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

6 months to
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 83 149 198
Rank change year-on-year +66 +49 -6
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,362 512 447
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.04% 1.88% 1.22%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.56% 2.08% 1.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 969 338 329
10th Percentile £384 £400 £375
25th Percentile £449 £450 £468
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -8.70% -8.00%
75th Percentile £638 £667 £700
90th Percentile £750 £800 £775
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -12.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 7 13
10th Percentile £30.88 £24.75 £30.55
25th Percentile £58.19 £28.13 £35.00
Median hourly rate £70.00 £38.96 £48.50
Median % change year-on-year +79.67% -19.67% -37.82%
75th Percentile £77.25 £53.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £88.25 £58.25 -
UK median hourly rate £69.22 £38.96 £35.00
% change year-on-year +77.67% +11.31% -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 38,234 24,648 31,320
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.43% 90.68% 85.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,071 15,798 20,362
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £420 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £735 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,374 1,309 2,214
10th Percentile £15.57 £14.39 £13.00
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.98 £16.25
Median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +88.87% -34.02% -8.14%
75th Percentile £68.75 £54.00 £62.50
90th Percentile £83.00 £71.70 £73.60
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -5.29%

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 July 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 July 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 July 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 +57 794 £550 - 231
North of England +21 178 £475 -5.00% 69
Midlands +41 152 £475 +3.09% 34
West Midlands +38 129 £469 +12.61% 22
South West +35 87 £500 -8.05% 25
Yorkshire +8 82 £490 +5.95% 19
South East -26 78 £525 +11.11% 69
North West -20 58 £500 +2.56% 36
North East -5 40 £425 -15.00% 14
East of England -5 29 £575 +39.39% 6
East Midlands -2 20 £500 +8.11% 12
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
1 170 (12.48%) Apache Spark
2 155 (11.38%) Apache Airflow
3 108 (7.93%) Apache
4 42 (3.08%) SAS
5 29 (2.13%) Confluence
6 23 (1.69%) Jupyter
7 18 (1.32%) Palantir Foundry
8 11 (0.81%) SharePoint
9 8 (0.59%) Apache Superset
10 4 (0.29%) Appian
11 2 (0.15%) Apache Synapse
11 2 (0.15%) ArcGIS
11 2 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
12 1 (0.073%) Apache Solr
12 1 (0.073%) Camunda
12 1 (0.073%) CICS
12 1 (0.073%) IBM HTTP Server
12 1 (0.073%) PowerExchange
Applications
1 20 (1.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (0.59%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 7 (0.51%) Spreadsheet
4 3 (0.22%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.15%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.073%) Notion
Business Applications
1 10 (0.73%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.44%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.37%) BambooHR
3 5 (0.37%) SAP S/4HANA
4 4 (0.29%) NetSuite
4 4 (0.29%) Sage X3
5 2 (0.15%) Endur
5 2 (0.15%) Oracle Assets
5 2 (0.15%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.15%) SAP BPC
5 2 (0.15%) Temenos T24
6 1 (0.073%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.073%) Markit EDM
6 1 (0.073%) MIS ActiveH
6 1 (0.073%) SAP ECC
Cloud Services
1 573 (42.07%) Azure
2 527 (38.69%) AWS
3 281 (20.63%) Power Platform
4 193 (14.17%) Snowflake
