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 14 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 129 146 155
Rank change year-on-year +17 +9 +54
Permanent jobs citing Data Engineering 1,624 1,068 1,314
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.43% 2.16% 1.69%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.97% 2.44% 2.08%
Number of salaries quoted 1,147 462 661
10th Percentile £46,217 £46,000 £44,738
25th Percentile £55,425 £55,000 £56,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £70,000 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year +14.29% - -6.67%
75th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £92,500
90th Percentile £115,000 £111,250 £105,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £72,500 £65,000 £63,950
% change year-on-year +11.54% +1.64% -1.62%

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 82,630 43,847 63,101
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 72.77% 88.67% 80.95%
Number of salaries quoted 57,445 24,695 36,468
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £32,000
25th Percentile £41,750 £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 £76,250
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 14 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 14 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 +21 1,506 £80,000 +14.29% 2,077
UK excluding London -23 803 £72,500 +11.54% 940
London +36 720 £90,000 +5.88% 1,372
Work from Home +17 515 £80,000 +13.48% 1,104
North of England -2 365 £75,000 +11.11% 259
North West -23 174 £80,000 +37.93% 168
South East -59 154 £70,000 +7.69% 226
Midlands +1 107 £75,000 +11.11% 97
Yorkshire +7 99 £75,000 +7.14% 58
North East +14 92 £66,805 +40.64% 34
South West -26 82 £60,000 - 106
West Midlands 0 74 £75,000 +25.00% 72
East of England -12 44 £70,000 +40.00% 62
East Midlands -17 33 £77,500 +13.97% 25
Scotland -10 29 £100,000 +37.93% 116
Wales -48 25 £63,500 +26.69% 23
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 53

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
1 171 (10.53%) Apache Spark
2 140 (8.62%) Apache Airflow
3 126 (7.76%) Apache
4 22 (1.35%) Palantir Foundry
5 20 (1.23%) Jupyter
6 14 (0.86%) SAS
7 10 (0.62%) SharePoint
8 9 (0.55%) Confluence
9 6 (0.37%) Oracle Workflow
10 4 (0.25%) Luigi
11 2 (0.12%) Apache Superset
11 2 (0.12%) Moodle
11 2 (0.12%) Tornado
12 1 (0.062%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 1 (0.062%) ArcGIS
12 1 (0.062%) CMS
12 1 (0.062%) GeoServer
Applications
1 19 (1.17%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (0.55%) Spreadsheet
3 3 (0.18%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.12%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.062%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.062%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 5 (0.31%) IBM Planning Analytics
2 4 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.12%) SAP Business One
4 1 (0.062%) Academy Revenues and Benefits
4 1 (0.062%) FastStats
4 1 (0.062%) Infor M3
4 1 (0.062%) NetSuite
4 1 (0.062%) Oracle Assets
4 1 (0.062%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.062%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.062%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 674 (41.50%) Azure
2 477 (29.37%) AWS
3 282 (17.36%) Power Platform
4 264 (16.26%) GCP
5 209 (12.87%) Snowflake
6 176 (10.84%) Azure Data Factory
7 150 (9.24%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 133 (8.19%) dbt
