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

6 months to
22 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 92 151 212
Rank change year-on-year +59 +61 +13
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 974 456 421
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.80% 1.76% 1.11%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.21% 1.96% 1.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 672 320 319
10th Percentile £363 £400 £412
25th Percentile £435 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £570 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.89% +3.64% -8.33%
75th Percentile £625 £676 £675
90th Percentile £738 £838 £739
UK median daily rate £524 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.77% - -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 11 7
10th Percentile £61.70 £22.00 £29.69
25th Percentile £65.00 £22.36 £35.00
Median hourly rate £70.00 £26.50 £35.63
Median % change year-on-year +164.15% -25.62% -28.38%
75th Percentile £79.38 £29.38 £46.88
90th Percentile £86.25 £65.00 £56.15
UK median hourly rate £69.00 £25.97 £35.63
% change year-on-year +165.74% -27.13% +1.80%

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 30,350 23,294 33,147
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.25% 90.10% 87.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,414 14,536 22,024
10th Percentile £313 £309 £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 £617 £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 1,891 752 2,034
10th Percentile £15.22 £15.62 £13.41
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £27.21 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.26% - -
75th Percentile £63.32 £65.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.48 £72.68
UK median hourly rate £25.77 £32.81 £35.00
% change year-on-year -21.46% -6.26% -

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 22 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 22 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 22 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 +62 647 £550 -4.35% 206
North of England -4 103 £450 -10.00% 96
Midlands +12 88 £511 +2.25% 51
West Midlands -9 68 £519 +3.85% 41
North West +5 56 £448 +0.85% 52
South West +3 54 £550 -15.38% 30
South East -15 39 £550 +0.92% 95
Yorkshire -45 28 £500 -16.67% 35
East Midlands -13 20 £447 -12.78% 10
North East -5 19 £450 -23.08% 10
East of England -24 15 £551 +72.45% 14
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
1 150 (15.40%) Apache Spark
2 102 (10.47%) Apache Airflow
3 67 (6.88%) Apache
4 18 (1.85%) Palantir Foundry
5 15 (1.54%) SAS
6 11 (1.13%) Confluence
7 8 (0.82%) Appian
8 3 (0.31%) Apache Superset
8 3 (0.31%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.21%) Jupyter
9 2 (0.21%) SharePoint
10 1 (0.10%) Apache Synapse
10 1 (0.10%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.10%) Camunda
10 1 (0.10%) CMS
10 1 (0.10%) IBM HTTP Server
10 1 (0.10%) Luigi
Applications
1 18 (1.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (1.03%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 6 (0.62%) Chatbot
4 5 (0.51%) Microsoft Office
5 4 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.31%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.31%) Trello
7 2 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.10%) Adobe XD
Business Applications
1 4 (0.41%) Aladdin
2 3 (0.31%) SAP BPC
3 2 (0.21%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.21%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.10%) Actimize
4 1 (0.10%) Markit EDM
4 1 (0.10%) Maximo
4 1 (0.10%) Misys Midas
4 1 (0.10%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.10%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.10%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 463 (47.54%) Azure
2 346 (35.52%) AWS
3 220 (22.59%) Power Platform
