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 31 May 2026.

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

6 months to
31 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 59 91 99
Rank change year-on-year +32 +8 +20
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,564 668 815
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.72% 2.76% 2.22%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.03% 2.99% 2.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,108 513 626
10th Percentile £375 £356 £250
25th Percentile £425 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.09%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £663 £723 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £491 £500
% change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 53 9 41
10th Percentile £19.34 £18.13 £37.50
25th Percentile £35.00 £51.25 £49.25
Median hourly rate £52.50 £52.50 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -22.22% -10.60%
75th Percentile £71.50 £78.70 £80.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £82.75 -
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £52.50 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -22.22% -10.60%

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 38,775 22,373 34,095
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.34% 92.37% 92.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,973 14,794 22,503
10th Percentile £325 £293 £285
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £518 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -1.43% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +1.49% -3.81% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,719 930 2,543
10th Percentile £15.74 £14.00 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.26 £16.30
Median hourly rate £45.00 £30.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +50.00% -20.00% -16.67%
75th Percentile £67.50 £60.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £79.00 £75.00 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £28.18 £37.50
% change year-on-year +50.82% -24.85% -16.67%

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 31 May 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 31 May 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 31 May 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 +31 855 £525 - 88
Midlands +49 300 £469 +4.22% 29
West Midlands +45 283 £469 +1.96% 20
North of England -3 201 £465 -2.11% 70
North West +6 125 £480 +1.05% 21
South East +9 101 £488 +17.90% 67
South West +5 72 £500 +1.27% 28
Yorkshire -24 58 £465 +3.33% 25
East of England -25 19 £520 +63.52% 3
North East -16 18 £450 -5.26% 25
East Midlands -21 17 £525 +28.05% 9
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 31 May 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.

