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 June 2026.

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

6 months to
6 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 59 94 100
Rank change year-on-year +35 +6 +19
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,574 661 817
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.73% 2.73% 2.21%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.04% 2.96% 2.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,115 503 625
10th Percentile £377 £363 £255
25th Percentile £425 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.09%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £663 £713 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 55 9 41
10th Percentile £19.34 £18.13 £37.50
25th Percentile £34.92 £51.25 £49.25
Median hourly rate £52.50 £52.50 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -22.22% -10.60%
75th Percentile £71.50 £78.70 £80.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £82.75 -
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £52.50 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -22.22% -10.60%

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 38,958 22,345 34,300
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.37% 92.42% 92.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,051 14,722 22,516
10th Percentile £325 £290 £285
25th Percentile £413 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.78% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,739 957 2,592
10th Percentile £15.79 £14.00 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.30 £18.20 £16.30
Median hourly rate £45.78 £29.33 £38.00
Median % change year-on-year +56.09% -22.82% -15.56%
75th Percentile £67.50 £60.00 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £74.00
UK median hourly rate £45.00 £28.00 £37.50
% change year-on-year +60.71% -25.33% -16.67%

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 June 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 June 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 June 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 +31 848 £525 - 142
Midlands +53 306 £469 +4.22% 39
West Midlands +45 288 £469 +1.96% 32
North of England +5 202 £465 -2.11% 87
North West +11 126 £480 +1.05% 43
South East +9 104 £475 +14.87% 99
South West +17 79 £503 +4.42% 32
Yorkshire -29 58 £465 +3.33% 22
East of England -20 19 £520 +63.52% 7
North East -17 18 £450 -5.26% 23
East Midlands -20 18 £525 +28.05% 7
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 6 June 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 (54.51%) SQL
2 691 (43.90%) Python
3 650 (41.30%) Data Pipeline
4 600 (38.12%) ETL
5 594 (37.74%) Analytics
6 577 (36.66%) Data Engineering
7 543 (34.50%) Data Modelling
8 519 (32.97%) Azure
9 460 (29.22%) Security Cleared
10 447 (28.40%) AWS
11 411 (26.11%) SC Cleared
12 391 (24.84%) Data Quality
13 378 (24.02%) CI/CD
14 346 (21.98%) Databricks
15 333 (21.16%) Business Intelligence
16 276 (17.53%) DevOps
17 274 (17.41%) Agile
18 270 (17.15%) Power Platform
19 257 (16.33%) Data Warehouse
20 256 (16.26%) Power BI
21 224 (14.23%) Azure Data Factory
22 221 (14.04%) PySpark
23 209 (13.28%) Data Governance
24 208 (13.21%) Microsoft
25 207 (13.15%) Problem-Solving
26 205 (13.02%) Migration
27 182 (11.56%) AI
28 168 (10.67%) Data Integration
29 166 (10.55%) Data Lake
29 166 (10.55%) Terraform

