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

6 months to
20 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 83 145 201
Rank change year-on-year +62 +56 -12
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,184 455 424
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.88% 1.87% 1.16%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.40% 2.05% 1.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 836 311 313
10th Percentile £400 £400 £392
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 £676 £688
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 14 12
10th Percentile £52.90 £22.00 £30.46
25th Percentile £65.00 £22.55 £34.06
Median hourly rate £70.00 £28.75 £41.75
Median % change year-on-year +143.48% -31.14% -42.81%
75th Percentile £82.31 £53.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £89.25 £65.00 -
UK median hourly rate £70.00 £27.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year +154.55% -21.43% -35.48%

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 34,792 22,163 31,446
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.62% 91.27% 86.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,183 14,469 20,624
10th Percentile £325 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £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 £514 £525
% change year-on-year -0.88% -2.10% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,136 960 2,252
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.42 £12.93
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.20 £15.99
Median hourly rate £46.11 £28.75 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +60.37% -21.23% -1.75%
75th Percentile £67.84 £62.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £28.17 £36.05
% change year-on-year +50.90% -21.86% +0.13%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 +58 739 £550 -4.35% 282
North of England +9 125 £480 -4.00% 93
Midlands +21 121 £500 +8.11% 40
West Midlands +24 100 £500 +16.01% 32
South West +18 78 £506 -15.67% 36
South East -27 63 £550 +12.02% 109
Yorkshire -14 55 £478 -15.11% 23
North West -18 50 £500 +2.56% 43
North East -4 22 £450 -5.26% 27
East of England -20 22 £575 +54.08% 26
East Midlands -19 18 £475 +1.33% 8
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
1 175 (14.78%) Apache Spark
2 119 (10.05%) Apache Airflow
3 77 (6.50%) Apache
4 31 (2.62%) SAS
5 15 (1.27%) Palantir Foundry
6 14 (1.18%) Confluence
7 9 (0.76%) Jupyter
8 8 (0.68%) Appian
9 7 (0.59%) Apache Superset
10 4 (0.34%) Microsoft Exchange
11 2 (0.17%) Apache Synapse
11 2 (0.17%) SharePoint
12 1 (0.084%) ArcGIS
12 1 (0.084%) Camunda
12 1 (0.084%) CICS
12 1 (0.084%) CMS
12 1 (0.084%) IBM HTTP Server
Applications
1 24 (2.03%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.59%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (0.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 6 (0.51%) 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 (0.34%) 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 (0.084%) Endur
5 1 (0.084%) Markit EDM
5 1 (0.084%) Misys Midas
5 1 (0.084%) SAP ECC
Cloud Services
1 533 (45.02%) Azure
2 432 (36.49%) AWS
3 269 (22.72%) Power Platform
4 176 (14.86%) GCP
5 175 (14.78%) Azure Data Factory
6 142 (11.99%) Snowflake
7 136 (11.49%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 123 (10.39%) Amazon S3
9 119 (10.05%) dbt
9 119 (10.05%) GitHub
10 99 (8.36%) Azure DevOps
11 93 (7.85%) Serverless
12 75 (6.33%) AWS Lambda
13 71 (6.00%) GitHub Actions
14 39 (3.29%) AWS CloudFormation
15 29 (2.45%) AWS Step Functions
16 25 (2.11%) Azure AI
16 25 (2.11%) Dagster
17 24 (2.03%) Amazon SQS
