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 23 June 2026.

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

6 months to
23 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 54 104 98
Rank change year-on-year +50 -6 +22
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,647 648 843
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.80% 2.59% 2.25%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.12% 2.81% 2.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,143 493 644
10th Percentile £375 £363 £263
25th Percentile £425 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -6.82%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £663 £700 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 58 9 39
10th Percentile £19.34 £18.13 £37.50
25th Percentile £35.31 £51.25 £49.31
Median hourly rate £45.00 £52.50 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% -22.22% -10.60%
75th Percentile £71.50 £78.70 £80.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £82.75 -
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £67.50
% change year-on-year -4.76% -22.22% -10.60%

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 40,014 23,037 34,822
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.34% 92.23% 92.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,629 15,128 22,693
10th Percentile £325 £293 £290
25th Percentile £416 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £633 £638
90th Percentile £735 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £518 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +3.50% -4.76% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,831 1,043 2,688
10th Percentile £15.99 £14.00 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.93 £18.13 £16.58
Median hourly rate £45.00 £29.00 £39.53
Median % change year-on-year +55.17% -26.63% -10.17%
75th Percentile £67.60 £58.72 £63.75
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £74.39
UK median hourly rate £43.25 £27.38 £37.50
% change year-on-year +57.99% -27.00% -14.77%

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 23 June 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 23 June 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 23 June 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 +34 856 £525 - 109
Midlands +53 326 £468 +3.94% 55
West Midlands +45 300 £460 - 33
North of England +14 212 £475 - 58
North West +16 130 £480 +1.05% 28
South East +24 121 £475 +11.76% 77
South West +16 87 £506 +1.20% 29
Yorkshire -12 63 £470 +1.62% 14
East Midlands -5 26 £525 +28.05% 22
East of England -18 22 £498 +56.45% 15
North East -23 19 £500 +14.29% 16
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 23 June 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.

1 885 (53.73%) SQL
2 733 (44.51%) Python
3 682 (41.41%) Data Pipeline
4 623 (37.83%) Analytics
5 610 (37.04%) ETL
6 602 (36.55%) Data Engineering
7 558 (33.88%) Data Modelling
8 525 (31.88%) Azure
9 478 (29.02%) AWS
10 462 (28.05%) Security Cleared
11 414 (25.14%) Data Quality
12 409 (24.83%) SC Cleared
13 407 (24.71%) CI/CD
14 342 (20.77%) Business Intelligence
15 335 (20.34%) Databricks
16 290 (17.61%) Agile
17 284 (17.24%) DevOps
18 277 (16.82%) Data Warehouse
19 275 (16.70%) Power Platform
20 263 (15.97%) Power BI
21 234 (14.21%) PySpark
22 231 (14.03%) Migration
23 221 (13.42%) Azure Data Factory
24 217 (13.18%) Microsoft
25 214 (12.99%) Problem-Solving
26 212 (12.87%) Data Governance
27 203 (12.33%) AI
28 180 (10.93%) Terraform
29 178 (10.81%) Snowflake
30 173 (10.50%) Validation

