Data Engineer Contract Job Trends in London

Data Engineer
England > London

The median Data Engineer daily rate in London is £520, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 5 March 2026.

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

6 months to
5 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 61 64 77
Rank change year-on-year +3 +13 +24
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 684 486 526
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.21% 3.66% 2.91%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.55% 3.91% 3.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 488 359 426
10th Percentile £363 £400 £363
25th Percentile £431 £463 £441
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.45% +4.76% -8.70%
75th Percentile £614 £650 £638
90th Percentile £725 £800 £719
England median daily rate £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 7 12
10th Percentile - £55.50 £36.74
25th Percentile £53.25 £65.00 £48.63
Median hourly rate £54.50 £75.00 £52.13
Median % change year-on-year -27.33% +43.88% -18.55%
75th Percentile £55.75 £93.75 £62.45
90th Percentile - £95.25 £67.65
England median hourly rate £66.75 £65.00 £62.36
% change year-on-year +2.69% +4.24% -2.57%

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 15,038 12,428 16,831
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.54% 93.65% 93.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,080 8,197 12,150
10th Percentile £350 £338 £325
25th Percentile £425 £435 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £675
90th Percentile £750 £800 £788
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 231 141 335
10th Percentile £18.07 £21.21 £15.97
25th Percentile £23.00 £24.66 £19.03
Median hourly rate £34.50 £35.00 £28.50
Median % change year-on-year -1.44% +22.81% -18.57%
75th Percentile £59.99 £52.00 £48.03
90th Percentile £76.58 £78.40 £65.00
England median hourly rate £35.00 £35.45 £33.07
% change year-on-year -1.26% +7.20% -19.41%

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 5 March 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
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 5 March 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 +20 96 £517 +0.19% 75
West London 0 28 £603 +3.66% 8
South London -12 10 £500 +1.27% 3
Data Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 5 March 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.

1 403 (58.92%) SQL
2 394 (57.60%) Python
3 319 (46.64%) Azure
4 307 (44.88%) Data Pipeline
5 288 (42.11%) Data Engineering
6 282 (41.23%) ETL
7 258 (37.72%) Analytics
8 249 (36.40%) Data Modelling
9 247 (36.11%) Databricks
10 218 (31.87%) AWS
11 203 (29.68%) Data Quality
12 194 (28.36%) CI/CD
13 167 (24.42%) Security Cleared
14 165 (24.12%) Business Intelligence
15 153 (22.37%) Data Warehouse
16 151 (22.08%) SC Cleared
17 146 (21.35%) Power Platform
18 144 (21.05%) DevOps
19 138 (20.18%) Power BI
20 131 (19.15%) Agile
21 128 (18.71%) Azure Data Factory
21 128 (18.71%) Data Governance
22 122 (17.84%) PySpark
23 116 (16.96%) Data Science
24 112 (16.37%) Terraform
25 101 (14.77%) AI
26 100 (14.62%) Snowflake
27 97 (14.18%) Data Lake
27 97 (14.18%) Microsoft
28 96 (14.04%) Infrastructure as Code

