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 9 June 2026.

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

6 months to
9 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 58 93 99
Rank change year-on-year +35 +6 +20
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,594 660 821
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.76% 2.71% 2.21%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.07% 2.93% 2.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,126 502 628
10th Percentile £375 £363 £259
25th Percentile £425 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.09%
75th Percentile £588 £599 £600
90th Percentile £663 £713 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 55 9 41
10th Percentile £19.34 £18.13 £37.50
25th Percentile £34.92 £51.25 £49.25
Median hourly rate £52.50 £52.50 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -22.22% -10.60%
75th Percentile £71.50 £78.70 £80.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £82.75 -
UK median hourly rate £51.25 £52.50 £67.50
% change year-on-year -2.38% -22.22% -10.60%

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 39,165 22,521 34,505
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.35% 92.41% 92.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,166 14,805 22,602
10th Percentile £325 £289 £288
25th Percentile £413 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £514 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.17% -2.10% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,761 973 2,623
10th Percentile £15.84 £14.00 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.13 £16.30
Median hourly rate £45.56 £29.33 £39.50
Median % change year-on-year +55.32% -25.75% -12.22%
75th Percentile £67.50 £60.00 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £74.00
UK median hourly rate £43.61 £28.00 £37.50
% change year-on-year +55.73% -25.33% -16.67%

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 9 June 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 9 June 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 9 June 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 +36 858 £525 - 127
Midlands +51 309 £469 +4.22% 34
West Midlands +44 290 £469 +1.96% 29
North of England +8 204 £465 -2.11% 69
North West +14 127 £480 +1.05% 37
South East +16 107 £475 +11.76% 88
South West +18 82 £506 +5.14% 28
Yorkshire -25 58 £465 +3.33% 14
North East -15 19 £450 -5.26% 18
East Midlands -23 19 £525 +28.05% 5
East of England -25 19 £520 +63.52% 8
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 9 June 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.

1 866 (54.33%) SQL
2 709 (44.48%) Python
3 662 (41.53%) Data Pipeline
4 605 (37.95%) ETL
5 602 (37.77%) Analytics
6 590 (37.01%) Data Engineering
7 547 (34.32%) Data Modelling
8 523 (32.81%) Azure
9 464 (29.11%) Security Cleared
10 459 (28.80%) AWS
11 414 (25.97%) SC Cleared
12 398 (24.97%) Data Quality
13 384 (24.09%) CI/CD
14 351 (22.02%) Databricks
15 338 (21.20%) Business Intelligence
16 279 (17.50%) DevOps
17 278 (17.44%) Agile
18 272 (17.06%) Power Platform
19 262 (16.44%) Data Warehouse
20 258 (16.19%) Power BI
21 228 (14.30%) PySpark
22 225 (14.12%) Azure Data Factory
23 211 (13.24%) Data Governance
24 209 (13.11%) Microsoft
25 208 (13.05%) Problem-Solving
26 207 (12.99%) Migration
27 188 (11.79%) AI
28 175 (10.98%) Terraform
29 170 (10.66%) Data Integration
29 170 (10.66%) Data Lake

