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

6 months to
15 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 159 167 178
Rank change year-on-year +8 +11 -44
Permanent jobs citing Data Engineering 890 915 972
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.48% 1.71% 1.75%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.82% 1.88% 1.95%
Number of salaries quoted 569 578 634
10th Percentile £46,000 £42,500 £41,475
25th Percentile £57,500 £52,625 £53,938
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £71,000 £75,000 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year -5.33% +7.14% -6.67%
75th Percentile £87,614 £97,500 £92,500
90th Percentile £109,000 £115,000 £107,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £65,000 £62,500 £65,066
% change year-on-year +4.00% -3.94% -3.61%

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 48,808 48,616 49,870
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 80.95% 90.71% 89.93%
Number of salaries quoted 28,796 23,669 37,967
10th Percentile £28,500 £35,000 £31,250
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,000 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £77,715
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £97,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £51,971
% change year-on-year -9.09% +5.83% -5.51%

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 15 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 15 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 +15 797 £70,000 -6.67% 666
London +48 443 £75,000 -16.67% 219
UK excluding London -12 375 £65,000 +4.00% 571
Work from Home +11 345 £75,000 - 316
North of England -31 110 £67,500 +35.00% 107
South East -3 90 £75,000 +7.14% 219
Midlands +42 83 £65,000 +18.18% 68
West Midlands +41 64 £60,000 +26.32% 32
Yorkshire -12 59 £68,000 +40.19% 38
North West -12 44 £65,000 +18.18% 50
Scotland +3 40 £72,500 +14.85% 23
East of England +42 30 £52,500 -16.00% 69
South West -46 21 £50,000 -34.43% 65
East Midlands -14 17 £75,000 +15.38% 34
North East -5 7 £67,500 +8.00% 19
Wales +7 5 £65,000 +5.91% 22

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 94 (10.56%) Apache Spark
2 89 (10.00%) Apache Airflow
3 53 (5.96%) Apache
4 14 (1.57%) SAS
5 12 (1.35%) Confluence
5 12 (1.35%) SharePoint
6 9 (1.01%) Appian
7 4 (0.45%) WordPress
8 3 (0.34%) Jupyter
8 3 (0.34%) Microsoft Exchange
8 3 (0.34%) 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 30 (3.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (1.01%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.11%) Adobe XD
4 1 (0.11%) Notion
Business Applications
1 7 (0.79%) 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
1 431 (48.43%) Azure
2 270 (30.34%) AWS
3 206 (23.15%) Power Platform
4 155 (17.42%) Snowflake
5 136 (15.28%) Azure Data Factory
6 135 (15.17%) GCP
7 88 (9.89%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 68 (7.64%) dbt
9 53 (5.96%) Azure DevOps
10 49 (5.51%) Amazon S3
11 44 (4.94%) SaaS
12 40 (4.49%) Serverless
13 35 (3.93%) AWS Lambda
13 35 (3.93%) GitHub
14 27 (3.03%) Fivetran
15 22 (2.47%) Amazon Kinesis
16 20 (2.25%) Azure Machine Learning
17 19 (2.13%) Amazon EMR
17 19 (2.13%) Amazon SageMaker
