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 £575, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 22 July 2026.

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

6 months to
22 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 64 90
Rank change year-on-year +18 +26 -26
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 105 66 44
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 4.36% 3.55% 2.08%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.64% 3.80% 2.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 76 44 33
10th Percentile £416 £319 £417
25th Percentile £459 £459 £488
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +12.20% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £616 £576 £688
90th Percentile £719 £636 £748
Central London median daily rate £565 £500 £538
% change year-on-year +13.00% -6.98% -4.02%
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 2,263 1,738 2,015
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 93.86% 93.39% 95.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,510 1,113 1,369
10th Percentile £356 £340 £350
25th Percentile £455 £438 £450
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 £790
Central London median daily rate £550 £550 £555
% change year-on-year - -0.81% -6.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 22 17
10th Percentile £17.60 £17.57 £20.22
25th Percentile £18.75 £24.66 £22.00
Median hourly rate £19.50 £32.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -40.00% -18.75% +0.43%
75th Percentile £40.88 £62.00 £78.75
90th Percentile £59.72 £86.43 £137.50
Central London median hourly rate £23.08 £30.04 £30.41
% change year-on-year -23.16% -1.22% -13.13%

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 22 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 22 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 (49.52%) SQL
2 51 (48.57%) Python
3 49 (46.67%) Data Engineering
4 48 (45.71%) Data Pipeline
5 47 (44.76%) Analytics
6 38 (36.19%) Data Modelling
7 35 (33.33%) ETL
8 29 (27.62%) Azure
9 27 (25.71%) CI/CD
10 26 (24.76%) Data Quality
11 24 (22.86%) Data Warehouse
12 23 (21.90%) AWS
13 22 (20.95%) Power Platform
14 20 (19.05%) Apache Airflow
14 20 (19.05%) Data Science
15 19 (18.10%) Business Intelligence
15 19 (18.10%) DevOps
15 19 (18.10%) Power BI
16 18 (17.14%) Snowflake
17 16 (15.24%) dbt
17 16 (15.24%) Migration
17 16 (15.24%) Tableau
18 15 (14.29%) Azure Data Factory
18 15 (14.29%) Validation
19 14 (13.33%) Decision-Making
19 14 (13.33%) Microsoft
20 13 (12.38%) AI
20 13 (12.38%) Databricks
20 13 (12.38%) GCP
20 13 (12.38%) 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 20 (19.05%) Apache Airflow
2 7 (6.67%) Apache Spark
3 6 (5.71%) Apache
4 1 (0.95%) Confluence
4 1 (0.95%) Microsoft Exchange
Business Applications
1 2 (1.90%) Aladdin
1 2 (1.90%) BambooHR
2 1 (0.95%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 29 (27.62%) Azure
2 23 (21.90%) AWS
3 22 (20.95%) Power Platform
4 18 (17.14%) Snowflake
5 16 (15.24%) dbt
6 15 (14.29%) Azure Data Factory
7 13 (12.38%) GCP
8 10 (9.52%) Amazon S3
9 8 (7.62%) AWS Lambda
9 8 (7.62%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 8 (7.62%) Serverless
10 6 (5.71%) Prefect
11 5 (4.76%) Azure DevOps
12 4 (3.81%) Amazon Kinesis
13 3 (2.86%) Dagster
13 3 (2.86%) Fivetran
13 3 (2.86%) GitHub
14 2 (1.90%) Amazon EMR
14 2 (1.90%) GitHub Actions
14 2 (1.90%) Matillion
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.95%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (22.86%) Data Warehouse
2 19 (18.10%) Power BI
3 16 (15.24%) Tableau
4 11 (10.48%) BigQuery
5 9 (8.57%) SQL Server
6 7 (6.67%) Amazon Redshift
7 6 (5.71%) Data Lake
7 6 (5.71%) Snowflake Schema
8 4 (3.81%) Azure SQL Database
8 4 (3.81%) Data Mart
8 4 (3.81%) Looker
