Data Engineer Contract Job Trends in London

Data Engineer
England > London

The median Data Engineer daily rate in London is £522, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 14 May 2026.

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

6 months to
14 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 70 81
Rank change year-on-year +24 +11 +12
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 833 454 492
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.68% 3.67% 2.80%
As % of the Job Titles category 5.04% 3.93% 3.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 604 342 398
10th Percentile £388 £400 £350
25th Percentile £455 £455 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £522 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.52% - -8.70%
75th Percentile £614 £634 £638
90th Percentile £722 £800 £700
England median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 7 9
10th Percentile £23.72 £51.25 £48.75
25th Percentile £30.30 £58.13 £49.25
Median hourly rate £42.50 £65.00 £51.75
Median % change year-on-year -34.62% +25.60% -28.13%
75th Percentile £49.75 £85.63 £61.75
90th Percentile £53.35 £93.75 £66.13
England median hourly rate £52.50 £65.00 £66.25
% change year-on-year -19.23% -1.89% +3.52%

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 16,525 11,541 16,388
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.81% 93.35% 93.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,971 7,894 11,839
10th Percentile £350 £345 £325
25th Percentile £428 £425 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £650 £678 £688
90th Percentile £755 £800 £800
England median daily rate £513 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 266 143 324
10th Percentile £18.75 £20.24 £16.01
25th Percentile £25.15 £24.42 £20.02
Median hourly rate £37.50 £34.00 £27.25
Median % change year-on-year +10.29% +24.77% -23.24%
75th Percentile £63.10 £50.97 £45.18
90th Percentile £76.58 £65.00 £65.00
England median hourly rate £46.50 £30.00 £37.50
% change year-on-year +55.00% -20.00% -14.88%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 +20 117 £550 +10.00% 44
West London +1 30 £603 +6.73% 3
South London -7 8 £500 +5.26% 2
East London - 3 £450 - 6
Data Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 14 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.

1 472 (56.66%) SQL
2 460 (55.22%) Python
3 360 (43.22%) Data Pipeline
4 345 (41.42%) Azure
5 337 (40.46%) Data Engineering
6 334 (40.10%) ETL
7 312 (37.45%) Analytics
8 292 (35.05%) Data Modelling
9 269 (32.29%) AWS
10 243 (29.17%) Databricks
11 234 (28.09%) Data Quality
12 224 (26.89%) CI/CD
13 203 (24.37%) Security Cleared
14 191 (22.93%) SC Cleared
15 181 (21.73%) DevOps
16 170 (20.41%) Business Intelligence
17 168 (20.17%) Data Warehouse
18 157 (18.85%) Power Platform
19 147 (17.65%) Power BI
20 145 (17.41%) PySpark
21 143 (17.17%) Data Governance
22 142 (17.05%) Agile
23 137 (16.45%) Azure Data Factory
24 127 (15.25%) Terraform
25 124 (14.89%) AI
26 122 (14.65%) Data Lake
26 122 (14.65%) Microsoft
27 116 (13.93%) Data Science
28 108 (12.97%) Amazon S3
29 106 (12.73%) Apache Airflow

