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

6 months to
10 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 86 130 186
Rank change year-on-year +44 +56 +33
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,424 587 437
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.08% 2.09% 1.35%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.63% 2.30% 1.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 992 366 326
10th Percentile £400 £350 £400
25th Percentile £445 £425 £469
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -8.70% -4.17%
75th Percentile £650 £650 £676
90th Percentile £744 £756 £775
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £550
% change year-on-year +0.96% -5.45% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 5 5
10th Percentile - £36.73 £23.35
25th Percentile £21.25 £38.96 £26.50
Median hourly rate £62.45 £52.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.95% -12.50% -23.08%
75th Percentile £71.79 £65.00 -
90th Percentile £83.78 £92.00 -
UK median hourly rate £59.95 £58.75 £43.25
% change year-on-year +2.04% +35.84% -42.72%

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 39,257 25,497 27,959
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.86% 90.90% 86.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,690 16,157 17,059
10th Percentile £325 £293 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £416
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,996 1,590 1,150
10th Percentile £13.69 £14.54 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.33 £17.87 £20.30
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -40.82% -4.49%
75th Percentile £67.47 £45.00 £67.38
90th Percentile £78.88 £67.28 £74.88
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.16
% change year-on-year +49.11% -37.38% -8.38%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 +39 870 £550 - 1,296
North of England +23 190 £475 +6.15% 262
Midlands +29 126 £475 +2.70% 84
West Midlands +26 104 £475 -17.39% 60
South East -15 96 £500 +12.36% 145
South West +41 91 £525 -14.29% 63
Yorkshire +33 88 £500 +5.26% 71
North West -23 65 £500 +14.94% 152
North East -11 37 £425 -5.56% 39
East Midlands -1 22 £503 +15.57% 24
East of England -29 20 £538 +13.16% 47
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
1 181 (12.71%) Apache Airflow
2 165 (11.59%) Apache Spark
3 142 (9.97%) Apache
4 30 (2.11%) Confluence
5 29 (2.04%) SAS
6 19 (1.33%) Jupyter
7 16 (1.12%) Palantir Foundry
8 15 (1.05%) SharePoint
9 5 (0.35%) Apache Solr
10 4 (0.28%) ArcGIS
10 4 (0.28%) nginx
11 3 (0.21%) Apache Superset
12 2 (0.14%) PowerExchange
13 1 (0.070%) Apache Pulsar
13 1 (0.070%) Microsoft Exchange
13 1 (0.070%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 12 (0.84%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.49%) Chatbot
2 7 (0.49%) Spreadsheet
3 3 (0.21%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.14%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.070%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.070%) Notion
Business Applications
1 10 (0.70%) Aladdin
2 5 (0.35%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (0.35%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.28%) NetSuite
3 4 (0.28%) Sage X3
4 3 (0.21%) 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 (0.070%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.070%) Markit EDM
6 1 (0.070%) MIS ActiveH
6 1 (0.070%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.070%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.070%) SAP ECC
6 1 (0.070%) SAP Oil and Gas
6 1 (0.070%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 594 (41.71%) Azure
2 528 (37.08%) AWS
3 261 (18.33%) Power Platform
4 240 (16.85%) Snowflake
5 226 (15.87%) GCP
6 223 (15.66%) dbt
7 168 (11.80%) Amazon S3
8 164 (11.52%) Azure Data Factory
9 128 (8.99%) Serverless
10 126 (8.85%) Azure DevOps
