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 July 2026.

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

6 months to
3 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 54 104 101
Rank change year-on-year +50 -3 +14
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,672 668 844
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.81% 2.56% 2.26%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.12% 2.78% 2.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,155 499 645
10th Percentile £377 £363 £263
25th Percentile £425 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £520
Median % change year-on-year - -3.85% -5.45%
75th Percentile £588 £591 £625
90th Percentile £650 £700 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 66 11 38
10th Percentile £19.34 £18.22 £37.50
25th Percentile £34.88 £46.75 £49.25
Median hourly rate £43.75 £52.50 £71.25
Median % change year-on-year -16.67% -26.32% -1.04%
75th Percentile £68.00 £78.10 £80.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £80.00 -
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £66.25
% change year-on-year -4.76% -20.75% -7.99%

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 40,580 24,049 34,742
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.41% 92.16% 92.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,840 15,686 22,733
10th Percentile £325 £291 £300
25th Percentile £419 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £638
90th Percentile £735 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,926 1,128 2,569
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.00 £12.88
25th Percentile £21.93 £18.00 £16.86
Median hourly rate £45.00 £28.18 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.69% -29.55% -8.95%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.00 £26.50 £37.50
% change year-on-year +62.26% -29.33% -12.79%

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 July 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 July 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 July 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 +32 842 £525 - 188
Midlands +50 351 £463 +2.78% 72
West Midlands +46 314 £459 -0.22% 39
North of England +16 216 £475 - 114
North West +19 132 £500 +5.26% 61
South East +22 127 £475 +11.76% 103
South West +23 92 £523 +4.50% 46
Yorkshire -15 64 £475 - 29
East Midlands +9 37 £525 +28.05% 34
East of England -11 24 £543 +70.60% 17
North East -24 20 £480 +9.71% 27
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 3 July 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.

