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 23 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 84 152 207
Rank change year-on-year +68 +55 -16
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,199 444 415
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.89% 1.86% 1.14%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.41% 2.04% 1.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 849 306 309
10th Percentile £400 £400 £387
25th Percentile £450 £450 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% -4.35% -8.00%
75th Percentile £625 £688 £675
90th Percentile £749 £838 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 11 12
10th Percentile £52.90 £22.00 £30.46
25th Percentile £65.00 £22.61 £34.06
Median hourly rate £70.00 £27.50 £41.75
Median % change year-on-year +154.55% -34.13% -44.33%
75th Percentile £82.31 £46.36 £60.00
90th Percentile £89.25 £53.75 -
UK median hourly rate £70.00 £26.47 £35.00
% change year-on-year +164.50% -24.39% -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 35,196 21,756 31,344
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.75% 91.30% 86.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,391 14,220 20,552
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £411 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £510 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,171 917 2,255
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.41 £12.89
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.20 £15.97
Median hourly rate £45.59 £28.55 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.67% -21.78% -2.67%
75th Percentile £67.84 £60.00 £60.13
90th Percentile £80.20 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £27.97 £36.05
% change year-on-year +51.98% -22.42% -2.58%

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 23 May 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 23 May 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 23 May 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 +55 743 £550 -4.76% 280
North of England +5 132 £478 -4.50% 114
Midlands +10 123 £500 +8.11% 33
West Midlands +14 101 £500 -1.09% 26
South West +26 78 £505 -15.83% 29
South East -33 63 £550 +15.18% 90
Yorkshire -15 58 £478 -15.11% 25
North West -13 52 £500 - 64
North East -5 24 £450 -5.26% 27
East of England -22 22 £575 +54.08% 10
East Midlands -20 19 £525 +13.51% 7
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
1 173 (14.43%) Apache Spark
2 127 (10.59%) Apache Airflow
3 82 (6.84%) Apache
4 31 (2.59%) SAS
5 15 (1.25%) Confluence
6 14 (1.17%) Palantir Foundry
7 10 (0.83%) Jupyter
8 8 (0.67%) Appian
9 7 (0.58%) Apache Superset
10 4 (0.33%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.25%) SharePoint
12 2 (0.17%) Apache Synapse
13 1 (0.083%) ArcGIS
13 1 (0.083%) Camunda
13 1 (0.083%) CICS
13 1 (0.083%) CMS
13 1 (0.083%) IBM HTTP Server
13 1 (0.083%) PowerExchange
Applications
1 25 (2.09%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.58%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (0.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 6 (0.50%) Spreadsheet
4 3 (0.25%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.25%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.25%) Trello
5 2 (0.17%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 5 (0.42%) Aladdin
1 5 (0.42%) BambooHR
2 4 (0.33%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
3 3 (0.25%) SAP BPC
4 2 (0.17%) Oracle Assets
4 2 (0.17%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.083%) Endur
5 1 (0.083%) Markit EDM
5 1 (0.083%) SAP ECC
Cloud Services
1 541 (45.12%) Azure
2 440 (36.70%) AWS
3 274 (22.85%) Power Platform
4 178 (14.85%) Azure Data Factory
5 176 (14.68%) GCP
6 146 (12.18%) Snowflake
7 138 (11.51%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 128 (10.68%) Amazon S3
