Data Engineer Contract Job Trends in England

Data Engineer
UK > England

The median Data Engineer daily rate in England is £513, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 18 November 2025.

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

6 months to
18 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 130 92 124
Rank change year-on-year -38 +32 +9
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 684 779 818
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.27% 2.54% 2.06%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.49% 2.73% 2.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 488 541 622
10th Percentile £363 £400 £400
25th Percentile £413 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.82% - -1.35%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £643
90th Percentile £700 £725 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £539 £530
% change year-on-year -7.19% +1.65% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 6 14
10th Percentile £25.34 £33.75 £35.19
25th Percentile £33.75 £43.25 £41.29
Median hourly rate £43.50 £72.75 £61.75
Median % change year-on-year -40.21% +17.81% +23.50%
75th Percentile £69.25 £97.50 £67.25
90th Percentile £104.00 - £78.75
UK median hourly rate £48.00 £34.93 £61.75
% change year-on-year +37.44% -43.44% +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 27,471 28,532 37,117
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.20% 92.99% 93.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,625 17,415 25,662
10th Percentile £281 £300 £294
25th Percentile £404 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £508 £525 £534
Median % change year-on-year -3.33% -1.69% -2.91%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,664 1,067 1,428
10th Percentile £14.22 £15.22 £15.33
25th Percentile £17.87 £21.25 £19.87
Median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £45.94
Median % change year-on-year -37.13% -12.93% +53.13%
75th Percentile £55.00 £66.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £36.08 £45.00
% change year-on-year -30.30% -19.82% +60.06%

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 18 November 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 18 November 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 18 November 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 -18 417 £536 -6.74% 446
Midlands -26 79 £515 +5.32% 63
North of England -25 78 £450 -10.00% 69
West Midlands -20 66 £519 +4.75% 52
South West +7 37 £550 -2.22% 33
South East -37 36 £475 -13.64% 100
North West -18 35 £403 -17.44% 40
Yorkshire -33 35 £500 +1.52% 20
East Midlands -15 13 £460 +29.21% 10
North East -1 8 £425 -27.35% 9
East of England -28 6 £625 +79.86% 21
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 18 November 2025, 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.

1 433 (63.30%) Python
2 423 (61.84%) SQL
3 323 (47.22%) Data Pipeline
4 294 (42.98%) Azure
5 285 (41.67%) ETL
6 272 (39.77%) Data Engineering
7 245 (35.82%) AWS
8 237 (34.65%) Data Modelling
9 219 (32.02%) Analytics
9 219 (32.02%) CI/CD
10 210 (30.70%) Databricks
11 175 (25.58%) Data Quality
12 165 (24.12%) Business Intelligence
13 163 (23.83%) DevOps
14 154 (22.51%) Data Warehouse
15 145 (21.20%) Security Cleared
16 137 (20.03%) Agile
17 131 (19.15%) Power Platform
18 130 (19.01%) Azure Data Factory
19 128 (18.71%) Power BI
20 122 (17.84%) SC Cleared
21 119 (17.40%) Apache Airflow
22 118 (17.25%) Data Science
23 113 (16.52%) Problem-Solving
24 111 (16.23%) PySpark
25 109 (15.94%) Snowflake
26 98 (14.33%) Git
27 95 (13.89%) Machine Learning
28 91 (13.30%) Data Governance
28 91 (13.30%) GCP

