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 22 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 56 89 98
Rank change year-on-year +33 +9 +39
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 76 32 30
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 3.89% 1.74% 1.26%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.38% 1.90% 1.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 54 17 22
10th Percentile £363 £413 £413
25th Percentile £416 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £563
Median % change year-on-year - -2.22% -8.69%
75th Percentile £688 £650 £703
90th Percentile £868 £743 £774
Central London median daily rate £575 £550 £625
% change year-on-year +4.55% -12.00% +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 1,735 1,687 2,129
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 88.88% 91.78% 89.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,200 1,030 1,509
10th Percentile £356 £363 £350
25th Percentile £431 £463 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -6.52% - -4.17%
75th Percentile £668 £688 £688
90th Percentile £775 £781 £800
Central London median daily rate £550 £575 £563
% change year-on-year -4.35% +2.22% -4.66%
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 9 14
10th Percentile £18.75 £22.00 £17.00
25th Percentile £20.34 £31.00 £19.18
Median hourly rate £34.25 £38.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -11.04% +18.46% -7.14%
75th Percentile £46.29 £48.75 £45.52
90th Percentile £55.54 £112.00 £66.70
Central London median hourly rate £26.11 £35.00 £27.81
% change year-on-year -25.40% +25.85% -20.54%

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 22 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 (13.16%) Apache Spark
2 9 (11.84%) Apache Airflow
3 5 (6.58%) Apache
4 2 (2.63%) Palantir Foundry
5 1 (1.32%) Confluence
5 1 (1.32%) SharePoint
Applications
1 4 (5.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (1.32%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (1.32%) MS Visio
2 1 (1.32%) Spreadsheet
Cloud Services
1 33 (43.42%) Azure
2 27 (35.53%) AWS
3 24 (31.58%) Power Platform
4 16 (21.05%) Snowflake
5 12 (15.79%) Azure Data Factory
6 11 (14.47%) GCP
7 7 (9.21%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 6 (7.89%) Amazon SageMaker
8 6 (7.89%) dbt
8 6 (7.89%) Serverless
9 4 (5.26%) Azure DevOps
9 4 (5.26%) GitHub
9 4 (5.26%) Microsoft Purview
10 3 (3.95%) AWS Control Tower
10 3 (3.95%) Azure Functions
10 3 (3.95%) Power Automate
10 3 (3.95%) SaaS
11 2 (2.63%) Amazon S3
11 2 (2.63%) AWS CloudFormation
11 2 (2.63%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.32%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (28.95%) Power BI
2 13 (17.11%) Data Warehouse
3 9 (11.84%) Snowflake Schema
3 9 (11.84%) Tableau
4 7 (9.21%) Data Lake
4 7 (9.21%) Metadata
5 6 (7.89%) Big Data
6 4 (5.26%) NoSQL
7 3 (3.95%) Delta Lake
8 2 (2.63%) Azure SQL Database
8 2 (2.63%) Geospatial Data
8 2 (2.63%) SQL Server
9 1 (1.32%) KDB
9 1 (1.32%) Kdb+
9 1 (1.32%) Looker
9 1 (1.32%) Qlik Sense
9 1 (1.32%) SQL Server Analysis Services
9 1 (1.32%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 1 (1.32%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 1 (1.32%) Tick Data
Development Applications
1 14 (18.42%) Git
2 4 (5.26%) Jenkins
3 2 (2.63%) GitLab
4 1 (1.32%) ERwin
4 1 (1.32%) JIRA
4 1 (1.32%) Postman
4 1 (1.32%) Robot Framework
4 1 (1.32%) Selenium
General
1 32 (42.11%) Finance
2 15 (19.74%) Analytical Skills
3 13 (17.11%) Banking
4 10 (13.16%) Social Skills
5 5 (6.58%) Front Office
5 5 (6.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 4 (5.26%) Back Office
7 2 (2.63%) Influencing Skills
7 2 (2.63%) Investment Banking
7 2 (2.63%) Marketing
7 2 (2.63%) Public Sector
