Data Engineer
UK

The median Data Engineer salary in the UK is £70,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 17 August 2026.

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

6 months to
17 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 98 240 152
Rank change year-on-year +142 -88 -9
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,958 658 1,418
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.83% 1.31% 1.71%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.94% 1.46% 1.80%
Number of salaries quoted 1,446 502 994
10th Percentile £45,000 £46,025 £40,000
25th Percentile £52,500 £55,000 £52,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £68,750 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year +1.82% -1.79% -3.45%
75th Percentile £85,000 £85,000 £85,000
90th Percentile £96,250 £100,000 £105,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £65,000 £65,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year - +8.33% -4.00%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies. 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 with a recognized job title 100,717 45,123 78,702
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.02% 89.93% 95.04%
Number of salaries quoted 68,844 26,712 52,410
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,250 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £36,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £56,350 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +2.45% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £75,000 £75,000 £72,000
90th Percentile £96,250 £95,000 £91,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £48,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +9.38% -4.00% -6.54%

Data Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Data Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

Data Engineer
Salary Trend

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

Salary distribution trend for Data Engineer job vacancies in the UK

Data Engineer
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Data Engineer over the 6 months to 17 August 2026.

Salary histogram for Data Engineer in the UK

Data Engineer
Top 17 Job Locations

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 over the 6 months to 17 August 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
England +138 1,798 £70,000 - 528
UK excluding London +176 1,246 £65,000 - 356
London +41 613 £80,000 -3.03% 255
North of England +124 484 £67,500 +12.50% 106
Work from Home +93 473 £72,500 - 204
South East +137 264 £60,000 -7.69% 110
North West +109 234 £70,000 +16.67% 52
Midlands +64 185 £70,000 +7.69% 55
South West +43 179 £70,000 -3.45% 37
Yorkshire +46 142 £75,000 +25.00% 25
West Midlands +62 130 £70,000 +7.69% 42
North East +18 108 £61,250 -9.26% 30
East of England +21 61 £55,500 +8.29% 18
East Midlands +9 55 £52,500 -22.22% 13
Wales -22 46 £60,000 +9.09% 10
Scotland +21 32 £80,000 +52.38% 16
Northern Ireland -75 2 - - 6

Data Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 17 August 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 featuring Data Engineer in the job title.

1 695 (35.50%) Python
2 693 (35.39%) SQL
3 646 (32.99%) Data Pipeline
4 631 (32.23%) Analytics
5 580 (29.62%) Data Engineering
6 549 (28.04%) Azure
7 442 (22.57%) ETL
8 424 (21.65%) Data Modelling
9 380 (19.41%) AWS
10 378 (19.31%) AI
11 359 (18.34%) Data Quality
12 330 (16.85%) CI/CD
13 304 (15.53%) Databricks
14 301 (15.37%) Business Intelligence
15 279 (14.25%) Microsoft
16 272 (13.89%) Decision-Making
17 258 (13.18%) Data Warehouse
18 247 (12.61%) Agile
19 231 (11.80%) Security Cleared
20 218 (11.13%) Problem-Solving
21 201 (10.27%) Data Governance
22 197 (10.06%) Machine Learning
23 195 (9.96%) DevOps
23 195 (9.96%) Power Platform
24 193 (9.86%) Data Architecture
25 188 (9.60%) Power BI
26 187 (9.55%) GCP
27 176 (8.99%) Azure Data Factory
28 174 (8.89%) Data Science
29 169 (8.63%) Apache Airflow

