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 4 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 88 139 187
Rank change year-on-year +51 +48 +29
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,408 573 437
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.04% 2.04% 1.35%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.59% 2.24% 1.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 983 360 321
10th Percentile £392 £350 £390
25th Percentile £449 £413 £468
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -8.70% -8.00%
75th Percentile £650 £640 £676
90th Percentile £738 £738 £775
UK median daily rate £525 £514 £550
% change year-on-year +2.19% -6.59% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 5 6
10th Percentile - £36.73 £23.88
25th Percentile £21.25 £38.96 £34.88
Median hourly rate £62.45 £52.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.95% -12.50% -20.53%
75th Percentile £71.13 £65.00 -
90th Percentile £76.71 £92.00 -
UK median hourly rate £59.95 £58.75 £60.00
% change year-on-year +2.04% -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 39,229 25,540 27,994
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.68% 90.96% 86.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,740 16,195 17,136
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £512 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.54% -2.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £643
90th Percentile £738 £734 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,947 1,574 1,191
10th Percentile £13.81 £14.50 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.54 £17.87 £20.50
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.47 £46.55 £67.01
90th Percentile £78.75 £67.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £38.62 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +53.57% -40.82% -

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 4 October 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 4 October 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 4 October 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 +41 862 £550 - 1,332
North of England +28 189 £475 +7.34% 323
Midlands +28 124 £475 +2.70% 135
West Midlands +22 101 £475 -13.64% 97
Yorkshire +27 92 £500 +5.26% 90
South East -11 92 £513 +15.17% 254
South West +38 88 £525 -8.70% 109
North West -17 61 £525 +23.53% 175
North East -7 38 £425 -5.56% 63
East Midlands +4 23 £525 +20.62% 38
East of England -13 22 £550 +15.79% 59
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
1 174 (12.36%) Apache Airflow
2 158 (11.22%) Apache Spark
3 131 (9.30%) Apache
4 31 (2.20%) Confluence
5 29 (2.06%) SAS
6 21 (1.49%) Jupyter
7 15 (1.07%) Palantir Foundry
7 15 (1.07%) SharePoint
8 5 (0.36%) Apache Solr
9 4 (0.28%) ArcGIS
9 4 (0.28%) nginx
10 3 (0.21%) Apache Superset
11 2 (0.14%) PowerExchange
12 1 (0.071%) Apache Pulsar
12 1 (0.071%) CICS
12 1 (0.071%) Microsoft Exchange
12 1 (0.071%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 10 (0.71%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.50%) Chatbot
3 6 (0.43%) Spreadsheet
4 3 (0.21%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.14%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.071%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.071%) Notion
Business Applications
1 10 (0.71%) Aladdin
2 8 (0.57%) 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%) Cloudability
5 2 (0.14%) Endur
5 2 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
5 2 (0.14%) Temenos T24
5 2 (0.14%) Workday HCM
6 1 (0.071%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.071%) Markit EDM
6 1 (0.071%) MIS ActiveH
6 1 (0.071%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.071%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.071%) SAP Oil and Gas
6 1 (0.071%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 588 (41.76%) Azure
2 520 (36.93%) AWS
3 260 (18.47%) Power Platform
