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 £565, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 16 September 2026.

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

6 months to
16 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 63 81
Rank change year-on-year +14 +18 -8
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 101 60 48
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 4.48% 3.41% 2.31%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.76% 3.63% 2.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 81 44 32
10th Percentile £400 £319 £430
25th Percentile £450 £461 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £565 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year +7.62% -4.55% -6.78%
75th Percentile £625 £590 £656
90th Percentile £725 £685 £688
Central London median daily rate £560 £525 £550
% change year-on-year +6.67% -4.55% -7.17%
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 2,120 1,654 1,960
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 94.14% 93.87% 94.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,433 1,113 1,239
10th Percentile £363 £325 £363
25th Percentile £456 £424 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £688
90th Percentile £775 £775 £783
Central London median daily rate £550 £550 £575
% change year-on-year - -4.35% -0.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 22 15
10th Percentile - £17.35 £16.49
25th Percentile £17.60 £23.98 £21.25
Median hourly rate £21.75 £28.33 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -23.21% +4.91% -23.94%
75th Percentile £34.51 £53.50 £85.63
90th Percentile £61.25 £65.39 £137.50
Central London median hourly rate £28.07 £28.15 £35.00
% change year-on-year -0.30% -19.57% -

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 16 September 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 16 September 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 56 (55.45%) SQL
2 55 (54.46%) Python
3 52 (51.49%) Data Engineering
4 49 (48.51%) Data Pipeline
5 43 (42.57%) Analytics
6 38 (37.62%) CI/CD
7 35 (34.65%) Azure
7 35 (34.65%) Data Modelling
7 35 (34.65%) ETL
8 33 (32.67%) Data Quality
9 28 (27.72%) AWS
10 24 (23.76%) Databricks
10 24 (23.76%) DevOps
11 20 (19.80%) Apache Airflow
11 20 (19.80%) Data Warehouse
12 19 (18.81%) Azure Data Factory
12 19 (18.81%) Migration
13 18 (17.82%) Data Governance
14 17 (16.83%) Snowflake
15 16 (15.84%) Power Platform
15 16 (15.84%) PySpark
16 15 (14.85%) AI
16 15 (14.85%) Data Science
16 15 (14.85%) Performance Optimisation
16 15 (14.85%) Power BI
17 14 (13.86%) Agile
17 14 (13.86%) Business Intelligence
17 14 (13.86%) dbt
18 13 (12.87%) Amazon S3
18 13 (12.87%) Data Architecture

