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 12 October 2026.

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

6 months to
12 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 68 97 87
Rank change year-on-year +29 -10 +12
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 825 394 463
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.08% 2.96% 2.87%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.38% 3.20% 3.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 609 290 331
10th Percentile £364 £380 £413
25th Percentile £433 £450 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £565
Median % change year-on-year - -7.08% -1.74%
75th Percentile £638 £623 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £751
England median daily rate £500 £513 £550
% change year-on-year -2.44% -6.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 9 4
10th Percentile - £33.23 £62.23
25th Percentile £30.00 £42.25 £81.69
Median hourly rate £34.84 £52.50 £95.00
Median % change year-on-year -33.64% -44.74% +57.02%
75th Percentile - £62.50 £97.50
90th Percentile £58.19 £110.00 -
England median hourly rate £45.00 £48.00 £95.00
% change year-on-year -6.25% -49.47% +53.85%

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 18,818 12,294 15,161
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 93.08% 92.47% 94.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,156 8,215 9,889
10th Percentile £363 £333 £342
25th Percentile £450 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £543 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.38% -1.36% -4.35%
75th Percentile £663 £663 £675
90th Percentile £775 £775 £800
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 418 209 174
10th Percentile £16.94 £17.00 £17.33
25th Percentile £21.93 £22.50 £24.16
Median hourly rate £41.00 £27.00 £35.75
Median % change year-on-year +51.85% -24.48% -10.24%
75th Percentile £65.45 £49.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £81.25 £68.00 £79.63
England median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -6.89%

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 12 October 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 12 October 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 12 October 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 +7 95 £565 +7.62% 91
West London -2 16 £485 -2.27% 11
South London -13 4 £475 +3.83% 4
East London +7 3 £470 - 4
Data Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 12 October 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.

1 458 (55.52%) SQL
2 451 (54.67%) Python
3 396 (48.00%) Data Engineering
4 390 (47.27%) Data Pipeline
5 303 (36.73%) Data Modelling
5 303 (36.73%) ETL
6 291 (35.27%) Analytics
7 290 (35.15%) Azure
8 289 (35.03%) AWS
9 258 (31.27%) Data Quality
10 256 (31.03%) CI/CD
11 204 (24.73%) Databricks
12 196 (23.76%) Security Cleared
13 174 (21.09%) Agile
13 174 (21.09%) AI
14 172 (20.85%) SC Cleared
15 169 (20.48%) Data Warehouse
16 155 (18.79%) dbt
16 155 (18.79%) DevOps
17 154 (18.67%) PySpark
18 147 (17.82%) Apache Airflow
19 142 (17.21%) Snowflake
20 137 (16.61%) Migration
21 134 (16.24%) Data Governance
21 134 (16.24%) Data Transformation
22 119 (14.42%) Business Intelligence
23 117 (14.18%) GCP
24 115 (13.94%) Machine Learning
24 115 (13.94%) Microsoft
25 114 (13.82%) Validation

