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 24 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 111 156 221
Rank change year-on-year +45 +65 +9
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 821 433 398
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.53% 1.62% 1.06%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.87% 1.81% 1.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 555 307 297
10th Percentile £363 £400 £407
25th Percentile £431 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £550
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% +4.55% -8.33%
75th Percentile £625 £676 £675
90th Percentile £749 £825 £760
UK median daily rate £515 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -6.36% - -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 11 9
10th Percentile £39.15 £21.25 £35.00
25th Percentile £45.00 £22.00 £35.63
Median hourly rate £54.88 £25.43 £42.31
Median % change year-on-year +115.81% -39.89% -43.59%
75th Percentile £64.63 £28.45 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.41 £65.00 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £62.13 £25.43 £42.31
% change year-on-year +144.32% -39.89% -43.59%

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 28,619 23,884 32,830
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 88.03% 89.35% 87.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,307 14,637 22,019
10th Percentile £305 £310 £300
25th Percentile £410 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -4.67% -1.50% -3.09%
75th Percentile £625 £645 £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 1,784 768 1,764
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.62 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.83 £20.94 £17.20
Median hourly rate £25.15 £34.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -26.03% -9.33% +11.41%
75th Percentile £58.75 £63.75 £62.50
90th Percentile £69.89 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £36.42
% change year-on-year -22.62% -10.76% +16.69%

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 24 January 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 24 January 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 24 January 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 +62 573 £550 -4.35% 221
North of England -18 84 £450 -18.18% 139
Midlands +2 69 £528 +5.50% 94
North West -2 52 £450 -10.00% 64
West Midlands -20 48 £550 +10.00% 38
South West -12 33 £550 -17.60% 82
South East -17 30 £513 +2.50% 262
East Midlands -6 21 £444 -22.83% 55
Yorkshire -53 18 £500 -14.89% 54
North East -3 14 £425 -28.87% 21
East of England -17 10 £500 +56.25% 101
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
1 116 (14.13%) Apache Spark
2 100 (12.18%) Apache Airflow
3 56 (6.82%) Apache
4 12 (1.46%) Confluence
5 5 (0.61%) Appian
5 5 (0.61%) SAS
6 3 (0.37%) Microsoft Exchange
7 2 (0.24%) SharePoint
8 1 (0.12%) Apache Pig
8 1 (0.12%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.12%) CMS
8 1 (0.12%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.12%) Luigi
Applications
1 15 (1.83%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (1.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 6 (0.73%) Chatbot
4 3 (0.37%) Microsoft Office
4 3 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.37%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.37%) Trello
5 1 (0.12%) Adobe XD
5 1 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 5 (0.61%) Aladdin
2 2 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.24%) Eagle PACE
2 2 (0.24%) Markit EDM
2 2 (0.24%) Salesforce CRM
3 1 (0.12%) Actimize
3 1 (0.12%) Maximo
3 1 (0.12%) Misys Midas
3 1 (0.12%) SAP BPC
3 1 (0.12%) SAP ERP
3 1 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.12%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 387 (47.14%) Azure
