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 26 August 2026.

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

 6 months to
26 Aug 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 61 128 98
Rank change year-on-year +67 -30 +23
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,694 621 775
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.71% 2.25% 2.33%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.01% 2.46% 2.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,127 452 562
10th Percentile £381 £380 £276
25th Percentile £425 £434 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £638
90th Percentile £663 £693 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 81 13 22
10th Percentile £19.34 £25.34 £41.38
25th Percentile £30.96 £35.25 £51.94
Median hourly rate £41.56 £52.50 £75.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.85% -30.00% +5.26%
75th Percentile £70.00 £62.50 £80.00
90th Percentile £73.75 £79.74 -
UK median hourly rate £44.75 £52.50 £75.00
% change year-on-year -14.76% -30.00% +5.26%

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 42,222 25,226 30,892
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.43% 91.56% 92.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,437 16,285 19,969
10th Percentile £325 £280 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £630 £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 3,228 1,378 1,700
10th Percentile £15.10 £13.68 £14.16
25th Percentile £21.15 £17.44 £20.50
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% +2.60%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £66.61
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.07 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +65.94% -41.51% -1.44%

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 26 August 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 26 August 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 26 August 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 +37 831 £525 - 88
Midlands +70 366 £460 -0.27% 33
West Midlands +55 306 £465 -3.13% 21
North of England +25 221 £480 +1.05% 56
South East +26 130 £463 -3.14% 42
North West +31 126 £525 +10.53% 18
South West +4 89 £525 +5.00% 34
Yorkshire -3 75 £465 -2.11% 18
East Midlands +26 60 £450 +1.98% 12
East of England +9 40 £475 +5.56% 14
North East -27 21 £515 +21.89% 21
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 26 August 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.

