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 4 September 2026.

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

 6 months to
4 Sep 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 63 130 104
Rank change year-on-year +67 -26 +15
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,688 606 747
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.70% 2.23% 2.29%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.00% 2.44% 2.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,123 442 529
10th Percentile £380 £380 £323
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £638
90th Percentile £673 £695 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 78 14 16
10th Percentile £19.34 £25.42 £49.25
25th Percentile £30.96 £37.00 £64.69
Median hourly rate £41.56 £52.50 £80.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.85% -34.38% +12.28%
75th Percentile £70.00 £74.65 -
90th Percentile £73.75 £101.00 £88.75
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £52.50 £80.00
% change year-on-year -19.05% -34.38% +12.28%

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 42,168 24,883 30,334
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.41% 91.42% 93.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,332 16,051 19,383
10th Percentile £325 £281 £304
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% -1.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,270 1,335 1,579
10th Percentile £15.05 £13.52 £14.28
25th Percentile £21.14 £17.30 £21.23
Median hourly rate £42.58 £25.15 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +69.28% -45.54% +5.29%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £67.50
90th Percentile £79.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.13 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +67.50% -41.51% +1.18%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 +34 851 £525 - 456
Midlands +75 348 £469 +2.79% 61
West Midlands +66 286 £469 -0.21% 35
North of England +24 209 £500 +5.26% 127
South East +26 129 £459 +2.00% 140
North West +31 117 £525 +10.53% 67
South West +10 92 £525 +5.00% 67
Yorkshire -4 73 £475 - 27
East Midlands +24 62 £450 +1.98% 26
East of England +15 38 £450 -40.00% 26
North East -23 20 £515 +21.89% 33
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 4 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.

1 854 (50.59%) SQL
2 734 (43.48%) Data Pipeline
3 715 (42.36%) Python
4 650 (38.51%) Data Engineering
5 589 (34.89%) Analytics
6 578 (34.24%) ETL
7 576 (34.12%) Data Modelling
8 532 (31.52%) Azure
9 530 (31.40%) AWS
10 445 (26.36%) Security Cleared
11 434 (25.71%) Data Quality
12 417 (24.70%) CI/CD
13 391 (23.16%) SC Cleared
14 336 (19.91%) Databricks
15 295 (17.48%) Agile
16 285 (16.88%) Data Warehouse
17 281 (16.65%) DevOps
18 277 (16.41%) Business Intelligence
19 276 (16.35%) Migration
20 241 (14.28%) PySpark
21 239 (14.16%) AI
22 238 (14.10%) Data Governance
23 221 (13.09%) Power Platform
24 220 (13.03%) Microsoft
25 217 (12.86%) Power BI
26 213 (12.62%) Data Transformation
27 205 (12.14%) Validation
28 204 (12.09%) Azure Data Factory
28 204 (12.09%) Data Integration
28 204 (12.09%) Snowflake

