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 8 October 2026.

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

6 months to
8 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 66 129 99
Rank change year-on-year +63 -30 +31
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,646 619 770
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.56% 2.21% 2.38%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.87% 2.43% 2.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,079 446 535
10th Percentile £379 £363 £363
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -6.82% -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £638
90th Percentile £675 £695 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 63 12 7
10th Percentile £21.25 £25.25 £49.25
25th Percentile £30.96 £32.94 £54.63
Median hourly rate £45.00 £48.00 £80.00
Median % change year-on-year -6.25% -40.00% +29.55%
75th Percentile £68.00 £66.88 £97.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £107.00 -
UK median hourly rate £44.75 £52.50 £80.00
% change year-on-year -14.76% -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 42,578 25,492 30,053
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.05% 91.10% 93.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,092 16,398 18,391
10th Percentile £325 £277 £300
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -3.67%
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 3,683 1,411 1,311
10th Percentile £14.50 £13.80 £15.00
25th Percentile £20.31 £17.31 £21.25
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -6.70%
75th Percentile £67.84 £52.50 £67.63
90th Percentile £79.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.71 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +65.84% -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 8 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 8 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 8 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 +30 830 £525 - 879
Midlands +70 317 £469 -1.26% 101
West Midlands +55 235 £469 -6.20% 70
North of England +36 203 £525 +10.53% 278
South East +22 120 £459 -0.76% 202
South West +32 119 £525 +2.44% 81
North West +28 109 £525 +23.53% 143
East Midlands +42 82 £388 -16.22% 31
Yorkshire +3 75 £510 -0.49% 79
East of England -3 36 £545 -12.80% 42
North East -27 20 £480 +15.32% 57
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 8 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.

1 841 (51.09%) SQL
2 721 (43.80%) Data Pipeline
3 716 (43.50%) Python
4 659 (40.04%) Data Engineering
5 579 (35.18%) Data Modelling
6 570 (34.63%) ETL
7 557 (33.84%) Analytics
8 521 (31.65%) AWS
9 504 (30.62%) Azure
10 434 (26.37%) Data Quality
11 427 (25.94%) Security Cleared
12 412 (25.03%) CI/CD
13 360 (21.87%) SC Cleared
14 337 (20.47%) Databricks
15 293 (17.80%) Agile
16 279 (16.95%) DevOps
17 274 (16.65%) AI
18 270 (16.40%) Data Warehouse
19 267 (16.22%) Migration
20 244 (14.82%) Business Intelligence
21 229 (13.91%) Data Transformation
22 226 (13.73%) PySpark
23 222 (13.49%) Validation
24 221 (13.43%) Data Governance
25 214 (13.00%) Microsoft
26 213 (12.94%) dbt
27 210 (12.76%) Snowflake
28 208 (12.64%) Data Integration
29 197 (11.97%) Power Platform
30 192 (11.66%) 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
1 187 (11.36%) Apache Airflow
2 150 (9.11%) Apache Spark
3 131 (7.96%) Apache
4 34 (2.07%) Confluence
5 33 (2.00%) SAS
6 17 (1.03%) Palantir Foundry
7 14 (0.85%) SharePoint
