Data Engineer Contract Job Trends in England

Data Engineer
UK > England

The median Data Engineer daily rate in England is £510, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 January 2026.

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

6 months to
1 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 104 82 117
Rank change year-on-year -22 +35 +12
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 802 793 762
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.53% 2.82% 2.10%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.77% 3.04% 2.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 571 557 583
10th Percentile £360 £362 £400
25th Percentile £413 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £638
90th Percentile £700 £725 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 8 19
10th Percentile £25.83 £36.75 £35.00
25th Percentile £33.75 £59.06 £42.74
Median hourly rate £43.50 £78.75 £62.36
Median % change year-on-year -44.76% +26.29% -5.88%
75th Percentile £79.00 £97.50 £67.50
90th Percentile £110.00 - £78.75
UK median hourly rate £54.00 £53.75 £62.36
% change year-on-year +0.47% -13.80% -0.63%

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 28,978 26,109 33,858
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.40% 92.88% 93.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,528 16,189 23,132
10th Percentile £300 £300 £281
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
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 1,750 814 1,430
10th Percentile £14.38 £15.91 £14.54
25th Percentile £18.26 £21.23 £20.00
Median hourly rate £27.21 £35.00 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year -22.26% -23.71% +40.01%
75th Percentile £61.23 £64.73 £65.00
90th Percentile £73.41 £74.31 £77.00
UK median hourly rate £26.00 £32.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year -20.00% -27.78% +41.93%

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 1 January 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 1 January 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 1 January 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 -8 508 £525 -7.89% 184
North of England -52 94 £463 +1.37% 78
Midlands -15 88 £523 +5.56% 31
West Midlands -15 74 £525 +5.00% 20
North West -27 49 £405 -10.00% 49
South West +4 41 £550 +22.22% 40
Yorkshire -50 32 £500 +4.17% 15
South East -52 32 £475 -12.64% 115
East Midlands -10 14 £455 +27.81% 9
North East -7 13 £450 -1.64% 14
East of England -26 6 £625 +96.54% 40
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 1 January 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.

1 477 (59.48%) SQL
2 473 (58.98%) Python
3 359 (44.76%) Azure
4 356 (44.39%) Data Pipeline
5 337 (42.02%) ETL
6 329 (41.02%) Data Engineering
7 275 (34.29%) Data Modelling
8 274 (34.16%) Databricks
9 268 (33.42%) Analytics
10 251 (31.30%) AWS
11 241 (30.05%) CI/CD
12 218 (27.18%) Data Quality
13 201 (25.06%) Business Intelligence
14 197 (24.56%) Security Cleared
15 186 (23.19%) DevOps
16 171 (21.32%) Data Warehouse
17 170 (21.20%) SC Cleared
18 162 (20.20%) Power Platform
19 160 (19.95%) Azure Data Factory
20 158 (19.70%) Power BI
21 150 (18.70%) Agile
22 146 (18.20%) PySpark
23 126 (15.71%) Problem-Solving
24 125 (15.59%) Data Science
25 119 (14.84%) Data Governance
26 117 (14.59%) Git
27 111 (13.84%) Apache Airflow
28 107 (13.34%) Microsoft
29 106 (13.22%) Snowflake
30 105 (13.09%) Data Architecture