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 (19.80%) Apache Airflow
2 9 (8.91%) Apache Spark
3 5 (4.95%) Apache
4 2 (1.98%) Confluence
5 1 (0.99%) SAS
Business Applications
1 1 (0.99%) Aladdin
1 1 (0.99%) BambooHR
1 1 (0.99%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 35 (34.65%) Azure
2 28 (27.72%) AWS
3 19 (18.81%) Azure Data Factory
4 17 (16.83%) Snowflake
5 16 (15.84%) Power Platform
6 14 (13.86%) dbt
7 13 (12.87%) Amazon S3
8 11 (10.89%) AWS Lambda
8 11 (10.89%) GCP
8 11 (10.89%) Serverless
9 9 (8.91%) Azure Databricks
10 8 (7.92%) Azure DevOps
10 8 (7.92%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 8 (7.92%) GitHub
11 7 (6.93%) GitHub Actions
12 5 (4.95%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 5 (4.95%) Amazon EventBridge
12 5 (4.95%) Amazon Kinesis
12 5 (4.95%) AWS Step Functions
13 4 (3.96%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.99%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (19.80%) Data Warehouse
2 15 (14.85%) Power BI
3 11 (10.89%) BigQuery
4 10 (9.90%) Tableau
5 9 (8.91%) Amazon Athena
6 7 (6.93%) Amazon RDS
6 7 (6.93%) Data Lake
6 7 (6.93%) Metadata
6 7 (6.93%) SQL Server
7 5 (4.95%) Amazon Redshift
7 5 (4.95%) Delta Lake
8 4 (3.96%) Azure SQL Database
8 4 (3.96%) Data Mart
8 4 (3.96%) Oracle Database
9 3 (2.97%) Snowflake Schema
10 2 (1.98%) Looker
10 2 (1.98%) NoSQL
10 2 (1.98%) Spark SQL
11 1 (0.99%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
11 1 (0.99%) Mixpanel
Development Applications
1 6 (5.94%) Bitbucket
1 6 (5.94%) Git
2 4 (3.96%) GitLab
3 2 (1.98%) Atlassian Bamboo
3 2 (1.98%) JIRA
3 2 (1.98%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
4 1 (0.99%) Jenkins
4 1 (0.99%) Terragrunt
General
1 40 (39.60%) Finance
2 17 (16.83%) Social Skills
3 13 (12.87%) Analytical Skills
3 13 (12.87%) Banking
4 5 (4.95%) Back Office
5 4 (3.96%) Front Office
6 3 (2.97%) Public Sector
7 2 (1.98%) Investment Banking
7 2 (1.98%) Legal
7 2 (1.98%) Pharmaceutical
8 1 (0.99%) Advertising
8 1 (0.99%) Billing
8 1 (0.99%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (0.99%) Financial Institution
8 1 (0.99%) General Ledger
8 1 (0.99%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (0.99%) Law
8 1 (0.99%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (15.84%) PySpark
2 11 (10.89%) Terraform
3 9 (8.91%) Kafka
4 4 (3.96%) ActiveMQ
4 4 (3.96%) RabbitMQ
4 4 (3.96%) Spring
4 4 (3.96%) Spring Boot
5 2 (1.98%) REST
6 1 (0.99%) EDI
6 1 (0.99%) FastAPI
6 1 (0.99%) JSON
6 1 (0.99%) Middleware
6 1 (0.99%) SOAP
6 1 (0.99%) XML
6 1 (0.99%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 23 (22.77%) Cloud Native
2 5 (4.95%) Legacy Systems
3 4 (3.96%) Onboarding
4 3 (2.97%) Data Structures
4 3 (2.97%) Distributed Computing
5 2 (1.98%) AI Agents
5 2 (1.98%) Clustering
5 2 (1.98%) Data Centre
5 2 (1.98%) PropTech
5 2 (1.98%) Reinsurance
6 1 (0.99%) Distributed Systems
6 1 (0.99%) Enterprise Storage
6 1 (0.99%) Fixed Income
6 1 (0.99%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 1 (0.99%) Hedge funds
6 1 (0.99%) Legacy Code
6 1 (0.99%) NHS
6 1 (0.99%) Product Ownership
6 1 (0.99%) Smart Meter
6 1 (0.99%) Taxonomies
Processes & Methodologies
1 52 (51.49%) Data Engineering
2 49 (48.51%) Data Pipeline
3 43 (42.57%) Analytics
4 38 (37.62%) CI/CD
5 35 (34.65%) Data Modelling
5 35 (34.65%) ETL
6 24 (23.76%) DevOps
7 19 (18.81%) Migration
8 18 (17.82%) Data Governance
9 15 (14.85%) AI
9 15 (14.85%) Data Science
9 15 (14.85%) Performance Optimisation
10 14 (13.86%) Agile
10 14 (13.86%) Business Intelligence
11 13 (12.87%) Data Architecture
11 13 (12.87%) Data Transformation
11 13 (12.87%) Infrastructure as Code
11 13 (12.87%) Software Engineering
11 13 (12.87%) Validation
12 12 (11.88%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 56 (55.45%) SQL
2 55 (54.46%) Python
3 7 (6.93%) Java
4 6 (5.94%) Scala
5 3 (2.97%) C#
5 3 (2.97%) Korn
6 2 (1.98%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 2 (1.98%) PowerShell
6 2 (1.98%) T-SQL
7 1 (0.99%) Bicep
7 1 (0.99%) R
Qualifications
1 9 (8.91%) Security Cleared
2 8 (7.92%) SC Cleared
3 5 (4.95%) DBS Check
4 3 (2.97%) SnowPro
5 2 (1.98%) Microsoft Certification
6 1 (0.99%) AWS Certification
6 1 (0.99%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
6 1 (0.99%) BICSI Certification
6 1 (0.99%) BPSS Clearance
6 1 (0.99%) City & Guilds
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (32.67%) Data Quality
2 4 (3.96%) QA
3 3 (2.97%) GDPR
4 2 (1.98%) Accessibility
4 2 (1.98%) EMIR
4 2 (1.98%) MiFID
System Software
1 4 (3.96%) Docker
Systems Management
1 4 (3.96%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 24 (23.76%) Databricks
2 12 (11.88%) Microsoft
3 5 (4.95%) Oracle
4 3 (2.97%) Informatica
5 2 (1.98%) Google
5 2 (1.98%) Palantir
5 2 (1.98%) Salesforce
5 2 (1.98%) SAP
6 1 (0.99%) Amplitude
6 1 (0.99%) Cribl.io
6 1 (0.99%) Dell
6 1 (0.99%) HubSpot
6 1 (0.99%) IBM
6 1 (0.99%) MuleSoft
6 1 (0.99%) NetApp
6 1 (0.99%) OpenAI
6 1 (0.99%) Teradata
6 1 (0.99%) Workday