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 2 October 2026.

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

6 months to
2 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 66 133 101
Rank change year-on-year +67 -32 +27
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,672 622 775
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.59% 2.22% 2.38%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.90% 2.44% 2.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,106 451 539
10th Percentile £378 £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 £700 £703
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 66 12 8
10th Percentile £21.25 £25.25 £49.25
25th Percentile £30.96 £32.94 £57.31
Median hourly rate £41.56 £48.00 £80.00
Median % change year-on-year -13.43% -40.00% +29.55%
75th Percentile £68.00 £66.88 £97.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £107.00 -
UK median hourly rate £41.56 £52.50 £80.00
% change year-on-year -20.85% -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 42,886 25,528 30,220
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.14% 91.21% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,349 16,462 18,545
10th Percentile £325 £279 £300
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.11%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £730 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,627 1,402 1,358
10th Percentile £14.59 £13.80 £15.00
25th Percentile £20.50 £17.31 £21.37
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% -1.20%
75th Percentile £67.87 £52.50 £67.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +65.94% -41.51% -3.37%

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 2 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 2 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 2 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 +37 833 £530 +0.95% 962
Midlands +71 337 £469 +1.41% 134
West Midlands +63 258 £469 -6.20% 88
North of England +27 205 £525 +10.53% 301
South East +19 125 £459 -3.37% 222
South West +29 115 £525 +5.00% 93
North West +22 111 £525 +19.32% 163
East Midlands +39 79 £388 -16.22% 45
Yorkshire +9 76 £500 - 82
East of England +7 37 £488 -18.75% 64
North East -30 19 £480 +16.36% 57
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 2 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.

1 858 (51.32%) SQL
2 728 (43.54%) Data Pipeline
3 718 (42.94%) Python
4 656 (39.23%) Data Engineering
5 582 (34.81%) Data Modelling
6 580 (34.69%) ETL
7 567 (33.91%) Analytics
8 526 (31.46%) AWS
9 507 (30.32%) Azure
10 439 (26.26%) Data Quality
11 435 (26.02%) Security Cleared
12 415 (24.82%) CI/CD
13 368 (22.01%) SC Cleared
14 340 (20.33%) Databricks
15 296 (17.70%) Agile
16 280 (16.75%) Data Warehouse
17 279 (16.69%) DevOps
18 278 (16.63%) Migration
19 271 (16.21%) AI
20 252 (15.07%) Business Intelligence
21 228 (13.64%) Data Transformation
22 226 (13.52%) PySpark
23 222 (13.28%) Validation
24 221 (13.22%) Data Governance
25 217 (12.98%) Microsoft
26 214 (12.80%) Snowflake
27 212 (12.68%) dbt
28 206 (12.32%) Data Integration
29 203 (12.14%) Power Platform
30 198 (11.84%) 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
1 188 (11.24%) Apache Airflow
2 149 (8.91%) Apache Spark
3 126 (7.54%) Apache
4 39 (2.33%) SAS
5 34 (2.03%) Confluence
6 17 (1.02%) Palantir Foundry
7 14 (0.84%) SharePoint
8 13 (0.78%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.18%) Apache Superset
9 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.060%) Apache Pulsar
10 1 (0.060%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.060%) Liferay
10 1 (0.060%) Luigi
10 1 (0.060%) nginx
10 1 (0.060%) Oracle Workflow
10 1 (0.060%) PowerExchange
Applications
