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 5 April 2026.

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

6 months to
5 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 68 80 95
Rank change year-on-year +12 +15 +22
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,368 756 857
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.53% 3.10% 2.28%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.82% 3.34% 2.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 981 571 669
10th Percentile £368 £358 £300
25th Percentile £415 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year - -1.96% -7.27%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £619
90th Percentile £663 £738 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 10 41
10th Percentile £19.34 £25.45 £37.50
25th Percentile £38.13 £43.75 £49.25
Median hourly rate £64.50 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year -0.77% -3.70% +5.47%
75th Percentile £75.00 £78.40 £80.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £93.75 -
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £47.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +15.79% -26.92% +1.56%

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 35,775 22,632 34,809
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.34% 92.88% 92.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,532 15,157 23,256
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £409 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £507 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.52% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -3.31%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,360 840 2,307
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.84 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.09 £20.30 £16.25
Median hourly rate £42.50 £33.00 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +28.79% - -24.36%
75th Percentile £65.60 £65.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.55 £76.25 £71.45
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £32.00 £33.78
% change year-on-year +25.00% -5.26% -24.15%

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 April 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 5 April 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 5 April 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 +12 777 £525 -1.41% 158
Midlands +17 255 £469 -1.37% 59
West Midlands +21 235 £469 -2.91% 45
North of England -19 174 £463 - 87
North West -3 108 £450 -2.70% 56
South East -23 68 £500 -0.50% 91
South West -5 53 £525 +5.00% 38
Yorkshire -31 51 £465 +3.33% 19
East Midlands -25 20 £450 +12.85% 14
North East -12 15 £488 +2.63% 13
East of England -31 15 £565 +79.37% 17
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 5 April 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.

1 775 (56.65%) SQL
2 665 (48.61%) Python
3 585 (42.76%) Data Pipeline
4 573 (41.89%) ETL
5 558 (40.79%) Data Engineering
6 538 (39.33%) Analytics
7 520 (38.01%) Azure
8 491 (35.89%) Data Modelling
9 390 (28.51%) Security Cleared
10 387 (28.29%) Data Quality
11 379 (27.70%) AWS
12 365 (26.68%) Databricks
13 359 (26.24%) CI/CD
14 353 (25.80%) SC Cleared
15 325 (23.76%) Business Intelligence
16 268 (19.59%) DevOps
17 254 (18.57%) Data Warehouse
17 254 (18.57%) Power Platform
18 253 (18.49%) Agile
19 239 (17.47%) Power BI
20 223 (16.30%) Data Governance
21 219 (16.01%) Azure Data Factory
22 206 (15.06%) PySpark
23 203 (14.84%) Problem-Solving
24 182 (13.30%) Microsoft
25 178 (13.01%) Git
26 165 (12.06%) Data Science
27 161 (11.77%) Snowflake
28 155 (11.33%) Data Integration
29 154 (11.26%) AI