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
1 151 (9.17%) Apache Airflow
2 137 (8.32%) Apache Spark
3 92 (5.59%) Apache
4 73 (4.43%) SAS
5 39 (2.37%) Confluence
6 9 (0.55%) Jupyter
6 9 (0.55%) SharePoint
7 8 (0.49%) Palantir Foundry
8 5 (0.30%) Microsoft Exchange
9 1 (0.061%) Apache Superset
9 1 (0.061%) Appian
9 1 (0.061%) Camunda
9 1 (0.061%) Liferay
9 1 (0.061%) Luigi
9 1 (0.061%) R Markdown
Applications
1 16 (0.97%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.30%) Notepad++
3 4 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.061%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 6 (0.36%) Aladdin
1 6 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (0.30%) Infor LN
3 4 (0.24%) NetSuite
3 4 (0.24%) Sage X3
4 3 (0.18%) SAP BPC
4 3 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.18%) SimCorp Dimension
5 2 (0.12%) BambooHR
5 2 (0.12%) Maximo
6 1 (0.061%) Elite 3E
6 1 (0.061%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.061%) iTrent
6 1 (0.061%) NEC Housing
6 1 (0.061%) Oracle 11i
6 1 (0.061%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.061%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.061%) Raiser’s Edge
6 1 (0.061%) SAP CAR
6 1 (0.061%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 525 (31.88%) Azure
2 478 (29.02%) AWS
3 275 (16.70%) Power Platform
4 221 (13.42%) Azure Data Factory
5 178 (10.81%) Snowflake
6 160 (9.71%) dbt
7 157 (9.53%) Amazon S3
8 145 (8.80%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 143 (8.68%) GCP
10 135 (8.20%) Azure DevOps
11 112 (6.80%) GitHub
12 105 (6.38%) Serverless
13 91 (5.53%) AWS Lambda
14 54 (3.28%) GitHub Actions
15 34 (2.06%) Amazon EMR
15 34 (2.06%) Matillion
16 27 (1.64%) AWS CloudFormation
17 25 (1.52%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 25 (1.52%) Amazon Kinesis
18 24 (1.46%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 33 (2.00%) DNS
1 33 (2.00%) VPN
2 32 (1.94%) BGP
2 32 (1.94%) DMZ
2 32 (1.94%) Multicast
3 10 (0.61%) Structured Cabling
4 5 (0.30%) Firewall
4 5 (0.30%) PuTTY
4 5 (0.30%) WinSCP
5 4 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
5 4 (0.24%) Wireless
6 1 (0.061%) 4G
6 1 (0.061%) 5G
6 1 (0.061%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 277 (16.82%) Data Warehouse
2 263 (15.97%) Power BI
3 164 (9.96%) Data Lake
4 112 (6.80%) SQL Server
5 101 (6.13%) Amazon Redshift
6 91 (5.53%) Delta Lake
7 87 (5.28%) Pentaho
8 85 (5.16%) BigQuery
9 84 (5.10%) Metadata
10 73 (4.43%) Tableau
11 68 (4.13%) Azure SQL Database
12 65 (3.95%) Amazon Athena
13 63 (3.83%) Snowflake Schema
14 62 (3.76%) PostgreSQL
15 57 (3.46%) Big Data
16 55 (3.34%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 50 (3.04%) NoSQL
18 43 (2.61%) Relational Database
19 35 (2.13%) Data Vault
20 34 (2.06%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 158 (9.59%) Git
2 85 (5.16%) GitLab
3 78 (4.74%) JIRA
4 45 (2.73%) Jenkins
5 7 (0.43%) Postman
6 5 (0.30%) Artifactory
7 4 (0.24%) Bitbucket
7 4 (0.24%) MLflow
8 3 (0.18%) Newman
8 3 (0.18%) SonarQube
9 2 (0.12%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 2 (0.12%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.12%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 2 (0.12%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.12%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.061%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.061%) ER Studio
10 1 (0.061%) ERwin
10 1 (0.061%) Octopus Deploy
10 1 (0.061%) Selenium
General
1 286 (17.36%) Finance
2 267 (16.21%) Social Skills
3 174 (10.56%) Analytical Skills
4 145 (8.80%) Public Sector
5 94 (5.71%) Banking
6 32 (1.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 26 (1.58%) Retail
8 23 (1.40%) Telecoms
9 21 (1.28%) Documentation Skills
9 21 (1.28%) Marketing
10 20 (1.21%) Investment Banking
11 18 (1.09%) Manufacturing
12 17 (1.03%) Pharmaceutical
13 13 (0.79%) Aerospace
14 12 (0.73%) Automotive
15 11 (0.67%) Publishing
16 8 (0.49%) Billing
16 8 (0.49%) Front Office
17 7 (0.43%) Military
18 6 (0.36%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 234 (14.21%) PySpark
2 133 (8.08%) Kafka
3 43 (2.61%) Pandas
4 33 (2.00%) JSON
5 26 (1.58%) REST
6 23 (1.40%) Great Expectations
6 23 (1.40%) Spring
6 23 (1.40%) Spring Boot
7 22 (1.34%) XML
