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 £575, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 29 July 2026.

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

6 months to
29 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 60 79
Rank change year-on-year +14 +19 -15
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 103 68 46
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 4.32% 3.62% 2.23%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.60% 3.88% 2.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 76 46 35
10th Percentile £416 £329 £419
25th Percentile £459 £463 £490
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year +9.52% -4.55% -3.93%
75th Percentile £616 £579 £681
90th Percentile £719 £660 £745
Central London median daily rate £565 £513 £550
% change year-on-year +10.24% -6.82% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 0
Median hourly rate £19.34 - -
Central London median hourly rate £19.34 - -

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 2,241 1,753 1,958
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 93.92% 93.44% 94.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,495 1,140 1,319
10th Percentile £357 £338 £363
25th Percentile £456 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £682 £688
90th Percentile £775 £775 £788
Central London median daily rate £550 £550 £565
% change year-on-year - -2.65% -5.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 30 23 14
10th Percentile £17.60 £18.06 £20.31
25th Percentile £18.75 £24.66 £22.28
Median hourly rate £19.50 £31.00 £33.50
Median % change year-on-year -37.10% -7.46% -10.46%
75th Percentile £37.34 £60.25 £89.06
90th Percentile £60.25 £84.11 £137.50
Central London median hourly rate £23.08 £29.07 £33.00
% change year-on-year -20.61% -11.91% -5.71%

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 29 July 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 29 July 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 (48.54%) SQL
2 49 (47.57%) Python
3 47 (45.63%) Data Engineering
4 46 (44.66%) Analytics
4 46 (44.66%) Data Pipeline
5 36 (34.95%) Data Modelling
6 34 (33.01%) ETL
7 29 (28.16%) Azure
8 26 (25.24%) CI/CD
9 25 (24.27%) Data Quality
10 22 (21.36%) AWS
10 22 (21.36%) Data Warehouse
10 22 (21.36%) Power Platform
11 20 (19.42%) Data Science
12 19 (18.45%) Apache Airflow
12 19 (18.45%) Business Intelligence
12 19 (18.45%) DevOps
12 19 (18.45%) Power BI
13 17 (16.50%) Snowflake
14 16 (15.53%) Migration
14 16 (15.53%) Tableau
15 15 (14.56%) Azure Data Factory
15 15 (14.56%) dbt
16 14 (13.59%) Decision-Making
16 14 (13.59%) Microsoft
16 14 (13.59%) Validation
17 13 (12.62%) AI
17 13 (12.62%) Databricks
17 13 (12.62%) GCP
17 13 (12.62%) PySpark

