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 1 July 2026.

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

6 months to
1 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 40 58 72
Rank change year-on-year +18 +14 +4
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 108 64 51
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 4.41% 3.63% 2.41%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.69% 3.87% 2.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 78 40 41
10th Percentile £369 £396 £413
25th Percentile £447 £471 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £555 £518 £525
Median % change year-on-year +7.25% -1.43% -8.30%
75th Percentile £613 £576 £650
90th Percentile £675 £645 £738
Central London median daily rate £555 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +9.90% -3.81% -8.70%
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 2,302 1,653 2,019
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 94.00% 93.76% 95.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,534 1,050 1,390
10th Percentile £356 £350 £350
25th Percentile £455 £455 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £554 £565
Median % change year-on-year -0.63% -2.04% -5.83%
75th Percentile £669 £688 £688
90th Percentile £775 £775 £800
Central London median daily rate £550 £550 £550
% change year-on-year - - -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 33 22 16
10th Percentile £17.60 £17.57 £16.33
25th Percentile £18.75 £24.66 £20.22
Median hourly rate £19.50 £32.50 £24.63
Median % change year-on-year -40.00% +31.98% -29.64%
75th Percentile £42.65 £62.00 £40.00
90th Percentile £59.72 £86.43 £64.50
Central London median hourly rate £24.47 £30.04 £27.00
% change year-on-year -18.55% +11.24% -22.86%

