Data Engineering Contract Job Trends in the North of England

Data Engineering
England > North of England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North of England requiring Data Engineering skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 19 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 131 120 140
Rank change year-on-year -11 +20 +36
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 77 40 44
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 1.59% 1.19% 0.92%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.81% 1.36% 1.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 63 22 33
10th Percentile £344 £419 £411
25th Percentile £363 £430 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -18.18% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £503 £631 £600
90th Percentile £550 £711 £615
England median daily rate £525 £575 £550
% change year-on-year -8.70% +4.55% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 3 1
Median hourly rate £74.26 £25.43 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +192.02% -60.88% -
England median hourly rate £74.26 £25.43 £42.25
% change year-on-year +192.02% -39.81% -43.67%

All Process & Methodology Skills
North of 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 the North of England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 4,256 2,944 4,173
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 88.04% 87.93% 87.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,833 1,689 2,716
10th Percentile £239 £263 £292
25th Percentile £363 £380 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.63% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £550 £575 £590
90th Percentile £643 £666 £675
England median daily rate £500 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 250 135 241
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.00 £12.50
25th Percentile £21.26 £17.16 £16.25
Median hourly rate £41.00 £27.39 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +49.72% -8.72% +34.83%
75th Percentile £56.69 £46.18 £46.88
90th Percentile £69.25 £71.41 £62.00
England median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -28.14% -12.50% +14.29%

Data Engineering
Job Vacancy Trend in the North of England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Data Engineering relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England.

Data Engineering job vacancy trend in the North of England

Data Engineering
Daily Rate Trend in the North of England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing Data Engineering.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing Data Engineering

Data Engineering
Daily Rate Histogram in the North of England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Data Engineering in the North of England over the 6 months to 19 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Data Engineering in the North of England

Data Engineering
Hourly Rate Trend in the North of England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing Data Engineering.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing Data Engineering

Data Engineering
Contract Job Locations in the North of 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 North of England region over the 6 months to 19 January 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
North West +1 49 £445 -11.00% 55
Yorkshire -41 15 £500 -9.09% 52
North East -5 13 £400 -33.05% 20
Data Engineering
England

