Data Engineer Contract Job Trends in London

Data Engineer
England > London

The median Data Engineer daily rate in London is £531, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 5 October 2026.

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

6 months to
5 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 71 98 84
Rank change year-on-year +27 -14 +18
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 815 397 465
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.04% 2.96% 2.87%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.34% 3.20% 3.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 604 292 334
10th Percentile £369 £380 £413
25th Percentile £437 £450 £477
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £531 £525 £570
Median % change year-on-year +1.19% -7.89% -0.87%
75th Percentile £638 £614 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £751
England median daily rate £500 £500 £550
% change year-on-year - -9.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 9 5
10th Percentile - £33.23 -
25th Percentile £30.00 £42.25 £49.25
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 £41.56 £48.00 £80.00
% change year-on-year -13.43% -40.00% +29.55%

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 18,770 12,424 15,211
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 93.13% 92.67% 94.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,117 8,295 9,975
10th Percentile £363 £332 £340
25th Percentile £450 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £545 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% -0.94% -4.35%
75th Percentile £663 £663 £675
90th Percentile £775 £775 £800
England median daily rate £525 £512 £525
% change year-on-year +2.64% -2.57% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 411 204 179
10th Percentile £17.00 £17.00 £17.45
25th Percentile £21.97 £22.69 £24.17
Median hourly rate £40.96 £27.81 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +47.27% -23.80% -3.31%
75th Percentile £64.63 £50.00 £58.13
90th Percentile £81.25 £66.92 £78.75
England median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.90
% change year-on-year +68.99% -42.71% -4.32%

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 +13 98 £565 +7.62% 93
West London -8 16 £485 -7.62% 16
East London +5 4 £460 - 3
South London -6 4 £475 +3.83% 2
Data Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 5 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.

1 452 (55.46%) SQL
2 446 (54.72%) Python
3 386 (47.36%) Data Engineering
4 380 (46.63%) Data Pipeline
5 300 (36.81%) ETL
6 299 (36.69%) Data Modelling
7 292 (35.83%) Analytics
8 285 (34.97%) AWS
9 283 (34.72%) Azure
10 252 (30.92%) Data Quality
11 248 (30.43%) CI/CD
12 201 (24.66%) Databricks
13 185 (22.70%) Security Cleared
14 169 (20.74%) Agile
15 165 (20.25%) AI
15 165 (20.25%) Data Warehouse
16 161 (19.75%) SC Cleared
17 157 (19.26%) dbt
18 152 (18.65%) DevOps
19 148 (18.16%) PySpark
20 146 (17.91%) Apache Airflow
21 144 (17.67%) Snowflake
22 133 (16.32%) Migration
23 131 (16.07%) Data Transformation
24 127 (15.58%) Data Governance
25 121 (14.85%) Business Intelligence
26 116 (14.23%) GCP
27 113 (13.87%) Validation
28 111 (13.62%) Microsoft
29 110 (13.50%) Azure Data Factory

