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

6 months to
21 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 160 151 174
Rank change year-on-year -9 +23 -58
Permanent jobs citing Data Engineering 1,051 847 1,485
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.38% 2.00% 1.73%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.78% 2.14% 1.99%
Number of salaries quoted 672 591 838
10th Percentile £46,250 £45,000 £42,439
25th Percentile £57,500 £56,839 £55,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £75,000 £80,000 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year -6.25% +14.29% -6.67%
75th Percentile £92,500 £105,000 £90,000
90th Percentile £110,000 £122,500 £110,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £65,000 £65,000 £65,066
% change year-on-year - -0.10% +4.38%

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 58,981 39,507 74,640
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 77.68% 93.49% 87.04%
Number of salaries quoted 35,808 22,230 56,250
10th Percentile £29,750 £31,750 £29,079
25th Percentile £40,000 £43,887 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -11.29%
75th Percentile £77,500 £80,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,410 £93,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -8.90%

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 March 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 March 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 -9 924 £75,000 -6.25% 569
London +40 503 £80,000 -15.79% 269
UK excluding London -34 447 £65,000 - 415
Work from Home -9 376 £75,000 -9.09% 246
North of England -73 109 £75,000 +22.95% 122
South East -37 107 £70,000 - 131
Midlands +11 87 £65,000 +18.18% 53
West Midlands +28 66 £60,000 +33.33% 38
East of England +27 57 £59,450 +3.39% 35
North West -23 52 £77,500 +16.98% 61
Yorkshire -58 50 £67,500 +12.50% 49
Scotland +2 48 £85,000 +47.83% 26
South West -38 33 £55,000 -33.33% 43
East Midlands -47 19 £75,000 +22.45% 15
North East -31 7 £65,000 +32.65% 14
Wales -25 6 £65,000 -18.75% 11

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
1 162 (15.41%) Apache Airflow
2 118 (11.23%) Apache Spark
3 70 (6.66%) Apache
4 32 (3.04%) Palantir Foundry
5 22 (2.09%) SAS
6 14 (1.33%) SharePoint
7 12 (1.14%) Appian
8 6 (0.57%) Confluence
8 6 (0.57%) Moodle
9 4 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.095%) Apache Solr
10 1 (0.095%) Camunda
10 1 (0.095%) WordPress
Applications
1 26 (2.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.38%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.19%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.095%) Adobe XD
4 1 (0.095%) Notion
Business Applications
1 4 (0.38%) Markit EDM
2 2 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
2 2 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.19%) SAP SD
2 2 (0.19%) Unit4 Business World
3 1 (0.095%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.095%) Primavera
3 1 (0.095%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 499 (47.48%) Azure
2 339 (32.25%) AWS
3 211 (20.08%) Power Platform
4 206 (19.60%) Snowflake
5 174 (16.56%) GCP
6 165 (15.70%) Azure Data Factory
7 109 (10.37%) dbt
8 106 (10.09%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 67 (6.37%) Amazon S3
10 51 (4.85%) Azure DevOps
11 48 (4.57%) Serverless
12 47 (4.47%) GitHub
13 42 (4.00%) Azure Machine Learning
14 38 (3.62%) SaaS
15 37 (3.52%) Azure AI
16 29 (2.76%) AWS Lambda
17 27 (2.57%) OpenShift
