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 May 2026.

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

6 months to
13 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 59 84 98
Rank change year-on-year +25 +14 +16
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,498 730 818
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.72% 3.03% 2.24%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.02% 3.27% 2.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,067 556 632
10th Percentile £375 £357 £263
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 £661 £719 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 45 9 44
10th Percentile £19.34 £44.64 £37.50
25th Percentile £41.25 £51.25 £49.25
Median hourly rate £52.50 £65.00 £66.25
Median % change year-on-year -19.23% -1.89% +3.52%
75th Percentile £75.00 £78.70 £80.00
90th Percentile £77.40 £93.75 -
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £65.00 £63.75
% change year-on-year -19.23% +1.96% -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 37,225 22,311 33,904
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.34% 92.50% 92.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,137 14,840 22,465
10th Percentile £315 £300 £281
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £645
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £510 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,565 900 2,436
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.00 £12.87
25th Percentile £20.79 £18.50 £16.30
Median hourly rate £46.80 £30.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +56.00% -20.00% -14.88%
75th Percentile £67.50 £63.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £43.85 £28.18 £37.50
% change year-on-year +55.59% -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 13 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 13 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 13 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 +25 827 £523 -0.48% 130
Midlands +40 295 £469 +1.96% 50
West Midlands +33 277 £469 -1.37% 31
North of England -11 188 £465 +0.54% 75
North West +8 123 £480 +3.78% 35
South East -2 89 £500 +8.11% 87
South West 0 67 £500 +1.27% 32
Yorkshire -28 50 £465 +3.33% 20
East Midlands -22 18 £498 +21.34% 19
East of England -28 16 £565 +79.37% 7
North East -21 15 £463 +8.82% 22
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 13 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.

1 820 (54.74%) SQL
2 676 (45.13%) Python
3 621 (41.46%) Data Pipeline
4 592 (39.52%) ETL
5 581 (38.79%) Analytics
6 569 (37.98%) Data Engineering
7 530 (35.38%) Data Modelling
8 529 (35.31%) Azure
9 445 (29.71%) Security Cleared
10 402 (26.84%) AWS
10 402 (26.84%) SC Cleared
11 386 (25.77%) Data Quality
12 365 (24.37%) CI/CD
13 354 (23.63%) Databricks
14 333 (22.23%) Business Intelligence
15 279 (18.62%) DevOps
16 274 (18.29%) Agile
17 262 (17.49%) Power Platform
18 260 (17.36%) Data Warehouse
19 248 (16.56%) Power BI
20 227 (15.15%) PySpark
21 226 (15.09%) Azure Data Factory
22 212 (14.15%) Problem-Solving
23 211 (14.09%) Data Governance
24 200 (13.35%) Microsoft
25 182 (12.15%) Migration
26 170 (11.35%) AI
27 167 (11.15%) Data Integration
28 165 (11.01%) Git
28 165 (11.01%) 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
1 146 (9.75%) Apache Spark
2 136 (9.08%) Apache Airflow
3 86 (5.74%) Apache
4 74 (4.94%) SAS
5 26 (1.74%) Confluence
6 9 (0.60%) Palantir Foundry
7 7 (0.47%) Jupyter
8 5 (0.33%) Microsoft Exchange
9 3 (0.20%) SharePoint
10 1 (0.067%) Apache Superset
10 1 (0.067%) Appian
10 1 (0.067%) Camunda
10 1 (0.067%) Luigi
10 1 (0.067%) R Markdown
Applications
1 17 (1.13%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.33%) Notepad++
