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 29 September 2026.

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

6 months to
29 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 65 129 96
Rank change year-on-year +64 -33 +32
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,669 609 768
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.60% 2.21% 2.38%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.91% 2.42% 2.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,108 445 534
10th Percentile £375 £363 £372
25th Percentile £425 £425 £451
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £508 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.48% -7.73% -
75th Percentile £590 £600 £638
90th Percentile £675 £698 £709
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 63 12 9
10th Percentile £21.25 £25.25 £49.25
25th Percentile £30.96 £32.94 £60.00
Median hourly rate £41.56 £48.00 £80.00
Median % change year-on-year -13.43% -40.00% +29.55%
75th Percentile £68.00 £66.88 £97.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £107.00 -
UK median hourly rate £41.56 £52.50 £80.00
% change year-on-year -20.85% -34.38% +29.55%

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 42,712 25,148 30,073
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.20% 91.27% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,315 16,227 18,440
10th Percentile £325 £275 £300
25th Percentile £425 £401 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.11%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £730 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,579 1,379 1,371
10th Percentile £14.82 £13.77 £15.00
25th Percentile £20.53 £17.31 £21.25
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% -1.92%
75th Percentile £67.85 £52.50 £67.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.92 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +66.68% -41.51% -3.37%

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 29 September 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 29 September 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 29 September 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 +29 829 £525 - 784
Midlands +79 337 £469 +1.41% 103
West Midlands +65 260 £469 -6.20% 73
North of England +28 208 £520 +9.47% 240
South East +19 127 £459 +2.00% 139
North West +25 112 £525 +17.98% 126
South West +21 108 £525 +5.00% 78
East Midlands +36 77 £388 -16.22% 30
Yorkshire +6 77 £500 - 70
East of England +5 37 £488 -18.75% 53
North East -27 20 £450 +9.09% 44
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 29 September 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 (50.93%) SQL
2 723 (43.32%) Data Pipeline
3 713 (42.72%) Python
4 647 (38.77%) Data Engineering
5 580 (34.75%) Data Modelling
6 575 (34.45%) ETL
7 562 (33.67%) Analytics
8 529 (31.70%) AWS
9 506 (30.32%) Azure
10 432 (25.88%) Data Quality
11 430 (25.76%) Security Cleared
12 408 (24.45%) CI/CD
13 368 (22.05%) SC Cleared
14 338 (20.25%) Databricks
15 290 (17.38%) Agile
16 281 (16.84%) Data Warehouse
17 279 (16.72%) Migration
18 269 (16.12%) DevOps
19 267 (16.00%) AI
20 254 (15.22%) Business Intelligence
21 229 (13.72%) PySpark
22 225 (13.48%) Data Transformation
23 223 (13.36%) Data Governance
24 217 (13.00%) Validation
25 216 (12.94%) Microsoft
26 214 (12.82%) dbt
27 211 (12.64%) Snowflake
28 206 (12.34%) Power Platform
29 203 (12.16%) Data Integration
30 201 (12.04%) Power BI

