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 19 February 2026.

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

6 months to
19 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 83 79 105
Rank change year-on-year -4 +26 +19
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,056 787 814
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.04% 3.04% 2.17%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.31% 3.27% 2.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 756 574 637
10th Percentile £359 £358 £363
25th Percentile £413 £432 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £635
90th Percentile £675 £738 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 10 26
10th Percentile £29.96 £25.45 £35.32
25th Percentile £34.13 £47.19 £39.81
Median hourly rate £58.25 £70.00 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year -16.79% +15.70% -5.47%
75th Percentile £73.56 £93.75 £67.19
90th Percentile £82.10 £97.50 £76.25
UK median hourly rate £54.50 £53.75 £60.50
% change year-on-year +1.40% -11.16% -5.47%

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 31,870 24,101 34,846
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.80% 93.03% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,212 15,168 23,324
10th Percentile £303 £296 £270
25th Percentile £409 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.67% - -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 2,043 704 2,142
10th Percentile £15.00 £16.24 £13.19
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £16.54
Median hourly rate £33.00 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -5.71% - -12.50%
75th Percentile £63.75 £65.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £74.21 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £31.18 £34.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -8.31% -2.86% -9.09%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 +2 661 £513 -6.82% 165
Midlands -14 138 £500 +4.82% 67
West Midlands -10 124 £500 +1.01% 48
North of England -33 123 £450 - 94
North West -7 74 £425 -2.86% 56
South East -41 53 £513 -2.38% 117
South West -5 47 £538 +7.50% 41
Yorkshire -34 35 £481 +1.32% 31
North East -14 14 £450 -14.29% 8
East Midlands -22 14 £431 +15.00% 19
East of England -40 6 £520 +63.52% 16
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 19 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.

1 610 (57.77%) SQL
2 582 (55.11%) Python
3 451 (42.71%) ETL
4 449 (42.52%) Azure
5 444 (42.05%) Data Pipeline
6 440 (41.67%) Data Engineering
7 390 (36.93%) Analytics
8 376 (35.61%) Data Modelling
9 331 (31.34%) Databricks
10 308 (29.17%) AWS
11 298 (28.22%) Data Quality
12 284 (26.89%) CI/CD
13 276 (26.14%) Security Cleared
14 259 (24.53%) Business Intelligence
15 241 (22.82%) SC Cleared
16 217 (20.55%) Power Platform
17 209 (19.79%) DevOps
18 205 (19.41%) Power BI
19 193 (18.28%) Azure Data Factory
19 193 (18.28%) Data Warehouse
20 189 (17.90%) Agile
21 180 (17.05%) PySpark
22 174 (16.48%) Problem-Solving
23 161 (15.25%) Data Governance
24 160 (15.15%) Data Science
25 145 (13.73%) Microsoft
26 140 (13.26%) Terraform
27 137 (12.97%) Git
28 134 (12.69%) Snowflake
29 127 (12.03%) 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
1 113 (10.70%) Apache Spark
2 108 (10.23%) Apache Airflow
3 77 (7.29%) Apache
4 30 (2.84%) SAS
5 16 (1.52%) Confluence
6 14 (1.33%) Palantir Foundry
7 5 (0.47%) Jupyter
7 5 (0.47%) Oracle Application Server
8 4 (0.38%) Apache Pig
8 4 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
9 3 (0.28%) IIS
10 2 (0.19%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.19%) SharePoint
11 1 (0.095%) Apache Synapse
11 1 (0.095%) Appian
11 1 (0.095%) Camunda
11 1 (0.095%) Luigi
11 1 (0.095%) nginx
