Data Engineering Contract Job Trends in the City of London

Data Engineering
Central London > City of London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the City of London requiring Data Engineering skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 12 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 55 87 99
Rank change year-on-year +32 +12 +40
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 71 31 32
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 3.70% 1.69% 1.35%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.15% 1.85% 1.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 50 16 24
10th Percentile £361 £413 £414
25th Percentile £413 £453 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £575 £613
Median % change year-on-year -6.52% -6.12% -0.57%
75th Percentile £688 £672 £701
90th Percentile £875 £744 £771
Central London median daily rate £575 £575 £625
% change year-on-year - -8.00% +7.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 2 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - £46.75
Median hourly rate - £22.00 £48.50
Median % change year-on-year - -54.64% -
75th Percentile - - £50.25
90th Percentile - - -
Central London median hourly rate - £22.00 £48.50
% change year-on-year - -54.64% -

All Process & Methodology Skills
City of London

Data Engineering falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in the City of London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 1,709 1,675 2,115
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 89.10% 91.43% 89.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,183 1,005 1,513
10th Percentile £351 £363 £350
25th Percentile £425 £463 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £575 £569
Median % change year-on-year -6.52% +1.05% -5.17%
75th Percentile £675 £681 £688
90th Percentile £775 £784 £800
Central London median daily rate £550 £575 £563
% change year-on-year -4.35% +2.22% -4.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 8 13
10th Percentile £20.10 £22.00 £17.00
25th Percentile £23.30 £28.94 £18.93
Median hourly rate £34.00 £40.50 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -16.05% +62.00% -28.57%
75th Percentile £45.08 £64.56 £46.75
90th Percentile £54.94 £112.00 £69.05
Central London median hourly rate £26.11 £35.00 £27.81
% change year-on-year -25.40% +25.85% -17.60%

Data Engineering
Job Vacancy Trend in the City of London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Data Engineering relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London.

Data Engineering job vacancy trend in the City of London

Data Engineering
Daily Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Data Engineering.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Data Engineering

Data Engineering
Daily Rate Histogram in the City of London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Data Engineering in the City of London over the 6 months to 12 February 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Data Engineering in the City of London

Data Engineering
Hourly Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Data Engineering.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Data Engineering

