Data Engineer Contract Job Trends in London

Data Engineer
England > London

The median Data Engineer daily rate in London is £524, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 24 May 2026.

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

6 months to
24 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 72 82
Rank change year-on-year +25 +10 +12
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 851 428 490
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.66% 3.50% 2.82%
As % of the Job Titles category 5.02% 3.75% 3.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 616 328 396
10th Percentile £388 £400 £355
25th Percentile £454 £455 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £524 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.24% - -8.70%
75th Percentile £614 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £800 £725
England median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 6 8
10th Percentile £23.72 - £48.50
25th Percentile £30.30 £51.25 £49.25
Median hourly rate £42.50 £63.75 £51.13
Median % change year-on-year -33.33% +24.69% -28.99%
75th Percentile £49.75 £89.69 £56.73
90th Percentile £53.35 £93.75 £66.92
England median hourly rate £52.50 £63.75 £67.50
% change year-on-year -17.65% -5.56% -10.60%

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 16,936 11,403 16,267
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.79% 93.34% 93.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,216 7,773 11,764
10th Percentile £355 £343 £325
25th Percentile £431 £427 £441
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £682
90th Percentile £758 £800 £800
England median daily rate £515 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 271 145 319
10th Percentile £19.19 £20.24 £16.02
25th Percentile £25.25 £24.18 £20.22
Median hourly rate £39.50 £31.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +27.42% +12.73% -23.61%
75th Percentile £63.10 £49.75 £44.25
90th Percentile £76.58 £62.30 £65.23
England median hourly rate £45.00 £29.07 £37.18
% change year-on-year +54.80% -21.81% -17.38%

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 24 May 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 24 May 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 24 May 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 +19 123 £550 +10.00% 30
West London -3 31 £603 +6.73% 1
South London -11 8 £500 +5.26% 1
East London - 4 £450 - 5
Data Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 24 May 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.

1 477 (56.05%) SQL
2 469 (55.11%) Python
3 374 (43.95%) Data Pipeline
4 347 (40.78%) Azure
5 345 (40.54%) Data Engineering
6 341 (40.07%) ETL
7 320 (37.60%) Analytics
8 297 (34.90%) Data Modelling
9 281 (33.02%) AWS
10 244 (28.67%) Databricks
11 239 (28.08%) Data Quality
12 223 (26.20%) CI/CD
13 203 (23.85%) Security Cleared
14 190 (22.33%) SC Cleared
15 183 (21.50%) DevOps
16 169 (19.86%) Business Intelligence
17 165 (19.39%) Data Warehouse
18 156 (18.33%) Power Platform
19 146 (17.16%) Power BI
20 145 (17.04%) Data Governance
20 145 (17.04%) PySpark
21 143 (16.80%) Azure Data Factory
22 141 (16.57%) Agile
23 127 (14.92%) Terraform
24 125 (14.69%) AI
24 125 (14.69%) Data Lake
24 125 (14.69%) Microsoft
25 112 (13.16%) Apache Airflow
25 112 (13.16%) Data Science
26 111 (13.04%) Amazon S3

