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 13 October 2026.

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

6 months to
13 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 66 132 99
Rank change year-on-year +66 -33 +28
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,659 617 758
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.56% 2.21% 2.37%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.87% 2.43% 2.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,087 443 524
10th Percentile £378 £363 £363
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -6.82% -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £632
90th Percentile £675 £695 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 64 12 5
10th Percentile £21.25 £25.25 £53.55
25th Percentile £30.96 £32.94 £60.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £48.00 £95.00
Median % change year-on-year -6.25% -49.47% +53.85%
75th Percentile £68.00 £66.88 £97.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £107.00 -
UK median hourly rate £45.00 £52.50 £95.00
% change year-on-year -14.29% -44.74% +53.85%

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 42,832 25,432 29,773
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.01% 91.11% 93.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,187 16,375 18,173
10th Percentile £325 £275 £300
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -3.23%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.47%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,752 1,439 1,252
10th Percentile £14.50 £13.80 £15.10
25th Percentile £20.29 £17.31 £21.25
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -6.89%
75th Percentile £67.99 £50.75 £67.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.71 £25.15 £41.27
% change year-on-year +65.84% -39.05% -8.30%

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 13 October 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 13 October 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 13 October 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 +33 830 £525 - 740
Midlands +74 326 £469 -6.20% 79
West Midlands +56 241 £469 -6.20% 52
North of England +33 203 £525 +10.53% 237
South East +19 124 £459 -0.76% 123
South West +32 121 £525 +3.70% 62
North West +17 107 £525 +20.69% 122
East Midlands +43 85 £388 -16.22% 27
Yorkshire +11 78 £512 +1.06% 63
East of England +7 36 £525 -16.00% 34
North East -29 19 £510 +23.64% 52
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 13 October 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.

1 850 (51.24%) SQL
2 729 (43.94%) Data Pipeline
3 723 (43.58%) Python
4 677 (40.81%) Data Engineering
5 588 (35.44%) Data Modelling
6 583 (35.14%) ETL
7 551 (33.21%) Analytics
8 534 (32.19%) AWS
9 503 (30.32%) Azure
10 445 (26.82%) Data Quality
11 437 (26.34%) Security Cleared
12 422 (25.44%) CI/CD
13 370 (22.30%) SC Cleared
14 344 (20.74%) Databricks
15 301 (18.14%) Agile
16 287 (17.30%) DevOps
17 278 (16.76%) AI
17 278 (16.76%) Migration
18 271 (16.34%) Data Warehouse
19 241 (14.53%) Data Transformation
20 240 (14.47%) Business Intelligence
21 234 (14.10%) Data Governance
21 234 (14.10%) Validation
22 228 (13.74%) PySpark
23 219 (13.20%) Data Integration
24 215 (12.96%) Microsoft
25 211 (12.72%) dbt
26 208 (12.54%) Snowflake
27 193 (11.63%) Power Platform
28 189 (11.39%) Azure Data Factory

