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

6 months to
3 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 135 151 144
Rank change year-on-year +16 -7 +71
Permanent jobs citing Data Engineering 1,616 1,030 1,313
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.37% 2.08% 1.76%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.87% 2.33% 2.15%
Number of salaries quoted 1,115 472 638
10th Percentile £45,937 £46,000 £42,500
25th Percentile £55,175 £55,000 £55,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £75,000 £70,000 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% - -6.67%
75th Percentile £97,500 £94,063 £92,500
90th Percentile £110,000 £112,500 £110,000
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 86,399 44,171 61,013
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.12% 89.11% 81.89%
Number of salaries quoted 59,417 24,443 33,150
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £32,500
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,250 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £58,700
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -6.30% -2.17%
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,000 £77,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £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 3 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 3 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 +19 1,482 £75,000 +7.14% 1,992
UK excluding London -19 797 £70,000 +7.69% 1,210
London +20 715 £85,000 - 1,132
Work from Home -2 487 £75,000 +6.38% 1,161
North of England -2 370 £75,000 +11.11% 332
North West -31 172 £75,000 +30.43% 184
South East -40 143 £64,500 -0.77% 252
North East +25 106 £65,903 +38.74% 60
Midlands -1 105 £75,000 +11.11% 142
Yorkshire -12 92 £75,000 +7.14% 93
South West -16 87 £62,500 +4.17% 115
West Midlands -8 72 £75,000 +25.00% 101
Scotland -2 38 £95,000 +31.03% 184
East Midlands -24 33 £77,500 +13.97% 41
East of England -37 29 £70,000 +36.59% 58
Wales -46 28 £63,500 +26.69% 56
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 80

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 (10.46%) Apache Spark
2 134 (8.29%) Apache
3 132 (8.17%) Apache Airflow
4 23 (1.42%) Jupyter
5 21 (1.30%) Palantir Foundry
6 14 (0.87%) Confluence
7 10 (0.62%) SAS
8 9 (0.56%) Oracle Workflow
8 9 (0.56%) SharePoint
9 4 (0.25%) Luigi
10 2 (0.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 2 (0.12%) Apache Superset
10 2 (0.12%) Tornado
11 1 (0.062%) ArcGIS
11 1 (0.062%) CMS
11 1 (0.062%) GeoServer
Applications
1 21 (1.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (0.62%) Spreadsheet
3 8 (0.50%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.19%) Notion
5 2 (0.12%) Microsoft Office
6 1 (0.062%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.062%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.062%) 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 (0.062%) Academy Revenues and Benefits
3 1 (0.062%) Actimize
3 1 (0.062%) FastStats
3 1 (0.062%) NetSuite
3 1 (0.062%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.062%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 635 (39.29%) Azure
2 471 (29.15%) AWS
3 279 (17.26%) Power Platform
4 272 (16.83%) GCP
5 178 (11.01%) Azure Data Factory
6 156 (9.65%) Snowflake
7 131 (8.11%) dbt
8 103 (6.37%) Amazon S3
8 103 (6.37%) Azure DevOps
9 101 (6.25%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 96 (5.94%) Serverless
11 68 (4.21%) AWS Lambda
11 68 (4.21%) GitHub
12 65 (4.02%) SaaS
13 54 (3.34%) Amazon EMR
