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

6 months to
27 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 87 141 213
Rank change year-on-year +54 +72 -2
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,117 456 415
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.97% 1.88% 1.10%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.44% 2.07% 1.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 776 324 314
10th Percentile £400 £400 £413
25th Percentile £450 £453 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £560
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% -1.79% -6.67%
75th Percentile £625 £676 £688
90th Percentile £750 £838 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 12 10
10th Percentile £52.90 £22.00 £29.51
25th Percentile £65.00 £22.38 £32.19
Median hourly rate £70.00 £25.97 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +169.59% -25.81% -36.36%
75th Percentile £81.56 £35.94 £48.56
90th Percentile £89.25 £63.88 £60.88
UK median hourly rate £70.00 £25.97 £35.00
% change year-on-year +169.59% -25.81% -

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 32,472 22,014 32,706
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.22% 90.86% 86.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,793 14,527 21,615
10th Percentile £313 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £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 1,988 846 2,159
10th Percentile £15.37 £15.00 £13.00
25th Percentile £19.00 £20.33 £16.00
Median hourly rate £35.91 £32.50 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.49% -1.52% -12.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £58.70
90th Percentile £76.55 £76.72 £71.87
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £32.00 £32.50
% change year-on-year +9.38% -1.54% -9.72%

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 27 March 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 27 March 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 27 March 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 +57 730 £550 -4.35% 253
Midlands +22 114 £514 +2.75% 51
North of England -8 107 £466 -6.75% 110
West Midlands +15 91 £525 -2.78% 36
South West +18 66 £550 -12.00% 49
North West -10 49 £471 -0.79% 59
South East -29 48 £550 +10.00% 111
Yorkshire -32 37 £473 -17.83% 40
North East +7 21 £450 -5.26% 13
East Midlands -16 21 £447 -5.89% 15
East of England -27 18 £575 +78.92% 34
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
1 172 (15.40%) Apache Spark
2 115 (10.30%) Apache Airflow
3 77 (6.89%) Apache
4 22 (1.97%) SAS
5 18 (1.61%) Palantir Foundry
6 11 (0.98%) Confluence
7 8 (0.72%) Appian
8 5 (0.45%) Apache Superset
9 4 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.27%) Jupyter
11 2 (0.18%) SharePoint
12 1 (0.090%) Apache Synapse
12 1 (0.090%) ArcGIS
12 1 (0.090%) Camunda
12 1 (0.090%) CMS
12 1 (0.090%) IBM HTTP Server
Applications
1 22 (1.97%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (0.90%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 8 (0.72%) Microsoft Office
4 6 (0.54%) Spreadsheet
5 4 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.27%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.27%) Trello
7 2 (0.18%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 4 (0.36%) Aladdin
2 3 (0.27%) BambooHR
2 3 (0.27%) SAP BPC
3 2 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.090%) Actimize
4 1 (0.090%) Markit EDM
4 1 (0.090%) Maximo
4 1 (0.090%) Misys Midas
4 1 (0.090%) SAP ECC
Cloud Services
1 530 (47.45%) Azure
2 398 (35.63%) AWS
3 256 (22.92%) Power Platform
4 189 (16.92%) Azure Data Factory
5 164 (14.68%) GCP
6 138 (12.35%) Snowflake
7 135 (12.09%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 127 (11.37%) GitHub
9 119 (10.65%) Amazon S3