1 20 (1.20%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
3 5 (0.30%) Notepad++
4 4 (0.24%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.060%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.060%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 12 (0.72%) Aladdin
2 7 (0.42%) 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 (0.060%) BambooHR
7 1 (0.060%) Dynamics NAV
7 1 (0.060%) Markit EDM
7 1 (0.060%) MIS ActiveH
7 1 (0.060%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.060%) Oracle Retail
7 1 (0.060%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 526 (31.46%) AWS
2 507 (30.32%) Azure
3 214 (12.80%) Snowflake
4 212 (12.68%) dbt
5 203 (12.14%) Power Platform
6 196 (11.72%) Azure Data Factory
7 181 (10.83%) GCP
8 154 (9.21%) Amazon S3
9 114 (6.82%) Serverless
10 113 (6.76%) Azure DevOps
11 111 (6.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 100 (5.98%) AWS Lambda
13 97 (5.80%) GitHub
14 59 (3.53%) Azure Databricks
15 47 (2.81%) Amazon EMR
16 44 (2.63%) GitHub Actions
17 36 (2.15%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 28 (1.67%) AWS Step Functions
19 27 (1.61%) Microsoft Purview
20 25 (1.50%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 22 (1.32%) DNS
2 21 (1.26%) BGP
2 21 (1.26%) DMZ
2 21 (1.26%) Multicast
2 21 (1.26%) VPN
3 6 (0.36%) Firewall
4 5 (0.30%) PuTTY
4 5 (0.30%) WinSCP
5 4 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
5 4 (0.24%) Wireless
6 3 (0.18%) Intrusion Detection
6 3 (0.18%) Structured Cabling
7 1 (0.060%) HTTP
7 1 (0.060%) HTTPS
7 1 (0.060%) Network Security
7 1 (0.060%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.060%) tcpdump
7 1 (0.060%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 280 (16.75%) Data Warehouse
2 198 (11.84%) Power BI
3 138 (8.25%) Data Lake
4 125 (7.48%) Metadata
5 102 (6.10%) BigQuery
6 85 (5.08%) Amazon Redshift
7 78 (4.67%) Delta Lake
8 71 (4.25%) Amazon Athena
9 68 (4.07%) SQL Server
10 62 (3.71%) Big Data
11 58 (3.47%) PostgreSQL
12 57 (3.41%) Pentaho
13 53 (3.17%) Tableau
14 49 (2.93%) Relational Database
15 48 (2.87%) Snowflake Schema
16 46 (2.75%) NoSQL
17 40 (2.39%) Oracle Database
18 37 (2.21%) Amazon RDS
19 35 (2.09%) SQL Server Integration Services
20 34 (2.03%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 149 (8.91%) Git
2 84 (5.02%) GitLab
3 45 (2.69%) JIRA
4 24 (1.44%) Jenkins
5 14 (0.84%) MLflow
6 8 (0.48%) Bitbucket
6 8 (0.48%) 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%) RStudio
10 2 (0.12%) Terragrunt
10 2 (0.12%) Yeoman
11 1 (0.060%) Octopus Deploy
11 1 (0.060%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 286 (17.11%) Social Skills
2 261 (15.61%) Finance
3 185 (11.06%) Analytical Skills
4 150 (8.97%) Public Sector
5 107 (6.40%) Banking
6 26 (1.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 26 (1.56%) Retail
7 23 (1.38%) Automotive
8 21 (1.26%) Aerospace
9 19 (1.14%) Front Office
10 18 (1.08%) Investment Banking
11 17 (1.02%) Manufacturing
12 16 (0.96%) Marketing
12 16 (0.96%) Telecoms
13 14 (0.84%) Military
13 14 (0.84%) Pharmaceutical
14 13 (0.78%) Documentation Skills
15 11 (0.66%) Back Office
16 10 (0.60%) Law
17 9 (0.54%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 226 (13.52%) PySpark
2 185 (11.06%) Terraform
3 106 (6.34%) Kafka
4 31 (1.85%) REST
5 24 (1.44%) JSON
5 24 (1.44%) Pandas
6 19 (1.14%) Spring
6 19 (1.14%) Spring Boot
7 17 (1.02%) Great Expectations
7 17 (1.02%) XML
8 14 (0.84%) Apache Beam
8 14 (0.84%) pytest
9 13 (0.78%) Apache NiFi
10 12 (0.72%) PyTorch
10 12 (0.72%) RESTful
11 11 (0.66%) LangChain
12 10 (0.60%) .NET
12 10 (0.60%) Microsoft Graph
12 10 (0.60%) React
13 7 (0.42%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 140 (8.37%) Cloud Native
2 58 (3.47%) Legacy Systems
3 50 (2.99%) Data Structures
