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 13 February 2026.

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

6 months to
13 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 86 77 107
Rank change year-on-year -9 +30 +18
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,014 792 810
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.97% 3.04% 2.14%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.24% 3.27% 2.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 724 577 636
10th Percentile £360 £356 £363
25th Percentile £413 £434 £434
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £636
90th Percentile £688 £743 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 10 22
10th Percentile £28.89 £39.75 £35.82
25th Percentile £32.94 £65.00 £38.09
Median hourly rate £46.00 £83.75 £56.50
Median % change year-on-year -45.07% +48.23% -14.72%
75th Percentile £71.69 £96.56 £66.25
90th Percentile £88.30 £97.50 £67.50
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £65.00 £56.50
% change year-on-year -19.23% +15.04% -9.60%

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 31,296 24,249 35,198
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.70% 93.05% 93.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,862 15,146 23,628
10th Percentile £300 £300 £272
25th Percentile £408 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £640
90th Percentile £725 £750 £745
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,999 708 2,116
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.98 £13.17
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £16.54
Median hourly rate £31.46 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -10.11% - -7.03%
75th Percentile £63.75 £64.73 £60.00
90th Percentile £73.46 £75.00 £72.39
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £33.52 £35.00
% change year-on-year -10.50% -4.23% -2.23%

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 13 February 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 13 February 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 13 February 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 +6 641 £520 -5.45% 152
Midlands -17 123 £504 +5.61% 65
North of England -29 120 £450 -2.70% 90
West Midlands -11 108 £513 +4.59% 49
North West -15 70 £425 -2.86% 50
South East -48 52 £513 -2.38% 109
South West -5 46 £525 +5.00% 39
Yorkshire -42 37 £488 -1.27% 32
East Midlands -25 15 £450 +20.00% 16
North East -14 13 £463 -11.90% 10
East of England -38 5 £510 +60.38% 15
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 13 February 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.

