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 19 November 2025.

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

6 months to
19 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 76 71 72
Rank change year-on-year -5 +1 +40
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 53 53 77
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 2.98% 2.53% 2.84%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.18% 2.71% 3.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 41 35 58
10th Percentile £306 £468 £398
25th Percentile £413 £513 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £575 £558
Median % change year-on-year -6.52% +3.14% +1.36%
75th Percentile £588 £675 £655
90th Percentile £663 £754 £788
Central London median daily rate £538 £575 £580
% change year-on-year -6.52% -0.86% +5.45%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
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 1,666 1,959 2,549
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 93.70% 93.33% 94.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,168 1,202 1,795
10th Percentile £325 £363 £351
25th Percentile £413 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% - -
75th Percentile £675 £684 £688
90th Percentile £775 £775 £800
Central London median daily rate £550 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -4.35% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 14 14
10th Percentile £16.96 £15.95 £17.00
25th Percentile £20.18 £28.06 £19.51
Median hourly rate £28.00 £67.50 £37.00
Median % change year-on-year -58.52% +82.43% -11.90%
75th Percentile £44.72 £112.00 £51.56
90th Percentile £64.11 £137.50 £72.25
Central London median hourly rate £27.04 £35.00 £36.00
% change year-on-year -22.76% -2.78% -11.11%

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 November 2025.