11 1 (0.095%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 10 (0.95%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.19%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.095%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.095%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 3 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.19%) Maximo
3 1 (0.095%) Actimize
3 1 (0.095%) Aladdin
3 1 (0.095%) Elite 3E
3 1 (0.095%) iTrent
3 1 (0.095%) NEC Housing
3 1 (0.095%) Oracle BPM
3 1 (0.095%) SAP Business ByDesign
3 1 (0.095%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 449 (42.52%) Azure
2 308 (29.17%) AWS
3 217 (20.55%) Power Platform
4 193 (18.28%) Azure Data Factory
5 134 (12.69%) Snowflake
6 123 (11.65%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 110 (10.42%) GCP
8 103 (9.75%) dbt
9 100 (9.47%) Amazon S3
10 93 (8.81%) Serverless
11 88 (8.33%) GitHub
12 79 (7.48%) Azure DevOps
13 68 (6.44%) AWS Lambda
14 43 (4.07%) GitHub Actions
15 37 (3.50%) AWS CloudFormation
16 24 (2.27%) AWS Step Functions
17 22 (2.08%) SaaS
18 21 (1.99%) Matillion
19 19 (1.80%) Amazon Kinesis
20 16 (1.52%) Amazon EMR
Communications & Networking
1 14 (1.33%) DNS
2 13 (1.23%) BGP
2 13 (1.23%) DMZ
2 13 (1.23%) Multicast
2 13 (1.23%) VPN
3 4 (0.38%) Firewall
4 3 (0.28%) SAN
5 2 (0.19%) Structured Cabling
6 1 (0.095%) 4G
6 1 (0.095%) 5G
6 1 (0.095%) Network Security
6 1 (0.095%) Software-Defined Networking
6 1 (0.095%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 205 (19.41%) Power BI
2 193 (18.28%) Data Warehouse
3 121 (11.46%) Data Lake
4 99 (9.38%) SQL Server
5 71 (6.72%) Delta Lake
6 66 (6.25%) Azure SQL Database
7 62 (5.87%) Amazon Redshift
8 60 (5.68%) BigQuery
9 58 (5.49%) PostgreSQL
10 57 (5.40%) Metadata
10 57 (5.40%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 54 (5.11%) Big Data
12 50 (4.73%) NoSQL
13 41 (3.88%) Tableau
14 40 (3.79%) Pentaho
15 38 (3.60%) Snowflake Schema
16 37 (3.50%) Amazon Athena
17 32 (3.03%) Hadoop
18 30 (2.84%) Relational Database
19 23 (2.18%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 137 (12.97%) Git
2 54 (5.11%) Jenkins
3 39 (3.69%) JIRA
4 36 (3.41%) GitLab
5 22 (2.08%) MLflow
6 5 (0.47%) DBeaver
7 4 (0.38%) Visual Studio
8 3 (0.28%) Selenium
9 2 (0.19%) Bitbucket
9 2 (0.19%) JUnit
9 2 (0.19%) Visual Studio Code
10 1 (0.095%) Deequ
10 1 (0.095%) Gradle
10 1 (0.095%) Jaeger
10 1 (0.095%) Mockito
10 1 (0.095%) Poetry
10 1 (0.095%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 1 (0.095%) Team Foundation Server
10 1 (0.095%) TeamCity
10 1 (0.095%) Terragrunt
General
1 198 (18.75%) Social Skills
2 165 (15.63%) Finance
3 108 (10.23%) Analytical Skills
4 83 (7.86%) Public Sector
5 51 (4.83%) Banking
6 31 (2.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 18 (1.70%) Investment Banking
8 14 (1.33%) Retail
9 13 (1.23%) Front Office
10 12 (1.14%) Marketing
10 12 (1.14%) Pharmaceutical
11 11 (1.04%) Documentation Skills
12 10 (0.95%) Telecoms
13 8 (0.76%) Manufacturing
13 8 (0.76%) Publishing
14 6 (0.57%) Military
15 5 (0.47%) Law
16 4 (0.38%) Back Office
16 4 (0.38%) Corporate Banking
17 3 (0.28%) Aerospace
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 180 (17.05%) PySpark
2 115 (10.89%) Kafka
3 37 (3.50%) Pandas
4 26 (2.46%) JSON
5 23 (2.18%) YAML
6 22 (2.08%) REST
7 18 (1.70%) XML
8 15 (1.42%) PyTorch
9 14 (1.33%) Apache NiFi
9 14 (1.33%) NumPy
10 13 (1.23%) Great Expectations
11 12 (1.14%) Keycloak
11 12 (1.14%) Node.js
11 12 (1.14%) RESTful
11 12 (1.14%) scikit-learn
12 11 (1.04%) TensorFlow
13 10 (0.95%) Matplotlib
13 10 (0.95%) OpenTelemetry
14 9 (0.85%) HTML
14 9 (0.85%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 78 (7.39%) Cloud Native
2 32 (3.03%) Data Structures
3 26 (2.46%) Product Ownership
