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 28 April 2026.

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

6 months to
28 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 68 77
Rank change year-on-year +22 +9 +16
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 791 463 501
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.49% 3.66% 2.83%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.84% 3.91% 3.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 573 349 409
10th Percentile £388 £400 £350
25th Percentile £463 £455 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -8.70%
75th Percentile £614 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £800 £700
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 16,357 11,839 16,511
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.78% 93.48% 93.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,892 8,132 11,935
10th Percentile £350 £340 £325
25th Percentile £425 £431 £443
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 £510 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -2.86% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 271 147 337
10th Percentile £18.75 £20.45 £16.01
25th Percentile £24.27 £24.09 £20.02
Median hourly rate £37.50 £35.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% +27.27% -21.99%
75th Percentile £63.10 £50.75 £43.75
90th Percentile £76.58 £64.25 £65.00
England median hourly rate £45.59 £31.76 £35.65
% change year-on-year +43.53% -10.91% -20.78%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 +29 115 £550 +10.00% 38
West London +1 29 £603 +6.73% 4
South London -10 8 £500 +3.90% 1
East London -3 2 £425 -15.00% 6
Data Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 28 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.

1 454 (57.40%) SQL
2 448 (56.64%) Python
3 346 (43.74%) Data Pipeline
4 342 (43.24%) Azure
5 319 (40.33%) Data Engineering
6 316 (39.95%) ETL
7 298 (37.67%) Analytics
8 281 (35.52%) Data Modelling
9 255 (32.24%) AWS
10 239 (30.21%) Databricks
11 231 (29.20%) Data Quality
12 217 (27.43%) CI/CD
13 188 (23.77%) Security Cleared
14 175 (22.12%) SC Cleared
15 174 (22.00%) DevOps
16 168 (21.24%) Business Intelligence
17 166 (20.99%) Data Warehouse
18 155 (19.60%) Power Platform
19 145 (18.33%) Data Governance
19 145 (18.33%) Power BI
20 141 (17.83%) Agile
21 138 (17.45%) PySpark
22 134 (16.94%) Azure Data Factory
23 126 (15.93%) Terraform
24 119 (15.04%) AI
25 118 (14.92%) Data Science
25 118 (14.92%) Microsoft
26 115 (14.54%) Data Lake
27 105 (13.27%) Apache Airflow
27 105 (13.27%) 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 (13.27%) Apache Airflow
2 101 (12.77%) Apache Spark
3 55 (6.95%) Apache
4 8 (1.01%) 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
1 342 (43.24%) Azure
2 255 (32.24%) AWS
3 155 (19.60%) Power Platform
4 134 (16.94%) Azure Data Factory
5 105 (13.27%) Snowflake
6 103 (13.02%) Amazon S3
7 101 (12.77%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 92 (11.63%) Azure DevOps
9 91 (11.50%) GCP
10 85 (10.75%) dbt
11 84 (10.62%) GitHub
12 66 (8.34%) Serverless
13 59 (7.46%) AWS Lambda
14 41 (5.18%) GitHub Actions
15 29 (3.67%) AWS CloudFormation
16 22 (2.78%) Amazon Kinesis
17 21 (2.65%) Dagster
18 18 (2.28%) AWS Step Functions
19 16 (2.02%) Amazon SQS
20 15 (1.90%) Collibra
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.38%) SAN
2 2 (0.25%) Firewall
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
1 166 (20.99%) Data Warehouse
2 145 (18.33%) Power BI
3 115 (14.54%) Data Lake
4 82 (10.37%) SQL Server
5 66 (8.34%) BigQuery
6 61 (7.71%) Azure SQL Database
7 60 (7.59%) Delta Lake
8 57 (7.21%) Metadata
9 50 (6.32%) Tableau
10 45 (5.69%) Amazon Redshift
11 44 (5.56%) NoSQL
12 42 (5.31%) Snowflake Schema
13 39 (4.93%) Amazon Athena
13 39 (4.93%) Big Data
14 37 (4.68%) PostgreSQL
15 36 (4.55%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 26 (3.29%) Star Schema
17 23 (2.91%) MongoDB
17 23 (2.91%) Relational Database
18 21 (2.65%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 86 (10.87%) Git
2 25 (3.16%) JIRA
3 21 (2.65%) GitLab
4 19 (2.40%) Jenkins
5 16 (2.02%) MLflow
6 2 (0.25%) SonarQube
6 2 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.25%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
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
1 188 (23.77%) Finance
2 116 (14.66%) Social Skills
3 96 (12.14%) Analytical Skills
4 51 (6.45%) Public Sector
5 46 (5.82%) Banking
