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 19 May 2026.

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

6 months to
19 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 36 57 80
Rank change year-on-year +21 +23 0
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 114 64 47
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 4.95% 3.69% 2.17%
As % of the Job Titles category 5.23% 3.96% 2.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 84 41 39
10th Percentile £356 £400 £407
25th Percentile £424 £455 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% - -10.71%
75th Percentile £600 £550 £588
90th Percentile £671 £640 £704
Central London median daily rate £550 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +10.00% - -9.09%
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 2,180 1,617 2,058
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 94.58% 93.15% 95.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,463 1,011 1,446
10th Percentile £356 £350 £350
25th Percentile £453 £463 £446
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £551
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% +4.40% -8.21%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £688
90th Percentile £775 £775 £800
Central London median daily rate £550 £565 £550
% change year-on-year -2.65% +2.73% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 14 15
10th Percentile £17.99 £22.00 £15.62
25th Percentile £18.75 £23.98 £20.22
Median hourly rate £29.78 £29.58 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year +0.70% +28.59% -34.29%
75th Percentile £52.41 £47.50 £28.44
90th Percentile £62.36 £89.13 £40.00
Central London median hourly rate £26.56 £28.61 £26.41
% change year-on-year -7.18% +8.35% -24.56%

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 19 May 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 19 May 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 53 (46.49%) Data Pipeline
1 53 (46.49%) SQL
2 51 (44.74%) Python
3 44 (38.60%) Analytics
4 43 (37.72%) Data Engineering
5 39 (34.21%) Azure
6 38 (33.33%) ETL
7 29 (25.44%) Data Modelling
8 28 (24.56%) Data Quality
9 26 (22.81%) AWS
10 24 (21.05%) Power Platform
11 23 (20.18%) Data Warehouse
12 21 (18.42%) Business Intelligence
12 21 (18.42%) Databricks
12 21 (18.42%) Power BI
12 21 (18.42%) Security Cleared
13 20 (17.54%) Apache Airflow
13 20 (17.54%) Data Science
13 20 (17.54%) Tableau
14 18 (15.79%) CI/CD
14 18 (15.79%) SC Cleared
14 18 (15.79%) Snowflake
15 16 (14.04%) Azure Data Factory
16 15 (13.16%) Data Governance
16 15 (13.16%) dbt
16 15 (13.16%) PySpark
16 15 (13.16%) Validation
17 14 (12.28%) GCP
17 14 (12.28%) Microsoft
18 13 (11.40%) AI

