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 10 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 82 152 202
Rank change year-on-year +70 +50 -9
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,404 517 406
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.08% 1.86% 1.22%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.62% 2.05% 1.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 986 333 300
10th Percentile £400 £363 £399
25th Percentile £450 £449 £473
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -8.70% -8.00%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £700
90th Percentile £750 £785 £775
UK median daily rate £525 £516 £575
% change year-on-year +1.69% -10.22% -8.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 6 12
10th Percentile £21.25 £30.73 £22.59
25th Percentile £24.69 £42.03 £31.03
Median hourly rate £70.00 £52.50 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +33.33% +10.53% -39.10%
75th Percentile £77.25 £62.19 £60.00
90th Percentile £87.13 £87.50 -
UK median hourly rate £70.00 £52.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year +33.33% +50.00% -52.05%

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 38,771 25,264 28,522
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.11% 90.78% 85.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,101 16,147 18,629
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £756
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,535 1,418 1,654
10th Percentile £14.56 £14.20 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £17.87 £18.39
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +2.19%
75th Percentile £68.75 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £70.05 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £40.94
% change year-on-year +68.99% -38.57% -3.67%

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 10 August 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 10 August 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 10 August 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 +48 832 £550 - 584
North of England +36 181 £463 -2.63% 143
Midlands +46 154 £486 +5.93% 38
West Midlands +43 129 £475 -0.63% 28
South East -24 91 £525 +11.94% 126
Yorkshire +21 86 £475 +2.70% 41
South West +17 78 £505 -12.17% 61
North West -10 58 £500 +5.26% 81
North East -8 39 £425 -20.93% 22
East of England -4 29 £575 +35.29% 12
East Midlands +2 22 £525 +14.38% 10
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
1 172 (12.25%) Apache Spark
2 162 (11.54%) Apache Airflow
3 113 (8.05%) Apache
4 42 (2.99%) SAS
5 29 (2.07%) Confluence
6 23 (1.64%) Jupyter
7 19 (1.35%) Palantir Foundry
8 11 (0.78%) SharePoint
9 9 (0.64%) Apache Superset
10 4 (0.28%) Apache Solr
10 4 (0.28%) ArcGIS
11 2 (0.14%) Microsoft Exchange
12 1 (0.071%) Apache Synapse
12 1 (0.071%) CICS
12 1 (0.071%) nginx
12 1 (0.071%) PowerExchange
Applications
1 17 (1.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.50%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (0.50%) Spreadsheet
3 5 (0.36%) Chatbot
3 5 (0.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.14%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.071%) Notion
Business Applications
1 12 (0.85%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.43%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.36%) BambooHR
4 4 (0.28%) NetSuite
4 4 (0.28%) Sage X3
4 4 (0.28%) SAP S/4HANA
5 2 (0.14%) Endur
5 2 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
5 2 (0.14%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.14%) SAP BPC
5 2 (0.14%) Temenos T24
5 2 (0.14%) Workday HCM
6 1 (0.071%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.071%) MIS ActiveH
6 1 (0.071%) SAP ECC
6 1 (0.071%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 591 (42.09%) Azure
