Data Engineer Contract Job Trends in London

Data Engineer
England > London

The median Data Engineer daily rate in London is £531, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 2 November 2026.

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

6 months to
2 Nov 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 71 93 83
Rank change year-on-year +22 -10 +12
Contract Data Engineer jobs 829 412 464
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.09% 3.03% 2.97%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.41% 3.27% 3.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 610 303 329
10th Percentile £364 £380 £413
25th Percentile £434 £450 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £531 £525 £575
Median % change year-on-year +1.19% -8.70% +4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £754
England median daily rate £500 £513 £550
% change year-on-year -2.44% -6.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 8 4
10th Percentile £30.00 £32.23 £62.23
25th Percentile £30.17 £40.50 £81.69
Median hourly rate £33.09 £48.00 £95.00
Median % change year-on-year -31.06% -49.47% +53.85%
75th Percentile £34.84 £74.38 £97.50
90th Percentile £54.30 £110.00 -
England median hourly rate £51.25 £48.00 £77.50
% change year-on-year +6.77% -38.06% +23.02%

All Contract IT Job Roles
London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job adverts in London matching a recognised job title. The table also shows what proportion of all contract IT job adverts they make up.

6 months to
2 Nov 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Contract job adverts in London matching a recognised job title 18,804 12,582 14,705
% of contract job adverts matching a recognised job title 92.70% 92.58% 94.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,265 8,345 9,504
10th Percentile £363 £335 £340
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 £663 £663 £675
90th Percentile £775 £775 £794
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 435 222 159
10th Percentile £16.50 £17.50 £17.25
25th Percentile £21.72 £22.50 £24.87
Median hourly rate £40.96 £26.68 £39.00
Median % change year-on-year +53.55% -31.60% -3.70%
75th Percentile £64.63 £47.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £81.25 £67.31 £80.75
England median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £41.27
% change year-on-year +63.02% -39.05% -10.35%

Data Engineer Job Vacancy Trend in London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract Data Engineer job postings 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 Data Engineer jobs in London over the 6 months to 2 November 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 for Data Engineer jobs in London over the 6 months to 2 November 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 Data Engineer jobs within the London region over the 6 months to 2 November 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		 Job Ads
Past 6 Months		 Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months		 Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year		 Live
Jobs
Central London +13 97 £550 +4.76% 28
West London -3 21 £538 -6.52% 20
South London 0 6 £525 +9.72% 3
East London +1 3 £470 - 4
Data Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 2 November 2026, Data Engineer contract job ads cited 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 Data Engineer job ads across the London region.

RankSkillShareJob Ads
1Python56.5%468
2SQL56.3%467
3Data Engineering50.7%420
4Data Pipeline49.5%410
5Data Modelling37.2%308
6ETL37.0%307
7Analytics36.2%300
7AWS36.2%300
9Azure35.1%291
10Data Quality34.9%289
11CI/CD34.5%286
12Databricks27.6%229
13Security Cleared25.2%209
14SC Cleared22.1%183
15AI22.0%182
16Agile20.9%173
17Data Warehouse20.0%166
18dbt18.5%153
18PySpark18.5%153
20DevOps18.1%150
21Snowflake17.6%146
22Apache Airflow17.5%145
23Data Governance17.2%143
23Data Transformation17.2%143
25Migration16.4%136
26GCP14.4%119
26Machine Learning14.4%119
26Validation14.4%119
29Business Intelligence14.0%116
30Azure Data Factory13.9%115

Data Engineer Skill Set Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in London by Category

The table below expands on the one above by listing co-occurrences one category at a time. It covers the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences in each category.

Job Titles

RankJob TitleShareJob Ads
1Senior Data Engineer22.2%184
2Databricks Data Engineer8.6%71
3Azure Engineer8.2%68
4Azure Data Engineer7.7%64
5AWS Engineer7.6%63
6Lead Data Engineer7.5%62
7AWS Data Engineer7.2%60
8Snowflake Engineer7.1%59
9Snowflake Data Engineer7.0%58
10Python Engineer6.6%55
11Python Data Engineer5.7%47
12GCP Engineer5.1%42
13GCP Data Engineer4.8%40
14Platform Engineer3.3%27
15Migration Engineer2.8%23
16Data Migration Engineer2.4%20
17Artificial Intelligence Engineer2.3%19
18Senior Databricks Data Engineer1.9%16
19Cloud Engineer1.8%15
20Data Analytics Engineer1.7%14
264 Data Engineer jobs in London