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 26 June 2026.

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

6 months to
26 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 54 105 98
Rank change year-on-year +51 -7 +22
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,659 649 842
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.82% 2.57% 2.25%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.14% 2.79% 2.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,148 491 644
10th Percentile £379 £363 £263
25th Percentile £425 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -6.82%
75th Percentile £588 £599 £625
90th Percentile £661 £700 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 62 10 40
10th Percentile £19.34 £18.18 £37.50
25th Percentile £35.31 £44.50 £49.25
Median hourly rate £45.00 £52.50 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% -22.22% -10.60%
75th Percentile £70.63 £78.40 £80.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.38 -
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £66.25
% change year-on-year -4.76% -20.75% -12.25%

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 40,088 23,260 34,683
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.37% 92.28% 92.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,631 15,261 22,669
10th Percentile £325 £293 £293
25th Percentile £418 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £635 £638
90th Percentile £734 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,855 1,061 2,606
10th Percentile £15.99 £13.85 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.93 £17.87 £16.67
Median hourly rate £45.00 £28.18 £39.78
Median % change year-on-year +59.69% -29.15% -8.17%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.61 £26.45 £37.50
% change year-on-year +64.86% -29.47% -12.79%

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 26 June 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 26 June 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 26 June 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 +40 853 £525 - 129
Midlands +48 334 £468 +3.94% 57
West Midlands +49 303 £460 - 33
North of England +20 213 £475 - 78
North West +15 131 £500 +5.26% 45
South East +23 124 £475 +11.76% 84
South West +16 89 £506 +1.20% 33
Yorkshire -11 63 £470 -1.05% 15
East Midlands +8 31 £525 +28.05% 24
East of England -19 23 £520 +63.52% 18
North East -19 19 £500 +14.29% 18
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 26 June 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.

