Data Engineer Contract Job Trends in England

Data Engineer
UK > England

The median Data Engineer daily rate in England is £513, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 5 December 2025.

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

 6 months to
5 Dec 2025		 Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 122 89 120
Rank change year-on-year -33 +31 +9
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 728 817 803
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.34% 2.66% 2.11%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.56% 2.86% 2.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 518 571 612
10th Percentile £363 £370 £400
25th Percentile £425 £453 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.82% - -
75th Percentile £600 £650 £638
90th Percentile £694 £725 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £529 £530
% change year-on-year -5.48% -0.19% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 9 16
10th Percentile £25.92 £38.25 £35.00
25th Percentile £34.13 £49.25 £38.79
Median hourly rate £43.50 £65.00 £61.43
Median % change year-on-year -33.08% +5.82% +2.38%
75th Percentile £67.56 £97.50 £65.75
90th Percentile £110.00 - £78.75
UK median hourly rate £43.50 £50.50 £61.43
% change year-on-year -13.86% -17.79% +2.38%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
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 28,419 28,527 35,622
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.21% 92.94% 93.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,252 17,617 24,501
10th Percentile £287 £300 £292
25th Percentile £403 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £504 £525 £534
Median % change year-on-year -4.03% -1.69% -2.91%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,704 990 1,393
10th Percentile £14.28 £15.36 £15.32
25th Percentile £17.96 £21.05 £19.50
Median hourly rate £25.44 £37.25 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -31.70% -17.22% +36.36%
75th Percentile £57.50 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.85 £74.47 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.00
% change year-on-year -28.14% -20.45% +39.68%

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 5 December 2025.

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 5 December 2025.

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 5 December 2025. 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 -14 451 £525 -8.70% 153
North of England -38 84 £456 +1.39% 110
Midlands -21 83 £519 +5.82% 68
West Midlands -22 69 £523 +4.50% 45
North West -18 41 £415 -7.78% 68
South West +3 38 £550 +15.79% 43
Yorkshire -27 35 £506 +4.38% 31
South East -53 35 £478 -13.18% 154
East Midlands -6 14 £455 +27.81% 20
North East -8 8 £425 +13.64% 11
East of England -28 6 £625 +95.31% 43
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 5 December 2025, 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.

1 459 (63.05%) Python
2 446 (61.26%) SQL
3 337 (46.29%) Data Pipeline
4 317 (43.54%) Azure
5 305 (41.90%) ETL
6 292 (40.11%) Data Engineering
7 250 (34.34%) AWS
7 250 (34.34%) Data Modelling
8 237 (32.55%) Databricks
9 236 (32.42%) CI/CD
10 233 (32.01%) Analytics
11 192 (26.37%) Data Quality
12 173 (23.76%) DevOps
13 169 (23.21%) Business Intelligence
14 164 (22.53%) Security Cleared
15 160 (21.98%) Data Warehouse
16 146 (20.05%) Agile
17 140 (19.23%) SC Cleared
18 136 (18.68%) Azure Data Factory
19 135 (18.54%) Power Platform
20 132 (18.13%) Power BI
21 123 (16.90%) PySpark
22 121 (16.62%) Apache Airflow
22 121 (16.62%) Data Science
22 121 (16.62%) Problem-Solving
23 114 (15.66%) Snowflake
24 106 (14.56%) Git
25 100 (13.74%) Machine Learning
26 96 (13.19%) Data Governance
27 95 (13.05%) GCP

