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

6 months to
1 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 87 143 189
Rank change year-on-year +56 +46 +22
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,416 560 436
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.04% 2.00% 1.35%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.59% 2.20% 1.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 989 355 320
10th Percentile £400 £350 £375
25th Percentile £450 £413 £468
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -8.70% -8.00%
75th Percentile £650 £644 £676
90th Percentile £738 £744 £775
UK median daily rate £525 £515 £550
% change year-on-year +1.94% -6.36% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 5 6
10th Percentile - £36.73 £23.88
25th Percentile £21.25 £38.96 £34.88
Median hourly rate £62.40 £52.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.86% -12.50% -20.53%
75th Percentile £72.08 £65.00 -
90th Percentile £79.67 £92.00 -
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £58.75 £60.00
% change year-on-year -2.13% -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 39,431 25,424 27,856
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.70% 90.99% 86.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,955 16,149 17,033
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £512 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.64% -2.57% -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 2,897 1,546 1,199
10th Percentile £13.87 £14.42 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.60 £17.87 £20.30
Median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +63.02% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.50 £46.55 £67.01
90th Percentile £78.75 £67.25 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £39.00 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +55.07% -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 1 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 1 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 1 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 +49 866 £550 - 1,114
North of England +27 190 £475 +7.34% 277
Midlands +18 124 £475 +2.70% 120
West Midlands +31 102 £475 -13.64% 93
Yorkshire +29 96 £500 +5.26% 75
South East -11 94 £525 +17.98% 236
South West +36 88 £525 -8.70% 99
North West -25 59 £525 +22.09% 159
North East -4 37 £425 -17.07% 45
East of England -17 23 £550 +22.22% 44
East Midlands -3 22 £503 +15.57% 27
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
1 173 (12.22%) Apache Airflow
2 159 (11.23%) Apache Spark
3 128 (9.04%) Apache
4 31 (2.19%) Confluence
5 30 (2.12%) SAS
6 21 (1.48%) Jupyter
7 15 (1.06%) Palantir Foundry
7 15 (1.06%) SharePoint
8 5 (0.35%) Apache Solr
9 4 (0.28%) ArcGIS
10 3 (0.21%) Apache Superset
10 3 (0.21%) nginx
11 2 (0.14%) PowerExchange
12 1 (0.071%) Apache Pulsar
12 1 (0.071%) Apache Synapse
12 1 (0.071%) CICS
12 1 (0.071%) Microsoft Exchange
12 1 (0.071%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 9 (0.64%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.49%) Chatbot
3 6 (0.42%) 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 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 (0.071%) Cloudability
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%) SAP Oil and Gas
6 1 (0.071%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 588 (41.53%) Azure
2 527 (37.22%) AWS
3 258 (18.22%) Power Platform
4 240 (16.95%) Snowflake
5 223 (15.75%) dbt
6 214 (15.11%) GCP
7 170 (12.01%) Amazon S3
8 164 (11.58%) Azure Data Factory
