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 15 September 2026.

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

6 months to
15 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 65 126 101
Rank change year-on-year +61 -25 +18
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,667 611 757
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.61% 2.23% 2.32%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.90% 2.45% 2.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,105 444 533
10th Percentile £381 £376 £363
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -7.41% -1.82%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £638
90th Percentile £675 £695 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 73 13 9
10th Percentile £19.34 £25.34 £49.25
25th Percentile £30.96 £35.25 £60.00
Median hourly rate £41.56 £52.50 £80.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.85% -34.38% +25.00%
75th Percentile £68.00 £62.50 -
90th Percentile £70.00 £104.00 £97.50
UK median hourly rate £41.56 £52.50 £80.00
% change year-on-year -20.85% -34.38% +25.00%

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 42,696 24,979 30,334
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.35% 91.29% 93.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,483 16,104 19,043
10th Percentile £325 £280 £301
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.96% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,419 1,343 1,501
10th Percentile £14.96 £13.66 £14.65
25th Percentile £21.07 £17.30 £21.25
Median hourly rate £43.50 £25.15 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +72.96% -47.05% +5.56%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.75 £67.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £71.20 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.15 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +67.59% -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 15 September 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 15 September 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 15 September 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 +35 835 £525 - 985
Midlands +78 343 £469 +4.22% 129
West Midlands +66 273 £469 +6.59% 88
North of England +24 202 £500 +5.26% 292
South East +25 129 £459 -4.62% 197
North West +22 112 £525 +10.53% 162
South West +8 99 £525 +5.00% 95
Yorkshire +10 73 £475 -6.17% 90
East Midlands +33 70 £450 +1.98% 41
East of England +4 38 £450 -40.00% 77
North East -26 18 £510 +20.71% 40
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 15 September 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.

1 848 (50.87%) SQL
2 729 (43.73%) Data Pipeline
3 705 (42.29%) Python
4 647 (38.81%) Data Engineering
5 577 (34.61%) Analytics
6 574 (34.43%) Data Modelling
6 574 (34.43%) ETL
7 525 (31.49%) AWS
8 511 (30.65%) Azure
9 434 (26.03%) Data Quality
9 434 (26.03%) Security Cleared
10 412 (24.72%) CI/CD
11 377 (22.62%) SC Cleared
12 326 (19.56%) Databricks
13 291 (17.46%) Agile
14 279 (16.74%) Data Warehouse
15 276 (16.56%) DevOps
16 269 (16.14%) Business Intelligence
16 269 (16.14%) Migration
17 253 (15.18%) AI
18 237 (14.22%) Data Governance
19 231 (13.86%) PySpark
20 220 (13.20%) Microsoft
21 217 (13.02%) Data Transformation
22 215 (12.90%) Power Platform
23 212 (12.72%) Power BI
24 207 (12.42%) Snowflake
25 206 (12.36%) Validation
26 203 (12.18%) dbt
27 200 (12.00%) 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
1 188 (11.28%) Apache Airflow
2 138 (8.28%) Apache Spark
3 114 (6.84%) Apache
4 47 (2.82%) SAS
5 34 (2.04%) Confluence
6 16 (0.96%) Palantir Foundry
7 14 (0.84%) SharePoint
8 10 (0.60%) Jupyter
9 2 (0.12%) Apache Superset
9 2 (0.12%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.060%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.060%) Liferay
10 1 (0.060%) Luigi
10 1 (0.060%) nginx
