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 3 September 2026.

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

 6 months to
3 Sep 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 65 131 99
Rank change year-on-year +66 -32 +20
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,681 610 764
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.68% 2.23% 2.33%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.99% 2.44% 2.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,121 445 543
10th Percentile £381 £380 £310
25th Percentile £425 £425 £439
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £638
90th Percentile £675 £695 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 78 14 19
10th Percentile £19.34 £25.42 £45.65
25th Percentile £30.96 £37.00 £63.13
Median hourly rate £41.56 £52.50 £80.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.85% -34.38% +12.28%
75th Percentile £70.00 £74.65 -
90th Percentile £73.75 £101.00 £83.50
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £52.50 £75.00
% change year-on-year -19.05% -30.00% +5.26%

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 42,158 25,047 30,515
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.40% 91.51% 93.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,345 16,151 19,528
10th Percentile £325 £281 £303
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,265 1,357 1,613
10th Percentile £15.05 £13.67 £14.16
25th Percentile £21.14 £17.33 £20.75
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% +2.86%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £67.02
90th Percentile £79.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.25 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +67.99% -41.51% +1.18%

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 3 September 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 3 September 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 3 September 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 +43 846 £525 - 475
Midlands +69 347 £469 +1.41% 62
West Midlands +64 287 £469 -6.20% 36
North of England +37 210 £500 +5.26% 131
South East +25 129 £459 +4.91% 143
North West +23 117 £525 +10.53% 70
South West +15 92 £525 +5.00% 64
Yorkshire -2 73 £470 -1.05% 27
East Midlands +22 60 £450 +1.98% 26
East of England +9 37 £450 - 26
North East -27 21 £515 +21.89% 34
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 3 September 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.

1 850 (50.57%) SQL
2 727 (43.25%) Data Pipeline
3 711 (42.30%) Python
4 646 (38.43%) Data Engineering
5 585 (34.80%) Analytics
6 579 (34.44%) ETL
7 569 (33.85%) Data Modelling
8 528 (31.41%) Azure
9 525 (31.23%) AWS
10 446 (26.53%) Security Cleared
11 429 (25.52%) Data Quality
12 413 (24.57%) CI/CD
13 391 (23.26%) SC Cleared
14 332 (19.75%) Databricks
15 294 (17.49%) Agile
16 281 (16.72%) Data Warehouse
17 280 (16.66%) DevOps
18 275 (16.36%) Business Intelligence
19 272 (16.18%) Migration
20 241 (14.34%) PySpark
21 238 (14.16%) AI
22 231 (13.74%) Data Governance
23 220 (13.09%) Microsoft
24 218 (12.97%) Power Platform
25 214 (12.73%) Power BI
26 211 (12.55%) Data Transformation
27 206 (12.25%) Validation
28 201 (11.96%) Data Integration
28 201 (11.96%) Snowflake
29 200 (11.90%) Azure Data Factory