4 184 (18.89%) Azure Data Factory
5 145 (14.89%) GCP
6 120 (12.32%) Snowflake
7 107 (10.99%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 104 (10.68%) Amazon S3
9 103 (10.57%) GitHub
10 93 (9.55%) Serverless
11 88 (9.03%) dbt
12 83 (8.52%) Azure DevOps
13 76 (7.80%) AWS Lambda
14 70 (7.19%) GitHub Actions
15 41 (4.21%) AWS CloudFormation
16 26 (2.67%) AWS Step Functions
17 25 (2.57%) Azure Machine Learning
18 23 (2.36%) Amazon SageMaker
19 22 (2.26%) Microsoft Purview
20 21 (2.16%) Collibra
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.51%) Network Security
2 4 (0.41%) Cisco IPT
2 4 (0.41%) Kerberos
3 3 (0.31%) RTP
3 3 (0.31%) VPN
4 1 (0.10%) 4G
4 1 (0.10%) 5G
4 1 (0.10%) Firewall
4 1 (0.10%) SAN
4 1 (0.10%) SMS
4 1 (0.10%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 200 (20.53%) Power BI
2 190 (19.51%) Data Warehouse
3 137 (14.07%) Data Lake
4 81 (8.32%) Metadata
5 68 (6.98%) SQL Server
6 65 (6.67%) Big Data
7 62 (6.37%) NoSQL
8 59 (6.06%) Delta Lake
9 53 (5.44%) Azure SQL Database
9 53 (5.44%) Snowflake Schema
10 51 (5.24%) Relational Database
11 50 (5.13%) Amazon Redshift
12 45 (4.62%) BigQuery
13 40 (4.11%) Tableau
14 39 (4.00%) PostgreSQL
15 38 (3.90%) Amazon Athena
16 34 (3.49%) Hadoop
17 32 (3.29%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 27 (2.77%) Spark SQL
19 23 (2.36%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 139 (14.27%) Git
2 46 (4.72%) GitLab
3 41 (4.21%) Jenkins
4 39 (4.00%) MLflow
5 21 (2.16%) JIRA
6 6 (0.62%) Visual Studio Code
7 5 (0.51%) Selenium
8 4 (0.41%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.31%) JUnit
9 3 (0.31%) Maven
9 3 (0.31%) Postman
9 3 (0.31%) Robot Framework
9 3 (0.31%) Terragrunt
10 2 (0.21%) Cucumber
10 2 (0.21%) ERwin
10 2 (0.21%) Mockito
10 2 (0.21%) TeamCity
10 2 (0.21%) Visual Studio
11 1 (0.10%) Bitbucket
11 1 (0.10%) SoapUI
General
1 271 (27.82%) Social Skills
2 229 (23.51%) Finance
3 143 (14.68%) Analytical Skills
4 83 (8.52%) Public Sector
5 62 (6.37%) Banking
6 23 (2.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 17 (1.75%) Investment Banking
7 17 (1.75%) Retail
8 16 (1.64%) Influencing Skills
9 14 (1.44%) Front Office
10 13 (1.33%) Marketing
11 11 (1.13%) Documentation Skills
12 10 (1.03%) Publishing
13 9 (0.92%) Legal
13 9 (0.92%) Pharmaceutical
14 8 (0.82%) Financial Institution
15 6 (0.62%) Back Office
15 6 (0.62%) Military
15 6 (0.62%) Presentation Skills
15 6 (0.62%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 449 (46.10%) Data Engineer
2 128 (13.14%) Lead
3 121 (12.42%) Senior
4 86 (8.83%) Senior Data Engineer
5 74 (7.60%) Azure Engineer
6 71 (7.29%) Architect
7 64 (6.57%) Developer
8 57 (5.85%) Azure Data Engineer
9 50 (5.13%) Analyst
10 44 (4.52%) Snowflake Engineer
11 43 (4.41%) Lead Data Engineer
12 41 (4.21%) Data Scientist
13 38 (3.90%) AWS Engineer
14 36 (3.70%) Data Architect
14 36 (3.70%) Snowflake Data Engineer
15 34 (3.49%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 28 (2.87%) Data Analyst
17 26 (2.67%) Python Engineer
18 25 (2.57%) AWS Data Engineer
19 24 (2.46%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 164 (16.84%) PySpark
2 123 (12.63%) Kafka
3 53 (5.44%) Pandas
4 51 (5.24%) PyTorch
5 43 (4.41%) scikit-learn
6 41 (4.21%) NumPy
7 40 (4.11%) TensorFlow
8 31 (3.18%) FastAPI
9 30 (3.08%) RESTful
10 29 (2.98%) JSON
11 28 (2.87%) Flask
12 27 (2.77%) pytest
13 24 (2.46%) YAML
14 23 (2.36%) React
15 22 (2.26%) LangChain
16 19 (1.95%) REST
17 16 (1.64%) Hugging Face
18 15 (1.54%) Django
18 15 (1.54%) Great Expectations
19 13 (1.33%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 114 (11.70%) Cloud Native
2 33 (3.39%) Algorithms
2 33 (3.39%) Product Ownership
3 30 (3.08%) Distributed Computing
4 28 (2.87%) Distributed Systems
5 23 (2.36%) Data Structures
6 21 (2.16%) Hybrid Cloud
7 19 (1.95%) Data Protection Act
7 19 (1.95%) Legacy Systems
