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 4 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 93 151 214
Rank change year-on-year +58 +63 +2
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,011 456 415
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.81% 1.81% 1.10%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.23% 2.00% 1.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 702 325 310
10th Percentile £363 £400 £413
25th Percentile £442 £463 £464
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £617 £676 £675
90th Percentile £738 £838 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £540 £550
% change year-on-year -2.78% -1.82% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 12 8
10th Percentile £61.70 £22.00 £31.02
25th Percentile £65.00 £22.38 £35.00
Median hourly rate £70.00 £25.97 £35.32
Median % change year-on-year +169.59% -26.48% +0.90%
75th Percentile £79.38 £29.06 £45.19
90th Percentile £86.25 £61.50 £54.68
UK median hourly rate £69.00 £25.43 £35.32
% change year-on-year +171.33% -27.99% +0.90%

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 31,295 22,746 32,794
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.03% 90.36% 87.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,032 14,434 21,722
10th Percentile £313 £308 £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 £618 £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 1,939 776 2,084
10th Percentile £15.24 £15.50 £13.29
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £29.00 £35.00 £33.78
Median % change year-on-year -17.14% +3.63% -6.18%
75th Percentile £63.75 £65.00 £59.44
90th Percentile £73.46 £75.38 £71.90
UK median hourly rate £27.94 £32.50 £32.85
% change year-on-year -14.03% -1.05% -6.16%

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 4 March 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 4 March 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 4 March 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 +48 665 £550 -4.35% 250
North of England -2 105 £450 -14.29% 135
Midlands +9 95 £519 +3.70% 73
West Midlands +4 75 £534 +6.75% 51
South West +4 57 £550 -15.38% 61
North West -7 54 £450 - 61
South East -12 44 £550 +8.11% 147
Yorkshire -42 32 £500 -16.67% 60
East Midlands -16 20 £447 -12.78% 21
North East +2 19 £450 -23.08% 15
East of England -23 16 £563 +76.29% 41
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
1 156 (15.43%) Apache Spark
2 104 (10.29%) Apache Airflow
3 66 (6.53%) Apache
4 19 (1.88%) Palantir Foundry
5 17 (1.68%) SAS
6 10 (0.99%) Confluence
7 8 (0.79%) Appian
8 4 (0.40%) Microsoft Exchange
9 3 (0.30%) Apache Superset
10 2 (0.20%) Jupyter
10 2 (0.20%) SharePoint
11 1 (0.099%) Apache Synapse
11 1 (0.099%) ArcGIS
11 1 (0.099%) Camunda
11 1 (0.099%) CMS
11 1 (0.099%) IBM HTTP Server
11 1 (0.099%) Luigi
Applications
1 18 (1.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (0.99%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 5 (0.49%) Chatbot
3 5 (0.49%) Microsoft Office
4 4 (0.40%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.30%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.30%) Trello
6 2 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.099%) Adobe XD
Business Applications
1 4 (0.40%) Aladdin
2 3 (0.30%) SAP BPC
3 2 (0.20%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.099%) Actimize
4 1 (0.099%) Markit EDM
4 1 (0.099%) Maximo
4 1 (0.099%) Misys Midas
4 1 (0.099%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.099%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 480 (47.48%) Azure
2 352 (34.82%) AWS
3 230 (22.75%) Power Platform
4 192 (18.99%) Azure Data Factory
5 149 (14.74%) GCP
6 124 (12.27%) Snowflake
7 116 (11.47%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 106 (10.48%) GitHub
