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 £555, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 15 July 2026.

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

6 months to
15 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 42 60 84
Rank change year-on-year +18 +24 -13
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 109 68 48
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 4.48% 3.65% 2.23%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.78% 3.91% 2.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 79 44 37
10th Percentile £369 £319 £413
25th Percentile £448 £446 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £555 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +11.00% -4.76% -7.89%
75th Percentile £613 £556 £675
90th Percentile £683 £636 £743
Central London median daily rate £555 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +11.00% -4.76% -8.30%
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 2,279 1,740 2,053
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 93.71% 93.45% 95.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,525 1,115 1,398
10th Percentile £356 £350 £350
25th Percentile £453 £450 £454
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £688
90th Percentile £775 £775 £800
Central London median daily rate £550 £550 £553
% change year-on-year - -0.45% -7.92%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 22 18
10th Percentile £17.60 £17.57 £17.77
25th Percentile £18.75 £24.66 £20.29
Median hourly rate £19.50 £32.50 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -40.00% +20.37% -22.86%
75th Percentile £40.88 £62.00 £58.50
90th Percentile £59.72 £86.43 £106.00
Central London median hourly rate £23.08 £30.04 £27.81
% change year-on-year -23.16% +8.00% -20.54%

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 15 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 15 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 52 (47.71%) SQL
2 51 (46.79%) Python
3 49 (44.95%) Analytics
3 49 (44.95%) Data Pipeline
4 47 (43.12%) Data Engineering
5 40 (36.70%) Data Modelling
6 36 (33.03%) ETL
7 32 (29.36%) Azure
8 26 (23.85%) CI/CD
8 26 (23.85%) Data Quality
9 24 (22.02%) Data Warehouse
10 23 (21.10%) AWS
10 23 (21.10%) Power Platform
11 21 (19.27%) Apache Airflow
11 21 (19.27%) Data Science
12 20 (18.35%) Business Intelligence
12 20 (18.35%) Power BI
13 19 (17.43%) Snowflake
14 18 (16.51%) DevOps
14 18 (16.51%) Tableau
15 17 (15.60%) dbt
16 15 (13.76%) Databricks
16 15 (13.76%) Decision-Making
16 15 (13.76%) Migration
16 15 (13.76%) Validation
17 14 (12.84%) AI
17 14 (12.84%) Azure Data Factory
17 14 (12.84%) GCP
18 13 (11.93%) Microsoft
18 13 (11.93%) Performance Optimisation

