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 6 August 2026.

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

6 months to
6 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 55 124 93
Rank change year-on-year +69 -31 +23
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,765 636 797
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.88% 2.30% 2.38%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.19% 2.51% 2.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,196 461 593
10th Percentile £385 £375 £253
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 £588 £638
90th Percentile £663 £695 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £520
% change year-on-year - -3.85% -5.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 84 11 29
10th Percentile £19.91 £18.22 £38.65
25th Percentile £30.96 £34.13 £52.50
Median hourly rate £43.75 £52.50 £80.00
Median % change year-on-year -16.67% -34.38% +12.28%
75th Percentile £70.00 £70.60 -
90th Percentile £75.00 £80.00 -
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £75.00
% change year-on-year -4.76% -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 42,143 25,342 31,083
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.57% 91.72% 92.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,556 16,442 20,451
10th Percentile £326 £285 £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 £627 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,146 1,309 1,833
10th Percentile £15.50 £13.54 £14.16
25th Percentile £21.35 £17.50 £21.25
Median hourly rate £45.00 £26.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +73.08% -42.22% +5.88%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -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 6 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 6 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 6 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 +49 859 £525 - 309
Midlands +64 398 £465 +3.33% 57
West Midlands +61 346 £460 - 34
North of England +38 237 £500 +5.26% 113
North West +27 139 £525 +10.53% 44
South East +22 129 £469 +4.22% 117
South West +3 86 £525 +5.00% 36
Yorkshire -8 75 £465 -2.11% 36
East Midlands +23 52 £500 +19.05% 23
East of England +6 36 £520 +63.52% 17
North East -21 24 £520 +23.08% 34
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 6 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.

1 895 (50.71%) SQL
2 746 (42.27%) Data Pipeline
3 727 (41.19%) Python
4 652 (36.94%) Data Engineering
5 629 (35.64%) Analytics
6 617 (34.96%) ETL
7 590 (33.43%) Data Modelling
8 544 (30.82%) Azure
9 503 (28.50%) AWS
10 483 (27.37%) Security Cleared
11 434 (24.59%) Data Quality
12 423 (23.97%) SC Cleared
13 415 (23.51%) CI/CD
14 324 (18.36%) Databricks
15 317 (17.96%) Business Intelligence
16 307 (17.39%) Agile
17 291 (16.49%) Data Warehouse
18 290 (16.43%) DevOps
19 282 (15.98%) Migration
20 245 (13.88%) Power Platform
21 236 (13.37%) Data Governance
22 234 (13.26%) Power BI
23 225 (12.75%) PySpark
24 224 (12.69%) Microsoft
25 222 (12.58%) Azure Data Factory
26 216 (12.24%) AI
27 213 (12.07%) Problem-Solving
28 208 (11.78%) Data Integration
29 207 (11.73%) Validation
30 198 (11.22%) 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
1 173 (9.80%) Apache Airflow
2 138 (7.82%) Apache Spark
3 102 (5.78%) Apache
4 76 (4.31%) SAS
5 39 (2.21%) Confluence
6 13 (0.74%) Palantir Foundry
7 12 (0.68%) SharePoint
8 10 (0.57%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.17%) Apache Superset
10 2 (0.11%) Microsoft Exchange
11 1 (0.057%) ArcGIS
11 1 (0.057%) Liferay
11 1 (0.057%) Luigi