1 840 (49.59%) SQL
2 726 (42.86%) Data Pipeline
3 695 (41.03%) Python
4 632 (37.31%) Data Engineering
5 592 (34.95%) Analytics
6 575 (33.94%) ETL
7 559 (33.00%) Data Modelling
8 525 (30.99%) Azure
9 506 (29.87%) AWS
10 443 (26.15%) Security Cleared
11 421 (24.85%) Data Quality
12 403 (23.79%) CI/CD
13 388 (22.90%) SC Cleared
14 325 (19.19%) Databricks
15 290 (17.12%) Agile
16 284 (16.77%) Data Warehouse
17 283 (16.71%) Business Intelligence
18 274 (16.17%) DevOps
19 270 (15.94%) Migration
20 235 (13.87%) PySpark
21 228 (13.46%) Data Governance
22 224 (13.22%) AI
22 224 (13.22%) Power Platform
23 220 (12.99%) Power BI
24 213 (12.57%) Microsoft
25 208 (12.28%) Validation
26 203 (11.98%) Data Transformation
27 200 (11.81%) Azure Data Factory
28 195 (11.51%) Snowflake
29 192 (11.33%) 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
1 178 (10.51%) Apache Airflow
2 137 (8.09%) Apache Spark
3 105 (6.20%) Apache
4 55 (3.25%) SAS
5 32 (1.89%) Confluence
6 16 (0.94%) Palantir Foundry
7 12 (0.71%) SharePoint
8 9 (0.53%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.18%) Apache Superset
10 2 (0.12%) Microsoft Exchange
11 1 (0.059%) ArcGIS
11 1 (0.059%) Liferay
11 1 (0.059%) Luigi
11 1 (0.059%) PowerExchange
11 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 12 (0.71%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.35%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.30%) Infor LN
3 5 (0.30%) NetSuite
3 5 (0.30%) Sage X3
4 3 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.18%) SimCorp Dimension
4 3 (0.18%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 2 (0.12%) BambooHR
5 2 (0.12%) Maximo
6 1 (0.059%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.059%) MIS ActiveH
6 1 (0.059%) Oracle 11i
6 1 (0.059%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.059%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.059%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.059%) Raiser’s Edge
6 1 (0.059%) SAP BPC
6 1 (0.059%) SAP CAR
6 1 (0.059%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 525 (30.99%) Azure
2 506 (29.87%) AWS
3 224 (13.22%) Power Platform
4 200 (11.81%) Azure Data Factory
5 195 (11.51%) Snowflake
6 190 (11.22%) dbt
7 157 (9.27%) GCP
8 145 (8.56%) Amazon S3
9 128 (7.56%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 120 (7.08%) Azure DevOps
11 102 (6.02%) GitHub
11 102 (6.02%) Serverless
12 91 (5.37%) AWS Lambda
13 41 (2.42%) GitHub Actions
14 37 (2.18%) Amazon EMR
15 29 (1.71%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 24 (1.42%) AWS Step Functions
17 23 (1.36%) Fivetran
18 22 (1.30%) AWS CloudFormation
18 22 (1.30%) Matillion
Communications & Networking
1 32 (1.89%) VPN
2 31 (1.83%) BGP
2 31 (1.83%) DMZ
2 31 (1.83%) DNS
2 31 (1.83%) Multicast
3 11 (0.65%) Structured Cabling
4 7 (0.41%) Firewall
5 5 (0.30%) PuTTY
5 5 (0.30%) WinSCP
6 4 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.24%) Wireless
7 3 (0.18%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 284 (16.77%) Data Warehouse
2 220 (12.99%) Power BI
3 151 (8.91%) Data Lake
4 108 (6.38%) Metadata
5 96 (5.67%) BigQuery
6 95 (5.61%) Amazon Redshift
7 78 (4.60%) SQL Server
8 75 (4.43%) Delta Lake
9 69 (4.07%) Amazon Athena
9 69 (4.07%) Pentaho
10 65 (3.84%) Tableau
11 61 (3.60%) Big Data
12 56 (3.31%) PostgreSQL
13 52 (3.07%) Relational Database
14 48 (2.83%) Azure SQL Database
14 48 (2.83%) Snowflake Schema
15 45 (2.66%) NoSQL
16 40 (2.36%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 35 (2.07%) Oracle Database
18 34 (2.01%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 138 (8.15%) Git
2 79 (4.66%) GitLab
3 56 (3.31%) JIRA
4 31 (1.83%) Jenkins
5 11 (0.65%) MLflow
6 7 (0.41%) Postman
7 5 (0.30%) Artifactory
7 5 (0.30%) Bitbucket
8 4 (0.24%) ERwin
9 3 (0.18%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 3 (0.18%) Newman
9 3 (0.18%) Selenium
9 3 (0.18%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.18%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.12%) Claude Code
10 2 (0.12%) ER Studio
10 2 (0.12%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 2 (0.12%) Terragrunt
10 2 (0.12%) Yeoman
11 1 (0.059%) Toad
General
1 273 (16.12%) Finance
2 268 (15.82%) Social Skills
3 191 (11.28%) Analytical Skills
4 144 (8.50%) Public Sector
5 101 (5.96%) Banking
6 31 (1.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 24 (1.42%) Telecoms
8 21 (1.24%) Marketing
8 21 (1.24%) Retail
9 19 (1.12%) Automotive
10 18 (1.06%) Aerospace
10 18 (1.06%) Investment Banking
