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 13 August 2026.

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

 6 months to
13 Aug 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 57 129 92
Rank change year-on-year +72 -37 +26
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,756 622 785
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.85% 2.25% 2.35%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.17% 2.46% 2.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,183 448 574
10th Percentile £384 £375 £263
25th Percentile £425 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £589 £636
90th Percentile £663 £697 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £522
% change year-on-year - -4.21% -5.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 85 12 29
10th Percentile £20.10 £19.00 £38.65
25th Percentile £30.96 £38.19 £52.50
Median hourly rate £45.00 £52.50 £80.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% -34.38% +23.08%
75th Percentile £70.00 £66.55 -
90th Percentile £75.00 £79.87 -
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £75.00
% change year-on-year -4.76% -30.00% +15.38%

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 42,146 25,333 30,967
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.50% 91.63% 92.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,503 16,397 20,301
10th Percentile £325 £283 £300
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £512 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.54% -2.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £627 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,173 1,332 1,801
10th Percentile £15.25 £13.51 £14.16
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.48 £21.25
Median hourly rate £43.56 £25.15 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +73.20% -44.11% +7.66%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £66.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £74.88 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.31 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +68.21% -41.51% +2.38%

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 13 August 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 13 August 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 13 August 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 +41 848 £525 - 301
Midlands +71 402 £465 +3.33% 57
West Midlands +68 346 £463 +0.54% 36
North of England +31 232 £500 +5.26% 97
North West +30 133 £525 +10.53% 42
South East +22 127 £463 +2.78% 122
South West +8 88 £525 +6.33% 34
Yorkshire -1 77 £465 -4.62% 25
East Midlands +23 56 £475 +13.10% 21
East of England +9 39 £520 +34.19% 11
North East -25 23 £515 +22.62% 31
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 13 August 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.

1 887 (50.51%) SQL
2 754 (42.94%) Data Pipeline
3 717 (40.83%) Python
4 642 (36.56%) Data Engineering
5 630 (35.88%) Analytics
6 614 (34.97%) ETL
7 586 (33.37%) Data Modelling
8 537 (30.58%) Azure
9 512 (29.16%) AWS
10 482 (27.45%) Security Cleared
11 437 (24.89%) Data Quality
12 422 (24.03%) CI/CD
12 422 (24.03%) SC Cleared
13 328 (18.68%) Databricks
14 311 (17.71%) Agile
15 309 (17.60%) Business Intelligence
16 293 (16.69%) Data Warehouse
16 293 (16.69%) DevOps
17 277 (15.77%) Migration
18 240 (13.67%) Data Governance
19 232 (13.21%) Power Platform
20 229 (13.04%) PySpark
21 226 (12.87%) AI
22 225 (12.81%) Power BI
23 220 (12.53%) Microsoft
24 215 (12.24%) Azure Data Factory
25 210 (11.96%) Data Integration
26 208 (11.85%) Problem-Solving
26 208 (11.85%) Validation
27 199 (11.33%) Data Transformation

