Senior Data Engineer Job Trends

Senior Data Engineer
UK

The median Senior Data Engineer salary in the UK is £75,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 5 March 2026.

The table below compares current salary benchmarking and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 416 475 512
Rank change year-on-year +59 +37 +1
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Data Engineer 277 195 323
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.39% 0.43% 0.41%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.42% 0.47% 0.43%
Number of salaries quoted 215 133 231
10th Percentile £60,000 £53,000 £28,250
25th Percentile £64,875 £62,500 £60,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £75,000 £70,000 £72,500
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% -3.45% -9.38%
75th Percentile £85,000 £80,000 £85,000
90th Percentile £90,000 £90,000 £100,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £65,000 £63,500
% change year-on-year +7.69% +2.36% -9.29%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of permanent jobs in our overall sample.

Permanent vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 65,777 41,647 74,342
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 91.60% 91.11% 94.66%
Number of salaries quoted 41,594 22,804 57,442
10th Percentile £29,750 £32,500 £28,500
25th Percentile £38,250 £45,000 £39,073
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -8.33%
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £72,624
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -5.66%

Senior Data Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings featuring 'Senior Data Engineer' in the job title relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

Senior Data Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

Senior Data Engineer
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for Senior Data Engineer job vacancies in the UK.

Salary distribution trend for Senior Data Engineer job vacancies in the UK

Senior Data Engineer
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Senior Data Engineer over the 6 months to 5 March 2026.

Salary histogram for Senior Data Engineer in the UK

Senior Data Engineer
Top 15 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Senior Data Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 5 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 +60 258 £72,500 +3.57% 102
UK excluding London +14 137 £70,000 +7.69% 73
London +84 122 £83,750 +4.69% 44
Work from Home +76 121 £70,000 -3.45% 46
North of England +5 54 £70,000 +12.00% 29
Midlands +19 40 £65,000 - 19
West Midlands +27 31 £65,000 - 11
North West +11 31 £70,000 +19.15% 18
Yorkshire -26 21 £65,000 +4.00% 8
South East -59 15 £68,750 -1.79% 14
East of England +14 11 £82,500 +3.13% 1
South West -16 9 £80,000 +45.45% 3
East Midlands -27 9 £65,000 - 7
Scotland -10 8 £80,000 +14.29% 7
North East -16 2 £70,000 +12.00% 3

Senior Data Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 5 March 2026, Senior Data Engineer job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all permanent job ads featuring Senior Data Engineer in the job title.

1 158 (57.04%) SQL
2 141 (50.90%) Python
3 122 (44.04%) Data Engineering
4 113 (40.79%) Data Pipeline
5 105 (37.91%) ETL
6 103 (37.18%) Azure
7 101 (36.46%) Data Modelling
8 90 (32.49%) Databricks
9 84 (30.32%) Agile
10 83 (29.96%) Analytics
11 68 (24.55%) AWS
12 66 (23.83%) Data Warehouse
13 56 (20.22%) CI/CD
14 52 (18.77%) Decision-Making
15 51 (18.41%) Data Science
15 51 (18.41%) DevOps
16 49 (17.69%) Business Intelligence
16 49 (17.69%) Mentoring
17 48 (17.33%) Data Quality
18 46 (16.61%) Data Lake
18 46 (16.61%) Microsoft
19 43 (15.52%) AI
19 43 (15.52%) Azure Data Factory
20 42 (15.16%) Data Governance
20 42 (15.16%) Power BI
20 42 (15.16%) Power Platform
21 36 (13.00%) dbt
22 32 (11.55%) Apache Spark
23 31 (11.19%) Azure Synapse Analytics
24 29 (10.47%) Problem-Solving

