Data Engineer Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Data Engineer
UK > UK excluding London

The median Data Engineer salary in the UK excluding London is £65,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 6 January 2026.

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

6 months to
6 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 192 235 152
Rank change year-on-year +43 -83 +50
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Engineer 425 418 655
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 1.01% 1.14% 2.03%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.12% 1.23% 2.13%
Number of salaries quoted 316 287 403
10th Percentile £45,000 £37,150 £35,000
25th Percentile £55,000 £46,250 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +8.33% +9.09% -10.10%
75th Percentile £70,000 £72,500 £73,750
90th Percentile £85,000 £80,000 £88,500
UK median annual salary £68,000 £70,000 £67,500
% change year-on-year -2.86% +3.70% -3.57%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
UK excluding London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies in the UK excluding London. 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 UK excluding London with a recognized job title 38,055 33,958 30,791
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 90.42% 92.95% 95.27%
Number of salaries quoted 23,081 16,702 23,207
10th Percentile £28,000 £31,250 £28,000
25th Percentile £35,000 £40,000 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £52,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £65,000 £68,750 £65,250
90th Percentile £80,000 £82,500 £80,000
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £58,500
% change year-on-year -8.33% +2.56% -2.50%

Data Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

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 UK excluding London.

Data Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Data Engineer
Salary Trend in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution trend for Data Engineer job vacancies in the UK excluding London.

Salary distribution trend for Data Engineer job vacancies in the UK excluding London

Data Engineer
Salary Histogram in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution for jobs citing Data Engineer in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 6 January 2026.

Salary histogram for Data Engineer in the UK excluding London

Data Engineer
Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Data Engineer within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 6 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
North of England +20 123 £65,000 +2.87% 94
Midlands +61 121 £65,000 +18.18% 56
West Midlands +56 96 £64,250 +16.82% 30
South East -14 64 £61,250 -5.77% 154
North West +22 63 £60,000 - 49
South West +6 51 £70,000 +30.23% 55
Yorkshire +2 50 £65,000 +4.00% 29
East of England +37 35 £60,000 +9.09% 57
East Midlands +5 25 £67,500 +18.42% 26
Scotland -12 25 £78,750 +36.96% 15
North East -5 10 £67,500 -2.15% 17
Wales +7 5 £62,500 +46.20% 13
Northern Ireland - 2 - - 5
Data Engineer
UK

Data Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London

For the 6 months to 6 January 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 UK excluding London region featuring Data Engineer in the job title.

1 247 (58.12%) SQL
2 186 (43.76%) Python
3 163 (38.35%) Data Engineering
4 159 (37.41%) Azure
5 139 (32.71%) ETL
6 132 (31.06%) Data Pipeline
7 122 (28.71%) Data Warehouse
8 111 (26.12%) Data Modelling
9 109 (25.65%) Analytics
10 96 (22.59%) Databricks
11 89 (20.94%) Business Intelligence
12 84 (19.76%) Agile
13 79 (18.59%) CI/CD
14 76 (17.88%) Mentoring
15 75 (17.65%) Microsoft
16 68 (16.00%) AWS
17 66 (15.53%) Power Platform
18 65 (15.29%) Power BI
19 60 (14.12%) Data Lake
19 60 (14.12%) Security Cleared
20 58 (13.65%) Azure Data Factory
21 52 (12.24%) AI
22 51 (12.00%) Data Science
22 51 (12.00%) Machine Learning
23 49 (11.53%) Data Quality
24 45 (10.59%) Decision-Making
25 44 (10.35%) Problem-Solving
25 44 (10.35%) PySpark
25 44 (10.35%) SQL Server
26 38 (8.94%) Data Integration

