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

6 months to
15 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 124 146 155
Rank change year-on-year +22 +9 +52
Permanent jobs citing Data Engineering 1,644 1,066 1,305
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.44% 2.17% 1.68%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.98% 2.45% 2.08%
Number of salaries quoted 1,164 462 652
10th Percentile £46,217 £46,000 £44,738
25th Percentile £55,981 £55,000 £56,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £70,000 £71,746
Median % change year-on-year +14.29% -2.43% -4.34%
75th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £92,500
90th Percentile £115,000 £111,250 £105,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £72,500 £65,000 £62,500
% change year-on-year +11.54% +4.00% -3.85%

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 82,954 43,576 62,762
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 72.83% 88.69% 80.93%
Number of salaries quoted 57,665 24,452 36,140
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £32,000
25th Percentile £42,000 £36,250 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £80,000 £75,000 £76,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,250 £95,000
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 15 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 15 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 +16 1,523 £80,000 +14.29% 2,443
UK excluding London -17 811 £72,500 +11.54% 1,081
London +31 731 £90,000 +5.88% 1,592
Work from Home +15 518 £80,000 +13.48% 1,020
North of England +3 370 £75,000 +11.11% 310
North West -23 175 £80,000 +37.93% 191
South East -53 152 £70,000 +7.69% 235
Midlands +2 108 £75,000 +11.11% 130
Yorkshire -9 101 £75,000 +7.14% 80
North East +16 94 £66,805 +40.64% 40
South West -27 84 £62,500 +4.17% 117
West Midlands -4 74 £75,000 +25.00% 105
East of England -14 44 £70,000 +40.00% 81
East Midlands -13 34 £77,500 +13.97% 25
Scotland -12 30 £100,000 +37.93% 125
Wales -47 26 £63,500 +26.69% 20
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 63

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
1 172 (10.46%) Apache Spark
2 141 (8.58%) Apache Airflow
3 127 (7.73%) Apache
4 22 (1.34%) Palantir Foundry
5 20 (1.22%) Jupyter
6 14 (0.85%) SAS
7 10 (0.61%) SharePoint
8 9 (0.55%) Confluence
8 9 (0.55%) Oracle Workflow
9 4 (0.24%) Luigi
10 2 (0.12%) Apache Superset
10 2 (0.12%) Moodle
10 2 (0.12%) Tornado
11 1 (0.061%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 1 (0.061%) ArcGIS
11 1 (0.061%) CMS
11 1 (0.061%) GeoServer
Applications
1 19 (1.16%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (0.55%) Spreadsheet
3 3 (0.18%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.12%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.061%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.061%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 5 (0.30%) IBM Planning Analytics
2 4 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.12%) SAP Business One
4 1 (0.061%) Academy Revenues and Benefits
4 1 (0.061%) FastStats
4 1 (0.061%) Infor M3
4 1 (0.061%) NetSuite
4 1 (0.061%) Oracle Assets
4 1 (0.061%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.061%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.061%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 684 (41.61%) Azure
2 478 (29.08%) AWS
3 286 (17.40%) Power Platform
4 270 (16.42%) GCP
5 212 (12.90%) Snowflake
6 181 (11.01%) Azure Data Factory
