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 7 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 88 149 213
Rank change year-on-year +61 +64 -6
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,032 468 419
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.83% 1.82% 1.10%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.26% 2.01% 1.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 712 332 311
10th Percentile £370 £400 £413
25th Percentile £439 £463 £466
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £560 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.25% +1.82% -8.33%
75th Percentile £615 £676 £681
90th Percentile £738 £838 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 12 10
10th Percentile £50.23 £22.00 £30.30
25th Percentile £62.94 £22.38 -
Median hourly rate £70.00 £25.97 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +169.59% -25.81% -
75th Percentile £77.19 £29.06 £41.54
90th Percentile £85.63 £61.50 £51.73
UK median hourly rate £66.50 £25.43 £35.00
% change year-on-year +161.50% -27.34% -

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 31,633 23,246 33,278
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.88% 90.44% 87.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,235 14,775 22,032
10th Percentile £313 £308 £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 £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,951 810 2,137
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.49 £13.25
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £16.06
Median hourly rate £29.61 £35.00 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.40% +6.06% -6.46%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £58.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £76.34 £71.88
UK median hourly rate £28.00 £32.81 £32.50
% change year-on-year -14.66% +0.95% -7.14%

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 7 March 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 7 March 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 7 March 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 +57 678 £550 -4.35% 275
North of England -4 107 £450 -14.29% 111
Midlands +12 99 £519 +3.70% 55
West Midlands +8 79 £534 +6.75% 43
South West +5 57 £550 -15.38% 44
North West -4 54 £450 - 49
South East -17 45 £550 +8.91% 140
Yorkshire -40 33 £490 -18.33% 51
North East +5 20 £450 -23.08% 12
East Midlands -16 20 £447 -12.78% 11
East of England -22 16 £563 +75.86% 31
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
1 160 (15.50%) Apache Spark
2 106 (10.27%) Apache Airflow
3 69 (6.69%) Apache
4 19 (1.84%) Palantir Foundry
5 17 (1.65%) SAS
6 10 (0.97%) Confluence
7 8 (0.78%) Appian
8 4 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
9 3 (0.29%) Apache Superset
9 3 (0.29%) Jupyter
10 2 (0.19%) SharePoint
11 1 (0.097%) Apache Synapse
11 1 (0.097%) ArcGIS
11 1 (0.097%) Camunda
11 1 (0.097%) CMS
11 1 (0.097%) IBM HTTP Server
11 1 (0.097%) Luigi
Applications
1 18 (1.74%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (0.97%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 5 (0.48%) Chatbot
3 5 (0.48%) Microsoft Office
4 4 (0.39%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.29%) Trello
6 2 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.097%) Adobe XD
Business Applications
1 7 (0.68%) Aladdin
2 3 (0.29%) BambooHR
2 3 (0.29%) SAP BPC
3 2 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.097%) Actimize
4 1 (0.097%) Markit EDM
4 1 (0.097%) Maximo
4 1 (0.097%) Misys Midas
4 1 (0.097%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.097%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 488 (47.29%) Azure
2 358 (34.69%) AWS
3 234 (22.67%) Power Platform
4 192 (18.60%) Azure Data Factory
5 148 (14.34%) GCP
6 130 (12.60%) Snowflake
