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 6 October 2026.

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

6 months to
6 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 66 129 96
Rank change year-on-year +63 -33 +35
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,638 611 766
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.54% 2.20% 2.38%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.84% 2.42% 2.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,070 442 530
10th Percentile £375 £363 £363
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.05% -9.05% -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £636
90th Percentile £675 £694 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 66 12 8
10th Percentile £21.25 £25.25 £49.25
25th Percentile £30.96 £32.94 £57.31
Median hourly rate £41.56 £48.00 £80.00
Median % change year-on-year -13.43% -40.00% +29.55%
75th Percentile £68.00 £66.88 £97.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £107.00 -
UK median hourly rate £41.56 £52.50 £80.00
% change year-on-year -20.85% -34.38% +29.55%

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 42,656 25,279 29,913
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.08% 91.06% 93.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,141 16,283 18,289
10th Percentile £325 £278 £300
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.24%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,680 1,407 1,330
10th Percentile £14.59 £13.80 £15.00
25th Percentile £20.48 £17.33 £21.25
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -6.40%
75th Percentile £68.00 £52.08 £67.50
90th Percentile £79.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +65.94% -40.82% -4.49%

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 6 October 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 6 October 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 6 October 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 +34 823 £528 +0.48% 898
Midlands +73 321 £469 +1.41% 124
West Midlands +54 241 £469 -6.20% 84
North of England +27 200 £525 +10.53% 307
South East +23 122 £459 -0.76% 217
South West +30 116 £525 +5.00% 84
North West +26 107 £525 +22.09% 158
East Midlands +43 80 £388 -16.22% 40
Yorkshire +2 74 £505 -0.25% 90
East of England +5 36 £545 +9.00% 61
North East -25 20 £480 +15.32% 60
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 6 October 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.

1 830 (50.67%) SQL
2 714 (43.59%) Data Pipeline
3 702 (42.86%) Python
4 651 (39.74%) Data Engineering
5 576 (35.16%) Data Modelling
6 566 (34.55%) ETL
7 550 (33.58%) Analytics
8 513 (31.32%) AWS
9 498 (30.40%) Azure
10 427 (26.07%) Data Quality
11 418 (25.52%) Security Cleared
12 407 (24.85%) CI/CD
13 351 (21.43%) SC Cleared
14 335 (20.45%) Databricks
15 289 (17.64%) Agile
16 276 (16.85%) DevOps
17 273 (16.67%) Migration
18 270 (16.48%) AI
18 270 (16.48%) Data Warehouse
19 245 (14.96%) Business Intelligence
20 228 (13.92%) Data Transformation
21 222 (13.55%) Validation
22 220 (13.43%) PySpark
23 219 (13.37%) Data Governance
24 213 (13.00%) Microsoft
25 209 (12.76%) Snowflake
26 206 (12.58%) dbt
27 205 (12.52%) Data Integration
28 198 (12.09%) Power Platform
29 193 (11.78%) Power BI

