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 19 July 2026.

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

6 months to
19 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 56 111 99
Rank change year-on-year +55 -12 +17
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,714 669 829
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.80% 2.44% 2.30%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.11% 2.66% 2.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,174 489 625
10th Percentile £382 £375 £263
25th Percentile £425 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £630
90th Percentile £650 £700 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 76 11 35
10th Percentile £19.34 £18.22 £37.50
25th Percentile £34.63 £46.75 £49.25
Median hourly rate £45.00 £52.50 £75.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% -30.00% -3.23%
75th Percentile £70.00 £78.10 £80.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £80.00 -
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £75.00
% change year-on-year -4.76% -30.00% -3.23%

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 41,658 25,184 33,519
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.47% 91.89% 92.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,450 16,385 22,036
10th Percentile £325 £290 £300
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £638
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,985 1,243 2,292
10th Percentile £16.01 £13.75 £13.25
25th Percentile £22.00 £17.87 £18.00
Median hourly rate £45.50 £27.50 £40.33
Median % change year-on-year +65.45% -31.80% -8.35%
75th Percentile £68.00 £56.60 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.03 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.50 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +72.96% -37.13% -6.98%

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 19 July 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 19 July 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 19 July 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 +36 832 £525 - 123
Midlands +61 379 £460 +1.10% 36
West Midlands +46 332 £459 -0.22% 24
North of England +30 229 £478 +0.53% 82
North West +18 134 £525 +10.53% 38
South East +14 129 £470 +10.59% 82
South West +11 95 £525 +5.00% 28
Yorkshire -6 73 £475 - 22
East Midlands +17 47 £500 +19.05% 12
East of England +7 33 £565 +77.67% 13
North East -20 23 £515 +17.71% 22
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 19 July 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.

