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 17 April 2026.

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

6 months to
17 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 63 80 96
Rank change year-on-year +17 +16 +16
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,414 761 858
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.59% 3.11% 2.30%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.89% 3.36% 2.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,019 574 673
10th Percentile £368 £358 £290
25th Percentile £419 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -6.82%
75th Percentile £588 £619 £625
90th Percentile £650 £725 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 38 10 44
10th Percentile £19.34 £25.45 £37.50
25th Percentile £41.26 £43.75 £49.25
Median hourly rate £57.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year -12.31% -3.70% +5.47%
75th Percentile £75.00 £78.40 £80.00
90th Percentile £80.43 £93.75 -
UK median hourly rate £53.50 £52.50 £66.25
% change year-on-year +1.90% -20.75% +3.52%

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 36,323 22,654 34,607
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.31% 92.69% 92.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,825 15,139 23,065
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £409 £412
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £508 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.33% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £644
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £515 £525
% change year-on-year -2.91% -1.90% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,416 860 2,374
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.39 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.75 £20.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £45.00 £32.50 £34.21
Median % change year-on-year +38.46% -5.00% -21.59%
75th Percentile £67.31 £64.81 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £76.25 £72.42
UK median hourly rate £41.94 £30.79 £35.00
% change year-on-year +36.20% -12.02% -22.22%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 +17 793 £525 - 173
Midlands +17 269 £469 -1.26% 51
West Midlands +22 249 £469 -1.68% 47
North of England -16 179 £465 +0.54% 94
North West +1 111 £450 -2.70% 62
South East -18 78 £500 - 88
South West -12 53 £510 +3.29% 35
Yorkshire -27 53 £465 +3.33% 23
East Midlands -24 20 £455 +14.11% 4
East of England -28 16 £565 +79.37% 22
North East -18 15 £488 +8.33% 13
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 17 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.

1 799 (56.51%) SQL
2 675 (47.74%) Python
3 595 (42.08%) Data Pipeline
4 577 (40.81%) ETL
5 554 (39.18%) Analytics
5 554 (39.18%) Data Engineering
6 520 (36.78%) Azure
7 507 (35.86%) Data Modelling
8 408 (28.85%) Security Cleared
9 391 (27.65%) AWS
10 388 (27.44%) Data Quality
11 367 (25.95%) SC Cleared
12 366 (25.88%) Databricks
13 361 (25.53%) CI/CD
14 325 (22.98%) Business Intelligence
15 268 (18.95%) DevOps
16 266 (18.81%) Agile
17 255 (18.03%) Data Warehouse
18 254 (17.96%) Power Platform
19 239 (16.90%) Power BI
20 223 (15.77%) Data Governance
21 221 (15.63%) Azure Data Factory
22 213 (15.06%) PySpark
23 208 (14.71%) Problem-Solving
24 186 (13.15%) Microsoft
25 174 (12.31%) Git
26 169 (11.95%) Data Science
27 165 (11.67%) Terraform
28 160 (11.32%) AI
29 159 (11.24%) 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
1 144 (10.18%) Apache Spark
2 141 (9.97%) Apache Airflow
3 82 (5.80%) Apache
4 68 (4.81%) SAS
5 13 (0.92%) Confluence
6 10 (0.71%) Palantir Foundry
7 8 (0.57%) Jupyter
8 5 (0.35%) Microsoft Exchange
9 3 (0.21%) SharePoint
10 1 (0.071%) Apache Superset
10 1 (0.071%) Apache Synapse