8 1 (1.32%) Financial Institution
8 1 (1.32%) Manufacturing
8 1 (1.32%) Organisational Skills
8 1 (1.32%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 25 (32.89%) Data Engineer
2 14 (18.42%) Architect
3 9 (11.84%) Lead
4 7 (9.21%) Developer
5 6 (7.89%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
5 6 (7.89%) Snowflake Data Engineer
5 6 (7.89%) Snowflake Engineer
6 5 (6.58%) Analyst
6 5 (6.58%) Machine Learning Engineer
6 5 (6.58%) Solutions Architect
7 4 (5.26%) Business Intelligence Developer
7 4 (5.26%) Consultant
8 3 (3.95%) Azure Data Engineer
8 3 (3.95%) Azure Engineer
8 3 (3.95%) Data Analyst
8 3 (3.95%) Data Scientist
8 3 (3.95%) Lead Data Engineer
8 3 (3.95%) Senior
8 3 (3.95%) Technical Leader
9 2 (2.63%) Cloud Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (13.16%) PySpark
2 9 (11.84%) PyTorch
2 9 (11.84%) TensorFlow
3 8 (10.53%) scikit-learn
4 7 (9.21%) Kafka
5 5 (6.58%) Middleware
6 3 (3.95%) Dask
6 3 (3.95%) Google JAX
6 3 (3.95%) JAX
6 3 (3.95%) LightGBM
6 3 (3.95%) Vert.x
6 3 (3.95%) XGBoost
7 2 (2.63%) JSON
7 2 (2.63%) Microsoft Graph
7 2 (2.63%) NumPy
7 2 (2.63%) OpenTelemetry
7 2 (2.63%) Pandas
7 2 (2.63%) XML
7 2 (2.63%) YAML
8 1 (1.32%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 13 (17.11%) Cloud Native
2 8 (10.53%) Algorithms
2 8 (10.53%) Distributed Systems
3 7 (9.21%) Product Ownership
4 5 (6.58%) Derivative
5 4 (5.26%) Analytical Mindset
5 4 (5.26%) Equities
6 3 (3.95%) Security Posture
7 2 (2.63%) AI Agents
7 2 (2.63%) Clustering
7 2 (2.63%) Distributed Computing
7 2 (2.63%) Fixed Income
7 2 (2.63%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 2 (2.63%) Taxonomies
8 1 (1.32%) Autonomous Agent
8 1 (1.32%) Data Structures
8 1 (1.32%) Management Information System
8 1 (1.32%) Operational Technology
8 1 (1.32%) Public Cloud
8 1 (1.32%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 1 (1.32%) Linux
1 1 (1.32%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 35 (46.05%) Data Pipeline
2 31 (40.79%) AI
2 31 (40.79%) Analytics
3 24 (31.58%) CI/CD
4 23 (30.26%) Business Intelligence
5 21 (27.63%) Data Modelling
5 21 (27.63%) ETL
5 21 (27.63%) Machine Learning
6 17 (22.37%) Data Governance
7 15 (19.74%) Agile
7 15 (19.74%) Data Science
8 13 (17.11%) Generative AI
8 13 (17.11%) Validation
9 12 (15.79%) DevOps
10 11 (14.47%) Use Case
11 10 (13.16%) Performance Tuning
11 10 (13.16%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 9 (11.84%) MLOps
12 9 (11.84%) Visualisation
13 8 (10.53%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 41 (53.95%) Python
2 38 (50.00%) SQL
3 5 (6.58%) Java
3 5 (6.58%) Scala
4 3 (3.95%) C#
4 3 (3.95%) Data Analysis Expressions
4 3 (3.95%) Korn
4 3 (3.95%) T-SQL
5 2 (2.63%) JavaScript
5 2 (2.63%) R
6 1 (1.32%) Bicep
6 1 (1.32%) C++
6 1 (1.32%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 6 (7.89%) Degree
2 4 (5.26%) Security Cleared
3 3 (3.95%) Computer Science Degree
3 3 (3.95%) SC Cleared
4 2 (2.63%) DBS Check
5 1 (1.32%) BPSS Clearance
5 1 (1.32%) DV Cleared
5 1 (1.32%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (25.00%) Data Quality
2 9 (11.84%) GDPR
3 3 (3.95%) QA
4 2 (2.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 1 (1.32%) Accessibility
5 1 (1.32%) HIPAA
5 1 (1.32%) NIST
5 1 (1.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 1 (1.32%) Docker
1 1 (1.32%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 8 (10.53%) Terraform
2 1 (1.32%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 23 (30.26%) Databricks
2 14 (18.42%) Microsoft
3 3 (3.95%) Google
4 2 (2.63%) Foundry
4 2 (2.63%) Palantir
4 2 (2.63%) Salesforce
4 2 (2.63%) SimCorp
4 2 (2.63%) Vermilion
5 1 (1.32%) Alteryx
5 1 (1.32%) Dataiku
5 1 (1.32%) Guidewire
5 1 (1.32%) OpenAI
5 1 (1.32%) Workday