Data Engineer Job Trends in the South East

Data Engineer
England > South East

The median Data Engineer salary in the South East is £57,500 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 11 May 2026.

The table below compares current salary benchmarking and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
11 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 108 198 234
Rank change year-on-year +90 +36 -60
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Engineer 224 73 160
As % of all permanent jobs in the South East 1.56% 0.94% 0.97%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.65% 1.12% 1.04%
Number of salaries quoted 154 48 84
10th Percentile £46,250 £44,250 £27,500
25th Percentile £50,000 £59,375 £30,875
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £70,000 £49,000
Median % change year-on-year -17.86% +42.86% -21.60%
75th Percentile £65,000 £72,500 £72,500
90th Percentile £75,000 £75,750 £74,625
England median annual salary £70,000 £72,500 £65,000
% change year-on-year -3.45% +11.54% -7.14%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
South East

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies in the South East. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of permanent jobs in our overall sample.

Permanent vacancies in the South East with a recognized job title 13,616 6,529 15,433
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.79% 84.50% 93.89%
Number of salaries quoted 9,310 3,679 11,286
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,500 £27,500
25th Percentile £37,500 £37,500 £36,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,500 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +10.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £68,750 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £83,750 £77,500
England median annual salary £55,000 £59,000 £54,000
% change year-on-year -6.78% +9.26% -11.18%

Data Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings featuring 'Data Engineer' in the job title relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the South East.

Data Engineer job vacancy trend in the South East

Data Engineer
Salary Trend in the South East

Salary distribution trend for Data Engineer job vacancies in the South East.

Salary distribution trend for Data Engineer job vacancies in the South East

Data Engineer
Salary Histogram in the South East

Salary distribution for jobs citing Data Engineer in the South East over the 6 months to 11 May 2026.

Salary histogram for Data Engineer in the South East

Data Engineer
Job Locations in the South East

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Data Engineer within the South East region over the 6 months to 11 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
Thames Valley +111 130 £50,000 -23.08% 39
Buckinghamshire +46 67 £50,000 -16.67% 28
Hampshire +20 52 £55,000 -21.43% 10
Oxfordshire +36 36 £63,750 -1.92% 6
Berkshire +26 27 £70,000 +9.38% 5
Surrey -21 27 £65,000 -7.14% 1
East Sussex -15 7 £60,000 -
Kent -29 4 £65,000 - 1
West Sussex -18 3 £60,000 +41.18% 2
Data Engineer
England

Data Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East

For the 6 months to 11 May 2026, Data Engineer job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all permanent job ads across the South East region featuring Data Engineer in the job title.

1 86 (38.39%) Data Pipeline
2 80 (35.71%) Analytics
3 59 (26.34%) Azure
4 53 (23.66%) Microsoft
5 47 (20.98%) ETL
5 47 (20.98%) Python
6 46 (20.54%) Data Modelling
6 46 (20.54%) SQL
7 35 (15.63%) Data Engineering
8 34 (15.18%) Decision-Making
8 34 (15.18%) Platform Engineering
9 32 (14.29%) AI
10 30 (13.39%) CI/CD
11 29 (12.95%) Data Quality
11 29 (12.95%) Machine Learning
12 28 (12.50%) Agile
13 23 (10.27%) Data Governance
13 23 (10.27%) Data Warehouse
13 23 (10.27%) Mentoring
14 21 (9.38%) Azure Data Factory
14 21 (9.38%) Data Architecture
15 20 (8.93%) AWS
15 20 (8.93%) SC Cleared
15 20 (8.93%) Security Cleared
15 20 (8.93%) Terraform
16 19 (8.48%) Problem-Solving
17 18 (8.04%) Data Science
17 18 (8.04%) Databricks
17 18 (8.04%) SQL Server
18 17 (7.59%) Data Strategy