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
1 146 (17.91%) Apache Airflow
2 104 (12.76%) Apache Spark
3 85 (10.43%) Apache
4 13 (1.60%) Confluence
5 10 (1.23%) SharePoint
6 9 (1.10%) Palantir Foundry
7 7 (0.86%) Jupyter
7 7 (0.86%) SAS
8 2 (0.25%) Microsoft Exchange
9 1 (0.12%) CMS
9 1 (0.12%) Luigi
9 1 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
9 1 (0.12%) PowerExchange
Applications
1 7 (0.86%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.25%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 11 (1.35%) Aladdin
2 2 (0.25%) Maximo
2 2 (0.25%) NetSuite
2 2 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
2 2 (0.25%) SAP BPC
2 2 (0.25%) SAP Oil and Gas
2 2 (0.25%) SimCorp Dimension
2 2 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 1 (0.12%) BambooHR
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
1 285 (34.97%) AWS
2 283 (34.72%) Azure
3 157 (19.26%) dbt
4 144 (17.67%) Snowflake
5 116 (14.23%) GCP
6 110 (13.50%) Azure Data Factory
6 110 (13.50%) Power Platform
7 98 (12.02%) Amazon S3
8 74 (9.08%) Azure DevOps
9 71 (8.71%) Serverless
10 69 (8.47%) GitHub
11 68 (8.34%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 66 (8.10%) AWS Lambda
13 38 (4.66%) Azure Databricks
14 30 (3.68%) GitHub Actions
15 29 (3.56%) Amazon EMR
16 19 (2.33%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 17 (2.09%) Amazon Kinesis
17 17 (2.09%) Fivetran
18 16 (1.96%) Amazon EventBridge
Communications & Networking
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
1 165 (20.25%) Data Warehouse
2 106 (13.01%) Power BI
3 80 (9.82%) Data Lake
4 75 (9.20%) BigQuery
5 61 (7.48%) Metadata
6 57 (6.99%) Delta Lake
7 56 (6.87%) Amazon Redshift
8 44 (5.40%) Amazon Athena
9 42 (5.15%) Big Data
9 42 (5.15%) PostgreSQL
10 39 (4.79%) NoSQL
11 38 (4.66%) SQL Server
12 36 (4.42%) Snowflake Schema
13 29 (3.56%) Relational Database
13 29 (3.56%) Tableau
14 25 (3.07%) Amazon RDS
15 21 (2.58%) Apache Iceberg
15 21 (2.58%) Spark SQL
16 20 (2.45%) MongoDB
16 20 (2.45%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 98 (12.02%) Git
2 28 (3.44%) GitLab
3 17 (2.09%) JIRA
4 11 (1.35%) MLflow
5 9 (1.10%) Jenkins
6 8 (0.98%) Bitbucket
7 6 (0.74%) Selenium
8 5 (0.61%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.37%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 3 (0.37%) Claude Code
9 3 (0.37%) ERwin
9 3 (0.37%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 2 (0.25%) Terragrunt
11 1 (0.12%) ER Studio
11 1 (0.12%) GoCD
11 1 (0.12%) Octopus Deploy
11 1 (0.12%) Postman
11 1 (0.12%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 211 (25.89%) Finance
2 137 (16.81%) Social Skills
3 95 (11.66%) Analytical Skills
4 77 (9.45%) Banking
5 47 (5.77%) Public Sector
6 18 (2.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 17 (2.09%) Front Office
8 15 (1.84%) Retail
9 13 (1.60%) Pharmaceutical
10 11 (1.35%) Back Office
11 9 (1.10%) Marketing
12 6 (0.74%) Financial Institution
12 6 (0.74%) Investment Banking
12 6 (0.74%) Legal
12 6 (0.74%) Manufacturing
13 5 (0.61%) Aerospace
13 5 (0.61%) Local Government
14 4 (0.49%) Games
14 4 (0.49%) Military
14 4 (0.49%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 148 (18.16%) PySpark
2 109 (13.37%) Terraform
3 78 (9.57%) Kafka
4 18 (2.21%) REST
5 15 (1.84%) Spring
5 15 (1.84%) Spring Boot
6 14 (1.72%) Apache Beam
6 14 (1.72%) Pandas
7 11 (1.35%) Great Expectations
8 10 (1.23%) Microsoft Graph
8 10 (1.23%) PyTorch
8 10 (1.23%) React
9 9 (1.10%) pytest
10 8 (0.98%) JSON