17 24 (2.03%) Collibra
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.42%) RTP
2 4 (0.34%) Firewall
3 2 (0.17%) Kerberos
4 1 (0.084%) 4G
4 1 (0.084%) 5G
4 1 (0.084%) MIMO
4 1 (0.084%) Network Security
4 1 (0.084%) SAN
4 1 (0.084%) SMS
4 1 (0.084%) TCP/IP
4 1 (0.084%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 247 (20.86%) Power BI
2 227 (19.17%) Data Warehouse
3 191 (16.13%) Data Lake
4 107 (9.04%) Metadata
5 82 (6.93%) SQL Server
6 81 (6.84%) Big Data
6 81 (6.84%) Delta Lake
7 73 (6.17%) NoSQL
8 70 (5.91%) BigQuery
8 70 (5.91%) Tableau
9 66 (5.57%) Amazon Redshift
10 63 (5.32%) Snowflake Schema
11 61 (5.15%) Azure SQL Database
12 52 (4.39%) Relational Database
13 51 (4.31%) Amazon Athena
14 43 (3.63%) PostgreSQL
15 39 (3.29%) Hadoop
16 35 (2.96%) Spark SQL
16 35 (2.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 28 (2.36%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 137 (11.57%) Git
2 50 (4.22%) GitLab
3 39 (3.29%) JIRA
3 39 (3.29%) MLflow
4 27 (2.28%) Jenkins
5 6 (0.51%) SonarQube
6 5 (0.42%) Selenium
7 4 (0.34%) Postman
8 3 (0.25%) Robot Framework
8 3 (0.25%) Snyk
9 2 (0.17%) Artifactory
9 2 (0.17%) Bitbucket
9 2 (0.17%) ERwin
9 2 (0.17%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.17%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.084%) Ant
10 1 (0.084%) JUnit
10 1 (0.084%) Maven
10 1 (0.084%) REST Assured
10 1 (0.084%) SoapUI
General
1 306 (25.84%) Finance
2 265 (22.38%) Social Skills
3 173 (14.61%) Analytical Skills
4 101 (8.53%) Public Sector
5 63 (5.32%) Banking
6 25 (2.11%) Retail
7 24 (2.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 22 (1.86%) Marketing
9 17 (1.44%) Documentation Skills
9 17 (1.44%) Front Office
10 15 (1.27%) Telecoms
11 14 (1.18%) Financial Institution
12 13 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
13 12 (1.01%) Investment Banking
14 10 (0.84%) Legal
15 7 (0.59%) Military
16 6 (0.51%) Back Office
16 6 (0.51%) Law
17 4 (0.34%) Pharmaceutical
18 3 (0.25%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 577 (48.73%) Data Engineer
2 160 (13.51%) Senior
3 129 (10.90%) Lead
4 122 (10.30%) Architect
5 111 (9.38%) Senior Data Engineer
6 66 (5.57%) Developer
7 62 (5.24%) Data Architect
8 57 (4.81%) Azure Engineer
9 51 (4.31%) Analyst
9 51 (4.31%) Lead Data Engineer
10 50 (4.22%) Azure Data Engineer
11 49 (4.14%) AWS Engineer
12 43 (3.63%) Snowflake Engineer
13 41 (3.46%) Data Scientist
13 41 (3.46%) Solutions Architect
14 39 (3.29%) AWS Data Engineer
15 38 (3.21%) Snowflake Data Engineer
16 34 (2.87%) Consultant
17 29 (2.45%) Data Analyst
18 28 (2.36%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 181 (15.29%) PySpark
2 131 (11.06%) Kafka
3 50 (4.22%) Pandas
4 37 (3.13%) scikit-learn
5 36 (3.04%) PyTorch
6 32 (2.70%) NumPy
7 27 (2.28%) REST
8 26 (2.20%) TensorFlow
9 24 (2.03%) JSON
10 23 (1.94%) React
10 23 (1.94%) Spring
11 19 (1.60%) LangChain
11 19 (1.60%) YAML
12 18 (1.52%) Great Expectations
12 18 (1.52%) pytest
13 17 (1.44%) RESTful
14 16 (1.35%) Spring Boot
15 15 (1.27%) FastAPI
16 14 (1.18%) Flask
17 13 (1.10%) Hugging Face
Miscellaneous
1 152 (12.84%) Cloud Native
2 41 (3.46%) Distributed Systems
3 40 (3.38%) Legacy Systems
4 38 (3.21%) Product Ownership
5 35 (2.96%) Data Structures
6 30 (2.53%) Distributed Computing
7 27 (2.28%) AI Agents
8 21 (1.77%) Greenfield Project
9 20 (1.69%) Data Protection Act
9 20 (1.69%) Onboarding
10 19 (1.60%) Algorithms
11 16 (1.35%) Analytical Mindset
12 14 (1.18%) Fixed Income
13 12 (1.01%) Clustering
13 12 (1.01%) Hybrid Cloud
13 12 (1.01%) NHS
13 12 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
14 10 (0.84%) Equities