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
1 150 (9.41%) Apache Airflow
2 143 (8.97%) Apache Spark
3 95 (5.96%) Apache
4 71 (4.45%) SAS
5 33 (2.07%) Confluence
6 9 (0.56%) Jupyter
6 9 (0.56%) Palantir Foundry
7 4 (0.25%) Microsoft Exchange
7 4 (0.25%) SharePoint
8 1 (0.063%) Apache Superset
8 1 (0.063%) Appian
8 1 (0.063%) Camunda
8 1 (0.063%) Luigi
8 1 (0.063%) R Markdown
Applications
1 16 (1.00%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.31%) Notepad++
3 4 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.13%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.063%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 6 (0.38%) Aladdin
2 3 (0.19%) Infor LN
2 3 (0.19%) SAP BPC
2 3 (0.19%) SimCorp Dimension
3 2 (0.13%) BambooHR
3 2 (0.13%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.13%) NetSuite
3 2 (0.13%) Sage X3
3 2 (0.13%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.063%) Elite 3E
4 1 (0.063%) FIS Private Capital Suite
4 1 (0.063%) iTrent
4 1 (0.063%) NEC Housing
4 1 (0.063%) Oracle 11i
4 1 (0.063%) Oracle Assets
4 1 (0.063%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.063%) Raiser’s Edge
4 1 (0.063%) SAP Business ByDesign
4 1 (0.063%) SAP CAR
4 1 (0.063%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 523 (32.81%) Azure
2 459 (28.80%) AWS
3 272 (17.06%) Power Platform
4 225 (14.12%) Azure Data Factory
5 163 (10.23%) Snowflake
6 152 (9.54%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 150 (9.41%) Amazon S3
7 150 (9.41%) dbt
8 141 (8.85%) GCP
9 135 (8.47%) Azure DevOps
10 112 (7.03%) GitHub
11 97 (6.09%) Serverless
12 85 (5.33%) AWS Lambda
13 55 (3.45%) GitHub Actions
14 32 (2.01%) Matillion
15 29 (1.82%) AWS CloudFormation
16 27 (1.69%) Amazon Kinesis
17 26 (1.63%) Amazon EMR
18 24 (1.51%) AWS Step Functions
18 24 (1.51%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 34 (2.13%) DNS
1 34 (2.13%) VPN
2 33 (2.07%) BGP
2 33 (2.07%) DMZ
2 33 (2.07%) Multicast
3 10 (0.63%) Structured Cabling
4 5 (0.31%) PuTTY
4 5 (0.31%) WinSCP
5 4 (0.25%) Firewall
5 4 (0.25%) Wi-Fi
5 4 (0.25%) Wireless
6 1 (0.063%) 4G
6 1 (0.063%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 262 (16.44%) Data Warehouse
2 258 (16.19%) Power BI
3 170 (10.66%) Data Lake
4 118 (7.40%) SQL Server
5 96 (6.02%) Delta Lake
6 92 (5.77%) Amazon Redshift
7 83 (5.21%) BigQuery
7 83 (5.21%) Pentaho
8 81 (5.08%) Metadata
9 74 (4.64%) Azure SQL Database
10 72 (4.52%) Tableau
11 64 (4.02%) Snowflake Schema
12 62 (3.89%) PostgreSQL
13 61 (3.83%) Amazon Athena
14 60 (3.76%) Big Data
15 56 (3.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 53 (3.32%) NoSQL
17 40 (2.51%) Relational Database
18 37 (2.32%) Data Vault
19 35 (2.20%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 155 (9.72%) Git
2 79 (4.96%) GitLab
3 73 (4.58%) JIRA
4 47 (2.95%) Jenkins
5 8 (0.50%) MLflow
6 7 (0.44%) Postman
7 5 (0.31%) Artifactory
8 3 (0.19%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.19%) Newman
8 3 (0.19%) SonarQube
9 2 (0.13%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.13%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 2 (0.13%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.13%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.063%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 1 (0.063%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.063%) ER Studio
10 1 (0.063%) ERwin
10 1 (0.063%) JUnit
10 1 (0.063%) Selenium
General
1 272 (17.06%) Finance
2 247 (15.50%) Social Skills
3 163 (10.23%) Analytical Skills
4 134 (8.41%) Public Sector
5 89 (5.58%) Banking
6 30 (1.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 26 (1.63%) Retail
8 22 (1.38%) Investment Banking
8 22 (1.38%) Marketing
9 21 (1.32%) Telecoms
10 19 (1.19%) Documentation Skills
11 17 (1.07%) Manufacturing
11 17 (1.07%) Pharmaceutical
12 14 (0.88%) Aerospace
13 11 (0.69%) Front Office
13 11 (0.69%) Publishing
14 7 (0.44%) Military
15 6 (0.38%) Billing
15 6 (0.38%) Legal
16 5 (0.31%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 228 (14.30%) PySpark
2 136 (8.53%) Kafka
3 48 (3.01%) Pandas
4 32 (2.01%) JSON
5 26 (1.63%) REST
6 25 (1.57%) Great Expectations
7 22 (1.38%) Spring
7 22 (1.38%) Spring Boot
8 20 (1.25%) XML
