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

6 months to
27 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 90 144 196
Rank change year-on-year +54 +52 +12
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,399 556 439
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.02% 1.99% 1.34%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.57% 2.19% 1.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 978 351 322
10th Percentile £400 £350 £400
25th Percentile £450 £413 £468
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -8.70% -4.17%
75th Percentile £638 £644 £676
90th Percentile £738 £748 £775
UK median daily rate £525 £515 £550
% change year-on-year +1.94% -6.36% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 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% -23.08%
75th Percentile £73.48 £65.00 -
90th Percentile £81.93 £92.00 -
UK median hourly rate £54.75 £58.75 £60.00
% change year-on-year -6.81% -2.08% -20.53%

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 39,218 25,382 28,205
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.59% 90.90% 86.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,880 16,110 17,293
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £420
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 2,852 1,550 1,234
10th Percentile £13.90 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.60 £17.87 £20.26
Median hourly rate £41.03 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +63.14% -41.51% -2.27%
75th Percentile £67.50 £47.41 £66.61
90th Percentile £79.00 £67.28 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £39.50 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +57.06% -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 27 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 27 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 27 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 +45 853 £550 - 1,027
North of England +28 186 £475 +7.34% 244
Midlands +32 123 £475 +2.70% 108
West Midlands +23 100 £475 -13.64% 81
Yorkshire +25 95 £500 +5.26% 64
South East -15 91 £525 +19.32% 141
South West +41 87 £525 -3.45% 81
North West -31 57 £513 +19.19% 146
North East -5 36 £425 -17.07% 35
East of England -9 25 £550 +22.22% 43
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
1 168 (12.01%) Apache Airflow
2 155 (11.08%) Apache Spark
3 122 (8.72%) Apache
4 32 (2.29%) SAS
5 31 (2.22%) Confluence
6 21 (1.50%) Jupyter
7 16 (1.14%) Palantir Foundry
8 15 (1.07%) SharePoint
9 5 (0.36%) Apache Solr
9 5 (0.36%) Apache Superset
10 4 (0.29%) ArcGIS
11 3 (0.21%) nginx
12 2 (0.14%) PowerExchange
13 1 (0.071%) Apache Synapse
13 1 (0.071%) CICS
13 1 (0.071%) Microsoft Exchange
13 1 (0.071%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 9 (0.64%) 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 7 (0.50%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.29%) NetSuite
3 4 (0.29%) 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%) 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
1 581 (41.53%) Azure
2 524 (37.46%) AWS
3 256 (18.30%) Power Platform
4 231 (16.51%) Snowflake
5 214 (15.30%) dbt
6 210 (15.01%) GCP
7 162 (11.58%) Amazon S3
8 161 (11.51%) Azure Data Factory
9 131 (9.36%) Serverless
10 124 (8.86%) Azure DevOps
11 114 (8.15%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 108 (7.72%) AWS Lambda
