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 14 May 2026.

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

6 months to
14 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 41 57 80
Rank change year-on-year +16 +23 +5
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 110 65 47
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 4.80% 3.74% 2.18%
As % of the Job Titles category 5.08% 4.02% 2.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 81 41 39
10th Percentile £369 £400 £407
25th Percentile £450 £455 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% - -10.71%
75th Percentile £600 £580 £588
90th Percentile £663 £641 £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 2,166 1,617 2,055
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 94.59% 93.04% 95.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,445 1,014 1,453
10th Percentile £355 £349 £350
25th Percentile £450 £457 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £563
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% +2.22% -6.25%
75th Percentile £675 £685 £688
90th Percentile £775 £775 £800
Central London median daily rate £550 £558 £550
% change year-on-year -1.35% +1.36% -7.56%
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 £27.25
90th Percentile £62.36 £89.13 £40.00
Central London median hourly rate £26.11 £28.61 £25.78
% change year-on-year -8.74% +10.98% -26.34%

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 14 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 14 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 51 (46.36%) SQL
2 50 (45.45%) Data Pipeline
3 49 (44.55%) Python
4 42 (38.18%) Analytics
5 39 (35.45%) Data Engineering
6 38 (34.55%) Azure
7 36 (32.73%) ETL
8 28 (25.45%) Data Modelling
8 28 (25.45%) Data Quality
9 25 (22.73%) AWS
10 24 (21.82%) Data Warehouse
11 22 (20.00%) Power Platform
12 21 (19.09%) Data Science
12 21 (19.09%) Databricks
12 21 (19.09%) Security Cleared
13 20 (18.18%) Tableau
14 19 (17.27%) Apache Airflow
14 19 (17.27%) Business Intelligence
14 19 (17.27%) Power BI
14 19 (17.27%) Snowflake
15 18 (16.36%) CI/CD
15 18 (16.36%) SC Cleared
16 16 (14.55%) dbt
17 15 (13.64%) Azure Data Factory
17 15 (13.64%) PySpark
17 15 (13.64%) Validation
18 14 (12.73%) Data Governance
18 14 (12.73%) Microsoft
18 14 (12.73%) Performance Tuning
19 13 (11.82%) 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 19 (17.27%) Apache Airflow
2 5 (4.55%) Apache
2 5 (4.55%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.91%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.91%) SAS
3 1 (0.91%) SharePoint
Applications
1 1 (0.91%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (1.82%) BambooHR
2 1 (0.91%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 38 (34.55%) Azure
2 25 (22.73%) AWS
3 22 (20.00%) Power Platform
4 19 (17.27%) Snowflake
5 16 (14.55%) dbt
6 15 (13.64%) Azure Data Factory
7 13 (11.82%) GCP
8 11 (10.00%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 10 (9.09%) Amazon S3
10 9 (8.18%) Serverless
11 8 (7.27%) AWS Lambda
12 6 (5.45%) Prefect
13 4 (3.64%) Matillion
14 3 (2.73%) Amazon Kinesis
14 3 (2.73%) Azure DevOps
14 3 (2.73%) Dagster
14 3 (2.73%) Fivetran
15 2 (1.82%) Amazon EventBridge
15 2 (1.82%) Microsoft Purview
15 2 (1.82%) Textract
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.91%) Software-Defined Networking
1 1 (0.91%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (21.82%) Data Warehouse
2 20 (18.18%) Tableau
3 19 (17.27%) Power BI
4 10 (9.09%) Snowflake Schema
5 9 (8.18%) BigQuery
5 9 (8.18%) Metadata
6 8 (7.27%) SQL Server
7 7 (6.36%) Amazon Redshift
7 7 (6.36%) Data Lake
8 5 (4.55%) Azure SQL Database
8 5 (4.55%) Looker
9 4 (3.64%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 3 (2.73%) Big Data
