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 March 2026.

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

 6 months to
13 Mar 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 70 74 99
Rank change year-on-year +4 +25 +25
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,202 771 860
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.29% 3.13% 2.27%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.58% 3.36% 2.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 863 571 672
10th Percentile £363 £350 £313
25th Percentile £415 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -6.82%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £625
90th Percentile £674 £738 £699
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £510
% change year-on-year - -1.96% -7.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 10 40
10th Percentile £34.50 £25.45 £35.19
25th Percentile £59.75 £47.19 £48.63
Median hourly rate £69.00 £70.00 £63.75
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% +9.80% -0.39%
75th Percentile £75.00 £89.99 £78.13
90th Percentile £83.40 £94.13 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £64.50 £53.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year +20.00% -14.00% -1.19%

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 33,621 22,950 35,200
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.03% 93.03% 92.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,202 15,047 23,545
10th Percentile £310 £300 £270
25th Percentile £413 £409 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,216 759 2,280
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.28 £13.00
25th Percentile £19.34 £21.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £36.86 £35.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +5.30% +7.69% -23.53%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £58.75
90th Percentile £76.25 £77.50 £71.25
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £33.40 £32.50
% change year-on-year +4.79% +2.77% -23.53%

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 March 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 March 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 March 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 +6 705 £520 -5.45% 153
Midlands +9 208 £481 +1.26% 51
West Midlands +9 190 £495 +1.07% 38
North of England -21 153 £463 +2.78% 77
North West -5 92 £450 - 39
South East -46 55 £500 - 102
South West -7 49 £525 +5.00% 45
Yorkshire -33 44 £470 +4.44% 28
East Midlands -27 18 £450 +20.40% 13
North East -9 17 £463 -7.50% 10
East of England -39 10 £565 +77.67% 16
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 13 March 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.

1 700 (58.24%) SQL
2 619 (51.50%) Python
3 521 (43.34%) Data Pipeline
4 520 (43.26%) ETL
5 502 (41.76%) Data Engineering
6 485 (40.35%) Azure
7 476 (39.60%) Analytics
8 441 (36.69%) Data Modelling
9 351 (29.20%) Databricks
10 349 (29.03%) Data Quality
11 339 (28.20%) AWS
12 334 (27.79%) Security Cleared
13 326 (27.12%) CI/CD
14 297 (24.71%) SC Cleared
15 291 (24.21%) Business Intelligence
16 250 (20.80%) DevOps
17 234 (19.47%) Agile
18 229 (19.05%) Power Platform
19 228 (18.97%) Data Warehouse
20 214 (17.80%) Power BI
21 212 (17.64%) Azure Data Factory
22 198 (16.47%) Data Governance
23 190 (15.81%) PySpark
24 188 (15.64%) Problem-Solving
25 161 (13.39%) Git
25 161 (13.39%) Microsoft
26 159 (13.23%) Data Science
27 146 (12.15%) Snowflake
28 143 (11.90%) Data Integration
29 142 (11.81%) AI