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
1 136 (9.94%) Apache Spark
2 131 (9.58%) Apache Airflow
3 86 (6.29%) Apache
4 68 (4.97%) SAS
5 16 (1.17%) Confluence
6 10 (0.73%) Palantir Foundry
7 5 (0.37%) Jupyter
7 5 (0.37%) Microsoft Exchange
8 3 (0.22%) SharePoint
9 2 (0.15%) Oracle Application Server
10 1 (0.073%) Apache Superset
10 1 (0.073%) Apache Synapse
10 1 (0.073%) Appian
10 1 (0.073%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.073%) Camunda
10 1 (0.073%) Luigi
10 1 (0.073%) R Markdown
Applications
1 15 (1.10%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.29%) Notepad++
3 3 (0.22%) Chatbot
3 3 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.073%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.073%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.15%) Aladdin
1 2 (0.15%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.15%) Maximo
1 2 (0.15%) SAP BPC
2 1 (0.073%) Actimize
2 1 (0.073%) BambooHR
2 1 (0.073%) Elite 3E
2 1 (0.073%) iTrent
2 1 (0.073%) NEC Housing
2 1 (0.073%) Oracle 11i
2 1 (0.073%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.073%) SAP Business ByDesign
2 1 (0.073%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 520 (38.01%) Azure
2 379 (27.70%) AWS
3 254 (18.57%) Power Platform
4 219 (16.01%) Azure Data Factory
5 161 (11.77%) Snowflake
6 146 (10.67%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 138 (10.09%) GCP
8 134 (9.80%) dbt
9 133 (9.72%) Amazon S3
10 115 (8.41%) GitHub
11 106 (7.75%) Azure DevOps
12 92 (6.73%) Serverless
13 69 (5.04%) AWS Lambda
14 51 (3.73%) GitHub Actions
15 38 (2.78%) AWS CloudFormation
16 27 (1.97%) Matillion
17 24 (1.75%) Amazon Kinesis
17 24 (1.75%) AWS Step Functions
18 21 (1.54%) Dagster
19 19 (1.39%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.83%) DNS
1 25 (1.83%) VPN
2 24 (1.75%) BGP
2 24 (1.75%) DMZ
2 24 (1.75%) Multicast
3 10 (0.73%) Structured Cabling
4 4 (0.29%) Firewall
4 4 (0.29%) PuTTY
4 4 (0.29%) WinSCP
5 3 (0.22%) SAN
6 1 (0.073%) 4G
6 1 (0.073%) 5G
6 1 (0.073%) Network Security
6 1 (0.073%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 254 (18.57%) Data Warehouse
2 239 (17.47%) Power BI
3 153 (11.18%) Data Lake
4 103 (7.53%) SQL Server
5 83 (6.07%) Delta Lake
6 82 (5.99%) BigQuery
7 81 (5.92%) Amazon Redshift
7 81 (5.92%) Azure SQL Database
8 74 (5.41%) Metadata
9 73 (5.34%) Pentaho
10 60 (4.39%) PostgreSQL
11 59 (4.31%) Tableau
12 55 (4.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 54 (3.95%) Big Data
13 54 (3.95%) Snowflake Schema
14 51 (3.73%) NoSQL
15 49 (3.58%) Amazon Athena
16 35 (2.56%) Hadoop
16 35 (2.56%) Star Schema
17 34 (2.49%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 178 (13.01%) Git
2 64 (4.68%) Jenkins
3 63 (4.61%) JIRA
4 57 (4.17%) GitLab
5 19 (1.39%) MLflow
6 2 (0.15%) Bitbucket
6 2 (0.15%) DBeaver
6 2 (0.15%) JUnit
6 2 (0.15%) Selenium
6 2 (0.15%) SonarQube
6 2 (0.15%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.15%) Visual Studio
7 1 (0.073%) Cucumber
7 1 (0.073%) ER Studio
7 1 (0.073%) ERwin
7 1 (0.073%) Jaeger
7 1 (0.073%) Maven
7 1 (0.073%) Mockito
7 1 (0.073%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (0.073%) Terragrunt
General
1 229 (16.74%) Social Skills
2 221 (16.15%) Finance
3 144 (10.53%) Analytical Skills
4 120 (8.77%) Public Sector
5 71 (5.19%) Banking
6 35 (2.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 20 (1.46%) Investment Banking
7 20 (1.46%) Telecoms
8 15 (1.10%) Documentation Skills
8 15 (1.10%) Retail
9 14 (1.02%) Front Office
9 14 (1.02%) Pharmaceutical
10 13 (0.95%) Marketing
11 11 (0.80%) Publishing
12 10 (0.73%) Manufacturing
13 8 (0.58%) Law
14 6 (0.44%) Military
15 4 (0.29%) Corporate Banking
15 4 (0.29%) Legal
15 4 (0.29%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 206 (15.06%) PySpark
2 144 (10.53%) Kafka
3 47 (3.44%) Pandas
4 32 (2.34%) JSON
5 28 (2.05%) YAML
6 24 (1.75%) REST
7 23 (1.68%) Great Expectations
8 17 (1.24%) XML
9 16 (1.17%) Node.js
10 15 (1.10%) scikit-learn
11 13 (0.95%) Matplotlib
11 13 (0.95%) PyTorch
11 13 (0.95%) React
