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 28 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 126 155 143
Rank change year-on-year +29 -12 +55
Permanent jobs citing Data Engineering 1,601 1,069 1,459
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.46% 2.14% 1.75%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.00% 2.41% 2.17%
Number of salaries quoted 1,132 462 729
10th Percentile £46,217 £46,000 £42,500
25th Percentile £55,543 £55,000 £55,000
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 £90,822
90th Percentile £115,000 £112,500 £105,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £67,500 £62,500
% change year-on-year +3.70% +8.00% -3.85%

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 79,979 44,380 67,332
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.09% 88.78% 80.65%
Number of salaries quoted 55,459 25,207 42,110
10th Percentile £31,000 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,250 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,250 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £50,055
% change year-on-year +15.79% -5.10% -8.99%

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 28 August 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 28 August 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 1,508 £80,000 +14.29% 1,446
UK excluding London -12 775 £70,000 +3.70% 728
London +35 732 £90,000 +3.15% 946
Work from Home +10 485 £81,000 +8.00% 651
North of England -3 349 £78,000 +15.56% 220
North West -36 169 £80,000 +33.33% 138
South East -51 155 £68,750 +5.77% 188
Midlands +14 102 £70,000 +3.70% 67
Yorkshire -5 98 £80,000 +15.94% 40
North East +14 82 £66,250 +39.47% 43
South West -30 78 £60,000 -9.43% 88
West Midlands -1 67 £72,500 +20.83% 52
East of England +6 56 £70,000 +40.00% 37
East Midlands -11 35 £52,500 -22.79% 15
Scotland -17 19 £100,000 +37.93% 87
Wales -57 18 £61,750 +3.67% 12
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 32

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
1 175 (10.93%) Apache Spark
2 156 (9.74%) Apache Airflow
3 124 (7.75%) Apache
4 26 (1.62%) Palantir Foundry
5 20 (1.25%) Jupyter
6 18 (1.12%) SAS
7 11 (0.69%) SharePoint
8 8 (0.50%) Confluence
9 4 (0.25%) Luigi
10 3 (0.19%) Moodle
11 2 (0.12%) Apache Superset
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 20 (1.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (0.62%) Spreadsheet
3 2 (0.12%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.062%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.062%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 3 (0.19%) IBM Planning Analytics
1 3 (0.19%) SAP SD
2 2 (0.12%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.12%) SAP Business One
3 1 (0.062%) FastStats
3 1 (0.062%) Infor M3
3 1 (0.062%) NetSuite
3 1 (0.062%) Oracle Assets
3 1 (0.062%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.062%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 676 (42.22%) Azure
2 475 (29.67%) AWS
3 287 (17.93%) Power Platform
4 274 (17.11%) GCP
5 232 (14.49%) Snowflake
6 170 (10.62%) Azure Data Factory
7 156 (9.74%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 145 (9.06%) dbt
9 89 (5.56%) Serverless
10 87 (5.43%) Azure DevOps
11 85 (5.31%) Amazon S3
11 85 (5.31%) Azure Machine Learning
12 69 (4.31%) Azure AI
13 60 (3.75%) SaaS
14 58 (3.62%) GitHub
15 46 (2.87%) AWS Lambda
