Data Engineering Contract Job Trends in England

Data Engineering
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring Data Engineering skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 18 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 86 149 196
Rank change year-on-year +63 +47 -2
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,169 453 426
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.97% 1.85% 1.14%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.47% 2.03% 1.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 818 323 318
10th Percentile £400 £400 £405
25th Percentile £450 £457 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £560
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% -1.79% -6.67%
75th Percentile £624 £688 £675
90th Percentile £750 £838 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 11 11
10th Percentile £53.45 £22.00 £30.37
25th Percentile £65.00 £22.25 £33.13
Median hourly rate £70.00 £25.43 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +175.27% -27.34% -52.05%
75th Percentile £80.88 £41.88 £55.13
90th Percentile £89.00 £65.00 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £70.00 £25.43 £35.00
% change year-on-year +175.27% -27.34% -35.48%

All Process & Methodology Skills
England

Data Engineering falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 33,651 22,305 32,263
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.36% 91.07% 86.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,531 14,664 21,253
10th Percentile £313 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £523 £525
% change year-on-year -4.31% -0.48% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,083 886 2,215
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.80 £12.85
25th Percentile £20.27 £18.51 £15.75
Median hourly rate £41.86 £31.64 £34.21
Median % change year-on-year +32.29% -7.51% -6.66%
75th Percentile £67.13 £63.75 £58.69
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.38 £71.75
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £30.00 £33.78
% change year-on-year +25.00% -11.18% -5.92%

Data Engineering
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Data Engineering relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

Data Engineering job vacancy trend in England

Data Engineering
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Data Engineering.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Data Engineering

Data Engineering
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Data Engineering in England over the 6 months to 18 April 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Data Engineering in England

Data Engineering
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Data Engineering.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Data Engineering

Data Engineering
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Data Engineering in England over the 6 months to 18 April 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Data Engineering in England

Data Engineering
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 Engineering within the England region over the 6 months to 18 April 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 +57 735 £550 -8.33% 227
Midlands +25 126 £511 +2.25% 36
North of England +4 125 £475 -5.00% 80
West Midlands +16 101 £513 -5.09% 27
South West +19 70 £525 -14.29% 34
Yorkshire -15 55 £480 -14.67% 31
South East -17 54 £550 +10.00% 73
North West -22 52 £480 +1.05% 41
East of England -20 23 £575 +54.08% 16
East Midlands -18 22 £447 -5.89% 9
North East +5 20 £475 - 11
Data Engineering
UK

