Data Engineer Contract Job Trends in the City of London

Data Engineer
Central London > City of London

The median Data Engineer daily rate in the City of London is £550, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 18 May 2026.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
18 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 40 53 80
Rank change year-on-year +13 +27 -1
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 111 65 47
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 4.82% 3.72% 2.17%
As % of the Job Titles category 5.10% 4.00% 2.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 82 41 39
10th Percentile £352 £400 £407
25th Percentile £421 £455 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% - -10.71%
75th Percentile £600 £550 £588
90th Percentile £661 £640 £704
Central London median daily rate £550 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +10.00% - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - £46.75
Median hourly rate £19.34 - £48.50
75th Percentile - - £50.25
90th Percentile - - -
Central London median hourly rate £19.34 - £48.50

All Contract IT Job Roles
City of London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the City of London. 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 contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the City of London with a recognized job title 2,177 1,627 2,058
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 94.57% 93.13% 95.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,460 1,017 1,446
10th Percentile £356 £350 £350
25th Percentile £454 £463 £446
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £551
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% +4.40% -8.21%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £688
90th Percentile £775 £775 £800
Central London median daily rate £550 £565 £550
% change year-on-year -2.65% +2.73% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 27 14 15
10th Percentile £18.14 £22.00 £15.62
25th Percentile £18.75 £23.98 £20.22
Median hourly rate £32.07 £29.58 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year +8.42% +28.59% -34.29%
75th Percentile £52.33 £47.50 £28.44
90th Percentile £61.83 £89.13 £40.00
Central London median hourly rate £27.00 £28.61 £26.41
% change year-on-year -5.63% +8.35% -24.56%

Data Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the City of London

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

Data Engineer job vacancy trend in the City of London

Data Engineer
Daily Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Data Engineer job vacancies in the City of London.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Data Engineer job vacancies in the City of London

Data Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in the City of London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Data Engineer in the City of London over the 6 months to 18 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Data Engineer in the City of London

Data Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Data Engineer job vacancies in the City of London.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Data Engineer job vacancies in the City of London

Data Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the City of London

For the 6 months to 18 May 2026, Data Engineer contract 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 contract job ads across the City of London region featuring Data Engineer in the job title.

1 50 (45.05%) Data Pipeline
1 50 (45.05%) SQL
2 48 (43.24%) Python
3 41 (36.94%) Analytics
3 41 (36.94%) Data Engineering
4 38 (34.23%) Azure
5 36 (32.43%) ETL
6 27 (24.32%) Data Modelling
6 27 (24.32%) Data Quality
7 25 (22.52%) AWS
8 23 (20.72%) Data Warehouse
8 23 (20.72%) Power Platform
9 21 (18.92%) Security Cleared
10 20 (18.02%) Business Intelligence
10 20 (18.02%) Data Science
10 20 (18.02%) Databricks
10 20 (18.02%) Power BI
10 20 (18.02%) Tableau
11 19 (17.12%) Apache Airflow
12 18 (16.22%) SC Cleared
12 18 (16.22%) Snowflake
13 17 (15.32%) CI/CD
14 15 (13.51%) Azure Data Factory
14 15 (13.51%) dbt
14 15 (13.51%) Validation
15 14 (12.61%) Microsoft
15 14 (12.61%) PySpark
16 13 (11.71%) AI
16 13 (11.71%) Data Governance
16 13 (11.71%) GCP