1 587 (57.89%) SQL
2 575 (56.71%) Python
3 432 (42.60%) Azure
4 428 (42.21%) Data Pipeline
5 427 (42.11%) Data Engineering
6 426 (42.01%) ETL
7 376 (37.08%) Analytics
8 366 (36.09%) Data Modelling
9 323 (31.85%) Databricks
10 304 (29.98%) AWS
11 286 (28.21%) Data Quality
12 283 (27.91%) CI/CD
13 259 (25.54%) Security Cleared
14 253 (24.95%) Business Intelligence
15 228 (22.49%) SC Cleared
16 216 (21.30%) Power Platform
17 207 (20.41%) Power BI
18 203 (20.02%) DevOps
19 187 (18.44%) Azure Data Factory
20 184 (18.15%) Data Warehouse
21 181 (17.85%) Agile
22 176 (17.36%) PySpark
23 161 (15.88%) Problem-Solving
24 155 (15.29%) Data Science
25 153 (15.09%) Data Governance
26 138 (13.61%) Git
27 137 (13.51%) Microsoft
28 136 (13.41%) Terraform
29 130 (12.82%) Snowflake
30 129 (12.72%) 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
1 115 (11.34%) Apache Airflow
2 109 (10.75%) Apache Spark
3 77 (7.59%) Apache
4 21 (2.07%) SAS
5 14 (1.38%) Confluence
5 14 (1.38%) Palantir Foundry
6 6 (0.59%) Apache Pig
6 6 (0.59%) Oracle Application Server
7 5 (0.49%) IIS
8 4 (0.39%) Jupyter
8 4 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.20%) ArcGIS
9 2 (0.20%) SharePoint
10 1 (0.099%) Apache Synapse
10 1 (0.099%) Appian
10 1 (0.099%) Camunda
10 1 (0.099%) Luigi
10 1 (0.099%) nginx
10 1 (0.099%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 10 (0.99%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.20%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.099%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.099%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.20%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.20%) Maximo
2 1 (0.099%) Actimize
2 1 (0.099%) Aladdin
2 1 (0.099%) Elite 3E
2 1 (0.099%) NEC Housing
2 1 (0.099%) Oracle BPM
2 1 (0.099%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 432 (42.60%) Azure
2 304 (29.98%) AWS
3 216 (21.30%) Power Platform
4 187 (18.44%) Azure Data Factory
5 130 (12.82%) Snowflake
6 119 (11.74%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 109 (10.75%) Amazon S3
8 107 (10.55%) dbt
9 103 (10.16%) GCP
10 97 (9.57%) GitHub
11 89 (8.78%) Serverless
12 77 (7.59%) Azure DevOps
13 65 (6.41%) AWS Lambda
14 51 (5.03%) GitHub Actions
15 38 (3.75%) AWS CloudFormation
16 22 (2.17%) SaaS
17 21 (2.07%) Amazon Kinesis
17 21 (2.07%) AWS Step Functions
18 19 (1.87%) Matillion
19 16 (1.58%) Amazon EMR
Communications & Networking
1 13 (1.28%) DNS
2 12 (1.18%) BGP
2 12 (1.18%) DMZ
2 12 (1.18%) Multicast
2 12 (1.18%) VPN
3 4 (0.39%) Firewall
4 3 (0.30%) SAN
5 2 (0.20%) Structured Cabling
6 1 (0.099%) Network Security
6 1 (0.099%) Software-Defined Networking
6 1 (0.099%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 207 (20.41%) Power BI
2 184 (18.15%) Data Warehouse
3 121 (11.93%) Data Lake
4 97 (9.57%) SQL Server
5 65 (6.41%) Azure SQL Database
5 65 (6.41%) Delta Lake
6 63 (6.21%) Amazon Redshift
7 61 (6.02%) PostgreSQL
8 59 (5.82%) BigQuery
9 53 (5.23%) Big Data
9 53 (5.23%) Metadata
10 52 (5.13%) NoSQL
11 51 (5.03%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 41 (4.04%) Tableau
13 37 (3.65%) Snowflake Schema
14 35 (3.45%) Amazon Athena
15 33 (3.25%) Star Schema
16 32 (3.16%) Hadoop
17 31 (3.06%) Pentaho
18 30 (2.96%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 138 (13.61%) Git
2 52 (5.13%) Jenkins
3 36 (3.55%) JIRA
4 34 (3.35%) GitLab
5 21 (2.07%) MLflow
6 6 (0.59%) DBeaver
7 4 (0.39%) Visual Studio
8 3 (0.30%) Selenium
9 2 (0.20%) Bitbucket
9 2 (0.20%) JUnit
9 2 (0.20%) Visual Studio Code
10 1 (0.099%) Deequ
10 1 (0.099%) Gradle
10 1 (0.099%) Jaeger
10 1 (0.099%) Maven
10 1 (0.099%) Poetry
10 1 (0.099%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 1 (0.099%) Team Foundation Server
10 1 (0.099%) TeamCity
10 1 (0.099%) Terragrunt
General
1 188 (18.54%) Social Skills
2 159 (15.68%) Finance
3 107 (10.55%) Analytical Skills
4 73 (7.20%) Public Sector
5 50 (4.93%) Banking
6 31 (3.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 17 (1.68%) Investment Banking
8 14 (1.38%) Retail
9 12 (1.18%) Front Office
10 11 (1.08%) Marketing
10 11 (1.08%) Pharmaceutical
11 10 (0.99%) Documentation Skills
12 9 (0.89%) Telecoms
13 7 (0.69%) Manufacturing
14 6 (0.59%) Military
14 6 (0.59%) Publishing
15 5 (0.49%) Law
16 4 (0.39%) Back Office
16 4 (0.39%) Corporate Banking
17 3 (0.30%) Organisational Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 176 (17.36%) PySpark
