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 30 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 80 150 201
Rank change year-on-year +70 +51 -2
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,328 485 450
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.03% 1.90% 1.21%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.56% 2.09% 1.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 934 326 333
10th Percentile £388 £388 £375
25th Percentile £449 £450 £468
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £533 £575
Median % change year-on-year -1.50% -7.30% -8.00%
75th Percentile £638 £675 £688
90th Percentile £750 £825 £763
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -12.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 7 13
10th Percentile £53.45 £24.75 £30.55
25th Percentile £63.75 £28.13 £35.00
Median hourly rate £70.00 £38.96 £48.50
Median % change year-on-year +79.67% -19.67% -37.82%
75th Percentile £80.88 £53.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £89.00 £58.25 -
UK median hourly rate £69.44 £38.96 £35.00
% change year-on-year +78.23% +11.31% -52.05%

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 37,351 23,260 31,773
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.35% 91.20% 85.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,546 14,980 20,587
10th Percentile £325 £300 £305
25th Percentile £418 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.97% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £730 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £515 £504 £525
% change year-on-year +2.18% -4.00% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,338 1,158 2,330
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.87 £16.06
Median hourly rate £47.00 £25.23 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +86.32% -33.83% +1.65%
75th Percentile £68.38 £55.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £82.25 £72.50 £72.93
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +4.17%

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 30 June 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 30 June 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 30 June 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 +52 789 £550 - 244
North of England +25 171 £475 -5.00% 71
Midlands +29 138 £486 +5.14% 37
West Midlands +30 115 £472 -18.62% 23
South West +29 81 £500 -11.11% 30
South East -20 79 £525 +5.00% 105
Yorkshire +2 75 £480 +3.78% 13
North West -11 60 £496 -0.80% 42
North East -1 38 £425 -15.00% 16
East of England -15 26 £575 +71.29% 10
East Midlands -7 20 £525 +13.51% 14
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
1 177 (13.33%) Apache Spark
2 152 (11.45%) Apache Airflow
3 100 (7.53%) Apache
4 41 (3.09%) SAS
5 23 (1.73%) Confluence
5 23 (1.73%) Jupyter
6 17 (1.28%) Palantir Foundry
7 12 (0.90%) SharePoint
8 7 (0.53%) Apache Superset
9 6 (0.45%) Appian
10 5 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
11 2 (0.15%) Apache Synapse
11 2 (0.15%) ArcGIS
12 1 (0.075%) Camunda
12 1 (0.075%) CICS
12 1 (0.075%) IBM HTTP Server
12 1 (0.075%) PowerExchange
Applications
1 22 (1.66%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (0.60%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
3 7 (0.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.23%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.15%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.075%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.075%) Notion
6 1 (0.075%) Trello
Business Applications
1 6 (0.45%) Aladdin
2 5 (0.38%) BambooHR
2 5 (0.38%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (0.38%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.30%) NetSuite
3 4 (0.30%) Sage X3
3 4 (0.30%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.15%) Endur
4 2 (0.15%) Oracle Assets
4 2 (0.15%) SAP BPC
4 2 (0.15%) Temenos T24
