 £498 +24.76% 8
East of England -37 17 £565 +79.37% 25
North East -18 15 £463 +2.78% 21
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 25 April 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.

1 797 (55.54%) SQL
2 672 (46.83%) Python
3 597 (41.60%) Data Pipeline
4 575 (40.07%) ETL
5 561 (39.09%) Analytics
6 547 (38.12%) Data Engineering
7 530 (36.93%) Azure
8 508 (35.40%) Data Modelling
9 410 (28.57%) Security Cleared
10 389 (27.11%) AWS
11 385 (26.83%) Data Quality
12 371 (25.85%) SC Cleared
13 359 (25.02%) CI/CD
14 357 (24.88%) Databricks
15 325 (22.65%) Business Intelligence
16 271 (18.89%) DevOps
17 270 (18.82%) Agile
18 257 (17.91%) Power Platform
19 251 (17.49%) Data Warehouse
20 242 (16.86%) Power BI
21 225 (15.68%) Azure Data Factory
22 219 (15.26%) PySpark
23 218 (15.19%) Data Governance
24 209 (14.56%) Problem-Solving
25 192 (13.38%) Microsoft
26 168 (11.71%) Terraform
27 166 (11.57%) Git
27 166 (11.57%) Migration
28 162 (11.29%) Data Science
29 160 (11.15%) AI

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
1 147 (10.24%) Apache Spark
2 143 (9.97%) Apache Airflow
3 84 (5.85%) Apache
4 67 (4.67%) SAS
5 15 (1.05%) Confluence
6 8 (0.56%) Jupyter
6 8 (0.56%) Palantir Foundry
7 5 (0.35%) Microsoft Exchange
8 3 (0.21%) SharePoint
9 1 (0.070%) Apache Superset
9 1 (0.070%) Apache Synapse
9 1 (0.070%) Appian
9 1 (0.070%) Camunda
9 1 (0.070%) Luigi
9 1 (0.070%) R Markdown
Applications
1 19 (1.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.35%) Notepad++
3 4 (0.28%) Chatbot
3 4 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.14%) Aladdin
1 2 (0.14%) BambooHR
1 2 (0.14%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.14%) Maximo
1 2 (0.14%) SAP BPC
2 1 (0.070%) Actimize
2 1 (0.070%) Elite 3E
2 1 (0.070%) iTrent
2 1 (0.070%) NEC Housing
2 1 (0.070%) Oracle 11i
2 1 (0.070%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.070%) SAP Business ByDesign
2 1 (0.070%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.070%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 530 (36.93%) Azure
2 389 (27.11%) AWS
3 257 (17.91%) Power Platform
4 225 (15.68%) Azure Data Factory
5 154 (10.73%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 151 (10.52%) Snowflake
7 137 (9.55%) Amazon S3
7 137 (9.55%) GCP
8 133 (9.27%) dbt
9 116 (8.08%) Azure DevOps
10 107 (7.46%) GitHub
11 91 (6.34%) Serverless
12 75 (5.23%) AWS Lambda
13 51 (3.55%) GitHub Actions
14 38 (2.65%) AWS CloudFormation
15 26 (1.81%) Matillion
16 25 (1.74%) Amazon Kinesis
17 24 (1.67%) Dagster
18 22 (1.53%) AWS Step Functions
18 22 (1.53%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 29 (2.02%) DNS
1 29 (2.02%) VPN
2 28 (1.95%) BGP
2 28 (1.95%) DMZ
2 28 (1.95%) Multicast
3 10 (0.70%) Structured Cabling
4 5 (0.35%) Firewall
4 5 (0.35%) PuTTY
4 5 (0.35%) WinSCP
5 3 (0.21%) SAN
6 1 (0.070%) 4G
6 1 (0.070%) 5G
6 1 (0.070%) Network Security
6 1 (0.070%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 251 (17.49%) Data Warehouse
