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 August 2026.

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

 6 months to
31 Aug 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 61 127 100
Rank change year-on-year +66 -27 +21
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,687 620 768
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.69% 2.23% 2.32%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.99% 2.44% 2.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,121 451 545
10th Percentile £380 £380 £310
25th Percentile £425 £428 £439
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £638
90th Percentile £668 £695 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 80 14 19
10th Percentile £19.34 £25.42 £45.65
25th Percentile £30.96 £37.00 £63.13
Median hourly rate £41.56 £52.50 £80.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.85% -34.38% +12.28%
75th Percentile £70.00 £74.65 -
90th Percentile £73.88 £101.00 £83.50
UK median hourly rate £43.50 £52.50 £75.00
% change year-on-year -17.14% -30.00% +5.26%

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 42,287 25,412 30,763
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.42% 91.57% 93.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,391 16,412 19,714
10th Percentile £325 £281 £303
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £634 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,267 1,364 1,626
10th Percentile £15.13 £13.71 £14.16
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.33 £21.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% +4.65%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £66.94
90th Percentile £80.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% +1.96%

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 August 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 August 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 August 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 +35 838 £525 - 275
Midlands +71 357 £467 +0.97% 54
West Midlands +70 297 £469 -6.20% 32
North of England +31 217 £500 +5.26% 101
South East +28 129 £459 +2.00% 115
North West +27 123 £525 +10.53% 49
South West +7 91 £525 +5.00% 42
Yorkshire -6 74 £465 -2.11% 22
East Midlands +27 60 £450 +1.98% 22
East of England +14 37 £450 - 16
North East -22 21 £515 +21.89% 31
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 31 August 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.

