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 2 July 2026.

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

 6 months to
2 Jul 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 55 105 99
Rank change year-on-year +50 -6 +17
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,670 665 841
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.81% 2.57% 2.25%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.12% 2.79% 2.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,153 496 642
10th Percentile £376 £363 £263
25th Percentile £425 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £515
Median % change year-on-year - -2.95% -6.33%
75th Percentile £588 £594 £625
90th Percentile £660 £700 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 66 11 39
10th Percentile £19.34 £18.22 £37.50
25th Percentile £34.88 £46.75 £49.25
Median hourly rate £43.75 £52.50 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year -16.67% -22.22% -6.25%
75th Percentile £68.00 £78.10 £80.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £80.00 -
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year -4.76% -19.23% -9.72%

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 40,541 23,799 34,693
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.39% 92.15% 92.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,820 15,556 22,692
10th Percentile £325 £293 £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 2,915 1,109 2,587
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.00 £12.87
25th Percentile £22.00 £17.98 £16.80
Median hourly rate £45.00 £28.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +57.89% -28.75% -8.95%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £79.80 £75.00 £74.52
UK median hourly rate £43.00 £26.75 £37.50
% change year-on-year +60.75% -28.67% -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 2 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 2 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 2 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 +33 844 £525 - 191
Midlands +52 350 £465 +2.20% 72
West Midlands +47 313 £460 -0.11% 39
North of England +19 215 £475 - 115
North West +16 132 £500 +5.26% 62
South East +18 127 £475 +11.76% 103
South West +17 91 £520 +4.00% 46
Yorkshire -8 64 £475 - 29
East Midlands +5 37 £525 +28.05% 34
East of England -9 24 £543 +70.60% 18
North East -18 19 £480 +9.71% 27
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 2 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.

