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 August 2026.

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

 6 months to
9 Aug 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 56 120 91
Rank change year-on-year +64 -29 +23
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,768 642 788
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.86% 2.31% 2.37%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.18% 2.52% 2.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,193 463 582
10th Percentile £386 £369 £263
25th Percentile £425 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £595 £630
90th Percentile £663 £700 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £518
% change year-on-year - -3.45% -5.84%
Number of hourly rates quoted 85 12 29
10th Percentile £20.10 £19.00 £38.65
25th Percentile £30.96 £38.19 £52.50
Median hourly rate £45.00 £52.50 £80.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% -34.38% +12.28%
75th Percentile £70.00 £66.55 -
90th Percentile £75.00 £79.87 -
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £75.00
% change year-on-year -4.76% -30.00% +5.26%

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 42,336 25,493 30,878
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.53% 91.65% 92.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,676 16,525 20,338
10th Percentile £326 £285 £300
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £630 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,158 1,323 1,795
10th Percentile £15.25 £13.66 £14.16
25th Percentile £21.26 £17.48 £21.25
Median hourly rate £43.61 £25.30 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +72.35% -43.78% +5.88%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £65.52
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.30 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +68.19% -41.51% +1.18%

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 August 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 August 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 August 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 +41 863 £525 - 290
Midlands +71 400 £465 +1.09% 62
West Midlands +66 347 £460 -4.17% 37
North of England +34 236 £490 +3.16% 101
North West +33 139 £525 +10.53% 46
South East +16 129 £467 +3.78% 121
South West +2 85 £525 +10.53% 38
Yorkshire -1 75 £465 -4.62% 26
East Midlands +26 53 £500 +19.05% 25
East of England +5 36 £520 +61.74% 16
North East -26 23 £515 +22.62% 30
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 9 August 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.

1 898 (50.79%) SQL
2 753 (42.59%) Data Pipeline
3 730 (41.29%) Python
4 654 (36.99%) Data Engineering
5 633 (35.80%) Analytics
6 617 (34.90%) ETL
7 594 (33.60%) Data Modelling
8 547 (30.94%) Azure
9 509 (28.79%) AWS
10 485 (27.43%) Security Cleared
11 438 (24.77%) Data Quality
12 425 (24.04%) SC Cleared
13 421 (23.81%) CI/CD
14 326 (18.44%) Databricks
15 316 (17.87%) Business Intelligence
16 312 (17.65%) Agile
17 295 (16.69%) Data Warehouse
17 295 (16.69%) DevOps
18 278 (15.72%) Migration
19 243 (13.74%) Power Platform
20 239 (13.52%) Data Governance
21 233 (13.18%) Power BI
22 228 (12.90%) PySpark
23 226 (12.78%) Microsoft
24 224 (12.67%) Azure Data Factory
25 221 (12.50%) AI
26 213 (12.05%) Problem-Solving
27 209 (11.82%) Data Integration
28 208 (11.76%) Validation
29 202 (11.43%) Data Transformation

