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

6 months to
7 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 96 154 214
Rank change year-on-year +58 +60 +9
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 887 449 416
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.66% 1.71% 1.09%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.04% 1.91% 1.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 608 317 310
10th Percentile £363 £400 £413
25th Percentile £431 £469 £469
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £550
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% +4.55% -8.33%
75th Percentile £625 £676 £675
90th Percentile £738 £838 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 11 9
10th Percentile £41.70 £22.00 £35.00
25th Percentile £51.38 £22.36 £35.63
Median hourly rate £63.97 £26.50 £42.31
Median % change year-on-year +141.40% -37.36% -43.59%
75th Percentile £70.65 £29.38 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.81 £65.00 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £61.25 £25.97 £42.31
% change year-on-year +135.89% -38.62% -39.35%

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 29,172 23,495 33,456
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.59% 89.70% 87.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,676 14,439 22,381
10th Percentile £306 £310 £300
25th Percentile £410 £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 1,836 743 1,976
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.62 £13.41
25th Percentile £17.88 £21.00 £16.72
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% - -
75th Percentile £60.00 £64.50 £61.78
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year -22.62% -7.14% +7.69%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 +60 607 £550 -4.35% 257
North of England -18 88 £450 -18.18% 85
Midlands +8 78 £515 +3.00% 47
West Midlands 0 59 £528 +6.57% 34
North West -1 52 £450 -10.00% 50
South West -4 41 £550 -16.51% 32
South East -12 36 £519 -2.58% 117
East Midlands -10 19 £447 -20.53% 13
Yorkshire -47 19 £500 -14.89% 28
North East -3 17 £450 -23.08% 8
East of England -22 12 £525 +64.06% 16
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
1 131 (14.77%) Apache Spark
2 108 (12.18%) Apache Airflow
3 63 (7.10%) Apache
4 17 (1.92%) Palantir Foundry
5 10 (1.13%) Confluence
6 7 (0.79%) Appian
7 5 (0.56%) SAS
8 3 (0.34%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.23%) SharePoint
10 1 (0.11%) Apache Pig
10 1 (0.11%) Apache Synapse
10 1 (0.11%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.11%) Camunda
10 1 (0.11%) CMS
10 1 (0.11%) IBM HTTP Server
10 1 (0.11%) Jupyter
10 1 (0.11%) Luigi
Applications
1 17 (1.92%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (1.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 6 (0.68%) Chatbot
4 4 (0.45%) Microsoft Office
4 4 (0.45%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.34%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.34%) Trello
6 1 (0.11%) Adobe XD
6 1 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 5 (0.56%) Aladdin
2 3 (0.34%) Markit EDM
3 2 (0.23%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.23%) Eagle PACE
3 2 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.11%) Actimize
4 1 (0.11%) Maximo
4 1 (0.11%) Misys Midas
4 1 (0.11%) SAP BPC
4 1 (0.11%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.11%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.11%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 420 (47.35%) Azure
2 308 (34.72%) AWS
3 188 (21.20%) Power Platform
4 170 (19.17%) Azure Data Factory
5 132 (14.88%) GCP
6 112 (12.63%) Snowflake
7 101 (11.39%) Amazon S3
8 99 (11.16%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 95 (10.71%) GitHub
10 86 (9.70%) dbt
