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

6 months to
12 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 156 162 181
Rank change year-on-year +6 +19 -65
Permanent jobs citing Data Engineering 1,003 831 1,401
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.36% 1.90% 1.67%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.75% 2.03% 1.91%
Number of salaries quoted 640 595 836
10th Percentile £46,250 £43,000 £42,439
25th Percentile £57,500 £56,839 £55,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £75,000 £80,000 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year -6.25% +14.29% -6.67%
75th Percentile £90,000 £105,000 £90,000
90th Percentile £107,750 £120,000 £111,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £65,000 £65,000 £65,066
% change year-on-year - -0.10% +4.10%

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 57,440 40,902 73,209
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 78.10% 93.61% 87.44%
Number of salaries quoted 34,676 22,163 55,834
10th Percentile £29,750 £32,500 £29,000
25th Percentile £39,750 £45,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -11.31%
75th Percentile £76,299 £80,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,500 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -8.90%

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 12 March 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 12 March 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 -2 880 £75,000 -6.25% 568
London +46 483 £80,000 -15.79% 296
UK excluding London -24 424 £65,000 - 380
Work from Home -10 357 £75,000 -9.09% 281
North of England -67 106 £71,000 +18.33% 109
South East -26 101 £67,500 -3.57% 138
Midlands +10 86 £65,000 +20.93% 45
West Midlands +33 66 £60,000 +33.33% 38
North West -20 51 £76,250 +17.31% 52
East of England +28 48 £59,450 -8.54% 29
Yorkshire -64 48 £70,500 +17.50% 48
Scotland +2 46 £85,000 +47.83% 18
South West -31 31 £50,000 -33.33% 39
East Midlands -37 18 £75,000 +22.45% 7
North East -25 7 £65,000 +13.04% 9
Wales -13 6 £65,000 -18.75% 7

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
1 151 (15.05%) Apache Airflow
2 115 (11.47%) Apache Spark
3 68 (6.78%) Apache
4 29 (2.89%) Palantir Foundry
5 19 (1.89%) SAS
6 13 (1.30%) SharePoint
7 12 (1.20%) Appian
8 5 (0.50%) Confluence
8 5 (0.50%) Moodle
9 4 (0.40%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.100%) Apache Solr
10 1 (0.100%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.100%) Camunda
10 1 (0.100%) GeoServer
10 1 (0.100%) WordPress
Applications
1 26 (2.59%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.50%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.100%) Adobe XD
4 1 (0.100%) Notion
4 1 (0.100%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 4 (0.40%) Markit EDM
2 2 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
2 2 (0.20%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.20%) SAP SD
2 2 (0.20%) Unit4 Business World
3 1 (0.100%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.100%) Primavera
3 1 (0.100%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 462 (46.06%) Azure
2 327 (32.60%) AWS
3 203 (20.24%) Power Platform
4 186 (18.54%) Snowflake
5 163 (16.25%) GCP
6 158 (15.75%) Azure Data Factory
7 104 (10.37%) dbt
8 86 (8.57%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 71 (7.08%) Amazon S3
10 49 (4.89%) Azure DevOps
11 45 (4.49%) GitHub
11 45 (4.49%) Serverless
12 36 (3.59%) SaaS
13 34 (3.39%) AWS Lambda
