Data Engineer Contract Job Trends in London

Data Engineer
England > London

The median Data Engineer daily rate in London is £536, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 18 November 2025.

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

6 months to
18 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 96 78 92
Rank change year-on-year -18 +14 +17
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 417 478 524
As % of all contract jobs in London 2.98% 3.08% 2.60%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.23% 3.28% 2.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 302 341 385
10th Percentile £380 £406 £400
25th Percentile £450 £481 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £536 £575 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.74% +4.55% -5.42%
75th Percentile £638 £663 £650
90th Percentile £725 £756 £725
England median daily rate £513 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -6.82% - -1.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 5 9
10th Percentile £32.23 £44.45 £35.00
25th Percentile £40.50 £49.25 £35.63
Median hourly rate £48.00 £95.00 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year -49.47% +57.02% +56.13%
75th Percentile £74.38 £97.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £110.00 - £71.40
England median hourly rate £43.50 £72.75 £61.75
% change year-on-year -40.21% +17.81% +23.50%

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 12,918 14,555 18,859
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.45% 93.87% 93.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,569 9,408 13,666
10th Percentile £333 £338 £340
25th Percentile £425 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £550 £565
Median % change year-on-year -2.27% -2.65% -1.74%
75th Percentile £656 £675 £688
90th Percentile £775 £792 £794
England median daily rate £508 £525 £534
% change year-on-year -3.33% -1.69% -2.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 242 155 224
10th Percentile £17.50 £17.25 £18.21
25th Percentile £21.46 £23.80 £21.75
Median hourly rate £26.68 £37.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.87% - +15.38%
75th Percentile £49.13 £57.38 £60.00
90th Percentile £71.80 £80.75 £73.75
England median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £45.94
% change year-on-year -37.13% -12.93% +53.13%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 +2 56 £538 -6.52% 169
West London -17 6 £575 +4.55% 10
South London -9 3 £479 -18.55%
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 18 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.

1 282 (67.63%) Python
2 266 (63.79%) SQL
3 211 (50.60%) Data Pipeline
4 197 (47.24%) Azure
5 174 (41.73%) Data Engineering
6 165 (39.57%) ETL
7 160 (38.37%) AWS
8 153 (36.69%) Data Modelling
9 150 (35.97%) Databricks
10 130 (31.18%) Analytics
11 125 (29.98%) CI/CD
12 105 (25.18%) Data Quality
13 101 (24.22%) Data Warehouse
14 96 (23.02%) Business Intelligence
15 94 (22.54%) DevOps
16 91 (21.82%) Security Cleared
17 89 (21.34%) Agile
18 85 (20.38%) Azure Data Factory
18 85 (20.38%) Data Science
19 80 (19.18%) Apache Airflow
20 79 (18.94%) Power Platform
21 78 (18.71%) Power BI
21 78 (18.71%) SC Cleared
22 75 (17.99%) PySpark
23 72 (17.27%) Snowflake
24 67 (16.07%) Data Governance
25 64 (15.35%) Terraform
26 62 (14.87%) Data Lake
26 62 (14.87%) Infrastructure as Code
26 62 (14.87%) Problem-Solving

