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 20 August 2026.

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

6 months to
20 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 61 123 99
Rank change year-on-year +62 -24 +19
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,714 630 770
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.75% 2.28% 2.32%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.06% 2.49% 2.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,151 457 561
10th Percentile £381 £378 £263
25th Percentile £425 £427 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £594 £638
90th Percentile £663 £694 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 81 12 24
10th Percentile £19.34 £25.25 £43.13
25th Percentile £30.96 £38.19 £57.31
Median hourly rate £41.56 £52.50 £77.50
Median % change year-on-year -20.85% -32.26% +8.77%
75th Percentile £70.00 £66.55 £80.00
90th Percentile £73.75 £79.87 -
UK median hourly rate £44.75 £52.50 £75.00
% change year-on-year -14.76% -30.00% +5.26%

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 42,197 25,269 30,827
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.44% 91.56% 92.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,494 16,320 20,128
10th Percentile £325 £281 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £630 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,196 1,350 1,742
10th Percentile £15.24 £13.64 £14.16
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.79 £21.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £26.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +63.46% -42.22% +6.95%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £66.33
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +65.94% -41.51% +2.38%

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 20 August 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 20 August 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 20 August 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 +41 832 £533 +1.43% 268
Midlands +62 379 £460 -0.38% 63
West Midlands +58 319 £460 -0.11% 47
North of England +32 225 £500 +5.26% 129
South East +33 131 £467 +3.78% 119
North West +34 126 £525 +10.53% 56
South West +9 88 £525 +5.00% 43
Yorkshire -3 79 £465 -4.62% 39
East Midlands +24 60 £460 -0.54% 16
East of England +12 40 £475 +22.58% 24
North East -24 21 £515 +21.89% 35
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 20 August 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.

1 859 (50.12%) SQL
2 735 (42.88%) Data Pipeline
3 706 (41.19%) Python
4 642 (37.46%) Data Engineering
5 613 (35.76%) Analytics
6 587 (34.25%) ETL
7 568 (33.14%) Data Modelling
8 531 (30.98%) Azure
9 506 (29.52%) AWS
10 453 (26.43%) Security Cleared
11 427 (24.91%) Data Quality
12 416 (24.27%) CI/CD
13 397 (23.16%) SC Cleared
14 329 (19.19%) Databricks
15 299 (17.44%) Agile
16 295 (17.21%) Business Intelligence
17 287 (16.74%) Data Warehouse
18 284 (16.57%) DevOps
19 268 (15.64%) Migration
20 238 (13.89%) PySpark
21 230 (13.42%) Power Platform
22 229 (13.36%) AI
22 229 (13.36%) Data Governance
23 224 (13.07%) Power BI
24 217 (12.66%) Microsoft
25 209 (12.19%) Azure Data Factory
26 208 (12.14%) Validation
27 198 (11.55%) Data Transformation
28 195 (11.38%) Data Integration
28 195 (11.38%) Problem-Solving