3 4 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.13%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 5 (0.33%) Aladdin
2 2 (0.13%) BambooHR
2 2 (0.13%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.13%) SAP BPC
2 2 (0.13%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.13%) SimCorp Dimension
3 1 (0.067%) Actimize
3 1 (0.067%) Elite 3E
3 1 (0.067%) iTrent
3 1 (0.067%) NEC Housing
3 1 (0.067%) Oracle 11i
3 1 (0.067%) Oracle Assets
3 1 (0.067%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.067%) Raiser’s Edge
3 1 (0.067%) SAP Business ByDesign
Cloud Services
1 529 (35.31%) Azure
2 402 (26.84%) AWS
3 262 (17.49%) Power Platform
4 226 (15.09%) Azure Data Factory
5 160 (10.68%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 145 (9.68%) Snowflake
7 138 (9.21%) GCP
8 135 (9.01%) Amazon S3
9 131 (8.74%) dbt
10 128 (8.54%) Azure DevOps
11 112 (7.48%) GitHub
12 87 (5.81%) Serverless
13 72 (4.81%) AWS Lambda
14 51 (3.40%) GitHub Actions
15 32 (2.14%) AWS CloudFormation
16 28 (1.87%) Matillion
17 25 (1.67%) Amazon Kinesis
18 24 (1.60%) OpenShift
19 21 (1.40%) Dagster
20 20 (1.34%) Amazon EMR
Communications & Networking
1 33 (2.20%) DNS
1 33 (2.20%) VPN
2 32 (2.14%) BGP
2 32 (2.14%) DMZ
2 32 (2.14%) Multicast
3 10 (0.67%) Structured Cabling
4 5 (0.33%) PuTTY
4 5 (0.33%) WinSCP
5 4 (0.27%) Firewall
6 2 (0.13%) Wi-Fi
6 2 (0.13%) Wireless
7 1 (0.067%) 4G
7 1 (0.067%) 5G
7 1 (0.067%) Network Security
7 1 (0.067%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 260 (17.36%) Data Warehouse
2 248 (16.56%) Power BI
3 164 (10.95%) Data Lake
4 113 (7.54%) SQL Server
5 90 (6.01%) Delta Lake
6 85 (5.67%) BigQuery
7 84 (5.61%) Metadata
8 83 (5.54%) Amazon Redshift
9 82 (5.47%) Azure SQL Database
10 81 (5.41%) Pentaho
11 67 (4.47%) Tableau
12 63 (4.21%) Big Data
13 60 (4.01%) PostgreSQL
13 60 (4.01%) Snowflake Schema
14 57 (3.81%) NoSQL
15 56 (3.74%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 51 (3.40%) Amazon Athena
17 38 (2.54%) Hadoop
17 38 (2.54%) Relational Database
18 34 (2.27%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 165 (11.01%) Git
2 73 (4.87%) JIRA
3 66 (4.41%) GitLab
4 58 (3.87%) Jenkins
5 16 (1.07%) MLflow
6 2 (0.13%) Artifactory
6 2 (0.13%) Bitbucket
6 2 (0.13%) SonarQube
6 2 (0.13%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.13%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
6 2 (0.13%) Visual Studio
7 1 (0.067%) ER Studio
7 1 (0.067%) ERwin
7 1 (0.067%) Jaeger
7 1 (0.067%) JUnit
7 1 (0.067%) Poetry
7 1 (0.067%) Selenium
7 1 (0.067%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (0.067%) Terragrunt
General
1 251 (16.76%) Finance
2 228 (15.22%) Social Skills
3 158 (10.55%) Analytical Skills
4 126 (8.41%) Public Sector
5 80 (5.34%) Banking
6 30 (2.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 23 (1.54%) Investment Banking
8 21 (1.40%) Telecoms
9 19 (1.27%) Marketing
10 18 (1.20%) Retail
11 16 (1.07%) Documentation Skills
11 16 (1.07%) Manufacturing
12 13 (0.87%) Aerospace
12 13 (0.87%) Pharmaceutical
13 11 (0.73%) Front Office
13 11 (0.73%) Publishing
14 8 (0.53%) Military
15 5 (0.33%) Games
15 5 (0.33%) Law
15 5 (0.33%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 227 (15.15%) PySpark
2 138 (9.21%) Kafka
3 46 (3.07%) Pandas
4 27 (1.80%) JSON
5 26 (1.74%) YAML
6 25 (1.67%) Great Expectations
7 22 (1.47%) REST
8 21 (1.40%) Spring
8 21 (1.40%) Spring Boot
9 14 (0.93%) Apache Beam
10 13 (0.87%) Apache Avro
10 13 (0.87%) PyTorch
10 13 (0.87%) scikit-learn
11 12 (0.80%) Node.js
11 12 (0.80%) React
11 12 (0.80%) XML
12 11 (0.73%) Matplotlib
13 9 (0.60%) GeoJSON
13 9 (0.60%) NumPy
13 9 (0.60%) Polars
Miscellaneous
1 109 (7.28%) Cloud Native
2 42 (2.80%) Legacy Systems
3 31 (2.07%) Data Structures
4 28 (1.87%) Product Ownership