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
1 150 (9.53%) Apache Airflow
2 141 (8.96%) Apache Spark
3 94 (5.97%) Apache
4 71 (4.51%) SAS
5 33 (2.10%) Confluence
6 9 (0.57%) Jupyter
6 9 (0.57%) Palantir Foundry
7 4 (0.25%) Microsoft Exchange
8 3 (0.19%) SharePoint
9 1 (0.064%) Apache Superset
9 1 (0.064%) Appian
9 1 (0.064%) Camunda
9 1 (0.064%) Luigi
9 1 (0.064%) R Markdown
Applications
1 16 (1.02%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.32%) Notepad++
3 4 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.13%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.064%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 6 (0.38%) Aladdin
2 3 (0.19%) Infor LN
2 3 (0.19%) SAP BPC
2 3 (0.19%) SimCorp Dimension
3 2 (0.13%) BambooHR
3 2 (0.13%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.13%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.064%) Elite 3E
4 1 (0.064%) FIS Private Capital Suite
4 1 (0.064%) iTrent
4 1 (0.064%) Maximo
4 1 (0.064%) NEC Housing
4 1 (0.064%) Oracle 11i
4 1 (0.064%) Oracle Assets
4 1 (0.064%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.064%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.064%) Raiser’s Edge
4 1 (0.064%) SAP Business ByDesign
4 1 (0.064%) SAP CAR
4 1 (0.064%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 519 (32.97%) Azure
2 447 (28.40%) AWS
3 270 (17.15%) Power Platform
4 224 (14.23%) Azure Data Factory
5 158 (10.04%) Snowflake
6 151 (9.59%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 147 (9.34%) dbt
8 145 (9.21%) Amazon S3
9 137 (8.70%) GCP
10 133 (8.45%) Azure DevOps
11 110 (6.99%) GitHub
12 93 (5.91%) Serverless
13 81 (5.15%) AWS Lambda
14 53 (3.37%) GitHub Actions
15 32 (2.03%) Matillion
16 28 (1.78%) AWS CloudFormation
17 27 (1.72%) Amazon Kinesis
18 26 (1.65%) Amazon EMR
19 24 (1.52%) OpenShift
20 23 (1.46%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 33 (2.10%) DNS
1 33 (2.10%) VPN
2 32 (2.03%) BGP
2 32 (2.03%) DMZ
2 32 (2.03%) Multicast
3 10 (0.64%) Structured Cabling
4 5 (0.32%) PuTTY
4 5 (0.32%) WinSCP
5 4 (0.25%) Firewall
5 4 (0.25%) Wi-Fi
5 4 (0.25%) Wireless
6 1 (0.064%) 4G
6 1 (0.064%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 257 (16.33%) Data Warehouse
2 256 (16.26%) Power BI
3 166 (10.55%) Data Lake
4 118 (7.50%) SQL Server
5 96 (6.10%) Delta Lake
6 87 (5.53%) Amazon Redshift
7 83 (5.27%) Pentaho
8 80 (5.08%) BigQuery
9 79 (5.02%) Metadata
10 74 (4.70%) Azure SQL Database
11 72 (4.57%) Tableau
12 64 (4.07%) Snowflake Schema
13 60 (3.81%) PostgreSQL
14 59 (3.75%) Big Data
15 57 (3.62%) Amazon Athena
16 56 (3.56%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 53 (3.37%) NoSQL
18 39 (2.48%) Relational Database
19 37 (2.35%) Data Vault
20 35 (2.22%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 154 (9.78%) Git
2 79 (5.02%) GitLab
3 73 (4.64%) JIRA
4 47 (2.99%) Jenkins
5 8 (0.51%) MLflow
6 7 (0.44%) Postman
7 5 (0.32%) Artifactory
8 3 (0.19%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.19%) Newman
8 3 (0.19%) SonarQube
9 2 (0.13%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.13%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 2 (0.13%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.13%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.064%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 1 (0.064%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.064%) ER Studio
10 1 (0.064%) ERwin
10 1 (0.064%) JUnit
10 1 (0.064%) Selenium
General
1 271 (17.22%) Finance
2 241 (15.31%) Social Skills
3 164 (10.42%) Analytical Skills
4 132 (8.39%) Public Sector
5 84 (5.34%) Banking
6 27 (1.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 26 (1.65%) Retail
8 22 (1.40%) Marketing
9 21 (1.33%) Investment Banking
10 19 (1.21%) Telecoms
11 18 (1.14%) Documentation Skills
12 17 (1.08%) Manufacturing
12 17 (1.08%) Pharmaceutical
13 14 (0.89%) Aerospace
14 11 (0.70%) Front Office
14 11 (0.70%) Publishing
15 7 (0.44%) Military
16 6 (0.38%) Legal
17 5 (0.32%) Law
17 5 (0.32%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 221 (14.04%) PySpark
2 135 (8.58%) Kafka
3 48 (3.05%) Pandas
4 32 (2.03%) JSON
5 25 (1.59%) Great Expectations
5 25 (1.59%) REST
6 22 (1.40%) Spring
6 22 (1.40%) Spring Boot
7 20 (1.27%) XML