2 529 (37.68%) AWS
3 285 (20.30%) Power Platform
4 213 (15.17%) Snowflake
5 192 (13.68%) GCP
6 177 (12.61%) dbt
7 157 (11.18%) Azure Data Factory
8 142 (10.11%) Amazon S3
9 139 (9.90%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 131 (9.33%) Azure DevOps
11 115 (8.19%) GitHub
12 111 (7.91%) Serverless
13 93 (6.62%) AWS Lambda
14 61 (4.34%) GitHub Actions
15 34 (2.42%) Amazon EMR
16 28 (1.99%) Amazon Bedrock
16 28 (1.99%) Azure AI
17 27 (1.92%) Azure Cosmos DB
17 27 (1.92%) Microsoft Purview
18 25 (1.78%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.36%) Firewall
2 2 (0.14%) Network Security
2 2 (0.14%) RTP
3 1 (0.071%) 4G
3 1 (0.071%) 5G
3 1 (0.071%) MIMO
3 1 (0.071%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 280 (19.94%) Data Warehouse
2 267 (19.02%) Power BI
3 191 (13.60%) Data Lake
4 139 (9.90%) Metadata
5 98 (6.98%) BigQuery
6 95 (6.77%) Delta Lake
7 93 (6.62%) Amazon Redshift
8 86 (6.13%) Big Data
9 80 (5.70%) Tableau
10 66 (4.70%) SQL Server
11 61 (4.34%) NoSQL
12 59 (4.20%) Amazon Athena
13 53 (3.77%) Snowflake Schema
14 51 (3.63%) Relational Database
15 45 (3.21%) PostgreSQL
16 39 (2.78%) Azure SQL Database
17 35 (2.49%) Looker
18 34 (2.42%) Star Schema
19 33 (2.35%) Hadoop
20 31 (2.21%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 145 (10.33%) Git
2 74 (5.27%) GitLab
3 57 (4.06%) JIRA
4 23 (1.64%) Jenkins
4 23 (1.64%) MLflow
5 7 (0.50%) SonarQube
6 6 (0.43%) Bitbucket
7 5 (0.36%) ERwin
8 4 (0.28%) Selenium
9 3 (0.21%) Artifactory
9 3 (0.21%) ER Studio
9 3 (0.21%) Postman
9 3 (0.21%) Snyk
9 3 (0.21%) Sonatype Nexus
9 3 (0.21%) Terragrunt
10 2 (0.14%) Yeoman
11 1 (0.071%) Cypress.io
11 1 (0.071%) Octopus Deploy
11 1 (0.071%) Toad
11 1 (0.071%) Visual Studio
General
1 345 (24.57%) Social Skills
2 326 (23.22%) Finance
3 232 (16.52%) Analytical Skills
4 154 (10.97%) Public Sector
5 103 (7.34%) Banking
6 41 (2.92%) Marketing
7 35 (2.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 33 (2.35%) Retail
9 25 (1.78%) Documentation Skills
9 25 (1.78%) Telecoms
10 23 (1.64%) Front Office
11 20 (1.42%) Investment Banking
12 15 (1.07%) Financial Institution
12 15 (1.07%) Manufacturing
13 14 (1.00%) Pharmaceutical
14 11 (0.78%) Influencing Skills
15 9 (0.64%) Law
15 9 (0.64%) Legal
15 9 (0.64%) Military
16 8 (0.57%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 649 (46.23%) Data Engineer
2 196 (13.96%) Senior
3 168 (11.97%) Lead
4 161 (11.47%) Architect
5 119 (8.48%) Senior Data Engineer
6 86 (6.13%) Data Architect
7 82 (5.84%) Developer
8 69 (4.91%) AWS Engineer
9 68 (4.84%) Analyst
10 58 (4.13%) AWS Data Engineer
10 58 (4.13%) Lead Data Engineer
11 52 (3.70%) Azure Engineer
12 50 (3.56%) Snowflake Engineer
13 44 (3.13%) Azure Data Engineer
13 44 (3.13%) Solutions Architect
14 41 (2.92%) Data Analyst
14 41 (2.92%) Snowflake Data Engineer
15 39 (2.78%) Data Scientist
16 38 (2.71%) Consultant
17 33 (2.35%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 194 (13.82%) PySpark
2 111 (7.91%) Kafka
3 39 (2.78%) REST
4 30 (2.14%) Pandas
5 28 (1.99%) JSON
6 27 (1.92%) React
7 22 (1.57%) scikit-learn
8 20 (1.42%) .NET
8 20 (1.42%) Spring
9 18 (1.28%) NumPy
10 17 (1.21%) PyTorch
11 13 (0.93%) RESTful
11 13 (0.93%) Spring Boot
11 13 (0.93%) TensorFlow
12 11 (0.78%) Apache Avro
12 11 (0.78%) Microsoft Graph
12 11 (0.78%) OpenTelemetry
13 10 (0.71%) pytest
14 9 (0.64%) FastAPI
14 9 (0.64%) Great Expectations
Miscellaneous
1 184 (13.11%) Cloud Native
2 60 (4.27%) Data Structures
3 56 (3.99%) Legacy Systems
4 55 (3.92%) Product Ownership
5 53 (3.77%) Distributed Systems
6 42 (2.99%) Onboarding
7 30 (2.14%) AI Agents
8 25 (1.78%) Data Protection Act
9 22 (1.57%) Greenfield Project
10 19 (1.35%) Distributed Computing
10 19 (1.35%) NHS
11 16 (1.14%) Algorithms
11 16 (1.14%) Clustering
11 16 (1.14%) Virtual Team