1 875 (52.33%) SQL
2 736 (44.02%) Python
3 701 (41.93%) Data Pipeline
4 628 (37.56%) Analytics
5 609 (36.42%) Data Engineering
6 608 (36.36%) ETL
7 558 (33.37%) Data Modelling
8 530 (31.70%) Azure
9 490 (29.31%) AWS
10 456 (27.27%) Security Cleared
11 409 (24.46%) CI/CD
12 408 (24.40%) Data Quality
13 400 (23.92%) SC Cleared
14 336 (20.10%) Databricks
15 326 (19.50%) Business Intelligence
16 294 (17.58%) Agile
17 285 (17.05%) DevOps
18 272 (16.27%) Data Warehouse
19 260 (15.55%) Power Platform
20 248 (14.83%) Power BI
21 244 (14.59%) Migration
22 236 (14.11%) PySpark
23 223 (13.34%) Data Governance
24 213 (12.74%) Azure Data Factory
25 210 (12.56%) Problem-Solving
26 204 (12.20%) AI
27 201 (12.02%) Microsoft
28 186 (11.12%) Validation
29 183 (10.94%) Snowflake
30 182 (10.89%) 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
1 153 (9.15%) Apache Airflow
2 136 (8.13%) Apache Spark
3 93 (5.56%) Apache
4 74 (4.43%) SAS
5 39 (2.33%) Confluence
6 10 (0.60%) Palantir Foundry
6 10 (0.60%) SharePoint
7 9 (0.54%) Jupyter
8 5 (0.30%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.12%) Luigi
10 1 (0.060%) Apache Superset
10 1 (0.060%) Appian
10 1 (0.060%) Camunda
10 1 (0.060%) Liferay
10 1 (0.060%) R Markdown
Applications
1 17 (1.02%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.30%) Notepad++
3 4 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.060%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 7 (0.42%) 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 3 (0.18%) SAP BPC
4 3 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.18%) SimCorp Dimension
5 2 (0.12%) BambooHR
5 2 (0.12%) Maximo
6 1 (0.060%) Elite 3E
6 1 (0.060%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.060%) iTrent
6 1 (0.060%) NEC Housing
6 1 (0.060%) Oracle 11i
6 1 (0.060%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.060%) Raiser’s Edge
6 1 (0.060%) SAP Business ByDesign
6 1 (0.060%) SAP CAR
6 1 (0.060%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 530 (31.70%) Azure
2 490 (29.31%) AWS
3 260 (15.55%) Power Platform
4 213 (12.74%) Azure Data Factory
5 183 (10.94%) Snowflake
6 169 (10.11%) dbt
7 156 (9.33%) Amazon S3
8 145 (8.67%) GCP
9 137 (8.19%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 133 (7.95%) Azure DevOps
11 104 (6.22%) GitHub
12 101 (6.04%) Serverless
13 88 (5.26%) AWS Lambda
14 50 (2.99%) GitHub Actions
15 37 (2.21%) Amazon EMR
16 32 (1.91%) Matillion
17 26 (1.56%) AWS CloudFormation
18 25 (1.50%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 24 (1.44%) Amazon Kinesis
19 24 (1.44%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 35 (2.09%) DNS
1 35 (2.09%) VPN
2 34 (2.03%) BGP
2 34 (2.03%) DMZ
2 34 (2.03%) Multicast
3 10 (0.60%) Structured Cabling
4 6 (0.36%) Firewall
5 5 (0.30%) PuTTY
5 5 (0.30%) WinSCP
6 4 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.24%) Wireless
7 2 (0.12%) Intrusion Detection
8 1 (0.060%) 4G
8 1 (0.060%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 272 (16.27%) Data Warehouse
2 248 (14.83%) Power BI
3 156 (9.33%) Data Lake
4 102 (6.10%) Amazon Redshift
5 95 (5.68%) SQL Server
6 93 (5.56%) Delta Lake
7 90 (5.38%) BigQuery
8 86 (5.14%) Pentaho
9 79 (4.72%) Metadata
10 77 (4.61%) Tableau
11 66 (3.95%) PostgreSQL
12 63 (3.77%) Amazon Athena
13 62 (3.71%) Snowflake Schema
14 60 (3.59%) Big Data
15 56 (3.35%) Azure SQL Database
16 49 (2.93%) NoSQL
16 49 (2.93%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 44 (2.63%) Relational Database
18 37 (2.21%) Data Vault
19 35 (2.09%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 152 (9.09%) Git
2 85 (5.08%) GitLab
3 75 (4.49%) JIRA
4 44 (2.63%) Jenkins
5 7 (0.42%) Postman
6 6 (0.36%) MLflow
7 5 (0.30%) Artifactory
8 4 (0.24%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.18%) Newman
9 3 (0.18%) SonarQube
10 2 (0.12%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 2 (0.12%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.12%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 2 (0.12%) Terragrunt
10 2 (0.12%) Visual Studio
10 2 (0.12%) Yeoman
11 1 (0.060%) Claude Code
11 1 (0.060%) ERwin
11 1 (0.060%) Octopus Deploy
11 1 (0.060%) Selenium
General
1 286 (17.11%) Finance
2 270 (16.15%) Social Skills
3 176 (10.53%) Analytical Skills
4 145 (8.67%) Public Sector
5 93 (5.56%) Banking
6 35 (2.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 28 (1.67%) Retail
8 24 (1.44%) Telecoms
9 22 (1.32%) Documentation Skills
10 21 (1.26%) Marketing
11 20 (1.20%) Investment Banking
12 19 (1.14%) Manufacturing
13 17 (1.02%) Pharmaceutical
14 14 (0.84%) Automotive
15 13 (0.78%) Aerospace
16 11 (0.66%) Publishing
17 9 (0.54%) Billing