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
1 111 (13.84%) Apache Airflow
2 102 (12.72%) Apache Spark
3 62 (7.73%) Apache
4 21 (2.62%) Confluence
5 19 (2.37%) SAS
6 6 (0.75%) Apache Pig
6 6 (0.75%) Oracle Application Server
7 5 (0.62%) IIS
8 3 (0.37%) Jupyter
8 3 (0.37%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 2 (0.25%) ArcGIS
9 2 (0.25%) SharePoint
10 1 (0.12%) Apache Synapse
10 1 (0.12%) Luigi
10 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.12%) nginx
Applications
1 8 (1.00%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.25%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.12%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.12%) SPSS
3 1 (0.12%) Stata
Business Applications
1 3 (0.37%) Oracle BPM
2 2 (0.25%) Aladdin
2 2 (0.25%) Maximo
2 2 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.12%) Actimize
3 1 (0.12%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.12%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 359 (44.76%) Azure
2 251 (31.30%) AWS
3 162 (20.20%) Power Platform
4 160 (19.95%) Azure Data Factory
5 106 (13.22%) Snowflake
6 99 (12.34%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 96 (11.97%) GCP
8 93 (11.60%) Amazon S3
9 88 (10.97%) dbt
10 82 (10.22%) GitHub
11 72 (8.98%) Serverless
12 56 (6.98%) Azure DevOps
13 47 (5.86%) AWS Lambda
14 44 (5.49%) GitHub Actions
15 27 (3.37%) AWS CloudFormation
16 22 (2.74%) SaaS
17 19 (2.37%) Amazon Kinesis
18 17 (2.12%) AWS Step Functions
19 14 (1.75%) Amazon EMR
20 13 (1.62%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.62%) DNS
2 4 (0.50%) Firewall
2 4 (0.50%) TCP/IP
3 3 (0.37%) BGP
3 3 (0.37%) DMZ
3 3 (0.37%) Multicast
3 3 (0.37%) SAN
3 3 (0.37%) SSH
3 3 (0.37%) VPN
4 2 (0.25%) SSL
4 2 (0.25%) Structured Cabling
5 1 (0.12%) Internet
5 1 (0.12%) Network Security
5 1 (0.12%) Software-Defined Networking
5 1 (0.12%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 171 (21.32%) Data Warehouse
2 158 (19.70%) Power BI
3 102 (12.72%) Data Lake
4 73 (9.10%) SQL Server
5 61 (7.61%) Big Data
6 60 (7.48%) Azure SQL Database
7 53 (6.61%) PostgreSQL
8 50 (6.23%) Amazon Redshift
8 50 (6.23%) NoSQL
9 47 (5.86%) Delta Lake
10 43 (5.36%) BigQuery
11 42 (5.24%) Metadata
12 41 (5.11%) Hadoop
13 36 (4.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 30 (3.74%) Tableau
15 29 (3.62%) Relational Database
16 27 (3.37%) Amazon Athena
17 26 (3.24%) Star Schema
18 25 (3.12%) Pentaho
18 25 (3.12%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 117 (14.59%) Git
2 62 (7.73%) Jenkins
3 39 (4.86%) JIRA
4 28 (3.49%) GitLab
5 23 (2.87%) MLflow
6 6 (0.75%) DBeaver
7 5 (0.62%) Visual Studio Code
8 4 (0.50%) Bitbucket
8 4 (0.50%) Poetry
8 4 (0.50%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.37%) PyCharm
9 3 (0.37%) Sonatype Nexus
9 3 (0.37%) Visual Studio
10 2 (0.25%) Selenium
11 1 (0.12%) Cucumber
11 1 (0.12%) ERwin
11 1 (0.12%) JUnit
11 1 (0.12%) Maven
11 1 (0.12%) Mockito
11 1 (0.12%) TeamCity
General
1 146 (18.20%) Social Skills
2 127 (15.84%) Finance
3 84 (10.47%) Analytical Skills
4 58 (7.23%) Public Sector
5 33 (4.11%) Banking
6 25 (3.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 14 (1.75%) Investment Banking
8 13 (1.62%) Front Office
8 13 (1.62%) Pharmaceutical
9 10 (1.25%) Retail
10 9 (1.12%) Marketing
11 7 (0.87%) Telecoms
12 5 (0.62%) Military
13 4 (0.50%) Back Office
13 4 (0.50%) Law
13 4 (0.50%) Manufacturing
14 3 (0.37%) Corporate Banking
14 3 (0.37%) Health Technology
14 3 (0.37%) Legal
14 3 (0.37%) Organisational Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 146 (18.20%) PySpark
2 85 (10.60%) Kafka
3 24 (2.99%) Pandas
4 17 (2.12%) Apache NiFi
4 17 (2.12%) REST
5 15 (1.87%) NumPy
5 15 (1.87%) XML
6 14 (1.75%) RESTful
6 14 (1.75%) YAML
7 13 (1.62%) JSON
8 12 (1.50%) Flask
8 12 (1.50%) Keycloak
9 11 (1.37%) PyTorch
10 10 (1.25%) Node.js
11 9 (1.12%) HTML
11 9 (1.12%) pytest