11 1 (0.057%) R Markdown
Applications
1 22 (1.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.28%) Notepad++
2 5 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
3 4 (0.23%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.057%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 12 (0.68%) Aladdin
2 8 (0.45%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.28%) Infor LN
3 5 (0.28%) NetSuite
3 5 (0.28%) 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
1 544 (30.82%) Azure
2 503 (28.50%) AWS
3 245 (13.88%) Power Platform
4 222 (12.58%) Azure Data Factory
5 191 (10.82%) dbt
6 190 (10.76%) Snowflake
7 160 (9.07%) GCP
8 142 (8.05%) Amazon S3
9 141 (7.99%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 129 (7.31%) Azure DevOps
11 100 (5.67%) GitHub
12 95 (5.38%) Serverless
13 81 (4.59%) AWS Lambda
14 42 (2.38%) GitHub Actions
15 37 (2.10%) Amazon EMR
16 27 (1.53%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 25 (1.42%) Dagster
17 25 (1.42%) Fivetran
17 25 (1.42%) Matillion
18 24 (1.36%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 32 (1.81%) DNS
1 32 (1.81%) VPN
2 31 (1.76%) BGP
2 31 (1.76%) DMZ
2 31 (1.76%) Multicast
3 9 (0.51%) Structured Cabling
4 7 (0.40%) Firewall
5 5 (0.28%) PuTTY
5 5 (0.28%) 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 (16.49%) Data Warehouse
2 234 (13.26%) Power BI
3 156 (8.84%) Data Lake
4 97 (5.50%) Metadata
5 95 (5.38%) Amazon Redshift
5 95 (5.38%) BigQuery
6 91 (5.16%) Pentaho
7 88 (4.99%) SQL Server
8 83 (4.70%) Delta Lake
9 66 (3.74%) Tableau
10 64 (3.63%) Amazon Athena
11 62 (3.51%) Big Data
12 58 (3.29%) PostgreSQL
13 54 (3.06%) Snowflake Schema
14 50 (2.83%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 49 (2.78%) Azure SQL Database
16 48 (2.72%) Relational Database
17 47 (2.66%) NoSQL
18 34 (1.93%) Hadoop
19 33 (1.87%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 159 (9.01%) Git
2 85 (4.82%) GitLab
3 70 (3.97%) JIRA
4 45 (2.55%) Jenkins
5 9 (0.51%) MLflow
6 7 (0.40%) Postman
7 6 (0.34%) Bitbucket
8 5 (0.28%) Artifactory
8 5 (0.28%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.17%) Newman
9 3 (0.17%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.11%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 2 (0.11%) ER Studio
10 2 (0.11%) ERwin
10 2 (0.11%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 2 (0.11%) Yeoman
11 1 (0.057%) Claude Code
11 1 (0.057%) Octopus Deploy
11 1 (0.057%) Terragrunt
11 1 (0.057%) Toad
General
1 294 (16.66%) Finance
2 279 (15.81%) Social Skills
3 201 (11.39%) Analytical Skills
4 162 (9.18%) Public Sector
5 102 (5.78%) Banking
6 31 (1.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 25 (1.42%) Telecoms
8 24 (1.36%) Retail
9 23 (1.30%) Marketing
10 21 (1.19%) Documentation Skills
11 20 (1.13%) Manufacturing
12 19 (1.08%) Automotive
13 17 (0.96%) Front Office
13 17 (0.96%) Investment Banking
14 16 (0.91%) Aerospace
14 16 (0.91%) Pharmaceutical
15 11 (0.62%) Publishing
16 9 (0.51%) Billing
17 8 (0.45%) Legal
17 8 (0.45%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 225 (12.75%) PySpark
2 118 (6.69%) Kafka
3 36 (2.04%) Pandas
4 26 (1.47%) JSON
5 24 (1.36%) REST
6 21 (1.19%) Spring
6 21 (1.19%) Spring Boot
7 20 (1.13%) Great Expectations
8 16 (0.91%) XML
9 15 (0.85%) Apache Beam
9 15 (0.85%) YAML
10 13 (0.74%) scikit-learn
11 12 (0.68%) Apache Avro
11 12 (0.68%) React
11 12 (0.68%) RESTful
12 10 (0.57%) Microsoft Graph
12 10 (0.57%) pytest
12 10 (0.57%) PyTorch
13 9 (0.51%) GeoJSON
13 9 (0.51%) Polars
Miscellaneous
1 128 (7.25%) Cloud Native
2 74 (4.19%) Legacy Systems
3 53 (3.00%) Data Structures