5 188 (13.80%) GCP
6 162 (11.89%) dbt
7 158 (11.60%) Azure Data Factory
8 156 (11.45%) Amazon S3
9 135 (9.91%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 119 (8.74%) Serverless
11 118 (8.66%) Azure DevOps
12 109 (8.00%) GitHub
13 101 (7.42%) AWS Lambda
14 64 (4.70%) GitHub Actions
15 39 (2.86%) Amazon EMR
16 30 (2.20%) Azure AI
17 28 (2.06%) Amazon Bedrock
17 28 (2.06%) Amazon SageMaker
17 28 (2.06%) AWS CloudFormation
18 27 (1.98%) Azure Cosmos DB
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.37%) Firewall
1 5 (0.37%) RTP
2 1 (0.073%) 4G
2 1 (0.073%) 5G
2 1 (0.073%) MIMO
2 1 (0.073%) MQTT
2 1 (0.073%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 261 (19.16%) Data Warehouse
2 258 (18.94%) Power BI
3 195 (14.32%) Data Lake
4 127 (9.32%) Metadata
5 95 (6.98%) Amazon Redshift
6 89 (6.53%) BigQuery
7 85 (6.24%) Big Data
8 84 (6.17%) Delta Lake
9 79 (5.80%) Tableau
10 70 (5.14%) SQL Server
11 62 (4.55%) Amazon Athena
11 62 (4.55%) NoSQL
12 57 (4.19%) Snowflake Schema
13 50 (3.67%) Relational Database
14 49 (3.60%) PostgreSQL
15 40 (2.94%) Azure SQL Database
16 36 (2.64%) Hadoop
17 35 (2.57%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 33 (2.42%) Star Schema
19 27 (1.98%) Looker
Development Applications
1 143 (10.50%) Git
2 65 (4.77%) GitLab
3 58 (4.26%) JIRA
4 33 (2.42%) MLflow
5 19 (1.40%) Jenkins
6 6 (0.44%) SonarQube
7 5 (0.37%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.22%) Artifactory
8 3 (0.22%) ERwin
8 3 (0.22%) Postman
8 3 (0.22%) Selenium
8 3 (0.22%) Snyk
8 3 (0.22%) Visual Studio
9 2 (0.15%) Yeoman
10 1 (0.073%) Cypress.io
10 1 (0.073%) git-flow
10 1 (0.073%) Octopus Deploy
10 1 (0.073%) Robot Framework
10 1 (0.073%) SoapUI
10 1 (0.073%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 327 (24.01%) Social Skills
2 318 (23.35%) Finance
3 228 (16.74%) Analytical Skills
4 158 (11.60%) Public Sector
5 95 (6.98%) Banking
6 35 (2.57%) Marketing
7 34 (2.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 30 (2.20%) Retail
9 28 (2.06%) Documentation Skills
10 21 (1.54%) Telecoms
11 19 (1.40%) Front Office
12 16 (1.17%) Investment Banking
13 15 (1.10%) Financial Institution
14 13 (0.95%) Manufacturing
15 11 (0.81%) Law
16 10 (0.73%) Influencing Skills
16 10 (0.73%) Legal
16 10 (0.73%) Pharmaceutical
17 8 (0.59%) Billing
18 6 (0.44%) Police
Job Titles
1 633 (46.48%) Data Engineer
2 195 (14.32%) Senior
3 155 (11.38%) Architect
4 153 (11.23%) Lead
5 114 (8.37%) Senior Data Engineer
6 84 (6.17%) Data Architect
7 81 (5.95%) Developer
8 68 (4.99%) AWS Engineer
9 66 (4.85%) Analyst
10 63 (4.63%) Lead Data Engineer
11 55 (4.04%) AWS Data Engineer
12 50 (3.67%) Snowflake Engineer
13 48 (3.52%) Azure Engineer
14 46 (3.38%) Data Scientist
15 45 (3.30%) Solutions Architect
16 43 (3.16%) Azure Data Engineer
17 42 (3.08%) Snowflake Data Engineer
18 38 (2.79%) Consultant
18 38 (2.79%) Data Analyst
19 33 (2.42%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 186 (13.66%) PySpark
2 122 (8.96%) Kafka
3 40 (2.94%) REST
4 35 (2.57%) Pandas
5 31 (2.28%) JSON
6 29 (2.13%) scikit-learn
7 27 (1.98%) React
8 23 (1.69%) PyTorch
9 22 (1.62%) NumPy
9 22 (1.62%) Spring
10 18 (1.32%) .NET
11 17 (1.25%) TensorFlow
12 15 (1.10%) OpenTelemetry
12 15 (1.10%) RESTful
12 15 (1.10%) Spring Boot
13 13 (0.95%) Microsoft Graph
13 13 (0.95%) YAML
14 12 (0.88%) Apache Avro
14 12 (0.88%) Great Expectations
14 12 (0.88%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 182 (13.36%) Cloud Native
2 56 (4.11%) Data Structures
2 56 (4.11%) Legacy Systems
3 52 (3.82%) Distributed Systems
4 42 (3.08%) Product Ownership
5 36 (2.64%) Onboarding
6 33 (2.42%) AI Agents
7 26 (1.91%) Distributed Computing
8 25 (1.84%) Data Protection Act
9 21 (1.54%) NHS
10 20 (1.47%) Greenfield Project
11 19 (1.40%) Algorithms
12 18 (1.32%) Analytical Mindset
13 16 (1.17%) Clustering
