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 17 April 2026.

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

6 months to
17 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 65 77
Rank change year-on-year +17 +12 +18
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 793 463 517
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.57% 3.66% 2.88%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.93% 3.91% 3.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 577 343 423
10th Percentile £388 £400 £354
25th Percentile £463 £455 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -8.70%
75th Percentile £614 £650 £644
90th Percentile £736 £800 £703
England median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 7 10
10th Percentile £23.72 £47.25 £49.00
25th Percentile £30.30 £58.13 £49.25
Median hourly rate £42.50 £65.00 £52.13
Median % change year-on-year -34.62% +24.70% -18.55%
75th Percentile £49.75 £85.63 £63.84
90th Percentile £53.35 £93.75 £68.45
England median hourly rate £57.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year -12.31% -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 16,086 11,843 16,724
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.77% 93.49% 93.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,735 8,116 12,083
10th Percentile £350 £338 £325
25th Percentile £425 £430 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £675
90th Percentile £750 £800 £788
England median daily rate £508 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.33% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 258 142 346
10th Percentile £18.75 £21.21 £16.00
25th Percentile £24.03 £24.66 £19.94
Median hourly rate £37.25 £35.00 £27.66
Median % change year-on-year +6.43% +26.56% -20.99%
75th Percentile £63.08 £50.75 £44.50
90th Percentile £76.58 £64.88 £64.77
England median hourly rate £45.00 £32.50 £34.21
% change year-on-year +38.46% -5.00% -21.59%

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 17 April 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 17 April 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 17 April 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 +30 113 £544 +7.67% 42
West London +1 32 £603 +6.73% 3
South London -9 8 £500 +3.90%
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 17 April 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.

1 468 (59.02%) SQL
2 456 (57.50%) Python
3 355 (44.77%) Data Pipeline
4 347 (43.76%) Azure
5 328 (41.36%) Data Engineering
6 324 (40.86%) ETL
7 299 (37.70%) Analytics
8 288 (36.32%) Data Modelling
9 266 (33.54%) AWS
10 252 (31.78%) Databricks
11 240 (30.26%) Data Quality
12 219 (27.62%) CI/CD
13 192 (24.21%) Security Cleared
14 178 (22.45%) SC Cleared
15 175 (22.07%) Business Intelligence
16 171 (21.56%) Data Warehouse
17 170 (21.44%) DevOps
18 160 (20.18%) Power Platform
19 151 (19.04%) Data Governance
20 150 (18.92%) Power BI
21 139 (17.53%) Agile
22 138 (17.40%) PySpark
23 134 (16.90%) Azure Data Factory
23 134 (16.90%) Terraform
24 127 (16.02%) Data Science
25 120 (15.13%) AI
26 116 (14.63%) Microsoft
27 114 (14.38%) Amazon S3
27 114 (14.38%) Data Lake
28 111 (14.00%) Snowflake