11 83 (9.36%) Serverless
12 70 (7.89%) Azure DevOps
13 67 (7.55%) AWS Lambda
14 66 (7.44%) GitHub Actions
15 36 (4.06%) AWS CloudFormation
16 22 (2.48%) Azure Machine Learning
17 21 (2.37%) AWS Step Functions
17 21 (2.37%) Microsoft Purview
18 20 (2.25%) Amazon EMR
18 20 (2.25%) Amazon SageMaker
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.56%) Network Security
2 4 (0.45%) Cisco IPT
2 4 (0.45%) Kerberos
3 3 (0.34%) RTP
3 3 (0.34%) VPN
4 1 (0.11%) Firewall
4 1 (0.11%) SAN
4 1 (0.11%) SMS
4 1 (0.11%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 176 (19.84%) Power BI
2 167 (18.83%) Data Warehouse
3 126 (14.21%) Data Lake
4 79 (8.91%) Metadata
5 61 (6.88%) SQL Server
6 56 (6.31%) Big Data
7 53 (5.98%) NoSQL
8 51 (5.75%) Azure SQL Database
9 50 (5.64%) Snowflake Schema
10 47 (5.30%) Amazon Redshift
11 46 (5.19%) Delta Lake
11 46 (5.19%) Relational Database
12 42 (4.74%) BigQuery
13 37 (4.17%) PostgreSQL
13 37 (4.17%) Tableau
14 34 (3.83%) Amazon Athena
15 31 (3.49%) Hadoop
16 26 (2.93%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 24 (2.71%) Elasticsearch
18 22 (2.48%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 127 (14.32%) Git
2 40 (4.51%) GitLab
3 36 (4.06%) Jenkins
4 33 (3.72%) MLflow
5 22 (2.48%) JIRA
6 6 (0.68%) Visual Studio Code
7 4 (0.45%) Selenium
8 3 (0.34%) JUnit
8 3 (0.34%) Maven
8 3 (0.34%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.34%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.23%) Cucumber
9 2 (0.23%) ERwin
9 2 (0.23%) Mockito
9 2 (0.23%) Poetry
9 2 (0.23%) Postman
9 2 (0.23%) Robot Framework
9 2 (0.23%) TeamCity
9 2 (0.23%) TestRail
9 2 (0.23%) Visual Studio
General
1 247 (27.85%) Social Skills
2 212 (23.90%) Finance
3 127 (14.32%) Analytical Skills
4 70 (7.89%) Public Sector
5 58 (6.54%) Banking
6 23 (2.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 18 (2.03%) Investment Banking
8 16 (1.80%) Front Office
9 15 (1.69%) Influencing Skills
10 13 (1.47%) Marketing
10 13 (1.47%) Retail
11 9 (1.01%) Legal
11 9 (1.01%) Pharmaceutical
11 9 (1.01%) Publishing
12 8 (0.90%) Documentation Skills
13 7 (0.79%) Military
14 6 (0.68%) Back Office
14 6 (0.68%) Financial Institution
14 6 (0.68%) Presentation Skills
15 4 (0.45%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 402 (45.32%) Data Engineer
2 111 (12.51%) Senior
3 102 (11.50%) Lead
4 80 (9.02%) Senior Data Engineer
5 68 (7.67%) Azure Engineer
6 64 (7.22%) Architect
7 59 (6.65%) Developer
8 53 (5.98%) Azure Data Engineer
9 44 (4.96%) Analyst
10 42 (4.74%) Snowflake Engineer
11 37 (4.17%) Data Scientist
12 34 (3.83%) AWS Engineer
12 34 (3.83%) Data Architect
12 34 (3.83%) Snowflake Data Engineer
13 32 (3.61%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
14 28 (3.16%) Lead Data Engineer
15 25 (2.82%) Python Engineer
16 24 (2.71%) Data Analyst
17 23 (2.59%) DevOps Engineer
17 23 (2.59%) Principal Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 151 (17.02%) PySpark
2 108 (12.18%) Kafka
3 50 (5.64%) Pandas
4 48 (5.41%) PyTorch
5 39 (4.40%) NumPy
5 39 (4.40%) TensorFlow
6 37 (4.17%) scikit-learn
7 31 (3.49%) FastAPI
8 29 (3.27%) Flask
9 25 (2.82%) RESTful
10 24 (2.71%) React
11 23 (2.59%) pytest
12 22 (2.48%) JSON
12 22 (2.48%) LangChain
13 21 (2.37%) YAML
14 18 (2.03%) REST
15 16 (1.80%) Hugging Face
16 15 (1.69%) Spark Streaming
17 14 (1.58%) Django
18 13 (1.47%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 99 (11.16%) Cloud Native
2 30 (3.38%) Algorithms
2 30 (3.38%) Distributed Computing
3 25 (2.82%) Product Ownership
4 23 (2.59%) Distributed Systems
5 19 (2.14%) Data Structures
6 17 (1.92%) Data Protection Act
6 17 (1.92%) Hybrid Cloud
6 17 (1.92%) Legacy Systems
7 16 (1.80%) AI Agents
7 16 (1.80%) Onboarding
8 15 (1.69%) Analytical Mindset
9 12 (1.35%) Clustering