9 100 (6.16%) Serverless
10 97 (5.97%) Amazon S3
11 93 (5.73%) Azure DevOps
12 81 (4.99%) Azure Machine Learning
13 67 (4.13%) Azure AI
14 66 (4.06%) AWS Lambda
15 63 (3.88%) GitHub
16 60 (3.69%) SaaS
17 51 (3.14%) Amazon EMR
18 46 (2.83%) Azure Databricks
19 44 (2.71%) Microsoft Purview
20 41 (2.52%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 21 (1.29%) Broadband
2 7 (0.43%) Internet
3 4 (0.25%) 5G
4 2 (0.12%) Firewall
4 2 (0.12%) HTTP
4 2 (0.12%) MQTT
5 1 (0.062%) 4G
5 1 (0.062%) ATM
5 1 (0.062%) DAB
Database & Business Intelligence
1 294 (18.10%) Data Warehouse
2 272 (16.75%) Power BI
3 225 (13.85%) Data Lake
4 132 (8.13%) SQL Server
5 113 (6.96%) BigQuery
6 110 (6.77%) Amazon Redshift
7 107 (6.59%) Tableau
8 98 (6.03%) Metadata
9 86 (5.30%) Big Data
10 67 (4.13%) Azure SQL Database
11 63 (3.88%) NoSQL
12 59 (3.63%) Semantic Layer
13 57 (3.51%) Relational Database
14 56 (3.45%) Star Schema
15 55 (3.39%) Delta Lake
16 54 (3.33%) PostgreSQL
17 50 (3.08%) Amazon Athena
18 49 (3.02%) Spark SQL
19 43 (2.65%) Looker
20 39 (2.40%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 118 (7.27%) Git
2 34 (2.09%) Jenkins
3 21 (1.29%) GitLab
4 19 (1.17%) JIRA
4 19 (1.17%) MLflow
5 10 (0.62%) Claude Code
6 5 (0.31%) Poetry
7 4 (0.25%) Selenium
7 4 (0.25%) Visual Studio Code
8 3 (0.18%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.18%) Octopus Deploy
9 2 (0.12%) ERwin
9 2 (0.12%) RStudio
9 2 (0.12%) VSS/SourceSafe
10 1 (0.062%) kappa
10 1 (0.062%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 1 (0.062%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.062%) Yeoman
General
1 430 (26.48%) Finance
2 405 (24.94%) Social Skills
3 283 (17.43%) Analytical Skills
4 139 (8.56%) Public Sector
5 111 (6.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 70 (4.31%) Banking
7 59 (3.63%) Retail
8 53 (3.26%) Marketing
9 43 (2.65%) Legal
10 37 (2.28%) Influencing Skills
10 37 (2.28%) Law
11 31 (1.91%) Financial Institution
12 26 (1.60%) Manufacturing
13 22 (1.35%) Advertising
14 16 (0.99%) Games
15 12 (0.74%) Aerospace
15 12 (0.74%) Organisational Skills
15 12 (0.74%) Presentation Skills
16 10 (0.62%) Police
17 9 (0.55%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 629 (38.73%) Data Engineer
2 364 (22.41%) Senior
3 295 (18.17%) Lead
4 185 (11.39%) Senior Data Engineer
5 141 (8.68%) Architect
6 114 (7.02%) Data Manager
7 100 (6.16%) Data Architect
8 95 (5.85%) Lead Data Engineer
9 72 (4.43%) Engineering Manager
9 72 (4.43%) Principal Engineer
10 70 (4.31%) Analyst
11 68 (4.19%) Developer
12 60 (3.69%) Consultant
13 57 (3.51%) Databricks Engineer
14 54 (3.33%) Software Engineer
15 46 (2.83%) Databricks Data Engineer
15 46 (2.83%) Head of Engineering
16 44 (2.71%) Principal Data Engineer
17 43 (2.65%) Data Scientist
18 42 (2.59%) Data Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 176 (10.84%) PySpark
2 123 (7.57%) Terraform
3 90 (5.54%) Kafka
4 41 (2.52%) LangChain
5 39 (2.40%) .NET
6 38 (2.34%) REST
7 35 (2.16%) PyTorch
7 35 (2.16%) scikit-learn
7 35 (2.16%) TensorFlow
8 34 (2.09%) LlamaIndex
9 28 (1.72%) Pandas
10 26 (1.60%) Node.js
11 22 (1.35%) JSON
11 22 (1.35%) SpaCy
12 20 (1.23%) pgvector
13 16 (0.99%) Apache NiFi
14 14 (0.86%) RESTful
15 11 (0.68%) ARM Templates
15 11 (0.68%) FastAPI
15 11 (0.68%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 182 (11.21%) Cloud Native
2 66 (4.06%) Data Structures
3 65 (4.00%) Product Ownership
4 53 (3.26%) Distributed Systems
5 45 (2.77%) Onboarding
6 35 (2.16%) AI Agents