1 860 (54.99%) SQL
2 696 (44.50%) Python
3 653 (41.75%) Data Pipeline
4 602 (38.49%) ETL
5 597 (38.17%) Analytics
6 588 (37.60%) Data Engineering
7 546 (34.91%) Data Modelling
8 530 (33.89%) Azure
9 456 (29.16%) Security Cleared
10 437 (27.94%) AWS
11 408 (26.09%) SC Cleared
12 390 (24.94%) Data Quality
13 377 (24.10%) CI/CD
14 354 (22.63%) Databricks
15 334 (21.36%) Business Intelligence
16 281 (17.97%) DevOps
17 276 (17.65%) Agile
18 272 (17.39%) Power Platform
19 258 (16.50%) Power BI
20 257 (16.43%) Data Warehouse
21 232 (14.83%) Azure Data Factory
22 223 (14.26%) PySpark
23 214 (13.68%) Data Governance
24 210 (13.43%) Microsoft
25 209 (13.36%) Problem-Solving
26 197 (12.60%) Migration
27 181 (11.57%) AI
28 171 (10.93%) Data Lake
29 168 (10.74%) Data Integration
30 167 (10.68%) 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
1 152 (9.72%) Apache Airflow
2 145 (9.27%) Apache Spark
3 96 (6.14%) Apache
4 72 (4.60%) SAS
5 29 (1.85%) Confluence
6 9 (0.58%) Jupyter
6 9 (0.58%) Palantir Foundry
7 4 (0.26%) Microsoft Exchange
8 2 (0.13%) SharePoint
9 1 (0.064%) Apache Superset
9 1 (0.064%) Appian
9 1 (0.064%) Camunda
9 1 (0.064%) Luigi
9 1 (0.064%) R Markdown
Applications
1 17 (1.09%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.32%) Notepad++
3 4 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.13%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.064%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 6 (0.38%) Aladdin
2 3 (0.19%) SAP BPC
2 3 (0.19%) SimCorp Dimension
3 2 (0.13%) BambooHR
3 2 (0.13%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.13%) Infor LN
3 2 (0.13%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.064%) Elite 3E
4 1 (0.064%) iTrent
4 1 (0.064%) NEC Housing
4 1 (0.064%) Oracle 11i
4 1 (0.064%) Oracle Assets
4 1 (0.064%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.064%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.064%) Raiser’s Edge
4 1 (0.064%) SAP Business ByDesign
4 1 (0.064%) SAP CAR
4 1 (0.064%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 530 (33.89%) Azure
2 437 (27.94%) AWS
3 272 (17.39%) Power Platform
4 232 (14.83%) Azure Data Factory
5 157 (10.04%) Snowflake
6 155 (9.91%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 142 (9.08%) dbt
8 141 (9.02%) Amazon S3
8 141 (9.02%) GCP
9 136 (8.70%) Azure DevOps
10 112 (7.16%) GitHub
11 91 (5.82%) Serverless
12 77 (4.92%) AWS Lambda
13 55 (3.52%) GitHub Actions
14 32 (2.05%) Matillion
15 29 (1.85%) AWS CloudFormation
16 26 (1.66%) Amazon Kinesis
17 24 (1.53%) Amazon EMR
17 24 (1.53%) OpenShift
18 21 (1.34%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 33 (2.11%) DNS
1 33 (2.11%) VPN
2 32 (2.05%) BGP
2 32 (2.05%) DMZ
2 32 (2.05%) Multicast
3 10 (0.64%) Structured Cabling
4 5 (0.32%) PuTTY
4 5 (0.32%) WinSCP
5 4 (0.26%) Firewall
5 4 (0.26%) Wi-Fi
5 4 (0.26%) Wireless
6 1 (0.064%) 4G
6 1 (0.064%) 5G
6 1 (0.064%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 258 (16.50%) Power BI
2 257 (16.43%) Data Warehouse
3 171 (10.93%) Data Lake
4 120 (7.67%) SQL Server
5 98 (6.27%) Delta Lake
6 85 (5.43%) BigQuery
7 82 (5.24%) Amazon Redshift
8 81 (5.18%) Metadata
9 79 (5.05%) Pentaho
10 78 (4.99%) Azure SQL Database
11 72 (4.60%) Tableau
12 65 (4.16%) Snowflake Schema
13 62 (3.96%) PostgreSQL
14 59 (3.77%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 58 (3.71%) Big Data
16 56 (3.58%) NoSQL
17 55 (3.52%) Amazon Athena
18 39 (2.49%) Relational Database
19 37 (2.37%) Data Vault
20 35 (2.24%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 153 (9.78%) Git
2 75 (4.80%) GitLab
3 72 (4.60%) JIRA
4 45 (2.88%) Jenkins
5 9 (0.58%) MLflow
6 6 (0.38%) Postman
7 5 (0.32%) Artifactory
8 3 (0.19%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.19%) Newman
8 3 (0.19%) SonarQube
9 2 (0.13%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.13%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 2 (0.13%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.13%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.064%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 1 (0.064%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.064%) ER Studio
10 1 (0.064%) ERwin
10 1 (0.064%) JUnit
10 1 (0.064%) Selenium
General
1 271 (17.33%) Finance
2 238 (15.22%) Social Skills
3 166 (10.61%) Analytical Skills
4 128 (8.18%) Public Sector
5 83 (5.31%) Banking
6 29 (1.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 25 (1.60%) Retail
8 21 (1.34%) Investment Banking
8 21 (1.34%) Marketing
9 19 (1.21%) Telecoms
10 18 (1.15%) Documentation Skills
11 17 (1.09%) Manufacturing
12 16 (1.02%) Pharmaceutical
13 14 (0.90%) Aerospace
14 11 (0.70%) Front Office