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
1 105 (13.24%) Apache Airflow
2 100 (12.61%) Apache Spark
3 55 (6.94%) Apache
4 10 (1.26%) Palantir Foundry
5 7 (0.88%) Confluence
6 5 (0.63%) Jupyter
6 5 (0.63%) Microsoft Exchange
7 3 (0.38%) SAS
8 2 (0.25%) SharePoint
9 1 (0.13%) Appian
9 1 (0.13%) Camunda
9 1 (0.13%) Luigi
9 1 (0.13%) R Markdown
Applications
1 14 (1.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.38%) 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 (0.13%) Actimize
2 1 (0.13%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.13%) iTrent
2 1 (0.13%) Maximo
2 1 (0.13%) SAP Business ByDesign
2 1 (0.13%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 347 (43.76%) Azure
2 266 (33.54%) AWS
3 160 (20.18%) Power Platform
4 134 (16.90%) Azure Data Factory
5 114 (14.38%) Amazon S3
6 111 (14.00%) Snowflake
7 100 (12.61%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 93 (11.73%) GCP
9 87 (10.97%) Azure DevOps
9 87 (10.97%) dbt
10 83 (10.47%) GitHub
11 71 (8.95%) Serverless
12 63 (7.94%) AWS Lambda
13 40 (5.04%) GitHub Actions
14 32 (4.04%) AWS CloudFormation
15 25 (3.15%) Dagster
16 22 (2.77%) Amazon Kinesis
17 19 (2.40%) AWS Step Functions
18 18 (2.27%) Amazon SQS
19 17 (2.14%) Collibra
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.38%) Firewall
1 3 (0.38%) SAN
2 2 (0.25%) Structured Cabling
3 1 (0.13%) 4G
3 1 (0.13%) 5G
3 1 (0.13%) Network Security
3 1 (0.13%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 171 (21.56%) Data Warehouse
2 150 (18.92%) Power BI
3 114 (14.38%) Data Lake
4 82 (10.34%) SQL Server
5 66 (8.32%) BigQuery
6 61 (7.69%) Azure SQL Database
7 60 (7.57%) Delta Lake
8 57 (7.19%) Metadata
9 49 (6.18%) Tableau
10 48 (6.05%) Amazon Redshift
11 44 (5.55%) Amazon Athena
11 44 (5.55%) NoSQL
12 42 (5.30%) Snowflake Schema
13 39 (4.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 35 (4.41%) Big Data
14 35 (4.41%) PostgreSQL
15 26 (3.28%) Star Schema
16 25 (3.15%) Relational Database
17 21 (2.65%) Data Vault
17 21 (2.65%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 87 (10.97%) Git
2 24 (3.03%) JIRA
3 21 (2.65%) GitLab
4 20 (2.52%) Jenkins
5 18 (2.27%) MLflow
6 2 (0.25%) SonarQube
6 2 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (0.13%) Jaeger
7 1 (0.13%) Poetry
7 1 (0.13%) Selenium
7 1 (0.13%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (0.13%) Terragrunt
General
1 182 (22.95%) Finance
2 120 (15.13%) Social Skills
3 93 (11.73%) Analytical Skills
4 56 (7.06%) Public Sector
5 45 (5.67%) Banking
6 29 (3.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 13 (1.64%) Pharmaceutical
7 13 (1.64%) Telecoms
8 11 (1.39%) Front Office
9 10 (1.26%) Retail
10 9 (1.13%) Marketing
10 9 (1.13%) Publishing
11 6 (0.76%) Investment Banking
12 5 (0.63%) Documentation Skills
13 4 (0.50%) Back Office
13 4 (0.50%) Corporate Banking
13 4 (0.50%) Games
13 4 (0.50%) Law
13 4 (0.50%) Manufacturing
14 3 (0.38%) Financial Institution
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 138 (17.40%) PySpark
2 85 (10.72%) Kafka
3 34 (4.29%) Pandas
4 24 (3.03%) Great Expectations
5 23 (2.90%) YAML
6 14 (1.77%) REST
6 14 (1.77%) scikit-learn
7 12 (1.51%) Matplotlib
8 10 (1.26%) JSON
8 10 (1.26%) PyTorch
9 9 (1.13%) GeoJSON
9 9 (1.13%) NumPy
9 9 (1.13%) Polars
9 9 (1.13%) Spring
9 9 (1.13%) Spring Boot
9 9 (1.13%) XML
10 7 (0.88%) OAuth
10 7 (0.88%) React
10 7 (0.88%) Spark Streaming
11 6 (0.76%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 73 (9.21%) Cloud Native
