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 26 February 2026.

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

6 months to
26 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 82 75 100
Rank change year-on-year -7 +25 +19
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,101 798 818
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.11% 3.10% 2.19%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.39% 3.33% 2.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 798 578 642
10th Percentile £363 £357 £353
25th Percentile £413 £426 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £629
90th Percentile £675 £741 £699
UK median daily rate £500 £512 £525
% change year-on-year -2.25% -2.57% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 10 29
10th Percentile £33.42 £25.45 £35.50
25th Percentile £54.88 £47.19 £46.75
Median hourly rate £67.25 £70.00 £62.36
Median % change year-on-year -3.93% +12.26% -2.57%
75th Percentile £78.00 £93.75 £68.00
90th Percentile £92.00 £97.50 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £58.50 £53.75 £62.36
% change year-on-year +8.84% -13.80% -1.42%

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 32,499 23,947 34,620
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.90% 92.94% 92.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,614 15,190 23,219
10th Percentile £306 £300 £270
25th Percentile £411 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £624 £638 £640
90th Percentile £725 £750 £748
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,088 723 2,142
10th Percentile £15.06 £16.25 £13.19
25th Percentile £18.89 £22.00 £16.30
Median hourly rate £34.38 £36.50 £34.38
Median % change year-on-year -5.80% +6.18% -14.06%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £74.68 £75.20 £71.70
UK median hourly rate £33.17 £35.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -5.23% - -10.26%

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 26 February 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 26 February 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 26 February 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 +3 670 £515 -6.36% 146
Midlands +5 166 £498 +4.74% 63
West Midlands +2 150 £500 +2.04% 44
North of England -28 131 £450 -2.70% 96
North West -14 79 £425 -4.23% 51
South East -42 55 £496 -0.75% 112
South West -12 47 £538 +7.50% 36
Yorkshire -37 38 £488 -4.88% 34
East Midlands -22 16 £455 +21.33% 19
North East -13 14 £450 -14.29% 12
East of England -36 6 £520 +63.52% 11
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 26 February 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.

1 644 (58.49%) SQL
2 594 (53.95%) Python
3 476 (43.23%) Data Pipeline
4 474 (43.05%) ETL
5 460 (41.78%) Azure
5 460 (41.78%) Data Engineering
6 424 (38.51%) Analytics
7 403 (36.60%) Data Modelling
8 336 (30.52%) Databricks
9 322 (29.25%) Data Quality
10 317 (28.79%) AWS
11 312 (28.34%) CI/CD
12 299 (27.16%) Security Cleared
13 275 (24.98%) Business Intelligence
14 264 (23.98%) SC Cleared
15 230 (20.89%) DevOps
16 218 (19.80%) Power Platform
17 216 (19.62%) Agile
18 204 (18.53%) Data Warehouse
18 204 (18.53%) Power BI
19 201 (18.26%) Azure Data Factory
20 186 (16.89%) Problem-Solving
21 184 (16.71%) PySpark
22 176 (15.99%) Data Governance
23 161 (14.62%) Data Science
24 153 (13.90%) Git
25 151 (13.71%) Microsoft
26 141 (12.81%) Terraform
27 135 (12.26%) AI
27 135 (12.26%) Snowflake