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
1 185 (11.15%) Apache Airflow
2 158 (9.52%) Apache Spark
3 136 (8.20%) Apache
4 41 (2.47%) SAS
5 34 (2.05%) Confluence
6 16 (0.96%) Palantir Foundry
7 15 (0.90%) SharePoint
8 12 (0.72%) Jupyter
9 4 (0.24%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.18%) Apache Superset
11 2 (0.12%) CMS
12 1 (0.060%) Apache Pulsar
12 1 (0.060%) ArcGIS
12 1 (0.060%) Liferay
12 1 (0.060%) Luigi
12 1 (0.060%) nginx
12 1 (0.060%) Oracle Workflow
12 1 (0.060%) PowerExchange
Applications
1 17 (1.02%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (0.48%) Spreadsheet
3 3 (0.18%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.060%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.060%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 12 (0.72%) Aladdin
2 8 (0.48%) Dynamics CRM
3 6 (0.36%) NetSuite
4 5 (0.30%) Infor LN
4 5 (0.30%) Sage X3
5 4 (0.24%) SAP S/4HANA
6 3 (0.18%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 2 (0.12%) FIS Private Capital Suite
7 2 (0.12%) Maximo
7 2 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
7 2 (0.12%) SAP BPC
7 2 (0.12%) SAP Oil and Gas
7 2 (0.12%) SimCorp Dimension
8 1 (0.060%) Dynamics NAV
8 1 (0.060%) Markit EDM
8 1 (0.060%) MIS ActiveH
8 1 (0.060%) Oracle Retail
8 1 (0.060%) Raiser’s Edge
8 1 (0.060%) SAP CAR
8 1 (0.060%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 534 (32.19%) AWS
2 503 (30.32%) Azure
3 211 (12.72%) dbt
4 208 (12.54%) Snowflake
5 193 (11.63%) Power Platform
6 189 (11.39%) Azure Data Factory
7 186 (11.21%) GCP
8 149 (8.98%) Amazon S3
9 112 (6.75%) Serverless
10 109 (6.57%) Azure DevOps
11 104 (6.27%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 97 (5.85%) AWS Lambda
13 96 (5.79%) GitHub
14 60 (3.62%) Azure Databricks
15 51 (3.07%) Amazon EMR
16 42 (2.53%) GitHub Actions
17 34 (2.05%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 30 (1.81%) AWS Step Functions
19 28 (1.69%) Microsoft Purview
20 24 (1.45%) Fivetran
Communications & Networking
1 21 (1.27%) DNS
2 20 (1.21%) BGP
2 20 (1.21%) DMZ
2 20 (1.21%) Multicast
2 20 (1.21%) VPN
3 6 (0.36%) Firewall
4 4 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
4 4 (0.24%) Wireless
5 3 (0.18%) Intrusion Detection
6 2 (0.12%) Structured Cabling
7 1 (0.060%) Cisco IPT
7 1 (0.060%) HTTP
7 1 (0.060%) HTTPS
7 1 (0.060%) Network Security
7 1 (0.060%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.060%) tcpdump
7 1 (0.060%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 271 (16.34%) Data Warehouse
2 188 (11.33%) Power BI
3 137 (8.26%) Data Lake
4 125 (7.53%) Metadata
5 96 (5.79%) BigQuery
6 85 (5.12%) Amazon Redshift
7 79 (4.76%) Delta Lake
8 72 (4.34%) Amazon Athena
9 69 (4.16%) Pentaho
10 64 (3.86%) SQL Server
11 61 (3.68%) Big Data
12 58 (3.50%) PostgreSQL
13 47 (2.83%) NoSQL
13 47 (2.83%) Relational Database
14 43 (2.59%) Oracle Database
15 42 (2.53%) Snowflake Schema
16 41 (2.47%) Tableau
17 39 (2.35%) Amazon RDS
18 35 (2.11%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 34 (2.05%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 156 (9.40%) Git
2 83 (5.00%) GitLab
3 44 (2.65%) JIRA
4 33 (1.99%) Jenkins
5 15 (0.90%) MLflow
6 9 (0.54%) Bitbucket
6 9 (0.54%) Postman
7 6 (0.36%) Artifactory
7 6 (0.36%) Selenium
8 5 (0.30%) SonarQube
9 4 (0.24%) Claude Code
10 3 (0.18%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 3 (0.18%) ERwin
10 3 (0.18%) Newman
10 3 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 2 (0.12%) CircleCI
11 2 (0.12%) RStudio
11 2 (0.12%) Terragrunt
11 2 (0.12%) Yeoman
12 1 (0.060%) GoCD
General
1 276 (16.64%) Social Skills
2 254 (15.31%) Finance
3 191 (11.51%) Analytical Skills
4 152 (9.16%) Public Sector
5 107 (6.45%) Banking
6 25 (1.51%) Retail
7 23 (1.39%) Automotive
7 23 (1.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 20 (1.21%) Investment Banking
9 19 (1.15%) Aerospace
9 19 (1.15%) Front Office
10 17 (1.02%) Marketing
11 15 (0.90%) Telecoms
12 14 (0.84%) Military
12 14 (0.84%) Pharmaceutical
13 13 (0.78%) Manufacturing
14 11 (0.66%) Back Office
14 11 (0.66%) Documentation Skills
15 10 (0.60%) Financial Institution
16 9 (0.54%) Law
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 228 (13.74%) PySpark
2 178 (10.73%) Terraform
