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 £524, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 2 April 2026.

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

6 months to
2 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 68 75
Rank change year-on-year +21 +7 +1
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 97 50 53
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 4.50% 2.89% 2.30%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.78% 3.12% 2.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 72 30 46
10th Percentile £325 £424 £385
25th Percentile £412 £457 £453
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £524 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.66% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £588
90th Percentile £696 £683 £702
Central London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
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 2,028 1,605 2,191
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 94.15% 92.72% 95.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,392 1,024 1,556
10th Percentile £350 £363 £341
25th Percentile £450 £463 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £566
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% +1.55% -5.63%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £688
90th Percentile £775 £775 £796
Central London median daily rate £550 £575 £550
% change year-on-year -4.35% +4.55% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 10 17
10th Percentile £18.75 £22.00 £15.30
25th Percentile £19.05 £24.66 £19.92
Median hourly rate £32.07 £31.75 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +0.99% +41.11% -35.71%
75th Percentile £49.83 £45.23 £40.00
90th Percentile £59.72 £76.13 £49.35
Central London median hourly rate £26.11 £30.04 £26.56
% change year-on-year -13.07% +13.08% -24.11%

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 2 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 2 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 54 (55.67%) SQL
2 51 (52.58%) Data Pipeline
3 48 (49.48%) Python
4 42 (43.30%) ETL
5 41 (42.27%) Azure
6 34 (35.05%) Data Engineering
6 34 (35.05%) Data Modelling
7 33 (34.02%) Analytics
7 33 (34.02%) Data Quality
8 27 (27.84%) AWS
8 27 (27.84%) Databricks
9 23 (23.71%) Data Warehouse
10 22 (22.68%) CI/CD
10 22 (22.68%) Power Platform
11 20 (20.62%) Business Intelligence
12 19 (19.59%) dbt
12 19 (19.59%) Performance Tuning
12 19 (19.59%) Power BI
12 19 (19.59%) Snowflake
13 18 (18.56%) Apache Airflow
13 18 (18.56%) Data Science
13 18 (18.56%) Microsoft
13 18 (18.56%) Security Cleared
14 15 (15.46%) Data Governance
15 14 (14.43%) PySpark
15 14 (14.43%) SC Cleared
15 14 (14.43%) Tableau
16 13 (13.40%) Azure Data Factory
16 13 (13.40%) Data Transformation
16 13 (13.40%) GCP