15 9 (0.76%) Data Fabric
16 8 (0.68%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 28 (2.36%) Linux
2 22 (1.86%) Unix
3 6 (0.51%) VMS
4 3 (0.25%) Windows
5 2 (0.17%) Ubuntu
5 2 (0.17%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.084%) CentOS
6 1 (0.084%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 601 (50.76%) Analytics
2 537 (45.35%) Data Pipeline
3 468 (39.53%) Data Modelling
4 449 (37.92%) ETL
5 395 (33.36%) CI/CD
6 331 (27.96%) AI
7 306 (25.84%) Business Intelligence
8 295 (24.92%) Agile
9 290 (24.49%) DevOps
10 260 (21.96%) Data Governance
11 223 (18.83%) Machine Learning
12 199 (16.81%) Data Science
12 199 (16.81%) Problem-Solving
13 171 (14.44%) Data Architecture
14 156 (13.18%) Decision-Making
15 147 (12.42%) Migration
16 142 (11.99%) Validation
17 126 (10.64%) Data Transformation
17 126 (10.64%) Infrastructure as Code
18 112 (9.46%) Data Integration
Programming Languages
1 652 (55.07%) SQL
2 627 (52.96%) Python
3 97 (8.19%) Java
4 60 (5.07%) Scala
5 40 (3.38%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 36 (3.04%) C#
7 27 (2.28%) Bash
8 23 (1.94%) T-SQL
9 22 (1.86%) JavaScript
10 20 (1.69%) R
11 19 (1.60%) PowerShell
12 15 (1.27%) Bicep
13 13 (1.10%) PL/SQL
14 11 (0.93%) Shell Script
14 11 (0.93%) TypeScript
15 8 (0.68%) Go
16 7 (0.59%) SAS Macro
17 4 (0.34%) Korn
18 2 (0.17%) C++
18 2 (0.17%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 229 (19.34%) Security Cleared
2 201 (16.98%) SC Cleared
3 79 (6.67%) Degree
4 36 (3.04%) Azure Certification
5 33 (2.79%) Computer Science Degree
6 28 (2.36%) Master's Degree
7 16 (1.35%) BPSS Clearance
8 14 (1.18%) DV Cleared
9 11 (0.93%) AWS Certification
10 9 (0.76%) DBS Check
11 8 (0.68%) Microsoft Certification
12 6 (0.51%) PhD
13 4 (0.34%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 4 (0.34%) Microsoft Certified Professional
13 4 (0.34%) SnowPro
14 2 (0.17%) PMI Certification
14 2 (0.17%) Tableau Certification
15 1 (0.084%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 1 (0.084%) OCP
15 1 (0.084%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 330 (27.87%) Data Quality
2 82 (6.93%) GDPR
3 54 (4.56%) QA
4 12 (1.01%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 6 (0.51%) Accessibility
5 6 (0.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (0.42%) SLA
7 4 (0.34%) HIPAA
7 4 (0.34%) MiFID
7 4 (0.34%) Solvency II
8 3 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 3 (0.25%) GRC
8 3 (0.25%) PMO
9 2 (0.17%) EMIR
9 2 (0.17%) NIST
10 1 (0.084%) Actionable Recommendations
10 1 (0.084%) IFRS
10 1 (0.084%) IFRS 9
10 1 (0.084%) ISO 13485
10 1 (0.084%) SOC 2
System Software
1 114 (9.63%) Docker
2 4 (0.34%) HDFS
3 3 (0.25%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.084%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.084%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 151 (12.75%) Terraform
2 111 (9.38%) Kubernetes
3 23 (1.94%) Prometheus
4 10 (0.84%) Grafana
5 9 (0.76%) Ansible
6 5 (0.42%) Argo
7 4 (0.34%) 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 (0.084%) Apache Ranger
10 1 (0.084%) Control-M
10 1 (0.084%) HP Fortify
10 1 (0.084%) IBM Guardium
10 1 (0.084%) Oozie
Vendors
1 309 (26.10%) Databricks
2 193 (16.30%) Microsoft
3 59 (4.98%) Google
4 52 (4.39%) Informatica
5 42 (3.55%) Oracle
6 23 (1.94%) OpenAI
6 23 (1.94%) Talend
7 22 (1.86%) Foundry
8 21 (1.77%) SAP
9 19 (1.60%) Splunk
10 16 (1.35%) Palantir
11 15 (1.27%) Cloudera
12 12 (1.01%) ServiceNow
13 10 (0.84%) Salesforce
14 9 (0.76%) UiPath
15 8 (0.68%) Automation Anywhere
16 7 (0.59%) InterSystems
17 6 (0.51%) Denodo
18 5 (0.42%) Workday
19 4 (0.34%) Hortonworks