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 £538, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 16 April 2026.

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

6 months to
16 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 44 63 80
Rank change year-on-year +19 +17 0
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 104 51 53
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 4.69% 2.92% 2.36%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.96% 3.14% 2.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 79 33 47
10th Percentile £325 £425 £385
25th Percentile £416 £463 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £510 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.39% +2.00% -11.70%
75th Percentile £588 £597 £594
90th Percentile £643 £672 £702
Central London median daily rate £538 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +7.50% -4.76% -6.67%
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 2,095 1,623 2,129
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 94.45% 92.80% 94.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,423 1,021 1,519
10th Percentile £355 £350 £350
25th Percentile £450 £463 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £565
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% +1.77% -5.04%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £688
90th Percentile £775 £775 £800
Central London median daily rate £550 £575 £550
% change year-on-year -4.35% +4.55% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 11 18
10th Percentile £18.75 £22.00 £15.73
25th Percentile £18.90 £24.66 £19.99
Median hourly rate £36.28 £34.65 £22.75
Median % change year-on-year +4.71% +52.31% -35.00%
75th Percentile £52.41 £56.25 £27.38
90th Percentile £62.36 £100.00 £43.08
Central London median hourly rate £26.11 £30.04 £25.78
% change year-on-year -13.07% +16.51% -26.34%

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 April 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 April 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 52 (50.00%) Data Pipeline
1 52 (50.00%) SQL
2 49 (47.12%) Python
3 42 (40.38%) ETL
4 41 (39.42%) Azure
5 37 (35.58%) Analytics
6 34 (32.69%) Data Engineering
7 33 (31.73%) Data Modelling
7 33 (31.73%) Data Quality
8 29 (27.88%) AWS
9 27 (25.96%) Databricks
10 23 (22.12%) Data Warehouse
11 22 (21.15%) Power Platform
12 21 (20.19%) Data Science
12 21 (20.19%) Snowflake
13 20 (19.23%) Apache Airflow
13 20 (19.23%) Business Intelligence
13 20 (19.23%) CI/CD
13 20 (19.23%) Security Cleared
14 19 (18.27%) dbt
14 19 (18.27%) Power BI
15 18 (17.31%) Performance Tuning
15 18 (17.31%) Tableau
16 16 (15.38%) Microsoft
16 16 (15.38%) SC Cleared
17 15 (14.42%) Data Governance
18 14 (13.46%) GCP
18 14 (13.46%) PySpark
19 13 (12.50%) Azure Data Factory
20 12 (11.54%) Amazon S3