1 881 (53.10%) SQL
2 739 (44.54%) Python
3 691 (41.65%) Data Pipeline
4 626 (37.73%) Analytics
5 604 (36.41%) Data Engineering
5 604 (36.41%) ETL
6 556 (33.51%) Data Modelling
7 526 (31.71%) Azure
8 485 (29.23%) AWS
9 460 (27.73%) Security Cleared
10 408 (24.59%) Data Quality
11 406 (24.47%) CI/CD
11 406 (24.47%) SC Cleared
12 338 (20.37%) Databricks
13 334 (20.13%) Business Intelligence
14 293 (17.66%) Agile
15 285 (17.18%) DevOps
16 272 (16.40%) Data Warehouse
17 267 (16.09%) Power Platform
18 255 (15.37%) Power BI
19 237 (14.29%) Migration
19 237 (14.29%) PySpark
20 219 (13.20%) Azure Data Factory
21 215 (12.96%) Data Governance
21 215 (12.96%) Problem-Solving
22 211 (12.72%) Microsoft
23 202 (12.18%) AI
24 182 (10.97%) Terraform
25 179 (10.79%) Snowflake
26 173 (10.43%) 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
1 150 (9.04%) Apache Airflow
2 135 (8.14%) Apache Spark
3 91 (5.49%) Apache
4 74 (4.46%) SAS
5 39 (2.35%) Confluence
6 10 (0.60%) SharePoint
7 9 (0.54%) Jupyter
7 9 (0.54%) Palantir Foundry
8 5 (0.30%) Microsoft Exchange
9 1 (0.060%) Apache Superset
9 1 (0.060%) Appian
9 1 (0.060%) Camunda
9 1 (0.060%) Liferay
9 1 (0.060%) Luigi
9 1 (0.060%) R Markdown
Applications
1 16 (0.96%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.30%) Notepad++
3 4 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.060%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 7 (0.42%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.30%) Infor LN
4 4 (0.24%) NetSuite
4 4 (0.24%) Sage X3
5 3 (0.18%) SAP BPC
5 3 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
5 3 (0.18%) SimCorp Dimension
6 2 (0.12%) BambooHR
6 2 (0.12%) Maximo
7 1 (0.060%) Elite 3E
7 1 (0.060%) FIS Private Capital Suite
7 1 (0.060%) iTrent
7 1 (0.060%) NEC Housing
7 1 (0.060%) Oracle 11i
7 1 (0.060%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.060%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.060%) Raiser’s Edge
7 1 (0.060%) SAP CAR
7 1 (0.060%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 526 (31.71%) Azure
2 485 (29.23%) AWS
3 267 (16.09%) Power Platform
4 219 (13.20%) Azure Data Factory
5 179 (10.79%) Snowflake
6 163 (9.83%) dbt
7 157 (9.46%) Amazon S3
8 144 (8.68%) GCP
9 143 (8.62%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 134 (8.08%) Azure DevOps
11 108 (6.51%) GitHub
12 102 (6.15%) Serverless
13 89 (5.36%) AWS Lambda
14 52 (3.13%) GitHub Actions
15 36 (2.17%) Amazon EMR
16 34 (2.05%) Matillion
17 27 (1.63%) AWS CloudFormation
18 25 (1.51%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 24 (1.45%) Amazon Kinesis
19 24 (1.45%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 34 (2.05%) DNS
1 34 (2.05%) VPN
2 33 (1.99%) BGP
2 33 (1.99%) DMZ
2 33 (1.99%) Multicast
3 10 (0.60%) Structured Cabling
4 6 (0.36%) Firewall
5 5 (0.30%) PuTTY
5 5 (0.30%) WinSCP
6 4 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.24%) Wireless
7 2 (0.12%) Intrusion Detection
8 1 (0.060%) 4G
8 1 (0.060%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 272 (16.40%) Data Warehouse
2 255 (15.37%) Power BI
3 158 (9.52%) Data Lake
4 103 (6.21%) SQL Server
5 101 (6.09%) Amazon Redshift
6 92 (5.55%) Delta Lake
7 87 (5.24%) BigQuery
7 87 (5.24%) Pentaho
8 82 (4.94%) Metadata
9 73 (4.40%) Tableau
10 64 (3.86%) Amazon Athena
10 64 (3.86%) Azure SQL Database
11 63 (3.80%) PostgreSQL
12 62 (3.74%) Snowflake Schema
13 59 (3.56%) Big Data
14 51 (3.07%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 49 (2.95%) NoSQL
16 43 (2.59%) Relational Database
17 37 (2.23%) Data Vault
18 34 (2.05%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 155 (9.34%) Git
2 86 (5.18%) GitLab
3 77 (4.64%) JIRA
4 45 (2.71%) Jenkins
5 7 (0.42%) Postman
6 5 (0.30%) Artifactory
7 4 (0.24%) Bitbucket
7 4 (0.24%) MLflow
8 3 (0.18%) Newman
8 3 (0.18%) SonarQube
9 2 (0.12%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 2 (0.12%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.12%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 2 (0.12%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.12%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.060%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.060%) ER Studio
10 1 (0.060%) ERwin
10 1 (0.060%) Octopus Deploy
10 1 (0.060%) Selenium
General
1 289 (17.42%) Finance
2 269 (16.21%) Social Skills
3 176 (10.61%) Analytical Skills
4 144 (8.68%) Public Sector
5 94 (5.67%) Banking
6 33 (1.99%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 27 (1.63%) Retail
8 23 (1.39%) Telecoms
9 21 (1.27%) Documentation Skills
9 21 (1.27%) Marketing
10 20 (1.21%) Investment Banking
11 18 (1.08%) Manufacturing
12 17 (1.02%) Pharmaceutical
13 13 (0.78%) Aerospace