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 21 (19.27%) Apache Airflow
2 7 (6.42%) Apache Spark
3 6 (5.50%) Apache
4 1 (0.92%) Confluence
4 1 (0.92%) Microsoft Exchange
Business Applications
1 2 (1.83%) Aladdin
1 2 (1.83%) BambooHR
2 1 (0.92%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 32 (29.36%) Azure
2 23 (21.10%) AWS
2 23 (21.10%) Power Platform
3 19 (17.43%) Snowflake
4 17 (15.60%) dbt
5 14 (12.84%) Azure Data Factory
5 14 (12.84%) GCP
6 10 (9.17%) Amazon S3
7 8 (7.34%) AWS Lambda
7 8 (7.34%) Serverless
8 7 (6.42%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 6 (5.50%) Prefect
10 5 (4.59%) Azure DevOps
11 4 (3.67%) Amazon Kinesis
11 4 (3.67%) Matillion
12 3 (2.75%) Dagster
12 3 (2.75%) Fivetran
12 3 (2.75%) GitHub
13 2 (1.83%) Amazon EMR
13 2 (1.83%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.92%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (22.02%) Data Warehouse
2 20 (18.35%) Power BI
3 18 (16.51%) Tableau
4 11 (10.09%) BigQuery
5 10 (9.17%) SQL Server
6 8 (7.34%) Snowflake Schema
7 7 (6.42%) Amazon Redshift
8 5 (4.59%) Data Lake
8 5 (4.59%) Looker
8 5 (4.59%) Metadata
9 4 (3.67%) Azure SQL Database
9 4 (3.67%) Data Mart
9 4 (3.67%) Delta Lake
9 4 (3.67%) Oracle Database
9 4 (3.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 3 (2.75%) Amazon RDS
10 3 (2.75%) Big Data
10 3 (2.75%) Geospatial Data
11 2 (1.83%) Mixpanel
11 2 (1.83%) Spatial Data
Development Applications
1 8 (7.34%) Git
2 2 (1.83%) Bitbucket
2 2 (1.83%) JIRA
2 2 (1.83%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
3 1 (0.92%) Atlassian Bamboo
3 1 (0.92%) GitLab
General
1 34 (31.19%) Finance
2 13 (11.93%) Analytical Skills
3 11 (10.09%) Social Skills
4 10 (9.17%) Banking
5 3 (2.75%) Front Office
5 3 (2.75%) Public Sector
5 3 (2.75%) Publishing
6 2 (1.83%) Back Office
6 2 (1.83%) Legal
6 2 (1.83%) Pharmaceutical
6 2 (1.83%) Telecoms
7 1 (0.92%) Billing
7 1 (0.92%) Documentation Skills
7 1 (0.92%) Financial Institution
7 1 (0.92%) General Ledger
7 1 (0.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (0.92%) Investment Banking
7 1 (0.92%) Law
7 1 (0.92%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (11.93%) PySpark
2 9 (8.26%) Kafka
3 4 (3.67%) Spring
3 4 (3.67%) Spring Boot
4 3 (2.75%) GeoJSON
4 3 (2.75%) JSON
4 3 (2.75%) Matplotlib
4 3 (2.75%) Pandas
4 3 (2.75%) Polars
4 3 (2.75%) scikit-learn
5 2 (1.83%) XML
6 1 (0.92%) ActiveMQ
6 1 (0.92%) EDI
6 1 (0.92%) Jinja
6 1 (0.92%) Node.js
6 1 (0.92%) pytest
6 1 (0.92%) RabbitMQ
6 1 (0.92%) React
6 1 (0.92%) XSLT
6 1 (0.92%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 14 (12.84%) Cloud Native
2 6 (5.50%) Clustering
2 6 (5.50%) Legacy Systems
3 4 (3.67%) Data Structures
3 4 (3.67%) Onboarding
4 2 (1.83%) Algorithms
4 2 (1.83%) Fixed Income
4 2 (1.83%) Greenfield Project
4 2 (1.83%) Life Science
4 2 (1.83%) Reinsurance
5 1 (0.92%) Data Centre
5 1 (0.92%) Derivative
5 1 (0.92%) Enterprise Cloud
5 1 (0.92%) Equities
5 1 (0.92%) Fibre Optics
5 1 (0.92%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 1 (0.92%) NHS
5 1 (0.92%) Public Cloud
5 1 (0.92%) Smart Meter
5 1 (0.92%) Virtual Team
Processes & Methodologies
1 49 (44.95%) Analytics
1 49 (44.95%) Data Pipeline
2 47 (43.12%) Data Engineering
3 40 (36.70%) Data Modelling
4 36 (33.03%) ETL
5 26 (23.85%) CI/CD
6 21 (19.27%) Data Science
7 20 (18.35%) Business Intelligence
8 18 (16.51%) DevOps
9 15 (13.76%) Decision-Making
9 15 (13.76%) Migration
9 15 (13.76%) Validation
10 14 (12.84%) AI
11 13 (11.93%) Performance Optimisation
12 12 (11.01%) Data Governance
12 12 (11.01%) Performance Tuning
13 11 (10.09%) Data Transformation
14 10 (9.17%) Data Analytics
15 9 (8.26%) Data Architecture
15 9 (8.26%) Use Case
Programming Languages
1 52 (47.71%) SQL
2 51 (46.79%) Python
3 8 (7.34%) Java
4 6 (5.50%) Scala
5 4 (3.67%) C#
6 3 (2.75%) T-SQL
7 2 (1.83%) R
8 1 (0.92%) Bicep
8 1 (0.92%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 1 (0.92%) Korn
8 1 (0.92%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 13 (11.93%) Security Cleared
2 10 (9.17%) SC Cleared
3 5 (4.59%) DBS Check
4 3 (2.75%) BPSS Clearance
4 3 (2.75%) SnowPro
5 1 (0.92%) AWS Certification
5 1 (0.92%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
5 1 (0.92%) BICSI Certification
5 1 (0.92%) City & Guilds
5 1 (0.92%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (23.85%) Data Quality
2 4 (3.67%) GDPR
3 2 (1.83%) Accessibility
3 2 (1.83%) EMIR
3 2 (1.83%) MiFID
3 2 (1.83%) QA
4 1 (0.92%) GxP
System Software
1 5 (4.59%) Docker
Systems Management
1 5 (4.59%) Kubernetes
2 3 (2.75%) Terraform
Vendors
1 15 (13.76%) Databricks
2 13 (11.93%) Microsoft
3 7 (6.42%) Informatica
4 6 (5.50%) Oracle
5 3 (2.75%) Google
6 2 (1.83%) Amplitude
6 2 (1.83%) Palantir
6 2 (1.83%) SAP
6 2 (1.83%) Workday
7 1 (0.92%) Cribl.io
7 1 (0.92%) HubSpot
7 1 (0.92%) IBM
7 1 (0.92%) MuleSoft
7 1 (0.92%) OpenAI
7 1 (0.92%) Salesforce
7 1 (0.92%) Talend