10 18 (1.06%) Manufacturing
11 16 (0.94%) Front Office
12 15 (0.89%) Documentation Skills
13 14 (0.83%) Pharmaceutical
14 10 (0.59%) Financial Institution
14 10 (0.59%) Law
15 8 (0.47%) Legal
15 8 (0.47%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 235 (13.87%) PySpark
2 167 (9.86%) Terraform
3 117 (6.91%) Kafka
4 31 (1.83%) Pandas
5 25 (1.48%) REST
6 24 (1.42%) JSON
7 22 (1.30%) Spring
7 22 (1.30%) Spring Boot
8 21 (1.24%) Great Expectations
9 16 (0.94%) XML
10 15 (0.89%) Apache Beam
11 14 (0.83%) React
12 13 (0.77%) YAML
13 12 (0.71%) RESTful
14 10 (0.59%) Microsoft Graph
14 10 (0.59%) pytest
15 9 (0.53%) Apache Avro
15 9 (0.53%) PyTorch
16 8 (0.47%) .NET
16 8 (0.47%) LangChain
Miscellaneous
1 128 (7.56%) Cloud Native
2 74 (4.37%) Legacy Systems
3 44 (2.60%) Data Structures
4 36 (2.13%) Onboarding
5 24 (1.42%) Product Ownership
6 21 (1.24%) Distributed Systems
6 21 (1.24%) Greenfield Project
7 19 (1.12%) NHS
7 19 (1.12%) Reference Data
8 17 (1.00%) Reinsurance
9 14 (0.83%) Management Information System
10 13 (0.77%) AI Agents
11 12 (0.71%) Data Protection Act
12 11 (0.65%) Algorithms
12 11 (0.65%) Clustering
12 11 (0.65%) Virtual Team
13 9 (0.53%) Life Science
13 9 (0.53%) Self-Motivation
14 8 (0.47%) Driving Licence
14 8 (0.47%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 57 (3.36%) Unix
2 44 (2.60%) Linux
3 4 (0.24%) Windows
4 2 (0.12%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.12%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.059%) Robot Operating System
5 1 (0.059%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 726 (42.86%) Data Pipeline
2 632 (37.31%) Data Engineering
3 592 (34.95%) Analytics
4 575 (33.94%) ETL
5 559 (33.00%) Data Modelling
6 403 (23.79%) CI/CD
7 290 (17.12%) Agile
8 283 (16.71%) Business Intelligence
9 274 (16.17%) DevOps
10 270 (15.94%) Migration
11 228 (13.46%) Data Governance
12 224 (13.22%) AI
13 208 (12.28%) Validation
14 203 (11.98%) Data Transformation
15 192 (11.33%) Data Integration
16 187 (11.04%) Problem-Solving
17 162 (9.56%) Decision-Making
18 139 (8.21%) Infrastructure as Code
19 138 (8.15%) Data Science
20 137 (8.09%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 840 (49.59%) SQL
2 695 (41.03%) Python
3 97 (5.73%) Java
4 60 (3.54%) Scala
5 46 (2.72%) PL/SQL
6 32 (1.89%) Shell Script
7 27 (1.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 24 (1.42%) T-SQL
9 22 (1.30%) Bash
10 20 (1.18%) PowerShell
11 16 (0.94%) JavaScript
12 14 (0.83%) C#
13 11 (0.65%) R
14 8 (0.47%) Bicep
15 6 (0.35%) Go
16 5 (0.30%) TypeScript
17 4 (0.24%) Korn
18 2 (0.12%) COBOL
18 2 (0.12%) LookML
18 2 (0.12%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 443 (26.15%) Security Cleared
2 388 (22.90%) SC Cleared
3 39 (2.30%) Degree
4 34 (2.01%) BPSS Clearance
5 21 (1.24%) Azure Certification
6 20 (1.18%) Computer Science Degree
6 20 (1.18%) DV Cleared
7 11 (0.65%) AWS Certification
8 9 (0.53%) City & Guilds
9 8 (0.47%) DBS Check
10 7 (0.41%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 7 (0.41%) SnowPro
11 6 (0.35%) 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%) CISA
15 1 (0.059%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 421 (24.85%) Data Quality
2 59 (3.48%) QA
3 40 (2.36%) GDPR
4 16 (0.94%) Accessibility
5 11 (0.65%) SLA
6 6 (0.35%) 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%) EMIR
10 2 (0.12%) SNOMED CT
10 2 (0.12%) WCAG
11 1 (0.059%) Disclosure Scotland
11 1 (0.059%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.059%) GxP
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 (6.14%) Docker
2 4 (0.24%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.12%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.059%) RACF
Systems Management
1 76 (4.49%) Kubernetes
2 31 (1.83%) Grafana
3 13 (0.77%) Ansible
4 10 (0.59%) Control-M
5 6 (0.35%) Kibana
6 3 (0.18%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.12%) Apache Ranger
7 2 (0.12%) Puppet
7 2 (0.12%) Thomson Reuters DACS
8 1 (0.059%) Kubeflow
8 1 (0.059%) logstash
8 1 (0.059%) Rancher
Vendors
1 325 (19.19%) Databricks
2 213 (12.57%) Microsoft
3 136 (8.03%) Oracle
4 107 (6.32%) Informatica
5 91 (5.37%) Talend
6 63 (3.72%) Google
7 52 (3.07%) Denodo
8 32 (1.89%) Cisco
8 32 (1.89%) F5
9 27 (1.59%) Salesforce
10 26 (1.53%) SAP
11 25 (1.48%) Palantir
12 20 (1.18%) Foundry
13 14 (0.83%) Cloudera
14 13 (0.77%) ServiceNow
14 13 (0.77%) Splunk
15 10 (0.59%) IBM
16 9 (0.53%) Bloomberg
16 9 (0.53%) Sage
17 8 (0.47%) InterSystems
247 Data Engineer jobs in England