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 September 2026.

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

6 months to
13 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 66 127 101
Rank change year-on-year +61 -26 +17
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,665 618 761
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.60% 2.23% 2.31%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.90% 2.44% 2.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,105 449 541
10th Percentile £381 £379 £363
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -9.09% -
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 74 13 10
10th Percentile £19.34 £25.34 £49.25
25th Percentile £30.96 £35.25 £65.00
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 £71.05 £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 42,644 25,339 30,656
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.32% 91.32% 93.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,474 16,339 19,303
10th Percentile £325 £280 £305
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £506 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.75% -3.62% -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 3,406 1,355 1,524
10th Percentile £14.96 £13.71 £14.66
25th Percentile £21.14 £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 £71.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.13 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +67.50% -41.51% -0.76%

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 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 13 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 13 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 +27 832 £525 - 586
Midlands +76 344 £469 +2.79% 83
West Midlands +69 277 £469 -0.21% 52
North of England +28 205 £500 +5.26% 124
South East +28 130 £459 -4.62% 148
North West +13 113 £525 +10.53% 69
South West +9 95 £525 +5.00% 55
Yorkshire +6 75 £475 -6.17% 36
East Midlands +31 67 £450 +1.98% 31
East of England +12 38 £450 -40.00% 35
North East -29 18 £510 +20.71% 19
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 13 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.

1 840 (50.45%) SQL
2 724 (43.48%) Data Pipeline
3 700 (42.04%) Python
4 640 (38.44%) Data Engineering
5 573 (34.41%) Analytics
6 571 (34.29%) ETL
7 570 (34.23%) Data Modelling
8 517 (31.05%) AWS
9 516 (30.99%) Azure
10 436 (26.19%) Security Cleared
11 430 (25.83%) Data Quality
12 411 (24.68%) CI/CD
13 379 (22.76%) SC Cleared
14 329 (19.76%) Databricks
15 289 (17.36%) Agile
16 277 (16.64%) Data Warehouse
16 277 (16.64%) DevOps
17 270 (16.22%) Migration
18 269 (16.16%) Business Intelligence
19 249 (14.95%) AI
20 236 (14.17%) Data Governance
21 233 (13.99%) PySpark
22 221 (13.27%) Microsoft
23 216 (12.97%) Power Platform
24 214 (12.85%) Data Transformation
25 212 (12.73%) Power BI
26 204 (12.25%) Validation
27 202 (12.13%) Snowflake
28 200 (12.01%) Data Integration
29 199 (11.95%) dbt

