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 £565, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 24 September 2026.

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

6 months to
24 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 62 71
Rank change year-on-year +13 +9 +4
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 103 59 55
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 4.60% 3.38% 2.62%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.88% 3.60% 2.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 85 43 36
10th Percentile £400 £314 £444
25th Percentile £438 £452 £498
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £565 £538 £563
Median % change year-on-year +5.12% -4.44% -3.85%
75th Percentile £638 £592 £675
90th Percentile £725 £686 £734
Central London median daily rate £565 £531 £563
% change year-on-year +6.35% -5.56% -4.26%

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 2,109 1,640 1,976
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 94.19% 93.88% 94.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,423 1,098 1,238
10th Percentile £363 £325 £363
25th Percentile £456 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -3.56%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £688
90th Percentile £775 £775 £788
Central London median daily rate £550 £550 £575
% change year-on-year - -4.35% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 21 16
10th Percentile £17.06 £17.08 £17.25
25th Percentile £17.60 £23.75 £22.84
Median hourly rate £21.75 £28.15 £48.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.74% -41.35% +33.33%
75th Percentile £34.51 £56.75 £112.00
90th Percentile £61.25 £65.57 £137.50
Central London median hourly rate £28.07 £27.83 £35.00
% change year-on-year +0.86% -20.50% -1.41%

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 24 September 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 24 September 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 59 (57.28%) SQL
2 58 (56.31%) Python
3 54 (52.43%) Data Engineering
4 52 (50.49%) Data Pipeline
5 42 (40.78%) Analytics
6 38 (36.89%) CI/CD
7 37 (35.92%) Azure
8 36 (34.95%) Data Modelling
9 34 (33.01%) Data Quality
9 34 (33.01%) ETL
10 28 (27.18%) AWS
10 28 (27.18%) Databricks
11 25 (24.27%) DevOps
12 21 (20.39%) Migration
13 20 (19.42%) Data Warehouse
14 19 (18.45%) Azure Data Factory
15 18 (17.48%) Apache Airflow
15 18 (17.48%) Data Governance
16 17 (16.50%) PySpark
17 16 (15.53%) Agile
17 16 (15.53%) Performance Optimisation
17 16 (15.53%) Power Platform
17 16 (15.53%) Snowflake
18 15 (14.56%) AI
19 14 (13.59%) Infrastructure as Code
19 14 (13.59%) Power BI
19 14 (13.59%) Serverless
19 14 (13.59%) Software Engineering
20 13 (12.62%) Amazon S3
20 13 (12.62%) Business Intelligence

