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 May 2026.

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

6 months to
19 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 58 88 101
Rank change year-on-year +30 +13 +14
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,520 720 804
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.70% 2.96% 2.21%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.01% 3.20% 2.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,080 551 617
10th Percentile £375 £356 £218
25th Percentile £425 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.09%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £663 £700 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 46 9 43
10th Percentile £19.34 £44.64 £37.50
25th Percentile £41.26 £51.25 £49.25
Median hourly rate £52.50 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year -19.23% -3.70% -10.60%
75th Percentile £74.13 £78.70 £80.00
90th Percentile £77.00 £93.75 -
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -19.23% - -13.91%

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 37,905 22,467 33,793
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.36% 92.36% 92.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,551 14,942 22,422
10th Percentile £319 £300 £284
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.03% -0.36% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £644
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £512 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -0.10% -2.38% -3.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,597 915 2,440
10th Percentile £15.63 £14.00 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.75 £18.50 £16.30
Median hourly rate £45.00 £30.00 £36.92
Median % change year-on-year +50.00% -18.73% -17.54%
75th Percentile £67.50 £63.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £42.69 £28.00 £36.50
% change year-on-year +52.45% -23.29% -18.89%

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 May 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 May 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 May 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 +24 845 £525 - 130
Midlands +37 292 £469 +1.96% 50
West Midlands +37 273 £468 -1.53% 36
North of England -14 190 £465 +0.54% 85
North West +4 124 £480 +2.40% 37
South East -9 92 £500 +8.11% 95
South West +6 68 £500 - 32
Yorkshire -26 51 £465 +3.33% 22
East Midlands -23 19 £475 +15.85% 14
East of England -27 16 £565 +79.37% 5
North East -23 15 £463 +8.82% 29
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 19 May 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.

1 827 (54.41%) SQL
2 686 (45.13%) Python
3 631 (41.51%) Data Pipeline
4 593 (39.01%) ETL
5 582 (38.29%) Analytics
6 579 (38.09%) Data Engineering
7 536 (35.26%) Data Modelling
8 533 (35.07%) Azure
9 445 (29.28%) Security Cleared
10 414 (27.24%) AWS
11 402 (26.45%) SC Cleared
12 388 (25.53%) Data Quality
13 362 (23.82%) CI/CD
14 360 (23.68%) Databricks
15 328 (21.58%) Business Intelligence
16 275 (18.09%) Agile
17 273 (17.96%) DevOps
18 261 (17.17%) Power Platform
19 259 (17.04%) Data Warehouse
20 247 (16.25%) Power BI
21 230 (15.13%) Azure Data Factory
22 227 (14.93%) PySpark
23 217 (14.28%) Data Governance
24 208 (13.68%) Problem-Solving
25 201 (13.22%) Microsoft
26 187 (12.30%) Migration
27 172 (11.32%) AI
28 167 (10.99%) Data Integration
29 164 (10.79%) Data Lake
30 163 (10.72%) Terraform