Data Engineering
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
1 173 (14.80%) Apache Spark
2 116 (9.92%) Apache Airflow
3 75 (6.42%) Apache
4 28 (2.40%) SAS
5 18 (1.54%) Palantir Foundry
6 10 (0.86%) Confluence
7 8 (0.68%) Appian
8 7 (0.60%) Apache Superset
9 5 (0.43%) Jupyter
10 4 (0.34%) Microsoft Exchange
11 2 (0.17%) Apache Synapse
11 2 (0.17%) SharePoint
12 1 (0.086%) ArcGIS
12 1 (0.086%) Camunda
12 1 (0.086%) CICS
12 1 (0.086%) CMS
12 1 (0.086%) IBM HTTP Server
Applications
1 23 (1.97%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (0.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 7 (0.60%) Microsoft Office
4 6 (0.51%) Spreadsheet
5 4 (0.34%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.26%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.26%) Trello
7 2 (0.17%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 5 (0.43%) BambooHR
2 4 (0.34%) Aladdin
2 4 (0.34%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
3 3 (0.26%) SAP BPC
4 2 (0.17%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.086%) Actimize
5 1 (0.086%) Markit EDM
5 1 (0.086%) Maximo
5 1 (0.086%) Misys Midas
5 1 (0.086%) Oracle Assets
5 1 (0.086%) SAP ECC
Cloud Services
1 538 (46.02%) Azure
2 421 (36.01%) AWS
3 268 (22.93%) Power Platform
4 188 (16.08%) Azure Data Factory
5 165 (14.11%) GCP
6 139 (11.89%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 136 (11.63%) Snowflake
8 127 (10.86%) Amazon S3
9 123 (10.52%) GitHub
10 108 (9.24%) dbt
11 100 (8.55%) Serverless
12 92 (7.87%) Azure DevOps
13 81 (6.93%) AWS Lambda
14 74 (6.33%) GitHub Actions
15 47 (4.02%) AWS CloudFormation
16 29 (2.48%) AWS Step Functions
17 27 (2.31%) Dagster
18 26 (2.22%) Collibra
19 24 (2.05%) Amazon SQS
20 23 (1.97%) Amazon SageMaker
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.43%) RTP
2 4 (0.34%) Cisco IPT
2 4 (0.34%) Kerberos
3 3 (0.26%) Network Security
3 3 (0.26%) VPN
4 1 (0.086%) 4G
4 1 (0.086%) 5G
4 1 (0.086%) Firewall
4 1 (0.086%) MIMO
4 1 (0.086%) SAN
4 1 (0.086%) SMS
4 1 (0.086%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 244 (20.87%) Power BI
2 231 (19.76%) Data Warehouse
3 183 (15.65%) Data Lake
4 109 (9.32%) Metadata
5 81 (6.93%) SQL Server
6 77 (6.59%) NoSQL
7 76 (6.50%) Delta Lake
8 74 (6.33%) Big Data
9 69 (5.90%) Tableau
10 67 (5.73%) Amazon Redshift
11 64 (5.47%) Azure SQL Database
12 63 (5.39%) BigQuery
12 63 (5.39%) Snowflake Schema
13 53 (4.53%) Amazon Athena
13 53 (4.53%) Relational Database
14 44 (3.76%) PostgreSQL
15 38 (3.25%) Hadoop
16 37 (3.17%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 34 (2.91%) Spark SQL
18 25 (2.14%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 148 (12.66%) Git
2 47 (4.02%) GitLab
3 39 (3.34%) MLflow
4 36 (3.08%) Jenkins
5 33 (2.82%) JIRA
6 7 (0.60%) Selenium
6 7 (0.60%) SonarQube
7 3 (0.26%) JUnit
7 3 (0.26%) Maven
7 3 (0.26%) Postman
7 3 (0.26%) Robot Framework
7 3 (0.26%) Snyk
7 3 (0.26%) Terragrunt
8 2 (0.17%) Artifactory
8 2 (0.17%) Bitbucket
8 2 (0.17%) Cucumber
8 2 (0.17%) Mockito
8 2 (0.17%) Visual Studio
9 1 (0.086%) Octopus Deploy
9 1 (0.086%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 296 (25.32%) Finance
2 277 (23.70%) Social Skills
3 178 (15.23%) Analytical Skills
4 101 (8.64%) Public Sector
5 62 (5.30%) Banking
6 27 (2.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 21 (1.80%) Retail
8 18 (1.54%) Marketing
9 16 (1.37%) Documentation Skills
9 16 (1.37%) Front Office
10 15 (1.28%) Influencing Skills
10 15 (1.28%) Telecoms
11 13 (1.11%) Legal
12 12 (1.03%) Financial Institution
12 12 (1.03%) Investment Banking
13 7 (0.60%) Pharmaceutical
14 6 (0.51%) Back Office
14 6 (0.51%) Law
14 6 (0.51%) Military
15 5 (0.43%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 556 (47.56%) Data Engineer
2 157 (13.43%) Senior
3 134 (11.46%) Lead
4 116 (9.92%) Architect
5 105 (8.98%) Senior Data Engineer
6 69 (5.90%) Developer
7 66 (5.65%) Azure Engineer
8 60 (5.13%) Data Architect
9 55 (4.70%) Azure Data Engineer
10 54 (4.62%) Analyst
11 52 (4.45%) Lead Data Engineer
12 48 (4.11%) AWS Engineer
13 42 (3.59%) Data Scientist
14 41 (3.51%) Snowflake Engineer
15 36 (3.08%) Consultant
16 35 (2.99%) AWS Data Engineer
17 34 (2.91%) Snowflake Data Engineer
18 33 (2.82%) Solutions Architect
19 32 (2.74%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
20 30 (2.57%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 186 (15.91%) PySpark
2 143 (12.23%) Kafka
3 52 (4.45%) Pandas
4 42 (3.59%) scikit-learn
5 41 (3.51%) PyTorch
6 35 (2.99%) NumPy
7 32 (2.74%) TensorFlow
