Data Engineer Contract Job Trends in London

Data Engineer
England > London

The median Data Engineer daily rate in London is £524, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 23 May 2026.

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

6 months to
23 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 72 81
Rank change year-on-year +25 +9 +13
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 849 425 487
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.66% 3.50% 2.80%
As % of the Job Titles category 5.02% 3.75% 2.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 616 326 394
10th Percentile £388 £400 £361
25th Percentile £454 £456 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £524 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.24% - -8.70%
75th Percentile £614 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £800 £723
England median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 6 8
10th Percentile £23.72 - £48.50
25th Percentile £30.30 £51.25 £49.25
Median hourly rate £42.50 £63.75 £51.13
Median % change year-on-year -33.33% +24.69% -28.99%
75th Percentile £49.75 £89.69 £56.73
90th Percentile £53.35 £93.75 £66.92
England median hourly rate £52.50 £63.75 £67.50
% change year-on-year -17.65% -5.56% -10.60%

All Contract IT Job Roles
London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in 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 London with a recognized job title 16,903 11,323 16,274
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.78% 93.36% 93.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,200 7,715 11,770
10th Percentile £355 £343 £325
25th Percentile £431 £426 £443
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £682
90th Percentile £758 £800 £800
England median daily rate £515 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 269 144 316
10th Percentile £19.10 £20.24 £16.01
25th Percentile £25.25 £24.54 £20.02
Median hourly rate £39.00 £31.17 £27.25
Median % change year-on-year +25.11% +14.39% -24.31%
75th Percentile £63.10 £49.81 £44.00
90th Percentile £76.58 £62.48 £65.52
England median hourly rate £45.00 £29.07 £37.18
% change year-on-year +54.80% -21.81% -17.38%

Data Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in 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 London.

Data Engineer job vacancy trend in London

Data Engineer
Daily Rate Trend in London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Data Engineer job vacancies in London.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Data Engineer job vacancies in London

Data Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Data Engineer in London over the 6 months to 23 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Data Engineer in London

Data Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend in London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Data Engineer job vacancies in London.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Data Engineer job vacancies in London

Data Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram in London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Data Engineer in London over the 6 months to 23 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Data Engineer in London

Data Engineer
Contract Job Locations in London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Data Engineer within the London region over the 6 months to 23 May 2026. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 6 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
Central London +23 123 £550 +10.00% 32
West London -3 31 £603 +6.73% 1
South London -12 8 £500 +5.26% 1
East London - 4 £450 - 5
Data Engineer
England

Data Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in London

For the 6 months to 23 May 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 London region featuring Data Engineer in the job title.

1 476 (56.07%) SQL
2 468 (55.12%) Python
3 372 (43.82%) Data Pipeline
4 346 (40.75%) Azure
5 344 (40.52%) Data Engineering
6 341 (40.16%) ETL
7 318 (37.46%) Analytics
8 295 (34.75%) Data Modelling
9 280 (32.98%) AWS
10 243 (28.62%) Databricks
11 238 (28.03%) Data Quality
12 222 (26.15%) CI/CD
13 203 (23.91%) Security Cleared
14 190 (22.38%) SC Cleared
15 182 (21.44%) DevOps
16 169 (19.91%) Business Intelligence
17 164 (19.32%) Data Warehouse
18 156 (18.37%) Power Platform
19 146 (17.20%) Power BI
20 145 (17.08%) Data Governance
20 145 (17.08%) PySpark
21 142 (16.73%) Azure Data Factory
22 141 (16.61%) Agile
23 127 (14.96%) Terraform
24 125 (14.72%) AI
24 125 (14.72%) Data Lake
24 125 (14.72%) Microsoft
25 111 (13.07%) Amazon S3
25 111 (13.07%) Apache Airflow
25 111 (13.07%) Data Science

