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 31 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 156 175 189
Rank change year-on-year +19 +14 -65
Permanent jobs citing Data Engineering 938 883 1,160
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.47% 1.70% 1.66%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.83% 1.86% 1.87%
Number of salaries quoted 599 597 771
10th Percentile £46,200 £42,500 £43,750
25th Percentile £57,500 £53,000 £55,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £72,500 £75,000 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year -3.33% +7.14% -6.67%
75th Percentile £88,500 £97,500 £91,934
90th Percentile £107,500 £115,000 £110,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £65,000 £62,500 £67,500
% change year-on-year +4.00% -7.41% -

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 51,135 47,583 62,099
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 80.17% 91.57% 88.82%
Number of salaries quoted 30,200 22,958 48,143
10th Percentile £28,697 £35,000 £30,000
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,531 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £56,500
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +6.19% -9.60%
75th Percentile £75,900 £80,000 £75,772
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -9.09%

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 31 January 2026.

Salary histogram for Data Engineering in the UK

Data Engineering
Top 16 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 31 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
England +4 825 £70,000 -6.67% 512
London +46 461 £75,000 -18.92% 233
UK excluding London +2 389 £65,000 +4.00% 399
Work from Home +9 367 £75,000 - 281
North of England -34 106 £67,500 +28.57% 83
South East -8 91 £73,750 +5.36% 167
Midlands +40 88 £65,000 +18.18% 44
West Midlands +52 68 £60,000 +33.33% 24
Yorkshire -18 56 £69,000 +34.63% 27
Scotland +6 45 £80,000 +16.36% 24
North West +3 43 £65,000 +30.00% 44
East of England +43 32 £52,500 -16.00% 37
South West -23 24 £50,000 -28.57% 37
East Midlands -7 18 £75,000 +22.95% 20
North East -17 7 £67,500 +14.89% 13
Wales +5 6 £65,000 -18.75% 9