2 242 (16.86%) Power BI
3 157 (10.94%) Data Lake
4 109 (7.60%) SQL Server
5 88 (6.13%) Delta Lake
6 84 (5.85%) Amazon Redshift
6 84 (5.85%) BigQuery
7 82 (5.71%) Azure SQL Database
8 78 (5.44%) Pentaho
9 77 (5.37%) Metadata
10 69 (4.81%) Tableau
11 61 (4.25%) Big Data
11 61 (4.25%) PostgreSQL
12 59 (4.11%) Snowflake Schema
13 57 (3.97%) NoSQL
14 54 (3.76%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 50 (3.48%) Amazon Athena
16 36 (2.51%) Hadoop
17 35 (2.44%) Data Vault
17 35 (2.44%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 166 (11.57%) Git
2 62 (4.32%) JIRA
3 61 (4.25%) GitLab
4 60 (4.18%) Jenkins
5 16 (1.11%) MLflow
6 2 (0.14%) Bitbucket
6 2 (0.14%) SonarQube
6 2 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.14%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
6 2 (0.14%) Visual Studio
7 1 (0.070%) ER Studio
7 1 (0.070%) ERwin
7 1 (0.070%) Jaeger
7 1 (0.070%) JUnit
7 1 (0.070%) Poetry
7 1 (0.070%) Selenium
7 1 (0.070%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (0.070%) Terragrunt
General
1 238 (16.59%) Finance
2 224 (15.61%) Social Skills
3 156 (10.87%) Analytical Skills
4 119 (8.29%) Public Sector
5 78 (5.44%) Banking
6 32 (2.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 21 (1.46%) Investment Banking
7 21 (1.46%) Telecoms
8 16 (1.11%) Documentation Skills
8 16 (1.11%) Manufacturing
9 15 (1.05%) Pharmaceutical
9 15 (1.05%) Retail
10 14 (0.98%) Marketing
11 12 (0.84%) Aerospace
12 11 (0.77%) Publishing
13 10 (0.70%) Front Office
14 6 (0.42%) Law
14 6 (0.42%) Local Government
14 6 (0.42%) Military
15 5 (0.35%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 219 (15.26%) PySpark
2 140 (9.76%) Kafka
3 47 (3.28%) Pandas
4 30 (2.09%) JSON
5 29 (2.02%) YAML
6 25 (1.74%) Great Expectations
6 25 (1.74%) REST
7 16 (1.11%) Spring
7 16 (1.11%) Spring Boot
8 15 (1.05%) scikit-learn
8 15 (1.05%) XML
9 14 (0.98%) Node.js
10 13 (0.91%) PyTorch
11 12 (0.84%) Matplotlib
11 12 (0.84%) React
12 11 (0.77%) Apache Avro
12 11 (0.77%) Apache Beam
12 11 (0.77%) NumPy
13 10 (0.70%) pytest
14 9 (0.63%) GeoJSON
Miscellaneous
1 99 (6.90%) Cloud Native
2 44 (3.07%) Legacy Systems
3 31 (2.16%) Data Structures
3 31 (2.16%) Product Ownership
4 23 (1.60%) Greenfield Project
5 20 (1.39%) Clustering
5 20 (1.39%) Distributed Systems
6 18 (1.25%) Onboarding
7 15 (1.05%) Data Protection Act
8 14 (0.98%) NHS
9 12 (0.84%) Reinsurance
9 12 (0.84%) Replication
9 12 (0.84%) Self-Motivation
10 11 (0.77%) Hybrid Cloud
10 11 (0.77%) Public Cloud
11 8 (0.56%) Analytical Mindset
11 8 (0.56%) Distributed Computing
11 8 (0.56%) Life Science
12 7 (0.49%) AI Agents
12 7 (0.49%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 42 (2.93%) Unix
2 30 (2.09%) Linux
3 3 (0.21%) Windows
4 2 (0.14%) VMS
4 2 (0.14%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.070%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 597 (41.60%) Data Pipeline
2 575 (40.07%) ETL
3 561 (39.09%) Analytics
4 547 (38.12%) Data Engineering