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
1 186 (11.14%) Apache Airflow
2 142 (8.51%) Apache Spark
3 117 (7.01%) Apache
4 44 (2.64%) SAS
5 34 (2.04%) Confluence
6 18 (1.08%) Palantir Foundry
7 14 (0.84%) SharePoint
8 12 (0.72%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.18%) Apache Superset
9 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.060%) Apache Pulsar
10 1 (0.060%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.060%) Liferay
10 1 (0.060%) Luigi
10 1 (0.060%) nginx
10 1 (0.060%) Oracle Workflow
10 1 (0.060%) PowerExchange
Applications
1 20 (1.20%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
3 5 (0.30%) Notepad++
4 4 (0.24%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.060%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.060%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 12 (0.72%) Aladdin
2 7 (0.42%) Dynamics CRM
3 6 (0.36%) NetSuite
4 5 (0.30%) Infor LN
4 5 (0.30%) Sage X3
4 5 (0.30%) SAP S/4HANA
5 3 (0.18%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 2 (0.12%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 2 (0.12%) Maximo
6 2 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.12%) SAP BPC
6 2 (0.12%) SAP Oil and Gas
6 2 (0.12%) SimCorp Dimension
7 1 (0.060%) BambooHR
7 1 (0.060%) Dynamics NAV
7 1 (0.060%) Markit EDM
7 1 (0.060%) Oracle Retail
7 1 (0.060%) Raiser’s Edge
7 1 (0.060%) SAP CAR
7 1 (0.060%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 529 (31.70%) AWS
2 506 (30.32%) Azure
3 214 (12.82%) dbt
4 211 (12.64%) Snowflake
5 206 (12.34%) Power Platform
6 195 (11.68%) Azure Data Factory
7 176 (10.55%) GCP
8 150 (8.99%) Amazon S3
9 114 (6.83%) Azure DevOps
9 114 (6.83%) Serverless
10 110 (6.59%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 100 (5.99%) AWS Lambda
12 98 (5.87%) GitHub
13 59 (3.54%) Azure Databricks
14 46 (2.76%) Amazon EMR
15 45 (2.70%) GitHub Actions
16 35 (2.10%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 28 (1.68%) AWS Step Functions
18 26 (1.56%) Microsoft Purview
19 24 (1.44%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.44%) DNS
2 23 (1.38%) BGP
2 23 (1.38%) DMZ
2 23 (1.38%) Multicast
2 23 (1.38%) VPN
3 6 (0.36%) Firewall
4 5 (0.30%) PuTTY
4 5 (0.30%) WinSCP
5 4 (0.24%) Structured Cabling
5 4 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
5 4 (0.24%) Wireless
6 3 (0.18%) Intrusion Detection
7 1 (0.060%) HTTP
7 1 (0.060%) HTTPS
7 1 (0.060%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.060%) tcpdump
7 1 (0.060%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 281 (16.84%) Data Warehouse
2 201 (12.04%) Power BI
3 138 (8.27%) Data Lake
4 118 (7.07%) Metadata
5 102 (6.11%) BigQuery
6 85 (5.09%) Amazon Redshift
7 77 (4.61%) Delta Lake
8 73 (4.37%) Amazon Athena
9 69 (4.13%) SQL Server
10 60 (3.59%) PostgreSQL
11 58 (3.48%) Big Data
11 58 (3.48%) Pentaho
12 56 (3.36%) Tableau
13 49 (2.94%) Relational Database
14 48 (2.88%) Snowflake Schema
15 47 (2.82%) NoSQL
16 40 (2.40%) Oracle Database
17 37 (2.22%) Amazon RDS
18 34 (2.04%) Azure SQL Database
18 34 (2.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 150 (8.99%) Git
2 77 (4.61%) GitLab
3 47 (2.82%) JIRA
4 24 (1.44%) Jenkins
5 15 (0.90%) MLflow
6 8 (0.48%) Bitbucket
6 8 (0.48%) Postman
7 6 (0.36%) Artifactory
7 6 (0.36%) Selenium
8 5 (0.30%) SonarQube
9 4 (0.24%) ERwin
10 3 (0.18%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 3 (0.18%) Claude Code
10 3 (0.18%) Newman
10 3 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 2 (0.12%) ER Studio
11 2 (0.12%) RStudio
11 2 (0.12%) Terragrunt
11 2 (0.12%) Yeoman
12 1 (0.060%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 278 (16.66%) Social Skills
2 261 (15.64%) Finance
3 187 (11.20%) Analytical Skills
4 151 (9.05%) Public Sector
5 108 (6.47%) Banking
6 27 (1.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 25 (1.50%) Retail
8 23 (1.38%) Automotive
9 18 (1.08%) Aerospace
9 18 (1.08%) Front Office
10 17 (1.02%) Investment Banking
10 17 (1.02%) Manufacturing
11 16 (0.96%) Marketing
11 16 (0.96%) Telecoms
12 14 (0.84%) Military
12 14 (0.84%) Pharmaceutical
13 13 (0.78%) Documentation Skills
14 11 (0.66%) Back Office
14 11 (0.66%) Law
15 10 (0.60%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 229 (13.72%) PySpark
2 180 (10.78%) Terraform