10 1 (0.071%) Appian
10 1 (0.071%) Camunda
10 1 (0.071%) Luigi
10 1 (0.071%) Oracle Application Server
10 1 (0.071%) R Markdown
Applications
1 18 (1.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.35%) Notepad++
3 4 (0.28%) Chatbot
4 3 (0.21%) 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 (0.071%) Actimize
2 1 (0.071%) Elite 3E
2 1 (0.071%) iTrent
2 1 (0.071%) NEC Housing
2 1 (0.071%) Oracle 11i
2 1 (0.071%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.071%) SAP Business ByDesign
2 1 (0.071%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.071%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 520 (36.78%) Azure
2 391 (27.65%) AWS
3 254 (17.96%) Power Platform
4 221 (15.63%) Azure Data Factory
5 156 (11.03%) Snowflake
6 151 (10.68%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 144 (10.18%) Amazon S3
8 135 (9.55%) GCP
9 134 (9.48%) dbt
10 111 (7.85%) GitHub
11 109 (7.71%) Azure DevOps
12 94 (6.65%) Serverless
13 78 (5.52%) AWS Lambda
14 52 (3.68%) GitHub Actions
15 39 (2.76%) AWS CloudFormation
16 26 (1.84%) Matillion
17 25 (1.77%) Dagster
18 24 (1.70%) Amazon Kinesis
18 24 (1.70%) AWS Step Functions
19 19 (1.34%) Amazon EMR
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.91%) DNS
1 27 (1.91%) VPN
2 26 (1.84%) BGP
2 26 (1.84%) DMZ
2 26 (1.84%) Multicast
3 11 (0.78%) Structured Cabling
4 5 (0.35%) PuTTY
4 5 (0.35%) WinSCP
5 3 (0.21%) Firewall
5 3 (0.21%) SAN
6 1 (0.071%) 4G
6 1 (0.071%) 5G
6 1 (0.071%) Network Security
6 1 (0.071%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 255 (18.03%) Data Warehouse
2 239 (16.90%) Power BI
3 154 (10.89%) Data Lake
4 109 (7.71%) SQL Server
5 88 (6.22%) Delta Lake
6 87 (6.15%) Amazon Redshift
7 85 (6.01%) BigQuery
8 83 (5.87%) Azure SQL Database
9 77 (5.45%) Pentaho
10 75 (5.30%) Metadata
11 67 (4.74%) Tableau
12 62 (4.38%) PostgreSQL
13 59 (4.17%) NoSQL
13 59 (4.17%) Snowflake Schema
14 56 (3.96%) Big Data
14 56 (3.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 52 (3.68%) Amazon Athena
16 37 (2.62%) Relational Database
17 36 (2.55%) Data Vault
18 35 (2.48%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 174 (12.31%) Git
2 66 (4.67%) Jenkins
3 60 (4.24%) JIRA
4 58 (4.10%) GitLab
5 18 (1.27%) MLflow
6 2 (0.14%) Bitbucket
6 2 (0.14%) JUnit
6 2 (0.14%) Selenium
6 2 (0.14%) SonarQube
6 2 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.14%) Visual Studio
7 1 (0.071%) Cucumber
7 1 (0.071%) DBeaver
7 1 (0.071%) ER Studio
7 1 (0.071%) ERwin
7 1 (0.071%) Jaeger
7 1 (0.071%) Maven
7 1 (0.071%) Mockito
7 1 (0.071%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (0.071%) Terragrunt
General
1 233 (16.48%) Finance
2 226 (15.98%) Social Skills
3 148 (10.47%) Analytical Skills
4 125 (8.84%) Public Sector
5 74 (5.23%) Banking
6 33 (2.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 21 (1.49%) Telecoms
8 20 (1.41%) Investment Banking
9 16 (1.13%) Manufacturing
9 16 (1.13%) Retail
10 15 (1.06%) Documentation Skills
11 14 (0.99%) Pharmaceutical
12 13 (0.92%) Marketing
13 12 (0.85%) Publishing
14 11 (0.78%) Front Office
15 10 (0.71%) Aerospace
16 7 (0.50%) Law
17 6 (0.42%) Local Government
17 6 (0.42%) Military
18 5 (0.35%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 213 (15.06%) PySpark
2 142 (10.04%) Kafka
3 46 (3.25%) Pandas
4 33 (2.33%) JSON
5 29 (2.05%) YAML
6 26 (1.84%) Great Expectations
7 24 (1.70%) REST
8 18 (1.27%) XML
9 15 (1.06%) scikit-learn
10 14 (0.99%) Node.js
11 13 (0.92%) PyTorch
11 13 (0.92%) React
12 12 (0.85%) Apache Beam
12 12 (0.85%) Matplotlib
13 11 (0.78%) Apache Avro
13 11 (0.78%) NumPy
13 11 (0.78%) Spring
13 11 (0.78%) Spring Boot
14 10 (0.71%) pytest
15 9 (0.64%) GeoJSON
Miscellaneous
1 94 (6.65%) Cloud Native
2 43 (3.04%) Legacy Systems
3 31 (2.19%) Data Structures