5 25 (1.67%) Greenfield Project
6 22 (1.47%) Distributed Systems
7 19 (1.27%) Clustering
8 16 (1.07%) Onboarding
9 15 (1.00%) Reinsurance
10 14 (0.93%) Data Protection Act
11 13 (0.87%) NHS
11 13 (0.87%) Replication
12 12 (0.80%) Distributed Computing
12 12 (0.80%) Self-Motivation
13 10 (0.67%) Public Cloud
14 9 (0.60%) Hybrid Cloud
15 8 (0.53%) AI Agents
15 8 (0.53%) Analytical Mindset
15 8 (0.53%) Reference Data
16 7 (0.47%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 49 (3.27%) Unix
2 31 (2.07%) Linux
3 3 (0.20%) Windows
4 2 (0.13%) VMS
4 2 (0.13%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.067%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 621 (41.46%) Data Pipeline
2 592 (39.52%) ETL
3 581 (38.79%) Analytics
4 569 (37.98%) Data Engineering
5 530 (35.38%) Data Modelling
6 365 (24.37%) CI/CD
7 333 (22.23%) Business Intelligence
8 279 (18.62%) DevOps
9 274 (18.29%) Agile
10 212 (14.15%) Problem-Solving
11 211 (14.09%) Data Governance
12 182 (12.15%) Migration
13 170 (11.35%) AI
14 167 (11.15%) Data Integration
15 156 (10.41%) Data Science
16 155 (10.35%) Validation
17 131 (8.74%) Decision-Making
18 129 (8.61%) Data Architecture
19 126 (8.41%) Data Transformation
20 121 (8.08%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 820 (54.74%) SQL
2 676 (45.13%) Python
3 97 (6.48%) Java
4 82 (5.47%) Scala
5 38 (2.54%) PL/SQL
6 36 (2.40%) C#
6 36 (2.40%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 33 (2.20%) T-SQL
8 27 (1.80%) Bash
9 26 (1.74%) Shell Script
10 18 (1.20%) Bicep
11 16 (1.07%) R
12 15 (1.00%) PowerShell
13 13 (0.87%) JavaScript
14 9 (0.60%) Go
15 6 (0.40%) TypeScript
16 3 (0.20%) C
17 2 (0.13%) LookML
17 2 (0.13%) Ruby
17 2 (0.13%) VB
Qualifications
1 445 (29.71%) Security Cleared
2 402 (26.84%) SC Cleared
3 38 (2.54%) Degree
4 30 (2.00%) Azure Certification
5 28 (1.87%) BPSS Clearance
6 16 (1.07%) Computer Science Degree
7 13 (0.87%) DV Cleared
8 7 (0.47%) City & Guilds
8 7 (0.47%) DBS Check
9 6 (0.40%) AWS Certification
9 6 (0.40%) Microsoft Certification
10 5 (0.33%) BICSI Certification
10 5 (0.33%) Master's Degree
11 3 (0.20%) CTC Cleared
11 3 (0.20%) SnowPro
12 2 (0.13%) CISM
12 2 (0.13%) CISSP
13 1 (0.067%) CCIE
13 1 (0.067%) CCNP
13 1 (0.067%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 386 (25.77%) Data Quality
2 48 (3.20%) GDPR
3 46 (3.07%) QA
4 9 (0.60%) Accessibility
4 9 (0.60%) FATCA
4 9 (0.60%) SLA
5 5 (0.33%) MiFID
6 4 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 3 (0.20%) GMP
7 3 (0.20%) HIPAA
7 3 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 2 (0.13%) EMIR
8 2 (0.13%) SNOMED CT
8 2 (0.13%) WCAG
9 1 (0.067%) Basel III
9 1 (0.067%) GRC
9 1 (0.067%) GxP
9 1 (0.067%) IFRS 17
9 1 (0.067%) NIST
9 1 (0.067%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 101 (6.74%) Docker
2 5 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.13%) HDFS
4 1 (0.067%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.067%) RACF
Systems Management
1 165 (11.01%) Terraform
2 92 (6.14%) Kubernetes
3 37 (2.47%) Grafana
4 12 (0.80%) Ansible
5 11 (0.73%) Prometheus
6 7 (0.47%) Kibana
7 3 (0.20%) Rancher
8 2 (0.13%) Apache Ranger
8 2 (0.13%) Kubeflow
8 2 (0.13%) logstash
8 2 (0.13%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.067%) Control-M
9 1 (0.067%) NetBackup
9 1 (0.067%) Puppet
Vendors
1 354 (23.63%) Databricks
2 200 (13.35%) Microsoft
3 131 (8.74%) Oracle
4 110 (7.34%) Talend
5 105 (7.01%) Informatica
6 64 (4.27%) Denodo
7 57 (3.81%) Google
8 35 (2.34%) Cisco
9 34 (2.27%) F5
10 26 (1.74%) SAP
11 22 (1.47%) Splunk
12 20 (1.34%) ServiceNow
13 17 (1.13%) Cloudera
14 13 (0.87%) Alteryx
15 12 (0.80%) Foundry
16 10 (0.67%) IBM
16 10 (0.67%) Palantir
17 8 (0.53%) Dynatrace
17 8 (0.53%) InterSystems
17 8 (0.53%) MuleSoft