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
1 180 (10.50%) Apache Airflow
2 144 (8.40%) Apache Spark
3 107 (6.24%) Apache
4 61 (3.56%) SAS
5 35 (2.04%) Confluence
6 15 (0.88%) Palantir Foundry
7 12 (0.70%) SharePoint
8 9 (0.53%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.18%) Apache Superset
10 2 (0.12%) Microsoft Exchange
11 1 (0.058%) ArcGIS
11 1 (0.058%) Liferay
11 1 (0.058%) Luigi
11 1 (0.058%) PowerExchange
11 1 (0.058%) R Markdown
Applications
1 24 (1.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
3 5 (0.29%) Notepad++
4 4 (0.23%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.058%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 12 (0.70%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.35%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.29%) Infor LN
3 5 (0.29%) NetSuite
3 5 (0.29%) Sage X3
4 3 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.18%) SimCorp Dimension
4 3 (0.18%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 2 (0.12%) BambooHR
5 2 (0.12%) Maximo
5 2 (0.12%) SAP BPC
6 1 (0.058%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.058%) MIS ActiveH
6 1 (0.058%) Oracle 11i
6 1 (0.058%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.058%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.058%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.058%) Raiser’s Edge
6 1 (0.058%) SAP CAR
6 1 (0.058%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 531 (30.98%) Azure
2 506 (29.52%) AWS
3 230 (13.42%) Power Platform
4 209 (12.19%) Azure Data Factory
5 194 (11.32%) Snowflake
6 183 (10.68%) dbt
7 157 (9.16%) GCP
8 144 (8.40%) Amazon S3
9 132 (7.70%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 127 (7.41%) Azure DevOps
11 104 (6.07%) GitHub
12 101 (5.89%) Serverless
13 88 (5.13%) AWS Lambda
14 43 (2.51%) GitHub Actions
15 36 (2.10%) Amazon EMR
16 28 (1.63%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 23 (1.34%) AWS Step Functions
17 23 (1.34%) Fivetran
18 22 (1.28%) Amazon Kinesis
18 22 (1.28%) Matillion
Communications & Networking
1 30 (1.75%) VPN
2 29 (1.69%) BGP
2 29 (1.69%) DMZ
2 29 (1.69%) DNS
2 29 (1.69%) 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
Database & Business Intelligence
1 287 (16.74%) Data Warehouse
2 224 (13.07%) Power BI
3 154 (8.98%) Data Lake
4 107 (6.24%) Metadata
5 95 (5.54%) Amazon Redshift
6 94 (5.48%) BigQuery
7 81 (4.73%) SQL Server
8 77 (4.49%) Pentaho
9 76 (4.43%) Delta Lake
10 66 (3.85%) Amazon Athena
11 65 (3.79%) Tableau
12 63 (3.68%) PostgreSQL
13 60 (3.50%) Big Data
14 52 (3.03%) Relational Database
15 50 (2.92%) NoSQL
15 50 (2.92%) Snowflake Schema
16 49 (2.86%) Azure SQL Database
17 41 (2.39%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 34 (1.98%) Amazon RDS
19 33 (1.93%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 147 (8.58%) Git
2 84 (4.90%) GitLab
3 60 (3.50%) JIRA
4 39 (2.28%) Jenkins
5 10 (0.58%) MLflow
6 7 (0.41%) Bitbucket
6 7 (0.41%) Postman
7 5 (0.29%) Artifactory
8 4 (0.23%) ERwin
8 4 (0.23%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.18%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 3 (0.18%) Newman
9 3 (0.18%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.12%) Claude Code
10 2 (0.12%) ER Studio
10 2 (0.12%) Selenium
10 2 (0.12%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 2 (0.12%) Terragrunt
10 2 (0.12%) Yeoman
11 1 (0.058%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 279 (16.28%) Finance
2 271 (15.81%) Social Skills
3 194 (11.32%) Analytical Skills
4 152 (8.87%) Public Sector
5 102 (5.95%) Banking
6 31 (1.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 24 (1.40%) Telecoms
8 21 (1.23%) Marketing
8 21 (1.23%) Retail
9 19 (1.11%) Automotive
10 18 (1.05%) Aerospace
10 18 (1.05%) Manufacturing
11 16 (0.93%) Front Office
11 16 (0.93%) Investment Banking
12 15 (0.88%) Documentation Skills
13 14 (0.82%) Pharmaceutical
14 10 (0.58%) Financial Institution
14 10 (0.58%) Law
15 8 (0.47%) Legal
15 8 (0.47%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 238 (13.89%) PySpark
2 165 (9.63%) Terraform
3 120 (7.00%) Kafka
4 31 (1.81%) Pandas
5 25 (1.46%) REST
6 24 (1.40%) JSON
7 22 (1.28%) Spring
7 22 (1.28%) Spring Boot
8 20 (1.17%) Great Expectations
9 16 (0.93%) XML
10 15 (0.88%) Apache Beam
11 14 (0.82%) React