1 846 (50.15%) SQL
2 723 (42.86%) Data Pipeline
3 706 (41.85%) Python
4 646 (38.29%) Data Engineering
5 588 (34.85%) Analytics
6 578 (34.26%) ETL
7 563 (33.37%) Data Modelling
8 523 (31.00%) Azure
9 522 (30.94%) AWS
10 445 (26.38%) Security Cleared
11 420 (24.90%) Data Quality
12 407 (24.13%) CI/CD
13 390 (23.12%) SC Cleared
14 326 (19.32%) Databricks
15 293 (17.37%) Agile
16 283 (16.78%) Business Intelligence
17 281 (16.66%) Data Warehouse
18 277 (16.42%) DevOps
19 271 (16.06%) Migration
20 240 (14.23%) PySpark
21 230 (13.63%) AI
22 226 (13.40%) Data Governance
23 223 (13.22%) Power Platform
24 219 (12.98%) Power BI
25 217 (12.86%) Microsoft
26 208 (12.33%) Data Transformation
26 208 (12.33%) Validation
27 200 (11.86%) Data Integration
28 199 (11.80%) Azure Data Factory
29 197 (11.68%) 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
1 181 (10.73%) Apache Airflow
2 137 (8.12%) Apache Spark
3 108 (6.40%) Apache
4 53 (3.14%) SAS
5 32 (1.90%) Confluence
6 17 (1.01%) Palantir Foundry
7 12 (0.71%) SharePoint
8 11 (0.65%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.18%) Apache Superset
10 1 (0.059%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.059%) Liferay
10 1 (0.059%) Luigi
10 1 (0.059%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.059%) nginx
10 1 (0.059%) PowerExchange
10 1 (0.059%) R Markdown
Applications
1 24 (1.42%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.41%) Spreadsheet
3 5 (0.30%) Notepad++
4 4 (0.24%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.059%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 12 (0.71%) 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 4 (0.24%) SAP S/4HANA
5 3 (0.18%) SimCorp Dimension
5 3 (0.18%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 2 (0.12%) BambooHR
6 2 (0.12%) Maximo
7 1 (0.059%) FIS Private Capital Suite
7 1 (0.059%) MIS ActiveH
7 1 (0.059%) Oracle 11i
7 1 (0.059%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.059%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.059%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.059%) Raiser’s Edge
7 1 (0.059%) SAP BPC
7 1 (0.059%) SAP CAR
7 1 (0.059%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 523 (31.00%) Azure
2 522 (30.94%) AWS
3 223 (13.22%) Power Platform
4 199 (11.80%) Azure Data Factory
5 197 (11.68%) Snowflake
6 194 (11.50%) dbt
7 155 (9.19%) GCP
8 154 (9.13%) Amazon S3
9 128 (7.59%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 123 (7.29%) Azure DevOps
11 110 (6.52%) Serverless
12 104 (6.16%) GitHub
13 97 (5.75%) AWS Lambda
14 58 (3.44%) Azure Databricks
15 41 (2.43%) GitHub Actions
16 39 (2.31%) Amazon EMR
17 31 (1.84%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 26 (1.54%) AWS Step Functions
19 24 (1.42%) AWS CloudFormation
20 23 (1.36%) Fivetran
Communications & Networking
1 30 (1.78%) VPN
2 29 (1.72%) BGP
2 29 (1.72%) DMZ
2 29 (1.72%) DNS
2 29 (1.72%) Multicast
3 11 (0.65%) Structured Cabling
4 7 (0.41%) Firewall
5 5 (0.30%) PuTTY
5 5 (0.30%) WinSCP
6 4 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.24%) Wireless
7 3 (0.18%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 281 (16.66%) Data Warehouse
2 219 (12.98%) Power BI
3 151 (8.95%) Data Lake
4 113 (6.70%) Metadata
5 95 (5.63%) Amazon Redshift
6 94 (5.57%) BigQuery
7 79 (4.68%) Delta Lake
7 79 (4.68%) SQL Server
8 73 (4.33%) Amazon Athena
9 69 (4.09%) Pentaho
10 63 (3.73%) Tableau
11 58 (3.44%) Big Data
12 55 (3.26%) PostgreSQL
13 52 (3.08%) Relational Database
14 50 (2.96%) Snowflake Schema
15 45 (2.67%) Azure SQL Database
16 44 (2.61%) NoSQL
17 37 (2.19%) Oracle Database
18 36 (2.13%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 35 (2.07%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 140 (8.30%) Git
2 81 (4.80%) GitLab
3 54 (3.20%) JIRA
4 31 (1.84%) Jenkins
5 11 (0.65%) MLflow
6 7 (0.41%) Postman
7 5 (0.30%) Artifactory
7 5 (0.30%) Bitbucket
8 4 (0.24%) ERwin
8 4 (0.24%) Selenium
9 3 (0.18%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 3 (0.18%) Newman
9 3 (0.18%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.18%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.12%) Claude Code
10 2 (0.12%) ER Studio
10 2 (0.12%) RStudio
10 2 (0.12%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 2 (0.12%) Terragrunt
10 2 (0.12%) Yeoman
General
1 274 (16.24%) Finance
2 267 (15.83%) Social Skills
3 196 (11.62%) Analytical Skills
4 143 (8.48%) Public Sector
5 101 (5.99%) Banking
6 31 (1.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 24 (1.42%) Telecoms
8 22 (1.30%) Retail
9 20 (1.19%) Marketing
10 19 (1.13%) Automotive
11 18 (1.07%) Aerospace
11 18 (1.07%) Manufacturing
12 17 (1.01%) Front Office
12 17 (1.01%) Investment Banking
13 15 (0.89%) Documentation Skills