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
1 151 (9.93%) Apache Spark
2 138 (9.08%) Apache Airflow
3 89 (5.86%) Apache
4 69 (4.54%) SAS
5 26 (1.71%) Confluence
6 9 (0.59%) Palantir Foundry
7 7 (0.46%) Jupyter
8 5 (0.33%) Microsoft Exchange
9 3 (0.20%) SharePoint
10 1 (0.066%) Apache Superset
10 1 (0.066%) Appian
10 1 (0.066%) Camunda
10 1 (0.066%) Luigi
10 1 (0.066%) R Markdown
Applications
1 16 (1.05%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.33%) Notepad++
3 4 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.13%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 6 (0.39%) Aladdin
2 3 (0.20%) SimCorp Dimension
3 2 (0.13%) BambooHR
3 2 (0.13%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.13%) SAP BPC
3 2 (0.13%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.066%) Actimize
4 1 (0.066%) Elite 3E
4 1 (0.066%) Infor LN
4 1 (0.066%) iTrent
4 1 (0.066%) NEC Housing
4 1 (0.066%) Oracle 11i
4 1 (0.066%) Oracle Assets
4 1 (0.066%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.066%) Raiser’s Edge
4 1 (0.066%) SAP Business ByDesign
Cloud Services
1 533 (35.07%) Azure
2 414 (27.24%) AWS
3 261 (17.17%) Power Platform
4 230 (15.13%) Azure Data Factory
5 158 (10.39%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 146 (9.61%) Snowflake
7 141 (9.28%) GCP
8 136 (8.95%) Amazon S3
9 131 (8.62%) dbt
10 126 (8.29%) Azure DevOps
11 109 (7.17%) GitHub
12 88 (5.79%) Serverless
13 73 (4.80%) AWS Lambda
14 49 (3.22%) GitHub Actions
15 32 (2.11%) AWS CloudFormation
16 28 (1.84%) Matillion
17 26 (1.71%) Amazon Kinesis
18 24 (1.58%) OpenShift
19 21 (1.38%) Dagster
20 20 (1.32%) Amazon EMR
Communications & Networking
1 33 (2.17%) DNS
1 33 (2.17%) VPN
2 32 (2.11%) BGP
2 32 (2.11%) DMZ
2 32 (2.11%) Multicast
3 10 (0.66%) Structured Cabling
4 5 (0.33%) PuTTY
4 5 (0.33%) WinSCP
5 4 (0.26%) Firewall
6 2 (0.13%) Wi-Fi
6 2 (0.13%) Wireless
7 1 (0.066%) 4G
7 1 (0.066%) 5G
7 1 (0.066%) Network Security
7 1 (0.066%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 259 (17.04%) Data Warehouse
2 247 (16.25%) Power BI
3 164 (10.79%) Data Lake
4 117 (7.70%) SQL Server
5 93 (6.12%) Delta Lake
6 86 (5.66%) BigQuery
7 84 (5.53%) Metadata
8 83 (5.46%) Amazon Redshift
9 80 (5.26%) Azure SQL Database
10 77 (5.07%) Pentaho
11 68 (4.47%) Tableau
12 62 (4.08%) Big Data
12 62 (4.08%) PostgreSQL
13 60 (3.95%) NoSQL
14 58 (3.82%) Snowflake Schema
15 57 (3.75%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 52 (3.42%) Amazon Athena
17 39 (2.57%) Relational Database
18 37 (2.43%) Hadoop
19 35 (2.30%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 160 (10.53%) Git
2 68 (4.47%) JIRA
3 67 (4.41%) GitLab
4 53 (3.49%) Jenkins
5 15 (0.99%) MLflow
6 2 (0.13%) Artifactory
6 2 (0.13%) Bitbucket
6 2 (0.13%) SonarQube
6 2 (0.13%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.13%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
6 2 (0.13%) Visual Studio
7 1 (0.066%) ER Studio
7 1 (0.066%) ERwin
7 1 (0.066%) Jaeger
7 1 (0.066%) JUnit
7 1 (0.066%) Poetry
7 1 (0.066%) Postman
7 1 (0.066%) Selenium
7 1 (0.066%) Terragrunt
General
1 256 (16.84%) Finance
2 226 (14.87%) Social Skills
3 158 (10.39%) Analytical Skills
4 125 (8.22%) Public Sector
5 80 (5.26%) Banking
6 26 (1.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 22 (1.45%) Investment Banking
8 21 (1.38%) Telecoms
9 19 (1.25%) Marketing
10 18 (1.18%) Retail
11 16 (1.05%) Documentation Skills
11 16 (1.05%) Manufacturing
12 14 (0.92%) Aerospace
12 14 (0.92%) Pharmaceutical
13 11 (0.72%) Front Office
13 11 (0.72%) Publishing
14 8 (0.53%) Military
15 5 (0.33%) Games
15 5 (0.33%) Law
15 5 (0.33%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 227 (14.93%) PySpark
2 141 (9.28%) Kafka
3 47 (3.09%) Pandas
4 28 (1.84%) JSON
5 25 (1.64%) Great Expectations
6 24 (1.58%) YAML
7 22 (1.45%) REST
8 21 (1.38%) Spring
8 21 (1.38%) Spring Boot
9 15 (0.99%) Apache Beam
10 13 (0.86%) Apache Avro
10 13 (0.86%) PyTorch
10 13 (0.86%) scikit-learn
10 13 (0.86%) XML
11 12 (0.79%) Node.js
11 12 (0.79%) React
12 11 (0.72%) Matplotlib