2 112 (11.05%) Kafka
3 34 (3.35%) Pandas
4 26 (2.56%) JSON
5 23 (2.27%) YAML
6 22 (2.17%) REST
7 18 (1.78%) XML
8 15 (1.48%) PyTorch
9 14 (1.38%) Apache NiFi
9 14 (1.38%) NumPy
10 12 (1.18%) Great Expectations
10 12 (1.18%) Keycloak
10 12 (1.18%) Node.js
10 12 (1.18%) OpenTelemetry
10 12 (1.18%) RESTful
11 10 (0.99%) scikit-learn
11 10 (0.99%) TensorFlow
12 9 (0.89%) HTML
12 9 (0.89%) Middleware
12 9 (0.89%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 78 (7.69%) Cloud Native
2 28 (2.76%) Data Structures
3 25 (2.47%) Product Ownership
4 21 (2.07%) Legacy Systems
4 21 (2.07%) Replication
5 18 (1.78%) Onboarding
6 17 (1.68%) Algorithms
7 16 (1.58%) Clustering
7 16 (1.58%) Hybrid Cloud
8 14 (1.38%) Greenfield Project
9 13 (1.28%) Data Protection Act
9 13 (1.28%) Reinsurance
10 12 (1.18%) Distributed Systems
11 10 (0.99%) Public Cloud
12 9 (0.89%) Distributed Computing
13 7 (0.69%) Life Science
13 7 (0.69%) Management Information System
14 5 (0.49%) Analytical Mindset
14 5 (0.49%) NHS
14 5 (0.49%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 19 (1.87%) Linux
2 15 (1.48%) Unix
3 1 (0.099%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 428 (42.21%) Data Pipeline
2 427 (42.11%) Data Engineering
3 426 (42.01%) ETL
4 376 (37.08%) Analytics
5 366 (36.09%) Data Modelling
6 283 (27.91%) CI/CD
7 253 (24.95%) Business Intelligence
8 203 (20.02%) DevOps
9 181 (17.85%) Agile
10 161 (15.88%) Problem-Solving
11 155 (15.29%) Data Science
12 153 (15.09%) Data Governance
13 129 (12.72%) AI
14 121 (11.93%) Data Architecture
15 119 (11.74%) Infrastructure as Code
16 116 (11.44%) Machine Learning
17 114 (11.24%) Data Integration
18 102 (10.06%) Data Transformation
19 99 (9.76%) Migration
20 97 (9.57%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 587 (57.89%) SQL
2 575 (56.71%) Python
3 88 (8.68%) Scala
4 71 (7.00%) Java
5 31 (3.06%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 28 (2.76%) C#
7 25 (2.47%) T-SQL
8 22 (2.17%) PL/SQL
9 18 (1.78%) Bicep
10 16 (1.58%) Bash
10 16 (1.58%) Go
10 16 (1.58%) R
11 15 (1.48%) PowerShell
12 13 (1.28%) Shell Script
13 12 (1.18%) JavaScript
14 5 (0.49%) TypeScript
15 4 (0.39%) C++
15 4 (0.39%) Korn
16 2 (0.20%) C
16 2 (0.20%) VB
Qualifications
1 259 (25.54%) Security Cleared
2 228 (22.49%) SC Cleared
3 34 (3.35%) Azure Certification
4 30 (2.96%) Degree
5 20 (1.97%) AWS Certification
6 16 (1.58%) Computer Science Degree
6 16 (1.58%) DV Cleared
7 15 (1.48%) BPSS Clearance
8 5 (0.49%) Master's Degree
8 5 (0.49%) Microsoft Certification
9 4 (0.39%) CTC Cleared
9 4 (0.39%) DBS Check
10 2 (0.20%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 2 (0.20%) SnowPro
11 1 (0.099%) CCIE
11 1 (0.099%) CCNP
11 1 (0.099%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 286 (28.21%) Data Quality
2 46 (4.54%) GDPR
3 21 (2.07%) QA
4 9 (0.89%) Accessibility
5 4 (0.39%) HIPAA
5 4 (0.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 3 (0.30%) FATCA
6 3 (0.30%) MiFID
7 2 (0.20%) Dodd-Frank
7 2 (0.20%) EMIR
7 2 (0.20%) EU AI Act
7 2 (0.20%) NIST
8 1 (0.099%) Basel III
8 1 (0.099%) GMP
8 1 (0.099%) GRC
8 1 (0.099%) ISO 13485
8 1 (0.099%) NCSC
8 1 (0.099%) PMO
8 1 (0.099%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.099%) WCAG
System Software
1 70 (6.90%) Docker
2 11 (1.08%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (0.49%) zsh
4 1 (0.099%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.099%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 136 (13.41%) Terraform
2 80 (7.89%) Kubernetes
3 12 (1.18%) Grafana
3 12 (1.18%) Prometheus
4 6 (0.59%) Ansible
5 5 (0.49%) NetBackup
6 4 (0.39%) Kibana
7 3 (0.30%) Control-M
7 3 (0.30%) Kubeflow
8 2 (0.20%) EMC NetWorker
8 2 (0.20%) logstash
8 2 (0.20%) Puppet
8 2 (0.20%) Tivoli Storage Manager
9 1 (0.099%) Ambari
9 1 (0.099%) Argo
9 1 (0.099%) Rancher
9 1 (0.099%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 323 (31.85%) Databricks
2 137 (13.51%) Microsoft
3 71 (7.00%) Oracle
4 45 (4.44%) Talend
5 38 (3.75%) Google
5 38 (3.75%) Informatica
6 23 (2.27%) Denodo
7 18 (1.78%) Splunk
8 17 (1.68%) Foundry
8 17 (1.68%) Palantir
9 16 (1.58%) Cisco
10 15 (1.48%) IBM
11 13 (1.28%) F5
12 12 (1.18%) ServiceNow
13 11 (1.08%) Alteryx
13 11 (1.08%) SAP
14 8 (0.79%) Cloudera
15 7 (0.69%) Confluent
15 7 (0.69%) Virgin Media
16 6 (0.59%) Salesforce