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

6 months to
21 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 157 162 189
Rank change year-on-year +5 +27 -53
Permanent jobs citing Data Engineering 912 916 1,061
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.48% 1.73% 1.69%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.84% 1.90% 1.89%
Number of salaries quoted 585 581 703
10th Percentile £46,250 £42,500 £42,500
25th Percentile £57,500 £53,000 £55,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £71,193 £75,000 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year -5.08% +7.14% -6.67%
75th Percentile £88,500 £97,500 £92,500
90th Percentile £108,250 £115,000 £107,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £65,000 £62,500 £65,066
% change year-on-year +4.00% -3.94% +0.10%

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 49,597 48,194 56,134
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 80.59% 90.99% 89.24%
Number of salaries quoted 29,262 23,336 43,211
10th Percentile £28,500 £35,000 £30,500
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,000 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +4.35% -8.00%
75th Percentile £75,246 £80,000 £77,500
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £96,250
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 21 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 21 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 +12 813 £70,000 -6.67% 573
London +47 456 £77,500 -16.22% 211
UK excluding London -10 380 £65,000 +4.00% 480
Work from Home +8 355 £75,000 -1.03% 260
North of England -31 111 £67,500 +31.71% 98
South East -9 87 £75,000 +7.14% 187
Midlands +44 84 £65,000 +16.07% 60
West Midlands +47 64 £60,000 +33.33% 30
Yorkshire -14 60 £68,000 +36.00% 33
North West -14 44 £65,000 +18.18% 51
Scotland -2 41 £80,000 +16.36% 24
East of England +33 32 £52,500 -16.00% 51
South West -34 23 £50,000 -32.20% 45
East Midlands -8 18 £75,000 +15.38% 29
North East -10 7 £67,500 +14.89% 14
Wales +8 6 £65,000 -18.75% 16

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 97 (10.64%) Apache Airflow
2 95 (10.42%) Apache Spark
3 55 (6.03%) Apache
4 14 (1.54%) SAS
5 12 (1.32%) Confluence
5 12 (1.32%) SharePoint
6 10 (1.10%) Appian
7 5 (0.55%) WordPress
8 3 (0.33%) Jupyter
8 3 (0.33%) Microsoft Exchange
8 3 (0.33%) Moodle
9 1 (0.11%) Apache Solr
9 1 (0.11%) Apache Superset
9 1 (0.11%) ArcGIS
9 1 (0.11%) GeoServer
9 1 (0.11%) Luigi
Applications
1 31 (3.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (0.99%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.11%) Adobe XD
4 1 (0.11%) Notion
Business Applications
1 6 (0.66%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.22%) Markit EDM
2 2 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.11%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.11%) SAP ERP
3 1 (0.11%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 438 (48.03%) Azure
2 274 (30.04%) AWS
3 210 (23.03%) Power Platform
4 157 (17.21%) Snowflake
5 138 (15.13%) Azure Data Factory
6 135 (14.80%) GCP
7 85 (9.32%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 72 (7.89%) dbt
9 54 (5.92%) Azure DevOps
10 51 (5.59%) Amazon S3
11 43 (4.71%) SaaS
12 41 (4.50%) Serverless
13 38 (4.17%) GitHub
14 35 (3.84%) AWS Lambda
15 26 (2.85%) Fivetran
16 23 (2.52%) Amazon Kinesis
17 21 (2.30%) Amazon SageMaker