Data Engineering
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 10 (14.08%) Apache Spark
2 8 (11.27%) Apache Airflow
3 4 (5.63%) Apache
4 1 (1.41%) Confluence
4 1 (1.41%) Palantir Foundry
4 1 (1.41%) SharePoint
Applications
1 4 (5.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (1.41%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (1.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (1.41%) MS Visio
2 1 (1.41%) Spreadsheet
Cloud Services
1 28 (39.44%) Azure
2 26 (36.62%) AWS
3 21 (29.58%) Power Platform
4 15 (21.13%) Snowflake
5 11 (15.49%) Azure Data Factory
6 10 (14.08%) GCP
7 6 (8.45%) Amazon SageMaker
7 6 (8.45%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 6 (8.45%) dbt
8 5 (7.04%) Serverless
9 4 (5.63%) Microsoft Purview
10 3 (4.23%) AWS Control Tower
10 3 (4.23%) Azure DevOps
10 3 (4.23%) Azure Functions
10 3 (4.23%) Power Automate
10 3 (4.23%) SaaS
11 2 (2.82%) Amazon S3
11 2 (2.82%) AWS CloudFormation
11 2 (2.82%) AWS Lambda
11 2 (2.82%) GitHub
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.41%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (29.58%) Power BI
2 11 (15.49%) Data Warehouse
3 9 (12.68%) Tableau
4 7 (9.86%) Metadata
4 7 (9.86%) Snowflake Schema
5 6 (8.45%) Data Lake
6 5 (7.04%) Big Data
7 3 (4.23%) Delta Lake
7 3 (4.23%) NoSQL
8 2 (2.82%) Geospatial Data
8 2 (2.82%) SQL Server
9 1 (1.41%) Hadoop
9 1 (1.41%) KDB
9 1 (1.41%) Kdb+
9 1 (1.41%) Looker
9 1 (1.41%) Qlik Sense
9 1 (1.41%) SQL Server Analysis Services
9 1 (1.41%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 1 (1.41%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 1 (1.41%) Tick Data
Development Applications
1 10 (14.08%) Git
2 3 (4.23%) Jenkins
3 1 (1.41%) ERwin
3 1 (1.41%) GitLab
3 1 (1.41%) JIRA
General
1 31 (43.66%) Finance
2 16 (22.54%) Analytical Skills
3 13 (18.31%) Banking
4 8 (11.27%) Social Skills
5 5 (7.04%) Front Office
5 5 (7.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 4 (5.63%) Back Office
7 2 (2.82%) Influencing Skills
7 2 (2.82%) Investment Banking
7 2 (2.82%) Marketing
7 2 (2.82%) Public Sector
8 1 (1.41%) Financial Institution
8 1 (1.41%) Manufacturing
8 1 (1.41%) Organisational Skills
8 1 (1.41%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 23 (32.39%) Data Engineer
2 12 (16.90%) Architect
3 9 (12.68%) Lead
4 7 (9.86%) Developer
5 6 (8.45%) Analyst
6 5 (7.04%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
6 5 (7.04%) Machine Learning Engineer
6 5 (7.04%) Snowflake Data Engineer
6 5 (7.04%) Snowflake Engineer
6 5 (7.04%) Solutions Architect
7 4 (5.63%) Business Intelligence Developer
7 4 (5.63%) Consultant
7 4 (5.63%) Data Analyst
8 3 (4.23%) Data Scientist
8 3 (4.23%) Lead Data Engineer
8 3 (4.23%) Senior
8 3 (4.23%) Technical Leader
9 2 (2.82%) Azure Data Engineer
9 2 (2.82%) Cloud Architect
9 2 (2.82%) Cloud Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (12.68%) PySpark
1 9 (12.68%) PyTorch
1 9 (12.68%) TensorFlow
2 8 (11.27%) scikit-learn
3 7 (9.86%) Kafka
4 4 (5.63%) Middleware
5 3 (4.23%) Dask
5 3 (4.23%) Google JAX
5 3 (4.23%) JAX
5 3 (4.23%) LightGBM
5 3 (4.23%) Vert.x
5 3 (4.23%) XGBoost
6 2 (2.82%) JSON
6 2 (2.82%) Microsoft Graph
6 2 (2.82%) NumPy
6 2 (2.82%) OpenTelemetry
6 2 (2.82%) Pandas
6 2 (2.82%) XML
6 2 (2.82%) YAML
7 1 (1.41%) Matplotlib
Miscellaneous
1 11 (15.49%) Cloud Native
2 8 (11.27%) Algorithms
3 7 (9.86%) Distributed Systems
4 5 (7.04%) Derivative
4 5 (7.04%) Product Ownership
5 4 (5.63%) Analytical Mindset
5 4 (5.63%) Equities
6 3 (4.23%) Security Posture
7 2 (2.82%) AI Agents
7 2 (2.82%) Distributed Computing
7 2 (2.82%) Fixed Income
7 2 (2.82%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 2 (2.82%) Taxonomies
8 1 (1.41%) Clustering
8 1 (1.41%) Data Structures
8 1 (1.41%) Legacy Systems
8 1 (1.41%) Management Information System
8 1 (1.41%) Public Cloud
8 1 (1.41%) Replication
8 1 (1.41%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 1 (1.41%) Linux
1 1 (1.41%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 33 (46.48%) Data Pipeline
2 28 (39.44%) Analytics
3 25 (35.21%) AI
4 22 (30.99%) Business Intelligence
5 21 (29.58%) Machine Learning
6 20 (28.17%) Data Modelling
7 19 (26.76%) CI/CD
8 18 (25.35%) ETL
9 16 (22.54%) Data Governance
10 14 (19.72%) Data Science
11 13 (18.31%) Agile
12 12 (16.90%) Generative AI
13 11 (15.49%) Validation
14 10 (14.08%) Use Case
15 9 (12.68%) DevOps
15 9 (12.68%) MLOps
15 9 (12.68%) Problem-Solving
15 9 (12.68%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 9 (12.68%) Visualisation
16 8 (11.27%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 38 (53.52%) Python
2 33 (46.48%) SQL
3 5 (7.04%) Scala
4 3 (4.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
4 3 (4.23%) Java
4 3 (4.23%) Korn
4 3 (4.23%) T-SQL
5 2 (2.82%) C#
5 2 (2.82%) R
6 1 (1.41%) Bicep
6 1 (1.41%) C++
6 1 (1.41%) JavaScript
6 1 (1.41%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 5 (7.04%) Degree
2 4 (5.63%) Security Cleared
3 3 (4.23%) SC Cleared
4 2 (2.82%) Computer Science Degree
4 2 (2.82%) DBS Check
5 1 (1.41%) BPSS Clearance
5 1 (1.41%) DV Cleared
5 1 (1.41%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (25.35%) Data Quality
2 8 (11.27%) GDPR
3 2 (2.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (2.82%) QA
4 1 (1.41%) Accessibility
4 1 (1.41%) HIPAA
4 1 (1.41%) NIST
System Software
1 1 (1.41%) Docker
Systems Management
1 7 (9.86%) Terraform
Vendors
1 22 (30.99%) Databricks
2 11 (15.49%) Microsoft
3 2 (2.82%) Google
3 2 (2.82%) Salesforce
3 2 (2.82%) SimCorp
3 2 (2.82%) Vermilion
4 1 (1.41%) Alteryx
4 1 (1.41%) Dataiku
4 1 (1.41%) Foundry
4 1 (1.41%) Guidewire
4 1 (1.41%) OpenAI
4 1 (1.41%) Palantir
4 1 (1.41%) Workday