11 14 (0.82%) YAML
12 13 (0.76%) RESTful
13 11 (0.64%) pytest
14 10 (0.58%) Microsoft Graph
15 9 (0.53%) Apache Avro
15 9 (0.53%) PyTorch
16 8 (0.47%) .NET
16 8 (0.47%) Spark Streaming
Miscellaneous
1 131 (7.64%) Cloud Native
2 75 (4.38%) Legacy Systems
3 47 (2.74%) Data Structures
4 34 (1.98%) Onboarding
5 24 (1.40%) Product Ownership
6 23 (1.34%) Distributed Systems
7 21 (1.23%) Greenfield Project
8 19 (1.11%) NHS
8 19 (1.11%) Reference Data
9 17 (0.99%) Reinsurance
10 14 (0.82%) Management Information System
11 12 (0.70%) AI Agents
11 12 (0.70%) Data Protection Act
12 11 (0.64%) Algorithms
12 11 (0.64%) Clustering
12 11 (0.64%) Virtual Team
13 10 (0.58%) Life Science
14 9 (0.53%) Self-Motivation
15 8 (0.47%) Driving Licence
15 8 (0.47%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 57 (3.33%) Unix
2 45 (2.63%) Linux
3 4 (0.23%) Windows
4 2 (0.12%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.12%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.058%) Robot Operating System
5 1 (0.058%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 735 (42.88%) Data Pipeline
2 642 (37.46%) Data Engineering
3 613 (35.76%) Analytics
4 587 (34.25%) ETL
5 568 (33.14%) Data Modelling
6 416 (24.27%) CI/CD
7 299 (17.44%) Agile
8 295 (17.21%) Business Intelligence
9 284 (16.57%) DevOps
10 268 (15.64%) Migration
11 229 (13.36%) AI
11 229 (13.36%) Data Governance
12 208 (12.14%) Validation
13 198 (11.55%) Data Transformation
14 195 (11.38%) Data Integration
14 195 (11.38%) Problem-Solving
15 167 (9.74%) Decision-Making
16 145 (8.46%) Data Science
17 138 (8.05%) Infrastructure as Code
17 138 (8.05%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 859 (50.12%) SQL
2 706 (41.19%) Python
3 101 (5.89%) Java
4 59 (3.44%) Scala
5 48 (2.80%) PL/SQL
6 31 (1.81%) Shell Script
7 26 (1.52%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 25 (1.46%) T-SQL
9 23 (1.34%) Bash
10 21 (1.23%) PowerShell
11 16 (0.93%) JavaScript
12 15 (0.88%) C#
13 12 (0.70%) R
14 8 (0.47%) Bicep
15 6 (0.35%) Go
15 6 (0.35%) TypeScript
16 4 (0.23%) Korn
17 2 (0.12%) COBOL
17 2 (0.12%) HiveQL
17 2 (0.12%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 453 (26.43%) Security Cleared
2 397 (23.16%) SC Cleared
3 41 (2.39%) Degree
4 34 (1.98%) BPSS Clearance
5 22 (1.28%) Azure Certification
6 21 (1.23%) Computer Science Degree
6 21 (1.23%) DV Cleared
7 10 (0.58%) AWS Certification
8 9 (0.53%) City & Guilds
9 8 (0.47%) DBS Check
10 7 (0.41%) SnowPro
11 6 (0.35%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 6 (0.35%) Master's Degree
12 5 (0.29%) BICSI Certification
12 5 (0.29%) CISM
12 5 (0.29%) CISSP
13 4 (0.23%) Microsoft Certification
14 3 (0.18%) CEH
15 1 (0.058%) CISA
15 1 (0.058%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 427 (24.91%) Data Quality
2 58 (3.38%) QA
3 42 (2.45%) GDPR
4 16 (0.93%) Accessibility
5 11 (0.64%) SLA
6 6 (0.35%) FATCA
7 5 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 4 (0.23%) HIPAA
8 4 (0.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 3 (0.18%) MiFID
10 2 (0.12%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 2 (0.12%) EMIR
10 2 (0.12%) SNOMED CT
10 2 (0.12%) WCAG
11 1 (0.058%) Disclosure Scotland
11 1 (0.058%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.058%) IFRS
11 1 (0.058%) IFRS 17
11 1 (0.058%) IFRS 9
11 1 (0.058%) PMO
System Software
1 109 (6.36%) Docker
2 4 (0.23%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.12%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.12%) HDFS
4 1 (0.058%) RACF
Systems Management
1 84 (4.90%) Kubernetes
2 34 (1.98%) Grafana
3 14 (0.82%) Ansible
4 9 (0.53%) Control-M
5 6 (0.35%) Kibana
6 3 (0.18%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.12%) Apache Ranger
7 2 (0.12%) Puppet
7 2 (0.12%) Rancher
7 2 (0.12%) Thomson Reuters DACS
8 1 (0.058%) Kubeflow
8 1 (0.058%) logstash
Vendors
1 329 (19.19%) Databricks
2 217 (12.66%) Microsoft
3 140 (8.17%) Oracle
4 109 (6.36%) Informatica
5 98 (5.72%) Talend
6 63 (3.68%) Google
7 58 (3.38%) Denodo
8 30 (1.75%) Cisco
8 30 (1.75%) F5
9 28 (1.63%) Salesforce
10 26 (1.52%) SAP
11 24 (1.40%) Palantir
12 20 (1.17%) Foundry
13 17 (0.99%) Splunk
14 14 (0.82%) Cloudera
15 13 (0.76%) ServiceNow
16 10 (0.58%) IBM
17 9 (0.53%) Bloomberg
17 9 (0.53%) Sage
18 8 (0.47%) InterSystems