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 £513, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 10 February 2026.

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

6 months to
10 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 60 72 67
Rank change year-on-year +12 -5 +43
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 64 47 66
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 3.37% 2.59% 2.76%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.59% 2.79% 2.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 49 28 55
10th Percentile £323 £442 £385
25th Percentile £400 £463 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £538 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.65% +2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £616 £606
90th Percentile £670 £743 £694
Central London median daily rate £513 £538 £540
% change year-on-year -4.65% -0.46% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - £46.75
Median hourly rate - - £48.50
75th Percentile - - £50.25
90th Percentile - - -
Central London median hourly rate - - £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 1,784 1,686 2,264
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 93.94% 92.84% 94.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,227 1,007 1,629
10th Percentile £350 £352 £340
25th Percentile £431 £463 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £563
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% +2.22% -3.85%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £688
90th Percentile £775 £775 £788
Central London median daily rate £540 £575 £550
% change year-on-year -6.09% +4.55% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 7 22
10th Percentile £20.06 £22.00 £17.00
25th Percentile £25.95 £26.63 £19.18
Median hourly rate £37.25 £38.50 £24.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.25% +60.42% -26.15%
75th Percentile £46.29 £80.38 £40.00
90th Percentile £55.54 £112.00 £50.10
Central London median hourly rate £26.11 £35.00 £26.91
% change year-on-year -25.40% +30.09% +5.51%

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 10 February 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 10 February 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 38 (59.38%) SQL
2 36 (56.25%) Python
3 35 (54.69%) Data Pipeline
4 32 (50.00%) Azure
5 30 (46.88%) ETL
6 25 (39.06%) Data Modelling
6 25 (39.06%) Data Quality
6 25 (39.06%) Databricks
7 23 (35.94%) AWS
8 20 (31.25%) Analytics
9 19 (29.69%) Data Engineering
10 15 (23.44%) Security Cleared
11 13 (20.31%) CI/CD
11 13 (20.31%) Data Governance
11 13 (20.31%) Data Warehouse
11 13 (20.31%) Performance Tuning
11 13 (20.31%) PySpark
12 12 (18.75%) Apache Airflow
12 12 (18.75%) Business Intelligence
12 12 (18.75%) Snowflake
13 11 (17.19%) Microsoft
13 11 (17.19%) Power BI
13 11 (17.19%) Power Platform
13 11 (17.19%) SC Cleared
14 10 (15.63%) Data Integration
14 10 (15.63%) Data Transformation
14 10 (15.63%) dbt
15 9 (14.06%) Amazon S3
15 9 (14.06%) Azure Data Factory
15 9 (14.06%) Data Lake