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
1 112 (13.16%) Apache Airflow
2 103 (12.10%) Apache Spark
3 61 (7.17%) Apache
4 7 (0.82%) Confluence
4 7 (0.82%) Palantir Foundry
5 5 (0.59%) Microsoft Exchange
6 4 (0.47%) Jupyter
6 4 (0.47%) SAS
7 2 (0.24%) SharePoint
8 1 (0.12%) Appian
8 1 (0.12%) Camunda
8 1 (0.12%) Luigi
8 1 (0.12%) R Markdown
Applications
1 11 (1.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.12%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 6 (0.71%) Aladdin
2 3 (0.35%) SimCorp Dimension
3 2 (0.24%) BambooHR
3 2 (0.24%) SAP BPC
4 1 (0.12%) Actimize
4 1 (0.12%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.12%) iTrent
4 1 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.12%) Raiser’s Edge
4 1 (0.12%) SAP Business ByDesign
Cloud Services
1 347 (40.78%) Azure
2 281 (33.02%) AWS
3 156 (18.33%) Power Platform
4 143 (16.80%) Azure Data Factory
5 111 (13.04%) Amazon S3
6 106 (12.46%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 102 (11.99%) Snowflake
8 101 (11.87%) Azure DevOps
9 95 (11.16%) dbt
10 94 (11.05%) GCP
11 88 (10.34%) GitHub
12 65 (7.64%) Serverless
13 59 (6.93%) AWS Lambda
14 42 (4.94%) GitHub Actions
15 25 (2.94%) AWS CloudFormation
16 21 (2.47%) Amazon Kinesis
16 21 (2.47%) Dagster
17 16 (1.88%) Amazon SQS
18 15 (1.76%) AWS Step Functions
18 15 (1.76%) Collibra
Communications & Networking
1 2 (0.24%) Structured Cabling
2 1 (0.12%) 4G
2 1 (0.12%) 5G
2 1 (0.12%) Firewall
2 1 (0.12%) Network Security
2 1 (0.12%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 165 (19.39%) Data Warehouse
2 146 (17.16%) Power BI
3 125 (14.69%) Data Lake
4 87 (10.22%) SQL Server
5 68 (7.99%) BigQuery
6 67 (7.87%) Delta Lake
7 60 (7.05%) Metadata
8 55 (6.46%) Azure SQL Database
9 48 (5.64%) Snowflake Schema
10 47 (5.52%) Tableau
11 45 (5.29%) Amazon Redshift
12 43 (5.05%) Amazon Athena
12 43 (5.05%) NoSQL
13 40 (4.70%) PostgreSQL
14 39 (4.58%) Big Data
15 37 (4.35%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 26 (3.06%) Relational Database
17 25 (2.94%) Star Schema
18 24 (2.82%) MongoDB
18 24 (2.82%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 83 (9.75%) Git
2 25 (2.94%) JIRA
3 21 (2.47%) GitLab
4 16 (1.88%) Jenkins
5 12 (1.41%) MLflow
6 2 (0.24%) SonarQube
6 2 (0.24%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.24%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 1 (0.12%) Jaeger
7 1 (0.12%) Poetry
7 1 (0.12%) Selenium
7 1 (0.12%) Terragrunt
General
1 209 (24.56%) Finance
2 123 (14.45%) Social Skills
3 98 (11.52%) Analytical Skills
4 52 (6.11%) Public Sector
5 50 (5.88%) Banking
6 23 (2.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 13 (1.53%) Pharmaceutical
7 13 (1.53%) Telecoms
8 12 (1.41%) Marketing
9 11 (1.29%) Front Office
9 11 (1.29%) Retail
10 10 (1.18%) Publishing
11 6 (0.71%) Documentation Skills
12 5 (0.59%) Back Office
12 5 (0.59%) Games
12 5 (0.59%) Investment Banking
13 4 (0.47%) Corporate Banking
13 4 (0.47%) Financial Institution
13 4 (0.47%) Manufacturing
13 4 (0.47%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 145 (17.04%) PySpark
2 87 (10.22%) Kafka
3 34 (4.00%) Pandas
4 22 (2.59%) Great Expectations
5 19 (2.23%) Spring
5 19 (2.23%) Spring Boot
6 18 (2.12%) YAML
7 13 (1.53%) REST
8 11 (1.29%) Matplotlib
8 11 (1.29%) scikit-learn
9 9 (1.06%) GeoJSON
9 9 (1.06%) JSON
9 9 (1.06%) Polars
9 9 (1.06%) PyTorch
10 8 (0.94%) Apache Beam
11 7 (0.82%) NumPy
11 7 (0.82%) React
12 6 (0.71%) HTML
12 6 (0.71%) Middleware
12 6 (0.71%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 90 (10.58%) Cloud Native
2 25 (2.94%) Legacy Systems
3 23 (2.70%) Data Structures
4 19 (2.23%) Greenfield Project