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
1 178 (10.14%) Apache Airflow
2 145 (8.26%) Apache Spark
3 110 (6.26%) Apache
4 77 (4.38%) SAS
5 37 (2.11%) Confluence
6 13 (0.74%) Palantir Foundry
7 12 (0.68%) SharePoint
8 10 (0.57%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.17%) Apache Superset
10 2 (0.11%) Microsoft Exchange
11 1 (0.057%) ArcGIS
11 1 (0.057%) Liferay
11 1 (0.057%) Luigi
11 1 (0.057%) R Markdown
Applications
1 24 (1.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.28%) Notepad++
2 5 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
3 4 (0.23%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.057%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 12 (0.68%) Aladdin
2 7 (0.40%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.28%) Infor LN
3 5 (0.28%) NetSuite
3 5 (0.28%) Sage X3
4 3 (0.17%) SAP BPC
4 3 (0.17%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.17%) SimCorp Dimension
4 3 (0.17%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 2 (0.11%) BambooHR
5 2 (0.11%) Maximo
6 1 (0.057%) iTrent
6 1 (0.057%) MIS ActiveH
6 1 (0.057%) Oracle 11i
6 1 (0.057%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.057%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.057%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.057%) Raiser’s Edge
6 1 (0.057%) SAP Business ByDesign
6 1 (0.057%) SAP CAR
Cloud Services
1 537 (30.58%) Azure
2 512 (29.16%) AWS
3 232 (13.21%) Power Platform
4 215 (12.24%) Azure Data Factory
5 191 (10.88%) Snowflake
6 186 (10.59%) dbt
7 161 (9.17%) GCP
8 144 (8.20%) Amazon S3
9 136 (7.74%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 128 (7.29%) Azure DevOps
11 102 (5.81%) GitHub
12 100 (5.69%) Serverless
13 86 (4.90%) AWS Lambda
14 43 (2.45%) GitHub Actions
15 36 (2.05%) Amazon EMR
16 28 (1.59%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 25 (1.42%) AWS Step Functions
18 24 (1.37%) Amazon Kinesis
18 24 (1.37%) Fivetran
18 24 (1.37%) Matillion
Communications & Networking
1 32 (1.82%) VPN
2 31 (1.77%) BGP
2 31 (1.77%) DMZ
2 31 (1.77%) DNS
2 31 (1.77%) Multicast
3 9 (0.51%) Structured Cabling
4 7 (0.40%) Firewall
5 5 (0.28%) PuTTY
5 5 (0.28%) WinSCP
6 4 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.23%) Wireless
7 3 (0.17%) Intrusion Detection
8 1 (0.057%) 4G
8 1 (0.057%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 293 (16.69%) Data Warehouse
2 225 (12.81%) Power BI
3 155 (8.83%) Data Lake
4 106 (6.04%) Metadata
5 97 (5.52%) BigQuery
6 94 (5.35%) Amazon Redshift
7 92 (5.24%) Pentaho
8 83 (4.73%) SQL Server
9 80 (4.56%) Delta Lake
10 64 (3.64%) Amazon Athena
10 64 (3.64%) Big Data
10 64 (3.64%) Tableau
11 62 (3.53%) PostgreSQL
12 52 (2.96%) Snowflake Schema
13 50 (2.85%) Azure SQL Database
14 49 (2.79%) NoSQL
14 49 (2.79%) Relational Database
15 47 (2.68%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 35 (1.99%) Amazon RDS
16 35 (1.99%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 154 (8.77%) Git
2 86 (4.90%) GitLab
3 68 (3.87%) JIRA
4 47 (2.68%) Jenkins
5 10 (0.57%) MLflow
6 7 (0.40%) Postman
7 6 (0.34%) Bitbucket
8 5 (0.28%) Artifactory
8 5 (0.28%) SonarQube
9 4 (0.23%) ERwin
10 3 (0.17%) Newman
10 3 (0.17%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (0.11%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 2 (0.11%) ER Studio
11 2 (0.11%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 2 (0.11%) Yeoman
12 1 (0.057%) Octopus Deploy
12 1 (0.057%) Selenium
12 1 (0.057%) Terragrunt
12 1 (0.057%) Toad
General
1 288 (16.40%) Finance
2 272 (15.49%) Social Skills
3 200 (11.39%) Analytical Skills
4 162 (9.23%) Public Sector
5 102 (5.81%) Banking
6 30 (1.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 25 (1.42%) Telecoms
8 22 (1.25%) Marketing
8 22 (1.25%) Retail
9 19 (1.08%) Automotive
9 19 (1.08%) Manufacturing
10 17 (0.97%) Aerospace
10 17 (0.97%) Investment Banking
11 16 (0.91%) Documentation Skills
11 16 (0.91%) Front Office
12 15 (0.85%) Pharmaceutical
13 10 (0.57%) Financial Institution
14 9 (0.51%) Billing
14 9 (0.51%) Law
14 9 (0.51%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 229 (13.04%) PySpark
2 120 (6.83%) Kafka
3 33 (1.88%) Pandas
4 25 (1.42%) REST
5 24 (1.37%) JSON
6 22 (1.25%) Spring
6 22 (1.25%) Spring Boot
7 20 (1.14%) Great Expectations
8 16 (0.91%) XML
9 15 (0.85%) Apache Beam
10 14 (0.80%) YAML
11 13 (0.74%) React
11 13 (0.74%) RESTful
