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 31 July 2026.

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

6 months to
31 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 56 122 93
Rank change year-on-year +66 -29 +23
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,742 644 810
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.84% 2.34% 2.38%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.15% 2.55% 2.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,190 468 603
10th Percentile £382 £375 £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 £600 £638
90th Percentile £663 £700 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £518
% change year-on-year - -3.45% -5.84%
Number of hourly rates quoted 80 11 30
10th Percentile £19.34 £18.22 £36.88
25th Percentile £30.96 £34.13 £50.06
Median hourly rate £43.75 £52.50 £77.50
Median % change year-on-year -16.67% -32.26% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £70.60 £80.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £80.00 -
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £75.00
% change year-on-year -4.76% -30.00% -3.23%

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 41,951 25,239 31,602
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.56% 91.71% 92.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,523 16,403 20,840
10th Percentile £329 £288 £300
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.02%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,084 1,288 1,943
10th Percentile £15.93 £13.75 £14.05
25th Percentile £22.00 £17.87 £20.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £26.30 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +71.10% -38.84% -
75th Percentile £68.00 £56.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.04 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +68.99% -40.82% -1.16%

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 31 July 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 31 July 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 31 July 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 +44 852 £525 - 214
Midlands +63 391 £460 +2.22% 47
West Midlands +55 339 £459 -0.22% 32
North of England +30 231 £475 - 83
North West +20 136 £525 +10.53% 40
South East +19 127 £469 +10.35% 93
South West +9 86 £525 +2.44% 36
Yorkshire -12 73 £475 - 20
East Midlands +22 52 £475 +13.10% 15
East of England +5 35 £520 +63.52% 13
North East -26 23 £515 +21.18% 24
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 31 July 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.

