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

6 months to
9 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 133 152 148
Rank change year-on-year +19 -4 +69
Permanent jobs citing Data Engineering 1,597 1,026 1,298
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.35% 2.06% 1.79%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.85% 2.32% 2.18%
Number of salaries quoted 1,081 472 634
10th Percentile £45,456 £46,000 £43,225
25th Percentile £55,000 £55,000 £55,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £75,000 £70,000 £72,500
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% -3.45% -3.33%
75th Percentile £95,000 £93,750 £92,500
90th Percentile £105,000 £112,500 £110,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £65,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year +7.69% +8.33% -11.11%

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 86,265 44,296 59,619
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.17% 89.00% 82.18%
Number of salaries quoted 59,107 24,598 32,082
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,250 £32,500
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,250 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,000 £77,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £97,500
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 9 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 9 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 +14 1,456 £75,000 +7.14% 2,009
UK excluding London -19 780 £70,000 +7.69% 763
London +20 713 £85,000 - 1,337
Work from Home -11 460 £75,000 +6.38% 851
North of England -6 357 £75,000 +11.11% 261
North West -35 158 £75,000 +30.43% 150
South East -46 135 £63,750 -1.92% 156
North East +23 107 £65,903 +38.74% 38
Midlands -1 103 £77,500 +14.81% 88
Yorkshire -5 92 £75,000 +7.14% 73
South West -15 87 £63,750 +6.25% 67
West Midlands -10 70 £82,500 +37.50% 62
Scotland +10 44 £90,000 +5.88% 92
East Midlands -20 33 £77,500 +13.97% 25
East of England -35 29 £70,000 +33.33% 41
Wales -48 28 £63,500 +26.69% 17
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 43

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
1 167 (10.46%) Apache Spark
2 132 (8.27%) Apache
2 132 (8.27%) Apache Airflow
3 24 (1.50%) Jupyter
4 19 (1.19%) Palantir Foundry
5 12 (0.75%) Confluence
6 10 (0.63%) SAS
6 10 (0.63%) SharePoint
7 9 (0.56%) Oracle Workflow
8 4 (0.25%) Luigi
9 2 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 2 (0.13%) Apache Superset
9 2 (0.13%) Tornado
10 1 (0.063%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.063%) CMS
10 1 (0.063%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 22 (1.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (0.50%) MS Visio
2 8 (0.50%) Spreadsheet
3 3 (0.19%) Notion
4 2 (0.13%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.063%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.063%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.063%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 5 (0.31%) Dynamics CRM
1 5 (0.31%) IBM Planning Analytics
2 2 (0.13%) SAP Business One
3 1 (0.063%) Academy Revenues and Benefits
3 1 (0.063%) Actimize
3 1 (0.063%) FastStats
3 1 (0.063%) NetSuite
3 1 (0.063%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.063%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 616 (38.57%) Azure
2 468 (29.30%) AWS
3 281 (17.60%) Power Platform
4 269 (16.84%) GCP
5 181 (11.33%) Azure Data Factory
6 137 (8.58%) Snowflake
7 130 (8.14%) dbt
8 104 (6.51%) Azure DevOps
9 102 (6.39%) Amazon S3
10 93 (5.82%) Serverless
11 84 (5.26%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 70 (4.38%) GitHub
