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 24 August 2026.

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

6 months to
24 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 62 95 91
Rank change year-on-year +33 -4 -1
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 830 397 454
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.14% 2.94% 2.79%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.44% 3.17% 2.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 613 295 335
10th Percentile £388 £403 £375
25th Percentile £450 £456 £468
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £616 £650
90th Percentile £713 £700 £750
England median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 9 4
10th Percentile £25.74 £33.23 -
25th Percentile £30.00 £42.25 £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 £53.75 £63.19
90th Percentile £55.75 £72.00 £83.78
England median hourly rate £41.56 £52.50 £75.00
% change year-on-year -20.85% -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 18,709 12,535 15,296
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 93.27% 92.98% 94.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,137 8,432 10,599
10th Percentile £363 £325 £349
25th Percentile £450 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £541 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.62% -1.59% -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 359 210 193
10th Percentile £17.60 £17.89 £17.88
25th Percentile £21.93 £23.00 £22.00
Median hourly rate £37.50 £29.07 £33.07
Median % change year-on-year +29.00% -12.10% -12.40%
75th Percentile £60.50 £49.31 £55.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £65.00 £71.75
England median hourly rate £42.65 £25.32 £45.00
% change year-on-year +68.44% -43.73% +2.60%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 £565 +7.62% 19
West London -8 15 £475 -13.64% 10
East London +7 4 £450 - 6
South London -4 3 £500 +9.29% 2
Data Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 24 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.

1 457 (55.06%) SQL
2 455 (54.82%) Python
3 395 (47.59%) Data Pipeline
4 377 (45.42%) Data Engineering
5 313 (37.71%) Analytics
6 302 (36.39%) ETL
7 299 (36.02%) AWS
8 297 (35.78%) Azure
9 291 (35.06%) Data Modelling
10 240 (28.92%) Data Quality
11 238 (28.67%) CI/CD
12 191 (23.01%) Databricks
13 186 (22.41%) Security Cleared
14 172 (20.72%) SC Cleared
15 169 (20.36%) DevOps
16 166 (20.00%) Agile
16 166 (20.00%) Data Warehouse
17 151 (18.19%) AI
17 151 (18.19%) dbt
17 151 (18.19%) PySpark
18 141 (16.99%) Apache Airflow
19 134 (16.14%) Business Intelligence
20 133 (16.02%) Snowflake
21 132 (15.90%) Data Governance
22 131 (15.78%) Migration
23 125 (15.06%) Power Platform
24 122 (14.70%) Power BI
25 118 (14.22%) Azure Data Factory
26 114 (13.73%) Data Transformation
27 110 (13.25%) 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
1 141 (16.99%) Apache Airflow
2 100 (12.05%) Apache Spark
3 77 (9.28%) Apache
4 13 (1.57%) Confluence
5 11 (1.33%) Palantir Foundry
6 8 (0.96%) SharePoint
7 7 (0.84%) SAS
8 4 (0.48%) Jupyter
9 2 (0.24%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.12%) Luigi
10 1 (0.12%) PowerExchange
10 1 (0.12%) R Markdown
Applications
1 12 (1.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.36%) Chatbot