3 31 (2.19%) Product Ownership
4 23 (1.63%) Greenfield Project
5 22 (1.56%) Clustering
6 19 (1.34%) Distributed Systems
6 19 (1.34%) Onboarding
7 15 (1.06%) Data Protection Act
8 14 (0.99%) NHS
8 14 (0.99%) Replication
9 13 (0.92%) Hybrid Cloud
10 12 (0.85%) Reinsurance
11 11 (0.78%) Public Cloud
12 9 (0.64%) Self-Motivation
13 8 (0.57%) Analytical Mindset
13 8 (0.57%) Distributed Computing
13 8 (0.57%) Life Science
14 7 (0.50%) Data Centre
14 7 (0.50%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 41 (2.90%) Unix
2 28 (1.98%) Linux
3 3 (0.21%) Windows
4 2 (0.14%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.071%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 595 (42.08%) Data Pipeline
2 577 (40.81%) ETL
3 554 (39.18%) Analytics
3 554 (39.18%) Data Engineering
4 507 (35.86%) Data Modelling
5 361 (25.53%) CI/CD
6 325 (22.98%) Business Intelligence
7 268 (18.95%) DevOps
8 266 (18.81%) Agile
9 223 (15.77%) Data Governance
10 208 (14.71%) Problem-Solving
11 169 (11.95%) Data Science
12 160 (11.32%) AI
13 159 (11.24%) Data Integration
13 159 (11.24%) Migration
14 142 (10.04%) Data Architecture
15 137 (9.69%) Validation
16 130 (9.19%) Infrastructure as Code
17 126 (8.91%) Data Transformation
18 122 (8.63%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 799 (56.51%) SQL
2 675 (47.74%) Python
3 94 (6.65%) Java
4 85 (6.01%) Scala
5 39 (2.76%) C#
6 34 (2.40%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 33 (2.33%) PL/SQL
8 29 (2.05%) T-SQL
9 25 (1.77%) Bash
9 25 (1.77%) Shell Script
10 19 (1.34%) PowerShell
11 18 (1.27%) Bicep
12 16 (1.13%) R
13 15 (1.06%) JavaScript
14 12 (0.85%) 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
1 408 (28.85%) Security Cleared
2 367 (25.95%) SC Cleared
3 38 (2.69%) Degree
4 32 (2.26%) Azure Certification
5 28 (1.98%) BPSS Clearance
6 17 (1.20%) Computer Science Degree
7 13 (0.92%) AWS Certification
8 12 (0.85%) DV Cleared
9 6 (0.42%) Microsoft Certification
10 5 (0.35%) BICSI Certification
10 5 (0.35%) City & Guilds
10 5 (0.35%) DBS Check
10 5 (0.35%) Master's Degree
11 4 (0.28%) CTC Cleared
11 4 (0.28%) SnowPro
12 2 (0.14%) CISM
12 2 (0.14%) CISSP
13 1 (0.071%) CCIE
13 1 (0.071%) CISA
13 1 (0.071%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 388 (27.44%) Data Quality
2 51 (3.61%) GDPR
3 35 (2.48%) QA
4 12 (0.85%) Accessibility
5 8 (0.57%) SLA
6 6 (0.42%) FATCA
7 4 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 3 (0.21%) GMP
8 3 (0.21%) HIPAA
8 3 (0.21%) WCAG
9 2 (0.14%) MiFID
10 1 (0.071%) Basel III
10 1 (0.071%) Government Security Classifications
10 1 (0.071%) GRC
10 1 (0.071%) GxP
10 1 (0.071%) ISO 13485
10 1 (0.071%) NCSC
10 1 (0.071%) NIST
10 1 (0.071%) PCI DSS
10 1 (0.071%) PMO
System Software
1 105 (7.43%) Docker
2 7 (0.50%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.14%) HDFS
4 1 (0.071%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.071%) RACF
Systems Management
1 165 (11.67%) Terraform
2 98 (6.93%) Kubernetes
3 35 (2.48%) Grafana
4 13 (0.92%) Prometheus
5 8 (0.57%) Kibana
6 7 (0.50%) Ansible
7 4 (0.28%) Kubeflow
8 3 (0.21%) Rancher
9 2 (0.14%) Apache Ranger
9 2 (0.14%) EMC NetWorker
9 2 (0.14%) logstash
9 2 (0.14%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 2 (0.14%) Tivoli Storage Manager
10 1 (0.071%) Control-M
10 1 (0.071%) NetBackup
10 1 (0.071%) Puppet
Vendors
1 366 (25.88%) Databricks
2 186 (13.15%) Microsoft
3 122 (8.63%) Oracle
4 108 (7.64%) Talend
5 92 (6.51%) Informatica
6 59 (4.17%) Denodo
7 57 (4.03%) Google
8 31 (2.19%) Cisco
9 28 (1.98%) F5
10 22 (1.56%) SAP
10 22 (1.56%) Splunk
11 21 (1.49%) ServiceNow
12 16 (1.13%) Cloudera
13 14 (0.99%) IBM
14 13 (0.92%) Foundry
14 13 (0.92%) Palantir
15 11 (0.78%) Alteryx
16 8 (0.57%) MuleSoft
17 7 (0.50%) OpenAI
18 5 (0.35%) Sage