9 132 (9.32%) Serverless
10 123 (8.69%) Azure DevOps
11 115 (8.12%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 110 (7.77%) AWS Lambda
13 104 (7.34%) GitHub
14 67 (4.73%) Azure Databricks
15 55 (3.88%) GitHub Actions
16 42 (2.97%) Amazon EMR
17 39 (2.75%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 36 (2.54%) Amazon Bedrock
19 34 (2.40%) Microsoft Purview
20 30 (2.12%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 7 (0.49%) Network Security
2 6 (0.42%) DNS
3 4 (0.28%) 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%) 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
1 290 (20.48%) Data Warehouse
2 245 (17.30%) Power BI
3 174 (12.29%) Data Lake
4 170 (12.01%) Metadata
5 116 (8.19%) BigQuery
6 97 (6.85%) Amazon Redshift
6 97 (6.85%) Delta Lake
7 76 (5.37%) Big Data
8 66 (4.66%) Tableau
9 65 (4.59%) Amazon Athena
10 54 (3.81%) SQL Server
11 50 (3.53%) Snowflake Schema
12 46 (3.25%) PostgreSQL
13 43 (3.04%) NoSQL
13 43 (3.04%) Relational Database
14 37 (2.61%) Looker
15 31 (2.19%) Amazon RDS
16 30 (2.12%) Azure SQL Database
16 30 (2.12%) Data Vault
17 25 (1.77%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 154 (10.88%) Git
2 87 (6.14%) GitLab
3 55 (3.88%) JIRA
4 24 (1.69%) Jenkins
5 21 (1.48%) 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 4 (0.28%) ER Studio
10 3 (0.21%) Artifactory
10 3 (0.21%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 3 (0.21%) Postman
10 3 (0.21%) SonarQube
10 3 (0.21%) TeamCity
11 2 (0.14%) Cucumber
11 2 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (0.14%) Yeoman
General
1 374 (26.41%) Social Skills
2 322 (22.74%) Finance
3 220 (15.54%) Analytical Skills
4 146 (10.31%) Public Sector
5 131 (9.25%) Banking
6 45 (3.18%) Marketing
7 32 (2.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 28 (1.98%) Retail
9 24 (1.69%) Front Office
10 22 (1.55%) Investment Banking
11 18 (1.27%) Pharmaceutical
12 16 (1.13%) Documentation Skills
12 16 (1.13%) Manufacturing
13 14 (0.99%) Telecoms
14 12 (0.85%) Back Office
14 12 (0.85%) Billing
15 11 (0.78%) Financial Institution
15 11 (0.78%) Influencing Skills
15 11 (0.78%) Military
16 10 (0.71%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 653 (46.12%) Data Engineer
2 223 (15.75%) Senior
3 165 (11.65%) Lead
4 150 (10.59%) Architect
5 145 (10.24%) Senior Data Engineer
6 80 (5.65%) Developer
7 79 (5.58%) Data Architect
8 70 (4.94%) AWS Engineer
9 63 (4.45%) Analyst
10 60 (4.24%) AWS Data Engineer
11 58 (4.10%) Databricks Engineer
11 58 (4.10%) Snowflake Engineer
12 52 (3.67%) Azure Engineer
13 48 (3.39%) Lead Data Engineer
14 47 (3.32%) Snowflake Data Engineer
15 46 (3.25%) Databricks Data Engineer
16 39 (2.75%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 35 (2.47%) GCP Engineer
18 34 (2.40%) Consultant
18 34 (2.40%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 227 (16.03%) Terraform
2 202 (14.27%) PySpark
3 91 (6.43%) Kafka
4 58 (4.10%) REST
5 32 (2.26%) React
6 27 (1.91%) .NET
7 26 (1.84%) JSON
8 20 (1.41%) Pandas
9 15 (1.06%) LangChain
9 15 (1.06%) PyTorch
10 13 (0.92%) FastAPI
11 12 (0.85%) NumPy
11 12 (0.85%) pytest
11 12 (0.85%) scikit-learn
11 12 (0.85%) TensorFlow
12 11 (0.78%) Apache NiFi
12 11 (0.78%) Microsoft Graph
12 11 (0.78%) RabbitMQ
13 10 (0.71%) RESTful
14 9 (0.64%) Great Expectations
Miscellaneous
1 194 (13.70%) Cloud Native
2 77 (5.44%) Onboarding
3 70 (4.94%) Data Structures
4 59 (4.17%) Product Ownership
5 48 (3.39%) Legacy Systems
6 47 (3.32%) AI Agents
7 41 (2.90%) Distributed Systems
8 23 (1.62%) Data Protection Act