2 3 (0.36%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 11 (1.33%) Aladdin
2 3 (0.36%) SimCorp Dimension
3 2 (0.24%) BambooHR
3 2 (0.24%) Maximo
3 2 (0.24%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
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 BPC
4 1 (0.12%) SAP CAR
4 1 (0.12%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 299 (36.02%) AWS
2 297 (35.78%) Azure
3 151 (18.19%) dbt
4 133 (16.02%) Snowflake
5 125 (15.06%) Power Platform
6 118 (14.22%) Azure Data Factory
7 107 (12.89%) GCP
8 105 (12.65%) Amazon S3
9 91 (10.96%) Azure DevOps
10 83 (10.00%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 73 (8.80%) GitHub
12 68 (8.19%) Serverless
13 65 (7.83%) AWS Lambda
14 28 (3.37%) GitHub Actions
15 26 (3.13%) Amazon EMR
16 20 (2.41%) Dagster
17 17 (2.05%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 17 (2.05%) Fivetran
18 16 (1.93%) Prefect
19 15 (1.81%) Amazon Kinesis
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.12%) Firewall
1 1 (0.12%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 166 (20.00%) Data Warehouse
2 122 (14.70%) Power BI
3 96 (11.57%) Data Lake
4 75 (9.04%) BigQuery
5 63 (7.59%) Metadata
6 52 (6.27%) Delta Lake
7 50 (6.02%) Amazon Redshift
8 47 (5.66%) Amazon Athena
9 44 (5.30%) Big Data
9 44 (5.30%) PostgreSQL
9 44 (5.30%) SQL Server
10 43 (5.18%) Tableau
11 37 (4.46%) Snowflake Schema
12 35 (4.22%) NoSQL
13 29 (3.49%) Relational Database
14 28 (3.37%) Azure SQL Database
15 26 (3.13%) Star Schema
16 25 (3.01%) Spark SQL
17 23 (2.77%) MongoDB
18 21 (2.53%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 73 (8.80%) Git
2 26 (3.13%) GitLab
3 22 (2.65%) JIRA
4 9 (1.08%) Jenkins
5 7 (0.84%) MLflow
6 5 (0.60%) Bitbucket
7 3 (0.36%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 3 (0.36%) ERwin
7 3 (0.36%) Selenium
7 3 (0.36%) SonarQube
8 2 (0.24%) Claude Code
8 2 (0.24%) Sonatype Nexus
8 2 (0.24%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 2 (0.24%) Terragrunt
9 1 (0.12%) ER Studio
9 1 (0.12%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 219 (26.39%) Finance
2 129 (15.54%) Social Skills
3 95 (11.45%) Analytical Skills
4 68 (8.19%) Banking
5 51 (6.14%) Public Sector
6 22 (2.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 14 (1.69%) Front Office
8 13 (1.57%) Pharmaceutical
9 12 (1.45%) Marketing
10 11 (1.33%) Retail
11 9 (1.08%) Telecoms
12 7 (0.84%) Financial Institution
13 6 (0.72%) Back Office
13 6 (0.72%) Manufacturing
14 4 (0.48%) Documentation Skills
14 4 (0.48%) Games
14 4 (0.48%) Legal
14 4 (0.48%) Local Government
14 4 (0.48%) Publishing
15 3 (0.36%) Aviation
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 151 (18.19%) PySpark
2 108 (13.01%) Terraform
3 82 (9.88%) Kafka
4 19 (2.29%) Spring
4 19 (2.29%) Spring Boot
5 18 (2.17%) Pandas
6 17 (2.05%) REST
7 16 (1.93%) Great Expectations
8 13 (1.57%) Apache Beam
9 12 (1.45%) YAML
10 11 (1.33%) React
11 10 (1.20%) Microsoft Graph
12 8 (0.96%) JSON
12 8 (0.96%) Spark Streaming
13 7 (0.84%) pytest
13 7 (0.84%) PyTorch
14 6 (0.72%) HTML
14 6 (0.72%) RESTful
14 6 (0.72%) scikit-learn
14 6 (0.72%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 94 (11.33%) Cloud Native
2 42 (5.06%) Legacy Systems
3 28 (3.37%) Onboarding
4 24 (2.89%) Data Structures
5 18 (2.17%) Distributed Systems
6 17 (2.05%) Reinsurance
