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 1 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 133 150 153
Rank change year-on-year +17 +3 +57
Permanent jobs citing Data Engineering 1,637 1,034 1,307
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.39% 2.09% 1.75%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.90% 2.34% 2.14%
Number of salaries quoted 1,135 472 637
10th Percentile £46,217 £46,000 £42,500
25th Percentile £55,350 £55,000 £55,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £75,000 £70,000 £71,991
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% -2.77% -4.01%
75th Percentile £97,500 £94,063 £92,500
90th Percentile £110,000 £112,500 £108,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £65,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year +7.69% +8.33% -7.69%

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 86,281 44,107 61,151
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.16% 89.14% 81.78%
Number of salaries quoted 59,444 24,402 33,284
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £32,500
25th Percentile £41,750 £36,250 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £58,274
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -5.62% -2.88%
75th Percentile £79,091 £75,000 £77,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,250 £96,250
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 1 October 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 1 October 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 1,501 £75,000 +7.14% 1,722
UK excluding London -13 807 £70,000 +7.69% 783
London +20 725 £85,000 - 1,048
Work from Home -2 494 £75,000 +6.38% 756
North of England -6 373 £75,000 +11.11% 254
North West -27 173 £77,500 +34.78% 148
South East -46 145 £64,500 -0.77% 155
North East +21 106 £66,805 +40.64% 39
Midlands +1 106 £77,500 +14.81% 106
Yorkshire -4 94 £75,000 +7.14% 68
South West -15 90 £62,500 +4.17% 85
West Midlands -15 72 £82,500 +37.50% 82
Scotland +9 38 £95,000 +31.03% 84
East Midlands -19 34 £77,500 +13.97% 24
East of England -26 29 £70,000 +40.00% 42
Wales -44 29 £63,500 +26.69% 14
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 46

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
1 168 (10.26%) Apache Spark
2 134 (8.19%) Apache Airflow
3 131 (8.00%) Apache
4 22 (1.34%) Jupyter
5 21 (1.28%) Palantir Foundry
6 15 (0.92%) Confluence
7 10 (0.61%) SAS
8 9 (0.55%) Oracle Workflow
8 9 (0.55%) SharePoint
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
Applications
1 20 (1.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
3 8 (0.49%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.12%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.12%) Notion
5 1 (0.061%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.061%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.061%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 5 (0.31%) Dynamics CRM
1 5 (0.31%) IBM Planning Analytics
2 2 (0.12%) SAP Business One
3 1 (0.061%) Academy Revenues and Benefits
3 1 (0.061%) Actimize
3 1 (0.061%) FastStats
3 1 (0.061%) NetSuite
3 1 (0.061%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.061%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 650 (39.71%) Azure
2 473 (28.89%) AWS
3 283 (17.29%) Power Platform
4 275 (16.80%) GCP
5 184 (11.24%) Azure Data Factory
6 162 (9.90%) Snowflake
7 130 (7.94%) dbt
8 106 (6.48%) Azure DevOps
8 106 (6.48%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 104 (6.35%) Amazon S3
