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 4 October 2026.

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

6 months to
4 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 66 129 100
Rank change year-on-year +63 -29 +27
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,649 621 770
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.56% 2.21% 2.38%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.87% 2.43% 2.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,084 450 536
10th Percentile £375 £363 £363
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.05% -9.05% -
75th Percentile £600 £596 £638
90th Percentile £675 £694 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 67 12 8
10th Percentile £21.25 £25.25 £49.25
25th Percentile £30.96 £32.94 £57.31
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 £43.03 £52.50 £80.00
% change year-on-year -18.04% -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 42,663 25,579 30,167
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.09% 91.10% 93.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,165 16,474 18,507
10th Percentile £325 £280 £300
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.11%
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% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,652 1,417 1,347
10th Percentile £14.56 £13.80 £15.00
25th Percentile £20.50 £17.33 £21.37
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.90
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -42.71% -4.32%
75th Percentile £67.84 £52.50 £67.50
90th Percentile £79.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £42.91
% change year-on-year +65.94% -41.39% -3.57%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 +27 819 £533 +1.43% 953
Midlands +80 330 £469 +1.41% 163
West Midlands +54 250 £469 -6.20% 97
North of England +34 203 £525 +10.53% 364
South East +25 124 £459 -0.76% 239
South West +33 116 £525 +5.00% 125
North West +28 109 £525 +20.69% 177
East Midlands +43 80 £388 -16.22% 66
Yorkshire +1 75 £500 -1.23% 112
East of England +9 36 £545 +9.00% 96
North East -27 20 £480 +15.32% 77
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 4 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.

1 843 (51.12%) SQL
2 720 (43.66%) Data Pipeline
3 707 (42.87%) Python
4 650 (39.42%) Data Engineering
5 580 (35.17%) Data Modelling
6 569 (34.51%) ETL
7 557 (33.78%) Analytics
8 517 (31.35%) AWS
9 500 (30.32%) Azure
10 431 (26.14%) Data Quality
11 425 (25.77%) Security Cleared
12 414 (25.11%) CI/CD
13 358 (21.71%) SC Cleared
14 337 (20.44%) Databricks
15 292 (17.71%) Agile
16 277 (16.80%) DevOps
17 273 (16.56%) Data Warehouse
17 273 (16.56%) Migration
18 271 (16.43%) AI
19 249 (15.10%) Business Intelligence
20 228 (13.83%) Data Transformation
21 223 (13.52%) PySpark
22 222 (13.46%) Validation
23 219 (13.28%) Data Governance
24 214 (12.98%) Microsoft
25 211 (12.80%) Snowflake
26 209 (12.67%) dbt
27 205 (12.43%) Data Integration
28 200 (12.13%) Power Platform
29 195 (11.83%) 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
1 183 (11.10%) Apache Airflow
2 149 (9.04%) Apache Spark
3 127 (7.70%) Apache
4 38 (2.30%) SAS
5 34 (2.06%) Confluence
6 17 (1.03%) Palantir Foundry
7 14 (0.85%) SharePoint
8 13 (0.79%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.18%) Apache Superset
9 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.061%) Apache Pulsar
10 1 (0.061%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.061%) CMS
10 1 (0.061%) Liferay
10 1 (0.061%) Luigi
10 1 (0.061%) nginx
10 1 (0.061%) Oracle Workflow
10 1 (0.061%) PowerExchange
Applications
1 20 (1.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
