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 18 January 2026.

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

6 months to
18 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 68 74 83
Rank change year-on-year +6 +9 +20
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 567 464 496
As % of all contract jobs in London 3.95% 3.31% 2.72%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.27% 3.54% 2.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 405 339 376
10th Percentile £363 £375 £400
25th Percentile £425 £463 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £525
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% +9.52% -8.70%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £638
90th Percentile £731 £800 £700
England median daily rate £513 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 7 12
10th Percentile £29.20 £55.50 £35.06
25th Percentile £35.25 £65.00 £45.85
Median hourly rate £43.50 £92.50 £56.50
Median % change year-on-year -52.97% +63.72% -2.59%
75th Percentile £110.00 £97.50 £64.51
90th Percentile - - £67.65
England median hourly rate £40.50 £78.75 £60.50
% change year-on-year -48.57% +30.17% -13.57%

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 13,269 13,107 16,957
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.51% 93.57% 93.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,794 8,428 12,231
10th Percentile £350 £339 £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 £788
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 219 143 258
10th Percentile £18.25 £20.15 £16.25
25th Percentile £23.55 £23.80 £19.10
Median hourly rate £32.45 £35.00 £31.61
Median % change year-on-year -7.29% +10.74% -7.04%
75th Percentile £62.63 £53.75 £53.69
90th Percentile £76.58 £80.35 £70.60
England median hourly rate £28.00 £35.00 £41.23
% change year-on-year -20.00% -15.11% +17.80%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 +14 69 £525 -8.70% 39
West London -7 16 £603 +9.55% 5
South London -2 6 £500 +1.27% 3
Data Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 18 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.

1 351 (61.90%) Python
2 341 (60.14%) SQL
3 270 (47.62%) Azure
4 259 (45.68%) Data Pipeline
5 240 (42.33%) Data Engineering
6 233 (41.09%) ETL
7 226 (39.86%) Databricks
8 210 (37.04%) Data Modelling
9 191 (33.69%) AWS
10 189 (33.33%) Analytics
11 170 (29.98%) Data Quality
12 161 (28.40%) CI/CD
13 150 (26.46%) Security Cleared
14 140 (24.69%) Business Intelligence
15 134 (23.63%) SC Cleared
16 126 (22.22%) Data Warehouse
17 123 (21.69%) DevOps
18 118 (20.81%) Power BI
18 118 (20.81%) Power Platform
19 113 (19.93%) Azure Data Factory
19 113 (19.93%) PySpark
20 108 (19.05%) Agile
21 103 (18.17%) Data Governance
22 100 (17.64%) Data Science
23 86 (15.17%) AI
24 82 (14.46%) Data Lake
24 82 (14.46%) Snowflake
24 82 (14.46%) Terraform
25 81 (14.29%) Data Architecture
26 80 (14.11%) 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 80 (14.11%) Apache Spark
2 75 (13.23%) Apache Airflow
3 44 (7.76%) Apache
4 10 (1.76%) Confluence
5 4 (0.71%) Microsoft Exchange
6 3 (0.53%) SAS
6 3 (0.53%) SharePoint
7 2 (0.35%) ArcGIS
7 2 (0.35%) Jupyter
7 2 (0.35%) Luigi
8 1 (0.18%) Apache Pig
8 1 (0.18%) Appian
8 1 (0.18%) IIS
8 1 (0.18%) Oracle Application Server