13 68 (4.26%) SaaS
14 66 (4.13%) AWS Lambda
15 55 (3.44%) Amazon EMR
16 48 (3.01%) Azure Databricks
17 46 (2.88%) Microsoft Purview
18 42 (2.63%) Amazon EC2
19 27 (1.69%) Azure Machine Learning
19 27 (1.69%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 17 (1.06%) Broadband
2 7 (0.44%) Internet
3 4 (0.25%) 5G
4 3 (0.19%) HTTP
5 2 (0.13%) Firewall
6 1 (0.063%) 4G
6 1 (0.063%) ATM
6 1 (0.063%) DAB
6 1 (0.063%) DNS
6 1 (0.063%) HTTPS
6 1 (0.063%) SMS
6 1 (0.063%) TCP/IP
6 1 (0.063%) tcpdump
6 1 (0.063%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 272 (17.03%) Power BI
2 271 (16.97%) Data Warehouse
3 190 (11.90%) Data Lake
4 117 (7.33%) Metadata
5 100 (6.26%) BigQuery
6 95 (5.95%) Amazon Redshift
7 90 (5.64%) Tableau
8 78 (4.88%) Big Data
9 69 (4.32%) SQL Server
10 63 (3.94%) NoSQL
11 61 (3.82%) Azure SQL Database
11 61 (3.82%) Semantic Layer
12 54 (3.38%) Delta Lake
13 53 (3.32%) Amazon Athena
13 53 (3.32%) Relational Database
14 51 (3.19%) Star Schema
15 50 (3.13%) PostgreSQL
16 44 (2.76%) Spark SQL
17 36 (2.25%) Data Vault
18 32 (2.00%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 134 (8.39%) Git
2 35 (2.19%) Jenkins
3 34 (2.13%) GitLab
4 22 (1.38%) JIRA
5 10 (0.63%) Claude Code
6 5 (0.31%) MLflow
6 5 (0.31%) Poetry
7 4 (0.25%) Octopus Deploy
7 4 (0.25%) Visual Studio Code
8 3 (0.19%) Bitbucket
9 2 (0.13%) ERwin
9 2 (0.13%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 2 (0.13%) VSS/SourceSafe
10 1 (0.063%) Cypress.io
10 1 (0.063%) kappa
10 1 (0.063%) RStudio
10 1 (0.063%) Selenium
10 1 (0.063%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.063%) Yeoman
General
1 436 (27.30%) Social Skills
2 398 (24.92%) Finance
3 265 (16.59%) Analytical Skills
4 154 (9.64%) Public Sector
5 110 (6.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 69 (4.32%) Banking
7 59 (3.69%) Retail
8 53 (3.32%) Marketing
9 48 (3.01%) Legal
10 37 (2.32%) Financial Institution
10 37 (2.32%) Influencing Skills
11 34 (2.13%) Law
12 26 (1.63%) Manufacturing
13 21 (1.31%) Advertising
14 18 (1.13%) Games
15 16 (1.00%) Presentation Skills
16 12 (0.75%) Documentation Skills
17 11 (0.69%) Organisational Skills
18 10 (0.63%) Aerospace
18 10 (0.63%) Police
Job Titles
1 644 (40.33%) Data Engineer
2 359 (22.48%) Senior
3 298 (18.66%) Lead
4 185 (11.58%) Senior Data Engineer
5 137 (8.58%) Architect
6 96 (6.01%) Lead Data Engineer
7 94 (5.89%) Data Architect
8 83 (5.20%) Data Manager
9 81 (5.07%) Analyst
10 79 (4.95%) Software Engineer
11 76 (4.76%) Developer
11 76 (4.76%) Principal Engineer
12 68 (4.26%) Consultant
13 47 (2.94%) Principal Data Engineer
14 45 (2.82%) Data Consultant
15 44 (2.76%) Data Scientist
15 44 (2.76%) Databricks Engineer
16 42 (2.63%) Python Engineer
17 41 (2.57%) Head of Engineering
18 37 (2.32%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 177 (11.08%) PySpark
2 133 (8.33%) Terraform
3 72 (4.51%) Kafka
4 44 (2.76%) .NET
5 36 (2.25%) REST
6 32 (2.00%) LangChain
6 32 (2.00%) Pandas
7 27 (1.69%) Node.js
8 25 (1.57%) SpaCy
9 23 (1.44%) LlamaIndex
10 22 (1.38%) scikit-learn
11 21 (1.31%) JSON
11 21 (1.31%) PyTorch
11 21 (1.31%) TensorFlow
12 18 (1.13%) React
13 17 (1.06%) RESTful
14 15 (0.94%) Apache NiFi
15 13 (0.81%) FastAPI
15 13 (0.81%) NumPy
16 11 (0.69%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 174 (10.90%) Cloud Native
2 69 (4.32%) Data Structures
3 53 (3.32%) Product Ownership
4 52 (3.26%) Distributed Systems
5 49 (3.07%) Onboarding
6 47 (2.94%) AI Agents
7 25 (1.57%) e-Learning
8 22 (1.38%) Self-Motivation
9 17 (1.06%) Distributed Computing
9 17 (1.06%) Hedge funds
9 17 (1.06%) Legacy Systems
