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 28 July 2026.

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

6 months to
28 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 56 120 92
Rank change year-on-year +64 -28 +25
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,728 657 821
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.83% 2.39% 2.39%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.14% 2.61% 2.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,177 476 616
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 £589 £630
90th Percentile £661 £700 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £510
% change year-on-year - -1.96% -7.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 79 11 32
10th Percentile £19.34 £18.22 £37.50
25th Percentile £32.49 £46.75 £49.25
Median hourly rate £45.00 £52.50 £75.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% -30.00% -3.23%
75th Percentile £70.00 £78.10 £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 41,736 25,175 31,921
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.58% 91.76% 92.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,423 16,354 21,069
10th Percentile £328 £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% -1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,036 1,281 2,006
10th Percentile £16.00 £13.75 £13.86
25th Percentile £22.42 £17.79 £19.25
Median hourly rate £45.25 £26.30 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +72.05% -38.84% -1.71%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.49 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.60 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.50 £25.15 £42.03
% change year-on-year +72.96% -40.16% -2.97%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 +40 840 £525 - 205
Midlands +66 392 £460 -0.11% 54
West Midlands +57 341 £459 -0.22% 39
North of England +26 231 £475 - 99
North West +22 135 £525 +10.53% 50
South East +16 127 £469 +10.35% 92
South West +14 87 £525 +3.70% 37
Yorkshire 0 74 £475 - 21
East Midlands +21 51 £475 +13.10% 15
East of England +3 34 £543 +70.60% 13
North East -24 23 £515 +21.18% 29
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 28 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.

1 890 (51.50%) SQL
2 731 (42.30%) Data Pipeline
2 731 (42.30%) Python
3 646 (37.38%) Data Engineering
4 624 (36.11%) Analytics
5 609 (35.24%) ETL
6 579 (33.51%) Data Modelling
7 543 (31.42%) Azure
8 493 (28.53%) AWS
9 465 (26.91%) Security Cleared
10 425 (24.59%) Data Quality
11 413 (23.90%) CI/CD
12 405 (23.44%) SC Cleared
13 320 (18.52%) Databricks
14 313 (18.11%) Business Intelligence
15 297 (17.19%) Agile
16 288 (16.67%) Data Warehouse
17 281 (16.26%) DevOps
18 277 (16.03%) Migration
19 246 (14.24%) Power Platform
20 235 (13.60%) Data Governance
21 234 (13.54%) Power BI
22 228 (13.19%) PySpark
23 220 (12.73%) Azure Data Factory
24 217 (12.56%) Microsoft
25 207 (11.98%) Validation
26 205 (11.86%) Problem-Solving
27 203 (11.75%) AI
28 189 (10.94%) Data Integration
29 188 (10.88%) 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
1 162 (9.38%) Apache Airflow
2 138 (7.99%) Apache Spark
3 102 (5.90%) Apache
4 72 (4.17%) SAS
5 39 (2.26%) Confluence
6 13 (0.75%) Palantir Foundry
7 10 (0.58%) SharePoint
8 8 (0.46%) Jupyter
9 2 (0.12%) Apache Superset
9 2 (0.12%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.058%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.058%) Camunda
10 1 (0.058%) Liferay
10 1 (0.058%) Luigi
10 1 (0.058%) R Markdown
Applications
1 20 (1.16%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.29%) Notepad++
2 5 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