1 895 (51.38%) SQL
2 738 (42.37%) Data Pipeline
3 733 (42.08%) Python
4 645 (37.03%) Data Engineering
5 627 (35.99%) Analytics
6 611 (35.07%) ETL
7 581 (33.35%) Data Modelling
8 546 (31.34%) Azure
9 496 (28.47%) AWS
10 471 (27.04%) Security Cleared
11 430 (24.68%) Data Quality
12 417 (23.94%) CI/CD
13 412 (23.65%) SC Cleared
14 322 (18.48%) Databricks
15 313 (17.97%) Business Intelligence
16 303 (17.39%) Agile
17 291 (16.70%) Data Warehouse
18 282 (16.19%) DevOps
19 278 (15.96%) Migration
20 245 (14.06%) Power Platform
21 234 (13.43%) Data Governance
22 233 (13.38%) Power BI
23 229 (13.15%) PySpark
24 224 (12.86%) Azure Data Factory
25 219 (12.57%) Microsoft
26 210 (12.06%) AI
27 207 (11.88%) Validation
28 206 (11.83%) Problem-Solving
29 195 (11.19%) Data Integration
30 190 (10.91%) 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
1 168 (9.64%) Apache Airflow
2 138 (7.92%) Apache Spark
3 107 (6.14%) Apache
4 73 (4.19%) SAS
5 39 (2.24%) Confluence
6 13 (0.75%) Palantir Foundry
7 10 (0.57%) Jupyter
7 10 (0.57%) SharePoint
8 2 (0.11%) Apache Superset
8 2 (0.11%) Microsoft Exchange
9 1 (0.057%) ArcGIS
9 1 (0.057%) Liferay
9 1 (0.057%) Luigi
9 1 (0.057%) R Markdown
Applications
1 21 (1.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.29%) Notepad++
2 5 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
3 3 (0.17%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.057%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 12 (0.69%) Aladdin
2 8 (0.46%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.29%) Infor LN
3 5 (0.29%) NetSuite
3 5 (0.29%) 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%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.057%) MIS ActiveH
6 1 (0.057%) NEC Housing
6 1 (0.057%) Oracle 11i
6 1 (0.057%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.057%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.057%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.057%) SAP Business ByDesign
6 1 (0.057%) SAP CAR
6 1 (0.057%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 546 (31.34%) Azure
2 496 (28.47%) AWS
3 245 (14.06%) Power Platform
4 224 (12.86%) Azure Data Factory
5 189 (10.85%) dbt
6 186 (10.68%) Snowflake
7 161 (9.24%) GCP
8 145 (8.32%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 144 (8.27%) Amazon S3
10 129 (7.41%) Azure DevOps
11 101 (5.80%) GitHub
12 95 (5.45%) Serverless
13 80 (4.59%) AWS Lambda
14 44 (2.53%) GitHub Actions
15 36 (2.07%) Amazon EMR
16 28 (1.61%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 25 (1.44%) Matillion
18 23 (1.32%) Dagster
18 23 (1.32%) Fivetran
18 23 (1.32%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 32 (1.84%) DNS
1 32 (1.84%) VPN
2 31 (1.78%) BGP
2 31 (1.78%) DMZ
2 31 (1.78%) Multicast
3 9 (0.52%) Structured Cabling
4 7 (0.40%) Firewall
5 5 (0.29%) PuTTY
5 5 (0.29%) 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
1 291 (16.70%) Data Warehouse
2 233 (13.38%) Power BI
3 157 (9.01%) Data Lake
4 97 (5.57%) BigQuery
5 94 (5.40%) Amazon Redshift
6 92 (5.28%) Metadata
7 87 (4.99%) SQL Server
8 85 (4.88%) Pentaho
9 81 (4.65%) Delta Lake
10 68 (3.90%) Tableau
11 61 (3.50%) Big Data
11 61 (3.50%) PostgreSQL
12 60 (3.44%) Amazon Athena
13 57 (3.27%) Snowflake Schema
14 51 (2.93%) Azure SQL Database
15 50 (2.87%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 48 (2.76%) NoSQL
17 47 (2.70%) Relational Database
18 34 (1.95%) Hadoop
19 33 (1.89%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 157 (9.01%) Git
2 78 (4.48%) GitLab
3 67 (3.85%) JIRA
4 44 (2.53%) Jenkins
5 7 (0.40%) MLflow
5 7 (0.40%) Postman
6 5 (0.29%) Artifactory
6 5 (0.29%) Bitbucket
7 4 (0.23%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.17%) Newman
8 3 (0.17%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.11%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 2 (0.11%) ER Studio
9 2 (0.11%) ERwin
9 2 (0.11%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 2 (0.11%) Yeoman
10 1 (0.057%) JUnit
10 1 (0.057%) Octopus Deploy
10 1 (0.057%) Selenium
10 1 (0.057%) Terragrunt
General
1 292 (16.76%) Finance
2 265 (15.21%) Social Skills
3 196 (11.25%) Analytical Skills
4 157 (9.01%) Public Sector
5 100 (5.74%) Banking
6 31 (1.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 26 (1.49%) Telecoms
8 23 (1.32%) Marketing
8 23 (1.32%) Retail
9 21 (1.21%) Documentation Skills
10 20 (1.15%) Manufacturing
11 19 (1.09%) Automotive
12 17 (0.98%) Investment Banking
12 17 (0.98%) Pharmaceutical
