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 24 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 87 148 187
Rank change year-on-year +61 +39 +20
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,421 545 433
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.05% 1.96% 1.33%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.60% 2.16% 1.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 989 345 318
10th Percentile £400 £353 £400
25th Percentile £450 £413 £468
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -8.70% -6.12%
75th Percentile £644 £644 £676
90th Percentile £738 £744 £775
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £560
% change year-on-year +0.96% -7.14% -6.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 5 6
10th Percentile - £36.73 £23.88
25th Percentile £21.25 £38.96 £34.88
Median hourly rate £66.25 £52.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +26.19% -12.50% -20.53%
75th Percentile £74.06 £65.00 -
90th Percentile £80.81 £92.00 -
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £58.75 £60.00
% change year-on-year +10.64% -2.08% -17.81%

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 39,443 25,283 28,060
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.68% 90.86% 86.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,053 16,051 17,283
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £423
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £645
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,841 1,529 1,252
10th Percentile £13.99 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.72 £17.87 £20.09
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% -2.39%
75th Percentile £67.84 £47.12 £66.61
90th Percentile £79.00 £67.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% -

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 24 September 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 24 September 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 24 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 +50 872 £550 - 1,240
North of England +30 187 £475 +5.56% 275
Midlands +26 126 £475 +2.70% 117
West Midlands +30 103 £475 -9.52% 89
Yorkshire +35 96 £500 +5.26% 73
South East -13 91 £525 +19.32% 212
South West +34 86 £525 -8.70% 101
North West -28 57 £513 +20.59% 163
North East -12 36 £425 -17.07% 41
East of England -18 26 £563 +25.00% 50
East Midlands -6 22 £503 +15.57% 28
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
1 171 (12.03%) Apache Airflow
2 156 (10.98%) Apache Spark
3 122 (8.59%) Apache
4 33 (2.32%) SAS
5 31 (2.18%) Confluence
6 21 (1.48%) Jupyter
7 16 (1.13%) Palantir Foundry
8 15 (1.06%) SharePoint
9 5 (0.35%) Apache Solr
9 5 (0.35%) Apache Superset
9 5 (0.35%) ArcGIS
10 3 (0.21%) nginx
11 2 (0.14%) PowerExchange
12 1 (0.070%) Apache Synapse
12 1 (0.070%) CICS
12 1 (0.070%) Microsoft Exchange
12 1 (0.070%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 12 (0.84%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
3 5 (0.35%) Chatbot
4 3 (0.21%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.14%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.070%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.070%) Notion
Business Applications
1 10 (0.70%) Aladdin
2 7 (0.49%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.28%) NetSuite
3 4 (0.28%) Sage X3
4 3 (0.21%) SAP S/4HANA
5 2 (0.14%) BambooHR
5 2 (0.14%) Endur
5 2 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
5 2 (0.14%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.14%) Temenos T24
5 2 (0.14%) Workday HCM
6 1 (0.070%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.070%) Markit EDM
6 1 (0.070%) MIS ActiveH
6 1 (0.070%) SAP Oil and Gas
6 1 (0.070%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 590 (41.52%) Azure
2 533 (37.51%) AWS
3 263 (18.51%) Power Platform
4 237 (16.68%) Snowflake