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
1 121 (16.62%) Apache Airflow
2 91 (12.50%) Apache Spark
3 58 (7.97%) Apache
4 22 (3.02%) Confluence
5 18 (2.47%) SAS
6 8 (1.10%) Oracle Application Server
7 7 (0.96%) SharePoint
8 6 (0.82%) Apache Pig
9 5 (0.69%) IIS
10 4 (0.55%) Jupyter
11 3 (0.41%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 2 (0.27%) ArcGIS
12 2 (0.27%) Documentum
12 2 (0.27%) Luigi
13 1 (0.14%) Apache Synapse
13 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Exchange
13 1 (0.14%) nginx
Applications
1 9 (1.24%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.27%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.27%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.27%) Windchill
4 1 (0.14%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.14%) SPSS
4 1 (0.14%) Stata
Business Applications
1 3 (0.41%) Oracle BPM
2 2 (0.27%) Aladdin
2 2 (0.27%) Maximo
2 2 (0.27%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.14%) Actimize
3 1 (0.14%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.14%) Salesforce CRM
3 1 (0.14%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 317 (43.54%) Azure
2 250 (34.34%) AWS
3 136 (18.68%) Azure Data Factory
4 135 (18.54%) Power Platform
5 114 (15.66%) Snowflake
6 95 (13.05%) GCP
7 91 (12.50%) dbt
8 86 (11.81%) Amazon S3
9 79 (10.85%) GitHub
10 75 (10.30%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 63 (8.65%) Serverless
12 46 (6.32%) Azure DevOps
13 43 (5.91%) GitHub Actions
14 40 (5.49%) AWS Lambda
15 27 (3.71%) AWS CloudFormation
16 21 (2.88%) SaaS
17 16 (2.20%) Amazon EMR
18 15 (2.06%) Amazon Kinesis
19 11 (1.51%) AWS Step Functions
20 10 (1.37%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.55%) Firewall
1 4 (0.55%) TCP/IP
2 3 (0.41%) SAN
2 3 (0.41%) SSH
3 2 (0.27%) DNS
3 2 (0.27%) Internet
3 2 (0.27%) SSL
3 2 (0.27%) Structured Cabling
4 1 (0.14%) Network Security
4 1 (0.14%) Software-Defined Networking
4 1 (0.14%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 160 (21.98%) Data Warehouse
2 132 (18.13%) Power BI
3 84 (11.54%) Data Lake
4 61 (8.38%) Big Data
5 56 (7.69%) PostgreSQL
6 53 (7.28%) SQL Server
7 47 (6.46%) Amazon Redshift
8 46 (6.32%) Delta Lake
9 43 (5.91%) Hadoop
9 43 (5.91%) NoSQL
10 41 (5.63%) Azure SQL Database
11 40 (5.49%) BigQuery
12 35 (4.81%) Tableau
13 33 (4.53%) Metadata
14 32 (4.40%) Relational Database
15 28 (3.85%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 28 (3.85%) Star Schema
16 24 (3.30%) Pentaho
17 22 (3.02%) Amazon QuickSight
17 22 (3.02%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 106 (14.56%) Git
2 60 (8.24%) Jenkins
3 38 (5.22%) JIRA
4 26 (3.57%) GitLab
5 22 (3.02%) MLflow
6 8 (1.10%) DBeaver
7 5 (0.69%) Visual Studio Code
8 4 (0.55%) Bitbucket
8 4 (0.55%) Poetry
8 4 (0.55%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.41%) PyCharm
9 3 (0.41%) Sonatype Nexus
9 3 (0.41%) Visual Studio
10 2 (0.27%) Selenium
11 1 (0.14%) Cucumber
11 1 (0.14%) ERwin
11 1 (0.14%) Maven
11 1 (0.14%) Mockito
11 1 (0.14%) Team Foundation Server
11 1 (0.14%) TeamCity
General
1 145 (19.92%) Social Skills
2 124 (17.03%) Finance
3 91 (12.50%) Analytical Skills
4 52 (7.14%) Public Sector
5 27 (3.71%) Banking
6 22 (3.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 13 (1.79%) Pharmaceutical
8 10 (1.37%) Front Office
8 10 (1.37%) Investment Banking
8 10 (1.37%) Retail
9 9 (1.24%) Marketing
9 9 (1.24%) Telecoms
10 5 (0.69%) Documentation Skills
11 4 (0.55%) Legal
11 4 (0.55%) Manufacturing
12 3 (0.41%) Law
12 3 (0.41%) Military
12 3 (0.41%) Organisational Skills
12 3 (0.41%) Presentation Skills
12 3 (0.41%) Tech for Good
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 123 (16.90%) PySpark
2 77 (10.58%) Kafka
3 17 (2.34%) Pandas
4 16 (2.20%) Apache NiFi
4 16 (2.20%) XML
5 15 (2.06%) YAML
6 14 (1.92%) RESTful
7 13 (1.79%) JSON
8 12 (1.65%) Flask
8 12 (1.65%) NumPy
9 11 (1.51%) Keycloak
9 11 (1.51%) REST
10 10 (1.37%) Node.js
10 10 (1.37%) PyTorch
10 10 (1.37%) RabbitMQ
