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

6 months to
24 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 135 146 154
Rank change year-on-year +11 +8 +52
Permanent jobs citing Data Engineering 1,635 1,047 1,310
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.40% 2.13% 1.71%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.91% 2.39% 2.10%
Number of salaries quoted 1,157 479 645
10th Percentile £46,217 £46,000 £42,500
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 £61,250
% change year-on-year +7.69% +6.12% -5.77%

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 85,482 43,719 62,334
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.07% 88.75% 81.46%
Number of salaries quoted 58,986 24,656 34,489
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 £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 24 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 24 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 +17 1,508 £80,000 +14.29% 2,038
UK excluding London -12 819 £70,000 +7.69% 949
London +22 714 £87,500 +2.94% 1,278
Work from Home 0 507 £80,000 +13.48% 883
North of England -5 376 £75,000 +11.11% 283
North West -25 179 £80,000 +37.93% 173
South East -49 152 £65,000 - 217
Midlands -2 109 £75,000 +11.11% 124
North East +16 102 £66,805 +40.64% 43
Yorkshire -9 95 £75,000 +7.14% 68
South West -16 91 £62,500 +4.17% 105
West Midlands -10 76 £75,000 +25.00% 95
Scotland -8 34 £100,000 +37.93% 88
East Midlands -14 33 £75,000 +10.29% 29
East of England -30 32 £70,000 +40.00% 58
Wales -49 28 £63,500 +26.69% 15
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 60

