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 17 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 95 154 212
Rank change year-on-year +59 +58 +4
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 937 451 427
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.73% 1.76% 1.13%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.12% 1.96% 1.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 641 319 320
10th Percentile £363 £399 £413
25th Percentile £434 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -7.37%
75th Percentile £615 £676 £675
90th Percentile £738 £838 £744
UK median daily rate £515 £540 £550
% change year-on-year -4.63% -1.82% -7.37%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 11 9
10th Percentile £41.70 £22.00 £32.35
25th Percentile £51.38 £22.36 £35.00
Median hourly rate £63.97 £26.50 £42.31
Median % change year-on-year +141.40% -37.36% -14.96%
75th Percentile £70.65 £29.38 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.81 £65.00 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £61.25 £25.97 £42.31
% change year-on-year +135.89% -38.62% +20.87%

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 29,988 23,032 33,130
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.44% 89.84% 87.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,171 14,261 22,013
10th Percentile £310 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £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 1,882 723 1,996
10th Percentile £15.18 £15.62 £13.31
25th Percentile £18.23 £21.15 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.77 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -26.37% - -
75th Percentile £60.41 £64.86 £61.25
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £73.27
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £34.00
% change year-on-year -22.62% -4.41% -2.86%

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 17 February 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 17 February 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 17 February 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 +62 632 £550 -4.35% 213
North of England -6 95 £450 -10.00% 98
Midlands +5 85 £511 +2.25% 56
West Midlands 0 65 £519 +3.85% 42
North West 0 52 £445 +0.28% 56
South West -4 47 £550 -15.38% 38
South East -14 39 £525 -2.78% 102
Yorkshire -37 25 £500 -20.00% 32
East Midlands -8 20 £445 -6.24% 14
North East +2 18 £450 -23.08% 11
East of England -23 15 £551 +72.45% 19
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
1 138 (14.73%) Apache Spark
2 102 (10.89%) Apache Airflow
3 66 (7.04%) Apache
4 18 (1.92%) Palantir Foundry
5 11 (1.17%) Confluence
6 8 (0.85%) Appian
7 7 (0.75%) SAS
8 3 (0.32%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.21%) Apache Superset
9 2 (0.21%) Jupyter
9 2 (0.21%) SharePoint
10 1 (0.11%) Apache Pig
10 1 (0.11%) Apache Synapse
10 1 (0.11%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.11%) Camunda
10 1 (0.11%) CMS
10 1 (0.11%) IBM HTTP Server
10 1 (0.11%) Luigi
Applications
1 18 (1.92%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (1.07%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 6 (0.64%) Chatbot
4 5 (0.53%) Microsoft Office
5 4 (0.43%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.32%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.32%) Trello
7 1 (0.11%) Adobe XD
7 1 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 4 (0.43%) Aladdin
2 2 (0.21%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.21%) Markit EDM
2 2 (0.21%) Salesforce CRM
3 1 (0.11%) Actimize
3 1 (0.11%) Eagle PACE
3 1 (0.11%) Maximo
3 1 (0.11%) Misys Midas
3 1 (0.11%) SAP BPC
3 1 (0.11%) SAP ERP
3 1 (0.11%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.11%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 447 (47.71%) Azure
2 322 (34.36%) AWS
3 203 (21.66%) Power Platform
