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

6 months to
2 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 135 154 152
Rank change year-on-year +19 -2 +55
Permanent jobs citing Data Engineering 1,633 1,035 1,310
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.38% 2.09% 1.75%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.89% 2.34% 2.14%
Number of salaries quoted 1,132 474 640
10th Percentile £46,217 £46,000 £42,500
25th Percentile £55,263 £55,000 £55,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £75,000 £70,000 £70,996
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% -1.40% -5.34%
75th Percentile £97,500 £93,750 £92,500
90th Percentile £110,000 £112,500 £110,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £65,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year +7.69% +8.33% -7.69%

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 86,437 44,202 61,341
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.18% 89.12% 81.82%
Number of salaries quoted 59,483 24,460 33,440
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £32,500
25th Percentile £41,500 £36,250 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £58,465
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -5.93% -2.56%
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,000 £77,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,250 £96,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year +15.79% -9.52% -2.78%

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 2 October 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 2 October 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 +17 1,497 £75,000 +7.14% 2,099
UK excluding London -15 806 £70,000 +7.69% 986
London +20 722 £85,000 - 1,322
Work from Home -6 493 £75,000 +6.38% 932
North of England +2 374 £75,000 +11.11% 294
North West -24 173 £77,500 +34.78% 169
South East -43 144 £64,000 -1.54% 241
North East +24 107 £66,805 +40.64% 48
Midlands -6 106 £75,000 +11.11% 123
Yorkshire -3 94 £75,000 +7.14% 80
South West -8 89 £62,500 +4.17% 107
West Midlands -9 73 £75,000 +25.00% 96
Scotland +3 38 £95,000 +31.03% 103
East Midlands -25 33 £77,500 +13.97% 27
East of England -38 29 £70,000 +40.00% 52
Wales -47 29 £63,500 +26.69% 26
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 44

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
1 169 (10.35%) Apache Spark
2 136 (8.33%) Apache Airflow
3 133 (8.14%) Apache
4 23 (1.41%) Jupyter
5 21 (1.29%) Palantir Foundry
6 15 (0.92%) Confluence
7 10 (0.61%) SAS
8 9 (0.55%) Oracle Workflow
8 9 (0.55%) SharePoint
9 4 (0.24%) Luigi
10 2 (0.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 2 (0.12%) Apache Superset
10 2 (0.12%) Tornado
11 1 (0.061%) ArcGIS
11 1 (0.061%) CMS
11 1 (0.061%) GeoServer
Applications
1 21 (1.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
3 8 (0.49%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.12%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.12%) Notion
5 1 (0.061%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.061%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.061%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 5 (0.31%) Dynamics CRM
1 5 (0.31%) IBM Planning Analytics
2 2 (0.12%) SAP Business One
3 1 (0.061%) Academy Revenues and Benefits
3 1 (0.061%) Actimize
3 1 (0.061%) FastStats
3 1 (0.061%) NetSuite
3 1 (0.061%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.061%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 642 (39.31%) Azure
2 477 (29.21%) AWS
3 281 (17.21%) Power Platform
4 275 (16.84%) GCP
5 180 (11.02%) Azure Data Factory
6 162 (9.92%) Snowflake
7 130 (7.96%) dbt
8 104 (6.37%) Amazon S3
