Data Engineering Job Trends

Data Engineering
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs requiring Data Engineering skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 21 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 130 148 154
Rank change year-on-year +18 +6 +47
Permanent jobs citing Data Engineering 1,649 1,054 1,318
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.42% 2.15% 1.70%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.94% 2.42% 2.09%
Number of salaries quoted 1,161 472 655
10th Percentile £46,217 £46,000 £42,700
25th Percentile £55,557 £55,000 £55,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £77,500 £70,000 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year +10.71% - -6.67%
75th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £92,500
90th Percentile £112,500 £112,500 £105,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £65,000 £62,500
% change year-on-year +7.69% +4.00% -3.85%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

Data Engineering falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 84,797 43,558 63,026
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.01% 88.68% 81.33%
Number of salaries quoted 58,554 24,566 35,554
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £32,000
25th Percentile £41,781 £36,250 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £80,000 £75,000 £77,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,250 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year +15.79% -9.52% -2.78%

Data Engineering
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Data Engineering relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

Data Engineering job vacancy trend in the UK

Data Engineering
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Data Engineering.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Data Engineering

Data Engineering
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Data Engineering over the 6 months to 21 September 2026.

Salary histogram for Data Engineering in the UK

Data Engineering
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 Engineering within the UK over the 6 months to 21 September 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 +16 1,525 £80,000 +14.29% 2,420
UK excluding London -10 821 £70,000 +7.69% 1,052
London +28 727 £87,500 +2.94% 1,589
Work from Home 0 508 £78,750 +11.70% 1,033
North of England -12 374 £75,000 +11.11% 306
North West -33 175 £80,000 +36.75% 196
South East -56 152 £65,000 - 240
Midlands -1 112 £75,000 +11.11% 128
North East +22 100 £66,805 +40.64% 44
Yorkshire -5 99 £75,000 +7.14% 67
South West -12 88 £62,500 +4.17% 118
West Midlands -11 78 £75,000 +25.00% 101
East of England -27 38 £70,000 +40.00% 73
East Midlands -18 34 £75,000 +10.29% 27
Scotland 0 32 £100,000 +37.93% 116
Wales -44 28 £63,500 +26.69% 20
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 51