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
1 119 (17.40%) Apache Airflow
2 83 (12.13%) Apache Spark
3 57 (8.33%) Apache
4 22 (3.22%) Confluence
5 15 (2.19%) SAS
6 8 (1.17%) Oracle Application Server
7 6 (0.88%) Apache Pig
7 6 (0.88%) SharePoint
8 5 (0.73%) IIS
9 4 (0.58%) Jupyter
10 3 (0.44%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 2 (0.29%) ArcGIS
11 2 (0.29%) Documentum
11 2 (0.29%) Luigi
12 1 (0.15%) Apache Synapse
12 1 (0.15%) nginx
Applications
1 8 (1.17%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.29%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.29%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.29%) Windchill
4 1 (0.15%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.15%) SPSS
4 1 (0.15%) Stata
Business Applications
1 3 (0.44%) Oracle BPM
2 2 (0.29%) Aladdin
2 2 (0.29%) Maximo
2 2 (0.29%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.29%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.15%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.15%) Endur
3 1 (0.15%) Salesforce CRM
3 1 (0.15%) SAP BPC
3 1 (0.15%) SAP ERP
3 1 (0.15%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 294 (42.98%) Azure
2 245 (35.82%) AWS
3 131 (19.15%) Power Platform
4 130 (19.01%) Azure Data Factory
5 109 (15.94%) Snowflake
6 91 (13.30%) GCP
7 86 (12.57%) dbt
8 82 (11.99%) Amazon S3
9 77 (11.26%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 73 (10.67%) GitHub
11 60 (8.77%) Serverless
12 47 (6.87%) Azure DevOps
13 40 (5.85%) AWS Lambda
14 39 (5.70%) GitHub Actions
15 23 (3.36%) AWS CloudFormation
16 20 (2.92%) SaaS
17 19 (2.78%) Amazon EMR
17 19 (2.78%) Amazon Kinesis
18 11 (1.61%) AWS Step Functions
19 10 (1.46%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.73%) Firewall
1 5 (0.73%) TCP/IP
2 3 (0.44%) Internet
2 3 (0.44%) SAN
2 3 (0.44%) SSH
3 2 (0.29%) DNS
3 2 (0.29%) SSL
3 2 (0.29%) Structured Cabling
4 1 (0.15%) 802.11
4 1 (0.15%) Ethernet
4 1 (0.15%) Wi-Fi
4 1 (0.15%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 154 (22.51%) Data Warehouse
2 128 (18.71%) Power BI
3 84 (12.28%) Data Lake
4 60 (8.77%) Big Data
5 52 (7.60%) PostgreSQL
5 52 (7.60%) SQL Server
6 48 (7.02%) Amazon Redshift
6 48 (7.02%) Hadoop
7 42 (6.14%) Delta Lake
8 38 (5.56%) NoSQL
9 34 (4.97%) Azure SQL Database
9 34 (4.97%) BigQuery
9 34 (4.97%) Tableau
10 31 (4.53%) Relational Database
11 28 (4.09%) Star Schema
12 25 (3.65%) Metadata
12 25 (3.65%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 24 (3.51%) Pentaho
14 21 (3.07%) Amazon QuickSight
15 20 (2.92%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 98 (14.33%) Git
2 51 (7.46%) Jenkins
3 36 (5.26%) JIRA
4 24 (3.51%) GitLab
5 15 (2.19%) MLflow
6 8 (1.17%) DBeaver
7 5 (0.73%) SonarQube
7 5 (0.73%) Visual Studio Code
8 4 (0.58%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.44%) Poetry
9 3 (0.44%) PyCharm
9 3 (0.44%) Sonatype Nexus
9 3 (0.44%) Visual Studio
10 2 (0.29%) Selenium
11 1 (0.15%) ERwin
11 1 (0.15%) Gradle
11 1 (0.15%) JUnit
11 1 (0.15%) Maven
11 1 (0.15%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 1 (0.15%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 146 (21.35%) Social Skills
2 119 (17.40%) Finance
3 87 (12.72%) Analytical Skills
4 49 (7.16%) Public Sector
5 29 (4.24%) Banking
6 20 (2.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 13 (1.90%) Pharmaceutical
8 12 (1.75%) Retail
9 11 (1.61%) Investment Banking
10 10 (1.46%) Front Office
11 9 (1.32%) Marketing
12 7 (1.02%) Telecoms
13 6 (0.88%) Documentation Skills
14 5 (0.73%) Presentation Skills
15 4 (0.58%) Legal
15 4 (0.58%) Manufacturing
16 3 (0.44%) Corporate Banking
16 3 (0.44%) Financial Institution
16 3 (0.44%) Law
16 3 (0.44%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 111 (16.23%) PySpark
2 72 (10.53%) Kafka
3 17 (2.49%) Apache NiFi
3 17 (2.49%) XML
4 14 (2.05%) Pandas
5 13 (1.90%) RESTful
6 12 (1.75%) HTML
6 12 (1.75%) JSON
7 11 (1.61%) Flask
8 10 (1.46%) NumPy
8 10 (1.46%) RabbitMQ
8 10 (1.46%) YAML
9 9 (1.32%) pytest
9 9 (1.32%) REST
10 8 (1.17%) Jinja
10 8 (1.17%) Keycloak