2 288 (35.08%) AWS
3 173 (21.07%) Power Platform
4 155 (18.88%) Azure Data Factory
5 119 (14.49%) GCP
6 105 (12.79%) Snowflake
7 92 (11.21%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 92 (11.21%) GitHub
8 91 (11.08%) Amazon S3
9 78 (9.50%) dbt
10 76 (9.26%) Serverless
11 69 (8.40%) Azure DevOps
12 63 (7.67%) GitHub Actions
13 62 (7.55%) AWS Lambda
14 30 (3.65%) AWS CloudFormation
15 22 (2.68%) Azure Machine Learning
16 21 (2.56%) Amazon Kinesis
17 20 (2.44%) AWS Step Functions
17 20 (2.44%) Microsoft Purview
18 18 (2.19%) Amazon EMR
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.61%) Network Security
2 4 (0.49%) Cisco IPT
2 4 (0.49%) Kerberos
3 3 (0.37%) VPN
4 1 (0.12%) Firewall
4 1 (0.12%) SAN
4 1 (0.12%) SMS
4 1 (0.12%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 162 (19.73%) Power BI
2 154 (18.76%) Data Warehouse
3 114 (13.89%) Data Lake
4 72 (8.77%) Metadata
5 52 (6.33%) Big Data
6 51 (6.21%) SQL Server
7 50 (6.09%) NoSQL
8 46 (5.60%) Azure SQL Database
9 45 (5.48%) Snowflake Schema
10 43 (5.24%) Relational Database
11 42 (5.12%) Delta Lake
12 40 (4.87%) Amazon Redshift
13 38 (4.63%) BigQuery
14 32 (3.90%) PostgreSQL
15 31 (3.78%) Amazon Athena
15 31 (3.78%) Hadoop
16 29 (3.53%) Tableau
17 22 (2.68%) Elasticsearch
17 22 (2.68%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 20 (2.44%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 120 (14.62%) Git
2 38 (4.63%) GitLab
3 35 (4.26%) Jenkins
4 27 (3.29%) MLflow
5 21 (2.56%) JIRA
6 6 (0.73%) Visual Studio Code
7 4 (0.49%) Selenium
8 3 (0.37%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.37%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.24%) Cucumber
9 2 (0.24%) JUnit
9 2 (0.24%) Maven
9 2 (0.24%) Mockito
9 2 (0.24%) Poetry
9 2 (0.24%) Postman
9 2 (0.24%) Robot Framework
9 2 (0.24%) TeamCity
9 2 (0.24%) TestRail
10 1 (0.12%) ERwin
10 1 (0.12%) Pylint
General
1 230 (28.01%) Social Skills
2 191 (23.26%) Finance
3 116 (14.13%) Analytical Skills
4 62 (7.55%) Public Sector
5 49 (5.97%) Banking
6 23 (2.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 20 (2.44%) Investment Banking
8 15 (1.83%) Front Office
9 14 (1.71%) Influencing Skills
9 14 (1.71%) Retail
10 12 (1.46%) Marketing
11 11 (1.34%) Pharmaceutical
12 9 (1.10%) Legal
12 9 (1.10%) Publishing
13 8 (0.97%) Military
14 6 (0.73%) Back Office
15 5 (0.61%) Presentation Skills
16 4 (0.49%) Aviation
16 4 (0.49%) Documentation Skills
16 4 (0.49%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 369 (44.95%) Data Engineer
2 101 (12.30%) Senior
3 92 (11.21%) Lead
4 75 (9.14%) Senior Data Engineer
5 66 (8.04%) Azure Engineer
6 61 (7.43%) Architect
7 60 (7.31%) Developer
8 51 (6.21%) Azure Data Engineer
9 41 (4.99%) Analyst
10 38 (4.63%) Snowflake Engineer
11 34 (4.14%) AWS Engineer
12 32 (3.90%) Data Architect
12 32 (3.90%) Data Scientist
13 30 (3.65%) Snowflake Data Engineer
14 29 (3.53%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 26 (3.17%) Lead Data Engineer
16 24 (2.92%) Python Engineer
17 22 (2.68%) AWS Data Engineer
17 22 (2.68%) DevOps Engineer
18 20 (2.44%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 148 (18.03%) PySpark
2 94 (11.45%) Kafka
3 47 (5.72%) Pandas
4 42 (5.12%) PyTorch
5 37 (4.51%) NumPy
6 36 (4.38%) TensorFlow
7 34 (4.14%) scikit-learn
8 30 (3.65%) FastAPI
9 27 (3.29%) Flask
10 24 (2.92%) RESTful
11 22 (2.68%) React
12 21 (2.56%) LangChain
12 21 (2.56%) pytest
13 18 (2.19%) YAML
14 17 (2.07%) JSON
15 15 (1.83%) Spark Streaming
16 14 (1.71%) REST
17 13 (1.58%) Hugging Face
18 12 (1.46%) Django
18 12 (1.46%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 88 (10.72%) Cloud Native
2 28 (3.41%) Algorithms
3 24 (2.92%) Distributed Computing
3 24 (2.92%) Product Ownership
4 20 (2.44%) Data Structures
5 18 (2.19%) Distributed Systems
6 16 (1.95%) Data Protection Act
