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 17 June 2026.

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

6 months to
17 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 54 100 98
Rank change year-on-year +46 -2 +22
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,629 646 841
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.79% 2.61% 2.24%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.11% 2.83% 2.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,138 494 643
10th Percentile £375 £363 £263
25th Percentile £425 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year - -1.96% -7.27%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £650 £700 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 56 9 40
10th Percentile £19.34 £18.13 £37.50
25th Percentile £34.96 £51.25 £49.34
Median hourly rate £45.00 £52.50 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% -22.22% -10.60%
75th Percentile £71.50 £78.70 £80.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £82.75 -
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £67.50
% change year-on-year -4.76% -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 39,651 22,840 34,791
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.36% 92.32% 92.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,409 15,016 22,678
10th Percentile £325 £293 £288
25th Percentile £415 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.46% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £635 £638
90th Percentile £731 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £515 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,798 1,018 2,675
10th Percentile £15.93 £14.00 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.35 £18.13 £16.58
Median hourly rate £45.00 £28.75 £39.55
Median % change year-on-year +56.52% -27.31% -12.11%
75th Percentile £67.50 £58.75 £62.83
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £74.00
UK median hourly rate £43.61 £27.45 £37.50
% change year-on-year +58.85% -26.80% -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 17 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 17 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 17 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 +37 853 £525 - 112
Midlands +54 318 £469 +4.22% 51
West Midlands +50 297 £465 +1.09% 27
North of England +16 214 £475 - 86
North West +17 131 £480 +1.05% 50
South East +20 117 £475 +11.76% 86
South West +20 86 £506 +3.79% 32
Yorkshire -19 62 £470 +4.44% 20
East Midlands -13 21 £525 +28.05% 24
North East -19 21 £450 - 16
East of England -19 21 £498 +56.45% 19
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 17 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.

1 881 (54.08%) SQL
2 726 (44.57%) Python
3 671 (41.19%) Data Pipeline
4 613 (37.63%) Analytics
5 608 (37.32%) ETL
6 598 (36.71%) Data Engineering
7 557 (34.19%) Data Modelling
8 524 (32.17%) Azure
9 471 (28.91%) AWS
10 465 (28.55%) Security Cleared
11 413 (25.35%) SC Cleared
12 410 (25.17%) Data Quality
13 396 (24.31%) CI/CD
14 346 (21.24%) Business Intelligence
15 343 (21.06%) Databricks
16 285 (17.50%) DevOps
17 282 (17.31%) Agile
18 278 (17.07%) Power Platform
19 271 (16.64%) Data Warehouse
20 265 (16.27%) Power BI
21 232 (14.24%) PySpark
22 219 (13.44%) Azure Data Factory
23 218 (13.38%) Migration
24 216 (13.26%) Microsoft
25 211 (12.95%) Data Governance
25 211 (12.95%) Problem-Solving
26 202 (12.40%) AI
27 181 (11.11%) Terraform
28 175 (10.74%) Validation
29 170 (10.44%) Data Integration

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
1 149 (9.15%) Apache Airflow
2 137 (8.41%) Apache Spark
3 91 (5.59%) Apache
4 73 (4.48%) SAS
5 37 (2.27%) Confluence
6 9 (0.55%) Jupyter
7 8 (0.49%) Palantir Foundry
8 7 (0.43%) SharePoint
9 5 (0.31%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.061%) Apache Superset
10 1 (0.061%) Appian
10 1 (0.061%) Camunda
10 1 (0.061%) Liferay
10 1 (0.061%) Luigi
