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 29 March 2026.

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

6 months to
29 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 70 75 101
Rank change year-on-year +5 +26 +14
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,290 770 845
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.39% 3.15% 2.24%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.68% 3.39% 2.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 921 578 662
10th Percentile £368 £356 £300
25th Percentile £415 £419 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year - -1.96% -7.27%
75th Percentile £588 £622 £617
90th Percentile £663 £725 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 10 40
10th Percentile £19.34 £25.45 £36.88
25th Percentile £34.69 £43.75 £49.25
Median hourly rate £66.75 £65.00 £66.25
Median % change year-on-year +2.69% -1.89% +3.52%
75th Percentile £75.00 £78.40 £80.00
90th Percentile £82.30 £93.75 -
UK median hourly rate £58.50 £47.50 £63.75
% change year-on-year +23.16% -25.49% -0.39%

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 35,057 22,720 34,933
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.13% 92.93% 92.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,082 15,205 23,344
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £409 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £621 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,308 839 2,296
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.99 £12.96
25th Percentile £19.90 £21.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £40.92 £34.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +18.60% +6.15% -23.85%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £59.95
90th Percentile £77.50 £77.25 £71.87
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £32.50 £33.00
% change year-on-year +15.38% -1.52% -24.36%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 +14 744 £525 -1.87% 158
Midlands +8 226 £470 -1.05% 59
West Midlands +16 207 £484 +1.52% 45
North of England -15 163 £464 +1.64% 87
North West -3 99 £450 -2.70% 56
South East -23 66 £500 - 91
South West -8 53 £536 +7.10% 38
Yorkshire -37 49 £470 +4.44% 19
East Midlands -25 19 £450 +18.03% 14
North East -10 15 £488 +2.63% 13
East of England -36 14 £565 +77.67% 17
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 29 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.

1 734 (56.90%) SQL
2 643 (49.84%) Python
3 559 (43.33%) Data Pipeline
4 550 (42.64%) ETL
5 541 (41.94%) Data Engineering
6 516 (40.00%) Analytics
7 506 (39.22%) Azure
8 475 (36.82%) Data Modelling
9 370 (28.68%) Data Quality
10 360 (27.91%) Databricks
11 357 (27.67%) AWS
11 357 (27.67%) Security Cleared
12 347 (26.90%) CI/CD
13 323 (25.04%) SC Cleared
14 310 (24.03%) Business Intelligence
15 266 (20.62%) DevOps
16 241 (18.68%) Agile
16 241 (18.68%) Power Platform
17 240 (18.60%) Data Warehouse
18 226 (17.52%) Power BI
19 215 (16.67%) Data Governance
20 214 (16.59%) Azure Data Factory
21 200 (15.50%) PySpark
22 199 (15.43%) Problem-Solving
23 177 (13.72%) Microsoft
24 170 (13.18%) Git
25 161 (12.48%) Data Science
26 155 (12.02%) Snowflake
27 150 (11.63%) AI
27 150 (11.63%) Data Integration