4 178 (19.00%) Azure Data Factory
5 136 (14.51%) GCP
6 116 (12.38%) Snowflake
7 107 (11.42%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 99 (10.57%) Amazon S3
9 96 (10.25%) GitHub
10 89 (9.50%) Serverless
11 83 (8.86%) dbt
12 77 (8.22%) Azure DevOps
13 73 (7.79%) AWS Lambda
14 64 (6.83%) GitHub Actions
15 38 (4.06%) AWS CloudFormation
16 24 (2.56%) AWS Step Functions
16 24 (2.56%) Azure Machine Learning
17 23 (2.45%) Amazon SageMaker
18 22 (2.35%) Microsoft Purview
19 21 (2.24%) Amazon EMR
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.53%) Network Security
2 4 (0.43%) Cisco IPT
2 4 (0.43%) Kerberos
3 3 (0.32%) RTP
3 3 (0.32%) VPN
4 1 (0.11%) 4G
4 1 (0.11%) 5G
4 1 (0.11%) Firewall
4 1 (0.11%) SAN
4 1 (0.11%) SMS
4 1 (0.11%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 188 (20.06%) Power BI
2 182 (19.42%) Data Warehouse
3 134 (14.30%) Data Lake
4 82 (8.75%) Metadata
5 66 (7.04%) SQL Server
6 58 (6.19%) NoSQL
7 57 (6.08%) Big Data
8 53 (5.66%) Snowflake Schema
9 52 (5.55%) Azure SQL Database
9 52 (5.55%) Delta Lake
10 50 (5.34%) Amazon Redshift
10 50 (5.34%) Relational Database
11 43 (4.59%) BigQuery
12 38 (4.06%) PostgreSQL
13 37 (3.95%) Tableau
14 35 (3.74%) Amazon Athena
15 31 (3.31%) Hadoop
15 31 (3.31%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 26 (2.77%) Spark SQL
17 24 (2.56%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 134 (14.30%) Git
2 43 (4.59%) GitLab
3 37 (3.95%) Jenkins
4 36 (3.84%) MLflow
5 22 (2.35%) JIRA
6 6 (0.64%) Visual Studio Code
7 4 (0.43%) Selenium
8 3 (0.32%) JUnit
8 3 (0.32%) Maven
8 3 (0.32%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.32%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.21%) Cucumber
9 2 (0.21%) ERwin
9 2 (0.21%) Mockito
9 2 (0.21%) Poetry
9 2 (0.21%) Postman
9 2 (0.21%) Robot Framework
9 2 (0.21%) TeamCity
9 2 (0.21%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.11%) SoapUI
General
1 264 (28.18%) Social Skills
2 218 (23.27%) Finance
3 136 (14.51%) Analytical Skills
4 80 (8.54%) Public Sector
5 59 (6.30%) Banking
6 23 (2.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 17 (1.81%) Investment Banking
8 15 (1.60%) Influencing Skills
9 14 (1.49%) Front Office
9 14 (1.49%) Retail
10 13 (1.39%) Marketing
11 11 (1.17%) Documentation Skills
12 10 (1.07%) Publishing
13 9 (0.96%) Legal
13 9 (0.96%) Pharmaceutical
14 8 (0.85%) Financial Institution
15 6 (0.64%) Back Office
15 6 (0.64%) Military
15 6 (0.64%) Presentation Skills
16 4 (0.43%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 428 (45.68%) Data Engineer
2 116 (12.38%) Senior
3 112 (11.95%) Lead
4 81 (8.64%) Senior Data Engineer
5 71 (7.58%) Azure Engineer
6 69 (7.36%) Architect
7 64 (6.83%) Developer
8 56 (5.98%) Azure Data Engineer
9 50 (5.34%) Analyst
10 43 (4.59%) Snowflake Engineer
11 40 (4.27%) Data Scientist
12 37 (3.95%) Lead Data Engineer
13 35 (3.74%) Data Architect
13 35 (3.74%) Snowflake Data Engineer
14 34 (3.63%) AWS Engineer
15 32 (3.42%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 29 (3.09%) Data Analyst
17 24 (2.56%) Principal Engineer
17 24 (2.56%) Python Engineer
18 23 (2.45%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 160 (17.08%) PySpark
2 119 (12.70%) Kafka
3 54 (5.76%) Pandas
4 50 (5.34%) PyTorch
5 43 (4.59%) scikit-learn
6 42 (4.48%) NumPy
7 41 (4.38%) TensorFlow
8 32 (3.42%) FastAPI
9 29 (3.09%) Flask
9 29 (3.09%) JSON
9 29 (3.09%) RESTful
10 24 (2.56%) pytest
10 24 (2.56%) React
10 24 (2.56%) YAML
11 22 (2.35%) LangChain
12 19 (2.03%) REST
13 16 (1.71%) Hugging Face
14 15 (1.60%) Django
15 14 (1.49%) Great Expectations
15 14 (1.49%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 102 (10.89%) Cloud Native
2 32 (3.42%) Algorithms
3 29 (3.09%) Distributed Computing
3 29 (3.09%) Product Ownership
4 27 (2.88%) Distributed Systems
5 21 (2.24%) Hybrid Cloud
6 20 (2.13%) Data Structures
7 19 (2.03%) Data Protection Act