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 (12.73%) Apache Airflow
2 103 (12.36%) Apache Spark
3 59 (7.08%) Apache
4 9 (1.08%) Palantir Foundry
5 8 (0.96%) Confluence
6 5 (0.60%) Microsoft Exchange
7 4 (0.48%) Jupyter
7 4 (0.48%) SAS
8 2 (0.24%) SharePoint
9 1 (0.12%) Appian
9 1 (0.12%) Camunda
9 1 (0.12%) Luigi
9 1 (0.12%) R Markdown
Applications
1 12 (1.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.36%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.12%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 5 (0.60%) Aladdin
2 2 (0.24%) BambooHR
2 2 (0.24%) SAP BPC
2 2 (0.24%) SimCorp Dimension
3 1 (0.12%) Actimize
3 1 (0.12%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.12%) iTrent
3 1 (0.12%) Raiser’s Edge
3 1 (0.12%) SAP Business ByDesign
Cloud Services
1 345 (41.42%) Azure
2 269 (32.29%) AWS
3 157 (18.85%) Power Platform
4 137 (16.45%) Azure Data Factory
5 108 (12.97%) Amazon S3
6 105 (12.61%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 100 (12.00%) Azure DevOps
7 100 (12.00%) Snowflake
8 93 (11.16%) GCP
9 92 (11.04%) dbt
10 88 (10.56%) GitHub
11 65 (7.80%) Serverless
12 58 (6.96%) AWS Lambda
13 42 (5.04%) GitHub Actions
14 25 (3.00%) AWS CloudFormation
15 21 (2.52%) Dagster
16 20 (2.40%) Amazon Kinesis
17 16 (1.92%) Amazon SQS
18 15 (1.80%) AWS Step Functions
18 15 (1.80%) Collibra
Communications & Networking
1 2 (0.24%) Structured Cabling
2 1 (0.12%) 4G
2 1 (0.12%) 5G
2 1 (0.12%) Firewall
2 1 (0.12%) Network Security
2 1 (0.12%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 168 (20.17%) Data Warehouse
2 147 (17.65%) Power BI
3 122 (14.65%) Data Lake
4 84 (10.08%) SQL Server
5 68 (8.16%) BigQuery
6 64 (7.68%) Delta Lake
7 60 (7.20%) Metadata
8 59 (7.08%) Azure SQL Database
9 47 (5.64%) Tableau
10 46 (5.52%) Amazon Redshift
11 45 (5.40%) Snowflake Schema
12 44 (5.28%) NoSQL
13 41 (4.92%) Amazon Athena
14 40 (4.80%) Big Data
15 39 (4.68%) PostgreSQL
16 36 (4.32%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 26 (3.12%) Star Schema
18 25 (3.00%) Relational Database
19 24 (2.88%) MongoDB
20 23 (2.76%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 85 (10.20%) Git
2 26 (3.12%) JIRA
3 21 (2.52%) GitLab
4 18 (2.16%) Jenkins
5 16 (1.92%) MLflow
6 2 (0.24%) SonarQube
6 2 (0.24%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.24%) 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
1 197 (23.65%) Finance
2 118 (14.17%) Social Skills
3 97 (11.64%) Analytical Skills
4 53 (6.36%) Public Sector
5 46 (5.52%) Banking
6 26 (3.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 13 (1.56%) Telecoms
8 12 (1.44%) Marketing
8 12 (1.44%) Pharmaceutical
9 11 (1.32%) Front Office
9 11 (1.32%) Retail
10 10 (1.20%) Publishing
11 6 (0.72%) Documentation Skills
11 6 (0.72%) Investment Banking
12 5 (0.60%) Games
13 4 (0.48%) Back Office
13 4 (0.48%) Corporate Banking
13 4 (0.48%) Financial Institution
13 4 (0.48%) Manufacturing
13 4 (0.48%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 145 (17.41%) PySpark
2 84 (10.08%) Kafka
3 33 (3.96%) Pandas
4 22 (2.64%) Great Expectations
5 20 (2.40%) YAML
6 19 (2.28%) Spring
6 19 (2.28%) Spring Boot
7 13 (1.56%) REST
8 12 (1.44%) scikit-learn
9 11 (1.32%) Matplotlib
10 10 (1.20%) PyTorch
11 9 (1.08%) GeoJSON
11 9 (1.08%) JSON
11 9 (1.08%) Polars
12 8 (0.96%) NumPy
13 7 (0.84%) Apache Beam
13 7 (0.84%) React
14 6 (0.72%) HTML
14 6 (0.72%) XML
15 5 (0.60%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 81 (9.72%) Cloud Native