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
1 120 (10.90%) Apache Spark
2 114 (10.35%) Apache Airflow
3 76 (6.90%) Apache
4 46 (4.18%) SAS
5 20 (1.82%) Confluence
6 13 (1.18%) Palantir Foundry
7 4 (0.36%) Jupyter
7 4 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
7 4 (0.36%) Oracle Application Server
8 2 (0.18%) Apache Pig
8 2 (0.18%) ArcGIS
8 2 (0.18%) SharePoint
9 1 (0.091%) Apache Synapse
9 1 (0.091%) Appian
9 1 (0.091%) Camunda
9 1 (0.091%) IIS
9 1 (0.091%) Luigi
9 1 (0.091%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 9 (0.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.18%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.091%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.091%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 3 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.18%) Maximo
2 2 (0.18%) SAP BPC
3 1 (0.091%) Actimize
3 1 (0.091%) Aladdin
3 1 (0.091%) Elite 3E
3 1 (0.091%) iTrent
3 1 (0.091%) NEC Housing
3 1 (0.091%) Oracle BPM
3 1 (0.091%) SAP Business ByDesign
3 1 (0.091%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 460 (41.78%) Azure
2 317 (28.79%) AWS
3 218 (19.80%) Power Platform
4 201 (18.26%) Azure Data Factory
5 135 (12.26%) Snowflake
6 129 (11.72%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 117 (10.63%) GCP
8 105 (9.54%) dbt
9 99 (8.99%) Amazon S3
10 92 (8.36%) GitHub
10 92 (8.36%) Serverless
11 83 (7.54%) Azure DevOps
12 67 (6.09%) AWS Lambda
13 45 (4.09%) GitHub Actions
14 38 (3.45%) AWS CloudFormation
15 23 (2.09%) AWS Step Functions
16 21 (1.91%) Matillion
17 19 (1.73%) Amazon Kinesis
18 18 (1.63%) SaaS
19 15 (1.36%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 15 (1.36%) DNS
2 14 (1.27%) BGP
2 14 (1.27%) DMZ
2 14 (1.27%) Multicast
2 14 (1.27%) VPN
3 4 (0.36%) Firewall
4 3 (0.27%) SAN
5 2 (0.18%) Structured Cabling
6 1 (0.091%) 4G
6 1 (0.091%) 5G
6 1 (0.091%) Network Security
6 1 (0.091%) Software-Defined Networking
6 1 (0.091%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 204 (18.53%) Data Warehouse
1 204 (18.53%) Power BI
2 127 (11.53%) Data Lake
3 99 (8.99%) SQL Server
4 71 (6.45%) Delta Lake
5 67 (6.09%) Azure SQL Database
6 66 (5.99%) BigQuery
7 61 (5.54%) Amazon Redshift
8 60 (5.45%) PostgreSQL
9 58 (5.27%) Metadata
10 55 (5.00%) Big Data
10 55 (5.00%) Pentaho
10 55 (5.00%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 54 (4.90%) NoSQL
12 41 (3.72%) Snowflake Schema
12 41 (3.72%) Tableau
13 37 (3.36%) Hadoop
14 35 (3.18%) Amazon Athena
15 29 (2.63%) Relational Database
16 23 (2.09%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 153 (13.90%) Git
2 69 (6.27%) Jenkins
3 49 (4.45%) JIRA
4 45 (4.09%) GitLab
5 22 (2.00%) MLflow
6 4 (0.36%) DBeaver
6 4 (0.36%) Visual Studio
7 3 (0.27%) Bitbucket
7 3 (0.27%) Selenium
8 2 (0.18%) JUnit
8 2 (0.18%) SonarQube
8 2 (0.18%) Visual Studio Code
9 1 (0.091%) Deequ
9 1 (0.091%) Gradle
9 1 (0.091%) Jaeger
9 1 (0.091%) Maven
9 1 (0.091%) Poetry
9 1 (0.091%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 1 (0.091%) TeamCity
9 1 (0.091%) Terragrunt
General
1 205 (18.62%) Social Skills
2 172 (15.62%) Finance
3 109 (9.90%) Analytical Skills
4 97 (8.81%) Public Sector
5 55 (5.00%) Banking
6 31 (2.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 18 (1.63%) Investment Banking
8 16 (1.45%) Retail
9 13 (1.18%) Front Office
10 12 (1.09%) Pharmaceutical
11 11 (1.00%) Documentation Skills
12 10 (0.91%) Marketing
12 10 (0.91%) Telecoms
13 8 (0.73%) Manufacturing
13 8 (0.73%) Publishing
14 6 (0.54%) Military
15 5 (0.45%) Law
16 4 (0.36%) Back Office
16 4 (0.36%) Corporate Banking
17 3 (0.27%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 184 (16.71%) PySpark
2 120 (10.90%) Kafka
3 36 (3.27%) Pandas
4 25 (2.27%) JSON
5 24 (2.18%) YAML
6 22 (2.00%) REST
7 17 (1.54%) XML
8 15 (1.36%) PyTorch
9 14 (1.27%) Apache NiFi
9 14 (1.27%) Great Expectations
10 13 (1.18%) Node.js
10 13 (1.18%) NumPy
10 13 (1.18%) RESTful
11 12 (1.09%) Keycloak
11 12 (1.09%) pytest
11 12 (1.09%) scikit-learn
12 11 (1.00%) TensorFlow