8 19 (1.21%) YAML
9 15 (0.95%) Apache Beam
10 13 (0.83%) Apache Avro
11 12 (0.76%) scikit-learn
12 11 (0.70%) Matplotlib
12 11 (0.70%) React
13 10 (0.64%) PyTorch
14 9 (0.57%) GeoJSON
14 9 (0.57%) Node.js
14 9 (0.57%) Polars
14 9 (0.57%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 124 (7.88%) Cloud Native
2 48 (3.05%) Legacy Systems
3 40 (2.54%) Data Structures
4 28 (1.78%) Product Ownership
5 27 (1.72%) Greenfield Project
6 22 (1.40%) Onboarding
7 21 (1.33%) Reinsurance
8 20 (1.27%) Distributed Systems
9 19 (1.21%) Clustering
10 16 (1.02%) Data Protection Act
11 14 (0.89%) NHS
12 11 (0.70%) Distributed Computing
12 11 (0.70%) Replication
13 10 (0.64%) Life Science
13 10 (0.64%) Self-Motivation
14 9 (0.57%) Driving Licence
14 9 (0.57%) Public Cloud
14 9 (0.57%) Reference Data
15 8 (0.51%) Analytical Mindset
16 7 (0.44%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 56 (3.56%) Unix
2 37 (2.35%) Linux
3 4 (0.25%) Windows
4 2 (0.13%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.13%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.064%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 650 (41.30%) Data Pipeline
2 600 (38.12%) ETL
3 594 (37.74%) Analytics
4 577 (36.66%) Data Engineering
5 543 (34.50%) Data Modelling
6 378 (24.02%) CI/CD
7 333 (21.16%) Business Intelligence
8 276 (17.53%) DevOps
9 274 (17.41%) Agile
10 209 (13.28%) Data Governance
11 207 (13.15%) Problem-Solving
12 205 (13.02%) Migration
13 182 (11.56%) AI
14 168 (10.67%) Data Integration
15 165 (10.48%) Validation
16 149 (9.47%) Data Science
17 141 (8.96%) Decision-Making
18 133 (8.45%) Data Transformation
19 125 (7.94%) Infrastructure as Code
20 122 (7.75%) Data Architecture
Programming Languages
1 858 (54.51%) SQL
2 691 (43.90%) Python
3 99 (6.29%) Java
4 70 (4.45%) Scala
5 50 (3.18%) PL/SQL
6 34 (2.16%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 33 (2.10%) T-SQL
8 32 (2.03%) C#
9 28 (1.78%) Shell Script
10 26 (1.65%) Bash
11 18 (1.14%) PowerShell
12 17 (1.08%) Bicep
13 13 (0.83%) R
14 9 (0.57%) JavaScript
15 7 (0.44%) Go
16 6 (0.38%) TypeScript
17 2 (0.13%) C
17 2 (0.13%) Korn
17 2 (0.13%) Ruby
17 2 (0.13%) VB
Qualifications
1 460 (29.22%) Security Cleared
2 411 (26.11%) SC Cleared
3 39 (2.48%) Degree
4 33 (2.10%) BPSS Clearance
5 25 (1.59%) Azure Certification
6 16 (1.02%) Computer Science Degree
7 14 (0.89%) DV Cleared
8 10 (0.64%) DBS Check
9 9 (0.57%) City & Guilds
10 8 (0.51%) AWS Certification
11 6 (0.38%) Microsoft Certification
12 5 (0.32%) BICSI Certification
12 5 (0.32%) Master's Degree
13 3 (0.19%) SnowPro
14 2 (0.13%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 2 (0.13%) CISM
14 2 (0.13%) CISSP
15 1 (0.064%) CCIE
15 1 (0.064%) CISA
15 1 (0.064%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 391 (24.84%) Data Quality
2 51 (3.24%) QA
3 46 (2.92%) GDPR
4 11 (0.70%) SLA
5 9 (0.57%) Accessibility
5 9 (0.57%) FATCA
6 5 (0.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 4 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 4 (0.25%) MiFID
8 3 (0.19%) GMP
9 2 (0.13%) EMIR
9 2 (0.13%) SNOMED CT
9 2 (0.13%) WCAG
10 1 (0.064%) Basel III
10 1 (0.064%) GRC
10 1 (0.064%) GxP
10 1 (0.064%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.064%) IFRS 17
10 1 (0.064%) NIST
10 1 (0.064%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 92 (5.84%) Docker
2 6 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.13%) HDFS
4 1 (0.064%) RACF
Systems Management
1 166 (10.55%) Terraform
2 76 (4.83%) Kubernetes
3 36 (2.29%) Grafana
4 12 (0.76%) Ansible
5 10 (0.64%) Prometheus
6 7 (0.44%) Kibana
7 3 (0.19%) Rancher
8 2 (0.13%) Apache Ranger
8 2 (0.13%) Control-M
8 2 (0.13%) logstash
8 2 (0.13%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.064%) Kubeflow
9 1 (0.064%) NetBackup
9 1 (0.064%) Puppet
Vendors
1 346 (21.98%) Databricks
2 208 (13.21%) Microsoft
3 145 (9.21%) Oracle
4 117 (7.43%) Talend
5 113 (7.18%) Informatica
6 63 (4.00%) Denodo
7 57 (3.62%) Google
8 34 (2.16%) Cisco
8 34 (2.16%) F5
9 29 (1.84%) SAP
10 22 (1.40%) ServiceNow
11 21 (1.33%) Splunk
12 17 (1.08%) Cloudera
13 15 (0.95%) Alteryx
14 12 (0.76%) Foundry
15 11 (0.70%) IBM
15 11 (0.70%) Palantir
16 10 (0.64%) Salesforce
17 8 (0.51%) InterSystems
17 8 (0.51%) MuleSoft