14 28 (2.79%) OpenShift
15 27 (2.69%) Azure Machine Learning
16 26 (2.59%) Amazon Kinesis
17 24 (2.39%) Power Automate
18 22 (2.19%) Azure AI
18 22 (2.19%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 9 (0.90%) Broadband
2 3 (0.30%) DHCP
2 3 (0.30%) DNS
2 3 (0.30%) HTTP
2 3 (0.30%) Kerberos
3 2 (0.20%) DAB
4 1 (0.100%) 4G
4 1 (0.100%) 5G
4 1 (0.100%) Radio Access Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 270 (26.92%) Data Warehouse
2 195 (19.44%) Power BI
3 166 (16.55%) Data Lake
4 97 (9.67%) SQL Server
5 87 (8.67%) Metadata
6 83 (8.28%) Tableau
7 63 (6.28%) Amazon Redshift
8 62 (6.18%) BigQuery
9 44 (4.39%) Delta Lake
10 42 (4.19%) Relational Database
11 39 (3.89%) Big Data
12 36 (3.59%) PostgreSQL
13 34 (3.39%) Looker
13 34 (3.39%) MySQL
14 32 (3.19%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 31 (3.09%) Apache Iceberg
16 29 (2.89%) Azure SQL Database
17 28 (2.79%) SQL Server Reporting Services
18 27 (2.69%) NoSQL
18 27 (2.69%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 72 (7.18%) Git
2 48 (4.79%) MLflow
3 13 (1.30%) Jenkins
4 12 (1.20%) IBM UrbanCode
5 11 (1.10%) JIRA
6 10 (1.00%) GitLab
7 4 (0.40%) Selenium
8 3 (0.30%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 2 (0.20%) Deequ
10 1 (0.100%) CMake
10 1 (0.100%) Cucumber
10 1 (0.100%) JMeter
10 1 (0.100%) Team Foundation Server
10 1 (0.100%) Zephyr
General
1 269 (26.82%) Finance
2 233 (23.23%) Social Skills
3 129 (12.86%) Analytical Skills
4 61 (6.08%) Banking
5 57 (5.68%) Public Sector
6 39 (3.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 39 (3.89%) Law
7 37 (3.69%) Retail
8 28 (2.79%) Legal
9 27 (2.69%) Influencing Skills
9 27 (2.69%) Marketing
10 22 (2.19%) Manufacturing
11 17 (1.69%) Financial Institution
12 15 (1.50%) Investment Banking
13 12 (1.20%) Advertising
14 11 (1.10%) Automotive
15 9 (0.90%) Front Office
16 7 (0.70%) Documentation Skills
16 7 (0.70%) Telecoms
17 6 (0.60%) Games
Job Titles
1 435 (43.37%) Data Engineer
2 187 (18.64%) Senior
3 160 (15.95%) Lead
4 115 (11.47%) Senior Data Engineer
5 105 (10.47%) Architect
6 87 (8.67%) Data Architect
7 82 (8.18%) Lead Data Engineer
8 55 (5.48%) Consultant
9 48 (4.79%) Data Manager
10 45 (4.49%) Developer
11 39 (3.89%) Analyst
12 35 (3.49%) AWS Engineer
13 33 (3.29%) Azure Engineer
14 30 (2.99%) Data Consultant
15 29 (2.89%) AWS Data Engineer
15 29 (2.89%) Principal Engineer
16 28 (2.79%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 28 (2.79%) Azure Data Engineer
17 25 (2.49%) Platform Engineer
18 22 (2.19%) Technical Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 106 (10.57%) PySpark
2 83 (8.28%) Kafka
3 58 (5.78%) PyTorch
3 58 (5.78%) TensorFlow
4 35 (3.49%) Pandas
5 32 (3.19%) scikit-learn
6 28 (2.79%) LangChain
7 25 (2.49%) REST
8 24 (2.39%) RESTful
9 21 (2.09%) Faiss
10 18 (1.79%) pytest
11 17 (1.69%) React
12 16 (1.60%) FastAPI
12 16 (1.60%) Spring
13 15 (1.50%) NumPy
13 15 (1.50%) OAuth
13 15 (1.50%) Spring Boot
14 14 (1.40%) Flask
15 13 (1.30%) HTML
15 13 (1.30%) Hugging Face
Miscellaneous
1 82 (8.18%) Cloud Native
2 42 (4.19%) Data Structures
3 38 (3.79%) Legacy Systems
4 34 (3.39%) Distributed Systems
5 29 (2.89%) Product Ownership
6 27 (2.69%) Low-Code
7 21 (2.09%) Greenfield Project
8 18 (1.79%) e-Learning
9 17 (1.69%) AI Agents
9 17 (1.69%) Management Information System
10 16 (1.60%) Self-Motivation
11 13 (1.30%) Data Centre
11 13 (1.30%) Public Cloud
12 12 (1.20%) Hybrid Cloud
12 12 (1.20%) Onboarding
13 10 (1.00%) Distributed Architecture
