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 £560, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 12 August 2026.

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

6 months to
12 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 57 80
Rank change year-on-year +10 +23 -16
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 102 70 46
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 4.31% 3.75% 2.22%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.58% 4.00% 2.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 78 49 32
10th Percentile £412 £345 £429
25th Percentile £450 £449 £490
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £560 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year +6.67% -2.33% -6.11%
75th Percentile £613 £583 £675
90th Percentile £716 £682 £716
Central London median daily rate £555 £525 £538
% change year-on-year +5.71% -2.33% -6.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 0
Median hourly rate £19.34 - -
Central London median hourly rate £19.34 - -

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 2,227 1,750 1,963
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 94.05% 93.68% 94.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,496 1,153 1,311
10th Percentile £363 £331 £363
25th Percentile £456 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £678 £688
90th Percentile £765 £775 £788
Central London median daily rate £550 £550 £575
% change year-on-year - -4.35% -2.13%
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 22 14
10th Percentile £17.60 £17.57 £15.87
25th Percentile £18.46 £24.66 £20.88
Median hourly rate £19.50 £29.75 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -34.45% +10.19% -26.03%
75th Percentile £31.52 £62.00 £89.06
90th Percentile £56.24 £86.43 £137.50
Central London median hourly rate £22.83 £29.07 £27.00
% change year-on-year -21.47% +7.67% -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 12 August 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 12 August 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 49 (48.04%) Data Pipeline
2 48 (47.06%) Python
2 48 (47.06%) SQL
3 47 (46.08%) Data Engineering
4 45 (44.12%) Analytics
5 35 (34.31%) Data Modelling
6 33 (32.35%) ETL
7 30 (29.41%) CI/CD
8 27 (26.47%) Azure
9 25 (24.51%) Data Quality
10 22 (21.57%) AWS
11 21 (20.59%) DevOps
12 20 (19.61%) Data Warehouse
12 20 (19.61%) Power Platform
13 19 (18.63%) Apache Airflow
14 18 (17.65%) Data Science
15 17 (16.67%) Business Intelligence
15 17 (16.67%) Power BI
16 16 (15.69%) Databricks
16 16 (15.69%) Migration
16 16 (15.69%) Snowflake
17 15 (14.71%) AI
17 15 (14.71%) dbt
17 15 (14.71%) PySpark
18 14 (13.73%) Azure Data Factory
18 14 (13.73%) Tableau
18 14 (13.73%) Validation
19 13 (12.75%) Microsoft
19 13 (12.75%) Performance Optimisation
20 12 (11.76%) Data Governance

