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 1 May 2026.

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

6 months to
1 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 70 76
Rank change year-on-year +23 +6 +14
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 802 457 503
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.52% 3.64% 2.82%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.88% 3.90% 3.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 578 345 409
10th Percentile £375 £400 £350
25th Percentile £455 £455 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -8.70%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £800 £703
England median daily rate £500 £500 £510
% change year-on-year - -1.96% -7.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 8 9
10th Percentile £23.72 £48.25 £48.75
25th Percentile £30.30 £51.25 £49.25
Median hourly rate £42.50 £65.00 £51.75
Median % change year-on-year -34.62% +25.60% -19.14%
75th Percentile £49.75 £81.56 £61.75
90th Percentile £53.35 £93.75 £66.13
England median hourly rate £52.50 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year -19.23% -3.70% +5.47%

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 16,451 11,727 16,626
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.81% 93.48% 93.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,958 8,033 12,023
10th Percentile £350 £341 £325
25th Percentile £425 £431 £444
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £650 £676 £675
90th Percentile £755 £800 £800
England median daily rate £510 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -2.86% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 272 143 336
10th Percentile £18.75 £20.45 £16.01
25th Percentile £24.03 £23.90 £20.02
Median hourly rate £37.25 £34.00 £27.81
Median % change year-on-year +9.56% +22.26% -20.54%
75th Percentile £63.10 £50.75 £43.75
90th Percentile £76.58 £64.75 £65.00
England median hourly rate £47.00 £30.78 £36.31
% change year-on-year +52.70% -15.22% -19.32%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 +28 116 £550 +10.00% 52
West London +4 29 £603 +6.73% 2
South London -12 8 £500 +3.90% 2
East London -3 2 £425 -15.00% 2
Data Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 1 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.

1 463 (57.73%) SQL
2 452 (56.36%) Python
3 355 (44.26%) Data Pipeline
4 346 (43.14%) Azure
5 324 (40.40%) Data Engineering
5 324 (40.40%) ETL
6 304 (37.91%) Analytics
7 286 (35.66%) Data Modelling
8 257 (32.04%) AWS
9 240 (29.93%) Databricks
10 233 (29.05%) Data Quality
11 221 (27.56%) CI/CD
12 192 (23.94%) Security Cleared
13 179 (22.32%) SC Cleared
14 178 (22.19%) DevOps
15 172 (21.45%) Business Intelligence
16 169 (21.07%) Data Warehouse
17 159 (19.83%) Power Platform
18 149 (18.58%) Power BI
19 145 (18.08%) Data Governance
20 142 (17.71%) Agile
21 139 (17.33%) PySpark
22 134 (16.71%) Azure Data Factory
23 129 (16.08%) Terraform
24 122 (15.21%) AI
25 121 (15.09%) Data Lake
25 121 (15.09%) Microsoft
26 120 (14.96%) Data Science
27 106 (13.22%) Apache Airflow
28 105 (13.09%) 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
1 106 (13.22%) Apache Airflow
2 104 (12.97%) Apache Spark
3 55 (6.86%) Apache
4 8 (1.00%) Confluence
4 8 (1.00%) Palantir Foundry
5 5 (0.62%) Jupyter
5 5 (0.62%) Microsoft Exchange
6 4 (0.50%) SAS
7 2 (0.25%) SharePoint
8 1 (0.12%) Appian
8 1 (0.12%) Camunda
8 1 (0.12%) Luigi
8 1 (0.12%) R Markdown
Applications
