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 1 April 2026.

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

6 months to
1 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 68 81 101
Rank change year-on-year +13 +20 +11
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,308 757 849
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.43% 3.12% 2.25%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.72% 3.36% 2.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 934 569 664
10th Percentile £364 £356 £300
25th Percentile £415 £423 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year - -1.96% -7.27%
75th Percentile £588 £619 £614
90th Percentile £662 £728 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 10 41
10th Percentile £19.34 £25.45 £37.50
25th Percentile £34.69 £43.75 £49.25
Median hourly rate £66.75 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year +2.69% -3.70% +5.47%
75th Percentile £75.00 £78.40 £80.00
90th Percentile £82.30 £93.75 -
UK median hourly rate £58.50 £47.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +23.16% -26.92% +1.56%

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 35,200 22,534 34,941
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.21% 92.95% 92.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,188 15,074 23,351
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £409 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -3.54%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,322 836 2,308
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.99 £13.00
25th Percentile £19.91 £21.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £41.86 £34.31 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +22.01% +5.55% -24.14%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £59.95
90th Percentile £77.50 £77.35 £71.75
UK median hourly rate £38.63 £32.50 £32.90
% change year-on-year +18.86% -1.20% -25.00%

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 1 April 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 1 April 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 1 April 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 +10 751 £525 -0.47% 158
Midlands +12 233 £475 - 59
West Midlands +16 214 £492 +1.76% 45
North of England -18 166 £453 +0.56% 87
North West -4 101 £450 -2.70% 56
South East -30 65 £500 - 91
South West -6 52 £525 +5.00% 38
Yorkshire -30 49 £465 +3.33% 19
East Midlands -27 19 £450 +18.03% 14
North East -10 16 £475 - 13
East of England -32 14 £565 +79.37% 17
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 1 April 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.

1 740 (56.57%) SQL
2 646 (49.39%) Python
3 564 (43.12%) Data Pipeline
4 554 (42.35%) ETL
5 546 (41.74%) Data Engineering
6 518 (39.60%) Analytics
7 506 (38.69%) Azure
8 481 (36.77%) Data Modelling
9 371 (28.36%) Data Quality
10 366 (27.98%) Security Cleared
11 362 (27.68%) AWS
12 358 (27.37%) Databricks
13 348 (26.61%) CI/CD
14 331 (25.31%) SC Cleared
15 315 (24.08%) Business Intelligence
16 265 (20.26%) DevOps
17 247 (18.88%) Power Platform
18 243 (18.58%) Agile
19 241 (18.43%) Data Warehouse
20 232 (17.74%) Power BI
21 217 (16.59%) Data Governance
22 213 (16.28%) Azure Data Factory
23 200 (15.29%) Problem-Solving
24 199 (15.21%) PySpark
25 178 (13.61%) Microsoft
26 173 (13.23%) Git
27 158 (12.08%) Data Science
28 156 (11.93%) Snowflake
29 152 (11.62%) Data Integration
30 151 (11.54%) AI