Data Engineering
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 (10.25%) Apache Spark
2 137 (8.31%) Apache Airflow
3 128 (7.76%) Apache
4 21 (1.27%) Jupyter
4 21 (1.27%) Palantir Foundry
5 12 (0.73%) SAS
6 11 (0.67%) Confluence
7 10 (0.61%) SharePoint
8 9 (0.55%) Oracle Workflow
9 4 (0.24%) Luigi
10 2 (0.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 2 (0.12%) Apache Superset
10 2 (0.12%) Tornado
11 1 (0.061%) ArcGIS
11 1 (0.061%) CMS
11 1 (0.061%) GeoServer
11 1 (0.061%) Moodle
Applications
1 19 (1.15%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (0.49%) Spreadsheet
3 6 (0.36%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.12%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.061%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.061%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.061%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 5 (0.30%) IBM Planning Analytics
2 4 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.12%) SAP Business One
4 1 (0.061%) Academy Revenues and Benefits
4 1 (0.061%) FastStats
4 1 (0.061%) Infor M3
4 1 (0.061%) NetSuite
4 1 (0.061%) Oracle Assets
4 1 (0.061%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.061%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.061%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 675 (40.93%) Azure
2 473 (28.68%) AWS
3 282 (17.10%) Power Platform
4 268 (16.25%) GCP
5 189 (11.46%) Snowflake
6 185 (11.22%) Azure Data Factory
7 132 (8.00%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 132 (8.00%) dbt
8 103 (6.25%) Azure DevOps
9 99 (6.00%) Amazon S3
10 97 (5.88%) Serverless
11 67 (4.06%) Azure Machine Learning
12 66 (4.00%) AWS Lambda
13 65 (3.94%) GitHub
14 63 (3.82%) SaaS
15 52 (3.15%) Azure AI
16 51 (3.09%) Amazon EMR
17 49 (2.97%) Azure Databricks
18 47 (2.85%) Microsoft Purview
19 41 (2.49%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 17 (1.03%) Broadband
2 7 (0.42%) Internet
3 4 (0.24%) 5G
4 2 (0.12%) Firewall
4 2 (0.12%) HTTP
4 2 (0.12%) MQTT
5 1 (0.061%) 4G
5 1 (0.061%) ATM
5 1 (0.061%) DAB
5 1 (0.061%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 294 (17.83%) Data Warehouse
2 273 (16.56%) Power BI
3 216 (13.10%) Data Lake
4 117 (7.10%) SQL Server
5 110 (6.67%) BigQuery
6 106 (6.43%) Metadata
7 105 (6.37%) Amazon Redshift
8 101 (6.12%) Tableau
9 85 (5.15%) Big Data
10 71 (4.31%) Azure SQL Database
11 64 (3.88%) NoSQL
12 60 (3.64%) Semantic Layer
13 58 (3.52%) Relational Database
14 57 (3.46%) Delta Lake
15 56 (3.40%) Star Schema
16 50 (3.03%) Amazon Athena
16 50 (3.03%) PostgreSQL
17 47 (2.85%) Spark SQL
18 36 (2.18%) Looker
19 35 (2.12%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 127 (7.70%) Git
2 36 (2.18%) Jenkins
3 27 (1.64%) GitLab
4 23 (1.39%) JIRA
5 13 (0.79%) MLflow
6 10 (0.61%) Claude Code
7 5 (0.30%) Poetry
8 4 (0.24%) Octopus Deploy
8 4 (0.24%) Visual Studio Code
9 3 (0.18%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.18%) Selenium
10 2 (0.12%) ERwin
10 2 (0.12%) VSS/SourceSafe
11 1 (0.061%) kappa
11 1 (0.061%) RStudio
11 1 (0.061%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 1 (0.061%) Visual Studio
11 1 (0.061%) Yeoman
General
1 422 (25.59%) Finance
2 420 (25.47%) Social Skills
3 282 (17.10%) Analytical Skills
4 143 (8.67%) Public Sector
5 108 (6.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 73 (4.43%) Banking
7 59 (3.58%) Retail
8 53 (3.21%) Marketing
9 45 (2.73%) Legal
10 37 (2.24%) Influencing Skills
10 37 (2.24%) Law
11 32 (1.94%) Financial Institution
12 26 (1.58%) Manufacturing
13 21 (1.27%) Advertising
14 13 (0.79%) Games
14 13 (0.79%) Presentation Skills
15 12 (0.73%) Aerospace
15 12 (0.73%) Organisational Skills
16 10 (0.61%) Pharmaceutical
16 10 (0.61%) Police
Job Titles
1 658 (39.90%) Data Engineer
2 363 (22.01%) Senior
3 298 (18.07%) Lead
4 190 (11.52%) Senior Data Engineer
5 139 (8.43%) Architect
6 105 (6.37%) Data Manager
7 98 (5.94%) Data Architect
8 97 (5.88%) Lead Data Engineer
9 76 (4.61%) Analyst
10 73 (4.43%) Principal Engineer
11 71 (4.31%) Developer
12 62 (3.76%) Engineering Manager
12 62 (3.76%) Software Engineer
13 61 (3.70%) Consultant
14 54 (3.27%) Databricks Engineer
15 46 (2.79%) Head of Engineering
16 45 (2.73%) Principal Data Engineer
17 44 (2.67%) Data Scientist
17 44 (2.67%) Databricks Data Engineer