3 108 (6.51%) Kafka
4 32 (1.93%) REST
5 23 (1.39%) JSON
6 21 (1.27%) Pandas
7 17 (1.02%) XML
8 15 (0.90%) Spring
8 15 (0.90%) Spring Boot
9 14 (0.84%) Great Expectations
9 14 (0.84%) pytest
10 13 (0.78%) Apache Beam
10 13 (0.78%) Apache NiFi
10 13 (0.78%) PyTorch
10 13 (0.78%) RESTful
11 11 (0.66%) LangChain
12 10 (0.60%) .NET
12 10 (0.60%) Microsoft Graph
12 10 (0.60%) React
13 7 (0.42%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 148 (8.92%) Cloud Native
2 57 (3.44%) Legacy Systems
3 52 (3.13%) Data Structures
4 45 (2.71%) Onboarding
5 24 (1.45%) Product Ownership
6 22 (1.33%) AI Agents
7 20 (1.21%) Distributed Systems
8 18 (1.08%) Algorithms
9 17 (1.02%) Management Information System
10 16 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
10 16 (0.96%) Reference Data
11 15 (0.90%) Reinsurance
12 12 (0.72%) NHS
13 11 (0.66%) Virtual Team
14 10 (0.60%) Data Protection Act
14 10 (0.60%) Distributed Computing
15 8 (0.48%) Enterprise Software
16 7 (0.42%) Clustering
16 7 (0.42%) Life Science
16 7 (0.42%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 36 (2.17%) Unix
2 35 (2.11%) 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
1 729 (43.94%) Data Pipeline
2 677 (40.81%) Data Engineering
3 588 (35.44%) Data Modelling
4 583 (35.14%) ETL
5 551 (33.21%) Analytics
6 422 (25.44%) CI/CD
7 301 (18.14%) Agile
8 287 (17.30%) DevOps
9 278 (16.76%) AI
9 278 (16.76%) Migration
10 241 (14.53%) Data Transformation
11 240 (14.47%) Business Intelligence
12 234 (14.10%) Data Governance
12 234 (14.10%) Validation
13 219 (13.20%) Data Integration
14 176 (10.61%) Problem-Solving
15 157 (9.46%) Machine Learning
16 155 (9.34%) Infrastructure as Code
17 154 (9.28%) Lakehouse
18 149 (8.98%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 850 (51.24%) SQL
2 723 (43.58%) Python
3 83 (5.00%) Java
4 63 (3.80%) Scala
5 38 (2.29%) PL/SQL
6 29 (1.75%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 28 (1.69%) PowerShell
8 26 (1.57%) T-SQL
9 21 (1.27%) Shell Script
10 19 (1.15%) Bash
11 18 (1.08%) JavaScript
12 12 (0.72%) R
13 10 (0.60%) Bicep
13 10 (0.60%) Go
14 7 (0.42%) TypeScript
15 6 (0.36%) C#
16 5 (0.30%) Korn
17 3 (0.18%) Kusto Query Language
18 2 (0.12%) COBOL
18 2 (0.12%) Cypher
Qualifications
1 437 (26.34%) Security Cleared
2 370 (22.30%) SC Cleared
3 44 (2.65%) BPSS Clearance
4 42 (2.53%) DV Cleared
5 41 (2.47%) Degree
6 23 (1.39%) Azure Certification
7 21 (1.27%) AWS Certification
8 18 (1.08%) Computer Science Degree
9 8 (0.48%) Master's Degree
10 7 (0.42%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 7 (0.42%) DBS Check
10 7 (0.42%) SnowPro
11 5 (0.30%) CISM
11 5 (0.30%) CISSP
12 4 (0.24%) City & Guilds
13 3 (0.18%) CEH
13 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Certification
14 1 (0.060%) CISA
14 1 (0.060%) PMP
14 1 (0.060%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 445 (26.82%) Data Quality
2 69 (4.16%) QA
3 37 (2.23%) GDPR
4 13 (0.78%) Accessibility
5 6 (0.36%) FATCA
5 6 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 5 (0.30%) SLA
7 4 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
8 3 (0.18%) HIPAA
8 3 (0.18%) MiFID
9 2 (0.12%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 2 (0.12%) EMIR
9 2 (0.12%) SNOMED CT
10 1 (0.060%) Government Security Classifications
10 1 (0.060%) GRC
10 1 (0.060%) IFRS
10 1 (0.060%) IFRS 9
10 1 (0.060%) PMO
10 1 (0.060%) SOC 2
System Software
1 101 (6.09%) Docker
2 4 (0.24%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.060%) HDFS
3 1 (0.060%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 92 (5.55%) Kubernetes
2 19 (1.15%) Ansible
2 19 (1.15%) Grafana
3 11 (0.66%) Control-M
4 10 (0.60%) Kibana
5 5 (0.30%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.12%) Puppet
7 1 (0.060%) logstash
7 1 (0.060%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 344 (20.74%) Databricks
2 215 (12.96%) Microsoft
3 137 (8.26%) Oracle
4 87 (5.24%) Google
5 85 (5.12%) Informatica
6 84 (5.06%) Talend
7 39 (2.35%) Denodo
8 31 (1.87%) Salesforce
9 27 (1.63%) Palantir
10 24 (1.45%) SAP
11 23 (1.39%) Foundry
12 20 (1.21%) Cisco
12 20 (1.21%) F5
13 11 (0.66%) Splunk
14 9 (0.54%) Bloomberg
15 8 (0.48%) OpenAI
15 8 (0.48%) Sage
16 7 (0.42%) Alteryx
16 7 (0.42%) Cloudera
16 7 (0.42%) InterSystems