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 29 January 2026.

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

6 months to
29 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 70 71 81
Rank change year-on-year +1 +10 +26
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 589 473 504
As % of all contract jobs in London 3.99% 3.40% 2.76%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.30% 3.64% 2.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 417 344 387
10th Percentile £363 £386 £379
25th Percentile £430 £463 £453
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £570 £525
Median % change year-on-year -7.89% +8.57% -8.70%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £638
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% -17.49%
75th Percentile £61.06 £97.50 £64.50
90th Percentile £90.43 - £67.31
England median hourly rate £37.50 £83.75 £60.50
% change year-on-year -55.22% +38.43% -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 13,690 13,011 16,973
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.64% 93.60% 93.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,077 8,349 12,255
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 £775
England median daily rate £501 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.67% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 219 141 306
10th Percentile £18.25 £20.75 £16.14
25th Percentile £23.65 £24.18 £19.10
Median hourly rate £33.46 £35.00 £29.61
Median % change year-on-year -4.40% +18.20% -14.17%
75th Percentile £63.05 £53.75 £50.63
90th Percentile £76.58 £78.75 £67.00
England median hourly rate £30.00 £35.00 £37.50
% change year-on-year -14.29% -6.67% +7.14%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 +10 71 £513 -10.87% 49
West London -2 21 £603 +9.55% 12
South London -5 6 £500 +1.27% 10
Data Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 29 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.

