Data Engineer Contract Job Trends in London

Data Engineer
England > London

The median Data Engineer daily rate in London is £525, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 16 August 2026.

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

6 months to
16 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 57 100 90
Rank change year-on-year +43 -10 -2
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 855 388 460
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.23% 2.86% 2.84%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.54% 3.08% 3.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 633 285 342
10th Percentile £390 £400 £375
25th Percentile £450 £454 £469
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £619 £650
90th Percentile £712 £700 £750
England median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 7 3
10th Percentile £25.74 £42.25 -
25th Percentile £30.00 £46.75 £49.25
Median hourly rate £34.84 £52.50 £50.50
Median % change year-on-year -33.64% +3.96% -30.34%
75th Percentile £39.30 £58.13 £51.75
90th Percentile £55.75 £81.50 -
England median hourly rate £43.75 £52.50 £75.00
% change year-on-year -16.67% -30.00% +5.26%

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 18,816 12,608 15,219
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 93.17% 92.96% 94.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,240 8,489 10,694
10th Percentile £363 £325 £350
25th Percentile £450 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £540 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.85% -1.82% -4.35%
75th Percentile £656 £675 £688
90th Percentile £775 £775 £800
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 345 208 200
10th Percentile £17.60 £17.98 £17.25
25th Percentile £21.93 £22.98 £22.00
Median hourly rate £37.50 £29.07 £33.29
Median % change year-on-year +29.00% -12.66% -11.24%
75th Percentile £58.75 £49.81 £54.06
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.00 £71.88
England median hourly rate £42.50 £25.23 £45.00
% change year-on-year +68.48% -43.94% +8.04%

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 16 August 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 16 August 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 16 August 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 +18 108 £555 +5.71% 20
West London -11 13 £625 +13.64% 9
East London +3 4 £450 - 4
South London -2 4 £500 +9.29% 1
Data Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 16 August 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.

1 465 (54.39%) SQL
2 461 (53.92%) Python
3 405 (47.37%) Data Pipeline
4 375 (43.86%) Data Engineering
5 327 (38.25%) Analytics
6 307 (35.91%) ETL
7 303 (35.44%) Azure
8 302 (35.32%) Data Modelling
9 298 (34.85%) AWS
10 243 (28.42%) Data Quality
11 238 (27.84%) CI/CD
12 196 (22.92%) Databricks
13 189 (22.11%) Security Cleared
14 175 (20.47%) SC Cleared
15 173 (20.23%) DevOps
16 169 (19.77%) Data Warehouse
17 161 (18.83%) Agile
18 152 (17.78%) AI
19 146 (17.08%) PySpark
20 145 (16.96%) dbt
21 144 (16.84%) Apache Airflow
22 138 (16.14%) Data Governance
22 138 (16.14%) Migration
23 137 (16.02%) Business Intelligence
24 130 (15.20%) Power Platform
24 130 (15.20%) Snowflake
25 123 (14.39%) Azure Data Factory
25 123 (14.39%) Power BI
26 115 (13.45%) Data Transformation
26 115 (13.45%) Microsoft

