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 27 June 2026.

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

6 months to
27 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 54 100 98
Rank change year-on-year +46 -2 +21
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,660 654 842
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.82% 2.59% 2.26%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.13% 2.81% 2.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,149 491 643
10th Percentile £380 £363 £263
25th Percentile £425 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year - -1.96% -7.27%
75th Percentile £588 £595 £625
90th Percentile £661 £700 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 64 11 40
10th Percentile £19.34 £18.22 £37.50
25th Percentile £34.96 £46.75 £49.25
Median hourly rate £43.75 £52.50 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year -16.67% -22.22% -6.25%
75th Percentile £68.88 £78.10 £80.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £80.00 -
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £66.25
% change year-on-year -4.76% -20.75% -7.99%

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 40,161 23,310 34,627
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.39% 92.25% 92.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,642 15,281 22,628
10th Percentile £325 £294 £293
25th Percentile £419 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £635 £638
90th Percentile £735 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,860 1,068 2,586
10th Percentile £15.99 £13.96 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.93 £17.87 £16.65
Median hourly rate £45.00 £28.50 £39.55
Median % change year-on-year +57.89% -27.94% -9.83%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.25 £26.50 £37.50
% change year-on-year +63.21% -29.33% -14.29%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 +38 850 £525 - 123
Midlands +46 339 £468 +2.80% 56
West Midlands +44 307 £460 - 32
North of England +22 213 £475 - 75
North West +15 131 £500 +5.26% 44
South East +20 124 £475 +11.76% 85
South West +11 89 £506 +1.10% 33
Yorkshire -4 63 £470 -1.05% 13
East Midlands +5 32 £525 +28.05% 24
East of England -17 23 £520 +63.52% 18
North East -24 19 £500 +14.29% 18
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 27 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.

1 878 (52.89%) SQL
2 737 (44.40%) Python
3 689 (41.51%) Data Pipeline
4 628 (37.83%) Analytics
5 605 (36.45%) ETL
6 604 (36.39%) Data Engineering
7 556 (33.49%) Data Modelling
8 524 (31.57%) Azure
9 485 (29.22%) AWS
10 457 (27.53%) Security Cleared
11 406 (24.46%) Data Quality
12 404 (24.34%) CI/CD
12 404 (24.34%) SC Cleared
13 334 (20.12%) Databricks
14 332 (20.00%) Business Intelligence
15 292 (17.59%) Agile
16 283 (17.05%) DevOps
17 271 (16.33%) Data Warehouse
18 265 (15.96%) Power Platform
19 253 (15.24%) Power BI
20 240 (14.46%) Migration
21 234 (14.10%) PySpark
22 217 (13.07%) Data Governance
23 216 (13.01%) Azure Data Factory
24 215 (12.95%) Problem-Solving
25 209 (12.59%) Microsoft
26 202 (12.17%) AI
27 182 (10.96%) Terraform
28 179 (10.78%) Snowflake
29 175 (10.54%) 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
1 150 (9.04%) Apache Airflow
2 134 (8.07%) Apache Spark
3 91 (5.48%) Apache
4 74 (4.46%) SAS
5 39 (2.35%) Confluence
6 10 (0.60%) SharePoint
7 9 (0.54%) Jupyter
7 9 (0.54%) Palantir Foundry
8 5 (0.30%) Microsoft Exchange
9 1 (0.060%) Apache Superset
9 1 (0.060%) Appian
9 1 (0.060%) Camunda
9 1 (0.060%) Liferay
9 1 (0.060%) Luigi
9 1 (0.060%) R Markdown
Applications
1 16 (0.96%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.30%) Notepad++