8 13 (0.79%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.18%) Apache Superset
9 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
10 2 (0.12%) CMS
11 1 (0.061%) Apache Pulsar
11 1 (0.061%) ArcGIS
11 1 (0.061%) Liferay
11 1 (0.061%) Luigi
11 1 (0.061%) nginx
11 1 (0.061%) Oracle Workflow
11 1 (0.061%) PowerExchange
Applications
1 19 (1.15%) 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 (0.36%) NetSuite
4 5 (0.30%) Infor LN
4 5 (0.30%) Sage X3
4 5 (0.30%) 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%) BambooHR
7 1 (0.061%) Dynamics NAV
7 1 (0.061%) Markit EDM
7 1 (0.061%) MIS ActiveH
7 1 (0.061%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.061%) Oracle Retail
7 1 (0.061%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 521 (31.65%) AWS
2 504 (30.62%) Azure
3 213 (12.94%) dbt
4 210 (12.76%) Snowflake
5 197 (11.97%) Power Platform
6 191 (11.60%) Azure Data Factory
7 184 (11.18%) GCP
8 149 (9.05%) Amazon S3
9 113 (6.87%) Azure DevOps
10 110 (6.68%) Serverless
11 107 (6.50%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 97 (5.89%) GitHub
13 96 (5.83%) AWS Lambda
14 58 (3.52%) Azure Databricks
15 50 (3.04%) Amazon EMR
16 43 (2.61%) GitHub Actions
17 35 (2.13%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 29 (1.76%) AWS Step Functions
19 27 (1.64%) Microsoft Purview
20 24 (1.46%) Amazon Kinesis
Communications & Networking
1 21 (1.28%) DNS
2 20 (1.22%) BGP
2 20 (1.22%) DMZ
2 20 (1.22%) Multicast
2 20 (1.22%) VPN
3 6 (0.36%) Firewall
4 4 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
4 4 (0.24%) Wireless
5 3 (0.18%) Intrusion Detection
6 2 (0.12%) Structured Cabling
7 1 (0.061%) Cisco IPT
7 1 (0.061%) HTTP
7 1 (0.061%) HTTPS
7 1 (0.061%) Network Security
7 1 (0.061%) PuTTY
7 1 (0.061%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.061%) tcpdump
7 1 (0.061%) WinSCP
7 1 (0.061%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 270 (16.40%) Data Warehouse
2 192 (11.66%) Power BI
3 134 (8.14%) Data Lake
4 124 (7.53%) Metadata
5 98 (5.95%) BigQuery
6 88 (5.35%) Amazon Redshift
7 78 (4.74%) Delta Lake
8 71 (4.31%) Amazon Athena
9 64 (3.89%) SQL Server
10 61 (3.71%) Big Data
10 61 (3.71%) Pentaho
11 57 (3.46%) PostgreSQL
12 47 (2.86%) NoSQL
12 47 (2.86%) Relational Database
13 45 (2.73%) Tableau
14 43 (2.61%) Snowflake Schema
15 40 (2.43%) Oracle Database
16 39 (2.37%) Amazon RDS
17 36 (2.19%) Azure SQL Database
18 34 (2.07%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 147 (8.93%) Git
2 82 (4.98%) GitLab
3 44 (2.67%) JIRA
4 24 (1.46%) Jenkins
5 14 (0.85%) MLflow
6 8 (0.49%) Bitbucket
6 8 (0.49%) Postman
7 6 (0.36%) Artifactory
7 6 (0.36%) Selenium
8 5 (0.30%) 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%) CircleCI
10 2 (0.12%) RStudio
10 2 (0.12%) Terragrunt
10 2 (0.12%) Yeoman
11 1 (0.061%) ER Studio
General
1 272 (16.52%) Social Skills
2 253 (15.37%) Finance
3 189 (11.48%) Analytical Skills
4 149 (9.05%) Public Sector
5 104 (6.32%) Banking
6 25 (1.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 24 (1.46%) Retail
8 23 (1.40%) Automotive
9 19 (1.15%) Aerospace
9 19 (1.15%) Front Office
10 18 (1.09%) Investment Banking
11 16 (0.97%) Marketing
12 15 (0.91%) Manufacturing
13 14 (0.85%) Military
13 14 (0.85%) Pharmaceutical
13 14 (0.85%) Telecoms
14 11 (0.67%) Back Office
14 11 (0.67%) Documentation Skills
15 10 (0.61%) Legal
16 9 (0.55%) Law
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 226 (13.73%) PySpark
2 179 (10.87%) Terraform
3 105 (6.38%) Kafka
4 31 (1.88%) REST
5 23 (1.40%) JSON
