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 5 August 2026.

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

6 months to
5 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 42 61 86
Rank change year-on-year +19 +25 -24
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 107 69 44
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 4.48% 3.68% 2.13%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.76% 3.94% 2.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 81 47 33
10th Percentile £413 £335 £417
25th Percentile £450 £456 £490
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £565 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year +7.62% -4.55% -3.08%
75th Percentile £613 £581 £675
90th Percentile £725 £656 £744
Central London median daily rate £555 £525 £550
% change year-on-year +5.71% -4.55% -3.51%
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 2,249 1,752 1,956
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 94.06% 93.54% 94.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,506 1,150 1,317
10th Percentile £363 £332 £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 £680 £688
90th Percentile £771 £775 £788
Central London median daily rate £550 £550 £565
% change year-on-year - -2.65% -4.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 22 14
10th Percentile £17.60 £17.57 £15.87
25th Percentile £18.75 £24.66 £20.88
Median hourly rate £19.50 £29.75 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -34.45% +10.19% -27.84%
75th Percentile £38.75 £62.00 £89.06
90th Percentile £60.78 £86.43 £137.50
Central London median hourly rate £23.00 £29.07 £27.00
% change year-on-year -20.88% +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 5 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 5 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 53 (49.53%) SQL
2 52 (48.60%) Python
3 50 (46.73%) Data Engineering
4 49 (45.79%) Data Pipeline
5 48 (44.86%) Analytics
6 38 (35.51%) Data Modelling
7 35 (32.71%) ETL
8 32 (29.91%) Azure
9 29 (27.10%) CI/CD
10 26 (24.30%) Data Quality
11 24 (22.43%) Power Platform
12 23 (21.50%) AWS
13 22 (20.56%) Data Warehouse
14 21 (19.63%) Business Intelligence
14 21 (19.63%) Power BI
15 20 (18.69%) Data Science
15 20 (18.69%) DevOps
16 19 (17.76%) Apache Airflow
17 18 (16.82%) Azure Data Factory
18 17 (15.89%) Snowflake
19 16 (14.95%) Migration
19 16 (14.95%) Tableau
20 15 (14.02%) Databricks
20 15 (14.02%) dbt
20 15 (14.02%) Microsoft
21 14 (13.08%) AI
21 14 (13.08%) Decision-Making
21 14 (13.08%) PySpark
21 14 (13.08%) Validation
22 13 (12.15%) GCP