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 (11.26%) Apache Airflow
2 143 (8.47%) Apache Spark
3 115 (6.81%) Apache
4 51 (3.02%) SAS
5 33 (1.95%) Confluence
6 17 (1.01%) Palantir Foundry
7 13 (0.77%) SharePoint
8 10 (0.59%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.18%) Apache Superset
10 1 (0.059%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.059%) Liferay
10 1 (0.059%) Luigi
10 1 (0.059%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.059%) nginx
10 1 (0.059%) PowerExchange
10 1 (0.059%) R Markdown
Applications
1 24 (1.42%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.41%) Spreadsheet
3 5 (0.30%) Notepad++
4 4 (0.24%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.059%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 10 (0.59%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.30%) Infor LN
3 5 (0.30%) NetSuite
3 5 (0.30%) Sage X3
4 4 (0.24%) SAP S/4HANA
5 3 (0.18%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 2 (0.12%) Maximo
6 2 (0.12%) SAP BPC
6 2 (0.12%) SimCorp Dimension
7 1 (0.059%) BambooHR
7 1 (0.059%) FIS Private Capital Suite
7 1 (0.059%) MIS ActiveH
7 1 (0.059%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.059%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.059%) Raiser’s Edge
7 1 (0.059%) SAP CAR
7 1 (0.059%) SAP EWM
7 1 (0.059%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 532 (31.52%) Azure
2 530 (31.40%) AWS
3 221 (13.09%) Power Platform
4 204 (12.09%) Azure Data Factory
4 204 (12.09%) Snowflake
5 199 (11.79%) dbt
6 163 (9.66%) GCP
7 152 (9.00%) Amazon S3
8 128 (7.58%) Azure DevOps
9 126 (7.46%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 111 (6.58%) GitHub
10 111 (6.58%) Serverless
11 97 (5.75%) AWS Lambda
12 59 (3.50%) Azure Databricks
13 46 (2.73%) GitHub Actions
14 39 (2.31%) Amazon EMR
15 32 (1.90%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 27 (1.60%) AWS Step Functions
17 25 (1.48%) Fivetran
17 25 (1.48%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.60%) BGP
1 27 (1.60%) DMZ
1 27 (1.60%) DNS
1 27 (1.60%) Multicast
1 27 (1.60%) VPN
2 11 (0.65%) Structured Cabling
3 7 (0.41%) 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
1 285 (16.88%) Data Warehouse
2 217 (12.86%) Power BI
3 148 (8.77%) Data Lake
4 119 (7.05%) Metadata
5 99 (5.86%) BigQuery
6 90 (5.33%) Amazon Redshift
7 80 (4.74%) SQL Server
8 79 (4.68%) Delta Lake
9 72 (4.27%) Amazon Athena
10 67 (3.97%) Pentaho
11 61 (3.61%) Big Data
11 61 (3.61%) Tableau
12 55 (3.26%) PostgreSQL
13 52 (3.08%) Relational Database
14 49 (2.90%) Snowflake Schema
15 46 (2.73%) Azure SQL Database
15 46 (2.73%) NoSQL
16 39 (2.31%) Oracle Database
17 36 (2.13%) Amazon RDS
18 33 (1.95%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 143 (8.47%) Git
2 80 (4.74%) GitLab
3 53 (3.14%) JIRA
4 28 (1.66%) Jenkins
5 13 (0.77%) MLflow
6 7 (0.41%) Postman
7 5 (0.30%) Artifactory
7 5 (0.30%) Bitbucket
7 5 (0.30%) SonarQube
8 4 (0.24%) ERwin
8 4 (0.24%) Selenium
9 3 (0.18%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 3 (0.18%) Newman
10 2 (0.12%) Claude Code
10 2 (0.12%) ER Studio
10 2 (0.12%) RStudio
10 2 (0.12%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.12%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 2 (0.12%) Terragrunt
10 2 (0.12%) Yeoman
General
1 271 (16.05%) Finance
1 271 (16.05%) Social Skills
2 193 (11.43%) Analytical Skills
3 145 (8.59%) Public Sector
4 99 (5.86%) Banking
5 29 (1.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 24 (1.42%) Retail
7 23 (1.36%) Telecoms
8 21 (1.24%) Marketing
9 20 (1.18%) Automotive
10 19 (1.13%) Aerospace
11 17 (1.01%) Manufacturing
12 16 (0.95%) Investment Banking
13 15 (0.89%) Documentation Skills
13 15 (0.89%) Front Office
14 14 (0.83%) Pharmaceutical
15 11 (0.65%) Law
16 10 (0.59%) Financial Institution
16 10 (0.59%) Legal
17 9 (0.53%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 241 (14.28%) PySpark
2 174 (10.31%) Terraform
3 113 (6.69%) Kafka
4 27 (1.60%) JSON
4 27 (1.60%) Pandas
4 27 (1.60%) REST
5 23 (1.36%) Great Expectations
