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 21 April 2026.

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

6 months to
21 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 64 78 97
Rank change year-on-year +14 +19 +16
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,419 764 850
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.59% 3.12% 2.30%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.89% 3.36% 2.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,017 580 668
10th Percentile £369 £358 £290
25th Percentile £420 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year - -1.96% -7.27%
75th Percentile £588 £614 £625
90th Percentile £650 £725 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 38 9 43
10th Percentile £19.34 £36.64 £37.50
25th Percentile £41.26 £51.25 £49.25
Median hourly rate £57.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year -12.31% -3.70% +5.47%
75th Percentile £75.00 £78.70 £80.00
90th Percentile £80.43 £93.75 -
UK median hourly rate £53.50 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -17.69% - +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 36,522 22,722 34,320
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.33% 92.70% 92.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,886 15,172 22,851
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £409 £412
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £508 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.24% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £644
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £515 £525
% change year-on-year -2.91% -1.90% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,461 869 2,384
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.42 £12.92
25th Percentile £20.75 £19.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £45.00 £32.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +38.46% -7.14% -22.22%
75th Percentile £67.47 £65.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £76.25 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.00 £30.45 £35.00
% change year-on-year +37.93% -13.00% -22.22%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 +22 796 £525 - 155
Midlands +22 269 £469 -1.26% 45
West Midlands +20 251 £469 -1.68% 41
North of England -6 181 £465 +0.54% 84
North West -2 114 £450 -2.70% 54
South East -19 78 £500 - 85
South West -12 53 £523 +4.50% 36
Yorkshire -37 53 £465 +3.33% 20
East Midlands -28 18 £498 +24.76% 4
East of England -31 16 £565 +79.37% 18
North East -15 14 £475 +5.56% 14
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 21 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.

1 802 (56.52%) SQL
2 675 (47.57%) Python
3 596 (42.00%) Data Pipeline
4 575 (40.52%) ETL
5 558 (39.32%) Analytics
6 554 (39.04%) Data Engineering
7 525 (37.00%) Azure
8 506 (35.66%) Data Modelling
9 407 (28.68%) Security Cleared
10 390 (27.48%) Data Quality
11 389 (27.41%) AWS
12 367 (25.86%) SC Cleared
13 366 (25.79%) Databricks
14 358 (25.23%) CI/CD
15 325 (22.90%) Business Intelligence
16 267 (18.82%) DevOps
17 264 (18.60%) Agile
18 257 (18.11%) Power Platform
19 252 (17.76%) Data Warehouse
20 242 (17.05%) Power BI
21 226 (15.93%) Azure Data Factory
22 223 (15.72%) Data Governance
23 218 (15.36%) PySpark
24 205 (14.45%) Problem-Solving
25 188 (13.25%) Microsoft
26 170 (11.98%) Git
27 166 (11.70%) Terraform
28 165 (11.63%) Data Science
29 162 (11.42%) Migration
30 157 (11.06%) 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
1 143 (10.08%) Apache Spark
2 141 (9.94%) Apache Airflow
3 83 (5.85%) Apache
4 66 (4.65%) SAS
5 12 (0.85%) Confluence
6 8 (0.56%) Jupyter
6 8 (0.56%) Palantir Foundry
7 5 (0.35%) Microsoft Exchange
8 3 (0.21%) SharePoint
9 1 (0.070%) Apache Superset
9 1 (0.070%) Apache Synapse
9 1 (0.070%) Appian