14 8 (0.80%) Analytical Mindset
14 8 (0.80%) Clustering
14 8 (0.80%) Data Protection Act
14 8 (0.80%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 8 (0.80%) Linux
2 5 (0.50%) Unix
3 4 (0.40%) Windows
4 3 (0.30%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.100%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 516 (51.45%) Analytics
2 458 (45.66%) Data Pipeline
3 394 (39.28%) Data Modelling
4 372 (37.09%) ETL
5 317 (31.61%) AI
6 285 (28.41%) CI/CD
7 278 (27.72%) Business Intelligence
8 274 (27.32%) Data Governance
9 235 (23.43%) Agile
10 204 (20.34%) Data Architecture
11 190 (18.94%) Data Science
12 186 (18.54%) Machine Learning
13 180 (17.95%) DevOps
14 177 (17.65%) Decision-Making
15 176 (17.55%) Problem-Solving
16 173 (17.25%) Data Integration
17 166 (16.55%) Mentoring
18 139 (13.86%) Continuous Improvement
19 120 (11.96%) Data Management
20 112 (11.17%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 546 (54.44%) Python
2 499 (49.75%) SQL
3 90 (8.97%) Java
4 49 (4.89%) Scala
5 32 (3.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 30 (2.99%) Bash
7 26 (2.59%) T-SQL
8 25 (2.49%) R
9 21 (2.09%) PowerShell
10 20 (1.99%) JavaScript
11 19 (1.89%) C#
12 14 (1.40%) Go
13 13 (1.30%) C++
14 12 (1.20%) TypeScript
15 8 (0.80%) Bicep
16 7 (0.70%) PHP
17 3 (0.30%) Ruby
17 3 (0.30%) VBA
18 1 (0.100%) ABAP
18 1 (0.100%) Korn
Qualifications
1 113 (11.27%) Degree
2 73 (7.28%) Security Cleared
3 50 (4.99%) Computer Science Degree
4 47 (4.69%) SC Cleared
5 32 (3.19%) Master's Degree
6 22 (2.19%) DV Cleared
7 21 (2.09%) Azure Certification
8 19 (1.89%) Microsoft Certification
9 18 (1.79%) AWS Certification
10 16 (1.60%) DBS Check
11 7 (0.70%) BPSS Clearance
11 7 (0.70%) MCSE
12 6 (0.60%) CISSP
12 6 (0.60%) OCP
12 6 (0.60%) Oracle Certification
13 5 (0.50%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 5 (0.50%) CRISC
13 5 (0.50%) PhD
14 2 (0.20%) SnowPro
15 1 (0.100%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 285 (28.41%) Data Quality
2 72 (7.18%) GDPR
3 63 (6.28%) Accessibility
4 23 (2.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 18 (1.79%) HIPAA
6 11 (1.10%) GRC
6 11 (1.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 11 (1.10%) QA
7 10 (1.00%) SLA
8 6 (0.60%) NIST
9 5 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.100%) Actionable Recommendations
10 1 (0.100%) GMP
10 1 (0.100%) IFRS
10 1 (0.100%) IFRS 17
10 1 (0.100%) NCSC
10 1 (0.100%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.100%) Solvency II
System Software
1 101 (10.07%) Docker
2 11 (1.10%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.30%) HDFS
4 1 (0.100%) Apache ZooKeeper
4 1 (0.100%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 79 (7.88%) Kubernetes
2 74 (7.38%) Terraform
3 12 (1.20%) Grafana
4 11 (1.10%) Prometheus
5 9 (0.90%) Ansible
5 9 (0.90%) Argo
5 9 (0.90%) Single Sign-On
6 7 (0.70%) Control-M
7 3 (0.30%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 3 (0.30%) Microsoft Intune
7 3 (0.30%) SCCM
8 1 (0.100%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 265 (26.42%) Databricks
2 197 (19.64%) Microsoft
3 49 (4.89%) Informatica
4 47 (4.69%) Oracle
5 46 (4.59%) Palantir
6 43 (4.29%) Google
7 37 (3.69%) OpenAI
8 35 (3.49%) Foundry
9 33 (3.29%) Dell
10 28 (2.79%) Talend
11 15 (1.50%) Red Hat
12 14 (1.40%) Cloudera
12 14 (1.40%) Salesforce
13 13 (1.30%) Automation Anywhere
13 13 (1.30%) Denodo
13 13 (1.30%) UiPath
14 12 (1.20%) Teradata
15 9 (0.90%) NVIDIA
15 9 (0.90%) SAP
16 8 (0.80%) MuleSoft