17 21 (2.30%) Azure Machine Learning
18 19 (2.08%) Amazon EMR
18 19 (2.08%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.33%) DHCP
1 3 (0.33%) DNS
2 2 (0.22%) Broadband
2 2 (0.22%) Kerberos
3 1 (0.11%) DAB
Database & Business Intelligence
1 276 (30.26%) Data Warehouse
2 199 (21.82%) Power BI
3 135 (14.80%) Data Lake
4 126 (13.82%) SQL Server
5 81 (8.88%) Metadata
6 71 (7.79%) Tableau
7 55 (6.03%) Amazon Redshift
7 55 (6.03%) Big Data
8 47 (5.15%) NoSQL
9 41 (4.50%) Hadoop
9 41 (4.50%) PostgreSQL
10 39 (4.28%) BigQuery
11 38 (4.17%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 36 (3.95%) Delta Lake
13 35 (3.84%) MySQL
13 35 (3.84%) Relational Database
14 34 (3.73%) Looker
15 30 (3.29%) MongoDB
16 28 (3.07%) SQL Server Reporting Services
17 22 (2.41%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 53 (5.81%) Git
2 31 (3.40%) MLflow
3 18 (1.97%) JIRA
4 11 (1.21%) Jenkins
5 7 (0.77%) GitLab
6 3 (0.33%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 1 (0.11%) CMake
7 1 (0.11%) Cucumber
7 1 (0.11%) Deequ
7 1 (0.11%) JMeter
7 1 (0.11%) Selenium
7 1 (0.11%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (0.11%) Zephyr
General
1 295 (32.35%) Finance
2 239 (26.21%) Social Skills
3 121 (13.27%) Analytical Skills
4 68 (7.46%) Law
5 56 (6.14%) Banking
6 53 (5.81%) Public Sector
7 38 (4.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 38 (4.17%) Marketing
8 32 (3.51%) Retail
9 28 (3.07%) Manufacturing
10 26 (2.85%) Financial Institution
11 21 (2.30%) Legal
12 19 (2.08%) Advertising
13 13 (1.43%) Automotive
13 13 (1.43%) French Language
14 10 (1.10%) Front Office
15 8 (0.88%) Documentation Skills
16 7 (0.77%) Organisational Skills
16 7 (0.77%) Publishing
17 6 (0.66%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 407 (44.63%) Data Engineer
2 171 (18.75%) Senior
3 133 (14.58%) Lead
4 112 (12.28%) Senior Data Engineer
5 76 (8.33%) Architect
6 70 (7.68%) Lead Data Engineer
7 59 (6.47%) Data Architect
8 53 (5.81%) Data Manager
9 49 (5.37%) Developer
10 44 (4.82%) Analyst
11 40 (4.39%) Azure Engineer
12 38 (4.17%) Consultant
13 34 (3.73%) Azure Data Engineer
14 28 (3.07%) Engineering Manager
14 28 (3.07%) Principal Engineer
15 27 (2.96%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 27 (2.96%) AWS Engineer
16 23 (2.52%) AWS Data Engineer
17 22 (2.41%) Data Consultant
18 20 (2.19%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 92 (10.09%) PySpark
2 74 (8.11%) Kafka
3 47 (5.15%) PyTorch
3 47 (5.15%) TensorFlow
4 42 (4.61%) Pandas
5 23 (2.52%) REST
5 23 (2.52%) RESTful
5 23 (2.52%) scikit-learn
6 22 (2.41%) LangChain
7 18 (1.97%) pytest
7 18 (1.97%) React
8 17 (1.86%) FastAPI
8 17 (1.86%) NumPy
9 16 (1.75%) Faiss
10 15 (1.64%) Flask
11 14 (1.54%) HTML
11 14 (1.54%) Keras
11 14 (1.54%) Spring
11 14 (1.54%) XML
12 13 (1.43%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 54 (5.92%) Cloud Native
2 45 (4.93%) Product Ownership
3 43 (4.71%) Legacy Systems
4 38 (4.17%) Distributed Systems
5 35 (3.84%) Management Information System
6 25 (2.74%) Data Structures
7 22 (2.41%) Low-Code
8 21 (2.30%) e-Learning
9 20 (2.19%) Data Centre
10 19 (2.08%) Greenfield Project
11 17 (1.86%) Hybrid Cloud
12 15 (1.64%) Onboarding
13 14 (1.54%) Analytical Mindset
14 13 (1.43%) AI Agents
15 11 (1.21%) Distributed Architecture
15 11 (1.21%) Self-Motivation
16 9 (0.99%) Algorithms
16 9 (0.99%) FMCG
17 7 (0.77%) Enterprise Software