Data Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 24 (5.65%) Apache Spark
2 20 (4.71%) Apache
2 20 (4.71%) Apache Airflow
3 9 (2.12%) SAS
4 3 (0.71%) Confluence
5 1 (0.24%) Apache Solr
5 1 (0.24%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 2 (0.47%) Spreadsheet
2 1 (0.24%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.24%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.24%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 159 (37.41%) Azure
2 68 (16.00%) AWS
3 66 (15.53%) Power Platform
4 58 (13.65%) Azure Data Factory
5 32 (7.53%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 29 (6.82%) Snowflake
7 25 (5.88%) SaaS
8 24 (5.65%) Amazon S3
9 21 (4.94%) GCP
10 19 (4.47%) dbt
11 13 (3.06%) AWS Lambda
11 13 (3.06%) Azure DevOps
11 13 (3.06%) Serverless
12 9 (2.12%) Microsoft Purview
13 7 (1.65%) GitHub
14 6 (1.41%) AWS Step Functions
14 6 (1.41%) Azure Stack
15 5 (1.18%) Amazon SageMaker
15 5 (1.18%) Matillion
16 4 (0.94%) Azure Cosmos DB
Communications & Networking
1 38 (8.94%) Structured Cabling
2 33 (7.76%) Wi-Fi
3 1 (0.24%) DAB
3 1 (0.24%) Firewall
3 1 (0.24%) LAN
3 1 (0.24%) Network Security
3 1 (0.24%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 122 (28.71%) Data Warehouse
2 65 (15.29%) Power BI
3 60 (14.12%) Data Lake
4 44 (10.35%) SQL Server
5 25 (5.88%) Amazon Redshift
6 22 (5.18%) Metadata
7 20 (4.71%) NoSQL
7 20 (4.71%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 18 (4.24%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 17 (4.00%) Delta Lake
10 16 (3.76%) MongoDB
11 15 (3.53%) Big Data
12 14 (3.29%) Azure SQL Database
13 11 (2.59%) MySQL
14 9 (2.12%) Apache Iceberg
15 8 (1.88%) Amazon Athena
15 8 (1.88%) BigQuery
15 8 (1.88%) Hadoop
15 8 (1.88%) Pentaho
15 8 (1.88%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 7 (1.65%) Git
2 5 (1.18%) JIRA
3 4 (0.94%) LabVIEW
4 2 (0.47%) GitLab
4 2 (0.47%) Jenkins
5 1 (0.24%) Cucumber
5 1 (0.24%) JMeter
5 1 (0.24%) Zephyr
General
1 62 (14.59%) Finance
2 60 (14.12%) Social Skills
3 40 (9.41%) Retail
4 33 (7.76%) Analytical Skills
5 32 (7.53%) Legal
6 22 (5.18%) Public Sector
7 21 (4.94%) Manufacturing
8 19 (4.47%) Law
9 13 (3.06%) Telecoms
10 8 (1.88%) Marketing
11 7 (1.65%) Aerospace
11 7 (1.65%) Automotive
11 7 (1.65%) Tech for Good
12 5 (1.18%) Military
13 4 (0.94%) Documentation Skills
13 4 (0.94%) Organisational Skills
14 3 (0.71%) Influencing Skills
15 2 (0.47%) Games
15 2 (0.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 1 (0.24%) Electronics
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 44 (10.35%) PySpark
2 11 (2.59%) Kafka
3 10 (2.35%) REST
4 7 (1.65%) JSON
5 6 (1.41%) XML
6 5 (1.18%) .NET
7 3 (0.71%) Pandas
7 3 (0.71%) Snowpark
8 2 (0.47%) Apache NiFi
9 1 (0.24%) ARM Templates
9 1 (0.24%) EDI
9 1 (0.24%) Hugging Face
9 1 (0.24%) Regular Expression
9 1 (0.24%) scikit-learn
9 1 (0.24%) SOAP
9 1 (0.24%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 30 (7.06%) Driving Licence