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
1 177 (10.01%) Apache Airflow
2 143 (8.09%) Apache Spark
3 105 (5.94%) Apache
4 76 (4.30%) SAS
5 39 (2.21%) Confluence
6 13 (0.74%) Palantir Foundry
7 12 (0.68%) SharePoint
8 10 (0.57%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.17%) Apache Superset
10 2 (0.11%) Microsoft Exchange
11 1 (0.057%) ArcGIS
11 1 (0.057%) Liferay
11 1 (0.057%) Luigi
11 1 (0.057%) R Markdown
Applications
1 23 (1.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.28%) Notepad++
2 5 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
3 4 (0.23%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.057%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 12 (0.68%) Aladdin
2 7 (0.40%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.28%) Infor LN
3 5 (0.28%) NetSuite
3 5 (0.28%) Sage X3
4 3 (0.17%) SAP BPC
4 3 (0.17%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.17%) SimCorp Dimension
5 2 (0.11%) BambooHR
5 2 (0.11%) Maximo
6 1 (0.057%) iTrent
6 1 (0.057%) MIS ActiveH
6 1 (0.057%) NEC Housing
6 1 (0.057%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.057%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.057%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.057%) Raiser’s Edge
6 1 (0.057%) SAP Business ByDesign
6 1 (0.057%) SAP CAR
6 1 (0.057%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 547 (30.94%) Azure
2 509 (28.79%) AWS
3 243 (13.74%) Power Platform
4 224 (12.67%) Azure Data Factory
5 193 (10.92%) Snowflake
6 192 (10.86%) dbt
7 163 (9.22%) GCP
8 144 (8.14%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 143 (8.09%) Amazon S3
10 129 (7.30%) Azure DevOps
11 101 (5.71%) GitHub
12 97 (5.49%) Serverless
13 83 (4.69%) AWS Lambda
14 42 (2.38%) GitHub Actions
15 37 (2.09%) Amazon EMR
16 27 (1.53%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 25 (1.41%) Dagster
17 25 (1.41%) Matillion
18 24 (1.36%) AWS Step Functions
18 24 (1.36%) Fivetran
Communications & Networking
1 32 (1.81%) DNS
1 32 (1.81%) VPN
2 31 (1.75%) BGP
2 31 (1.75%) DMZ
2 31 (1.75%) Multicast
3 9 (0.51%) Structured Cabling
4 7 (0.40%) Firewall
5 5 (0.28%) PuTTY
5 5 (0.28%) WinSCP
6 4 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.23%) Wireless
7 3 (0.17%) Intrusion Detection
8 1 (0.057%) 4G
8 1 (0.057%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 295 (16.69%) Data Warehouse
2 233 (13.18%) Power BI
3 157 (8.88%) Data Lake
4 100 (5.66%) Metadata
5 98 (5.54%) BigQuery
6 97 (5.49%) Amazon Redshift
7 91 (5.15%) Pentaho
8 88 (4.98%) SQL Server
9 84 (4.75%) Delta Lake
10 66 (3.73%) Tableau
11 64 (3.62%) Amazon Athena
12 62 (3.51%) Big Data
13 58 (3.28%) PostgreSQL
14 53 (3.00%) Snowflake Schema
15 50 (2.83%) Azure SQL Database
15 50 (2.83%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 48 (2.71%) Relational Database
17 47 (2.66%) NoSQL
18 35 (1.98%) Hadoop
19 33 (1.87%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 161 (9.11%) Git
2 86 (4.86%) GitLab
3 70 (3.96%) JIRA
4 45 (2.55%) Jenkins
5 9 (0.51%) MLflow
6 7 (0.40%) Postman
7 6 (0.34%) Bitbucket
8 5 (0.28%) Artifactory
8 5 (0.28%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.17%) Newman
9 3 (0.17%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.11%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 2 (0.11%) ER Studio
10 2 (0.11%) ERwin
10 2 (0.11%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 2 (0.11%) Yeoman
11 1 (0.057%) Octopus Deploy
11 1 (0.057%) Selenium
11 1 (0.057%) Terragrunt
11 1 (0.057%) Toad
General
1 294 (16.63%) Finance
2 281 (15.89%) Social Skills
3 204 (11.54%) Analytical Skills
4 163 (9.22%) Public Sector
5 102 (5.77%) Banking
6 30 (1.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 25 (1.41%) Telecoms
8 24 (1.36%) Retail
9 22 (1.24%) Marketing
10 20 (1.13%) Documentation Skills
10 20 (1.13%) Manufacturing
11 19 (1.07%) Automotive
12 17 (0.96%) Aerospace
12 17 (0.96%) Front Office
12 17 (0.96%) Investment Banking
13 15 (0.85%) Pharmaceutical
14 11 (0.62%) Publishing
15 9 (0.51%) Billing
15 9 (0.51%) Military
16 8 (0.45%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 228 (12.90%) PySpark
2 122 (6.90%) Kafka
3 36 (2.04%) Pandas
4 26 (1.47%) JSON
5 24 (1.36%) REST
6 21 (1.19%) Great Expectations
6 21 (1.19%) Spring
6 21 (1.19%) Spring Boot
7 16 (0.90%) XML
7 16 (0.90%) YAML
8 15 (0.85%) Apache Beam