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 1 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 1 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 (48.15%) SQL
2 51 (47.22%) Python
3 49 (45.37%) Analytics
4 48 (44.44%) Data Pipeline
5 44 (40.74%) Data Engineering
6 36 (33.33%) Data Modelling
6 36 (33.33%) ETL
7 33 (30.56%) Azure
8 25 (23.15%) Data Quality
9 24 (22.22%) CI/CD
9 24 (22.22%) Data Warehouse
9 24 (22.22%) Power Platform
10 22 (20.37%) AWS
11 21 (19.44%) Apache Airflow
11 21 (19.44%) Business Intelligence
11 21 (19.44%) Data Science
11 21 (19.44%) Power BI
12 19 (17.59%) Snowflake
12 19 (17.59%) Tableau
13 18 (16.67%) Databricks
13 18 (16.67%) DevOps
14 16 (14.81%) dbt
14 16 (14.81%) Decision-Making
15 15 (13.89%) Azure Data Factory
15 15 (13.89%) Migration
16 14 (12.96%) AI
16 14 (12.96%) GCP
16 14 (12.96%) Microsoft
16 14 (12.96%) Validation
17 13 (12.04%) 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 (19.44%) Apache Airflow
2 7 (6.48%) Apache Spark
3 6 (5.56%) Apache
4 1 (0.93%) Confluence
4 1 (0.93%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.93%) SharePoint
Applications
1 1 (0.93%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (1.85%) BambooHR
2 1 (0.93%) Aladdin
2 1 (0.93%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 33 (30.56%) Azure
2 24 (22.22%) Power Platform
3 22 (20.37%) AWS
4 19 (17.59%) Snowflake
5 16 (14.81%) dbt
6 15 (13.89%) Azure Data Factory
7 14 (12.96%) GCP
8 9 (8.33%) Amazon S3
9 8 (7.41%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 7 (6.48%) AWS Lambda
10 7 (6.48%) Serverless
11 6 (5.56%) Prefect
12 4 (3.70%) Azure DevOps
12 4 (3.70%) Matillion
13 3 (2.78%) Amazon Kinesis
13 3 (2.78%) Dagster
13 3 (2.78%) Fivetran
14 2 (1.85%) Amazon EMR
14 2 (1.85%) GitHub
14 2 (1.85%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.93%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (22.22%) Data Warehouse
2 21 (19.44%) Power BI
3 19 (17.59%) Tableau
4 11 (10.19%) BigQuery
5 10 (9.26%) SQL Server
6 8 (7.41%) Snowflake Schema
7 7 (6.48%) Amazon Redshift
8 5 (4.63%) Data Lake
8 5 (4.63%) Looker
9 4 (3.70%) Azure SQL Database
9 4 (3.70%) Data Mart
9 4 (3.70%) Delta Lake
9 4 (3.70%) Metadata
9 4 (3.70%) Oracle Database
9 4 (3.70%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 3 (2.78%) Big Data
10 3 (2.78%) Geospatial Data
11 2 (1.85%) Mixpanel
11 2 (1.85%) NoSQL
11 2 (1.85%) Spatial Data
Development Applications
1 7 (6.48%) Git
2 2 (1.85%) JIRA
2 2 (1.85%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
3 1 (0.93%) Atlassian Bamboo
3 1 (0.93%) Bitbucket
General
1 35 (32.41%) Finance
2 11 (10.19%) Analytical Skills
2 11 (10.19%) Social Skills
3 10 (9.26%) Banking
4 3 (2.78%) Front Office
4 3 (2.78%) Public Sector
4 3 (2.78%) Publishing
4 3 (2.78%) Telecoms
5 2 (1.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 2 (1.85%) Legal
5 2 (1.85%) Pharmaceutical
6 1 (0.93%) Back Office
6 1 (0.93%) Billing
6 1 (0.93%) Documentation Skills
6 1 (0.93%) Financial Institution
6 1 (0.93%) General Ledger
6 1 (0.93%) Investment Banking
6 1 (0.93%) Law
6 1 (0.93%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (12.04%) PySpark
2 9 (8.33%) Kafka
3 4 (3.70%) Spring
3 4 (3.70%) Spring Boot
4 3 (2.78%) GeoJSON
4 3 (2.78%) JSON
4 3 (2.78%) Matplotlib
4 3 (2.78%) Pandas
4 3 (2.78%) Polars
4 3 (2.78%) scikit-learn
5 2 (1.85%) XML
6 1 (0.93%) EDI
6 1 (0.93%) FastAPI
6 1 (0.93%) Jinja
6 1 (0.93%) Node.js
6 1 (0.93%) pytest
6 1 (0.93%) React
6 1 (0.93%) REST
6 1 (0.93%) XSLT
6 1 (0.93%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 13 (12.04%) Cloud Native
2 6 (5.56%) Clustering
2 6 (5.56%) Legacy Systems
3 3 (2.78%) Data Structures
3 3 (2.78%) Onboarding
4 2 (1.85%) Algorithms
4 2 (1.85%) Fixed Income
4 2 (1.85%) Greenfield Project
4 2 (1.85%) Life Science
4 2 (1.85%) Reinsurance
5 1 (0.93%) Data Centre
5 1 (0.93%) Derivative
5 1 (0.93%) Equities
5 1 (0.93%) Fibre Optics
5 1 (0.93%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 1 (0.93%) Management Information System
5 1 (0.93%) NHS
5 1 (0.93%) Public Cloud
5 1 (0.93%) Smart Meter
5 1 (0.93%) Virtual Team
Processes & Methodologies
1 49 (45.37%) Analytics
2 48 (44.44%) Data Pipeline
3 44 (40.74%) Data Engineering
4 36 (33.33%) Data Modelling
4 36 (33.33%) ETL
5 24 (22.22%) CI/CD
6 21 (19.44%) Business Intelligence
6 21 (19.44%) Data Science
7 18 (16.67%) DevOps
8 16 (14.81%) Decision-Making
9 15 (13.89%) Migration
10 14 (12.96%) AI
10 14 (12.96%) Validation
11 13 (12.04%) Performance Optimisation
12 12 (11.11%) Data Governance
12 12 (11.11%) Performance Tuning
13 10 (9.26%) Data Analytics
14 9 (8.33%) Data Transformation
15 8 (7.41%) Problem-Solving
15 8 (7.41%) Use Case
Programming Languages
1 52 (48.15%) SQL
2 51 (47.22%) Python
3 8 (7.41%) Java
4 6 (5.56%) Scala
5 4 (3.70%) C#
6 3 (2.78%) T-SQL
7 2 (1.85%) R
8 1 (0.93%) Bicep
8 1 (0.93%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 1 (0.93%) Korn
8 1 (0.93%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 13 (12.04%) Security Cleared
2 10 (9.26%) SC Cleared
3 5 (4.63%) DBS Check
4 3 (2.78%) BPSS Clearance
4 3 (2.78%) SnowPro
5 1 (0.93%) AWS Certification
5 1 (0.93%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
5 1 (0.93%) BICSI Certification
5 1 (0.93%) City & Guilds
5 1 (0.93%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (23.15%) Data Quality
2 5 (4.63%) GDPR
3 2 (1.85%) EMIR
3 2 (1.85%) MiFID
4 1 (0.93%) Accessibility
4 1 (0.93%) GxP
4 1 (0.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (0.93%) QA
System Software
1 5 (4.63%) Docker
Systems Management
1 5 (4.63%) Kubernetes
2 2 (1.85%) Terraform
Vendors
1 18 (16.67%) Databricks
2 14 (12.96%) Microsoft
3 7 (6.48%) Informatica
4 6 (5.56%) Oracle
5 3 (2.78%) Google
6 2 (1.85%) Amplitude
6 2 (1.85%) Palantir
6 2 (1.85%) Salesforce
6 2 (1.85%) SAP
6 2 (1.85%) Workday
7 1 (0.93%) Cribl.io
7 1 (0.93%) HubSpot
7 1 (0.93%) IBM
7 1 (0.93%) MuleSoft
7 1 (0.93%) OpenAI
7 1 (0.93%) Talend