10 16 (1.00%) Hybrid Cloud
11 15 (0.94%) Analytical Mindset
12 14 (0.88%) Distributed Architecture
12 14 (0.88%) Low-Code
13 13 (0.81%) Blog
13 13 (0.81%) Greenfield Project
14 12 (0.75%) Management Information System
15 11 (0.69%) IoT
15 11 (0.69%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 8 (0.50%) Windows
2 5 (0.31%) Linux
3 1 (0.063%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 760 (47.59%) Analytics
2 577 (36.13%) Data Pipeline
3 546 (34.19%) AI
4 518 (32.44%) Data Modelling
5 456 (28.55%) CI/CD
6 454 (28.43%) ETL
7 399 (24.98%) Business Intelligence
8 380 (23.79%) Decision-Making
9 358 (22.42%) Agile
10 342 (21.42%) Data Governance
11 324 (20.29%) Machine Learning
12 310 (19.41%) DevOps
13 299 (18.72%) Mentoring
14 288 (18.03%) Data Architecture
15 278 (17.41%) Problem-Solving
16 252 (15.78%) Data Science
17 232 (14.53%) Technical Leadership
18 211 (13.21%) Software Engineering
19 188 (11.77%) Continuous Improvement
20 173 (10.83%) Lakehouse
Programming Languages
1 813 (50.91%) Python
2 789 (49.41%) SQL
3 115 (7.20%) Java
4 73 (4.57%) Scala
5 58 (3.63%) JavaScript
6 52 (3.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 38 (2.38%) C#
7 38 (2.38%) TypeScript
8 34 (2.13%) C++
9 28 (1.75%) R
10 20 (1.25%) Bash
11 15 (0.94%) PowerShell
11 15 (0.94%) T-SQL
12 10 (0.63%) Go
13 9 (0.56%) Bicep
14 6 (0.38%) Groovy
15 5 (0.31%) PL/SQL
16 4 (0.25%) Rust
16 4 (0.25%) VBA
17 2 (0.13%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 199 (12.46%) Security Cleared
2 158 (9.89%) Degree
3 137 (8.58%) SC Cleared
4 57 (3.57%) Master's Degree
5 45 (2.82%) Azure Certification
6 44 (2.76%) DV Cleared
7 42 (2.63%) Computer Science Degree
8 33 (2.07%) AWS Certification
9 32 (2.00%) BPSS Clearance
10 31 (1.94%) PhD
11 25 (1.57%) DBS Check
12 17 (1.06%) Microsoft Certification
13 15 (0.94%) ACCA
13 15 (0.94%) CIMA
14 6 (0.38%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 6 (0.38%) Numerate Degree
15 5 (0.31%) CBAP
16 4 (0.25%) CCA
17 3 (0.19%) CISSP
17 3 (0.19%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 478 (29.93%) Data Quality
2 65 (4.07%) Accessibility
3 52 (3.26%) GDPR
4 40 (2.50%) QA
5 13 (0.81%) Actionable Recommendations
6 9 (0.56%) NCSC
7 5 (0.31%) GRC
8 4 (0.25%) SLA
9 3 (0.19%) EU AI Act
9 3 (0.19%) PCI DSS
9 3 (0.19%) PMO
9 3 (0.19%) PSD2
10 2 (0.13%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 1 (0.063%) Cyber Essentials
11 1 (0.063%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 1 (0.063%) IASME
11 1 (0.063%) ISO 9001
11 1 (0.063%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 1 (0.063%) NIST
System Software
1 107 (6.70%) Docker
2 11 (0.69%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.19%) NDS
3 3 (0.19%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.063%) Embedded Firmware
4 1 (0.063%) Firmware
4 1 (0.063%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 73 (4.57%) Kubernetes
2 12 (0.75%) Grafana
3 4 (0.25%) Kibana
3 4 (0.25%) Microsoft Intune
3 4 (0.25%) Prometheus
4 3 (0.19%) Ansible
4 3 (0.19%) Argo
4 3 (0.19%) SCCM
5 2 (0.13%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
5 2 (0.13%) Computer Incident Response Team
6 1 (0.063%) CASB
6 1 (0.063%) Packer
Vendors
1 326 (20.41%) Databricks
2 279 (17.47%) Microsoft
3 99 (6.20%) Google
4 37 (2.32%) Oracle
5 35 (2.19%) Salesforce
6 30 (1.88%) Palantir
7 27 (1.69%) Foundry
7 27 (1.69%) SAP
8 26 (1.63%) OpenAI
9 18 (1.13%) Informatica
10 12 (0.75%) Sage
11 9 (0.56%) YouTube
12 8 (0.50%) Alteryx
13 5 (0.31%) IBM
13 5 (0.31%) MicroStrategy
13 5 (0.31%) Talend
14 4 (0.25%) Cloudera
14 4 (0.25%) Cognos
15 3 (0.19%) CyberArk
15 3 (0.19%) ForgeRock