2 28 (6.59%) Onboarding
3 13 (3.06%) Legacy Systems
4 9 (2.12%) Cloud Native
5 8 (1.88%) Data Centre
5 8 (1.88%) Fibre Optics
6 6 (1.41%) Data Structures
6 6 (1.41%) Greenfield Project
7 5 (1.18%) Low-Code
8 4 (0.94%) Virtual Team
9 3 (0.71%) Analytical Mindset
9 3 (0.71%) Enterprise Cloud
9 3 (0.71%) Management Information System
10 2 (0.47%) Client/Server
10 2 (0.47%) Distributed Computing
10 2 (0.47%) e-Learning
10 2 (0.47%) IoT
10 2 (0.47%) Legacy Code
10 2 (0.47%) Self-Motivation
11 1 (0.24%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 1 (0.24%) Linux
1 1 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
1 1 (0.24%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 163 (38.35%) Data Engineering
2 139 (32.71%) ETL
3 132 (31.06%) Data Pipeline
4 111 (26.12%) Data Modelling
5 109 (25.65%) Analytics
6 89 (20.94%) Business Intelligence
7 84 (19.76%) Agile
8 79 (18.59%) CI/CD
9 76 (17.88%) Mentoring
10 52 (12.24%) AI
11 51 (12.00%) Data Science
11 51 (12.00%) Machine Learning
12 45 (10.59%) Decision-Making
13 44 (10.35%) Problem-Solving
14 38 (8.94%) Data Integration
14 38 (8.94%) DevOps
15 37 (8.71%) Data Governance
16 36 (8.47%) Data Architecture
16 36 (8.47%) Migration
17 29 (6.82%) Data Security
Programming Languages
1 247 (58.12%) SQL
2 186 (43.76%) Python
3 19 (4.47%) T-SQL
4 14 (3.29%) Scala
5 11 (2.59%) PowerShell
6 10 (2.35%) Bash
7 8 (1.88%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 8 (1.88%) Java
8 5 (1.18%) C#
9 3 (0.71%) TypeScript
10 2 (0.47%) Bicep
10 2 (0.47%) Groovy
10 2 (0.47%) JavaScript
10 2 (0.47%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.24%) C
Qualifications
1 60 (14.12%) Security Cleared
2 18 (4.24%) SC Cleared
3 8 (1.88%) Degree
4 7 (1.65%) DV Cleared
5 5 (1.18%) Microsoft Certification
6 4 (0.94%) BPSS Clearance
7 3 (0.71%) Azure Certification
7 3 (0.71%) Computer Science Degree
8 2 (0.47%) AWS Certification
8 2 (0.47%) CISSP
8 2 (0.47%) Master's Degree
8 2 (0.47%) MCSE
8 2 (0.47%) OCP
8 2 (0.47%) Oracle Certification
9 1 (0.24%) HNC
9 1 (0.24%) HND
9 1 (0.24%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 49 (11.53%) Data Quality
2 8 (1.88%) Accessibility
2 8 (1.88%) GDPR
3 6 (1.41%) SLA
4 4 (0.94%) QA
5 2 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (0.24%) HIPAA
6 1 (0.24%) NIST
6 1 (0.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 16 (3.76%) Docker
2 1 (0.24%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 20 (4.71%) Terraform
2 8 (1.88%) Kubernetes
3 2 (0.47%) Control-M
4 1 (0.24%) Ansible
4 1 (0.24%) Grafana
Vendors
1 96 (22.59%) Databricks
2 75 (17.65%) Microsoft
3 22 (5.18%) Oracle
4 11 (2.59%) Talend
5 8 (1.88%) Informatica
6 6 (1.41%) Cloudera
6 6 (1.41%) Palantir
7 5 (1.18%) Google
7 5 (1.18%) Netezza
8 3 (0.71%) IBM
8 3 (0.71%) SAP
9 2 (0.47%) Alteryx
9 2 (0.47%) BMC
9 2 (0.47%) MuleSoft
10 1 (0.24%) ArcSight
10 1 (0.24%) Denodo
10 1 (0.24%) Foundry
10 1 (0.24%) OpenAI
10 1 (0.24%) Palo Alto
10 1 (0.24%) Splunk