11 7 (0.86%) .NET
11 7 (0.86%) NumPy
11 7 (0.86%) XML
11 7 (0.86%) YAML
12 6 (0.74%) HTML
12 6 (0.74%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 98 (12.02%) Cloud Native
2 36 (4.42%) Legacy Systems
3 34 (4.17%) Onboarding
4 30 (3.68%) Data Structures
5 18 (2.21%) AI Agents
6 17 (2.09%) Product Ownership
7 15 (1.84%) Reinsurance
8 13 (1.60%) Distributed Systems
9 11 (1.35%) Algorithms
10 9 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
10 9 (1.10%) NHS
11 8 (0.98%) Clustering
11 8 (0.98%) Virtual Team
12 7 (0.86%) Distributed Computing
12 7 (0.86%) Replication
13 6 (0.74%) Derivative
14 5 (0.61%) Enterprise Software
14 5 (0.61%) Reference Data
15 4 (0.49%) Analytical Mindset
15 4 (0.49%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 20 (2.45%) Linux
2 13 (1.60%) Unix
3 1 (0.12%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 386 (47.36%) Data Engineering
2 380 (46.63%) Data Pipeline
3 300 (36.81%) ETL
4 299 (36.69%) Data Modelling
5 292 (35.83%) Analytics
6 248 (30.43%) CI/CD
7 169 (20.74%) Agile
8 165 (20.25%) AI
9 152 (18.65%) DevOps
10 133 (16.32%) Migration
11 131 (16.07%) Data Transformation
12 127 (15.58%) Data Governance
13 121 (14.85%) Business Intelligence
14 113 (13.87%) Validation
15 107 (13.13%) Machine Learning
16 93 (11.41%) Infrastructure as Code
16 93 (11.41%) Performance Optimisation
17 91 (11.17%) Lakehouse
18 90 (11.04%) Data Science
19 79 (9.69%) Data Architecture
Programming Languages
1 452 (55.46%) SQL
2 446 (54.72%) Python
3 62 (7.61%) Java
4 56 (6.87%) Scala
5 19 (2.33%) PowerShell
6 17 (2.09%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 15 (1.84%) JavaScript
8 14 (1.72%) Shell Script
8 14 (1.72%) T-SQL
9 12 (1.47%) PL/SQL
10 10 (1.23%) R
11 7 (0.86%) C#
11 7 (0.86%) TypeScript
12 6 (0.74%) Go
13 5 (0.61%) Bicep
13 5 (0.61%) Korn
14 3 (0.37%) Bash
15 2 (0.25%) Cypher
16 1 (0.12%) Kusto Query Language
16 1 (0.12%) LookML
Qualifications
1 185 (22.70%) Security Cleared
2 161 (19.75%) SC Cleared
3 23 (2.82%) BPSS Clearance
4 19 (2.33%) Degree
5 16 (1.96%) Azure Certification
6 10 (1.23%) Computer Science Degree
6 10 (1.23%) DV Cleared
7 9 (1.10%) AWS Certification
8 8 (0.98%) DBS Check
9 7 (0.86%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 5 (0.61%) Master's Degree
11 4 (0.49%) SnowPro
12 3 (0.37%) Microsoft Certification
13 1 (0.12%) AWS Certified Developer
13 1 (0.12%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
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
1 252 (30.92%) Data Quality
2 31 (3.80%) QA
3 17 (2.09%) GDPR
4 8 (0.98%) Accessibility
5 4 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 3 (0.37%) MiFID
7 2 (0.25%) EMIR
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%) PMO
8 1 (0.12%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 66 (8.10%) Docker
2 3 (0.37%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 52 (6.38%) Kubernetes
2 9 (1.10%) Control-M
3 8 (0.98%) Grafana
4 7 (0.86%) Ansible
5 6 (0.74%) Kibana
6 2 (0.25%) Puppet
7 1 (0.12%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 201 (24.66%) Databricks
2 111 (13.62%) Microsoft
3 52 (6.38%) Google
4 46 (5.64%) Oracle
5 36 (4.42%) Informatica
6 16 (1.96%) Foundry
6 16 (1.96%) Palantir
7 14 (1.72%) Salesforce
8 11 (1.35%) Talend
9 10 (1.23%) Denodo
10 9 (1.10%) Bloomberg
10 9 (1.10%) Splunk
11 8 (0.98%) SAP
12 7 (0.86%) OpenAI
13 6 (0.74%) Amplitude
13 6 (0.74%) SnapLogic
14 5 (0.61%) Mistral
14 5 (0.61%) New Relic
15 4 (0.49%) Alteryx
16 3 (0.37%) Teradata