UK data jobs, October 2026: the numbers, and what changed
Data engineer and data analyst pay and ad counts in the UK this autumn, the Graduate visa change coming in January, and the ICO's call on agentic AI
Most data-career advice online is American. Salary numbers in dollars, visa rules that do not apply, interview formats UK companies do not use. This is the first of a monthly post that sticks to what is true here: the numbers for UK data roles, and anything that changed in the rules around them.
Everything below has a source. Where a number comes from one aggregator, I say so.
Data engineer: pay flat, ads up
IT Jobs Watch tracks permanent job ads across the UK and reports a six-month window. For the six months to 27 October 2026, for permanent Data Engineer roles:
| UK | London | UK excluding London | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Median advertised salary | £70,000 | £80,000 | £65,000 |
| 10th percentile | £45,000 | ||
| 90th percentile | £100,000 | ||
| Permanent ads in the window | 2,213 | 640 | 1,472 |
The median has not moved. It was £70,000 in the same window in 2025 and in 2024, and the non-London median has sat at £65,000 for the same period. If you were hoping a tight market would push pay up, the ads do not show it yet.
What has moved is volume. The same source counted 651 Data Engineer ads in this window in 2025 and 1,028 in 2024, against 2,213 now. That is one aggregator's count, and ad counts are noisy (reposts, agencies, the same role listed in three cities), so treat the direction as real and the multiple as rough. Data Engineer ads are 1.83% of all permanent UK vacancies in the window, which for one job title is a lot.
Two other cuts worth knowing. The North of England had 608 ads at a median of £66,805, not far behind the South East's £65,000 on 249 ads. And 565 ads were tagged work-from-home at a £70,000 median, the same as the national figure, so remote is not trading at a discount.
What the ads ask for
Share of Data Engineer ads mentioning each skill, same source and window:
| Skill | Share of ads |
|---|---|
| SQL | 37.1% |
| Python | 33.4% |
| Azure | 26.5% |
| Data modelling | 22.6% |
| ETL | 22.6% |
| Data quality | 21.1% |
| AI | 19.6% |
SQL and Python first, as every year. Azure is the cloud that appears most; AWS next, GCP less often. One in five ads now mentions AI, which for a data engineering title is new. Read a few of those ads and it is mostly pipelines that feed models, not training them.
Data analyst: more ads, lower ceiling
Same source, same window, permanent Data Analyst roles:
| UK | London | UK excluding London | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Median advertised salary | £57,500 | £60,000 | £55,000 |
| 10th percentile | £33,000 | ||
| 90th percentile | £68,750 | ||
| Permanent ads in the window | 992 | 231 |
Ad count was 504 in this window last year and 631 the year before, so analyst hiring has roughly doubled by this measure. The gap to engineering is the thing to notice: a £12,500 difference at the median and a £31,000 difference at the 90th percentile. The analyst ceiling is low. Moving from analyst to analytics engineer or data engineer is where the pay step is.
Analyst ads ask for SQL (32.1%), Power BI (26.7%) and Python (18.5%). Power BI, not Tableau, not Looker. If you are applying for analyst roles in the UK and have never opened Power BI, that is the gap to close first.
The Graduate visa shortens in January
If you are an international student or know one, this is the change that matters most this year.
From 1 January 2027 the Graduate visa, the post-study route most international graduates use to get their first UK job, drops from two years to 18 months for bachelor's and master's graduates. PhD graduates keep three years. People who apply before 31 December 2026 keep the two-year version. Freeths has the detail; check GOV.UK for the current rules before you rely on any date.
Eighteen months is enough, but it changes the plan. The first job search cannot wait for the dissertation to be marked. And the sponsorship conversation with an employer needs to start in the first year, not the second.
The bigger change in the government's 2025 white paper, the proposal to raise the settlement qualifying period from five years to ten, was still at consultation stage at the last update from the House of Commons Library. It is not in force. Anyone telling you otherwise is ahead of the law.
The ICO wants to hear about agentic AI
On 8 October 2026 the Information Commissioner's Office opened a call for evidence on how existing UK data protection law applies to agentic AI, systems that take actions rather than only generate text (Squire Patton Boggs, 20 October). No new rules yet. But if your job involves building agents that touch customer data, the questions the ICO is asking are the ones your own data protection officer will be asking next year. Worth reading the call itself.
What to do with this
- Pricing yourself: the medians above are what ads say, not what people get. Use them as a floor for the conversation, and remember the London premium is about £10,000 at the median for engineers and £5,000 for analysts.
- Choosing what to learn: SQL, Python, Azure, modelling. For analyst roles, Power BI. Everything else is secondary to the ads.
- On a Graduate visa: if you finish in 2026, apply for the visa before the year ends. If you finish in 2027, plan for 18 months and start applying in the final term.
Next month: the same numbers again, so the trend is visible, and whatever else moved.
Sources: IT Jobs Watch, Data Engineer and Data Analyst, six months to 27 October 2026; Freeths on Graduate visa changes, 11 February 2026; House of Commons Library briefing CBP-10267; Privacy World on the ICO call for evidence, 20 October 2026.
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