10 101 (9.04%) dbt
11 98 (8.77%) Serverless
12 93 (8.33%) Azure DevOps
13 77 (6.89%) AWS Lambda
14 74 (6.62%) GitHub Actions
15 46 (4.12%) AWS CloudFormation
16 27 (2.42%) AWS Step Functions
17 24 (2.15%) Amazon EMR
17 24 (2.15%) Azure Machine Learning
17 24 (2.15%) Collibra
18 23 (2.06%) Amazon Kinesis
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.45%) RTP
2 4 (0.36%) Cisco IPT
2 4 (0.36%) Kerberos
2 4 (0.36%) Network Security
3 3 (0.27%) VPN
4 1 (0.090%) 4G
4 1 (0.090%) 5G
4 1 (0.090%) Firewall
4 1 (0.090%) SAN
4 1 (0.090%) SMS
4 1 (0.090%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 234 (20.95%) Power BI
2 221 (19.79%) Data Warehouse
3 173 (15.49%) Data Lake
4 98 (8.77%) Metadata
5 78 (6.98%) SQL Server
6 77 (6.89%) Big Data
7 76 (6.80%) NoSQL
8 72 (6.45%) Delta Lake
9 63 (5.64%) Azure SQL Database
10 60 (5.37%) Snowflake Schema
11 59 (5.28%) Amazon Redshift
11 59 (5.28%) Relational Database
12 56 (5.01%) BigQuery
12 56 (5.01%) Tableau
13 48 (4.30%) PostgreSQL
14 47 (4.21%) Amazon Athena
15 42 (3.76%) Hadoop
16 35 (3.13%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 31 (2.78%) Spark SQL
18 22 (1.97%) Mixpanel
Development Applications
1 150 (13.43%) Git
2 47 (4.21%) GitLab
3 42 (3.76%) MLflow
4 40 (3.58%) Jenkins
5 27 (2.42%) JIRA
6 7 (0.63%) Selenium
7 6 (0.54%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.27%) JUnit
8 3 (0.27%) Maven
8 3 (0.27%) Postman
8 3 (0.27%) Robot Framework
8 3 (0.27%) Terragrunt
8 3 (0.27%) Visual Studio Code
9 2 (0.18%) Bitbucket
9 2 (0.18%) Cucumber
9 2 (0.18%) Mockito
9 2 (0.18%) Snyk
9 2 (0.18%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.090%) Artifactory
10 1 (0.090%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 286 (25.60%) Social Skills
2 278 (24.89%) Finance
3 169 (15.13%) Analytical Skills
4 91 (8.15%) Public Sector
5 60 (5.37%) Banking
6 31 (2.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 20 (1.79%) Retail
8 17 (1.52%) Front Office
9 16 (1.43%) Documentation Skills
9 16 (1.43%) Marketing
10 15 (1.34%) Investment Banking
11 14 (1.25%) Influencing Skills
11 14 (1.25%) Telecoms
12 12 (1.07%) Financial Institution
13 11 (0.98%) Legal
14 9 (0.81%) Pharmaceutical
15 7 (0.63%) Publishing
16 6 (0.54%) Back Office
16 6 (0.54%) Military
17 5 (0.45%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 537 (48.08%) Data Engineer
2 142 (12.71%) Senior
3 136 (12.18%) Lead
4 99 (8.86%) Senior Data Engineer
5 97 (8.68%) Architect
6 70 (6.27%) Azure Engineer
7 67 (6.00%) Developer
8 58 (5.19%) Azure Data Engineer
9 55 (4.92%) Analyst
10 54 (4.83%) Lead Data Engineer
11 52 (4.66%) Data Architect
12 46 (4.12%) Snowflake Engineer
13 45 (4.03%) Data Scientist
14 44 (3.94%) AWS Engineer
15 39 (3.49%) Snowflake Data Engineer
16 37 (3.31%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 32 (2.86%) Consultant
17 32 (2.86%) Data Analyst
18 30 (2.69%) AWS Data Engineer
18 30 (2.69%) Principal Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 184 (16.47%) PySpark
2 143 (12.80%) Kafka
3 58 (5.19%) Pandas
4 47 (4.21%) scikit-learn
5 46 (4.12%) PyTorch
6 40 (3.58%) NumPy
7 35 (3.13%) TensorFlow
8 29 (2.60%) JSON
9 24 (2.15%) FastAPI
9 24 (2.15%) pytest
9 24 (2.15%) YAML
10 23 (2.06%) REST
11 22 (1.97%) LangChain
12 21 (1.88%) React
12 21 (1.88%) RESTful
13 20 (1.79%) Flask
14 19 (1.70%) Spring
15 18 (1.61%) Great Expectations
16 14 (1.25%) Hugging Face
16 14 (1.25%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 140 (12.53%) Cloud Native
2 39 (3.49%) Product Ownership
3 37 (3.31%) Distributed Systems
4 34 (3.04%) Legacy Systems
5 33 (2.95%) Algorithms
6 30 (2.69%) Distributed Computing
7 25 (2.24%) Data Structures
8 23 (2.06%) Hybrid Cloud
9 19 (1.70%) Greenfield Project
9 19 (1.70%) Onboarding
10 18 (1.61%) Data Protection Act
11 17 (1.52%) AI Agents
