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 14 September 2026.

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

6 months to
14 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 65 96 90
Rank change year-on-year +31 -6 -3
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 830 399 451
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.12% 2.99% 2.78%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.42% 3.22% 2.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 614 297 329
10th Percentile £388 £383 £410
25th Percentile £448 £450 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -8.70% -
75th Percentile £625 £600 £650
90th Percentile £713 £700 £750
England median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 10 4
10th Percentile £25.74 £34.24 -
25th Percentile £30.00 £42.25 £49.25
Median hourly rate £34.84 £52.50 £72.75
Median % change year-on-year -33.64% -27.84% +13.67%
75th Percentile £39.30 £60.31 £97.50
90th Percentile £55.75 £110.00 -
England median hourly rate £41.56 £52.50 £80.00
% change year-on-year -20.85% -34.38% +25.00%

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 18,789 12,374 15,247
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 93.25% 92.70% 94.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,111 8,285 10,262
10th Percentile £363 £325 £343
25th Percentile £450 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £540 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.85% -1.82% -4.35%
75th Percentile £656 £675 £675
90th Percentile £775 £775 £800
England median daily rate £525 £506 £525
% change year-on-year +3.75% -3.62% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 382 207 182
10th Percentile £17.60 £17.00 £17.54
25th Percentile £21.95 £23.00 £23.80
Median hourly rate £39.50 £30.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.51% -12.86% -6.67%
75th Percentile £63.10 £50.25 £57.13
90th Percentile £81.25 £66.34 £74.69
England median hourly rate £43.08 £25.15 £47.50
% change year-on-year +71.27% -47.05% +5.56%

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 14 September 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 14 September 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 14 September 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 +16 103 £565 +7.62% 64
West London -12 12 £450 -14.29% 15
East London +6 5 £450 - 13
South London -8 4 £475 +3.83% 10
Data Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 14 September 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.

1 464 (55.90%) SQL
2 456 (54.94%) Python
3 397 (47.83%) Data Pipeline
4 392 (47.23%) Data Engineering
5 314 (37.83%) Analytics
6 310 (37.35%) Data Modelling
7 309 (37.23%) ETL
8 305 (36.75%) AWS
9 294 (35.42%) Azure
10 250 (30.12%) CI/CD
11 249 (30.00%) Data Quality
12 193 (23.25%) Databricks
13 185 (22.29%) Security Cleared
14 169 (20.36%) Data Warehouse
15 168 (20.24%) SC Cleared
16 167 (20.12%) DevOps
17 165 (19.88%) Agile
17 165 (19.88%) AI
18 160 (19.28%) dbt
19 152 (18.31%) PySpark
19 152 (18.31%) Snowflake
20 148 (17.83%) Apache Airflow
21 143 (17.23%) Data Governance
22 138 (16.63%) Business Intelligence
23 127 (15.30%) Power Platform
24 126 (15.18%) Migration
25 125 (15.06%) Power BI
26 124 (14.94%) Data Transformation
27 119 (14.34%) Microsoft
28 113 (13.61%) Azure Data Factory