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
1 133 (10.17%) Apache Spark
2 124 (9.48%) Apache Airflow
3 84 (6.42%) Apache
4 63 (4.82%) SAS
5 17 (1.30%) Confluence
6 10 (0.76%) Palantir Foundry
7 5 (0.38%) Jupyter
7 5 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
8 3 (0.23%) SharePoint
9 2 (0.15%) Oracle Application Server
10 1 (0.076%) Apache Superset
10 1 (0.076%) Apache Synapse
10 1 (0.076%) Appian
10 1 (0.076%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.076%) Camunda
10 1 (0.076%) Luigi
10 1 (0.076%) R Markdown
Applications
1 14 (1.07%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.23%) Chatbot
2 3 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.076%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.076%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.15%) Aladdin
1 2 (0.15%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.15%) Maximo
1 2 (0.15%) SAP BPC
2 1 (0.076%) Actimize
2 1 (0.076%) BambooHR
2 1 (0.076%) Elite 3E
2 1 (0.076%) iTrent
2 1 (0.076%) NEC Housing
2 1 (0.076%) Oracle 11i
2 1 (0.076%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.076%) SAP Business ByDesign
2 1 (0.076%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 506 (38.69%) Azure
2 362 (27.68%) AWS
3 247 (18.88%) Power Platform
4 213 (16.28%) Azure Data Factory
5 156 (11.93%) Snowflake
6 139 (10.63%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 136 (10.40%) GCP
8 129 (9.86%) dbt
9 126 (9.63%) Amazon S3
10 115 (8.79%) GitHub
11 103 (7.87%) Azure DevOps
12 87 (6.65%) Serverless
13 64 (4.89%) AWS Lambda
14 51 (3.90%) GitHub Actions
15 36 (2.75%) AWS CloudFormation
16 27 (2.06%) Matillion
17 24 (1.83%) Amazon Kinesis
17 24 (1.83%) AWS Step Functions
18 19 (1.45%) Amazon SQS
18 19 (1.45%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.91%) DNS
1 25 (1.91%) VPN
2 24 (1.83%) BGP
2 24 (1.83%) DMZ
2 24 (1.83%) Multicast
3 10 (0.76%) Structured Cabling
4 4 (0.31%) Firewall
5 3 (0.23%) SAN
6 1 (0.076%) 4G
6 1 (0.076%) 5G
6 1 (0.076%) Network Security
6 1 (0.076%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 241 (18.43%) Data Warehouse
2 232 (17.74%) Power BI
3 148 (11.31%) Data Lake
4 99 (7.57%) SQL Server
5 81 (6.19%) Azure SQL Database
6 80 (6.12%) BigQuery
6 80 (6.12%) Delta Lake
7 79 (6.04%) Amazon Redshift
8 72 (5.50%) Pentaho
9 69 (5.28%) Metadata
10 62 (4.74%) PostgreSQL
11 54 (4.13%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 53 (4.05%) Big Data
12 53 (4.05%) Tableau
13 50 (3.82%) NoSQL
14 49 (3.75%) Snowflake Schema
15 45 (3.44%) Amazon Athena
16 34 (2.60%) Relational Database
16 34 (2.60%) Star Schema
17 33 (2.52%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 173 (13.23%) Git
2 65 (4.97%) Jenkins
3 63 (4.82%) JIRA
4 51 (3.90%) GitLab
5 19 (1.45%) MLflow
6 2 (0.15%) Bitbucket
6 2 (0.15%) DBeaver
6 2 (0.15%) JUnit
6 2 (0.15%) Selenium
6 2 (0.15%) SonarQube
6 2 (0.15%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.15%) Visual Studio
7 1 (0.076%) Cucumber
7 1 (0.076%) ER Studio
7 1 (0.076%) ERwin
7 1 (0.076%) Jaeger
7 1 (0.076%) Maven
7 1 (0.076%) Mockito
7 1 (0.076%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (0.076%) Terragrunt
General
1 215 (16.44%) Social Skills
2 213 (16.28%) Finance
3 143 (10.93%) Analytical Skills
4 116 (8.87%) Public Sector
5 67 (5.12%) Banking
6 34 (2.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 20 (1.53%) Investment Banking
8 19 (1.45%) Telecoms
9 14 (1.07%) Front Office
9 14 (1.07%) Pharmaceutical
9 14 (1.07%) Retail
10 13 (0.99%) Documentation Skills
10 13 (0.99%) Marketing
11 11 (0.84%) Publishing
12 10 (0.76%) Manufacturing
13 7 (0.54%) Law
14 6 (0.46%) Military
15 4 (0.31%) Corporate Banking
15 4 (0.31%) Legal
15 4 (0.31%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 199 (15.21%) PySpark
2 141 (10.78%) Kafka
3 44 (3.36%) Pandas
4 30 (2.29%) JSON
5 28 (2.14%) YAML
6 23 (1.76%) REST
7 21 (1.61%) Great Expectations
8 17 (1.30%) XML
9 16 (1.22%) Node.js
10 15 (1.15%) scikit-learn
11 13 (0.99%) Matplotlib
11 13 (0.99%) PyTorch
11 13 (0.99%) React