8 4 (3.81%) Metadata
8 4 (3.81%) Oracle Database
8 4 (3.81%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 3 (2.86%) Amazon RDS
9 3 (2.86%) Big Data
9 3 (2.86%) Delta Lake
9 3 (2.86%) Geospatial Data
9 3 (2.86%) NoSQL
10 2 (1.90%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 8 (7.62%) Git
2 2 (1.90%) Bitbucket
2 2 (1.90%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
3 1 (0.95%) Atlassian Bamboo
3 1 (0.95%) GitLab
3 1 (0.95%) JIRA
General
1 34 (32.38%) Finance
2 12 (11.43%) Analytical Skills
3 11 (10.48%) Social Skills
4 9 (8.57%) Banking
5 4 (3.81%) Front Office
6 3 (2.86%) Public Sector
6 3 (2.86%) Publishing
7 2 (1.90%) Back Office
7 2 (1.90%) Legal
7 2 (1.90%) Pharmaceutical
8 1 (0.95%) Billing
8 1 (0.95%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (0.95%) Financial Institution
8 1 (0.95%) General Ledger
8 1 (0.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (0.95%) Investment Banking
8 1 (0.95%) Law
8 1 (0.95%) Military
8 1 (0.95%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (12.38%) PySpark
2 9 (8.57%) Kafka
3 4 (3.81%) Spring
3 4 (3.81%) Spring Boot
4 3 (2.86%) GeoJSON
4 3 (2.86%) JSON
4 3 (2.86%) Matplotlib
4 3 (2.86%) Pandas
4 3 (2.86%) Polars
4 3 (2.86%) scikit-learn
5 2 (1.90%) REST
5 2 (1.90%) XML
6 1 (0.95%) ActiveMQ
6 1 (0.95%) EDI
6 1 (0.95%) Middleware
6 1 (0.95%) Node.js
6 1 (0.95%) RabbitMQ
6 1 (0.95%) SOAP
6 1 (0.95%) XSLT
6 1 (0.95%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 16 (15.24%) Cloud Native
2 6 (5.71%) Legacy Systems
3 5 (4.76%) Clustering
4 4 (3.81%) Onboarding
5 3 (2.86%) Data Structures
5 3 (2.86%) Fixed Income
6 2 (1.90%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 2 (1.90%) Greenfield Project
6 2 (1.90%) Life Science
7 1 (0.95%) Algorithms
7 1 (0.95%) Data Centre
7 1 (0.95%) Derivative
7 1 (0.95%) Distributed Computing
7 1 (0.95%) Enterprise Cloud
7 1 (0.95%) Equities
7 1 (0.95%) Fibre Optics
7 1 (0.95%) Hedge funds
7 1 (0.95%) NHS
7 1 (0.95%) Reinsurance
7 1 (0.95%) Smart Meter
Processes & Methodologies
1 49 (46.67%) Data Engineering
2 48 (45.71%) Data Pipeline
3 47 (44.76%) Analytics
4 38 (36.19%) Data Modelling
5 35 (33.33%) ETL
6 27 (25.71%) CI/CD
7 20 (19.05%) Data Science
8 19 (18.10%) Business Intelligence
8 19 (18.10%) DevOps
9 16 (15.24%) Migration
10 15 (14.29%) Validation
11 14 (13.33%) Decision-Making
12 13 (12.38%) AI
12 13 (12.38%) Performance Optimisation
13 12 (11.43%) Data Governance
13 12 (11.43%) Data Transformation
14 10 (9.52%) Data Analytics
14 10 (9.52%) Data Architecture
14 10 (9.52%) Performance Tuning
15 8 (7.62%) Asset Management
Programming Languages
1 52 (49.52%) SQL
2 51 (48.57%) Python
3 7 (6.67%) Java
4 4 (3.81%) C#
4 4 (3.81%) Scala
5 3 (2.86%) T-SQL
6 2 (1.90%) R
7 1 (0.95%) Bicep
7 1 (0.95%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 1 (0.95%) Korn
7 1 (0.95%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 12 (11.43%) Security Cleared
2 9 (8.57%) SC Cleared
3 5 (4.76%) DBS Check
4 3 (2.86%) BPSS Clearance
4 3 (2.86%) SnowPro
5 1 (0.95%) AWS Certification
5 1 (0.95%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
5 1 (0.95%) BICSI Certification
5 1 (0.95%) City & Guilds
5 1 (0.95%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (24.76%) Data Quality
2 4 (3.81%) GDPR
3 2 (1.90%) Accessibility
3 2 (1.90%) EMIR
3 2 (1.90%) MiFID
3 2 (1.90%) QA
4 1 (0.95%) GxP
System Software
1 6 (5.71%) Docker
Systems Management
1 5 (4.76%) Kubernetes
2 3 (2.86%) Terraform
Vendors
1 14 (13.33%) Microsoft
2 13 (12.38%) Databricks
3 6 (5.71%) Informatica
4 5 (4.76%) Oracle
5 3 (2.86%) Google
6 2 (1.90%) Amplitude
6 2 (1.90%) MuleSoft
6 2 (1.90%) Palantir
6 2 (1.90%) Salesforce
6 2 (1.90%) SAP
6 2 (1.90%) Workday
7 1 (0.95%) Cribl.io
7 1 (0.95%) HubSpot
7 1 (0.95%) IBM
7 1 (0.95%) OpenAI
7 1 (0.95%) Talend