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 (19.23%) Apache Airflow
2 7 (6.73%) Apache
3 6 (5.77%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.96%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.96%) SAS
4 1 (0.96%) SharePoint
Applications
1 1 (0.96%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (1.92%) BambooHR
2 1 (0.96%) Aladdin
2 1 (0.96%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 41 (39.42%) Azure
2 29 (27.88%) AWS
3 22 (21.15%) Power Platform
4 21 (20.19%) Snowflake
5 19 (18.27%) dbt
6 14 (13.46%) GCP
7 13 (12.50%) Azure Data Factory
8 12 (11.54%) Amazon S3
9 10 (9.62%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 10 (9.62%) Serverless
10 9 (8.65%) AWS Lambda
11 7 (6.73%) Prefect
12 5 (4.81%) Dagster
13 4 (3.85%) Amazon Kinesis
13 4 (3.85%) Matillion
14 3 (2.88%) AWS Step Functions
14 3 (2.88%) Fivetran
15 2 (1.92%) Amazon EventBridge
15 2 (1.92%) Microsoft Purview
15 2 (1.92%) Textract
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.96%) Software-Defined Networking
1 1 (0.96%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (22.12%) Data Warehouse
2 19 (18.27%) Power BI
3 18 (17.31%) Tableau
4 10 (9.62%) Data Lake
4 10 (9.62%) Metadata
5 8 (7.69%) Amazon Redshift
5 8 (7.69%) Snowflake Schema
6 7 (6.73%) BigQuery
6 7 (6.73%) SQL Server
7 5 (4.81%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 4 (3.85%) Amazon Athena
8 4 (3.85%) Delta Lake
8 4 (3.85%) Looker
8 4 (3.85%) PostgreSQL
9 3 (2.88%) Azure SQL Database
9 3 (2.88%) Big Data
9 3 (2.88%) Geospatial Data
9 3 (2.88%) Star Schema
10 2 (1.92%) Hadoop
10 2 (1.92%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 10 (9.62%) Git
2 1 (0.96%) Jaeger
2 1 (0.96%) Jenkins
2 1 (0.96%) JIRA
General
1 25 (24.04%) Finance
2 13 (12.50%) Social Skills
3 11 (10.58%) Analytical Skills
4 6 (5.77%) Banking
4 6 (5.77%) Front Office
5 4 (3.85%) Back Office
5 4 (3.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 3 (2.88%) Investment Banking
6 3 (2.88%) Law
6 3 (2.88%) Pharmaceutical
6 3 (2.88%) Public Sector
6 3 (2.88%) Publishing
6 3 (2.88%) Telecoms
7 2 (1.92%) Legal
8 1 (0.96%) Financial Institution
8 1 (0.96%) Games
8 1 (0.96%) International Banking
8 1 (0.96%) Manufacturing
8 1 (0.96%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (13.46%) PySpark
2 6 (5.77%) Kafka
3 5 (4.81%) Pandas
4 3 (2.88%) GeoJSON
4 3 (2.88%) JSON
4 3 (2.88%) Matplotlib
4 3 (2.88%) Polars
4 3 (2.88%) REST
4 3 (2.88%) scikit-learn
5 2 (1.92%) boto
5 2 (1.92%) NumPy
5 2 (1.92%) XML
5 2 (1.92%) YAML
6 1 (0.96%) Jinja
6 1 (0.96%) Loki
6 1 (0.96%) Node.js
6 1 (0.96%) pytest
6 1 (0.96%) React
6 1 (0.96%) Spring Boot
6 1 (0.96%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 6 (5.77%) Data Structures
2 5 (4.81%) Cloud Native
2 5 (4.81%) Clustering
3 2 (1.92%) Derivative
3 2 (1.92%) Equities
3 2 (1.92%) Fixed Income
3 2 (1.92%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 2 (1.92%) Greenfield Project
3 2 (1.92%) Life Science
3 2 (1.92%) Management Information System
4 1 (0.96%) Algorithms
4 1 (0.96%) Data Centre
4 1 (0.96%) Fibre Optics
4 1 (0.96%) Legacy Systems
4 1 (0.96%) Media Streaming
4 1 (0.96%) Online Games
4 1 (0.96%) Public Cloud
4 1 (0.96%) Reinsurance
4 1 (0.96%) Replication
4 1 (0.96%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 1 (0.96%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 52 (50.00%) Data Pipeline
2 42 (40.38%) ETL
3 37 (35.58%) Analytics
4 34 (32.69%) Data Engineering
5 33 (31.73%) Data Modelling
6 21 (20.19%) Data Science
7 20 (19.23%) Business Intelligence
7 20 (19.23%) CI/CD
8 18 (17.31%) Performance Tuning
9 15 (14.42%) Data Governance
10 12 (11.54%) Data Transformation
10 12 (11.54%) Decision-Making
10 12 (11.54%) Validation
11 11 (10.58%) DevOps
11 11 (10.58%) Problem-Solving
12 10 (9.62%) AI
13 9 (8.65%) Data Integration
14 8 (7.69%) Agile
15 7 (6.73%) Asset Management
15 7 (6.73%) Dimensional Modelling
Programming Languages
1 52 (50.00%) SQL
2 49 (47.12%) Python
3 9 (8.65%) Scala
4 5 (4.81%) Java
5 4 (3.85%) C#
6 2 (1.92%) T-SQL
7 1 (0.96%) Bicep
7 1 (0.96%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 1 (0.96%) Go
7 1 (0.96%) PL/SQL
7 1 (0.96%) PowerShell
7 1 (0.96%) R
Qualifications
1 20 (19.23%) Security Cleared
2 16 (15.38%) SC Cleared
3 3 (2.88%) BPSS Clearance
3 3 (2.88%) SnowPro
4 1 (0.96%) BICSI Certification
4 1 (0.96%) City & Guilds
4 1 (0.96%) Computer Science Degree
4 1 (0.96%) DBS Check
4 1 (0.96%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (31.73%) Data Quality
2 4 (3.85%) GDPR
3 2 (1.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (0.96%) Accessibility
4 1 (0.96%) GxP
4 1 (0.96%) QA
System Software
1 3 (2.88%) Docker
Systems Management
1 5 (4.81%) Terraform
2 4 (3.85%) Kubernetes
3 1 (0.96%) Grafana
3 1 (0.96%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 27 (25.96%) Databricks
2 16 (15.38%) Microsoft
3 7 (6.73%) Informatica
4 4 (3.85%) SAP
5 3 (2.88%) Google
5 3 (2.88%) Oracle
6 2 (1.92%) Workday
7 1 (0.96%) Amplitude
7 1 (0.96%) IBM
7 1 (0.96%) MuleSoft
7 1 (0.96%) Palantir
7 1 (0.96%) Salesforce
7 1 (0.96%) Splunk
7 1 (0.96%) Talend
7 1 (0.96%) Teradata