10 1 (0.061%) R Markdown
Applications
1 16 (0.98%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.31%) Notepad++
3 4 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.061%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 6 (0.37%) Aladdin
1 6 (0.37%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (0.25%) Infor LN
3 3 (0.18%) NetSuite
3 3 (0.18%) Sage X3
3 3 (0.18%) SAP BPC
3 3 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.18%) SimCorp Dimension
4 2 (0.12%) BambooHR
4 2 (0.12%) Maximo
5 1 (0.061%) Elite 3E
5 1 (0.061%) FIS Private Capital Suite
5 1 (0.061%) iTrent
5 1 (0.061%) NEC Housing
5 1 (0.061%) Oracle 11i
5 1 (0.061%) Oracle Assets
5 1 (0.061%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.061%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.061%) Raiser’s Edge
5 1 (0.061%) SAP CAR
Cloud Services
1 524 (32.17%) Azure
2 471 (28.91%) AWS
3 278 (17.07%) Power Platform
4 219 (13.44%) Azure Data Factory
5 170 (10.44%) Snowflake
6 158 (9.70%) Amazon S3
6 158 (9.70%) dbt
7 146 (8.96%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 140 (8.59%) GCP
9 137 (8.41%) Azure DevOps
10 112 (6.88%) GitHub
11 106 (6.51%) Serverless
12 91 (5.59%) AWS Lambda
13 55 (3.38%) GitHub Actions
14 34 (2.09%) Matillion
15 31 (1.90%) Amazon EMR
16 29 (1.78%) AWS CloudFormation
17 26 (1.60%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 25 (1.53%) Amazon Kinesis
19 24 (1.47%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 33 (2.03%) DNS
1 33 (2.03%) VPN
2 32 (1.96%) BGP
2 32 (1.96%) DMZ
2 32 (1.96%) Multicast
3 10 (0.61%) 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 (0.061%) 4G
6 1 (0.061%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 271 (16.64%) Data Warehouse
2 265 (16.27%) Power BI
3 170 (10.44%) Data Lake
4 116 (7.12%) SQL Server
5 100 (6.14%) Amazon Redshift
6 92 (5.65%) Delta Lake
7 86 (5.28%) Pentaho
8 85 (5.22%) BigQuery
9 84 (5.16%) Metadata
10 73 (4.48%) Tableau
11 70 (4.30%) Azure SQL Database
12 66 (4.05%) Amazon Athena
13 64 (3.93%) Snowflake Schema
14 62 (3.81%) PostgreSQL
15 57 (3.50%) Big Data
16 55 (3.38%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 50 (3.07%) NoSQL
18 41 (2.52%) Relational Database
19 36 (2.21%) Data Vault
20 34 (2.09%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 160 (9.82%) Git
2 84 (5.16%) GitLab
3 76 (4.67%) JIRA
4 46 (2.82%) Jenkins
5 7 (0.43%) Postman
6 5 (0.31%) Artifactory
6 5 (0.31%) MLflow
7 3 (0.18%) Bitbucket
7 3 (0.18%) Newman
7 3 (0.18%) SonarQube
8 2 (0.12%) Sonatype Nexus
8 2 (0.12%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 2 (0.12%) Terragrunt
8 2 (0.12%) Visual Studio
9 1 (0.061%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 1 (0.061%) ER Studio
9 1 (0.061%) ERwin
9 1 (0.061%) JUnit
9 1 (0.061%) Octopus Deploy
9 1 (0.061%) Selenium
General
1 279 (17.13%) Finance
2 257 (15.78%) Social Skills
3 167 (10.25%) Analytical Skills
4 140 (8.59%) Public Sector
5 91 (5.59%) Banking
6 29 (1.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 26 (1.60%) Retail
8 23 (1.41%) Telecoms
9 21 (1.29%) Marketing
10 20 (1.23%) Documentation Skills
10 20 (1.23%) Investment Banking
11 17 (1.04%) Manufacturing
11 17 (1.04%) Pharmaceutical
12 13 (0.80%) Aerospace
13 11 (0.68%) Publishing
14 9 (0.55%) Front Office
15 8 (0.49%) Automotive
16 7 (0.43%) Billing
16 7 (0.43%) Military
17 6 (0.37%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 232 (14.24%) PySpark
2 133 (8.16%) Kafka
3 46 (2.82%) Pandas
4 33 (2.03%) JSON
5 28 (1.72%) REST
6 25 (1.53%) Great Expectations
7 22 (1.35%) Spring
7 22 (1.35%) Spring Boot
8 21 (1.29%) XML
9 18 (1.10%) YAML
10 15 (0.92%) Apache Beam
11 13 (0.80%) Apache Avro
12 12 (0.74%) scikit-learn
13 11 (0.68%) React
14 10 (0.61%) Matplotlib
14 10 (0.61%) PyTorch
15 9 (0.55%) GeoJSON
15 9 (0.55%) Node.js
15 9 (0.55%) pytest
15 9 (0.55%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 125 (7.67%) Cloud Native
2 53 (3.25%) Legacy Systems