10 3 (2.73%) Delta Lake
10 3 (2.73%) DynamoDB
10 3 (2.73%) Geospatial Data
11 2 (1.82%) Amazon Athena
11 2 (1.82%) CockroachDB
11 2 (1.82%) Data Vault
11 2 (1.82%) Spatial Data
Development Applications
1 7 (6.36%) Git
2 2 (1.82%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
3 1 (0.91%) Jaeger
3 1 (0.91%) JIRA
General
1 31 (28.18%) Finance
2 11 (10.00%) Analytical Skills
3 10 (9.09%) Social Skills
4 6 (5.45%) Front Office
5 5 (4.55%) Banking
6 4 (3.64%) Back Office
6 4 (3.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 3 (2.73%) Investment Banking
7 3 (2.73%) Publishing
7 3 (2.73%) Telecoms
8 2 (1.82%) Legal
8 2 (1.82%) Pharmaceutical
8 2 (1.82%) Public Sector
9 1 (0.91%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.91%) Financial Institution
9 1 (0.91%) Games
9 1 (0.91%) General Ledger
9 1 (0.91%) Law
9 1 (0.91%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (13.64%) PySpark
2 7 (6.36%) Kafka
3 5 (4.55%) Pandas
4 4 (3.64%) Spring
4 4 (3.64%) Spring Boot
5 3 (2.73%) GeoJSON
5 3 (2.73%) Matplotlib
5 3 (2.73%) Polars
5 3 (2.73%) REST
5 3 (2.73%) scikit-learn
6 2 (1.82%) boto
6 2 (1.82%) JSON
6 2 (1.82%) NumPy
6 2 (1.82%) YAML
7 1 (0.91%) HTML
7 1 (0.91%) Jinja
7 1 (0.91%) Node.js
7 1 (0.91%) pytest
7 1 (0.91%) React
7 1 (0.91%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 6 (5.45%) Cloud Native
2 5 (4.55%) Clustering
2 5 (4.55%) Data Structures
3 2 (1.82%) Derivative
3 2 (1.82%) Equities
3 2 (1.82%) Fixed Income
3 2 (1.82%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 2 (1.82%) Greenfield Project
3 2 (1.82%) Life Science
3 2 (1.82%) Management Information System
3 2 (1.82%) Reinsurance
4 1 (0.91%) AI Agents
4 1 (0.91%) Distributed Computing
4 1 (0.91%) Distributed Systems
4 1 (0.91%) Fibre Optics
4 1 (0.91%) Legacy Code
4 1 (0.91%) Legacy Systems
4 1 (0.91%) Onboarding
4 1 (0.91%) Operational Technology
4 1 (0.91%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 1 (0.91%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 50 (45.45%) Data Pipeline
2 42 (38.18%) Analytics
3 39 (35.45%) Data Engineering
4 36 (32.73%) ETL
5 28 (25.45%) Data Modelling
6 21 (19.09%) Data Science
7 19 (17.27%) Business Intelligence
8 18 (16.36%) CI/CD
9 15 (13.64%) Validation
10 14 (12.73%) Data Governance
10 14 (12.73%) Performance Tuning
11 13 (11.82%) AI
11 13 (11.82%) DevOps
12 11 (10.00%) Decision-Making
13 9 (8.18%) Data Analytics
13 9 (8.18%) Problem-Solving
14 8 (7.27%) Data Transformation
15 7 (6.36%) Agile
15 7 (6.36%) Dimensional Modelling
15 7 (6.36%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 51 (46.36%) SQL
2 49 (44.55%) Python
3 8 (7.27%) Java
3 8 (7.27%) Scala
4 4 (3.64%) C#
5 2 (1.82%) R
5 2 (1.82%) T-SQL
6 1 (0.91%) Bicep
6 1 (0.91%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 1 (0.91%) Go
6 1 (0.91%) PL/SQL
6 1 (0.91%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 21 (19.09%) Security Cleared
2 18 (16.36%) SC Cleared
3 3 (2.73%) BPSS Clearance
3 3 (2.73%) DBS Check
4 2 (1.82%) SnowPro
5 1 (0.91%) BICSI Certification
5 1 (0.91%) City & Guilds
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (25.45%) Data Quality
2 6 (5.45%) GDPR
3 2 (1.82%) EMIR
3 2 (1.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (1.82%) MiFID
4 1 (0.91%) GxP
4 1 (0.91%) QA
System Software
1 5 (4.55%) Docker
Systems Management
1 7 (6.36%) Kubernetes
2 3 (2.73%) Terraform
3 1 (0.91%) Grafana
3 1 (0.91%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 21 (19.09%) Databricks
2 14 (12.73%) Microsoft
3 7 (6.36%) Informatica
4 4 (3.64%) SAP
5 3 (2.73%) Google
5 3 (2.73%) Oracle
6 2 (1.82%) Amplitude
6 2 (1.82%) Salesforce
6 2 (1.82%) Workday
7 1 (0.91%) HubSpot
7 1 (0.91%) MuleSoft
7 1 (0.91%) OpenAI
7 1 (0.91%) Splunk
7 1 (0.91%) Talend
7 1 (0.91%) Teradata