Data Engineering
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North of 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 23 (29.87%) Apache Airflow
2 10 (12.99%) Apache Spark
3 9 (11.69%) Apache
4 1 (1.30%) Confluence
Applications
1 3 (3.90%) Microsoft Excel
1 3 (3.90%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 2 (2.60%) Chatbot
Cloud Services
1 32 (41.56%) Azure
2 30 (38.96%) AWS
3 16 (20.78%) GCP
4 13 (16.88%) dbt
4 13 (16.88%) Power Platform
5 10 (12.99%) Serverless
6 9 (11.69%) Snowflake
7 8 (10.39%) AWS Lambda
7 8 (10.39%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 8 (10.39%) Prefect
8 7 (9.09%) Amazon S3
9 6 (7.79%) Amazon SageMaker
9 6 (7.79%) Azure Data Factory
9 6 (7.79%) Azure DevOps
9 6 (7.79%) GitHub
9 6 (7.79%) GitHub Actions
10 5 (6.49%) Amazon EC2
10 5 (6.49%) Amazon ECS
11 3 (3.90%) AWS CloudFormation
11 3 (3.90%) AWS Step Functions
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (15.58%) Data Warehouse
2 11 (14.29%) Data Lake
2 11 (14.29%) Power BI
3 8 (10.39%) Snowflake Schema
4 7 (9.09%) Big Data
5 5 (6.49%) Amazon RDS
5 5 (6.49%) Amazon Redshift
5 5 (6.49%) Azure SQL Database
5 5 (6.49%) BigQuery
6 4 (5.19%) Delta Lake
6 4 (5.19%) Hadoop
6 4 (5.19%) NoSQL
7 3 (3.90%) Apache Hive
7 3 (3.90%) HBase
7 3 (3.90%) Metadata
7 3 (3.90%) Spark SQL
8 2 (2.60%) DynamoDB
8 2 (2.60%) MongoDB
8 2 (2.60%) Tableau
9 1 (1.30%) Apache Cassandra
Development Applications
1 15 (19.48%) Git
2 7 (9.09%) GitLab
2 7 (9.09%) Jenkins
3 4 (5.19%) MLflow
4 3 (3.90%) JIRA
5 2 (2.60%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 17 (22.08%) Analytical Skills
1 17 (22.08%) Social Skills
2 13 (16.88%) Public Sector
3 6 (7.79%) Finance
4 3 (3.90%) Influencing Skills
5 2 (2.60%) Health Technology
5 2 (2.60%) Manufacturing
5 2 (2.60%) Telecoms
6 1 (1.30%) Automotive
6 1 (1.30%) Banking
6 1 (1.30%) Documentation Skills
6 1 (1.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 1 (1.30%) Legal
6 1 (1.30%) Pharmaceutical
6 1 (1.30%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 46 (59.74%) Data Engineer
2 9 (11.69%) AWS Engineer
2 9 (11.69%) Senior
3 8 (10.39%) AWS Data Engineer
4 7 (9.09%) Analyst
4 7 (9.09%) Lead
4 7 (9.09%) Senior Data Engineer
5 6 (7.79%) Azure Data Engineer
5 6 (7.79%) Azure Engineer
6 5 (6.49%) Business Analyst
6 5 (6.49%) Data Scientist
6 5 (6.49%) DevOps Engineer
6 5 (6.49%) Lead Data Engineer
7 4 (5.19%) Snowflake Data Engineer
7 4 (5.19%) Snowflake Engineer
8 3 (3.90%) Developer
8 3 (3.90%) Hadoop Engineer
8 3 (3.90%) Python Data Engineer
8 3 (3.90%) Python Engineer
8 3 (3.90%) Security Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (19.48%) PySpark
2 6 (7.79%) RESTful
3 5 (6.49%) Flask
3 5 (6.49%) Kafka
3 5 (6.49%) XGBoost
4 4 (5.19%) HTML
4 4 (5.19%) Spark Streaming
5 3 (3.90%) FHIR
6 2 (2.60%) pytest
6 2 (2.60%) REST
7 1 (1.30%) .NET
7 1 (1.30%) Django
7 1 (1.30%) JSON
7 1 (1.30%) Node.js
7 1 (1.30%) NumPy
7 1 (1.30%) OAuth
7 1 (1.30%) OAuth2
7 1 (1.30%) Pandas
7 1 (1.30%) React
7 1 (1.30%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 8 (10.39%) Cloud Native
1 8 (10.39%) Clustering
2 4 (5.19%) Data Protection Act
2 4 (5.19%) NHS
3 3 (3.90%) Algorithms
3 3 (3.90%) Data Centre
3 3 (3.90%) Data Structures
3 3 (3.90%) Greenfield Project
4 2 (2.60%) Data Fabric
4 2 (2.60%) Distributed Computing
4 2 (2.60%) Legacy Systems
4 2 (2.60%) Onboarding
5 1 (1.30%) Distributed Systems
5 1 (1.30%) Freedom of Information
5 1 (1.30%) Hybrid Cloud
5 1 (1.30%) Life Science
5 1 (1.30%) Product Ownership
5 1 (1.30%) Reinsurance
5 1 (1.30%) Replication
5 1 (1.30%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 3 (3.90%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 36 (46.75%) Analytics
2 35 (45.45%) Data Pipeline
3 32 (41.56%) CI/CD
4 30 (38.96%) ETL
5 26 (33.77%) Data Modelling
6 22 (28.57%) Data Science
7 20 (25.97%) Problem-Solving
8 18 (23.38%) Machine Learning
9 17 (22.08%) Business Intelligence
9 17 (22.08%) DevOps
10 16 (20.78%) Agile
10 16 (20.78%) Continuous Improvement
11 14 (18.18%) AI
11 14 (18.18%) Data Governance
12 11 (14.29%) Infrastructure as Code
13 10 (12.99%) Data Transformation
13 10 (12.99%) Performance Tuning
14 9 (11.69%) Containerisation
14 9 (11.69%) Data Architecture
15 8 (10.39%) MLOps
Programming Languages
1 47 (61.04%) Python
2 40 (51.95%) SQL
3 8 (10.39%) PL/SQL
4 3 (3.90%) Bicep
4 3 (3.90%) Java
4 3 (3.90%) Shell Script
5 1 (1.30%) C#
5 1 (1.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 1 (1.30%) JavaScript
5 1 (1.30%) Scala
5 1 (1.30%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 14 (18.18%) Security Cleared
2 13 (16.88%) SC Cleared
3 3 (3.90%) Degree
4 2 (2.60%) Azure Certification
4 2 (2.60%) Computer Science Degree
4 2 (2.60%) Master's Degree
5 1 (1.30%) AWS Certification
5 1 (1.30%) BPSS Clearance
5 1 (1.30%) CBAP
5 1 (1.30%) DV Cleared
5 1 (1.30%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (28.57%) Data Quality
2 3 (3.90%) GDPR
3 2 (2.60%) Accessibility
3 2 (2.60%) QA
4 1 (1.30%) GMP
4 1 (1.30%) HIPAA
4 1 (1.30%) HL7
4 1 (1.30%) NCSC
System Software
1 17 (22.08%) Docker
2 3 (3.90%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 18 (23.38%) Terraform
2 15 (19.48%) Kubernetes
3 3 (3.90%) Ansible
3 3 (3.90%) Hadoop YARN
3 3 (3.90%) Prometheus
3 3 (3.90%) Puppet
4 2 (2.60%) Control-M
4 2 (2.60%) Grafana
Vendors
1 22 (28.57%) Databricks
2 10 (12.99%) Microsoft
3 4 (5.19%) Google
4 2 (2.60%) Brio
4 2 (2.60%) Oracle
4 2 (2.60%) Virgin Media
5 1 (1.30%) Hitachi
5 1 (1.30%) OpenAI
5 1 (1.30%) SnapLogic