8 17 (1.75%) AI Agents
8 17 (1.75%) Onboarding
9 16 (1.64%) Analytical Mindset
10 13 (1.33%) Clustering
11 11 (1.13%) Fixed Income
12 10 (1.03%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 10 (1.03%) Greenfield Project
12 10 (1.03%) NHS
13 9 (0.92%) Derivative
13 9 (0.92%) Enterprise Software
13 9 (0.92%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 23 (2.36%) Linux
2 6 (0.62%) VMS
3 5 (0.51%) Unix
4 2 (0.21%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.10%) CentOS
5 1 (0.10%) Debian
5 1 (0.10%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 439 (45.07%) Analytics
1 439 (45.07%) Data Pipeline
2 389 (39.94%) ETL
3 381 (39.12%) Data Modelling
4 343 (35.22%) CI/CD
5 254 (26.08%) Agile
6 252 (25.87%) AI
6 252 (25.87%) DevOps
7 242 (24.85%) Business Intelligence
8 240 (24.64%) Data Governance
9 214 (21.97%) Machine Learning
10 203 (20.84%) Data Science
11 201 (20.64%) Problem-Solving
12 155 (15.91%) Data Architecture
13 124 (12.73%) Infrastructure as Code
14 104 (10.68%) Decision-Making
15 100 (10.27%) Validation
15 100 (10.27%) Visualisation
16 98 (10.06%) Data Integration
17 94 (9.65%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 595 (61.09%) Python
2 521 (53.49%) SQL
3 70 (7.19%) Java
4 62 (6.37%) Scala
5 44 (4.52%) C#
6 30 (3.08%) JavaScript
7 28 (2.87%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 26 (2.67%) PowerShell
9 23 (2.36%) Bicep
10 22 (2.26%) Bash
11 19 (1.95%) T-SQL
11 19 (1.95%) TypeScript
12 16 (1.64%) R
13 15 (1.54%) Go
14 14 (1.44%) C++
15 11 (1.13%) PL/SQL
16 8 (0.82%) Korn
16 8 (0.82%) Rust
17 6 (0.62%) Shell Script
18 2 (0.21%) SAS Macro
Qualifications
1 199 (20.43%) Security Cleared
2 164 (16.84%) SC Cleared
3 79 (8.11%) Degree
4 49 (5.03%) Azure Certification
5 36 (3.70%) Computer Science Degree
5 36 (3.70%) Master's Degree
6 21 (2.16%) DV Cleared
7 13 (1.33%) AWS Certification
7 13 (1.33%) BPSS Clearance
8 11 (1.13%) Microsoft Certification
8 11 (1.13%) PhD
9 4 (0.41%) DBS Check
9 4 (0.41%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 2 (0.21%) SnowPro
11 1 (0.10%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 1 (0.10%) CCSP
11 1 (0.10%) Cisco Certification
11 1 (0.10%) CISSP
11 1 (0.10%) OCP
11 1 (0.10%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 266 (27.31%) Data Quality
2 81 (8.32%) GDPR
3 34 (3.49%) QA
4 13 (1.33%) Accessibility
5 12 (1.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 9 (0.92%) HIPAA
7 6 (0.62%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 6 (0.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 5 (0.51%) PERC
8 5 (0.51%) SOC 2
9 3 (0.31%) GRC
9 3 (0.31%) WCAG
10 2 (0.21%) HL7
10 2 (0.21%) MiFID
10 2 (0.21%) NIST
10 2 (0.21%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.21%) Solvency II
11 1 (0.10%) ISO 13485
11 1 (0.10%) NCSC
11 1 (0.10%) PMO
System Software
1 136 (13.96%) Docker
2 8 (0.82%) HDFS
3 2 (0.21%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.10%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 161 (16.53%) Terraform
2 134 (13.76%) Kubernetes
3 25 (2.57%) Prometheus
4 13 (1.33%) Grafana
5 6 (0.62%) Ansible
6 5 (0.51%) Argo
7 4 (0.41%) Hadoop YARN
8 3 (0.31%) Control-M
8 3 (0.31%) Kubeflow
9 2 (0.21%) Kibana
9 2 (0.21%) logstash
9 2 (0.21%) Nagios
9 2 (0.21%) Oozie
9 2 (0.21%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.10%) Apache Ranger
10 1 (0.10%) HP Fortify
10 1 (0.10%) Puppet
10 1 (0.10%) Rancher
Vendors
1 282 (28.95%) Databricks
2 131 (13.45%) Microsoft
3 47 (4.83%) Google
4 29 (2.98%) Informatica
4 29 (2.98%) Oracle
5 22 (2.26%) Palantir
5 22 (2.26%) Talend
6 21 (2.16%) Foundry
6 21 (2.16%) OpenAI
7 15 (1.54%) SAP
8 13 (1.33%) Splunk
9 11 (1.13%) Salesforce
10 10 (1.03%) Cloudera
11 8 (0.82%) Automation Anywhere
11 8 (0.82%) UiPath
11 8 (0.82%) Virgin Media
12 7 (0.72%) Denodo
13 6 (0.62%) MicroStrategy
13 6 (0.62%) ServiceNow
14 5 (0.51%) Guidewire