9 126 (10.51%) dbt
10 120 (10.01%) GitHub
11 106 (8.84%) Azure DevOps
12 94 (7.84%) Serverless
13 76 (6.34%) AWS Lambda
14 73 (6.09%) GitHub Actions
15 39 (3.25%) AWS CloudFormation
16 29 (2.42%) AWS Step Functions
17 25 (2.09%) Azure AI
17 25 (2.09%) Dagster
18 24 (2.00%) Amazon SQS
18 24 (2.00%) Collibra
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.42%) RTP
2 4 (0.33%) Firewall
3 2 (0.17%) Kerberos
4 1 (0.083%) 4G
4 1 (0.083%) 5G
4 1 (0.083%) MIMO
4 1 (0.083%) Network Security
4 1 (0.083%) SAN
4 1 (0.083%) SMS
4 1 (0.083%) TCP/IP
4 1 (0.083%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 252 (21.02%) Power BI
2 227 (18.93%) Data Warehouse
3 197 (16.43%) Data Lake
4 107 (8.92%) Metadata
5 86 (7.17%) SQL Server
6 84 (7.01%) Delta Lake
7 82 (6.84%) Big Data
8 71 (5.92%) BigQuery
9 70 (5.84%) Tableau
10 69 (5.75%) NoSQL
11 66 (5.50%) Amazon Redshift
12 64 (5.34%) Snowflake Schema
13 62 (5.17%) Azure SQL Database
14 52 (4.34%) Amazon Athena
14 52 (4.34%) Relational Database
15 42 (3.50%) PostgreSQL
16 39 (3.25%) Hadoop
17 36 (3.00%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 35 (2.92%) Spark SQL
19 28 (2.34%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 139 (11.59%) Git
2 53 (4.42%) GitLab
3 41 (3.42%) JIRA
4 38 (3.17%) MLflow
5 25 (2.09%) Jenkins
6 6 (0.50%) SonarQube
7 5 (0.42%) Selenium
8 4 (0.33%) Postman
9 3 (0.25%) Artifactory
9 3 (0.25%) Robot Framework
9 3 (0.25%) Snyk
10 2 (0.17%) Bitbucket
10 2 (0.17%) ERwin
10 2 (0.17%) Terragrunt
10 2 (0.17%) Visual Studio
11 1 (0.083%) Ant
11 1 (0.083%) JUnit
11 1 (0.083%) Maven
11 1 (0.083%) REST Assured
11 1 (0.083%) SoapUI
General
1 308 (25.69%) Finance
2 269 (22.44%) Social Skills
3 175 (14.60%) Analytical Skills
4 102 (8.51%) Public Sector
5 68 (5.67%) Banking
6 26 (2.17%) Retail
7 24 (2.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 22 (1.83%) Marketing
9 19 (1.58%) Documentation Skills
10 17 (1.42%) Front Office
11 15 (1.25%) Telecoms
12 14 (1.17%) Financial Institution
13 13 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
14 12 (1.00%) Investment Banking
15 10 (0.83%) Legal
16 6 (0.50%) Back Office
16 6 (0.50%) Law
16 6 (0.50%) Military
17 4 (0.33%) Pharmaceutical
18 3 (0.25%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 584 (48.71%) Data Engineer
2 163 (13.59%) Senior
3 131 (10.93%) Lead
4 123 (10.26%) Architect
5 111 (9.26%) Senior Data Engineer
6 65 (5.42%) Developer
7 63 (5.25%) Data Architect
8 54 (4.50%) Azure Engineer
9 53 (4.42%) Lead Data Engineer
10 51 (4.25%) AWS Engineer
11 50 (4.17%) Analyst
12 47 (3.92%) Azure Data Engineer
13 44 (3.67%) Snowflake Engineer
14 42 (3.50%) Data Scientist
14 42 (3.50%) Solutions Architect
15 41 (3.42%) AWS Data Engineer
16 38 (3.17%) Snowflake Data Engineer
17 34 (2.84%) Consultant
18 30 (2.50%) Data Analyst
19 28 (2.34%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 182 (15.18%) PySpark
2 129 (10.76%) Kafka
3 50 (4.17%) Pandas
4 37 (3.09%) scikit-learn
5 35 (2.92%) PyTorch
6 31 (2.59%) NumPy
7 30 (2.50%) REST
8 26 (2.17%) JSON
9 25 (2.09%) TensorFlow
10 23 (1.92%) React
10 23 (1.92%) Spring
11 19 (1.58%) LangChain
12 18 (1.50%) Great Expectations
12 18 (1.50%) YAML
13 17 (1.42%) RESTful
14 16 (1.33%) pytest
14 16 (1.33%) Spring Boot
15 15 (1.25%) FastAPI
16 14 (1.17%) Flask
17 13 (1.08%) Hugging Face
Miscellaneous
1 155 (12.93%) Cloud Native
2 42 (3.50%) Legacy Systems
3 40 (3.34%) Distributed Systems
4 39 (3.25%) Product Ownership
5 36 (3.00%) Data Structures
6 30 (2.50%) Distributed Computing
7 28 (2.34%) AI Agents
8 22 (1.83%) Onboarding
9 21 (1.75%) Greenfield Project
10 19 (1.58%) Algorithms
10 19 (1.58%) Data Protection Act
11 16 (1.33%) Analytical Mindset
12 14 (1.17%) Fixed Income
13 12 (1.00%) Clustering
13 12 (1.00%) NHS
13 12 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