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 (17.76%) Apache Airflow
2 7 (6.54%) Apache Spark
3 6 (5.61%) Apache
4 1 (0.93%) Confluence
4 1 (0.93%) Microsoft Exchange
Business Applications
1 2 (1.87%) Aladdin
1 2 (1.87%) BambooHR
2 1 (0.93%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 32 (29.91%) Azure
2 24 (22.43%) Power Platform
3 23 (21.50%) AWS
4 18 (16.82%) Azure Data Factory
5 17 (15.89%) Snowflake
6 15 (14.02%) dbt
7 13 (12.15%) GCP
8 10 (9.35%) Amazon S3
9 9 (8.41%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 8 (7.48%) AWS Lambda
10 8 (7.48%) Serverless
11 6 (5.61%) Azure DevOps
11 6 (5.61%) Prefect
12 5 (4.67%) Amazon Kinesis
13 4 (3.74%) GitHub
14 3 (2.80%) Dagster
14 3 (2.80%) Fivetran
14 3 (2.80%) GitHub Actions
15 2 (1.87%) Amazon EventBridge
15 2 (1.87%) Matillion
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.93%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (20.56%) Data Warehouse
2 21 (19.63%) Power BI
3 16 (14.95%) Tableau
4 11 (10.28%) BigQuery
5 9 (8.41%) SQL Server
6 7 (6.54%) Amazon Redshift
6 7 (6.54%) Data Lake
7 6 (5.61%) Snowflake Schema
8 5 (4.67%) Azure SQL Database
9 4 (3.74%) Amazon Athena
9 4 (3.74%) Amazon RDS
9 4 (3.74%) Data Mart
9 4 (3.74%) Delta Lake
9 4 (3.74%) Looker
9 4 (3.74%) Metadata
9 4 (3.74%) Oracle Database
10 3 (2.80%) Big Data
10 3 (2.80%) Geospatial Data
10 3 (2.80%) NoSQL
10 3 (2.80%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 6 (5.61%) Git
2 3 (2.80%) Bitbucket
3 2 (1.87%) GitLab
3 2 (1.87%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
4 1 (0.93%) Atlassian Bamboo
4 1 (0.93%) JIRA
General
1 35 (32.71%) Finance
2 13 (12.15%) Analytical Skills
2 13 (12.15%) Social Skills
3 8 (7.48%) Banking
4 4 (3.74%) Front Office
5 3 (2.80%) Back Office
5 3 (2.80%) Public Sector
5 3 (2.80%) Publishing
6 2 (1.87%) Legal
6 2 (1.87%) Pharmaceutical
7 1 (0.93%) Billing
7 1 (0.93%) Documentation Skills
7 1 (0.93%) Financial Institution
7 1 (0.93%) General Ledger
7 1 (0.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (0.93%) Investment Banking
7 1 (0.93%) Law
7 1 (0.93%) Military
7 1 (0.93%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (13.08%) PySpark
2 9 (8.41%) Kafka
3 4 (3.74%) Spring
3 4 (3.74%) Spring Boot
4 3 (2.80%) GeoJSON
4 3 (2.80%) JSON
4 3 (2.80%) Matplotlib
4 3 (2.80%) Pandas
4 3 (2.80%) Polars
4 3 (2.80%) scikit-learn
5 2 (1.87%) ActiveMQ
5 2 (1.87%) RabbitMQ
5 2 (1.87%) REST
5 2 (1.87%) XML
6 1 (0.93%) EDI
6 1 (0.93%) Middleware
6 1 (0.93%) Node.js
6 1 (0.93%) SOAP
6 1 (0.93%) XSLT
6 1 (0.93%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 16 (14.95%) Cloud Native
2 6 (5.61%) Legacy Systems
3 5 (4.67%) Clustering
4 4 (3.74%) Onboarding
5 3 (2.80%) Data Structures
5 3 (2.80%) Fixed Income
6 2 (1.87%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 2 (1.87%) Greenfield Project
6 2 (1.87%) Life Science
7 1 (0.93%) AI Agents
7 1 (0.93%) Algorithms
7 1 (0.93%) Analytical Mindset
7 1 (0.93%) Data Centre
7 1 (0.93%) Derivative
7 1 (0.93%) Enterprise Cloud
7 1 (0.93%) Equities
7 1 (0.93%) Hedge funds
7 1 (0.93%) NHS
7 1 (0.93%) Reinsurance
7 1 (0.93%) Smart Meter
Processes & Methodologies
1 50 (46.73%) Data Engineering
2 49 (45.79%) Data Pipeline
3 48 (44.86%) Analytics
4 38 (35.51%) Data Modelling
5 35 (32.71%) ETL
6 29 (27.10%) CI/CD
7 21 (19.63%) Business Intelligence
8 20 (18.69%) Data Science
8 20 (18.69%) DevOps
9 16 (14.95%) Migration
10 14 (13.08%) AI
10 14 (13.08%) Decision-Making
10 14 (13.08%) Validation
11 13 (12.15%) Performance Optimisation
12 12 (11.21%) Data Governance
12 12 (11.21%) Data Transformation
13 10 (9.35%) Data Analytics
13 10 (9.35%) Data Architecture
13 10 (9.35%) Performance Tuning
14 9 (8.41%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 53 (49.53%) SQL
2 52 (48.60%) Python
3 7 (6.54%) Java
4 5 (4.67%) C#
4 5 (4.67%) Scala
5 3 (2.80%) T-SQL
6 2 (1.87%) Bicep
6 2 (1.87%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 2 (1.87%) Korn
6 2 (1.87%) PowerShell
6 2 (1.87%) R
Qualifications
1 13 (12.15%) Security Cleared
2 10 (9.35%) SC Cleared
3 5 (4.67%) DBS Check
4 3 (2.80%) BPSS Clearance
4 3 (2.80%) SnowPro
5 2 (1.87%) Microsoft Certification
6 1 (0.93%) AWS Certification
6 1 (0.93%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
6 1 (0.93%) BICSI Certification
6 1 (0.93%) City & Guilds
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (24.30%) Data Quality
2 4 (3.74%) GDPR
3 3 (2.80%) QA
4 2 (1.87%) Accessibility
4 2 (1.87%) EMIR
4 2 (1.87%) MiFID
5 1 (0.93%) GxP
System Software
1 6 (5.61%) Docker
Systems Management
1 5 (4.67%) Kubernetes
1 5 (4.67%) Terraform
Vendors
1 15 (14.02%) Databricks
1 15 (14.02%) Microsoft
2 6 (5.61%) Informatica
3 5 (4.67%) Oracle
4 3 (2.80%) Google
5 2 (1.87%) Amplitude
5 2 (1.87%) MuleSoft
5 2 (1.87%) Palantir
5 2 (1.87%) Salesforce
5 2 (1.87%) SAP
5 2 (1.87%) Workday
6 1 (0.93%) Cribl.io
6 1 (0.93%) HubSpot
6 1 (0.93%) IBM
6 1 (0.93%) OpenAI
6 1 (0.93%) Talend