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 31 January 2026.

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

6 months to
31 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 69 67 83
Rank change year-on-year -2 +16 +25
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 592 474 512
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.00% 3.43% 2.76%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.31% 3.66% 2.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 416 345 395
10th Percentile £363 £378 £375
25th Percentile £425 £463 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +4.76% -8.70%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £636
90th Percentile £738 £800 £700
England median daily rate £513 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 9 13
10th Percentile £28.19 £60.25 £35.13
25th Percentile £32.73 £65.00 £46.75
Median hourly rate £39.50 £92.50 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -57.30% +76.19% +50.00%
75th Percentile £61.06 £97.50 £64.50
90th Percentile £90.43 - £67.31
England median hourly rate £40.50 £83.75 £60.50
% change year-on-year -51.64% +38.43% -8.68%

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 13,721 12,957 17,285
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.64% 93.63% 93.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,099 8,286 12,493
10th Percentile £350 £338 £325
25th Percentile £425 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -5.98%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £675
90th Percentile £750 £800 £780
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 214 141 321
10th Percentile £18.25 £20.75 £16.02
25th Percentile £23.60 £24.50 £19.05
Median hourly rate £32.50 £35.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -7.14% +16.67% -11.76%
75th Percentile £63.08 £53.75 £50.75
90th Percentile £76.58 £78.75 £66.00
England median hourly rate £30.00 £35.00 £36.50
% change year-on-year -14.29% -4.11% +4.29%

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 31 January 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 31 January 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 31 January 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 71 £513 -8.89% 43
West London -6 22 £603 +9.55% 10
South London -4 6 £500 +1.27% 7
Data Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 31 January 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.

1 363 (61.32%) Python
2 357 (60.30%) SQL
3 277 (46.79%) Azure
4 266 (44.93%) Data Pipeline
5 251 (42.40%) ETL
6 248 (41.89%) Data Engineering
7 231 (39.02%) Databricks
8 224 (37.84%) Data Modelling
9 207 (34.97%) AWS
10 206 (34.80%) Analytics
11 179 (30.24%) Data Quality
12 172 (29.05%) CI/CD
13 156 (26.35%) Security Cleared
14 146 (24.66%) Business Intelligence
15 141 (23.82%) SC Cleared
16 128 (21.62%) Data Warehouse
17 127 (21.45%) DevOps
18 125 (21.11%) Power BI
18 125 (21.11%) Power Platform
19 118 (19.93%) PySpark
20 112 (18.92%) Azure Data Factory
21 108 (18.24%) Agile
22 106 (17.91%) Data Governance
23 101 (17.06%) Data Science
24 93 (15.71%) AI
25 92 (15.54%) Terraform
26 89 (15.03%) Snowflake
27 87 (14.70%) Amazon S3
28 86 (14.53%) Data Lake
29 81 (13.68%) Apache Spark