2 24 (3.03%) Legacy Systems
3 19 (2.40%) Data Structures
3 19 (2.40%) Product Ownership
4 15 (1.89%) Greenfield Project
5 12 (1.51%) Onboarding
6 11 (1.39%) Reinsurance
7 10 (1.26%) Distributed Systems
8 8 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
9 7 (0.88%) Clustering
9 7 (0.88%) Life Science
9 7 (0.88%) Public Cloud
9 7 (0.88%) Replication
10 6 (0.76%) NHS
11 5 (0.63%) AI Agents
11 5 (0.63%) Data Protection Act
11 5 (0.63%) Derivative
11 5 (0.63%) Distributed Computing
11 5 (0.63%) Reference Data
12 4 (0.50%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 20 (2.52%) Linux
2 10 (1.26%) Unix
3 3 (0.38%) Windows
4 2 (0.25%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.13%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 355 (44.77%) Data Pipeline
2 328 (41.36%) Data Engineering
3 324 (40.86%) ETL
4 299 (37.70%) Analytics
5 288 (36.32%) Data Modelling
6 219 (27.62%) CI/CD
7 175 (22.07%) Business Intelligence
8 170 (21.44%) DevOps
9 151 (19.04%) Data Governance
10 139 (17.53%) Agile
11 127 (16.02%) Data Science
12 120 (15.13%) AI
13 107 (13.49%) Infrastructure as Code
14 104 (13.11%) Data Architecture
15 93 (11.73%) Problem-Solving
16 90 (11.35%) Migration
17 89 (11.22%) Machine Learning
18 81 (10.21%) Validation
19 74 (9.33%) Decision-Making
20 72 (9.08%) Data Integration
Programming Languages
1 468 (59.02%) SQL
2 456 (57.50%) Python
3 77 (9.71%) Scala
4 65 (8.20%) Java
5 32 (4.04%) C#
6 22 (2.77%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 17 (2.14%) T-SQL
8 14 (1.77%) R
9 13 (1.64%) Bicep
10 11 (1.39%) JavaScript
11 10 (1.26%) Bash
12 9 (1.13%) PL/SQL
12 9 (1.13%) PowerShell
12 9 (1.13%) Shell Script
13 5 (0.63%) TypeScript
14 3 (0.38%) C
15 2 (0.25%) Korn
15 2 (0.25%) LookML
15 2 (0.25%) Ruby
15 2 (0.25%) VB
Qualifications
1 192 (24.21%) Security Cleared
2 178 (22.45%) SC Cleared
3 25 (3.15%) Degree
4 21 (2.65%) Azure Certification
5 17 (2.14%) BPSS Clearance
6 13 (1.64%) Computer Science Degree
7 12 (1.51%) AWS Certification
8 6 (0.76%) DV Cleared
8 6 (0.76%) Microsoft Certification
9 4 (0.50%) DBS Check
9 4 (0.50%) Master's Degree
9 4 (0.50%) SnowPro
10 3 (0.38%) CTC Cleared
11 1 (0.13%) BICSI Certification
11 1 (0.13%) CISA
11 1 (0.13%) CISM
11 1 (0.13%) CISSP
11 1 (0.13%) City & Guilds
11 1 (0.13%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 240 (30.26%) Data Quality
2 38 (4.79%) GDPR
3 24 (3.03%) QA
4 8 (1.01%) Accessibility
5 3 (0.38%) SLA
6 2 (0.25%) GMP
6 2 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.25%) MiFID
7 1 (0.13%) GRC
7 1 (0.13%) GxP
7 1 (0.13%) HIPAA
7 1 (0.13%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.13%) PMO
7 1 (0.13%) WCAG
System Software
1 47 (5.93%) Docker
2 5 (0.63%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (0.13%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.13%) RACF
Systems Management
1 134 (16.90%) Terraform
2 34 (4.29%) Kubernetes
3 9 (1.13%) Grafana
4 4 (0.50%) Kibana
4 4 (0.50%) Kubeflow
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
6 1 (0.13%) Ansible
Vendors
1 252 (31.78%) Databricks
2 116 (14.63%) Microsoft
3 44 (5.55%) Google
4 34 (4.29%) Informatica
5 29 (3.66%) Oracle
6 13 (1.64%) Foundry
6 13 (1.64%) IBM
7 11 (1.39%) Palantir
7 11 (1.39%) SAP
8 10 (1.26%) ServiceNow
9 9 (1.13%) Denodo
10 8 (1.01%) Talend
11 6 (0.76%) Cloudera
11 6 (0.76%) MuleSoft
12 5 (0.63%) Splunk
13 4 (0.50%) Alteryx
13 4 (0.50%) Bloomberg
13 4 (0.50%) OpenAI
14 3 (0.38%) Salesforce
14 3 (0.38%) Virgin Media