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 12 September 2026.

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

 6 months to
12 Sep 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 66 122 99
Rank change year-on-year +56 -23 +23
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,679 628 760
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.62% 2.26% 2.30%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.92% 2.47% 2.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,116 456 540
10th Percentile £381 £377 £363
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -6.98% -2.27%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £638
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 74 14 10
10th Percentile £19.34 £25.42 £49.25
25th Percentile £30.96 £37.00 £65.00
Median hourly rate £41.56 £52.50 £80.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.85% -34.38% +25.00%
75th Percentile £68.00 £74.65 -
90th Percentile £71.05 £101.00 £97.50
UK median hourly rate £41.56 £52.50 £80.00
% change year-on-year -20.85% -34.38% +25.00%

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 42,792 25,414 30,698
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.32% 91.34% 93.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,591 16,383 19,325
10th Percentile £325 £281 £305
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £506 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.75% -3.62% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,397 1,362 1,531
10th Percentile £14.96 £13.75 £14.56
25th Percentile £21.14 £17.30 £21.25
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -47.05% +6.15%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.99 £67.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £71.95 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% -

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 12 September 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 12 September 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 12 September 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 +32 843 £525 - 560
Midlands +76 346 £469 +2.79% 87
West Midlands +64 280 £469 -0.21% 52
North of England +22 208 £500 +5.26% 131
South East +33 131 £459 -4.62% 152
North West +23 115 £525 +10.53% 69
South West +9 94 £525 +5.00% 58
Yorkshire +2 76 £475 -6.17% 39
East Midlands +29 66 £450 +1.98% 35
East of England +12 38 £450 -40.00% 41
North East -33 18 £510 +20.71% 23
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 12 September 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.

1 851 (50.68%) SQL
2 731 (43.54%) Data Pipeline
3 708 (42.17%) Python
4 648 (38.59%) Data Engineering
5 581 (34.60%) Analytics
6 579 (34.48%) ETL
7 577 (34.37%) Data Modelling
8 524 (31.21%) Azure
9 522 (31.09%) AWS
10 441 (26.27%) Security Cleared
11 439 (26.15%) Data Quality
12 419 (24.96%) CI/CD
13 384 (22.87%) SC Cleared
14 334 (19.89%) Databricks
15 292 (17.39%) Agile
16 283 (16.86%) DevOps
17 281 (16.74%) Data Warehouse
18 276 (16.44%) Migration
19 272 (16.20%) Business Intelligence
20 249 (14.83%) AI
21 238 (14.18%) Data Governance
21 238 (14.18%) PySpark
22 222 (13.22%) Microsoft
23 216 (12.86%) Power Platform
24 214 (12.75%) Data Transformation
25 212 (12.63%) Power BI
26 206 (12.27%) Validation
27 204 (12.15%) Data Integration
28 203 (12.09%) Snowflake
29 199 (11.85%) Azure Data Factory