11 116 (8.15%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 105 (7.37%) GitHub
13 104 (7.30%) AWS Lambda
14 68 (4.78%) Azure Databricks
15 53 (3.72%) GitHub Actions
16 40 (2.81%) Amazon EMR
17 36 (2.53%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 35 (2.46%) Amazon Bedrock
19 34 (2.39%) Microsoft Purview
20 30 (2.11%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 8 (0.56%) Network Security
2 7 (0.49%) DNS
3 5 (0.35%) Firewall
4 2 (0.14%) Broadband
5 1 (0.070%) HTTP
5 1 (0.070%) HTTPS
5 1 (0.070%) Internet
5 1 (0.070%) MQTT
5 1 (0.070%) Radio Access Network
5 1 (0.070%) Reverse Proxy
5 1 (0.070%) SMS
5 1 (0.070%) SSL
5 1 (0.070%) TCP/IP
5 1 (0.070%) tcpdump
5 1 (0.070%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 289 (20.29%) Data Warehouse
2 249 (17.49%) Power BI
3 172 (12.08%) Metadata
4 168 (11.80%) Data Lake
5 114 (8.01%) BigQuery
6 100 (7.02%) Delta Lake
7 96 (6.74%) Amazon Redshift
8 72 (5.06%) Big Data
9 63 (4.42%) Amazon Athena
10 59 (4.14%) Tableau
11 53 (3.72%) SQL Server
12 48 (3.37%) Snowflake Schema
13 46 (3.23%) NoSQL
14 44 (3.09%) PostgreSQL
15 40 (2.81%) Relational Database
16 36 (2.53%) Looker
17 32 (2.25%) Amazon RDS
18 31 (2.18%) Azure SQL Database
19 29 (2.04%) Data Vault
20 27 (1.90%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 153 (10.74%) Git
2 90 (6.32%) GitLab
3 49 (3.44%) JIRA
4 25 (1.76%) Jenkins
5 22 (1.54%) MLflow
6 8 (0.56%) Bitbucket
6 8 (0.56%) Claude Code
6 8 (0.56%) RStudio
6 8 (0.56%) Terragrunt
7 7 (0.49%) Selenium
8 6 (0.42%) ERwin
9 4 (0.28%) ER Studio
9 4 (0.28%) Postman
10 3 (0.21%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 3 (0.21%) Cucumber
10 3 (0.21%) TeamCity
11 2 (0.14%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.14%) SonarQube
11 2 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (0.14%) Yeoman
General
1 377 (26.47%) Social Skills
2 319 (22.40%) Finance
3 220 (15.45%) Analytical Skills
4 144 (10.11%) Public Sector
5 132 (9.27%) Banking
6 44 (3.09%) Marketing
7 32 (2.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 25 (1.76%) Front Office
8 25 (1.76%) Investment Banking
8 25 (1.76%) Retail
9 19 (1.33%) Pharmaceutical
10 16 (1.12%) Documentation Skills
10 16 (1.12%) Manufacturing
11 14 (0.98%) Billing
12 13 (0.91%) Aerospace
12 13 (0.91%) Financial Institution
12 13 (0.91%) Telecoms
13 12 (0.84%) Back Office
13 12 (0.84%) Law
14 10 (0.70%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 667 (46.84%) Data Engineer
2 220 (15.45%) Senior
3 167 (11.73%) Lead
4 149 (10.46%) Senior Data Engineer
5 142 (9.97%) Architect
6 78 (5.48%) Developer
7 72 (5.06%) Data Architect
8 68 (4.78%) AWS Engineer
9 67 (4.71%) Analyst
10 60 (4.21%) Databricks Engineer
10 60 (4.21%) Snowflake Engineer
11 58 (4.07%) AWS Data Engineer
12 51 (3.58%) Azure Engineer
13 50 (3.51%) Lead Data Engineer
13 50 (3.51%) Snowflake Data Engineer
14 48 (3.37%) Databricks Data Engineer
15 41 (2.88%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 39 (2.74%) GCP Engineer
17 38 (2.67%) Data Analyst
18 36 (2.53%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 219 (15.38%) Terraform
2 213 (14.96%) PySpark
3 96 (6.74%) Kafka
4 60 (4.21%) REST
5 29 (2.04%) .NET
5 29 (2.04%) React
6 26 (1.83%) JSON
7 22 (1.54%) Pandas
8 18 (1.26%) LangChain
9 15 (1.05%) PyTorch
10 14 (0.98%) pytest
10 14 (0.98%) RabbitMQ
11 13 (0.91%) FastAPI
12 12 (0.84%) Apache NiFi
12 12 (0.84%) Microsoft Graph
12 12 (0.84%) NumPy
12 12 (0.84%) scikit-learn
12 12 (0.84%) TensorFlow
13 10 (0.70%) LangGraph
13 10 (0.70%) LlamaIndex
Miscellaneous
1 193 (13.55%) Cloud Native
2 77 (5.41%) Onboarding
3 68 (4.78%) Data Structures
4 65 (4.56%) Product Ownership
5 48 (3.37%) AI Agents
5 48 (3.37%) Legacy Systems
6 41 (2.88%) Distributed Systems
7 25 (1.76%) Data Protection Act
8 22 (1.54%) Algorithms
9 21 (1.47%) Distributed Computing
9 21 (1.47%) Enterprise Software
10 20 (1.40%) Management Information System
