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

6 months to
18 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 86 148 192
Rank change year-on-year +62 +44 +6
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,405 543 431
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.04% 1.95% 1.31%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.59% 2.15% 1.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 982 342 317
10th Percentile £400 £361 £400
25th Percentile £450 £413 £468
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -8.70% -6.12%
75th Percentile £640 £648 £676
90th Percentile £738 £747 £775
UK median daily rate £525 £515 £560
% change year-on-year +1.94% -8.04% -6.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 6 6
10th Percentile - £37.11 £23.88
25th Percentile £21.25 £42.03 £34.88
Median hourly rate £67.50 £52.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +28.57% -12.50% -23.08%
75th Percentile £75.00 £62.19 -
90th Percentile £84.27 £87.50 -
UK median hourly rate £66.25 £52.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +26.19% -12.50% -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 39,123 25,281 28,365
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.74% 90.90% 86.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,918 16,062 17,635
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 2,776 1,509 1,303
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.75 £17.79 £20.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £66.55
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% -1.91%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 +48 865 £550 - 1,260
North of England +27 184 £475 +0.53% 241
Midlands +28 126 £486 +6.46% 109
West Midlands +28 102 £475 -7.95% 81
Yorkshire +31 93 £500 +5.26% 60
South East -11 92 £513 +16.48% 221
South West +32 81 £525 -3.45% 89
North West -28 58 £513 +11.41% 143
North East -16 35 £425 -20.93% 38
East of England -16 27 £550 +22.22% 52
East Midlands -3 22 £503 +15.57% 28
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
1 167 (11.89%) Apache Airflow
2 155 (11.03%) Apache Spark
3 119 (8.47%) Apache
4 34 (2.42%) SAS
5 31 (2.21%) Confluence
6 20 (1.42%) Jupyter
7 16 (1.14%) Palantir Foundry
8 15 (1.07%) SharePoint
9 6 (0.43%) Apache Superset
10 5 (0.36%) Apache Solr
10 5 (0.36%) 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 12 (0.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (0.64%) Spreadsheet
3 5 (0.36%) Chatbot
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 (0.28%) NetSuite
3 4 (0.28%) Sage X3
3 4 (0.28%) SAP S/4HANA
4 2 (0.14%) BambooHR
4 2 (0.14%) Endur
4 2 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
4 2 (0.14%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.14%) Temenos T24
4 2 (0.14%) Workday HCM
5 1 (0.071%) FIS Private Capital Suite
5 1 (0.071%) Markit EDM
5 1 (0.071%) MIS ActiveH
5 1 (0.071%) SAP ECC
5 1 (0.071%) SAP Oil and Gas
5 1 (0.071%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 582 (41.42%) Azure
2 529 (37.65%) AWS
3 260 (18.51%) Power Platform
4 229 (16.30%) Snowflake
5 207 (14.73%) dbt
6 205 (14.59%) GCP
7 161 (11.46%) Amazon S3
8 160 (11.39%) Azure Data Factory
9 129 (9.18%) Serverless
10 123 (8.75%) Azure DevOps
11 118 (8.40%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 107 (7.62%) GitHub
13 105 (7.47%) AWS Lambda
14 67 (4.77%) Azure Databricks
15 54 (3.84%) GitHub Actions
16 40 (2.85%) Amazon EMR
17 37 (2.63%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 35 (2.49%) Amazon Bedrock
19 31 (2.21%) Microsoft Purview