13 16 (0.92%) Front Office
14 15 (0.86%) Aerospace
15 11 (0.63%) Publishing
16 9 (0.52%) Billing
17 8 (0.46%) Legal
17 8 (0.46%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 229 (13.15%) PySpark
2 123 (7.06%) Kafka
3 38 (2.18%) Pandas
4 30 (1.72%) JSON
5 25 (1.44%) REST
6 21 (1.21%) Spring
6 21 (1.21%) Spring Boot
7 20 (1.15%) Great Expectations
7 20 (1.15%) XML
8 19 (1.09%) Apache Beam
9 16 (0.92%) YAML
10 14 (0.80%) React
11 12 (0.69%) Apache Avro
11 12 (0.69%) scikit-learn
12 11 (0.63%) RESTful
13 10 (0.57%) Microsoft Graph
13 10 (0.57%) pytest
14 9 (0.52%) GeoJSON
14 9 (0.52%) Polars
14 9 (0.52%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 127 (7.29%) Cloud Native
2 73 (4.19%) Legacy Systems
3 52 (2.99%) Data Structures
4 32 (1.84%) Onboarding
5 28 (1.61%) Distributed Systems
6 22 (1.26%) Greenfield Project
6 22 (1.26%) NHS
7 21 (1.21%) Product Ownership
8 19 (1.09%) Reinsurance
9 18 (1.03%) Clustering
10 15 (0.86%) Reference Data
11 14 (0.80%) Data Protection Act
12 12 (0.69%) Life Science
13 11 (0.63%) Algorithms
14 10 (0.57%) Management Information System
14 10 (0.57%) Virtual Team
15 9 (0.52%) AI Agents
15 9 (0.52%) Driving Licence
15 9 (0.52%) Self-Motivation
16 8 (0.46%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 58 (3.33%) Unix
2 44 (2.53%) Linux
3 4 (0.23%) Windows
4 2 (0.11%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.11%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.057%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 738 (42.37%) Data Pipeline
2 645 (37.03%) Data Engineering
3 627 (35.99%) Analytics
4 611 (35.07%) ETL
5 581 (33.35%) Data Modelling
6 417 (23.94%) CI/CD
7 313 (17.97%) Business Intelligence
8 303 (17.39%) Agile
9 282 (16.19%) DevOps
10 278 (15.96%) Migration
11 234 (13.43%) Data Governance
12 210 (12.06%) AI
13 207 (11.88%) Validation
14 206 (11.83%) Problem-Solving
15 195 (11.19%) Data Integration
16 190 (10.91%) Data Transformation
17 172 (9.87%) Decision-Making
18 167 (9.59%) Data Science
19 139 (7.98%) Infrastructure as Code
20 135 (7.75%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 895 (51.38%) SQL
2 733 (42.08%) Python
3 106 (6.08%) Java
4 57 (3.27%) Scala
5 51 (2.93%) PL/SQL
6 35 (2.01%) Shell Script
7 31 (1.78%) T-SQL
8 29 (1.66%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 26 (1.49%) Bash
10 24 (1.38%) C#
11 23 (1.32%) PowerShell
12 14 (0.80%) JavaScript
12 14 (0.80%) R
13 12 (0.69%) Bicep
14 7 (0.40%) Go
14 7 (0.40%) TypeScript
15 3 (0.17%) Korn
16 2 (0.11%) C
16 2 (0.11%) Ruby
16 2 (0.11%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 471 (27.04%) Security Cleared
2 412 (23.65%) SC Cleared
3 42 (2.41%) BPSS Clearance
4 40 (2.30%) Degree
5 25 (1.44%) Azure Certification
6 22 (1.26%) DV Cleared
7 17 (0.98%) Computer Science Degree
8 10 (0.57%) AWS Certification
9 9 (0.52%) City & Guilds
9 9 (0.52%) DBS Check
10 6 (0.34%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 6 (0.34%) SnowPro
11 5 (0.29%) BICSI Certification
11 5 (0.29%) CISM
11 5 (0.29%) CISSP
11 5 (0.29%) Master's Degree
12 3 (0.17%) CEH
12 3 (0.17%) Microsoft Certification
13 1 (0.057%) CISA
13 1 (0.057%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 430 (24.68%) Data Quality
2 58 (3.33%) QA
3 45 (2.58%) GDPR
4 20 (1.15%) Accessibility
5 12 (0.69%) SLA
6 8 (0.46%) FATCA
7 5 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 4 (0.23%) HIPAA
8 4 (0.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 3 (0.17%) GMP
9 3 (0.17%) MiFID
10 2 (0.11%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 2 (0.11%) EMIR
10 2 (0.11%) PMO
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%) NIST
System Software
1 105 (6.03%) 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
1 172 (9.87%) Terraform
2 87 (4.99%) Kubernetes
3 35 (2.01%) Grafana
4 13 (0.75%) Ansible
5 9 (0.52%) Prometheus
6 7 (0.40%) Control-M
7 6 (0.34%) Kibana
8 3 (0.17%) Rancher
9 2 (0.11%) Apache Ranger
9 2 (0.11%) Thomson Reuters DACS
10 1 (0.057%) Kubeflow
10 1 (0.057%) logstash
10 1 (0.057%) NetBackup
10 1 (0.057%) Puppet
Vendors
1 322 (18.48%) Databricks
2 219 (12.57%) Microsoft
3 151 (8.67%) Oracle
4 124 (7.12%) Informatica
5 114 (6.54%) Talend
6 66 (3.79%) Google
7 60 (3.44%) Denodo
8 33 (1.89%) Cisco
8 33 (1.89%) F5
8 33 (1.89%) SAP
9 26 (1.49%) Salesforce
10 23 (1.32%) Palantir
10 23 (1.32%) Splunk
11 18 (1.03%) Cloudera
12 17 (0.98%) Foundry
13 15 (0.86%) ServiceNow
14 12 (0.69%) Sage
15 10 (0.57%) IBM
16 9 (0.52%) Bloomberg
16 9 (0.52%) MuleSoft