1 15 (1.87%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
3 2 (0.25%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.25%) Aladdin
1 2 (0.25%) BambooHR
1 2 (0.25%) SAP BPC
2 1 (0.12%) Actimize
2 1 (0.12%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.12%) iTrent
2 1 (0.12%) Maximo
2 1 (0.12%) SAP Business ByDesign
2 1 (0.12%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 346 (43.14%) Azure
2 257 (32.04%) AWS
3 159 (19.83%) Power Platform
4 134 (16.71%) Azure Data Factory
5 105 (13.09%) Amazon S3
6 104 (12.97%) Snowflake
7 103 (12.84%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 94 (11.72%) Azure DevOps
9 93 (11.60%) GCP
10 87 (10.85%) dbt
11 85 (10.60%) GitHub
12 66 (8.23%) Serverless
13 59 (7.36%) AWS Lambda
14 41 (5.11%) GitHub Actions
15 29 (3.62%) AWS CloudFormation
16 23 (2.87%) Amazon Kinesis
17 21 (2.62%) Dagster
18 18 (2.24%) AWS Step Functions
19 16 (2.00%) Amazon SQS
20 15 (1.87%) Collibra
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.37%) SAN
2 2 (0.25%) Firewall
2 2 (0.25%) Structured Cabling
3 1 (0.12%) 4G
3 1 (0.12%) 5G
3 1 (0.12%) Network Security
3 1 (0.12%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 169 (21.07%) Data Warehouse
2 149 (18.58%) Power BI
3 121 (15.09%) Data Lake
4 84 (10.47%) SQL Server
5 66 (8.23%) BigQuery
6 61 (7.61%) Azure SQL Database
6 61 (7.61%) Delta Lake
7 57 (7.11%) Metadata
8 51 (6.36%) Tableau
9 47 (5.86%) Amazon Redshift
10 44 (5.49%) NoSQL
11 42 (5.24%) Snowflake Schema
12 40 (4.99%) Amazon Athena
13 39 (4.86%) Big Data
14 37 (4.61%) PostgreSQL
15 36 (4.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 26 (3.24%) Star Schema
17 24 (2.99%) Relational Database
18 23 (2.87%) MongoDB
18 23 (2.87%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 88 (10.97%) Git
2 26 (3.24%) JIRA
3 21 (2.62%) GitLab
4 19 (2.37%) Jenkins
5 16 (2.00%) MLflow
6 2 (0.25%) SonarQube
6 2 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.25%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 1 (0.12%) Jaeger
7 1 (0.12%) Poetry
7 1 (0.12%) Selenium
7 1 (0.12%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (0.12%) Terragrunt
General
1 188 (23.44%) Finance
2 120 (14.96%) Social Skills
3 96 (11.97%) Analytical Skills
4 52 (6.48%) Public Sector
5 46 (5.74%) Banking
6 26 (3.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 13 (1.62%) Telecoms
8 12 (1.50%) Marketing
8 12 (1.50%) Pharmaceutical
9 10 (1.25%) Front Office
9 10 (1.25%) Publishing
9 10 (1.25%) Retail
10 6 (0.75%) Documentation Skills
10 6 (0.75%) Investment Banking
11 5 (0.62%) Games
12 4 (0.50%) Back Office
12 4 (0.50%) Corporate Banking
13 3 (0.37%) Law
13 3 (0.37%) Manufacturing
13 3 (0.37%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 139 (17.33%) PySpark
2 82 (10.22%) Kafka
3 34 (4.24%) Pandas
4 23 (2.87%) YAML
5 22 (2.74%) Great Expectations
6 16 (2.00%) Spring
6 16 (2.00%) Spring Boot
7 14 (1.75%) REST
7 14 (1.75%) scikit-learn
8 12 (1.50%) Matplotlib
9 10 (1.25%) JSON
9 10 (1.25%) PyTorch
10 9 (1.12%) GeoJSON
10 9 (1.12%) NumPy
10 9 (1.12%) Polars
11 7 (0.87%) React
11 7 (0.87%) Spark Streaming
11 7 (0.87%) XML
12 6 (0.75%) HTML
12 6 (0.75%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 78 (9.73%) Cloud Native
2 23 (2.87%) Legacy Systems
3 19 (2.37%) Data Structures
3 19 (2.37%) Product Ownership
4 16 (2.00%) Greenfield Project
5 12 (1.50%) Distributed Systems
6 11 (1.37%) Onboarding
6 11 (1.37%) Reinsurance
7 9 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