7 26 (1.60%) e-Learning
8 19 (1.17%) Analytical Mindset
8 19 (1.17%) Distributed Computing
8 19 (1.17%) Management Information System
8 19 (1.17%) Self-Motivation
9 18 (1.11%) Legacy Systems
9 18 (1.11%) Low-Code
9 18 (1.11%) Public Cloud
10 16 (0.99%) Clustering
10 16 (0.99%) Greenfield Project
11 14 (0.86%) Distributed Architecture
11 14 (0.86%) Hedge funds
11 14 (0.86%) Hybrid Cloud
11 14 (0.86%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 7 (0.43%) Windows
2 5 (0.31%) Linux
3 1 (0.062%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 763 (46.98%) Analytics
2 610 (37.56%) AI
3 569 (35.04%) Data Pipeline
4 500 (30.79%) Data Modelling
5 463 (28.51%) ETL
6 420 (25.86%) CI/CD
7 416 (25.62%) Business Intelligence
8 409 (25.18%) Data Governance
9 393 (24.20%) Agile
10 391 (24.08%) Decision-Making
11 389 (23.95%) Machine Learning
12 356 (21.92%) Data Architecture
13 306 (18.84%) Mentoring
14 299 (18.41%) DevOps
15 275 (16.93%) Data Science
16 264 (16.26%) Problem-Solving
17 239 (14.72%) Roadmaps
18 206 (12.68%) Lakehouse
19 200 (12.32%) Technical Leadership
20 185 (11.39%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 824 (50.74%) SQL
2 803 (49.45%) Python
3 126 (7.76%) Java
4 71 (4.37%) Scala
5 60 (3.69%) JavaScript
6 51 (3.14%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 34 (2.09%) C#
8 30 (1.85%) C++
9 29 (1.79%) TypeScript
10 27 (1.66%) R
11 19 (1.17%) Bash
12 15 (0.92%) T-SQL
13 14 (0.86%) Go
14 13 (0.80%) PowerShell
15 8 (0.49%) Bicep
16 7 (0.43%) Groovy
17 5 (0.31%) PL/SQL
17 5 (0.31%) VBA
18 4 (0.25%) Julia
18 4 (0.25%) Rust
Qualifications
1 170 (10.47%) Degree
2 166 (10.22%) Security Cleared
3 111 (6.83%) SC Cleared
4 55 (3.39%) Master's Degree
5 51 (3.14%) Computer Science Degree
6 44 (2.71%) Azure Certification
7 39 (2.40%) DV Cleared
8 31 (1.91%) DBS Check
9 28 (1.72%) BPSS Clearance
10 24 (1.48%) AWS Certification
10 24 (1.48%) PhD
11 15 (0.92%) ACCA
11 15 (0.92%) CIMA
12 12 (0.74%) Microsoft Certification
13 6 (0.37%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 6 (0.37%) Numerate Degree
14 4 (0.25%) CCA
15 3 (0.18%) CBAP
15 3 (0.18%) CISSP
15 3 (0.18%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 460 (28.33%) Data Quality
2 76 (4.68%) GDPR
3 58 (3.57%) Accessibility
4 36 (2.22%) QA
5 14 (0.86%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 11 (0.68%) GRC
7 9 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
8 7 (0.43%) NCSC
8 7 (0.43%) PERC
9 4 (0.25%) PMO
9 4 (0.25%) SLA
10 3 (0.18%) EU AI Act
10 3 (0.18%) PCI DSS
10 3 (0.18%) PSD2
11 2 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 2 (0.12%) Solvency II
12 1 (0.062%) NIST
System Software
1 93 (5.73%) Docker
2 56 (3.45%) Virtual Machines
3 7 (0.43%) Active Directory
4 3 (0.18%) NDS
4 3 (0.18%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.062%) Apache Flume
5 1 (0.062%) Embedded Firmware
5 1 (0.062%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 62 (3.82%) Kubernetes
2 13 (0.80%) Grafana
3 5 (0.31%) Prometheus
4 4 (0.25%) 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 (0.062%) CASB
Vendors
1 425 (26.17%) Databricks
2 308 (18.97%) Microsoft
3 88 (5.42%) Google
4 36 (2.22%) Oracle
5 33 (2.03%) Palantir
6 31 (1.91%) Informatica
7 30 (1.85%) Foundry
8 29 (1.79%) SAP
9 28 (1.72%) Dell
10 25 (1.54%) OpenAI
11 23 (1.42%) Salesforce
12 18 (1.11%) Cloudera
13 15 (0.92%) Teradata
14 12 (0.74%) Denodo
15 11 (0.68%) Sage
16 9 (0.55%) Alteryx
17 5 (0.31%) IBM
17 5 (0.31%) MicroStrategy
18 4 (0.25%) Cognos
18 4 (0.25%) Talend