10 95 (5.80%) Serverless
11 68 (4.15%) AWS Lambda
12 67 (4.09%) GitHub
13 65 (3.97%) SaaS
14 53 (3.24%) Amazon EMR
15 49 (2.99%) Azure Databricks
15 49 (2.99%) Azure Machine Learning
16 48 (2.93%) Microsoft Purview
17 41 (2.50%) Amazon EC2
18 33 (2.02%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 17 (1.04%) Broadband
2 7 (0.43%) Internet
3 4 (0.24%) 5G
4 2 (0.12%) Firewall
4 2 (0.12%) HTTP
5 1 (0.061%) 4G
5 1 (0.061%) ATM
5 1 (0.061%) DAB
5 1 (0.061%) MQTT
5 1 (0.061%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 281 (17.17%) Data Warehouse
2 274 (16.74%) Power BI
3 196 (11.97%) Data Lake
4 112 (6.84%) Metadata
5 105 (6.41%) BigQuery
6 101 (6.17%) Amazon Redshift
7 94 (5.74%) SQL Server
7 94 (5.74%) Tableau
8 82 (5.01%) Big Data
9 67 (4.09%) Azure SQL Database
10 64 (3.91%) NoSQL
11 62 (3.79%) Semantic Layer
12 59 (3.60%) Relational Database
13 55 (3.36%) Delta Lake
14 54 (3.30%) PostgreSQL
14 54 (3.30%) Star Schema
15 52 (3.18%) Amazon Athena
16 45 (2.75%) Spark SQL
17 36 (2.20%) Data Vault
18 34 (2.08%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 136 (8.31%) Git
2 36 (2.20%) Jenkins
3 33 (2.02%) GitLab
4 26 (1.59%) JIRA
5 10 (0.61%) Claude Code
6 6 (0.37%) MLflow
7 5 (0.31%) Poetry
8 4 (0.24%) Octopus Deploy
8 4 (0.24%) Visual Studio Code
9 3 (0.18%) Bitbucket
10 2 (0.12%) ERwin
10 2 (0.12%) VSS/SourceSafe
11 1 (0.061%) Cypress.io
11 1 (0.061%) kappa
11 1 (0.061%) RStudio
11 1 (0.061%) Selenium
11 1 (0.061%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 1 (0.061%) Visual Studio
11 1 (0.061%) Yeoman
General
1 432 (26.39%) Social Skills
2 417 (25.47%) Finance
3 274 (16.74%) Analytical Skills
4 153 (9.35%) Public Sector
5 117 (7.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 72 (4.40%) Banking
7 57 (3.48%) Marketing
7 57 (3.48%) Retail
8 48 (2.93%) Legal
9 38 (2.32%) Law
10 37 (2.26%) Influencing Skills
11 36 (2.20%) Financial Institution
12 25 (1.53%) Manufacturing
13 22 (1.34%) Advertising
14 15 (0.92%) Games
14 15 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
15 12 (0.73%) Documentation Skills
15 12 (0.73%) Organisational Skills
16 11 (0.67%) Aerospace
16 11 (0.67%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 657 (40.13%) Data Engineer
2 368 (22.48%) Senior
3 299 (18.27%) Lead
4 194 (11.85%) Senior Data Engineer
5 140 (8.55%) Architect
6 97 (5.93%) Data Architect
6 97 (5.93%) Lead Data Engineer
7 95 (5.80%) Data Manager
8 84 (5.13%) Analyst
9 75 (4.58%) Principal Engineer
10 73 (4.46%) Software Engineer
11 71 (4.34%) Developer
12 65 (3.97%) Consultant
13 50 (3.05%) Databricks Engineer
14 49 (2.99%) Engineering Manager
15 47 (2.87%) Principal Data Engineer
16 46 (2.81%) Head of Engineering
17 44 (2.69%) Python Engineer
18 43 (2.63%) Data Consultant
19 42 (2.57%) Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 182 (11.12%) PySpark
2 137 (8.37%) Terraform
3 78 (4.76%) Kafka
4 43 (2.63%) .NET
5 37 (2.26%) REST
6 33 (2.02%) LangChain
6 33 (2.02%) Pandas
7 27 (1.65%) Node.js
8 25 (1.53%) SpaCy
9 24 (1.47%) LlamaIndex
10 22 (1.34%) JSON
10 22 (1.34%) PyTorch
10 22 (1.34%) scikit-learn
10 22 (1.34%) TensorFlow
11 16 (0.98%) React
11 16 (0.98%) RESTful
12 15 (0.92%) Apache NiFi
13 14 (0.86%) FastAPI
14 13 (0.79%) NumPy
15 12 (0.73%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 177 (10.81%) Cloud Native
2 66 (4.03%) Data Structures
3 58 (3.54%) Product Ownership
4 55 (3.36%) Distributed Systems
5 49 (2.99%) Onboarding
6 39 (2.38%) AI Agents
7 25 (1.53%) e-Learning