7 150 (9.12%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 136 (8.27%) dbt
9 100 (6.08%) Serverless
10 97 (5.90%) Amazon S3
10 97 (5.90%) Azure DevOps
11 82 (4.99%) Azure Machine Learning
12 67 (4.08%) Azure AI
13 66 (4.01%) AWS Lambda
14 63 (3.83%) GitHub
14 63 (3.83%) SaaS
15 51 (3.10%) Amazon EMR
16 49 (2.98%) Azure Databricks
17 44 (2.68%) Microsoft Purview
18 41 (2.49%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 18 (1.09%) Broadband
2 7 (0.43%) Internet
3 4 (0.24%) 5G
4 2 (0.12%) Firewall
4 2 (0.12%) HTTP
4 2 (0.12%) MQTT
5 1 (0.061%) 4G
5 1 (0.061%) ATM
5 1 (0.061%) DAB
Database & Business Intelligence
1 296 (18.00%) Data Warehouse
2 276 (16.79%) Power BI
3 226 (13.75%) Data Lake
4 133 (8.09%) SQL Server
5 114 (6.93%) BigQuery
6 110 (6.69%) Amazon Redshift
7 109 (6.63%) Tableau
8 102 (6.20%) Metadata
9 86 (5.23%) Big Data
10 69 (4.20%) Azure SQL Database
11 64 (3.89%) NoSQL
12 59 (3.59%) Semantic Layer
13 57 (3.47%) Relational Database
14 56 (3.41%) Delta Lake
14 56 (3.41%) Star Schema
15 51 (3.10%) PostgreSQL
16 50 (3.04%) Amazon Athena
17 49 (2.98%) Spark SQL
18 43 (2.62%) Looker
19 39 (2.37%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 120 (7.30%) Git
2 35 (2.13%) Jenkins
3 21 (1.28%) GitLab
4 19 (1.16%) JIRA
4 19 (1.16%) MLflow
5 10 (0.61%) Claude Code
6 5 (0.30%) Poetry
7 4 (0.24%) Selenium
7 4 (0.24%) Visual Studio Code
8 3 (0.18%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.18%) Octopus Deploy
9 2 (0.12%) ERwin
9 2 (0.12%) RStudio
9 2 (0.12%) VSS/SourceSafe
10 1 (0.061%) kappa
10 1 (0.061%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 1 (0.061%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.061%) Yeoman
General
1 436 (26.52%) Finance
2 409 (24.88%) Social Skills
3 285 (17.34%) Analytical Skills
4 142 (8.64%) Public Sector
5 111 (6.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 71 (4.32%) Banking
7 60 (3.65%) Retail
8 54 (3.28%) Marketing
9 45 (2.74%) Legal
10 38 (2.31%) Influencing Skills
11 37 (2.25%) Law
12 31 (1.89%) Financial Institution
13 26 (1.58%) Manufacturing
14 22 (1.34%) Advertising
15 13 (0.79%) Games
15 13 (0.79%) Presentation Skills
16 12 (0.73%) Aerospace
16 12 (0.73%) Organisational Skills
17 10 (0.61%) Police
18 9 (0.55%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 641 (38.99%) Data Engineer
2 367 (22.32%) Senior
3 299 (18.19%) Lead
4 190 (11.56%) Senior Data Engineer
5 142 (8.64%) Architect
6 114 (6.93%) Data Manager
7 101 (6.14%) Data Architect
8 97 (5.90%) Lead Data Engineer
9 73 (4.44%) Principal Engineer
10 72 (4.38%) Engineering Manager
11 70 (4.26%) Analyst
12 68 (4.14%) Developer
13 60 (3.65%) Consultant
14 57 (3.47%) Databricks Engineer
15 56 (3.41%) Software Engineer
16 46 (2.80%) Databricks Data Engineer
16 46 (2.80%) Head of Engineering
17 45 (2.74%) Principal Data Engineer
18 43 (2.62%) Data Scientist
19 42 (2.55%) Data Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 179 (10.89%) PySpark
2 123 (7.48%) Terraform
3 91 (5.54%) Kafka
4 41 (2.49%) LangChain
5 39 (2.37%) .NET
6 35 (2.13%) PyTorch
6 35 (2.13%) REST
6 35 (2.13%) scikit-learn
6 35 (2.13%) TensorFlow
7 34 (2.07%) LlamaIndex
8 28 (1.70%) Pandas
9 26 (1.58%) Node.js
10 22 (1.34%) JSON
10 22 (1.34%) SpaCy
11 20 (1.22%) pgvector
12 16 (0.97%) Apache NiFi
13 14 (0.85%) RESTful
14 11 (0.67%) ARM Templates
14 11 (0.67%) React
14 11 (0.67%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 182 (11.07%) Cloud Native
2 66 (4.01%) Data Structures
3 62 (3.77%) Product Ownership
4 53 (3.22%) Distributed Systems
5 46 (2.80%) Onboarding
6 35 (2.13%) AI Agents