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 88 (12.87%) Apache Spark
2 79 (11.55%) Apache Airflow
3 52 (7.60%) Apache
4 10 (1.46%) Confluence
4 10 (1.46%) Palantir Foundry
5 5 (0.73%) Microsoft Exchange
6 2 (0.29%) ArcGIS
6 2 (0.29%) Jupyter
6 2 (0.29%) SAS
6 2 (0.29%) SharePoint
7 1 (0.15%) Appian
7 1 (0.15%) Camunda
7 1 (0.15%) IIS
7 1 (0.15%) Luigi
7 1 (0.15%) Oracle Application Server
7 1 (0.15%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 7 (1.02%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.15%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.15%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.29%) SAP BPC
2 1 (0.15%) Actimize
2 1 (0.15%) Aladdin
2 1 (0.15%) BambooHR
2 1 (0.15%) iTrent
2 1 (0.15%) Maximo
2 1 (0.15%) Oracle BPM
2 1 (0.15%) SAP Business ByDesign
Cloud Services
1 319 (46.64%) Azure
2 218 (31.87%) AWS
3 146 (21.35%) Power Platform
4 128 (18.71%) Azure Data Factory
5 100 (14.62%) Snowflake
6 87 (12.72%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 86 (12.57%) GCP
8 82 (11.99%) Amazon S3
9 68 (9.94%) Azure DevOps
10 67 (9.80%) dbt
11 66 (9.65%) GitHub
11 66 (9.65%) Serverless
12 51 (7.46%) AWS Lambda
13 34 (4.97%) GitHub Actions
14 27 (3.95%) AWS CloudFormation
15 19 (2.78%) Amazon Kinesis
15 19 (2.78%) AWS Step Functions
16 15 (2.19%) Amazon SQS
16 15 (2.19%) Collibra
17 13 (1.90%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.58%) Firewall
2 3 (0.44%) SAN
3 1 (0.15%) 4G
3 1 (0.15%) 5G
3 1 (0.15%) Network Security
3 1 (0.15%) Software-Defined Networking
3 1 (0.15%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 153 (22.37%) Data Warehouse
2 138 (20.18%) Power BI
3 97 (14.18%) Data Lake
4 81 (11.84%) SQL Server
5 54 (7.89%) BigQuery
6 51 (7.46%) Delta Lake
7 50 (7.31%) Azure SQL Database
8 49 (7.16%) Metadata
9 43 (6.29%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 40 (5.85%) Amazon Redshift
11 37 (5.41%) NoSQL
12 36 (5.26%) Tableau
13 34 (4.97%) PostgreSQL
14 33 (4.82%) Big Data
15 32 (4.68%) Amazon Athena
16 29 (4.24%) Snowflake Schema
17 22 (3.22%) Relational Database
18 18 (2.63%) Data Vault
18 18 (2.63%) Mixpanel
19 16 (2.34%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 86 (12.57%) Git
2 20 (2.92%) JIRA
3 18 (2.63%) Jenkins
4 17 (2.49%) GitLab
4 17 (2.49%) MLflow
5 2 (0.29%) Selenium
5 2 (0.29%) SonarQube
6 1 (0.15%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.15%) DBeaver
6 1 (0.15%) Gradle
6 1 (0.15%) Jaeger
6 1 (0.15%) Poetry
6 1 (0.15%) Team Foundation Server
6 1 (0.15%) TeamCity
6 1 (0.15%) Terragrunt
6 1 (0.15%) Visual Studio
General
1 138 (20.18%) Finance
2 116 (16.96%) Social Skills
3 69 (10.09%) Analytical Skills
4 46 (6.73%) Public Sector
5 39 (5.70%) Banking
6 28 (4.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 16 (2.34%) Front Office
8 12 (1.75%) Pharmaceutical
9 10 (1.46%) Retail
10 9 (1.32%) Investment Banking
10 9 (1.32%) Telecoms
11 8 (1.17%) Marketing
12 6 (0.88%) Publishing
13 4 (0.58%) Back Office
13 4 (0.58%) Corporate Banking
14 3 (0.44%) Documentation Skills
14 3 (0.44%) Law
14 3 (0.44%) Military
14 3 (0.44%) Organisational Skills
15 2 (0.29%) Manufacturing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 122 (17.84%) PySpark
2 74 (10.82%) Kafka
3 29 (4.24%) Pandas
4 18 (2.63%) YAML
5 14 (2.05%) Great Expectations
6 12 (1.75%) REST
7 11 (1.61%) NumPy
7 11 (1.61%) PyTorch
7 11 (1.61%) scikit-learn
8 10 (1.46%) Matplotlib
9 8 (1.17%) XML
10 7 (1.02%) Apache NiFi
10 7 (1.02%) TensorFlow
11 6 (0.88%) GeoJSON
11 6 (0.88%) JSON
11 6 (0.88%) Polars
11 6 (0.88%) pytest
11 6 (0.88%) RabbitMQ
11 6 (0.88%) Spark Streaming