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 81 (13.68%) Apache Spark
2 75 (12.67%) Apache Airflow
3 45 (7.60%) Apache
4 13 (2.20%) Palantir Foundry
5 8 (1.35%) Confluence
6 4 (0.68%) Microsoft Exchange
7 3 (0.51%) SAS
8 2 (0.34%) ArcGIS
8 2 (0.34%) Jupyter
8 2 (0.34%) Luigi
8 2 (0.34%) SharePoint
9 1 (0.17%) Apache Pig
9 1 (0.17%) Appian
9 1 (0.17%) Camunda
9 1 (0.17%) IIS
9 1 (0.17%) Oracle Application Server
9 1 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 8 (1.35%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.17%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.17%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.17%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.34%) Aladdin
2 1 (0.17%) Actimize
2 1 (0.17%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.17%) Maximo
2 1 (0.17%) Oracle BPM
2 1 (0.17%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 277 (46.79%) Azure
2 207 (34.97%) AWS
3 125 (21.11%) Power Platform
4 112 (18.92%) Azure Data Factory
5 89 (15.03%) Snowflake
6 87 (14.70%) Amazon S3
7 75 (12.67%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 70 (11.82%) GitHub
9 68 (11.49%) GCP
10 63 (10.64%) dbt
10 63 (10.64%) Serverless
11 57 (9.63%) Azure DevOps
12 46 (7.77%) AWS Lambda
13 40 (6.76%) GitHub Actions
14 23 (3.89%) AWS CloudFormation
15 19 (3.21%) Amazon Kinesis
16 17 (2.87%) AWS Step Functions
16 17 (2.87%) SaaS
17 11 (1.86%) Collibra
17 11 (1.86%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.68%) Firewall
2 3 (0.51%) SAN
3 1 (0.17%) Internet
3 1 (0.17%) Network Security
3 1 (0.17%) Software-Defined Networking
3 1 (0.17%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 128 (21.62%) Data Warehouse
2 125 (21.11%) Power BI
3 86 (14.53%) Data Lake
4 77 (13.01%) SQL Server
5 43 (7.26%) Azure SQL Database
5 43 (7.26%) Delta Lake
5 43 (7.26%) Metadata
6 38 (6.42%) BigQuery
6 38 (6.42%) NoSQL
7 35 (5.91%) Amazon Redshift
7 35 (5.91%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 34 (5.74%) Big Data
9 32 (5.41%) PostgreSQL
10 31 (5.24%) Amazon Athena
11 28 (4.73%) Tableau
12 24 (4.05%) Relational Database
12 24 (4.05%) Star Schema
13 18 (3.04%) Snowflake Schema
14 17 (2.87%) Hadoop
15 16 (2.70%) Amazon QuickSight
Development Applications
1 77 (13.01%) Git
2 19 (3.21%) Jenkins
3 18 (3.04%) JIRA
4 16 (2.70%) MLflow
5 15 (2.53%) GitLab
6 1 (0.17%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.17%) DBeaver
6 1 (0.17%) ERwin
6 1 (0.17%) Gradle
6 1 (0.17%) Jaeger
6 1 (0.17%) Poetry
6 1 (0.17%) Selenium
6 1 (0.17%) Team Foundation Server
6 1 (0.17%) TeamCity
6 1 (0.17%) Terragrunt
6 1 (0.17%) Visual Studio
General
1 113 (19.09%) Finance
2 98 (16.55%) Social Skills
3 56 (9.46%) Analytical Skills
4 34 (5.74%) Public Sector
5 30 (5.07%) Banking
6 27 (4.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 14 (2.36%) Front Office
8 11 (1.86%) Investment Banking
9 10 (1.69%) Retail
10 9 (1.52%) Pharmaceutical
11 7 (1.18%) Marketing
11 7 (1.18%) Telecoms
12 4 (0.68%) Back Office
12 4 (0.68%) Corporate Banking
12 4 (0.68%) Military
13 3 (0.51%) Law
13 3 (0.51%) Organisational Skills
14 2 (0.34%) Financial Institution
14 2 (0.34%) International Banking
15 1 (0.17%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 118 (19.93%) PySpark
2 68 (11.49%) Kafka
3 23 (3.89%) Pandas
4 16 (2.70%) YAML
5 11 (1.86%) NumPy
5 11 (1.86%) PyTorch
5 11 (1.86%) REST
6 9 (1.52%) Great Expectations
7 8 (1.35%) Apache NiFi
7 8 (1.35%) XML
8 7 (1.18%) RabbitMQ
8 7 (1.18%) TensorFlow
9 6 (1.01%) JSON
10 5 (0.84%) Middleware
10 5 (0.84%) RESTful
11 4 (0.68%) GraphQL
11 4 (0.68%) OAuth
