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 29 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 140 144 177
Rank change year-on-year +4 +33 -49
Permanent jobs citing Data Engineering 1,316 987 1,586
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.41% 2.30% 1.59%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.91% 2.47% 1.89%
Number of salaries quoted 908 492 915
10th Percentile £44,500 £46,250 £42,439
25th Percentile £57,000 £58,000 £55,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £79,500 £77,500 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year +2.58% +10.71% -6.67%
75th Percentile £99,063 £105,000 £90,000
90th Percentile £115,000 £136,125 £106,474
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £66,367 £65,000
% change year-on-year +5.47% +2.10% +7.89%

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 68,838 39,983 83,789
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.88% 93.25% 83.85%
Number of salaries quoted 44,890 21,039 60,407
10th Percentile £30,000 £29,750 £29,250
25th Percentile £41,000 £40,903 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £58,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +3.45% +5.45% -9.84%
75th Percentile £78,750 £78,750 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £101,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £51,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +2.94% +2.00% -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 29 May 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 29 May 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 -1 1,182 £80,000 +3.23% 444
UK excluding London -39 602 £70,000 +5.47% 293
London +40 600 £85,920 -9.56% 236
Work from Home +7 427 £82,250 -3.24% 219
North of England -47 224 £80,000 +18.52% 100
North West -41 120 £90,000 +33.33% 56
South East -81 106 £70,000 - 98
Midlands +25 105 £65,000 +8.33% 32
Yorkshire -23 78 £73,750 +7.27% 21
West Midlands +11 73 £67,500 +14.89% 21
East of England +6 62 £70,000 +40.00% 13
South West -36 57 £52,500 -44.74% 26
Scotland +6 36 £90,000 +71.43% 12
East Midlands -23 30 £65,000 - 11
North East -19 26 £67,500 +32.03% 24
Wales -30 12 £65,000 -18.75% 10

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
1 189 (14.36%) Apache Airflow
2 143 (10.87%) Apache Spark
3 90 (6.84%) Apache
4 36 (2.74%) Palantir Foundry
5 19 (1.44%) SAS
6 13 (0.99%) SharePoint
7 10 (0.76%) Confluence
7 10 (0.76%) Jupyter
8 9 (0.68%) Appian
9 6 (0.46%) Moodle
10 4 (0.30%) Microsoft Exchange
11 2 (0.15%) Luigi
12 1 (0.076%) ArcGIS
12 1 (0.076%) Camunda
12 1 (0.076%) GeoServer
12 1 (0.076%) WordPress
Applications
1 26 (1.98%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (0.76%) Spreadsheet
3 2 (0.15%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.076%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 3 (0.23%) Markit EDM
1 3 (0.23%) SAP S/4HANA
1 3 (0.23%) SAP SD
2 2 (0.15%) Unit4 Business World
3 1 (0.076%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.076%) FastStats
3 1 (0.076%) Infor M3
3 1 (0.076%) Oracle Assets
3 1 (0.076%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.076%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 627 (47.64%) Azure
2 431 (32.75%) AWS
3 232 (17.63%) Snowflake
4 230 (17.48%) GCP
5 228 (17.33%) Power Platform
6 167 (12.69%) Azure Data Factory
7 149 (11.32%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 127 (9.65%) dbt
9 86 (6.53%) Amazon S3
9 86 (6.53%) Azure Machine Learning
10 75 (5.70%) Azure AI