12 15 (1.07%) Life Science
13 14 (1.00%) Analytical Mindset
14 12 (0.85%) Fixed Income
14 12 (0.85%) Management Information System
15 11 (0.78%) Reference Data
15 11 (0.78%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 34 (2.42%) Linux
2 29 (2.07%) Unix
3 8 (0.57%) Windows
4 2 (0.14%) VMS
4 2 (0.14%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.071%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.071%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 706 (50.28%) Analytics
2 680 (48.43%) Data Pipeline
3 539 (38.39%) Data Modelling
4 491 (34.97%) CI/CD
5 485 (34.54%) ETL
6 389 (27.71%) AI
7 361 (25.71%) Agile
8 347 (24.72%) Business Intelligence
9 340 (24.22%) DevOps
10 306 (21.79%) Data Governance
11 246 (17.52%) Machine Learning
12 240 (17.09%) Problem-Solving
13 218 (15.53%) Data Science
14 210 (14.96%) Decision-Making
15 205 (14.60%) Data Architecture
15 205 (14.60%) Validation
16 203 (14.46%) Migration
17 195 (13.89%) Data Transformation
18 194 (13.82%) Stakeholder Management
19 174 (12.39%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 759 (54.06%) SQL
2 707 (50.36%) Python
3 112 (7.98%) Java
4 42 (2.99%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 39 (2.78%) Bash
6 38 (2.71%) Scala
7 34 (2.42%) PowerShell
8 32 (2.28%) C#
9 25 (1.78%) T-SQL
10 22 (1.57%) JavaScript
11 18 (1.28%) R
12 16 (1.14%) Bicep
13 15 (1.07%) PL/SQL
14 14 (1.00%) Shell Script
15 12 (0.85%) SAS Macro
16 9 (0.64%) TypeScript
17 8 (0.57%) Kusto Query Language
18 7 (0.50%) SPARQL
19 6 (0.43%) Cypher
20 5 (0.36%) Korn
Qualifications
1 282 (20.09%) Security Cleared
2 241 (17.17%) SC Cleared
3 86 (6.13%) Degree
4 43 (3.06%) Computer Science Degree
5 30 (2.14%) BPSS Clearance
6 29 (2.07%) Azure Certification
7 26 (1.85%) DV Cleared
8 23 (1.64%) Master's Degree
9 16 (1.14%) AWS Certification
10 13 (0.93%) DBS Check
11 8 (0.57%) Microsoft Certification
12 7 (0.50%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 7 (0.50%) SnowPro
13 5 (0.36%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 5 (0.36%) Tableau Certification
14 3 (0.21%) PhD
15 2 (0.14%) CCSP
15 2 (0.14%) Cisco Certification
15 2 (0.14%) CISSP
15 2 (0.14%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 415 (29.56%) Data Quality
2 76 (5.41%) QA
3 72 (5.13%) GDPR
4 21 (1.50%) Accessibility
5 10 (0.71%) SLA
6 5 (0.36%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 4 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 4 (0.28%) NIST
7 4 (0.28%) Solvency II
8 3 (0.21%) GxP
8 3 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 42001
8 3 (0.21%) MiFID
8 3 (0.21%) PMO
9 2 (0.14%) 21 CFR Part 11
9 2 (0.14%) Actionable Recommendations
9 2 (0.14%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 2 (0.14%) EMIR
9 2 (0.14%) GRC
10 1 (0.071%) IFRS
10 1 (0.071%) IFRS 9
System Software
1 122 (8.69%) Docker
2 5 (0.36%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.071%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 186 (13.25%) Terraform
2 106 (7.55%) Kubernetes
3 19 (1.35%) Ansible
4 17 (1.21%) Prometheus
5 14 (1.00%) Grafana
6 5 (0.36%) Kibana
7 3 (0.21%) Control-M
7 3 (0.21%) logstash
8 2 (0.14%) Argo
8 2 (0.14%) Rancher
8 2 (0.14%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.071%) Cilium
9 1 (0.071%) IBM Guardium
9 1 (0.071%) Kubeflow
9 1 (0.071%) Kustomize
9 1 (0.071%) Nagios
9 1 (0.071%) Puppet
9 1 (0.071%) QRadar
Vendors
1 344 (24.50%) Databricks
2 250 (17.81%) Microsoft
3 72 (5.13%) Informatica
4 63 (4.49%) Google
5 60 (4.27%) Oracle
6 32 (2.28%) SAP
7 30 (2.14%) Foundry
8 29 (2.07%) Talend
9 28 (1.99%) Palantir
10 20 (1.42%) Salesforce
11 19 (1.35%) Splunk
12 18 (1.28%) Cloudera
13 16 (1.14%) OpenAI
14 14 (1.00%) ServiceNow
15 12 (0.85%) Trend Micro
16 8 (0.57%) Denodo
16 8 (0.57%) Workday
17 7 (0.50%) Adobe
17 7 (0.50%) InterSystems
18 6 (0.43%) Hitachi