8 22 (1.34%) Self-Motivation
9 18 (1.10%) Analytical Mindset
10 17 (1.04%) Distributed Computing
10 17 (1.04%) Hedge funds
10 17 (1.04%) Legacy Systems
11 16 (0.98%) Hybrid Cloud
12 15 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
12 15 (0.92%) Management Information System
13 14 (0.86%) Distributed Architecture
13 14 (0.86%) Low-Code
14 13 (0.79%) IoT
15 12 (0.73%) Blog
16 11 (0.67%) Sports Betting
Operating Systems
1 7 (0.43%) Windows
2 4 (0.24%) Linux
3 1 (0.061%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 781 (47.71%) Analytics
2 581 (35.49%) Data Pipeline
3 570 (34.82%) AI
4 517 (31.58%) Data Modelling
5 468 (28.59%) ETL
6 457 (27.92%) CI/CD
7 408 (24.92%) Business Intelligence
8 388 (23.70%) Decision-Making
9 383 (23.40%) Agile
10 370 (22.60%) Data Governance
11 348 (21.26%) Machine Learning
12 321 (19.61%) Data Architecture
13 316 (19.30%) DevOps
14 306 (18.69%) Mentoring
15 287 (17.53%) Problem-Solving
16 257 (15.70%) Data Science
17 222 (13.56%) Technical Leadership
18 201 (12.28%) Roadmaps
19 198 (12.10%) Software Engineering
20 192 (11.73%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 819 (50.03%) Python
2 818 (49.97%) SQL
3 120 (7.33%) Java
4 74 (4.52%) Scala
5 60 (3.67%) JavaScript
6 52 (3.18%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 37 (2.26%) TypeScript
8 36 (2.20%) C#
9 34 (2.08%) C++
10 26 (1.59%) R
11 20 (1.22%) Bash
12 15 (0.92%) PowerShell
13 14 (0.86%) T-SQL
14 10 (0.61%) Go
15 9 (0.55%) Bicep
16 6 (0.37%) Groovy
17 5 (0.31%) PL/SQL
18 4 (0.24%) Rust
18 4 (0.24%) VBA
19 2 (0.12%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 190 (11.61%) Security Cleared
2 160 (9.77%) Degree
3 131 (8.00%) SC Cleared
4 57 (3.48%) Master's Degree
5 47 (2.87%) Azure Certification
6 45 (2.75%) Computer Science Degree
7 43 (2.63%) DV Cleared
8 32 (1.95%) BPSS Clearance
9 31 (1.89%) AWS Certification
10 30 (1.83%) PhD
11 26 (1.59%) DBS Check
12 16 (0.98%) Microsoft Certification
13 15 (0.92%) ACCA
13 15 (0.92%) CIMA
14 6 (0.37%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 6 (0.37%) CBAP
14 6 (0.37%) Numerate Degree
15 4 (0.24%) CCA
16 3 (0.18%) CISSP
16 3 (0.18%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 484 (29.57%) Data Quality
2 60 (3.67%) Accessibility
3 57 (3.48%) GDPR
4 40 (2.44%) QA
5 11 (0.67%) Actionable Recommendations
6 9 (0.55%) NCSC
7 7 (0.43%) GRC
8 3 (0.18%) EU AI Act
8 3 (0.18%) PCI DSS
8 3 (0.18%) PERC
8 3 (0.18%) PMO
8 3 (0.18%) PSD2
8 3 (0.18%) SLA
9 2 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 1 (0.061%) Cyber Essentials
10 1 (0.061%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 1 (0.061%) IASME
10 1 (0.061%) ISO 9001
10 1 (0.061%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 1 (0.061%) NIST
System Software
1 105 (6.41%) Docker
2 22 (1.34%) Virtual Machines
3 9 (0.55%) 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 74 (4.52%) Kubernetes
2 13 (0.79%) Grafana
3 5 (0.31%) Prometheus
4 4 (0.24%) Argo
4 4 (0.24%) Kibana
5 3 (0.18%) Ansible
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
1 364 (22.24%) Databricks
2 298 (18.20%) Microsoft
3 102 (6.23%) Google
4 37 (2.26%) Oracle
5 33 (2.02%) Salesforce
6 32 (1.95%) Palantir
7 29 (1.77%) Foundry
8 27 (1.65%) SAP
9 26 (1.59%) OpenAI
10 18 (1.10%) Informatica
11 11 (0.67%) Sage
12 9 (0.55%) Alteryx
13 8 (0.49%) YouTube
14 5 (0.31%) IBM
14 5 (0.31%) MicroStrategy
14 5 (0.31%) Talend
15 4 (0.24%) Cloudera
15 4 (0.24%) Cognos
16 3 (0.18%) CyberArk
16 3 (0.18%) ForgeRock