18 26 (2.47%) Amazon Kinesis
19 25 (2.38%) Power Automate
20 22 (2.09%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 15 (1.43%) Broadband
2 3 (0.29%) HTTP
2 3 (0.29%) Kerberos
3 2 (0.19%) DAB
3 2 (0.19%) DHCP
3 2 (0.19%) DNS
4 1 (0.095%) 4G
4 1 (0.095%) 5G
4 1 (0.095%) Radio Access Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 282 (26.83%) Data Warehouse
2 201 (19.12%) Power BI
3 176 (16.75%) Data Lake
4 107 (10.18%) SQL Server
5 94 (8.94%) Tableau
6 87 (8.28%) Metadata
7 72 (6.85%) BigQuery
8 65 (6.18%) Amazon Redshift
9 46 (4.38%) Delta Lake
10 45 (4.28%) Relational Database
11 42 (4.00%) PostgreSQL
12 41 (3.90%) Big Data
12 41 (3.90%) Looker
13 37 (3.52%) MySQL
14 33 (3.14%) Elasticsearch
15 32 (3.04%) Snowflake Schema
16 30 (2.85%) Apache Iceberg
16 30 (2.85%) Spark SQL
16 30 (2.85%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 29 (2.76%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 73 (6.95%) Git
2 55 (5.23%) MLflow
3 13 (1.24%) Jenkins
4 12 (1.14%) IBM UrbanCode
4 12 (1.14%) JIRA
5 10 (0.95%) GitLab
6 5 (0.48%) Selenium
7 3 (0.29%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 2 (0.19%) Deequ
9 1 (0.095%) Bitbucket
9 1 (0.095%) CMake
9 1 (0.095%) Cucumber
9 1 (0.095%) JMeter
9 1 (0.095%) RStudio
9 1 (0.095%) Team Foundation Server
9 1 (0.095%) Zephyr
General
1 285 (27.12%) Finance
2 229 (21.79%) Social Skills
3 145 (13.80%) Analytical Skills
4 62 (5.90%) Public Sector
5 57 (5.42%) Banking
6 44 (4.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 43 (4.09%) Retail
8 37 (3.52%) Law
9 32 (3.04%) Marketing
10 30 (2.85%) Legal
11 29 (2.76%) Influencing Skills
12 21 (2.00%) Manufacturing
13 16 (1.52%) Financial Institution
14 15 (1.43%) Investment Banking
15 12 (1.14%) Games
16 11 (1.05%) Advertising
16 11 (1.05%) Automotive
17 8 (0.76%) Front Office
18 7 (0.67%) Documentation Skills
18 7 (0.67%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 442 (42.06%) Data Engineer
2 197 (18.74%) Senior
3 179 (17.03%) Lead
4 117 (11.13%) Senior Data Engineer
5 112 (10.66%) Architect
6 91 (8.66%) Data Architect
7 86 (8.18%) Lead Data Engineer
8 58 (5.52%) Data Manager
9 57 (5.42%) Consultant
10 44 (4.19%) Developer
11 35 (3.33%) Analyst
12 34 (3.24%) Azure Engineer
13 33 (3.14%) Engineering Manager
14 32 (3.04%) AWS Engineer
14 32 (3.04%) Data Consultant
15 29 (2.76%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 29 (2.76%) Principal Engineer
16 28 (2.66%) Azure Data Engineer
16 28 (2.66%) Platform Engineer
17 26 (2.47%) AWS Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 112 (10.66%) PySpark
2 91 (8.66%) Kafka
3 62 (5.90%) PyTorch
3 62 (5.90%) TensorFlow
4 39 (3.71%) scikit-learn
5 35 (3.33%) LangChain
6 33 (3.14%) Pandas
7 32 (3.04%) REST
8 26 (2.47%) RESTful
9 21 (2.00%) Faiss
10 18 (1.71%) pytest
11 17 (1.62%) HTML
12 16 (1.52%) Spring
13 15 (1.43%) LlamaIndex
13 15 (1.43%) OAuth
13 15 (1.43%) pgvector
13 15 (1.43%) React
13 15 (1.43%) Spring Boot
14 14 (1.33%) FastAPI
14 14 (1.33%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 91 (8.66%) Cloud Native
2 44 (4.19%) Data Structures
3 39 (3.71%) Product Ownership
4 36 (3.43%) Distributed Systems
4 36 (3.43%) Legacy Systems
5 32 (3.04%) Low-Code
6 20 (1.90%) Greenfield Project
6 20 (1.90%) Public Cloud
7 19 (1.81%) e-Learning
7 19 (1.81%) Management Information System
8 17 (1.62%) AI Agents
8 17 (1.62%) Self-Motivation
9 15 (1.43%) Clustering
10 13 (1.24%) Algorithms
11 11 (1.05%) Hybrid Cloud
11 11 (1.05%) Onboarding
12 10 (0.95%) Data Centre