13 10 (0.91%) Matplotlib
14 9 (0.82%) HTML
15 8 (0.73%) Apache Beam
Miscellaneous
1 85 (7.72%) Cloud Native
2 35 (3.18%) Data Structures
3 26 (2.36%) Product Ownership
4 25 (2.27%) Legacy Systems
5 19 (1.73%) Replication
6 17 (1.54%) Clustering
7 16 (1.45%) Hybrid Cloud
7 16 (1.45%) Onboarding
8 15 (1.36%) Distributed Systems
9 14 (1.27%) Greenfield Project
10 13 (1.18%) Data Protection Act
10 13 (1.18%) Reinsurance
11 10 (0.91%) Algorithms
11 10 (0.91%) Public Cloud
12 9 (0.82%) Distributed Computing
13 8 (0.73%) Life Science
14 7 (0.64%) Management Information System
14 7 (0.64%) NHS
15 6 (0.54%) Analytical Mindset
15 6 (0.54%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 21 (1.91%) Linux
2 20 (1.82%) Unix
3 1 (0.091%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 476 (43.23%) Data Pipeline
2 474 (43.05%) ETL
3 460 (41.78%) Data Engineering
4 424 (38.51%) Analytics
5 403 (36.60%) Data Modelling
6 312 (28.34%) CI/CD
7 275 (24.98%) Business Intelligence
8 230 (20.89%) DevOps
9 216 (19.62%) Agile
10 186 (16.89%) Problem-Solving
11 176 (15.99%) Data Governance
12 161 (14.62%) Data Science
13 135 (12.26%) AI
14 133 (12.08%) Data Integration
15 127 (11.53%) Data Architecture
16 119 (10.81%) Infrastructure as Code
17 117 (10.63%) Machine Learning
18 115 (10.45%) Data Transformation
19 114 (10.35%) Migration
20 103 (9.36%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 644 (58.49%) SQL
2 594 (53.95%) Python
3 80 (7.27%) Scala
4 69 (6.27%) Java
5 31 (2.82%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 29 (2.63%) C#
7 28 (2.54%) T-SQL
8 27 (2.45%) PL/SQL
9 22 (2.00%) Bash
10 18 (1.63%) Bicep
11 16 (1.45%) PowerShell
11 16 (1.45%) R
11 16 (1.45%) Shell Script
12 14 (1.27%) Go
13 13 (1.18%) JavaScript
14 4 (0.36%) C++
14 4 (0.36%) TypeScript
15 3 (0.27%) Korn
16 2 (0.18%) Ruby
16 2 (0.18%) VB
Qualifications
1 299 (27.16%) Security Cleared
2 264 (23.98%) SC Cleared
3 35 (3.18%) Degree
4 34 (3.09%) Azure Certification
5 21 (1.91%) BPSS Clearance
6 20 (1.82%) AWS Certification
7 17 (1.54%) Computer Science Degree
8 16 (1.45%) DV Cleared
9 5 (0.45%) Master's Degree
9 5 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
10 4 (0.36%) CTC Cleared
10 4 (0.36%) DBS Check
11 2 (0.18%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 2 (0.18%) SnowPro
12 1 (0.091%) CCIE
12 1 (0.091%) CCNP
12 1 (0.091%) Cisco Certification
12 1 (0.091%) CISM
12 1 (0.091%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 322 (29.25%) Data Quality
2 47 (4.27%) GDPR
3 26 (2.36%) QA
4 9 (0.82%) Accessibility
5 5 (0.45%) HIPAA
6 4 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 3 (0.27%) FATCA
7 3 (0.27%) GMP
7 3 (0.27%) MiFID
7 3 (0.27%) NIST
8 2 (0.18%) Dodd-Frank
8 2 (0.18%) EMIR
8 2 (0.18%) EU AI Act
8 2 (0.18%) SLA
9 1 (0.091%) Basel III
9 1 (0.091%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 1 (0.091%) GRC
9 1 (0.091%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 1 (0.091%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.091%) WCAG
System Software
1 88 (7.99%) Docker
2 7 (0.64%) Virtual Machines
3 4 (0.36%) zsh
4 3 (0.27%) HDFS
5 1 (0.091%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 141 (12.81%) Terraform
2 96 (8.72%) Kubernetes
3 14 (1.27%) Grafana
4 12 (1.09%) Prometheus
5 8 (0.73%) Ansible
6 5 (0.45%) NetBackup
7 4 (0.36%) Kibana
8 3 (0.27%) Control-M
8 3 (0.27%) Kubeflow
8 3 (0.27%) Puppet
9 2 (0.18%) EMC NetWorker
9 2 (0.18%) logstash
9 2 (0.18%) Rancher
9 2 (0.18%) Tivoli Storage Manager
10 1 (0.091%) Ambari
10 1 (0.091%) Argo
10 1 (0.091%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 336 (30.52%) Databricks
2 151 (13.71%) Microsoft
3 96 (8.72%) Oracle
4 75 (6.81%) Talend
5 58 (5.27%) Informatica
6 45 (4.09%) Google
7 35 (3.18%) Denodo
8 19 (1.73%) SAP
9 18 (1.63%) Cisco
9 18 (1.63%) Foundry
10 17 (1.54%) Palantir
10 17 (1.54%) Splunk
11 15 (1.36%) F5
11 15 (1.36%) IBM
12 13 (1.18%) Cloudera
12 13 (1.18%) ServiceNow
13 11 (1.00%) Alteryx
14 7 (0.64%) Confluent
15 6 (0.54%) MuleSoft
15 6 (0.54%) Virgin Media