4 25 (2.37%) Legacy Systems
5 20 (1.89%) Replication
6 18 (1.70%) Onboarding
7 16 (1.52%) Clustering
7 16 (1.52%) Hybrid Cloud
8 14 (1.33%) Greenfield Project
8 14 (1.33%) Reinsurance
9 13 (1.23%) Algorithms
9 13 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
9 13 (1.23%) Distributed Systems
10 10 (0.95%) Public Cloud
11 9 (0.85%) Distributed Computing
12 7 (0.66%) Life Science
12 7 (0.66%) Management Information System
13 6 (0.57%) NHS
13 6 (0.57%) Wiki
14 5 (0.47%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 20 (1.89%) Linux
2 18 (1.70%) Unix
3 1 (0.095%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 451 (42.71%) ETL
2 444 (42.05%) Data Pipeline
3 440 (41.67%) Data Engineering
4 390 (36.93%) Analytics
5 376 (35.61%) Data Modelling
6 284 (26.89%) CI/CD
7 259 (24.53%) Business Intelligence
8 209 (19.79%) DevOps
9 189 (17.90%) Agile
10 174 (16.48%) Problem-Solving
11 161 (15.25%) Data Governance
12 160 (15.15%) Data Science
13 127 (12.03%) AI
14 122 (11.55%) Data Architecture
14 122 (11.55%) Data Integration
15 120 (11.36%) Infrastructure as Code
16 118 (11.17%) Machine Learning
17 113 (10.70%) Migration
18 111 (10.51%) Data Transformation
19 102 (9.66%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 610 (57.77%) SQL
2 582 (55.11%) Python
3 84 (7.95%) Scala
4 70 (6.63%) Java
5 31 (2.94%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 28 (2.65%) C#
7 27 (2.56%) T-SQL
8 24 (2.27%) PL/SQL
9 22 (2.08%) Bash
10 18 (1.70%) Bicep
11 16 (1.52%) R
12 15 (1.42%) PowerShell
12 15 (1.42%) Shell Script
13 14 (1.33%) Go
14 12 (1.14%) JavaScript
15 4 (0.38%) C++
15 4 (0.38%) Korn
15 4 (0.38%) TypeScript
16 2 (0.19%) C
16 2 (0.19%) VB
Qualifications
1 276 (26.14%) Security Cleared
2 241 (22.82%) SC Cleared
3 34 (3.22%) Azure Certification
4 33 (3.13%) Degree
5 20 (1.89%) AWS Certification
6 19 (1.80%) BPSS Clearance
7 17 (1.61%) Computer Science Degree
8 16 (1.52%) DV Cleared
9 5 (0.47%) Master's Degree
9 5 (0.47%) Microsoft Certification
10 4 (0.38%) CTC Cleared
10 4 (0.38%) DBS Check
11 2 (0.19%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 2 (0.19%) SnowPro
12 1 (0.095%) CCIE
12 1 (0.095%) CCNP
12 1 (0.095%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 298 (28.22%) Data Quality
2 46 (4.36%) GDPR
3 26 (2.46%) QA
4 9 (0.85%) Accessibility
5 4 (0.38%) HIPAA
5 4 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 3 (0.28%) FATCA
6 3 (0.28%) GMP
6 3 (0.28%) MiFID
7 2 (0.19%) Dodd-Frank
7 2 (0.19%) EMIR
7 2 (0.19%) EU AI Act
7 2 (0.19%) NIST
7 2 (0.19%) SLA
8 1 (0.095%) Basel III
8 1 (0.095%) GRC
8 1 (0.095%) ISO 13485
8 1 (0.095%) NCSC
8 1 (0.095%) PMO
8 1 (0.095%) SOC 2
System Software
1 72 (6.82%) Docker
2 9 (0.85%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (0.47%) zsh
4 1 (0.095%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.095%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 140 (13.26%) Terraform
2 80 (7.58%) Kubernetes
3 12 (1.14%) Grafana
3 12 (1.14%) Prometheus
4 6 (0.57%) Ansible
5 5 (0.47%) NetBackup
6 4 (0.38%) Kibana
7 3 (0.28%) Control-M
7 3 (0.28%) Kubeflow
7 3 (0.28%) Puppet
8 2 (0.19%) EMC NetWorker
8 2 (0.19%) logstash
8 2 (0.19%) Tivoli Storage Manager
9 1 (0.095%) Ambari
9 1 (0.095%) Argo
9 1 (0.095%) Rancher
9 1 (0.095%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 331 (31.34%) Databricks
2 145 (13.73%) Microsoft
3 84 (7.95%) Oracle
4 60 (5.68%) Talend
5 52 (4.92%) Informatica
6 39 (3.69%) Google
7 24 (2.27%) Denodo
8 17 (1.61%) Cisco
8 17 (1.61%) Foundry
8 17 (1.61%) Palantir
8 17 (1.61%) SAP
9 16 (1.52%) Splunk
10 15 (1.42%) IBM
11 14 (1.33%) F5
12 13 (1.23%) Cloudera
12 13 (1.23%) ServiceNow
13 11 (1.04%) Alteryx
14 7 (0.66%) Confluent
14 7 (0.66%) Virgin Media
15 6 (0.57%) MuleSoft