7 26 (1.58%) e-Learning
8 19 (1.16%) Analytical Mindset
8 19 (1.16%) Distributed Computing
8 19 (1.16%) Management Information System
8 19 (1.16%) Self-Motivation
9 18 (1.09%) Legacy Systems
9 18 (1.09%) Public Cloud
10 16 (0.97%) Clustering
10 16 (0.97%) Greenfield Project
10 16 (0.97%) Hedge funds
11 15 (0.91%) Hybrid Cloud
11 15 (0.91%) Low-Code
12 14 (0.85%) Distributed Architecture
12 14 (0.85%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 7 (0.43%) Windows
2 5 (0.30%) Linux
3 1 (0.061%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 776 (47.20%) Analytics
2 615 (37.41%) AI
3 578 (35.16%) Data Pipeline
4 505 (30.72%) Data Modelling
5 472 (28.71%) ETL
6 425 (25.85%) CI/CD
7 423 (25.73%) Business Intelligence
8 411 (25.00%) Data Governance
9 398 (24.21%) Decision-Making
10 397 (24.15%) Agile
11 391 (23.78%) Machine Learning
12 361 (21.96%) Data Architecture
13 313 (19.04%) Mentoring
14 305 (18.55%) DevOps
15 280 (17.03%) Data Science
16 266 (16.18%) Problem-Solving
17 242 (14.72%) Roadmaps
18 207 (12.59%) Lakehouse
19 205 (12.47%) Technical Leadership
20 184 (11.19%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 837 (50.91%) SQL
2 812 (49.39%) Python
3 125 (7.60%) Java
4 72 (4.38%) Scala
5 60 (3.65%) JavaScript
6 51 (3.10%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 34 (2.07%) C#
8 31 (1.89%) C++
9 29 (1.76%) TypeScript
10 28 (1.70%) R
11 19 (1.16%) Bash
12 15 (0.91%) T-SQL
13 13 (0.79%) PowerShell
14 11 (0.67%) Go
15 8 (0.49%) Bicep
16 7 (0.43%) Groovy
17 5 (0.30%) PL/SQL
17 5 (0.30%) VBA
18 4 (0.24%) Julia
18 4 (0.24%) Rust
Qualifications
1 172 (10.46%) Degree
2 170 (10.34%) Security Cleared
3 115 (7.00%) SC Cleared
4 55 (3.35%) Master's Degree
5 52 (3.16%) Computer Science Degree
6 45 (2.74%) Azure Certification
7 39 (2.37%) DV Cleared
8 31 (1.89%) DBS Check
9 28 (1.70%) BPSS Clearance
10 24 (1.46%) AWS Certification
10 24 (1.46%) PhD
11 15 (0.91%) ACCA
11 15 (0.91%) CIMA
12 12 (0.73%) Microsoft Certification
13 6 (0.36%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 6 (0.36%) Numerate Degree
14 4 (0.24%) CCA
15 3 (0.18%) CBAP
15 3 (0.18%) CISSP
15 3 (0.18%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 466 (28.35%) Data Quality
2 77 (4.68%) GDPR
3 58 (3.53%) Accessibility
4 33 (2.01%) QA
5 14 (0.85%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 11 (0.67%) GRC
7 9 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
8 7 (0.43%) NCSC
8 7 (0.43%) PERC
9 4 (0.24%) PMO
9 4 (0.24%) SLA
10 3 (0.18%) EU AI Act
10 3 (0.18%) PCI DSS
10 3 (0.18%) PSD2
11 2 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 2 (0.12%) Solvency II
12 1 (0.061%) NIST
System Software
1 94 (5.72%) Docker
2 56 (3.41%) Virtual Machines
3 7 (0.43%) Active Directory
4 3 (0.18%) NDS
4 3 (0.18%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.061%) Apache Flume
5 1 (0.061%) Embedded Firmware
5 1 (0.061%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 63 (3.83%) Kubernetes
2 13 (0.79%) Grafana
3 5 (0.30%) Prometheus
4 4 (0.24%) Argo
5 3 (0.18%) Ansible
5 3 (0.18%) Kibana
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
1 429 (26.09%) Databricks
2 310 (18.86%) Microsoft
3 90 (5.47%) Google
4 39 (2.37%) Oracle
5 33 (2.01%) Palantir
6 31 (1.89%) Informatica
7 30 (1.82%) Foundry
8 29 (1.76%) SAP
9 28 (1.70%) Dell
10 25 (1.52%) OpenAI
11 23 (1.40%) Salesforce
12 18 (1.09%) Cloudera
13 15 (0.91%) Teradata
14 12 (0.73%) Denodo
15 11 (0.67%) Sage
16 9 (0.55%) Alteryx
17 5 (0.30%) IBM
17 5 (0.30%) MicroStrategy
17 5 (0.30%) YouTube
18 4 (0.24%) Cognos