14 49 (3.03%) Azure Databricks
15 47 (2.91%) Azure Machine Learning
15 47 (2.91%) Microsoft Purview
16 41 (2.54%) Amazon EC2
17 31 (1.92%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 17 (1.05%) Broadband
2 7 (0.43%) Internet
3 4 (0.25%) 5G
4 3 (0.19%) HTTP
5 2 (0.12%) Firewall
6 1 (0.062%) 4G
6 1 (0.062%) ATM
6 1 (0.062%) DAB
6 1 (0.062%) DNS
6 1 (0.062%) HTTPS
6 1 (0.062%) MQTT
6 1 (0.062%) SMS
6 1 (0.062%) TCP/IP
6 1 (0.062%) tcpdump
6 1 (0.062%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 277 (17.14%) Data Warehouse
2 270 (16.71%) Power BI
3 193 (11.94%) Data Lake
4 112 (6.93%) Metadata
5 102 (6.31%) BigQuery
6 98 (6.06%) Amazon Redshift
7 91 (5.63%) SQL Server
8 88 (5.45%) Tableau
9 81 (5.01%) Big Data
10 65 (4.02%) NoSQL
11 64 (3.96%) Azure SQL Database
12 62 (3.84%) Semantic Layer
13 57 (3.53%) Relational Database
14 54 (3.34%) Delta Lake
14 54 (3.34%) PostgreSQL
15 53 (3.28%) Star Schema
16 52 (3.22%) Amazon Athena
17 44 (2.72%) Spark SQL
18 35 (2.17%) Data Vault
19 34 (2.10%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 136 (8.42%) Git
2 35 (2.17%) Jenkins
3 34 (2.10%) GitLab
4 25 (1.55%) JIRA
5 10 (0.62%) Claude Code
6 6 (0.37%) MLflow
7 5 (0.31%) Poetry
8 4 (0.25%) Octopus Deploy
8 4 (0.25%) Visual Studio Code
9 3 (0.19%) Bitbucket
10 2 (0.12%) ERwin
10 2 (0.12%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 2 (0.12%) VSS/SourceSafe
11 1 (0.062%) Cypress.io
11 1 (0.062%) kappa
11 1 (0.062%) RStudio
11 1 (0.062%) Selenium
11 1 (0.062%) Visual Studio
11 1 (0.062%) Yeoman
General
1 426 (26.36%) Social Skills
2 406 (25.12%) Finance
3 261 (16.15%) Analytical Skills
4 155 (9.59%) Public Sector
5 111 (6.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 69 (4.27%) Banking
7 53 (3.28%) Retail
8 51 (3.16%) Marketing
9 48 (2.97%) Legal
10 36 (2.23%) Financial Institution
10 36 (2.23%) Influencing Skills
11 35 (2.17%) Law
12 26 (1.61%) Manufacturing
13 21 (1.30%) Advertising
14 16 (0.99%) Games
15 15 (0.93%) Presentation Skills
16 12 (0.74%) Documentation Skills
17 11 (0.68%) Aerospace
17 11 (0.68%) Organisational Skills
17 11 (0.68%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 648 (40.10%) Data Engineer
2 365 (22.59%) Senior
3 290 (17.95%) Lead
4 189 (11.70%) Senior Data Engineer
5 140 (8.66%) Architect
6 97 (6.00%) Data Architect
7 95 (5.88%) Data Manager
8 93 (5.75%) Lead Data Engineer
9 81 (5.01%) Analyst
10 75 (4.64%) Principal Engineer
10 75 (4.64%) Software Engineer
11 73 (4.52%) Developer
12 64 (3.96%) Consultant
13 49 (3.03%) Engineering Manager
14 48 (2.97%) Databricks Engineer
15 47 (2.91%) Principal Data Engineer
16 44 (2.72%) Head of Engineering
16 44 (2.72%) Python Engineer
17 42 (2.60%) Data Consultant
17 42 (2.60%) Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 179 (11.08%) PySpark
2 138 (8.54%) Terraform
3 79 (4.89%) Kafka
4 44 (2.72%) .NET
5 38 (2.35%) REST
6 33 (2.04%) Pandas
7 32 (1.98%) LangChain
8 27 (1.67%) Node.js
9 25 (1.55%) SpaCy
10 23 (1.42%) JSON
10 23 (1.42%) LlamaIndex
11 22 (1.36%) scikit-learn
12 21 (1.30%) PyTorch
12 21 (1.30%) TensorFlow
13 17 (1.05%) RESTful
14 16 (0.99%) React
15 15 (0.93%) Apache NiFi
16 13 (0.80%) FastAPI
17 12 (0.74%) NumPy
17 12 (0.74%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 175 (10.83%) Cloud Native
2 66 (4.08%) Data Structures
3 55 (3.40%) Distributed Systems
3 55 (3.40%) Product Ownership
4 49 (3.03%) Onboarding
5 41 (2.54%) AI Agents
6 25 (1.55%) e-Learning
7 21 (1.30%) Self-Motivation
8 17 (1.05%) Distributed Computing
8 17 (1.05%) Hedge funds
8 17 (1.05%) Legacy Systems
9 16 (0.99%) Analytical Mindset
