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 15 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 84 145 201
Rank change year-on-year +61 +56 -10
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,159 460 421
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.96% 1.89% 1.14%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.46% 2.07% 1.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 811 322 312
10th Percentile £400 £400 £408
25th Percentile £450 £460 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £560
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% -1.79% -6.67%
75th Percentile £625 £688 £678
90th Percentile £750 £838 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 12 11
10th Percentile £53.45 £22.00 £30.37
25th Percentile £65.00 £22.38 £33.13
Median hourly rate £70.00 £25.97 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +169.59% -25.81% -52.05%
75th Percentile £80.88 £35.94 £55.13
90th Percentile £89.00 £63.88 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £70.00 £25.97 £35.00
% change year-on-year +169.59% -25.81% -35.48%

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 33,504 22,203 32,130
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.48% 91.02% 86.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,453 14,593 21,161
10th Percentile £313 £313 £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 £613 £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 2,080 880 2,196
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.83 £12.85
25th Percentile £20.07 £18.51 £15.75
Median hourly rate £41.56 £31.76 £34.00
Median % change year-on-year +30.84% -6.59% -9.33%
75th Percentile £66.50 £64.50 £58.69
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.28 £71.75
UK median hourly rate £37.00 £30.78 £33.07
% change year-on-year +20.21% -6.91% -8.79%

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 15 April 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 15 April 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 15 April 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 +56 734 £550 -8.33% 178
Midlands +28 123 £513 +2.50% 30
North of England +1 122 £475 -5.00% 76
West Midlands +18 97 £517 -4.31% 24
South West +17 71 £525 -14.29% 30
Yorkshire -13 54 £480 -14.67% 28
North West -21 49 £480 +1.05% 42
South East -28 49 £538 +7.50% 80
East Midlands -13 23 £449 -5.58% 6
East of England -17 23 £575 +54.08% 19
North East 0 21 £450 -5.26% 9
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 (14.84%) Apache Spark
2 116 (10.01%) Apache Airflow
3 73 (6.30%) Apache
4 27 (2.33%) SAS
5 18 (1.55%) Palantir Foundry
6 10 (0.86%) Confluence
7 8 (0.69%) Appian
8 7 (0.60%) Apache Superset
9 5 (0.43%) Jupyter
10 4 (0.35%) Microsoft Exchange
11 2 (0.17%) Apache Synapse
11 2 (0.17%) SharePoint
12 1 (0.086%) ArcGIS
12 1 (0.086%) Camunda
12 1 (0.086%) CICS
12 1 (0.086%) CMS
12 1 (0.086%) IBM HTTP Server
Applications
1 23 (1.98%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 7 (0.60%) Microsoft Office
4 6 (0.52%) Spreadsheet
5 4 (0.35%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.26%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.26%) Trello
7 2 (0.17%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 5 (0.43%) BambooHR
2 4 (0.35%) Aladdin
2 4 (0.35%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
3 3 (0.26%) SAP BPC
4 2 (0.17%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.086%) Actimize
5 1 (0.086%) Markit EDM
5 1 (0.086%) Maximo
5 1 (0.086%) Misys Midas
5 1 (0.086%) SAP ECC
Cloud Services
1 538 (46.42%) Azure
2 413 (35.63%) AWS
3 265 (22.86%) Power Platform
4 185 (15.96%) Azure Data Factory
5 163 (14.06%) GCP
6 138 (11.91%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 133 (11.48%) Snowflake
8 125 (10.79%) Amazon S3
8 125 (10.79%) GitHub
