ETL salary and demand trends

Reviewed by Mark Dickie · Last updated

ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) is the process of moving data from source systems, reshaping it, and loading it into a target warehouse or data lake. Companies still depend on it to populate analytics platforms, even as ELT and streaming approaches have gained ground. Demand has held steady as data engineering teams broaden their toolkits rather than replace batch pipelines outright. Salary bands track closely with broader data engineering pay, since ETL overlaps heavily with general pipeline work.

What does the ETL job market look like in 2026?

The two tables below break down ETL salary percentiles and a hiring-demand series, both pulled from live market data.

Figure on this pageWhat it tells you
Salary percentilesThe spread of pay across the ETL market, from the low end to the high end
Hiring-demand seriesHow job postings for ETL have moved over the covered period
  1. Use the salary percentiles to see where your current or target pay sits within the market band.
  2. Compare the hiring-demand series with adjacent technologies such as ELT or general data engineering to gauge relative momentum.
  3. Pair both views together. Strong demand paired with a wide salary spread points to room to negotiate.

Etl salary & hiring demand

From live job postings, the median Etl salary is £86,250, across 141 postings in August 2026. These figures are technology-wide across all seniority levels, as of August 2026.

25th percentile£66,250
Median (50th percentile)£86,250
75th percentile£117,000

Hiring demand over time

We need 3 complete months of tracking before we publish a month-by-month series. Months we only partly covered are left out rather than shown as low demand.

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