12 5 (0.73%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 61 (8.92%) Cloud Native
2 22 (3.22%) Data Structures
3 17 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
4 12 (1.75%) Onboarding
4 12 (1.75%) Product Ownership
5 11 (1.61%) Reinsurance
6 8 (1.17%) Greenfield Project
6 8 (1.17%) Life Science
7 7 (1.02%) Distributed Systems
7 7 (1.02%) Public Cloud
8 6 (0.88%) Distributed Computing
8 6 (0.88%) Replication
9 5 (0.73%) Derivative
10 4 (0.58%) Algorithms
10 4 (0.58%) Equities
10 4 (0.58%) Fixed Income
10 4 (0.58%) Genomics
10 4 (0.58%) Virtual Team
10 4 (0.58%) Wiki
11 3 (0.44%) EMC VNX
Operating Systems
1 11 (1.61%) Linux
2 1 (0.15%) Unix
2 1 (0.15%) VMS
2 1 (0.15%) Windows
2 1 (0.15%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 307 (44.88%) Data Pipeline
2 288 (42.11%) Data Engineering
3 282 (41.23%) ETL
4 258 (37.72%) Analytics
5 249 (36.40%) Data Modelling
6 194 (28.36%) CI/CD
7 165 (24.12%) Business Intelligence
8 144 (21.05%) DevOps
9 131 (19.15%) Agile
10 128 (18.71%) Data Governance
11 116 (16.96%) Data Science
12 101 (14.77%) AI
13 96 (14.04%) Infrastructure as Code
14 93 (13.60%) Data Architecture
15 91 (13.30%) Problem-Solving
16 86 (12.57%) Machine Learning
17 78 (11.40%) Migration
18 72 (10.53%) Data Transformation
19 70 (10.23%) Data Integration
20 61 (8.92%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 403 (58.92%) SQL
2 394 (57.60%) Python
3 72 (10.53%) Scala
4 40 (5.85%) Java
5 23 (3.36%) C#
6 19 (2.78%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 17 (2.49%) T-SQL
8 12 (1.75%) Bicep
9 11 (1.61%) JavaScript
10 10 (1.46%) Bash
10 10 (1.46%) R
11 9 (1.32%) PL/SQL
11 9 (1.32%) PowerShell
12 5 (0.73%) Shell Script
13 3 (0.44%) Korn
14 2 (0.29%) C
14 2 (0.29%) C++
14 2 (0.29%) Ruby
14 2 (0.29%) TypeScript
14 2 (0.29%) VB
Qualifications
1 167 (24.42%) Security Cleared
2 151 (22.08%) SC Cleared
3 23 (3.36%) Degree
4 21 (3.07%) Azure Certification
5 13 (1.90%) BPSS Clearance
6 12 (1.75%) AWS Certification
7 11 (1.61%) Computer Science Degree
7 11 (1.61%) DV Cleared
8 5 (0.73%) Microsoft Certification
9 4 (0.58%) Master's Degree
10 3 (0.44%) CTC Cleared
10 3 (0.44%) DBS Check
11 2 (0.29%) SnowPro
12 1 (0.15%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 203 (29.68%) Data Quality
2 37 (5.41%) GDPR
3 16 (2.34%) QA
4 7 (1.02%) Accessibility
5 3 (0.44%) HIPAA
5 3 (0.44%) MiFID
6 2 (0.29%) Dodd-Frank
6 2 (0.29%) EMIR
6 2 (0.29%) GMP
6 2 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.15%) EU AI Act
7 1 (0.15%) GRC
7 1 (0.15%) GxP
7 1 (0.15%) NIST
7 1 (0.15%) PMO
7 1 (0.15%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 1 (0.15%) SLA
7 1 (0.15%) SOC 2
System Software
1 36 (5.26%) Docker
2 5 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
3 3 (0.44%) zsh
4 1 (0.15%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.15%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 112 (16.37%) Terraform
2 34 (4.97%) Kubernetes
3 4 (0.58%) Kubeflow
4 3 (0.44%) Grafana
5 2 (0.29%) EMC NetWorker
5 2 (0.29%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.29%) Tivoli Storage Manager
6 1 (0.15%) Ambari
6 1 (0.15%) Argo
6 1 (0.15%) Puppet
6 1 (0.15%) Thomson Reuters DACS
6 1 (0.15%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 247 (36.11%) Databricks
2 97 (14.18%) Microsoft
3 40 (5.85%) Google
4 29 (4.24%) Oracle
5 24 (3.51%) Informatica
6 15 (2.19%) SAP
7 14 (2.05%) Foundry
8 11 (1.61%) Palantir
8 11 (1.61%) ServiceNow
9 9 (1.32%) Talend
10 8 (1.17%) IBM
11 6 (0.88%) Cloudera
12 5 (0.73%) Virgin Media
13 4 (0.58%) Alteryx
13 4 (0.58%) Denodo
13 4 (0.58%) MuleSoft
13 4 (0.58%) Salesforce
14 3 (0.44%) Bloomberg
14 3 (0.44%) Cisco
14 3 (0.44%) Isilon