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 12 March 2026.

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

6 months to
12 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 76 79 97
Rank change year-on-year +3 +18 +27
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,187 765 860
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.26% 3.10% 2.26%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.54% 3.34% 2.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 851 569 672
10th Percentile £363 £353 £313
25th Percentile £415 £425 £422
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £515
Median % change year-on-year - -2.95% -6.33%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £625
90th Percentile £675 £740 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £510
% change year-on-year - -1.96% -7.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 9 40
10th Percentile £34.50 £24.64 £35.19
25th Percentile £59.75 £41.25 £48.63
Median hourly rate £69.00 £65.00 £63.75
Median % change year-on-year +6.15% +1.96% -0.39%
75th Percentile £75.00 £93.75 £78.13
90th Percentile £83.40 £94.50 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £64.50 £42.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +51.76% -32.00% -1.19%

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 33,519 22,927 35,267
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.01% 93.04% 92.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,140 15,037 23,588
10th Percentile £310 £300 £270
25th Percentile £413 £409 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £638
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 2,206 758 2,285
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.32 £13.00
25th Percentile £19.34 £21.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £37.00 £35.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +5.71% +7.69% -23.29%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £58.75
90th Percentile £76.25 £77.28 £71.25
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £33.45 £32.50
% change year-on-year +4.63% +2.92% -23.29%

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 12 March 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 12 March 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 12 March 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 +6 694 £520 -5.45% 156
Midlands +12 206 £478 +0.63% 52
West Midlands +6 187 £492 +0.51% 40
North of England -22 150 £459 +1.94% 79
North West -6 90 £450 - 41
South East -38 54 £506 +1.25% 94
South West -2 49 £525 +5.00% 46
Yorkshire -42 43 £473 +5.00% 28
East Midlands -23 19 £450 +20.40% 12
North East -9 17 £463 -7.50% 10
East of England -38 10 £565 +77.67% 16
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 12 March 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.

