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

6 months to
30 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 131 152 151
Rank change year-on-year +21 -1 +54
Permanent jobs citing Data Engineering 1,630 1,029 1,303
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 1,135 469 633
10th Percentile £46,217 £46,000 £42,500
25th Percentile £55,740 £55,000 £55,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £75,000 £70,000 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% - -6.67%
75th Percentile £97,500 £95,000 £92,500
90th Percentile £110,000 £112,500 £107,000
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 86,307 43,936 60,951
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.14% 89.11% 81.72%
Number of salaries quoted 59,386 24,309 33,164
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £32,500
25th Percentile £41,750 £36,250 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £58,033
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -5.23% -3.28%
75th Percentile £79,641 £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 30 September 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 30 September 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 +19 1,498 £77,500 +10.71% 1,645
UK excluding London -21 804 £70,000 +7.69% 724
London +18 723 £85,000 - 1,018
Work from Home -1 494 £75,000 +6.38% 732
North of England -3 373 £75,000 +11.11% 233
North West -23 174 £77,500 +34.78% 134
South East -37 144 £64,000 -1.54% 143
Midlands -10 107 £75,000 +11.11% 96
North East +22 105 £66,805 +40.64% 38
Yorkshire -10 94 £75,000 +7.14% 62
South West -14 89 £62,500 +4.17% 76
West Midlands -12 73 £75,000 +25.00% 73
Scotland +12 37 £95,000 +31.03% 81
East Midlands -24 34 £77,500 +13.97% 23
East of England -32 29 £70,000 +40.00% 39
Wales -47 28 £63,500 +26.69% 14
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 45

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
1 168 (10.31%) Apache Spark
2 133 (8.16%) Apache Airflow
3 131 (8.04%) Apache
4 22 (1.35%) Jupyter
4 22 (1.35%) Palantir Foundry
5 14 (0.86%) Confluence
6 10 (0.61%) SAS
7 9 (0.55%) Oracle Workflow
7 9 (0.55%) SharePoint
8 4 (0.25%) Luigi
9 2 (0.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 2 (0.12%) Apache Superset
9 2 (0.12%) Tornado
10 1 (0.061%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.061%) CMS
10 1 (0.061%) GeoServer
Applications
1 20 (1.23%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (0.55%) 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
3 1 (0.061%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 647 (39.69%) Azure
2 472 (28.96%) AWS
3 277 (16.99%) Power Platform
4 271 (16.63%) GCP
5 185 (11.35%) Azure Data Factory
6 160 (9.82%) Snowflake
7 129 (7.91%) dbt
8 106 (6.50%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 104 (6.38%) Amazon S3
10 103 (6.32%) Azure DevOps
11 96 (5.89%) Serverless
12 68 (4.17%) AWS Lambda
13 65 (3.99%) GitHub
14 64 (3.93%) SaaS
15 53 (3.25%) Amazon EMR
16 49 (3.01%) Azure Databricks
16 49 (3.01%) Azure Machine Learning
17 48 (2.94%) Microsoft Purview
18 41 (2.52%) Amazon EC2
19 33 (2.02%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 17 (1.04%) Broadband
2 7 (0.43%) Internet
3 4 (0.25%) 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 (17.18%) Data Warehouse
2 268 (16.44%) Power BI
3 193 (11.84%) Data Lake
4 112 (6.87%) Metadata
5 102 (6.26%) BigQuery
6 101 (6.20%) Amazon Redshift
7 93 (5.71%) SQL Server
8 90 (5.52%) Tableau
9 82 (5.03%) Big Data
10 67 (4.11%) Azure SQL Database
11 64 (3.93%) NoSQL
12 61 (3.74%) Semantic Layer
13 58 (3.56%) Relational Database
14 55 (3.37%) Delta Lake
15 54 (3.31%) Star Schema
16 52 (3.19%) Amazon Athena
16 52 (3.19%) PostgreSQL
17 46 (2.82%) Spark SQL
18 35 (2.15%) Data Vault
19 34 (2.09%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 136 (8.34%) Git
2 36 (2.21%) Jenkins
3 33 (2.02%) GitLab
4 25 (1.53%) JIRA
5 10 (0.61%) 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 (0.18%) Bitbucket
9 2 (0.12%) ERwin
9 2 (0.12%) VSS/SourceSafe
10 1 (0.061%) kappa
10 1 (0.061%) RStudio
10 1 (0.061%) Selenium
10 1 (0.061%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 1 (0.061%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.061%) Yeoman
General
1 427 (26.20%) Social Skills
2 415 (25.46%) Finance
3 270 (16.56%) Analytical Skills
4 149 (9.14%) Public Sector
5 114 (6.99%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 71 (4.36%) Banking
7 57 (3.50%) Retail
8 55 (3.37%) Marketing
9 48 (2.94%) Legal
10 38 (2.33%) Law
11 37 (2.27%) Influencing Skills
12 35 (2.15%) Financial Institution
