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

6 months to
16 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 84 144 194
Rank change year-on-year +60 +50 +7
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,404 539 424
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.05% 1.94% 1.30%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.59% 2.14% 1.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 983 340 313
10th Percentile £400 £363 £400
25th Percentile £450 £422 £468
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £575
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -9.57% -8.00%
75th Percentile £639 £644 £676
90th Percentile £749 £748 £775
UK median daily rate £525 £510 £575
% change year-on-year +2.99% -11.35% -4.17%
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 39,062 25,238 28,145
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.72% 90.90% 86.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,917 16,041 17,545
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £423
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 2,725 1,497 1,306
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.38 £14.92
25th Percentile £17.85 £17.87 £20.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -1.91%
75th Percentile £68.00 £49.75 £66.50
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% +1.18%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 +44 864 £550 - 1,583
North of England +21 182 £475 - 309
Midlands +34 127 £486 +7.88% 133
West Midlands +23 103 £475 -6.31% 108
South East -15 93 £525 +19.32% 237
Yorkshire +21 91 £500 +5.26% 81
South West +20 79 £525 -3.45% 119
North West -21 58 £513 +8.47% 189
North East -9 35 £425 -20.93% 40
East of England -7 29 £575 +27.78% 79
East Midlands +2 22 £503 +15.57% 25
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
2 152 (10.83%) Apache Spark
3 118 (8.40%) Apache
4 34 (2.42%) SAS
5 31 (2.21%) Confluence
6 20 (1.42%) Jupyter
7 17 (1.21%) 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 8 (0.57%) 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%) 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
1 581 (41.38%) Azure
2 526 (37.46%) AWS
3 263 (18.73%) Power Platform
4 227 (16.17%) Snowflake
5 204 (14.53%) GCP
6 201 (14.32%) dbt
7 157 (11.18%) Amazon S3
8 156 (11.11%) Azure Data Factory
9 127 (9.05%) Serverless
10 122 (8.69%) Azure DevOps
11 115 (8.19%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 104 (7.41%) AWS Lambda
13 102 (7.26%) GitHub
14 67 (4.77%) Azure Databricks
15 53 (3.77%) GitHub Actions
16 38 (2.71%) Amazon EMR
17 35 (2.49%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 33 (2.35%) Amazon Bedrock
19 31 (2.21%) Microsoft Purview
20 29 (2.07%) 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%) RTP
4 1 (0.071%) SMS
4 1 (0.071%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 284 (20.23%) Data Warehouse
2 249 (17.74%) Power BI
3 176 (12.54%) Data Lake
4 164 (11.68%) Metadata
5 112 (7.98%) BigQuery
6 96 (6.84%) Delta Lake
7 90 (6.41%) Amazon Redshift
8 77 (5.48%) Big Data
9 66 (4.70%) Tableau
10 63 (4.49%) Amazon Athena
11 56 (3.99%) SQL Server
12 48 (3.42%) Snowflake Schema
13 46 (3.28%) Relational Database
14 44 (3.13%) PostgreSQL
15 41 (2.92%) NoSQL
16 36 (2.56%) Looker
17 32 (2.28%) Azure SQL Database
18 29 (2.07%) Data Vault
19 28 (1.99%) Amazon RDS
20 27 (1.92%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 143 (10.19%) Git
2 83 (5.91%) GitLab
3 59 (4.20%) JIRA
4 24 (1.71%) Jenkins
5 20 (1.42%) MLflow
6 8 (0.57%) RStudio
6 8 (0.57%) Terragrunt
7 7 (0.50%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.50%) Claude Code
7 7 (0.50%) Selenium
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%) Snyk
12 2 (0.14%) Postman
12 2 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
12 2 (0.14%) TeamCity
12 2 (0.14%) Yeoman
General
1 353 (25.14%) Social Skills
2 319 (22.72%) Finance
3 225 (16.03%) Analytical Skills
4 143 (10.19%) Public Sector
5 120 (8.55%) Banking
6 45 (3.21%) Marketing
7 33 (2.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 30 (2.14%) Retail
9 21 (1.50%) Front Office
10 20 (1.42%) Investment Banking
11 19 (1.35%) Documentation Skills
12 17 (1.21%) Pharmaceutical
13 16 (1.14%) Manufacturing
13 16 (1.14%) Telecoms
14 12 (0.85%) Billing
14 12 (0.85%) Influencing Skills
15 11 (0.78%) Financial Institution
15 11 (0.78%) Law
16 10 (0.71%) Back Office
16 10 (0.71%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 646 (46.01%) Data Engineer
2 209 (14.89%) Senior
3 160 (11.40%) Lead
4 154 (10.97%) Architect
5 134 (9.54%) Senior Data Engineer
6 86 (6.13%) Data Architect
7 75 (5.34%) Developer
8 67 (4.77%) AWS Engineer
9 62 (4.42%) Analyst
10 58 (4.13%) AWS Data Engineer