5 1 (0.075%) FIS Private Capital Suite
5 1 (0.075%) Markit EDM
5 1 (0.075%) SAP ECC
Cloud Services
1 574 (43.22%) Azure
2 518 (39.01%) AWS
3 293 (22.06%) Power Platform
4 186 (14.01%) GCP
5 184 (13.86%) Snowflake
6 159 (11.97%) Azure Data Factory
7 153 (11.52%) dbt
8 150 (11.30%) Amazon S3
9 130 (9.79%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 114 (8.58%) GitHub
11 113 (8.51%) Azure DevOps
12 112 (8.43%) Serverless
13 96 (7.23%) AWS Lambda
14 68 (5.12%) GitHub Actions
15 37 (2.79%) Amazon EMR
16 32 (2.41%) AWS CloudFormation
16 32 (2.41%) Azure AI
17 28 (2.11%) Azure Cosmos DB
18 27 (2.03%) Amazon Bedrock
18 27 (2.03%) Amazon SageMaker
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.38%) Firewall
1 5 (0.38%) RTP
2 2 (0.15%) Network Security
3 1 (0.075%) 4G
3 1 (0.075%) 5G
3 1 (0.075%) MIMO
3 1 (0.075%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 267 (20.11%) Power BI
2 250 (18.83%) Data Warehouse
3 201 (15.14%) Data Lake
4 123 (9.26%) Metadata
5 96 (7.23%) Amazon Redshift
6 91 (6.85%) Big Data
7 86 (6.48%) Delta Lake
8 83 (6.25%) BigQuery
9 78 (5.87%) SQL Server
9 78 (5.87%) Tableau
10 66 (4.97%) NoSQL
11 64 (4.82%) Amazon Athena
12 61 (4.59%) Snowflake Schema
13 54 (4.07%) Relational Database
14 48 (3.61%) PostgreSQL
15 44 (3.31%) Azure SQL Database
16 39 (2.94%) Hadoop
17 33 (2.48%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 32 (2.41%) Star Schema
19 27 (2.03%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 140 (10.54%) Git
2 69 (5.20%) GitLab
3 51 (3.84%) JIRA
4 33 (2.48%) MLflow
5 19 (1.43%) Jenkins
6 6 (0.45%) SonarQube
7 4 (0.30%) Postman
7 4 (0.30%) Selenium
8 3 (0.23%) Artifactory
8 3 (0.23%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.23%) Snyk
8 3 (0.23%) Visual Studio
9 2 (0.15%) ERwin
9 2 (0.15%) Robot Framework
9 2 (0.15%) Terragrunt
10 1 (0.075%) Ant
10 1 (0.075%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.075%) Deequ
10 1 (0.075%) JUnit
10 1 (0.075%) REST Assured
General
1 330 (24.85%) Social Skills
2 325 (24.47%) Finance
3 204 (15.36%) Analytical Skills
4 146 (10.99%) Public Sector
5 91 (6.85%) Banking
6 35 (2.64%) Marketing
7 34 (2.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 31 (2.33%) Retail
9 28 (2.11%) Documentation Skills
10 20 (1.51%) Telecoms
11 16 (1.20%) Front Office
12 14 (1.05%) Financial Institution
12 14 (1.05%) Investment Banking
13 11 (0.83%) Influencing Skills
13 11 (0.83%) Manufacturing
14 10 (0.75%) Legal
15 9 (0.68%) Law
16 8 (0.60%) Pharmaceutical
17 7 (0.53%) Billing
18 5 (0.38%) Military
Job Titles
1 610 (45.93%) Data Engineer
2 196 (14.76%) Senior
3 155 (11.67%) Architect
4 149 (11.22%) Lead
5 116 (8.73%) Senior Data Engineer
6 83 (6.25%) Data Architect
7 71 (5.35%) Developer
8 62 (4.67%) AWS Engineer
9 61 (4.59%) Analyst
10 60 (4.52%) Lead Data Engineer
11 51 (3.84%) AWS Data Engineer
12 45 (3.39%) Data Scientist
12 45 (3.39%) Solutions Architect
13 44 (3.31%) Snowflake Engineer
14 42 (3.16%) Azure Engineer
15 39 (2.94%) Snowflake Data Engineer
16 38 (2.86%) Consultant
17 37 (2.79%) Azure Data Engineer
18 36 (2.71%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
19 34 (2.56%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 189 (14.23%) PySpark
2 123 (9.26%) Kafka
3 42 (3.16%) REST
4 39 (2.94%) Pandas
5 31 (2.33%) scikit-learn
6 30 (2.26%) JSON
7 27 (2.03%) PyTorch
8 25 (1.88%) NumPy
8 25 (1.88%) Spring
9 24 (1.81%) React
10 20 (1.51%) TensorFlow
11 18 (1.36%) Spring Boot
12 16 (1.20%) .NET
13 15 (1.13%) OpenTelemetry
13 15 (1.13%) RESTful
13 15 (1.13%) YAML
14 13 (0.98%) FastAPI
14 13 (0.98%) pytest
14 13 (0.98%) XML
15 12 (0.90%) Apache Avro
Miscellaneous
1 179 (13.48%) Cloud Native
2 55 (4.14%) Legacy Systems
3 54 (4.07%) Distributed Systems
4 51 (3.84%) Data Structures
5 41 (3.09%) Product Ownership
6 33 (2.48%) AI Agents
7 31 (2.33%) Onboarding
8 27 (2.03%) Distributed Computing
9 22 (1.66%) Data Protection Act