Senior Data Engineer Skill Set
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 32 (11.55%) Apache Spark
2 27 (9.75%) Apache Airflow
3 16 (5.78%) Apache
4 4 (1.44%) Confluence
5 1 (0.36%) Apache Solr
Applications
1 5 (1.81%) Microsoft Excel
1 5 (1.81%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.36%) Spreadsheet
Cloud Services
1 103 (37.18%) Azure
2 68 (24.55%) AWS
3 43 (15.52%) Azure Data Factory
4 42 (15.16%) Power Platform
5 36 (13.00%) dbt
6 31 (11.19%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 28 (10.11%) Snowflake
8 26 (9.39%) GCP
9 23 (8.30%) Azure DevOps
10 21 (7.58%) SaaS
11 17 (6.14%) Serverless
12 15 (5.42%) Amazon S3
12 15 (5.42%) AWS Lambda
13 12 (4.33%) AWS Step Functions
13 12 (4.33%) Fivetran
14 9 (3.25%) Collibra
14 9 (3.25%) Dagster
15 6 (2.17%) Cloud Composer
16 5 (1.81%) Amazon EC2
16 5 (1.81%) Azure Storage
Communications & Networking
1 9 (3.25%) Broadband
2 4 (1.44%) Kerberos
3 1 (0.36%) LTE
3 1 (0.36%) Software-Defined Radio
3 1 (0.36%) Wi-Fi
3 1 (0.36%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 66 (23.83%) Data Warehouse
2 46 (16.61%) Data Lake
3 42 (15.16%) Power BI
4 29 (10.47%) SQL Server
5 24 (8.66%) Amazon Redshift
6 22 (7.94%) Metadata
7 17 (6.14%) Big Data
8 16 (5.78%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 13 (4.69%) Azure SQL Database
9 13 (4.69%) BigQuery
10 11 (3.97%) Hadoop
10 11 (3.97%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 10 (3.61%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 9 (3.25%) Apache Hive
12 9 (3.25%) MySQL
13 8 (2.89%) Amazon RDS
13 8 (2.89%) Delta Lake
13 8 (2.89%) PostgreSQL
14 7 (2.53%) Relational Database
15 6 (2.17%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 11 (3.97%) Git
2 4 (1.44%) JIRA
3 2 (0.72%) Jenkins
3 2 (0.72%) TeamCity
4 1 (0.36%) MLflow
General
1 69 (24.91%) Finance
2 59 (21.30%) Social Skills
3 25 (9.03%) Analytical Skills
4 17 (6.14%) Law
5 14 (5.05%) Public Sector
6 7 (2.53%) Automotive
6 7 (2.53%) Influencing Skills
6 7 (2.53%) Marketing
7 6 (2.17%) Documentation Skills
7 6 (2.17%) Financial Institution
7 6 (2.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 6 (2.17%) Retail
8 4 (1.44%) Banking
8 4 (1.44%) Legal
8 4 (1.44%) Manufacturing
8 4 (1.44%) Tech for Good
9 3 (1.08%) Digital Health
9 3 (1.08%) Organisational Skills
10 2 (0.72%) Publishing
11 1 (0.36%) Games
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (7.58%) PySpark
2 16 (5.78%) Kafka
3 5 (1.81%) boto
3 5 (1.81%) Spark Streaming
4 4 (1.44%) LDAP
4 4 (1.44%) OAuth
4 4 (1.44%) OAuth2
5 3 (1.08%) .NET
5 3 (1.08%) Pandas
6 2 (0.72%) Akka
6 2 (0.72%) Celery
6 2 (0.72%) JDBC
6 2 (0.72%) ODBC
6 2 (0.72%) PyTorch
6 2 (0.72%) RabbitMQ
6 2 (0.72%) Snowpark
7 1 (0.36%) PostGIS
7 1 (0.36%) Spring Boot
7 1 (0.36%) TensorFlow
7 1 (0.36%) ZeroMQ
Miscellaneous
1 11 (3.97%) Data Structures
1 11 (3.97%) Greenfield Project
2 9 (3.25%) Distributed Systems
3 7 (2.53%) Social Media
4 6 (2.17%) Anti-Piracy
5 5 (1.81%) e-Learning
5 5 (1.81%) Product Ownership
6 4 (1.44%) Legacy Systems
6 4 (1.44%) Linux Command Line
7 3 (1.08%) Analytical Mindset
7 3 (1.08%) Cloud Native
7 3 (1.08%) Onboarding
7 3 (1.08%) Video\Live Streaming
7 3 (1.08%) Virtual Team
8 2 (0.72%) Client/Server
8 2 (0.72%) Distributed Architecture
8 2 (0.72%) FMCG
8 2 (0.72%) Over-the-Top Content
8 2 (0.72%) Reference Data
9 1 (0.36%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 6 (2.17%) Linux
2 4 (1.44%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 122 (44.04%) Data Engineering
2 113 (40.79%) Data Pipeline
3 105 (37.91%) ETL
4 101 (36.46%) Data Modelling
5 84 (30.32%) Agile
6 83 (29.96%) Analytics
7 56 (20.22%) CI/CD
8 52 (18.77%) Decision-Making
9 51 (18.41%) Data Science
9 51 (18.41%) DevOps
10 49 (17.69%) Business Intelligence
10 49 (17.69%) Mentoring
11 43 (15.52%) AI
12 42 (15.16%) Data Governance
13 29 (10.47%) Problem-Solving
14 25 (9.03%) Data Integration
15 24 (8.66%) Data Architecture
15 24 (8.66%) Machine Learning
16 22 (7.94%) Visualisation
17 20 (7.22%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 158 (57.04%) SQL
2 141 (50.90%) Python
3 22 (7.94%) Scala
4 21 (7.58%) Java
5 13 (4.69%) T-SQL
6 11 (3.97%) C#
7 7 (2.53%) C++
8 4 (1.44%) PowerShell
9 3 (1.08%) Bicep
9 3 (1.08%) R
10 1 (0.36%) Bash
10 1 (0.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 1 (0.36%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 15 (5.42%) Security Cleared
2 14 (5.05%) Degree
3 9 (3.25%) SC Cleared
4 7 (2.53%) Computer Science Degree
5 3 (1.08%) Azure Certification
5 3 (1.08%) DV Cleared
6 2 (0.72%) DBS Check
7 1 (0.36%) AWS Certification
7 1 (0.36%) Master's Degree
7 1 (0.36%) Microsoft Certification
7 1 (0.36%) PhD
7 1 (0.36%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 48 (17.33%) Data Quality
2 14 (5.05%) GDPR
3 5 (1.81%) Accessibility
4 3 (1.08%) QA
5 1 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 1 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 14 (5.05%) Docker
2 6 (2.17%) HDFS
3 4 (1.44%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 23 (8.30%) Terraform
2 9 (3.25%) Kubernetes
3 4 (1.44%) Ansible
4 3 (1.08%) Control-M
5 1 (0.36%) Grafana
5 1 (0.36%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 90 (32.49%) Databricks
2 46 (16.61%) Microsoft
3 8 (2.89%) Dataiku
4 5 (1.81%) Dell
4 5 (1.81%) Talend
5 3 (1.08%) BMC
5 3 (1.08%) IBM
5 3 (1.08%) Oracle
5 3 (1.08%) SAP
6 2 (0.72%) Google
6 2 (0.72%) Palantir
7 1 (0.36%) Bloomberg
7 1 (0.36%) Cloudera
7 1 (0.36%) NetApp
7 1 (0.36%) Refinitiv