9 108 (9.32%) dbt
10 98 (8.46%) Serverless
11 94 (8.11%) Azure DevOps
12 79 (6.82%) AWS Lambda
13 75 (6.47%) GitHub Actions
14 46 (3.97%) AWS CloudFormation
15 27 (2.33%) Dagster
16 26 (2.24%) AWS Step Functions
16 26 (2.24%) Collibra
17 23 (1.98%) Amazon Kinesis
18 22 (1.90%) Amazon SageMaker
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.43%) RTP
2 4 (0.35%) Cisco IPT
2 4 (0.35%) Kerberos
2 4 (0.35%) Network Security
3 3 (0.26%) VPN
4 1 (0.086%) 4G
4 1 (0.086%) 5G
4 1 (0.086%) Firewall
4 1 (0.086%) MIMO
4 1 (0.086%) SAN
4 1 (0.086%) SMS
4 1 (0.086%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 240 (20.71%) Power BI
2 230 (19.84%) Data Warehouse
3 181 (15.62%) Data Lake
4 106 (9.15%) Metadata
5 79 (6.82%) SQL Server
6 77 (6.64%) NoSQL
7 76 (6.56%) Delta Lake
8 73 (6.30%) Big Data
9 67 (5.78%) Amazon Redshift
10 65 (5.61%) Tableau
11 64 (5.52%) Azure SQL Database
12 62 (5.35%) BigQuery
13 61 (5.26%) Snowflake Schema
14 54 (4.66%) Relational Database
15 53 (4.57%) Amazon Athena
16 44 (3.80%) PostgreSQL
17 38 (3.28%) Hadoop
17 38 (3.28%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 33 (2.85%) Spark SQL
19 24 (2.07%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 146 (12.60%) Git
2 48 (4.14%) GitLab
3 40 (3.45%) MLflow
4 36 (3.11%) Jenkins
5 33 (2.85%) JIRA
6 7 (0.60%) Selenium
6 7 (0.60%) SonarQube
7 3 (0.26%) JUnit
7 3 (0.26%) Maven
7 3 (0.26%) Postman
7 3 (0.26%) Robot Framework
7 3 (0.26%) Snyk
7 3 (0.26%) Terragrunt
8 2 (0.17%) Artifactory
8 2 (0.17%) Bitbucket
8 2 (0.17%) Cucumber
8 2 (0.17%) Mockito
8 2 (0.17%) Visual Studio
8 2 (0.17%) Visual Studio Code
9 1 (0.086%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 293 (25.28%) Finance
2 279 (24.07%) Social Skills
3 178 (15.36%) Analytical Skills
4 99 (8.54%) Public Sector
5 62 (5.35%) Banking
6 28 (2.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 21 (1.81%) Retail
8 16 (1.38%) Documentation Skills
8 16 (1.38%) Front Office
8 16 (1.38%) Influencing Skills
8 16 (1.38%) Marketing
9 15 (1.29%) Telecoms
10 13 (1.12%) Investment Banking
10 13 (1.12%) Legal
11 12 (1.04%) Financial Institution
12 7 (0.60%) Pharmaceutical
13 6 (0.52%) Back Office
13 6 (0.52%) Law
13 6 (0.52%) Military
14 5 (0.43%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 550 (47.45%) Data Engineer
2 155 (13.37%) Senior
3 133 (11.48%) Lead
4 112 (9.66%) Architect
5 104 (8.97%) Senior Data Engineer
6 69 (5.95%) Developer
7 68 (5.87%) Azure Engineer
8 58 (5.00%) Data Architect
9 56 (4.83%) Azure Data Engineer
10 54 (4.66%) Analyst
10 54 (4.66%) Lead Data Engineer
11 47 (4.06%) AWS Engineer
12 43 (3.71%) Data Scientist
12 43 (3.71%) Snowflake Engineer
13 37 (3.19%) Consultant
14 35 (3.02%) Snowflake Data Engineer
15 33 (2.85%) AWS Data Engineer
16 31 (2.67%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 31 (2.67%) Data Analyst
16 31 (2.67%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 182 (15.70%) PySpark
2 142 (12.25%) Kafka
3 53 (4.57%) Pandas
4 42 (3.62%) scikit-learn
5 41 (3.54%) PyTorch
6 35 (3.02%) NumPy
7 32 (2.76%) TensorFlow
8 29 (2.50%) JSON
9 24 (2.07%) REST
10 23 (1.98%) Spring
10 23 (1.98%) YAML
11 22 (1.90%) pytest
12 21 (1.81%) React
13 20 (1.73%) LangChain
13 20 (1.73%) RESTful
14 18 (1.55%) FastAPI
14 18 (1.55%) Great Expectations
15 16 (1.38%) Flask
15 16 (1.38%) Spring Boot
16 14 (1.21%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 148 (12.77%) Cloud Native
2 38 (3.28%) Distributed Systems
3 37 (3.19%) Product Ownership
4 35 (3.02%) Legacy Systems
5 31 (2.67%) Data Structures
6 28 (2.42%) Distributed Computing
7 26 (2.24%) Algorithms
8 22 (1.90%) Greenfield Project
9 21 (1.81%) AI Agents
10 20 (1.73%) Hybrid Cloud
10 20 (1.73%) Onboarding
11 17 (1.47%) Analytical Mindset
11 17 (1.47%) Data Protection Act
12 15 (1.29%) Clustering