7 118 (11.43%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 108 (10.47%) Amazon S3
9 107 (10.37%) GitHub
10 99 (9.59%) Serverless
11 95 (9.21%) dbt
12 86 (8.33%) Azure DevOps
13 80 (7.75%) AWS Lambda
14 69 (6.69%) GitHub Actions
15 44 (4.26%) AWS CloudFormation
16 27 (2.62%) AWS Step Functions
17 26 (2.52%) Azure Machine Learning
18 23 (2.23%) Collibra
19 22 (2.13%) Amazon EMR
19 22 (2.13%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.39%) Cisco IPT
1 4 (0.39%) Kerberos
1 4 (0.39%) Network Security
2 3 (0.29%) RTP
2 3 (0.29%) VPN
3 1 (0.097%) 4G
3 1 (0.097%) 5G
3 1 (0.097%) SAN
3 1 (0.097%) SMS
3 1 (0.097%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 213 (20.64%) Power BI
2 204 (19.77%) Data Warehouse
3 150 (14.53%) Data Lake
4 89 (8.62%) Metadata
5 71 (6.88%) SQL Server
6 69 (6.69%) Big Data
6 69 (6.69%) NoSQL
7 63 (6.10%) Delta Lake
8 61 (5.91%) Snowflake Schema
9 57 (5.52%) Amazon Redshift
10 54 (5.23%) Azure SQL Database
11 52 (5.04%) Relational Database
12 50 (4.84%) BigQuery
13 46 (4.46%) Tableau
14 45 (4.36%) PostgreSQL
15 42 (4.07%) Amazon Athena
16 38 (3.68%) Hadoop
17 34 (3.29%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 30 (2.91%) Spark SQL
19 21 (2.03%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 146 (14.15%) Git
2 44 (4.26%) GitLab
3 40 (3.88%) Jenkins
4 37 (3.59%) MLflow
5 20 (1.94%) JIRA
6 6 (0.58%) Selenium
6 6 (0.58%) Visual Studio Code
7 4 (0.39%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.29%) JUnit
8 3 (0.29%) Maven
8 3 (0.29%) Postman
8 3 (0.29%) Robot Framework
8 3 (0.29%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.19%) Cucumber
9 2 (0.19%) ERwin
9 2 (0.19%) Mockito
9 2 (0.19%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.097%) Bitbucket
10 1 (0.097%) SoapUI
10 1 (0.097%) TeamCity
General
1 280 (27.13%) Social Skills
2 249 (24.13%) Finance
3 148 (14.34%) Analytical Skills
4 85 (8.24%) Public Sector
5 65 (6.30%) Banking
6 27 (2.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 19 (1.84%) Investment Banking
7 19 (1.84%) Retail
8 17 (1.65%) Front Office
8 17 (1.65%) Influencing Skills
9 15 (1.45%) Marketing
10 12 (1.16%) Documentation Skills
11 11 (1.07%) Legal
12 10 (0.97%) Pharmaceutical
12 10 (0.97%) Publishing
13 8 (0.78%) Financial Institution
13 8 (0.78%) Telecoms
14 6 (0.58%) Back Office
14 6 (0.58%) Military
15 5 (0.48%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 485 (47.00%) Data Engineer
2 137 (13.28%) Lead
3 132 (12.79%) Senior
4 94 (9.11%) Senior Data Engineer
5 81 (7.85%) Architect
6 74 (7.17%) Azure Engineer
7 65 (6.30%) Developer
8 60 (5.81%) Azure Data Engineer
9 49 (4.75%) Analyst
10 48 (4.65%) Lead Data Engineer
11 45 (4.36%) Snowflake Engineer
12 44 (4.26%) Data Architect
13 42 (4.07%) Data Scientist
14 40 (3.88%) AWS Engineer
15 38 (3.68%) Snowflake Data Engineer
16 37 (3.59%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 28 (2.71%) Principal Engineer
18 27 (2.62%) AWS Data Engineer
18 27 (2.62%) Data Analyst
19 26 (2.52%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 178 (17.25%) PySpark
2 129 (12.50%) Kafka
3 54 (5.23%) Pandas
4 48 (4.65%) PyTorch
5 43 (4.17%) scikit-learn
6 38 (3.68%) NumPy
7 37 (3.59%) TensorFlow
8 30 (2.91%) JSON
9 29 (2.81%) FastAPI
9 29 (2.81%) RESTful
10 27 (2.62%) pytest
11 25 (2.42%) YAML
12 24 (2.33%) Flask
13 22 (2.13%) LangChain
13 22 (2.13%) React
14 19 (1.84%) REST
15 16 (1.55%) Great Expectations
16 15 (1.45%) Hugging Face
17 14 (1.36%) Spring
18 13 (1.26%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 123 (11.92%) Cloud Native
2 38 (3.68%) Product Ownership
3 32 (3.10%) Algorithms
3 32 (3.10%) Distributed Systems
4 29 (2.81%) Distributed Computing
5 23 (2.23%) Data Structures
6 21 (2.03%) Hybrid Cloud
6 21 (2.03%) Legacy Systems
7 20 (1.94%) Data Protection Act
8 18 (1.74%) AI Agents
8 18 (1.74%) Onboarding