14 11 (0.70%) Publishing
15 7 (0.45%) Military
16 5 (0.32%) Law
16 5 (0.32%) Legal
16 5 (0.32%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 223 (14.26%) PySpark
2 136 (8.70%) Kafka
3 48 (3.07%) Pandas
4 30 (1.92%) JSON
5 26 (1.66%) Great Expectations
6 25 (1.60%) REST
7 22 (1.41%) Spring
7 22 (1.41%) Spring Boot
8 21 (1.34%) YAML
9 18 (1.15%) XML
10 16 (1.02%) Apache Beam
11 13 (0.83%) Apache Avro
12 12 (0.77%) React
12 12 (0.77%) scikit-learn
13 11 (0.70%) Matplotlib
13 11 (0.70%) PyTorch
14 10 (0.64%) Node.js
15 9 (0.58%) GeoJSON
15 9 (0.58%) Polars
15 9 (0.58%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 122 (7.80%) Cloud Native
2 46 (2.94%) Legacy Systems
3 38 (2.43%) Data Structures
4 28 (1.79%) Greenfield Project
4 28 (1.79%) Product Ownership
5 22 (1.41%) Onboarding
6 20 (1.28%) Reinsurance
7 19 (1.21%) Clustering
7 19 (1.21%) Distributed Systems
8 15 (0.96%) Data Protection Act
9 13 (0.83%) NHS
10 12 (0.77%) Replication
11 11 (0.70%) Distributed Computing
12 10 (0.64%) Life Science
12 10 (0.64%) Reference Data
12 10 (0.64%) Self-Motivation
13 9 (0.58%) Driving Licence
13 9 (0.58%) Public Cloud
14 8 (0.51%) Analytical Mindset
15 7 (0.45%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 56 (3.58%) Unix
2 34 (2.17%) Linux
3 4 (0.26%) Windows
4 2 (0.13%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.13%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.064%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 653 (41.75%) Data Pipeline
2 602 (38.49%) ETL
3 597 (38.17%) Analytics
4 588 (37.60%) Data Engineering
5 546 (34.91%) Data Modelling
6 377 (24.10%) CI/CD
7 334 (21.36%) Business Intelligence
8 281 (17.97%) DevOps
9 276 (17.65%) Agile
10 214 (13.68%) Data Governance
11 209 (13.36%) Problem-Solving
12 197 (12.60%) Migration
13 181 (11.57%) AI
14 168 (10.74%) Data Integration
15 163 (10.42%) Validation
16 151 (9.65%) Data Science
17 137 (8.76%) Decision-Making
18 130 (8.31%) Data Transformation
19 125 (7.99%) Data Architecture
20 124 (7.93%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 860 (54.99%) SQL
2 696 (44.50%) Python
3 103 (6.59%) Java
4 75 (4.80%) Scala
5 49 (3.13%) PL/SQL
6 36 (2.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 35 (2.24%) C#
8 34 (2.17%) T-SQL
9 28 (1.79%) Shell Script
10 27 (1.73%) Bash
11 18 (1.15%) Bicep
11 18 (1.15%) PowerShell
12 12 (0.77%) R
13 10 (0.64%) JavaScript
14 7 (0.45%) Go
15 6 (0.38%) TypeScript
16 2 (0.13%) C
16 2 (0.13%) Korn
16 2 (0.13%) Ruby
16 2 (0.13%) VB
Qualifications
1 456 (29.16%) Security Cleared
2 408 (26.09%) SC Cleared
3 40 (2.56%) Degree
4 31 (1.98%) BPSS Clearance
5 26 (1.66%) Azure Certification
6 16 (1.02%) Computer Science Degree
7 13 (0.83%) DV Cleared
8 11 (0.70%) DBS Check
9 9 (0.58%) City & Guilds
10 6 (0.38%) AWS Certification
10 6 (0.38%) Microsoft Certification
11 5 (0.32%) BICSI Certification
11 5 (0.32%) Master's Degree
12 3 (0.19%) SnowPro
13 2 (0.13%) CISM
13 2 (0.13%) CISSP
14 1 (0.064%) CCIE
14 1 (0.064%) CCNP
14 1 (0.064%) Cisco Certification
14 1 (0.064%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 390 (24.94%) Data Quality
2 50 (3.20%) QA
3 48 (3.07%) GDPR
4 11 (0.70%) SLA
5 10 (0.64%) Accessibility
6 9 (0.58%) FATCA
7 5 (0.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 4 (0.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 4 (0.26%) MiFID
9 3 (0.19%) GMP
10 2 (0.13%) EMIR
10 2 (0.13%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.13%) SNOMED CT
10 2 (0.13%) WCAG
11 1 (0.064%) Basel III
11 1 (0.064%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 1 (0.064%) GRC
11 1 (0.064%) GxP
11 1 (0.064%) NIST
11 1 (0.064%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 94 (6.01%) Docker
2 6 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.13%) HDFS
4 1 (0.064%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.064%) RACF
Systems Management
1 167 (10.68%) Terraform
2 77 (4.92%) Kubernetes
3 36 (2.30%) Grafana
4 12 (0.77%) Ansible
5 10 (0.64%) Prometheus
6 7 (0.45%) Kibana
7 3 (0.19%) Rancher
8 2 (0.13%) Apache Ranger
8 2 (0.13%) Control-M
8 2 (0.13%) logstash
8 2 (0.13%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.064%) Kubeflow
9 1 (0.064%) NetBackup
9 1 (0.064%) Puppet
Vendors
1 354 (22.63%) Databricks
2 210 (13.43%) Microsoft
3 141 (9.02%) Oracle
4 113 (7.23%) Talend
5 112 (7.16%) Informatica
6 63 (4.03%) Denodo
7 58 (3.71%) Google
8 34 (2.17%) Cisco
8 34 (2.17%) F5
9 29 (1.85%) SAP
10 21 (1.34%) Splunk
11 19 (1.21%) ServiceNow
12 17 (1.09%) Cloudera
13 15 (0.96%) Alteryx
14 12 (0.77%) Foundry
15 10 (0.64%) IBM
15 10 (0.64%) Palantir
16 8 (0.51%) InterSystems
16 8 (0.51%) MuleSoft
16 8 (0.51%) Salesforce