6 25 (3.16%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 13 (1.64%) Telecoms
8 12 (1.52%) Pharmaceutical
9 10 (1.26%) Front Office
9 10 (1.26%) Marketing
9 10 (1.26%) Retail
10 9 (1.14%) Publishing
11 6 (0.76%) Documentation Skills
11 6 (0.76%) Investment Banking
12 4 (0.51%) Back Office
12 4 (0.51%) Corporate Banking
12 4 (0.51%) Games
13 3 (0.38%) Law
13 3 (0.38%) Manufacturing
13 3 (0.38%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 138 (17.45%) PySpark
2 83 (10.49%) Kafka
3 34 (4.30%) Pandas
4 23 (2.91%) YAML
5 22 (2.78%) Great Expectations
6 16 (2.02%) Spring
6 16 (2.02%) Spring Boot
7 14 (1.77%) REST
7 14 (1.77%) scikit-learn
8 12 (1.52%) Matplotlib
9 10 (1.26%) JSON
9 10 (1.26%) PyTorch
10 9 (1.14%) GeoJSON
10 9 (1.14%) NumPy
10 9 (1.14%) Polars
11 7 (0.88%) React
11 7 (0.88%) Spark Streaming
11 7 (0.88%) XML
12 6 (0.76%) HTML
12 6 (0.76%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 77 (9.73%) Cloud Native
2 23 (2.91%) Legacy Systems
3 19 (2.40%) Data Structures
3 19 (2.40%) Product Ownership
4 16 (2.02%) Greenfield Project
5 11 (1.39%) Distributed Systems
5 11 (1.39%) Onboarding
5 11 (1.39%) Reinsurance
6 9 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
7 8 (1.01%) Replication
8 7 (0.88%) Clustering
8 7 (0.88%) Life Science
8 7 (0.88%) Public Cloud
9 6 (0.76%) AI Agents
9 6 (0.76%) Derivative
9 6 (0.76%) NHS
10 5 (0.63%) Data Protection Act
10 5 (0.63%) Distributed Computing
10 5 (0.63%) Reference Data
10 5 (0.63%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 21 (2.65%) Linux
2 11 (1.39%) Unix
3 3 (0.38%) Windows
4 2 (0.25%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.13%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 346 (43.74%) Data Pipeline
2 319 (40.33%) Data Engineering
3 316 (39.95%) ETL
4 298 (37.67%) Analytics
5 281 (35.52%) Data Modelling
6 217 (27.43%) CI/CD
7 174 (22.00%) DevOps
8 168 (21.24%) Business Intelligence
9 145 (18.33%) Data Governance
10 141 (17.83%) Agile
11 119 (15.04%) AI
12 118 (14.92%) Data Science
13 99 (12.52%) Infrastructure as Code
14 98 (12.39%) Data Architecture
15 90 (11.38%) Migration
15 90 (11.38%) Problem-Solving
16 86 (10.87%) Validation
17 83 (10.49%) Machine Learning
18 76 (9.61%) Decision-Making
19 69 (8.72%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 454 (57.40%) SQL
2 448 (56.64%) Python
3 74 (9.36%) Scala
4 67 (8.47%) Java
5 30 (3.79%) C#
6 23 (2.91%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 17 (2.15%) T-SQL
8 14 (1.77%) R
9 13 (1.64%) Bicep
10 11 (1.39%) JavaScript
11 10 (1.26%) Shell Script
12 9 (1.14%) Bash
12 9 (1.14%) PL/SQL
13 8 (1.01%) PowerShell
14 5 (0.63%) TypeScript
15 3 (0.38%) C
16 2 (0.25%) Korn
16 2 (0.25%) LookML
16 2 (0.25%) Ruby
16 2 (0.25%) VB
Qualifications
1 188 (23.77%) Security Cleared
2 175 (22.12%) SC Cleared
3 24 (3.03%) Degree
4 22 (2.78%) Azure Certification
5 17 (2.15%) BPSS Clearance
6 12 (1.52%) Computer Science Degree
7 10 (1.26%) AWS Certification
8 6 (0.76%) Microsoft Certification
9 5 (0.63%) DBS Check
10 4 (0.51%) DV Cleared
10 4 (0.51%) Master's Degree
11 3 (0.38%) CTC Cleared
11 3 (0.38%) SnowPro
12 1 (0.13%) BICSI Certification
12 1 (0.13%) CISA
12 1 (0.13%) CISM
12 1 (0.13%) CISSP
12 1 (0.13%) City & Guilds
12 1 (0.13%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 231 (29.20%) Data Quality
2 38 (4.80%) GDPR
3 26 (3.29%) QA
4 6 (0.76%) Accessibility
5 4 (0.51%) MiFID
6 3 (0.38%) SLA
7 2 (0.25%) EMIR
7 2 (0.25%) GMP
7 2 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.13%) GRC
8 1 (0.13%) GxP
8 1 (0.13%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.13%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.13%) PMO
8 1 (0.13%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.13%) SNOMED CT
8 1 (0.13%) WCAG
System Software
1 53 (6.70%) Docker
2 4 (0.51%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (0.13%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.13%) RACF
Systems Management
1 126 (15.93%) Terraform
2 37 (4.68%) Kubernetes
3 9 (1.14%) Grafana
4 4 (0.51%) Kibana
4 4 (0.51%) 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
1 239 (30.21%) Databricks
2 118 (14.92%) Microsoft
3 43 (5.44%) Google
4 35 (4.42%) Informatica
5 27 (3.41%) Oracle
6 13 (1.64%) IBM
7 11 (1.39%) Foundry
7 11 (1.39%) SAP
8 9 (1.14%) Palantir
8 9 (1.14%) ServiceNow
9 8 (1.01%) Talend
10 7 (0.88%) Denodo
11 6 (0.76%) Cloudera
11 6 (0.76%) MuleSoft
12 5 (0.63%) Bloomberg
12 5 (0.63%) Splunk
13 4 (0.51%) Alteryx
13 4 (0.51%) Hortonworks
13 4 (0.51%) OpenAI
13 4 (0.51%) Salesforce