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 9 April 2026.

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

6 months to
9 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 66 78
Rank change year-on-year +16 +12 +13
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 782 461 517
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.52% 3.64% 2.87%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.87% 3.89% 3.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 562 344 418
10th Percentile £383 £397 £358
25th Percentile £453 £454 £441
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £524 £533 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.64% +1.43% -8.70%
75th Percentile £614 £650 £638
90th Percentile £737 £800 £716
England median daily rate £500 £500 £511
% change year-on-year - -2.20% -7.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 7 9
10th Percentile £23.72 £47.25 £48.75
25th Percentile £30.30 £58.13 £49.25
Median hourly rate £42.50 £65.00 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -34.62% +23.81% -17.97%
75th Percentile £49.75 £85.63 £64.53
90th Percentile £53.35 £93.75 £68.90
England median hourly rate £58.25 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year -10.38% -3.70% +5.47%

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 16,042 11,851 16,753
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.74% 93.56% 93.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,726 8,117 12,092
10th Percentile £350 £340 £325
25th Percentile £425 £431 £442
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £675
90th Percentile £756 £800 £788
England median daily rate £507 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.43% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 253 146 338
10th Percentile £18.25 £21.38 £16.00
25th Percentile £23.00 £24.66 £19.57
Median hourly rate £35.71 £35.00 £27.81
Median % change year-on-year +2.03% +25.85% -22.75%
75th Percentile £60.25 £51.80 £46.50
90th Percentile £76.58 £65.00 £63.98
England median hourly rate £43.61 £33.00 £34.11
% change year-on-year +32.15% -3.24% -21.71%

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 9 April 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 9 April 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 9 April 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 +33 113 £531 +6.25% 52
West London +1 33 £603 +6.73% 6
South London -15 9 £500 +3.90%
East London -1 2 £425 -15.00% 2
Data Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 9 April 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.

1 463 (59.21%) SQL
2 451 (57.67%) Python
3 357 (45.65%) Data Pipeline
4 354 (45.27%) Azure
5 334 (42.71%) Data Engineering
6 324 (41.43%) ETL
7 300 (38.36%) Analytics
8 289 (36.96%) Data Modelling
9 259 (33.12%) AWS
10 257 (32.86%) Databricks
11 239 (30.56%) Data Quality
12 220 (28.13%) CI/CD
13 188 (24.04%) Security Cleared
14 179 (22.89%) Business Intelligence
15 175 (22.38%) SC Cleared
16 173 (22.12%) Data Warehouse
17 172 (21.99%) DevOps
18 162 (20.72%) Power Platform
19 153 (19.57%) Data Governance
20 152 (19.44%) Power BI
21 136 (17.39%) Azure Data Factory
21 136 (17.39%) PySpark
22 133 (17.01%) Agile
23 127 (16.24%) Data Science
23 127 (16.24%) Terraform
24 117 (14.96%) Data Lake
24 117 (14.96%) Microsoft
25 116 (14.83%) AI
25 116 (14.83%) Snowflake
26 106 (13.55%) Amazon S3