18 18 (2.02%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.34%) DHCP
1 3 (0.34%) DNS
2 2 (0.22%) Kerberos
3 1 (0.11%) Broadband
3 1 (0.11%) DAB
Database & Business Intelligence
1 274 (30.79%) Data Warehouse
2 195 (21.91%) Power BI
3 128 (14.38%) Data Lake
4 125 (14.04%) SQL Server
5 74 (8.31%) Metadata
6 71 (7.98%) Tableau
7 54 (6.07%) Big Data
8 53 (5.96%) Amazon Redshift
9 47 (5.28%) NoSQL
10 42 (4.72%) Hadoop
10 42 (4.72%) PostgreSQL
11 37 (4.16%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 36 (4.04%) BigQuery
13 35 (3.93%) Delta Lake
13 35 (3.93%) MySQL
13 35 (3.93%) Relational Database
14 34 (3.82%) Looker
15 30 (3.37%) MongoDB
16 28 (3.15%) SQL Server Reporting Services
17 21 (2.36%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 47 (5.28%) Git
2 29 (3.26%) MLflow
3 18 (2.02%) JIRA
4 10 (1.12%) Jenkins
5 7 (0.79%) GitLab
6 3 (0.34%) 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
1 284 (31.91%) Finance
2 231 (25.96%) Social Skills
3 122 (13.71%) Analytical Skills
4 75 (8.43%) Law
5 56 (6.29%) Banking
6 49 (5.51%) Public Sector
7 45 (5.06%) Marketing
8 38 (4.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 31 (3.48%) Retail
10 26 (2.92%) Financial Institution
11 24 (2.70%) Manufacturing
12 21 (2.36%) Advertising
12 21 (2.36%) Legal
13 14 (1.57%) French Language
14 11 (1.24%) Automotive
15 10 (1.12%) Front Office
16 8 (0.90%) Documentation Skills
16 8 (0.90%) Organisational Skills
17 7 (0.79%) Presentation Skills
17 7 (0.79%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 400 (44.94%) Data Engineer
2 170 (19.10%) Senior
3 132 (14.83%) Lead
4 108 (12.13%) Senior Data Engineer
5 78 (8.76%) Architect
6 69 (7.75%) Lead Data Engineer
7 62 (6.97%) Data Architect
8 51 (5.73%) Data Manager
9 47 (5.28%) Developer
10 43 (4.83%) Analyst
11 38 (4.27%) Azure Engineer
12 34 (3.82%) Consultant
13 32 (3.60%) Azure Data Engineer
14 27 (3.03%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
14 27 (3.03%) Engineering Manager
14 27 (3.03%) Principal Engineer
15 26 (2.92%) AWS Engineer
16 23 (2.58%) AWS Data Engineer
17 20 (2.25%) Software Engineer
18 19 (2.13%) Data Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 90 (10.11%) PySpark
2 73 (8.20%) Kafka
3 42 (4.72%) PyTorch
3 42 (4.72%) TensorFlow
4 41 (4.61%) Pandas
5 22 (2.47%) LangChain
5 22 (2.47%) RESTful
5 22 (2.47%) scikit-learn
6 21 (2.36%) REST
7 18 (2.02%) React
8 17 (1.91%) pytest
9 16 (1.80%) FastAPI
9 16 (1.80%) NumPy
10 14 (1.57%) Faiss
10 14 (1.57%) Flask
10 14 (1.57%) HTML
10 14 (1.57%) XML
11 13 (1.46%) Spring
12 12 (1.35%) CSS
12 12 (1.35%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 53 (5.96%) Cloud Native
2 45 (5.06%) Product Ownership
3 42 (4.72%) Legacy Systems
4 37 (4.16%) Distributed Systems
5 31 (3.48%) Management Information System
6 22 (2.47%) Data Structures
7 21 (2.36%) e-Learning
7 21 (2.36%) Low-Code
8 19 (2.13%) Greenfield Project
9 16 (1.80%) Data Centre
10 15 (1.69%) Hybrid Cloud
11 14 (1.57%) Analytical Mindset
11 14 (1.57%) Onboarding
12 13 (1.46%) AI Agents
13 11 (1.24%) Distributed Architecture
14 10 (1.12%) FMCG
15 9 (1.01%) Algorithms
15 9 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
16 7 (0.79%) Enterprise Software
