Data Engineering Salaries in Europe in 2022

It’s not always easy for workers to know their worth. Even in industries with high demand for qualified employees, it might be challenging for prospective workers to get their wages set in figures. For example, it’s still hard for a data engineer with a specific career experience and background to define what salary’s fair — and which one isn't. On a hunch, a data engineer with two years of experience working in Austria should earn more than a starter in Germany. But is that the case? To answer these questions and arrive at insights, we decided to analyse our data and create this report. This will also help employers get clarity on what the market looks like today in Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands.

Below you’ll find insights on salaries for data engineers right now throughout Europe. We analysed recent data to uncover facts and surprises. Come and take a peek.

Expected Salary Compared to Offered Salary

At the beginning of the hiring process, most talents are asked what salary they expect to receive. While it’s easy to assume that companies would prefer to lowball applicants, we found that, in Europe, the median offered compensation surpasses the median expected salary. The expected pay unusually rounds at about €60k, while the offered salary usually goes at €63k. That’s to say: the average offer exceeds the talents’ expectations..

Salary Over Time

Over the past years, salaries for data engineers have grown steadily. However, it has not exactly exploded. It is worth noting that we are lacking data for 2020.

• Average offered salaries for data engineering grew steadily from around €59k in 2017 to €67.3k in 2021.

Salary Compared to Years of Experience

There are many factors in play when considering salaries. One of them, which is undoubtedly essential and is evidenced by the data, is years of experience.

Looking at the data, we can see one thing is clear: companies value experience! The most significant jump in salary is from 0-2 years of experience to 2-4 years (in other words from junior to mid-level), where we see the average salary increase from €54kto €61k. However, there appears to be a slump in the remuneration offered in cases where experience goes from 4-6 years to 6+ years, where the average salary remains at €65k.

Women Earn 5% Less than Men on Average

 Overall, the average salary offered in Europe is lower for women than for men. Women are offered an average of roughly €61k as their salary, whereas the average salary for men is usually around €64k. 

Salary Compared to Company Size

Average salary does not vary much relating to company size. This is interesting given that our developer salaries research showed that developer salary DOES vary by company size. For data engineers, the lowest salaries are found in companies with around 11-50 employees, where the average offered salary is roughly €62k. In all other companies, the variation between pay provided is minimal, hanging around €64k as a starting salary. However, small startups may offer perks that more prominent companies may not.

Data Engineer Salaries in Germany

We found that on average data engineers are offered €64k.

Check out our Developer Salaries 2022 Germany Report.

Salary Compared to Language and Location

Companies prefer local talents. Regardless of whether they’re native speakers or data engineers who came from abroad, talents who live locally are offered an average salary higher than those living elsewhere in the EU or in the rest of the world

Again, this is unusual compared to our developer salary data which found that developers from outside the EU received the highest offered salaries. We suspected this was because key roles can be tough to fill locally and companies are compelled to look across the pond for the right talent. This does not seem to be the case for data engineers (at the moment).

Companies Prioritise Python, SQL and Spark

Most talents invited to an interview knew either Python, SQL, or Spark. Talents who also knew Scala and Java, for example, also succeeded in getting into the interview stage, but to a lesser extent — in Scala vs. Python, for example, the ratio was 1 to 3.

Those who used other technologies outside that cluster also received invitations, but were not as fortunate as candidates with Python know-how. This is not to imply that someone will receive an interview just by knowing how to use a particular technology, but there do seem to be certain biases.

Methodology and Conclusions

We used salaries specified by hiring companies during the interview process on the Honeypot platform as our key data source.

We removed interview invites sent with missing information (like position title or company location) to ensure that the data can be compared consistently. Furthermore, we also removed salaries that were unusually low or high to get rid of any extreme outliers. An external library was used to determine gender based on the individual’s first name.

We hope you have a better idea of data engineer salaries in Europe. Sign up for our fabulous newsletter for more reports, videos, interviews, and insights.