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
1 183 (11.17%) Apache Airflow
2 148 (9.04%) Apache Spark
3 126 (7.69%) Apache
4 34 (2.08%) Confluence
4 34 (2.08%) SAS
5 18 (1.10%) Palantir Foundry
6 14 (0.85%) SharePoint
7 13 (0.79%) Jupyter
8 3 (0.18%) Apache Superset
8 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.12%) CMS
10 1 (0.061%) Apache Pulsar
10 1 (0.061%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.061%) Liferay
10 1 (0.061%) Luigi
10 1 (0.061%) nginx
10 1 (0.061%) Oracle Workflow
10 1 (0.061%) PowerExchange
Applications
1 20 (1.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (0.49%) Spreadsheet
3 4 (0.24%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.061%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.061%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.061%) Notepad++
Business Applications
1 12 (0.73%) Aladdin
2 7 (0.43%) Dynamics CRM
3 6 (0.37%) NetSuite
4 5 (0.31%) Infor LN
4 5 (0.31%) Sage X3
4 5 (0.31%) SAP S/4HANA
5 3 (0.18%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 2 (0.12%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 2 (0.12%) Maximo
6 2 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.12%) SAP BPC
6 2 (0.12%) SAP Oil and Gas
6 2 (0.12%) SimCorp Dimension
7 1 (0.061%) Dynamics NAV
7 1 (0.061%) Markit EDM
7 1 (0.061%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.061%) Oracle Retail
7 1 (0.061%) Raiser’s Edge
7 1 (0.061%) SAP CAR
7 1 (0.061%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 513 (31.32%) AWS
2 498 (30.40%) Azure
3 209 (12.76%) Snowflake
4 206 (12.58%) dbt
5 198 (12.09%) Power Platform
6 190 (11.60%) Azure Data Factory
7 183 (11.17%) GCP
8 146 (8.91%) Amazon S3
9 110 (6.72%) Azure DevOps
10 108 (6.59%) Serverless
11 104 (6.35%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 97 (5.92%) GitHub
13 94 (5.74%) AWS Lambda
14 58 (3.54%) Azure Databricks
15 47 (2.87%) Amazon EMR
16 44 (2.69%) GitHub Actions
17 33 (2.01%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 27 (1.65%) AWS Step Functions
19 26 (1.59%) Microsoft Purview
20 24 (1.47%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.40%) DNS
2 22 (1.34%) BGP
2 22 (1.34%) DMZ
2 22 (1.34%) Multicast
2 22 (1.34%) VPN
3 6 (0.37%) Firewall
4 4 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
4 4 (0.24%) Wireless
5 3 (0.18%) Intrusion Detection
5 3 (0.18%) Structured Cabling
6 1 (0.061%) Cisco IPT
6 1 (0.061%) HTTP
6 1 (0.061%) HTTPS
6 1 (0.061%) Network Security
6 1 (0.061%) PuTTY
6 1 (0.061%) TCP/IP
6 1 (0.061%) tcpdump
6 1 (0.061%) WinSCP
6 1 (0.061%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 270 (16.48%) Data Warehouse
2 193 (11.78%) Power BI
3 133 (8.12%) Data Lake
4 121 (7.39%) Metadata
5 100 (6.11%) BigQuery
6 84 (5.13%) Amazon Redshift
7 76 (4.64%) Delta Lake
8 68 (4.15%) Amazon Athena
9 65 (3.97%) SQL Server
10 61 (3.72%) Big Data
11 59 (3.60%) Pentaho
12 58 (3.54%) PostgreSQL
13 49 (2.99%) Relational Database
14 46 (2.81%) Tableau
15 45 (2.75%) NoSQL
16 43 (2.63%) Snowflake Schema
17 41 (2.50%) Oracle Database
18 37 (2.26%) Amazon RDS
19 34 (2.08%) Azure SQL Database
19 34 (2.08%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 144 (8.79%) Git
2 80 (4.88%) GitLab
3 44 (2.69%) JIRA
4 24 (1.47%) Jenkins
5 14 (0.85%) MLflow
6 8 (0.49%) Bitbucket
6 8 (0.49%) Postman
7 6 (0.37%) Artifactory
7 6 (0.37%) Selenium
8 5 (0.31%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.18%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 3 (0.18%) Claude Code
9 3 (0.18%) ERwin
9 3 (0.18%) Newman
9 3 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 2 (0.12%) RStudio
10 2 (0.12%) Terragrunt
10 2 (0.12%) Yeoman
11 1 (0.061%) Sonatype Nexus
11 1 (0.061%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 274 (16.73%) Social Skills
2 255 (15.57%) Finance
3 187 (11.42%) Analytical Skills
4 147 (8.97%) Public Sector
5 105 (6.41%) Banking
6 26 (1.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 25 (1.53%) Retail
8 23 (1.40%) Automotive
9 21 (1.28%) Aerospace
10 19 (1.16%) Front Office
10 19 (1.16%) Investment Banking
11 17 (1.04%) Manufacturing
12 16 (0.98%) Marketing
13 15 (0.92%) Telecoms
14 14 (0.85%) Military
14 14 (0.85%) Pharmaceutical
15 11 (0.67%) Back Office
15 11 (0.67%) Documentation Skills
16 10 (0.61%) Legal
17 9 (0.55%) Law
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 220 (13.43%) PySpark