9 104 (10.29%) Amazon S3
10 95 (9.40%) Serverless
11 91 (9.00%) dbt
12 86 (8.51%) Azure DevOps
13 76 (7.52%) AWS Lambda
14 70 (6.92%) GitHub Actions
15 43 (4.25%) AWS CloudFormation
16 26 (2.57%) AWS Step Functions
16 26 (2.57%) Azure Machine Learning
17 22 (2.18%) Amazon EMR
17 22 (2.18%) Collibra
17 22 (2.18%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.40%) Cisco IPT
1 4 (0.40%) Kerberos
1 4 (0.40%) Network Security
2 3 (0.30%) RTP
2 3 (0.30%) VPN
3 1 (0.099%) 4G
3 1 (0.099%) 5G
3 1 (0.099%) SAN
3 1 (0.099%) SMS
3 1 (0.099%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 209 (20.67%) Power BI
2 197 (19.49%) Data Warehouse
3 145 (14.34%) Data Lake
4 86 (8.51%) Metadata
5 70 (6.92%) SQL Server
6 68 (6.73%) Big Data
7 67 (6.63%) NoSQL
8 59 (5.84%) Delta Lake
9 56 (5.54%) Snowflake Schema
10 54 (5.34%) Azure SQL Database
11 51 (5.04%) Amazon Redshift
11 51 (5.04%) Relational Database
12 47 (4.65%) BigQuery
13 44 (4.35%) PostgreSQL
14 42 (4.15%) Tableau
15 40 (3.96%) Amazon Athena
16 37 (3.66%) Hadoop
17 33 (3.26%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 30 (2.97%) Spark SQL
19 22 (2.18%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 145 (14.34%) Git
2 44 (4.35%) GitLab
3 40 (3.96%) Jenkins
4 38 (3.76%) MLflow
5 19 (1.88%) JIRA
6 6 (0.59%) Selenium
6 6 (0.59%) Visual Studio Code
7 4 (0.40%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.30%) JUnit
8 3 (0.30%) Maven
8 3 (0.30%) Postman
8 3 (0.30%) Robot Framework
8 3 (0.30%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.20%) Cucumber
9 2 (0.20%) ERwin
9 2 (0.20%) Mockito
9 2 (0.20%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.099%) Bitbucket
10 1 (0.099%) SoapUI
10 1 (0.099%) TeamCity
General
1 276 (27.30%) Social Skills
2 243 (24.04%) Finance
3 145 (14.34%) Analytical Skills
4 85 (8.41%) Public Sector
5 65 (6.43%) Banking
6 27 (2.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 20 (1.98%) Retail
8 17 (1.68%) Investment Banking
9 16 (1.58%) Influencing Skills
10 14 (1.38%) Front Office
10 14 (1.38%) Marketing
11 12 (1.19%) Documentation Skills
12 10 (0.99%) Publishing
13 9 (0.89%) Pharmaceutical
14 8 (0.79%) Financial Institution
14 8 (0.79%) Legal
15 6 (0.59%) Back Office
15 6 (0.59%) Military
16 5 (0.49%) Telecoms
17 4 (0.40%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 469 (46.39%) Data Engineer
2 136 (13.45%) Lead
3 129 (12.76%) Senior
4 90 (8.90%) Senior Data Engineer
5 78 (7.72%) Architect
6 75 (7.42%) Azure Engineer
7 63 (6.23%) Developer
8 60 (5.93%) Azure Data Engineer
9 50 (4.95%) Analyst
10 48 (4.75%) Lead Data Engineer
11 44 (4.35%) Snowflake Engineer
12 42 (4.15%) Data Scientist
13 40 (3.96%) Data Architect
14 39 (3.86%) AWS Engineer
15 37 (3.66%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 37 (3.66%) Snowflake Data Engineer
16 28 (2.77%) Data Analyst
17 26 (2.57%) AWS Data Engineer
17 26 (2.57%) Principal Engineer
17 26 (2.57%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 171 (16.91%) PySpark
2 125 (12.36%) Kafka
3 53 (5.24%) Pandas
4 50 (4.95%) PyTorch
5 44 (4.35%) scikit-learn
6 40 (3.96%) NumPy
7 39 (3.86%) TensorFlow
8 30 (2.97%) FastAPI
8 30 (2.97%) JSON
8 30 (2.97%) RESTful
9 27 (2.67%) pytest
10 26 (2.57%) Flask
11 25 (2.47%) YAML
12 23 (2.27%) React
13 22 (2.18%) LangChain
14 19 (1.88%) REST
15 16 (1.58%) Great Expectations
16 15 (1.48%) Hugging Face
17 14 (1.38%) ARM Templates
17 14 (1.38%) Django
Miscellaneous
1 118 (11.67%) Cloud Native
2 34 (3.36%) Product Ownership
3 33 (3.26%) Algorithms
4 31 (3.07%) Distributed Systems
5 28 (2.77%) Distributed Computing
6 24 (2.37%) Data Structures
7 21 (2.08%) Hybrid Cloud
8 20 (1.98%) Legacy Systems
9 19 (1.88%) Data Protection Act
10 18 (1.78%) AI Agents
11 17 (1.68%) Onboarding
12 16 (1.58%) Analytical Mindset