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 12 (18.75%) Apache Airflow
2 5 (7.81%) Apache
2 5 (7.81%) Apache Spark
3 1 (1.56%) SAS
3 1 (1.56%) SharePoint
Applications
1 2 (3.13%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (1.56%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (1.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 1 (1.56%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 32 (50.00%) Azure
2 23 (35.94%) AWS
3 12 (18.75%) Snowflake
4 11 (17.19%) Power Platform
5 10 (15.63%) dbt
6 9 (14.06%) Amazon S3
6 9 (14.06%) Azure Data Factory
7 8 (12.50%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 8 (12.50%) Serverless
8 7 (10.94%) AWS Lambda
9 6 (9.38%) GCP
10 3 (4.69%) AWS Step Functions
11 2 (3.13%) Amazon EventBridge
11 2 (3.13%) Azure DevOps
11 2 (3.13%) Dagster
11 2 (3.13%) Matillion
11 2 (3.13%) Microsoft Purview
11 2 (3.13%) Prefect
11 2 (3.13%) Textract
12 1 (1.56%) Amazon Kinesis
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.56%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (20.31%) Data Warehouse
2 11 (17.19%) Power BI
3 9 (14.06%) Data Lake
3 9 (14.06%) Metadata
4 6 (9.38%) Tableau
5 5 (7.81%) Amazon Redshift
5 5 (7.81%) Snowflake Schema
6 4 (6.25%) Amazon Athena
6 4 (6.25%) Delta Lake
6 4 (6.25%) SQL Server
7 3 (4.69%) PostgreSQL
8 2 (3.13%) Amazon QuickSight
8 2 (3.13%) CockroachDB
8 2 (3.13%) DataStage
8 2 (3.13%) DynamoDB
8 2 (3.13%) Geospatial Data
8 2 (3.13%) Looker
8 2 (3.13%) Relational Database
8 2 (3.13%) Spatial Data
8 2 (3.13%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 9 (14.06%) Git
2 2 (3.13%) Jenkins
3 1 (1.56%) Jaeger
3 1 (1.56%) JIRA
General
1 15 (23.44%) Finance
2 9 (14.06%) Social Skills
3 6 (9.38%) Banking
4 5 (7.81%) Analytical Skills
5 4 (6.25%) Front Office
5 4 (6.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 3 (4.69%) Back Office
6 3 (4.69%) Public Sector
7 2 (3.13%) Investment Banking
7 2 (3.13%) Law
7 2 (3.13%) Publishing
7 2 (3.13%) Telecoms
8 1 (1.56%) Games
8 1 (1.56%) International Banking
8 1 (1.56%) Manufacturing
8 1 (1.56%) Military
8 1 (1.56%) Organisational Skills
8 1 (1.56%) Pharmaceutical
8 1 (1.56%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (20.31%) PySpark
2 4 (6.25%) Pandas
3 3 (4.69%) Kafka
4 2 (3.13%) boto
4 2 (3.13%) GeoJSON
4 2 (3.13%) Matplotlib
4 2 (3.13%) NumPy
4 2 (3.13%) Polars
4 2 (3.13%) REST
4 2 (3.13%) scikit-learn
4 2 (3.13%) XML
5 1 (1.56%) AWS CDK
5 1 (1.56%) EDI
5 1 (1.56%) HTML
5 1 (1.56%) JSON
5 1 (1.56%) Loki
5 1 (1.56%) Middleware
5 1 (1.56%) OpenTelemetry
5 1 (1.56%) XSLT
5 1 (1.56%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 5 (7.81%) Cloud Native
1 5 (7.81%) Data Structures
2 2 (3.13%) Management Information System
3 1 (1.56%) Algorithms
3 1 (1.56%) Clustering
3 1 (1.56%) Derivative
3 1 (1.56%) Equities
3 1 (1.56%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 1 (1.56%) Greenfield Project
3 1 (1.56%) Hedge funds
3 1 (1.56%) Media Streaming
3 1 (1.56%) Online Games
3 1 (1.56%) Operational Technology
3 1 (1.56%) Product Ownership
3 1 (1.56%) Public Cloud
3 1 (1.56%) Reinsurance
3 1 (1.56%) Replication
3 1 (1.56%) Taxonomies
3 1 (1.56%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 1 (1.56%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 35 (54.69%) Data Pipeline
2 30 (46.88%) ETL
3 25 (39.06%) Data Modelling
4 20 (31.25%) Analytics
5 19 (29.69%) Data Engineering
6 13 (20.31%) CI/CD
6 13 (20.31%) Data Governance
6 13 (20.31%) Performance Tuning
7 12 (18.75%) Business Intelligence
8 10 (15.63%) Data Integration
8 10 (15.63%) Data Transformation
9 9 (14.06%) Data Science
10 8 (12.50%) Problem-Solving
11 7 (10.94%) Agile
12 6 (9.38%) Data Lineage
12 6 (9.38%) Machine Learning
12 6 (9.38%) Validation
13 5 (7.81%) DevOps
13 5 (7.81%) Metadata Management
13 5 (7.81%) Performance Optimisation
Programming Languages
1 38 (59.38%) SQL
2 36 (56.25%) Python
3 8 (12.50%) Scala
4 3 (4.69%) Java
5 2 (3.13%) T-SQL
6 1 (1.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 1 (1.56%) Go
6 1 (1.56%) JavaScript
6 1 (1.56%) PL/SQL
6 1 (1.56%) R
Qualifications
1 15 (23.44%) Security Cleared
2 11 (17.19%) SC Cleared
3 3 (4.69%) Computer Science Degree
3 3 (4.69%) Degree
4 2 (3.13%) BPSS Clearance
4 2 (3.13%) SnowPro
5 1 (1.56%) AWS Certification
5 1 (1.56%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (39.06%) Data Quality
2 3 (4.69%) GDPR
3 2 (3.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (1.56%) Accessibility
4 1 (1.56%) Dodd-Frank
4 1 (1.56%) EMIR
Systems Management
1 5 (7.81%) Terraform
2 2 (3.13%) Kubernetes
3 1 (1.56%) Grafana
3 1 (1.56%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 25 (39.06%) Databricks
2 11 (17.19%) Microsoft
3 2 (3.13%) Informatica
3 2 (3.13%) Oracle
3 2 (3.13%) SAP
4 1 (1.56%) Amplitude
4 1 (1.56%) IBM
4 1 (1.56%) Palantir
4 1 (1.56%) Salesforce
4 1 (1.56%) Splunk
4 1 (1.56%) Teradata
4 1 (1.56%) Workday