4 240 (17.05%) Snowflake
5 220 (15.63%) dbt
6 217 (15.41%) GCP
7 167 (11.86%) Amazon S3
8 163 (11.58%) Azure Data Factory
9 129 (9.16%) Serverless
10 124 (8.81%) Azure DevOps
11 114 (8.10%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 106 (7.53%) GitHub
13 105 (7.46%) AWS Lambda
14 67 (4.76%) Azure Databricks
15 54 (3.84%) GitHub Actions
16 40 (2.84%) Amazon EMR
17 36 (2.56%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 35 (2.49%) Amazon Bedrock
19 34 (2.41%) Microsoft Purview
20 30 (2.13%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 8 (0.57%) Network Security
2 7 (0.50%) DNS
3 5 (0.36%) Firewall
4 2 (0.14%) Broadband
5 1 (0.071%) HTTP
5 1 (0.071%) HTTPS
5 1 (0.071%) Internet
5 1 (0.071%) MIMO
5 1 (0.071%) MQTT
5 1 (0.071%) Radio Access Network
5 1 (0.071%) Reverse Proxy
5 1 (0.071%) SMS
5 1 (0.071%) SSL
5 1 (0.071%) TCP/IP
5 1 (0.071%) tcpdump
5 1 (0.071%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 291 (20.67%) Data Warehouse
2 248 (17.61%) Power BI
3 171 (12.14%) Metadata
4 168 (11.93%) Data Lake
5 116 (8.24%) BigQuery
6 97 (6.89%) Amazon Redshift
7 96 (6.82%) Delta Lake
8 73 (5.18%) Big Data
9 63 (4.47%) Amazon Athena
9 63 (4.47%) Tableau
10 54 (3.84%) SQL Server
11 49 (3.48%) Snowflake Schema
12 46 (3.27%) PostgreSQL
13 42 (2.98%) NoSQL
13 42 (2.98%) Relational Database
14 37 (2.63%) Looker
15 31 (2.20%) Amazon RDS
15 31 (2.20%) Azure SQL Database
16 30 (2.13%) Data Vault
17 26 (1.85%) Parquet
Development Applications
1 153 (10.87%) Git
2 87 (6.18%) GitLab
3 55 (3.91%) JIRA
4 24 (1.70%) Jenkins
5 22 (1.56%) MLflow
6 8 (0.57%) Bitbucket
6 8 (0.57%) RStudio
6 8 (0.57%) Terragrunt
7 7 (0.50%) Claude Code
7 7 (0.50%) Selenium
8 6 (0.43%) ERwin
9 4 (0.28%) ER Studio
9 4 (0.28%) Postman
10 3 (0.21%) Artifactory
10 3 (0.21%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 3 (0.21%) Cucumber
10 3 (0.21%) SonarQube
10 3 (0.21%) TeamCity
11 2 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (0.14%) Yeoman
General
1 374 (26.56%) Social Skills
2 322 (22.87%) Finance
3 221 (15.70%) Analytical Skills
4 145 (10.30%) Public Sector
5 131 (9.30%) Banking
6 44 (3.13%) Marketing
7 32 (2.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 26 (1.85%) Retail
9 24 (1.70%) Front Office
10 23 (1.63%) Investment Banking
11 18 (1.28%) Pharmaceutical
12 16 (1.14%) Documentation Skills
12 16 (1.14%) Manufacturing
13 14 (0.99%) Telecoms
14 13 (0.92%) Billing
15 12 (0.85%) Back Office
15 12 (0.85%) Financial Institution
16 11 (0.78%) Law
16 11 (0.78%) Military
17 10 (0.71%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 650 (46.16%) Data Engineer
2 220 (15.63%) Senior
3 165 (11.72%) Lead
4 147 (10.44%) Architect
5 144 (10.23%) Senior Data Engineer
6 81 (5.75%) Developer
7 76 (5.40%) Data Architect
8 67 (4.76%) AWS Engineer
9 63 (4.47%) Analyst
10 58 (4.12%) Snowflake Engineer
11 57 (4.05%) AWS Data Engineer
12 56 (3.98%) Databricks Engineer
13 52 (3.69%) Azure Engineer
14 48 (3.41%) Lead Data Engineer
15 47 (3.34%) Snowflake Data Engineer
16 45 (3.20%) Databricks Data Engineer
17 38 (2.70%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 35 (2.49%) Consultant
18 35 (2.49%) Data Analyst
18 35 (2.49%) GCP Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 224 (15.91%) Terraform
2 204 (14.49%) PySpark
3 92 (6.53%) Kafka
4 59 (4.19%) REST
5 29 (2.06%) React
6 28 (1.99%) .NET
7 26 (1.85%) JSON
8 22 (1.56%) Pandas
9 15 (1.07%) LangChain
9 15 (1.07%) PyTorch
10 14 (0.99%) pytest
11 13 (0.92%) FastAPI
12 12 (0.85%) Apache NiFi
12 12 (0.85%) NumPy
12 12 (0.85%) scikit-learn
12 12 (0.85%) TensorFlow
13 11 (0.78%) Microsoft Graph
13 11 (0.78%) RabbitMQ
14 10 (0.71%) RESTful
15 9 (0.64%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 194 (13.78%) Cloud Native
2 76 (5.40%) Onboarding
3 69 (4.90%) Data Structures
4 60 (4.26%) Product Ownership
5 48 (3.41%) AI Agents
6 47 (3.34%) Legacy Systems
7 41 (2.91%) Distributed Systems
8 25 (1.78%) Data Protection Act
