Data Engineer Contract Job Trends in England

Data Engineer
UK > England

The median Data Engineer daily rate in England is £504, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 19 September 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 131 99 124
Rank change year-on-year -32 +25 +15
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 614 777 875
As % of all contract jobs advertised in England 2.21% 2.36% 2.07%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.42% 2.54% 2.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 444 550 673
10th Percentile £375 £375 £413
25th Percentile £425 £450 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £504 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -8.36% - -
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £699 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 9 12
10th Percentile £25.34 £49.25 £35.06
25th Percentile £35.25 £60.00 £38.79
Median hourly rate £52.50 £80.00 £61.75
Median % change year-on-year -34.38% +29.55% +23.50%
75th Percentile £62.50 - £68.44
90th Percentile £104.00 £97.50 £78.75
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £80.00 £61.75
% change year-on-year -34.38% +29.55% +23.50%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
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 25,406 30,639 39,817
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.35% 92.99% 94.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 16,389 19,101 27,778
10th Percentile £278 £300 £300
25th Percentile £401 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £508 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.33% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,371 1,479 1,365
10th Percentile £13.75 £14.81 £15.25
25th Percentile £17.30 £21.25 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -45.54% +2.62% +73.08%
75th Percentile £54.88 £67.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.00 £75.00 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -41.51% -3.37% +71.15%

Data Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Job postings that featured Data Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in England.

Job vacancy trend for Data Engineer 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 September 2025.

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 September 2025.

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 September 2025. 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 -11 401 £525 -8.70% 164
North of England -27 69 £475 -5.00% 60
Midlands -26 44 £456 -3.95% 37
North West -8 37 £475 - 35
South West +6 35 £500 -4.76% 34
West Midlands -17 32 £440 -11.11% 16
South East -30 29 £481 -8.33% 120
Yorkshire -20 27 £513 +2.50% 15
East Midlands -9 10 £463 +15.63% 21
North East +2 6 £423 -27.78% 10
East of England -13 5 £750 +110.53% 17
Data Engineer
UK

Data Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England

For the 6 months to 19 September 2025, Data Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the England region featuring Data Engineer in the job title.

1 388 (63.19%) Python
2 363 (59.12%) SQL
3 279 (45.44%) Data Pipeline
4 263 (42.83%) Azure
5 234 (38.11%) ETL
6 233 (37.95%) Data Engineering
7 227 (36.97%) AWS
8 211 (34.36%) Data Modelling
9 184 (29.97%) Analytics
10 183 (29.80%) Databricks
11 165 (26.87%) CI/CD
12 146 (23.78%) Data Quality
13 138 (22.48%) Security Cleared
14 129 (21.01%) Data Warehouse
15 128 (20.85%) Business Intelligence
16 122 (19.87%) DevOps
16 122 (19.87%) Social Skills
17 120 (19.54%) Power Platform
18 119 (19.38%) Power BI
19 118 (19.22%) Agile
20 117 (19.06%) Azure Data Factory
21 116 (18.89%) Apache Airflow
22 108 (17.59%) SC Cleared
23 106 (17.26%) Finance
24 102 (16.61%) Problem-Solving
25 100 (16.29%) PySpark
26 94 (15.31%) Data Science
27 92 (14.98%) Analytical Skills
28 89 (14.50%) dbt
29 84 (13.68%) Snowflake