11 68 (5.17%) Azure DevOps
11 68 (5.17%) Serverless
12 49 (3.72%) GitHub
13 35 (2.66%) SaaS
14 31 (2.36%) AWS Lambda
15 30 (2.28%) Dagster
15 30 (2.28%) GitHub Actions
16 26 (1.98%) Microsoft Purview
17 25 (1.90%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.90%) Broadband
2 4 (0.30%) HTTP
3 2 (0.15%) 4G
3 2 (0.15%) 5G
3 2 (0.15%) DAB
3 2 (0.15%) DHCP
3 2 (0.15%) DNS
3 2 (0.15%) Firewall
3 2 (0.15%) MQTT
4 1 (0.076%) Kerberos
4 1 (0.076%) Radio Access Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 279 (21.20%) Data Warehouse
2 217 (16.49%) Power BI
3 205 (15.58%) Data Lake
4 149 (11.32%) SQL Server
5 118 (8.97%) BigQuery
6 107 (8.13%) Tableau
7 91 (6.91%) Amazon Redshift
7 91 (6.91%) Metadata
8 67 (5.09%) Relational Database
9 55 (4.18%) Delta Lake
10 53 (4.03%) Semantic Layer
11 51 (3.88%) Spark SQL
12 48 (3.65%) Elasticsearch
13 47 (3.57%) NoSQL
14 46 (3.50%) Big Data
14 46 (3.50%) Looker
15 45 (3.42%) Azure SQL Database
15 45 (3.42%) Star Schema
16 44 (3.34%) PostgreSQL
17 42 (3.19%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 86 (6.53%) Git
2 56 (4.26%) MLflow
3 26 (1.98%) Jenkins
4 19 (1.44%) JIRA
5 15 (1.14%) GitLab
6 12 (0.91%) IBM UrbanCode
7 7 (0.53%) Selenium
8 4 (0.30%) Claude Code
9 3 (0.23%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 1 (0.076%) Bitbucket
10 1 (0.076%) CMake
10 1 (0.076%) Cucumber
10 1 (0.076%) Deequ
10 1 (0.076%) JMeter
10 1 (0.076%) RStudio
10 1 (0.076%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.076%) Yeoman
10 1 (0.076%) Zephyr
General
1 323 (24.54%) Finance
2 261 (19.83%) Social Skills
3 205 (15.58%) Analytical Skills
4 81 (6.16%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 80 (6.08%) Public Sector
6 62 (4.71%) Banking
7 56 (4.26%) Retail
8 36 (2.74%) Influencing Skills
9 32 (2.43%) Legal
10 31 (2.36%) Marketing
11 26 (1.98%) Law
12 16 (1.22%) Advertising
12 16 (1.22%) Financial Institution
12 16 (1.22%) Games
13 14 (1.06%) Manufacturing
14 12 (0.91%) Investment Banking
15 10 (0.76%) Front Office
16 8 (0.61%) Automotive
17 7 (0.53%) Organisational Skills
17 7 (0.53%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 521 (39.59%) Data Engineer
2 270 (20.52%) Senior
3 234 (17.78%) Lead
4 141 (10.71%) Senior Data Engineer
5 107 (8.13%) Data Manager
6 103 (7.83%) Architect
7 95 (7.22%) Lead Data Engineer
8 80 (6.08%) Data Architect
9 78 (5.93%) Consultant
10 69 (5.24%) Engineering Manager
11 58 (4.41%) Data Consultant
12 48 (3.65%) Analyst
13 45 (3.42%) Developer
14 44 (3.34%) Principal Engineer
15 42 (3.19%) Platform Engineer
16 41 (3.12%) AWS Engineer
17 36 (2.74%) Azure Engineer
18 34 (2.58%) Head of Engineering
18 34 (2.58%) Technical Leader
19 33 (2.51%) Finance Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 146 (11.09%) PySpark
2 97 (7.37%) Kafka
3 57 (4.33%) PyTorch
3 57 (4.33%) TensorFlow
4 46 (3.50%) REST
5 42 (3.19%) scikit-learn
6 36 (2.74%) LangChain
7 27 (2.05%) pgvector
8 26 (1.98%) Pandas
9 25 (1.90%) LlamaIndex
10 23 (1.75%) Node.js
11 19 (1.44%) RESTful
12 18 (1.37%) Faiss
13 16 (1.22%) .NET
14 15 (1.14%) FastAPI
14 15 (1.14%) React
15 13 (0.99%) CSS
15 13 (0.99%) Flask
15 13 (0.99%) HTML
15 13 (0.99%) NumPy
Miscellaneous
1 127 (9.65%) Cloud Native
2 54 (4.10%) Data Structures
2 54 (4.10%) Product Ownership
3 44 (3.34%) Distributed Systems
4 31 (2.36%) Low-Code
5 29 (2.20%) Legacy Systems
6 27 (2.05%) Public Cloud
7 25 (1.90%) Self-Motivation
8 23 (1.75%) Clustering
9 21 (1.60%) e-Learning
10 18 (1.37%) Management Information System
10 18 (1.37%) Onboarding