3 4 (0.24%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.061%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.061%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.061%) Notepad++
Business Applications
1 12 (0.73%) 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 (0.061%) BambooHR
7 1 (0.061%) Dynamics NAV
7 1 (0.061%) Markit EDM
7 1 (0.061%) Oracle Retail
7 1 (0.061%) Raiser’s Edge
7 1 (0.061%) SAP CAR
7 1 (0.061%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 517 (31.35%) AWS
2 500 (30.32%) Azure
3 211 (12.80%) Snowflake
4 209 (12.67%) dbt
5 200 (12.13%) Power Platform
6 191 (11.58%) Azure Data Factory
7 182 (11.04%) GCP
8 149 (9.04%) Amazon S3
9 111 (6.73%) Azure DevOps
9 111 (6.73%) Serverless
10 104 (6.31%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 97 (5.88%) AWS Lambda
11 97 (5.88%) GitHub
12 59 (3.58%) Azure Databricks
13 47 (2.85%) Amazon EMR
14 44 (2.67%) GitHub Actions
15 34 (2.06%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 28 (1.70%) AWS Step Functions
17 26 (1.58%) Microsoft Purview
18 24 (1.46%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 22 (1.33%) DNS
2 21 (1.27%) BGP
2 21 (1.27%) DMZ
2 21 (1.27%) Multicast
2 21 (1.27%) VPN
3 6 (0.36%) Firewall
4 4 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
4 4 (0.24%) Wireless
5 3 (0.18%) Intrusion Detection
5 3 (0.18%) Structured Cabling
6 1 (0.061%) HTTP
6 1 (0.061%) HTTPS
6 1 (0.061%) Network Security
6 1 (0.061%) PuTTY
6 1 (0.061%) TCP/IP
6 1 (0.061%) tcpdump
6 1 (0.061%) WinSCP
6 1 (0.061%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 273 (16.56%) Data Warehouse
2 195 (11.83%) Power BI
3 135 (8.19%) Data Lake
4 121 (7.34%) Metadata
5 101 (6.12%) BigQuery
6 85 (5.15%) Amazon Redshift
7 78 (4.73%) Delta Lake
8 70 (4.24%) Amazon Athena
9 65 (3.94%) SQL Server
10 61 (3.70%) Big Data
11 58 (3.52%) Pentaho
11 58 (3.52%) PostgreSQL
12 51 (3.09%) Tableau
13 49 (2.97%) Relational Database
14 45 (2.73%) NoSQL
14 45 (2.73%) Snowflake Schema
15 40 (2.43%) Oracle Database
16 37 (2.24%) Amazon RDS
17 34 (2.06%) Azure SQL Database
17 34 (2.06%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 146 (8.85%) Git
2 85 (5.15%) GitLab
3 44 (2.67%) JIRA
4 24 (1.46%) Jenkins
5 14 (0.85%) MLflow
6 8 (0.49%) Bitbucket
6 8 (0.49%) Postman
7 6 (0.36%) Artifactory
7 6 (0.36%) Selenium
8 5 (0.30%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.18%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 3 (0.18%) Claude Code
9 3 (0.18%) ERwin
9 3 (0.18%) Newman
9 3 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 2 (0.12%) RStudio
10 2 (0.12%) Terragrunt
10 2 (0.12%) Yeoman
11 1 (0.061%) GoCD
11 1 (0.061%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 282 (17.10%) Social Skills
2 255 (15.46%) Finance
3 185 (11.22%) Analytical Skills
4 148 (8.98%) Public Sector
5 104 (6.31%) Banking
6 26 (1.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 25 (1.52%) Retail
8 23 (1.39%) Automotive
9 21 (1.27%) Aerospace
10 19 (1.15%) Front Office
11 18 (1.09%) Investment Banking
12 17 (1.03%) Manufacturing
13 16 (0.97%) Marketing
13 16 (0.97%) Telecoms
14 14 (0.85%) Military
14 14 (0.85%) Pharmaceutical
15 13 (0.79%) Documentation Skills
16 11 (0.67%) Back Office
17 9 (0.55%) Financial Institution
17 9 (0.55%) Law
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 223 (13.52%) PySpark
2 181 (10.98%) Terraform
3 104 (6.31%) Kafka
4 30 (1.82%) REST
5 24 (1.46%) JSON
6 22 (1.33%) Pandas
7 17 (1.03%) Spring
7 17 (1.03%) Spring Boot
7 17 (1.03%) XML
8 15 (0.91%) Great Expectations
9 14 (0.85%) Apache Beam
9 14 (0.85%) pytest
10 13 (0.79%) Apache NiFi
11 12 (0.73%) LangChain
11 12 (0.73%) PyTorch
11 12 (0.73%) RESTful
12 10 (0.61%) .NET
12 10 (0.61%) Microsoft Graph
12 10 (0.61%) React
13 7 (0.42%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 140 (8.49%) Cloud Native