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
1 148 (17.83%) Apache Airflow
2 97 (11.69%) Apache Spark
3 83 (10.00%) Apache
4 13 (1.57%) Confluence
5 11 (1.33%) Palantir Foundry
6 10 (1.20%) SharePoint
7 7 (0.84%) SAS
8 5 (0.60%) Jupyter
9 2 (0.24%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.12%) Luigi
10 1 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
10 1 (0.12%) PowerExchange
10 1 (0.12%) R Markdown
Applications
1 11 (1.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.24%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 9 (1.08%) Aladdin
2 2 (0.24%) Maximo
2 2 (0.24%) SAP BPC
2 2 (0.24%) SAP Oil and Gas
2 2 (0.24%) SimCorp Dimension
2 2 (0.24%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 1 (0.12%) BambooHR
3 1 (0.12%) NetSuite
3 1 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.12%) Raiser’s Edge
3 1 (0.12%) Sage X3
3 1 (0.12%) SAP CAR
3 1 (0.12%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 305 (36.75%) AWS
2 294 (35.42%) Azure
3 160 (19.28%) dbt
4 152 (18.31%) Snowflake
5 127 (15.30%) Power Platform
6 113 (13.61%) Azure Data Factory
7 111 (13.37%) Amazon S3
7 111 (13.37%) GCP
8 85 (10.24%) Azure DevOps
9 80 (9.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 76 (9.16%) GitHub
11 71 (8.55%) Serverless
12 68 (8.19%) AWS Lambda
13 33 (3.98%) Azure Databricks
14 29 (3.49%) Amazon EMR
14 29 (3.49%) GitHub Actions
15 20 (2.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 20 (2.41%) Dagster
16 19 (2.29%) Microsoft Purview
17 18 (2.17%) Fivetran
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.12%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 169 (20.36%) Data Warehouse
2 125 (15.06%) Power BI
3 89 (10.72%) Data Lake
4 78 (9.40%) BigQuery
5 62 (7.47%) Metadata
6 55 (6.63%) Delta Lake
7 49 (5.90%) Amazon Redshift
8 47 (5.66%) Amazon Athena
9 42 (5.06%) SQL Server
10 41 (4.94%) Big Data
10 41 (4.94%) PostgreSQL
11 40 (4.82%) Snowflake Schema
12 38 (4.58%) NoSQL
12 38 (4.58%) Tableau
13 29 (3.49%) Relational Database
14 25 (3.01%) Azure SQL Database
15 24 (2.89%) Spark SQL
16 23 (2.77%) Amazon RDS
17 22 (2.65%) MongoDB
17 22 (2.65%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 90 (10.84%) Git
2 26 (3.13%) GitLab
3 20 (2.41%) JIRA
4 11 (1.33%) MLflow
5 6 (0.72%) Bitbucket
5 6 (0.72%) Jenkins
6 5 (0.60%) SonarQube
7 4 (0.48%) Selenium
8 3 (0.36%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 3 (0.36%) Claude Code
8 3 (0.36%) ERwin
9 2 (0.24%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 2 (0.24%) Terragrunt
10 1 (0.12%) ER Studio
10 1 (0.12%) Octopus Deploy
10 1 (0.12%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 223 (26.87%) Finance
2 137 (16.51%) Social Skills
3 98 (11.81%) Analytical Skills
4 72 (8.67%) Banking
5 48 (5.78%) Public Sector
6 19 (2.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 15 (1.81%) Retail
8 13 (1.57%) Front Office
8 13 (1.57%) Pharmaceutical
9 12 (1.45%) Marketing
10 8 (0.96%) Back Office
10 8 (0.96%) Telecoms
11 7 (0.84%) Financial Institution
12 6 (0.72%) Legal
12 6 (0.72%) Manufacturing
13 5 (0.60%) Local Government
14 4 (0.48%) Aerospace
14 4 (0.48%) Documentation Skills
14 4 (0.48%) Games
15 3 (0.36%) Aviation
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 152 (18.31%) PySpark
2 112 (13.49%) Terraform
3 77 (9.28%) Kafka
4 19 (2.29%) Spring
4 19 (2.29%) Spring Boot
5 16 (1.93%) REST
6 15 (1.81%) Apache Beam
6 15 (1.81%) Great Expectations
7 14 (1.69%) Pandas
8 13 (1.57%) React
9 10 (1.20%) Microsoft Graph
10 9 (1.08%) pytest
10 9 (1.08%) YAML
11 8 (0.96%) JSON
11 8 (0.96%) PyTorch
12 7 (0.84%) .NET
12 7 (0.84%) XML
13 6 (0.72%) HTML