16 7 (0.79%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 5 (0.56%) Linux
2 4 (0.45%) Unix
2 4 (0.45%) Windows
3 3 (0.34%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 428 (48.09%) Data Pipeline
2 418 (46.97%) Analytics
3 377 (42.36%) ETL
4 327 (36.74%) Data Modelling
5 259 (29.10%) Business Intelligence
6 248 (27.87%) AI
7 245 (27.53%) CI/CD
8 234 (26.29%) Agile
8 234 (26.29%) Data Governance
9 197 (22.13%) DevOps
10 175 (19.66%) Machine Learning
11 174 (19.55%) Mentoring
12 173 (19.44%) Data Integration
12 173 (19.44%) Data Science
13 160 (17.98%) Problem-Solving
14 157 (17.64%) Data Architecture
14 157 (17.64%) Decision-Making
15 116 (13.03%) Continuous Improvement
16 107 (12.02%) Visualisation
17 102 (11.46%) Data Management
Programming Languages
1 498 (55.96%) Python
2 483 (54.27%) SQL
3 80 (8.99%) Java
4 57 (6.40%) Scala
5 31 (3.48%) T-SQL
6 29 (3.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 23 (2.58%) R
8 21 (2.36%) PowerShell
9 20 (2.25%) Bash
10 17 (1.91%) JavaScript
11 16 (1.80%) C#
12 10 (1.12%) Bicep
13 9 (1.01%) Go
14 7 (0.79%) TypeScript
15 6 (0.67%) PHP
16 5 (0.56%) C++
17 3 (0.34%) Groovy
17 3 (0.34%) Ruby
18 2 (0.22%) PL/SQL
19 1 (0.11%) Korn
Qualifications
1 106 (11.91%) Degree
2 67 (7.53%) Security Cleared
3 45 (5.06%) SC Cleared
4 40 (4.49%) Computer Science Degree
5 28 (3.15%) Master's Degree
6 24 (2.70%) Microsoft Certification
7 19 (2.13%) DV Cleared
8 17 (1.91%) AWS Certification
9 16 (1.80%) Azure Certification
10 13 (1.46%) MCSE
11 12 (1.35%) CISSP
11 12 (1.35%) OCP
11 12 (1.35%) Oracle Certification
12 11 (1.24%) PhD
13 6 (0.67%) SnowPro
14 5 (0.56%) BPSS Clearance
14 5 (0.56%) CRISC
14 5 (0.56%) DBS Check
15 3 (0.34%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 2 (0.22%) MCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 215 (24.16%) Data Quality
2 65 (7.30%) Accessibility
3 54 (6.07%) GDPR
4 18 (2.02%) QA
5 11 (1.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 4 (0.45%) HIPAA
6 4 (0.45%) NIST
6 4 (0.45%) SLA
7 3 (0.34%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 2 (0.22%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 1 (0.11%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.11%) GAAP
9 1 (0.11%) GMP
9 1 (0.11%) GRC
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 83 (9.33%) Docker
2 9 (1.01%) Active Directory
2 9 (1.01%) HDFS
3 1 (0.11%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 69 (7.75%) Kubernetes
2 56 (6.29%) Terraform
3 8 (0.90%) Argo
4 6 (0.67%) Ansible
5 5 (0.56%) Control-M
5 5 (0.56%) Grafana
5 5 (0.56%) Prometheus
6 4 (0.45%) Kubeflow
6 4 (0.45%) Single Sign-On
7 3 (0.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 3 (0.34%) Microsoft Intune
7 3 (0.34%) SCCM
8 1 (0.11%) Istio
8 1 (0.11%) Progress Chef
8 1 (0.11%) Puppet
Vendors
1 239 (26.85%) Databricks
2 201 (22.58%) Microsoft
3 50 (5.62%) Oracle
4 32 (3.60%) Informatica
5 28 (3.15%) Google
5 28 (3.15%) OpenAI
5 28 (3.15%) Talend
6 26 (2.92%) Palantir
7 21 (2.36%) Foundry
8 17 (1.91%) SAP
9 14 (1.57%) Dell
10 10 (1.12%) NVIDIA
11 9 (1.01%) Automation Anywhere
11 9 (1.01%) UiPath
12 7 (0.79%) Salesforce
13 6 (0.67%) Cloudera
13 6 (0.67%) MuleSoft
14 5 (0.56%) Dataiku
14 5 (0.56%) Netezza
15 4 (0.45%) CrowdStrike