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
1 161 (9.85%) Apache Spark
2 130 (7.95%) Apache Airflow
3 128 (7.83%) Apache
4 21 (1.28%) Jupyter
4 21 (1.28%) Palantir Foundry
5 11 (0.67%) Confluence
5 11 (0.67%) SAS
6 9 (0.55%) Oracle Workflow
6 9 (0.55%) SharePoint
7 4 (0.24%) Luigi
8 2 (0.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 2 (0.12%) Apache Superset
8 2 (0.12%) Tornado
9 1 (0.061%) ArcGIS
9 1 (0.061%) CMS
9 1 (0.061%) GeoServer
9 1 (0.061%) Moodle
Applications
1 19 (1.16%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (0.55%) Spreadsheet
3 6 (0.37%) 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 (0.31%) 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%) FastStats
3 1 (0.061%) Infor M3
3 1 (0.061%) NetSuite
3 1 (0.061%) Oracle Assets
3 1 (0.061%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.061%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.061%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 665 (40.67%) Azure
2 465 (28.44%) AWS
3 274 (16.76%) Power Platform
4 260 (15.90%) GCP
5 186 (11.38%) Azure Data Factory
6 175 (10.70%) Snowflake
7 125 (7.65%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 123 (7.52%) dbt
9 103 (6.30%) Azure DevOps
10 100 (6.12%) Amazon S3
11 95 (5.81%) Serverless
12 68 (4.16%) Azure Machine Learning
13 66 (4.04%) AWS Lambda
14 65 (3.98%) GitHub
15 63 (3.85%) SaaS
16 52 (3.18%) Azure AI
17 51 (3.12%) Amazon EMR
18 50 (3.06%) Azure Databricks
19 46 (2.81%) Microsoft Purview
20 41 (2.51%) Amazon EC2
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
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
1 280 (17.13%) Data Warehouse
2 265 (16.21%) Power BI
3 198 (12.11%) Data Lake
4 116 (7.09%) SQL Server
5 106 (6.48%) Metadata
6 101 (6.18%) BigQuery
7 98 (5.99%) Amazon Redshift
8 91 (5.57%) Tableau
9 82 (5.02%) Big Data
10 71 (4.34%) Azure SQL Database
11 63 (3.85%) NoSQL
12 60 (3.67%) Semantic Layer
13 57 (3.49%) Relational Database
13 57 (3.49%) Star Schema
14 56 (3.43%) Delta Lake
15 51 (3.12%) PostgreSQL
16 50 (3.06%) Amazon Athena
17 46 (2.81%) Spark SQL
18 35 (2.14%) Data Vault
19 34 (2.08%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 128 (7.83%) Git
2 36 (2.20%) Jenkins
3 28 (1.71%) GitLab
4 23 (1.41%) JIRA
5 10 (0.61%) Claude Code
6 5 (0.31%) MLflow
6 5 (0.31%) Poetry
7 4 (0.24%) Octopus Deploy
7 4 (0.24%) Visual Studio Code
8 3 (0.18%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.18%) Selenium
9 2 (0.12%) ERwin
9 2 (0.12%) VSS/SourceSafe
10 1 (0.061%) kappa
10 1 (0.061%) RStudio
10 1 (0.061%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 1 (0.061%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.061%) Yeoman
General
1 427 (26.12%) Finance
2 421 (25.75%) Social Skills
3 266 (16.27%) Analytical Skills
4 145 (8.87%) Public Sector
5 107 (6.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 74 (4.53%) Banking
7 56 (3.43%) Retail
8 52 (3.18%) Marketing
9 47 (2.87%) Legal
10 38 (2.32%) Law
11 36 (2.20%) Influencing Skills
12 33 (2.02%) Financial Institution
13 25 (1.53%) Manufacturing
14 21 (1.28%) Advertising
15 14 (0.86%) Games
16 13 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
17 12 (0.73%) Aerospace
17 12 (0.73%) Organisational Skills
18 11 (0.67%) Documentation Skills
19 10 (0.61%) Police
Job Titles
1 655 (40.06%) Data Engineer
2 361 (22.08%) Senior
3 297 (18.17%) Lead
4 192 (11.74%) Senior Data Engineer
5 136 (8.32%) Architect
6 106 (6.48%) Data Manager
7 96 (5.87%) Lead Data Engineer
8 95 (5.81%) Data Architect
9 75 (4.59%) Analyst
10 73 (4.46%) Principal Engineer
11 72 (4.40%) Developer
12 65 (3.98%) Software Engineer
13 62 (3.79%) Consultant
13 62 (3.79%) Engineering Manager
14 53 (3.24%) Databricks Engineer
15 46 (2.81%) Head of Engineering
16 45 (2.75%) Principal Data Engineer
17 43 (2.63%) Data Consultant
17 43 (2.63%) Data Scientist
17 43 (2.63%) Databricks Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 185 (11.31%) PySpark
2 131 (8.01%) Terraform
3 75 (4.59%) Kafka
4 41 (2.51%) .NET
5 35 (2.14%) REST
6 30 (1.83%) Pandas
7 29 (1.77%) LangChain
8 27 (1.65%) Node.js
9 24 (1.47%) SpaCy
10 22 (1.35%) JSON
10 22 (1.35%) LlamaIndex
10 22 (1.35%) scikit-learn
11 21 (1.28%) PyTorch
11 21 (1.28%) TensorFlow
12 15 (0.92%) Apache NiFi
13 14 (0.86%) RESTful
14 12 (0.73%) React
14 12 (0.73%) YAML
15 11 (0.67%) FastAPI
15 11 (0.67%) NumPy
Miscellaneous
1 175 (10.70%) Cloud Native
2 66 (4.04%) Data Structures
3 59 (3.61%) Product Ownership
4 55 (3.36%) Distributed Systems
5 48 (2.94%) Onboarding
6 36 (2.20%) AI Agents
7 25 (1.53%) e-Learning
8 21 (1.28%) Self-Motivation
9 18 (1.10%) Analytical Mindset
9 18 (1.10%) Distributed Computing
9 18 (1.10%) Legacy Systems
10 17 (1.04%) Hedge funds
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%) IoT
13 14 (0.86%) Low-Code
14 11 (0.67%) Sports Betting
15 10 (0.61%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 7 (0.43%) Windows
2 4 (0.24%) Linux
3 1 (0.061%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 768 (46.97%) Analytics
2 580 (35.47%) Data Pipeline
3 578 (35.35%) AI
4 502 (30.70%) Data Modelling
5 469 (28.69%) ETL
6 443 (27.09%) CI/CD
7 400 (24.46%) Business Intelligence
8 387 (23.67%) Agile
9 386 (23.61%) Decision-Making
10 382 (23.36%) Data Governance
11 363 (22.20%) Machine Learning
12 345 (21.10%) Data Architecture
13 314 (19.20%) DevOps
14 308 (18.84%) Mentoring
15 271 (16.57%) Problem-Solving
16 252 (15.41%) Data Science
17 224 (13.70%) Roadmaps
18 212 (12.97%) Technical Leadership
19 190 (11.62%) Continuous Improvement
20 184 (11.25%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 827 (50.58%) SQL
2 812 (49.66%) Python
3 122 (7.46%) Java
4 73 (4.46%) Scala
5 59 (3.61%) JavaScript
6 51 (3.12%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 35 (2.14%) C#
8 33 (2.02%) C++
9 32 (1.96%) TypeScript
10 27 (1.65%) R
11 20 (1.22%) Bash
12 16 (0.98%) T-SQL
13 14 (0.86%) PowerShell
14 10 (0.61%) Go
15 9 (0.55%) Bicep
16 6 (0.37%) Groovy
17 5 (0.31%) PL/SQL
17 5 (0.31%) VBA
18 4 (0.24%) Rust
19 2 (0.12%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 179 (10.95%) Security Cleared
2 158 (9.66%) Degree
3 122 (7.46%) SC Cleared
4 55 (3.36%) Master's Degree
5 46 (2.81%) Azure Certification
5 46 (2.81%) Computer Science Degree
6 40 (2.45%) DV Cleared
7 30 (1.83%) BPSS Clearance
8 27 (1.65%) PhD
9 26 (1.59%) AWS Certification
10 25 (1.53%) DBS Check
11 16 (0.98%) Microsoft Certification
12 15 (0.92%) ACCA
12 15 (0.92%) CIMA
13 6 (0.37%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 6 (0.37%) Numerate Degree
14 5 (0.31%) CBAP
15 4 (0.24%) CCA
16 3 (0.18%) CISSP
16 3 (0.18%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 470 (28.75%) Data Quality
2 58 (3.55%) Accessibility
3 55 (3.36%) GDPR
4 37 (2.26%) QA
5 9 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
5 9 (0.55%) GRC
6 8 (0.49%) NCSC
7 4 (0.24%) SLA
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
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/IEC 27001
10 1 (0.061%) NIST
10 1 (0.061%) Solvency II
System Software
1 98 (5.99%) Docker
2 41 (2.51%) Virtual Machines
3 7 (0.43%) 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 (4.10%) Kubernetes
2 13 (0.80%) Grafana
3 5 (0.31%) 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
1 387 (23.67%) Databricks
2 311 (19.02%) Microsoft
3 94 (5.75%) Google
4 39 (2.39%) Oracle
5 32 (1.96%) Palantir
6 29 (1.77%) Foundry
6 29 (1.77%) Salesforce
6 29 (1.77%) SAP
7 25 (1.53%) OpenAI
8 19 (1.16%) Informatica
9 11 (0.67%) Sage
10 9 (0.55%) Alteryx
11 6 (0.37%) YouTube
12 5 (0.31%) Cloudera
12 5 (0.31%) IBM
12 5 (0.31%) MicroStrategy
12 5 (0.31%) Talend
13 4 (0.24%) Cognos
14 3 (0.18%) Adobe
14 3 (0.18%) PeopleSoft