13 14 (1.21%) NHS
14 12 (1.04%) Fixed Income
15 10 (0.86%) Management Information System
15 10 (0.86%) Self-Motivation
16 8 (0.69%) Replication
16 8 (0.69%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 27 (2.33%) Linux
2 16 (1.38%) Unix
3 8 (0.69%) VMS
4 3 (0.26%) Windows
5 2 (0.17%) Ubuntu
5 2 (0.17%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.086%) CentOS
6 1 (0.086%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 590 (50.91%) Analytics
2 527 (45.47%) Data Pipeline
3 463 (39.95%) ETL
4 456 (39.34%) Data Modelling
5 390 (33.65%) CI/CD
6 302 (26.06%) AI
7 299 (25.80%) Business Intelligence
8 293 (25.28%) Agile
9 292 (25.19%) DevOps
10 276 (23.81%) Data Governance
11 225 (19.41%) Machine Learning
12 223 (19.24%) Problem-Solving
13 218 (18.81%) Data Science
14 190 (16.39%) Data Architecture
15 147 (12.68%) Decision-Making
16 134 (11.56%) Infrastructure as Code
17 130 (11.22%) Validation
18 128 (11.04%) Data Transformation
19 124 (10.70%) Migration
20 111 (9.58%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 640 (55.22%) Python
2 625 (53.93%) SQL
3 100 (8.63%) Java
4 68 (5.87%) Scala
5 41 (3.54%) C#
6 39 (3.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 26 (2.24%) Bash
7 26 (2.24%) PowerShell
8 22 (1.90%) JavaScript
8 22 (1.90%) R
9 21 (1.81%) T-SQL
10 18 (1.55%) Bicep
11 13 (1.12%) Go
12 11 (0.95%) TypeScript
13 10 (0.86%) Shell Script
14 9 (0.78%) PL/SQL
15 6 (0.52%) Korn
16 5 (0.43%) SAS Macro
17 4 (0.35%) C++
18 2 (0.17%) Rust
Qualifications
1 237 (20.45%) Security Cleared
2 205 (17.69%) SC Cleared
3 79 (6.82%) Degree
4 44 (3.80%) Azure Certification
5 38 (3.28%) Computer Science Degree
6 29 (2.50%) Master's Degree
7 16 (1.38%) BPSS Clearance
8 15 (1.29%) DV Cleared
9 11 (0.95%) AWS Certification
10 8 (0.69%) Microsoft Certification
11 7 (0.60%) PhD
12 4 (0.35%) DBS Check
12 4 (0.35%) Microsoft Certified Professional
13 3 (0.26%) SnowPro
14 2 (0.17%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 2 (0.17%) Tableau Certification
15 1 (0.086%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 1 (0.086%) CCSP
15 1 (0.086%) OCP
15 1 (0.086%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 321 (27.70%) Data Quality
2 89 (7.68%) GDPR
3 41 (3.54%) QA
4 13 (1.12%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 8 (0.69%) Accessibility
6 5 (0.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (0.43%) PERC
7 4 (0.35%) HIPAA
7 4 (0.35%) SLA
7 4 (0.35%) SOC 2
7 4 (0.35%) Solvency II
8 3 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 3 (0.26%) GRC
8 3 (0.26%) WCAG
9 2 (0.17%) HL7
9 2 (0.17%) MiFID
9 2 (0.17%) NIST
9 2 (0.17%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.17%) PMO
10 1 (0.086%) NCSC
System Software
1 122 (10.53%) Docker
2 5 (0.43%) HDFS
3 3 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.086%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.086%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 164 (14.15%) Terraform
2 124 (10.70%) Kubernetes
3 26 (2.24%) Prometheus
4 14 (1.21%) Grafana
5 5 (0.43%) Ansible
5 5 (0.43%) Argo
6 4 (0.35%) Kibana
6 4 (0.35%) Kubeflow
7 3 (0.26%) Nagios
7 3 (0.26%) Rancher
8 2 (0.17%) Hadoop YARN
8 2 (0.17%) logstash
8 2 (0.17%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.086%) Apache Ranger
9 1 (0.086%) Control-M
9 1 (0.086%) HP Fortify
9 1 (0.086%) IBM Guardium
9 1 (0.086%) Oozie
Vendors
1 326 (28.13%) Databricks
2 181 (15.62%) Microsoft
3 60 (5.18%) Google
4 47 (4.06%) Informatica
5 35 (3.02%) Oracle
6 27 (2.33%) Talend
7 25 (2.16%) Foundry
8 21 (1.81%) OpenAI
9 20 (1.73%) Palantir
10 19 (1.64%) Splunk
11 18 (1.55%) SAP
12 15 (1.29%) Cloudera
13 13 (1.12%) ServiceNow
14 11 (0.95%) Denodo
15 9 (0.78%) Salesforce
15 9 (0.78%) UiPath
16 8 (0.69%) Automation Anywhere
17 6 (0.52%) IBM
17 6 (0.52%) MicroStrategy
18 5 (0.43%) Workday