13 24 (1.47%) Manufacturing
14 22 (1.35%) Advertising
15 14 (0.86%) Games
15 14 (0.86%) Presentation Skills
16 12 (0.74%) Documentation Skills
16 12 (0.74%) Organisational Skills
17 11 (0.67%) Aerospace
18 10 (0.61%) Police
Job Titles
1 656 (40.25%) Data Engineer
2 367 (22.52%) Senior
3 297 (18.22%) Lead
4 194 (11.90%) Senior Data Engineer
5 139 (8.53%) Architect
6 97 (5.95%) Data Architect
6 97 (5.95%) Lead Data Engineer
7 94 (5.77%) Data Manager
8 82 (5.03%) Analyst
9 74 (4.54%) Principal Engineer
10 72 (4.42%) Developer
10 72 (4.42%) Software Engineer
11 63 (3.87%) Consultant
12 51 (3.13%) Databricks Engineer
13 48 (2.94%) Engineering Manager
14 46 (2.82%) Head of Engineering
14 46 (2.82%) Principal Data Engineer
15 44 (2.70%) Python Engineer
16 42 (2.58%) Data Consultant
16 42 (2.58%) Databricks Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 182 (11.17%) PySpark
2 138 (8.47%) Terraform
3 78 (4.79%) Kafka
4 43 (2.64%) .NET
5 38 (2.33%) REST
6 32 (1.96%) LangChain
6 32 (1.96%) Pandas
7 27 (1.66%) Node.js
8 25 (1.53%) SpaCy
9 24 (1.47%) LlamaIndex
10 22 (1.35%) JSON
10 22 (1.35%) PyTorch
10 22 (1.35%) scikit-learn
10 22 (1.35%) TensorFlow
11 15 (0.92%) Apache NiFi
11 15 (0.92%) React
11 15 (0.92%) RESTful
12 13 (0.80%) FastAPI
13 12 (0.74%) NumPy
13 12 (0.74%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 177 (10.86%) Cloud Native
2 66 (4.05%) Data Structures
3 57 (3.50%) Product Ownership
4 55 (3.37%) Distributed Systems
5 49 (3.01%) Onboarding
6 38 (2.33%) AI Agents
7 25 (1.53%) e-Learning
8 21 (1.29%) Self-Motivation
9 18 (1.10%) Analytical Mindset
10 17 (1.04%) Distributed Computing
10 17 (1.04%) Hedge funds
10 17 (1.04%) Legacy Systems
11 16 (0.98%) Hybrid Cloud
12 15 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
12 15 (0.92%) Management Information System
13 14 (0.86%) Distributed Architecture
14 13 (0.80%) IoT
14 13 (0.80%) Low-Code
15 11 (0.67%) Blog
15 11 (0.67%) Sports Betting
Operating Systems
1 7 (0.43%) Windows
2 4 (0.25%) Linux
3 1 (0.061%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 774 (47.48%) Analytics
2 577 (35.40%) Data Pipeline
3 568 (34.85%) AI
4 512 (31.41%) Data Modelling
5 466 (28.59%) ETL
6 456 (27.98%) CI/CD
7 402 (24.66%) Business Intelligence
8 387 (23.74%) Decision-Making
9 377 (23.13%) Agile
10 367 (22.52%) Data Governance
11 345 (21.17%) Machine Learning
12 325 (19.94%) Data Architecture
13 314 (19.26%) DevOps
14 306 (18.77%) Mentoring
15 284 (17.42%) Problem-Solving
16 256 (15.71%) Data Science
17 218 (13.37%) Technical Leadership
18 203 (12.45%) Roadmaps
19 197 (12.09%) Software Engineering
20 191 (11.72%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 817 (50.12%) Python
2 813 (49.88%) SQL
3 121 (7.42%) Java
4 74 (4.54%) Scala
5 59 (3.62%) JavaScript
6 52 (3.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 36 (2.21%) C#
7 36 (2.21%) TypeScript
8 34 (2.09%) C++
9 26 (1.60%) R
10 19 (1.17%) Bash
11 15 (0.92%) PowerShell
12 14 (0.86%) T-SQL
13 10 (0.61%) Go
14 9 (0.55%) Bicep
15 6 (0.37%) Groovy
16 5 (0.31%) PL/SQL
16 5 (0.31%) VBA
17 4 (0.25%) Rust
18 2 (0.12%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 187 (11.47%) Security Cleared
2 159 (9.75%) Degree
3 129 (7.91%) SC Cleared
4 57 (3.50%) Master's Degree
5 46 (2.82%) Azure Certification
5 46 (2.82%) Computer Science Degree
6 42 (2.58%) DV Cleared
7 32 (1.96%) BPSS Clearance
8 31 (1.90%) AWS Certification
9 29 (1.78%) PhD
10 24 (1.47%) 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 (0.25%) CCA
15 3 (0.18%) CISSP
15 3 (0.18%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 479 (29.39%) Data Quality
2 61 (3.74%) Accessibility
3 58 (3.56%) GDPR
4 37 (2.27%) QA
5 10 (0.61%) Actionable Recommendations
6 9 (0.55%) NCSC
7 8 (0.49%) GRC
8 3 (0.18%) EU AI Act
8 3 (0.18%) PCI DSS
8 3 (0.18%) PERC
8 3 (0.18%) PMO
8 3 (0.18%) PSD2
8 3 (0.18%) SLA
9 2 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 42001
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
1 104 (6.38%) 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 73 (4.48%) Kubernetes
2 13 (0.80%) Grafana
3 5 (0.31%) Prometheus
4 4 (0.25%) Argo
4 4 (0.25%) Kibana
5 3 (0.18%) Ansible
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
1 364 (22.33%) Databricks
2 298 (18.28%) Microsoft
3 98 (6.01%) Google
4 37 (2.27%) Oracle
5 33 (2.02%) Palantir
5 33 (2.02%) Salesforce
6 30 (1.84%) Foundry
7 28 (1.72%) SAP
8 25 (1.53%) OpenAI
9 18 (1.10%) Informatica
10 11 (0.67%) Sage
11 9 (0.55%) Alteryx
12 7 (0.43%) YouTube
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 (0.18%) CyberArk
15 3 (0.18%) ForgeRock