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 9 December 2025.

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

6 months to
9 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 93 76 85
Rank change year-on-year -17 +9 +25
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 449 503 526
As % of all contract jobs in London 3.14% 3.22% 2.70%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.41% 3.45% 2.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 325 365 394
10th Percentile £380 £400 £400
25th Percentile £434 £475 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £550
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% +4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £751 £725
England median daily rate £513 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -6.82% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 8 10
10th Percentile £31.22 £46.85 £35.00
25th Percentile £38.75 £61.06 £41.54
Median hourly rate £43.50 £78.75 £61.43
Median % change year-on-year -44.76% +28.20% +0.29%
75th Percentile £86.25 £97.50 £64.88
90th Percentile £110.00 - £69.70
England median hourly rate £43.50 £65.00 £61.43
% change year-on-year -33.08% +5.82% +2.38%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
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 13,179 14,595 18,242
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.19% 93.55% 93.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,760 9,478 13,182
10th Percentile £338 £338 £336
25th Percentile £425 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £550 £563
Median % change year-on-year -3.18% -2.22% -2.17%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £688
90th Percentile £763 £799 £788
England median daily rate £507 £525 £534
% change year-on-year -3.38% -1.69% -2.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 230 152 214
10th Percentile £17.50 £17.25 £18.05
25th Percentile £21.12 £23.80 £21.75
Median hourly rate £27.61 £36.65 £36.14
Median % change year-on-year -24.68% +1.41% +3.26%
75th Percentile £53.59 £54.06 £58.75
90th Percentile £75.16 £80.75 £73.31
England median hourly rate £25.15 £37.25 £45.00
% change year-on-year -32.48% -17.22% +36.36%

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 December 2025.

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 December 2025.

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 December 2025. 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 +16 60 £525 -8.70% 25
West London -12 7 £603 +9.55% 6
South London -5 4 £500 -14.98% 10
East London +3 1 - - 2
Data Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 9 December 2025, 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.

1 297 (66.15%) Python
2 280 (62.36%) SQL
3 219 (48.78%) Data Pipeline
4 213 (47.44%) Azure
5 188 (41.87%) Data Engineering
6 177 (39.42%) Databricks
7 173 (38.53%) ETL
8 160 (35.63%) Data Modelling
9 158 (35.19%) AWS
10 139 (30.96%) CI/CD
11 136 (30.29%) Analytics
12 121 (26.95%) Data Quality
13 107 (23.83%) Security Cleared
14 105 (23.39%) Data Warehouse
15 102 (22.72%) DevOps
16 101 (22.49%) Business Intelligence
17 95 (21.16%) Agile
18 93 (20.71%) SC Cleared
19 88 (19.60%) Azure Data Factory
19 88 (19.60%) Data Science
20 84 (18.71%) Power Platform
21 83 (18.49%) Power BI
21 83 (18.49%) PySpark
22 78 (17.37%) Data Governance
23 76 (16.93%) Apache Airflow
24 74 (16.48%) Snowflake
25 66 (14.70%) Apache Spark
25 66 (14.70%) Git
25 66 (14.70%) Problem-Solving
26 65 (14.48%) Terraform