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 (17.54%) Apache Airflow
2 6 (5.26%) Apache
2 6 (5.26%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.88%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.88%) SAS
3 1 (0.88%) SharePoint
Applications
1 1 (0.88%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (1.75%) BambooHR
2 1 (0.88%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 39 (34.21%) Azure
2 26 (22.81%) AWS
3 24 (21.05%) Power Platform
4 18 (15.79%) Snowflake
5 16 (14.04%) Azure Data Factory
6 15 (13.16%) dbt
7 14 (12.28%) GCP
8 11 (9.65%) Amazon S3
9 10 (8.77%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 10 (8.77%) Serverless
10 9 (7.89%) AWS Lambda
11 6 (5.26%) Prefect
12 4 (3.51%) Matillion
13 3 (2.63%) Amazon Kinesis
13 3 (2.63%) Azure DevOps
13 3 (2.63%) Dagster
13 3 (2.63%) Fivetran
14 2 (1.75%) AWS Step Functions
14 2 (1.75%) Microsoft Purview
14 2 (1.75%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.88%) Software-Defined Networking
1 1 (0.88%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (20.18%) Data Warehouse
2 21 (18.42%) Power BI
3 20 (17.54%) Tableau
4 10 (8.77%) BigQuery
4 10 (8.77%) SQL Server
5 9 (7.89%) Snowflake Schema
6 8 (7.02%) Metadata
7 7 (6.14%) Amazon Redshift
7 7 (6.14%) Data Lake
8 5 (4.39%) Looker
9 4 (3.51%) Azure SQL Database
9 4 (3.51%) Delta Lake
9 4 (3.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 3 (2.63%) Big Data
10 3 (2.63%) DynamoDB
10 3 (2.63%) Geospatial Data
11 2 (1.75%) Amazon Athena
11 2 (1.75%) CockroachDB
11 2 (1.75%) NoSQL
11 2 (1.75%) Spatial Data
Development Applications
1 7 (6.14%) Git
2 2 (1.75%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
3 1 (0.88%) Jaeger
3 1 (0.88%) JIRA
General
1 31 (27.19%) Finance
2 10 (8.77%) Analytical Skills
3 9 (7.89%) Social Skills
4 6 (5.26%) Front Office
5 5 (4.39%) Banking
6 4 (3.51%) Back Office
7 3 (2.63%) Investment Banking
7 3 (2.63%) Publishing
7 3 (2.63%) Telecoms
8 2 (1.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 2 (1.75%) Legal
8 2 (1.75%) Pharmaceutical
8 2 (1.75%) Public Sector
9 1 (0.88%) Billing
9 1 (0.88%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.88%) Financial Institution
9 1 (0.88%) Games
9 1 (0.88%) General Ledger
9 1 (0.88%) Law
9 1 (0.88%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (13.16%) PySpark
2 8 (7.02%) Kafka
3 5 (4.39%) Pandas
4 4 (3.51%) Spring
4 4 (3.51%) Spring Boot
5 3 (2.63%) GeoJSON
5 3 (2.63%) Matplotlib
5 3 (2.63%) Polars
5 3 (2.63%) REST
5 3 (2.63%) scikit-learn
6 2 (1.75%) boto
6 2 (1.75%) JSON
6 2 (1.75%) NumPy
6 2 (1.75%) YAML
7 1 (0.88%) HTML
7 1 (0.88%) Jinja
7 1 (0.88%) Node.js
7 1 (0.88%) pytest
7 1 (0.88%) React
7 1 (0.88%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 8 (7.02%) Cloud Native
2 5 (4.39%) Clustering
2 5 (4.39%) Data Structures
3 3 (2.63%) Onboarding
4 2 (1.75%) Derivative
4 2 (1.75%) Equities
4 2 (1.75%) Fixed Income
4 2 (1.75%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 2 (1.75%) Greenfield Project
4 2 (1.75%) Life Science
4 2 (1.75%) Management Information System
4 2 (1.75%) Reinsurance
5 1 (0.88%) Algorithms
5 1 (0.88%) Data Centre
5 1 (0.88%) Distributed Computing
5 1 (0.88%) Media Streaming
5 1 (0.88%) Online Games
5 1 (0.88%) Public Cloud
5 1 (0.88%) Smart Meter
5 1 (0.88%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 1 (0.88%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 53 (46.49%) Data Pipeline
2 44 (38.60%) Analytics
3 43 (37.72%) Data Engineering
4 38 (33.33%) ETL
5 29 (25.44%) Data Modelling
6 21 (18.42%) Business Intelligence
7 20 (17.54%) Data Science
8 18 (15.79%) CI/CD
9 15 (13.16%) Data Governance
9 15 (13.16%) Validation
10 13 (11.40%) AI
10 13 (11.40%) DevOps
10 13 (11.40%) Performance Tuning
11 11 (9.65%) Decision-Making
12 9 (7.89%) Data Analytics
13 8 (7.02%) Migration
13 8 (7.02%) Performance Optimisation
13 8 (7.02%) Problem-Solving
14 7 (6.14%) Agile
14 7 (6.14%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 53 (46.49%) SQL
2 51 (44.74%) Python
3 9 (7.89%) Scala
4 8 (7.02%) Java
5 4 (3.51%) C#
6 3 (2.63%) T-SQL
7 2 (1.75%) R
8 1 (0.88%) Bicep
8 1 (0.88%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 1 (0.88%) Go
8 1 (0.88%) Korn
8 1 (0.88%) PL/SQL
8 1 (0.88%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 21 (18.42%) Security Cleared
2 18 (15.79%) SC Cleared
3 4 (3.51%) DBS Check
4 3 (2.63%) BPSS Clearance
5 2 (1.75%) SnowPro
6 1 (0.88%) BICSI Certification
6 1 (0.88%) City & Guilds
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (24.56%) Data Quality
2 6 (5.26%) GDPR
3 2 (1.75%) EMIR
3 2 (1.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (1.75%) MiFID
4 1 (0.88%) Accessibility
4 1 (0.88%) GxP
4 1 (0.88%) QA
System Software
1 5 (4.39%) Docker
Systems Management
1 7 (6.14%) Kubernetes
2 3 (2.63%) Terraform
3 1 (0.88%) Grafana
3 1 (0.88%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 21 (18.42%) Databricks
2 14 (12.28%) Microsoft
3 7 (6.14%) Informatica
4 4 (3.51%) SAP
5 3 (2.63%) Google
5 3 (2.63%) Oracle
6 2 (1.75%) Amplitude
6 2 (1.75%) Salesforce
6 2 (1.75%) Workday
7 1 (0.88%) HubSpot
7 1 (0.88%) MuleSoft
7 1 (0.88%) OpenAI
7 1 (0.88%) Splunk
7 1 (0.88%) Talend
7 1 (0.88%) Teradata