9 1 (0.070%) Camunda
9 1 (0.070%) Luigi
9 1 (0.070%) R Markdown
Applications
1 19 (1.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.35%) Notepad++
3 4 (0.28%) Chatbot
4 3 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.14%) Aladdin
1 2 (0.14%) BambooHR
1 2 (0.14%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.14%) Maximo
1 2 (0.14%) SAP BPC
2 1 (0.070%) Actimize
2 1 (0.070%) Elite 3E
2 1 (0.070%) iTrent
2 1 (0.070%) NEC Housing
2 1 (0.070%) Oracle 11i
2 1 (0.070%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.070%) SAP Business ByDesign
2 1 (0.070%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.070%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 525 (37.00%) Azure
2 389 (27.41%) AWS
3 257 (18.11%) Power Platform
4 226 (15.93%) Azure Data Factory
5 153 (10.78%) Azure Synapse Analytics
5 153 (10.78%) Snowflake
6 142 (10.01%) Amazon S3
7 134 (9.44%) GCP
8 133 (9.37%) dbt
9 113 (7.96%) GitHub
10 112 (7.89%) Azure DevOps
11 91 (6.41%) Serverless
12 76 (5.36%) AWS Lambda
13 53 (3.74%) GitHub Actions
14 40 (2.82%) AWS CloudFormation
15 26 (1.83%) Matillion
16 25 (1.76%) Dagster
17 23 (1.62%) Amazon Kinesis
18 22 (1.55%) AWS Step Functions
19 19 (1.34%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.90%) DNS
1 27 (1.90%) VPN
2 26 (1.83%) BGP
2 26 (1.83%) DMZ
2 26 (1.83%) Multicast
3 10 (0.70%) Structured Cabling
4 5 (0.35%) PuTTY
4 5 (0.35%) WinSCP
5 3 (0.21%) Firewall
5 3 (0.21%) SAN
6 1 (0.070%) 4G
6 1 (0.070%) 5G
6 1 (0.070%) Network Security
6 1 (0.070%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 252 (17.76%) Data Warehouse
2 242 (17.05%) Power BI
3 156 (10.99%) Data Lake
4 108 (7.61%) SQL Server
5 90 (6.34%) Delta Lake
6 86 (6.06%) BigQuery
7 85 (5.99%) Amazon Redshift
8 83 (5.85%) Azure SQL Database
9 77 (5.43%) Metadata
10 74 (5.21%) Pentaho
11 70 (4.93%) Tableau
12 61 (4.30%) PostgreSQL
13 59 (4.16%) NoSQL
13 59 (4.16%) Snowflake Schema
14 56 (3.95%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 54 (3.81%) Big Data
16 50 (3.52%) Amazon Athena
17 36 (2.54%) Relational Database
18 35 (2.47%) Data Vault
18 35 (2.47%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 170 (11.98%) Git
2 62 (4.37%) Jenkins
3 59 (4.16%) GitLab
4 57 (4.02%) JIRA
5 18 (1.27%) MLflow
6 2 (0.14%) Bitbucket
6 2 (0.14%) JUnit
6 2 (0.14%) Selenium
6 2 (0.14%) SonarQube
6 2 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.14%) Visual Studio
7 1 (0.070%) Cucumber
7 1 (0.070%) ER Studio
7 1 (0.070%) ERwin
7 1 (0.070%) Jaeger
7 1 (0.070%) Maven
7 1 (0.070%) Mockito
7 1 (0.070%) Poetry
7 1 (0.070%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (0.070%) Terragrunt
General
1 236 (16.63%) Finance
2 222 (15.64%) Social Skills
3 150 (10.57%) Analytical Skills
4 123 (8.67%) Public Sector
5 75 (5.29%) Banking
6 32 (2.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 21 (1.48%) Telecoms
8 20 (1.41%) Investment Banking
9 16 (1.13%) Manufacturing
10 15 (1.06%) Documentation Skills
10 15 (1.06%) Pharmaceutical
10 15 (1.06%) Retail
11 14 (0.99%) Marketing
12 11 (0.78%) Front Office
12 11 (0.78%) Publishing
13 10 (0.70%) Aerospace
14 7 (0.49%) Law
15 6 (0.42%) Local Government
15 6 (0.42%) Military
16 5 (0.35%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 218 (15.36%) PySpark
2 140 (9.87%) Kafka
3 47 (3.31%) Pandas
4 33 (2.33%) JSON
5 29 (2.04%) YAML
6 27 (1.90%) Great Expectations
7 24 (1.69%) REST
8 18 (1.27%) XML
9 15 (1.06%) scikit-learn
10 14 (0.99%) Node.js
11 13 (0.92%) PyTorch
11 13 (0.92%) React
12 12 (0.85%) Apache Beam
12 12 (0.85%) Matplotlib
12 12 (0.85%) Spring
12 12 (0.85%) Spring Boot
13 11 (0.78%) Apache Avro
13 11 (0.78%) NumPy
14 10 (0.70%) pytest
15 9 (0.63%) GeoJSON
Miscellaneous
1 96 (6.77%) Cloud Native
2 44 (3.10%) Legacy Systems
3 31 (2.18%) Data Structures
3 31 (2.18%) Product Ownership