5 508 (35.40%) Data Modelling
6 359 (25.02%) CI/CD
7 325 (22.65%) Business Intelligence
8 271 (18.89%) DevOps
9 270 (18.82%) Agile
10 218 (15.19%) Data Governance
11 209 (14.56%) Problem-Solving
12 166 (11.57%) Migration
13 162 (11.29%) Data Science
14 160 (11.15%) AI
15 157 (10.94%) Data Integration
16 142 (9.90%) Validation
17 138 (9.62%) Data Architecture
18 128 (8.92%) Decision-Making
18 128 (8.92%) Infrastructure as Code
19 125 (8.71%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 797 (55.54%) SQL
2 672 (46.83%) Python
3 92 (6.41%) Java
4 82 (5.71%) Scala
5 38 (2.65%) C#
6 35 (2.44%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 30 (2.09%) PL/SQL
8 29 (2.02%) T-SQL
9 26 (1.81%) Shell Script
10 24 (1.67%) Bash
11 18 (1.25%) Bicep
11 18 (1.25%) PowerShell
12 16 (1.11%) R
13 15 (1.05%) JavaScript
14 10 (0.70%) Go
15 6 (0.42%) TypeScript
16 3 (0.21%) C
17 2 (0.14%) HiveQL
17 2 (0.14%) LookML
17 2 (0.14%) VB
Qualifications
1 410 (28.57%) Security Cleared
2 371 (25.85%) SC Cleared
3 39 (2.72%) Degree
4 31 (2.16%) Azure Certification
5 28 (1.95%) BPSS Clearance
6 17 (1.18%) Computer Science Degree
7 11 (0.77%) AWS Certification
7 11 (0.77%) DV Cleared
8 6 (0.42%) DBS Check
8 6 (0.42%) Microsoft Certification
9 5 (0.35%) BICSI Certification
9 5 (0.35%) City & Guilds
9 5 (0.35%) Master's Degree
10 4 (0.28%) SnowPro
11 3 (0.21%) CTC Cleared
12 2 (0.14%) CISM
12 2 (0.14%) CISSP
13 1 (0.070%) CCIE
13 1 (0.070%) CISA
13 1 (0.070%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 385 (26.83%) Data Quality
2 51 (3.55%) GDPR
3 38 (2.65%) QA
4 11 (0.77%) Accessibility
5 9 (0.63%) FATCA
5 9 (0.63%) SLA
6 4 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 4 (0.28%) MiFID
7 3 (0.21%) GMP
7 3 (0.21%) HIPAA
8 2 (0.14%) EMIR
8 2 (0.14%) SNOMED CT
8 2 (0.14%) WCAG
9 1 (0.070%) Government Security Classifications
9 1 (0.070%) GRC
9 1 (0.070%) GxP
9 1 (0.070%) ISO 13485
9 1 (0.070%) NIST
9 1 (0.070%) PCI DSS
9 1 (0.070%) PMO
System Software
1 104 (7.25%) Docker
2 6 (0.42%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.14%) HDFS
4 1 (0.070%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.070%) RACF
Systems Management
1 168 (11.71%) Terraform
2 94 (6.55%) Kubernetes
3 35 (2.44%) Grafana
4 12 (0.84%) Ansible
4 12 (0.84%) Prometheus
5 7 (0.49%) Kibana
6 4 (0.28%) Kubeflow
7 3 (0.21%) Rancher
8 2 (0.14%) Apache Ranger
8 2 (0.14%) EMC NetWorker
8 2 (0.14%) logstash
8 2 (0.14%) Thomson Reuters DACS
8 2 (0.14%) Tivoli Storage Manager
9 1 (0.070%) Control-M
9 1 (0.070%) NetBackup
9 1 (0.070%) Puppet
Vendors
1 357 (24.88%) Databricks
2 192 (13.38%) Microsoft
3 122 (8.50%) Oracle
4 107 (7.46%) Talend
5 97 (6.76%) Informatica
6 57 (3.97%) Google
7 55 (3.83%) Denodo
8 33 (2.30%) Cisco
9 30 (2.09%) F5
10 23 (1.60%) SAP
11 22 (1.53%) Splunk
12 20 (1.39%) ServiceNow
13 16 (1.11%) Cloudera
14 15 (1.05%) IBM
15 11 (0.77%) Alteryx
15 11 (0.77%) Foundry
15 11 (0.77%) Palantir
16 8 (0.56%) MuleSoft
17 7 (0.49%) OpenAI
17 7 (0.49%) Sage