Data Engineer Salary in London 2026: What the Market Actually Pays

Data Engineer Salary in London 2026: What the Market Actually Pays

London is Europe's most competitive data engineering market. Fintech unicorns, investment banks, FAANG offices, and AI labs like DeepMind all sit within the same postcode cluster - competing for engineers who can build reliable data pipelines at scale. That concentration of demand pushes London salaries well above Berlin, Amsterdam, and Paris equivalents, even accounting for the higher cost of living.

This guide covers real 2026 salary ranges for London data engineers at every level, the employers driving the top of the market, how UK tax affects take-home pay, and how to negotiate your next offer.

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Data Engineer Salary by Level - London 2026

Explore live data: Data Engineer Salary London

Junior Data Engineer (0-2 years) £45,000 - £65,000 base salary. Entry roles at banks and large corporates sit in the £45K-£55K band. Fintech scale-ups like Revolut and Monzo typically start at £55K-£65K for junior hires. Equity in early-stage fintech can add meaningful upside, but vesting horizons are long. Mid-Level Data Engineer (2-5 years) £65,000 - £95,000 base salary. This is the most active hiring band in London. Engineers with proven experience in Spark, dbt, and Snowflake regularly command £75K-£90K at scale-ups and investment banks. Cloud-native engineers with AWS or GCP certifications see faster progression through this band. Senior Data Engineer (5-9 years) £90,000 - £120,000 base salary. Senior engineers who can architect end-to-end data platforms - from ingestion through transformation to serving - earn £95K-£115K at banks and £100K-£120K at tech companies. FAANG offices (Amazon, Meta) and AI labs pay at the top of this range. Staff / Principal Data Engineer (9+ years) £115,000 - £140,000+ base salary. Staff-level engineers driving cross-team data strategy are increasingly common in London's mature fintech sector. Goldman Sachs, Palantir, and DeepMind pay £120K-£140K+ for this level, sometimes with significant equity components. Total compensation note: Investment banks and FAANG offices add annual bonuses (10-30% of base), RSUs, and pension contributions. A senior engineer at Goldman Sachs with £105K base may receive £130K-£155K in total compensation. Revolut and Monzo equity schemes have historically delivered outsized returns for early employees.

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Top Employers for Data Engineers in London

Investment Banks (Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Barclays) London's investment banks run some of the largest data engineering functions in Europe. Goldman Sachs' global data platform, HSBC's data modernisation programme, and Barclays' cloud migration initiatives all require large data engineering teams. Compensation is structured - base plus substantial year-end bonus - and total comp for senior engineers regularly exceeds £130K. Work is complex but process-heavy; expect compliance overhead. FAANG (Amazon, Meta) Amazon's London offices (primarily AWS and retail) pay on US-adjacent scales - senior data engineers earn £100K-£120K base plus RSU grants. Meta London's infrastructure teams pay similarly. The key differentiator vs banks is equity: RSU grants vest quarterly and at current valuations add £15K-£40K to annual comp for senior roles. AI Labs (DeepMind, Palantir) DeepMind - now a core part of Google DeepMind, headquartered in King's Cross - hires data engineers to support research infrastructure at scale. Salaries reach £115K-£135K for experienced hires, and Google RSU grants are significant. Palantir's London office similarly pays premium rates: £100K-£130K+ for engineers building Foundry-based data platforms. Fintech Scale-ups (Revolut, Monzo) Revolut and Monzo operate some of the most sophisticated real-time data pipelines in European fintech. Pay is competitive: £70K-£105K for mid-to-senior roles, with equity schemes that have delivered significant returns for long-tenured engineers. The infrastructure challenges are genuinely world-class - Revolut processes hundreds of millions of daily transactions. Media and Technology (Sky) Sky's data engineering function supports personalisation, content analytics, and advertising targeting across millions of subscribers. Salaries are slightly below fintech - £65K-£95K mid-to-senior - but work-life balance and benefits packages are strong.