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 96 (12.28%) Apache Airflow
1 96 (12.28%) Apache Spark
2 58 (7.42%) Apache
3 9 (1.15%) Palantir Foundry
4 7 (0.90%) Confluence
5 5 (0.64%) Microsoft Exchange
6 4 (0.51%) Jupyter
7 3 (0.38%) SAS
8 2 (0.26%) SharePoint
9 1 (0.13%) Appian
9 1 (0.13%) ArcGIS
9 1 (0.13%) Camunda
9 1 (0.13%) Luigi
9 1 (0.13%) R Markdown
Applications
1 14 (1.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.38%) Spreadsheet
3 2 (0.26%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.26%) Aladdin
1 2 (0.26%) BambooHR
1 2 (0.26%) SAP BPC
2 1 (0.13%) Actimize
2 1 (0.13%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.13%) iTrent
2 1 (0.13%) Maximo
2 1 (0.13%) SAP Business ByDesign
2 1 (0.13%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 354 (45.27%) Azure
2 259 (33.12%) AWS
3 162 (20.72%) Power Platform
4 136 (17.39%) Azure Data Factory
5 116 (14.83%) Snowflake
6 106 (13.55%) Amazon S3
7 100 (12.79%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 95 (12.15%) GCP
9 88 (11.25%) Azure DevOps
10 86 (11.00%) dbt
10 86 (11.00%) GitHub
11 70 (8.95%) Serverless
12 57 (7.29%) AWS Lambda
13 41 (5.24%) GitHub Actions
14 31 (3.96%) AWS CloudFormation
15 23 (2.94%) Amazon Kinesis
16 22 (2.81%) Dagster
17 19 (2.43%) AWS Step Functions
18 18 (2.30%) Amazon SQS
19 17 (2.17%) Collibra
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.51%) Firewall
2 3 (0.38%) SAN
3 2 (0.26%) Structured Cabling
4 1 (0.13%) 4G
4 1 (0.13%) 5G
4 1 (0.13%) Network Security
4 1 (0.13%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 173 (22.12%) Data Warehouse
2 152 (19.44%) Power BI
3 117 (14.96%) Data Lake
4 79 (10.10%) SQL Server
5 64 (8.18%) BigQuery
6 62 (7.93%) Azure SQL Database
7 59 (7.54%) Delta Lake
8 57 (7.29%) Metadata
9 47 (6.01%) Tableau
10 44 (5.63%) Amazon Redshift
11 41 (5.24%) Amazon Athena
12 40 (5.12%) NoSQL
12 40 (5.12%) Snowflake Schema
13 38 (4.86%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 32 (4.09%) Big Data
15 31 (3.96%) PostgreSQL
16 25 (3.20%) Star Schema
17 24 (3.07%) Relational Database
18 20 (2.56%) Mixpanel
18 20 (2.56%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 88 (11.25%) Git
2 24 (3.07%) JIRA
3 22 (2.81%) GitLab
4 18 (2.30%) MLflow
5 16 (2.05%) Jenkins
6 2 (0.26%) SonarQube
6 2 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (0.13%) Jaeger
7 1 (0.13%) Poetry
7 1 (0.13%) Selenium
7 1 (0.13%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (0.13%) Terragrunt
General
1 176 (22.51%) Finance
2 124 (15.86%) Social Skills
3 89 (11.38%) Analytical Skills
4 57 (7.29%) Public Sector
5 44 (5.63%) Banking
6 30 (3.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 13 (1.66%) Front Office
7 13 (1.66%) Telecoms
8 12 (1.53%) Pharmaceutical
9 9 (1.15%) Marketing
9 9 (1.15%) Publishing
9 9 (1.15%) Retail
10 6 (0.77%) Investment Banking
11 5 (0.64%) Documentation Skills
12 4 (0.51%) Back Office
12 4 (0.51%) Corporate Banking
12 4 (0.51%) Law
13 3 (0.38%) Financial Institution
13 3 (0.38%) Manufacturing
13 3 (0.38%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 136 (17.39%) PySpark
2 84 (10.74%) Kafka
3 35 (4.48%) Pandas
4 23 (2.94%) YAML
5 21 (2.69%) Great Expectations
6 14 (1.79%) REST
6 14 (1.79%) scikit-learn
7 13 (1.66%) Matplotlib
8 10 (1.28%) JSON
8 10 (1.28%) NumPy
8 10 (1.28%) PyTorch
9 9 (1.15%) GeoJSON
9 9 (1.15%) Polars
9 9 (1.15%) XML
10 8 (1.02%) Spring
10 8 (1.02%) Spring Boot
11 7 (0.90%) React
11 7 (0.90%) Spark Streaming
12 6 (0.77%) pytest
12 6 (0.77%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 72 (9.21%) Cloud Native