12 12 (0.88%) NumPy
13 11 (0.80%) Apache Beam
13 11 (0.80%) Keycloak
13 11 (0.80%) pytest
14 10 (0.73%) Apache Avro
15 9 (0.66%) GeoJSON
15 9 (0.66%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 97 (7.09%) Cloud Native
2 44 (3.22%) Legacy Systems
3 31 (2.27%) Data Structures
4 30 (2.19%) Product Ownership
5 21 (1.54%) Clustering
5 21 (1.54%) Onboarding
6 20 (1.46%) Greenfield Project
7 19 (1.39%) Distributed Systems
8 15 (1.10%) Data Protection Act
8 15 (1.10%) Hybrid Cloud
8 15 (1.10%) Replication
9 12 (0.88%) NHS
9 12 (0.88%) Reinsurance
10 11 (0.80%) Public Cloud
11 9 (0.66%) Life Science
11 9 (0.66%) Self-Motivation
12 8 (0.58%) Analytical Mindset
12 8 (0.58%) Distributed Computing
13 7 (0.51%) Data Centre
13 7 (0.51%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 35 (2.56%) Unix
2 23 (1.68%) Linux
3 3 (0.22%) Windows
4 2 (0.15%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.073%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 585 (42.76%) Data Pipeline
2 573 (41.89%) ETL
3 558 (40.79%) Data Engineering
4 538 (39.33%) Analytics
5 491 (35.89%) Data Modelling
6 359 (26.24%) CI/CD
7 325 (23.76%) Business Intelligence
8 268 (19.59%) DevOps
9 253 (18.49%) Agile
10 223 (16.30%) Data Governance
11 203 (14.84%) Problem-Solving
12 165 (12.06%) Data Science
13 155 (11.33%) Data Integration
14 154 (11.26%) AI
15 146 (10.67%) Migration
16 144 (10.53%) Data Architecture
17 133 (9.72%) Validation
18 129 (9.43%) Data Transformation
19 124 (9.06%) Performance Tuning
20 121 (8.85%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 775 (56.65%) SQL
2 665 (48.61%) Python
3 85 (6.21%) Java
4 80 (5.85%) Scala
5 37 (2.70%) C#
5 37 (2.70%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 32 (2.34%) PL/SQL
7 27 (1.97%) T-SQL
8 25 (1.83%) Bash
9 24 (1.75%) Shell Script
10 20 (1.46%) PowerShell
11 19 (1.39%) Bicep
12 16 (1.17%) R
13 14 (1.02%) Go
14 10 (0.73%) JavaScript
15 6 (0.44%) TypeScript
16 3 (0.22%) C
16 3 (0.22%) Korn
17 2 (0.15%) Ruby
17 2 (0.15%) VB
Qualifications
1 390 (28.51%) Security Cleared
2 353 (25.80%) SC Cleared
3 36 (2.63%) Degree
4 33 (2.41%) Azure Certification
5 24 (1.75%) BPSS Clearance
6 16 (1.17%) Computer Science Degree
7 13 (0.95%) AWS Certification
7 13 (0.95%) DV Cleared
8 6 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
9 5 (0.37%) BICSI Certification
9 5 (0.37%) City & Guilds
9 5 (0.37%) Master's Degree
10 4 (0.29%) CTC Cleared
10 4 (0.29%) DBS Check
10 4 (0.29%) SnowPro
11 2 (0.15%) CISM
11 2 (0.15%) CISSP
12 1 (0.073%) CCIE
12 1 (0.073%) CCNP
12 1 (0.073%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 387 (28.29%) Data Quality
2 51 (3.73%) GDPR
3 33 (2.41%) QA
4 11 (0.80%) Accessibility
5 8 (0.58%) SLA
6 4 (0.29%) HIPAA
6 4 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 3 (0.22%) FATCA
7 3 (0.22%) GMP
7 3 (0.22%) MiFID
8 2 (0.15%) Dodd-Frank
8 2 (0.15%) EMIR
8 2 (0.15%) WCAG
9 1 (0.073%) GxP
9 1 (0.073%) ISO 13485
9 1 (0.073%) NCSC
9 1 (0.073%) NIST
9 1 (0.073%) PCI DSS
9 1 (0.073%) PMO
9 1 (0.073%) SOC 2
System Software
1 98 (7.16%) Docker
2 9 (0.66%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.15%) HDFS
4 1 (0.073%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.073%) RACF
Systems Management
1 153 (11.18%) Terraform
2 101 (7.38%) Kubernetes
3 30 (2.19%) Grafana
4 13 (0.95%) Prometheus
5 8 (0.58%) Ansible
6 4 (0.29%) Kubeflow
7 3 (0.22%) Kibana
7 3 (0.22%) NetBackup
7 3 (0.22%) Rancher
8 2 (0.15%) Apache Ranger
8 2 (0.15%) EMC NetWorker
8 2 (0.15%) logstash
8 2 (0.15%) Puppet
8 2 (0.15%) Thomson Reuters DACS
8 2 (0.15%) Tivoli Storage Manager
9 1 (0.073%) Control-M
Vendors
1 365 (26.68%) Databricks
2 182 (13.30%) Microsoft
3 115 (8.41%) Oracle
4 104 (7.60%) Talend
5 90 (6.58%) Informatica
6 60 (4.39%) Google
7 58 (4.24%) Denodo
8 29 (2.12%) Cisco
9 26 (1.90%) F5
10 22 (1.61%) ServiceNow
11 20 (1.46%) SAP
12 17 (1.24%) Cloudera
12 17 (1.24%) Splunk
13 13 (0.95%) Foundry
13 13 (0.95%) IBM
13 13 (0.95%) Palantir
14 10 (0.73%) Alteryx
15 8 (0.58%) MuleSoft
16 6 (0.44%) OpenAI
17 5 (0.37%) Virgin Media