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
1 186 (11.06%) Apache Airflow
2 143 (8.51%) Apache Spark
3 115 (6.84%) Apache
4 51 (3.03%) SAS
5 32 (1.90%) Confluence
6 17 (1.01%) Palantir Foundry
7 13 (0.77%) SharePoint
8 10 (0.59%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.18%) Apache Superset
10 1 (0.059%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.059%) Liferay
10 1 (0.059%) Luigi
10 1 (0.059%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.059%) nginx
10 1 (0.059%) PowerExchange
10 1 (0.059%) R Markdown
Applications
1 24 (1.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
3 5 (0.30%) Notepad++
4 4 (0.24%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.059%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 12 (0.71%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.30%) Infor LN
3 5 (0.30%) NetSuite
3 5 (0.30%) Sage X3
4 4 (0.24%) SAP S/4HANA
5 3 (0.18%) SimCorp Dimension
5 3 (0.18%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 2 (0.12%) Maximo
7 1 (0.059%) BambooHR
7 1 (0.059%) FIS Private Capital Suite
7 1 (0.059%) MIS ActiveH
7 1 (0.059%) Oracle 11i
7 1 (0.059%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.059%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.059%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.059%) Raiser’s Edge
7 1 (0.059%) SAP BPC
7 1 (0.059%) SAP CAR
7 1 (0.059%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 528 (31.41%) Azure
2 525 (31.23%) AWS
3 218 (12.97%) Power Platform
4 201 (11.96%) Snowflake
5 200 (11.90%) Azure Data Factory
6 197 (11.72%) dbt
7 161 (9.58%) GCP
8 152 (9.04%) Amazon S3
9 126 (7.50%) Azure DevOps
10 124 (7.38%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 111 (6.60%) Serverless
12 108 (6.42%) GitHub
13 97 (5.77%) AWS Lambda
14 59 (3.51%) Azure Databricks
15 43 (2.56%) GitHub Actions
16 39 (2.32%) Amazon EMR
17 32 (1.90%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 27 (1.61%) AWS Step Functions
19 25 (1.49%) Fivetran
20 24 (1.43%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.61%) BGP
1 27 (1.61%) DMZ
1 27 (1.61%) DNS
1 27 (1.61%) Multicast
1 27 (1.61%) VPN
2 11 (0.65%) Structured Cabling
3 7 (0.42%) 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
Database & Business Intelligence
1 281 (16.72%) Data Warehouse
2 214 (12.73%) Power BI
3 148 (8.80%) Data Lake
4 116 (6.90%) Metadata
5 96 (5.71%) BigQuery
6 90 (5.35%) Amazon Redshift
7 80 (4.76%) SQL Server
8 79 (4.70%) Delta Lake
9 72 (4.28%) Amazon Athena
10 68 (4.05%) Pentaho
11 61 (3.63%) Big Data
11 61 (3.63%) Tableau
12 55 (3.27%) PostgreSQL
13 53 (3.15%) Relational Database
14 48 (2.86%) Snowflake Schema
15 46 (2.74%) Azure SQL Database
15 46 (2.74%) NoSQL
16 38 (2.26%) Oracle Database
17 35 (2.08%) Amazon RDS
18 33 (1.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 143 (8.51%) Git
2 80 (4.76%) GitLab
3 53 (3.15%) JIRA
4 29 (1.73%) Jenkins
5 13 (0.77%) MLflow
6 7 (0.42%) Postman
7 5 (0.30%) Artifactory
7 5 (0.30%) Bitbucket
8 4 (0.24%) ERwin
8 4 (0.24%) Selenium
9 3 (0.18%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 3 (0.18%) Newman
9 3 (0.18%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.18%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.12%) Claude Code
10 2 (0.12%) ER Studio
10 2 (0.12%) RStudio
10 2 (0.12%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 2 (0.12%) Terragrunt
10 2 (0.12%) Yeoman
General
1 274 (16.30%) Finance
2 269 (16.00%) Social Skills
3 197 (11.72%) Analytical Skills
4 146 (8.69%) Public Sector
5 98 (5.83%) Banking
6 29 (1.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 23 (1.37%) Retail
7 23 (1.37%) Telecoms
8 20 (1.19%) Marketing
9 19 (1.13%) Automotive
10 18 (1.07%) Aerospace
11 17 (1.01%) Manufacturing
12 16 (0.95%) Documentation Skills
12 16 (0.95%) Investment Banking
13 14 (0.83%) Front Office
13 14 (0.83%) Pharmaceutical
14 11 (0.65%) Law
15 10 (0.59%) Financial Institution
16 9 (0.54%) Military
17 8 (0.48%) Billing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 241 (14.34%) PySpark
2 173 (10.29%) Terraform
3 114 (6.78%) Kafka
4 29 (1.73%) Pandas
5 27 (1.61%) JSON
6 26 (1.55%) REST
7 23 (1.37%) Great Expectations
8 22 (1.31%) Spring
8 22 (1.31%) Spring Boot
9 18 (1.07%) XML