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
1 144 (16.84%) Apache Airflow
2 99 (11.58%) Apache Spark
3 81 (9.47%) Apache
4 12 (1.40%) Confluence
5 11 (1.29%) Palantir Foundry
6 8 (0.94%) SharePoint
7 5 (0.58%) SAS
8 4 (0.47%) Jupyter
9 2 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.12%) Luigi
10 1 (0.12%) PowerExchange
10 1 (0.12%) R Markdown
Applications
1 12 (1.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.35%) Chatbot
2 3 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 11 (1.29%) Aladdin
2 3 (0.35%) SAP BPC
2 3 (0.35%) SimCorp Dimension
3 2 (0.23%) BambooHR
3 2 (0.23%) Maximo
3 2 (0.23%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.12%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.12%) iTrent
4 1 (0.12%) NetSuite
4 1 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.12%) Raiser’s Edge
4 1 (0.12%) Sage X3
4 1 (0.12%) SAP Business ByDesign
4 1 (0.12%) SAP CAR
4 1 (0.12%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 303 (35.44%) Azure
2 298 (34.85%) AWS
3 145 (16.96%) dbt
4 130 (15.20%) Power Platform
4 130 (15.20%) Snowflake
5 123 (14.39%) Azure Data Factory
6 111 (12.98%) GCP
7 104 (12.16%) Amazon S3
8 96 (11.23%) Azure DevOps
9 89 (10.41%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 76 (8.89%) GitHub
11 67 (7.84%) Serverless
12 63 (7.37%) AWS Lambda
13 29 (3.39%) GitHub Actions
14 26 (3.04%) Amazon EMR
15 24 (2.81%) Dagster
16 18 (2.11%) Amazon Kinesis
17 17 (1.99%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 17 (1.99%) Fivetran
18 16 (1.87%) Prefect
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.12%) 4G
1 1 (0.12%) 5G
1 1 (0.12%) Firewall
1 1 (0.12%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 169 (19.77%) Data Warehouse
2 123 (14.39%) Power BI
3 100 (11.70%) Data Lake
4 79 (9.24%) BigQuery
5 62 (7.25%) Metadata
6 54 (6.32%) Delta Lake
7 50 (5.85%) Amazon Redshift
8 46 (5.38%) Amazon Athena
8 46 (5.38%) PostgreSQL
8 46 (5.38%) SQL Server
9 43 (5.03%) Tableau
10 42 (4.91%) Snowflake Schema
11 41 (4.80%) Big Data
12 35 (4.09%) NoSQL
13 31 (3.63%) Azure SQL Database
14 29 (3.39%) Relational Database
15 25 (2.92%) Star Schema
16 24 (2.81%) MongoDB
17 22 (2.57%) Spark SQL
18 21 (2.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 74 (8.65%) Git
2 24 (2.81%) GitLab
3 22 (2.57%) JIRA
4 9 (1.05%) Jenkins
5 7 (0.82%) MLflow
6 5 (0.58%) SonarQube
7 4 (0.47%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.35%) ERwin
9 2 (0.23%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 2 (0.23%) Claude Code
9 2 (0.23%) Selenium
9 2 (0.23%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.23%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 2 (0.23%) Terragrunt
10 1 (0.12%) ER Studio
10 1 (0.12%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 227 (26.55%) Finance
2 131 (15.32%) Social Skills
3 101 (11.81%) Analytical Skills
4 69 (8.07%) Banking
5 57 (6.67%) Public Sector
6 22 (2.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 15 (1.75%) Front Office
8 14 (1.64%) Pharmaceutical
9 13 (1.52%) Marketing
10 10 (1.17%) Retail
10 10 (1.17%) Telecoms
11 7 (0.82%) Financial Institution
12 6 (0.70%) Back Office
12 6 (0.70%) Manufacturing
13 5 (0.58%) Documentation Skills
13 5 (0.58%) Publishing
14 4 (0.47%) Billing
14 4 (0.47%) Games
14 4 (0.47%) Legal
14 4 (0.47%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 146 (17.08%) PySpark
2 80 (9.36%) Kafka
3 19 (2.22%) Spring
3 19 (2.22%) Spring Boot
4 18 (2.11%) Pandas
5 17 (1.99%) REST
6 16 (1.87%) Great Expectations
7 13 (1.52%) Apache Beam
8 12 (1.40%) YAML
9 11 (1.29%) React
10 10 (1.17%) Microsoft Graph
11 8 (0.94%) JSON
11 8 (0.94%) pytest
11 8 (0.94%) Spark Streaming
12 7 (0.82%) PyTorch