12 10 (0.95%) Distributed Architecture
13 9 (0.86%) NHS
13 9 (0.86%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 9 (0.86%) Linux
2 3 (0.29%) Unix
2 3 (0.29%) Windows
3 2 (0.19%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.095%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 534 (50.81%) Analytics
2 467 (44.43%) Data Pipeline
3 419 (39.87%) Data Modelling
4 368 (35.01%) ETL
5 364 (34.63%) AI
6 302 (28.73%) Data Governance
7 290 (27.59%) Business Intelligence
8 288 (27.40%) CI/CD
9 255 (24.26%) Agile
10 224 (21.31%) Data Architecture
11 211 (20.08%) Machine Learning
12 207 (19.70%) Data Science
13 187 (17.79%) DevOps
14 183 (17.41%) Mentoring
15 182 (17.32%) Decision-Making
16 179 (17.03%) Problem-Solving
17 174 (16.56%) Data Integration
18 146 (13.89%) Continuous Improvement
19 129 (12.27%) Data Management
20 116 (11.04%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 563 (53.57%) Python
2 519 (49.38%) SQL
3 95 (9.04%) Java
4 48 (4.57%) Scala
5 33 (3.14%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 28 (2.66%) Bash
6 28 (2.66%) R
7 25 (2.38%) JavaScript
7 25 (2.38%) T-SQL
8 22 (2.09%) PowerShell
9 20 (1.90%) C#
9 20 (1.90%) Go
10 13 (1.24%) C++
11 11 (1.05%) TypeScript
12 8 (0.76%) PHP
13 6 (0.57%) Bicep
14 4 (0.38%) Julia
15 3 (0.29%) Ruby
15 3 (0.29%) VBA
16 2 (0.19%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 120 (11.42%) Degree
2 76 (7.23%) Security Cleared
3 55 (5.23%) Computer Science Degree
4 48 (4.57%) SC Cleared
5 34 (3.24%) Master's Degree
6 23 (2.19%) DBS Check
6 23 (2.19%) DV Cleared
7 20 (1.90%) Azure Certification
8 17 (1.62%) AWS Certification
8 17 (1.62%) Microsoft Certification
9 7 (0.67%) BPSS Clearance
10 6 (0.57%) MCSE
11 5 (0.48%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 5 (0.48%) CISSP
11 5 (0.48%) CRISC
11 5 (0.48%) OCP
11 5 (0.48%) Oracle Certification
12 4 (0.38%) PhD
13 2 (0.19%) SnowPro
14 1 (0.095%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 295 (28.07%) Data Quality
2 83 (7.90%) GDPR
3 63 (5.99%) Accessibility
4 30 (2.85%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 18 (1.71%) HIPAA
5 18 (1.71%) QA
6 15 (1.43%) GRC
7 11 (1.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 10 (0.95%) SLA
9 6 (0.57%) NIST
10 5 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 4 (0.38%) Solvency II
12 3 (0.29%) PERC
13 1 (0.095%) Actionable Recommendations
13 1 (0.095%) GMP
13 1 (0.095%) IFRS
13 1 (0.095%) IFRS 17
13 1 (0.095%) NCSC
13 1 (0.095%) SOC 2
System Software
1 95 (9.04%) Docker
2 16 (1.52%) Virtual Machines
3 10 (0.95%) Active Directory
4 3 (0.29%) HDFS
5 1 (0.095%) Apache Flume
5 1 (0.095%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 76 (7.23%) Kubernetes
2 72 (6.85%) Terraform
3 11 (1.05%) Grafana
4 10 (0.95%) Prometheus
5 9 (0.86%) Ansible
5 9 (0.86%) Argo
5 9 (0.86%) Single Sign-On
6 7 (0.67%) Control-M
7 2 (0.19%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 2 (0.19%) Microsoft Intune
7 2 (0.19%) SCCM
8 1 (0.095%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 304 (28.92%) Databricks
2 212 (20.17%) Microsoft
3 53 (5.04%) Informatica
4 50 (4.76%) Palantir
5 47 (4.47%) Oracle
6 42 (4.00%) Dell
6 42 (4.00%) Google
7 38 (3.62%) Foundry
8 35 (3.33%) OpenAI
9 28 (2.66%) Talend
10 21 (2.00%) Cloudera
11 17 (1.62%) Denodo
12 16 (1.52%) Teradata
13 15 (1.43%) Red Hat
13 15 (1.43%) Salesforce
14 13 (1.24%) Automation Anywhere
14 13 (1.24%) UiPath
15 9 (0.86%) SAP
16 8 (0.76%) NVIDIA
17 7 (0.67%) MuleSoft