Data Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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
1 169 (8.63%) Apache Airflow
2 131 (6.69%) Apache Spark
3 116 (5.92%) Apache
4 28 (1.43%) SAS
5 10 (0.51%) Palantir Foundry
6 5 (0.26%) Jupyter
7 4 (0.20%) Luigi
8 3 (0.15%) Apache Solr
9 2 (0.10%) ArcGIS
9 2 (0.10%) Confluence
9 2 (0.10%) Oracle Application Server
9 2 (0.10%) SharePoint
9 2 (0.10%) Tornado
10 1 (0.051%) GeoServer
Applications
1 20 (1.02%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.10%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.051%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.051%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 4 (0.20%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.10%) SAP Business One
3 1 (0.051%) FastStats
3 1 (0.051%) NetSuite
3 1 (0.051%) Primavera
3 1 (0.051%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 549 (28.04%) Azure
2 380 (19.41%) AWS
3 195 (9.96%) Power Platform
4 187 (9.55%) GCP
5 176 (8.99%) Azure Data Factory
6 118 (6.03%) Snowflake
7 115 (5.87%) dbt
8 87 (4.44%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 78 (3.98%) Azure DevOps
10 69 (3.52%) SaaS
11 63 (3.22%) Serverless
12 53 (2.71%) Amazon S3
13 45 (2.30%) AWS Lambda
14 40 (2.04%) GitHub
15 24 (1.23%) Fivetran
15 24 (1.23%) GitHub Actions
16 23 (1.17%) Microsoft Purview
17 22 (1.12%) Azure Logic Apps
18 20 (1.02%) Amazon EMR
18 20 (1.02%) Dagster
Communications & Networking
1 16 (0.82%) Broadband
1 16 (0.82%) Structured Cabling
2 8 (0.41%) Internet
2 8 (0.41%) Wi-Fi
3 4 (0.20%) Software-Defined Radio
3 4 (0.20%) Wireless
4 1 (0.051%) 4G
4 1 (0.051%) 5G
4 1 (0.051%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 258 (13.18%) Data Warehouse
2 188 (9.60%) Power BI
3 139 (7.10%) Data Lake
4 130 (6.64%) SQL Server
5 86 (4.39%) Big Data
6 81 (4.14%) BigQuery
7 70 (3.58%) Azure SQL Database
8 69 (3.52%) Relational Database
9 66 (3.37%) NoSQL
10 61 (3.12%) Amazon Redshift
11 55 (2.81%) PostgreSQL
12 53 (2.71%) Metadata
13 48 (2.45%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 38 (1.94%) Delta Lake
14 38 (1.94%) Star Schema
14 38 (1.94%) Tableau
15 35 (1.79%) Spark SQL
16 31 (1.58%) Semantic Layer
17 28 (1.43%) Amazon Athena
18 26 (1.33%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 117 (5.98%) Git
2 26 (1.33%) Jenkins
3 10 (0.51%) GitLab
4 7 (0.36%) JIRA
5 4 (0.20%) Visual Studio
6 3 (0.15%) Bitbucket
6 3 (0.15%) Visual Studio Code
7 2 (0.10%) ERwin
7 2 (0.10%) Oracle APEX
7 2 (0.10%) VSS/SourceSafe
8 1 (0.051%) Claude Code
8 1 (0.051%) Selenium
8 1 (0.051%) Yeoman
General
1 219 (11.18%) Social Skills
2 214 (10.93%) Finance
3 172 (8.78%) Analytical Skills
4 115 (5.87%) Public Sector
5 50 (2.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 43 (2.20%) Marketing
7 30 (1.53%) Law
8 29 (1.48%) Retail
9 23 (1.17%) Manufacturing
10 15 (0.77%) Advertising
11 12 (0.61%) Health Technology
12 11 (0.56%) Aerospace
12 11 (0.56%) Telecoms
13 10 (0.51%) Legal
13 10 (0.51%) Presentation Skills
14 9 (0.46%) Banking
15 8 (0.41%) Games
15 8 (0.41%) Influencing Skills
15 8 (0.41%) Military
16 6 (0.31%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 146 (7.46%) PySpark
2 110 (5.62%) Kafka
3 21 (1.07%) REST
4 18 (0.92%) Apache NiFi
5 17 (0.87%) JSON
6 16 (0.82%) Pandas
7 12 (0.61%) ARM Templates
8 8 (0.41%) TensorFlow
9 7 (0.36%) AWS CDK
9 7 (0.36%) Keycloak
9 7 (0.36%) Node.js
9 7 (0.36%) PyTorch
9 7 (0.36%) XML
10 6 (0.31%) Great Expectations
10 6 (0.31%) gRPC
10 6 (0.31%) YAML
11 5 (0.26%) RESTful
12 4 (0.20%) EDI
12 4 (0.20%) NumPy
