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

6 months to
29 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 154 169 183
Rank change year-on-year +15 +14 -58
Permanent jobs citing Data Engineering 931 910 1,142
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.47% 1.74% 1.68%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.83% 1.90% 1.89%
Number of salaries quoted 597 600 759
10th Percentile £46,550 £42,500 £43,750
25th Percentile £57,500 £53,000 £55,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £72,500 £75,000 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year -3.33% +7.14% -6.67%
75th Percentile £88,500 £97,500 £91,934
90th Percentile £107,500 £115,000 £110,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £65,000 £62,500 £67,500
% change year-on-year +4.00% -7.41% -

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 50,778 48,019 60,381
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 80.25% 91.58% 88.81%
Number of salaries quoted 30,009 23,112 46,660
10th Percentile £28,697 £35,000 £30,000
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,250 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £57,444
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +4.45% -8.09%
75th Percentile £75,900 £80,000 £76,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £95,000
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 29 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 29 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 +13 824 £70,250 -6.33% 629
London +50 464 £75,000 -18.92% 251
UK excluding London -17 384 £65,000 +4.00% 522
Work from Home +9 364 £75,000 - 376
North of England -31 107 £67,500 +31.71% 91
South East -18 89 £73,750 +5.36% 212
Midlands +32 86 £65,000 +18.18% 55
West Midlands +55 66 £60,000 +33.33% 30
Yorkshire -23 57 £68,000 +36.00% 31
Scotland +3 44 £82,500 +20.00% 30
North West -2 43 £65,000 +30.00% 46
East of England +41 32 £52,500 -16.00% 61
South West -32 23 £50,000 -32.20% 57
East Midlands -14 18 £75,000 +22.95% 25
North East -19 7 £67,500 +14.89% 14
Wales +10 6 £65,000 -18.75% 17

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
1 103 (11.06%) Apache Airflow
2 98 (10.53%) Apache Spark
3 57 (6.12%) Apache
4 17 (1.83%) SAS
5 14 (1.50%) SharePoint
6 12 (1.29%) Confluence
7 11 (1.18%) Appian
8 5 (0.54%) WordPress
9 4 (0.43%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.32%) Jupyter
10 3 (0.32%) Moodle
11 1 (0.11%) Apache Solr
11 1 (0.11%) Apache Superset
11 1 (0.11%) ArcGIS
11 1 (0.11%) GeoServer
11 1 (0.11%) Luigi
Applications
1 32 (3.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (0.97%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.11%) Adobe XD
4 1 (0.11%) Notion
Business Applications
1 5 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.21%) Markit EDM
2 2 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.11%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.11%) SAP ERP
3 1 (0.11%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 442 (47.48%) Azure
2 282 (30.29%) AWS
3 210 (22.56%) Power Platform
4 158 (16.97%) Snowflake
5 141 (15.15%) GCP
6 139 (14.93%) Azure Data Factory
7 82 (8.81%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 74 (7.95%) dbt
9 58 (6.23%) Azure DevOps
10 54 (5.80%) Amazon S3
11 44 (4.73%) Serverless
12 42 (4.51%) SaaS
13 40 (4.30%) GitHub
14 37 (3.97%) AWS Lambda
15 25 (2.69%) Amazon Kinesis