10 1 (0.060%) Oracle Workflow
10 1 (0.060%) PowerExchange
10 1 (0.060%) R Markdown
Applications
1 23 (1.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (0.36%) Spreadsheet
3 5 (0.30%) Notepad++
4 3 (0.18%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.060%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.060%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 10 (0.60%) Aladdin
2 7 (0.42%) Dynamics CRM
3 6 (0.36%) NetSuite
4 5 (0.30%) Infor LN
4 5 (0.30%) Sage X3
4 5 (0.30%) SAP S/4HANA
5 3 (0.18%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 2 (0.12%) Maximo
6 2 (0.12%) SAP BPC
6 2 (0.12%) SAP Oil and Gas
6 2 (0.12%) SimCorp Dimension
7 1 (0.060%) BambooHR
7 1 (0.060%) Dynamics NAV
7 1 (0.060%) FIS Private Capital Suite
7 1 (0.060%) MIS ActiveH
7 1 (0.060%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.060%) Oracle Retail
7 1 (0.060%) Raiser’s Edge
7 1 (0.060%) SAP CAR
7 1 (0.060%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 525 (31.49%) AWS
2 511 (30.65%) Azure
3 215 (12.90%) Power Platform
4 207 (12.42%) Snowflake
5 203 (12.18%) dbt
6 194 (11.64%) Azure Data Factory
7 171 (10.26%) GCP
8 152 (9.12%) Amazon S3
9 120 (7.20%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 118 (7.08%) Azure DevOps
11 111 (6.66%) Serverless
12 106 (6.36%) GitHub
13 98 (5.88%) AWS Lambda
14 54 (3.24%) Azure Databricks
15 43 (2.58%) GitHub Actions
16 42 (2.52%) Amazon EMR
17 33 (1.98%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 27 (1.62%) AWS Step Functions
19 26 (1.56%) Microsoft Purview
20 24 (1.44%) Fivetran
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.50%) BGP
1 25 (1.50%) DMZ
1 25 (1.50%) DNS
1 25 (1.50%) Multicast
1 25 (1.50%) VPN
2 10 (0.60%) Structured Cabling
3 6 (0.36%) Firewall
4 5 (0.30%) PuTTY
4 5 (0.30%) WinSCP
5 4 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
5 4 (0.24%) Wireless
6 3 (0.18%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 279 (16.74%) Data Warehouse
2 212 (12.72%) Power BI
3 138 (8.28%) Data Lake
4 119 (7.14%) Metadata
5 105 (6.30%) BigQuery
6 83 (4.98%) Amazon Redshift
7 75 (4.50%) Delta Lake
8 73 (4.38%) SQL Server
9 71 (4.26%) Amazon Athena
10 62 (3.72%) Pentaho
11 60 (3.60%) Tableau
12 56 (3.36%) PostgreSQL
13 55 (3.30%) Big Data
14 50 (3.00%) Relational Database
15 48 (2.88%) Snowflake Schema
16 45 (2.70%) NoSQL
17 40 (2.40%) Azure SQL Database
17 40 (2.40%) Oracle Database
18 38 (2.28%) Amazon RDS
19 32 (1.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 146 (8.76%) Git
2 76 (4.56%) GitLab
3 54 (3.24%) JIRA
4 25 (1.50%) Jenkins
5 14 (0.84%) MLflow
6 8 (0.48%) Postman
7 7 (0.42%) Bitbucket
8 5 (0.30%) Artifactory
8 5 (0.30%) SonarQube
9 4 (0.24%) ERwin
9 4 (0.24%) Selenium
10 3 (0.18%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 3 (0.18%) Claude Code
10 3 (0.18%) Newman
10 3 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 2 (0.12%) ER Studio
11 2 (0.12%) RStudio
11 2 (0.12%) Terragrunt
11 2 (0.12%) Yeoman
12 1 (0.060%) Toad
General
1 275 (16.50%) Social Skills
2 271 (16.26%) Finance
3 188 (11.28%) Analytical Skills
4 140 (8.40%) Public Sector
5 103 (6.18%) Banking
6 27 (1.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 26 (1.56%) Retail
8 22 (1.32%) Telecoms
9 21 (1.26%) Automotive
10 19 (1.14%) Aerospace
10 19 (1.14%) Marketing
11 16 (0.96%) Front Office
11 16 (0.96%) Manufacturing
12 15 (0.90%) Investment Banking
12 15 (0.90%) Pharmaceutical
13 14 (0.84%) Documentation Skills
14 11 (0.66%) Law
15 10 (0.60%) Financial Institution
15 10 (0.60%) Legal
15 10 (0.60%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 231 (13.86%) PySpark
2 177 (10.62%) Terraform
3 104 (6.24%) Kafka
4 25 (1.50%) JSON
5 24 (1.44%) Pandas
5 24 (1.44%) REST
6 22 (1.32%) Spring
6 22 (1.32%) Spring Boot
7 20 (1.20%) Great Expectations
8 17 (1.02%) XML
9 16 (0.96%) Apache Beam
10 14 (0.84%) React
11 12 (0.72%) pytest