4 43 (2.57%) Onboarding
5 27 (1.61%) Product Ownership
6 21 (1.26%) AI Agents
6 21 (1.26%) Distributed Systems
7 18 (1.08%) Greenfield Project
8 17 (1.02%) Algorithms
8 17 (1.02%) Management Information System
9 16 (0.96%) NHS
10 15 (0.90%) Reference Data
10 15 (0.90%) Reinsurance
11 11 (0.66%) Virtual Team
12 9 (0.54%) Data Protection Act
12 9 (0.54%) Distributed Computing
13 8 (0.48%) Clustering
13 8 (0.48%) Data Fabric
13 8 (0.48%) Enterprise Software
13 8 (0.48%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 48 (2.87%) Unix
2 38 (2.27%) Linux
3 2 (0.12%) Ubuntu
4 1 (0.060%) Robot Operating System
4 1 (0.060%) VMS
4 1 (0.060%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 728 (43.54%) Data Pipeline
2 656 (39.23%) Data Engineering
3 582 (34.81%) Data Modelling
4 580 (34.69%) ETL
5 567 (33.91%) Analytics
6 415 (24.82%) CI/CD
7 296 (17.70%) Agile
8 279 (16.69%) DevOps
9 278 (16.63%) Migration
10 271 (16.21%) AI
11 252 (15.07%) Business Intelligence
12 228 (13.64%) Data Transformation
13 222 (13.28%) Validation
14 221 (13.22%) Data Governance
15 206 (12.32%) Data Integration
16 174 (10.41%) Problem-Solving
17 158 (9.45%) Lakehouse
18 157 (9.39%) Decision-Making
18 157 (9.39%) Infrastructure as Code
19 154 (9.21%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 858 (51.32%) SQL
2 718 (42.94%) Python
3 88 (5.26%) Java
4 68 (4.07%) Scala
5 40 (2.39%) PL/SQL
6 29 (1.73%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 27 (1.61%) T-SQL
8 25 (1.50%) PowerShell
9 24 (1.44%) Shell Script
10 19 (1.14%) Bash
11 18 (1.08%) JavaScript
12 12 (0.72%) R
13 10 (0.60%) Go
14 9 (0.54%) Bicep
15 8 (0.48%) C#
16 7 (0.42%) TypeScript
17 5 (0.30%) Korn
18 3 (0.18%) Kusto Query Language
19 2 (0.12%) COBOL
19 2 (0.12%) Cypher
Qualifications
1 435 (26.02%) Security Cleared
2 368 (22.01%) SC Cleared
3 42 (2.51%) Degree
4 39 (2.33%) BPSS Clearance
5 36 (2.15%) DV Cleared
6 24 (1.44%) Azure Certification
7 20 (1.20%) Computer Science Degree
8 13 (0.78%) AWS Certification
9 8 (0.48%) DBS Check
9 8 (0.48%) Master's Degree
10 7 (0.42%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 6 (0.36%) SnowPro
12 4 (0.24%) CISM
12 4 (0.24%) CISSP
12 4 (0.24%) City & Guilds
13 3 (0.18%) CEH
13 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Certification
14 1 (0.060%) PMI Certification
14 1 (0.060%) PMP
14 1 (0.060%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 439 (26.26%) Data Quality
2 67 (4.01%) QA
3 30 (1.79%) GDPR
4 13 (0.78%) Accessibility
5 6 (0.36%) FATCA
5 6 (0.36%) SLA
6 5 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 4 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
8 3 (0.18%) HIPAA
8 3 (0.18%) MiFID
9 2 (0.12%) EMIR
9 2 (0.12%) SNOMED CT
10 1 (0.060%) Government Security Classifications
10 1 (0.060%) GRC
10 1 (0.060%) IFRS
10 1 (0.060%) IFRS 17
10 1 (0.060%) IFRS 9
10 1 (0.060%) NIST
10 1 (0.060%) PMO
System Software
1 99 (5.92%) Docker
2 3 (0.18%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.060%) HDFS
3 1 (0.060%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 81 (4.84%) Kubernetes
2 19 (1.14%) Ansible
2 19 (1.14%) Grafana
3 11 (0.66%) Control-M
4 10 (0.60%) Kibana
5 4 (0.24%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.12%) Puppet
7 1 (0.060%) logstash
7 1 (0.060%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 340 (20.33%) Databricks
2 217 (12.98%) Microsoft
3 141 (8.43%) Oracle
4 87 (5.20%) Informatica
5 82 (4.90%) Google
6 74 (4.43%) Talend
7 37 (2.21%) Denodo
8 30 (1.79%) Salesforce
9 27 (1.61%) Palantir
10 25 (1.50%) SAP
11 24 (1.44%) Foundry
12 21 (1.26%) Cisco
12 21 (1.26%) F5
13 12 (0.72%) Splunk
14 9 (0.54%) Bloomberg
15 8 (0.48%) OpenAI
15 8 (0.48%) Sage
16 7 (0.42%) Alteryx
16 7 (0.42%) Cloudera
16 7 (0.42%) InterSystems