10 16 (0.95%) Apache Beam
10 16 (0.95%) React
11 12 (0.71%) RESTful
11 12 (0.71%) YAML
12 11 (0.65%) .NET
12 11 (0.65%) LangChain
12 11 (0.65%) pytest
13 10 (0.59%) Microsoft Graph
14 9 (0.54%) Apache Avro
14 9 (0.54%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 135 (8.03%) Cloud Native
2 73 (4.34%) Legacy Systems
3 50 (2.97%) Data Structures
4 37 (2.20%) Onboarding
5 23 (1.37%) Product Ownership
6 21 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
7 20 (1.19%) Distributed Systems
8 19 (1.13%) NHS
9 18 (1.07%) Reference Data
10 17 (1.01%) AI Agents
10 17 (1.01%) Reinsurance
11 16 (0.95%) Management Information System
12 13 (0.77%) Algorithms
13 11 (0.65%) Clustering
13 11 (0.65%) Virtual Team
14 10 (0.59%) Data Protection Act
15 9 (0.54%) Self-Motivation
16 8 (0.48%) Driving Licence
16 8 (0.48%) Life Science
16 8 (0.48%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 56 (3.33%) Unix
2 44 (2.62%) Linux
3 3 (0.18%) Windows
4 2 (0.12%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.059%) Robot Operating System
5 1 (0.059%) VMS
5 1 (0.059%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 727 (43.25%) Data Pipeline
2 646 (38.43%) Data Engineering
3 585 (34.80%) Analytics
4 579 (34.44%) ETL
5 569 (33.85%) Data Modelling
6 413 (24.57%) CI/CD
7 294 (17.49%) Agile
8 280 (16.66%) DevOps
9 275 (16.36%) Business Intelligence
10 272 (16.18%) Migration
11 238 (14.16%) AI
12 231 (13.74%) Data Governance
13 211 (12.55%) Data Transformation
14 206 (12.25%) Validation
15 201 (11.96%) Data Integration
16 186 (11.06%) Problem-Solving
17 156 (9.28%) Lakehouse
18 153 (9.10%) Decision-Making
19 147 (8.74%) Infrastructure as Code
20 144 (8.57%) Data Science
Programming Languages
1 850 (50.57%) SQL
2 711 (42.30%) Python
3 99 (5.89%) Java
4 63 (3.75%) Scala
5 46 (2.74%) PL/SQL
6 30 (1.78%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 30 (1.78%) Shell Script
7 25 (1.49%) T-SQL
8 22 (1.31%) Bash
9 21 (1.25%) PowerShell
10 17 (1.01%) JavaScript
11 14 (0.83%) C#
12 11 (0.65%) R
13 8 (0.48%) Bicep
13 8 (0.48%) TypeScript
14 5 (0.30%) Go
15 4 (0.24%) Korn
16 2 (0.12%) COBOL
16 2 (0.12%) Cypher
16 2 (0.12%) LookML
Qualifications
1 446 (26.53%) Security Cleared
2 391 (23.26%) SC Cleared
3 40 (2.38%) Degree
4 34 (2.02%) BPSS Clearance
5 22 (1.31%) Computer Science Degree
5 22 (1.31%) DV Cleared
6 20 (1.19%) Azure Certification
7 12 (0.71%) AWS Certification
8 9 (0.54%) City & Guilds
9 8 (0.48%) DBS Check
9 8 (0.48%) SnowPro
10 7 (0.42%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 6 (0.36%) Master's Degree
12 5 (0.30%) BICSI Certification
13 4 (0.24%) CISM
13 4 (0.24%) CISSP
13 4 (0.24%) Microsoft Certification
14 3 (0.18%) CEH
15 1 (0.059%) CISA
15 1 (0.059%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 429 (25.52%) Data Quality
2 64 (3.81%) QA
3 40 (2.38%) GDPR
4 15 (0.89%) Accessibility
5 9 (0.54%) SLA
6 6 (0.36%) FATCA
7 5 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 4 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 3 (0.18%) HIPAA
9 3 (0.18%) MiFID
10 2 (0.12%) Disclosure Scotland
10 2 (0.12%) EMIR
10 2 (0.12%) SNOMED CT
10 2 (0.12%) WCAG
11 1 (0.059%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.059%) IFRS
11 1 (0.059%) IFRS 17
11 1 (0.059%) IFRS 9
11 1 (0.059%) PCI DSS
11 1 (0.059%) PMO
System Software
1 103 (6.13%) Docker
2 4 (0.24%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.12%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.059%) RACF
Systems Management
1 72 (4.28%) Kubernetes
2 29 (1.73%) Grafana
3 15 (0.89%) Ansible
4 10 (0.59%) Control-M
5 7 (0.42%) Kibana
6 4 (0.24%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.12%) Apache Ranger
7 2 (0.12%) Puppet
8 1 (0.059%) logstash
8 1 (0.059%) Progress Chef
8 1 (0.059%) Thomson Reuters DACS
Vendors
1 332 (19.75%) Databricks
2 220 (13.09%) Microsoft
3 139 (8.27%) Oracle
4 98 (5.83%) Informatica
5 89 (5.29%) Talend
6 67 (3.99%) Google
7 48 (2.86%) Denodo
8 29 (1.73%) Salesforce
9 27 (1.61%) Cisco
9 27 (1.61%) F5
10 26 (1.55%) Palantir
11 23 (1.37%) Foundry
11 23 (1.37%) SAP
12 13 (0.77%) Cloudera
13 12 (0.71%) Splunk
14 10 (0.59%) Bloomberg
15 9 (0.54%) IBM
15 9 (0.54%) Sage
16 8 (0.48%) Alteryx
16 8 (0.48%) InterSystems
826 Data Engineer jobs in England