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
1 135 (10.47%) Apache Spark
2 122 (9.46%) Apache Airflow
3 86 (6.67%) Apache
4 58 (4.50%) SAS
5 17 (1.32%) Confluence
6 10 (0.78%) Palantir Foundry
7 5 (0.39%) Jupyter
7 5 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
8 3 (0.23%) SharePoint
9 2 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
10 1 (0.078%) Apache Superset
10 1 (0.078%) Apache Synapse
10 1 (0.078%) Appian
10 1 (0.078%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.078%) Camunda
10 1 (0.078%) Luigi
10 1 (0.078%) R Markdown
Applications
1 14 (1.09%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.23%) Chatbot
2 3 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.078%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.078%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.16%) Aladdin
1 2 (0.16%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.16%) Maximo
1 2 (0.16%) SAP BPC
2 1 (0.078%) Actimize
2 1 (0.078%) BambooHR
2 1 (0.078%) Elite 3E
2 1 (0.078%) iTrent
2 1 (0.078%) NEC Housing
2 1 (0.078%) Oracle 11i
2 1 (0.078%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.078%) SAP Business ByDesign
2 1 (0.078%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 506 (39.22%) Azure
2 357 (27.67%) AWS
3 241 (18.68%) Power Platform
4 214 (16.59%) Azure Data Factory
5 155 (12.02%) Snowflake
6 142 (11.01%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 136 (10.54%) GCP
8 126 (9.77%) dbt
9 124 (9.61%) Amazon S3
10 115 (8.91%) GitHub
11 101 (7.83%) Azure DevOps
12 89 (6.90%) Serverless
13 66 (5.12%) AWS Lambda
14 50 (3.88%) GitHub Actions
15 37 (2.87%) AWS CloudFormation
16 27 (2.09%) Matillion
17 24 (1.86%) Amazon Kinesis
17 24 (1.86%) AWS Step Functions
18 19 (1.47%) Amazon SQS
18 19 (1.47%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.78%) DNS
1 23 (1.78%) VPN
2 22 (1.71%) BGP
2 22 (1.71%) DMZ
2 22 (1.71%) Multicast
3 9 (0.70%) Structured Cabling
4 4 (0.31%) Firewall
5 3 (0.23%) SAN
6 1 (0.078%) 4G
6 1 (0.078%) 5G
6 1 (0.078%) Network Security
6 1 (0.078%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 240 (18.60%) Data Warehouse
2 226 (17.52%) Power BI
3 149 (11.55%) Data Lake
4 99 (7.67%) SQL Server
5 81 (6.28%) Azure SQL Database
6 79 (6.12%) BigQuery
6 79 (6.12%) Delta Lake
7 78 (6.05%) Amazon Redshift
8 69 (5.35%) Metadata
8 69 (5.35%) Pentaho
9 62 (4.81%) PostgreSQL
10 55 (4.26%) Big Data
10 55 (4.26%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 51 (3.95%) NoSQL
12 50 (3.88%) Tableau
13 49 (3.80%) Snowflake Schema
14 42 (3.26%) Amazon Athena
15 36 (2.79%) Relational Database
16 35 (2.71%) Hadoop
17 34 (2.64%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 170 (13.18%) Git
2 65 (5.04%) Jenkins
3 61 (4.73%) JIRA
4 51 (3.95%) GitLab
5 19 (1.47%) MLflow
6 3 (0.23%) Visual Studio
7 2 (0.16%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.16%) DBeaver
7 2 (0.16%) JUnit
7 2 (0.16%) Selenium
7 2 (0.16%) SonarQube
7 2 (0.16%) Sonatype Nexus
8 1 (0.078%) Deequ
8 1 (0.078%) Gradle
8 1 (0.078%) Jaeger
8 1 (0.078%) Mockito
8 1 (0.078%) Poetry
8 1 (0.078%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 1 (0.078%) Team Foundation Server
8 1 (0.078%) Terragrunt
General
1 217 (16.82%) Social Skills
2 211 (16.36%) Finance
3 139 (10.78%) Analytical Skills
4 112 (8.68%) Public Sector
5 63 (4.88%) Banking
6 35 (2.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 19 (1.47%) Investment Banking
8 18 (1.40%) Telecoms
9 15 (1.16%) Front Office
10 14 (1.09%) Documentation Skills
10 14 (1.09%) Pharmaceutical
10 14 (1.09%) Retail
11 13 (1.01%) Marketing
12 11 (0.85%) Publishing
13 10 (0.78%) Manufacturing
14 6 (0.47%) Law
14 6 (0.47%) Military
15 4 (0.31%) Aerospace
15 4 (0.31%) Corporate Banking
15 4 (0.31%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 200 (15.50%) PySpark
2 141 (10.93%) Kafka
3 43 (3.33%) Pandas
4 30 (2.33%) JSON
5 27 (2.09%) YAML
6 23 (1.78%) REST
7 21 (1.63%) Great Expectations
8 17 (1.32%) XML
9 16 (1.24%) Node.js
10 15 (1.16%) scikit-learn
11 13 (1.01%) Matplotlib