11 17 (1.52%) Analytical Mindset
12 14 (1.25%) Clustering
13 12 (1.07%) Fixed Income
14 10 (0.90%) Management Information System
14 10 (0.90%) Self-Motivation
15 9 (0.81%) Derivative
15 9 (0.81%) NHS
15 9 (0.81%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 28 (2.51%) Linux
2 15 (1.34%) Unix
3 8 (0.72%) VMS
4 3 (0.27%) Windows
5 2 (0.18%) Ubuntu
5 2 (0.18%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.090%) CentOS
6 1 (0.090%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 559 (50.04%) Analytics
2 508 (45.48%) Data Pipeline
3 455 (40.73%) ETL
4 443 (39.66%) Data Modelling
5 386 (34.56%) CI/CD
6 293 (26.23%) Business Intelligence
7 291 (26.05%) AI
8 284 (25.43%) DevOps
9 281 (25.16%) Agile
10 276 (24.71%) Data Governance
11 230 (20.59%) Machine Learning
12 219 (19.61%) Problem-Solving
13 211 (18.89%) Data Science
14 181 (16.20%) Data Architecture
15 136 (12.18%) Decision-Making
16 128 (11.46%) Validation
17 124 (11.10%) Infrastructure as Code
18 114 (10.21%) Data Transformation
19 113 (10.12%) Migration
20 112 (10.03%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 647 (57.92%) Python
2 614 (54.97%) SQL
3 89 (7.97%) Java
4 67 (6.00%) Scala
5 45 (4.03%) C#
6 39 (3.49%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 30 (2.69%) Bash
8 29 (2.60%) PowerShell
9 23 (2.06%) JavaScript
10 20 (1.79%) T-SQL
11 18 (1.61%) Bicep
11 18 (1.61%) R
12 16 (1.43%) Go
13 14 (1.25%) TypeScript
14 10 (0.90%) Shell Script
15 9 (0.81%) PL/SQL
16 7 (0.63%) C++
17 6 (0.54%) Korn
18 4 (0.36%) Rust
18 4 (0.36%) SAS Macro
Qualifications
1 227 (20.32%) Security Cleared
2 192 (17.19%) SC Cleared
3 85 (7.61%) Degree
4 45 (4.03%) Azure Certification
5 39 (3.49%) Computer Science Degree
6 34 (3.04%) Master's Degree
7 20 (1.79%) DV Cleared
8 15 (1.34%) BPSS Clearance
9 14 (1.25%) AWS Certification
10 10 (0.90%) PhD
11 8 (0.72%) Microsoft Certification
12 4 (0.36%) DBS Check
12 4 (0.36%) Microsoft Certified Professional
13 3 (0.27%) SnowPro
14 2 (0.18%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 1 (0.090%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 1 (0.090%) CCSP
15 1 (0.090%) OCP
15 1 (0.090%) Oracle Certification
15 1 (0.090%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 314 (28.11%) Data Quality
2 87 (7.79%) GDPR
3 41 (3.67%) QA
4 13 (1.16%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 8 (0.72%) Accessibility
6 6 (0.54%) HIPAA
7 5 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 5 (0.45%) PERC
7 5 (0.45%) SOC 2
8 4 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 4 (0.36%) Solvency II
9 3 (0.27%) GRC
9 3 (0.27%) SLA
9 3 (0.27%) WCAG
10 2 (0.18%) HL7
10 2 (0.18%) MiFID
10 2 (0.18%) NIST
10 2 (0.18%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.18%) PMO
11 1 (0.090%) FATCA
System Software
1 130 (11.64%) Docker
2 5 (0.45%) HDFS
3 3 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.090%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 159 (14.23%) Terraform
2 128 (11.46%) Kubernetes
3 25 (2.24%) Prometheus
4 14 (1.25%) Grafana
5 5 (0.45%) Ansible
6 4 (0.36%) Argo
6 4 (0.36%) Kubeflow
7 3 (0.27%) Rancher
8 2 (0.18%) Hadoop YARN
8 2 (0.18%) Kibana
8 2 (0.18%) Nagios
8 2 (0.18%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.090%) Apache Ranger
9 1 (0.090%) Control-M
9 1 (0.090%) HP Fortify
9 1 (0.090%) Oozie
Vendors
1 319 (28.56%) Databricks
2 166 (14.86%) Microsoft
3 59 (5.28%) Google
4 44 (3.94%) Informatica
5 31 (2.78%) Oracle
6 25 (2.24%) Talend
7 24 (2.15%) Foundry
8 22 (1.97%) OpenAI
9 21 (1.88%) Palantir
10 19 (1.70%) Splunk
11 15 (1.34%) SAP
12 14 (1.25%) Cloudera
13 10 (0.90%) Denodo
13 10 (0.90%) ServiceNow
14 9 (0.81%) Salesforce
14 9 (0.81%) UiPath
15 8 (0.72%) Automation Anywhere
16 6 (0.54%) MicroStrategy
17 5 (0.45%) Virgin Media
18 4 (0.36%) Bloomberg