3 3 (0.17%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.058%) 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 (0.12%) BambooHR
5 2 (0.12%) Maximo
6 1 (0.058%) iTrent
6 1 (0.058%) MIS ActiveH
6 1 (0.058%) NEC Housing
6 1 (0.058%) Oracle 11i
6 1 (0.058%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.058%) Raiser’s Edge
6 1 (0.058%) SAP Business ByDesign
6 1 (0.058%) SAP CAR
6 1 (0.058%) SAP EWM
6 1 (0.058%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 543 (31.42%) Azure
2 493 (28.53%) AWS
3 246 (14.24%) Power Platform
4 220 (12.73%) Azure Data Factory
5 185 (10.71%) dbt
5 185 (10.71%) Snowflake
6 157 (9.09%) GCP
7 146 (8.45%) Amazon S3
8 143 (8.28%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 131 (7.58%) Azure DevOps
10 100 (5.79%) GitHub
11 99 (5.73%) Serverless
12 83 (4.80%) AWS Lambda
13 44 (2.55%) GitHub Actions
14 37 (2.14%) Amazon EMR
15 28 (1.62%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 25 (1.45%) Matillion
17 24 (1.39%) OpenShift
18 23 (1.33%) AWS Step Functions
18 23 (1.33%) Fivetran
Communications & Networking
1 33 (1.91%) DNS
1 33 (1.91%) VPN
2 32 (1.85%) BGP
2 32 (1.85%) DMZ
2 32 (1.85%) Multicast
3 10 (0.58%) Structured Cabling
4 7 (0.41%) 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 (0.058%) 4G
8 1 (0.058%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 288 (16.67%) Data Warehouse
2 234 (13.54%) Power BI
3 157 (9.09%) Data Lake
4 95 (5.50%) Amazon Redshift
5 92 (5.32%) BigQuery
6 89 (5.15%) Metadata
7 87 (5.03%) SQL Server
8 86 (4.98%) Pentaho
9 82 (4.75%) Delta Lake
10 71 (4.11%) Tableau
11 63 (3.65%) Big Data
12 62 (3.59%) PostgreSQL
13 59 (3.41%) Amazon Athena
14 56 (3.24%) Snowflake Schema
15 52 (3.01%) Azure SQL Database
16 51 (2.95%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 48 (2.78%) NoSQL
18 44 (2.55%) Relational Database
19 35 (2.03%) Hadoop
20 34 (1.97%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 159 (9.20%) Git
2 78 (4.51%) GitLab
3 69 (3.99%) JIRA
4 43 (2.49%) Jenkins
5 7 (0.41%) Postman
6 6 (0.35%) MLflow
7 5 (0.29%) Artifactory
7 5 (0.29%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.17%) Newman
8 3 (0.17%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.17%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.12%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 2 (0.12%) ER Studio
9 2 (0.12%) ERwin
9 2 (0.12%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 2 (0.12%) Visual Studio
9 2 (0.12%) Yeoman
10 1 (0.058%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.058%) JUnit
10 1 (0.058%) Selenium
General
1 288 (16.67%) Finance
2 265 (15.34%) Social Skills
3 193 (11.17%) Analytical Skills
4 152 (8.80%) Public Sector
5 100 (5.79%) Banking
6 31 (1.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 26 (1.50%) Telecoms
8 24 (1.39%) Retail
9 23 (1.33%) Marketing
10 22 (1.27%) Documentation Skills
11 20 (1.16%) Manufacturing
12 19 (1.10%) Automotive
13 17 (0.98%) Investment Banking
13 17 (0.98%) Pharmaceutical
14 16 (0.93%) Front Office
15 15 (0.87%) Aerospace
16 11 (0.64%) Publishing
17 9 (0.52%) Billing
18 8 (0.46%) Legal
18 8 (0.46%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 228 (13.19%) PySpark
2 121 (7.00%) Kafka
3 39 (2.26%) Pandas
4 32 (1.85%) JSON
5 25 (1.45%) REST
6 21 (1.22%) Spring
6 21 (1.22%) Spring Boot
6 21 (1.22%) XML
7 20 (1.16%) Great Expectations
8 17 (0.98%) Apache Beam
9 16 (0.93%) YAML
10 14 (0.81%) React
11 13 (0.75%) Apache Avro
12 11 (0.64%) scikit-learn
13 10 (0.58%) Microsoft Graph
13 10 (0.58%) RESTful
14 9 (0.52%) Matplotlib
14 9 (0.52%) Node.js
14 9 (0.52%) Polars
14 9 (0.52%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 127 (7.35%) Cloud Native
2 70 (4.05%) Legacy Systems
3 51 (2.95%) Data Structures
4 33 (1.91%) Onboarding
5 30 (1.74%) Distributed Systems
