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 25 November 2025.

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

6 months to
25 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 102 81 91
Rank change year-on-year -21 +10 +17
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 427 493 521
As % of all contract jobs in London 3.03% 3.14% 2.63%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.28% 3.35% 2.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 307 350 386
10th Percentile £380 £402 £400
25th Percentile £439 £477 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £550
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% +4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £638 £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 7 9
10th Percentile £31.22 £46.05 £35.00
25th Percentile £38.75 £57.13 £35.63
Median hourly rate £43.50 £65.00 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year -33.08% +7.44% +56.13%
75th Percentile £86.25 £97.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £110.00 - £71.40
England median hourly rate £43.50 £65.00 £61.75
% change year-on-year -33.08% +5.26% +14.35%

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 13,031 14,720 18,583
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.43% 93.72% 93.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,630 9,533 13,448
10th Percentile £335 £340 £338
25th Percentile £425 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £535 £550 £563
Median % change year-on-year -2.73% -2.22% -2.17%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £688
90th Percentile £775 £794 £788
England median daily rate £507 £525 £534
% change year-on-year -3.43% -1.69% -2.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 237 160 217
10th Percentile £17.50 £17.25 £18.10
25th Percentile £21.00 £24.33 £21.75
Median hourly rate £26.78 £37.50 £36.33
Median % change year-on-year -28.59% +3.22% +3.80%
75th Percentile £49.75 £58.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £72.20 £80.79 £72.50
England median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £45.88
% change year-on-year -37.13% -12.82% +41.17%

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 25 November 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 25 November 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 25 November 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 +9 55 £538 -6.52% 25
West London -11 6 £575 +4.55% 7
South London -6 3 £479 -18.55% 3
East London +5 1 - - 3
Data Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 25 November 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.

1 286 (66.98%) Python
2 275 (64.40%) SQL
3 217 (50.82%) Data Pipeline
4 201 (47.07%) Azure
5 177 (41.45%) Data Engineering
6 168 (39.34%) ETL
7 165 (38.64%) AWS
8 160 (37.47%) Data Modelling
9 156 (36.53%) Databricks
10 133 (31.15%) Analytics
11 129 (30.21%) CI/CD
12 109 (25.53%) Data Quality
13 103 (24.12%) Data Warehouse
14 99 (23.19%) Business Intelligence
15 97 (22.72%) Security Cleared
16 94 (22.01%) Agile
16 94 (22.01%) DevOps
17 88 (20.61%) Data Science
18 86 (20.14%) Azure Data Factory
19 83 (19.44%) Power Platform
19 83 (19.44%) SC Cleared
20 82 (19.20%) Power BI
21 80 (18.74%) Apache Airflow
22 78 (18.27%) PySpark
23 74 (17.33%) Snowflake
24 68 (15.93%) Data Governance
25 65 (15.22%) Problem-Solving
26 64 (14.99%) Apache Spark
27 63 (14.75%) Terraform
28 62 (14.52%) Data Lake