14 12 (0.72%) Automotive
15 11 (0.66%) Publishing
16 9 (0.54%) Front Office
17 8 (0.48%) Billing
18 7 (0.42%) Legal
19 6 (0.36%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 237 (14.29%) PySpark
2 129 (7.78%) Kafka
3 42 (2.53%) Pandas
4 34 (2.05%) JSON
5 26 (1.57%) REST
6 23 (1.39%) Great Expectations
6 23 (1.39%) Spring
6 23 (1.39%) Spring Boot
7 22 (1.33%) XML
8 18 (1.08%) YAML
9 15 (0.90%) Apache Beam
10 13 (0.78%) Apache Avro
11 12 (0.72%) scikit-learn
12 11 (0.66%) React
13 10 (0.60%) Matplotlib
14 9 (0.54%) GeoJSON
14 9 (0.54%) Node.js
14 9 (0.54%) pytest
14 9 (0.54%) PyTorch
14 9 (0.54%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 129 (7.78%) Cloud Native
2 57 (3.44%) Legacy Systems
3 42 (2.53%) Data Structures
4 27 (1.63%) Greenfield Project
4 27 (1.63%) Onboarding
5 26 (1.57%) Distributed Systems
6 25 (1.51%) Reinsurance
7 22 (1.33%) Product Ownership
8 21 (1.27%) NHS
9 19 (1.15%) Clustering
10 17 (1.02%) Data Protection Act
11 11 (0.66%) Life Science
11 11 (0.66%) Virtual Team
12 9 (0.54%) Distributed Computing
12 9 (0.54%) Driving Licence
12 9 (0.54%) Public Cloud
12 9 (0.54%) Reference Data
12 9 (0.54%) Self-Motivation
13 8 (0.48%) Linux Command Line
13 8 (0.48%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 57 (3.44%) Unix
2 37 (2.23%) Linux
3 4 (0.24%) Windows
4 2 (0.12%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.12%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.060%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 691 (41.65%) Data Pipeline
2 626 (37.73%) Analytics
3 604 (36.41%) Data Engineering
3 604 (36.41%) ETL
4 556 (33.51%) Data Modelling
5 406 (24.47%) CI/CD
6 334 (20.13%) Business Intelligence
7 293 (17.66%) Agile
8 285 (17.18%) DevOps
9 237 (14.29%) Migration
10 215 (12.96%) Data Governance
10 215 (12.96%) Problem-Solving
11 202 (12.18%) AI
12 173 (10.43%) Data Integration
12 173 (10.43%) Validation
13 158 (9.52%) Data Science
13 158 (9.52%) Decision-Making
14 150 (9.04%) Data Transformation
15 133 (8.02%) Infrastructure as Code
16 124 (7.47%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 881 (53.10%) SQL
2 739 (44.54%) Python
3 103 (6.21%) Java
4 61 (3.68%) Scala
5 49 (2.95%) PL/SQL
6 34 (2.05%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 34 (2.05%) T-SQL
7 29 (1.75%) C#
8 28 (1.69%) Shell Script
9 27 (1.63%) Bash
10 21 (1.27%) PowerShell
11 14 (0.84%) Bicep
12 13 (0.78%) R
13 10 (0.60%) JavaScript
14 7 (0.42%) TypeScript
15 6 (0.36%) Go
16 2 (0.12%) Korn
16 2 (0.12%) LookML
16 2 (0.12%) Ruby
16 2 (0.12%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 460 (27.73%) Security Cleared
2 406 (24.47%) SC Cleared
3 43 (2.59%) BPSS Clearance
4 38 (2.29%) Degree
5 25 (1.51%) Azure Certification
6 16 (0.96%) Computer Science Degree
7 15 (0.90%) DV Cleared
8 10 (0.60%) AWS Certification
9 9 (0.54%) City & Guilds
9 9 (0.54%) DBS Check
10 6 (0.36%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 6 (0.36%) Microsoft Certification
10 6 (0.36%) SnowPro
11 5 (0.30%) BICSI Certification
12 4 (0.24%) CISM
12 4 (0.24%) CISSP
12 4 (0.24%) Master's Degree
13 2 (0.12%) CEH
14 1 (0.060%) CISA
14 1 (0.060%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 408 (24.59%) Data Quality
2 52 (3.13%) QA
3 47 (2.83%) GDPR
4 12 (0.72%) SLA
5 10 (0.60%) Accessibility
6 9 (0.54%) FATCA
7 6 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 5 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 4 (0.24%) MiFID
10 3 (0.18%) GMP
10 3 (0.18%) HIPAA
11 2 (0.12%) EMIR
11 2 (0.12%) SNOMED CT
11 2 (0.12%) WCAG
12 1 (0.060%) Government Security Classifications
12 1 (0.060%) GxP
12 1 (0.060%) IFRS
12 1 (0.060%) IFRS 9
12 1 (0.060%) ISO 13485
12 1 (0.060%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 95 (5.73%) Docker
2 6 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.12%) HDFS
4 1 (0.060%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.060%) RACF
Systems Management
1 182 (10.97%) Terraform
2 79 (4.76%) Kubernetes
3 35 (2.11%) Grafana
4 11 (0.66%) Ansible
5 9 (0.54%) Prometheus
6 5 (0.30%) Kibana
7 3 (0.18%) Rancher
8 2 (0.12%) Apache Ranger
8 2 (0.12%) Control-M
8 2 (0.12%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.060%) Kubeflow
9 1 (0.060%) NetBackup
9 1 (0.060%) Puppet
Vendors
1 338 (20.37%) Databricks
2 211 (12.72%) Microsoft
3 158 (9.52%) Oracle
4 127 (7.66%) Informatica
5 121 (7.29%) Talend
6 64 (3.86%) Denodo
7 54 (3.25%) Google
8 35 (2.11%) Cisco
8 35 (2.11%) F5
9 29 (1.75%) SAP
10 24 (1.45%) Salesforce
11 21 (1.27%) Splunk
12 19 (1.15%) ServiceNow
13 18 (1.08%) Cloudera
14 16 (0.96%) Palantir
15 14 (0.84%) Alteryx
16 12 (0.72%) Foundry
17 10 (0.60%) IBM
17 10 (0.60%) Sage
18 8 (0.48%) Bloomberg