Data Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 116 (18.89%) Apache Airflow
2 73 (11.89%) Apache Spark
3 55 (8.96%) Apache
4 20 (3.26%) Confluence
5 8 (1.30%) SharePoint
6 7 (1.14%) Jupyter
6 7 (1.14%) SAS
7 6 (0.98%) Apache Pig
8 5 (0.81%) IIS
8 5 (0.81%) Oracle Application Server
9 4 (0.65%) Luigi
10 3 (0.49%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 2 (0.33%) ArcGIS
11 2 (0.33%) Documentum
11 2 (0.33%) nginx
12 1 (0.16%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 11 (1.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (0.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.33%) Windchill
5 1 (0.16%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.16%) SPSS
5 1 (0.16%) Stata
Business Applications
1 3 (0.49%) Oracle BPM
2 2 (0.33%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.33%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.33%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.16%) Aladdin
3 1 (0.16%) Dynamics AX
3 1 (0.16%) Endur
3 1 (0.16%) NetSuite
3 1 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
3 1 (0.16%) SAP BPC
3 1 (0.16%) SAP ERP
3 1 (0.16%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 263 (42.83%) Azure
2 227 (36.97%) AWS
3 120 (19.54%) Power Platform
4 117 (19.06%) Azure Data Factory
5 89 (14.50%) dbt
6 84 (13.68%) Snowflake
7 79 (12.87%) GCP
8 74 (12.05%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 60 (9.77%) Amazon S3
10 55 (8.96%) GitHub
11 39 (6.35%) Azure DevOps
11 39 (6.35%) Serverless
12 35 (5.70%) GitHub Actions
13 23 (3.75%) AWS Lambda
14 13 (2.12%) Amazon Kinesis
14 13 (2.12%) AWS CloudFormation
14 13 (2.12%) Microsoft Purview
15 11 (1.79%) Amazon EKS
16 10 (1.63%) Amazon EMR
16 10 (1.63%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 7 (1.14%) SSH
2 4 (0.65%) TCP/IP
3 3 (0.49%) Internet
4 2 (0.33%) DNS
4 2 (0.33%) Firewall
4 2 (0.33%) SSL
4 2 (0.33%) Structured Cabling
4 2 (0.33%) Wi-Fi
5 1 (0.16%) 802.11
5 1 (0.16%) Ethernet
5 1 (0.16%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 129 (21.01%) Data Warehouse
2 119 (19.38%) Power BI
3 78 (12.70%) Data Lake
4 60 (9.77%) SQL Server
5 58 (9.45%) Big Data
6 48 (7.82%) Hadoop
7 45 (7.33%) Delta Lake
8 39 (6.35%) Amazon Redshift
9 37 (6.03%) NoSQL
9 37 (6.03%) Relational Database
10 35 (5.70%) PostgreSQL
11 30 (4.89%) Azure SQL Database
12 29 (4.72%) BigQuery
13 28 (4.56%) Tableau
14 27 (4.40%) Metadata
15 22 (3.58%) Apache Hive
16 21 (3.42%) Snowflake Schema
17 20 (3.26%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 19 (3.09%) Star Schema
19 17 (2.77%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 70 (11.40%) Git
2 38 (6.19%) JIRA
3 34 (5.54%) Jenkins
4 16 (2.61%) GitLab
5 11 (1.79%) MLflow
6 6 (0.98%) Visual Studio Code
7 5 (0.81%) SonarQube
7 5 (0.81%) Terragrunt
8 4 (0.65%) Bitbucket
8 4 (0.65%) DBeaver
8 4 (0.65%) Poetry
8 4 (0.65%) RStudio
8 4 (0.65%) Visual Studio
9 3 (0.49%) PyCharm
9 3 (0.49%) Sonatype Nexus
9 3 (0.49%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 1 (0.16%) ERwin
10 1 (0.16%) GoCD
10 1 (0.16%) Mockito
10 1 (0.16%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 122 (19.87%) Social Skills
2 106 (17.26%) Finance
3 92 (14.98%) Analytical Skills
4 48 (7.82%) Public Sector
5 30 (4.89%) Banking
6 14 (2.28%) Retail
7 13 (2.12%) Marketing
8 11 (1.79%) Investment Banking
9 9 (1.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 9 (1.47%) Telecoms
10 7 (1.14%) Pharmaceutical
11 5 (0.81%) Financial Institution
11 5 (0.81%) Influencing Skills
11 5 (0.81%) Legal
11 5 (0.81%) Police
12 4 (0.65%) Documentation Skills
12 4 (0.65%) Organisational Skills
12 4 (0.65%) Presentation Skills
12 4 (0.65%) Retail Banking
13 3 (0.49%) Tech for Good
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 100 (16.29%) PySpark
2 65 (10.59%) Kafka
3 19 (3.09%) Apache NiFi
4 12 (1.95%) JSON
5 11 (1.79%) YAML
6 10 (1.63%) RabbitMQ
6 10 (1.63%) XML
7 9 (1.47%) Flask
7 9 (1.47%) Jinja
7 9 (1.47%) Pandas
7 9 (1.47%) REST