2 178 (10.87%) Terraform
3 103 (6.29%) Kafka
4 30 (1.83%) REST
5 23 (1.40%) JSON
6 22 (1.34%) Pandas
7 17 (1.04%) Spring
7 17 (1.04%) Spring Boot
7 17 (1.04%) XML
8 15 (0.92%) Great Expectations
9 14 (0.85%) Apache Beam
9 14 (0.85%) pytest
10 13 (0.79%) Apache NiFi
11 12 (0.73%) LangChain
11 12 (0.73%) PyTorch
11 12 (0.73%) RESTful
12 10 (0.61%) .NET
12 10 (0.61%) Microsoft Graph
12 10 (0.61%) React
13 7 (0.43%) LangGraph
Miscellaneous
1 140 (8.55%) Cloud Native
2 56 (3.42%) Legacy Systems
3 51 (3.11%) Data Structures
4 42 (2.56%) Onboarding
5 25 (1.53%) Product Ownership
6 22 (1.34%) AI Agents
7 20 (1.22%) Distributed Systems
8 17 (1.04%) Algorithms
8 17 (1.04%) Management Information System
9 16 (0.98%) Greenfield Project
9 16 (0.98%) Reference Data
10 15 (0.92%) Reinsurance
11 14 (0.85%) NHS
12 11 (0.67%) Virtual Team
13 10 (0.61%) Data Protection Act
14 9 (0.55%) Distributed Computing
15 8 (0.49%) Clustering
15 8 (0.49%) Data Fabric
15 8 (0.49%) Enterprise Software
16 7 (0.43%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 37 (2.26%) Unix
2 33 (2.01%) Linux
3 2 (0.12%) Ubuntu
3 2 (0.12%) Windows
4 1 (0.061%) Robot Operating System
4 1 (0.061%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 714 (43.59%) Data Pipeline
2 651 (39.74%) Data Engineering
3 576 (35.16%) Data Modelling
4 566 (34.55%) ETL
5 550 (33.58%) Analytics
6 407 (24.85%) CI/CD
7 289 (17.64%) Agile
8 276 (16.85%) DevOps
9 273 (16.67%) Migration
10 270 (16.48%) AI
11 245 (14.96%) Business Intelligence
12 228 (13.92%) Data Transformation
13 222 (13.55%) Validation
14 219 (13.37%) Data Governance
15 205 (12.52%) Data Integration
16 173 (10.56%) Problem-Solving
17 154 (9.40%) Machine Learning
18 152 (9.28%) Decision-Making
19 151 (9.22%) Lakehouse
20 150 (9.16%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 830 (50.67%) SQL
2 702 (42.86%) Python
3 84 (5.13%) Java
4 64 (3.91%) Scala
5 37 (2.26%) PL/SQL
6 29 (1.77%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 26 (1.59%) T-SQL
8 24 (1.47%) PowerShell
9 20 (1.22%) Shell Script
10 19 (1.16%) Bash
11 18 (1.10%) JavaScript
12 13 (0.79%) R
13 10 (0.61%) Go
14 9 (0.55%) Bicep
15 7 (0.43%) C#
15 7 (0.43%) TypeScript
16 5 (0.31%) Korn
17 3 (0.18%) Kusto Query Language
18 2 (0.12%) COBOL
18 2 (0.12%) Cypher
Qualifications
1 418 (25.52%) Security Cleared
2 351 (21.43%) SC Cleared
3 43 (2.63%) BPSS Clearance
4 41 (2.50%) Degree
5 38 (2.32%) DV Cleared
6 24 (1.47%) Azure Certification
7 19 (1.16%) Computer Science Degree
8 13 (0.79%) AWS Certification
9 8 (0.49%) DBS Check
9 8 (0.49%) Master's Degree
10 7 (0.43%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 6 (0.37%) SnowPro
12 5 (0.31%) CISM
12 5 (0.31%) CISSP
13 4 (0.24%) City & Guilds
14 3 (0.18%) CEH
14 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Certification
15 1 (0.061%) CISA
15 1 (0.061%) PMI Certification
15 1 (0.061%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 427 (26.07%) Data Quality
2 69 (4.21%) QA
3 30 (1.83%) GDPR
4 13 (0.79%) Accessibility
5 6 (0.37%) FATCA
5 6 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (0.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 5 (0.31%) SLA
7 4 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
8 3 (0.18%) HIPAA
8 3 (0.18%) MiFID
9 2 (0.12%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 2 (0.12%) EMIR
9 2 (0.12%) SNOMED CT
10 1 (0.061%) Government Security Classifications
10 1 (0.061%) IFRS
10 1 (0.061%) IFRS 17
10 1 (0.061%) IFRS 9
10 1 (0.061%) NIST
10 1 (0.061%) PMO
System Software
1 95 (5.80%) Docker
2 3 (0.18%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.061%) HDFS
3 1 (0.061%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 80 (4.88%) Kubernetes
2 19 (1.16%) Ansible
3 18 (1.10%) Grafana
4 11 (0.67%) Control-M
5 10 (0.61%) Kibana
6 4 (0.24%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.12%) Puppet
8 1 (0.061%) logstash
8 1 (0.061%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 335 (20.45%) Databricks
2 213 (13.00%) Microsoft
3 132 (8.06%) Oracle
4 84 (5.13%) Google
4 84 (5.13%) Informatica
5 73 (4.46%) Talend
6 32 (1.95%) Denodo
7 30 (1.83%) Salesforce
8 28 (1.71%) Palantir
9 26 (1.59%) SAP
10 25 (1.53%) Foundry
11 22 (1.34%) Cisco
11 22 (1.34%) F5
12 11 (0.67%) Splunk
13 9 (0.55%) Bloomberg
13 9 (0.55%) OpenAI
14 8 (0.49%) Sage
15 7 (0.43%) Alteryx
15 7 (0.43%) Cloudera
15 7 (0.43%) InterSystems