11 4 (0.68%) pytest
11 4 (0.68%) scikit-learn
11 4 (0.68%) Spark Streaming
Miscellaneous
1 51 (8.61%) Cloud Native
2 18 (3.04%) Data Structures
3 14 (2.36%) Legacy Systems
4 12 (2.03%) Onboarding
5 11 (1.86%) Product Ownership
5 11 (1.86%) Reinsurance
6 8 (1.35%) Greenfield Project
7 6 (1.01%) Public Cloud
7 6 (1.01%) Replication
8 5 (0.84%) Derivative
8 5 (0.84%) Equities
8 5 (0.84%) Linux Command Line
8 5 (0.84%) Virtual Team
9 4 (0.68%) AI Agents
9 4 (0.68%) Algorithms
9 4 (0.68%) Credit Risk
9 4 (0.68%) Distributed Computing
9 4 (0.68%) Genomics
9 4 (0.68%) Life Science
9 4 (0.68%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 9 (1.52%) Linux
2 1 (0.17%) Unix
2 1 (0.17%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 266 (44.93%) Data Pipeline
2 251 (42.40%) ETL
3 248 (41.89%) Data Engineering
4 224 (37.84%) Data Modelling
5 206 (34.80%) Analytics
6 172 (29.05%) CI/CD
7 146 (24.66%) Business Intelligence
8 127 (21.45%) DevOps
9 108 (18.24%) Agile
10 106 (17.91%) Data Governance
11 101 (17.06%) Data Science
12 93 (15.71%) AI
13 81 (13.68%) Data Architecture
14 79 (13.34%) Infrastructure as Code
15 76 (12.84%) Problem-Solving
16 74 (12.50%) Data Integration
16 74 (12.50%) Machine Learning
17 57 (9.63%) Data Transformation
18 56 (9.46%) Migration
19 50 (8.45%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 363 (61.32%) Python
2 357 (60.30%) SQL
3 72 (12.16%) Scala
4 40 (6.76%) Java
5 16 (2.70%) C#
6 12 (2.03%) Bash
6 12 (2.03%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 11 (1.86%) T-SQL
8 10 (1.69%) Bicep
8 10 (1.69%) JavaScript
8 10 (1.69%) PL/SQL
9 8 (1.35%) PowerShell
9 8 (1.35%) R
10 5 (0.84%) Shell Script
11 3 (0.51%) Go
11 3 (0.51%) Korn
11 3 (0.51%) TypeScript
12 2 (0.34%) VB
13 1 (0.17%) C
13 1 (0.17%) C++
Qualifications
1 156 (26.35%) Security Cleared
2 141 (23.82%) SC Cleared
3 18 (3.04%) Azure Certification
4 17 (2.87%) Degree
5 14 (2.36%) DV Cleared
6 11 (1.86%) AWS Certification
7 10 (1.69%) Computer Science Degree
8 5 (0.84%) BPSS Clearance
8 5 (0.84%) Master's Degree
8 5 (0.84%) Microsoft Certification
9 3 (0.51%) CTC Cleared
9 3 (0.51%) DBS Check
10 2 (0.34%) SnowPro
11 1 (0.17%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 1 (0.17%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 179 (30.24%) Data Quality
2 34 (5.74%) GDPR
3 10 (1.69%) QA
4 4 (0.68%) Accessibility
5 3 (0.51%) HIPAA
5 3 (0.51%) MiFID
6 2 (0.34%) Dodd-Frank
6 2 (0.34%) EMIR
6 2 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.34%) SLA
7 1 (0.17%) EU AI Act
7 1 (0.17%) GRC
7 1 (0.17%) NIST
7 1 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 1 (0.17%) SOC 2
System Software
1 31 (5.24%) Docker
2 5 (0.84%) Virtual Machines
2 5 (0.84%) zsh
3 1 (0.17%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.17%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 92 (15.54%) Terraform
2 33 (5.57%) Kubernetes
3 4 (0.68%) Grafana
4 3 (0.51%) Kubeflow
5 2 (0.34%) EMC NetWorker
5 2 (0.34%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.34%) Puppet
5 2 (0.34%) Tivoli Storage Manager
6 1 (0.17%) Ambari
6 1 (0.17%) Ansible
6 1 (0.17%) Argo
6 1 (0.17%) NetBackup
6 1 (0.17%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 231 (39.02%) Databricks
2 75 (12.67%) Microsoft
3 27 (4.56%) Google
3 27 (4.56%) Oracle
4 18 (3.04%) Informatica
5 15 (2.53%) Foundry
6 14 (2.36%) Palantir
7 11 (1.86%) ServiceNow
8 9 (1.52%) SAP
9 8 (1.35%) Cloudera
9 8 (1.35%) IBM
10 6 (1.01%) Talend
11 5 (0.84%) Virgin Media
12 4 (0.68%) Alteryx
12 4 (0.68%) Denodo
12 4 (0.68%) Salesforce
13 3 (0.51%) Cisco
13 3 (0.51%) EMC
13 3 (0.51%) Isilon
13 3 (0.51%) OpenAI