6 22 (1.30%) Spring
6 22 (1.30%) Spring Boot
7 18 (1.07%) XML
8 16 (0.95%) Apache Beam
8 16 (0.95%) React
9 13 (0.77%) pytest
10 12 (0.71%) RESTful
10 12 (0.71%) YAML
11 11 (0.65%) .NET
11 11 (0.65%) LangChain
12 10 (0.59%) Microsoft Graph
13 9 (0.53%) Apache Avro
13 9 (0.53%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 138 (8.18%) Cloud Native
2 72 (4.27%) Legacy Systems
3 50 (2.96%) Data Structures
4 36 (2.13%) Onboarding
5 24 (1.42%) Product Ownership
6 21 (1.24%) Distributed Systems
7 20 (1.18%) Greenfield Project
8 19 (1.13%) NHS
9 17 (1.01%) 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 (0.65%) Virtual Team
13 10 (0.59%) Clustering
14 9 (0.53%) Data Protection Act
14 9 (0.53%) Self-Motivation
15 8 (0.47%) Driving Licence
15 8 (0.47%) Life Science
15 8 (0.47%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 56 (3.32%) Unix
2 43 (2.55%) Linux
3 3 (0.18%) Windows
4 2 (0.12%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.059%) Robot Operating System
5 1 (0.059%) VMS
5 1 (0.059%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 734 (43.48%) Data Pipeline
2 650 (38.51%) Data Engineering
3 589 (34.89%) Analytics
4 578 (34.24%) ETL
5 576 (34.12%) Data Modelling
6 417 (24.70%) CI/CD
7 295 (17.48%) Agile
8 281 (16.65%) DevOps
9 277 (16.41%) Business Intelligence
10 276 (16.35%) Migration
11 239 (14.16%) AI
12 238 (14.10%) Data Governance
13 213 (12.62%) Data Transformation
14 205 (12.14%) Validation
15 204 (12.09%) Data Integration
16 187 (11.08%) Problem-Solving
17 156 (9.24%) Lakehouse
18 155 (9.18%) Decision-Making
19 148 (8.77%) Infrastructure as Code
20 144 (8.53%) Data Science
Programming Languages
1 854 (50.59%) SQL
2 715 (42.36%) Python
3 99 (5.86%) Java
4 63 (3.73%) Scala
5 45 (2.67%) PL/SQL
6 31 (1.84%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 30 (1.78%) Shell Script
8 25 (1.48%) T-SQL
9 22 (1.30%) Bash
10 20 (1.18%) PowerShell
11 16 (0.95%) JavaScript
12 13 (0.77%) C#
13 11 (0.65%) R
14 9 (0.53%) Bicep
15 8 (0.47%) TypeScript
16 5 (0.30%) Go
17 4 (0.24%) Korn
18 3 (0.18%) Kusto Query Language
18 3 (0.18%) LookML
19 2 (0.12%) Cypher
Qualifications
1 445 (26.36%) Security Cleared
2 391 (23.16%) SC Cleared
3 40 (2.37%) Degree
4 35 (2.07%) BPSS Clearance
5 22 (1.30%) Computer Science Degree
5 22 (1.30%) DV Cleared
6 20 (1.18%) Azure Certification
7 12 (0.71%) AWS Certification
8 9 (0.53%) City & Guilds
9 8 (0.47%) DBS Check
9 8 (0.47%) SnowPro
10 7 (0.41%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 6 (0.36%) Master's Degree
12 5 (0.30%) BICSI Certification
13 4 (0.24%) CISM
13 4 (0.24%) CISSP
13 4 (0.24%) Microsoft Certification
14 3 (0.18%) CEH
15 1 (0.059%) PMI Certification
15 1 (0.059%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 434 (25.71%) Data Quality
2 64 (3.79%) QA
3 39 (2.31%) GDPR
4 15 (0.89%) Accessibility
5 9 (0.53%) 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 (0.059%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 1 (0.059%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.059%) IFRS
11 1 (0.059%) IFRS 17
11 1 (0.059%) IFRS 9
11 1 (0.059%) PMO
System Software
1 104 (6.16%) Docker
2 4 (0.24%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.12%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.059%) RACF
Systems Management
1 73 (4.32%) Kubernetes
2 28 (1.66%) Grafana
3 15 (0.89%) Ansible
4 11 (0.65%) Control-M
5 7 (0.41%) Kibana
6 4 (0.24%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.12%) Apache Ranger
7 2 (0.12%) Puppet
8 1 (0.059%) logstash
8 1 (0.059%) Progress Chef
8 1 (0.059%) Thomson Reuters DACS
Vendors
1 336 (19.91%) Databricks
2 220 (13.03%) Microsoft
3 139 (8.23%) Oracle
4 99 (5.86%) Informatica
5 87 (5.15%) Talend
6 69 (4.09%) Google
7 46 (2.73%) Denodo
8 29 (1.72%) Salesforce
9 27 (1.60%) Cisco
9 27 (1.60%) F5
10 26 (1.54%) Palantir
11 24 (1.42%) SAP
12 23 (1.36%) Foundry
13 13 (0.77%) Cloudera
14 12 (0.71%) Splunk
15 10 (0.59%) Bloomberg
16 9 (0.53%) IBM
16 9 (0.53%) Sage
17 8 (0.47%) Alteryx
17 8 (0.47%) InterSystems
804 Data Engineer jobs in England