15 46 (2.87%) Microsoft Purview
16 41 (2.56%) Amazon EMR
17 28 (1.75%) Amazon EC2
18 24 (1.50%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.50%) Broadband
2 7 (0.44%) Internet
3 4 (0.25%) 5G
4 2 (0.12%) DAB
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
Database & Business Intelligence
1 304 (18.99%) Data Warehouse
2 275 (17.18%) Power BI
3 227 (14.18%) Data Lake
4 138 (8.62%) SQL Server
5 124 (7.75%) BigQuery
6 113 (7.06%) Tableau
7 110 (6.87%) Amazon Redshift
8 96 (6.00%) Metadata
9 87 (5.43%) Big Data
10 62 (3.87%) Azure SQL Database
11 61 (3.81%) NoSQL
11 61 (3.81%) Relational Database
12 59 (3.69%) PostgreSQL
12 59 (3.69%) Star Schema
13 58 (3.62%) Semantic Layer
14 56 (3.50%) Delta Lake
15 54 (3.37%) Looker
16 49 (3.06%) Elasticsearch
17 46 (2.87%) Snowflake Schema
18 41 (2.56%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 98 (6.12%) Git
2 32 (2.00%) Jenkins
3 30 (1.87%) MLflow
4 21 (1.31%) GitLab
5 19 (1.19%) JIRA
6 9 (0.56%) Claude Code
7 4 (0.25%) Bitbucket
7 4 (0.25%) Selenium
8 3 (0.19%) Visual Studio Code
9 2 (0.12%) ERwin
9 2 (0.12%) Poetry
9 2 (0.12%) VSS/SourceSafe
10 1 (0.062%) IBM UrbanCode
10 1 (0.062%) kappa
10 1 (0.062%) RStudio
10 1 (0.062%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 1 (0.062%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.062%) Yeoman
General
1 412 (25.73%) Finance
2 384 (23.99%) Social Skills
3 275 (17.18%) Analytical Skills
4 120 (7.50%) Public Sector
5 107 (6.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 68 (4.25%) Banking
7 56 (3.50%) Marketing
7 56 (3.50%) Retail
8 39 (2.44%) Legal
9 37 (2.31%) Influencing Skills
10 34 (2.12%) Law
11 27 (1.69%) Financial Institution
12 26 (1.62%) Manufacturing
13 25 (1.56%) Advertising
14 18 (1.12%) Games
15 12 (0.75%) Aerospace
16 11 (0.69%) Presentation Skills
17 9 (0.56%) Police
18 8 (0.50%) Front Office
18 8 (0.50%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 598 (37.35%) Data Engineer
2 349 (21.80%) Senior
3 292 (18.24%) Lead
4 162 (10.12%) Senior Data Engineer
5 143 (8.93%) Architect
6 112 (7.00%) Data Manager
7 99 (6.18%) Data Architect
8 96 (6.00%) Lead Data Engineer
9 71 (4.43%) Analyst
9 71 (4.43%) Principal Engineer
10 70 (4.37%) Engineering Manager
11 69 (4.31%) Consultant
12 62 (3.87%) Developer
13 48 (3.00%) Data Consultant
13 48 (3.00%) Head of Engineering
14 43 (2.69%) Principal Data Engineer
15 42 (2.62%) Data Scientist
15 42 (2.62%) Software Engineer
16 41 (2.56%) Python Engineer
17 36 (2.25%) Senior Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 154 (9.62%) PySpark
2 122 (7.62%) Terraform
3 99 (6.18%) Kafka
4 47 (2.94%) LangChain
5 43 (2.69%) scikit-learn
6 42 (2.62%) PyTorch
6 42 (2.62%) TensorFlow
7 40 (2.50%) LlamaIndex
8 39 (2.44%) REST
9 29 (1.81%) pgvector
10 27 (1.69%) .NET
10 27 (1.69%) Node.js
11 24 (1.50%) Pandas
12 20 (1.25%) SpaCy
13 19 (1.19%) JSON
14 17 (1.06%) Apache NiFi
15 15 (0.94%) RESTful
16 11 (0.69%) ARM Templates
16 11 (0.69%) FastAPI
17 10 (0.62%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 184 (11.49%) Cloud Native
2 70 (4.37%) Data Structures
3 66 (4.12%) Product Ownership
4 54 (3.37%) Distributed Systems
5 37 (2.31%) Onboarding
6 29 (1.81%) AI Agents
7 26 (1.62%) e-Learning
8 25 (1.56%) Clustering
8 25 (1.56%) Public Cloud
9 21 (1.31%) Distributed Computing
9 21 (1.31%) Low-Code
10 20 (1.25%) Analytical Mindset