13 103 (7.36%) GitHub
14 66 (4.72%) Azure Databricks
15 55 (3.93%) GitHub Actions
16 41 (2.93%) Amazon EMR
17 37 (2.64%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 35 (2.50%) Amazon Bedrock
19 32 (2.29%) Microsoft Purview
20 30 (2.14%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 6 (0.43%) DNS
2 4 (0.29%) Firewall
2 4 (0.29%) Network Security
3 2 (0.14%) Broadband
4 1 (0.071%) HTTP
4 1 (0.071%) HTTPS
4 1 (0.071%) Internet
4 1 (0.071%) MIMO
4 1 (0.071%) MQTT
4 1 (0.071%) Radio Access Network
4 1 (0.071%) SMS
4 1 (0.071%) SSL
4 1 (0.071%) TCP/IP
4 1 (0.071%) tcpdump
4 1 (0.071%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 288 (20.59%) Data Warehouse
2 242 (17.30%) Power BI
3 176 (12.58%) Data Lake
4 167 (11.94%) Metadata
5 114 (8.15%) BigQuery
6 97 (6.93%) Delta Lake
7 94 (6.72%) Amazon Redshift
8 71 (5.08%) Big Data
9 67 (4.79%) Tableau
10 65 (4.65%) Amazon Athena
11 52 (3.72%) SQL Server
12 47 (3.36%) Snowflake Schema
13 46 (3.29%) PostgreSQL
14 43 (3.07%) NoSQL
15 42 (3.00%) Relational Database
16 37 (2.64%) Looker
17 29 (2.07%) Amazon RDS
17 29 (2.07%) Azure SQL Database
17 29 (2.07%) Data Vault
18 25 (1.79%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 149 (10.65%) Git
2 83 (5.93%) GitLab
3 55 (3.93%) JIRA
4 24 (1.72%) Jenkins
5 22 (1.57%) 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 (0.29%) ER Studio
10 3 (0.21%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 3 (0.21%) Postman
10 3 (0.21%) SonarQube
11 2 (0.14%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.14%) Cucumber
11 2 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (0.14%) TeamCity
11 2 (0.14%) Yeoman
General
1 359 (25.66%) Social Skills
2 317 (22.66%) Finance
3 222 (15.87%) Analytical Skills
4 144 (10.29%) Public Sector
5 127 (9.08%) Banking
6 45 (3.22%) Marketing
7 31 (2.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 27 (1.93%) Retail
9 22 (1.57%) Front Office
10 21 (1.50%) Investment Banking
11 18 (1.29%) Pharmaceutical
12 17 (1.22%) Documentation Skills
13 16 (1.14%) Manufacturing
14 14 (1.00%) Telecoms
15 12 (0.86%) Back Office
15 12 (0.86%) Influencing Skills
16 11 (0.79%) Billing
16 11 (0.79%) Law
17 10 (0.71%) Military
17 10 (0.71%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 643 (45.96%) Data Engineer
2 216 (15.44%) Senior
3 162 (11.58%) Lead
4 154 (11.01%) Architect
5 139 (9.94%) Senior Data Engineer
6 81 (5.79%) Data Architect
7 80 (5.72%) Developer
8 68 (4.86%) AWS Engineer
9 59 (4.22%) Analyst
10 58 (4.15%) AWS Data Engineer
11 56 (4.00%) Databricks Engineer
11 56 (4.00%) Snowflake Engineer
12 52 (3.72%) Azure Engineer
13 48 (3.43%) Lead Data Engineer
14 45 (3.22%) Snowflake Data Engineer
15 44 (3.15%) Databricks Data Engineer
16 38 (2.72%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 36 (2.57%) Consultant
18 34 (2.43%) GCP Engineer
18 34 (2.43%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 220 (15.73%) Terraform
2 199 (14.22%) PySpark
3 87 (6.22%) Kafka
4 52 (3.72%) REST
5 32 (2.29%) React
6 27 (1.93%) .NET
7 26 (1.86%) JSON
8 19 (1.36%) Pandas
9 13 (0.93%) LangChain
9 13 (0.93%) PyTorch
10 12 (0.86%) FastAPI
10 12 (0.86%) pytest
11 11 (0.79%) Microsoft Graph
11 11 (0.79%) NumPy
11 11 (0.79%) RabbitMQ
12 10 (0.71%) RESTful
12 10 (0.71%) scikit-learn
12 10 (0.71%) TensorFlow
13 9 (0.64%) Apache Avro
13 9 (0.64%) Great Expectations