Data Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in 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
1 111 (13.07%) Apache Airflow
2 103 (12.13%) Apache Spark
3 61 (7.18%) Apache
4 7 (0.82%) Confluence
4 7 (0.82%) Palantir Foundry
5 5 (0.59%) Microsoft Exchange
6 4 (0.47%) Jupyter
6 4 (0.47%) SAS
7 2 (0.24%) SharePoint
8 1 (0.12%) Appian
8 1 (0.12%) Camunda
8 1 (0.12%) Luigi
8 1 (0.12%) R Markdown
Applications
1 11 (1.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.12%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 6 (0.71%) Aladdin
2 3 (0.35%) SimCorp Dimension
3 2 (0.24%) BambooHR
3 2 (0.24%) SAP BPC
4 1 (0.12%) Actimize
4 1 (0.12%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.12%) iTrent
4 1 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.12%) Raiser’s Edge
4 1 (0.12%) SAP Business ByDesign
Cloud Services
1 346 (40.75%) Azure
2 280 (32.98%) AWS
3 156 (18.37%) Power Platform
4 142 (16.73%) Azure Data Factory
5 111 (13.07%) Amazon S3
6 106 (12.49%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 101 (11.90%) Snowflake
8 100 (11.78%) Azure DevOps
9 94 (11.07%) dbt
9 94 (11.07%) GCP
10 88 (10.37%) GitHub
11 65 (7.66%) Serverless
12 59 (6.95%) AWS Lambda
13 42 (4.95%) GitHub Actions
14 25 (2.94%) AWS CloudFormation
15 21 (2.47%) Amazon Kinesis
15 21 (2.47%) Dagster
16 16 (1.88%) Amazon SQS
17 15 (1.77%) AWS Step Functions
17 15 (1.77%) Collibra
Communications & Networking
1 2 (0.24%) Structured Cabling
2 1 (0.12%) 4G
2 1 (0.12%) 5G
2 1 (0.12%) Firewall
2 1 (0.12%) Network Security
2 1 (0.12%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 164 (19.32%) Data Warehouse
2 146 (17.20%) Power BI
3 125 (14.72%) Data Lake
4 87 (10.25%) SQL Server
5 68 (8.01%) BigQuery
6 67 (7.89%) Delta Lake
7 60 (7.07%) Metadata
8 55 (6.48%) Azure SQL Database
9 47 (5.54%) Snowflake Schema
9 47 (5.54%) Tableau
10 45 (5.30%) Amazon Redshift
11 43 (5.06%) Amazon Athena
11 43 (5.06%) NoSQL
12 40 (4.71%) PostgreSQL
13 39 (4.59%) Big Data
14 37 (4.36%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 26 (3.06%) Relational Database
16 25 (2.94%) Star Schema
17 24 (2.83%) MongoDB
17 24 (2.83%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 83 (9.78%) Git
2 25 (2.94%) JIRA
3 21 (2.47%) GitLab
4 16 (1.88%) Jenkins
5 12 (1.41%) MLflow
6 2 (0.24%) SonarQube
6 2 (0.24%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.24%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 1 (0.12%) Jaeger
7 1 (0.12%) Poetry
7 1 (0.12%) Selenium
7 1 (0.12%) Terragrunt
General
1 207 (24.38%) Finance
2 122 (14.37%) Social Skills
3 97 (11.43%) Analytical Skills
4 52 (6.12%) Public Sector
5 49 (5.77%) Banking
6 22 (2.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 13 (1.53%) Pharmaceutical
7 13 (1.53%) Telecoms
8 12 (1.41%) Marketing
9 11 (1.30%) Front Office
9 11 (1.30%) Retail
10 10 (1.18%) Publishing
11 6 (0.71%) Documentation Skills
12 5 (0.59%) Back Office
12 5 (0.59%) Games
12 5 (0.59%) Investment Banking
13 4 (0.47%) Corporate Banking
13 4 (0.47%) Financial Institution
13 4 (0.47%) Manufacturing
13 4 (0.47%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 145 (17.08%) PySpark
2 87 (10.25%) Kafka
3 34 (4.00%) Pandas
4 22 (2.59%) Great Expectations
5 19 (2.24%) Spring
5 19 (2.24%) Spring Boot
6 18 (2.12%) YAML
7 13 (1.53%) REST
8 11 (1.30%) Matplotlib
8 11 (1.30%) scikit-learn
9 9 (1.06%) GeoJSON
9 9 (1.06%) JSON
9 9 (1.06%) Polars
9 9 (1.06%) PyTorch
10 8 (0.94%) Apache Beam
11 7 (0.82%) NumPy
11 7 (0.82%) React
12 6 (0.71%) HTML
12 6 (0.71%) Middleware
12 6 (0.71%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 90 (10.60%) Cloud Native
2 25 (2.94%) Legacy Systems
3 23 (2.71%) Data Structures