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 (18.63%) Apache Airflow
2 7 (6.86%) Apache Spark
3 6 (5.88%) Apache
4 1 (0.98%) Confluence
4 1 (0.98%) Microsoft Exchange
Business Applications
1 2 (1.96%) Aladdin
1 2 (1.96%) BambooHR
2 1 (0.98%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 27 (26.47%) Azure
2 22 (21.57%) AWS
3 20 (19.61%) Power Platform
4 16 (15.69%) Snowflake
5 15 (14.71%) dbt
6 14 (13.73%) Azure Data Factory
7 12 (11.76%) GCP
8 10 (9.80%) Amazon S3
9 8 (7.84%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 7 (6.86%) AWS Lambda
10 7 (6.86%) Serverless
11 6 (5.88%) Azure DevOps
11 6 (5.88%) Prefect
12 5 (4.90%) Amazon Kinesis
13 4 (3.92%) GitHub
14 3 (2.94%) Dagster
14 3 (2.94%) Fivetran
14 3 (2.94%) GitHub Actions
15 2 (1.96%) Amazon EKS
15 2 (1.96%) Amazon EventBridge
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.98%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (19.61%) Data Warehouse
2 17 (16.67%) Power BI
3 14 (13.73%) Tableau
4 11 (10.78%) BigQuery
5 8 (7.84%) SQL Server
6 6 (5.88%) Amazon Redshift
6 6 (5.88%) Data Lake
6 6 (5.88%) Snowflake Schema
7 4 (3.92%) Amazon Athena
7 4 (3.92%) Amazon RDS
7 4 (3.92%) Azure SQL Database
7 4 (3.92%) Data Mart
7 4 (3.92%) Delta Lake
7 4 (3.92%) Metadata
7 4 (3.92%) Oracle Database
8 3 (2.94%) Big Data
8 3 (2.94%) Looker
8 3 (2.94%) NoSQL
9 2 (1.96%) MongoDB
9 2 (1.96%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 5 (4.90%) Git
2 3 (2.94%) Bitbucket
3 2 (1.96%) GitLab
3 2 (1.96%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
4 1 (0.98%) Atlassian Bamboo
4 1 (0.98%) JIRA
General
1 33 (32.35%) Finance
2 12 (11.76%) Analytical Skills
3 11 (10.78%) Social Skills
4 8 (7.84%) Banking
5 3 (2.94%) Front Office
5 3 (2.94%) Public Sector
6 2 (1.96%) Back Office
6 2 (1.96%) Legal
6 2 (1.96%) Pharmaceutical
7 1 (0.98%) Billing
7 1 (0.98%) Documentation Skills
7 1 (0.98%) Financial Institution
7 1 (0.98%) General Ledger
7 1 (0.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (0.98%) Investment Banking
7 1 (0.98%) Law
7 1 (0.98%) Military
7 1 (0.98%) Publishing
7 1 (0.98%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (14.71%) PySpark
2 9 (8.82%) Kafka
3 4 (3.92%) Spring
3 4 (3.92%) Spring Boot
4 2 (1.96%) ActiveMQ
4 2 (1.96%) JSON
4 2 (1.96%) RabbitMQ
4 2 (1.96%) REST
5 1 (0.98%) GeoJSON
5 1 (0.98%) Jinja
5 1 (0.98%) Matplotlib
5 1 (0.98%) Middleware
5 1 (0.98%) Node.js
5 1 (0.98%) Pandas
5 1 (0.98%) pytest
5 1 (0.98%) React
5 1 (0.98%) scikit-learn
5 1 (0.98%) SOAP
5 1 (0.98%) XML
5 1 (0.98%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 16 (15.69%) Cloud Native
2 6 (5.88%) Legacy Systems
3 5 (4.90%) Clustering
4 4 (3.92%) Onboarding
5 3 (2.94%) Data Structures
5 3 (2.94%) Fixed Income
6 2 (1.96%) Data Centre
6 2 (1.96%) Greenfield Project
6 2 (1.96%) Life Science
7 1 (0.98%) Algorithms
7 1 (0.98%) Analytical Mindset
7 1 (0.98%) Distributed Computing
7 1 (0.98%) Enterprise Cloud
7 1 (0.98%) Enterprise Storage
7 1 (0.98%) Fibre Optics
7 1 (0.98%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 1 (0.98%) Hedge funds
7 1 (0.98%) NHS
7 1 (0.98%) Reinsurance
7 1 (0.98%) Smart Meter
Processes & Methodologies
1 49 (48.04%) Data Pipeline
2 47 (46.08%) Data Engineering
3 45 (44.12%) Analytics
4 35 (34.31%) Data Modelling
5 33 (32.35%) ETL
6 30 (29.41%) CI/CD
7 21 (20.59%) DevOps
8 18 (17.65%) Data Science
9 17 (16.67%) Business Intelligence
10 16 (15.69%) Migration
11 15 (14.71%) AI
12 14 (13.73%) Validation
13 13 (12.75%) Performance Optimisation
14 12 (11.76%) Data Governance
14 12 (11.76%) Decision-Making
15 10 (9.80%) Data Architecture
15 10 (9.80%) Data Transformation
15 10 (9.80%) Platform Engineering
16 9 (8.82%) Data Analytics
16 9 (8.82%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 48 (47.06%) Python
1 48 (47.06%) SQL
2 7 (6.86%) Java
3 4 (3.92%) C#
3 4 (3.92%) Scala
4 2 (1.96%) Data Analysis Expressions
4 2 (1.96%) Korn
4 2 (1.96%) PowerShell
4 2 (1.96%) T-SQL
5 1 (0.98%) Bicep
5 1 (0.98%) R
Qualifications
1 11 (10.78%) Security Cleared
2 10 (9.80%) SC Cleared
3 5 (4.90%) DBS Check
4 3 (2.94%) SnowPro
5 2 (1.96%) Microsoft Certification
6 1 (0.98%) AWS Certification
6 1 (0.98%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
6 1 (0.98%) BICSI Certification
6 1 (0.98%) BPSS Clearance
6 1 (0.98%) City & Guilds
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (24.51%) Data Quality
2 4 (3.92%) GDPR
3 3 (2.94%) QA
4 2 (1.96%) Accessibility
4 2 (1.96%) EMIR
4 2 (1.96%) MiFID
5 1 (0.98%) GxP
System Software
1 6 (5.88%) Docker
Systems Management
1 5 (4.90%) Kubernetes
1 5 (4.90%) Terraform
Vendors
1 16 (15.69%) Databricks
2 13 (12.75%) Microsoft
3 6 (5.88%) Informatica
4 5 (4.90%) Oracle
5 3 (2.94%) Google
5 3 (2.94%) SAP
6 2 (1.96%) MuleSoft
6 2 (1.96%) Palantir
6 2 (1.96%) Salesforce
6 2 (1.96%) Workday
7 1 (0.98%) Amplitude
7 1 (0.98%) Cribl.io
7 1 (0.98%) Dell
7 1 (0.98%) HubSpot
7 1 (0.98%) IBM
7 1 (0.98%) NetApp
7 1 (0.98%) OpenAI
7 1 (0.98%) Talend