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 29 May 2026.

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

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 77 81
Rank change year-on-year +30 +4 +13
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 859 408 498
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.67% 3.37% 2.85%
As % of the Job Titles category 5.03% 3.60% 3.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 618 310 401
10th Percentile £389 £400 £350
25th Percentile £453 £455 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -8.70%
75th Percentile £622 £625 £638
90th Percentile £713 £800 £725
England median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 5 8
10th Percentile £25.54 - £48.50
25th Percentile £34.84 £51.25 £49.25
Median hourly rate £42.50 £52.50 £51.13
Median % change year-on-year -19.05% +2.69% -28.99%
75th Percentile £55.75 £77.50 £56.73
90th Percentile £66.55 £87.25 £66.92
England median hourly rate £52.50 £52.50 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -22.22% -10.60%

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 17,077 11,323 16,346
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.86% 93.44% 93.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,301 7,687 11,841
10th Percentile £356 £350 £325
25th Percentile £431 £425 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £528 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £675
90th Percentile £756 £800 £800
England median daily rate £515 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -0.91% -1.00% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 272 151 322
10th Percentile £18.79 £20.24 £16.00
25th Percentile £25.25 £24.42 £20.22
Median hourly rate £39.00 £31.00 £27.66
Median % change year-on-year +25.81% +12.10% -23.18%
75th Percentile £63.10 £49.88 £46.50
90th Percentile £76.58 £62.00 £65.03
England median hourly rate £45.00 £29.07 £37.50
% change year-on-year +54.80% -22.48% -16.67%

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 29 May 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 29 May 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 29 May 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 +23 122 £550 +10.00% 12
West London -4 29 £603 +6.73% 1
South London -7 8 £500 +5.26% 1
East London - 4 £450 - 3
Data Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 29 May 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.