4 19 (2.24%) Greenfield Project
5 17 (2.00%) Product Ownership
6 16 (1.88%) Reinsurance
7 13 (1.53%) Distributed Systems
7 13 (1.53%) Onboarding
8 8 (0.94%) Distributed Computing
8 8 (0.94%) Replication
8 8 (0.94%) Self-Motivation
9 7 (0.82%) Clustering
9 7 (0.82%) Derivative
9 7 (0.82%) Reference Data
10 6 (0.71%) AI Agents
10 6 (0.71%) Life Science
10 6 (0.71%) NHS
11 5 (0.59%) Data Protection Act
11 5 (0.59%) Public Cloud
12 4 (0.47%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 23 (2.71%) Linux
2 12 (1.41%) Unix
3 3 (0.35%) Windows
4 2 (0.24%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.12%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 372 (43.82%) Data Pipeline
2 344 (40.52%) Data Engineering
3 341 (40.16%) ETL
4 318 (37.46%) Analytics
5 295 (34.75%) Data Modelling
6 222 (26.15%) CI/CD
7 182 (21.44%) DevOps
8 169 (19.91%) Business Intelligence
9 145 (17.08%) Data Governance
10 141 (16.61%) Agile
11 125 (14.72%) AI
12 111 (13.07%) Data Science
13 105 (12.37%) Migration
14 99 (11.66%) Data Architecture
15 98 (11.54%) Infrastructure as Code
16 94 (11.07%) Validation
17 93 (10.95%) Problem-Solving
18 80 (9.42%) Decision-Making
19 79 (9.31%) Machine Learning
20 72 (8.48%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 476 (56.07%) SQL
2 468 (55.12%) Python
3 78 (9.19%) Java
4 75 (8.83%) Scala
5 29 (3.42%) C#
6 23 (2.71%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 23 (2.71%) T-SQL
7 14 (1.65%) PL/SQL
8 13 (1.53%) Bicep
8 13 (1.53%) R
9 10 (1.18%) Shell Script
10 9 (1.06%) Bash
10 9 (1.06%) JavaScript
11 6 (0.71%) PowerShell
12 5 (0.59%) TypeScript
13 3 (0.35%) C
13 3 (0.35%) Go
14 2 (0.24%) LookML
14 2 (0.24%) Ruby
14 2 (0.24%) VB
Qualifications
1 203 (23.91%) Security Cleared
2 190 (22.38%) SC Cleared
3 24 (2.83%) Degree
4 23 (2.71%) Azure Certification
5 17 (2.00%) BPSS Clearance
6 12 (1.41%) Computer Science Degree
7 9 (1.06%) DBS Check
8 6 (0.71%) AWS Certification
8 6 (0.71%) Microsoft Certification
9 4 (0.47%) Master's Degree
10 3 (0.35%) SnowPro
11 2 (0.24%) CTC Cleared
11 2 (0.24%) DV Cleared
12 1 (0.12%) BICSI Certification
12 1 (0.12%) CISA
12 1 (0.12%) CISM
12 1 (0.12%) CISSP
12 1 (0.12%) City & Guilds
12 1 (0.12%) Postgraduate
12 1 (0.12%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 238 (28.03%) Data Quality
2 35 (4.12%) GDPR
3 32 (3.77%) QA
4 7 (0.82%) Accessibility
5 5 (0.59%) MiFID
6 3 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 2 (0.24%) EMIR
7 2 (0.24%) GMP
7 2 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.24%) SLA
8 1 (0.12%) GRC
8 1 (0.12%) GxP
8 1 (0.12%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.12%) IFRS
8 1 (0.12%) IFRS 17
8 1 (0.12%) IFRS 9
8 1 (0.12%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.12%) PMO
8 1 (0.12%) SNOMED CT
8 1 (0.12%) WCAG
System Software
1 52 (6.12%) Docker
2 3 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (0.12%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.12%) RACF
Systems Management
1 127 (14.96%) Terraform
2 37 (4.36%) Kubernetes
3 10 (1.18%) Grafana
4 4 (0.47%) Kibana
5 2 (0.24%) Ansible
5 2 (0.24%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.24%) Thomson Reuters DACS
6 1 (0.12%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 243 (28.62%) Databricks
2 125 (14.72%) Microsoft
3 44 (5.18%) Google
4 37 (4.36%) Informatica
5 35 (4.12%) Oracle
6 11 (1.30%) SAP
7 10 (1.18%) Denodo
7 10 (1.18%) Foundry
7 10 (1.18%) Talend
8 9 (1.06%) IBM
9 8 (0.94%) ServiceNow
10 7 (0.82%) Alteryx
10 7 (0.82%) Bloomberg
10 7 (0.82%) Palantir
11 6 (0.71%) MuleSoft
12 5 (0.59%) Cloudera
12 5 (0.59%) Salesforce
12 5 (0.59%) Splunk
13 4 (0.47%) Hortonworks
13 4 (0.47%) Refinitiv