8 1 (0.18%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 8 (1.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.18%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.18%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.35%) Aladdin
2 1 (0.18%) Actimize
2 1 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.18%) Maximo
2 1 (0.18%) Oracle BPM
2 1 (0.18%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 270 (47.62%) Azure
2 191 (33.69%) AWS
3 118 (20.81%) Power Platform
4 113 (19.93%) Azure Data Factory
5 82 (14.46%) Snowflake
6 76 (13.40%) Amazon S3
7 72 (12.70%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 65 (11.46%) GCP
9 64 (11.29%) GitHub
10 62 (10.93%) dbt
11 56 (9.88%) Serverless
12 52 (9.17%) Azure DevOps
13 39 (6.88%) AWS Lambda
14 37 (6.53%) GitHub Actions
15 20 (3.53%) AWS CloudFormation
16 18 (3.17%) Amazon Kinesis
17 17 (3.00%) SaaS
18 14 (2.47%) AWS Step Functions
19 11 (1.94%) Amazon EMR
19 11 (1.94%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.71%) Firewall
2 3 (0.53%) SAN
3 1 (0.18%) Internet
3 1 (0.18%) Network Security
3 1 (0.18%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 126 (22.22%) Data Warehouse
2 118 (20.81%) Power BI
3 82 (14.46%) Data Lake
4 74 (13.05%) SQL Server
5 42 (7.41%) Azure SQL Database
5 42 (7.41%) Metadata
6 41 (7.23%) Delta Lake
7 38 (6.70%) NoSQL
8 35 (6.17%) Big Data
8 35 (6.17%) BigQuery
9 34 (6.00%) Amazon Redshift
9 34 (6.00%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 30 (5.29%) PostgreSQL
11 27 (4.76%) Amazon Athena
12 24 (4.23%) Relational Database
12 24 (4.23%) Tableau
13 22 (3.88%) Star Schema
14 20 (3.53%) Hadoop
15 16 (2.82%) Amazon QuickSight
15 16 (2.82%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 70 (12.35%) Git
2 21 (3.70%) Jenkins
3 19 (3.35%) JIRA
4 16 (2.82%) MLflow
5 15 (2.65%) GitLab
6 1 (0.18%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.18%) DBeaver
6 1 (0.18%) ERwin
6 1 (0.18%) GoCD
6 1 (0.18%) Gradle
6 1 (0.18%) Jaeger
6 1 (0.18%) Poetry
6 1 (0.18%) Selenium
6 1 (0.18%) Team Foundation Server
6 1 (0.18%) TeamCity
6 1 (0.18%) Terragrunt
6 1 (0.18%) Visual Studio
General
1 114 (20.11%) Finance
2 97 (17.11%) Social Skills
3 58 (10.23%) Analytical Skills
4 36 (6.35%) Public Sector
5 27 (4.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 26 (4.59%) Banking
7 14 (2.47%) Front Office
8 12 (2.12%) Pharmaceutical
9 11 (1.94%) Investment Banking
10 9 (1.59%) Retail
11 7 (1.23%) Marketing
11 7 (1.23%) Telecoms
12 4 (0.71%) Back Office
12 4 (0.71%) Corporate Banking
12 4 (0.71%) Military
13 3 (0.53%) Financial Institution
13 3 (0.53%) Law
13 3 (0.53%) Organisational Skills
14 2 (0.35%) International Banking
15 1 (0.18%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 113 (19.93%) PySpark
2 65 (11.46%) Kafka
3 20 (3.53%) Pandas
4 15 (2.65%) YAML
5 11 (1.94%) NumPy
5 11 (1.94%) REST
6 10 (1.76%) PyTorch
7 9 (1.59%) Apache NiFi
8 8 (1.41%) RabbitMQ
8 8 (1.41%) XML
9 7 (1.23%) Great Expectations
9 7 (1.23%) TensorFlow
10 6 (1.06%) JSON
10 6 (1.06%) RESTful
11 5 (0.88%) LangChain
11 5 (0.88%) Middleware
12 4 (0.71%) OAuth
12 4 (0.71%) pytest
12 4 (0.71%) scikit-learn
12 4 (0.71%) Spark Streaming
Miscellaneous
1 40 (7.05%) Cloud Native
2 19 (3.35%) Data Structures
3 14 (2.47%) Legacy Systems
4 12 (2.12%) Onboarding
5 11 (1.94%) Product Ownership
5 11 (1.94%) Reinsurance
6 9 (1.59%) Greenfield Project
7 6 (1.06%) Life Science