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 80 (18.74%) Apache Airflow
2 64 (14.99%) Apache Spark
3 38 (8.90%) Apache
4 14 (3.28%) Confluence
5 4 (0.94%) SharePoint
6 3 (0.70%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 2 (0.47%) ArcGIS
7 2 (0.47%) Jupyter
7 2 (0.47%) Luigi
7 2 (0.47%) SAS
8 1 (0.23%) Apache Pig
8 1 (0.23%) IIS
8 1 (0.23%) Oracle Application Server
Applications
1 9 (2.11%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.47%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.23%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.23%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 3 (0.70%) Oracle BPM
2 2 (0.47%) Aladdin
3 1 (0.23%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.23%) Maximo
3 1 (0.23%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 201 (47.07%) Azure
2 165 (38.64%) AWS
3 86 (20.14%) Azure Data Factory
4 83 (19.44%) Power Platform
5 74 (17.33%) Snowflake
6 60 (14.05%) dbt
7 59 (13.82%) Amazon S3
7 59 (13.82%) GCP
8 53 (12.41%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 51 (11.94%) GitHub
10 39 (9.13%) Serverless
11 35 (8.20%) Azure DevOps
12 29 (6.79%) GitHub Actions
13 25 (5.85%) AWS Lambda
14 15 (3.51%) SaaS
15 14 (3.28%) Amazon EMR
15 14 (3.28%) Amazon Kinesis
15 14 (3.28%) AWS CloudFormation
16 7 (1.64%) AWS Step Functions
16 7 (1.64%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.94%) Firewall
2 3 (0.70%) SAN
3 2 (0.47%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 103 (24.12%) Data Warehouse
2 82 (19.20%) Power BI
3 62 (14.52%) Data Lake
4 37 (8.67%) SQL Server
5 35 (8.20%) Big Data
6 29 (6.79%) BigQuery
6 29 (6.79%) Hadoop
7 27 (6.32%) PostgreSQL
8 26 (6.09%) Amazon Redshift
9 23 (5.39%) Azure SQL Database
9 23 (5.39%) Delta Lake
10 22 (5.15%) Metadata
10 22 (5.15%) Relational Database
10 22 (5.15%) Tableau
11 21 (4.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 20 (4.68%) NoSQL
12 20 (4.68%) Star Schema
13 19 (4.45%) Amazon QuickSight
14 14 (3.28%) Amazon Athena
15 11 (2.58%) DataStage
Development Applications
1 59 (13.82%) Git
2 16 (3.75%) Jenkins
3 15 (3.51%) JIRA
4 11 (2.58%) MLflow
5 7 (1.64%) GitLab
6 3 (0.70%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.23%) DBeaver
7 1 (0.23%) ERwin
7 1 (0.23%) GoCD
7 1 (0.23%) Gradle
7 1 (0.23%) Poetry
7 1 (0.23%) Selenium
7 1 (0.23%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (0.23%) TeamCity
7 1 (0.23%) Visual Studio
General
1 98 (22.95%) Finance
2 88 (20.61%) Social Skills
3 59 (13.82%) Analytical Skills
4 32 (7.49%) Public Sector
5 20 (4.68%) Banking
6 17 (3.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 11 (2.58%) Investment Banking
7 11 (2.58%) Pharmaceutical
8 10 (2.34%) Front Office
9 8 (1.87%) Retail
10 6 (1.41%) Marketing
11 4 (0.94%) Telecoms
12 3 (0.70%) Corporate Banking
12 3 (0.70%) Retail Banking
13 2 (0.47%) Financial Institution
13 2 (0.47%) International Banking
13 2 (0.47%) Law
13 2 (0.47%) Legal
13 2 (0.47%) Military
13 2 (0.47%) Organisational Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 78 (18.27%) PySpark
2 50 (11.71%) Kafka
3 12 (2.81%) XML
4 11 (2.58%) Apache NiFi
5 10 (2.34%) Pandas
5 10 (2.34%) RabbitMQ
6 8 (1.87%) Jinja
6 8 (1.87%) YAML
7 7 (1.64%) NumPy
7 7 (1.64%) PyTorch
8 6 (1.41%) GraphQL
8 6 (1.41%) RESTful
9 5 (1.17%) HTML
9 5 (1.17%) JSON
9 5 (1.17%) pytest
9 5 (1.17%) REST
9 5 (1.17%) TensorFlow
10 4 (0.94%) CSS
10 4 (0.94%) OAuth