8 8 (1.00%) Replication
9 7 (0.87%) Clustering
9 7 (0.87%) Data Protection Act
9 7 (0.87%) Life Science
9 7 (0.87%) Public Cloud
10 6 (0.75%) AI Agents
10 6 (0.75%) Derivative
10 6 (0.75%) NHS
11 5 (0.62%) Distributed Computing
11 5 (0.62%) Reference Data
12 4 (0.50%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 21 (2.62%) Linux
2 11 (1.37%) Unix
3 3 (0.37%) Windows
4 2 (0.25%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.12%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 355 (44.26%) Data Pipeline
2 324 (40.40%) Data Engineering
2 324 (40.40%) ETL
3 304 (37.91%) Analytics
4 286 (35.66%) Data Modelling
5 221 (27.56%) CI/CD
6 178 (22.19%) DevOps
7 172 (21.45%) Business Intelligence
8 145 (18.08%) Data Governance
9 142 (17.71%) Agile
10 122 (15.21%) AI
11 120 (14.96%) Data Science
12 100 (12.47%) Infrastructure as Code
13 98 (12.22%) Data Architecture
14 94 (11.72%) Migration
15 90 (11.22%) Problem-Solving
16 88 (10.97%) Validation
17 85 (10.60%) Machine Learning
18 75 (9.35%) Decision-Making
19 71 (8.85%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 463 (57.73%) SQL
2 452 (56.36%) Python
3 75 (9.35%) Scala
4 69 (8.60%) Java
5 30 (3.74%) C#
6 23 (2.87%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 17 (2.12%) T-SQL
8 14 (1.75%) R
9 13 (1.62%) Bicep
10 11 (1.37%) JavaScript
11 10 (1.25%) Bash
11 10 (1.25%) Shell Script
12 9 (1.12%) PL/SQL
13 8 (1.00%) PowerShell
14 5 (0.62%) TypeScript
15 3 (0.37%) C
16 2 (0.25%) LookML
16 2 (0.25%) Ruby
16 2 (0.25%) VB
17 1 (0.12%) Korn
Qualifications
1 192 (23.94%) Security Cleared
2 179 (22.32%) SC Cleared
3 25 (3.12%) Degree
4 24 (2.99%) Azure Certification
5 17 (2.12%) BPSS Clearance
6 12 (1.50%) Computer Science Degree
7 10 (1.25%) AWS Certification
8 6 (0.75%) Microsoft Certification
9 5 (0.62%) DBS Check
10 4 (0.50%) DV Cleared
10 4 (0.50%) Master's Degree
11 3 (0.37%) CTC Cleared
11 3 (0.37%) SnowPro
12 1 (0.12%) BICSI Certification
12 1 (0.12%) CISA
12 1 (0.12%) CISM
12 1 (0.12%) CISSP
12 1 (0.12%) City & Guilds
12 1 (0.12%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 233 (29.05%) Data Quality
2 38 (4.74%) GDPR
3 27 (3.37%) QA
4 6 (0.75%) Accessibility
5 5 (0.62%) MiFID
6 3 (0.37%) SLA
7 2 (0.25%) EMIR
7 2 (0.25%) GMP
7 2 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.12%) GRC
8 1 (0.12%) GxP
8 1 (0.12%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.12%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.12%) PMO
8 1 (0.12%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.12%) SNOMED CT
8 1 (0.12%) WCAG
System Software
1 54 (6.73%) Docker
2 4 (0.50%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (0.12%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.12%) RACF
Systems Management
1 129 (16.08%) Terraform
2 38 (4.74%) Kubernetes
3 10 (1.25%) Grafana
4 4 (0.50%) Kibana
4 4 (0.50%) Kubeflow
5 2 (0.25%) Ansible
5 2 (0.25%) EMC NetWorker
5 2 (0.25%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.25%) Thomson Reuters DACS
5 2 (0.25%) Tivoli Storage Manager
Vendors
1 240 (29.93%) Databricks
2 121 (15.09%) Microsoft
3 44 (5.49%) Google
4 37 (4.61%) Informatica
5 28 (3.49%) Oracle
6 13 (1.62%) IBM
7 11 (1.37%) Foundry
7 11 (1.37%) SAP
8 9 (1.12%) Palantir
8 9 (1.12%) ServiceNow
9 8 (1.00%) Denodo
9 8 (1.00%) Talend
10 6 (0.75%) Cloudera
10 6 (0.75%) MuleSoft
11 5 (0.62%) Bloomberg
11 5 (0.62%) Splunk
12 4 (0.50%) Alteryx
12 4 (0.50%) Hortonworks
12 4 (0.50%) OpenAI
12 4 (0.50%) Salesforce