9 19 (1.19%) YAML
10 15 (0.94%) Apache Beam
11 13 (0.82%) Apache Avro
12 12 (0.75%) scikit-learn
13 11 (0.69%) Matplotlib
13 11 (0.69%) React
14 10 (0.63%) PyTorch
15 9 (0.56%) GeoJSON
15 9 (0.56%) Node.js
15 9 (0.56%) Polars
15 9 (0.56%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 125 (7.84%) Cloud Native
2 51 (3.20%) Legacy Systems
3 40 (2.51%) Data Structures
4 29 (1.82%) Greenfield Project
5 28 (1.76%) Product Ownership
6 24 (1.51%) Onboarding
7 22 (1.38%) Distributed Systems
7 22 (1.38%) Reinsurance
8 19 (1.19%) Clustering
9 16 (1.00%) Data Protection Act
10 14 (0.88%) NHS
11 11 (0.69%) Distributed Computing
11 11 (0.69%) Replication
12 10 (0.63%) Life Science
12 10 (0.63%) Self-Motivation
13 9 (0.56%) Driving Licence
13 9 (0.56%) Public Cloud
13 9 (0.56%) Reference Data
14 8 (0.50%) Analytical Mindset
14 8 (0.50%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 56 (3.51%) Unix
2 36 (2.26%) Linux
3 4 (0.25%) Windows
4 2 (0.13%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.13%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.063%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 662 (41.53%) Data Pipeline
2 605 (37.95%) ETL
3 602 (37.77%) Analytics
4 590 (37.01%) Data Engineering
5 547 (34.32%) Data Modelling
6 384 (24.09%) CI/CD
7 338 (21.20%) Business Intelligence
8 279 (17.50%) DevOps
9 278 (17.44%) Agile
10 211 (13.24%) Data Governance
11 208 (13.05%) Problem-Solving
12 207 (12.99%) Migration
13 188 (11.79%) AI
14 170 (10.66%) Data Integration
15 166 (10.41%) Validation
16 153 (9.60%) Data Science
17 143 (8.97%) Decision-Making
18 140 (8.78%) Data Transformation
19 128 (8.03%) Infrastructure as Code
20 125 (7.84%) Data Architecture
Programming Languages
1 866 (54.33%) SQL
2 709 (44.48%) Python
3 100 (6.27%) Java
4 70 (4.39%) Scala
5 51 (3.20%) PL/SQL
6 34 (2.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 33 (2.07%) T-SQL
8 32 (2.01%) C#
9 28 (1.76%) Shell Script
10 26 (1.63%) Bash
11 17 (1.07%) Bicep
11 17 (1.07%) PowerShell
12 13 (0.82%) R
13 9 (0.56%) JavaScript
14 7 (0.44%) Go
15 6 (0.38%) TypeScript
16 2 (0.13%) HiveQL
16 2 (0.13%) LookML
16 2 (0.13%) Ruby
16 2 (0.13%) VB
Qualifications
1 464 (29.11%) Security Cleared
2 414 (25.97%) SC Cleared
3 39 (2.45%) Degree
4 35 (2.20%) BPSS Clearance
5 26 (1.63%) Azure Certification
6 16 (1.00%) Computer Science Degree
7 14 (0.88%) DV Cleared
8 10 (0.63%) DBS Check
9 9 (0.56%) City & Guilds
10 8 (0.50%) AWS Certification
11 6 (0.38%) Microsoft Certification
12 5 (0.31%) BICSI Certification
12 5 (0.31%) Master's Degree
13 3 (0.19%) SnowPro
14 2 (0.13%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 2 (0.13%) CISM
14 2 (0.13%) CISSP
15 1 (0.063%) CISA
15 1 (0.063%) Cisco Certification
15 1 (0.063%) CTC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 398 (24.97%) Data Quality
2 51 (3.20%) QA
3 47 (2.95%) GDPR
4 11 (0.69%) SLA
5 9 (0.56%) Accessibility
5 9 (0.56%) FATCA
6 5 (0.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 4 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 4 (0.25%) MiFID
8 3 (0.19%) GMP
9 2 (0.13%) EMIR
9 2 (0.13%) SNOMED CT
9 2 (0.13%) WCAG
10 1 (0.063%) Government Security Classifications
10 1 (0.063%) GRC
10 1 (0.063%) IFRS
10 1 (0.063%) IFRS 9
10 1 (0.063%) ISO 13485
10 1 (0.063%) NIST
10 1 (0.063%) PMO
System Software
1 93 (5.83%) Docker
2 6 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.13%) HDFS
4 1 (0.063%) RACF
Systems Management
1 175 (10.98%) Terraform
2 77 (4.83%) Kubernetes
3 36 (2.26%) Grafana
4 12 (0.75%) Ansible
5 10 (0.63%) Prometheus
6 7 (0.44%) Kibana
7 3 (0.19%) Rancher
8 2 (0.13%) Apache Ranger
8 2 (0.13%) Control-M
8 2 (0.13%) logstash
8 2 (0.13%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.063%) Kubeflow
9 1 (0.063%) NetBackup
9 1 (0.063%) Puppet
Vendors
1 351 (22.02%) Databricks
2 209 (13.11%) Microsoft
3 147 (9.22%) Oracle
4 117 (7.34%) Talend
5 113 (7.09%) Informatica
6 63 (3.95%) Denodo
7 57 (3.58%) Google
8 35 (2.20%) Cisco
8 35 (2.20%) F5
9 29 (1.82%) SAP
10 22 (1.38%) ServiceNow
11 21 (1.32%) Splunk
12 17 (1.07%) Cloudera
13 15 (0.94%) Alteryx
14 14 (0.88%) Salesforce
15 12 (0.75%) Foundry
16 11 (0.69%) IBM
16 11 (0.69%) Palantir
17 8 (0.50%) Dynatrace
17 8 (0.50%) MuleSoft