17 9 (0.54%) Front Office
17 9 (0.54%) Legal
18 5 (0.30%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 236 (14.11%) PySpark
2 130 (7.78%) Kafka
3 39 (2.33%) Pandas
4 34 (2.03%) JSON
5 25 (1.50%) REST
6 24 (1.44%) Spring
6 24 (1.44%) Spring Boot
7 23 (1.38%) Great Expectations
8 22 (1.32%) XML
9 19 (1.14%) YAML
10 15 (0.90%) Apache Beam
11 13 (0.78%) Apache Avro
12 11 (0.66%) React
12 11 (0.66%) scikit-learn
13 10 (0.60%) Matplotlib
14 9 (0.54%) GeoJSON
14 9 (0.54%) Microsoft Graph
14 9 (0.54%) Node.js
14 9 (0.54%) pytest
14 9 (0.54%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 130 (7.78%) Cloud Native
2 58 (3.47%) Legacy Systems
3 43 (2.57%) Data Structures
4 27 (1.61%) Distributed Systems
4 27 (1.61%) Onboarding
5 26 (1.56%) Greenfield Project
6 24 (1.44%) Reinsurance
7 22 (1.32%) NHS
8 21 (1.26%) Product Ownership
9 18 (1.08%) Clustering
10 17 (1.02%) Data Protection Act
11 11 (0.66%) Life Science
11 11 (0.66%) Virtual Team
12 9 (0.54%) Distributed Computing
12 9 (0.54%) Driving Licence
12 9 (0.54%) Public Cloud
12 9 (0.54%) Reference Data
12 9 (0.54%) Self-Motivation
13 8 (0.48%) Linux Command Line
13 8 (0.48%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 57 (3.41%) Unix
2 37 (2.21%) Linux
3 4 (0.24%) Windows
4 2 (0.12%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.12%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.060%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 701 (41.93%) Data Pipeline
2 628 (37.56%) Analytics
3 609 (36.42%) Data Engineering
4 608 (36.36%) ETL
5 558 (33.37%) Data Modelling
6 409 (24.46%) CI/CD
7 326 (19.50%) Business Intelligence
8 294 (17.58%) Agile
9 285 (17.05%) DevOps
10 244 (14.59%) Migration
11 223 (13.34%) Data Governance
12 210 (12.56%) Problem-Solving
13 204 (12.20%) AI
14 186 (11.12%) Validation
15 178 (10.65%) Data Integration
16 164 (9.81%) Decision-Making
17 158 (9.45%) Data Science
17 158 (9.45%) Data Transformation
18 136 (8.13%) Infrastructure as Code
19 128 (7.66%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 875 (52.33%) SQL
2 736 (44.02%) Python
3 106 (6.34%) Java
4 60 (3.59%) Scala
5 47 (2.81%) PL/SQL
6 33 (1.97%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 31 (1.85%) T-SQL
8 29 (1.73%) C#
9 28 (1.67%) Shell Script
10 27 (1.61%) Bash
11 22 (1.32%) PowerShell
12 14 (0.84%) Bicep
12 14 (0.84%) R
13 10 (0.60%) JavaScript
14 7 (0.42%) Go
14 7 (0.42%) TypeScript
15 2 (0.12%) Korn
15 2 (0.12%) LookML
15 2 (0.12%) Ruby
15 2 (0.12%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 456 (27.27%) Security Cleared
2 400 (23.92%) SC Cleared
3 42 (2.51%) BPSS Clearance
4 41 (2.45%) Degree
5 26 (1.56%) Azure Certification
6 19 (1.14%) Computer Science Degree
7 16 (0.96%) DV Cleared
8 11 (0.66%) AWS Certification
9 9 (0.54%) City & Guilds
9 9 (0.54%) DBS Check
10 6 (0.36%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 6 (0.36%) SnowPro
11 5 (0.30%) BICSI Certification
12 4 (0.24%) CISM
12 4 (0.24%) CISSP
12 4 (0.24%) Master's Degree
12 4 (0.24%) Microsoft Certification
13 2 (0.12%) CEH
14 1 (0.060%) CISA
14 1 (0.060%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 408 (24.40%) Data Quality
2 52 (3.11%) QA
3 48 (2.87%) GDPR
4 12 (0.72%) Accessibility
4 12 (0.72%) SLA
5 9 (0.54%) FATCA
6 5 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 4 (0.24%) MiFID
8 3 (0.18%) GMP
8 3 (0.18%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.12%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 2 (0.12%) EMIR
9 2 (0.12%) SNOMED CT
9 2 (0.12%) WCAG
10 1 (0.060%) Government Security Classifications
10 1 (0.060%) GxP
10 1 (0.060%) IFRS 17
10 1 (0.060%) ISO 13485
10 1 (0.060%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 96 (5.74%) Docker
2 6 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.12%) HDFS
4 1 (0.060%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.060%) RACF
Systems Management
1 182 (10.89%) Terraform
2 79 (4.72%) Kubernetes
3 35 (2.09%) Grafana
4 11 (0.66%) Ansible
5 9 (0.54%) Prometheus
6 5 (0.30%) Kibana
7 3 (0.18%) Rancher
8 2 (0.12%) Apache Ranger
8 2 (0.12%) Control-M
8 2 (0.12%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.060%) Kubeflow
9 1 (0.060%) NetBackup
9 1 (0.060%) Puppet
Vendors
1 336 (20.10%) Databricks
2 201 (12.02%) Microsoft
3 155 (9.27%) Oracle
4 129 (7.72%) Informatica
5 120 (7.18%) Talend
6 63 (3.77%) Denodo
7 55 (3.29%) Google
8 36 (2.15%) Cisco
8 36 (2.15%) F5
9 31 (1.85%) SAP
10 26 (1.56%) Salesforce
11 21 (1.26%) Splunk
12 18 (1.08%) Cloudera
13 17 (1.02%) Palantir
14 16 (0.96%) ServiceNow
15 14 (0.84%) Alteryx
16 13 (0.78%) Foundry
17 11 (0.66%) Sage
18 9 (0.54%) Bloomberg
18 9 (0.54%) IBM