1 485 (56.46%) SQL
2 470 (54.71%) Python
3 384 (44.70%) Data Pipeline
4 345 (40.16%) Data Engineering
5 344 (40.05%) Azure
6 340 (39.58%) ETL
7 325 (37.83%) Analytics
8 305 (35.51%) Data Modelling
9 290 (33.76%) AWS
10 240 (27.94%) Data Quality
11 236 (27.47%) Databricks
12 225 (26.19%) CI/CD
13 202 (23.52%) Security Cleared
14 190 (22.12%) SC Cleared
15 180 (20.95%) DevOps
16 173 (20.14%) Business Intelligence
17 165 (19.21%) Data Warehouse
18 162 (18.86%) Power Platform
19 152 (17.69%) Power BI
20 141 (16.41%) Agile
21 140 (16.30%) PySpark
22 139 (16.18%) Azure Data Factory
22 139 (16.18%) Data Governance
23 130 (15.13%) Microsoft
24 129 (15.02%) AI
25 126 (14.67%) Terraform
26 124 (14.44%) Data Lake
27 118 (13.74%) Apache Airflow
28 111 (12.92%) Snowflake
29 110 (12.81%) 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
1 118 (13.74%) Apache Airflow
2 100 (11.64%) Apache Spark
3 64 (7.45%) Apache
4 8 (0.93%) Confluence
5 7 (0.81%) Palantir Foundry
6 4 (0.47%) Jupyter
6 4 (0.47%) Microsoft Exchange
6 4 (0.47%) SAS
7 1 (0.12%) Appian
7 1 (0.12%) Camunda
7 1 (0.12%) Luigi
7 1 (0.12%) R Markdown
7 1 (0.12%) SharePoint
Applications
1 11 (1.28%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.12%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 6 (0.70%) Aladdin
2 3 (0.35%) SAP BPC
2 3 (0.35%) SimCorp Dimension
3 2 (0.23%) BambooHR
4 1 (0.12%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.12%) iTrent
4 1 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.12%) Raiser’s Edge
4 1 (0.12%) SAP Business ByDesign
4 1 (0.12%) SAP CAR
4 1 (0.12%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 344 (40.05%) Azure
2 290 (33.76%) AWS
3 162 (18.86%) Power Platform
4 139 (16.18%) Azure Data Factory
5 111 (12.92%) Snowflake
6 110 (12.81%) Amazon S3
7 105 (12.22%) dbt
8 103 (11.99%) Azure DevOps
9 102 (11.87%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 96 (11.18%) GCP
11 88 (10.24%) GitHub
12 66 (7.68%) Serverless
13 60 (6.98%) AWS Lambda
14 43 (5.01%) GitHub Actions
15 23 (2.68%) AWS CloudFormation
16 21 (2.44%) Amazon Kinesis
16 21 (2.44%) Dagster
17 15 (1.75%) AWS Step Functions
17 15 (1.75%) Azure Monitor
17 15 (1.75%) Matillion
Communications & Networking
1 2 (0.23%) Structured Cabling
2 1 (0.12%) 4G
2 1 (0.12%) 5G
2 1 (0.12%) Firewall
2 1 (0.12%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 165 (19.21%) Data Warehouse
2 152 (17.69%) Power BI
3 124 (14.44%) Data Lake
4 87 (10.13%) SQL Server
5 69 (8.03%) BigQuery
6 68 (7.92%) Delta Lake
7 57 (6.64%) Metadata
8 51 (5.94%) Azure SQL Database
8 51 (5.94%) Snowflake Schema
9 50 (5.82%) Tableau
10 46 (5.36%) Amazon Redshift
11 42 (4.89%) Amazon Athena
11 42 (4.89%) NoSQL
12 41 (4.77%) PostgreSQL
13 37 (4.31%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 36 (4.19%) Big Data
15 25 (2.91%) Relational Database
15 25 (2.91%) Star Schema
16 24 (2.79%) Spark SQL
17 23 (2.68%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 78 (9.08%) Git
2 27 (3.14%) JIRA
3 21 (2.44%) GitLab
4 12 (1.40%) Jenkins
5 9 (1.05%) MLflow
6 3 (0.35%) SonarQube
7 2 (0.23%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.23%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 2 (0.23%) Terragrunt
8 1 (0.12%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 1 (0.12%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.12%) Claude Code
8 1 (0.12%) Selenium
General
1 216 (25.15%) Finance
2 123 (14.32%) Social Skills
3 101 (11.76%) Analytical Skills
4 52 (6.05%) Public Sector
5 50 (5.82%) Banking
6 25 (2.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 15 (1.75%) Pharmaceutical
8 14 (1.63%) Retail
9 12 (1.40%) Marketing
9 12 (1.40%) Telecoms
10 11 (1.28%) Front Office
11 10 (1.16%) Publishing
12 6 (0.70%) Documentation Skills
13 5 (0.58%) Back Office
13 5 (0.58%) Manufacturing
14 4 (0.47%) Corporate Banking
14 4 (0.47%) Financial Institution
14 4 (0.47%) Games
14 4 (0.47%) Investment Banking
14 4 (0.47%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 140 (16.30%) PySpark
2 86 (10.01%) Kafka