8 18 (1.09%) YAML
9 15 (0.91%) Apache Beam
10 13 (0.79%) Apache Avro
11 12 (0.73%) scikit-learn
12 11 (0.67%) React
13 10 (0.61%) Matplotlib
14 9 (0.55%) GeoJSON
14 9 (0.55%) Node.js
14 9 (0.55%) pytest
14 9 (0.55%) PyTorch
14 9 (0.55%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 126 (7.65%) Cloud Native
2 55 (3.34%) Legacy Systems
3 42 (2.55%) Data Structures
4 26 (1.58%) Greenfield Project
4 26 (1.58%) Onboarding
5 25 (1.52%) Distributed Systems
6 24 (1.46%) Reinsurance
7 23 (1.40%) Product Ownership
8 20 (1.21%) Clustering
8 20 (1.21%) NHS
9 17 (1.03%) Data Protection Act
10 11 (0.67%) Life Science
11 10 (0.61%) Virtual Team
12 9 (0.55%) Distributed Computing
12 9 (0.55%) Driving Licence
12 9 (0.55%) Public Cloud
12 9 (0.55%) Reference Data
12 9 (0.55%) Self-Motivation
13 8 (0.49%) Linux Command Line
13 8 (0.49%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 57 (3.46%) Unix
2 37 (2.25%) Linux
3 4 (0.24%) Windows
4 2 (0.12%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.12%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.061%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 682 (41.41%) Data Pipeline
2 623 (37.83%) Analytics
3 610 (37.04%) ETL
4 602 (36.55%) Data Engineering
5 558 (33.88%) Data Modelling
6 407 (24.71%) CI/CD
7 342 (20.77%) Business Intelligence
8 290 (17.61%) Agile
9 284 (17.24%) DevOps
10 231 (14.03%) Migration
11 214 (12.99%) Problem-Solving
12 212 (12.87%) Data Governance
13 203 (12.33%) AI
14 173 (10.50%) Validation
15 171 (10.38%) Data Integration
16 161 (9.78%) Data Science
17 157 (9.53%) Decision-Making
18 148 (8.99%) Data Transformation
19 131 (7.95%) Infrastructure as Code
20 123 (7.47%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 885 (53.73%) SQL
2 733 (44.51%) Python
3 102 (6.19%) Java
4 60 (3.64%) Scala
5 52 (3.16%) PL/SQL
6 35 (2.13%) T-SQL
7 34 (2.06%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 29 (1.76%) C#
9 28 (1.70%) Shell Script
10 27 (1.64%) Bash
11 20 (1.21%) PowerShell
12 16 (0.97%) Bicep
13 13 (0.79%) R
14 10 (0.61%) JavaScript
15 7 (0.43%) TypeScript
16 6 (0.36%) Go
17 2 (0.12%) Korn
17 2 (0.12%) Ruby
17 2 (0.12%) SPARQL
17 2 (0.12%) VB
Qualifications
1 462 (28.05%) Security Cleared
2 409 (24.83%) SC Cleared
3 43 (2.61%) BPSS Clearance
4 38 (2.31%) Degree
5 26 (1.58%) Azure Certification
6 16 (0.97%) Computer Science Degree
7 13 (0.79%) DV Cleared
8 10 (0.61%) AWS Certification
9 9 (0.55%) City & Guilds
9 9 (0.55%) DBS Check
10 8 (0.49%) Microsoft Certification
11 6 (0.36%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 6 (0.36%) SnowPro
12 5 (0.30%) BICSI Certification
13 4 (0.24%) Master's Degree
14 3 (0.18%) CISM
14 3 (0.18%) CISSP
15 1 (0.061%) CEH
15 1 (0.061%) CISA
15 1 (0.061%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 414 (25.14%) Data Quality
2 52 (3.16%) QA
3 47 (2.85%) GDPR
4 12 (0.73%) SLA
5 10 (0.61%) Accessibility
6 9 (0.55%) FATCA
7 5 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 5 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 4 (0.24%) MiFID
9 3 (0.18%) GMP
10 2 (0.12%) EMIR
10 2 (0.12%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.12%) SNOMED CT
10 2 (0.12%) WCAG
11 1 (0.061%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.061%) IFRS
11 1 (0.061%) IFRS 9
11 1 (0.061%) ISO 13485
11 1 (0.061%) NIST
11 1 (0.061%) PMO
System Software
1 95 (5.77%) Docker
2 6 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.12%) HDFS
4 1 (0.061%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.061%) RACF
Systems Management
1 180 (10.93%) Terraform
2 79 (4.80%) Kubernetes
3 35 (2.13%) Grafana
4 11 (0.67%) Ansible
5 9 (0.55%) Prometheus
6 5 (0.30%) Kibana
7 3 (0.18%) Rancher
8 2 (0.12%) Apache Ranger
8 2 (0.12%) Control-M
8 2 (0.12%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.061%) Kubeflow
9 1 (0.061%) NetBackup
9 1 (0.061%) Puppet
Vendors
1 335 (20.34%) Databricks
2 217 (13.18%) Microsoft
3 159 (9.65%) Oracle
4 124 (7.53%) Informatica
5 121 (7.35%) Talend
6 64 (3.89%) Denodo
7 54 (3.28%) Google
8 34 (2.06%) Cisco
8 34 (2.06%) F5
9 28 (1.70%) SAP
10 23 (1.40%) Salesforce
11 22 (1.34%) ServiceNow
12 21 (1.28%) Splunk
13 18 (1.09%) Cloudera
14 15 (0.91%) Alteryx
14 15 (0.91%) Palantir
15 11 (0.67%) Foundry
15 11 (0.67%) IBM
16 10 (0.61%) Sage
17 8 (0.49%) InterSystems