2 23 (2.94%) Legacy Systems
3 19 (2.43%) Data Structures
4 16 (2.05%) Product Ownership
5 14 (1.79%) Onboarding
6 13 (1.66%) Greenfield Project
7 11 (1.41%) Reinsurance
8 10 (1.28%) Distributed Systems
9 8 (1.02%) Self-Motivation
10 7 (0.90%) Clustering
10 7 (0.90%) Life Science
10 7 (0.90%) Public Cloud
10 7 (0.90%) Replication
11 6 (0.77%) NHS
12 5 (0.64%) Data Protection Act
12 5 (0.64%) Distributed Computing
12 5 (0.64%) Reference Data
12 5 (0.64%) Virtual Team
13 4 (0.51%) AI Agents
13 4 (0.51%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 16 (2.05%) Linux
2 6 (0.77%) Unix
3 3 (0.38%) Windows
4 2 (0.26%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.13%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 357 (45.65%) Data Pipeline
2 334 (42.71%) Data Engineering
3 324 (41.43%) ETL
4 300 (38.36%) Analytics
5 289 (36.96%) Data Modelling
6 220 (28.13%) CI/CD
7 179 (22.89%) Business Intelligence
8 172 (21.99%) DevOps
9 153 (19.57%) Data Governance
10 133 (17.01%) Agile
11 127 (16.24%) Data Science
12 116 (14.83%) AI
13 106 (13.55%) Data Architecture
14 103 (13.17%) Infrastructure as Code
15 91 (11.64%) Problem-Solving
16 90 (11.51%) Machine Learning
17 89 (11.38%) Migration
18 81 (10.36%) Validation
19 77 (9.85%) Data Transformation
20 73 (9.34%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 463 (59.21%) SQL
2 451 (57.67%) Python
3 72 (9.21%) Scala
4 58 (7.42%) Java
5 31 (3.96%) C#
6 24 (3.07%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 15 (1.92%) T-SQL
8 13 (1.66%) Bicep
8 13 (1.66%) R
9 10 (1.28%) Bash
9 10 (1.28%) PowerShell
10 9 (1.15%) Shell Script
11 8 (1.02%) PL/SQL
12 7 (0.90%) JavaScript
13 5 (0.64%) TypeScript
14 3 (0.38%) C
14 3 (0.38%) Korn
15 2 (0.26%) LookML
15 2 (0.26%) Ruby
15 2 (0.26%) VB
Qualifications
1 188 (24.04%) Security Cleared
2 175 (22.38%) SC Cleared
3 24 (3.07%) Degree
4 21 (2.69%) Azure Certification
5 14 (1.79%) BPSS Clearance
6 12 (1.53%) AWS Certification
6 12 (1.53%) Computer Science Degree
7 6 (0.77%) DV Cleared
7 6 (0.77%) Microsoft Certification
8 4 (0.51%) DBS Check
8 4 (0.51%) Master's Degree
8 4 (0.51%) SnowPro
9 3 (0.38%) CTC Cleared
10 1 (0.13%) BICSI Certification
10 1 (0.13%) CISA
10 1 (0.13%) CISM
10 1 (0.13%) CISSP
10 1 (0.13%) City & Guilds
10 1 (0.13%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 239 (30.56%) Data Quality
2 39 (4.99%) GDPR
3 24 (3.07%) QA
4 8 (1.02%) Accessibility
5 3 (0.38%) SLA
6 2 (0.26%) GMP
6 2 (0.26%) HIPAA
6 2 (0.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.26%) MiFID
7 1 (0.13%) Dodd-Frank
7 1 (0.13%) EMIR
7 1 (0.13%) GRC
7 1 (0.13%) GxP
7 1 (0.13%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.13%) PMO
7 1 (0.13%) SOC 2
7 1 (0.13%) WCAG
System Software
1 39 (4.99%) Docker
2 7 (0.90%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (0.13%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.13%) RACF
Systems Management
1 127 (16.24%) Terraform
2 33 (4.22%) Kubernetes
3 5 (0.64%) Grafana
4 4 (0.51%) Kubeflow
5 2 (0.26%) EMC NetWorker
5 2 (0.26%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.26%) Thomson Reuters DACS
5 2 (0.26%) Tivoli Storage Manager
6 1 (0.13%) Ansible
Vendors
1 257 (32.86%) Databricks
2 117 (14.96%) Microsoft
3 45 (5.75%) Google
4 35 (4.48%) Informatica
5 29 (3.71%) Oracle
6 13 (1.66%) IBM
7 12 (1.53%) Foundry
8 11 (1.41%) SAP
8 11 (1.41%) ServiceNow
9 10 (1.28%) Palantir
9 10 (1.28%) Talend
10 7 (0.90%) Denodo
11 6 (0.77%) Cloudera
11 6 (0.77%) MuleSoft
12 5 (0.64%) Virgin Media
13 4 (0.51%) Bloomberg
13 4 (0.51%) OpenAI
14 3 (0.38%) Cisco
14 3 (0.38%) EMC
14 3 (0.38%) Salesforce