20 30 (2.14%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.36%) DNS
2 4 (0.28%) Firewall
2 4 (0.28%) Network Security
3 2 (0.14%) Broadband
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
Database & Business Intelligence
1 286 (20.36%) Data Warehouse
2 246 (17.51%) Power BI
3 177 (12.60%) Data Lake
4 162 (11.53%) Metadata
5 112 (7.97%) BigQuery
6 97 (6.90%) Delta Lake
7 91 (6.48%) Amazon Redshift
8 76 (5.41%) Big Data
9 64 (4.56%) Amazon Athena
9 64 (4.56%) Tableau
10 55 (3.91%) SQL Server
11 49 (3.49%) Snowflake Schema
12 45 (3.20%) Relational Database
13 44 (3.13%) PostgreSQL
14 41 (2.92%) NoSQL
15 36 (2.56%) Looker
16 31 (2.21%) Azure SQL Database
17 30 (2.14%) Data Vault
18 29 (2.06%) Amazon RDS
19 27 (1.92%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 146 (10.39%) Git
2 86 (6.12%) GitLab
3 59 (4.20%) JIRA
4 24 (1.71%) Jenkins
5 21 (1.49%) MLflow
6 8 (0.57%) Bitbucket
6 8 (0.57%) RStudio
6 8 (0.57%) Selenium
6 8 (0.57%) Terragrunt
7 7 (0.50%) Claude Code
8 6 (0.43%) ERwin
9 5 (0.36%) SonarQube
10 4 (0.28%) ER Studio
11 3 (0.21%) Artifactory
11 3 (0.21%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 3 (0.21%) Postman
11 3 (0.21%) Snyk
12 2 (0.14%) Cucumber
12 2 (0.14%) TeamCity
12 2 (0.14%) Yeoman
General
1 355 (25.27%) Social Skills
2 324 (23.06%) Finance
3 227 (16.16%) Analytical Skills
4 143 (10.18%) Public Sector
5 125 (8.90%) Banking
6 44 (3.13%) Marketing
7 33 (2.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 31 (2.21%) Retail
9 21 (1.49%) Front Office
9 21 (1.49%) Investment Banking
10 19 (1.35%) Documentation Skills
11 17 (1.21%) Pharmaceutical
11 17 (1.21%) Telecoms
12 16 (1.14%) Manufacturing
13 12 (0.85%) Billing
13 12 (0.85%) Influencing Skills
14 11 (0.78%) Back Office
14 11 (0.78%) Law
15 10 (0.71%) Publishing
16 9 (0.64%) Legal
Job Titles
1 646 (45.98%) Data Engineer
2 213 (15.16%) Senior
3 160 (11.39%) Lead
4 158 (11.25%) Architect
5 136 (9.68%) Senior Data Engineer
6 87 (6.19%) Data Architect
7 73 (5.20%) Developer
8 69 (4.91%) AWS Engineer
9 59 (4.20%) AWS Data Engineer
10 58 (4.13%) Analyst
11 54 (3.84%) Snowflake Engineer
12 53 (3.77%) Databricks Engineer
13 50 (3.56%) Azure Engineer
14 47 (3.35%) Lead Data Engineer
15 42 (2.99%) Databricks Data Engineer
15 42 (2.99%) Snowflake Data Engineer
16 40 (2.85%) Solutions Architect
17 38 (2.70%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 38 (2.70%) Consultant
18 36 (2.56%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 215 (15.30%) Terraform
2 200 (14.23%) PySpark
3 86 (6.12%) Kafka
4 54 (3.84%) REST
5 32 (2.28%) React
6 28 (1.99%) .NET
7 26 (1.85%) JSON
8 21 (1.49%) Pandas
9 14 (1.00%) PyTorch
10 13 (0.93%) LangChain
11 12 (0.85%) NumPy
12 11 (0.78%) FastAPI
12 11 (0.78%) Microsoft Graph
12 11 (0.78%) pytest
12 11 (0.78%) TensorFlow
13 10 (0.71%) Apache Avro
13 10 (0.71%) RabbitMQ
13 10 (0.71%) scikit-learn
14 9 (0.64%) RESTful
14 9 (0.64%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 186 (13.24%) Cloud Native
2 70 (4.98%) Data Structures
3 69 (4.91%) Onboarding
4 56 (3.99%) Product Ownership
5 51 (3.63%) Legacy Systems
6 46 (3.27%) AI Agents
7 39 (2.78%) Distributed Systems
8 20 (1.42%) Distributed Computing
9 19 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
9 19 (1.35%) Enterprise Software
10 18 (1.28%) NHS
10 18 (1.28%) Virtual Team
11 16 (1.14%) Greenfield Project
11 16 (1.14%) Management Information System
12 15 (1.07%) Life Science
13 14 (1.00%) Analytical Mindset
14 13 (0.93%) Algorithms
14 13 (0.93%) Data Fabric
15 12 (0.85%) Clustering