14 14 (1.03%) Virtual Team
15 12 (0.88%) Fixed Income
15 12 (0.88%) Life Science
16 11 (0.81%) Management Information System
16 11 (0.81%) Self-Motivation
17 10 (0.73%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 30 (2.20%) Linux
2 24 (1.76%) Unix
3 5 (0.37%) VMS
4 4 (0.29%) Windows
5 2 (0.15%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.073%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 697 (51.17%) Analytics
2 655 (48.09%) Data Pipeline
3 531 (38.99%) Data Modelling
4 480 (35.24%) CI/CD
5 473 (34.73%) ETL
6 381 (27.97%) AI
7 350 (25.70%) Agile
8 334 (24.52%) Business Intelligence
9 324 (23.79%) DevOps
10 281 (20.63%) Data Governance
11 257 (18.87%) Machine Learning
12 236 (17.33%) Problem-Solving
13 228 (16.74%) Data Science
14 199 (14.61%) Migration
15 198 (14.54%) Data Architecture
16 197 (14.46%) Validation
17 189 (13.88%) Decision-Making
18 168 (12.33%) Infrastructure as Code
19 163 (11.97%) Stakeholder Management
20 162 (11.89%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 738 (54.19%) SQL
2 708 (51.98%) Python
3 120 (8.81%) Java
4 41 (3.01%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 36 (2.64%) Scala
6 35 (2.57%) C#
7 29 (2.13%) Bash
8 24 (1.76%) T-SQL
9 22 (1.62%) PowerShell
10 20 (1.47%) JavaScript
11 19 (1.40%) R
12 16 (1.17%) Bicep
12 16 (1.17%) PL/SQL
13 13 (0.95%) TypeScript
14 12 (0.88%) SAS Macro
14 12 (0.88%) Shell Script
15 6 (0.44%) SPARQL
16 5 (0.37%) Cypher
16 5 (0.37%) Kusto Query Language
17 4 (0.29%) Korn
Qualifications
1 274 (20.12%) Security Cleared
2 237 (17.40%) SC Cleared
3 88 (6.46%) Degree
4 40 (2.94%) Computer Science Degree
5 32 (2.35%) BPSS Clearance
6 27 (1.98%) Azure Certification
6 27 (1.98%) DV Cleared
6 27 (1.98%) Master's Degree
7 18 (1.32%) AWS Certification
8 13 (0.95%) DBS Check
9 7 (0.51%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
9 7 (0.51%) Microsoft Certification
10 6 (0.44%) SnowPro
11 5 (0.37%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 3 (0.22%) Tableau Certification
13 2 (0.15%) CSPO
13 2 (0.15%) PhD
13 2 (0.15%) PMI Certification
14 1 (0.073%) ACCA
14 1 (0.073%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 392 (28.78%) Data Quality
2 78 (5.73%) GDPR
3 73 (5.36%) QA
4 20 (1.47%) Accessibility
5 10 (0.73%) SLA
6 5 (0.37%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 4 (0.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 4 (0.29%) Solvency II
8 3 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
8 3 (0.22%) GxP
8 3 (0.22%) HIPAA
8 3 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 3 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 42001
8 3 (0.22%) MiFID
8 3 (0.22%) NIST
8 3 (0.22%) PMO
9 2 (0.15%) 21 CFR Part 11
9 2 (0.15%) EMIR
9 2 (0.15%) GRC
10 1 (0.073%) Basel II
System Software
1 121 (8.88%) Docker
2 3 (0.22%) Active Directory
2 3 (0.22%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.15%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 182 (13.36%) Terraform
2 107 (7.86%) Kubernetes
3 24 (1.76%) Prometheus
4 15 (1.10%) Grafana
5 12 (0.88%) Ansible
6 5 (0.37%) Kibana
7 3 (0.22%) Argo
7 3 (0.22%) logstash
7 3 (0.22%) Nagios
7 3 (0.22%) Rancher
8 2 (0.15%) Kubeflow
8 2 (0.15%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.073%) Control-M
9 1 (0.073%) Hadoop YARN
9 1 (0.073%) HP Fortify
9 1 (0.073%) IBM Guardium
9 1 (0.073%) Kustomize
9 1 (0.073%) Oozie
Vendors
1 320 (23.49%) Databricks
2 235 (17.25%) Microsoft
3 74 (5.43%) Informatica
4 57 (4.19%) Oracle
5 56 (4.11%) Google
6 30 (2.20%) Foundry
6 30 (2.20%) Talend
7 28 (2.06%) SAP
8 27 (1.98%) Palantir
9 23 (1.69%) OpenAI
10 22 (1.62%) Splunk
11 18 (1.32%) Salesforce
12 15 (1.10%) Cloudera
13 14 (1.03%) ServiceNow
14 12 (0.88%) Trend Micro
15 8 (0.59%) Denodo
16 7 (0.51%) Adobe
16 7 (0.51%) InterSystems
17 6 (0.44%) Workday
18 5 (0.37%) Amplitude