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Key Skills Driving Premium Pay in London

London's market heavily rewards specific technical depth:

Apache Spark - Still the dominant distributed processing framework in London banking and big data contexts. Engineers with production Spark experience at scale earn 10-15% above market rate. dbt (data build tool) - The transformation layer of choice at fintech scale-ups. dbt-certified engineers with strong SQL and data modelling skills are in particularly high demand at Monzo, Revolut, and similar companies. Snowflake and Databricks - Cloud data warehouse expertise. Engineers who can architect Snowflake or Databricks deployments - not just use them - command the top end of salary ranges. Python - Table stakes for London data engineering. Engineers who combine Python data engineering skills with software engineering practices (testing, CI/CD, code review) are preferred at FAANG and top fintech. Cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) - AWS dominates London's fintech sector; GCP is strong at DeepMind and Google-adjacent organisations; Azure is the default at banks with Microsoft enterprise agreements.

For the full role-level breakdown: Data Engineer Salary Guide

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UK Tax and Take-Home Pay

Unlike Berlin or Amsterdam, London has no flat-rate tax benefit for new arrivals (the UK's non-domicile rules changed in 2025). Here is what a London data engineer actually takes home:

£70,000 gross salary:

Income tax: ~£15,432 (20% up to £50,270, then 40% on remainder)

National Insurance (employee): ~£4,284

Net take-home: approximately £50,284 per year (£4,190/month)

£100,000 gross salary:

Income tax: ~£27,432

National Insurance: ~£5,484

Personal allowance tapered above £100K (full tapering by £125,140)

Net take-home: approximately £66,084 per year (£5,507/month)

£120,000 gross salary:

Effective combined marginal rate ~60% between £100K and £125,140 (due to personal allowance taper)

Net take-home: approximately £76,084 per year (£6,340/month)

Key takeaway: The £100K-£125K band has an effective 60% marginal rate in the UK. Engineers near this threshold should consider salary sacrifice into pension contributions to reduce the effective rate. Many London employers offer salary sacrifice pension schemes - it is worth the conversation.

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London vs Berlin and Amsterdam

London leads on gross salary and take-home in absolute terms, even after higher taxes. But London rent (£1,800-£2,800/month for a one-bedroom flat) erodes a significant portion of the advantage vs Berlin. Engineers who can command £100K+ in London typically find the total financial picture competitive with FAANG-equivalent Amsterdam or Berlin roles when accounting for total compensation including bonuses and equity.

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Negotiation Tips for London Data Engineers

Arrive with data. London data engineering salaries are well-documented. Pull benchmarks from CareerCheck's London data engineer salary tool before any negotiation. Market data transforms the conversation from asking for more to confirming fair market rate. Target total compensation, not just base. In banking, the annual bonus can exceed 20% of base for strong performers. In fintech, equity packages vary wildly. Always negotiate the full package - base, bonus, equity, pension contributions, and any signing bonus. Leverage competing offers. London's data engineering market is competitive enough that competing offers are common and respected by recruiters. A competing offer from a fintech (even if you prefer the bank role) meaningfully improves your negotiating position at both. Specify your stack premium. Databricks, Spark, dbt, and real-time streaming experience (Kafka, Flink) all command premiums in London's market. If you have depth in any of these, make it explicit in negotiation. "I bring production Databricks experience at scale" justifies a range move more concretely than a general request for more. Pension contributions are negotiable. UK employers are required to contribute at least 3% to pension; many London tech employers contribute 5-8%. Some FAANG offices contribute up to 10%. Especially above £100K where marginal tax rates are extreme, maximising employer pension contributions is worth negotiating explicitly.

Not sure where your skills position you in the London market? Take the CareerCheck career quiz for a personalised salary estimate.

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Related Reading

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Data Engineer Salary Guide 2026 - all cities compared

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Salary data sourced from job postings, recruiter surveys, and community salary submissions. Updated February 2026.