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
1 105 (11.19%) Apache Airflow
2 99 (10.55%) Apache Spark
3 58 (6.18%) Apache
4 23 (2.45%) Palantir Foundry
5 17 (1.81%) SAS
6 14 (1.49%) SharePoint
7 12 (1.28%) Appian
7 12 (1.28%) Confluence
8 5 (0.53%) WordPress
9 4 (0.43%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.32%) Jupyter
10 3 (0.32%) Moodle
11 1 (0.11%) Apache Solr
11 1 (0.11%) Apache Superset
11 1 (0.11%) ArcGIS
11 1 (0.11%) Camunda
11 1 (0.11%) GeoServer
11 1 (0.11%) Luigi
Applications
1 33 (3.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (0.96%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.11%) Adobe XD
4 1 (0.11%) Notion
Business Applications
1 5 (0.53%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.21%) Markit EDM
2 2 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.11%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.11%) SAP ERP
3 1 (0.11%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 447 (47.65%) Azure
2 284 (30.28%) AWS
3 211 (22.49%) Power Platform
4 159 (16.95%) Snowflake
5 142 (15.14%) Azure Data Factory
5 142 (15.14%) GCP
6 82 (8.74%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 74 (7.89%) dbt
8 58 (6.18%) Azure DevOps
9 55 (5.86%) Amazon S3
10 44 (4.69%) Serverless
11 42 (4.48%) SaaS
12 39 (4.16%) GitHub
13 37 (3.94%) AWS Lambda
14 26 (2.77%) Amazon Kinesis
15 24 (2.56%) Fivetran
16 22 (2.35%) Amazon SageMaker
16 22 (2.35%) Azure Machine Learning
17 21 (2.24%) Azure AI
18 20 (2.13%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.32%) DHCP
1 3 (0.32%) DNS
2 2 (0.21%) Broadband
2 2 (0.21%) HTTP
2 2 (0.21%) Kerberos
3 1 (0.11%) DAB
3 1 (0.11%) Radio Access Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 278 (29.64%) Data Warehouse
2 199 (21.22%) Power BI
3 135 (14.39%) Data Lake
4 125 (13.33%) SQL Server
5 81 (8.64%) Metadata
6 74 (7.89%) Tableau
7 58 (6.18%) Amazon Redshift
8 54 (5.76%) Big Data
9 46 (4.90%) NoSQL
10 42 (4.48%) PostgreSQL
11 41 (4.37%) BigQuery
12 40 (4.26%) Hadoop
13 37 (3.94%) Relational Database
13 37 (3.94%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 36 (3.84%) Delta Lake
15 35 (3.73%) MySQL
16 34 (3.62%) Looker
17 29 (3.09%) SQL Server Reporting Services
18 28 (2.99%) MongoDB
19 26 (2.77%) Apache Iceberg
Development Applications
1 53 (5.65%) Git
2 35 (3.73%) MLflow
3 18 (1.92%) JIRA
4 11 (1.17%) Jenkins
5 8 (0.85%) GitLab
6 3 (0.32%) Selenium
6 3 (0.32%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 2 (0.21%) Deequ
8 1 (0.11%) CMake
8 1 (0.11%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.11%) JMeter
8 1 (0.11%) Team Foundation Server
8 1 (0.11%) Zephyr
General
1 290 (30.92%) Finance
2 240 (25.59%) Social Skills
3 119 (12.69%) Analytical Skills
4 64 (6.82%) Law
5 54 (5.76%) Banking
5 54 (5.76%) Public Sector
6 38 (4.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 38 (4.05%) Marketing
7 34 (3.62%) Retail
8 27 (2.88%) Manufacturing
9 24 (2.56%) Financial Institution
10 21 (2.24%) Legal
11 19 (2.03%) Advertising
12 13 (1.39%) Automotive
13 11 (1.17%) French Language
14 9 (0.96%) Front Office
15 7 (0.75%) Influencing Skills
15 7 (0.75%) Organisational Skills
15 7 (0.75%) Publishing
15 7 (0.75%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 420 (44.78%) Data Engineer
2 178 (18.98%) Senior
3 139 (14.82%) Lead
4 116 (12.37%) Senior Data Engineer
5 80 (8.53%) Architect
6 76 (8.10%) Lead Data Engineer
7 62 (6.61%) Data Architect
8 51 (5.44%) Data Manager
9 50 (5.33%) Developer
10 43 (4.58%) Consultant
11 42 (4.48%) Analyst
12 40 (4.26%) Azure Engineer
13 34 (3.62%) Azure Data Engineer
14 30 (3.20%) AWS Engineer
15 28 (2.99%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 28 (2.99%) Principal Engineer
16 27 (2.88%) Engineering Manager
17 26 (2.77%) AWS Data Engineer
18 24 (2.56%) Data Consultant
19 20 (2.13%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 91 (9.70%) PySpark
2 76 (8.10%) Kafka
3 49 (5.22%) PyTorch
3 49 (5.22%) TensorFlow
4 42 (4.48%) Pandas
5 28 (2.99%) REST
6 26 (2.77%) RESTful
7 25 (2.67%) scikit-learn
8 22 (2.35%) LangChain
9 21 (2.24%) pytest
10 20 (2.13%) Faiss
11 19 (2.03%) FastAPI