4 23 (1.62%) Greenfield Project
5 21 (1.48%) Clustering
6 19 (1.34%) Distributed Systems
6 19 (1.34%) Onboarding
7 15 (1.06%) Data Protection Act
8 14 (0.99%) NHS
9 13 (0.92%) Hybrid Cloud
9 13 (0.92%) Replication
10 12 (0.85%) Reinsurance
11 11 (0.78%) Public Cloud
11 11 (0.78%) Self-Motivation
12 8 (0.56%) Analytical Mindset
12 8 (0.56%) Distributed Computing
12 8 (0.56%) Life Science
13 7 (0.49%) Management Information System
13 7 (0.49%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 42 (2.96%) Unix
2 29 (2.04%) Linux
3 3 (0.21%) Windows
4 2 (0.14%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.070%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 596 (42.00%) Data Pipeline
2 575 (40.52%) ETL
3 558 (39.32%) Analytics
4 554 (39.04%) Data Engineering
5 506 (35.66%) Data Modelling
6 358 (25.23%) CI/CD
7 325 (22.90%) Business Intelligence
8 267 (18.82%) DevOps
9 264 (18.60%) Agile
10 223 (15.72%) Data Governance
11 205 (14.45%) Problem-Solving
12 165 (11.63%) Data Science
13 162 (11.42%) Migration
14 157 (11.06%) AI
14 157 (11.06%) Data Integration
15 143 (10.08%) Data Architecture
16 138 (9.73%) Validation
17 131 (9.23%) Infrastructure as Code
18 126 (8.88%) Decision-Making
19 125 (8.81%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 802 (56.52%) SQL
2 675 (47.57%) Python
3 93 (6.55%) Java
4 84 (5.92%) Scala
5 39 (2.75%) C#
6 35 (2.47%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 32 (2.26%) PL/SQL
8 29 (2.04%) T-SQL
9 26 (1.83%) Shell Script
10 24 (1.69%) Bash
11 18 (1.27%) Bicep
11 18 (1.27%) PowerShell
12 16 (1.13%) R
13 15 (1.06%) JavaScript
14 12 (0.85%) Go
15 6 (0.42%) TypeScript
16 3 (0.21%) C
17 2 (0.14%) Korn
17 2 (0.14%) Ruby
17 2 (0.14%) VB
Qualifications
1 407 (28.68%) Security Cleared
2 367 (25.86%) SC Cleared
3 38 (2.68%) Degree
4 33 (2.33%) Azure Certification
5 28 (1.97%) BPSS Clearance
6 17 (1.20%) Computer Science Degree
7 13 (0.92%) AWS Certification
8 10 (0.70%) DV Cleared
9 6 (0.42%) Microsoft Certification
10 5 (0.35%) BICSI Certification
10 5 (0.35%) City & Guilds
10 5 (0.35%) DBS Check
10 5 (0.35%) Master's Degree
11 4 (0.28%) CTC Cleared
11 4 (0.28%) SnowPro
12 2 (0.14%) CISM
12 2 (0.14%) CISSP
13 1 (0.070%) CCIE
13 1 (0.070%) CCNP
13 1 (0.070%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 390 (27.48%) Data Quality
2 50 (3.52%) GDPR
3 36 (2.54%) QA
4 12 (0.85%) Accessibility
5 9 (0.63%) SLA
6 6 (0.42%) FATCA
7 4 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 3 (0.21%) GMP
8 3 (0.21%) HIPAA
8 3 (0.21%) WCAG
9 2 (0.14%) MiFID
10 1 (0.070%) Basel III
10 1 (0.070%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 1 (0.070%) Government Security Classifications
10 1 (0.070%) GRC
10 1 (0.070%) GxP
10 1 (0.070%) ISO 13485
10 1 (0.070%) NIST
10 1 (0.070%) PCI DSS
10 1 (0.070%) PMO
System Software
1 104 (7.33%) Docker
2 6 (0.42%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.14%) HDFS
4 1 (0.070%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.070%) RACF
Systems Management
1 166 (11.70%) Terraform
2 95 (6.69%) Kubernetes
3 35 (2.47%) Grafana
4 13 (0.92%) Prometheus
5 8 (0.56%) Ansible
5 8 (0.56%) Kibana
6 4 (0.28%) Kubeflow
7 3 (0.21%) Rancher
8 2 (0.14%) Apache Ranger
8 2 (0.14%) EMC NetWorker
8 2 (0.14%) logstash
8 2 (0.14%) Thomson Reuters DACS
8 2 (0.14%) Tivoli Storage Manager
9 1 (0.070%) Control-M
9 1 (0.070%) NetBackup
9 1 (0.070%) Puppet
Vendors
1 366 (25.79%) Databricks
2 188 (13.25%) Microsoft
3 119 (8.39%) Oracle
4 105 (7.40%) Talend
5 93 (6.55%) Informatica
6 57 (4.02%) Google
7 55 (3.88%) Denodo
8 31 (2.18%) Cisco
9 28 (1.97%) F5
10 23 (1.62%) SAP
11 22 (1.55%) Splunk
12 21 (1.48%) ServiceNow
13 16 (1.13%) Cloudera
14 14 (0.99%) IBM
15 11 (0.78%) Alteryx
15 11 (0.78%) Foundry
15 11 (0.78%) Palantir
16 8 (0.56%) MuleSoft
17 6 (0.42%) OpenAI
18 5 (0.35%) Sage