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 17 June 2026.

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

6 months to
17 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 43 61 70
Rank change year-on-year +18 +9 +11
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 113 61 53
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 4.67% 3.53% 2.44%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.95% 3.77% 2.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 82 37 43
10th Percentile £352 £408 £413
25th Percentile £425 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -4.76% -8.30%
75th Percentile £600 £580 £619
90th Percentile £674 £656 £734
Central London median daily rate £550 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +10.00% -4.76% -8.70%
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 2,281 1,619 2,066
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 94.30% 93.80% 95.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,509 1,025 1,430
10th Percentile £356 £352 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £563
Median % change year-on-year - -2.22% -6.25%
75th Percentile £668 £688 £688
90th Percentile £775 £775 £788
Central London median daily rate £550 £550 £550
% change year-on-year - - -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 18 15
10th Percentile £17.60 £20.35 £15.62
25th Percentile £18.75 £24.66 £20.22
Median hourly rate £25.77 £32.83 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year -21.49% +45.89% -35.71%
75th Percentile £47.58 £63.75 £34.69
90th Percentile £65.00 £92.13 £46.15
Central London median hourly rate £27.25 £29.07 £27.00
% change year-on-year -6.26% +7.67% -22.86%

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 17 June 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 17 June 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 54 (47.79%) SQL
2 53 (46.90%) Python
3 52 (46.02%) Data Pipeline
4 47 (41.59%) Analytics
5 44 (38.94%) Data Engineering
6 39 (34.51%) ETL
7 36 (31.86%) Data Modelling
8 35 (30.97%) Azure
9 28 (24.78%) Data Quality
10 25 (22.12%) Power Platform
11 24 (21.24%) AWS
12 23 (20.35%) Data Warehouse
13 22 (19.47%) Business Intelligence
13 22 (19.47%) CI/CD
13 22 (19.47%) Power BI
14 21 (18.58%) Data Science
15 20 (17.70%) Apache Airflow
16 19 (16.81%) Databricks
16 19 (16.81%) Snowflake
16 19 (16.81%) Tableau
17 16 (14.16%) Azure Data Factory
17 16 (14.16%) DevOps
17 16 (14.16%) PySpark
17 16 (14.16%) Validation
18 15 (13.27%) AI
18 15 (13.27%) dbt
18 15 (13.27%) Decision-Making
18 15 (13.27%) Security Cleared
19 14 (12.39%) Microsoft
19 14 (12.39%) Migration