3 32 (3.73%) Pandas
4 21 (2.44%) Great Expectations
5 20 (2.33%) Spring
5 20 (2.33%) Spring Boot
6 16 (1.86%) YAML
7 14 (1.63%) REST
8 11 (1.28%) Matplotlib
8 11 (1.28%) scikit-learn
9 9 (1.05%) Apache Beam
9 9 (1.05%) GeoJSON
9 9 (1.05%) Polars
10 8 (0.93%) PyTorch
11 7 (0.81%) JSON
11 7 (0.81%) React
12 6 (0.70%) Middleware
12 6 (0.70%) NumPy
12 6 (0.70%) XML
13 5 (0.58%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 93 (10.83%) Cloud Native
2 27 (3.14%) Legacy Systems
3 24 (2.79%) Data Structures
4 19 (2.21%) Greenfield Project
4 19 (2.21%) Reinsurance
5 17 (1.98%) Product Ownership
6 15 (1.75%) Onboarding
7 12 (1.40%) Distributed Systems
8 8 (0.93%) Reference Data
9 7 (0.81%) Clustering
9 7 (0.81%) Derivative
9 7 (0.81%) Distributed Computing
9 7 (0.81%) Replication
9 7 (0.81%) Self-Motivation
10 6 (0.70%) Data Protection Act
10 6 (0.70%) Life Science
10 6 (0.70%) NHS
11 5 (0.58%) AI Agents
11 5 (0.58%) Algorithms
11 5 (0.58%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 23 (2.68%) Linux
2 13 (1.51%) Unix
3 3 (0.35%) Windows
4 2 (0.23%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 384 (44.70%) Data Pipeline
2 345 (40.16%) Data Engineering
3 340 (39.58%) ETL
4 325 (37.83%) Analytics
5 305 (35.51%) Data Modelling
6 225 (26.19%) CI/CD
7 180 (20.95%) DevOps
8 173 (20.14%) Business Intelligence
9 141 (16.41%) Agile
10 139 (16.18%) Data Governance
11 129 (15.02%) AI
12 109 (12.69%) Data Science
13 107 (12.46%) Migration
14 99 (11.53%) Data Architecture
15 97 (11.29%) Infrastructure as Code
16 93 (10.83%) Problem-Solving
17 92 (10.71%) Validation
18 82 (9.55%) Decision-Making
19 77 (8.96%) Machine Learning
20 72 (8.38%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 485 (56.46%) SQL
2 470 (54.71%) Python
3 81 (9.43%) Java
4 69 (8.03%) Scala
5 28 (3.26%) C#
6 23 (2.68%) T-SQL
7 22 (2.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 15 (1.75%) PL/SQL
9 13 (1.51%) Bicep
10 11 (1.28%) R
10 11 (1.28%) Shell Script
11 8 (0.93%) Bash
12 7 (0.81%) JavaScript
12 7 (0.81%) PowerShell
13 5 (0.58%) TypeScript
14 3 (0.35%) Go
15 2 (0.23%) C
15 2 (0.23%) Korn
15 2 (0.23%) Ruby
15 2 (0.23%) VB
Qualifications
1 202 (23.52%) Security Cleared
2 190 (22.12%) SC Cleared
3 23 (2.68%) Degree
4 22 (2.56%) Azure Certification
5 17 (1.98%) BPSS Clearance
6 11 (1.28%) Computer Science Degree
7 10 (1.16%) DBS Check
8 6 (0.70%) AWS Certification
8 6 (0.70%) Microsoft Certification
9 3 (0.35%) Master's Degree
9 3 (0.35%) SnowPro
10 2 (0.23%) CTC Cleared
10 2 (0.23%) DV Cleared
11 1 (0.12%) BICSI Certification
11 1 (0.12%) CISA
11 1 (0.12%) CISM
11 1 (0.12%) CISSP
11 1 (0.12%) City & Guilds
11 1 (0.12%) Postgraduate
11 1 (0.12%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 240 (27.94%) Data Quality
2 35 (4.07%) GDPR
3 32 (3.73%) QA
4 7 (0.81%) Accessibility
5 4 (0.47%) MiFID
5 4 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 2 (0.23%) EMIR
6 2 (0.23%) GMP
6 2 (0.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.23%) SLA
7 1 (0.12%) GRC
7 1 (0.12%) GxP
7 1 (0.12%) IFRS
7 1 (0.12%) IFRS 17
7 1 (0.12%) IFRS 9
7 1 (0.12%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.12%) PMO
7 1 (0.12%) SNOMED CT
7 1 (0.12%) WCAG
System Software
1 52 (6.05%) Docker
2 3 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (0.12%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.12%) RACF
Systems Management
1 126 (14.67%) Terraform
2 33 (3.84%) Kubernetes
3 9 (1.05%) Grafana
4 4 (0.47%) Kibana
5 2 (0.23%) Ansible
5 2 (0.23%) Thomson Reuters DACS
6 1 (0.12%) Kubeflow
6 1 (0.12%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 236 (27.47%) Databricks
2 130 (15.13%) Microsoft
3 45 (5.24%) Google
4 38 (4.42%) Informatica
5 36 (4.19%) Oracle
6 13 (1.51%) SAP
7 10 (1.16%) Denodo
7 10 (1.16%) Foundry
7 10 (1.16%) Talend
8 9 (1.05%) IBM
9 8 (0.93%) ServiceNow
10 7 (0.81%) Alteryx
10 7 (0.81%) Bloomberg
10 7 (0.81%) Palantir
11 6 (0.70%) MuleSoft
12 5 (0.58%) Cloudera
12 5 (0.58%) Salesforce
13 4 (0.47%) Hortonworks
13 4 (0.47%) Splunk
14 3 (0.35%) MicroStrategy