8 104 (6.37%) Azure DevOps
8 104 (6.37%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 96 (5.88%) Serverless
10 68 (4.16%) AWS Lambda
11 67 (4.10%) GitHub
12 65 (3.98%) SaaS
13 53 (3.25%) Amazon EMR
14 49 (3.00%) Azure Databricks
14 49 (3.00%) Azure Machine Learning
15 47 (2.88%) Microsoft Purview
16 41 (2.51%) Amazon EC2
17 33 (2.02%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 17 (1.04%) Broadband
2 7 (0.43%) Internet
3 4 (0.24%) 5G
4 2 (0.12%) Firewall
4 2 (0.12%) HTTP
5 1 (0.061%) 4G
5 1 (0.061%) ATM
5 1 (0.061%) DAB
5 1 (0.061%) MQTT
5 1 (0.061%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 280 (17.15%) Data Warehouse
2 272 (16.66%) Power BI
3 194 (11.88%) Data Lake
4 112 (6.86%) Metadata
5 104 (6.37%) BigQuery
6 101 (6.18%) Amazon Redshift
7 94 (5.76%) SQL Server
8 92 (5.63%) Tableau
9 82 (5.02%) Big Data
10 66 (4.04%) Azure SQL Database
10 66 (4.04%) NoSQL
11 62 (3.80%) Semantic Layer
12 58 (3.55%) Relational Database
13 55 (3.37%) PostgreSQL
14 54 (3.31%) Delta Lake
15 53 (3.25%) Star Schema
16 52 (3.18%) Amazon Athena
17 44 (2.69%) Spark SQL
18 36 (2.20%) Data Vault
19 34 (2.08%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 137 (8.39%) Git
2 35 (2.14%) Jenkins
3 33 (2.02%) GitLab
4 26 (1.59%) JIRA
5 10 (0.61%) Claude Code
6 6 (0.37%) MLflow
7 5 (0.31%) Poetry
8 4 (0.24%) Octopus Deploy
8 4 (0.24%) Visual Studio Code
9 3 (0.18%) Bitbucket
10 2 (0.12%) ERwin
10 2 (0.12%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 2 (0.12%) VSS/SourceSafe
11 1 (0.061%) Cypress.io
11 1 (0.061%) kappa
11 1 (0.061%) RStudio
11 1 (0.061%) Selenium
11 1 (0.061%) Visual Studio
11 1 (0.061%) Yeoman
General
1 431 (26.39%) Social Skills
2 412 (25.23%) Finance
3 268 (16.41%) Analytical Skills
4 154 (9.43%) Public Sector
5 114 (6.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 72 (4.41%) Banking
7 55 (3.37%) Marketing
7 55 (3.37%) Retail
8 48 (2.94%) Legal
9 37 (2.27%) Law
10 36 (2.20%) Financial Institution
10 36 (2.20%) Influencing Skills
11 26 (1.59%) Manufacturing
12 22 (1.35%) Advertising
13 16 (0.98%) Games
14 15 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
15 12 (0.73%) Documentation Skills
16 11 (0.67%) Aerospace
16 11 (0.67%) Organisational Skills
16 11 (0.67%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 655 (40.11%) Data Engineer
2 367 (22.47%) Senior
3 297 (18.19%) Lead
4 191 (11.70%) Senior Data Engineer
5 139 (8.51%) Architect
6 97 (5.94%) Lead Data Engineer
7 96 (5.88%) Data Architect
8 95 (5.82%) Data Manager
9 83 (5.08%) Analyst
10 75 (4.59%) Principal Engineer
10 75 (4.59%) Software Engineer
11 73 (4.47%) Developer
12 64 (3.92%) Consultant
13 49 (3.00%) Engineering Manager
14 48 (2.94%) Databricks Engineer
15 47 (2.88%) Principal Data Engineer
16 46 (2.82%) Head of Engineering
17 44 (2.69%) Python Engineer
18 42 (2.57%) Data Consultant
18 42 (2.57%) Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 181 (11.08%) PySpark
2 139 (8.51%) Terraform
3 78 (4.78%) Kafka
4 44 (2.69%) .NET
5 38 (2.33%) REST
6 33 (2.02%) Pandas
7 32 (1.96%) LangChain
8 27 (1.65%) Node.js
9 25 (1.53%) SpaCy
10 23 (1.41%) JSON
10 23 (1.41%) LlamaIndex
11 22 (1.35%) scikit-learn
12 21 (1.29%) PyTorch
12 21 (1.29%) TensorFlow
13 17 (1.04%) React
13 17 (1.04%) RESTful
14 15 (0.92%) Apache NiFi
15 13 (0.80%) FastAPI
16 12 (0.73%) NumPy
16 12 (0.73%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 177 (10.84%) Cloud Native
2 66 (4.04%) Data Structures
3 57 (3.49%) Product Ownership
4 56 (3.43%) Distributed Systems
5 49 (3.00%) Onboarding
6 41 (2.51%) AI Agents
7 25 (1.53%) e-Learning
8 21 (1.29%) Self-Motivation
9 17 (1.04%) Analytical Mindset
9 17 (1.04%) Distributed Computing