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 20 (17.70%) Apache Airflow
2 7 (6.19%) Apache Spark
3 6 (5.31%) Apache
4 1 (0.88%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.88%) SharePoint
Applications
1 1 (0.88%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (1.77%) BambooHR
2 1 (0.88%) Aladdin
2 1 (0.88%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 35 (30.97%) Azure
2 25 (22.12%) Power Platform
3 24 (21.24%) AWS
4 19 (16.81%) Snowflake
5 16 (14.16%) Azure Data Factory
6 15 (13.27%) dbt
7 13 (11.50%) GCP
8 11 (9.73%) Amazon S3
9 9 (7.96%) AWS Lambda
9 9 (7.96%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 9 (7.96%) Serverless
10 6 (5.31%) Prefect
11 4 (3.54%) Azure DevOps
11 4 (3.54%) Matillion
12 3 (2.65%) Amazon Kinesis
12 3 (2.65%) Dagster
12 3 (2.65%) Fivetran
13 2 (1.77%) Amazon EventBridge
13 2 (1.77%) Microsoft Purview
13 2 (1.77%) Textract
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.88%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (20.35%) Data Warehouse
2 22 (19.47%) Power BI
3 19 (16.81%) Tableau
4 10 (8.85%) BigQuery
4 10 (8.85%) SQL Server
5 8 (7.08%) Amazon Redshift
5 8 (7.08%) Snowflake Schema
6 7 (6.19%) Metadata
7 6 (5.31%) Data Lake
8 5 (4.42%) Looker
9 4 (3.54%) Azure SQL Database
9 4 (3.54%) Delta Lake
9 4 (3.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 3 (2.65%) Big Data
10 3 (2.65%) Data Mart
10 3 (2.65%) DynamoDB
10 3 (2.65%) Geospatial Data
10 3 (2.65%) Oracle Database
11 2 (1.77%) NoSQL
11 2 (1.77%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 7 (6.19%) Git
2 2 (1.77%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
3 1 (0.88%) JIRA
General
1 34 (30.09%) Finance
2 10 (8.85%) Analytical Skills
2 10 (8.85%) Social Skills
3 9 (7.96%) Banking
4 4 (3.54%) Front Office
5 3 (2.65%) Public Sector
5 3 (2.65%) Publishing
5 3 (2.65%) Telecoms
6 2 (1.77%) Back Office
6 2 (1.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 2 (1.77%) Legal
6 2 (1.77%) Pharmaceutical
7 1 (0.88%) Billing
7 1 (0.88%) Documentation Skills
7 1 (0.88%) Financial Institution
7 1 (0.88%) General Ledger
7 1 (0.88%) Investment Banking
7 1 (0.88%) Law
7 1 (0.88%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (14.16%) PySpark
2 9 (7.96%) Kafka
3 5 (4.42%) Pandas
4 4 (3.54%) Spring
4 4 (3.54%) Spring Boot
5 3 (2.65%) GeoJSON
5 3 (2.65%) JSON
5 3 (2.65%) Matplotlib
5 3 (2.65%) Polars
5 3 (2.65%) REST
5 3 (2.65%) scikit-learn
6 2 (1.77%) boto
6 2 (1.77%) NumPy
6 2 (1.77%) XML
7 1 (0.88%) EDI
7 1 (0.88%) HTML
7 1 (0.88%) Jinja
7 1 (0.88%) Node.js
7 1 (0.88%) XSLT
7 1 (0.88%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 12 (10.62%) Cloud Native
2 6 (5.31%) Clustering
3 5 (4.42%) Data Structures
3 5 (4.42%) Legacy Systems
4 3 (2.65%) Onboarding
5 2 (1.77%) Algorithms
5 2 (1.77%) Fixed Income
5 2 (1.77%) Greenfield Project
5 2 (1.77%) Life Science
5 2 (1.77%) Management Information System
5 2 (1.77%) Reinsurance
6 1 (0.88%) Data Centre
6 1 (0.88%) Derivative
6 1 (0.88%) Equities
6 1 (0.88%) Fibre Optics
6 1 (0.88%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 1 (0.88%) NHS
6 1 (0.88%) Public Cloud
6 1 (0.88%) Smart Meter
6 1 (0.88%) Virtual Team
Processes & Methodologies
1 52 (46.02%) Data Pipeline
2 47 (41.59%) Analytics
3 44 (38.94%) Data Engineering
4 39 (34.51%) ETL
5 36 (31.86%) Data Modelling
6 22 (19.47%) Business Intelligence
6 22 (19.47%) CI/CD
7 21 (18.58%) Data Science
8 16 (14.16%) DevOps
8 16 (14.16%) Validation
9 15 (13.27%) AI
9 15 (13.27%) Decision-Making
10 14 (12.39%) Migration
11 13 (11.50%) Data Governance
12 12 (10.62%) Performance Optimisation
12 12 (10.62%) Performance Tuning
13 10 (8.85%) Data Analytics
14 9 (7.96%) Data Transformation
15 8 (7.08%) Agile
15 8 (7.08%) Use Case
Programming Languages
1 54 (47.79%) SQL
2 53 (46.90%) Python
3 8 (7.08%) Java
4 7 (6.19%) Scala
5 4 (3.54%) C#
6 3 (2.65%) T-SQL
7 2 (1.77%) R
8 1 (0.88%) Bicep
8 1 (0.88%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 1 (0.88%) Korn
8 1 (0.88%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 15 (13.27%) Security Cleared
2 12 (10.62%) SC Cleared
3 5 (4.42%) DBS Check
4 3 (2.65%) BPSS Clearance
4 3 (2.65%) SnowPro
5 1 (0.88%) AWS Certification
5 1 (0.88%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
5 1 (0.88%) BICSI Certification
5 1 (0.88%) City & Guilds
5 1 (0.88%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (24.78%) Data Quality
2 6 (5.31%) GDPR
3 2 (1.77%) EMIR
3 2 (1.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (1.77%) MiFID
4 1 (0.88%) Accessibility
4 1 (0.88%) GxP
4 1 (0.88%) QA
System Software
1 5 (4.42%) Docker
Systems Management
1 5 (4.42%) Kubernetes
2 1 (0.88%) Terraform
Vendors
1 19 (16.81%) Databricks
2 14 (12.39%) Microsoft
3 7 (6.19%) Informatica
4 5 (4.42%) Oracle
5 4 (3.54%) SAP
6 3 (2.65%) Google
7 2 (1.77%) Amplitude
7 2 (1.77%) Palantir
7 2 (1.77%) Salesforce
7 2 (1.77%) Workday
8 1 (0.88%) Cribl.io
8 1 (0.88%) HubSpot
8 1 (0.88%) IBM
8 1 (0.88%) MuleSoft
8 1 (0.88%) OpenAI
8 1 (0.88%) Talend