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 (19.18%) Apache Airflow
2 60 (14.39%) Apache Spark
3 38 (9.11%) Apache
4 14 (3.36%) Confluence
5 4 (0.96%) SharePoint
6 3 (0.72%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 2 (0.48%) ArcGIS
7 2 (0.48%) Jupyter
7 2 (0.48%) Luigi
7 2 (0.48%) SAS
8 1 (0.24%) Apache Pig
8 1 (0.24%) IIS
8 1 (0.24%) Oracle Application Server
Applications
1 8 (1.92%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.48%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.24%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.24%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 3 (0.72%) Oracle BPM
2 2 (0.48%) Aladdin
3 1 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.24%) Endur
3 1 (0.24%) Maximo
3 1 (0.24%) SAP BPC
3 1 (0.24%) SAP ERP
3 1 (0.24%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 197 (47.24%) Azure
2 160 (38.37%) AWS
3 85 (20.38%) Azure Data Factory
4 79 (18.94%) Power Platform
5 72 (17.27%) Snowflake
6 60 (14.39%) dbt
7 59 (14.15%) GCP
8 58 (13.91%) Amazon S3
9 55 (13.19%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 50 (11.99%) GitHub
11 37 (8.87%) Serverless
12 35 (8.39%) Azure DevOps
13 29 (6.95%) GitHub Actions
14 23 (5.52%) AWS Lambda
15 15 (3.60%) Amazon Kinesis
15 15 (3.60%) SaaS
16 14 (3.36%) Amazon EMR
16 14 (3.36%) AWS CloudFormation
17 7 (1.68%) AWS Step Functions
17 7 (1.68%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.96%) Firewall
2 3 (0.72%) Internet
2 3 (0.72%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 101 (24.22%) Data Warehouse
2 78 (18.71%) Power BI
3 62 (14.87%) Data Lake
4 37 (8.87%) SQL Server
5 34 (8.15%) Big Data
6 29 (6.95%) BigQuery
6 29 (6.95%) Hadoop
7 27 (6.47%) PostgreSQL
8 26 (6.24%) Amazon Redshift
9 23 (5.52%) Delta Lake
10 22 (5.28%) Tableau
11 21 (5.04%) Relational Database
11 21 (5.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 20 (4.80%) Metadata
12 20 (4.80%) Star Schema
13 19 (4.56%) Azure SQL Database
14 18 (4.32%) Amazon QuickSight
15 16 (3.84%) NoSQL
16 13 (3.12%) Amazon Athena
17 11 (2.64%) DataStage
Development Applications
1 58 (13.91%) Git
2 15 (3.60%) JIRA
3 13 (3.12%) Jenkins
4 7 (1.68%) GitLab
4 7 (1.68%) MLflow
5 3 (0.72%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.24%) DBeaver
6 1 (0.24%) ERwin
6 1 (0.24%) GoCD
6 1 (0.24%) Gradle
6 1 (0.24%) Selenium
6 1 (0.24%) SonarQube
6 1 (0.24%) Team Foundation Server
6 1 (0.24%) TeamCity
6 1 (0.24%) Visual Studio
General
1 97 (23.26%) Finance
2 89 (21.34%) Social Skills
3 54 (12.95%) Analytical Skills
4 30 (7.19%) Public Sector
5 20 (4.80%) Banking
6 16 (3.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 11 (2.64%) Investment Banking
7 11 (2.64%) Pharmaceutical
8 10 (2.40%) Front Office
9 8 (1.92%) Retail
10 6 (1.44%) Marketing
11 3 (0.72%) Corporate Banking
11 3 (0.72%) Documentation Skills
11 3 (0.72%) Financial Institution
11 3 (0.72%) Retail Banking
11 3 (0.72%) Telecoms
12 2 (0.48%) Law
12 2 (0.48%) Legal
12 2 (0.48%) Organisational Skills
12 2 (0.48%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 75 (17.99%) PySpark
2 51 (12.23%) Kafka
3 12 (2.88%) XML
4 11 (2.64%) Apache NiFi
5 10 (2.40%) RabbitMQ
6 8 (1.92%) Jinja
6 8 (1.92%) Pandas
7 7 (1.68%) pytest
7 7 (1.68%) YAML
8 6 (1.44%) GraphQL
8 6 (1.44%) PyTorch
9 5 (1.20%) HTML
9 5 (1.20%) JSON
9 5 (1.20%) NumPy
9 5 (1.20%) REST
9 5 (1.20%) RESTful
10 4 (0.96%) CSS