1 689 (58.05%) SQL
2 611 (51.47%) Python
3 514 (43.30%) Data Pipeline
4 511 (43.05%) ETL
5 493 (41.53%) Data Engineering
6 477 (40.19%) Azure
7 468 (39.43%) Analytics
8 434 (36.56%) Data Modelling
9 345 (29.06%) Databricks
10 340 (28.64%) Data Quality
11 335 (28.22%) AWS
12 329 (27.72%) Security Cleared
13 318 (26.79%) CI/CD
14 292 (24.60%) SC Cleared
15 289 (24.35%) Business Intelligence
16 244 (20.56%) DevOps
17 231 (19.46%) Agile
18 230 (19.38%) Power Platform
19 224 (18.87%) Data Warehouse
20 215 (18.11%) Power BI
21 208 (17.52%) Azure Data Factory
22 195 (16.43%) Data Governance
23 186 (15.67%) Problem-Solving
24 185 (15.59%) PySpark
25 160 (13.48%) Git
25 160 (13.48%) Microsoft
26 157 (13.23%) Data Science
27 145 (12.22%) Snowflake
28 141 (11.88%) AI
29 139 (11.71%) 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
1 130 (10.95%) Apache Spark
2 108 (9.10%) Apache Airflow
3 80 (6.74%) Apache
4 54 (4.55%) SAS
5 19 (1.60%) Confluence
6 11 (0.93%) Palantir Foundry
7 5 (0.42%) Jupyter
7 5 (0.42%) Microsoft Exchange
8 4 (0.34%) Oracle Application Server
9 2 (0.17%) ArcGIS
9 2 (0.17%) SharePoint
10 1 (0.084%) Apache Superset
10 1 (0.084%) Apache Synapse
10 1 (0.084%) Appian
10 1 (0.084%) Camunda
10 1 (0.084%) IIS
10 1 (0.084%) Luigi
10 1 (0.084%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 9 (0.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.25%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.084%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.084%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 3 (0.25%) Aladdin
2 2 (0.17%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.17%) Maximo
2 2 (0.17%) SAP BPC
3 1 (0.084%) Actimize
3 1 (0.084%) BambooHR
3 1 (0.084%) Elite 3E
3 1 (0.084%) iTrent
3 1 (0.084%) NEC Housing
3 1 (0.084%) Oracle 11i
3 1 (0.084%) Oracle BPM
3 1 (0.084%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.084%) SAP Business ByDesign
3 1 (0.084%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 477 (40.19%) Azure
2 335 (28.22%) AWS
3 230 (19.38%) Power Platform
4 208 (17.52%) Azure Data Factory
5 145 (12.22%) Snowflake
6 130 (10.95%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 127 (10.70%) GCP
8 114 (9.60%) dbt
9 112 (9.44%) Amazon S3
10 99 (8.34%) GitHub
11 89 (7.50%) Azure DevOps
12 88 (7.41%) Serverless
13 64 (5.39%) AWS Lambda
14 47 (3.96%) GitHub Actions
15 36 (3.03%) AWS CloudFormation
16 27 (2.27%) Matillion
17 23 (1.94%) AWS Step Functions
18 21 (1.77%) Amazon Kinesis
19 18 (1.52%) Amazon SQS
19 18 (1.52%) Collibra
Communications & Networking
1 19 (1.60%) DNS
1 19 (1.60%) VPN
2 18 (1.52%) BGP
2 18 (1.52%) DMZ
2 18 (1.52%) Multicast
3 4 (0.34%) Firewall
4 3 (0.25%) SAN
5 2 (0.17%) Structured Cabling
6 1 (0.084%) 4G
6 1 (0.084%) 5G
6 1 (0.084%) Network Security
6 1 (0.084%) Software-Defined Networking
6 1 (0.084%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 224 (18.87%) Data Warehouse
2 215 (18.11%) Power BI
3 134 (11.29%) Data Lake
4 101 (8.51%) SQL Server
5 74 (6.23%) Delta Lake
6 73 (6.15%) Azure SQL Database
7 72 (6.07%) BigQuery
8 71 (5.98%) Amazon Redshift
9 63 (5.31%) Pentaho
10 62 (5.22%) Metadata
10 62 (5.22%) PostgreSQL
11 60 (5.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 57 (4.80%) Big Data
13 50 (4.21%) NoSQL
14 49 (4.13%) Tableau
15 45 (3.79%) Snowflake Schema
16 40 (3.37%) Amazon Athena
17 39 (3.29%) Hadoop
18 34 (2.86%) Relational Database
19 29 (2.44%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 160 (13.48%) Git
2 63 (5.31%) Jenkins
3 54 (4.55%) JIRA
4 46 (3.88%) GitLab
5 19 (1.60%) MLflow
6 4 (0.34%) DBeaver
6 4 (0.34%) Visual Studio
7 3 (0.25%) Bitbucket
8 2 (0.17%) JUnit
8 2 (0.17%) Selenium
8 2 (0.17%) SonarQube
8 2 (0.17%) Sonatype Nexus
9 1 (0.084%) Deequ
9 1 (0.084%) Gradle
9 1 (0.084%) Jaeger
9 1 (0.084%) Maven
9 1 (0.084%) Poetry
9 1 (0.084%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 1 (0.084%) Team Foundation Server
9 1 (0.084%) Terragrunt
General
1 204 (17.19%) Social Skills
2 183 (15.42%) Finance
3 122 (10.28%) Analytical Skills
4 112 (9.44%) Public Sector
5 60 (5.05%) Banking
6 35 (2.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 19 (1.60%) Investment Banking
8 17 (1.43%) Front Office
9 14 (1.18%) Pharmaceutical
10 13 (1.10%) Documentation Skills
10 13 (1.10%) Retail
11 11 (0.93%) Telecoms
12 10 (0.84%) Publishing
13 9 (0.76%) Manufacturing
13 9 (0.76%) Marketing
14 6 (0.51%) Military
15 5 (0.42%) Law
16 4 (0.34%) Back Office
16 4 (0.34%) Corporate Banking