12 12 (0.92%) NumPy
13 11 (0.84%) Apache Beam
13 11 (0.84%) Keycloak
13 11 (0.84%) pytest
14 9 (0.69%) Apache NiFi
14 9 (0.69%) GeoJSON
14 9 (0.69%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 98 (7.49%) Cloud Native
2 42 (3.21%) Legacy Systems
3 31 (2.37%) Data Structures
4 29 (2.22%) Product Ownership
5 21 (1.61%) Clustering
6 20 (1.53%) Onboarding
7 18 (1.38%) Distributed Systems
7 18 (1.38%) Greenfield Project
8 15 (1.15%) Data Protection Act
8 15 (1.15%) Hybrid Cloud
8 15 (1.15%) Replication
9 12 (0.92%) Reinsurance
10 11 (0.84%) Public Cloud
11 10 (0.76%) NHS
12 9 (0.69%) Life Science
13 8 (0.61%) Analytical Mindset
13 8 (0.61%) Distributed Computing
13 8 (0.61%) Self-Motivation
14 7 (0.54%) Data Centre
14 7 (0.54%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 24 (1.83%) Unix
2 18 (1.38%) Linux
3 3 (0.23%) Windows
4 2 (0.15%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.076%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 564 (43.12%) Data Pipeline
2 554 (42.35%) ETL
3 546 (41.74%) Data Engineering
4 518 (39.60%) Analytics
5 481 (36.77%) Data Modelling
6 348 (26.61%) CI/CD
7 315 (24.08%) Business Intelligence
8 265 (20.26%) DevOps
9 243 (18.58%) Agile
10 217 (16.59%) Data Governance
11 200 (15.29%) Problem-Solving
12 158 (12.08%) Data Science
13 152 (11.62%) Data Integration
14 151 (11.54%) AI
15 140 (10.70%) Data Architecture
16 139 (10.63%) Migration
17 129 (9.86%) Validation
18 128 (9.79%) Data Transformation
19 120 (9.17%) Performance Tuning
20 117 (8.94%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 740 (56.57%) SQL
2 646 (49.39%) Python
3 81 (6.19%) Java
4 76 (5.81%) Scala
5 36 (2.75%) C#
5 36 (2.75%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 27 (2.06%) PL/SQL
7 26 (1.99%) Bash
8 25 (1.91%) T-SQL
9 20 (1.53%) Shell Script
10 19 (1.45%) Bicep
10 19 (1.45%) PowerShell
11 16 (1.22%) R
12 14 (1.07%) Go
13 10 (0.76%) JavaScript
14 6 (0.46%) TypeScript
15 3 (0.23%) C
15 3 (0.23%) Korn
16 2 (0.15%) Ruby
16 2 (0.15%) VB
Qualifications
1 366 (27.98%) Security Cleared
2 331 (25.31%) SC Cleared
3 35 (2.68%) Degree
4 33 (2.52%) Azure Certification
5 24 (1.83%) BPSS Clearance
6 15 (1.15%) Computer Science Degree
7 14 (1.07%) AWS Certification
8 13 (0.99%) DV Cleared
9 6 (0.46%) Microsoft Certification
10 5 (0.38%) BICSI Certification
10 5 (0.38%) City & Guilds
10 5 (0.38%) Master's Degree
11 4 (0.31%) CTC Cleared
11 4 (0.31%) DBS Check
11 4 (0.31%) SnowPro
12 2 (0.15%) CISM
12 2 (0.15%) CISSP
13 1 (0.076%) CCIE
13 1 (0.076%) CISA
13 1 (0.076%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 371 (28.36%) Data Quality
2 51 (3.90%) GDPR
3 33 (2.52%) QA
4 11 (0.84%) Accessibility
5 7 (0.54%) SLA
6 4 (0.31%) HIPAA
6 4 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 3 (0.23%) FATCA
7 3 (0.23%) GMP
7 3 (0.23%) MiFID
8 2 (0.15%) Dodd-Frank
8 2 (0.15%) EMIR
8 2 (0.15%) WCAG
9 1 (0.076%) Basel III
9 1 (0.076%) GxP
9 1 (0.076%) ISO 13485
9 1 (0.076%) NCSC
9 1 (0.076%) NIST
9 1 (0.076%) PCI DSS
9 1 (0.076%) PMO
System Software
1 94 (7.19%) Docker
2 9 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.15%) HDFS
4 1 (0.076%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.076%) RACF
Systems Management
1 147 (11.24%) Terraform
2 100 (7.65%) Kubernetes
3 29 (2.22%) Grafana
4 13 (0.99%) Prometheus
5 9 (0.69%) Ansible
6 4 (0.31%) Kubeflow
6 4 (0.31%) NetBackup
7 3 (0.23%) Kibana
7 3 (0.23%) Rancher
8 2 (0.15%) Apache Ranger
8 2 (0.15%) EMC NetWorker
8 2 (0.15%) logstash
8 2 (0.15%) Puppet
8 2 (0.15%) Thomson Reuters DACS
8 2 (0.15%) Tivoli Storage Manager
9 1 (0.076%) Control-M
Vendors
1 358 (27.37%) Databricks
2 178 (13.61%) Microsoft
3 101 (7.72%) Oracle
4 100 (7.65%) Talend
5 84 (6.42%) Informatica
6 59 (4.51%) Google
7 53 (4.05%) Denodo
8 29 (2.22%) Cisco
9 26 (1.99%) F5
10 22 (1.68%) ServiceNow
11 19 (1.45%) SAP
12 17 (1.30%) Cloudera
13 16 (1.22%) Splunk
14 13 (0.99%) Foundry
14 13 (0.99%) IBM
14 13 (0.99%) Palantir
15 10 (0.76%) Alteryx
16 8 (0.61%) MuleSoft
17 6 (0.46%) OpenAI
18 5 (0.38%) Virgin Media