13 13 (1.29%) Clustering
14 11 (1.09%) Fixed Income
14 11 (1.09%) Greenfield Project
15 10 (0.99%) NHS
16 9 (0.89%) Data Fabric
16 9 (0.89%) Derivative
16 9 (0.89%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 9 (0.89%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 23 (2.27%) Linux
2 7 (0.69%) VMS
3 6 (0.59%) Unix
4 2 (0.20%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.099%) CentOS
5 1 (0.099%) Debian
5 1 (0.099%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 466 (46.09%) Analytics
2 458 (45.30%) Data Pipeline
3 404 (39.96%) ETL
4 400 (39.56%) Data Modelling
5 357 (35.31%) CI/CD
6 265 (26.21%) Agile
7 263 (26.01%) DevOps
8 262 (25.91%) AI
9 255 (25.22%) Business Intelligence
10 250 (24.73%) Data Governance
11 221 (21.86%) Machine Learning
12 206 (20.38%) Data Science
13 203 (20.08%) Problem-Solving
14 160 (15.83%) Data Architecture
15 126 (12.46%) Infrastructure as Code
16 112 (11.08%) Decision-Making
17 104 (10.29%) Validation
18 101 (9.99%) Data Integration
19 100 (9.89%) LLM
20 99 (9.79%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 612 (60.53%) Python
2 539 (53.31%) SQL
3 74 (7.32%) Java
4 64 (6.33%) Scala
5 45 (4.45%) C#
6 30 (2.97%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 29 (2.87%) JavaScript
8 27 (2.67%) PowerShell
9 24 (2.37%) Bash
10 23 (2.27%) Bicep
11 19 (1.88%) T-SQL
11 19 (1.88%) TypeScript
12 16 (1.58%) Go
12 16 (1.58%) R
13 12 (1.19%) C++
14 11 (1.09%) PL/SQL
15 7 (0.69%) Rust
16 6 (0.59%) Korn
17 5 (0.49%) Shell Script
18 3 (0.30%) SAS Macro
Qualifications
1 204 (20.18%) Security Cleared
2 169 (16.72%) SC Cleared
3 82 (8.11%) Degree
4 50 (4.95%) Azure Certification
5 37 (3.66%) Computer Science Degree
6 36 (3.56%) Master's Degree
7 22 (2.18%) DV Cleared
8 14 (1.38%) BPSS Clearance
9 13 (1.29%) AWS Certification
10 11 (1.09%) Microsoft Certification
10 11 (1.09%) PhD
11 4 (0.40%) DBS Check
11 4 (0.40%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 1 (0.099%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 1 (0.099%) ACCA
12 1 (0.099%) CCSP
12 1 (0.099%) Cisco Certification
12 1 (0.099%) CISSP
12 1 (0.099%) OCP
12 1 (0.099%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 276 (27.30%) Data Quality
2 83 (8.21%) GDPR
3 34 (3.36%) QA
4 13 (1.29%) Accessibility
5 12 (1.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 9 (0.89%) HIPAA
7 6 (0.59%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 5 (0.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 5 (0.49%) PERC
8 5 (0.49%) SOC 2
9 3 (0.30%) GRC
9 3 (0.30%) Solvency II
9 3 (0.30%) WCAG
10 2 (0.20%) HL7
10 2 (0.20%) MiFID
10 2 (0.20%) NIST
10 2 (0.20%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.20%) SLA
11 1 (0.099%) NCSC
11 1 (0.099%) PMO
System Software
1 136 (13.45%) Docker
2 6 (0.59%) HDFS
3 3 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
4 2 (0.20%) Active Directory
5 1 (0.099%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 164 (16.22%) Terraform
2 135 (13.35%) Kubernetes
3 25 (2.47%) Prometheus
4 13 (1.29%) Grafana
5 5 (0.49%) Ansible
5 5 (0.49%) Argo
6 3 (0.30%) Control-M
6 3 (0.30%) Kubeflow
6 3 (0.30%) Rancher
7 2 (0.20%) Hadoop YARN
7 2 (0.20%) Kibana
7 2 (0.20%) logstash
7 2 (0.20%) Nagios
7 2 (0.20%) Single Sign-On
8 1 (0.099%) Apache Ranger
8 1 (0.099%) HP Fortify
8 1 (0.099%) Oozie
Vendors
1 292 (28.88%) Databricks
2 139 (13.75%) Microsoft
3 51 (5.04%) Google
4 32 (3.17%) Oracle
5 31 (3.07%) Informatica
6 25 (2.47%) Foundry
7 23 (2.27%) Palantir
7 23 (2.27%) Talend
8 22 (2.18%) OpenAI
9 17 (1.68%) Splunk
10 15 (1.48%) SAP
11 11 (1.09%) Salesforce
12 10 (0.99%) Cloudera
13 9 (0.89%) Denodo
14 8 (0.79%) Automation Anywhere
14 8 (0.79%) UiPath
15 7 (0.69%) Virgin Media
16 6 (0.59%) MicroStrategy
16 6 (0.59%) ServiceNow
17 5 (0.49%) Guidewire