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 76 (16.93%) Apache Airflow
2 66 (14.70%) Apache Spark
3 39 (8.69%) Apache
4 14 (3.12%) Confluence
5 5 (1.11%) SharePoint
6 3 (0.67%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 3 (0.67%) SAS
7 2 (0.45%) ArcGIS
7 2 (0.45%) Jupyter
7 2 (0.45%) Luigi
8 1 (0.22%) Apache Pig
8 1 (0.22%) IIS
8 1 (0.22%) Microsoft Exchange
8 1 (0.22%) Oracle Application Server
Applications
1 9 (2.00%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.45%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.22%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.22%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 3 (0.67%) Oracle BPM
2 2 (0.45%) Aladdin
3 1 (0.22%) Actimize
3 1 (0.22%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.22%) Maximo
3 1 (0.22%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 213 (47.44%) Azure
2 158 (35.19%) AWS
3 88 (19.60%) Azure Data Factory
4 84 (18.71%) Power Platform
5 74 (16.48%) Snowflake
6 63 (14.03%) Amazon S3
7 60 (13.36%) dbt
8 59 (13.14%) GCP
9 54 (12.03%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 53 (11.80%) GitHub
11 42 (9.35%) Serverless
12 36 (8.02%) Azure DevOps
13 31 (6.90%) GitHub Actions
14 25 (5.57%) AWS Lambda
15 16 (3.56%) SaaS
16 15 (3.34%) AWS CloudFormation
17 13 (2.90%) Amazon EMR
17 13 (2.90%) Amazon Kinesis
18 8 (1.78%) Microsoft Purview
19 7 (1.56%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.89%) Firewall
2 3 (0.67%) SAN
3 2 (0.45%) Internet
4 1 (0.22%) Network Security
4 1 (0.22%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 105 (23.39%) Data Warehouse
2 83 (18.49%) Power BI
3 60 (13.36%) Data Lake
4 40 (8.91%) SQL Server
5 35 (7.80%) Big Data
6 32 (7.13%) BigQuery
7 28 (6.24%) Delta Lake
7 28 (6.24%) PostgreSQL
8 27 (6.01%) Azure SQL Database
9 26 (5.79%) Amazon Redshift
9 26 (5.79%) Metadata
10 25 (5.57%) NoSQL
11 24 (5.35%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 23 (5.12%) Hadoop
12 23 (5.12%) Relational Database
12 23 (5.12%) Tableau
13 20 (4.45%) Star Schema
14 19 (4.23%) Amazon QuickSight
15 15 (3.34%) Amazon Athena
16 11 (2.45%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 66 (14.70%) Git
2 20 (4.45%) Jenkins
3 15 (3.34%) JIRA
4 14 (3.12%) MLflow
5 8 (1.78%) GitLab
6 3 (0.67%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.22%) DBeaver
7 1 (0.22%) ERwin
7 1 (0.22%) GoCD
7 1 (0.22%) Gradle
7 1 (0.22%) Jaeger
7 1 (0.22%) Poetry
7 1 (0.22%) Selenium
7 1 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (0.22%) TeamCity
7 1 (0.22%) Visual Studio
General
1 100 (22.27%) Finance
2 84 (18.71%) Social Skills
3 59 (13.14%) Analytical Skills
4 32 (7.13%) Public Sector
5 20 (4.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 19 (4.23%) Banking
7 11 (2.45%) Pharmaceutical
8 10 (2.23%) Front Office
8 10 (2.23%) Investment Banking
9 7 (1.56%) Marketing
9 7 (1.56%) Retail
10 5 (1.11%) Telecoms
11 3 (0.67%) Organisational Skills
12 2 (0.45%) Corporate Banking
12 2 (0.45%) Documentation Skills
12 2 (0.45%) Financial Institution
12 2 (0.45%) Law
12 2 (0.45%) Legal
12 2 (0.45%) Military
12 2 (0.45%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 83 (18.49%) PySpark
2 52 (11.58%) Kafka
3 12 (2.67%) YAML
4 11 (2.45%) Apache NiFi
4 11 (2.45%) Pandas
4 11 (2.45%) XML
5 10 (2.23%) RabbitMQ
6 9 (2.00%) PyTorch
7 8 (1.78%) Jinja
8 7 (1.56%) NumPy
9 6 (1.34%) JSON
9 6 (1.34%) RESTful
9 6 (1.34%) TensorFlow
10 5 (1.11%) pytest
10 5 (1.11%) REST
11 4 (0.89%) GraphQL
11 4 (0.89%) Great Expectations
11 4 (0.89%) Node.js