Data Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the City of London 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 19 (17.12%) Apache Airflow
2 5 (4.50%) Apache
2 5 (4.50%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.90%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.90%) SAS
3 1 (0.90%) SharePoint
Applications
1 1 (0.90%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (1.80%) BambooHR
2 1 (0.90%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 38 (34.23%) Azure
2 25 (22.52%) AWS
3 23 (20.72%) Power Platform
4 18 (16.22%) Snowflake
5 15 (13.51%) Azure Data Factory
5 15 (13.51%) dbt
6 13 (11.71%) GCP
7 10 (9.01%) Amazon S3
7 10 (9.01%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 9 (8.11%) Serverless
9 8 (7.21%) AWS Lambda
10 6 (5.41%) Prefect
11 4 (3.60%) Matillion
12 3 (2.70%) Amazon Kinesis
12 3 (2.70%) Dagster
12 3 (2.70%) Fivetran
13 2 (1.80%) AWS Step Functions
13 2 (1.80%) Azure DevOps
13 2 (1.80%) Microsoft Purview
13 2 (1.80%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.90%) Software-Defined Networking
1 1 (0.90%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (20.72%) Data Warehouse
2 20 (18.02%) Power BI
2 20 (18.02%) Tableau
3 9 (8.11%) BigQuery
3 9 (8.11%) Snowflake Schema
3 9 (8.11%) SQL Server
4 8 (7.21%) Metadata
5 7 (6.31%) Amazon Redshift
5 7 (6.31%) Data Lake
6 5 (4.50%) Looker
7 4 (3.60%) Azure SQL Database
7 4 (3.60%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 3 (2.70%) Big Data
8 3 (2.70%) Delta Lake
8 3 (2.70%) DynamoDB
8 3 (2.70%) Geospatial Data
9 2 (1.80%) Amazon Athena
9 2 (1.80%) CockroachDB
9 2 (1.80%) Data Vault
9 2 (1.80%) Spatial Data
Development Applications
1 6 (5.41%) Git
2 2 (1.80%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
3 1 (0.90%) Jaeger
3 1 (0.90%) JIRA
General
1 30 (27.03%) Finance
2 10 (9.01%) Analytical Skills
3 9 (8.11%) Social Skills
4 6 (5.41%) Front Office
5 5 (4.50%) Banking
6 4 (3.60%) Back Office
7 3 (2.70%) Investment Banking
7 3 (2.70%) Publishing
7 3 (2.70%) Telecoms
8 2 (1.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 2 (1.80%) Legal
8 2 (1.80%) Pharmaceutical
8 2 (1.80%) Public Sector
9 1 (0.90%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.90%) Financial Institution
9 1 (0.90%) Games
9 1 (0.90%) General Ledger
9 1 (0.90%) Law
9 1 (0.90%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (12.61%) PySpark
2 7 (6.31%) Kafka
3 5 (4.50%) Pandas
4 4 (3.60%) Spring
4 4 (3.60%) Spring Boot
5 3 (2.70%) GeoJSON
5 3 (2.70%) Matplotlib
5 3 (2.70%) Polars
5 3 (2.70%) REST
5 3 (2.70%) scikit-learn
6 2 (1.80%) boto
6 2 (1.80%) JSON
6 2 (1.80%) NumPy
6 2 (1.80%) YAML
7 1 (0.90%) HTML
7 1 (0.90%) Jinja
7 1 (0.90%) Node.js
7 1 (0.90%) pytest
7 1 (0.90%) React
7 1 (0.90%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 6 (5.41%) Cloud Native
2 5 (4.50%) Clustering
2 5 (4.50%) Data Structures
3 2 (1.80%) Derivative
3 2 (1.80%) Equities
3 2 (1.80%) Fixed Income
3 2 (1.80%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 2 (1.80%) Greenfield Project
3 2 (1.80%) Life Science
3 2 (1.80%) Management Information System
3 2 (1.80%) Reinsurance
4 1 (0.90%) AI Agents
4 1 (0.90%) Distributed Computing
4 1 (0.90%) Distributed Systems
4 1 (0.90%) Fibre Optics
4 1 (0.90%) Legacy Code
4 1 (0.90%) Legacy Systems
4 1 (0.90%) Onboarding
4 1 (0.90%) Online Games
4 1 (0.90%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 1 (0.90%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 50 (45.05%) Data Pipeline
2 41 (36.94%) Analytics
2 41 (36.94%) Data Engineering
3 36 (32.43%) ETL
4 27 (24.32%) Data Modelling
5 20 (18.02%) Business Intelligence
5 20 (18.02%) Data Science
6 17 (15.32%) CI/CD
7 15 (13.51%) Validation
8 13 (11.71%) AI
8 13 (11.71%) Data Governance
8 13 (11.71%) Performance Tuning
9 12 (10.81%) DevOps
10 11 (9.91%) Decision-Making
11 9 (8.11%) Data Analytics
12 8 (7.21%) Problem-Solving
13 7 (6.31%) Data Transformation
13 7 (6.31%) Dimensional Modelling
13 7 (6.31%) Microservices
13 7 (6.31%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 50 (45.05%) SQL
2 48 (43.24%) Python
3 9 (8.11%) Scala
4 8 (7.21%) Java
5 4 (3.60%) C#
6 3 (2.70%) T-SQL
7 2 (1.80%) R
8 1 (0.90%) Bicep
8 1 (0.90%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 1 (0.90%) Go
8 1 (0.90%) Korn
8 1 (0.90%) PL/SQL
8 1 (0.90%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 21 (18.92%) Security Cleared
2 18 (16.22%) SC Cleared
3 3 (2.70%) BPSS Clearance
3 3 (2.70%) DBS Check
4 2 (1.80%) SnowPro
5 1 (0.90%) BICSI Certification
5 1 (0.90%) City & Guilds
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (24.32%) Data Quality
2 6 (5.41%) GDPR
3 2 (1.80%) EMIR
3 2 (1.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (1.80%) MiFID
4 1 (0.90%) Accessibility
4 1 (0.90%) GxP
4 1 (0.90%) QA
System Software
1 5 (4.50%) Docker
Systems Management
1 7 (6.31%) Kubernetes
2 3 (2.70%) Terraform
3 1 (0.90%) Grafana
3 1 (0.90%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 20 (18.02%) Databricks
2 14 (12.61%) Microsoft
3 7 (6.31%) Informatica
4 4 (3.60%) SAP
5 3 (2.70%) Google
5 3 (2.70%) Oracle
6 2 (1.80%) Amplitude
6 2 (1.80%) Salesforce
6 2 (1.80%) Workday
7 1 (0.90%) HubSpot
7 1 (0.90%) MuleSoft
7 1 (0.90%) OpenAI
7 1 (0.90%) Splunk
7 1 (0.90%) Talend
7 1 (0.90%) Teradata