11 18 (1.26%) Virtual Team
12 16 (1.12%) Life Science
13 14 (0.98%) Clustering
13 14 (0.98%) Data Fabric
14 13 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
14 13 (0.91%) NHS
14 13 (0.91%) Reference Data
15 12 (0.84%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 30 (2.11%) Linux
2 22 (1.54%) Unix
3 9 (0.63%) Windows
4 1 (0.070%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.070%) Robot Operating System
4 1 (0.070%) Ubuntu
4 1 (0.070%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 712 (50.00%) Data Pipeline
2 657 (46.14%) Analytics
3 567 (39.82%) Data Modelling
4 537 (37.71%) CI/CD
5 496 (34.83%) ETL
6 456 (32.02%) AI
7 372 (26.12%) Agile
8 362 (25.42%) DevOps
9 330 (23.17%) Business Intelligence
10 316 (22.19%) Data Governance
11 264 (18.54%) Stakeholder Management
12 254 (17.84%) Machine Learning
13 235 (16.50%) Validation
14 227 (15.94%) Data Transformation
15 225 (15.80%) Problem-Solving
16 220 (15.45%) Infrastructure as Code
17 217 (15.24%) Migration
18 216 (15.17%) Data Architecture
19 213 (14.96%) Data Integration
20 203 (14.26%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 808 (56.74%) SQL
2 758 (53.23%) Python
3 90 (6.32%) Java
4 41 (2.88%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 39 (2.74%) PowerShell
5 39 (2.74%) Scala
6 36 (2.53%) C#
7 32 (2.25%) Bash
8 29 (2.04%) JavaScript
9 19 (1.33%) R
9 19 (1.33%) T-SQL
10 17 (1.19%) PL/SQL
11 16 (1.12%) TypeScript
12 14 (0.98%) Kusto Query Language
13 13 (0.91%) Bicep
14 11 (0.77%) Shell Script
15 9 (0.63%) Korn
16 8 (0.56%) SAS Macro
17 7 (0.49%) Go
17 7 (0.49%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 270 (18.96%) Security Cleared
2 220 (15.45%) SC Cleared
3 82 (5.76%) Degree
4 43 (3.02%) DV Cleared
5 42 (2.95%) Computer Science Degree
6 39 (2.74%) AWS Certification
7 36 (2.53%) Azure Certification
8 27 (1.90%) BPSS Clearance
9 19 (1.33%) Master's Degree
10 14 (0.98%) DBS Check
11 10 (0.70%) SnowPro
12 9 (0.63%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
13 8 (0.56%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 8 (0.56%) Microsoft Certification
14 7 (0.49%) TOGAF Certification
15 5 (0.35%) Microsoft Certified Professional
15 5 (0.35%) PMI Certification
15 5 (0.35%) PMP
16 4 (0.28%) PhD
17 3 (0.21%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 491 (34.48%) Data Quality
2 76 (5.34%) QA
3 55 (3.86%) GDPR
4 28 (1.97%) Accessibility
5 11 (0.77%) SLA
6 6 (0.42%) GRC
7 5 (0.35%) NCSC
8 4 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 4 (0.28%) Disclosure Scotland
8 4 (0.28%) EU AI Act
8 4 (0.28%) NIST
8 4 (0.28%) PMO
9 3 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
9 3 (0.21%) IFRS
9 3 (0.21%) IFRS 9
9 3 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 3 (0.21%) MiFID
9 3 (0.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 2 (0.14%) 21 CFR Part 11
10 2 (0.14%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 116 (8.15%) Docker
2 5 (0.35%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.070%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 108 (7.58%) Kubernetes
2 29 (2.04%) Ansible
3 24 (1.69%) Grafana
4 15 (1.05%) Prometheus
5 8 (0.56%) Kibana
6 7 (0.49%) Control-M
7 3 (0.21%) logstash
8 2 (0.14%) Progress Chef
8 2 (0.14%) Puppet
9 1 (0.070%) Argo
9 1 (0.070%) Cilium
9 1 (0.070%) HAProxy
9 1 (0.070%) Kubeflow
9 1 (0.070%) Kustomize
9 1 (0.070%) QRadar
9 1 (0.070%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 396 (27.81%) Databricks
2 254 (17.84%) Microsoft
3 88 (6.18%) Google
4 75 (5.27%) Oracle
5 53 (3.72%) Informatica
6 30 (2.11%) SAP
7 26 (1.83%) Foundry
7 26 (1.83%) Talend
8 25 (1.76%) Palantir
9 23 (1.62%) Salesforce
10 19 (1.33%) OpenAI
11 15 (1.05%) Cloudera
11 15 (1.05%) Teradata
12 12 (0.84%) Trend Micro
13 11 (0.77%) Adobe
14 10 (0.70%) Denodo
15 8 (0.56%) Splunk
16 7 (0.49%) Hitachi
17 6 (0.42%) Bloomberg
17 6 (0.42%) MicroStrategy