11 9 (1.24%) HTML
11 9 (1.24%) pytest
12 8 (1.10%) Jinja
12 8 (1.10%) Oracle GoldenGate
13 7 (0.96%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 46 (6.32%) Cloud Native
2 25 (3.43%) Legacy Systems
3 23 (3.16%) Data Structures
4 19 (2.61%) Product Ownership
5 18 (2.47%) Algorithms
5 18 (2.47%) Replication
6 12 (1.65%) Data Protection Act
6 12 (1.65%) Hybrid Cloud
6 12 (1.65%) Onboarding
7 9 (1.24%) Greenfield Project
8 8 (1.10%) Distributed Computing
8 8 (1.10%) Life Science
9 7 (0.96%) IoT
10 6 (0.82%) Clustering
10 6 (0.82%) NHS
11 5 (0.69%) Distributed Systems
11 5 (0.69%) Genomics
11 5 (0.69%) Linux Command Line
11 5 (0.69%) Reinsurance
11 5 (0.69%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 21 (2.88%) Linux
2 11 (1.51%) Unix
3 2 (0.27%) Windows
3 2 (0.27%) Windows Server
3 2 (0.27%) Windows Server 2003
4 1 (0.14%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 337 (46.29%) Data Pipeline
2 305 (41.90%) ETL
3 292 (40.11%) Data Engineering
4 250 (34.34%) Data Modelling
5 236 (32.42%) CI/CD
6 233 (32.01%) Analytics
7 173 (23.76%) DevOps
8 169 (23.21%) Business Intelligence
9 146 (20.05%) Agile
10 121 (16.62%) Data Science
10 121 (16.62%) Problem-Solving
11 100 (13.74%) Machine Learning
12 96 (13.19%) Data Governance
13 89 (12.23%) Infrastructure as Code
14 88 (12.09%) AI
15 86 (11.81%) Data Integration
16 80 (10.99%) Data Architecture
17 75 (10.30%) Migration
18 71 (9.75%) Data Transformation
19 67 (9.20%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 459 (63.05%) Python
2 446 (61.26%) SQL
3 72 (9.89%) Scala
4 67 (9.20%) Java
5 26 (3.57%) Bash
6 16 (2.20%) R
7 15 (2.06%) Go
8 14 (1.92%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 14 (1.92%) PL/SQL
9 13 (1.79%) JavaScript
10 11 (1.51%) C#
11 10 (1.37%) T-SQL
12 9 (1.24%) PowerShell
12 9 (1.24%) Shell Script
13 7 (0.96%) TypeScript
14 5 (0.69%) Groovy
15 4 (0.55%) Korn
16 3 (0.41%) C++
17 2 (0.27%) ABAP
17 2 (0.27%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 164 (22.53%) Security Cleared
2 140 (19.23%) SC Cleared
3 30 (4.12%) Degree
4 23 (3.16%) Azure Certification
5 20 (2.75%) AWS Certification
6 19 (2.61%) DV Cleared
7 12 (1.65%) Computer Science Degree
8 9 (1.24%) Master's Degree
9 6 (0.82%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (0.41%) CTC Cleared
10 3 (0.41%) SnowPro
11 2 (0.27%) DBS Check
11 2 (0.27%) MCP
12 1 (0.14%) HND
12 1 (0.14%) PhD
12 1 (0.14%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 192 (26.37%) Data Quality
2 34 (4.67%) GDPR
3 12 (1.65%) QA
4 7 (0.96%) Accessibility
5 5 (0.69%) HIPAA
6 4 (0.55%) NIST
7 3 (0.41%) ISO/IEC 20000
7 3 (0.41%) MiFID
7 3 (0.41%) SLA
8 2 (0.27%) Dodd-Frank
8 2 (0.27%) EMIR
8 2 (0.27%) EU AI Act
8 2 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 1 (0.14%) HL7
9 1 (0.14%) NCSC
9 1 (0.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 1 (0.14%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.14%) WCAG
System Software
1 69 (9.48%) Docker
2 9 (1.24%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (0.69%) zsh
4 3 (0.41%) Active Directory
5 1 (0.14%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 92 (12.64%) Terraform
2 70 (9.62%) Kubernetes
3 11 (1.51%) Ansible
4 9 (1.24%) NetBackup
5 8 (1.10%) Grafana
6 5 (0.69%) Prometheus
6 5 (0.69%) Puppet
7 4 (0.55%) Argo
8 3 (0.41%) Ambari
8 3 (0.41%) Istio
8 3 (0.41%) Kibana
8 3 (0.41%) Kubeflow
8 3 (0.41%) ZABBIX
9 2 (0.27%) Control-M
9 2 (0.27%) EMC NetWorker
9 2 (0.27%) Tivoli Storage Manager
10 1 (0.14%) logstash
Vendors
1 237 (32.55%) Databricks
2 86 (11.81%) Microsoft
3 58 (7.97%) Oracle
4 31 (4.26%) Google
4 31 (4.26%) Talend
5 23 (3.16%) Foundry
5 23 (3.16%) Palantir
6 22 (3.02%) Informatica
7 19 (2.61%) Denodo
8 15 (2.06%) Cloudera
9 12 (1.65%) IBM
9 12 (1.65%) Red Hat
10 11 (1.51%) SAP
11 9 (1.24%) Commvault
11 9 (1.24%) Splunk
11 9 (1.24%) Veritas
12 7 (0.96%) Confluent
12 7 (0.96%) Virgin Media
13 5 (0.69%) EMC
14 4 (0.55%) Salesforce
507 Data Engineer jobs in England