11 15 (1.14%) Analytical Mindset
11 15 (1.14%) Greenfield Project
12 13 (0.99%) Social Media
13 12 (0.91%) NHS
14 11 (0.84%) Reinsurance
14 11 (0.84%) Sports Betting
15 10 (0.76%) AI Agents
15 10 (0.76%) Cyberattack
Operating Systems
1 9 (0.68%) Linux
2 5 (0.38%) Windows
3 2 (0.15%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.076%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 625 (47.49%) Analytics
2 536 (40.73%) Data Pipeline
3 467 (35.49%) AI
3 467 (35.49%) Data Modelling
4 422 (32.07%) ETL
5 390 (29.64%) Data Governance
6 341 (25.91%) Business Intelligence
6 341 (25.91%) CI/CD
7 334 (25.38%) Agile
8 319 (24.24%) Data Architecture
9 289 (21.96%) Machine Learning
10 240 (18.24%) Decision-Making
11 233 (17.71%) Mentoring
12 232 (17.63%) DevOps
13 231 (17.55%) Data Science
14 208 (15.81%) Problem-Solving
15 197 (14.97%) Roadmaps
16 144 (10.94%) Continuous Improvement
17 135 (10.26%) Use Case
18 131 (9.95%) Data Strategy
Programming Languages
1 693 (52.66%) Python
2 684 (51.98%) SQL
3 111 (8.43%) Java
4 59 (4.48%) Scala
5 38 (2.89%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 35 (2.66%) JavaScript
7 33 (2.51%) Bash
8 31 (2.36%) R
9 25 (1.90%) Go
10 22 (1.67%) PowerShell
11 15 (1.14%) C#
12 14 (1.06%) T-SQL
13 13 (0.99%) C++
13 13 (0.99%) TypeScript
14 6 (0.46%) Julia
15 5 (0.38%) Bicep
15 5 (0.38%) PL/SQL
16 4 (0.30%) Rust
16 4 (0.30%) VBA
17 3 (0.23%) PHP
Qualifications
1 151 (11.47%) Degree
2 89 (6.76%) Security Cleared
3 57 (4.33%) Computer Science Degree
4 54 (4.10%) SC Cleared
5 40 (3.04%) Master's Degree
6 32 (2.43%) DBS Check
7 31 (2.36%) Azure Certification
8 25 (1.90%) DV Cleared
9 13 (0.99%) AWS Certification
9 13 (0.99%) Microsoft Certification
10 10 (0.76%) PhD
11 7 (0.53%) BPSS Clearance
12 5 (0.38%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 4 (0.30%) CCA
14 3 (0.23%) ACCA
14 3 (0.23%) CIMA
14 3 (0.23%) CISSP
15 2 (0.15%) CompTIA Security+
15 2 (0.15%) GIAC
15 2 (0.15%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 403 (30.62%) Data Quality
2 94 (7.14%) GDPR
3 37 (2.81%) California Consumer Privacy Act
4 32 (2.43%) Accessibility
5 25 (1.90%) QA
6 23 (1.75%) GRC
7 17 (1.29%) HIPAA
8 14 (1.06%) SLA
9 9 (0.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 7 (0.53%) NIST
10 7 (0.53%) PERC
11 5 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 4 (0.30%) Solvency II
13 1 (0.076%) NCSC
13 1 (0.076%) PMO
System Software
1 92 (6.99%) Docker
2 57 (4.33%) Virtual Machines
3 11 (0.84%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.076%) Apache Flume
Systems Management
1 103 (7.83%) Terraform
2 66 (5.02%) Kubernetes
3 13 (0.99%) Grafana
4 10 (0.76%) Prometheus
5 9 (0.68%) Single Sign-On
6 7 (0.53%) Argo
7 6 (0.46%) Control-M
8 5 (0.38%) Ansible
8 5 (0.38%) Microsoft Intune
8 5 (0.38%) SCCM
9 3 (0.23%) Kibana
10 2 (0.15%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 2 (0.15%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
10 2 (0.15%) Computer Incident Response Team
11 1 (0.076%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 432 (32.83%) Databricks
2 248 (18.84%) Microsoft
3 62 (4.71%) Google
4 53 (4.03%) Informatica
5 52 (3.95%) Dell
6 51 (3.88%) Palantir
7 43 (3.27%) Oracle
8 42 (3.19%) Foundry
9 37 (2.81%) OpenAI
10 28 (2.13%) Cloudera
11 25 (1.90%) Teradata
12 24 (1.82%) Denodo
13 23 (1.75%) Salesforce
14 19 (1.44%) Talend
15 14 (1.06%) SAP
16 12 (0.91%) Red Hat
17 10 (0.76%) Automation Anywhere
17 10 (0.76%) UiPath
18 8 (0.61%) MicroStrategy
19 7 (0.53%) Cognos