9 13 (0.74%) React
9 13 (0.74%) scikit-learn
10 12 (0.68%) Apache Avro
10 12 (0.68%) RESTful
11 11 (0.62%) pytest
12 10 (0.57%) Microsoft Graph
12 10 (0.57%) PyTorch
13 9 (0.51%) GeoJSON
13 9 (0.51%) Matplotlib
Miscellaneous
1 129 (7.30%) Cloud Native
2 74 (4.19%) Legacy Systems
3 53 (3.00%) Data Structures
4 33 (1.87%) Onboarding
5 24 (1.36%) Distributed Systems
5 24 (1.36%) Product Ownership
6 22 (1.24%) Greenfield Project
6 22 (1.24%) NHS
7 19 (1.07%) Reinsurance
8 17 (0.96%) Reference Data
9 12 (0.68%) Clustering
9 12 (0.68%) Data Protection Act
9 12 (0.68%) Management Information System
10 11 (0.62%) AI Agents
11 10 (0.57%) Algorithms
11 10 (0.57%) Life Science
11 10 (0.57%) Virtual Team
12 9 (0.51%) Driving Licence
12 9 (0.51%) Self-Motivation
13 8 (0.45%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 61 (3.45%) Unix
2 44 (2.49%) Linux
3 4 (0.23%) Windows
4 2 (0.11%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.11%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.057%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 753 (42.59%) Data Pipeline
2 654 (36.99%) Data Engineering
3 633 (35.80%) Analytics
4 617 (34.90%) ETL
5 594 (33.60%) Data Modelling
6 421 (23.81%) CI/CD
7 316 (17.87%) Business Intelligence
8 312 (17.65%) Agile
9 295 (16.69%) DevOps
10 278 (15.72%) Migration
11 239 (13.52%) Data Governance
12 221 (12.50%) AI
13 213 (12.05%) Problem-Solving
14 209 (11.82%) Data Integration
15 208 (11.76%) Validation
16 202 (11.43%) Data Transformation
17 176 (9.95%) Decision-Making
18 158 (8.94%) Data Science
19 141 (7.98%) Test Automation
20 138 (7.81%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 898 (50.79%) SQL
2 730 (41.29%) Python
3 101 (5.71%) Java
4 59 (3.34%) Scala
5 49 (2.77%) PL/SQL
6 33 (1.87%) Shell Script
7 31 (1.75%) T-SQL
8 30 (1.70%) Bash
9 27 (1.53%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 25 (1.41%) PowerShell
11 21 (1.19%) C#
12 15 (0.85%) JavaScript
13 14 (0.79%) R
14 11 (0.62%) Bicep
15 6 (0.34%) Go
15 6 (0.34%) TypeScript
16 3 (0.17%) Korn
17 2 (0.11%) HiveQL
17 2 (0.11%) Ruby
17 2 (0.11%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 485 (27.43%) Security Cleared
2 425 (24.04%) SC Cleared
3 43 (2.43%) BPSS Clearance
4 41 (2.32%) Degree
5 25 (1.41%) Azure Certification
6 21 (1.19%) DV Cleared
7 20 (1.13%) Computer Science Degree
8 11 (0.62%) AWS Certification
9 9 (0.51%) City & Guilds
9 9 (0.51%) DBS Check
10 6 (0.34%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 6 (0.34%) SnowPro
11 5 (0.28%) BICSI Certification
11 5 (0.28%) CISM
11 5 (0.28%) CISSP
11 5 (0.28%) Master's Degree
12 4 (0.23%) Microsoft Certification
13 3 (0.17%) CEH
14 1 (0.057%) CISA
14 1 (0.057%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 438 (24.77%) Data Quality
2 59 (3.34%) QA
3 44 (2.49%) GDPR
4 17 (0.96%) Accessibility
5 12 (0.68%) SLA
6 6 (0.34%) FATCA
7 5 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 4 (0.23%) HIPAA
8 4 (0.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 3 (0.17%) MiFID
10 2 (0.11%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 2 (0.11%) EMIR
10 2 (0.11%) GMP
10 2 (0.11%) SNOMED CT
10 2 (0.11%) WCAG
11 1 (0.057%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.057%) IFRS
11 1 (0.057%) IFRS 17
11 1 (0.057%) IFRS 9
11 1 (0.057%) PMO
System Software
1 114 (6.45%) Docker
2 4 (0.23%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.11%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.11%) HDFS
4 1 (0.057%) RACF
Systems Management
1 167 (9.45%) Terraform
2 94 (5.32%) Kubernetes
3 33 (1.87%) Grafana
4 14 (0.79%) Ansible
5 8 (0.45%) Prometheus
6 7 (0.40%) Control-M
7 6 (0.34%) Kibana
8 2 (0.11%) Apache Ranger
8 2 (0.11%) Puppet
8 2 (0.11%) Rancher
8 2 (0.11%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.057%) Kubeflow
9 1 (0.057%) logstash
9 1 (0.057%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 326 (18.44%) Databricks
2 226 (12.78%) Microsoft
3 151 (8.54%) Oracle
4 122 (6.90%) Informatica
5 115 (6.50%) Talend
6 67 (3.79%) Google
7 62 (3.51%) Denodo
8 33 (1.87%) Cisco
8 33 (1.87%) F5
8 33 (1.87%) SAP
9 28 (1.58%) Salesforce
10 23 (1.30%) Palantir
11 22 (1.24%) Splunk
12 19 (1.07%) Cloudera
13 18 (1.02%) Foundry
14 15 (0.85%) ServiceNow
15 11 (0.62%) Sage
16 10 (0.57%) IBM
17 9 (0.51%) Bloomberg
18 8 (0.45%) InterSystems
588 Data Engineer jobs in England