1 360 (61.12%) Python
2 354 (60.10%) SQL
3 277 (47.03%) Azure
4 266 (45.16%) Data Pipeline
5 249 (42.28%) ETL
6 245 (41.60%) Data Engineering
7 232 (39.39%) Databricks
8 222 (37.69%) Data Modelling
9 205 (34.80%) Analytics
10 204 (34.63%) AWS
11 179 (30.39%) Data Quality
12 173 (29.37%) CI/CD
13 156 (26.49%) Security Cleared
14 145 (24.62%) Business Intelligence
15 141 (23.94%) SC Cleared
16 128 (21.73%) Data Warehouse
17 127 (21.56%) DevOps
18 124 (21.05%) Power BI
18 124 (21.05%) Power Platform
19 118 (20.03%) PySpark
20 114 (19.35%) Azure Data Factory
21 109 (18.51%) Agile
22 106 (18.00%) Data Governance
23 101 (17.15%) Data Science
24 91 (15.45%) AI
24 91 (15.45%) Terraform
25 89 (15.11%) Snowflake
26 86 (14.60%) Amazon S3
26 86 (14.60%) Data Lake
27 81 (13.75%) 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 (13.75%) Apache Spark
2 75 (12.73%) Apache Airflow
3 45 (7.64%) Apache
4 8 (1.36%) Confluence
5 4 (0.68%) Microsoft Exchange
6 3 (0.51%) SAS
7 2 (0.34%) ArcGIS
7 2 (0.34%) Jupyter
7 2 (0.34%) Luigi
7 2 (0.34%) SharePoint
8 1 (0.17%) Apache Pig
8 1 (0.17%) Appian
8 1 (0.17%) Camunda
8 1 (0.17%) IIS
8 1 (0.17%) Oracle Application Server
8 1 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 8 (1.36%) 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 (47.03%) Azure
2 204 (34.63%) AWS
3 124 (21.05%) Power Platform
4 114 (19.35%) Azure Data Factory
5 89 (15.11%) Snowflake
6 86 (14.60%) Amazon S3
7 75 (12.73%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 70 (11.88%) GitHub
9 67 (11.38%) GCP
10 63 (10.70%) dbt
11 62 (10.53%) Serverless
12 56 (9.51%) Azure DevOps
13 45 (7.64%) AWS Lambda
14 40 (6.79%) GitHub Actions
15 23 (3.90%) AWS CloudFormation
16 19 (3.23%) Amazon Kinesis
17 17 (2.89%) SaaS
18 16 (2.72%) AWS Step Functions
19 11 (1.87%) Amazon SQS
19 11 (1.87%) Collibra
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
Database & Business Intelligence
1 128 (21.73%) Data Warehouse
2 124 (21.05%) Power BI
3 86 (14.60%) Data Lake
4 77 (13.07%) SQL Server
5 43 (7.30%) Azure SQL Database
5 43 (7.30%) Delta Lake
5 43 (7.30%) Metadata
6 38 (6.45%) BigQuery
6 38 (6.45%) NoSQL
7 35 (5.94%) Amazon Redshift
7 35 (5.94%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 34 (5.77%) Big Data
9 31 (5.26%) Amazon Athena
9 31 (5.26%) PostgreSQL
10 27 (4.58%) Tableau
11 24 (4.07%) Relational Database
12 23 (3.90%) Star Schema
13 18 (3.06%) Snowflake Schema
14 17 (2.89%) Hadoop
15 16 (2.72%) Amazon QuickSight
Development Applications
1 76 (12.90%) Git
2 19 (3.23%) Jenkins
3 18 (3.06%) JIRA
4 16 (2.72%) MLflow
5 15 (2.55%) 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 (19.19%) Finance
2 96 (16.30%) Social Skills
3 57 (9.68%) Analytical Skills
4 34 (5.77%) Public Sector
5 29 (4.92%) Banking
6 27 (4.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 14 (2.38%) Front Office
8 11 (1.87%) Investment Banking
9 10 (1.70%) Retail
10 9 (1.53%) Pharmaceutical
11 7 (1.19%) Marketing
11 7 (1.19%) 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%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 118 (20.03%) PySpark
2 67 (11.38%) Kafka
3 22 (3.74%) Pandas
4 16 (2.72%) YAML
5 11 (1.87%) NumPy
5 11 (1.87%) PyTorch
5 11 (1.87%) REST
6 9 (1.53%) Great Expectations
7 8 (1.36%) Apache NiFi
7 8 (1.36%) XML
8 7 (1.19%) RabbitMQ
8 7 (1.19%) TensorFlow
9 6 (1.02%) JSON
10 5 (0.85%) Middleware
10 5 (0.85%) RESTful
11 4 (0.68%) GraphQL
11 4 (0.68%) Node.js
11 4 (0.68%) OAuth
11 4 (0.68%) pytest
11 4 (0.68%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 50 (8.49%) Cloud Native
2 18 (3.06%) Data Structures
3 14 (2.38%) Legacy Systems
4 12 (2.04%) Onboarding
5 11 (1.87%) Product Ownership
5 11 (1.87%) Reinsurance
6 8 (1.36%) Greenfield Project
7 6 (1.02%) Public Cloud
7 6 (1.02%) Replication
8 5 (0.85%) Derivative
8 5 (0.85%) Equities
8 5 (0.85%) Linux Command Line
8 5 (0.85%) 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%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 8 (1.36%) Linux
2 1 (0.17%) Unix
2 1 (0.17%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 266 (45.16%) Data Pipeline
2 249 (42.28%) ETL
3 245 (41.60%) Data Engineering
4 222 (37.69%) Data Modelling
5 205 (34.80%) Analytics
6 173 (29.37%) CI/CD
7 145 (24.62%) Business Intelligence
8 127 (21.56%) DevOps
9 109 (18.51%) Agile
10 106 (18.00%) Data Governance
11 101 (17.15%) Data Science
12 91 (15.45%) AI
13 81 (13.75%) Data Architecture
14 78 (13.24%) Infrastructure as Code
15 75 (12.73%) Problem-Solving
16 74 (12.56%) Data Integration
17 73 (12.39%) Machine Learning
18 57 (9.68%) Data Transformation
18 57 (9.68%) Migration
19 49 (8.32%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 360 (61.12%) Python
2 354 (60.10%) SQL
3 74 (12.56%) Scala
4 40 (6.79%) Java
5 16 (2.72%) C#
6 12 (2.04%) Bash
6 12 (2.04%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 11 (1.87%) T-SQL
8 10 (1.70%) Bicep
8 10 (1.70%) JavaScript
8 10 (1.70%) PL/SQL
9 8 (1.36%) PowerShell
9 8 (1.36%) R
10 5 (0.85%) 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%) HiveQL
Qualifications
1 156 (26.49%) Security Cleared
2 141 (23.94%) SC Cleared
3 18 (3.06%) Azure Certification
4 16 (2.72%) Degree
5 14 (2.38%) DV Cleared
6 11 (1.87%) AWS Certification
7 10 (1.70%) Computer Science Degree
8 5 (0.85%) BPSS Clearance
8 5 (0.85%) Master's Degree
8 5 (0.85%) Microsoft Certification
9 3 (0.51%) CTC Cleared
9 3 (0.51%) DBS Check
10 2 (0.34%) SnowPro
11 1 (0.17%) MCP
11 1 (0.17%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 179 (30.39%) Data Quality
2 34 (5.77%) GDPR
3 10 (1.70%) 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 (5.26%) Docker
2 5 (0.85%) Virtual Machines
2 5 (0.85%) zsh
3 1 (0.17%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.17%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 91 (15.45%) Terraform
2 33 (5.60%) 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
1 232 (39.39%) Databricks
2 75 (12.73%) Microsoft
3 27 (4.58%) Google
3 27 (4.58%) Oracle
4 18 (3.06%) Informatica
5 15 (2.55%) Foundry
6 14 (2.38%) Palantir
7 11 (1.87%) ServiceNow
8 9 (1.53%) SAP
9 8 (1.36%) Cloudera
9 8 (1.36%) IBM
10 6 (1.02%) Talend
11 5 (0.85%) 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%) Splunk