17 3 (0.25%) Billing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 185 (15.59%) PySpark
2 128 (10.78%) Kafka
3 43 (3.62%) Pandas
4 26 (2.19%) JSON
4 26 (2.19%) YAML
5 21 (1.77%) REST
6 18 (1.52%) Great Expectations
7 17 (1.43%) XML
8 15 (1.26%) PyTorch
8 15 (1.26%) scikit-learn
9 14 (1.18%) Apache NiFi
10 13 (1.10%) NumPy
11 12 (1.01%) Keycloak
11 12 (1.01%) Matplotlib
11 12 (1.01%) Node.js
12 11 (0.93%) pytest
12 11 (0.93%) TensorFlow
13 9 (0.76%) Apache Beam
13 9 (0.76%) RESTful
14 8 (0.67%) GeoJSON
Miscellaneous
1 89 (7.50%) Cloud Native
2 34 (2.86%) Data Structures
3 33 (2.78%) Legacy Systems
4 27 (2.27%) Product Ownership
5 19 (1.60%) Onboarding
6 17 (1.43%) Clustering
6 17 (1.43%) Hybrid Cloud
7 15 (1.26%) Data Protection Act
7 15 (1.26%) Distributed Systems
7 15 (1.26%) Replication
8 14 (1.18%) Greenfield Project
9 11 (0.93%) Public Cloud
9 11 (0.93%) Reinsurance
10 9 (0.76%) Distributed Computing
10 9 (0.76%) Life Science
11 8 (0.67%) Algorithms
12 7 (0.59%) Management Information System
12 7 (0.59%) NHS
13 6 (0.51%) Virtual Team
13 6 (0.51%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 18 (1.52%) Unix
2 17 (1.43%) Linux
3 2 (0.17%) Windows
3 2 (0.17%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.084%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 514 (43.30%) Data Pipeline
2 511 (43.05%) ETL
3 493 (41.53%) Data Engineering
4 468 (39.43%) Analytics
5 434 (36.56%) Data Modelling
6 318 (26.79%) CI/CD
7 289 (24.35%) Business Intelligence
8 244 (20.56%) DevOps
9 231 (19.46%) Agile
10 195 (16.43%) Data Governance
11 186 (15.67%) Problem-Solving
12 157 (13.23%) Data Science
13 141 (11.88%) AI
14 139 (11.71%) Data Integration
15 131 (11.04%) Data Architecture
16 123 (10.36%) Migration
17 121 (10.19%) Data Transformation
18 119 (10.03%) Machine Learning
19 113 (9.52%) Infrastructure as Code
20 107 (9.01%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 689 (58.05%) SQL
2 611 (51.47%) Python
3 79 (6.66%) Scala
4 65 (5.48%) Java
5 34 (2.86%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 32 (2.70%) C#
7 26 (2.19%) T-SQL
8 24 (2.02%) Bash
9 23 (1.94%) PL/SQL
10 18 (1.52%) Bicep
10 18 (1.52%) PowerShell
11 16 (1.35%) R
12 15 (1.26%) Go
13 14 (1.18%) Shell Script
14 12 (1.01%) JavaScript
15 3 (0.25%) Korn
15 3 (0.25%) TypeScript
16 2 (0.17%) HiveQL
16 2 (0.17%) Ruby
16 2 (0.17%) VB
Qualifications
1 329 (27.72%) Security Cleared
2 292 (24.60%) SC Cleared
3 33 (2.78%) Azure Certification
4 31 (2.61%) Degree
5 23 (1.94%) BPSS Clearance
6 17 (1.43%) AWS Certification
7 15 (1.26%) DV Cleared
8 11 (0.93%) Computer Science Degree
9 5 (0.42%) Microsoft Certification
10 4 (0.34%) CTC Cleared
10 4 (0.34%) DBS Check
10 4 (0.34%) Master's Degree
11 2 (0.17%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 2 (0.17%) SnowPro
12 1 (0.084%) CCIE
12 1 (0.084%) CCNP
12 1 (0.084%) Cisco Certification
12 1 (0.084%) CISM
12 1 (0.084%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 340 (28.64%) Data Quality
2 49 (4.13%) GDPR
3 25 (2.11%) QA
4 10 (0.84%) Accessibility
5 4 (0.34%) HIPAA
5 4 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 4 (0.34%) SLA
6 3 (0.25%) FATCA
6 3 (0.25%) GMP
6 3 (0.25%) MiFID
6 3 (0.25%) NIST
7 2 (0.17%) Dodd-Frank
7 2 (0.17%) EMIR
7 2 (0.17%) EU AI Act
8 1 (0.084%) Basel III
8 1 (0.084%) GxP
8 1 (0.084%) ISO 13485
8 1 (0.084%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.084%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.084%) WCAG
System Software
1 86 (7.25%) Docker
2 8 (0.67%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.17%) HDFS
3 2 (0.17%) zsh
4 1 (0.084%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 138 (11.63%) Terraform
2 97 (8.17%) Kubernetes
3 20 (1.68%) Grafana
4 11 (0.93%) Prometheus
5 7 (0.59%) Ansible
6 4 (0.34%) Kibana
6 4 (0.34%) Kubeflow
6 4 (0.34%) NetBackup
7 3 (0.25%) Puppet
7 3 (0.25%) Rancher
8 2 (0.17%) EMC NetWorker
8 2 (0.17%) logstash
8 2 (0.17%) Thomson Reuters DACS
8 2 (0.17%) Tivoli Storage Manager
9 1 (0.084%) Ambari
9 1 (0.084%) Control-M
9 1 (0.084%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 345 (29.06%) Databricks
2 160 (13.48%) Microsoft
3 97 (8.17%) Oracle
4 88 (7.41%) Talend
5 71 (5.98%) Informatica
6 52 (4.38%) Google
7 42 (3.54%) Denodo
8 23 (1.94%) Cisco
9 20 (1.68%) F5
9 20 (1.68%) SAP
10 19 (1.60%) ServiceNow
11 16 (1.35%) Foundry
12 15 (1.26%) Palantir
12 15 (1.26%) Splunk
13 13 (1.10%) Cloudera
14 11 (0.93%) IBM
15 10 (0.84%) Alteryx
16 7 (0.59%) MuleSoft
17 6 (0.51%) OpenAI
18 5 (0.42%) Virgin Media