9 17 (1.04%) Hedge funds
9 17 (1.04%) Legacy Systems
10 16 (0.98%) Hybrid Cloud
11 15 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
12 14 (0.86%) Distributed Architecture
12 14 (0.86%) Low-Code
12 14 (0.86%) Management Information System
13 13 (0.80%) IoT
14 12 (0.73%) Blog
15 11 (0.67%) Sports Betting
Operating Systems
1 7 (0.43%) Windows
2 4 (0.24%) Linux
3 1 (0.061%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 775 (47.46%) Analytics
2 582 (35.64%) Data Pipeline
3 568 (34.78%) AI
4 514 (31.48%) Data Modelling
5 465 (28.48%) ETL
6 456 (27.92%) CI/CD
7 405 (24.80%) Business Intelligence
8 387 (23.70%) Decision-Making
9 381 (23.33%) Agile
10 366 (22.41%) Data Governance
11 345 (21.13%) Machine Learning
12 318 (19.47%) Data Architecture
13 314 (19.23%) DevOps
14 305 (18.68%) Mentoring
15 282 (17.27%) Problem-Solving
16 255 (15.62%) Data Science
17 222 (13.59%) Technical Leadership
18 201 (12.31%) Software Engineering
19 200 (12.25%) Roadmaps
20 192 (11.76%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 820 (50.21%) Python
2 815 (49.91%) SQL
3 120 (7.35%) Java
4 74 (4.53%) Scala
5 59 (3.61%) JavaScript
6 51 (3.12%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 38 (2.33%) TypeScript
8 37 (2.27%) C#
9 34 (2.08%) C++
10 26 (1.59%) R
11 20 (1.22%) Bash
12 15 (0.92%) PowerShell
13 13 (0.80%) T-SQL
14 10 (0.61%) Go
15 9 (0.55%) Bicep
16 6 (0.37%) Groovy
17 5 (0.31%) PL/SQL
18 4 (0.24%) Rust
18 4 (0.24%) VBA
19 2 (0.12%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 191 (11.70%) Security Cleared
2 159 (9.74%) Degree
3 132 (8.08%) SC Cleared
4 57 (3.49%) Master's Degree
5 47 (2.88%) Azure Certification
6 45 (2.76%) Computer Science Degree
7 43 (2.63%) DV Cleared
8 32 (1.96%) AWS Certification
8 32 (1.96%) BPSS Clearance
9 30 (1.84%) PhD
10 26 (1.59%) DBS Check
11 16 (0.98%) Microsoft Certification
12 15 (0.92%) ACCA
12 15 (0.92%) CIMA
13 6 (0.37%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 6 (0.37%) CBAP
13 6 (0.37%) Numerate Degree
14 4 (0.24%) CCA
15 3 (0.18%) CISSP
15 3 (0.18%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 480 (29.39%) Data Quality
2 61 (3.74%) Accessibility
3 55 (3.37%) GDPR
4 41 (2.51%) QA
5 11 (0.67%) Actionable Recommendations
6 9 (0.55%) NCSC
7 7 (0.43%) GRC
8 3 (0.18%) EU AI Act
8 3 (0.18%) PCI DSS
8 3 (0.18%) PMO
8 3 (0.18%) PSD2
8 3 (0.18%) SLA
9 2 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 42001
9 2 (0.12%) PERC
10 1 (0.061%) Cyber Essentials
10 1 (0.061%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 1 (0.061%) IASME
10 1 (0.061%) ISO 9001
10 1 (0.061%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 1 (0.061%) NIST
System Software
1 109 (6.67%) Docker
2 22 (1.35%) Virtual Machines
3 9 (0.55%) Active Directory
4 3 (0.18%) NDS
4 3 (0.18%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.061%) Embedded Firmware
5 1 (0.061%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 74 (4.53%) Kubernetes
2 13 (0.80%) Grafana
3 5 (0.31%) Prometheus
4 4 (0.24%) Kibana
5 3 (0.18%) Ansible
5 3 (0.18%) Argo
5 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Intune
5 3 (0.18%) SCCM
6 2 (0.12%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
6 2 (0.12%) Computer Incident Response Team
7 1 (0.061%) CASB
Vendors
1 357 (21.86%) Databricks
2 298 (18.25%) Microsoft
3 100 (6.12%) Google
4 38 (2.33%) Oracle
5 33 (2.02%) Salesforce
6 32 (1.96%) Palantir
7 29 (1.78%) Foundry
8 27 (1.65%) SAP
9 25 (1.53%) OpenAI
10 18 (1.10%) Informatica
11 11 (0.67%) Sage
12 9 (0.55%) Alteryx
13 8 (0.49%) YouTube
14 5 (0.31%) IBM
14 5 (0.31%) MicroStrategy
14 5 (0.31%) Talend
15 4 (0.24%) Cloudera
15 4 (0.24%) Cognos
16 3 (0.18%) CyberArk
16 3 (0.18%) ForgeRock