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
1 190 (11.32%) Apache Airflow
2 139 (8.28%) Apache Spark
3 115 (6.85%) Apache
4 47 (2.80%) SAS
5 34 (2.03%) Confluence
6 16 (0.95%) Palantir Foundry
7 14 (0.83%) SharePoint
8 11 (0.66%) Jupyter
9 2 (0.12%) Apache Superset
9 2 (0.12%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.060%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.060%) Liferay
10 1 (0.060%) Luigi
10 1 (0.060%) nginx
10 1 (0.060%) Oracle Workflow
10 1 (0.060%) PowerExchange
10 1 (0.060%) R Markdown
Applications
1 24 (1.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
3 5 (0.30%) Notepad++
4 3 (0.18%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.060%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 10 (0.60%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.30%) Infor LN
3 5 (0.30%) NetSuite
3 5 (0.30%) Sage X3
3 5 (0.30%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.18%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 2 (0.12%) Maximo
5 2 (0.12%) SAP BPC
5 2 (0.12%) SAP Oil and Gas
5 2 (0.12%) SimCorp Dimension
6 1 (0.060%) BambooHR
6 1 (0.060%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.060%) MIS ActiveH
6 1 (0.060%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.060%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.060%) Raiser’s Edge
6 1 (0.060%) SAP CAR
6 1 (0.060%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 524 (31.21%) Azure
2 522 (31.09%) AWS
3 216 (12.86%) Power Platform
4 203 (12.09%) Snowflake
5 199 (11.85%) Azure Data Factory
5 199 (11.85%) dbt
6 166 (9.89%) GCP
7 151 (8.99%) Amazon S3
8 124 (7.39%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 123 (7.33%) Azure DevOps
10 111 (6.61%) Serverless
11 110 (6.55%) GitHub
12 97 (5.78%) AWS Lambda
13 57 (3.39%) Azure Databricks
14 46 (2.74%) GitHub Actions
15 41 (2.44%) Amazon EMR
16 33 (1.97%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 26 (1.55%) AWS Step Functions
17 26 (1.55%) Microsoft Purview
18 24 (1.43%) Fivetran
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.61%) BGP
1 27 (1.61%) DMZ
1 27 (1.61%) DNS
1 27 (1.61%) Multicast
1 27 (1.61%) VPN
2 11 (0.66%) Structured Cabling
3 7 (0.42%) Firewall
4 5 (0.30%) PuTTY
4 5 (0.30%) WinSCP
5 4 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
5 4 (0.24%) Wireless
6 3 (0.18%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 281 (16.74%) Data Warehouse
2 212 (12.63%) Power BI
3 144 (8.58%) Data Lake
4 122 (7.27%) Metadata
5 104 (6.19%) BigQuery
6 86 (5.12%) Amazon Redshift
7 79 (4.71%) Delta Lake
8 74 (4.41%) SQL Server
9 70 (4.17%) Amazon Athena
10 64 (3.81%) Pentaho
11 59 (3.51%) Tableau
12 58 (3.45%) Big Data
12 58 (3.45%) PostgreSQL
13 50 (2.98%) Relational Database
14 48 (2.86%) Snowflake Schema
15 46 (2.74%) NoSQL
16 43 (2.56%) Azure SQL Database
17 41 (2.44%) Oracle Database
18 37 (2.20%) Amazon RDS
19 32 (1.91%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 145 (8.64%) Git
2 77 (4.59%) GitLab
3 54 (3.22%) JIRA
4 26 (1.55%) Jenkins
5 14 (0.83%) MLflow
6 7 (0.42%) Postman
7 6 (0.36%) Bitbucket
8 5 (0.30%) Artifactory
8 5 (0.30%) SonarQube
9 4 (0.24%) ERwin
9 4 (0.24%) Selenium
10 3 (0.18%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 3 (0.18%) Claude Code
10 3 (0.18%) Newman
11 2 (0.12%) ER Studio
11 2 (0.12%) RStudio
11 2 (0.12%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 2 (0.12%) Terragrunt
11 2 (0.12%) Yeoman
12 1 (0.060%) Toad
General
1 275 (16.38%) Finance
1 275 (16.38%) Social Skills
2 193 (11.49%) Analytical Skills
3 139 (8.28%) Public Sector
4 104 (6.19%) Banking
5 27 (1.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 25 (1.49%) Retail
7 23 (1.37%) Telecoms
8 21 (1.25%) Automotive
8 21 (1.25%) Marketing
9 19 (1.13%) Aerospace
10 17 (1.01%) Manufacturing
11 16 (0.95%) Investment Banking
12 15 (0.89%) Front Office
13 14 (0.83%) Documentation Skills
13 14 (0.83%) Pharmaceutical
14 11 (0.66%) Law
15 10 (0.60%) Financial Institution
15 10 (0.60%) Legal
15 10 (0.60%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 238 (14.18%) PySpark
2 177 (10.54%) Terraform
3 106 (6.31%) Kafka
4 26 (1.55%) REST
5 25 (1.49%) JSON
5 25 (1.49%) Pandas
6 22 (1.31%) Spring
6 22 (1.31%) Spring Boot
7 20 (1.19%) Great Expectations