11 9 (1.12%) RabbitMQ
12 8 (1.00%) Middleware
12 8 (1.00%) TensorFlow
13 7 (0.87%) Great Expectations
Miscellaneous
1 50 (6.23%) Cloud Native
2 25 (3.12%) Data Structures
3 23 (2.87%) Product Ownership
4 22 (2.74%) Legacy Systems
5 20 (2.49%) Replication
6 16 (2.00%) Algorithms
7 13 (1.62%) Greenfield Project
7 13 (1.62%) Onboarding
8 11 (1.37%) Hybrid Cloud
9 9 (1.12%) Data Protection Act
10 8 (1.00%) Clustering
10 8 (1.00%) Life Science
11 7 (0.87%) Distributed Computing
11 7 (0.87%) IoT
12 6 (0.75%) NHS
12 6 (0.75%) Reinsurance
13 5 (0.62%) Distributed Systems
13 5 (0.62%) Linux Command Line
13 5 (0.62%) Management Information System
13 5 (0.62%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 22 (2.74%) Linux
2 10 (1.25%) Unix
3 1 (0.12%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 356 (44.39%) Data Pipeline
2 337 (42.02%) ETL
3 329 (41.02%) Data Engineering
4 275 (34.29%) Data Modelling
5 268 (33.42%) Analytics
6 241 (30.05%) CI/CD
7 201 (25.06%) Business Intelligence
8 186 (23.19%) DevOps
9 150 (18.70%) Agile
10 126 (15.71%) Problem-Solving
11 125 (15.59%) Data Science
12 119 (14.84%) Data Governance
13 105 (13.09%) Data Architecture
14 104 (12.97%) Machine Learning
15 99 (12.34%) AI
15 99 (12.34%) Data Integration
16 90 (11.22%) Infrastructure as Code
17 73 (9.10%) Data Transformation
18 72 (8.98%) Performance Tuning
19 71 (8.85%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 477 (59.48%) SQL
2 473 (58.98%) Python
3 80 (9.98%) Scala
4 63 (7.86%) Java
5 25 (3.12%) Bash
6 18 (2.24%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 18 (2.24%) PL/SQL
7 16 (2.00%) Go
8 15 (1.87%) R
9 14 (1.75%) C#
10 13 (1.62%) T-SQL
11 12 (1.50%) JavaScript
12 9 (1.12%) PowerShell
12 9 (1.12%) Shell Script
13 8 (1.00%) Bicep
14 7 (0.87%) TypeScript
15 5 (0.62%) Groovy
16 4 (0.50%) Korn
17 3 (0.37%) C++
18 2 (0.25%) VB
Qualifications
1 197 (24.56%) Security Cleared
2 170 (21.20%) SC Cleared
3 28 (3.49%) Azure Certification
4 25 (3.12%) Degree
5 21 (2.62%) AWS Certification
6 19 (2.37%) DV Cleared
7 13 (1.62%) Computer Science Degree
8 7 (0.87%) BPSS Clearance
9 6 (0.75%) Master's Degree
10 4 (0.50%) CTC Cleared
10 4 (0.50%) DBS Check
10 4 (0.50%) Microsoft Certification
11 2 (0.25%) MCP
11 2 (0.25%) SnowPro
12 1 (0.12%) HND
12 1 (0.12%) PhD
12 1 (0.12%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 218 (27.18%) Data Quality
2 42 (5.24%) GDPR
3 10 (1.25%) QA
4 6 (0.75%) Accessibility
5 5 (0.62%) HIPAA
6 3 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 3 (0.37%) MiFID
7 2 (0.25%) Dodd-Frank
7 2 (0.25%) EMIR
7 2 (0.25%) EU AI Act
7 2 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 20000
7 2 (0.25%) NIST
7 2 (0.25%) SLA
8 1 (0.12%) Basel III
8 1 (0.12%) HL7
8 1 (0.12%) NCSC
8 1 (0.12%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.12%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.12%) WCAG
System Software
1 71 (8.85%) Docker
2 9 (1.12%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (0.62%) zsh
4 3 (0.37%) Active Directory
5 1 (0.12%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 97 (12.09%) Terraform
2 71 (8.85%) Kubernetes
3 12 (1.50%) Ansible
4 9 (1.12%) Grafana
4 9 (1.12%) NetBackup
5 6 (0.75%) Prometheus
6 5 (0.62%) Kibana
6 5 (0.62%) Puppet
7 4 (0.50%) Argo
8 3 (0.37%) Ambari
8 3 (0.37%) Istio
8 3 (0.37%) Kubeflow
8 3 (0.37%) logstash
8 3 (0.37%) ZABBIX
9 2 (0.25%) Control-M
9 2 (0.25%) EMC NetWorker
9 2 (0.25%) Tivoli Storage Manager
Vendors
1 274 (34.16%) Databricks
2 107 (13.34%) Microsoft
3 56 (6.98%) Oracle
4 33 (4.11%) Google
5 29 (3.62%) Talend
6 21 (2.62%) Foundry
6 21 (2.62%) Palantir
7 20 (2.49%) Denodo
8 17 (2.12%) Informatica
9 14 (1.75%) IBM
10 13 (1.62%) Cloudera
10 13 (1.62%) SAP
11 12 (1.50%) Red Hat
12 10 (1.25%) ServiceNow
13 9 (1.12%) Commvault
13 9 (1.12%) Splunk
13 9 (1.12%) Veritas
14 7 (0.87%) Confluent
14 7 (0.87%) Virgin Media
15 6 (0.75%) Cisco