10 4 (0.96%) OAuth
10 4 (0.96%) Spark Streaming
10 4 (0.96%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 21 (5.04%) Cloud Native
2 16 (3.84%) Legacy Systems
3 14 (3.36%) Data Structures
4 11 (2.64%) Onboarding
5 8 (1.92%) Distributed Computing
5 8 (1.92%) Product Ownership
6 7 (1.68%) Algorithms
6 7 (1.68%) Virtual Team
7 6 (1.44%) Greenfield Project
7 6 (1.44%) Life Science
7 6 (1.44%) Reinsurance
8 5 (1.20%) Genomics
8 5 (1.20%) Linux Command Line
9 4 (0.96%) Credit Risk
9 4 (0.96%) Data Protection Act
10 3 (0.72%) Derivative
10 3 (0.72%) EMC VNX
10 3 (0.72%) Equities
10 3 (0.72%) IoT
10 3 (0.72%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 7 (1.68%) Linux
2 4 (0.96%) Unix
3 1 (0.24%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 211 (50.60%) Data Pipeline
2 174 (41.73%) Data Engineering
3 165 (39.57%) ETL
4 153 (36.69%) Data Modelling
5 130 (31.18%) Analytics
6 125 (29.98%) CI/CD
7 96 (23.02%) Business Intelligence
8 94 (22.54%) DevOps
9 89 (21.34%) Agile
10 85 (20.38%) Data Science
11 67 (16.07%) Data Governance
12 62 (14.87%) Infrastructure as Code
12 62 (14.87%) Problem-Solving
13 60 (14.39%) AI
14 58 (13.91%) Machine Learning
15 53 (12.71%) Migration
16 48 (11.51%) Data Integration
17 47 (11.27%) Data Transformation
18 40 (9.59%) Data Architecture
19 38 (9.11%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 282 (67.63%) Python
2 266 (63.79%) SQL
3 40 (9.59%) Java
4 39 (9.35%) Scala
5 12 (2.88%) Bash
6 9 (2.16%) JavaScript
6 9 (2.16%) PowerShell
7 7 (1.68%) C#
7 7 (1.68%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 6 (1.44%) PL/SQL
9 5 (1.20%) T-SQL
10 4 (0.96%) R
10 4 (0.96%) Shell Script
10 4 (0.96%) TypeScript
11 3 (0.72%) Go
11 3 (0.72%) Korn
12 2 (0.48%) C++
13 1 (0.24%) C
13 1 (0.24%) HiveQL
Qualifications
1 91 (21.82%) Security Cleared
2 78 (18.71%) SC Cleared
3 24 (5.76%) Degree
4 17 (4.08%) DV Cleared
5 11 (2.64%) AWS Certification
5 11 (2.64%) Azure Certification
6 9 (2.16%) Computer Science Degree
7 4 (0.96%) BPSS Clearance
7 4 (0.96%) Master's Degree
8 2 (0.48%) DBS Check
8 2 (0.48%) SnowPro
9 1 (0.24%) MCP
9 1 (0.24%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 105 (25.18%) Data Quality
2 23 (5.52%) GDPR
3 9 (2.16%) QA
4 6 (1.44%) Accessibility
5 4 (0.96%) SLA
6 3 (0.72%) HIPAA
6 3 (0.72%) NIST
7 2 (0.48%) Dodd-Frank
7 2 (0.48%) EMIR
7 2 (0.48%) ISO/IEC 20000
7 2 (0.48%) MiFID
8 1 (0.24%) EU AI Act
8 1 (0.24%) HL7
8 1 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.24%) SOC 2
System Software
1 18 (4.32%) Docker
2 5 (1.20%) Virtual Machines
2 5 (1.20%) zsh
3 1 (0.24%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 64 (15.35%) Terraform
2 20 (4.80%) Kubernetes
3 4 (0.96%) Puppet
4 3 (0.72%) Ambari
4 3 (0.72%) Grafana
4 3 (0.72%) Kubeflow
4 3 (0.72%) ZABBIX
5 2 (0.48%) Ansible
5 2 (0.48%) EMC NetWorker
5 2 (0.48%) Tivoli Storage Manager
6 1 (0.24%) Argo
6 1 (0.24%) NetBackup
6 1 (0.24%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 150 (35.97%) Databricks
2 50 (11.99%) Microsoft
3 24 (5.76%) Foundry
4 23 (5.52%) Palantir
5 20 (4.80%) Google
6 19 (4.56%) Oracle
7 12 (2.88%) Cloudera
8 9 (2.16%) SAP
9 7 (1.68%) Informatica
10 5 (1.20%) IBM
10 5 (1.20%) Virgin Media
11 4 (0.96%) Denodo
12 3 (0.72%) EMC
12 3 (0.72%) Isilon
12 3 (0.72%) ServiceNow
12 3 (0.72%) Teradata
13 2 (0.48%) Alteryx
13 2 (0.48%) Cisco
13 2 (0.48%) Salesforce
13 2 (0.48%) Splunk