13 6 (0.72%) LangChain
13 6 (0.72%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 93 (11.20%) Cloud Native
2 37 (4.46%) Legacy Systems
3 30 (3.61%) Data Structures
4 29 (3.49%) Onboarding
5 17 (2.05%) AI Agents
5 17 (2.05%) Product Ownership
6 16 (1.93%) Distributed Systems
6 16 (1.93%) Reinsurance
7 12 (1.45%) Greenfield Project
7 12 (1.45%) NHS
8 11 (1.33%) Algorithms
9 8 (0.96%) Clustering
9 8 (0.96%) Virtual Team
10 7 (0.84%) Reference Data
11 6 (0.72%) Analytical Mindset
11 6 (0.72%) Replication
12 5 (0.60%) Data Protection Act
12 5 (0.60%) Distributed Computing
12 5 (0.60%) Life Science
13 4 (0.48%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 21 (2.53%) Linux
2 14 (1.69%) Unix
3 1 (0.12%) Robot Operating System
3 1 (0.12%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 397 (47.83%) Data Pipeline
2 392 (47.23%) Data Engineering
3 314 (37.83%) Analytics
4 310 (37.35%) Data Modelling
5 309 (37.23%) ETL
6 250 (30.12%) CI/CD
7 167 (20.12%) DevOps
8 165 (19.88%) Agile
8 165 (19.88%) AI
9 143 (17.23%) Data Governance
10 138 (16.63%) Business Intelligence
11 126 (15.18%) Migration
12 124 (14.94%) Data Transformation
13 109 (13.13%) Validation
14 104 (12.53%) Machine Learning
15 102 (12.29%) Data Science
16 94 (11.33%) Infrastructure as Code
17 91 (10.96%) Lakehouse
17 91 (10.96%) Performance Optimisation
18 87 (10.48%) Data Architecture
Programming Languages
1 464 (55.90%) SQL
2 456 (54.94%) Python
3 78 (9.40%) Java
4 55 (6.63%) Scala
5 21 (2.53%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 17 (2.05%) PowerShell
7 15 (1.81%) JavaScript
7 15 (1.81%) T-SQL
8 14 (1.69%) PL/SQL
9 13 (1.57%) Shell Script
10 12 (1.45%) C#
11 10 (1.20%) R
12 9 (1.08%) TypeScript
13 6 (0.72%) Bicep
14 5 (0.60%) Go
14 5 (0.60%) Korn
15 4 (0.48%) Bash
16 3 (0.36%) LookML
17 2 (0.24%) Cypher
18 1 (0.12%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 185 (22.29%) Security Cleared
2 168 (20.24%) SC Cleared
3 21 (2.53%) Degree
4 18 (2.17%) BPSS Clearance
5 17 (2.05%) Azure Certification
6 11 (1.33%) Computer Science Degree
7 9 (1.08%) AWS Certification
8 8 (0.96%) DBS Check
9 7 (0.84%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 6 (0.72%) DV Cleared
10 6 (0.72%) SnowPro
11 4 (0.48%) Microsoft Certification
12 3 (0.36%) Master's Degree
13 1 (0.12%) CISA
13 1 (0.12%) CISSP
13 1 (0.12%) City & Guilds
13 1 (0.12%) PMI Certification
13 1 (0.12%) PMP
13 1 (0.12%) Postgraduate
13 1 (0.12%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 249 (30.00%) Data Quality
2 38 (4.58%) QA
3 22 (2.65%) GDPR
4 10 (1.20%) Accessibility
5 4 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 3 (0.36%) MiFID
7 2 (0.24%) EMIR
7 2 (0.24%) SLA
8 1 (0.12%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.12%) IFRS
8 1 (0.12%) IFRS 17
8 1 (0.12%) IFRS 9
8 1 (0.12%) PMO
8 1 (0.12%) SNOMED CT
8 1 (0.12%) WCAG
System Software
1 69 (8.31%) Docker
2 3 (0.36%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.24%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.12%) RACF
Systems Management
1 46 (5.54%) Kubernetes
2 9 (1.08%) Control-M
2 9 (1.08%) Grafana
3 5 (0.60%) Ansible
3 5 (0.60%) Kibana
4 2 (0.24%) Puppet
5 1 (0.12%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 193 (23.25%) Databricks
2 119 (14.34%) Microsoft
3 46 (5.54%) Google
4 45 (5.42%) Informatica
5 43 (5.18%) Oracle
6 18 (2.17%) Foundry
6 18 (2.17%) Palantir
7 13 (1.57%) Salesforce
8 11 (1.33%) Talend
9 10 (1.20%) Denodo
10 9 (1.08%) Bloomberg
10 9 (1.08%) Splunk
11 7 (0.84%) SAP
12 6 (0.72%) Amplitude
12 6 (0.72%) OpenAI
12 6 (0.72%) SnapLogic
13 5 (0.60%) Alteryx
13 5 (0.60%) IBM
13 5 (0.60%) New Relic
14 4 (0.48%) Mistral