3 4 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.060%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 7 (0.42%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.30%) Infor LN
4 4 (0.24%) NetSuite
4 4 (0.24%) Sage X3
5 3 (0.18%) SAP BPC
5 3 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
5 3 (0.18%) SimCorp Dimension
6 2 (0.12%) BambooHR
6 2 (0.12%) Maximo
7 1 (0.060%) Elite 3E
7 1 (0.060%) FIS Private Capital Suite
7 1 (0.060%) iTrent
7 1 (0.060%) NEC Housing
7 1 (0.060%) Oracle 11i
7 1 (0.060%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.060%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.060%) Raiser’s Edge
7 1 (0.060%) SAP CAR
7 1 (0.060%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 524 (31.57%) Azure
2 485 (29.22%) AWS
3 265 (15.96%) Power Platform
4 216 (13.01%) Azure Data Factory
5 179 (10.78%) Snowflake
6 163 (9.82%) dbt
7 157 (9.46%) Amazon S3
8 144 (8.67%) GCP
9 141 (8.49%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 132 (7.95%) Azure DevOps
11 108 (6.51%) GitHub
12 102 (6.14%) Serverless
13 89 (5.36%) AWS Lambda
14 52 (3.13%) GitHub Actions
15 36 (2.17%) Amazon EMR
16 34 (2.05%) Matillion
17 27 (1.63%) AWS CloudFormation
18 25 (1.51%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 24 (1.45%) Amazon Kinesis
19 24 (1.45%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 34 (2.05%) DNS
1 34 (2.05%) VPN
2 33 (1.99%) BGP
2 33 (1.99%) DMZ
2 33 (1.99%) Multicast
3 10 (0.60%) Structured Cabling
4 6 (0.36%) Firewall
5 5 (0.30%) PuTTY
5 5 (0.30%) WinSCP
6 4 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.24%) Wireless
7 2 (0.12%) Intrusion Detection
8 1 (0.060%) 4G
8 1 (0.060%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 271 (16.33%) Data Warehouse
2 253 (15.24%) Power BI
3 159 (9.58%) Data Lake
4 103 (6.20%) SQL Server
5 101 (6.08%) Amazon Redshift
6 92 (5.54%) Delta Lake
7 87 (5.24%) BigQuery
7 87 (5.24%) Pentaho
8 82 (4.94%) Metadata
9 74 (4.46%) Tableau
10 64 (3.86%) Amazon Athena
11 63 (3.80%) PostgreSQL
12 62 (3.73%) Snowflake Schema
13 61 (3.67%) Azure SQL Database
14 59 (3.55%) Big Data
15 51 (3.07%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 48 (2.89%) NoSQL
17 43 (2.59%) Relational Database
18 37 (2.23%) Data Vault
19 34 (2.05%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 154 (9.28%) Git
2 86 (5.18%) GitLab
3 77 (4.64%) JIRA
4 45 (2.71%) Jenkins
5 7 (0.42%) 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 (0.060%) ERwin
10 1 (0.060%) JUnit
10 1 (0.060%) Octopus Deploy
10 1 (0.060%) Selenium
10 1 (0.060%) Yeoman
General
1 288 (17.35%) Finance
2 268 (16.14%) Social Skills
3 176 (10.60%) Analytical Skills
4 143 (8.61%) Public Sector
5 94 (5.66%) Banking
6 33 (1.99%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 27 (1.63%) Retail
8 23 (1.39%) Telecoms
9 21 (1.27%) Documentation Skills
9 21 (1.27%) Marketing
10 20 (1.20%) Investment Banking
11 18 (1.08%) Manufacturing
12 17 (1.02%) Pharmaceutical
13 13 (0.78%) Aerospace
14 12 (0.72%) Automotive
15 11 (0.66%) Publishing
16 9 (0.54%) Front Office
17 8 (0.48%) Billing
18 7 (0.42%) Legal
19 6 (0.36%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 234 (14.10%) PySpark
2 129 (7.77%) Kafka
3 42 (2.53%) Pandas
4 34 (2.05%) JSON
5 26 (1.57%) REST
6 23 (1.39%) Great Expectations
6 23 (1.39%) Spring
6 23 (1.39%) Spring Boot
7 22 (1.33%) XML
8 18 (1.08%) YAML
9 15 (0.90%) Apache Beam
10 13 (0.78%) Apache Avro
11 12 (0.72%) scikit-learn
12 11 (0.66%) React
13 10 (0.60%) Matplotlib
14 9 (0.54%) GeoJSON
14 9 (0.54%) Node.js
14 9 (0.54%) pytest
14 9 (0.54%) PyTorch
14 9 (0.54%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 129 (7.77%) Cloud Native
2 57 (3.43%) Legacy Systems
3 42 (2.53%) Data Structures
4 27 (1.63%) Greenfield Project
4 27 (1.63%) Onboarding