18 42 (2.55%) Data Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 183 (11.10%) PySpark
2 129 (7.82%) Terraform
3 84 (5.09%) Kafka
4 41 (2.49%) .NET
5 37 (2.24%) LangChain
6 35 (2.12%) REST
7 30 (1.82%) LlamaIndex
8 29 (1.76%) PyTorch
8 29 (1.76%) scikit-learn
8 29 (1.76%) TensorFlow
9 28 (1.70%) Pandas
10 27 (1.64%) Node.js
11 23 (1.39%) SpaCy
12 21 (1.27%) JSON
13 16 (0.97%) Apache NiFi
14 14 (0.85%) pgvector
14 14 (0.85%) RESTful
15 12 (0.73%) React
15 12 (0.73%) YAML
16 11 (0.67%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 182 (11.04%) Cloud Native
2 66 (4.00%) Data Structures
3 60 (3.64%) Product Ownership
4 55 (3.34%) Distributed Systems
5 48 (2.91%) Onboarding
6 36 (2.18%) AI Agents
7 25 (1.52%) e-Learning
8 21 (1.27%) Self-Motivation
9 20 (1.21%) Analytical Mindset
10 18 (1.09%) Distributed Computing
10 18 (1.09%) Legacy Systems
11 17 (1.03%) Hedge funds
12 16 (0.97%) Greenfield Project
12 16 (0.97%) Management Information System
13 15 (0.91%) Hybrid Cloud
13 15 (0.91%) Low-Code
14 14 (0.85%) Distributed Architecture
14 14 (0.85%) IoT
15 12 (0.73%) Public Cloud
16 11 (0.67%) Sports Betting
Operating Systems
1 7 (0.42%) Windows
2 4 (0.24%) Linux
3 1 (0.061%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 787 (47.73%) Analytics
2 597 (36.20%) AI
3 589 (35.72%) Data Pipeline
4 513 (31.11%) Data Modelling
5 479 (29.05%) ETL
6 438 (26.56%) CI/CD
7 418 (25.35%) Business Intelligence
8 396 (24.01%) Decision-Making
9 394 (23.89%) Data Governance
10 389 (23.59%) Agile
11 372 (22.56%) Machine Learning
12 348 (21.10%) Data Architecture
13 313 (18.98%) DevOps
14 308 (18.68%) Mentoring
15 272 (16.49%) Problem-Solving
16 269 (16.31%) Data Science
17 224 (13.58%) Roadmaps
18 211 (12.80%) Technical Leadership
19 198 (12.01%) Lakehouse
20 187 (11.34%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 838 (50.82%) SQL
2 820 (49.73%) Python
3 123 (7.46%) Java
4 74 (4.49%) Scala
5 60 (3.64%) JavaScript
6 50 (3.03%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 35 (2.12%) C#
8 33 (2.00%) C++
9 32 (1.94%) TypeScript
10 28 (1.70%) R
11 19 (1.15%) Bash
12 16 (0.97%) T-SQL
13 13 (0.79%) PowerShell
14 10 (0.61%) Go
15 8 (0.49%) Bicep
16 7 (0.42%) Groovy
17 5 (0.30%) PL/SQL
17 5 (0.30%) VBA
18 4 (0.24%) Rust
19 2 (0.12%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 177 (10.73%) Security Cleared
2 168 (10.19%) Degree
3 120 (7.28%) SC Cleared
4 55 (3.34%) Master's Degree
5 50 (3.03%) Computer Science Degree
6 47 (2.85%) Azure Certification
7 40 (2.43%) DV Cleared
8 30 (1.82%) BPSS Clearance
9 27 (1.64%) AWS Certification
9 27 (1.64%) DBS Check
10 25 (1.52%) PhD
11 15 (0.91%) ACCA
11 15 (0.91%) CIMA
11 15 (0.91%) Microsoft Certification
12 6 (0.36%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 6 (0.36%) Numerate Degree
13 5 (0.30%) CBAP
14 4 (0.24%) CCA
15 3 (0.18%) CISSP
15 3 (0.18%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 472 (28.62%) Data Quality
2 67 (4.06%) GDPR
3 58 (3.52%) Accessibility
4 34 (2.06%) QA
5 9 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
5 9 (0.55%) GRC
6 8 (0.49%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 8 (0.49%) NCSC
7 4 (0.24%) PERC
7 4 (0.24%) PMO
7 4 (0.24%) SLA
8 3 (0.18%) EU AI Act
8 3 (0.18%) PCI DSS
8 3 (0.18%) PSD2
9 2 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 1 (0.061%) NIST
10 1 (0.061%) Solvency II
System Software
1 97 (5.88%) Docker
2 41 (2.49%) Virtual Machines
3 7 (0.42%) Active Directory
4 3 (0.18%) NDS
4 3 (0.18%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.061%) Embedded Firmware
5 1 (0.061%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 67 (4.06%) Kubernetes
2 13 (0.79%) Grafana
3 5 (0.30%) Prometheus
4 4 (0.24%) Argo
5 3 (0.18%) Ansible
5 3 (0.18%) Kibana
5 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Intune
5 3 (0.18%) SCCM
6 2 (0.12%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
6 2 (0.12%) Computer Incident Response Team
7 1 (0.061%) CASB
Vendors
1 403 (24.44%) Databricks
2 312 (18.92%) Microsoft
3 92 (5.58%) Google
4 40 (2.43%) Oracle
5 32 (1.94%) Palantir
6 29 (1.76%) Foundry
6 29 (1.76%) SAP
7 28 (1.70%) Salesforce
8 27 (1.64%) Informatica
9 25 (1.52%) OpenAI
10 18 (1.09%) Dell
11 12 (0.73%) Cloudera
12 11 (0.67%) Sage
12 11 (0.67%) Teradata
13 9 (0.55%) Alteryx
14 8 (0.49%) Denodo
15 5 (0.30%) IBM
15 5 (0.30%) MicroStrategy
15 5 (0.30%) Talend
16 4 (0.24%) Cognos