12 7 (0.82%) scikit-learn
13 6 (0.70%) HTML
13 6 (0.70%) RESTful
13 6 (0.70%) XML
14 5 (0.58%) .NET
Miscellaneous
1 96 (11.23%) Cloud Native
2 45 (5.26%) Legacy Systems
3 29 (3.39%) Data Structures
4 25 (2.92%) Onboarding
5 19 (2.22%) Distributed Systems
6 18 (2.11%) Reinsurance
7 16 (1.87%) Product Ownership
8 14 (1.64%) Greenfield Project
9 13 (1.52%) NHS
10 10 (1.17%) AI Agents
11 9 (1.05%) Algorithms
11 9 (1.05%) Reference Data
12 8 (0.94%) Clustering
12 8 (0.94%) Virtual Team
13 7 (0.82%) Life Science
14 6 (0.70%) Data Protection Act
14 6 (0.70%) Replication
14 6 (0.70%) Self-Motivation
15 5 (0.58%) Analytical Mindset
15 5 (0.58%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 29 (3.39%) Linux
2 17 (1.99%) Unix
3 3 (0.35%) Windows
4 2 (0.23%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.12%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 405 (47.37%) Data Pipeline
2 375 (43.86%) Data Engineering
3 327 (38.25%) Analytics
4 307 (35.91%) ETL
5 302 (35.32%) Data Modelling
6 238 (27.84%) CI/CD
7 173 (20.23%) DevOps
8 161 (18.83%) Agile
9 152 (17.78%) AI
10 138 (16.14%) Data Governance
10 138 (16.14%) Migration
11 137 (16.02%) Business Intelligence
12 115 (13.45%) Data Transformation
13 109 (12.75%) Data Science
14 108 (12.63%) Validation
15 100 (11.70%) Machine Learning
16 89 (10.41%) Decision-Making
17 88 (10.29%) Data Architecture
17 88 (10.29%) Infrastructure as Code
18 87 (10.18%) Performance Optimisation
Programming Languages
1 465 (54.39%) SQL
2 461 (53.92%) Python
3 80 (9.36%) Java
4 50 (5.85%) Scala
5 17 (1.99%) Shell Script
6 16 (1.87%) C#
6 16 (1.87%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 16 (1.87%) PowerShell
6 16 (1.87%) T-SQL
7 14 (1.64%) PL/SQL
8 13 (1.52%) JavaScript
9 10 (1.17%) R
10 6 (0.70%) Bicep
10 6 (0.70%) TypeScript
11 5 (0.58%) Bash
11 5 (0.58%) Go
12 4 (0.47%) Korn
13 2 (0.23%) LookML
13 2 (0.23%) Ruby
13 2 (0.23%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 189 (22.11%) Security Cleared
2 175 (20.47%) SC Cleared
3 22 (2.57%) Degree
4 18 (2.11%) Azure Certification
5 16 (1.87%) BPSS Clearance
6 12 (1.40%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (0.94%) AWS Certification
7 8 (0.94%) DBS Check
8 6 (0.70%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
9 5 (0.58%) DV Cleared
10 4 (0.47%) Microsoft Certification
10 4 (0.47%) SnowPro
11 3 (0.35%) Master's Degree
12 1 (0.12%) CISA
12 1 (0.12%) CISSP
12 1 (0.12%) City & Guilds
12 1 (0.12%) PMI Certification
12 1 (0.12%) PMP
12 1 (0.12%) Postgraduate
12 1 (0.12%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 243 (28.42%) Data Quality
2 38 (4.44%) QA
3 26 (3.04%) GDPR
4 10 (1.17%) Accessibility
5 4 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 3 (0.35%) MiFID
7 2 (0.23%) EMIR
7 2 (0.23%) GMP
7 2 (0.23%) SLA
8 1 (0.12%) GxP
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 67 (7.84%) Docker
2 3 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.23%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.12%) RACF
Systems Management
1 110 (12.87%) Terraform
2 46 (5.38%) Kubernetes
3 9 (1.05%) Grafana
4 7 (0.82%) Control-M
5 4 (0.47%) Ansible
5 4 (0.47%) Kibana
6 2 (0.23%) Puppet
6 2 (0.23%) Thomson Reuters DACS
7 1 (0.12%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 196 (22.92%) Databricks
2 115 (13.45%) Microsoft
3 50 (5.85%) Google
3 50 (5.85%) Informatica
4 38 (4.44%) Oracle
5 18 (2.11%) Palantir
6 16 (1.87%) Foundry
7 12 (1.40%) Salesforce
7 12 (1.40%) SAP
8 11 (1.29%) Talend
9 10 (1.17%) Denodo
10 9 (1.05%) Bloomberg
10 9 (1.05%) Splunk
11 8 (0.94%) IBM
12 7 (0.82%) MuleSoft
13 6 (0.70%) Amplitude
14 5 (0.58%) Alteryx
14 5 (0.58%) Cloudera
14 5 (0.58%) New Relic
15 4 (0.47%) Hortonworks