2 22 (2.64%) Legacy Systems
3 20 (2.40%) Data Structures
4 18 (2.16%) Greenfield Project
5 17 (2.04%) Product Ownership
6 14 (1.68%) Reinsurance
7 13 (1.56%) Distributed Systems
8 9 (1.08%) Onboarding
8 9 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
9 8 (0.96%) Distributed Computing
9 8 (0.96%) Replication
10 7 (0.84%) Clustering
11 6 (0.72%) AI Agents
11 6 (0.72%) Derivative
11 6 (0.72%) Life Science
11 6 (0.72%) NHS
11 6 (0.72%) Public Cloud
11 6 (0.72%) Reference Data
12 5 (0.60%) Data Protection Act
13 4 (0.48%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 22 (2.64%) Linux
2 12 (1.44%) Unix
3 3 (0.36%) Windows
4 2 (0.24%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.12%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 360 (43.22%) Data Pipeline
2 337 (40.46%) Data Engineering
3 334 (40.10%) ETL
4 312 (37.45%) Analytics
5 292 (35.05%) Data Modelling
6 224 (26.89%) CI/CD
7 181 (21.73%) DevOps
8 170 (20.41%) Business Intelligence
9 143 (17.17%) Data Governance
10 142 (17.05%) Agile
11 124 (14.89%) AI
12 116 (13.93%) Data Science
13 100 (12.00%) Data Architecture
14 97 (11.64%) Infrastructure as Code
14 97 (11.64%) Migration
15 93 (11.16%) Problem-Solving
16 92 (11.04%) Validation
17 83 (9.96%) Machine Learning
18 78 (9.36%) Decision-Making
19 72 (8.64%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 472 (56.66%) SQL
2 460 (55.22%) Python
3 75 (9.00%) Java
3 75 (9.00%) Scala
4 29 (3.48%) C#
5 23 (2.76%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 21 (2.52%) T-SQL
7 15 (1.80%) R
8 13 (1.56%) Bicep
9 12 (1.44%) PL/SQL
10 10 (1.20%) JavaScript
10 10 (1.20%) Shell Script
11 9 (1.08%) Bash
12 5 (0.60%) PowerShell
12 5 (0.60%) TypeScript
13 3 (0.36%) C
14 2 (0.24%) Go
14 2 (0.24%) LookML
14 2 (0.24%) Ruby
14 2 (0.24%) VB
Qualifications
1 203 (24.37%) Security Cleared
2 191 (22.93%) SC Cleared
3 24 (2.88%) Azure Certification
3 24 (2.88%) Degree
4 17 (2.04%) BPSS Clearance
5 12 (1.44%) Computer Science Degree
6 6 (0.72%) AWS Certification
6 6 (0.72%) DBS Check
6 6 (0.72%) Microsoft Certification
7 4 (0.48%) DV Cleared
7 4 (0.48%) Master's Degree
8 3 (0.36%) CTC Cleared
8 3 (0.36%) SnowPro
9 1 (0.12%) BICSI Certification
9 1 (0.12%) CISA
9 1 (0.12%) CISM
9 1 (0.12%) CISSP
9 1 (0.12%) City & Guilds
9 1 (0.12%) Postgraduate
9 1 (0.12%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 234 (28.09%) Data Quality
2 35 (4.20%) GDPR
3 32 (3.84%) QA
4 6 (0.72%) Accessibility
5 5 (0.60%) MiFID
6 2 (0.24%) EMIR
6 2 (0.24%) GMP
6 2 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 2 (0.24%) SLA
7 1 (0.12%) GRC
7 1 (0.12%) GxP
7 1 (0.12%) HIPAA
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 54 (6.48%) Docker
2 3 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (0.12%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.12%) RACF
Systems Management
1 127 (15.25%) Terraform
2 40 (4.80%) Kubernetes
3 10 (1.20%) Grafana
4 4 (0.48%) Kibana
5 2 (0.24%) Ansible
5 2 (0.24%) Kubeflow
5 2 (0.24%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.24%) Thomson Reuters DACS
Vendors
1 243 (29.17%) Databricks
2 122 (14.65%) Microsoft
3 44 (5.28%) Google
4 37 (4.44%) Informatica
5 33 (3.96%) Oracle
6 12 (1.44%) Foundry
7 11 (1.32%) SAP
8 10 (1.20%) Denodo
8 10 (1.20%) Talend
9 9 (1.08%) IBM
9 9 (1.08%) Palantir
9 9 (1.08%) ServiceNow
10 6 (0.72%) Alteryx
10 6 (0.72%) Bloomberg
10 6 (0.72%) Cloudera
10 6 (0.72%) MuleSoft
11 5 (0.60%) Salesforce
11 5 (0.60%) Splunk
12 4 (0.48%) Hortonworks
13 3 (0.36%) OpenAI