18 6 (0.66%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 7 (0.77%) Linux
2 4 (0.44%) Unix
2 4 (0.44%) Windows
3 3 (0.33%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 438 (48.03%) Data Pipeline
2 437 (47.92%) Analytics
3 377 (41.34%) ETL
4 332 (36.40%) Data Modelling
5 265 (29.06%) Business Intelligence
6 257 (28.18%) CI/CD
7 255 (27.96%) AI
8 239 (26.21%) Data Governance
9 235 (25.77%) Agile
10 199 (21.82%) DevOps
11 176 (19.30%) Machine Learning
12 175 (19.19%) Data Integration
13 172 (18.86%) Mentoring
14 171 (18.75%) Data Science
15 167 (18.31%) Problem-Solving
16 159 (17.43%) Data Architecture
17 155 (17.00%) Decision-Making
18 117 (12.83%) Continuous Improvement
19 106 (11.62%) Data Management
19 106 (11.62%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 511 (56.03%) Python
2 496 (54.39%) SQL
3 82 (8.99%) Java
4 58 (6.36%) Scala
5 31 (3.40%) T-SQL
6 29 (3.18%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 23 (2.52%) Bash
8 21 (2.30%) PowerShell
8 21 (2.30%) R
9 17 (1.86%) JavaScript
10 16 (1.75%) C#
11 10 (1.10%) Bicep
11 10 (1.10%) Go
12 7 (0.77%) PHP
12 7 (0.77%) TypeScript
13 6 (0.66%) C++
14 3 (0.33%) Groovy
14 3 (0.33%) Ruby
15 2 (0.22%) PL/SQL
16 1 (0.11%) VBA
Qualifications
1 114 (12.50%) Degree
2 72 (7.89%) Security Cleared
3 48 (5.26%) SC Cleared
4 46 (5.04%) Computer Science Degree
5 35 (3.84%) Master's Degree
6 24 (2.63%) Microsoft Certification
7 21 (2.30%) DV Cleared
8 17 (1.86%) AWS Certification
9 16 (1.75%) Azure Certification
10 13 (1.43%) MCSE
11 12 (1.32%) CISSP
11 12 (1.32%) OCP
11 12 (1.32%) Oracle Certification
12 11 (1.21%) PhD
13 6 (0.66%) DBS Check
13 6 (0.66%) SnowPro
14 5 (0.55%) BPSS Clearance
14 5 (0.55%) CRISC
15 3 (0.33%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 2 (0.22%) MCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 223 (24.45%) Data Quality
2 68 (7.46%) Accessibility
3 55 (6.03%) GDPR
4 17 (1.86%) QA
5 12 (1.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (0.55%) HIPAA
6 5 (0.55%) NIST
6 5 (0.55%) SLA
7 4 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 2 (0.22%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 2 (0.22%) GRC
9 1 (0.11%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.11%) GAAP
9 1 (0.11%) GMP
9 1 (0.11%) IFRS
9 1 (0.11%) IFRS 17
9 1 (0.11%) NCSC
9 1 (0.11%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.11%) Solvency II
System Software
1 85 (9.32%) Docker
2 9 (0.99%) Active Directory
2 9 (0.99%) HDFS
3 1 (0.11%) Apache ZooKeeper
3 1 (0.11%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 70 (7.68%) Kubernetes
2 60 (6.58%) Terraform
3 8 (0.88%) Argo
4 6 (0.66%) Ansible
4 6 (0.66%) Grafana
4 6 (0.66%) Prometheus
5 5 (0.55%) Control-M
5 5 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
6 4 (0.44%) Kubeflow
7 3 (0.33%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 3 (0.33%) Microsoft Intune
7 3 (0.33%) SCCM
8 1 (0.11%) Istio
8 1 (0.11%) Progress Chef
8 1 (0.11%) Puppet
Vendors
1 244 (26.75%) Databricks
2 199 (21.82%) Microsoft
3 49 (5.37%) Oracle
4 34 (3.73%) Informatica
5 32 (3.51%) Palantir
6 31 (3.40%) Google
7 30 (3.29%) OpenAI
8 29 (3.18%) Talend
9 26 (2.85%) Foundry
10 18 (1.97%) Dell
11 16 (1.75%) SAP
12 14 (1.54%) NVIDIA
13 10 (1.10%) Automation Anywhere
13 10 (1.10%) UiPath
14 7 (0.77%) MuleSoft
14 7 (0.77%) Salesforce
15 6 (0.66%) Cloudera
16 5 (0.55%) Dataiku
16 5 (0.55%) Netezza
17 4 (0.44%) Palo Alto