8 29 (2.48%) JSON
9 24 (2.05%) REST
10 23 (1.97%) React
10 23 (1.97%) Spring
10 23 (1.97%) YAML
11 22 (1.88%) pytest
12 20 (1.71%) LangChain
12 20 (1.71%) RESTful
13 19 (1.63%) Great Expectations
14 18 (1.54%) FastAPI
15 16 (1.37%) Flask
15 16 (1.37%) Spring Boot
16 14 (1.20%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 149 (12.75%) Cloud Native
2 38 (3.25%) Distributed Systems
3 37 (3.17%) Product Ownership
4 35 (2.99%) Legacy Systems
5 31 (2.65%) Data Structures
6 28 (2.40%) Distributed Computing
7 25 (2.14%) Algorithms
8 23 (1.97%) AI Agents
9 22 (1.88%) Greenfield Project
10 20 (1.71%) Onboarding
11 19 (1.63%) Hybrid Cloud
12 17 (1.45%) Analytical Mindset
12 17 (1.45%) Data Protection Act
13 15 (1.28%) Clustering
14 14 (1.20%) NHS
15 13 (1.11%) Fixed Income
16 10 (0.86%) Management Information System
16 10 (0.86%) Self-Motivation
17 9 (0.77%) Data Fabric
17 9 (0.77%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 27 (2.31%) Linux
2 16 (1.37%) Unix
3 8 (0.68%) VMS
4 3 (0.26%) Windows
5 2 (0.17%) Ubuntu
5 2 (0.17%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.086%) CentOS
6 1 (0.086%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 595 (50.90%) Analytics
2 532 (45.51%) Data Pipeline
3 465 (39.78%) ETL
4 462 (39.52%) Data Modelling
5 393 (33.62%) CI/CD
6 310 (26.52%) AI
7 306 (26.18%) Business Intelligence
8 299 (25.58%) Agile
9 289 (24.72%) DevOps
10 277 (23.70%) Data Governance
11 226 (19.33%) Machine Learning
12 221 (18.91%) Problem-Solving
13 214 (18.31%) Data Science
14 187 (16.00%) Data Architecture
15 151 (12.92%) Decision-Making
16 137 (11.72%) Infrastructure as Code
17 129 (11.04%) Data Transformation
17 129 (11.04%) Validation
18 128 (10.95%) Migration
19 117 (10.01%) Data Integration
Programming Languages
1 644 (55.09%) Python
2 637 (54.49%) SQL
3 101 (8.64%) Java
4 68 (5.82%) Scala
5 41 (3.51%) C#
6 39 (3.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 27 (2.31%) Bash
8 25 (2.14%) PowerShell
9 23 (1.97%) JavaScript
10 22 (1.88%) R
10 22 (1.88%) T-SQL
11 18 (1.54%) Bicep
12 13 (1.11%) Go
13 11 (0.94%) PL/SQL
13 11 (0.94%) TypeScript
14 10 (0.86%) Shell Script
15 5 (0.43%) Korn
15 5 (0.43%) SAS Macro
16 4 (0.34%) C++
17 2 (0.17%) Rust
Qualifications
1 239 (20.44%) Security Cleared
2 208 (17.79%) SC Cleared
3 81 (6.93%) Degree
4 44 (3.76%) Azure Certification
5 38 (3.25%) Computer Science Degree
6 30 (2.57%) Master's Degree
7 17 (1.45%) DV Cleared
8 16 (1.37%) BPSS Clearance
9 11 (0.94%) AWS Certification
10 8 (0.68%) Microsoft Certification
11 7 (0.60%) PhD
12 5 (0.43%) DBS Check
13 4 (0.34%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 3 (0.26%) SnowPro
15 2 (0.17%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 2 (0.17%) Tableau Certification
16 1 (0.086%) CCSP
16 1 (0.086%) CISSP
16 1 (0.086%) OCP
16 1 (0.086%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 324 (27.72%) Data Quality
2 89 (7.61%) GDPR
3 43 (3.68%) QA
4 13 (1.11%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 8 (0.68%) Accessibility
6 5 (0.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (0.43%) PERC
6 5 (0.43%) SLA
7 4 (0.34%) HIPAA
7 4 (0.34%) Solvency II
8 3 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 3 (0.26%) GRC
8 3 (0.26%) SOC 2
8 3 (0.26%) WCAG
9 2 (0.17%) HL7
9 2 (0.17%) MiFID
9 2 (0.17%) NIST
9 2 (0.17%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.17%) PMO
10 1 (0.086%) NCSC
System Software
1 123 (10.52%) Docker
2 5 (0.43%) HDFS
3 3 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.086%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.086%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 166 (14.20%) Terraform
2 126 (10.78%) Kubernetes
3 26 (2.22%) Prometheus
4 14 (1.20%) Grafana
5 5 (0.43%) Ansible
5 5 (0.43%) Argo
6 4 (0.34%) Kibana
6 4 (0.34%) Kubeflow
7 3 (0.26%) Nagios
7 3 (0.26%) Rancher
8 2 (0.17%) Hadoop YARN
8 2 (0.17%) logstash
8 2 (0.17%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.086%) Apache Ranger
9 1 (0.086%) Control-M
9 1 (0.086%) HP Fortify
9 1 (0.086%) IBM Guardium
9 1 (0.086%) Oozie
Vendors
1 329 (28.14%) Databricks
2 182 (15.57%) Microsoft
3 61 (5.22%) Google
4 47 (4.02%) Informatica
5 38 (3.25%) Oracle
6 30 (2.57%) Talend
7 25 (2.14%) Foundry
8 22 (1.88%) OpenAI
9 20 (1.71%) Palantir
10 19 (1.63%) Splunk
11 18 (1.54%) SAP
12 15 (1.28%) Cloudera
13 13 (1.11%) ServiceNow
14 11 (0.94%) Denodo
15 10 (0.86%) Salesforce
16 9 (0.77%) UiPath
17 8 (0.68%) Automation Anywhere
18 6 (0.51%) IBM
19 5 (0.43%) MicroStrategy
19 5 (0.43%) Workday