9 16 (1.55%) Analytical Mindset
10 14 (1.36%) Clustering
11 13 (1.26%) Fixed Income
12 12 (1.16%) Greenfield Project
13 11 (1.07%) Derivative
14 10 (0.97%) Equities
14 10 (0.97%) NHS
15 9 (0.87%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 9 (0.87%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 23 (2.23%) Linux
2 7 (0.68%) VMS
3 6 (0.58%) Unix
4 2 (0.19%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.19%) Windows
5 1 (0.097%) CentOS
5 1 (0.097%) Debian
5 1 (0.097%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 481 (46.61%) Analytics
2 467 (45.25%) Data Pipeline
3 422 (40.89%) ETL
4 412 (39.92%) Data Modelling
5 359 (34.79%) CI/CD
6 267 (25.87%) Agile
7 265 (25.68%) AI
8 263 (25.48%) Business Intelligence
8 263 (25.48%) DevOps
9 258 (25.00%) Data Governance
10 219 (21.22%) Machine Learning
11 204 (19.77%) Data Science
11 204 (19.77%) Problem-Solving
12 163 (15.79%) Data Architecture
13 125 (12.11%) Infrastructure as Code
14 120 (11.63%) Decision-Making
15 106 (10.27%) Validation
16 103 (9.98%) Data Transformation
17 102 (9.88%) Data Integration
17 102 (9.88%) LLM
Programming Languages
1 623 (60.37%) Python
2 560 (54.26%) SQL
3 77 (7.46%) Java
4 65 (6.30%) Scala
5 45 (4.36%) C#
6 31 (3.00%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 31 (3.00%) JavaScript
7 28 (2.71%) PowerShell
8 25 (2.42%) Bash
9 22 (2.13%) Bicep
10 19 (1.84%) T-SQL
11 18 (1.74%) TypeScript
12 16 (1.55%) Go
12 16 (1.55%) R
13 12 (1.16%) C++
14 11 (1.07%) PL/SQL
15 7 (0.68%) Rust
16 6 (0.58%) Korn
17 5 (0.48%) Shell Script
18 3 (0.29%) SAS Macro
Qualifications
1 205 (19.86%) Security Cleared
2 169 (16.38%) SC Cleared
3 87 (8.43%) Degree
4 49 (4.75%) Azure Certification
5 41 (3.97%) Computer Science Degree
6 36 (3.49%) Master's Degree
7 22 (2.13%) DV Cleared
8 15 (1.45%) BPSS Clearance
9 14 (1.36%) AWS Certification
10 11 (1.07%) Microsoft Certification
10 11 (1.07%) PhD
11 4 (0.39%) DBS Check
11 4 (0.39%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 1 (0.097%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 1 (0.097%) ACCA
12 1 (0.097%) CIMA
12 1 (0.097%) CISM
12 1 (0.097%) ISTQB
12 1 (0.097%) OCP
12 1 (0.097%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 284 (27.52%) Data Quality
2 85 (8.24%) GDPR
3 35 (3.39%) QA
4 12 (1.16%) Accessibility
4 12 (1.16%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 9 (0.87%) HIPAA
6 6 (0.58%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 5 (0.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 5 (0.48%) PERC
7 5 (0.48%) SOC 2
8 3 (0.29%) GRC
8 3 (0.29%) SLA
8 3 (0.29%) Solvency II
8 3 (0.29%) WCAG
9 2 (0.19%) HL7
9 2 (0.19%) MiFID
9 2 (0.19%) NIST
9 2 (0.19%) PCI DSS
10 1 (0.097%) NCSC
10 1 (0.097%) PMO
System Software
1 134 (12.98%) Docker
2 6 (0.58%) HDFS
3 3 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.097%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.097%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 162 (15.70%) Terraform
2 134 (12.98%) Kubernetes
3 25 (2.42%) Prometheus
4 13 (1.26%) Grafana
5 5 (0.48%) Argo
6 4 (0.39%) Ansible
7 3 (0.29%) Control-M
7 3 (0.29%) Kubeflow
7 3 (0.29%) Rancher
8 2 (0.19%) Hadoop YARN
8 2 (0.19%) Kibana
8 2 (0.19%) Nagios
9 1 (0.097%) Apache Ranger
9 1 (0.097%) HP Fortify
9 1 (0.097%) logstash
9 1 (0.097%) Oozie
9 1 (0.097%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.097%) Thomson Reuters DACS
Vendors
1 301 (29.17%) Databricks
2 142 (13.76%) Microsoft
3 52 (5.04%) Google
4 32 (3.10%) Informatica
4 32 (3.10%) Oracle
5 25 (2.42%) Foundry
6 23 (2.23%) Palantir
6 23 (2.23%) Talend
7 22 (2.13%) OpenAI
8 17 (1.65%) Splunk
9 14 (1.36%) SAP
10 12 (1.16%) Salesforce
11 10 (0.97%) Cloudera
12 9 (0.87%) Denodo
13 8 (0.78%) Automation Anywhere
13 8 (0.78%) ServiceNow
13 8 (0.78%) UiPath
14 7 (0.68%) Virgin Media
15 6 (0.58%) Guidewire
15 6 (0.58%) Workday