5 26 (1.57%) Distributed Systems
6 25 (1.51%) Reinsurance
7 22 (1.33%) Product Ownership
8 21 (1.27%) NHS
9 19 (1.14%) Clustering
10 17 (1.02%) Data Protection Act
11 11 (0.66%) Life Science
11 11 (0.66%) Virtual Team
12 9 (0.54%) Distributed Computing
12 9 (0.54%) Driving Licence
12 9 (0.54%) Public Cloud
12 9 (0.54%) Reference Data
12 9 (0.54%) Self-Motivation
13 8 (0.48%) Linux Command Line
13 8 (0.48%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 57 (3.43%) Unix
2 37 (2.23%) Linux
3 4 (0.24%) Windows
4 2 (0.12%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.12%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.060%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 689 (41.51%) Data Pipeline
2 628 (37.83%) Analytics
3 605 (36.45%) ETL
4 604 (36.39%) Data Engineering
5 556 (33.49%) Data Modelling
6 404 (24.34%) CI/CD
7 332 (20.00%) Business Intelligence
8 292 (17.59%) Agile
9 283 (17.05%) DevOps
10 240 (14.46%) Migration
11 217 (13.07%) Data Governance
12 215 (12.95%) Problem-Solving
13 202 (12.17%) AI
14 175 (10.54%) Validation
15 174 (10.48%) Data Integration
16 159 (9.58%) Decision-Making
17 157 (9.46%) Data Science
18 151 (9.10%) Data Transformation
19 133 (8.01%) Infrastructure as Code
20 124 (7.47%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 878 (52.89%) SQL
2 737 (44.40%) Python
3 103 (6.20%) Java
4 59 (3.55%) Scala
5 50 (3.01%) PL/SQL
6 32 (1.93%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 32 (1.93%) T-SQL
7 29 (1.75%) C#
8 28 (1.69%) Shell Script
9 27 (1.63%) Bash
10 21 (1.27%) PowerShell
11 14 (0.84%) Bicep
12 13 (0.78%) R
13 10 (0.60%) JavaScript
14 7 (0.42%) TypeScript
15 6 (0.36%) Go
16 2 (0.12%) HiveQL
16 2 (0.12%) Korn
16 2 (0.12%) Ruby
16 2 (0.12%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 457 (27.53%) Security Cleared
2 404 (24.34%) SC Cleared
3 42 (2.53%) BPSS Clearance
4 38 (2.29%) Degree
5 25 (1.51%) Azure Certification
6 16 (0.96%) Computer Science Degree
7 15 (0.90%) DV Cleared
8 10 (0.60%) AWS Certification
9 9 (0.54%) City & Guilds
9 9 (0.54%) DBS Check
10 6 (0.36%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 6 (0.36%) Microsoft Certification
10 6 (0.36%) SnowPro
11 5 (0.30%) BICSI Certification
12 4 (0.24%) CISM
12 4 (0.24%) CISSP
12 4 (0.24%) Master's Degree
13 2 (0.12%) CEH
14 1 (0.060%) CISA
14 1 (0.060%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 406 (24.46%) Data Quality
2 52 (3.13%) QA
3 47 (2.83%) GDPR
4 12 (0.72%) SLA
5 10 (0.60%) Accessibility
6 9 (0.54%) FATCA
7 6 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 5 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 4 (0.24%) MiFID
10 3 (0.18%) GMP
10 3 (0.18%) HIPAA
11 2 (0.12%) EMIR
11 2 (0.12%) SNOMED CT
11 2 (0.12%) WCAG
12 1 (0.060%) Government Security Classifications
12 1 (0.060%) IFRS
12 1 (0.060%) IFRS 9
12 1 (0.060%) ISO 13485
12 1 (0.060%) NIST
12 1 (0.060%) PMO
System Software
1 95 (5.72%) Docker
2 6 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.12%) HDFS
4 1 (0.060%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.060%) RACF
Systems Management
1 182 (10.96%) Terraform
2 79 (4.76%) Kubernetes
3 35 (2.11%) Grafana
4 11 (0.66%) Ansible
5 9 (0.54%) 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 (0.060%) Kubeflow
9 1 (0.060%) NetBackup
9 1 (0.060%) Puppet
Vendors
1 334 (20.12%) Databricks
2 209 (12.59%) Microsoft
3 158 (9.52%) Oracle
4 128 (7.71%) Informatica
5 121 (7.29%) Talend
6 64 (3.86%) Denodo
7 54 (3.25%) Google
8 35 (2.11%) Cisco
8 35 (2.11%) F5
9 30 (1.81%) SAP
10 24 (1.45%) Salesforce
11 21 (1.27%) Splunk
12 19 (1.14%) ServiceNow
13 18 (1.08%) Cloudera
14 16 (0.96%) Palantir
15 14 (0.84%) Alteryx
16 12 (0.72%) Foundry
17 10 (0.60%) IBM
17 10 (0.60%) Sage
18 8 (0.48%) Bloomberg