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 November 2025, 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 33 (62.26%) Python
2 32 (60.38%) SQL
3 30 (56.60%) Data Pipeline
4 29 (54.72%) AWS
4 29 (54.72%) Azure
5 24 (45.28%) ETL
6 21 (39.62%) Data Quality
7 20 (37.74%) Data Modelling
8 19 (35.85%) Databricks
9 18 (33.96%) Data Warehouse
10 17 (32.08%) Analytics
10 17 (32.08%) Data Engineering
11 15 (28.30%) CI/CD
12 14 (26.42%) Data Science
13 12 (22.64%) Apache Airflow
13 12 (22.64%) Data Transformation
14 11 (20.75%) Business Intelligence
14 11 (20.75%) Data Lake
14 11 (20.75%) Degree
14 11 (20.75%) Security Cleared
14 11 (20.75%) Snowflake
15 10 (18.87%) Microsoft
16 9 (16.98%) Agile
16 9 (16.98%) Apache Spark
16 9 (16.98%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 9 (16.98%) Computer Science
16 9 (16.98%) Data Governance
16 9 (16.98%) dbt
16 9 (16.98%) DevOps
17 8 (15.09%) 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 12 (22.64%) Apache Airflow
2 9 (16.98%) Apache Spark
3 6 (11.32%) Apache
4 1 (1.89%) Confluence
4 1 (1.89%) Luigi
4 1 (1.89%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 2 (3.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (1.89%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (1.89%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 1 (1.89%) Aladdin
1 1 (1.89%) Maximo
1 1 (1.89%) Oracle BPM
Cloud Services
1 29 (54.72%) AWS
1 29 (54.72%) Azure
2 11 (20.75%) Snowflake
3 9 (16.98%) Azure Synapse Analytics
3 9 (16.98%) dbt
4 8 (15.09%) Amazon S3
4 8 (15.09%) Azure Data Factory
4 8 (15.09%) GCP
4 8 (15.09%) Power Platform
5 4 (7.55%) Azure DevOps
6 3 (5.66%) AWS Lambda
6 3 (5.66%) GitHub
6 3 (5.66%) Serverless
7 2 (3.77%) Amazon SageMaker
7 2 (3.77%) Azure Machine Learning
7 2 (3.77%) Dagster
7 2 (3.77%) GitHub Actions
7 2 (3.77%) Microsoft Purview
7 2 (3.77%) Prefect
8 1 (1.89%) ChatGPT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (33.96%) Data Warehouse
2 11 (20.75%) Data Lake
3 8 (15.09%) Power BI
4 5 (9.43%) Amazon QuickSight
4 5 (9.43%) Delta Lake
4 5 (9.43%) Hadoop
4 5 (9.43%) PostgreSQL
4 5 (9.43%) Relational Database
5 4 (7.55%) Amazon Redshift
5 4 (7.55%) DataStage
6 3 (5.66%) Snowflake Schema
7 2 (3.77%) Apache Hive
7 2 (3.77%) Azure SQL Database
7 2 (3.77%) Big Data
7 2 (3.77%) Metadata
7 2 (3.77%) Spark SQL
7 2 (3.77%) SQL Server
7 2 (3.77%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 2 (3.77%) Star Schema
7 2 (3.77%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 8 (15.09%) Git
2 3 (5.66%) Jenkins
3 2 (3.77%) JIRA
3 2 (3.77%) MLflow
4 1 (1.89%) Bitbucket
General
1 20 (37.74%) Finance
2 13 (24.53%) Social Skills
3 6 (11.32%) Analytical Skills
4 5 (9.43%) Public Sector
5 4 (7.55%) Banking
5 4 (7.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 2 (3.77%) Documentation Skills
6 2 (3.77%) Front Office
6 2 (3.77%) Investment Banking
6 2 (3.77%) Law
7 1 (1.89%) Back Office
7 1 (1.89%) Financial Institution
7 1 (1.89%) International Banking
7 1 (1.89%) Manufacturing
7 1 (1.89%) Organisational Skills
7 1 (1.89%) Pharmaceutical
7 1 (1.89%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (15.09%) PySpark
2 5 (9.43%) XML
3 3 (5.66%) Kafka
4 2 (3.77%) CSS
4 2 (3.77%) HTML
4 2 (3.77%) JSON
5 1 (1.89%) ActiveMQ
5 1 (1.89%) ADO
5 1 (1.89%) AWS CDK
5 1 (1.89%) EDI
5 1 (1.89%) Middleware
5 1 (1.89%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 3 (5.66%) Cloud Native
1 3 (5.66%) Product Ownership
2 2 (3.77%) Distributed Computing
2 2 (3.77%) Virtual Team
3 1 (1.89%) Data Structures
3 1 (1.89%) Derivative
3 1 (1.89%) Equities
3 1 (1.89%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 1 (1.89%) Greenfield Project
3 1 (1.89%) Hedge funds
3 1 (1.89%) IoT
3 1 (1.89%) Legacy Systems
3 1 (1.89%) Replication
3 1 (1.89%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 1 (1.89%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 30 (56.60%) Data Pipeline
2 24 (45.28%) ETL
3 20 (37.74%) Data Modelling
4 17 (32.08%) Analytics
4 17 (32.08%) Data Engineering
5 15 (28.30%) CI/CD
6 14 (26.42%) Data Science
7 12 (22.64%) Data Transformation
8 11 (20.75%) Business Intelligence
9 9 (16.98%) Agile
9 9 (16.98%) Computer Science
9 9 (16.98%) Data Governance
9 9 (16.98%) DevOps
10 8 (15.09%) Data Integration
10 8 (15.09%) Machine Learning
10 8 (15.09%) Problem-Solving
11 7 (13.21%) Migration
12 6 (11.32%) Performance Tuning
13 5 (9.43%) Data Migration
13 5 (9.43%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 33 (62.26%) Python
2 32 (60.38%) SQL
3 5 (9.43%) Java
3 5 (9.43%) Scala
4 3 (5.66%) JavaScript
5 1 (1.89%) R
5 1 (1.89%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 11 (20.75%) Degree
1 11 (20.75%) Security Cleared
2 8 (15.09%) SC Cleared
3 4 (7.55%) Computer Science Degree
4 3 (5.66%) AWS Certification
5 2 (3.77%) Master's Degree
5 2 (3.77%) SnowPro
6 1 (1.89%) Azure Certification
6 1 (1.89%) BPSS Clearance
6 1 (1.89%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (39.62%) Data Quality
2 2 (3.77%) NIST
3 1 (1.89%) Accessibility
3 1 (1.89%) Dodd-Frank
3 1 (1.89%) EMIR
3 1 (1.89%) GDPR
3 1 (1.89%) MiFID
Systems Management
1 4 (7.55%) Terraform
2 2 (3.77%) Kubernetes
3 1 (1.89%) Ambari
3 1 (1.89%) Puppet
3 1 (1.89%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 19 (35.85%) Databricks
2 10 (18.87%) Microsoft
3 4 (7.55%) Palantir
4 3 (5.66%) Foundry
5 1 (1.89%) IBM
5 1 (1.89%) Oracle
5 1 (1.89%) Workday