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 18 (18.56%) Apache Airflow
2 8 (8.25%) Apache
3 7 (7.22%) Apache Spark
4 1 (1.03%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (1.03%) SAS
4 1 (1.03%) SharePoint
Applications
1 2 (2.06%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (1.03%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (1.03%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 1 (1.03%) Aladdin
1 1 (1.03%) BambooHR
1 1 (1.03%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 41 (42.27%) Azure
2 27 (27.84%) AWS
3 22 (22.68%) Power Platform
4 19 (19.59%) dbt
4 19 (19.59%) Snowflake
5 13 (13.40%) Azure Data Factory
5 13 (13.40%) GCP
6 12 (12.37%) Amazon S3
7 10 (10.31%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 10 (10.31%) Serverless
8 9 (9.28%) AWS Lambda
9 6 (6.19%) Prefect
10 4 (4.12%) Amazon Kinesis
10 4 (4.12%) Dagster
10 4 (4.12%) Matillion
11 3 (3.09%) AWS Step Functions
11 3 (3.09%) Fivetran
12 2 (2.06%) Amazon EventBridge
12 2 (2.06%) Microsoft Purview
12 2 (2.06%) Textract
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.03%) Software-Defined Networking
1 1 (1.03%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (23.71%) Data Warehouse
2 19 (19.59%) Power BI
3 14 (14.43%) Tableau
4 12 (12.37%) Data Lake
5 10 (10.31%) Metadata
6 8 (8.25%) Snowflake Schema
7 7 (7.22%) Amazon Redshift
7 7 (7.22%) SQL Server
8 5 (5.15%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 4 (4.12%) Amazon Athena
9 4 (4.12%) Delta Lake
9 4 (4.12%) PostgreSQL
10 3 (3.09%) Azure SQL Database
10 3 (3.09%) Big Data
10 3 (3.09%) BigQuery
10 3 (3.09%) Geospatial Data
10 3 (3.09%) Looker
10 3 (3.09%) Star Schema
11 2 (2.06%) Hadoop
11 2 (2.06%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 11 (11.34%) Git
2 2 (2.06%) Jenkins
3 1 (1.03%) Jaeger
3 1 (1.03%) JIRA
General
1 23 (23.71%) Finance
2 13 (13.40%) Social Skills
3 11 (11.34%) Analytical Skills
4 7 (7.22%) Banking
4 7 (7.22%) Front Office
5 4 (4.12%) Back Office
5 4 (4.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 3 (3.09%) Investment Banking
6 3 (3.09%) Law
6 3 (3.09%) Pharmaceutical
6 3 (3.09%) Public Sector
6 3 (3.09%) Publishing
6 3 (3.09%) Telecoms
7 1 (1.03%) Financial Institution
7 1 (1.03%) Games
7 1 (1.03%) International Banking
7 1 (1.03%) Legal
7 1 (1.03%) Manufacturing
7 1 (1.03%) Military
7 1 (1.03%) Organisational Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (14.43%) PySpark
2 7 (7.22%) Kafka
3 5 (5.15%) Pandas
4 3 (3.09%) GeoJSON
4 3 (3.09%) JSON
4 3 (3.09%) Matplotlib
4 3 (3.09%) Polars
4 3 (3.09%) scikit-learn
5 2 (2.06%) boto
5 2 (2.06%) NumPy
5 2 (2.06%) REST
5 2 (2.06%) XML
5 2 (2.06%) YAML
6 1 (1.03%) HTML
6 1 (1.03%) Jinja
6 1 (1.03%) Loki
6 1 (1.03%) Node.js
6 1 (1.03%) pytest
6 1 (1.03%) React
6 1 (1.03%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 6 (6.19%) Cloud Native
1 6 (6.19%) Data Structures
2 5 (5.15%) Clustering
3 2 (2.06%) Derivative
3 2 (2.06%) Equities
3 2 (2.06%) Fixed Income
3 2 (2.06%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 2 (2.06%) Greenfield Project
3 2 (2.06%) Life Science
3 2 (2.06%) Management Information System
4 1 (1.03%) Algorithms
4 1 (1.03%) Data Centre
4 1 (1.03%) Hedge funds
4 1 (1.03%) Media Streaming
4 1 (1.03%) Online Games
4 1 (1.03%) Public Cloud
4 1 (1.03%) Reinsurance
4 1 (1.03%) Replication
4 1 (1.03%) Taxonomies
4 1 (1.03%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 1 (1.03%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 51 (52.58%) Data Pipeline
2 42 (43.30%) ETL
3 34 (35.05%) Data Engineering
3 34 (35.05%) Data Modelling
4 33 (34.02%) Analytics
5 22 (22.68%) CI/CD
6 20 (20.62%) Business Intelligence
7 19 (19.59%) Performance Tuning
8 18 (18.56%) Data Science
9 15 (15.46%) Data Governance
10 13 (13.40%) Data Transformation
11 12 (12.37%) Validation
12 11 (11.34%) AI
12 11 (11.34%) Data Integration
12 11 (11.34%) Decision-Making
12 11 (11.34%) DevOps
13 10 (10.31%) Problem-Solving
14 8 (8.25%) Agile
15 7 (7.22%) Asset Management
15 7 (7.22%) Dimensional Modelling
Programming Languages
1 54 (55.67%) SQL
2 48 (49.48%) Python
3 9 (9.28%) Scala
4 4 (4.12%) C#
4 4 (4.12%) Java
5 2 (2.06%) T-SQL
6 1 (1.03%) Bicep
6 1 (1.03%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 1 (1.03%) Go
6 1 (1.03%) PL/SQL
6 1 (1.03%) PowerShell
6 1 (1.03%) R
Qualifications
1 18 (18.56%) Security Cleared
2 14 (14.43%) SC Cleared
3 3 (3.09%) BPSS Clearance
3 3 (3.09%) SnowPro
4 1 (1.03%) BICSI Certification
4 1 (1.03%) City & Guilds
4 1 (1.03%) Computer Science Degree
4 1 (1.03%) DBS Check
4 1 (1.03%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (34.02%) Data Quality
2 3 (3.09%) GDPR
3 2 (2.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (1.03%) Accessibility
4 1 (1.03%) Dodd-Frank
4 1 (1.03%) EMIR
4 1 (1.03%) GxP
4 1 (1.03%) QA
System Software
1 2 (2.06%) Docker
Systems Management
1 6 (6.19%) Terraform
2 4 (4.12%) Kubernetes
3 1 (1.03%) Grafana
3 1 (1.03%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 27 (27.84%) Databricks
2 18 (18.56%) Microsoft
3 7 (7.22%) Informatica
4 4 (4.12%) SAP
5 3 (3.09%) Google
5 3 (3.09%) Oracle
6 1 (1.03%) Amplitude
6 1 (1.03%) IBM
6 1 (1.03%) MuleSoft
6 1 (1.03%) Palantir
6 1 (1.03%) Salesforce
6 1 (1.03%) Splunk
6 1 (1.03%) Talend
6 1 (1.03%) Teradata
6 1 (1.03%) Workday