8 17 (1.01%) XML
9 16 (0.95%) Apache Beam
10 15 (0.89%) React
11 12 (0.71%) pytest
11 12 (0.71%) RESTful
12 11 (0.66%) .NET
13 10 (0.60%) LangChain
13 10 (0.60%) Microsoft Graph
13 10 (0.60%) PyTorch
14 9 (0.54%) Apache Avro
14 9 (0.54%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 138 (8.22%) Cloud Native
2 65 (3.87%) Legacy Systems
3 50 (2.98%) Data Structures
4 35 (2.08%) Onboarding
5 26 (1.55%) Product Ownership
6 21 (1.25%) Distributed Systems
6 21 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
7 20 (1.19%) NHS
8 19 (1.13%) AI Agents
9 17 (1.01%) Reference Data
9 17 (1.01%) Reinsurance
10 16 (0.95%) Management Information System
11 13 (0.77%) Algorithms
12 11 (0.66%) Virtual Team
13 10 (0.60%) Clustering
14 9 (0.54%) Data Fabric
14 9 (0.54%) Data Protection Act
14 9 (0.54%) Replication
15 8 (0.48%) Linux Command Line
15 8 (0.48%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 54 (3.22%) Unix
2 41 (2.44%) Linux
3 2 (0.12%) Ubuntu
3 2 (0.12%) Windows
4 1 (0.060%) Robot Operating System
4 1 (0.060%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 731 (43.54%) Data Pipeline
2 648 (38.59%) Data Engineering
3 581 (34.60%) Analytics
4 579 (34.48%) ETL
5 577 (34.37%) Data Modelling
6 419 (24.96%) CI/CD
7 292 (17.39%) Agile
8 283 (16.86%) DevOps
9 276 (16.44%) Migration
10 272 (16.20%) Business Intelligence
11 249 (14.83%) AI
12 238 (14.18%) Data Governance
13 214 (12.75%) Data Transformation
14 206 (12.27%) Validation
15 204 (12.15%) Data Integration
16 185 (11.02%) Problem-Solving
17 159 (9.47%) Decision-Making
18 157 (9.35%) Lakehouse
19 151 (8.99%) Infrastructure as Code
20 143 (8.52%) Data Science
Programming Languages
1 851 (50.68%) SQL
2 708 (42.17%) Python
3 100 (5.96%) Java
4 62 (3.69%) Scala
5 45 (2.68%) PL/SQL
6 31 (1.85%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 28 (1.67%) Shell Script
8 26 (1.55%) T-SQL
9 21 (1.25%) Bash
9 21 (1.25%) PowerShell
10 18 (1.07%) JavaScript
11 12 (0.71%) C#
11 12 (0.71%) R
12 9 (0.54%) Bicep
12 9 (0.54%) TypeScript
13 6 (0.36%) Go
14 5 (0.30%) Korn
15 3 (0.18%) Kusto Query Language
15 3 (0.18%) LookML
16 2 (0.12%) Cypher
Qualifications
1 441 (26.27%) Security Cleared
2 384 (22.87%) SC Cleared
3 42 (2.50%) Degree
4 35 (2.08%) BPSS Clearance
5 24 (1.43%) DV Cleared
6 23 (1.37%) Azure Certification
6 23 (1.37%) Computer Science Degree
7 13 (0.77%) AWS Certification
8 9 (0.54%) City & Guilds
9 8 (0.48%) DBS Check
9 8 (0.48%) SnowPro
10 7 (0.42%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 7 (0.42%) Master's Degree
11 5 (0.30%) BICSI Certification
12 4 (0.24%) CISM
12 4 (0.24%) CISSP
12 4 (0.24%) Microsoft Certification
13 3 (0.18%) CEH
14 1 (0.060%) PMI Certification
14 1 (0.060%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 439 (26.15%) Data Quality
2 64 (3.81%) QA
3 36 (2.14%) GDPR
4 15 (0.89%) Accessibility
5 9 (0.54%) SLA
6 6 (0.36%) FATCA
7 5 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 4 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 3 (0.18%) HIPAA
9 3 (0.18%) MiFID
10 2 (0.12%) Disclosure Scotland
10 2 (0.12%) EMIR
10 2 (0.12%) SNOMED CT
10 2 (0.12%) WCAG
11 1 (0.060%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 1 (0.060%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.060%) IFRS
11 1 (0.060%) IFRS 17
11 1 (0.060%) IFRS 9
11 1 (0.060%) PMO
System Software
1 103 (6.13%) Docker
2 3 (0.18%) Active Directory
2 3 (0.18%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (0.060%) RACF
Systems Management
1 74 (4.41%) Kubernetes
2 26 (1.55%) Grafana
3 15 (0.89%) Ansible
4 11 (0.66%) Control-M
5 7 (0.42%) Kibana
6 5 (0.30%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.12%) Apache Ranger
7 2 (0.12%) Puppet
8 1 (0.060%) logstash
8 1 (0.060%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 334 (19.89%) Databricks
2 222 (13.22%) Microsoft
3 140 (8.34%) Oracle
4 95 (5.66%) Informatica
5 83 (4.94%) Talend
6 72 (4.29%) Google
7 45 (2.68%) Denodo
8 29 (1.73%) Salesforce
9 27 (1.61%) Cisco
9 27 (1.61%) F5
10 25 (1.49%) Palantir
10 25 (1.49%) SAP
11 23 (1.37%) Foundry
12 12 (0.71%) Splunk
13 11 (0.66%) Cloudera
14 9 (0.54%) Bloomberg
15 8 (0.48%) Alteryx
15 8 (0.48%) IBM
15 8 (0.48%) InterSystems
15 8 (0.48%) Sage
980 Data Engineer jobs in England