10 8 (1.17%) Oracle GoldenGate
11 7 (1.02%) GraphQL
11 7 (1.02%) Node.js
11 7 (1.02%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 42 (6.14%) Cloud Native
2 25 (3.65%) Legacy Systems
3 22 (3.22%) Product Ownership
4 21 (3.07%) Data Structures
5 18 (2.63%) Algorithms
5 18 (2.63%) Replication
6 13 (1.90%) Data Protection Act
6 13 (1.90%) Onboarding
7 10 (1.46%) Hybrid Cloud
8 9 (1.32%) Distributed Computing
8 9 (1.32%) Greenfield Project
9 8 (1.17%) IoT
9 8 (1.17%) Life Science
10 7 (1.02%) NHS
10 7 (1.02%) Virtual Team
11 6 (0.88%) Clustering
11 6 (0.88%) Reinsurance
12 5 (0.73%) Genomics
12 5 (0.73%) Linux Command Line
13 4 (0.58%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 22 (3.22%) Linux
2 12 (1.75%) Unix
3 3 (0.44%) Windows
4 2 (0.29%) Windows Server
4 2 (0.29%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 323 (47.22%) Data Pipeline
2 285 (41.67%) ETL
3 272 (39.77%) Data Engineering
4 237 (34.65%) Data Modelling
5 219 (32.02%) Analytics
5 219 (32.02%) CI/CD
6 165 (24.12%) Business Intelligence
7 163 (23.83%) DevOps
8 137 (20.03%) Agile
9 118 (17.25%) Data Science
10 113 (16.52%) Problem-Solving
11 95 (13.89%) Machine Learning
12 91 (13.30%) Data Governance
13 85 (12.43%) AI
13 85 (12.43%) Infrastructure as Code
14 78 (11.40%) Data Integration
15 74 (10.82%) Data Transformation
16 72 (10.53%) Migration
17 69 (10.09%) Visualisation
18 66 (9.65%) Data Architecture
Programming Languages
1 433 (63.30%) Python
2 423 (61.84%) SQL
3 70 (10.23%) Java
4 64 (9.36%) Scala
5 24 (3.51%) Bash
6 14 (2.05%) PL/SQL
7 13 (1.90%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 12 (1.75%) JavaScript
8 12 (1.75%) R
9 11 (1.61%) Go
10 10 (1.46%) C#
11 9 (1.32%) PowerShell
11 9 (1.32%) Shell Script
12 7 (1.02%) T-SQL
12 7 (1.02%) TypeScript
13 4 (0.58%) C++
13 4 (0.58%) Groovy
13 4 (0.58%) Korn
14 2 (0.29%) ABAP
15 1 (0.15%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 145 (21.20%) Security Cleared
2 122 (17.84%) SC Cleared
3 35 (5.12%) Degree
4 23 (3.36%) AWS Certification
5 20 (2.92%) Azure Certification
6 19 (2.78%) DV Cleared
7 14 (2.05%) Computer Science Degree
8 9 (1.32%) Master's Degree
9 7 (1.02%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (0.44%) SnowPro
11 2 (0.29%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 2 (0.29%) DBS Check
11 2 (0.29%) MCP
12 1 (0.15%) CTC Cleared
12 1 (0.15%) HND
12 1 (0.15%) PhD
12 1 (0.15%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 175 (25.58%) Data Quality
2 31 (4.53%) GDPR
3 13 (1.90%) QA
4 7 (1.02%) Accessibility
5 4 (0.58%) NIST
5 4 (0.58%) SLA
6 3 (0.44%) HIPAA
6 3 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 20000
7 2 (0.29%) Dodd-Frank
7 2 (0.29%) EMIR
7 2 (0.29%) EU AI Act
7 2 (0.29%) MiFID
8 1 (0.15%) HL7
8 1 (0.15%) ISO 19650
8 1 (0.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.15%) NCSC
8 1 (0.15%) PMO
8 1 (0.15%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.15%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.15%) WCAG
System Software
1 61 (8.92%) Docker
2 9 (1.32%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (0.73%) zsh
4 2 (0.29%) Active Directory
5 1 (0.15%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 89 (13.01%) Terraform
2 61 (8.92%) Kubernetes
3 11 (1.61%) Ansible
4 9 (1.32%) Grafana
4 9 (1.32%) NetBackup
5 5 (0.73%) Prometheus
5 5 (0.73%) Puppet
6 4 (0.58%) Argo
6 4 (0.58%) Kibana
7 3 (0.44%) Ambari
7 3 (0.44%) Istio
7 3 (0.44%) Kubeflow
7 3 (0.44%) ZABBIX
8 2 (0.29%) Control-M
8 2 (0.29%) EMC NetWorker
8 2 (0.29%) logstash
8 2 (0.29%) Tivoli Storage Manager
9 1 (0.15%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 210 (30.70%) Databricks
2 80 (11.70%) Microsoft
3 57 (8.33%) Oracle
4 30 (4.39%) Talend
5 27 (3.95%) Google
6 26 (3.80%) Foundry
6 26 (3.80%) Palantir
7 20 (2.92%) Informatica
8 18 (2.63%) Denodo
9 15 (2.19%) Cloudera
10 13 (1.90%) IBM
11 12 (1.75%) Red Hat
11 12 (1.75%) SAP
12 9 (1.32%) Commvault
13 8 (1.17%) Splunk
13 8 (1.17%) Veritas
14 7 (1.02%) Confluent
14 7 (1.02%) Virgin Media
15 5 (0.73%) EMC
15 5 (0.73%) Salesforce