16 11 (0.78%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 26 (1.85%) Linux
2 24 (1.71%) 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%) VMS
4 1 (0.071%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 695 (49.47%) Data Pipeline
2 672 (47.83%) Analytics
3 549 (39.07%) Data Modelling
4 509 (36.23%) CI/CD
5 487 (34.66%) ETL
6 439 (31.25%) AI
7 344 (24.48%) Agile
8 341 (24.27%) DevOps
9 326 (23.20%) Business Intelligence
10 318 (22.63%) Data Governance
11 247 (17.58%) Stakeholder Management
12 243 (17.30%) Machine Learning
13 225 (16.01%) Data Architecture
14 224 (15.94%) Data Transformation
14 224 (15.94%) Problem-Solving
15 222 (15.80%) Migration
16 216 (15.37%) Infrastructure as Code
16 216 (15.37%) Validation
17 205 (14.59%) Decision-Making
18 195 (13.88%) Data Science
Programming Languages
1 762 (54.23%) SQL
2 720 (51.25%) Python
3 97 (6.90%) Java
4 40 (2.85%) Scala
5 39 (2.78%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 37 (2.63%) PowerShell
7 33 (2.35%) C#
8 31 (2.21%) Bash
9 29 (2.06%) JavaScript
10 21 (1.49%) R
11 19 (1.35%) T-SQL
12 16 (1.14%) PL/SQL
13 14 (1.00%) TypeScript
14 13 (0.93%) Bicep
15 12 (0.85%) Kusto Query Language
16 11 (0.78%) Shell Script
17 9 (0.64%) SAS Macro
18 7 (0.50%) LookML
18 7 (0.50%) SPARQL
19 6 (0.43%) Korn
Qualifications
1 270 (19.22%) Security Cleared
2 226 (16.09%) SC Cleared
3 72 (5.12%) Degree
4 36 (2.56%) Computer Science Degree
5 33 (2.35%) DV Cleared
6 30 (2.14%) Azure Certification
7 29 (2.06%) AWS Certification
8 23 (1.64%) BPSS Clearance
9 19 (1.35%) Master's Degree
10 14 (1.00%) DBS Check
11 10 (0.71%) SnowPro
12 9 (0.64%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
13 8 (0.57%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 8 (0.57%) Microsoft Certification
14 6 (0.43%) PMI Certification
15 5 (0.36%) PMP
15 5 (0.36%) TOGAF Certification
16 4 (0.28%) Microsoft Certified Professional
16 4 (0.28%) Tableau Certification
17 3 (0.21%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 470 (33.45%) Data Quality
2 73 (5.20%) QA
3 60 (4.27%) GDPR
4 26 (1.85%) Accessibility
5 12 (0.85%) SLA
6 4 (0.28%) Disclosure Scotland
6 4 (0.28%) GRC
6 4 (0.28%) PMO
6 4 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 3 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
7 3 (0.21%) EU AI Act
7 3 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 3 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 42001
7 3 (0.21%) MiFID
7 3 (0.21%) NIST
8 2 (0.14%) 21 CFR Part 11
8 2 (0.14%) GxP
8 2 (0.14%) IFRS
8 2 (0.14%) IFRS 9
8 2 (0.14%) Solvency II
System Software
1 122 (8.68%) Docker
2 5 (0.36%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.071%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 97 (6.90%) Kubernetes
2 24 (1.71%) Ansible
3 19 (1.35%) Grafana
4 10 (0.71%) Prometheus
5 7 (0.50%) Control-M
5 7 (0.50%) Kibana
6 3 (0.21%) logstash
7 2 (0.14%) Argo
7 2 (0.14%) Puppet
8 1 (0.071%) Cilium
8 1 (0.071%) HAProxy
8 1 (0.071%) IBM Guardium
8 1 (0.071%) Kubeflow
8 1 (0.071%) Kustomize
8 1 (0.071%) Nagios
8 1 (0.071%) Progress Chef
8 1 (0.071%) QRadar
8 1 (0.071%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 377 (26.83%) Databricks
2 254 (18.08%) Microsoft
3 77 (5.48%) Google
4 65 (4.63%) Oracle
5 61 (4.34%) Informatica
6 28 (1.99%) Foundry
6 28 (1.99%) SAP
7 25 (1.78%) Talend
8 24 (1.71%) Palantir
9 23 (1.64%) Salesforce
10 18 (1.28%) OpenAI
11 14 (1.00%) Teradata
12 13 (0.93%) Cloudera
13 12 (0.85%) Trend Micro
14 11 (0.78%) ServiceNow
15 10 (0.71%) Adobe
16 7 (0.50%) Denodo
16 7 (0.50%) Hitachi
16 7 (0.50%) Splunk
17 6 (0.43%) SnapLogic