10 20 (1.25%) Management Information System
11 19 (1.19%) Legacy Systems
11 19 (1.19%) Self-Motivation
12 17 (1.06%) Greenfield Project
13 14 (0.87%) Distributed Architecture
14 13 (0.81%) IoT
15 12 (0.75%) Algorithms
15 12 (0.75%) Hedge funds
Operating Systems
1 7 (0.44%) Windows
2 5 (0.31%) Linux
3 1 (0.062%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 757 (47.28%) Analytics
2 615 (38.41%) AI
3 557 (34.79%) Data Pipeline
4 508 (31.73%) Data Modelling
5 442 (27.61%) ETL
6 422 (26.36%) Data Governance
7 412 (25.73%) Business Intelligence
8 400 (24.98%) Machine Learning
9 386 (24.11%) CI/CD
10 371 (23.17%) Agile
11 364 (22.74%) Decision-Making
12 354 (22.11%) Data Architecture
13 296 (18.49%) DevOps
14 290 (18.11%) Mentoring
15 278 (17.36%) Data Science
16 242 (15.12%) Problem-Solving
17 238 (14.87%) Roadmaps
18 179 (11.18%) Continuous Improvement
19 176 (10.99%) Technical Leadership
20 157 (9.81%) Use Case
Programming Languages
1 804 (50.22%) SQL
2 795 (49.66%) Python
3 114 (7.12%) Java
4 67 (4.18%) Scala
5 50 (3.12%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 45 (2.81%) JavaScript
7 26 (1.62%) R
8 22 (1.37%) TypeScript
9 21 (1.31%) C#
10 18 (1.12%) Bash
11 17 (1.06%) Go
12 16 (1.00%) C++
12 16 (1.00%) T-SQL
13 14 (0.87%) PowerShell
14 8 (0.50%) Bicep
14 8 (0.50%) Groovy
15 7 (0.44%) VBA
16 6 (0.37%) Julia
17 5 (0.31%) PL/SQL
18 4 (0.25%) Rust
Qualifications
1 178 (11.12%) Degree
2 147 (9.18%) Security Cleared
3 93 (5.81%) SC Cleared
4 56 (3.50%) Computer Science Degree
4 56 (3.50%) Master's Degree
5 42 (2.62%) DV Cleared
6 41 (2.56%) Azure Certification
7 35 (2.19%) DBS Check
8 29 (1.81%) BPSS Clearance
9 23 (1.44%) AWS Certification
10 21 (1.31%) PhD
11 14 (0.87%) Microsoft Certification
12 13 (0.81%) ACCA
12 13 (0.81%) CIMA
13 7 (0.44%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 6 (0.37%) Numerate Degree
15 4 (0.25%) CCA
16 3 (0.19%) CBAP
16 3 (0.19%) CISSP
16 3 (0.19%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 435 (27.17%) Data Quality
2 88 (5.50%) GDPR
3 52 (3.25%) Accessibility
4 41 (2.56%) QA
5 24 (1.50%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 14 (0.87%) GRC
7 9 (0.56%) Actionable Recommendations
8 7 (0.44%) PERC
9 6 (0.37%) SLA
10 5 (0.31%) NCSC
11 4 (0.25%) PMO
11 4 (0.25%) Solvency II
12 3 (0.19%) EU AI Act
12 3 (0.19%) PCI DSS
12 3 (0.19%) PSD2
13 2 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 42001
14 1 (0.062%) HIPAA
14 1 (0.062%) ISO/IEC 27001
14 1 (0.062%) NIST
System Software
1 89 (5.56%) Docker
2 56 (3.50%) Virtual Machines
3 6 (0.37%) Active Directory
4 3 (0.19%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.12%) NDS
6 1 (0.062%) Apache Flume
6 1 (0.062%) Embedded Firmware
6 1 (0.062%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 58 (3.62%) Kubernetes
2 14 (0.87%) Grafana
3 5 (0.31%) Ansible
3 5 (0.31%) Prometheus
4 4 (0.25%) Argo
5 3 (0.19%) Kibana
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
1 453 (28.29%) Databricks
2 298 (18.61%) Microsoft
3 89 (5.56%) Google
4 45 (2.81%) Dell
5 41 (2.56%) Informatica
6 39 (2.44%) Palantir
7 35 (2.19%) Foundry
7 35 (2.19%) Oracle
8 31 (1.94%) SAP
9 27 (1.69%) Cloudera
9 27 (1.69%) OpenAI
10 24 (1.50%) Salesforce
11 22 (1.37%) Teradata
12 20 (1.25%) Denodo
13 10 (0.62%) Sage
14 9 (0.56%) Alteryx
15 5 (0.31%) MicroStrategy
15 5 (0.31%) Talend
16 4 (0.25%) Cognos
17 3 (0.19%) IBM