11 13 (1.01%) PyTorch
12 12 (0.93%) Keycloak
12 12 (0.93%) NumPy
12 12 (0.93%) React
13 11 (0.85%) Apache Beam
13 11 (0.85%) pytest
14 10 (0.78%) Apache NiFi
15 9 (0.70%) GeoJSON
15 9 (0.70%) Polars
Miscellaneous
1 98 (7.60%) Cloud Native
2 43 (3.33%) Legacy Systems
3 33 (2.56%) Data Structures
4 29 (2.25%) Product Ownership
5 21 (1.63%) Clustering
6 19 (1.47%) Onboarding
7 18 (1.40%) Greenfield Project
8 17 (1.32%) Distributed Systems
9 16 (1.24%) Hybrid Cloud
9 16 (1.24%) Replication
10 15 (1.16%) Data Protection Act
11 12 (0.93%) Reinsurance
12 11 (0.85%) Public Cloud
13 9 (0.70%) Distributed Computing
13 9 (0.70%) Life Science
13 9 (0.70%) NHS
14 8 (0.62%) Self-Motivation
15 7 (0.54%) Analytical Mindset
15 7 (0.54%) Data Centre
15 7 (0.54%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 23 (1.78%) Unix
2 18 (1.40%) Linux
3 2 (0.16%) Windows
3 2 (0.16%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.078%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 559 (43.33%) Data Pipeline
2 550 (42.64%) ETL
3 541 (41.94%) Data Engineering
4 516 (40.00%) Analytics
5 475 (36.82%) Data Modelling
6 347 (26.90%) CI/CD
7 310 (24.03%) Business Intelligence
8 266 (20.62%) DevOps
9 241 (18.68%) Agile
10 215 (16.67%) Data Governance
11 199 (15.43%) Problem-Solving
12 161 (12.48%) Data Science
13 150 (11.63%) AI
13 150 (11.63%) Data Integration
14 141 (10.93%) Data Architecture
15 137 (10.62%) Migration
16 126 (9.77%) Data Transformation
16 126 (9.77%) Validation
17 120 (9.30%) Machine Learning
17 120 (9.30%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 734 (56.90%) SQL
2 643 (49.84%) Python
3 80 (6.20%) Java
4 78 (6.05%) Scala
5 36 (2.79%) C#
5 36 (2.79%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 27 (2.09%) PL/SQL
7 25 (1.94%) T-SQL
8 23 (1.78%) Bash
9 20 (1.55%) Shell Script
10 19 (1.47%) Bicep
11 18 (1.40%) PowerShell
12 16 (1.24%) R
13 15 (1.16%) Go
14 11 (0.85%) JavaScript
15 5 (0.39%) TypeScript
16 3 (0.23%) C
16 3 (0.23%) Korn
17 2 (0.16%) Ruby
17 2 (0.16%) VB
Qualifications
1 357 (27.67%) Security Cleared
2 323 (25.04%) SC Cleared
3 34 (2.64%) Azure Certification
3 34 (2.64%) Degree
4 22 (1.71%) BPSS Clearance
5 15 (1.16%) AWS Certification
5 15 (1.16%) Computer Science Degree
6 13 (1.01%) DV Cleared
7 6 (0.47%) Microsoft Certification
8 5 (0.39%) BICSI Certification
8 5 (0.39%) City & Guilds
8 5 (0.39%) Master's Degree
9 4 (0.31%) CTC Cleared
9 4 (0.31%) DBS Check
9 4 (0.31%) SnowPro
10 1 (0.078%) CCIE
10 1 (0.078%) CCNP
10 1 (0.078%) Cisco Certification
10 1 (0.078%) CISM
10 1 (0.078%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 370 (28.68%) Data Quality
2 50 (3.88%) GDPR
3 33 (2.56%) QA
4 11 (0.85%) Accessibility
5 4 (0.31%) HIPAA
5 4 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 4 (0.31%) SLA
6 3 (0.23%) FATCA
6 3 (0.23%) GMP
6 3 (0.23%) MiFID
7 2 (0.16%) Dodd-Frank
7 2 (0.16%) EMIR
7 2 (0.16%) WCAG
8 1 (0.078%) Basel III
8 1 (0.078%) GRC
8 1 (0.078%) GxP
8 1 (0.078%) NCSC
8 1 (0.078%) NIST
8 1 (0.078%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.078%) SOC 2
System Software
1 92 (7.13%) Docker
2 8 (0.62%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.16%) HDFS
4 1 (0.078%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 147 (11.40%) Terraform
2 100 (7.75%) Kubernetes
3 25 (1.94%) Grafana
4 13 (1.01%) Prometheus
5 9 (0.70%) Ansible
6 4 (0.31%) Kubeflow
6 4 (0.31%) NetBackup
7 3 (0.23%) Kibana
7 3 (0.23%) Rancher
8 2 (0.16%) Apache Ranger
8 2 (0.16%) EMC NetWorker
8 2 (0.16%) logstash
8 2 (0.16%) Puppet
8 2 (0.16%) Thomson Reuters DACS
8 2 (0.16%) Tivoli Storage Manager
9 1 (0.078%) Control-M
Vendors
1 360 (27.91%) Databricks
2 177 (13.72%) Microsoft
3 98 (7.60%) Oracle
4 96 (7.44%) Talend
5 82 (6.36%) Informatica
6 60 (4.65%) Google
7 50 (3.88%) Denodo
8 27 (2.09%) Cisco
9 24 (1.86%) F5
10 21 (1.63%) ServiceNow
11 19 (1.47%) SAP
12 16 (1.24%) Cloudera
12 16 (1.24%) Splunk
13 14 (1.09%) IBM
13 14 (1.09%) Palantir
14 12 (0.93%) Foundry
15 10 (0.78%) Alteryx
16 8 (0.62%) MuleSoft
17 6 (0.47%) OpenAI
18 5 (0.39%) Virgin Media