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

6 months to
6 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 82 157 196
Rank change year-on-year +75 +39 -3
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,403 513 417
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.08% 1.86% 1.25%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.62% 2.05% 1.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 987 331 304
10th Percentile £400 £363 £393
25th Percentile £450 £445 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £585
Median % change year-on-year - -10.26% -6.40%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £700
90th Percentile £750 £788 £775
UK median daily rate £525 £513 £575
% change year-on-year +2.44% -10.87% -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 38,782 25,081 28,761
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.18% 90.77% 85.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,156 16,055 18,761
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 £760
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,506 1,391 1,691
10th Percentile £14.94 £14.20 £14.05
25th Percentile £20.31 £17.87 £18.21
Median hourly rate £44.23 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +75.86% -40.82% -
75th Percentile £68.75 £50.88 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.50 £70.16 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.33
% change year-on-year +74.79% -37.63% -5.12%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 +56 836 £550 - 590
North of England +33 179 £463 -2.63% 147
Midlands +40 152 £486 +5.98% 40
West Midlands +37 127 £475 -0.63% 28
South East -10 90 £525 +11.94% 128
Yorkshire +11 83 £475 +2.70% 45
South West +17 78 £505 -12.17% 63
North West -18 59 £500 +5.26% 75
North East -6 39 £425 -20.93% 28
East of England -6 28 £575 +35.29% 15
East Midlands +3 22 £525 +14.38% 12
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 (12.26%) Apache Spark
2 161 (11.48%) Apache Airflow
3 111 (7.91%) 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 (0.29%) Apache Solr
11 3 (0.21%) ArcGIS
12 2 (0.14%) Microsoft Exchange
13 1 (0.071%) Apache Synapse
13 1 (0.071%) Appian
13 1 (0.071%) CICS
13 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 (0.86%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.43%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.36%) BambooHR
4 4 (0.29%) NetSuite
4 4 (0.29%) Sage X3
4 4 (0.29%) 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
1 588 (41.91%) Azure
2 530 (37.78%) AWS
3 286 (20.38%) Power Platform
4 212 (15.11%) Snowflake
5 192 (13.68%) GCP
6 180 (12.83%) dbt
7 158 (11.26%) Azure Data Factory
8 142 (10.12%) Amazon S3
9 139 (9.91%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 130 (9.27%) Azure DevOps
11 111 (7.91%) GitHub
12 108 (7.70%) Serverless
13 91 (6.49%) AWS Lambda
14 62 (4.42%) GitHub Actions
15 35 (2.49%) Amazon EMR
16 29 (2.07%) Azure AI
17 28 (2.00%) Amazon Bedrock
18 26 (1.85%) AWS Step Functions
18 26 (1.85%) Azure Cosmos DB
18 26 (1.85%) Microsoft Purview
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
1 274 (19.53%) Data Warehouse
2 266 (18.96%) Power BI
3 189 (13.47%) Data Lake
4 137 (9.76%) Metadata
5 96 (6.84%) BigQuery
6 94 (6.70%) Delta Lake
7 91 (6.49%) Amazon Redshift
8 84 (5.99%) Big Data
9 80 (5.70%) Tableau
10 67 (4.78%) SQL Server
11 61 (4.35%) NoSQL
12 60 (4.28%) Amazon Athena
13 54 (3.85%) Snowflake Schema
14 51 (3.64%) Relational Database
15 45 (3.21%) PostgreSQL
16 38 (2.71%) Azure SQL Database
17 34 (2.42%) Looker
17 34 (2.42%) Star Schema
18 32 (2.28%) Hadoop
19 31 (2.21%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 143 (10.19%) Git
2 73 (5.20%) GitLab
3 57 (4.06%) JIRA
4 26 (1.85%) MLflow
5 23 (1.64%) Jenkins
6 7 (0.50%) SonarQube
7 6 (0.43%) Bitbucket
8 5 (0.36%) ERwin
9 3 (0.21%) Artifactory
9 3 (0.21%) ER Studio
9 3 (0.21%) Postman
9 3 (0.21%) Selenium
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%) Octopus Deploy
11 1 (0.071%) Robot Framework
11 1 (0.071%) RStudio
11 1 (0.071%) TestRail
General
1 345 (24.59%) Social Skills
2 326 (23.24%) Finance
3 231 (16.46%) Analytical Skills
4 153 (10.91%) Public Sector
5 104 (7.41%) Banking
6 41 (2.92%) Marketing
7 34 (2.42%) 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 19 (1.35%) 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 10 (0.71%) Law
16 9 (0.64%) Legal
17 8 (0.57%) Back Office
17 8 (0.57%) Billing
Job Titles
1 652 (46.47%) Data Engineer