10 21 (1.58%) Greenfield Project
11 20 (1.51%) NHS
12 19 (1.43%) Analytical Mindset
13 16 (1.20%) Algorithms
14 15 (1.13%) Clustering
15 14 (1.05%) Fixed Income
15 14 (1.05%) Virtual Team
16 12 (0.90%) Management Information System
16 12 (0.90%) Self-Motivation
17 11 (0.83%) Hybrid Cloud
18 9 (0.68%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 28 (2.11%) Linux
2 25 (1.88%) Unix
3 5 (0.38%) VMS
4 3 (0.23%) Windows
5 2 (0.15%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.075%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 687 (51.73%) Analytics
2 623 (46.91%) Data Pipeline
3 501 (37.73%) Data Modelling
4 478 (35.99%) CI/CD
5 470 (35.39%) ETL
6 399 (30.05%) AI
7 338 (25.45%) Business Intelligence
8 337 (25.38%) Agile
9 325 (24.47%) DevOps
10 271 (20.41%) Data Governance
11 256 (19.28%) Machine Learning
12 232 (17.47%) Problem-Solving
13 223 (16.79%) Data Science
14 187 (14.08%) Data Architecture
14 187 (14.08%) Decision-Making
15 185 (13.93%) Migration
16 183 (13.78%) Validation
17 165 (12.42%) Infrastructure as Code
18 155 (11.67%) Stakeholder Management
19 149 (11.22%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 720 (54.22%) SQL
2 703 (52.94%) Python
3 114 (8.58%) Java
4 42 (3.16%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 40 (3.01%) Scala
6 34 (2.56%) C#
7 31 (2.33%) Bash
8 23 (1.73%) PowerShell
8 23 (1.73%) T-SQL
9 20 (1.51%) JavaScript
9 20 (1.51%) R
10 17 (1.28%) Bicep
11 16 (1.20%) PL/SQL
12 13 (0.98%) Shell Script
12 13 (0.98%) TypeScript
13 12 (0.90%) SAS Macro
14 6 (0.45%) SPARQL
15 5 (0.38%) Cypher
15 5 (0.38%) Korn
15 5 (0.38%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 254 (19.13%) Security Cleared
2 225 (16.94%) SC Cleared
3 89 (6.70%) Degree
4 43 (3.24%) Computer Science Degree
5 29 (2.18%) BPSS Clearance
6 28 (2.11%) Azure Certification
6 28 (2.11%) Master's Degree
7 17 (1.28%) AWS Certification
8 14 (1.05%) DV Cleared
9 13 (0.98%) DBS Check
10 9 (0.68%) Microsoft Certification
11 7 (0.53%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 6 (0.45%) SnowPro
13 5 (0.38%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 3 (0.23%) PhD
15 2 (0.15%) CSPO
15 2 (0.15%) PMI Certification
15 2 (0.15%) Tableau Certification
16 1 (0.075%) CISSP
16 1 (0.075%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 380 (28.61%) Data Quality
2 83 (6.25%) GDPR
3 65 (4.89%) QA
4 11 (0.83%) Accessibility
5 10 (0.75%) SLA
6 7 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 5 (0.38%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 5 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 4 (0.30%) MiFID
8 4 (0.30%) Solvency II
9 3 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
9 3 (0.23%) GRC
9 3 (0.23%) GxP
9 3 (0.23%) HIPAA
9 3 (0.23%) ISO/IEC 42001
9 3 (0.23%) NIST
10 2 (0.15%) 21 CFR Part 11
10 2 (0.15%) EMIR
10 2 (0.15%) PMO
11 1 (0.075%) Basel II
System Software
1 126 (9.49%) Docker
2 3 (0.23%) Active Directory
2 3 (0.23%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.15%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 187 (14.08%) Terraform
2 109 (8.21%) Kubernetes
3 23 (1.73%) Prometheus
4 14 (1.05%) Grafana
5 9 (0.68%) Ansible
6 4 (0.30%) Kibana
7 3 (0.23%) Argo
7 3 (0.23%) Nagios
7 3 (0.23%) Rancher
8 2 (0.15%) Kubeflow
8 2 (0.15%) logstash
8 2 (0.15%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.075%) Control-M
9 1 (0.075%) Hadoop YARN
9 1 (0.075%) HP Fortify
9 1 (0.075%) IBM Guardium
9 1 (0.075%) Oozie
Vendors
1 324 (24.40%) Databricks
2 231 (17.39%) Microsoft
3 73 (5.50%) Informatica
4 53 (3.99%) Oracle
5 49 (3.69%) Google
6 28 (2.11%) Foundry
7 26 (1.96%) OpenAI
7 26 (1.96%) SAP
7 26 (1.96%) Talend
8 25 (1.88%) Palantir
9 22 (1.66%) Salesforce
9 22 (1.66%) Splunk
10 15 (1.13%) Cloudera
10 15 (1.13%) ServiceNow
11 12 (0.90%) Trend Micro
12 8 (0.60%) Denodo
13 7 (0.53%) InterSystems
13 7 (0.53%) UiPath
14 6 (0.45%) Automation Anywhere
14 6 (0.45%) Workday