11 12 (0.72%) RESTful
12 10 (0.60%) .NET
12 10 (0.60%) LangChain
12 10 (0.60%) Microsoft Graph
12 10 (0.60%) PyTorch
13 9 (0.54%) Apache Avro
13 9 (0.54%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 136 (8.16%) Cloud Native
2 62 (3.72%) Legacy Systems
3 50 (3.00%) Data Structures
4 35 (2.10%) Onboarding
5 25 (1.50%) Product Ownership
6 21 (1.26%) Distributed Systems
7 20 (1.20%) AI Agents
7 20 (1.20%) Greenfield Project
7 20 (1.20%) NHS
8 17 (1.02%) Reference Data
9 16 (0.96%) Management Information System
9 16 (0.96%) Reinsurance
10 13 (0.78%) Algorithms
11 11 (0.66%) Virtual Team
12 10 (0.60%) Clustering
13 9 (0.54%) Data Fabric
13 9 (0.54%) Data Protection Act
14 8 (0.48%) Distributed Computing
14 8 (0.48%) Life Science
14 8 (0.48%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 51 (3.06%) Unix
2 38 (2.28%) Linux
3 2 (0.12%) Ubuntu
3 2 (0.12%) Windows
4 1 (0.060%) Robot Operating System
4 1 (0.060%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 729 (43.73%) Data Pipeline
2 647 (38.81%) Data Engineering
3 577 (34.61%) Analytics
4 574 (34.43%) Data Modelling
4 574 (34.43%) ETL
5 412 (24.72%) CI/CD
6 291 (17.46%) Agile
7 276 (16.56%) DevOps
8 269 (16.14%) Business Intelligence
8 269 (16.14%) Migration
9 253 (15.18%) AI
10 237 (14.22%) Data Governance
11 217 (13.02%) Data Transformation
12 206 (12.36%) Validation
13 200 (12.00%) Data Integration
14 180 (10.80%) Problem-Solving
15 158 (9.48%) Decision-Making
16 157 (9.42%) Lakehouse
17 150 (9.00%) Infrastructure as Code
18 144 (8.64%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 848 (50.87%) SQL
2 705 (42.29%) Python
3 99 (5.94%) Java
4 61 (3.66%) Scala
5 45 (2.70%) PL/SQL
6 31 (1.86%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 26 (1.56%) T-SQL
8 25 (1.50%) Shell Script
9 20 (1.20%) Bash
9 20 (1.20%) PowerShell
10 18 (1.08%) JavaScript
11 12 (0.72%) C#
11 12 (0.72%) R
12 9 (0.54%) Bicep
12 9 (0.54%) TypeScript
13 6 (0.36%) Go
14 5 (0.30%) Korn
15 3 (0.18%) Kusto Query Language
15 3 (0.18%) LookML
16 2 (0.12%) Cypher
Qualifications
1 434 (26.03%) Security Cleared
2 377 (22.62%) SC Cleared
3 40 (2.40%) Degree
4 35 (2.10%) BPSS Clearance
5 24 (1.44%) DV Cleared
6 22 (1.32%) Azure Certification
7 21 (1.26%) Computer Science Degree
8 12 (0.72%) AWS Certification
9 9 (0.54%) City & Guilds
10 8 (0.48%) DBS Check
10 8 (0.48%) SnowPro
11 7 (0.42%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 7 (0.42%) 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 (0.060%) PMI Certification
15 1 (0.060%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 434 (26.03%) Data Quality
2 63 (3.78%) QA
3 36 (2.16%) GDPR
4 15 (0.90%) Accessibility
5 9 (0.54%) 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%) Disclosure Scotland
10 2 (0.12%) EMIR
10 2 (0.12%) SNOMED CT
10 2 (0.12%) WCAG
11 1 (0.060%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 1 (0.060%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.060%) IFRS
11 1 (0.060%) IFRS 17
11 1 (0.060%) IFRS 9
11 1 (0.060%) PMO
System Software
1 104 (6.24%) Docker
2 3 (0.18%) Active Directory
2 3 (0.18%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (0.060%) RACF
Systems Management
1 75 (4.50%) Kubernetes
2 25 (1.50%) Grafana
3 14 (0.84%) Ansible
4 11 (0.66%) Control-M
5 7 (0.42%) Kibana
6 5 (0.30%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.12%) Apache Ranger
7 2 (0.12%) Puppet
8 1 (0.060%) logstash
8 1 (0.060%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 326 (19.56%) Databricks
2 220 (13.20%) Microsoft
3 139 (8.34%) Oracle
4 93 (5.58%) Informatica
5 81 (4.86%) Talend
6 74 (4.44%) Google
7 44 (2.64%) Denodo
8 29 (1.74%) Salesforce
9 25 (1.50%) Cisco
9 25 (1.50%) F5
9 25 (1.50%) Palantir
9 25 (1.50%) SAP
10 23 (1.38%) Foundry
11 12 (0.72%) Splunk
12 9 (0.54%) Bloomberg
12 9 (0.54%) Cloudera
13 8 (0.48%) Alteryx
13 8 (0.48%) Sage
14 7 (0.42%) IBM
14 7 (0.42%) InterSystems