3 101 (6.05%) Kafka
4 25 (1.50%) Pandas
5 24 (1.44%) JSON
5 24 (1.44%) REST
6 19 (1.14%) Spring
6 19 (1.14%) Spring Boot
7 17 (1.02%) Great Expectations
7 17 (1.02%) XML
8 14 (0.84%) Apache Beam
8 14 (0.84%) pytest
9 12 (0.72%) RESTful
10 11 (0.66%) LangChain
10 11 (0.66%) PyTorch
10 11 (0.66%) React
11 10 (0.60%) .NET
11 10 (0.60%) Microsoft Graph
12 8 (0.48%) Apache NiFi
12 8 (0.48%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 137 (8.21%) Cloud Native
2 58 (3.48%) Legacy Systems
3 50 (3.00%) Data Structures
4 44 (2.64%) Onboarding
5 25 (1.50%) Product Ownership
6 20 (1.20%) AI Agents
6 20 (1.20%) Distributed Systems
7 18 (1.08%) Greenfield Project
7 18 (1.08%) NHS
8 17 (1.02%) Management Information System
9 16 (0.96%) Reference Data
10 15 (0.90%) Reinsurance
11 13 (0.78%) Algorithms
12 11 (0.66%) Virtual Team
13 9 (0.54%) Data Fabric
14 8 (0.48%) Clustering
14 8 (0.48%) Data Protection Act
14 8 (0.48%) Distributed Computing
14 8 (0.48%) Enterprise Software
14 8 (0.48%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 50 (3.00%) Unix
2 39 (2.34%) 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
1 723 (43.32%) Data Pipeline
2 647 (38.77%) Data Engineering
3 580 (34.75%) Data Modelling
4 575 (34.45%) ETL
5 562 (33.67%) Analytics
6 408 (24.45%) CI/CD
7 290 (17.38%) Agile
8 279 (16.72%) Migration
9 269 (16.12%) DevOps
10 267 (16.00%) AI
11 254 (15.22%) Business Intelligence
12 225 (13.48%) Data Transformation
13 223 (13.36%) Data Governance
14 217 (13.00%) Validation
15 203 (12.16%) Data Integration
16 172 (10.31%) Problem-Solving
17 157 (9.41%) Lakehouse
18 156 (9.35%) Infrastructure as Code
19 154 (9.23%) Decision-Making
20 146 (8.75%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 850 (50.93%) SQL
2 713 (42.72%) Python
3 86 (5.15%) Java
4 66 (3.95%) Scala
5 40 (2.40%) PL/SQL
6 29 (1.74%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 26 (1.56%) PowerShell
7 26 (1.56%) T-SQL
8 24 (1.44%) Shell Script
9 22 (1.32%) Bash
10 18 (1.08%) JavaScript
11 11 (0.66%) R
12 9 (0.54%) Bicep
12 9 (0.54%) Go
13 8 (0.48%) C#
13 8 (0.48%) TypeScript
14 5 (0.30%) Korn
15 3 (0.18%) Kusto Query Language
16 2 (0.12%) COBOL
16 2 (0.12%) Cypher
Qualifications
1 430 (25.76%) Security Cleared
2 368 (22.05%) SC Cleared
3 41 (2.46%) BPSS Clearance
4 39 (2.34%) Degree
5 30 (1.80%) DV Cleared
6 23 (1.38%) Azure Certification
7 20 (1.20%) Computer Science Degree
8 13 (0.78%) AWS Certification
9 8 (0.48%) DBS Check
9 8 (0.48%) Master's Degree
10 7 (0.42%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 6 (0.36%) SnowPro
12 5 (0.30%) CISM
12 5 (0.30%) CISSP
13 4 (0.24%) City & Guilds
14 3 (0.18%) CEH
14 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Certification
15 2 (0.12%) CISA
16 1 (0.060%) PMI Certification
16 1 (0.060%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 432 (25.88%) Data Quality
2 67 (4.01%) QA
3 31 (1.86%) GDPR
4 14 (0.84%) Accessibility
5 9 (0.54%) SLA
6 6 (0.36%) FATCA
7 5 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 5 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 4 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
9 3 (0.18%) HIPAA
9 3 (0.18%) MiFID
10 2 (0.12%) EMIR
10 2 (0.12%) SNOMED CT
11 1 (0.060%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.060%) GRC
11 1 (0.060%) IFRS
11 1 (0.060%) IFRS 17
11 1 (0.060%) IFRS 9
11 1 (0.060%) NIST
11 1 (0.060%) PMO
System Software
1 98 (5.87%) Docker
2 3 (0.18%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.12%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.060%) HDFS
4 1 (0.060%) RACF
Systems Management
1 72 (4.31%) Kubernetes
2 21 (1.26%) Grafana
3 15 (0.90%) Ansible
4 11 (0.66%) Control-M
5 9 (0.54%) Kibana
6 3 (0.18%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.12%) Puppet
8 1 (0.060%) logstash
8 1 (0.060%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 338 (20.25%) Databricks
2 216 (12.94%) Microsoft
3 143 (8.57%) Oracle
4 87 (5.21%) Informatica
5 80 (4.79%) Google
6 76 (4.55%) Talend
7 39 (2.34%) Denodo
8 30 (1.80%) Salesforce
9 28 (1.68%) Palantir
10 26 (1.56%) Foundry
11 25 (1.50%) SAP
12 23 (1.38%) Cisco
12 23 (1.38%) F5
13 12 (0.72%) Splunk
14 9 (0.54%) Bloomberg
15 8 (0.48%) Cloudera
15 8 (0.48%) OpenAI
15 8 (0.48%) Sage
16 7 (0.42%) Alteryx
16 7 (0.42%) InterSystems