9 12 (1.35%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 11 (1.24%) Hedge funds
11 10 (1.13%) Data Fabric
11 10 (1.13%) Enterprise Software
11 10 (1.13%) Greenfield Project
11 10 (1.13%) Management Information System
12 9 (1.01%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 28 (3.16%) Linux
2 6 (0.68%) VMS
3 5 (0.56%) Unix
4 2 (0.23%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.11%) CentOS
5 1 (0.11%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 395 (44.53%) Data Pipeline
2 382 (43.07%) Analytics
3 348 (39.23%) ETL
4 344 (38.78%) Data Modelling
5 306 (34.50%) CI/CD
6 235 (26.49%) AI
7 216 (24.35%) Agile
7 216 (24.35%) Data Governance
8 214 (24.13%) DevOps
9 209 (23.56%) Business Intelligence
10 195 (21.98%) Machine Learning
11 183 (20.63%) Data Science
12 178 (20.07%) Problem-Solving
13 157 (17.70%) Data Architecture
14 108 (12.18%) Infrastructure as Code
15 95 (10.71%) Decision-Making
16 93 (10.48%) Data Integration
17 91 (10.26%) Visualisation
18 88 (9.92%) Data Transformation
19 85 (9.58%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 543 (61.22%) Python
2 461 (51.97%) SQL
3 62 (6.99%) Java
4 60 (6.76%) Scala
5 39 (4.40%) C#
6 31 (3.49%) JavaScript
7 23 (2.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 22 (2.48%) PowerShell
9 21 (2.37%) Bicep
10 18 (2.03%) R
10 18 (2.03%) TypeScript
11 17 (1.92%) C++
12 16 (1.80%) Bash
13 15 (1.69%) Go
13 15 (1.69%) T-SQL
14 11 (1.24%) PL/SQL
14 11 (1.24%) Shell Script
15 10 (1.13%) Rust
16 8 (0.90%) Korn
17 1 (0.11%) VBA
Qualifications
1 182 (20.52%) Security Cleared
2 151 (17.02%) SC Cleared
3 73 (8.23%) Degree
4 48 (5.41%) Azure Certification
5 36 (4.06%) Computer Science Degree
6 33 (3.72%) Master's Degree
7 21 (2.37%) DV Cleared
8 13 (1.47%) AWS Certification
9 11 (1.24%) Microsoft Certification
9 11 (1.24%) PhD
10 7 (0.79%) BPSS Clearance
11 4 (0.45%) DBS Check
12 3 (0.34%) ISTQB
12 3 (0.34%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 3 (0.34%) Tableau Certification
13 2 (0.23%) SnowPro
14 1 (0.11%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 1 (0.11%) CIMA
14 1 (0.11%) OCP
14 1 (0.11%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 241 (27.17%) Data Quality
2 80 (9.02%) GDPR
3 26 (2.93%) QA
4 13 (1.47%) Accessibility
5 11 (1.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 10 (1.13%) HIPAA
7 6 (0.68%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 5 (0.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 5 (0.56%) PERC
8 5 (0.56%) SOC 2
9 3 (0.34%) GRC
9 3 (0.34%) WCAG
10 2 (0.23%) HL7
10 2 (0.23%) MiFID
10 2 (0.23%) PCI DSS
11 1 (0.11%) FATCA
11 1 (0.11%) NCSC
11 1 (0.11%) NIST
11 1 (0.11%) PMO
11 1 (0.11%) Solvency II
System Software
1 128 (14.43%) Docker
2 14 (1.58%) HDFS
3 2 (0.23%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.11%) Apache ZooKeeper
4 1 (0.11%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 142 (16.01%) Terraform
2 122 (13.75%) Kubernetes
3 15 (1.69%) Prometheus
4 13 (1.47%) Grafana
5 10 (1.13%) Hadoop YARN
6 8 (0.90%) Ansible
7 5 (0.56%) Argo
7 5 (0.56%) Puppet
8 3 (0.34%) Control-M
8 3 (0.34%) Kibana
8 3 (0.34%) logstash
9 2 (0.23%) Kubeflow
9 2 (0.23%) Nagios
9 2 (0.23%) Oozie
9 2 (0.23%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.11%) Apache Ranger
10 1 (0.11%) HP Fortify
10 1 (0.11%) Rancher
Vendors
1 257 (28.97%) Databricks
2 115 (12.97%) Microsoft
3 43 (4.85%) Google
4 25 (2.82%) Oracle
5 24 (2.71%) Informatica
6 20 (2.25%) Foundry
6 20 (2.25%) Palantir
7 17 (1.92%) OpenAI
7 17 (1.92%) Talend
8 12 (1.35%) SAP
9 11 (1.24%) Salesforce
10 8 (0.90%) Virgin Media
11 7 (0.79%) Automation Anywhere
11 7 (0.79%) Denodo
11 7 (0.79%) UiPath
12 6 (0.68%) MicroStrategy
13 5 (0.56%) Cloudera
13 5 (0.56%) Guidewire
13 5 (0.56%) ServiceNow
14 4 (0.45%) Splunk