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
1 147 (17.82%) Apache Airflow
2 110 (13.33%) Apache Spark
3 90 (10.91%) Apache
4 13 (1.58%) Confluence
5 11 (1.33%) SharePoint
6 8 (0.97%) Palantir Foundry
7 7 (0.85%) SAS
8 6 (0.73%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
10 2 (0.24%) CMS
11 1 (0.12%) Luigi
11 1 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
11 1 (0.12%) PowerExchange
Applications
1 6 (0.73%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.24%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 11 (1.33%) Aladdin
2 2 (0.24%) Maximo
2 2 (0.24%) NetSuite
2 2 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
2 2 (0.24%) SAP BPC
2 2 (0.24%) SAP Oil and Gas
2 2 (0.24%) SimCorp Dimension
2 2 (0.24%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 1 (0.12%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.12%) Dynamics NAV
3 1 (0.12%) FIS Private Capital Suite
3 1 (0.12%) Markit EDM
3 1 (0.12%) Oracle Retail
3 1 (0.12%) Raiser’s Edge
3 1 (0.12%) Sage X3
3 1 (0.12%) SAP CAR
3 1 (0.12%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 290 (35.15%) Azure
2 289 (35.03%) AWS
3 155 (18.79%) dbt
4 142 (17.21%) Snowflake
5 117 (14.18%) GCP
6 111 (13.45%) Azure Data Factory
7 107 (12.97%) Power Platform
8 98 (11.88%) Amazon S3
9 74 (8.97%) Azure DevOps
10 71 (8.61%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 71 (8.61%) Serverless
11 68 (8.24%) GitHub
12 65 (7.88%) AWS Lambda
13 40 (4.85%) Azure Databricks
14 30 (3.64%) Amazon EMR
14 30 (3.64%) GitHub Actions
15 18 (2.18%) Microsoft Purview
16 17 (2.06%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 17 (2.06%) Fivetran
17 16 (1.94%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.12%) Cisco IPT
1 1 (0.12%) DNS
1 1 (0.12%) HTTP
1 1 (0.12%) HTTPS
1 1 (0.12%) TCP/IP
1 1 (0.12%) tcpdump
1 1 (0.12%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 169 (20.48%) Data Warehouse
2 103 (12.48%) Power BI
3 83 (10.06%) Data Lake
4 69 (8.36%) BigQuery
5 64 (7.76%) Metadata
6 58 (7.03%) Delta Lake
7 55 (6.67%) Amazon Redshift
8 45 (5.45%) Amazon Athena
9 42 (5.09%) Big Data
9 42 (5.09%) PostgreSQL
10 41 (4.97%) NoSQL
11 37 (4.48%) SQL Server
12 35 (4.24%) Snowflake Schema
13 28 (3.39%) Relational Database
14 26 (3.15%) Tableau
15 25 (3.03%) Amazon RDS
16 23 (2.79%) Apache Iceberg
16 23 (2.79%) Oracle Database
17 20 (2.42%) MongoDB
17 20 (2.42%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 98 (11.88%) Git
2 29 (3.52%) GitLab
3 17 (2.06%) JIRA
4 11 (1.33%) MLflow
5 9 (1.09%) Bitbucket
5 9 (1.09%) Jenkins
6 6 (0.73%) Selenium
7 5 (0.61%) SonarQube
8 4 (0.48%) Claude Code
9 3 (0.36%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 3 (0.36%) ERwin
9 3 (0.36%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 2 (0.24%) CircleCI
10 2 (0.24%) Terragrunt
11 1 (0.12%) ER Studio
11 1 (0.12%) GoCD
11 1 (0.12%) Liquibase
11 1 (0.12%) Octopus Deploy
11 1 (0.12%) Postman
11 1 (0.12%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 210 (25.45%) Finance
2 138 (16.73%) Social Skills
3 100 (12.12%) Analytical Skills
4 81 (9.82%) Banking
5 51 (6.18%) Public Sector
6 17 (2.06%) Front Office
7 16 (1.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 15 (1.82%) Retail
9 13 (1.58%) Pharmaceutical
10 11 (1.33%) Back Office
11 10 (1.21%) Marketing
12 8 (0.97%) Investment Banking
13 7 (0.85%) Financial Institution
14 6 (0.73%) Legal
14 6 (0.73%) Local Government
15 5 (0.61%) Aerospace
16 4 (0.48%) Automotive
16 4 (0.48%) Manufacturing
16 4 (0.48%) Military
16 4 (0.48%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 154 (18.67%) PySpark
2 107 (12.97%) Terraform
3 80 (9.70%) Kafka
4 18 (2.18%) REST
5 14 (1.70%) Spring
5 14 (1.70%) Spring Boot
6 13 (1.58%) Apache Beam
6 13 (1.58%) Pandas
7 11 (1.33%) PyTorch
8 10 (1.21%) Great Expectations
8 10 (1.21%) Microsoft Graph