8 8 (1.30%) HTML
9 7 (1.14%) Apache Avro
9 7 (1.14%) Elastic Stack
9 7 (1.14%) NumPy
9 7 (1.14%) pytest
10 6 (0.98%) OpenTelemetry
10 6 (0.98%) pydantic
10 6 (0.98%) RESTful
10 6 (0.98%) Spark Streaming
Miscellaneous
1 27 (4.40%) Cloud Native
2 19 (3.09%) Data Structures
2 19 (3.09%) Legacy Systems
3 15 (2.44%) Algorithms
4 13 (2.12%) Product Ownership
5 12 (1.95%) Replication
6 11 (1.79%) Data Protection Act
6 11 (1.79%) Distributed Computing
7 10 (1.63%) Linux Command Line
8 9 (1.47%) Onboarding
9 8 (1.30%) Greenfield Project
10 7 (1.14%) IoT
10 7 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
11 6 (0.98%) Reference Data
11 6 (0.98%) Reinsurance
12 4 (0.65%) Data Fabric
12 4 (0.65%) Enterprise Software
12 4 (0.65%) Life Science
12 4 (0.65%) Virtual Team
13 3 (0.49%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 27 (4.40%) Linux
2 13 (2.12%) Unix
3 3 (0.49%) Windows
4 2 (0.33%) Windows Server
4 2 (0.33%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 279 (45.44%) Data Pipeline
2 234 (38.11%) ETL
3 233 (37.95%) Data Engineering
4 211 (34.36%) Data Modelling
5 184 (29.97%) Analytics
6 165 (26.87%) CI/CD
7 128 (20.85%) Business Intelligence
8 122 (19.87%) DevOps
9 118 (19.22%) Agile
10 102 (16.61%) Problem-Solving
11 94 (15.31%) Data Science
12 77 (12.54%) Data Governance
13 71 (11.56%) Data Integration
14 69 (11.24%) Artificial Intelligence
14 69 (11.24%) Infrastructure as Code
15 68 (11.07%) Machine Learning
16 67 (10.91%) Visualisation
17 65 (10.59%) Data Ingestion
17 65 (10.59%) Data Transformation
18 60 (9.77%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 388 (63.19%) Python
2 363 (59.12%) SQL
3 63 (10.26%) Scala
4 56 (9.12%) Java
5 24 (3.91%) Bash
6 11 (1.79%) T-SQL
7 10 (1.63%) C#
7 10 (1.63%) R
8 9 (1.47%) PL/SQL
8 9 (1.47%) Shell Script
9 8 (1.30%) JavaScript
10 7 (1.14%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 6 (0.98%) TypeScript
12 4 (0.65%) Groovy
12 4 (0.65%) PowerShell
13 3 (0.49%) C++
13 3 (0.49%) Go
14 2 (0.33%) ABAP
15 1 (0.16%) HiveQL
15 1 (0.16%) PROC SQL
Qualifications
1 138 (22.48%) Security Cleared
2 108 (17.59%) SC Cleared
3 39 (6.35%) Degree
4 25 (4.07%) DV Cleared
5 14 (2.28%) Computer Science Degree
6 12 (1.95%) Azure Certification
7 11 (1.79%) AWS Certification
8 9 (1.47%) Master's Degree
9 6 (0.98%) BPSS Clearance
10 4 (0.65%) SnowPro
11 3 (0.49%) MCPD
11 3 (0.49%) MCSD
11 3 (0.49%) Microsoft Certification
12 2 (0.33%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 1 (0.16%) CTC Cleared
13 1 (0.16%) DBS Check
13 1 (0.16%) HND
13 1 (0.16%) IBM Certification
13 1 (0.16%) PhD
13 1 (0.16%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 146 (23.78%) Data Quality
2 28 (4.56%) GDPR
3 12 (1.95%) QA
4 9 (1.47%) Accessibility
5 3 (0.49%) ISO/IEC 20000
5 3 (0.49%) SLA
6 2 (0.33%) HIPAA
6 2 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.33%) NIST
7 1 (0.16%) HL7
7 1 (0.16%) ISO 19650
7 1 (0.16%) MiFID
7 1 (0.16%) PMO
7 1 (0.16%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 46 (7.49%) Docker
2 5 (0.81%) Virtual Machines
3 4 (0.65%) zsh
4 2 (0.33%) Active Directory
5 1 (0.16%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 84 (13.68%) Terraform
2 45 (7.33%) Kubernetes
3 9 (1.47%) Ansible
4 7 (1.14%) Grafana
5 6 (0.98%) NetBackup
6 4 (0.65%) Argo
6 4 (0.65%) Kibana
6 4 (0.65%) logstash
6 4 (0.65%) Puppet
7 3 (0.49%) Ambari
7 3 (0.49%) Istio
7 3 (0.49%) Prometheus
7 3 (0.49%) ZABBIX
8 2 (0.33%) Control-M
8 2 (0.33%) Kubeflow
9 1 (0.16%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 183 (29.80%) Databricks
2 76 (12.38%) Microsoft
3 42 (6.84%) Oracle
4 29 (4.72%) Palantir
5 25 (4.07%) Google
6 24 (3.91%) Foundry
7 16 (2.61%) Cloudera
7 16 (2.61%) Informatica
8 14 (2.28%) SAP
9 11 (1.79%) Talend
10 9 (1.47%) Red Hat
11 8 (1.30%) IBM
11 8 (1.30%) Splunk
12 7 (1.14%) Commvault
12 7 (1.14%) MicroStrategy
13 6 (0.98%) Confluent
13 6 (0.98%) Denodo
13 6 (0.98%) Salesforce
13 6 (0.98%) Veritas
14 3 (0.49%) Virgin Media