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
1 186 (11.17%) Apache Airflow
2 136 (8.17%) Apache Spark
3 113 (6.79%) Apache
4 47 (2.82%) SAS
5 34 (2.04%) Confluence
6 16 (0.96%) Palantir Foundry
7 14 (0.84%) SharePoint
8 11 (0.66%) 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 PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 10 (0.60%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.30%) Infor LN
3 5 (0.30%) NetSuite
3 5 (0.30%) Sage X3
3 5 (0.30%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.18%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 2 (0.12%) Maximo
5 2 (0.12%) SAP BPC
5 2 (0.12%) SAP Oil and Gas
5 2 (0.12%) SimCorp Dimension
6 1 (0.060%) BambooHR
6 1 (0.060%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.060%) MIS ActiveH
6 1 (0.060%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.060%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.060%) Raiser’s Edge
6 1 (0.060%) SAP CAR
6 1 (0.060%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 517 (31.05%) AWS
2 516 (30.99%) Azure
3 216 (12.97%) Power Platform
4 202 (12.13%) Snowflake
5 199 (11.95%) dbt
6 195 (11.71%) Azure Data Factory
7 166 (9.97%) GCP
8 149 (8.95%) Amazon S3
9 122 (7.33%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 119 (7.15%) Azure DevOps
11 109 (6.55%) Serverless
12 103 (6.19%) GitHub
13 96 (5.77%) AWS Lambda
14 54 (3.24%) Azure Databricks
15 42 (2.52%) GitHub Actions
16 41 (2.46%) Amazon EMR
17 32 (1.92%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 26 (1.56%) AWS Step Functions
18 26 (1.56%) Microsoft Purview
19 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 11 (0.66%) Structured Cabling
3 7 (0.42%) 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
1 277 (16.64%) Data Warehouse
2 212 (12.73%) Power BI
3 139 (8.35%) Data Lake
4 119 (7.15%) Metadata
5 104 (6.25%) BigQuery
6 83 (4.98%) Amazon Redshift
7 76 (4.56%) Delta Lake
8 72 (4.32%) SQL Server
9 70 (4.20%) Amazon Athena
10 64 (3.84%) Pentaho
11 59 (3.54%) Tableau
12 56 (3.36%) Big Data
12 56 (3.36%) PostgreSQL
13 48 (2.88%) Relational Database
13 48 (2.88%) Snowflake Schema
14 45 (2.70%) NoSQL
15 41 (2.46%) Azure SQL Database
16 40 (2.40%) Oracle Database
17 37 (2.22%) Amazon RDS
18 32 (1.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 144 (8.65%) Git
2 75 (4.50%) GitLab
3 54 (3.24%) JIRA
4 25 (1.50%) Jenkins
5 14 (0.84%) MLflow
6 7 (0.42%) Postman
7 6 (0.36%) 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
11 2 (0.12%) ER Studio
11 2 (0.12%) RStudio
11 2 (0.12%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 2 (0.12%) Terragrunt
11 2 (0.12%) Yeoman
12 1 (0.060%) Toad
General
1 273 (16.40%) Social Skills
2 270 (16.22%) Finance
3 189 (11.35%) Analytical Skills
4 139 (8.35%) Public Sector
5 103 (6.19%) Banking
6 27 (1.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 25 (1.50%) Retail
8 23 (1.38%) Telecoms
9 21 (1.26%) Automotive
10 19 (1.14%) Aerospace
10 19 (1.14%) Marketing
11 17 (1.02%) Manufacturing
12 15 (0.90%) Front Office
12 15 (0.90%) Investment Banking
13 14 (0.84%) Documentation Skills
13 14 (0.84%) Pharmaceutical
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
1 233 (13.99%) PySpark
2 175 (10.51%) Terraform
3 103 (6.19%) Kafka
4 25 (1.50%) JSON
4 25 (1.50%) Pandas
4 25 (1.50%) REST
5 22 (1.32%) Spring
5 22 (1.32%) Spring Boot
6 20 (1.20%) Great Expectations
7 16 (0.96%) Apache Beam
7 16 (0.96%) XML
8 15 (0.90%) React
9 12 (0.72%) pytest
9 12 (0.72%) RESTful
10 11 (0.66%) .NET
11 10 (0.60%) LangChain
11 10 (0.60%) Microsoft Graph
11 10 (0.60%) PyTorch
12 9 (0.54%) Apache Avro
12 9 (0.54%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 133 (7.99%) Cloud Native
2 62 (3.72%) Legacy Systems
3 50 (3.00%) Data Structures
4 35 (2.10%) Onboarding
5 26 (1.56%) Product Ownership
6 21 (1.26%) Distributed Systems
7 20 (1.20%) Greenfield Project
7 20 (1.20%) NHS
8 19 (1.14%) AI Agents
9 17 (1.02%) Reference Data
9 17 (1.02%) Reinsurance
10 16 (0.96%) Management Information System
11 13 (0.78%) Algorithms
12 11 (0.66%) Virtual Team
13 10 (0.60%) Clustering
14 9 (0.54%) Data Fabric
14 9 (0.54%) Data Protection Act
15 8 (0.48%) Driving Licence
15 8 (0.48%) Linux Command Line
15 8 (0.48%) Replication
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
1 724 (43.48%) Data Pipeline
2 640 (38.44%) Data Engineering
3 573 (34.41%) Analytics
4 571 (34.29%) ETL
5 570 (34.23%) Data Modelling
6 411 (24.68%) CI/CD
7 289 (17.36%) Agile
8 277 (16.64%) DevOps
9 270 (16.22%) Migration
10 269 (16.16%) Business Intelligence
11 249 (14.95%) AI
12 236 (14.17%) Data Governance
13 214 (12.85%) Data Transformation
14 204 (12.25%) Validation
15 200 (12.01%) Data Integration
16 183 (10.99%) Problem-Solving
17 157 (9.43%) Decision-Making
18 156 (9.37%) Lakehouse
19 149 (8.95%) Infrastructure as Code
20 142 (8.53%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 840 (50.45%) SQL
2 700 (42.04%) Python
3 98 (5.89%) Java
4 60 (3.60%) 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
1 436 (26.19%) Security Cleared
2 379 (22.76%) 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
1 430 (25.83%) 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
1 103 (6.19%) Docker
2 3 (0.18%) Active Directory
2 3 (0.18%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (0.060%) RACF
Systems Management
1 74 (4.44%) Kubernetes
2 26 (1.56%) Grafana
3 15 (0.90%) 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
1 329 (19.76%) Databricks
2 221 (13.27%) Microsoft
3 139 (8.35%) Oracle
4 94 (5.65%) Informatica
5 83 (4.98%) Talend
6 73 (4.38%) Google
7 45 (2.70%) 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%) InterSystems
13 8 (0.48%) Sage
14 7 (0.42%) IBM