16 24 (2.58%) Fivetran
17 22 (2.36%) Amazon SageMaker
17 22 (2.36%) Azure Machine Learning
18 20 (2.15%) Amazon EMR
18 20 (2.15%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.32%) DHCP
1 3 (0.32%) DNS
2 2 (0.21%) Broadband
2 2 (0.21%) HTTP
2 2 (0.21%) Kerberos
3 1 (0.11%) DAB
Database & Business Intelligence
1 277 (29.75%) Data Warehouse
2 198 (21.27%) Power BI
3 135 (14.50%) Data Lake
4 124 (13.32%) SQL Server
5 80 (8.59%) Metadata
6 71 (7.63%) Tableau
7 57 (6.12%) Amazon Redshift
8 54 (5.80%) Big Data
9 46 (4.94%) NoSQL
10 42 (4.51%) PostgreSQL
11 40 (4.30%) BigQuery
11 40 (4.30%) Hadoop
12 37 (3.97%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 36 (3.87%) Delta Lake
13 36 (3.87%) MySQL
13 36 (3.87%) Relational Database
14 33 (3.54%) Looker
15 29 (3.11%) MongoDB
16 28 (3.01%) SQL Server Reporting Services
17 24 (2.58%) Apache Iceberg
Development Applications
1 53 (5.69%) Git
2 33 (3.54%) MLflow
3 18 (1.93%) JIRA
4 12 (1.29%) Jenkins
5 8 (0.86%) GitLab
6 3 (0.32%) Selenium
6 3 (0.32%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 2 (0.21%) Deequ
8 1 (0.11%) CMake
8 1 (0.11%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.11%) JMeter
8 1 (0.11%) Team Foundation Server
8 1 (0.11%) Zephyr
General
1 290 (31.15%) Finance
2 239 (25.67%) Social Skills
3 120 (12.89%) Analytical Skills
4 64 (6.87%) Law
5 56 (6.02%) Public Sector
6 55 (5.91%) Banking
7 39 (4.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 38 (4.08%) Marketing
9 33 (3.54%) Retail
10 28 (3.01%) Manufacturing
11 24 (2.58%) Financial Institution
12 21 (2.26%) Legal
13 19 (2.04%) Advertising
14 12 (1.29%) Automotive
15 11 (1.18%) French Language
16 9 (0.97%) Front Office
17 7 (0.75%) Documentation Skills
17 7 (0.75%) Organisational Skills
17 7 (0.75%) Publishing
18 6 (0.64%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 417 (44.79%) Data Engineer
2 177 (19.01%) Senior
3 135 (14.50%) Lead
4 116 (12.46%) Senior Data Engineer
5 79 (8.49%) Architect
6 73 (7.84%) Lead Data Engineer
7 62 (6.66%) Data Architect
8 51 (5.48%) Data Manager
9 50 (5.37%) Developer
10 42 (4.51%) Analyst
11 41 (4.40%) Consultant
12 40 (4.30%) Azure Engineer
13 34 (3.65%) Azure Data Engineer
14 30 (3.22%) AWS Engineer
15 28 (3.01%) Principal Engineer
16 27 (2.90%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 27 (2.90%) Engineering Manager
17 26 (2.79%) AWS Data Engineer
18 23 (2.47%) Data Consultant
19 20 (2.15%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 91 (9.77%) PySpark
2 74 (7.95%) Kafka
3 48 (5.16%) PyTorch
3 48 (5.16%) TensorFlow
4 41 (4.40%) Pandas
5 26 (2.79%) REST
6 25 (2.69%) RESTful
7 24 (2.58%) scikit-learn
8 22 (2.36%) LangChain
9 20 (2.15%) pytest
10 18 (1.93%) Faiss
10 18 (1.93%) FastAPI
10 18 (1.93%) NumPy
10 18 (1.93%) React
11 17 (1.83%) HTML
12 16 (1.72%) Flask
13 14 (1.50%) Spring
13 14 (1.50%) XML
14 13 (1.40%) CSS
14 13 (1.40%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 58 (6.23%) Cloud Native
2 46 (4.94%) Product Ownership
3 43 (4.62%) Legacy Systems
4 40 (4.30%) Distributed Systems
5 34 (3.65%) Management Information System
6 26 (2.79%) Data Structures
7 23 (2.47%) Low-Code
8 21 (2.26%) e-Learning
9 20 (2.15%) Greenfield Project
10 19 (2.04%) Data Centre
11 16 (1.72%) Hybrid Cloud
11 16 (1.72%) Onboarding
12 14 (1.50%) Analytical Mindset
13 13 (1.40%) AI Agents
14 12 (1.29%) Self-Motivation
15 11 (1.18%) Distributed Architecture
16 9 (0.97%) Algorithms
