Data Engineer Contract Job Trends in London

Data Engineer
England > London

The median Data Engineer daily rate in London is £533, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 9 November 2026.

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

6 months to
9 Nov 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 69 99 84
Rank change year-on-year +30 -15 +6
Contract Data Engineer jobs 812 415 470
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.01% 3.00% 3.01%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.33% 3.24% 3.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 600 303 332
10th Percentile £363 £380 £413
25th Percentile £435 £448 £489
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £525 £575
Median % change year-on-year +1.43% -8.70% +4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £751
England median daily rate £500 £513 £550
% change year-on-year -2.44% -6.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 8 5
10th Percentile £30.00 £32.23 £44.45
25th Percentile £30.17 £40.50 £49.25
Median hourly rate £33.09 £48.00 £95.00
Median % change year-on-year -31.06% -49.47% +53.85%
75th Percentile £34.84 £74.38 £97.50
90th Percentile £54.30 £110.00 -
England median hourly rate £58.00 £43.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +33.33% -27.50% -4.76%

All Contract IT Job Roles
London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job adverts in London matching a recognised job title. The table also shows what proportion of all contract IT job adverts they make up.

6 months to
9 Nov 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Contract job adverts in London matching a recognised job title 18,767 12,809 14,695
% of contract job adverts matching a recognised job title 92.72% 92.59% 94.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,240 8,501 9,488
10th Percentile £363 £335 £338
25th Percentile £450 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £545 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.92% -0.91% -4.26%
75th Percentile £663 £663 £675
90th Percentile £775 £775 £791
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 442 232 154
10th Percentile £16.50 £17.50 £17.25
25th Percentile £22.07 £21.75 £23.98
Median hourly rate £41.00 £26.68 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +53.70% -28.87% -1.52%
75th Percentile £64.81 £47.50 £58.75
90th Percentile £81.25 £69.75 £80.75
England median hourly rate £41.03 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +63.14% -37.13% -11.11%

Data Engineer Job Vacancy Trend in London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract Data Engineer job postings 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 Data Engineer jobs in London over the 6 months to 9 November 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 for Data Engineer jobs in London over the 6 months to 9 November 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 Data Engineer jobs within the London region over the 6 months to 9 November 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		 Job Ads
Past 6 Months		 Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months		 Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year		 Live
Jobs
Central London +11 93 £550 +4.76% 94
West London -1 21 £538 -6.52% 25
South London 0 7 £550 +14.94% 3
East London +3 2 £523 - 10
Data Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 9 November 2026, Data Engineer contract job ads cited 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 Data Engineer job ads across the London region.

RankSkillShareJob Ads
1Python56.7%460
2SQL56.3%457
3Data Engineering51.5%418
4Data Pipeline50.1%407
5Analytics37.3%303
5Data Modelling37.3%303
7ETL36.8%299
8AWS36.5%296
9Data Quality35.6%289
10Azure35.3%287
11CI/CD35.2%286
12Databricks27.7%225
13Security Cleared25.5%207
14AI22.5%183
15SC Cleared22.3%181
16Agile21.3%173
17Data Warehouse20.2%164
18dbt18.7%152
19DevOps18.1%147
19PySpark18.1%147
21Data Transformation18.0%146
22Snowflake17.9%145
23Apache Airflow17.7%144
24Data Governance17.4%141
25Migration16.6%135
26Machine Learning15.1%123
27GCP14.8%120
28Validation14.4%117
29Business Intelligence14.3%116
30Microsoft14.2%115

Data Engineer Skill Set Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in London by Category

The table below expands on the one above by listing co-occurrences one category at a time. It covers the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences in each category.

Job Titles

RankJob TitleShareJob Ads
1Senior Data Engineer22.2%180
2Databricks Data Engineer8.3%67
3Azure Engineer7.9%64
4Lead Data Engineer7.6%62
5Azure Data Engineer7.5%61
6AWS Engineer7.4%60
7AWS Data Engineer7.0%57
8Snowflake Engineer6.7%54
9Snowflake Data Engineer6.5%53
10Python Engineer6.4%52
11Python Data Engineer5.5%45
12GCP Engineer5.2%42
13GCP Data Engineer4.9%40
14Platform Engineer3.4%28
15Migration Engineer3.0%24
16Data Migration Engineer2.6%21
17Artificial Intelligence Engineer2.3%19
18Cloud Engineer2.0%16
18Data Scientist2.0%16
20Senior Databricks Data Engineer1.8%15
803 Data Engineer jobs in London