13 9 (0.59%) GeoJSON
13 9 (0.59%) NumPy
13 9 (0.59%) Polars
Miscellaneous
1 113 (7.43%) Cloud Native
2 42 (2.76%) Legacy Systems
3 33 (2.17%) Data Structures
4 28 (1.84%) Product Ownership
5 27 (1.78%) Greenfield Project
6 22 (1.45%) Distributed Systems
7 19 (1.25%) Clustering
7 19 (1.25%) Onboarding
8 15 (0.99%) Reinsurance
9 14 (0.92%) Data Protection Act
10 13 (0.86%) NHS
10 13 (0.86%) Replication
11 12 (0.79%) Distributed Computing
12 11 (0.72%) Self-Motivation
13 10 (0.66%) Public Cloud
14 9 (0.59%) Reference Data
15 8 (0.53%) AI Agents
15 8 (0.53%) Analytical Mindset
15 8 (0.53%) Hybrid Cloud
15 8 (0.53%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 49 (3.22%) Unix
2 31 (2.04%) Linux
3 3 (0.20%) Windows
4 2 (0.13%) VMS
4 2 (0.13%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.066%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 631 (41.51%) Data Pipeline
2 593 (39.01%) ETL
3 582 (38.29%) Analytics
4 579 (38.09%) Data Engineering
5 536 (35.26%) Data Modelling
6 362 (23.82%) CI/CD
7 328 (21.58%) Business Intelligence
8 275 (18.09%) Agile
9 273 (17.96%) DevOps
10 217 (14.28%) Data Governance
11 208 (13.68%) Problem-Solving
12 187 (12.30%) Migration
13 172 (11.32%) AI
14 167 (10.99%) Data Integration
15 156 (10.26%) Validation
16 155 (10.20%) Data Science
17 134 (8.82%) Decision-Making
18 130 (8.55%) Data Architecture
18 130 (8.55%) Data Transformation
19 120 (7.89%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 827 (54.41%) SQL
2 686 (45.13%) Python
3 98 (6.45%) Java
4 83 (5.46%) Scala
5 41 (2.70%) PL/SQL
6 36 (2.37%) C#
7 35 (2.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 34 (2.24%) T-SQL
9 26 (1.71%) Bash
9 26 (1.71%) Shell Script
10 18 (1.18%) Bicep
11 15 (0.99%) PowerShell
11 15 (0.99%) R
12 13 (0.86%) JavaScript
13 9 (0.59%) Go
14 6 (0.39%) TypeScript
15 3 (0.20%) C
16 2 (0.13%) LookML
16 2 (0.13%) Ruby
16 2 (0.13%) VB
Qualifications
1 445 (29.28%) Security Cleared
2 402 (26.45%) SC Cleared
3 40 (2.63%) Degree
4 30 (1.97%) Azure Certification
5 29 (1.91%) BPSS Clearance
6 16 (1.05%) Computer Science Degree
7 13 (0.86%) DV Cleared
8 8 (0.53%) DBS Check
9 7 (0.46%) City & Guilds
10 6 (0.39%) AWS Certification
10 6 (0.39%) Master's Degree
10 6 (0.39%) Microsoft Certification
11 5 (0.33%) BICSI Certification
12 3 (0.20%) SnowPro
13 2 (0.13%) CISM
13 2 (0.13%) CISSP
13 2 (0.13%) CTC Cleared
14 1 (0.066%) CCIE
14 1 (0.066%) CCNP
14 1 (0.066%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 388 (25.53%) Data Quality
2 49 (3.22%) GDPR
3 47 (3.09%) QA
4 10 (0.66%) Accessibility
5 9 (0.59%) FATCA
5 9 (0.59%) SLA
6 5 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (0.33%) MiFID
7 4 (0.26%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 3 (0.20%) GMP
8 3 (0.20%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.13%) EMIR
9 2 (0.13%) SNOMED CT
9 2 (0.13%) WCAG
10 1 (0.066%) Basel III
10 1 (0.066%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 1 (0.066%) GRC
10 1 (0.066%) GxP
10 1 (0.066%) NIST
10 1 (0.066%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 96 (6.32%) Docker
2 5 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.13%) HDFS
4 1 (0.066%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.066%) RACF
Systems Management
1 163 (10.72%) Terraform
2 86 (5.66%) Kubernetes
3 37 (2.43%) Grafana
4 12 (0.79%) Ansible
5 11 (0.72%) Prometheus
6 7 (0.46%) Kibana
7 3 (0.20%) Rancher
8 2 (0.13%) Apache Ranger
8 2 (0.13%) Kubeflow
8 2 (0.13%) logstash
8 2 (0.13%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.066%) Control-M
9 1 (0.066%) NetBackup
9 1 (0.066%) Puppet
Vendors
1 360 (23.68%) Databricks
2 201 (13.22%) Microsoft
3 130 (8.55%) Oracle
4 106 (6.97%) Informatica
4 106 (6.97%) Talend
5 60 (3.95%) Denodo
6 58 (3.82%) Google
7 35 (2.30%) Cisco
8 34 (2.24%) F5
9 26 (1.71%) SAP
10 22 (1.45%) Splunk
11 20 (1.32%) ServiceNow
12 17 (1.12%) Cloudera
13 14 (0.92%) Alteryx
14 12 (0.79%) Foundry
15 10 (0.66%) IBM
15 10 (0.66%) Palantir
16 8 (0.53%) Dynatrace
16 8 (0.53%) InterSystems
16 8 (0.53%) MuleSoft