1 879 (51.28%) SQL
2 728 (42.47%) Python
3 723 (42.18%) Data Pipeline
4 635 (37.05%) Data Engineering
5 631 (36.81%) Analytics
6 614 (35.82%) ETL
7 582 (33.96%) Data Modelling
8 529 (30.86%) Azure
9 494 (28.82%) AWS
10 468 (27.30%) Security Cleared
11 413 (24.10%) CI/CD
12 412 (24.04%) Data Quality
13 409 (23.86%) SC Cleared
14 322 (18.79%) Business Intelligence
15 316 (18.44%) Databricks
16 292 (17.04%) Agile
17 284 (16.57%) Data Warehouse
18 281 (16.39%) DevOps
19 268 (15.64%) Migration
20 256 (14.94%) Power Platform
21 244 (14.24%) Power BI
22 233 (13.59%) Data Governance
23 224 (13.07%) PySpark
24 217 (12.66%) Azure Data Factory
25 214 (12.49%) Microsoft
26 202 (11.79%) Problem-Solving
27 201 (11.73%) AI
28 199 (11.61%) Validation
29 184 (10.74%) Snowflake
30 183 (10.68%) 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
1 159 (9.28%) Apache Airflow
2 135 (7.88%) Apache Spark
3 99 (5.78%) Apache
4 72 (4.20%) SAS
5 39 (2.28%) Confluence
6 10 (0.58%) Palantir Foundry
6 10 (0.58%) SharePoint
7 8 (0.47%) Jupyter
8 2 (0.12%) Apache Superset
8 2 (0.12%) Microsoft Exchange
9 1 (0.058%) Camunda
9 1 (0.058%) Liferay
9 1 (0.058%) Luigi
9 1 (0.058%) R Markdown
Applications
1 19 (1.11%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.29%) Notepad++
2 5 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
3 3 (0.18%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.058%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 11 (0.64%) Aladdin
2 8 (0.47%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.29%) Infor LN
3 5 (0.29%) NetSuite
3 5 (0.29%) Sage X3
4 3 (0.18%) SAP BPC
4 3 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.18%) SimCorp Dimension
5 2 (0.12%) BambooHR
5 2 (0.12%) Maximo
6 1 (0.058%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.058%) iTrent
6 1 (0.058%) MIS ActiveH
6 1 (0.058%) NEC Housing
6 1 (0.058%) Oracle 11i
6 1 (0.058%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.058%) Raiser’s Edge
6 1 (0.058%) SAP Business ByDesign
6 1 (0.058%) SAP CAR
6 1 (0.058%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 529 (30.86%) Azure
2 494 (28.82%) AWS
3 256 (14.94%) Power Platform
4 217 (12.66%) Azure Data Factory
5 184 (10.74%) Snowflake
6 176 (10.27%) dbt
7 155 (9.04%) Amazon S3
8 151 (8.81%) GCP
9 145 (8.46%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 129 (7.53%) Azure DevOps
11 104 (6.07%) Serverless
12 103 (6.01%) GitHub
13 88 (5.13%) AWS Lambda
14 47 (2.74%) GitHub Actions
15 38 (2.22%) Amazon EMR
16 31 (1.81%) Matillion
17 27 (1.58%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 24 (1.40%) Amazon Kinesis
18 24 (1.40%) AWS CloudFormation
18 24 (1.40%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 33 (1.93%) DNS
1 33 (1.93%) VPN
2 32 (1.87%) BGP
2 32 (1.87%) DMZ
2 32 (1.87%) Multicast
3 10 (0.58%) Structured Cabling
4 7 (0.41%) Firewall
5 5 (0.29%) PuTTY
5 5 (0.29%) WinSCP
6 4 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.23%) Wireless
7 3 (0.18%) Intrusion Detection
8 1 (0.058%) 4G
8 1 (0.058%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 284 (16.57%) Data Warehouse
2 244 (14.24%) Power BI
3 157 (9.16%) Data Lake
4 98 (5.72%) Amazon Redshift
5 93 (5.43%) BigQuery
6 88 (5.13%) Metadata
6 88 (5.13%) SQL Server
7 84 (4.90%) Pentaho
8 81 (4.73%) Delta Lake
9 74 (4.32%) Tableau
10 61 (3.56%) Amazon Athena
10 61 (3.56%) PostgreSQL
11 59 (3.44%) Big Data
11 59 (3.44%) Snowflake Schema
12 52 (3.03%) Azure SQL Database
12 52 (3.03%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 44 (2.57%) NoSQL
14 41 (2.39%) Relational Database
15 35 (2.04%) Hadoop
16 34 (1.98%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 156 (9.10%) Git
2 80 (4.67%) GitLab
3 69 (4.03%) JIRA
4 41 (2.39%) Jenkins
5 7 (0.41%) Postman
6 5 (0.29%) Artifactory
6 5 (0.29%) Bitbucket
6 5 (0.29%) MLflow
7 3 (0.18%) Newman
7 3 (0.18%) SonarQube
8 2 (0.12%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 2 (0.12%) Sonatype Nexus
8 2 (0.12%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 2 (0.12%) Visual Studio
8 2 (0.12%) Yeoman
9 1 (0.058%) ER Studio
9 1 (0.058%) ERwin
9 1 (0.058%) Octopus Deploy
9 1 (0.058%) Selenium
9 1 (0.058%) Terragrunt
General
1 284 (16.57%) Finance
2 263 (15.34%) Social Skills
3 191 (11.14%) Analytical Skills
4 150 (8.75%) Public Sector
5 93 (5.43%) Banking
6 32 (1.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 25 (1.46%) Retail
7 25 (1.46%) Telecoms
8 22 (1.28%) Documentation Skills
8 22 (1.28%) Marketing
9 18 (1.05%) Investment Banking
9 18 (1.05%) Manufacturing
10 17 (0.99%) Automotive
11 16 (0.93%) Pharmaceutical
12 13 (0.76%) Aerospace