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 (18.45%) Apache Airflow
2 7 (6.80%) Apache Spark
3 6 (5.83%) Apache
4 1 (0.97%) Confluence
4 1 (0.97%) Microsoft Exchange
Business Applications
1 2 (1.94%) Aladdin
1 2 (1.94%) BambooHR
2 1 (0.97%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 29 (28.16%) Azure
2 22 (21.36%) AWS
2 22 (21.36%) Power Platform
3 17 (16.50%) Snowflake
4 15 (14.56%) Azure Data Factory
4 15 (14.56%) dbt
5 13 (12.62%) GCP
6 9 (8.74%) Amazon S3
7 8 (7.77%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 7 (6.80%) AWS Lambda
8 7 (6.80%) Serverless
9 6 (5.83%) Prefect
10 5 (4.85%) Azure DevOps
11 4 (3.88%) Amazon Kinesis
12 3 (2.91%) Dagster
12 3 (2.91%) Fivetran
12 3 (2.91%) GitHub
13 2 (1.94%) Amazon EMR
13 2 (1.94%) GitHub Actions
13 2 (1.94%) Matillion
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.97%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (21.36%) Data Warehouse
2 19 (18.45%) Power BI
3 16 (15.53%) Tableau
4 11 (10.68%) BigQuery
5 9 (8.74%) SQL Server
6 7 (6.80%) Amazon Redshift
7 6 (5.83%) Data Lake
7 6 (5.83%) Snowflake Schema
8 4 (3.88%) Azure SQL Database
8 4 (3.88%) Data Mart
8 4 (3.88%) Looker
8 4 (3.88%) Metadata
8 4 (3.88%) Oracle Database
8 4 (3.88%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 3 (2.91%) Amazon RDS
9 3 (2.91%) Big Data
9 3 (2.91%) Delta Lake
9 3 (2.91%) Geospatial Data
9 3 (2.91%) NoSQL
10 2 (1.94%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 7 (6.80%) Git
2 2 (1.94%) Bitbucket
2 2 (1.94%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
3 1 (0.97%) Atlassian Bamboo
3 1 (0.97%) GitLab
3 1 (0.97%) JIRA
General
1 33 (32.04%) Finance
2 12 (11.65%) Analytical Skills
3 11 (10.68%) Social Skills
4 8 (7.77%) Banking
5 4 (3.88%) Front Office
6 3 (2.91%) Public Sector
6 3 (2.91%) Publishing
7 2 (1.94%) Back Office
7 2 (1.94%) Legal
7 2 (1.94%) Pharmaceutical
8 1 (0.97%) Billing
8 1 (0.97%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (0.97%) Financial Institution
8 1 (0.97%) General Ledger
8 1 (0.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (0.97%) Investment Banking
8 1 (0.97%) Law
8 1 (0.97%) Military
8 1 (0.97%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (12.62%) PySpark
2 8 (7.77%) Kafka
3 4 (3.88%) Spring
3 4 (3.88%) Spring Boot
4 3 (2.91%) GeoJSON
4 3 (2.91%) JSON
4 3 (2.91%) Matplotlib
4 3 (2.91%) Pandas
4 3 (2.91%) Polars
4 3 (2.91%) scikit-learn
5 2 (1.94%) REST
5 2 (1.94%) XML
6 1 (0.97%) ActiveMQ
6 1 (0.97%) EDI
6 1 (0.97%) Middleware
6 1 (0.97%) Node.js
6 1 (0.97%) RabbitMQ
6 1 (0.97%) SOAP
6 1 (0.97%) XSLT
6 1 (0.97%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 15 (14.56%) Cloud Native
2 6 (5.83%) Legacy Systems
3 5 (4.85%) Clustering
4 4 (3.88%) Onboarding
5 3 (2.91%) Data Structures
5 3 (2.91%) Fixed Income
6 2 (1.94%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 2 (1.94%) Greenfield Project
6 2 (1.94%) Life Science
7 1 (0.97%) Algorithms
7 1 (0.97%) Data Centre
7 1 (0.97%) Derivative
7 1 (0.97%) Distributed Computing
7 1 (0.97%) Enterprise Cloud
7 1 (0.97%) Equities
7 1 (0.97%) Fibre Optics
7 1 (0.97%) Hedge funds
7 1 (0.97%) NHS
7 1 (0.97%) Reinsurance
7 1 (0.97%) Smart Meter
Processes & Methodologies
1 47 (45.63%) Data Engineering
2 46 (44.66%) Analytics
2 46 (44.66%) Data Pipeline
3 36 (34.95%) Data Modelling
4 34 (33.01%) ETL
5 26 (25.24%) CI/CD
6 20 (19.42%) Data Science
7 19 (18.45%) Business Intelligence
7 19 (18.45%) DevOps
8 16 (15.53%) Migration
9 14 (13.59%) Decision-Making
9 14 (13.59%) Validation
10 13 (12.62%) AI
11 12 (11.65%) Data Governance
11 12 (11.65%) Data Transformation
11 12 (11.65%) Performance Optimisation
12 10 (9.71%) Data Analytics
12 10 (9.71%) Data Architecture
13 9 (8.74%) Performance Tuning
14 8 (7.77%) Asset Management
Programming Languages
1 50 (48.54%) SQL
2 49 (47.57%) Python
3 7 (6.80%) Java
4 4 (3.88%) C#
4 4 (3.88%) Scala
5 3 (2.91%) T-SQL
6 2 (1.94%) R
7 1 (0.97%) Bicep
7 1 (0.97%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 1 (0.97%) Korn
7 1 (0.97%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 12 (11.65%) Security Cleared
2 9 (8.74%) SC Cleared
3 5 (4.85%) DBS Check
4 3 (2.91%) BPSS Clearance
4 3 (2.91%) SnowPro
5 1 (0.97%) AWS Certification
5 1 (0.97%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
5 1 (0.97%) BICSI Certification
5 1 (0.97%) City & Guilds
5 1 (0.97%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (24.27%) Data Quality
2 4 (3.88%) GDPR
3 2 (1.94%) Accessibility
3 2 (1.94%) EMIR
3 2 (1.94%) MiFID
3 2 (1.94%) QA
4 1 (0.97%) GxP
System Software
1 6 (5.83%) Docker
Systems Management
1 5 (4.85%) Kubernetes
2 3 (2.91%) Terraform
Vendors
1 14 (13.59%) Microsoft
2 13 (12.62%) Databricks
3 6 (5.83%) Informatica
4 5 (4.85%) Oracle
5 3 (2.91%) Google
6 2 (1.94%) Amplitude
6 2 (1.94%) MuleSoft
6 2 (1.94%) Palantir
6 2 (1.94%) Salesforce
6 2 (1.94%) SAP
6 2 (1.94%) Workday
7 1 (0.97%) Cribl.io
7 1 (0.97%) HubSpot
7 1 (0.97%) IBM
7 1 (0.97%) OpenAI
7 1 (0.97%) Talend