12 11 (0.63%) pytest
13 10 (0.57%) Microsoft Graph
14 9 (0.51%) Apache Avro
14 9 (0.51%) PyTorch
14 9 (0.51%) scikit-learn
15 8 (0.46%) .NET
16 7 (0.40%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 130 (7.40%) Cloud Native
2 79 (4.50%) Legacy Systems
3 52 (2.96%) Data Structures
4 33 (1.88%) Onboarding
5 24 (1.37%) Distributed Systems
6 23 (1.31%) Product Ownership
7 21 (1.20%) Greenfield Project
7 21 (1.20%) NHS
8 19 (1.08%) Reference Data
9 18 (1.03%) Reinsurance
10 14 (0.80%) Management Information System
11 12 (0.68%) AI Agents
11 12 (0.68%) Data Protection Act
12 11 (0.63%) Clustering
13 10 (0.57%) Algorithms
13 10 (0.57%) Life Science
13 10 (0.57%) Virtual Team
14 9 (0.51%) Self-Motivation
15 8 (0.46%) Driving Licence
15 8 (0.46%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 61 (3.47%) Unix
2 46 (2.62%) Linux
3 4 (0.23%) Windows
4 2 (0.11%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.11%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.057%) Robot Operating System
5 1 (0.057%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 754 (42.94%) Data Pipeline
2 642 (36.56%) Data Engineering
3 630 (35.88%) Analytics
4 614 (34.97%) ETL
5 586 (33.37%) Data Modelling
6 422 (24.03%) CI/CD
7 311 (17.71%) Agile
8 309 (17.60%) Business Intelligence
9 293 (16.69%) DevOps
10 277 (15.77%) Migration
11 240 (13.67%) Data Governance
12 226 (12.87%) AI
13 210 (11.96%) Data Integration
14 208 (11.85%) Problem-Solving
14 208 (11.85%) Validation
15 199 (11.33%) Data Transformation
16 173 (9.85%) Decision-Making
17 151 (8.60%) Data Science
18 142 (8.09%) Test Automation
19 139 (7.92%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 887 (50.51%) SQL
2 717 (40.83%) Python
3 104 (5.92%) Java
4 59 (3.36%) Scala
5 49 (2.79%) PL/SQL
6 33 (1.88%) Shell Script
7 30 (1.71%) Bash
8 27 (1.54%) T-SQL
9 25 (1.42%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 22 (1.25%) PowerShell
11 16 (0.91%) C#
12 15 (0.85%) JavaScript
13 12 (0.68%) R
14 8 (0.46%) Bicep
15 6 (0.34%) Go
15 6 (0.34%) TypeScript
16 4 (0.23%) Korn
17 2 (0.11%) HiveQL
17 2 (0.11%) Ruby
17 2 (0.11%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 482 (27.45%) Security Cleared
2 422 (24.03%) SC Cleared
3 42 (2.39%) Degree
4 37 (2.11%) BPSS Clearance
5 22 (1.25%) Azure Certification
6 21 (1.20%) Computer Science Degree
6 21 (1.20%) DV Cleared
7 10 (0.57%) AWS Certification
8 9 (0.51%) City & Guilds
9 8 (0.46%) DBS Check
10 6 (0.34%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 6 (0.34%) Master's Degree
10 6 (0.34%) SnowPro
11 5 (0.28%) BICSI Certification
11 5 (0.28%) CISM
11 5 (0.28%) CISSP
12 4 (0.23%) Microsoft Certification
13 3 (0.17%) CEH
14 1 (0.057%) CISA
14 1 (0.057%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 437 (24.89%) Data Quality
2 57 (3.25%) QA
3 42 (2.39%) GDPR
4 16 (0.91%) Accessibility
5 12 (0.68%) SLA
6 6 (0.34%) FATCA
7 5 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 4 (0.23%) HIPAA
8 4 (0.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 3 (0.17%) MiFID
10 2 (0.11%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 2 (0.11%) EMIR
10 2 (0.11%) GMP
10 2 (0.11%) SNOMED CT
10 2 (0.11%) WCAG
11 1 (0.057%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.057%) IFRS
11 1 (0.057%) IFRS 17
11 1 (0.057%) IFRS 9
11 1 (0.057%) PMO
System Software
1 117 (6.66%) Docker
2 4 (0.23%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.11%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.11%) HDFS
4 1 (0.057%) RACF
Systems Management
1 163 (9.28%) Terraform
2 90 (5.13%) Kubernetes
3 34 (1.94%) Grafana
4 14 (0.80%) Ansible
5 8 (0.46%) Control-M
6 6 (0.34%) Kibana
7 3 (0.17%) Prometheus
7 3 (0.17%) Puppet
8 2 (0.11%) Apache Ranger
8 2 (0.11%) Rancher
8 2 (0.11%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.057%) Kubeflow
9 1 (0.057%) logstash
9 1 (0.057%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 328 (18.68%) Databricks
2 220 (12.53%) Microsoft
3 155 (8.83%) Oracle
4 124 (7.06%) Informatica
5 117 (6.66%) Talend
6 67 (3.82%) Google
7 63 (3.59%) Denodo
8 33 (1.88%) SAP
9 32 (1.82%) Cisco
9 32 (1.82%) F5
10 28 (1.59%) Salesforce
11 23 (1.31%) Palantir
12 19 (1.08%) Cloudera
13 18 (1.03%) Foundry
14 17 (0.97%) Splunk
15 14 (0.80%) ServiceNow
16 11 (0.63%) Sage
17 10 (0.57%) IBM
18 9 (0.51%) Bloomberg
19 8 (0.46%) InterSystems
578 Data Engineer jobs in England