12 13 (0.76%) Front Office
13 11 (0.64%) Publishing
14 9 (0.53%) Billing
15 8 (0.47%) Legal
16 7 (0.41%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 224 (13.07%) PySpark
2 126 (7.35%) Kafka
3 36 (2.10%) Pandas
4 32 (1.87%) JSON
5 25 (1.46%) REST
6 22 (1.28%) Great Expectations
7 21 (1.23%) Spring
7 21 (1.23%) Spring Boot
7 21 (1.23%) XML
8 16 (0.93%) Apache Beam
8 16 (0.93%) YAML
9 13 (0.76%) Apache Avro
10 12 (0.70%) React
11 11 (0.64%) scikit-learn
12 10 (0.58%) Microsoft Graph
12 10 (0.58%) RESTful
13 9 (0.53%) GeoJSON
13 9 (0.53%) Matplotlib
13 9 (0.53%) Node.js
13 9 (0.53%) Polars
Miscellaneous
1 131 (7.64%) Cloud Native
2 69 (4.03%) Legacy Systems
3 45 (2.63%) Data Structures
4 32 (1.87%) Onboarding
5 27 (1.58%) Distributed Systems
6 23 (1.34%) Greenfield Project
7 22 (1.28%) NHS
8 20 (1.17%) Product Ownership
9 18 (1.05%) Clustering
9 18 (1.05%) Reinsurance
10 15 (0.88%) Data Protection Act
11 12 (0.70%) Reference Data
12 11 (0.64%) Life Science
12 11 (0.64%) Virtual Team
13 9 (0.53%) Algorithms
13 9 (0.53%) Distributed Computing
13 9 (0.53%) Driving Licence
13 9 (0.53%) Replication
13 9 (0.53%) Self-Motivation
14 8 (0.47%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 57 (3.33%) Unix
2 41 (2.39%) Linux
3 4 (0.23%) Windows
4 2 (0.12%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.12%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.058%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 723 (42.18%) Data Pipeline
2 635 (37.05%) Data Engineering
3 631 (36.81%) Analytics
4 614 (35.82%) ETL
5 582 (33.96%) Data Modelling
6 413 (24.10%) CI/CD
7 322 (18.79%) Business Intelligence
8 292 (17.04%) Agile
9 281 (16.39%) DevOps
10 268 (15.64%) Migration
11 233 (13.59%) Data Governance
12 202 (11.79%) Problem-Solving
13 201 (11.73%) AI
14 199 (11.61%) Validation
15 183 (10.68%) Data Integration
16 177 (10.33%) Data Transformation
17 163 (9.51%) Decision-Making
18 159 (9.28%) Data Science
19 142 (8.28%) Infrastructure as Code
20 133 (7.76%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 879 (51.28%) SQL
2 728 (42.47%) Python
3 105 (6.13%) Java
4 56 (3.27%) Scala
5 51 (2.98%) PL/SQL
6 32 (1.87%) T-SQL
7 31 (1.81%) Shell Script
8 28 (1.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 27 (1.58%) C#
10 26 (1.52%) Bash
11 23 (1.34%) PowerShell
12 13 (0.76%) R
13 12 (0.70%) Bicep
13 12 (0.70%) JavaScript
14 7 (0.41%) Go
14 7 (0.41%) TypeScript
15 2 (0.12%) C
15 2 (0.12%) Korn
15 2 (0.12%) Ruby
15 2 (0.12%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 468 (27.30%) Security Cleared
2 409 (23.86%) SC Cleared
3 41 (2.39%) BPSS Clearance
3 41 (2.39%) Degree
4 25 (1.46%) Azure Certification
5 22 (1.28%) DV Cleared
6 18 (1.05%) Computer Science Degree
7 11 (0.64%) AWS Certification
8 9 (0.53%) City & Guilds
8 9 (0.53%) DBS Check
9 6 (0.35%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
9 6 (0.35%) SnowPro
10 5 (0.29%) BICSI Certification
10 5 (0.29%) CISM
10 5 (0.29%) CISSP
11 4 (0.23%) Master's Degree
12 3 (0.18%) CEH
12 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Certification
13 1 (0.058%) CISA
13 1 (0.058%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 412 (24.04%) Data Quality
2 54 (3.15%) QA
3 47 (2.74%) GDPR
4 20 (1.17%) Accessibility
5 12 (0.70%) SLA
6 9 (0.53%) FATCA
7 5 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 5 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 4 (0.23%) HIPAA
9 3 (0.18%) GMP
9 3 (0.18%) MiFID
10 2 (0.12%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 2 (0.12%) EMIR
10 2 (0.12%) PMO
10 2 (0.12%) SNOMED CT
10 2 (0.12%) WCAG
11 1 (0.058%) IFRS
11 1 (0.058%) IFRS 17
11 1 (0.058%) IFRS 9
11 1 (0.058%) NIST
System Software
1 93 (5.43%) Docker
2 5 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.12%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.12%) HDFS
4 1 (0.058%) RACF
Systems Management
1 181 (10.56%) Terraform
2 75 (4.38%) Kubernetes
3 35 (2.04%) Grafana
4 13 (0.76%) Ansible
5 10 (0.58%) Prometheus
6 6 (0.35%) Kibana
7 5 (0.29%) Control-M
8 3 (0.18%) Rancher
9 2 (0.12%) Apache Ranger
9 2 (0.12%) Thomson Reuters DACS
10 1 (0.058%) Kubeflow
10 1 (0.058%) logstash
10 1 (0.058%) NetBackup
10 1 (0.058%) Puppet
Vendors
1 316 (18.44%) Databricks
2 214 (12.49%) Microsoft
3 152 (8.87%) Oracle
4 126 (7.35%) Informatica
5 113 (6.59%) Talend
6 62 (3.62%) Google
7 58 (3.38%) Denodo
8 34 (1.98%) Cisco
8 34 (1.98%) F5
9 31 (1.81%) SAP
10 25 (1.46%) Salesforce
11 22 (1.28%) Splunk
12 20 (1.17%) Palantir
13 18 (1.05%) Cloudera
14 15 (0.88%) ServiceNow
15 14 (0.82%) Foundry
16 13 (0.76%) Alteryx
17 12 (0.70%) Sage
18 9 (0.53%) IBM
19 8 (0.47%) Bloomberg