6 16 (1.95%) Onboarding
7 15 (1.83%) Hybrid Cloud
8 14 (1.71%) Legacy Systems
9 13 (1.58%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 12 (1.46%) AI Agents
10 12 (1.46%) Hedge funds
11 11 (1.34%) Analytical Mindset
12 10 (1.22%) Clustering
12 10 (1.22%) Data Fabric
12 10 (1.22%) Greenfield Project
13 9 (1.10%) Derivative
13 9 (1.10%) Fixed Income
13 9 (1.10%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 23 (2.80%) Linux
2 4 (0.49%) VMS
3 2 (0.24%) Android
3 2 (0.24%) Ubuntu
4 1 (0.12%) CentOS
4 1 (0.12%) Debian
4 1 (0.12%) Unix
4 1 (0.12%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 366 (44.58%) Data Pipeline
2 334 (40.68%) Analytics
3 320 (38.98%) ETL
4 306 (37.27%) Data Modelling
5 283 (34.47%) CI/CD
6 212 (25.82%) AI
7 200 (24.36%) Agile
7 200 (24.36%) Data Governance
8 199 (24.24%) DevOps
9 192 (23.39%) Business Intelligence
10 171 (20.83%) Machine Learning
11 167 (20.34%) Problem-Solving
12 162 (19.73%) Data Science
13 147 (17.90%) Data Architecture
14 94 (11.45%) Infrastructure as Code
15 91 (11.08%) Data Integration
16 85 (10.35%) Decision-Making
17 81 (9.87%) Data Transformation
18 79 (9.62%) Visualisation
19 76 (9.26%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 504 (61.39%) Python
2 417 (50.79%) SQL
3 62 (7.55%) Scala
4 53 (6.46%) Java
5 35 (4.26%) C#
6 31 (3.78%) JavaScript
7 20 (2.44%) C++
7 20 (2.44%) PowerShell
8 18 (2.19%) Bicep
8 18 (2.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 17 (2.07%) R
10 16 (1.95%) Bash
10 16 (1.95%) TypeScript
11 14 (1.71%) Go
12 13 (1.58%) T-SQL
13 11 (1.34%) PL/SQL
13 11 (1.34%) Rust
14 10 (1.22%) Shell Script
15 7 (0.85%) Korn
16 2 (0.24%) PHP
Qualifications
1 166 (20.22%) Security Cleared
2 139 (16.93%) SC Cleared
3 62 (7.55%) Degree
4 46 (5.60%) Azure Certification
5 33 (4.02%) Computer Science Degree
6 28 (3.41%) Master's Degree
7 18 (2.19%) DV Cleared
8 12 (1.46%) AWS Certification
9 11 (1.34%) Microsoft Certification
9 11 (1.34%) PhD
10 7 (0.85%) MCP
11 5 (0.61%) BPSS Clearance
12 4 (0.49%) DBS Check
13 3 (0.37%) ISTQB
13 3 (0.37%) Tableau Certification
14 2 (0.24%) SnowPro
15 1 (0.12%) ACCA
15 1 (0.12%) CIMA
15 1 (0.12%) OCP
15 1 (0.12%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 219 (26.67%) Data Quality
2 69 (8.40%) GDPR
3 21 (2.56%) QA
4 14 (1.71%) Accessibility
5 11 (1.34%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 10 (1.22%) HIPAA
7 5 (0.61%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 5 (0.61%) PERC
7 5 (0.61%) SOC 2
8 4 (0.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 3 (0.37%) WCAG
10 2 (0.24%) GRC
10 2 (0.24%) HL7
10 2 (0.24%) MiFID
10 2 (0.24%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.24%) PMO
11 1 (0.12%) EMIR
11 1 (0.12%) ISO 13485
11 1 (0.12%) NCSC
11 1 (0.12%) Solvency II
System Software
1 120 (14.62%) Docker
2 15 (1.83%) HDFS
3 2 (0.24%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.12%) Apache ZooKeeper
4 1 (0.12%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 134 (16.32%) Terraform
2 110 (13.40%) Kubernetes
3 11 (1.34%) Grafana
3 11 (1.34%) Hadoop YARN
4 9 (1.10%) Prometheus
5 8 (0.97%) Ansible
6 5 (0.61%) Puppet
7 4 (0.49%) Argo
8 3 (0.37%) Kibana
8 3 (0.37%) logstash
8 3 (0.37%) Oozie
9 2 (0.24%) Control-M
9 2 (0.24%) Kubeflow
9 2 (0.24%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.12%) Apache Ranger
10 1 (0.12%) Nagios
Vendors
1 244 (29.72%) Databricks
2 102 (12.42%) Microsoft
3 41 (4.99%) Google
4 24 (2.92%) Oracle
5 21 (2.56%) Informatica
6 18 (2.19%) Foundry
6 18 (2.19%) Palantir
7 15 (1.83%) Talend
8 14 (1.71%) OpenAI
8 14 (1.71%) SAP
9 12 (1.46%) Salesforce
10 8 (0.97%) Virgin Media
11 7 (0.85%) Denodo
12 6 (0.73%) Guidewire
13 5 (0.61%) Automation Anywhere
13 5 (0.61%) Cloudera
13 5 (0.61%) MicroStrategy
13 5 (0.61%) ServiceNow
13 5 (0.61%) UiPath
14 3 (0.37%) Workday