5 17 (2.00%) Product Ownership
5 17 (2.00%) Reinsurance
6 13 (1.53%) Distributed Systems
6 13 (1.53%) Onboarding
7 8 (0.94%) Distributed Computing
7 8 (0.94%) Replication
7 8 (0.94%) Self-Motivation
8 7 (0.82%) Clustering
8 7 (0.82%) Derivative
8 7 (0.82%) Reference Data
9 6 (0.71%) AI Agents
9 6 (0.71%) Life Science
9 6 (0.71%) NHS
10 5 (0.59%) Algorithms
10 5 (0.59%) Data Protection Act
10 5 (0.59%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 23 (2.70%) Linux
2 12 (1.41%) Unix
3 3 (0.35%) Windows
4 2 (0.24%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.12%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 374 (43.95%) Data Pipeline
2 345 (40.54%) Data Engineering
3 341 (40.07%) ETL
4 320 (37.60%) Analytics
5 297 (34.90%) Data Modelling
6 223 (26.20%) CI/CD
7 183 (21.50%) DevOps
8 169 (19.86%) Business Intelligence
9 145 (17.04%) Data Governance
10 141 (16.57%) Agile
11 125 (14.69%) AI
12 112 (13.16%) Data Science
13 105 (12.34%) Migration
14 100 (11.75%) Data Architecture
15 98 (11.52%) Infrastructure as Code
16 96 (11.28%) Validation
17 93 (10.93%) Problem-Solving
18 80 (9.40%) Decision-Making
19 79 (9.28%) Machine Learning
20 72 (8.46%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 477 (56.05%) SQL
2 469 (55.11%) Python
3 79 (9.28%) Java
4 76 (8.93%) Scala
5 29 (3.41%) C#
6 23 (2.70%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 23 (2.70%) T-SQL
7 14 (1.65%) PL/SQL
8 13 (1.53%) Bicep
8 13 (1.53%) R
9 10 (1.18%) Shell Script
10 9 (1.06%) Bash
10 9 (1.06%) JavaScript
11 6 (0.71%) PowerShell
12 5 (0.59%) TypeScript
13 3 (0.35%) C
13 3 (0.35%) Go
14 2 (0.24%) LookML
14 2 (0.24%) Ruby
14 2 (0.24%) VB
Qualifications
1 203 (23.85%) Security Cleared
2 190 (22.33%) SC Cleared
3 24 (2.82%) Degree
4 23 (2.70%) Azure Certification
5 17 (2.00%) BPSS Clearance
6 12 (1.41%) Computer Science Degree
7 10 (1.18%) DBS Check
8 6 (0.71%) AWS Certification
8 6 (0.71%) Microsoft Certification
9 4 (0.47%) Master's Degree
10 3 (0.35%) SnowPro
11 2 (0.24%) CTC Cleared
11 2 (0.24%) DV Cleared
12 1 (0.12%) BICSI Certification
12 1 (0.12%) CISA
12 1 (0.12%) CISM
12 1 (0.12%) CISSP
12 1 (0.12%) City & Guilds
12 1 (0.12%) Postgraduate
12 1 (0.12%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 239 (28.08%) Data Quality
2 35 (4.11%) GDPR
3 32 (3.76%) QA
4 7 (0.82%) Accessibility
5 5 (0.59%) MiFID
6 3 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 2 (0.24%) EMIR
7 2 (0.24%) GMP
7 2 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.24%) SLA
8 1 (0.12%) GRC
8 1 (0.12%) GxP
8 1 (0.12%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.12%) IFRS
8 1 (0.12%) IFRS 17
8 1 (0.12%) IFRS 9
8 1 (0.12%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.12%) PMO
8 1 (0.12%) SNOMED CT
8 1 (0.12%) WCAG
System Software
1 52 (6.11%) Docker
2 3 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (0.12%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.12%) RACF
Systems Management
1 127 (14.92%) Terraform
2 37 (4.35%) Kubernetes
3 10 (1.18%) Grafana
4 4 (0.47%) Kibana
5 2 (0.24%) Ansible
5 2 (0.24%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.24%) Thomson Reuters DACS
6 1 (0.12%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 244 (28.67%) Databricks
2 125 (14.69%) Microsoft
3 44 (5.17%) Google
4 37 (4.35%) Informatica
5 35 (4.11%) Oracle
6 11 (1.29%) SAP
7 10 (1.18%) Denodo
7 10 (1.18%) Foundry
7 10 (1.18%) Talend
8 9 (1.06%) IBM
9 8 (0.94%) ServiceNow
10 7 (0.82%) Alteryx
10 7 (0.82%) Bloomberg
10 7 (0.82%) Palantir
11 6 (0.71%) MuleSoft
12 5 (0.59%) Cloudera
12 5 (0.59%) Salesforce
12 5 (0.59%) Splunk
13 4 (0.47%) Hortonworks
13 4 (0.47%) Refinitiv