12 4 (0.20%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 91 (4.65%) Cloud Native
2 31 (1.58%) Distributed Systems
3 30 (1.53%) Product Ownership
4 29 (1.48%) Onboarding
5 21 (1.07%) Distributed Computing
6 19 (0.97%) Data Structures
6 19 (0.97%) Greenfield Project
7 18 (0.92%) Self-Motivation
8 16 (0.82%) Driving Licence
9 14 (0.72%) Hedge funds
9 14 (0.72%) NHS
10 13 (0.66%) Legacy Systems
10 13 (0.66%) Virtual Team
11 12 (0.61%) Analytical Mindset
11 12 (0.61%) Sports Betting
12 11 (0.56%) AI Agents
13 10 (0.51%) Marketing Technology
13 10 (0.51%) Reference Data
14 9 (0.46%) Educational Technology
15 8 (0.41%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 11 (0.56%) Linux
2 6 (0.31%) Windows
3 1 (0.051%) Unix
3 1 (0.051%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 646 (32.99%) Data Pipeline
2 631 (32.23%) Analytics
3 580 (29.62%) Data Engineering
4 442 (22.57%) ETL
5 424 (21.65%) Data Modelling
6 378 (19.31%) AI
7 330 (16.85%) CI/CD
8 301 (15.37%) Business Intelligence
9 272 (13.89%) Decision-Making
10 247 (12.61%) Agile
11 218 (11.13%) Problem-Solving
12 201 (10.27%) Data Governance
13 197 (10.06%) Machine Learning
14 195 (9.96%) DevOps
15 193 (9.86%) Data Architecture
16 174 (8.89%) Data Science
17 160 (8.17%) Mentoring
18 159 (8.12%) Platform Engineering
19 123 (6.28%) Continuous Improvement
19 123 (6.28%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 695 (35.50%) Python
2 693 (35.39%) SQL
3 59 (3.01%) Java
4 58 (2.96%) Scala
5 25 (1.28%) PowerShell
6 20 (1.02%) Bash
7 19 (0.97%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 18 (0.92%) T-SQL
9 14 (0.72%) Go
10 11 (0.56%) C#
10 11 (0.56%) C++
11 8 (0.41%) Bicep
11 8 (0.41%) Groovy
11 8 (0.41%) TypeScript
12 7 (0.36%) Kusto Query Language
12 7 (0.36%) R
13 5 (0.26%) JavaScript
14 3 (0.15%) PL/SQL
14 3 (0.15%) VBA
15 2 (0.10%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 231 (11.80%) Security Cleared
2 149 (7.61%) SC Cleared
3 94 (4.80%) DV Cleared
4 88 (4.49%) Degree
5 35 (1.79%) Computer Science Degree
6 29 (1.48%) Azure Certification
7 21 (1.07%) BPSS Clearance
8 17 (0.87%) DBS Check
9 15 (0.77%) Master's Degree
10 7 (0.36%) AWS Certification
11 6 (0.31%) Microsoft Certification
12 2 (0.10%) CITP
13 1 (0.051%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 1 (0.051%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 1 (0.051%) CISM
13 1 (0.051%) CISSP
13 1 (0.051%) City & Guilds
13 1 (0.051%) ICAEW
13 1 (0.051%) MCT
13 1 (0.051%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 359 (18.34%) Data Quality
2 44 (2.25%) GDPR
3 23 (1.17%) QA
4 21 (1.07%) Accessibility
5 13 (0.66%) SLA
6 4 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
7 3 (0.15%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.051%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.051%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 79 (4.03%) Docker
2 1 (0.051%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 162 (8.27%) Terraform
2 44 (2.25%) Kubernetes
3 12 (0.61%) Ansible
4 9 (0.46%) Grafana
5 8 (0.41%) Packer
6 3 (0.15%) Kibana
7 2 (0.10%) Argo
7 2 (0.10%) CASB
7 2 (0.10%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 304 (15.53%) Databricks
2 279 (14.25%) Microsoft
3 58 (2.96%) Google
4 19 (0.97%) Oracle
5 18 (0.92%) Informatica
5 18 (0.92%) Salesforce
6 16 (0.82%) Palantir
7 14 (0.72%) Foundry
8 13 (0.66%) SAP
8 13 (0.66%) Talend
9 6 (0.31%) OpenAI
9 6 (0.31%) Typelevel
10 4 (0.20%) Cloudera
11 3 (0.15%) Alteryx
12 2 (0.10%) iManage
12 2 (0.10%) Intapp
12 2 (0.10%) MicroStrategy
12 2 (0.10%) Planon
12 2 (0.10%) Splunk
13 1 (0.051%) Dell