7 16 (1.93%) Product Ownership
8 14 (1.69%) Greenfield Project
9 12 (1.45%) NHS
10 10 (1.20%) AI Agents
11 9 (1.08%) Algorithms
11 9 (1.08%) Reference Data
11 9 (1.08%) Virtual Team
12 7 (0.84%) Clustering
12 7 (0.84%) Life Science
13 6 (0.72%) Data Protection Act
13 6 (0.72%) Replication
13 6 (0.72%) Self-Motivation
14 5 (0.60%) Analytical Mindset
14 5 (0.60%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 29 (3.49%) Linux
2 19 (2.29%) Unix
3 3 (0.36%) Windows
4 2 (0.24%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.12%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 395 (47.59%) Data Pipeline
2 377 (45.42%) Data Engineering
3 313 (37.71%) Analytics
4 302 (36.39%) ETL
5 291 (35.06%) Data Modelling
6 238 (28.67%) CI/CD
7 169 (20.36%) DevOps
8 166 (20.00%) Agile
9 151 (18.19%) AI
10 134 (16.14%) Business Intelligence
11 132 (15.90%) Data Governance
12 131 (15.78%) Migration
13 114 (13.73%) Data Transformation
14 103 (12.41%) Validation
15 99 (11.93%) Data Science
15 99 (11.93%) Machine Learning
16 88 (10.60%) Infrastructure as Code
17 86 (10.36%) Decision-Making
18 85 (10.24%) Performance Optimisation
19 83 (10.00%) Data Architecture
Programming Languages
1 457 (55.06%) SQL
2 455 (54.82%) Python
3 77 (9.28%) Java
4 49 (5.90%) Scala
5 19 (2.29%) Shell Script
6 16 (1.93%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 16 (1.93%) PowerShell
7 15 (1.81%) PL/SQL
7 15 (1.81%) T-SQL
8 14 (1.69%) C#
9 13 (1.57%) JavaScript
10 10 (1.20%) R
11 6 (0.72%) Bicep
12 5 (0.60%) Bash
12 5 (0.60%) Go
12 5 (0.60%) TypeScript
13 4 (0.48%) Korn
14 2 (0.24%) Cypher
14 2 (0.24%) LookML
14 2 (0.24%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 186 (22.41%) Security Cleared
2 172 (20.72%) SC Cleared
3 21 (2.53%) Degree
4 17 (2.05%) Azure Certification
5 15 (1.81%) BPSS Clearance
6 12 (1.45%) Computer Science Degree
7 9 (1.08%) AWS Certification
8 8 (0.96%) DBS Check
9 7 (0.84%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 5 (0.60%) DV Cleared
10 5 (0.60%) SnowPro
11 4 (0.48%) Microsoft Certification
12 3 (0.36%) Master's Degree
13 1 (0.12%) CISA
13 1 (0.12%) CISSP
13 1 (0.12%) City & Guilds
13 1 (0.12%) PMI Certification
13 1 (0.12%) PMP
13 1 (0.12%) Postgraduate
13 1 (0.12%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 240 (28.92%) Data Quality
2 36 (4.34%) QA
3 25 (3.01%) GDPR
4 10 (1.20%) Accessibility
5 4 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 3 (0.36%) MiFID
7 2 (0.24%) EMIR
7 2 (0.24%) 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 66 (7.95%) Docker
2 3 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.24%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.12%) RACF
Systems Management
1 46 (5.54%) Kubernetes
2 9 (1.08%) Grafana
3 8 (0.96%) Control-M
4 5 (0.60%) Ansible
5 4 (0.48%) Kibana
6 2 (0.24%) Puppet
6 2 (0.24%) Thomson Reuters DACS
7 1 (0.12%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 191 (23.01%) Databricks
2 110 (13.25%) Microsoft
3 49 (5.90%) Informatica
4 45 (5.42%) Google
5 36 (4.34%) Oracle
6 18 (2.17%) Palantir
7 16 (1.93%) Foundry
8 12 (1.45%) Salesforce
9 10 (1.20%) Denodo
10 9 (1.08%) Bloomberg
10 9 (1.08%) Splunk
10 9 (1.08%) Talend
11 8 (0.96%) IBM
12 7 (0.84%) SAP
13 6 (0.72%) Amplitude
14 5 (0.60%) Alteryx
14 5 (0.60%) Cloudera
14 5 (0.60%) New Relic
14 5 (0.60%) SnapLogic
15 4 (0.48%) Hortonworks