9 16 (0.99%) Hybrid Cloud
10 14 (0.87%) Distributed Architecture
10 14 (0.87%) Low-Code
11 13 (0.80%) Greenfield Project
11 13 (0.80%) IoT
12 12 (0.74%) Blog
12 12 (0.74%) Management Information System
13 11 (0.68%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 7 (0.43%) Windows
2 4 (0.25%) Linux
3 1 (0.062%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 763 (47.22%) Analytics
2 574 (35.52%) Data Pipeline
3 561 (34.72%) AI
4 511 (31.62%) Data Modelling
5 457 (28.28%) ETL
6 455 (28.16%) CI/CD
7 399 (24.69%) Business Intelligence
8 380 (23.51%) Decision-Making
9 375 (23.21%) Agile
10 361 (22.34%) Data Governance
11 340 (21.04%) Machine Learning
12 312 (19.31%) DevOps
13 311 (19.25%) Data Architecture
14 301 (18.63%) Mentoring
15 274 (16.96%) Problem-Solving
16 249 (15.41%) Data Science
17 223 (13.80%) Technical Leadership
18 201 (12.44%) Software Engineering
19 195 (12.07%) Roadmaps
20 191 (11.82%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 815 (50.43%) Python
2 808 (50.00%) SQL
3 119 (7.36%) Java
4 73 (4.52%) Scala
5 57 (3.53%) JavaScript
6 51 (3.16%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 37 (2.29%) C#
7 37 (2.29%) TypeScript
8 34 (2.10%) C++
9 26 (1.61%) R
10 20 (1.24%) Bash
11 15 (0.93%) PowerShell
12 13 (0.80%) T-SQL
13 10 (0.62%) Go
14 9 (0.56%) Bicep
15 6 (0.37%) Groovy
16 5 (0.31%) PL/SQL
17 4 (0.25%) Rust
17 4 (0.25%) VBA
18 2 (0.12%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 190 (11.76%) Security Cleared
2 156 (9.65%) Degree
3 132 (8.17%) SC Cleared
4 56 (3.47%) Master's Degree
5 47 (2.91%) Azure Certification
6 44 (2.72%) Computer Science Degree
7 43 (2.66%) DV Cleared
8 33 (2.04%) AWS Certification
9 32 (1.98%) BPSS Clearance
10 30 (1.86%) PhD
11 26 (1.61%) DBS Check
12 16 (0.99%) Microsoft Certification
13 15 (0.93%) ACCA
13 15 (0.93%) CIMA
14 6 (0.37%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 6 (0.37%) CBAP
14 6 (0.37%) Numerate Degree
15 4 (0.25%) CCA
16 3 (0.19%) CISSP
16 3 (0.19%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 474 (29.33%) Data Quality
2 62 (3.84%) Accessibility
3 55 (3.40%) GDPR
4 41 (2.54%) QA
5 11 (0.68%) Actionable Recommendations
6 9 (0.56%) NCSC
7 7 (0.43%) GRC
8 3 (0.19%) EU AI Act
8 3 (0.19%) PCI DSS
8 3 (0.19%) PMO
8 3 (0.19%) PSD2
8 3 (0.19%) SLA
9 2 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 1 (0.062%) Cyber Essentials
10 1 (0.062%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 1 (0.062%) IASME
10 1 (0.062%) ISO 9001
10 1 (0.062%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 1 (0.062%) NIST
System Software
1 109 (6.75%) Docker
2 20 (1.24%) Virtual Machines
3 10 (0.62%) Active Directory
4 3 (0.19%) NDS
4 3 (0.19%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.062%) Embedded Firmware
5 1 (0.062%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 75 (4.64%) Kubernetes
2 13 (0.80%) Grafana
3 5 (0.31%) Prometheus
4 4 (0.25%) Kibana
5 3 (0.19%) Ansible
5 3 (0.19%) Argo
5 3 (0.19%) Microsoft Intune
5 3 (0.19%) SCCM
6 2 (0.12%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
6 2 (0.12%) Computer Incident Response Team
7 1 (0.062%) CASB
Vendors
1 352 (21.78%) Databricks
2 297 (18.38%) Microsoft
3 99 (6.13%) Google
4 38 (2.35%) Oracle
5 34 (2.10%) Salesforce
6 32 (1.98%) Palantir
7 29 (1.79%) Foundry
8 27 (1.67%) SAP
9 25 (1.55%) OpenAI
10 18 (1.11%) Informatica
11 11 (0.68%) Sage
12 9 (0.56%) Alteryx
13 8 (0.50%) YouTube
14 5 (0.31%) IBM
14 5 (0.31%) MicroStrategy
14 5 (0.31%) Talend
15 4 (0.25%) Cloudera
15 4 (0.25%) Cognos
16 3 (0.19%) CyberArk
16 3 (0.19%) ForgeRock