11 53 (3.77%) Databricks Engineer
12 52 (3.70%) Snowflake Engineer
13 50 (3.56%) Azure Engineer
14 48 (3.42%) Lead Data Engineer
15 42 (2.99%) Databricks Data Engineer
16 40 (2.85%) Snowflake Data Engineer
16 40 (2.85%) Solutions Architect
17 38 (2.71%) Consultant
18 35 (2.49%) DevOps Engineer
19 34 (2.42%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 211 (15.03%) Terraform
2 201 (14.32%) PySpark
3 86 (6.13%) Kafka
4 55 (3.92%) REST
5 33 (2.35%) React
6 28 (1.99%) .NET
7 27 (1.92%) JSON
8 20 (1.42%) Pandas
9 13 (0.93%) PyTorch
10 12 (0.85%) LangChain
11 11 (0.78%) FastAPI
11 11 (0.78%) Microsoft Graph
11 11 (0.78%) NumPy
11 11 (0.78%) TensorFlow
12 10 (0.71%) Apache Avro
12 10 (0.71%) pytest
12 10 (0.71%) scikit-learn
13 9 (0.64%) RabbitMQ
13 9 (0.64%) RESTful
13 9 (0.64%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 180 (12.82%) Cloud Native
2 69 (4.91%) Data Structures
3 67 (4.77%) Onboarding
4 56 (3.99%) Product Ownership
5 50 (3.56%) Legacy Systems
6 42 (2.99%) AI Agents
7 40 (2.85%) Distributed Systems
8 20 (1.42%) Distributed Computing
9 19 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
10 18 (1.28%) Greenfield Project
10 18 (1.28%) NHS
10 18 (1.28%) Virtual Team
11 17 (1.21%) Enterprise Software
12 15 (1.07%) Life Science
13 14 (1.00%) Analytical Mindset
13 14 (1.00%) Management Information System
14 13 (0.93%) Data Fabric
15 12 (0.85%) Algorithms
15 12 (0.85%) Clustering
15 12 (0.85%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 28 (1.99%) Linux
2 25 (1.78%) 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 (49.50%) Data Pipeline
2 674 (48.01%) Analytics
3 547 (38.96%) Data Modelling
4 502 (35.75%) CI/CD
5 484 (34.47%) ETL
6 432 (30.77%) AI
7 341 (24.29%) Agile
8 336 (23.93%) DevOps
9 329 (23.43%) Business Intelligence
10 318 (22.65%) Data Governance
11 242 (17.24%) Stakeholder Management
12 241 (17.17%) Machine Learning
13 227 (16.17%) Data Transformation
13 227 (16.17%) Problem-Solving
14 223 (15.88%) Data Architecture
15 221 (15.74%) Migration
16 217 (15.46%) Validation
17 213 (15.17%) Infrastructure as Code
18 207 (14.74%) Decision-Making
19 196 (13.96%) Data Science
Programming Languages
1 754 (53.70%) SQL
2 716 (51.00%) Python
3 98 (6.98%) Java
4 41 (2.92%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 38 (2.71%) PowerShell
5 38 (2.71%) Scala
6 32 (2.28%) C#
7 31 (2.21%) Bash
8 28 (1.99%) JavaScript
9 21 (1.50%) R
10 20 (1.42%) T-SQL
11 16 (1.14%) PL/SQL
12 13 (0.93%) Bicep
12 13 (0.93%) TypeScript
13 12 (0.85%) Kusto Query Language
14 11 (0.78%) Shell Script
15 9 (0.64%) SAS Macro
16 7 (0.50%) LookML
16 7 (0.50%) SPARQL
17 6 (0.43%) Korn
Qualifications
1 270 (19.23%) Security Cleared
2 225 (16.03%) SC Cleared
3 71 (5.06%) Degree
4 35 (2.49%) Computer Science Degree
5 33 (2.35%) DV Cleared
6 29 (2.07%) Azure Certification
7 25 (1.78%) AWS Certification
8 24 (1.71%) BPSS Clearance
9 18 (1.28%) 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%) Microsoft Certification
14 6 (0.43%) PMI Certification
15 5 (0.36%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 5 (0.36%) PMP
16 4 (0.28%) Tableau Certification
16 4 (0.28%) TOGAF Certification
17 3 (0.21%) Microsoft Certified Professional
17 3 (0.21%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 464 (33.05%) Data Quality
2 74 (5.27%) QA
3 59 (4.20%) GDPR
4 26 (1.85%) Accessibility
5 12 (0.85%) SLA
6 4 (0.28%) Disclosure Scotland
6 4 (0.28%) PMO
6 4 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 3 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
7 3 (0.21%) GRC
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%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 2 (0.14%) EU AI Act
8 2 (0.14%) GxP
8 2 (0.14%) IFRS
8 2 (0.14%) NCSC
System Software
1 122 (8.69%) Docker
2 5 (0.36%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.071%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 97 (6.91%) Kubernetes
2 24 (1.71%) Ansible
3 19 (1.35%) Grafana
4 10 (0.71%) Prometheus
5 7 (0.50%) Control-M
6 6 (0.43%) Kibana
7 3 (0.21%) logstash
8 2 (0.14%) Argo
8 2 (0.14%) Puppet
9 1 (0.071%) Cilium
9 1 (0.071%) HAProxy
9 1 (0.071%) IBM Guardium
9 1 (0.071%) Kubeflow
9 1 (0.071%) Kustomize
9 1 (0.071%) Nagios
9 1 (0.071%) Progress Chef
9 1 (0.071%) QRadar
9 1 (0.071%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 370 (26.35%) Databricks
2 249 (17.74%) Microsoft
3 74 (5.27%) Google
4 65 (4.63%) Oracle
5 60 (4.27%) Informatica
6 28 (1.99%) Foundry
6 28 (1.99%) SAP
7 25 (1.78%) Palantir
7 25 (1.78%) Talend
8 23 (1.64%) Salesforce
9 16 (1.14%) OpenAI
10 13 (0.93%) Cloudera
10 13 (0.93%) Teradata
11 12 (0.85%) ServiceNow
11 12 (0.85%) Trend Micro
12 10 (0.71%) Adobe
13 7 (0.50%) Hitachi
13 7 (0.50%) Splunk
14 6 (0.43%) Alteryx
14 6 (0.43%) SnapLogic