4 33 (1.87%) Onboarding
5 25 (1.42%) Distributed Systems
6 22 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
6 22 (1.25%) NHS
6 22 (1.25%) Product Ownership
7 19 (1.08%) Reinsurance
8 16 (0.91%) Reference Data
9 12 (0.68%) Clustering
9 12 (0.68%) Data Protection Act
10 11 (0.62%) AI Agents
10 11 (0.62%) Management Information System
11 10 (0.57%) Algorithms
11 10 (0.57%) Life Science
11 10 (0.57%) Virtual Team
12 9 (0.51%) Driving Licence
12 9 (0.51%) Self-Motivation
13 8 (0.45%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 61 (3.46%) Unix
2 44 (2.49%) Linux
3 4 (0.23%) Windows
4 2 (0.11%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.11%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.057%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 746 (42.27%) Data Pipeline
2 652 (36.94%) Data Engineering
3 629 (35.64%) Analytics
4 617 (34.96%) ETL
5 590 (33.43%) Data Modelling
6 415 (23.51%) CI/CD
7 317 (17.96%) Business Intelligence
8 307 (17.39%) Agile
9 290 (16.43%) DevOps
10 282 (15.98%) Migration
11 236 (13.37%) Data Governance
12 216 (12.24%) AI
13 213 (12.07%) Problem-Solving
14 208 (11.78%) Data Integration
15 207 (11.73%) Validation
16 198 (11.22%) Data Transformation
17 177 (10.03%) Decision-Making
18 156 (8.84%) Data Science
19 139 (7.88%) Test Automation
20 135 (7.65%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 895 (50.71%) SQL
2 727 (41.19%) Python
3 101 (5.72%) Java
4 57 (3.23%) Scala
5 49 (2.78%) PL/SQL
6 33 (1.87%) Shell Script
7 31 (1.76%) T-SQL
8 30 (1.70%) Bash
9 26 (1.47%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 23 (1.30%) PowerShell
11 21 (1.19%) C#
12 14 (0.79%) JavaScript
12 14 (0.79%) R
13 11 (0.62%) Bicep
14 6 (0.34%) Go
14 6 (0.34%) TypeScript
15 3 (0.17%) Korn
16 2 (0.11%) HiveQL
16 2 (0.11%) Ruby
16 2 (0.11%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 483 (27.37%) Security Cleared
2 423 (23.97%) SC Cleared
3 43 (2.44%) BPSS Clearance
4 41 (2.32%) Degree
5 25 (1.42%) Azure Certification
6 21 (1.19%) DV Cleared
7 20 (1.13%) Computer Science Degree
8 11 (0.62%) AWS Certification
9 9 (0.51%) City & Guilds
9 9 (0.51%) DBS Check
10 6 (0.34%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 6 (0.34%) SnowPro
11 5 (0.28%) BICSI Certification
11 5 (0.28%) CISM
11 5 (0.28%) CISSP
11 5 (0.28%) Master's Degree
12 4 (0.23%) Microsoft Certification
13 3 (0.17%) CEH
14 1 (0.057%) CISA
14 1 (0.057%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 434 (24.59%) Data Quality
2 57 (3.23%) QA
3 44 (2.49%) GDPR
4 18 (1.02%) Accessibility
5 12 (0.68%) SLA
6 6 (0.34%) FATCA
7 5 (0.28%) 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%) 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%) IFRS 9
11 1 (0.057%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 110 (6.23%) 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
1 165 (9.35%) Terraform
2 91 (5.16%) Kubernetes
3 33 (1.87%) Grafana
4 13 (0.74%) Ansible
5 8 (0.45%) Prometheus
6 6 (0.34%) Control-M
6 6 (0.34%) Kibana
7 2 (0.11%) Apache Ranger
7 2 (0.11%) Rancher
7 2 (0.11%) Thomson Reuters DACS
8 1 (0.057%) Kubeflow
8 1 (0.057%) logstash
8 1 (0.057%) NetBackup
8 1 (0.057%) Puppet
Vendors
1 324 (18.36%) Databricks
2 224 (12.69%) Microsoft
3 152 (8.61%) Oracle
4 122 (6.91%) Informatica
5 115 (6.52%) Talend
6 67 (3.80%) Google
7 62 (3.51%) Denodo
8 34 (1.93%) SAP
9 33 (1.87%) Cisco
9 33 (1.87%) F5
10 28 (1.59%) Salesforce
11 23 (1.30%) Palantir
12 22 (1.25%) Splunk
13 19 (1.08%) Cloudera
14 18 (1.02%) Foundry
15 15 (0.85%) ServiceNow
16 11 (0.62%) Sage
17 10 (0.57%) IBM
18 9 (0.51%) Bloomberg
18 9 (0.51%) MuleSoft