2 55 (3.34%) Legacy Systems
3 50 (3.03%) Data Structures
4 42 (2.55%) Onboarding
5 25 (1.52%) Product Ownership
6 22 (1.33%) AI Agents
7 21 (1.27%) Distributed Systems
8 17 (1.03%) Algorithms
8 17 (1.03%) Greenfield Project
8 17 (1.03%) Management Information System
9 15 (0.91%) NHS
9 15 (0.91%) Reference Data
9 15 (0.91%) Reinsurance
10 11 (0.67%) Virtual Team
11 9 (0.55%) Data Protection Act
11 9 (0.55%) Distributed Computing
12 8 (0.49%) Clustering
12 8 (0.49%) Data Fabric
12 8 (0.49%) Enterprise Software
13 7 (0.42%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 41 (2.49%) Unix
2 37 (2.24%) Linux
3 2 (0.12%) Ubuntu
4 1 (0.061%) Robot Operating System
4 1 (0.061%) VMS
4 1 (0.061%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 720 (43.66%) Data Pipeline
2 650 (39.42%) Data Engineering
3 580 (35.17%) Data Modelling
4 569 (34.51%) ETL
5 557 (33.78%) Analytics
6 414 (25.11%) CI/CD
7 292 (17.71%) Agile
8 277 (16.80%) DevOps
9 273 (16.56%) Migration
10 271 (16.43%) AI
11 249 (15.10%) Business Intelligence
12 228 (13.83%) Data Transformation
13 222 (13.46%) Validation
14 219 (13.28%) Data Governance
15 205 (12.43%) Data Integration
16 171 (10.37%) Problem-Solving
17 154 (9.34%) Decision-Making
17 154 (9.34%) Infrastructure as Code
17 154 (9.34%) Machine Learning
18 152 (9.22%) Lakehouse
Programming Languages
1 843 (51.12%) SQL
2 707 (42.87%) Python
3 84 (5.09%) Java
4 66 (4.00%) Scala
5 35 (2.12%) PL/SQL
6 28 (1.70%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 25 (1.52%) PowerShell
7 25 (1.52%) T-SQL
8 19 (1.15%) Bash
8 19 (1.15%) Shell Script
9 18 (1.09%) JavaScript
10 13 (0.79%) R
11 10 (0.61%) Go
12 9 (0.55%) Bicep
13 7 (0.42%) C#
13 7 (0.42%) TypeScript
14 5 (0.30%) Korn
15 3 (0.18%) Kusto Query Language
16 2 (0.12%) COBOL
16 2 (0.12%) Cypher
Qualifications
1 425 (25.77%) Security Cleared
2 358 (21.71%) SC Cleared
3 42 (2.55%) BPSS Clearance
4 41 (2.49%) Degree
5 37 (2.24%) DV Cleared
6 24 (1.46%) Azure Certification
7 19 (1.15%) Computer Science Degree
8 13 (0.79%) AWS Certification
9 8 (0.49%) DBS Check
9 8 (0.49%) Master's Degree
10 7 (0.42%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 6 (0.36%) SnowPro
12 4 (0.24%) CISM
12 4 (0.24%) CISSP
12 4 (0.24%) City & Guilds
13 3 (0.18%) CEH
13 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Certification
14 1 (0.061%) CISA
14 1 (0.061%) PMP
14 1 (0.061%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 431 (26.14%) Data Quality
2 69 (4.18%) QA
3 30 (1.82%) GDPR
4 13 (0.79%) Accessibility
5 6 (0.36%) FATCA
5 6 (0.36%) SLA
6 5 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 4 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
8 3 (0.18%) HIPAA
8 3 (0.18%) MiFID
9 2 (0.12%) EMIR
9 2 (0.12%) SNOMED CT
10 1 (0.061%) Government Security Classifications
10 1 (0.061%) GRC
10 1 (0.061%) IFRS
10 1 (0.061%) IFRS 17
10 1 (0.061%) IFRS 9
10 1 (0.061%) NIST
10 1 (0.061%) PMO
System Software
1 95 (5.76%) Docker
2 3 (0.18%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.061%) HDFS
3 1 (0.061%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 80 (4.85%) Kubernetes
2 19 (1.15%) Ansible
3 18 (1.09%) Grafana
4 11 (0.67%) Control-M
5 10 (0.61%) Kibana
6 4 (0.24%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.12%) Puppet
8 1 (0.061%) logstash
8 1 (0.061%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 337 (20.44%) Databricks
2 214 (12.98%) Microsoft
3 136 (8.25%) Oracle
4 83 (5.03%) Informatica
5 82 (4.97%) Google
6 74 (4.49%) Talend
7 34 (2.06%) Denodo
8 30 (1.82%) Salesforce
9 27 (1.64%) Palantir
10 26 (1.58%) SAP
11 24 (1.46%) Foundry
12 21 (1.27%) Cisco
12 21 (1.27%) F5
13 12 (0.73%) Splunk
14 9 (0.55%) Bloomberg
14 9 (0.55%) OpenAI
15 8 (0.49%) Sage
16 7 (0.42%) Alteryx
16 7 (0.42%) Cloudera
16 7 (0.42%) InterSystems