1 874 (52.34%) SQL
2 738 (44.19%) Python
3 695 (41.62%) Data Pipeline
4 624 (37.37%) Analytics
5 608 (36.41%) ETL
6 607 (36.35%) Data Engineering
7 556 (33.29%) Data Modelling
8 530 (31.74%) Azure
9 489 (29.28%) AWS
10 454 (27.19%) Security Cleared
11 407 (24.37%) CI/CD
11 407 (24.37%) Data Quality
12 399 (23.89%) SC Cleared
13 335 (20.06%) Databricks
14 327 (19.58%) Business Intelligence
15 292 (17.49%) Agile
16 284 (17.01%) DevOps
17 271 (16.23%) Data Warehouse
18 261 (15.63%) Power Platform
19 249 (14.91%) Power BI
20 242 (14.49%) Migration
21 237 (14.19%) PySpark
22 221 (13.23%) Data Governance
23 213 (12.75%) Azure Data Factory
24 212 (12.69%) Problem-Solving
25 205 (12.28%) AI
26 203 (12.16%) Microsoft
27 183 (10.96%) Terraform
27 183 (10.96%) Validation
28 182 (10.90%) 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
1 153 (9.16%) Apache Airflow
2 136 (8.14%) Apache Spark
3 93 (5.57%) Apache
4 73 (4.37%) SAS
5 39 (2.34%) Confluence
6 10 (0.60%) SharePoint
7 9 (0.54%) Jupyter
7 9 (0.54%) Palantir Foundry
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 Assets
6 1 (0.060%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.060%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.060%) Raiser’s Edge
6 1 (0.060%) SAP Business ByDesign
6 1 (0.060%) SAP CAR
Cloud Services
1 530 (31.74%) Azure
2 489 (29.28%) AWS
3 261 (15.63%) Power Platform
4 213 (12.75%) Azure Data Factory
5 182 (10.90%) Snowflake
6 167 (10.00%) dbt
7 157 (9.40%) Amazon S3
8 145 (8.68%) GCP
9 138 (8.26%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 134 (8.02%) Azure DevOps
11 107 (6.41%) GitHub
12 101 (6.05%) Serverless
13 89 (5.33%) AWS Lambda
14 53 (3.17%) GitHub Actions
15 37 (2.22%) Amazon EMR
16 32 (1.92%) 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 (2.10%) DNS
1 35 (2.10%) VPN
2 34 (2.04%) BGP
2 34 (2.04%) DMZ
2 34 (2.04%) 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
1 271 (16.23%) Data Warehouse
2 249 (14.91%) Power BI
3 155 (9.28%) Data Lake
4 102 (6.11%) Amazon Redshift
5 98 (5.87%) SQL Server
6 93 (5.57%) Delta Lake
7 90 (5.39%) BigQuery
8 86 (5.15%) Pentaho
9 79 (4.73%) Metadata
10 77 (4.61%) Tableau
11 66 (3.95%) PostgreSQL
12 64 (3.83%) Amazon Athena
13 61 (3.65%) Snowflake Schema
14 60 (3.59%) Big Data
15 56 (3.35%) Azure SQL Database
16 50 (2.99%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 49 (2.93%) NoSQL
18 44 (2.63%) Relational Database
19 37 (2.22%) Data Vault
20 35 (2.10%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 152 (9.10%) Git
2 85 (5.09%) GitLab
3 75 (4.49%) JIRA
4 44 (2.63%) Jenkins
5 7 (0.42%) Postman
6 5 (0.30%) Artifactory
6 5 (0.30%) MLflow
7 4 (0.24%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.18%) Newman
8 3 (0.18%) SonarQube
9 2 (0.12%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 2 (0.12%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.12%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 2 (0.12%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.12%) Visual Studio
9 2 (0.12%) Yeoman
10 1 (0.060%) ER Studio
10 1 (0.060%) ERwin
10 1 (0.060%) JUnit
10 1 (0.060%) Selenium
General
1 287 (17.19%) Finance
2 269 (16.11%) Social Skills
3 177 (10.60%) Analytical Skills
4 143 (8.56%) Public Sector
5 95 (5.69%) Banking
6 35 (2.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 28 (1.68%) 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
18 8 (0.48%) Legal
19 5 (0.30%) Law
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 237 (14.19%) PySpark
2 132 (7.90%) Kafka
3 40 (2.40%) Pandas
4 34 (2.04%) JSON
5 26 (1.56%) 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%) Node.js
14 9 (0.54%) pytest
14 9 (0.54%) PyTorch
14 9 (0.54%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 128 (7.66%) Cloud Native
2 56 (3.35%) Legacy Systems
3 43 (2.57%) Data Structures
4 27 (1.62%) Distributed Systems
4 27 (1.62%) Onboarding
5 26 (1.56%) Greenfield Project
6 24 (1.44%) Reinsurance
7 22 (1.32%) Product Ownership
8 21 (1.26%) NHS
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 (2.22%) Linux
3 4 (0.24%) Windows
4 2 (0.12%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.12%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.060%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 695 (41.62%) Data Pipeline
2 624 (37.37%) Analytics
3 608 (36.41%) ETL
4 607 (36.35%) Data Engineering
5 556 (33.29%) Data Modelling
6 407 (24.37%) CI/CD
7 327 (19.58%) Business Intelligence
8 292 (17.49%) Agile
9 284 (17.01%) DevOps
10 242 (14.49%) Migration
11 221 (13.23%) Data Governance
12 212 (12.69%) Problem-Solving
13 205 (12.28%) AI
14 183 (10.96%) Validation
15 180 (10.78%) Data Integration
16 164 (9.82%) Decision-Making
17 158 (9.46%) Data Transformation
18 156 (9.34%) Data Science
19 134 (8.02%) Infrastructure as Code
20 127 (7.60%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 874 (52.34%) SQL
2 738 (44.19%) Python
3 106 (6.35%) Java
4 60 (3.59%) Scala
5 49 (2.93%) PL/SQL
6 33 (1.98%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 32 (1.92%) T-SQL
8 29 (1.74%) C#
9 28 (1.68%) Shell Script
10 27 (1.62%) Bash
11 22 (1.32%) PowerShell
12 15 (0.90%) Bicep
13 14 (0.84%) R
14 10 (0.60%) JavaScript
15 7 (0.42%) Go
15 7 (0.42%) TypeScript
16 2 (0.12%) C
16 2 (0.12%) HiveQL
16 2 (0.12%) LookML
16 2 (0.12%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 454 (27.19%) Security Cleared
2 399 (23.89%) SC Cleared
3 42 (2.51%) BPSS Clearance
4 41 (2.46%) 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%) CCIE
14 1 (0.060%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 407 (24.37%) 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%) IFRS
10 1 (0.060%) IFRS 9
10 1 (0.060%) ISO 13485
10 1 (0.060%) PMO
System Software
1 96 (5.75%) 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
1 183 (10.96%) Terraform
2 79 (4.73%) Kubernetes
3 35 (2.10%) 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
1 335 (20.06%) Databricks
2 203 (12.16%) Microsoft
3 157 (9.40%) Oracle
4 129 (7.72%) Informatica
5 120 (7.19%) Talend
6 63 (3.77%) Denodo
7 55 (3.29%) Google
8 36 (2.16%) Cisco
8 36 (2.16%) F5
9 31 (1.86%) SAP
10 26 (1.56%) Salesforce
11 21 (1.26%) Splunk
12 18 (1.08%) Cloudera
13 16 (0.96%) Palantir
13 16 (0.96%) ServiceNow
14 15 (0.90%) Alteryx
15 12 (0.72%) Foundry
16 11 (0.66%) Sage
17 10 (0.60%) IBM
18 9 (0.54%) Bloomberg
496 Data Engineer jobs in England