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 23 January 2026.

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

6 months to
23 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 71 70 84
Rank change year-on-year -1 +14 +23
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 580 472 500
As % of all contract jobs in London 3.97% 3.38% 2.74%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.28% 3.61% 2.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 416 344 379
10th Percentile £363 £375 £400
25th Percentile £425 £463 £459
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 £736 £800 £700
England median daily rate £513 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 8 13
10th Percentile £28.19 £57.88 £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% -9.48%
75th Percentile £61.06 £97.50 £64.50
90th Percentile £90.43 - £67.31
England median hourly rate £37.50 £92.50 £60.50
% change year-on-year -59.46% +52.89% -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 13,543 13,061 16,991
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.60% 93.59% 93.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,012 8,409 12,260
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% - -6.38%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £675
90th Percentile £750 £800 £788
England median daily rate £501 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.67% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 221 142 285
10th Percentile £18.25 £20.75 £16.02
25th Percentile £23.55 £24.26 £19.00
Median hourly rate £32.50 £35.00 £29.72
Median % change year-on-year -7.14% +17.77% -10.37%
75th Percentile £63.10 £53.75 £52.50
90th Percentile £76.58 £80.55 £67.20
England median hourly rate £29.60 £35.00 £39.55
% change year-on-year -15.43% -11.50% +13.00%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 +12 71 £522 -9.22% 37
West London -6 18 £603 +9.55% 7
South London -3 6 £500 +1.27% 9
Data Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 23 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.