7 6 (1.06%) Replication
8 5 (0.88%) Algorithms
8 5 (0.88%) Derivative
8 5 (0.88%) Equities
8 5 (0.88%) Genomics
8 5 (0.88%) Linux Command Line
8 5 (0.88%) Public Cloud
9 4 (0.71%) AI Agents
9 4 (0.71%) Distributed Computing
9 4 (0.71%) Management Information System
9 4 (0.71%) Self-Motivation
9 4 (0.71%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 9 (1.59%) Linux
2 1 (0.18%) Unix
2 1 (0.18%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 259 (45.68%) Data Pipeline
2 240 (42.33%) Data Engineering
3 233 (41.09%) ETL
4 210 (37.04%) Data Modelling
5 189 (33.33%) Analytics
6 161 (28.40%) CI/CD
7 140 (24.69%) Business Intelligence
8 123 (21.69%) DevOps
9 108 (19.05%) Agile
10 103 (18.17%) Data Governance
11 100 (17.64%) Data Science
12 86 (15.17%) AI
13 81 (14.29%) Data Architecture
14 76 (13.40%) Data Integration
15 75 (13.23%) Problem-Solving
16 72 (12.70%) Infrastructure as Code
17 70 (12.35%) Machine Learning
18 56 (9.88%) Migration
19 55 (9.70%) Data Transformation
20 45 (7.94%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 351 (61.90%) Python
2 341 (60.14%) SQL
3 69 (12.17%) Scala
4 39 (6.88%) Java
5 14 (2.47%) C#
6 13 (2.29%) Bash
7 12 (2.12%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 10 (1.76%) Bicep
8 10 (1.76%) JavaScript
8 10 (1.76%) PL/SQL
9 9 (1.59%) T-SQL
10 8 (1.41%) PowerShell
10 8 (1.41%) R
11 6 (1.06%) Shell Script
12 4 (0.71%) Go
13 3 (0.53%) Korn
13 3 (0.53%) TypeScript
14 2 (0.35%) VB
15 1 (0.18%) C
15 1 (0.18%) C++
Qualifications
1 150 (26.46%) Security Cleared
2 134 (23.63%) SC Cleared
3 17 (3.00%) Azure Certification
3 17 (3.00%) Degree
4 15 (2.65%) DV Cleared
5 11 (1.94%) Computer Science Degree
6 10 (1.76%) AWS Certification
7 5 (0.88%) BPSS Clearance
7 5 (0.88%) Microsoft Certification
8 4 (0.71%) Master's Degree
9 3 (0.53%) CTC Cleared
9 3 (0.53%) DBS Check
10 2 (0.35%) SnowPro
11 1 (0.18%) MCP
11 1 (0.18%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 170 (29.98%) Data Quality
2 37 (6.53%) GDPR
3 10 (1.76%) QA
4 4 (0.71%) Accessibility
4 4 (0.71%) HIPAA
4 4 (0.71%) MiFID
5 3 (0.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.35%) Dodd-Frank
6 2 (0.35%) EMIR
6 2 (0.35%) SLA
7 1 (0.18%) EU AI Act
7 1 (0.18%) GRC
7 1 (0.18%) HL7
7 1 (0.18%) ISO/IEC 20000
7 1 (0.18%) NIST
7 1 (0.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 1 (0.18%) SOC 2
System Software
1 31 (5.47%) Docker
2 5 (0.88%) Virtual Machines
2 5 (0.88%) zsh
3 1 (0.18%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.18%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 82 (14.46%) Terraform
2 33 (5.82%) Kubernetes
3 4 (0.71%) Grafana
4 3 (0.53%) Kubeflow
5 2 (0.35%) Ansible
5 2 (0.35%) EMC NetWorker
5 2 (0.35%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.35%) Puppet
5 2 (0.35%) Tivoli Storage Manager
6 1 (0.18%) Ambari
6 1 (0.18%) Argo
6 1 (0.18%) NetBackup
6 1 (0.18%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 226 (39.86%) Databricks
2 76 (13.40%) Microsoft
3 28 (4.94%) Oracle
4 25 (4.41%) Google
5 17 (3.00%) Foundry
6 16 (2.82%) Palantir
7 15 (2.65%) Informatica
8 11 (1.94%) ServiceNow
9 9 (1.59%) Cloudera
9 9 (1.59%) SAP
10 8 (1.41%) IBM
11 5 (0.88%) Talend
11 5 (0.88%) Virgin Media
12 4 (0.71%) Alteryx
12 4 (0.71%) Denodo
12 4 (0.71%) Salesforce
13 3 (0.53%) Cisco
13 3 (0.53%) EMC
13 3 (0.53%) OpenAI
13 3 (0.53%) Splunk