7 19 (2.03%) Legacy Systems
8 17 (1.81%) Onboarding
9 16 (1.71%) AI Agents
10 15 (1.60%) Analytical Mindset
11 12 (1.28%) Clustering
12 11 (1.17%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 10 (1.07%) Enterprise Software
13 10 (1.07%) Fixed Income
13 10 (1.07%) Greenfield Project
13 10 (1.07%) Hedge funds
14 9 (0.96%) Management Information System
14 9 (0.96%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 28 (2.99%) Linux
2 6 (0.64%) VMS
3 5 (0.53%) Unix
4 2 (0.21%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.11%) CentOS
5 1 (0.11%) Debian
5 1 (0.11%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 416 (44.40%) Data Pipeline
2 412 (43.97%) Analytics
3 374 (39.91%) ETL
4 359 (38.31%) Data Modelling
5 321 (34.26%) CI/CD
6 243 (25.93%) AI
7 236 (25.19%) DevOps
8 230 (24.55%) Agile
9 228 (24.33%) Data Governance
10 224 (23.91%) Business Intelligence
11 206 (21.99%) Machine Learning
12 192 (20.49%) Problem-Solving
13 191 (20.38%) Data Science
14 155 (16.54%) Data Architecture
15 116 (12.38%) Infrastructure as Code
16 100 (10.67%) Decision-Making
17 97 (10.35%) Visualisation
18 95 (10.14%) Data Integration
18 95 (10.14%) Validation
19 92 (9.82%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 578 (61.69%) Python
2 497 (53.04%) SQL
3 66 (7.04%) Java
4 60 (6.40%) Scala
5 43 (4.59%) C#
6 30 (3.20%) JavaScript
7 26 (2.77%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 26 (2.77%) PowerShell
8 24 (2.56%) Bicep
9 19 (2.03%) Bash
9 19 (2.03%) T-SQL
10 18 (1.92%) TypeScript
11 17 (1.81%) R
12 16 (1.71%) C++
13 15 (1.60%) Go
14 11 (1.17%) PL/SQL
14 11 (1.17%) Shell Script
15 9 (0.96%) Rust
16 8 (0.85%) Korn
17 1 (0.11%) VBA
Qualifications
1 191 (20.38%) Security Cleared
2 155 (16.54%) SC Cleared
3 76 (8.11%) Degree
4 50 (5.34%) Azure Certification
5 37 (3.95%) Computer Science Degree
6 35 (3.74%) Master's Degree
7 22 (2.35%) DV Cleared
8 13 (1.39%) AWS Certification
8 13 (1.39%) BPSS Clearance
9 11 (1.17%) Microsoft Certification
9 11 (1.17%) PhD
10 4 (0.43%) DBS Check
10 4 (0.43%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 2 (0.21%) ISTQB
11 2 (0.21%) SnowPro
12 1 (0.11%) CBAP
12 1 (0.11%) CCSP
12 1 (0.11%) CISSP
12 1 (0.11%) OCP
12 1 (0.11%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 254 (27.11%) Data Quality
2 80 (8.54%) GDPR
3 30 (3.20%) QA
4 13 (1.39%) Accessibility
5 11 (1.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 9 (0.96%) HIPAA
7 6 (0.64%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 6 (0.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 5 (0.53%) PERC
8 5 (0.53%) SOC 2
9 3 (0.32%) GRC
9 3 (0.32%) WCAG
10 2 (0.21%) HL7
10 2 (0.21%) MiFID
10 2 (0.21%) NIST
10 2 (0.21%) PCI DSS
11 1 (0.11%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.11%) ISO 13485
11 1 (0.11%) NCSC
11 1 (0.11%) PMO
System Software
1 135 (14.41%) Docker
2 14 (1.49%) HDFS
3 2 (0.21%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.11%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 154 (16.44%) Terraform
2 133 (14.19%) Kubernetes
3 23 (2.45%) Prometheus
4 13 (1.39%) Grafana
5 10 (1.07%) Hadoop YARN
6 8 (0.85%) Ansible
7 5 (0.53%) Argo
7 5 (0.53%) Puppet
8 3 (0.32%) Control-M
8 3 (0.32%) Kibana
8 3 (0.32%) Kubeflow
8 3 (0.32%) logstash
9 2 (0.21%) Nagios
9 2 (0.21%) Oozie
9 2 (0.21%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.11%) Apache Ranger
10 1 (0.11%) HP Fortify
10 1 (0.11%) Rancher
Vendors
1 271 (28.92%) Databricks
2 127 (13.55%) Microsoft
3 44 (4.70%) Google
4 27 (2.88%) Informatica
5 26 (2.77%) Oracle
6 21 (2.24%) Foundry
6 21 (2.24%) OpenAI
6 21 (2.24%) Palantir
7 19 (2.03%) Talend
8 13 (1.39%) SAP
9 11 (1.17%) Salesforce
10 9 (0.96%) Splunk
11 8 (0.85%) Automation Anywhere
11 8 (0.85%) UiPath
11 8 (0.85%) Virgin Media
12 7 (0.75%) Cloudera
12 7 (0.75%) Denodo
13 6 (0.64%) MicroStrategy
13 6 (0.64%) ServiceNow
14 5 (0.53%) Guidewire