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
1 133 (11.06%) Apache Spark
2 112 (9.32%) Apache Airflow
3 82 (6.82%) Apache
4 54 (4.49%) SAS
5 19 (1.58%) Confluence
6 11 (0.92%) Palantir Foundry
7 5 (0.42%) Jupyter
7 5 (0.42%) Microsoft Exchange
8 4 (0.33%) Oracle Application Server
9 2 (0.17%) ArcGIS
9 2 (0.17%) SharePoint
10 1 (0.083%) Apache Superset
10 1 (0.083%) Apache Synapse
10 1 (0.083%) Appian
10 1 (0.083%) Camunda
10 1 (0.083%) IIS
10 1 (0.083%) Luigi
10 1 (0.083%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 10 (0.83%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.25%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.083%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.083%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.083%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 3 (0.25%) Aladdin
2 2 (0.17%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.17%) Maximo
2 2 (0.17%) SAP BPC
3 1 (0.083%) Actimize
3 1 (0.083%) BambooHR
3 1 (0.083%) Elite 3E
3 1 (0.083%) iTrent
3 1 (0.083%) NEC Housing
3 1 (0.083%) Oracle 11i
3 1 (0.083%) Oracle BPM
3 1 (0.083%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.083%) SAP Business ByDesign
3 1 (0.083%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 485 (40.35%) Azure
2 339 (28.20%) AWS
3 229 (19.05%) Power Platform
4 212 (17.64%) Azure Data Factory
5 146 (12.15%) Snowflake
6 132 (10.98%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 128 (10.65%) GCP
8 115 (9.57%) dbt
9 114 (9.48%) Amazon S3
10 106 (8.82%) GitHub
11 93 (7.74%) Azure DevOps
12 90 (7.49%) Serverless
13 65 (5.41%) AWS Lambda
14 51 (4.24%) GitHub Actions
15 36 (3.00%) AWS CloudFormation
16 27 (2.25%) Matillion
17 23 (1.91%) AWS Step Functions
18 21 (1.75%) Amazon Kinesis
19 18 (1.50%) Amazon SQS
19 18 (1.50%) Collibra
Communications & Networking
1 21 (1.75%) DNS
1 21 (1.75%) VPN
2 20 (1.66%) BGP
2 20 (1.66%) DMZ
2 20 (1.66%) Multicast
3 4 (0.33%) Firewall
4 3 (0.25%) SAN
5 2 (0.17%) Structured Cabling
6 1 (0.083%) 4G
6 1 (0.083%) 5G
6 1 (0.083%) Network Security
6 1 (0.083%) Software-Defined Networking
6 1 (0.083%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 228 (18.97%) Data Warehouse
2 214 (17.80%) Power BI
3 139 (11.56%) Data Lake
4 103 (8.57%) SQL Server
5 77 (6.41%) Delta Lake
6 75 (6.24%) Azure SQL Database
7 74 (6.16%) Amazon Redshift
8 72 (5.99%) BigQuery
9 65 (5.41%) Metadata
10 64 (5.32%) PostgreSQL
11 63 (5.24%) Pentaho
12 60 (4.99%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 58 (4.83%) Big Data
14 51 (4.24%) NoSQL
15 49 (4.08%) Tableau
16 45 (3.74%) Snowflake Schema
17 40 (3.33%) Amazon Athena
18 38 (3.16%) Hadoop
19 36 (3.00%) Relational Database
20 29 (2.41%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 161 (13.39%) Git
2 64 (5.32%) Jenkins
3 54 (4.49%) JIRA
4 48 (3.99%) GitLab
5 19 (1.58%) MLflow
6 4 (0.33%) DBeaver
6 4 (0.33%) Visual Studio
7 3 (0.25%) Bitbucket
8 2 (0.17%) JUnit
8 2 (0.17%) Selenium
8 2 (0.17%) SonarQube
8 2 (0.17%) Sonatype Nexus
9 1 (0.083%) Cucumber
9 1 (0.083%) Deequ
9 1 (0.083%) Jaeger
9 1 (0.083%) Maven
9 1 (0.083%) Mockito
9 1 (0.083%) Poetry
9 1 (0.083%) Team Foundation Server
9 1 (0.083%) Terragrunt
General
1 205 (17.05%) Social Skills
2 187 (15.56%) Finance
3 126 (10.48%) Analytical Skills
4 112 (9.32%) Public Sector
5 60 (4.99%) Banking
6 35 (2.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 20 (1.66%) Investment Banking
8 17 (1.41%) Front Office
9 14 (1.16%) Pharmaceutical
10 13 (1.08%) Documentation Skills
10 13 (1.08%) Retail
11 11 (0.92%) Marketing
11 11 (0.92%) Telecoms
12 10 (0.83%) Publishing
13 9 (0.75%) Manufacturing
14 6 (0.50%) Military
15 5 (0.42%) Law
16 4 (0.33%) Back Office
16 4 (0.33%) Corporate Banking
17 3 (0.25%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 190 (15.81%) PySpark
2 131 (10.90%) Kafka
3 43 (3.58%) Pandas
4 26 (2.16%) JSON
4 26 (2.16%) YAML
5 22 (1.83%) REST
6 18 (1.50%) Great Expectations
6 18 (1.50%) XML
7 15 (1.25%) PyTorch
7 15 (1.25%) scikit-learn
8 14 (1.16%) Apache NiFi
9 13 (1.08%) NumPy
10 12 (1.00%) Keycloak
10 12 (1.00%) Matplotlib
10 12 (1.00%) Node.js
11 11 (0.92%) pytest