2 194 (13.83%) Senior
3 168 (11.97%) Lead
4 162 (11.55%) Architect
5 117 (8.34%) Senior Data Engineer
6 85 (6.06%) Data Architect
7 81 (5.77%) Developer
8 70 (4.99%) AWS Engineer
9 67 (4.78%) Analyst
10 60 (4.28%) Lead Data Engineer
11 59 (4.21%) AWS Data Engineer
12 51 (3.64%) Azure Engineer
12 51 (3.64%) Snowflake Engineer
13 45 (3.21%) Solutions Architect
14 43 (3.06%) Azure Data Engineer
15 42 (2.99%) Snowflake Data Engineer
16 40 (2.85%) Data Analyst
17 39 (2.78%) Data Scientist
18 38 (2.71%) Consultant
19 32 (2.28%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 192 (13.68%) PySpark
2 111 (7.91%) Kafka
3 40 (2.85%) REST
4 32 (2.28%) Pandas
5 28 (2.00%) JSON
6 25 (1.78%) React
7 24 (1.71%) scikit-learn
8 20 (1.43%) .NET
8 20 (1.43%) Spring
9 19 (1.35%) NumPy
9 19 (1.35%) PyTorch
10 14 (1.00%) TensorFlow
11 13 (0.93%) RESTful
11 13 (0.93%) Spring Boot
12 12 (0.86%) OpenTelemetry
13 11 (0.78%) Apache Avro
13 11 (0.78%) Microsoft Graph
14 10 (0.71%) LangChain
15 9 (0.64%) FastAPI
15 9 (0.64%) Great Expectations
Miscellaneous
1 186 (13.26%) Cloud Native
2 61 (4.35%) Data Structures
3 59 (4.21%) Legacy Systems
4 55 (3.92%) Distributed Systems
5 54 (3.85%) Product Ownership
6 43 (3.06%) Onboarding
7 31 (2.21%) AI Agents
8 25 (1.78%) Data Protection Act
9 22 (1.57%) Greenfield Project
10 20 (1.43%) Distributed Computing
11 19 (1.35%) NHS
12 16 (1.14%) Algorithms
12 16 (1.14%) Clustering
12 16 (1.14%) Virtual Team
13 14 (1.00%) Analytical Mindset
13 14 (1.00%) Life Science
14 12 (0.86%) Fixed Income
14 12 (0.86%) Management Information System
15 11 (0.78%) Reference Data
15 11 (0.78%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 31 (2.21%) Linux
2 29 (2.07%) Unix
3 8 (0.57%) Windows
4 3 (0.21%) VMS
5 2 (0.14%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.071%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 701 (49.96%) Analytics
2 675 (48.11%) Data Pipeline
3 537 (38.28%) Data Modelling
4 488 (34.78%) CI/CD
5 478 (34.07%) ETL
6 393 (28.01%) AI
7 355 (25.30%) Agile
8 345 (24.59%) Business Intelligence
9 334 (23.81%) DevOps
10 307 (21.88%) Data Governance
11 249 (17.75%) Machine Learning
12 240 (17.11%) Problem-Solving
13 218 (15.54%) Data Science
14 208 (14.83%) Decision-Making
15 207 (14.75%) Migration
16 205 (14.61%) Validation
17 202 (14.40%) Data Architecture
18 194 (13.83%) Data Transformation
19 192 (13.68%) Stakeholder Management
20 172 (12.26%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 758 (54.03%) SQL
2 707 (50.39%) Python
3 111 (7.91%) Java
4 40 (2.85%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 36 (2.57%) Bash
5 36 (2.57%) Scala
6 32 (2.28%) C#
7 30 (2.14%) PowerShell
8 25 (1.78%) T-SQL
9 21 (1.50%) JavaScript
10 18 (1.28%) R
11 16 (1.14%) Bicep
12 15 (1.07%) PL/SQL
13 14 (1.00%) Shell Script
14 12 (0.86%) SAS Macro
15 9 (0.64%) TypeScript
16 7 (0.50%) SPARQL
17 6 (0.43%) Cypher
18 5 (0.36%) Korn
18 5 (0.36%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 281 (20.03%) Security Cleared
2 240 (17.11%) 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 25 (1.78%) DV Cleared
8 24 (1.71%) Master's Degree
9 17 (1.21%) 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%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 412 (29.37%) Data Quality
2 74 (5.27%) QA
3 72 (5.13%) GDPR
4 22 (1.57%) Accessibility
5 10 (0.71%) SLA
6 5 (0.36%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 4 (0.29%) NIST
7 4 (0.29%) Solvency II
8 3 (0.21%) GxP
8 3 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
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
1 120 (8.55%) Docker
2 4 (0.29%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.071%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 184 (13.11%) Terraform
2 107 (7.63%) Kubernetes
3 18 (1.28%) Ansible
4 16 (1.14%) Prometheus
5 13 (0.93%) Grafana
6 5 (0.36%) Kibana
7 3 (0.21%) logstash
8 2 (0.14%) Argo
8 2 (0.14%) Control-M
8 2 (0.14%) Kubeflow
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%) Kustomize
9 1 (0.071%) Nagios
9 1 (0.071%) QRadar
Vendors
1 345 (24.59%) Databricks
2 248 (17.68%) Microsoft
3 71 (5.06%) Informatica
4 62 (4.42%) Google
5 60 (4.28%) Oracle
6 32 (2.28%) SAP
7 30 (2.14%) Foundry
8 28 (2.00%) Palantir
8 28 (2.00%) Talend
9 20 (1.43%) Salesforce
10 19 (1.35%) Splunk
11 18 (1.28%) Cloudera
11 18 (1.28%) OpenAI
12 14 (1.00%) ServiceNow
13 12 (0.86%) Trend Micro
14 8 (0.57%) Denodo
14 8 (0.57%) Workday
15 7 (0.50%) Adobe
15 7 (0.50%) InterSystems
16 6 (0.43%) Teradata