6 22 (1.34%) Pandas
7 17 (1.03%) XML
8 16 (0.97%) Spring
8 16 (0.97%) Spring Boot
9 15 (0.91%) Great Expectations
10 14 (0.85%) pytest
11 13 (0.79%) Apache Beam
11 13 (0.79%) Apache NiFi
11 13 (0.79%) PyTorch
12 12 (0.73%) LangChain
12 12 (0.73%) RESTful
13 10 (0.61%) .NET
13 10 (0.61%) Microsoft Graph
13 10 (0.61%) React
14 7 (0.43%) LangGraph
Miscellaneous
1 141 (8.57%) Cloud Native
2 56 (3.40%) Legacy Systems
3 50 (3.04%) Data Structures
4 44 (2.67%) Onboarding
5 25 (1.52%) Product Ownership
6 23 (1.40%) AI Agents
7 20 (1.22%) Distributed Systems
8 18 (1.09%) Algorithms
9 17 (1.03%) Management Information System
10 16 (0.97%) Greenfield Project
10 16 (0.97%) Reference Data
11 15 (0.91%) Reinsurance
12 12 (0.73%) NHS
13 11 (0.67%) Virtual Team
14 10 (0.61%) Data Protection Act
15 9 (0.55%) Distributed Computing
16 8 (0.49%) Data Fabric
16 8 (0.49%) Enterprise Software
17 7 (0.43%) Life Science
17 7 (0.43%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 37 (2.25%) Unix
2 33 (2.00%) 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
1 721 (43.80%) Data Pipeline
2 659 (40.04%) Data Engineering
3 579 (35.18%) Data Modelling
4 570 (34.63%) ETL
5 557 (33.84%) Analytics
6 412 (25.03%) CI/CD
7 293 (17.80%) Agile
8 279 (16.95%) DevOps
9 274 (16.65%) AI
10 267 (16.22%) Migration
11 244 (14.82%) Business Intelligence
12 229 (13.91%) Data Transformation
13 222 (13.49%) Validation
14 221 (13.43%) Data Governance
15 208 (12.64%) Data Integration
16 172 (10.45%) Problem-Solving
17 156 (9.48%) Machine Learning
18 154 (9.36%) Infrastructure as Code
18 154 (9.36%) Lakehouse
19 152 (9.23%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 841 (51.09%) SQL
2 716 (43.50%) Python
3 84 (5.10%) Java
4 64 (3.89%) Scala
5 37 (2.25%) PL/SQL
6 29 (1.76%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 26 (1.58%) PowerShell
7 26 (1.58%) T-SQL
8 20 (1.22%) Shell Script
9 19 (1.15%) Bash
10 18 (1.09%) JavaScript
11 12 (0.73%) R
12 10 (0.61%) Bicep
12 10 (0.61%) Go
13 7 (0.43%) TypeScript
14 6 (0.36%) C#
15 5 (0.30%) Korn
16 3 (0.18%) Kusto Query Language
17 2 (0.12%) COBOL
17 2 (0.12%) Cypher
Qualifications
1 427 (25.94%) Security Cleared
2 360 (21.87%) SC Cleared
3 42 (2.55%) BPSS Clearance
4 41 (2.49%) Degree
5 39 (2.37%) DV Cleared
6 24 (1.46%) Azure Certification
7 19 (1.15%) 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 (0.36%) SnowPro
12 5 (0.30%) CISM
12 5 (0.30%) 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
1 434 (26.37%) Data Quality
2 69 (4.19%) QA
3 30 (1.82%) GDPR
4 13 (0.79%) Accessibility
5 6 (0.36%) FATCA
5 6 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 5 (0.30%) 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%) IFRS
10 1 (0.061%) IFRS 17
10 1 (0.061%) IFRS 9
10 1 (0.061%) NIST
10 1 (0.061%) PMO
10 1 (0.061%) SOC 2
System Software
1 93 (5.65%) Docker
2 3 (0.18%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.061%) HDFS
3 1 (0.061%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 82 (4.98%) Kubernetes
2 19 (1.15%) Ansible
3 18 (1.09%) 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
1 337 (20.47%) Databricks
2 214 (13.00%) Microsoft
3 132 (8.02%) Oracle
4 85 (5.16%) Google
5 84 (5.10%) Informatica
6 75 (4.56%) Talend
7 33 (2.00%) Denodo
8 30 (1.82%) Salesforce
9 28 (1.70%) Palantir
10 25 (1.52%) SAP
11 24 (1.46%) Foundry
12 20 (1.22%) Cisco
12 20 (1.22%) F5
13 11 (0.67%) Splunk
14 9 (0.55%) Bloomberg
14 9 (0.55%) OpenAI
15 8 (0.49%) Sage
16 7 (0.43%) Alteryx
16 7 (0.43%) Cloudera
16 7 (0.43%) InterSystems