6 22 (1.27%) Greenfield Project
6 22 (1.27%) NHS
7 21 (1.22%) Product Ownership
8 18 (1.04%) Reinsurance
9 17 (0.98%) Clustering
10 15 (0.87%) Data Protection Act
10 15 (0.87%) Reference Data
11 12 (0.69%) Life Science
12 11 (0.64%) Algorithms
13 10 (0.58%) Virtual Team
14 9 (0.52%) Driving Licence
14 9 (0.52%) Management Information System
14 9 (0.52%) Self-Motivation
15 8 (0.46%) Linux Command Line
15 8 (0.46%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 57 (3.30%) Unix
2 44 (2.55%) Linux
3 4 (0.23%) Windows
4 2 (0.12%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.12%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.058%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 731 (42.30%) Data Pipeline
2 646 (37.38%) Data Engineering
3 624 (36.11%) Analytics
4 609 (35.24%) ETL
5 579 (33.51%) Data Modelling
6 413 (23.90%) CI/CD
7 313 (18.11%) Business Intelligence
8 297 (17.19%) Agile
9 281 (16.26%) DevOps
10 277 (16.03%) Migration
11 235 (13.60%) Data Governance
12 207 (11.98%) Validation
13 205 (11.86%) Problem-Solving
14 203 (11.75%) AI
15 189 (10.94%) Data Integration
16 188 (10.88%) Data Transformation
17 170 (9.84%) Decision-Making
18 162 (9.38%) Data Science
19 139 (8.04%) Infrastructure as Code
20 134 (7.75%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 890 (51.50%) SQL
2 731 (42.30%) Python
3 108 (6.25%) Java
4 54 (3.13%) Scala
5 51 (2.95%) PL/SQL
6 34 (1.97%) Shell Script
7 31 (1.79%) T-SQL
8 29 (1.68%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 26 (1.50%) Bash
10 25 (1.45%) C#
11 23 (1.33%) PowerShell
12 14 (0.81%) JavaScript
13 13 (0.75%) Bicep
13 13 (0.75%) R
14 7 (0.41%) Go
14 7 (0.41%) TypeScript
15 2 (0.12%) HiveQL
15 2 (0.12%) LookML
15 2 (0.12%) Ruby
15 2 (0.12%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 465 (26.91%) Security Cleared
2 405 (23.44%) SC Cleared
3 42 (2.43%) BPSS Clearance
4 41 (2.37%) Degree
5 25 (1.45%) Azure Certification
6 22 (1.27%) DV Cleared
7 18 (1.04%) Computer Science Degree
8 10 (0.58%) AWS Certification
9 9 (0.52%) City & Guilds
9 9 (0.52%) DBS Check
10 6 (0.35%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 6 (0.35%) Master's Degree
10 6 (0.35%) SnowPro
11 5 (0.29%) BICSI Certification
11 5 (0.29%) CISM
11 5 (0.29%) CISSP
12 3 (0.17%) CEH
12 3 (0.17%) Microsoft Certification
13 1 (0.058%) CISA
13 1 (0.058%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 425 (24.59%) Data Quality
2 57 (3.30%) QA
3 45 (2.60%) GDPR
4 20 (1.16%) Accessibility
5 12 (0.69%) SLA
6 9 (0.52%) 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 (0.12%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 2 (0.12%) EMIR
10 2 (0.12%) PMO
10 2 (0.12%) SNOMED CT
10 2 (0.12%) WCAG
11 1 (0.058%) IFRS
11 1 (0.058%) IFRS 17
11 1 (0.058%) IFRS 9
11 1 (0.058%) NIST
System Software
1 100 (5.79%) Docker
2 5 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.12%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.12%) HDFS
4 1 (0.058%) RACF
Systems Management
1 173 (10.01%) Terraform
2 81 (4.69%) Kubernetes
3 35 (2.03%) Grafana
4 13 (0.75%) Ansible
5 10 (0.58%) Prometheus
6 6 (0.35%) Kibana
7 5 (0.29%) Control-M
8 3 (0.17%) Rancher
9 2 (0.12%) Apache Ranger
9 2 (0.12%) Thomson Reuters DACS
10 1 (0.058%) Kubeflow
10 1 (0.058%) logstash
10 1 (0.058%) NetBackup
10 1 (0.058%) Puppet
Vendors
1 320 (18.52%) Databricks
2 217 (12.56%) Microsoft
3 151 (8.74%) Oracle
4 124 (7.18%) Informatica
5 115 (6.66%) Talend
6 64 (3.70%) Google
7 60 (3.47%) Denodo
8 34 (1.97%) Cisco
8 34 (1.97%) F5
9 33 (1.91%) SAP
10 26 (1.50%) Salesforce
11 23 (1.33%) Palantir
11 23 (1.33%) Splunk
12 18 (1.04%) Cloudera
13 17 (0.98%) Foundry
14 15 (0.87%) ServiceNow
15 12 (0.69%) Sage
16 10 (0.58%) IBM
17 9 (0.52%) Bloomberg
17 9 (0.52%) MuleSoft