5 216 (15.20%) dbt
6 212 (14.92%) GCP
7 164 (11.54%) Amazon S3
8 162 (11.40%) Azure Data Factory
9 130 (9.15%) Serverless
10 125 (8.80%) Azure DevOps
11 116 (8.16%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 107 (7.53%) AWS Lambda
13 102 (7.18%) GitHub
14 66 (4.64%) Azure Databricks
15 54 (3.80%) GitHub Actions
16 41 (2.89%) Amazon EMR
17 37 (2.60%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 36 (2.53%) Amazon Bedrock
19 32 (2.25%) Microsoft Purview
20 30 (2.11%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.35%) DNS
2 4 (0.28%) Firewall
2 4 (0.28%) Network Security
3 2 (0.14%) Broadband
4 1 (0.070%) Internet
4 1 (0.070%) MIMO
4 1 (0.070%) MQTT
4 1 (0.070%) Radio Access Network
4 1 (0.070%) SMS
4 1 (0.070%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 290 (20.41%) Data Warehouse
2 249 (17.52%) Power BI
3 179 (12.60%) Data Lake
4 165 (11.61%) Metadata
5 117 (8.23%) BigQuery
6 96 (6.76%) Delta Lake
7 93 (6.54%) Amazon Redshift
8 74 (5.21%) Big Data
9 67 (4.71%) Tableau
10 65 (4.57%) Amazon Athena
11 53 (3.73%) SQL Server
12 48 (3.38%) Snowflake Schema
13 47 (3.31%) PostgreSQL
14 44 (3.10%) NoSQL
14 44 (3.10%) Relational Database
15 37 (2.60%) Looker
16 31 (2.18%) Data Vault
17 30 (2.11%) Azure SQL Database
18 29 (2.04%) Amazon RDS
19 25 (1.76%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 147 (10.34%) Git
2 83 (5.84%) GitLab
3 57 (4.01%) JIRA
4 24 (1.69%) Jenkins
5 20 (1.41%) MLflow
6 8 (0.56%) Bitbucket
6 8 (0.56%) RStudio
6 8 (0.56%) Terragrunt
7 7 (0.49%) Claude Code
7 7 (0.49%) Selenium
8 6 (0.42%) ERwin
9 5 (0.35%) SonarQube
10 4 (0.28%) ER Studio
11 3 (0.21%) Artifactory
11 3 (0.21%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 3 (0.21%) Postman
11 3 (0.21%) Snyk
12 2 (0.14%) Cucumber
12 2 (0.14%) TeamCity
12 2 (0.14%) Yeoman
General
1 361 (25.40%) Social Skills
2 328 (23.08%) Finance
3 226 (15.90%) Analytical Skills
4 143 (10.06%) Public Sector
5 129 (9.08%) Banking
6 45 (3.17%) Marketing
7 34 (2.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 32 (2.25%) Retail
9 22 (1.55%) Front Office
10 21 (1.48%) Investment Banking
11 19 (1.34%) Documentation Skills
12 18 (1.27%) Pharmaceutical
13 16 (1.13%) Manufacturing
13 16 (1.13%) Telecoms
14 12 (0.84%) Billing
14 12 (0.84%) Influencing Skills
14 12 (0.84%) Law
15 11 (0.77%) Back Office
16 10 (0.70%) Financial Institution
16 10 (0.70%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 648 (45.60%) Data Engineer
2 218 (15.34%) Senior
3 164 (11.54%) Lead
4 162 (11.40%) Architect
5 138 (9.71%) Senior Data Engineer
6 88 (6.19%) Data Architect
7 79 (5.56%) Developer
8 70 (4.93%) AWS Engineer
9 61 (4.29%) Analyst
10 60 (4.22%) AWS Data Engineer
11 57 (4.01%) Snowflake Engineer
12 55 (3.87%) Databricks Engineer
13 51 (3.59%) Azure Engineer
14 47 (3.31%) Lead Data Engineer
15 45 (3.17%) Snowflake Data Engineer
16 44 (3.10%) Databricks Data Engineer
17 38 (2.67%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 36 (2.53%) Consultant
18 36 (2.53%) DevOps Engineer
18 36 (2.53%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 222 (15.62%) Terraform
2 198 (13.93%) PySpark
3 88 (6.19%) Kafka
4 52 (3.66%) REST
5 32 (2.25%) React
6 28 (1.97%) .NET
7 26 (1.83%) JSON
8 19 (1.34%) Pandas
9 14 (0.99%) LangChain
10 13 (0.91%) PyTorch
11 11 (0.77%) FastAPI
11 11 (0.77%) Microsoft Graph
11 11 (0.77%) NumPy
11 11 (0.77%) pytest
11 11 (0.77%) RabbitMQ
12 10 (0.70%) Apache Avro
12 10 (0.70%) RESTful
12 10 (0.70%) scikit-learn
12 10 (0.70%) TensorFlow
13 9 (0.63%) Great Expectations
Miscellaneous
1 190 (13.37%) Cloud Native
2 72 (5.07%) Data Structures
2 72 (5.07%) Onboarding
3 58 (4.08%) Product Ownership
4 49 (3.45%) Legacy Systems
5 46 (3.24%) AI Agents
6 41 (2.89%) Distributed Systems
7 21 (1.48%) Data Protection Act
8 20 (1.41%) Distributed Computing
9 19 (1.34%) Enterprise Software
10 18 (1.27%) NHS
10 18 (1.27%) Virtual Team