10 4 (0.94%) Spark Streaming
Miscellaneous
1 22 (5.15%) Cloud Native
2 16 (3.75%) Legacy Systems
3 14 (3.28%) Data Structures
4 10 (2.34%) Onboarding
5 8 (1.87%) Distributed Computing
5 8 (1.87%) Product Ownership
6 7 (1.64%) Algorithms
6 7 (1.64%) Virtual Team
7 6 (1.41%) Life Science
7 6 (1.41%) Reinsurance
8 5 (1.17%) Genomics
8 5 (1.17%) Linux Command Line
9 4 (0.94%) Credit Risk
9 4 (0.94%) Data Protection Act
9 4 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
9 4 (0.94%) Replication
10 3 (0.70%) Derivative
10 3 (0.70%) Equities
10 3 (0.70%) Hedge funds
10 3 (0.70%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 8 (1.87%) Linux
2 4 (0.94%) Unix
3 1 (0.23%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 217 (50.82%) Data Pipeline
2 177 (41.45%) Data Engineering
3 168 (39.34%) ETL
4 160 (37.47%) Data Modelling
5 133 (31.15%) Analytics
6 129 (30.21%) CI/CD
7 99 (23.19%) Business Intelligence
8 94 (22.01%) Agile
8 94 (22.01%) DevOps
9 88 (20.61%) Data Science
10 68 (15.93%) Data Governance
11 65 (15.22%) Problem-Solving
12 62 (14.52%) Infrastructure as Code
13 60 (14.05%) Machine Learning
14 59 (13.82%) AI
15 55 (12.88%) Migration
16 51 (11.94%) Data Integration
17 47 (11.01%) Data Transformation
18 46 (10.77%) Data Architecture
19 41 (9.60%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 286 (66.98%) Python
2 275 (64.40%) SQL
3 41 (9.60%) Scala
4 39 (9.13%) Java
5 13 (3.04%) Bash
6 10 (2.34%) JavaScript
7 9 (2.11%) PowerShell
8 7 (1.64%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 6 (1.41%) PL/SQL
9 6 (1.41%) R
10 5 (1.17%) C#
10 5 (1.17%) T-SQL
11 4 (0.94%) Shell Script
11 4 (0.94%) TypeScript
12 3 (0.70%) Go
12 3 (0.70%) Korn
13 2 (0.47%) C++
14 1 (0.23%) C
14 1 (0.23%) HiveQL
Qualifications
1 97 (22.72%) Security Cleared
2 83 (19.44%) SC Cleared
3 24 (5.62%) Degree
4 18 (4.22%) DV Cleared
5 11 (2.58%) AWS Certification
5 11 (2.58%) Azure Certification
6 9 (2.11%) Computer Science Degree
7 4 (0.94%) Master's Degree
8 3 (0.70%) BPSS Clearance
9 2 (0.47%) DBS Check
9 2 (0.47%) SnowPro
10 1 (0.23%) CTC Cleared
10 1 (0.23%) MCP
10 1 (0.23%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 109 (25.53%) Data Quality
2 24 (5.62%) GDPR
3 8 (1.87%) QA
4 6 (1.41%) Accessibility
5 4 (0.94%) HIPAA
6 3 (0.70%) NIST
6 3 (0.70%) SLA
7 2 (0.47%) Dodd-Frank
7 2 (0.47%) EMIR
7 2 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 20000
7 2 (0.47%) MiFID
8 1 (0.23%) EU AI Act
8 1 (0.23%) HL7
8 1 (0.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.23%) SOC 2
System Software
1 21 (4.92%) Docker
2 5 (1.17%) Virtual Machines
2 5 (1.17%) zsh
3 1 (0.23%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 63 (14.75%) Terraform
2 24 (5.62%) Kubernetes
3 4 (0.94%) Kubeflow
3 4 (0.94%) Puppet
4 3 (0.70%) Ambari
4 3 (0.70%) Grafana
4 3 (0.70%) ZABBIX
5 2 (0.47%) Ansible
5 2 (0.47%) EMC NetWorker
5 2 (0.47%) Tivoli Storage Manager
6 1 (0.23%) Argo
6 1 (0.23%) NetBackup
6 1 (0.23%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 156 (36.53%) Databricks
2 50 (11.71%) Microsoft
3 25 (5.85%) Foundry
4 24 (5.62%) Palantir
5 20 (4.68%) Google
5 20 (4.68%) Oracle
6 12 (2.81%) Cloudera
7 8 (1.87%) SAP
8 7 (1.64%) Informatica
9 5 (1.17%) IBM
9 5 (1.17%) Virgin Media
10 4 (0.94%) Denodo
10 4 (0.94%) ServiceNow
11 3 (0.70%) EMC
11 3 (0.70%) Isilon
11 3 (0.70%) Teradata
12 2 (0.47%) Cisco
12 2 (0.47%) Salesforce
12 2 (0.47%) Splunk
12 2 (0.47%) Talend