3 42 (2.58%) Data Structures
4 27 (1.66%) Greenfield Project
4 27 (1.66%) Product Ownership
5 26 (1.60%) Onboarding
6 24 (1.47%) Reinsurance
7 23 (1.41%) Distributed Systems
8 20 (1.23%) Clustering
9 17 (1.04%) Data Protection Act
10 16 (0.98%) NHS
11 10 (0.61%) Distributed Computing
11 10 (0.61%) Life Science
12 9 (0.55%) Driving Licence
12 9 (0.55%) Public Cloud
12 9 (0.55%) Reference Data
12 9 (0.55%) Self-Motivation
12 9 (0.55%) Virtual Team
13 8 (0.49%) Replication
14 7 (0.43%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 57 (3.50%) Unix
2 36 (2.21%) Linux
3 4 (0.25%) Windows
4 2 (0.12%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.12%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.061%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 671 (41.19%) Data Pipeline
2 613 (37.63%) Analytics
3 608 (37.32%) ETL
4 598 (36.71%) Data Engineering
5 557 (34.19%) Data Modelling
6 396 (24.31%) CI/CD
7 346 (21.24%) Business Intelligence
8 285 (17.50%) DevOps
9 282 (17.31%) Agile
10 218 (13.38%) Migration
11 211 (12.95%) Data Governance
11 211 (12.95%) Problem-Solving
12 202 (12.40%) AI
13 175 (10.74%) Validation
14 170 (10.44%) Data Integration
15 155 (9.52%) Data Science
16 150 (9.21%) Decision-Making
17 146 (8.96%) Data Transformation
18 132 (8.10%) Infrastructure as Code
19 122 (7.49%) Data Architecture
Programming Languages
1 881 (54.08%) SQL
2 726 (44.57%) Python
3 101 (6.20%) Java
4 62 (3.81%) Scala
5 52 (3.19%) PL/SQL
6 34 (2.09%) T-SQL
7 33 (2.03%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 31 (1.90%) C#
9 28 (1.72%) Shell Script
10 27 (1.66%) Bash
11 18 (1.10%) PowerShell
12 17 (1.04%) Bicep
13 13 (0.80%) R
14 9 (0.55%) JavaScript
15 6 (0.37%) Go
15 6 (0.37%) TypeScript
16 2 (0.12%) C
16 2 (0.12%) Korn
16 2 (0.12%) Ruby
16 2 (0.12%) VB
Qualifications
1 465 (28.55%) Security Cleared
2 413 (25.35%) SC Cleared
3 38 (2.33%) BPSS Clearance
4 37 (2.27%) Degree
5 26 (1.60%) Azure Certification
6 14 (0.86%) Computer Science Degree
7 12 (0.74%) DV Cleared
8 11 (0.68%) AWS Certification
9 9 (0.55%) City & Guilds
9 9 (0.55%) DBS Check
10 8 (0.49%) Microsoft Certification
11 6 (0.37%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 5 (0.31%) BICSI Certification
12 5 (0.31%) SnowPro
13 3 (0.18%) Master's Degree
14 2 (0.12%) CISM
14 2 (0.12%) CISSP
15 1 (0.061%) CCIE
15 1 (0.061%) CISA
15 1 (0.061%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 410 (25.17%) Data Quality
2 52 (3.19%) QA
3 47 (2.89%) GDPR
4 12 (0.74%) SLA
5 9 (0.55%) Accessibility
5 9 (0.55%) FATCA
6 5 (0.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 4 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 4 (0.25%) MiFID
8 3 (0.18%) GMP
9 2 (0.12%) EMIR
9 2 (0.12%) SNOMED CT
9 2 (0.12%) WCAG
10 1 (0.061%) Basel III
10 1 (0.061%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 1 (0.061%) GRC
10 1 (0.061%) GxP
10 1 (0.061%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.061%) IFRS 17
10 1 (0.061%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 92 (5.65%) Docker
2 6 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.12%) HDFS
4 1 (0.061%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.061%) RACF
Systems Management
1 181 (11.11%) Terraform
2 76 (4.67%) Kubernetes
3 35 (2.15%) Grafana
4 11 (0.68%) Ansible
5 9 (0.55%) Prometheus
6 5 (0.31%) Kibana
7 3 (0.18%) Rancher
8 2 (0.12%) Apache Ranger
8 2 (0.12%) Control-M
8 2 (0.12%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.061%) Kubeflow
9 1 (0.061%) NetBackup
9 1 (0.061%) Puppet
Vendors
1 343 (21.06%) Databricks
2 216 (13.26%) Microsoft
3 154 (9.45%) Oracle
4 121 (7.43%) Informatica
5 120 (7.37%) Talend
6 64 (3.93%) Denodo
7 57 (3.50%) Google
8 34 (2.09%) Cisco
8 34 (2.09%) F5
9 29 (1.78%) SAP
10 22 (1.35%) ServiceNow
11 21 (1.29%) Splunk
12 18 (1.10%) Cloudera
12 18 (1.10%) Salesforce
13 15 (0.92%) Alteryx
14 13 (0.80%) Palantir
15 12 (0.74%) IBM
16 11 (0.68%) Foundry
17 9 (0.55%) Sage
18 8 (0.49%) InterSystems