13 15 (0.89%) Pharmaceutical
14 11 (0.65%) Law
15 10 (0.59%) Financial Institution
16 8 (0.47%) Legal
16 8 (0.47%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 240 (14.23%) PySpark
2 170 (10.08%) Terraform
3 115 (6.82%) Kafka
4 29 (1.72%) Pandas
5 27 (1.60%) JSON
6 24 (1.42%) REST
7 23 (1.36%) Great Expectations
8 22 (1.30%) Spring
8 22 (1.30%) Spring Boot
9 18 (1.07%) XML
10 15 (0.89%) React
11 14 (0.83%) Apache Beam
12 13 (0.77%) YAML
13 12 (0.71%) RESTful
14 11 (0.65%) pytest
15 10 (0.59%) .NET
15 10 (0.59%) Microsoft Graph
16 9 (0.53%) Apache Avro
17 8 (0.47%) LangChain
17 8 (0.47%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 132 (7.82%) Cloud Native
2 74 (4.39%) Legacy Systems
3 45 (2.67%) Data Structures
4 36 (2.13%) Onboarding
5 24 (1.42%) Product Ownership
6 21 (1.24%) Greenfield Project
7 20 (1.19%) Distributed Systems
8 19 (1.13%) NHS
9 18 (1.07%) Reference Data
10 17 (1.01%) Reinsurance
11 14 (0.83%) AI Agents
11 14 (0.83%) Management Information System
12 11 (0.65%) Algorithms
12 11 (0.65%) Data Protection Act
12 11 (0.65%) Virtual Team
13 10 (0.59%) Clustering
14 9 (0.53%) Life Science
14 9 (0.53%) Self-Motivation
15 8 (0.47%) Driving Licence
15 8 (0.47%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 56 (3.32%) Unix
2 46 (2.73%) Linux
3 4 (0.24%) Windows
4 2 (0.12%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.12%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.059%) Robot Operating System
5 1 (0.059%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 723 (42.86%) Data Pipeline
2 646 (38.29%) Data Engineering
3 588 (34.85%) Analytics
4 578 (34.26%) ETL
5 563 (33.37%) Data Modelling
6 407 (24.13%) CI/CD
7 293 (17.37%) Agile
8 283 (16.78%) Business Intelligence
9 277 (16.42%) DevOps
10 271 (16.06%) Migration
11 230 (13.63%) AI
12 226 (13.40%) Data Governance
13 208 (12.33%) Data Transformation
13 208 (12.33%) Validation
14 200 (11.86%) Data Integration
15 190 (11.26%) Problem-Solving
16 161 (9.54%) Lakehouse
17 157 (9.31%) Decision-Making
18 146 (8.65%) Infrastructure as Code
19 136 (8.06%) Data Science
Programming Languages
1 846 (50.15%) SQL
2 706 (41.85%) Python
3 98 (5.81%) Java
4 59 (3.50%) Scala
5 46 (2.73%) PL/SQL
6 31 (1.84%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 31 (1.84%) Shell Script
7 24 (1.42%) T-SQL
8 22 (1.30%) Bash
8 22 (1.30%) PowerShell
9 17 (1.01%) JavaScript
10 15 (0.89%) C#
11 11 (0.65%) R
12 8 (0.47%) Bicep
13 7 (0.41%) TypeScript
14 5 (0.30%) Go
15 4 (0.24%) Korn
16 2 (0.12%) Cypher
16 2 (0.12%) Kusto Query Language
16 2 (0.12%) LookML
Qualifications
1 445 (26.38%) Security Cleared
2 390 (23.12%) SC Cleared
3 39 (2.31%) Degree
4 35 (2.07%) BPSS Clearance
5 21 (1.24%) DV Cleared
6 20 (1.19%) Azure Certification
6 20 (1.19%) Computer Science Degree
7 12 (0.71%) AWS Certification
8 9 (0.53%) City & Guilds
9 8 (0.47%) DBS Check
10 7 (0.41%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 7 (0.41%) SnowPro
11 6 (0.36%) Master's Degree
12 5 (0.30%) BICSI Certification
13 4 (0.24%) CISM
13 4 (0.24%) CISSP
13 4 (0.24%) Microsoft Certification
14 3 (0.18%) CEH
15 1 (0.059%) PMP
15 1 (0.059%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 420 (24.90%) Data Quality
2 62 (3.68%) QA
3 40 (2.37%) GDPR
4 15 (0.89%) Accessibility
5 10 (0.59%) SLA
6 6 (0.36%) FATCA
7 5 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 4 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 3 (0.18%) HIPAA
9 3 (0.18%) MiFID
10 2 (0.12%) EMIR
10 2 (0.12%) SNOMED CT
10 2 (0.12%) WCAG
11 1 (0.059%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 1 (0.059%) Disclosure Scotland
11 1 (0.059%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.059%) GxP
11 1 (0.059%) IFRS
11 1 (0.059%) IFRS 17
11 1 (0.059%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 101 (5.99%) Docker
2 4 (0.24%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.12%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.059%) RACF
Systems Management
1 73 (4.33%) Kubernetes
2 32 (1.90%) Grafana
3 15 (0.89%) Ansible
4 10 (0.59%) Control-M
5 7 (0.41%) Kibana
6 4 (0.24%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.12%) Apache Ranger
7 2 (0.12%) Puppet
7 2 (0.12%) Thomson Reuters DACS
8 1 (0.059%) logstash
8 1 (0.059%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 326 (19.32%) Databricks
2 217 (12.86%) Microsoft
3 137 (8.12%) Oracle
4 100 (5.93%) Informatica
5 91 (5.39%) Talend
6 64 (3.79%) Google
7 52 (3.08%) Denodo
8 30 (1.78%) Cisco
8 30 (1.78%) F5
9 27 (1.60%) Salesforce
10 26 (1.54%) Palantir
11 24 (1.42%) SAP
12 21 (1.24%) Foundry
13 13 (0.77%) Cloudera
14 12 (0.71%) Splunk
15 11 (0.65%) Bloomberg
16 10 (0.59%) IBM
17 9 (0.53%) Sage
17 9 (0.53%) ServiceNow
18 8 (0.47%) Alteryx
530 Data Engineer jobs in England