17 8 (0.86%) FMCG
18 7 (0.75%) Enterprise Software
19 6 (0.64%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 7 (0.75%) Linux
2 4 (0.43%) Unix
2 4 (0.43%) Windows
3 3 (0.32%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 451 (48.44%) Analytics
2 446 (47.91%) Data Pipeline
3 377 (40.49%) ETL
4 342 (36.73%) Data Modelling
5 269 (28.89%) Business Intelligence
6 267 (28.68%) CI/CD
7 265 (28.46%) AI
8 237 (25.46%) Data Governance
9 233 (25.03%) Agile
10 202 (21.70%) DevOps
11 181 (19.44%) Machine Learning
12 179 (19.23%) Data Integration
13 178 (19.12%) Mentoring
14 175 (18.80%) Data Science
15 167 (17.94%) Problem-Solving
16 164 (17.62%) Data Architecture
17 158 (16.97%) Decision-Making
18 117 (12.57%) Continuous Improvement
19 106 (11.39%) Visualisation
20 104 (11.17%) Data Management
Programming Languages
1 515 (55.32%) Python
2 492 (52.85%) SQL
3 84 (9.02%) Java
4 59 (6.34%) Scala
5 31 (3.33%) T-SQL
6 29 (3.11%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 26 (2.79%) Bash
8 22 (2.36%) PowerShell
9 20 (2.15%) JavaScript
9 20 (2.15%) R
10 17 (1.83%) C#
11 11 (1.18%) Bicep
11 11 (1.18%) Go
12 8 (0.86%) PHP
12 8 (0.86%) TypeScript
13 6 (0.64%) C++
14 3 (0.32%) Groovy
14 3 (0.32%) Ruby
15 2 (0.21%) PL/SQL
16 1 (0.11%) Korn
Qualifications
1 114 (12.24%) Degree
2 74 (7.95%) Security Cleared
3 51 (5.48%) SC Cleared
4 47 (5.05%) Computer Science Degree
5 35 (3.76%) Master's Degree
6 24 (2.58%) Microsoft Certification
7 20 (2.15%) DV Cleared
8 18 (1.93%) AWS Certification
9 16 (1.72%) Azure Certification
10 13 (1.40%) MCSE
11 12 (1.29%) CISSP
11 12 (1.29%) OCP
11 12 (1.29%) Oracle Certification
12 11 (1.18%) PhD
13 6 (0.64%) DBS Check
13 6 (0.64%) SnowPro
14 5 (0.54%) BPSS Clearance
14 5 (0.54%) CRISC
15 4 (0.43%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 2 (0.21%) MCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 231 (24.81%) Data Quality
2 68 (7.30%) Accessibility
3 57 (6.12%) GDPR
4 17 (1.83%) QA
5 13 (1.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 6 (0.64%) SLA
7 5 (0.54%) GRC
7 5 (0.54%) HIPAA
7 5 (0.54%) NIST
8 4 (0.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 3 (0.32%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 1 (0.11%) Actionable Recommendations
10 1 (0.11%) GAAP
10 1 (0.11%) GMP
10 1 (0.11%) IFRS
10 1 (0.11%) IFRS 17
10 1 (0.11%) NCSC
10 1 (0.11%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.11%) Solvency II
System Software
1 88 (9.45%) Docker
2 10 (1.07%) Active Directory
3 9 (0.97%) HDFS
4 1 (0.11%) Apache ZooKeeper
4 1 (0.11%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 72 (7.73%) Kubernetes
2 61 (6.55%) Terraform
3 8 (0.86%) Argo
4 6 (0.64%) Ansible
4 6 (0.64%) Grafana
4 6 (0.64%) Prometheus
4 6 (0.64%) Single Sign-On
5 5 (0.54%) Control-M
6 4 (0.43%) Kubeflow
7 3 (0.32%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 3 (0.32%) Microsoft Intune
7 3 (0.32%) SCCM
8 1 (0.11%) Istio
8 1 (0.11%) Progress Chef
8 1 (0.11%) Puppet
Vendors
1 240 (25.78%) Databricks
2 197 (21.16%) Microsoft
3 50 (5.37%) Oracle
4 36 (3.87%) Informatica
5 35 (3.76%) Google
6 34 (3.65%) Palantir
7 33 (3.54%) OpenAI
8 30 (3.22%) Talend
9 27 (2.90%) Foundry
10 17 (1.83%) Dell
11 15 (1.61%) SAP
12 13 (1.40%) NVIDIA
13 11 (1.18%) Automation Anywhere
13 11 (1.18%) UiPath
14 8 (0.86%) Salesforce
15 7 (0.75%) Cloudera
15 7 (0.75%) MuleSoft
16 5 (0.54%) Dataiku
16 5 (0.54%) Netezza
17 4 (0.43%) CrowdStrike