Data Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East 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 9 (4.02%) Apache Airflow
2 3 (1.34%) SAS
3 2 (0.89%) Apache
3 2 (0.89%) Apache Qpid
4 1 (0.45%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 4 (1.79%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 59 (26.34%) Azure
2 21 (9.38%) Azure Data Factory
3 20 (8.93%) AWS
4 15 (6.70%) Azure Synapse Analytics
5 14 (6.25%) Power Platform
5 14 (6.25%) Snowflake
6 10 (4.46%) dbt
7 8 (3.57%) GCP
8 6 (2.68%) Fivetran
8 6 (2.68%) GitHub
9 5 (2.23%) Amazon EKS
9 5 (2.23%) Microsoft Purview
10 4 (1.79%) Amazon S3
10 4 (1.79%) AWS Data Pipeline
10 4 (1.79%) Prefect
11 3 (1.34%) Amazon Kinesis
11 3 (1.34%) Azure Storage
12 2 (0.89%) AWS Lambda
12 2 (0.89%) GitHub Actions
12 2 (0.89%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 6 (2.68%) Structured Cabling
1 6 (2.68%) Wi-Fi
2 1 (0.45%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (10.27%) Data Warehouse
2 18 (8.04%) SQL Server
3 15 (6.70%) Data Lake
4 13 (5.80%) Power BI
5 10 (4.46%) Relational Database
6 9 (4.02%) PostgreSQL
7 8 (3.57%) MongoDB
7 8 (3.57%) NoSQL
8 5 (2.23%) Airbyte
8 5 (2.23%) Data Mining
8 5 (2.23%) Metadata
8 5 (2.23%) Redis
8 5 (2.23%) Spark SQL
9 4 (1.79%) Apache Cassandra
9 4 (1.79%) MySQL
9 4 (1.79%) Snowflake Schema
10 3 (1.34%) Elasticsearch
10 3 (1.34%) Flink
10 3 (1.34%) Looker
10 3 (1.34%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 15 (6.70%) Git
2 4 (1.79%) LabVIEW
3 1 (0.45%) Robot Framework
General
1 28 (12.50%) Finance
2 18 (8.04%) Manufacturing
3 17 (7.59%) Analytical Skills
4 16 (7.14%) Social Skills
5 14 (6.25%) Marketing
6 11 (4.91%) Public Sector
7 5 (2.23%) Law
7 5 (2.23%) Telecoms
8 4 (1.79%) Aerospace
9 2 (0.89%) Aviation
10 1 (0.45%) Aeronautics
10 1 (0.45%) Electronics
10 1 (0.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 1 (0.45%) Organisational Skills
10 1 (0.45%) Pharmaceutical
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (3.13%) Kafka
2 5 (2.23%) PySpark
3 2 (0.89%) JSON
3 2 (0.89%) REST
3 2 (0.89%) Snowpark
3 2 (0.89%) SOAP
3 2 (0.89%) YAML
4 1 (0.45%) Apache NiFi
Miscellaneous
1 10 (4.46%) Cloud Native
1 10 (4.46%) Marketing Technology
2 6 (2.68%) Enterprise Cloud
2 6 (2.68%) Fibre Optics
3 5 (2.23%) Data Centre
4 3 (1.34%) 3D Printing
5 2 (0.89%) Legacy Systems
6 1 (0.45%) Arduino
6 1 (0.45%) Distributed Computing
6 1 (0.45%) Driving Licence
6 1 (0.45%) Onboarding
6 1 (0.45%) Product Ownership
6 1 (0.45%) Public Cloud
6 1 (0.45%) Replication
6 1 (0.45%) Sports Betting
Operating Systems
1 2 (0.89%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 86 (38.39%) Data Pipeline
2 80 (35.71%) Analytics
3 47 (20.98%) ETL
4 46 (20.54%) Data Modelling
5 35 (15.63%) Data Engineering
6 34 (15.18%) Decision-Making
6 34 (15.18%) Platform Engineering
7 32 (14.29%) AI
8 30 (13.39%) CI/CD
9 29 (12.95%) Machine Learning
10 28 (12.50%) Agile
11 23 (10.27%) Data Governance
11 23 (10.27%) Mentoring
12 21 (9.38%) Data Architecture
13 19 (8.48%) Problem-Solving
14 18 (8.04%) Data Science
15 17 (7.59%) Data Strategy
16 16 (7.14%) Business Intelligence
16 16 (7.14%) Configuration Management
17 15 (6.70%) Data-Driven Decision Making
Programming Languages
1 47 (20.98%) Python
2 46 (20.54%) SQL
3 5 (2.23%) Java
3 5 (2.23%) Scala
4 3 (1.34%) Bash
4 3 (1.34%) JavaScript
4 3 (1.34%) TypeScript
5 2 (0.89%) C#
5 2 (0.89%) R
5 2 (0.89%) Rust
6 1 (0.45%) C
6 1 (0.45%) Groovy
6 1 (0.45%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 20 (8.93%) SC Cleared
1 20 (8.93%) Security Cleared
2 8 (3.57%) Degree
3 5 (2.23%) Computer Science Degree
4 4 (1.79%) Master's Degree
5 1 (0.45%) Azure Certification
5 1 (0.45%) CISM
5 1 (0.45%) CISSP
5 1 (0.45%) DV Cleared
5 1 (0.45%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (12.95%) Data Quality
2 4 (1.79%) GDPR
3 2 (0.89%) SLA
4 1 (0.45%) Accessibility
4 1 (0.45%) HIPAA
4 1 (0.45%) PCI DSS
4 1 (0.45%) SOC 2
System Software
1 5 (2.23%) Docker
Systems Management
1 20 (8.93%) Terraform
2 5 (2.23%) Kubernetes
3 1 (0.45%) CASB
Vendors
1 53 (23.66%) Microsoft
2 18 (8.04%) Databricks
3 10 (4.46%) Salesforce
4 9 (4.02%) Oracle
5 6 (2.68%) Informatica
6 4 (1.79%) Google
7 3 (1.34%) Confluent
8 2 (0.89%) Cloudera
8 2 (0.89%) Talend