11 19 (2.03%) NumPy
12 18 (1.92%) React
13 17 (1.81%) Flask
13 17 (1.81%) HTML
14 14 (1.49%) OAuth
14 14 (1.49%) Spring
15 13 (1.39%) CSS
15 13 (1.39%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 59 (6.29%) Cloud Native
2 47 (5.01%) Product Ownership
3 44 (4.69%) Legacy Systems
4 40 (4.26%) Distributed Systems
5 33 (3.52%) Management Information System
6 27 (2.88%) Data Structures
7 25 (2.67%) Low-Code
8 21 (2.24%) e-Learning
8 21 (2.24%) Greenfield Project
9 18 (1.92%) Data Centre
10 16 (1.71%) Hybrid Cloud
10 16 (1.71%) Onboarding
11 14 (1.49%) Analytical Mindset
12 13 (1.39%) AI Agents
12 13 (1.39%) Self-Motivation
13 11 (1.17%) Distributed Architecture
14 9 (0.96%) Algorithms
15 8 (0.85%) FMCG
16 7 (0.75%) Enterprise Software
17 6 (0.64%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 7 (0.75%) Linux
2 4 (0.43%) Unix
2 4 (0.43%) Windows
3 3 (0.32%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 456 (48.61%) Analytics
2 450 (47.97%) Data Pipeline
3 382 (40.72%) ETL
4 350 (37.31%) Data Modelling
5 272 (29.00%) Business Intelligence
6 269 (28.68%) CI/CD
7 268 (28.57%) AI
8 238 (25.37%) Data Governance
9 232 (24.73%) Agile
10 199 (21.22%) DevOps
11 180 (19.19%) Data Integration
12 179 (19.08%) Machine Learning
13 177 (18.87%) Mentoring
14 175 (18.66%) Data Science
15 169 (18.02%) Problem-Solving
16 165 (17.59%) Data Architecture
17 162 (17.27%) Decision-Making
18 117 (12.47%) Continuous Improvement
19 108 (11.51%) Visualisation
20 104 (11.09%) Data Management
Programming Languages
1 522 (55.65%) Python
2 499 (53.20%) SQL
3 85 (9.06%) Java
4 58 (6.18%) Scala
5 31 (3.30%) T-SQL
6 29 (3.09%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 28 (2.99%) Bash
8 22 (2.35%) PowerShell
8 22 (2.35%) R
9 20 (2.13%) JavaScript
10 17 (1.81%) C#
11 12 (1.28%) Go
12 11 (1.17%) Bicep
13 8 (0.85%) PHP
13 8 (0.85%) TypeScript
14 5 (0.53%) C++
15 3 (0.32%) Groovy
15 3 (0.32%) Ruby
16 2 (0.21%) PL/SQL
17 1 (0.11%) VBA
Qualifications
1 115 (12.26%) Degree
2 74 (7.89%) Security Cleared
3 51 (5.44%) SC Cleared
4 46 (4.90%) Computer Science Degree
5 35 (3.73%) Master's Degree
6 23 (2.45%) Microsoft Certification
7 20 (2.13%) DV Cleared
8 17 (1.81%) AWS Certification
9 15 (1.60%) Azure Certification
10 13 (1.39%) MCSE
11 12 (1.28%) CISSP
11 12 (1.28%) OCP
11 12 (1.28%) Oracle Certification
12 11 (1.17%) PhD
13 6 (0.64%) DBS Check
14 5 (0.53%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 5 (0.53%) BPSS Clearance
14 5 (0.53%) CRISC
14 5 (0.53%) SnowPro
15 1 (0.11%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 235 (25.05%) Data Quality
2 68 (7.25%) Accessibility
3 58 (6.18%) GDPR
4 16 (1.71%) QA
5 13 (1.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 7 (0.75%) SLA
7 5 (0.53%) GRC
7 5 (0.53%) HIPAA
7 5 (0.53%) NIST
8 4 (0.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 3 (0.32%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 1 (0.11%) Actionable Recommendations
10 1 (0.11%) GAAP
10 1 (0.11%) GMP
10 1 (0.11%) IFRS
10 1 (0.11%) IFRS 17
10 1 (0.11%) NCSC
10 1 (0.11%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.11%) Solvency II
System Software
1 90 (9.59%) Docker
2 10 (1.07%) Active Directory
3 9 (0.96%) HDFS
4 1 (0.11%) Apache ZooKeeper
4 1 (0.11%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 72 (7.68%) Kubernetes
2 59 (6.29%) Terraform
3 8 (0.85%) Argo
4 7 (0.75%) Single Sign-On
5 6 (0.64%) Ansible
5 6 (0.64%) Grafana
5 6 (0.64%) Prometheus
6 5 (0.53%) Control-M
7 4 (0.43%) Kubeflow
8 3 (0.32%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 3 (0.32%) Microsoft Intune
8 3 (0.32%) SCCM
9 1 (0.11%) Istio
9 1 (0.11%) Progress Chef
9 1 (0.11%) Puppet
Vendors
1 241 (25.69%) Databricks
2 197 (21.00%) Microsoft
3 49 (5.22%) Oracle
4 37 (3.94%) Informatica
5 35 (3.73%) Google
5 35 (3.73%) Palantir
6 34 (3.62%) OpenAI
7 30 (3.20%) Talend
8 28 (2.99%) Foundry
9 16 (1.71%) Dell
10 15 (1.60%) SAP
11 13 (1.39%) Automation Anywhere
11 13 (1.39%) UiPath
12 12 (1.28%) NVIDIA
13 8 (0.85%) Salesforce
14 7 (0.75%) Cloudera
14 7 (0.75%) MuleSoft
15 5 (0.53%) Dataiku
15 5 (0.53%) Netezza
16 4 (0.43%) Fortinet