11 17 (1.20%) Management Information System
12 16 (1.13%) Greenfield Project
13 15 (1.06%) Analytical Mindset
13 15 (1.06%) Life Science
14 13 (0.91%) Algorithms
14 13 (0.91%) Clustering
14 13 (0.91%) Data Fabric
15 11 (0.77%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 28 (1.97%) Linux
2 24 (1.69%) Unix
3 7 (0.49%) Windows
4 1 (0.070%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.070%) Robot Operating System
4 1 (0.070%) Ubuntu
4 1 (0.070%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 696 (48.98%) Data Pipeline
2 674 (47.43%) Analytics
3 561 (39.48%) Data Modelling
4 511 (35.96%) CI/CD
5 493 (34.69%) ETL
6 447 (31.46%) AI
7 353 (24.84%) Agile
8 347 (24.42%) DevOps
9 331 (23.29%) Business Intelligence
10 316 (22.24%) Data Governance
11 255 (17.95%) Stakeholder Management
12 245 (17.24%) Machine Learning
13 229 (16.12%) Data Architecture
14 224 (15.76%) Migration
15 223 (15.69%) Data Transformation
15 223 (15.69%) Infrastructure as Code
16 220 (15.48%) Problem-Solving
17 218 (15.34%) Validation
18 205 (14.43%) Decision-Making
19 192 (13.51%) Data Science
Programming Languages
1 778 (54.75%) SQL
2 729 (51.30%) Python
3 97 (6.83%) Java
4 41 (2.89%) Scala
5 39 (2.74%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 37 (2.60%) PowerShell
7 34 (2.39%) C#
8 32 (2.25%) Bash
9 29 (2.04%) JavaScript
10 20 (1.41%) R
11 19 (1.34%) T-SQL
12 17 (1.20%) PL/SQL
13 14 (0.99%) TypeScript
14 13 (0.91%) Bicep
15 12 (0.84%) Kusto Query Language
16 11 (0.77%) Shell Script
17 9 (0.63%) SAS Macro
18 7 (0.49%) Go
18 7 (0.49%) Korn
18 7 (0.49%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 264 (18.58%) Security Cleared
2 220 (15.48%) SC Cleared
3 71 (5.00%) Degree
4 34 (2.39%) Computer Science Degree
5 33 (2.32%) DV Cleared
6 31 (2.18%) Azure Certification
7 29 (2.04%) AWS Certification
8 24 (1.69%) BPSS Clearance
9 18 (1.27%) Master's Degree
10 14 (0.99%) DBS Check
11 9 (0.63%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 9 (0.63%) SnowPro
12 8 (0.56%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 8 (0.56%) Microsoft Certification
13 6 (0.42%) PMI Certification
14 5 (0.35%) PMP
14 5 (0.35%) TOGAF Certification
15 4 (0.28%) Microsoft Certified Professional
15 4 (0.28%) PhD
15 4 (0.28%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 473 (33.29%) Data Quality
2 73 (5.14%) QA
3 57 (4.01%) GDPR
4 26 (1.83%) Accessibility
5 12 (0.84%) SLA
6 5 (0.35%) GRC
7 4 (0.28%) Disclosure Scotland
7 4 (0.28%) PMO
8 3 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
8 3 (0.21%) EU AI Act
8 3 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 3 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 42001
8 3 (0.21%) MiFID
8 3 (0.21%) NCSC
8 3 (0.21%) NIST
9 2 (0.14%) 21 CFR Part 11
9 2 (0.14%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 2 (0.14%) GxP
9 2 (0.14%) IFRS
9 2 (0.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 118 (8.30%) Docker
2 5 (0.35%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.070%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 93 (6.54%) Kubernetes
2 23 (1.62%) Ansible
3 20 (1.41%) Grafana
4 10 (0.70%) Prometheus
5 8 (0.56%) Kibana
6 7 (0.49%) Control-M
7 3 (0.21%) logstash
8 2 (0.14%) Argo
8 2 (0.14%) Puppet
9 1 (0.070%) Cilium
9 1 (0.070%) HAProxy
9 1 (0.070%) IBM Guardium
9 1 (0.070%) Kustomize
9 1 (0.070%) Nagios
9 1 (0.070%) Progress Chef
9 1 (0.070%) QRadar
9 1 (0.070%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 389 (27.38%) Databricks
2 253 (17.80%) Microsoft
3 81 (5.70%) Google
4 68 (4.79%) Oracle
5 55 (3.87%) Informatica
6 27 (1.90%) Foundry
7 26 (1.83%) SAP
8 25 (1.76%) Talend
9 24 (1.69%) Palantir
9 24 (1.69%) Salesforce
10 18 (1.27%) OpenAI
11 14 (0.99%) Teradata
12 13 (0.91%) Cloudera
13 12 (0.84%) Trend Micro
14 11 (0.77%) Adobe
15 10 (0.70%) ServiceNow
16 8 (0.56%) Denodo
16 8 (0.56%) Splunk
17 7 (0.49%) Hitachi
18 6 (0.42%) MicroStrategy