8 10 (1.21%) React
9 9 (1.09%) pytest
10 7 (0.85%) .NET
10 7 (0.85%) JSON
10 7 (0.85%) NumPy
11 6 (0.73%) HTML
11 6 (0.73%) RESTful
11 6 (0.73%) XML
11 6 (0.73%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 99 (12.00%) Cloud Native
2 38 (4.61%) Legacy Systems
3 36 (4.36%) Onboarding
4 30 (3.64%) Data Structures
5 19 (2.30%) AI Agents
6 16 (1.94%) Product Ownership
7 15 (1.82%) Reinsurance
8 13 (1.58%) Algorithms
8 13 (1.58%) Distributed Systems
9 9 (1.09%) Greenfield Project
10 8 (0.97%) Distributed Computing
10 8 (0.97%) NHS
10 8 (0.97%) Virtual Team
11 7 (0.85%) Clustering
11 7 (0.85%) Replication
12 6 (0.73%) Reference Data
13 5 (0.61%) Analytical Mindset
13 5 (0.61%) Data Protection Act
13 5 (0.61%) Derivative
13 5 (0.61%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 20 (2.42%) Linux
2 13 (1.58%) Unix
3 1 (0.12%) Robot Operating System
3 1 (0.12%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 396 (48.00%) Data Engineering
2 390 (47.27%) Data Pipeline
3 303 (36.73%) Data Modelling
3 303 (36.73%) ETL
4 291 (35.27%) Analytics
5 256 (31.03%) CI/CD
6 174 (21.09%) Agile
6 174 (21.09%) AI
7 155 (18.79%) DevOps
8 137 (16.61%) Migration
9 134 (16.24%) Data Governance
9 134 (16.24%) Data Transformation
10 119 (14.42%) Business Intelligence
11 115 (13.94%) Machine Learning
12 114 (13.82%) Validation
13 98 (11.88%) Performance Optimisation
14 94 (11.39%) Infrastructure as Code
14 94 (11.39%) Lakehouse
15 91 (11.03%) Data Science
16 78 (9.45%) Data Ingestion
Programming Languages
1 458 (55.52%) SQL
2 451 (54.67%) Python
3 62 (7.52%) Java
4 54 (6.55%) Scala
5 20 (2.42%) PowerShell
6 17 (2.06%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 15 (1.82%) JavaScript
7 15 (1.82%) Shell Script
7 15 (1.82%) T-SQL
8 14 (1.70%) PL/SQL
9 9 (1.09%) R
10 7 (0.85%) TypeScript
11 6 (0.73%) C#
11 6 (0.73%) Go
12 5 (0.61%) Bicep
12 5 (0.61%) Korn
13 3 (0.36%) Bash
14 2 (0.24%) Cypher
15 1 (0.12%) Groovy
15 1 (0.12%) LookML
Qualifications
1 196 (23.76%) Security Cleared
2 172 (20.85%) SC Cleared
3 24 (2.91%) BPSS Clearance
4 19 (2.30%) Degree
5 15 (1.82%) Azure Certification
6 13 (1.58%) DV Cleared
7 10 (1.21%) AWS Certification
8 9 (1.09%) Computer Science Degree
9 7 (0.85%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
9 7 (0.85%) DBS Check
10 5 (0.61%) Master's Degree
11 4 (0.48%) SnowPro
12 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Certification
13 1 (0.12%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 1 (0.12%) CISM
13 1 (0.12%) CISSP
13 1 (0.12%) Numerate Degree
13 1 (0.12%) PMI Certification
13 1 (0.12%) PMP
13 1 (0.12%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 258 (31.27%) Data Quality
2 30 (3.64%) QA
3 17 (2.06%) GDPR
4 8 (0.97%) Accessibility
5 4 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 3 (0.36%) MiFID
7 2 (0.24%) EMIR
8 1 (0.12%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 1 (0.12%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.12%) IFRS
8 1 (0.12%) IFRS 17
8 1 (0.12%) IFRS 9
8 1 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.12%) PMO
8 1 (0.12%) SNOMED CT
8 1 (0.12%) SOC 2
System Software
1 66 (8.00%) Docker
2 4 (0.48%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 55 (6.67%) Kubernetes
2 9 (1.09%) Control-M
3 8 (0.97%) Grafana
4 7 (0.85%) Ansible
5 6 (0.73%) Kibana
6 2 (0.24%) Puppet
7 1 (0.12%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 204 (24.73%) Databricks
2 115 (13.94%) Microsoft
3 52 (6.30%) Oracle
4 51 (6.18%) Google
5 37 (4.48%) Informatica
6 16 (1.94%) Palantir
7 15 (1.82%) Foundry
8 14 (1.70%) Salesforce
9 12 (1.45%) Talend
10 10 (1.21%) Denodo
11 9 (1.09%) Bloomberg
11 9 (1.09%) SAP
11 9 (1.09%) Splunk
12 7 (0.85%) OpenAI
13 6 (0.73%) Amplitude
13 6 (0.73%) SnapLogic
14 5 (0.61%) Mistral
14 5 (0.61%) New Relic
15 4 (0.48%) Alteryx
16 3 (0.36%) Teradata