9 19 (1.34%) Distributed Computing
9 19 (1.34%) Enterprise Software
10 18 (1.27%) Algorithms
10 18 (1.27%) Virtual Team
11 17 (1.20%) Management Information System
12 16 (1.13%) NHS
13 15 (1.06%) Greenfield Project
13 15 (1.06%) Life Science
14 13 (0.92%) Analytical Mindset
14 13 (0.92%) Clustering
14 13 (0.92%) Data Fabric
15 12 (0.85%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 27 (1.91%) Linux
2 22 (1.55%) Unix
3 7 (0.49%) 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
1 699 (49.36%) Data Pipeline
2 661 (46.68%) Analytics
3 560 (39.55%) Data Modelling
4 522 (36.86%) CI/CD
5 487 (34.39%) ETL
6 453 (31.99%) AI
7 362 (25.56%) Agile
8 350 (24.72%) DevOps
9 324 (22.88%) Business Intelligence
10 311 (21.96%) Data Governance
11 266 (18.79%) Stakeholder Management
12 248 (17.51%) Machine Learning
13 228 (16.10%) Infrastructure as Code
14 227 (16.03%) Data Architecture
14 227 (16.03%) Data Transformation
15 223 (15.75%) Validation
16 219 (15.47%) Problem-Solving
17 216 (15.25%) Migration
18 206 (14.55%) Decision-Making
19 201 (14.19%) Data Integration
Programming Languages
1 791 (55.86%) SQL
2 743 (52.47%) Python
3 95 (6.71%) Java
4 42 (2.97%) Scala
5 38 (2.68%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 38 (2.68%) PowerShell
6 33 (2.33%) C#
7 32 (2.26%) Bash
8 29 (2.05%) JavaScript
9 20 (1.41%) R
10 18 (1.27%) T-SQL
11 16 (1.13%) PL/SQL
12 14 (0.99%) Bicep
13 13 (0.92%) Kusto Query Language
13 13 (0.92%) TypeScript
14 10 (0.71%) Shell Script
15 8 (0.56%) Korn
16 7 (0.49%) Go
16 7 (0.49%) SAS Macro
16 7 (0.49%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 261 (18.43%) Security Cleared
2 214 (15.11%) SC Cleared
3 76 (5.37%) Degree
4 37 (2.61%) DV Cleared
5 36 (2.54%) Computer Science Degree
6 32 (2.26%) AWS Certification
6 32 (2.26%) Azure Certification
7 25 (1.77%) BPSS Clearance
8 19 (1.34%) Master's Degree
9 14 (0.99%) DBS Check
10 9 (0.64%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 9 (0.64%) SnowPro
11 8 (0.56%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 8 (0.56%) Microsoft Certification
12 5 (0.35%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 5 (0.35%) PMI Certification
12 5 (0.35%) PMP
12 5 (0.35%) TOGAF Certification
13 4 (0.28%) PhD
13 4 (0.28%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 481 (33.97%) Data Quality
2 73 (5.16%) QA
3 57 (4.03%) GDPR
4 26 (1.84%) Accessibility
5 12 (0.85%) SLA
6 6 (0.42%) 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%) 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
8 3 (0.21%) NIST
9 2 (0.14%) Basel III
9 2 (0.14%) EMIR
9 2 (0.14%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 119 (8.40%) Docker
2 5 (0.35%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.071%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 100 (7.06%) Kubernetes
2 27 (1.91%) Ansible
3 20 (1.41%) Grafana
4 11 (0.78%) 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 (0.071%) Cilium
9 1 (0.071%) HAProxy
9 1 (0.071%) IBM Guardium
9 1 (0.071%) Kustomize
9 1 (0.071%) Nagios
9 1 (0.071%) Progress Chef
9 1 (0.071%) QRadar
9 1 (0.071%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 392 (27.68%) Databricks
2 245 (17.30%) Microsoft
3 84 (5.93%) Google
4 70 (4.94%) Oracle
5 53 (3.74%) Informatica
6 25 (1.77%) Foundry
6 25 (1.77%) Salesforce
6 25 (1.77%) SAP
7 24 (1.69%) Talend
8 23 (1.62%) Palantir
9 19 (1.34%) OpenAI
10 14 (0.99%) Teradata
11 13 (0.92%) Cloudera
12 12 (0.85%) Trend Micro
13 11 (0.78%) Adobe
14 10 (0.71%) ServiceNow
15 8 (0.56%) Denodo
16 7 (0.49%) Hitachi
16 7 (0.49%) Splunk
17 6 (0.42%) MicroStrategy