11 11 (0.92%) TensorFlow
12 9 (0.75%) Apache Beam
12 9 (0.75%) RESTful
13 8 (0.67%) Polars
Miscellaneous
1 93 (7.74%) Cloud Native
2 36 (3.00%) Legacy Systems
3 34 (2.83%) Data Structures
4 27 (2.25%) Product Ownership
5 19 (1.58%) Onboarding
6 17 (1.41%) Clustering
6 17 (1.41%) Hybrid Cloud
7 16 (1.33%) Replication
8 15 (1.25%) Data Protection Act
8 15 (1.25%) Distributed Systems
8 15 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
9 11 (0.92%) Public Cloud
9 11 (0.92%) Reinsurance
10 9 (0.75%) Distributed Computing
10 9 (0.75%) Life Science
11 8 (0.67%) Algorithms
12 7 (0.58%) Management Information System
12 7 (0.58%) NHS
12 7 (0.58%) Self-Motivation
13 6 (0.50%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 21 (1.75%) Unix
2 20 (1.66%) Linux
3 2 (0.17%) Windows
3 2 (0.17%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.083%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 521 (43.34%) Data Pipeline
2 520 (43.26%) ETL
3 502 (41.76%) Data Engineering
4 476 (39.60%) Analytics
5 441 (36.69%) Data Modelling
6 326 (27.12%) CI/CD
7 291 (24.21%) Business Intelligence
8 250 (20.80%) DevOps
9 234 (19.47%) Agile
10 198 (16.47%) Data Governance
11 188 (15.64%) Problem-Solving
12 159 (13.23%) Data Science
13 143 (11.90%) Data Integration
14 142 (11.81%) AI
15 136 (11.31%) Data Architecture
16 129 (10.73%) Migration
17 122 (10.15%) Data Transformation
18 119 (9.90%) Machine Learning
19 115 (9.57%) Infrastructure as Code
20 109 (9.07%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 700 (58.24%) SQL
2 619 (51.50%) Python
3 81 (6.74%) Scala
4 67 (5.57%) Java
5 34 (2.83%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 32 (2.66%) C#
7 26 (2.16%) T-SQL
8 25 (2.08%) Bash
9 23 (1.91%) PL/SQL
10 19 (1.58%) PowerShell
11 18 (1.50%) Bicep
12 17 (1.41%) Shell Script
13 15 (1.25%) Go
13 15 (1.25%) R
14 12 (1.00%) JavaScript
15 3 (0.25%) Korn
15 3 (0.25%) TypeScript
16 2 (0.17%) C++
16 2 (0.17%) Ruby
16 2 (0.17%) VB
Qualifications
1 334 (27.79%) Security Cleared
2 297 (24.71%) SC Cleared
3 34 (2.83%) Azure Certification
4 33 (2.75%) Degree
5 23 (1.91%) BPSS Clearance
6 18 (1.50%) AWS Certification
7 15 (1.25%) DV Cleared
8 13 (1.08%) Computer Science Degree
9 5 (0.42%) Microsoft Certification
10 4 (0.33%) CTC Cleared
10 4 (0.33%) DBS Check
10 4 (0.33%) Master's Degree
11 2 (0.17%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 2 (0.17%) SnowPro
12 1 (0.083%) CCIE
12 1 (0.083%) CCNP
12 1 (0.083%) Cisco Certification
12 1 (0.083%) CISM
12 1 (0.083%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 349 (29.03%) Data Quality
2 49 (4.08%) GDPR
3 26 (2.16%) QA
4 10 (0.83%) Accessibility
5 4 (0.33%) HIPAA
5 4 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 4 (0.33%) SLA
6 3 (0.25%) FATCA
6 3 (0.25%) GMP
6 3 (0.25%) MiFID
6 3 (0.25%) NIST
7 2 (0.17%) Dodd-Frank
7 2 (0.17%) EMIR
7 2 (0.17%) EU AI Act
8 1 (0.083%) Basel III
8 1 (0.083%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 1 (0.083%) GxP
8 1 (0.083%) NCSC
8 1 (0.083%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.083%) WCAG
System Software
1 86 (7.15%) Docker
2 8 (0.67%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.17%) HDFS
3 2 (0.17%) zsh
4 1 (0.083%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 140 (11.65%) Terraform
2 97 (8.07%) Kubernetes
3 20 (1.66%) Grafana
4 11 (0.92%) Prometheus
5 7 (0.58%) Ansible
6 4 (0.33%) Kibana
6 4 (0.33%) Kubeflow
6 4 (0.33%) NetBackup
7 3 (0.25%) Puppet
7 3 (0.25%) Rancher
8 2 (0.17%) EMC NetWorker
8 2 (0.17%) logstash
8 2 (0.17%) Thomson Reuters DACS
8 2 (0.17%) Tivoli Storage Manager
9 1 (0.083%) Ambari
9 1 (0.083%) Control-M
9 1 (0.083%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 351 (29.20%) Databricks
2 161 (13.39%) Microsoft
3 98 (8.15%) Oracle
4 88 (7.32%) Talend
5 72 (5.99%) Informatica
6 52 (4.33%) Google
7 42 (3.49%) Denodo
8 25 (2.08%) Cisco
9 22 (1.83%) F5
10 20 (1.66%) SAP
11 19 (1.58%) ServiceNow
12 16 (1.33%) Foundry
13 15 (1.25%) Cloudera
13 15 (1.25%) Palantir
13 15 (1.25%) Splunk
14 12 (1.00%) IBM
15 10 (0.83%) Alteryx
16 7 (0.58%) MuleSoft
17 6 (0.50%) OpenAI
18 5 (0.42%) Virgin Media
388 Data Engineer jobs in England