Miscellaneous
1 191 (13.65%) Cloud Native
2 74 (5.29%) Onboarding
3 69 (4.93%) Data Structures
4 59 (4.22%) Product Ownership
5 48 (3.43%) Legacy Systems
6 47 (3.36%) AI Agents
7 40 (2.86%) Distributed Systems
8 21 (1.50%) Data Protection Act
9 19 (1.36%) Distributed Computing
9 19 (1.36%) Enterprise Software
10 18 (1.29%) NHS
10 18 (1.29%) Virtual Team
11 17 (1.22%) Management Information System
12 15 (1.07%) Greenfield Project
12 15 (1.07%) Life Science
13 14 (1.00%) Analytical Mindset
14 13 (0.93%) Algorithms
14 13 (0.93%) Clustering
14 13 (0.93%) Data Fabric
15 11 (0.79%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 28 (2.00%) Linux
2 23 (1.64%) Unix
3 7 (0.50%) 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
1 687 (49.11%) Data Pipeline
2 657 (46.96%) Analytics
3 552 (39.46%) Data Modelling
4 510 (36.45%) CI/CD
5 481 (34.38%) ETL
6 444 (31.74%) AI
7 350 (25.02%) Agile
8 343 (24.52%) DevOps
9 319 (22.80%) Business Intelligence
10 310 (22.16%) Data Governance
11 255 (18.23%) Stakeholder Management
12 240 (17.16%) Machine Learning
13 226 (16.15%) Data Architecture
14 223 (15.94%) Data Transformation
15 222 (15.87%) Infrastructure as Code
16 218 (15.58%) Validation
17 215 (15.37%) Migration
17 215 (15.37%) Problem-Solving
18 201 (14.37%) Decision-Making
19 190 (13.58%) Data Integration
Programming Languages
1 773 (55.25%) SQL
2 725 (51.82%) Python
3 95 (6.79%) Java
4 40 (2.86%) Scala
5 37 (2.64%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 37 (2.64%) PowerShell
6 33 (2.36%) C#
7 32 (2.29%) Bash
8 29 (2.07%) JavaScript
9 18 (1.29%) R
9 18 (1.29%) T-SQL
10 16 (1.14%) PL/SQL
11 13 (0.93%) Bicep
11 13 (0.93%) TypeScript
12 12 (0.86%) Kusto Query Language
13 10 (0.71%) Shell Script
14 8 (0.57%) SAS Macro
15 7 (0.50%) Go
15 7 (0.50%) Korn
15 7 (0.50%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 258 (18.44%) Security Cleared
2 216 (15.44%) SC Cleared
3 72 (5.15%) Degree
4 35 (2.50%) Computer Science Degree
5 33 (2.36%) DV Cleared
6 30 (2.14%) Azure Certification
7 29 (2.07%) AWS Certification
8 24 (1.72%) BPSS Clearance
9 19 (1.36%) Master's Degree
10 14 (1.00%) 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%) PMI Certification
13 5 (0.36%) PMP
13 5 (0.36%) TOGAF Certification
14 4 (0.29%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 4 (0.29%) PhD
14 4 (0.29%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 468 (33.45%) Data Quality
2 75 (5.36%) QA
3 56 (4.00%) GDPR
4 26 (1.86%) Accessibility
5 12 (0.86%) SLA
6 5 (0.36%) GRC
7 4 (0.29%) Disclosure Scotland
7 4 (0.29%) 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
1 117 (8.36%) Docker
2 5 (0.36%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.071%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 94 (6.72%) Kubernetes
2 23 (1.64%) Ansible
3 20 (1.43%) Grafana
4 10 (0.71%) Prometheus
5 8 (0.57%) Kibana
6 7 (0.50%) 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
1 384 (27.45%) Databricks
2 248 (17.73%) Microsoft
3 84 (6.00%) Google
4 69 (4.93%) Oracle
5 55 (3.93%) Informatica
6 27 (1.93%) Foundry
7 26 (1.86%) SAP
8 25 (1.79%) Talend
9 24 (1.72%) Palantir
10 23 (1.64%) Salesforce
11 18 (1.29%) OpenAI
12 14 (1.00%) Teradata
13 13 (0.93%) Cloudera
14 12 (0.86%) Trend Micro
15 11 (0.79%) Adobe
16 10 (0.71%) ServiceNow
17 8 (0.57%) Denodo
18 7 (0.50%) Hitachi
18 7 (0.50%) Splunk
19 6 (0.43%) MicroStrategy