14 11 (0.92%) Hybrid Cloud
15 10 (0.83%) Equities
16 9 (0.75%) Data Fabric
17 8 (0.67%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 29 (2.42%) Linux
2 23 (1.92%) Unix
3 6 (0.50%) VMS
4 3 (0.25%) Ubuntu
4 3 (0.25%) Windows
5 2 (0.17%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.083%) CentOS
6 1 (0.083%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 606 (50.54%) Analytics
2 545 (45.45%) Data Pipeline
3 475 (39.62%) Data Modelling
4 454 (37.86%) ETL
5 403 (33.61%) CI/CD
6 341 (28.44%) AI
7 308 (25.69%) Business Intelligence
8 299 (24.94%) Agile
8 299 (24.94%) DevOps
9 264 (22.02%) Data Governance
10 223 (18.60%) Machine Learning
11 198 (16.51%) Problem-Solving
12 195 (16.26%) Data Science
13 170 (14.18%) Data Architecture
14 158 (13.18%) Decision-Making
15 156 (13.01%) Migration
16 148 (12.34%) Validation
17 129 (10.76%) Data Transformation
17 129 (10.76%) Infrastructure as Code
18 112 (9.34%) Data Integration
Programming Languages
1 662 (55.21%) SQL
2 630 (52.54%) Python
3 97 (8.09%) Java
4 57 (4.75%) Scala
5 40 (3.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 36 (3.00%) C#
7 29 (2.42%) Bash
8 23 (1.92%) T-SQL
9 20 (1.67%) JavaScript
10 19 (1.58%) PowerShell
10 19 (1.58%) R
11 15 (1.25%) Bicep
12 14 (1.17%) PL/SQL
13 11 (0.92%) Shell Script
14 10 (0.83%) TypeScript
15 7 (0.58%) Go
15 7 (0.58%) SAS Macro
16 4 (0.33%) Korn
17 2 (0.17%) C++
17 2 (0.17%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 226 (18.85%) Security Cleared
2 199 (16.60%) SC Cleared
3 79 (6.59%) Degree
4 34 (2.84%) Azure Certification
4 34 (2.84%) Computer Science Degree
5 28 (2.34%) Master's Degree
6 17 (1.42%) BPSS Clearance
7 12 (1.00%) DBS Check
7 12 (1.00%) DV Cleared
8 11 (0.92%) AWS Certification
9 8 (0.67%) Microsoft Certification
10 6 (0.50%) PhD
11 4 (0.33%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 4 (0.33%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 4 (0.33%) SnowPro
12 2 (0.17%) PMI Certification
12 2 (0.17%) Tableau Certification
13 1 (0.083%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 1 (0.083%) OCP
13 1 (0.083%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 332 (27.69%) Data Quality
2 82 (6.84%) GDPR
3 58 (4.84%) QA
4 12 (1.00%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 7 (0.58%) SLA
6 6 (0.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 5 (0.42%) Accessibility
8 4 (0.33%) HIPAA
8 4 (0.33%) MiFID
8 4 (0.33%) Solvency II
9 3 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 3 (0.25%) GRC
9 3 (0.25%) PMO
10 2 (0.17%) EMIR
10 2 (0.17%) NIST
11 1 (0.083%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.083%) IFRS
11 1 (0.083%) IFRS 9
11 1 (0.083%) ISO 13485
11 1 (0.083%) SOC 2
System Software
1 112 (9.34%) Docker
2 4 (0.33%) HDFS
2 4 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (0.083%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.083%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 155 (12.93%) Terraform
2 108 (9.01%) Kubernetes
3 23 (1.92%) Prometheus
4 10 (0.83%) Grafana
5 9 (0.75%) Ansible
6 5 (0.42%) Argo
7 4 (0.33%) Kubeflow
8 3 (0.25%) Kibana
8 3 (0.25%) Nagios
8 3 (0.25%) Rancher
9 2 (0.17%) Hadoop YARN
9 2 (0.17%) logstash
9 2 (0.17%) Thomson Reuters DACS
10 1 (0.083%) Apache Ranger
10 1 (0.083%) Control-M
10 1 (0.083%) HP Fortify
10 1 (0.083%) IBM Guardium
10 1 (0.083%) Oozie
Vendors
1 310 (25.85%) Databricks
2 198 (16.51%) Microsoft
3 59 (4.92%) Google
4 54 (4.50%) Informatica
5 43 (3.59%) Oracle
6 24 (2.00%) Talend
7 23 (1.92%) OpenAI
8 21 (1.75%) Foundry
8 21 (1.75%) SAP
9 19 (1.58%) Splunk
10 16 (1.33%) Palantir
11 15 (1.25%) Cloudera
12 12 (1.00%) ServiceNow
13 10 (0.83%) Salesforce
14 9 (0.75%) UiPath
15 8 (0.67%) Automation Anywhere
16 7 (0.58%) Denodo
16 7 (0.58%) InterSystems
17 5 (0.42%) Workday
18 4 (0.33%) Alteryx