1 353 (60.86%) Python
2 348 (60.00%) SQL
3 277 (47.76%) Azure
4 260 (44.83%) Data Pipeline
5 242 (41.72%) Data Engineering
6 240 (41.38%) ETL
7 231 (39.83%) Databricks
8 215 (37.07%) Data Modelling
9 198 (34.14%) Analytics
10 197 (33.97%) AWS
11 172 (29.66%) Data Quality
12 169 (29.14%) CI/CD
13 156 (26.90%) Security Cleared
14 146 (25.17%) Business Intelligence
15 140 (24.14%) SC Cleared
16 126 (21.72%) Data Warehouse
16 126 (21.72%) DevOps
17 121 (20.86%) Power BI
17 121 (20.86%) Power Platform
18 117 (20.17%) PySpark
19 115 (19.83%) Azure Data Factory
20 110 (18.97%) Agile
21 104 (17.93%) Data Governance
22 98 (16.90%) Data Science
23 89 (15.34%) Terraform
24 88 (15.17%) AI
25 86 (14.83%) Snowflake
26 84 (14.48%) Data Lake
27 83 (14.31%) Amazon S3
28 80 (13.79%) 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 (13.79%) Apache Spark
2 73 (12.59%) Apache Airflow
3 44 (7.59%) Apache
4 9 (1.55%) Confluence
5 4 (0.69%) Microsoft Exchange
5 4 (0.69%) SAS
6 3 (0.52%) SharePoint
7 2 (0.34%) ArcGIS
7 2 (0.34%) Jupyter
7 2 (0.34%) Luigi
8 1 (0.17%) Apache Pig
8 1 (0.17%) Appian
8 1 (0.17%) IIS
8 1 (0.17%) Oracle Application Server
8 1 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 8 (1.38%) 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 (47.76%) Azure
2 197 (33.97%) AWS
3 121 (20.86%) Power Platform
4 115 (19.83%) Azure Data Factory
5 86 (14.83%) Snowflake
6 83 (14.31%) Amazon S3
7 73 (12.59%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 68 (11.72%) GitHub
9 65 (11.21%) GCP
10 63 (10.86%) dbt
11 61 (10.52%) Serverless
12 55 (9.48%) Azure DevOps
13 44 (7.59%) AWS Lambda
14 40 (6.90%) GitHub Actions
15 22 (3.79%) AWS CloudFormation
16 20 (3.45%) Amazon Kinesis
17 17 (2.93%) SaaS
18 16 (2.76%) AWS Step Functions
19 11 (1.90%) Amazon EMR
19 11 (1.90%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.69%) Firewall
2 3 (0.52%) SAN
3 1 (0.17%) Internet
3 1 (0.17%) Network Security
3 1 (0.17%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 126 (21.72%) Data Warehouse
2 121 (20.86%) Power BI
3 84 (14.48%) Data Lake
4 76 (13.10%) SQL Server
5 43 (7.41%) Metadata
6 41 (7.07%) Azure SQL Database
6 41 (7.07%) Delta Lake
7 38 (6.55%) NoSQL
8 35 (6.03%) Amazon Redshift
8 35 (6.03%) BigQuery
8 35 (6.03%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 34 (5.86%) Big Data
10 31 (5.34%) Amazon Athena
11 30 (5.17%) PostgreSQL
12 25 (4.31%) Tableau
13 24 (4.14%) Relational Database
14 23 (3.97%) Star Schema
15 18 (3.10%) Hadoop
15 18 (3.10%) Snowflake Schema
16 16 (2.76%) Amazon QuickSight
Development Applications
1 72 (12.41%) Git
2 19 (3.28%) Jenkins
3 18 (3.10%) JIRA
4 16 (2.76%) MLflow
5 15 (2.59%) 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 (19.48%) Finance
2 98 (16.90%) Social Skills
3 59 (10.17%) Analytical Skills
4 35 (6.03%) Public Sector
5 28 (4.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 27 (4.66%) Banking
7 14 (2.41%) Front Office
8 12 (2.07%) Investment Banking
9 10 (1.72%) Retail
10 9 (1.55%) Pharmaceutical
11 7 (1.21%) Marketing
11 7 (1.21%) Telecoms
12 5 (0.86%) Corporate Banking
13 4 (0.69%) Back Office
13 4 (0.69%) Military
14 3 (0.52%) Financial Institution
14 3 (0.52%) Law
14 3 (0.52%) Organisational Skills
15 2 (0.34%) International Banking
15 2 (0.34%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 117 (20.17%) PySpark
2 66 (11.38%) Kafka
3 20 (3.45%) Pandas
4 16 (2.76%) YAML
5 11 (1.90%) NumPy
5 11 (1.90%) REST
6 10 (1.72%) PyTorch
7 8 (1.38%) Apache NiFi
7 8 (1.38%) Great Expectations
7 8 (1.38%) XML
8 7 (1.21%) RabbitMQ
8 7 (1.21%) TensorFlow
9 6 (1.03%) JSON
9 6 (1.03%) RESTful
10 5 (0.86%) LangChain
10 5 (0.86%) Middleware
11 4 (0.69%) OAuth
11 4 (0.69%) pytest
11 4 (0.69%) scikit-learn
11 4 (0.69%) Spark Streaming
Miscellaneous
1 45 (7.76%) Cloud Native
2 18 (3.10%) Data Structures
3 14 (2.41%) Legacy Systems
4 12 (2.07%) Onboarding
5 11 (1.90%) Product Ownership
5 11 (1.90%) Reinsurance
6 9 (1.55%) Greenfield Project
7 6 (1.03%) Public Cloud
7 6 (1.03%) Replication
8 5 (0.86%) Algorithms
8 5 (0.86%) Derivative
8 5 (0.86%) Equities
8 5 (0.86%) Linux Command Line
8 5 (0.86%) Virtual Team
9 4 (0.69%) AI Agents
9 4 (0.69%) Credit Risk
9 4 (0.69%) Genomics
9 4 (0.69%) Life Science
9 4 (0.69%) Management Information System
9 4 (0.69%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 8 (1.38%) Linux
2 1 (0.17%) Unix
2 1 (0.17%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 260 (44.83%) Data Pipeline
2 242 (41.72%) Data Engineering
3 240 (41.38%) ETL
4 215 (37.07%) Data Modelling
5 198 (34.14%) Analytics
6 169 (29.14%) CI/CD
7 146 (25.17%) Business Intelligence
8 126 (21.72%) DevOps
9 110 (18.97%) Agile
10 104 (17.93%) Data Governance
11 98 (16.90%) Data Science
12 88 (15.17%) AI
13 80 (13.79%) Data Architecture
14 77 (13.28%) Problem-Solving
15 76 (13.10%) Infrastructure as Code
16 75 (12.93%) Data Integration
17 70 (12.07%) Machine Learning
18 57 (9.83%) Data Transformation
18 57 (9.83%) Migration
19 47 (8.10%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 353 (60.86%) Python
2 348 (60.00%) SQL
3 72 (12.41%) Scala
4 39 (6.72%) Java
5 15 (2.59%) C#
6 12 (2.07%) Bash
6 12 (2.07%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 11 (1.90%) T-SQL
8 10 (1.72%) Bicep
8 10 (1.72%) JavaScript
8 10 (1.72%) PL/SQL
9 8 (1.38%) PowerShell
9 8 (1.38%) R
10 4 (0.69%) Shell Script
11 3 (0.52%) Go
11 3 (0.52%) Korn
11 3 (0.52%) TypeScript
12 2 (0.34%) VB
13 1 (0.17%) C
13 1 (0.17%) C++
Qualifications
1 156 (26.90%) Security Cleared
2 140 (24.14%) SC Cleared
3 18 (3.10%) Azure Certification
4 17 (2.93%) Degree
5 14 (2.41%) DV Cleared
6 11 (1.90%) AWS Certification
6 11 (1.90%) Computer Science Degree
7 5 (0.86%) BPSS Clearance
7 5 (0.86%) Microsoft Certification
8 4 (0.69%) Master's Degree
9 3 (0.52%) CTC Cleared
9 3 (0.52%) DBS Check
10 2 (0.34%) SnowPro
11 1 (0.17%) MCP
11 1 (0.17%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 172 (29.66%) Data Quality
2 34 (5.86%) GDPR
3 10 (1.72%) QA
4 4 (0.69%) Accessibility
5 3 (0.52%) HIPAA
5 3 (0.52%) 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%) ISO/IEC 20000
7 1 (0.17%) NIST
7 1 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 1 (0.17%) SOC 2
System Software
1 30 (5.17%) Docker
2 5 (0.86%) Virtual Machines
2 5 (0.86%) zsh
3 1 (0.17%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.17%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 89 (15.34%) Terraform
2 32 (5.52%) Kubernetes
3 4 (0.69%) Grafana
4 3 (0.52%) 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
1 231 (39.83%) Databricks
2 76 (13.10%) Microsoft
3 27 (4.66%) Oracle
4 25 (4.31%) Google
5 16 (2.76%) Foundry
5 16 (2.76%) Informatica
6 15 (2.59%) Palantir
7 11 (1.90%) ServiceNow
8 9 (1.55%) SAP
9 8 (1.38%) Cloudera
9 8 (1.38%) IBM
10 5 (0.86%) Talend
10 5 (0.86%) Virgin Media
11 4 (0.69%) Alteryx
11 4 (0.69%) Denodo
11 4 (0.69%) Salesforce
12 3 (0.52%) Cisco
12 3 (0.52%) EMC
12 3 (0.52%) OpenAI
12 3 (0.52%) Splunk