11 4 (0.89%) OAuth
11 4 (0.89%) Spark Streaming
Miscellaneous
1 22 (4.90%) Cloud Native
2 15 (3.34%) Data Structures
3 14 (3.12%) Legacy Systems
4 10 (2.23%) Onboarding
5 7 (1.56%) Algorithms
6 6 (1.34%) Life Science
7 5 (1.11%) Distributed Computing
7 5 (1.11%) Genomics
7 5 (1.11%) Greenfield Project
7 5 (1.11%) Linux Command Line
7 5 (1.11%) Product Ownership
7 5 (1.11%) Reinsurance
7 5 (1.11%) Replication
8 4 (0.89%) AI Agents
8 4 (0.89%) Credit Risk
8 4 (0.89%) Data Protection Act
8 4 (0.89%) Self-Motivation
8 4 (0.89%) Virtual Team
9 3 (0.67%) Derivative
9 3 (0.67%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 8 (1.78%) Linux
2 3 (0.67%) Unix
3 1 (0.22%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 219 (48.78%) Data Pipeline
2 188 (41.87%) Data Engineering
3 173 (38.53%) ETL
4 160 (35.63%) Data Modelling
5 139 (30.96%) CI/CD
6 136 (30.29%) Analytics
7 102 (22.72%) DevOps
8 101 (22.49%) Business Intelligence
9 95 (21.16%) Agile
10 88 (19.60%) Data Science
11 78 (17.37%) Data Governance
12 66 (14.70%) Problem-Solving
13 64 (14.25%) Infrastructure as Code
14 60 (13.36%) AI
14 60 (13.36%) Machine Learning
15 57 (12.69%) Data Integration
16 54 (12.03%) Migration
17 53 (11.80%) Data Architecture
18 43 (9.58%) Data Transformation
19 39 (8.69%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 297 (66.15%) Python
2 280 (62.36%) SQL
3 51 (11.36%) Scala
4 38 (8.46%) Java
5 14 (3.12%) Bash
6 10 (2.23%) JavaScript
7 9 (2.00%) C#
7 9 (2.00%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 9 (2.00%) PowerShell
8 8 (1.78%) R
9 7 (1.56%) T-SQL
10 6 (1.34%) PL/SQL
11 4 (0.89%) Go
11 4 (0.89%) Shell Script
11 4 (0.89%) TypeScript
12 3 (0.67%) Korn
13 1 (0.22%) Bicep
13 1 (0.22%) C
13 1 (0.22%) C++
13 1 (0.22%) HiveQL
Qualifications
1 107 (23.83%) Security Cleared
2 93 (20.71%) SC Cleared
3 20 (4.45%) Degree
4 18 (4.01%) DV Cleared
5 11 (2.45%) Azure Certification
6 10 (2.23%) AWS Certification
7 9 (2.00%) Computer Science Degree
8 4 (0.89%) Master's Degree
9 3 (0.67%) BPSS Clearance
9 3 (0.67%) DBS Check
10 2 (0.45%) CTC Cleared
10 2 (0.45%) SnowPro
11 1 (0.22%) MCP
11 1 (0.22%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 121 (26.95%) Data Quality
2 26 (5.79%) GDPR
3 8 (1.78%) QA
4 6 (1.34%) Accessibility
5 4 (0.89%) HIPAA
6 3 (0.67%) MiFID
6 3 (0.67%) NIST
6 3 (0.67%) SLA
7 2 (0.45%) Dodd-Frank
7 2 (0.45%) EMIR
7 2 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 20000
8 1 (0.22%) EU AI Act
8 1 (0.22%) HL7
8 1 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.22%) SOC 2
System Software
1 25 (5.57%) Docker
2 5 (1.11%) Virtual Machines
2 5 (1.11%) zsh
3 1 (0.22%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.22%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 65 (14.48%) Terraform
2 27 (6.01%) Kubernetes
3 4 (0.89%) Grafana
3 4 (0.89%) Puppet
4 3 (0.67%) Ambari
4 3 (0.67%) Kubeflow
4 3 (0.67%) ZABBIX
5 2 (0.45%) Ansible
5 2 (0.45%) EMC NetWorker
5 2 (0.45%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.45%) Tivoli Storage Manager
6 1 (0.22%) Argo
6 1 (0.22%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 177 (39.42%) Databricks
2 50 (11.14%) Microsoft
3 23 (5.12%) Google
4 20 (4.45%) Foundry
4 20 (4.45%) Oracle
5 19 (4.23%) Palantir
6 12 (2.67%) Cloudera
7 8 (1.78%) SAP
8 6 (1.34%) Informatica
9 5 (1.11%) IBM
9 5 (1.11%) Virgin Media
10 4 (0.89%) Denodo
10 4 (0.89%) ServiceNow
11 3 (0.67%) Cisco
11 3 (0.67%) EMC
11 3 (0.67%) Isilon
11 3 (0.67%) OpenAI
11 3 (0.67%) Splunk
12 2 (0.45%) Salesforce
12 2 (0.45%) Veritas