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 (17.48%) Apache Airflow
2 10 (9.71%) Apache Spark
3 5 (4.85%) Apache
4 2 (1.94%) Confluence
5 1 (0.97%) SAS
Business Applications
1 2 (1.94%) Aladdin
2 1 (0.97%) BambooHR
2 1 (0.97%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 37 (35.92%) Azure
2 28 (27.18%) AWS
3 19 (18.45%) Azure Data Factory
4 16 (15.53%) Power Platform
4 16 (15.53%) Snowflake
5 14 (13.59%) Serverless
6 13 (12.62%) Amazon S3
6 13 (12.62%) dbt
7 12 (11.65%) AWS Lambda
8 11 (10.68%) GCP
9 10 (9.71%) Azure Databricks
9 10 (9.71%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 9 (8.74%) Azure DevOps
10 9 (8.74%) GitHub
11 8 (7.77%) GitHub Actions
12 6 (5.83%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 6 (5.83%) Amazon EventBridge
12 6 (5.83%) AWS Step Functions
13 5 (4.85%) Amazon EC2
13 5 (4.85%) Amazon Kinesis
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (19.42%) Data Warehouse
2 14 (13.59%) Power BI
3 10 (9.71%) Amazon Athena
3 10 (9.71%) BigQuery
4 8 (7.77%) Amazon RDS
4 8 (7.77%) Tableau
5 7 (6.80%) Data Lake
5 7 (6.80%) Metadata
5 7 (6.80%) SQL Server
6 6 (5.83%) Delta Lake
7 5 (4.85%) Amazon Redshift
8 4 (3.88%) Azure SQL Database
8 4 (3.88%) Data Mart
8 4 (3.88%) Oracle Database
9 2 (1.94%) Looker
9 2 (1.94%) NoSQL
9 2 (1.94%) Parquet
9 2 (1.94%) Snowflake Schema
9 2 (1.94%) Spark SQL
10 1 (0.97%) Mixpanel
Development Applications
1 8 (7.77%) Git
2 7 (6.80%) Bitbucket
3 5 (4.85%) GitLab
4 2 (1.94%) Atlassian Bamboo
4 2 (1.94%) JIRA
4 2 (1.94%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
5 1 (0.97%) Jenkins
5 1 (0.97%) Terragrunt
General
1 41 (39.81%) Finance
2 16 (15.53%) Social Skills
3 14 (13.59%) Banking
4 13 (12.62%) Analytical Skills
5 6 (5.83%) Back Office
6 4 (3.88%) Front Office
6 4 (3.88%) Public Sector
7 3 (2.91%) Investment Banking
8 2 (1.94%) Legal
8 2 (1.94%) Pharmaceutical
9 1 (0.97%) Advertising
9 1 (0.97%) Billing
9 1 (0.97%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.97%) General Ledger
9 1 (0.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.97%) Law
9 1 (0.97%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (16.50%) PySpark
2 12 (11.65%) Terraform
3 9 (8.74%) Kafka
4 5 (4.85%) ActiveMQ
4 5 (4.85%) RabbitMQ
5 4 (3.88%) Spring
5 4 (3.88%) Spring Boot
6 2 (1.94%) JSON
6 2 (1.94%) REST
6 2 (1.94%) XML
7 1 (0.97%) EDI
7 1 (0.97%) FastAPI
7 1 (0.97%) Middleware
7 1 (0.97%) SOAP
7 1 (0.97%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 24 (23.30%) Cloud Native
2 5 (4.85%) Legacy Systems
3 4 (3.88%) Onboarding
4 3 (2.91%) Data Structures
4 3 (2.91%) Distributed Computing
5 2 (1.94%) AI Agents
5 2 (1.94%) Enterprise Software
5 2 (1.94%) PropTech
5 2 (1.94%) Reinsurance
6 1 (0.97%) Algorithms
6 1 (0.97%) Analytical Mindset
6 1 (0.97%) Data Centre
6 1 (0.97%) Distributed Systems
6 1 (0.97%) Enterprise Cloud
6 1 (0.97%) Enterprise Storage
6 1 (0.97%) Hedge funds
6 1 (0.97%) Legacy Code
6 1 (0.97%) Product Ownership
6 1 (0.97%) Smart Meter
6 1 (0.97%) Taxonomies
Processes & Methodologies
1 54 (52.43%) Data Engineering
2 52 (50.49%) Data Pipeline
3 42 (40.78%) Analytics
4 38 (36.89%) CI/CD
5 36 (34.95%) Data Modelling
6 34 (33.01%) ETL
7 25 (24.27%) DevOps
8 21 (20.39%) Migration
9 18 (17.48%) Data Governance
10 16 (15.53%) Agile
10 16 (15.53%) Performance Optimisation
11 15 (14.56%) AI
12 14 (13.59%) Infrastructure as Code
12 14 (13.59%) Software Engineering
13 13 (12.62%) Business Intelligence
13 13 (12.62%) Data Architecture
13 13 (12.62%) Data Science
13 13 (12.62%) Data Transformation
13 13 (12.62%) Platform Engineering
13 13 (12.62%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 59 (57.28%) SQL
2 58 (56.31%) Python
3 7 (6.80%) Java
3 7 (6.80%) Scala
4 3 (2.91%) C#
4 3 (2.91%) Korn
4 3 (2.91%) PowerShell
5 2 (1.94%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 2 (1.94%) T-SQL
6 1 (0.97%) Bicep
6 1 (0.97%) C
6 1 (0.97%) R
Qualifications
1 11 (10.68%) Security Cleared
2 10 (9.71%) SC Cleared
3 5 (4.85%) DBS Check
4 2 (1.94%) AWS Certification
4 2 (1.94%) Microsoft Certification
4 2 (1.94%) SnowPro
5 1 (0.97%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
5 1 (0.97%) AWS Certified Developer
5 1 (0.97%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 1 (0.97%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (33.01%) Data Quality
2 4 (3.88%) QA
3 3 (2.91%) GDPR
4 2 (1.94%) Accessibility
4 2 (1.94%) EMIR
4 2 (1.94%) MiFID
System Software
1 5 (4.85%) Docker
Systems Management
1 5 (4.85%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 28 (27.18%) Databricks
2 13 (12.62%) Microsoft
3 6 (5.83%) Oracle
4 3 (2.91%) Informatica
5 2 (1.94%) Google
5 2 (1.94%) Palantir
5 2 (1.94%) Salesforce
5 2 (1.94%) SAP
6 1 (0.97%) Amplitude
6 1 (0.97%) Cribl.io
6 1 (0.97%) Dell
6 1 (0.97%) HubSpot
6 1 (0.97%) IBM
6 1 (0.97%) MuleSoft
6 1 (0.97%) NetApp
6 1 (0.97%) OpenAI
6 1 (0.97%) Teradata
6 1 (0.97%) Workday