9 20 (1.42%) Distributed Computing
9 20 (1.42%) Enterprise Software
10 18 (1.28%) Algorithms
10 18 (1.28%) Virtual Team
11 17 (1.21%) Management Information System
12 15 (1.07%) Life Science
12 15 (1.07%) NHS
13 14 (0.99%) Greenfield Project
14 13 (0.92%) Analytical Mindset
14 13 (0.92%) Data Fabric
15 12 (0.85%) Reference Data
15 12 (0.85%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 29 (2.06%) Linux
2 22 (1.56%) Unix
3 8 (0.57%) Windows
4 1 (0.071%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.071%) Robot Operating System
4 1 (0.071%) Ubuntu
4 1 (0.071%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 696 (49.43%) Data Pipeline
2 657 (46.66%) Analytics
3 560 (39.77%) Data Modelling
4 528 (37.50%) CI/CD
5 485 (34.45%) ETL
6 451 (32.03%) AI
7 366 (25.99%) Agile
8 356 (25.28%) DevOps
9 328 (23.30%) Business Intelligence
10 311 (22.09%) Data Governance
11 265 (18.82%) Stakeholder Management
12 252 (17.90%) Machine Learning
13 227 (16.12%) Validation
14 225 (15.98%) Infrastructure as Code
15 224 (15.91%) Data Architecture
15 224 (15.91%) Data Transformation
16 218 (15.48%) Problem-Solving
17 215 (15.27%) Migration
18 207 (14.70%) Decision-Making
19 202 (14.35%) Data Integration
Programming Languages
1 793 (56.32%) SQL
2 743 (52.77%) Python
3 91 (6.46%) Java
4 41 (2.91%) Scala
5 40 (2.84%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 39 (2.77%) PowerShell
7 36 (2.56%) C#
8 32 (2.27%) Bash
9 30 (2.13%) JavaScript
10 21 (1.49%) R
11 18 (1.28%) T-SQL
12 16 (1.14%) PL/SQL
13 15 (1.07%) TypeScript
14 14 (0.99%) Kusto Query Language
15 13 (0.92%) Bicep
16 10 (0.71%) Shell Script
17 8 (0.57%) Korn
17 8 (0.57%) SAS Macro
18 7 (0.50%) Go
18 7 (0.50%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 257 (18.25%) Security Cleared
2 209 (14.84%) SC Cleared
3 77 (5.47%) Degree
4 38 (2.70%) DV Cleared
5 37 (2.63%) Computer Science Degree
6 33 (2.34%) AWS Certification
7 30 (2.13%) Azure Certification
8 25 (1.78%) BPSS Clearance
9 19 (1.35%) Master's Degree
10 14 (0.99%) DBS Check
11 9 (0.64%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 9 (0.64%) SnowPro
12 8 (0.57%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 8 (0.57%) Microsoft Certification
13 5 (0.36%) Microsoft Certified Professional
13 5 (0.36%) PMI Certification
13 5 (0.36%) PMP
13 5 (0.36%) TOGAF Certification
14 4 (0.28%) PhD
15 3 (0.21%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 481 (34.16%) Data Quality
2 73 (5.18%) QA
3 56 (3.98%) GDPR
4 28 (1.99%) Accessibility
5 11 (0.78%) SLA
6 6 (0.43%) GRC
7 4 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 4 (0.28%) Disclosure Scotland
7 4 (0.28%) EU AI Act
7 4 (0.28%) NCSC
7 4 (0.28%) NIST
7 4 (0.28%) PMO
8 3 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
8 3 (0.21%) IFRS
8 3 (0.21%) IFRS 9
8 3 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 3 (0.21%) MiFID
9 2 (0.14%) 21 CFR Part 11
9 2 (0.14%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 116 (8.24%) Docker
2 5 (0.36%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.071%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 101 (7.17%) Kubernetes
2 29 (2.06%) Ansible
3 21 (1.49%) Grafana
4 12 (0.85%) Prometheus
5 8 (0.57%) Kibana
6 7 (0.50%) Control-M
7 3 (0.21%) logstash
8 2 (0.14%) Progress Chef
8 2 (0.14%) Puppet
9 1 (0.071%) Argo
9 1 (0.071%) Cilium
9 1 (0.071%) HAProxy
9 1 (0.071%) Kubeflow
9 1 (0.071%) Kustomize
9 1 (0.071%) QRadar
9 1 (0.071%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 389 (27.63%) Databricks
2 248 (17.61%) Microsoft
3 84 (5.97%) Google
4 70 (4.97%) Oracle
5 52 (3.69%) Informatica
6 26 (1.85%) SAP
7 25 (1.78%) Foundry
8 23 (1.63%) Palantir
8 23 (1.63%) Salesforce
8 23 (1.63%) Talend
9 18 (1.28%) OpenAI
10 14 (0.99%) Teradata
11 12 (0.85%) Cloudera
11 12 (0.85%) Trend Micro
12 11 (0.78%) Adobe
13 10 (0.71%) ServiceNow
14 8 (0.57%) Denodo
15 7 (0.50%) Hitachi
15 7 (0.50%) Splunk
16 6 (0.43%) MicroStrategy