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 11 January 2026.

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

6 months to
11 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 71 70 84
Rank change year-on-year -1 +14 +20
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 522 465 493
As % of all contract jobs in London 3.70% 3.31% 2.72%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.00% 3.54% 2.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 372 338 371
10th Percentile £376 £400 £400
25th Percentile £425 £475 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £540
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% +6.48% -6.09%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £638
90th Percentile £725 £800 £704
England median daily rate £513 £530 £525
% change year-on-year -3.21% +0.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 7 13
10th Percentile £29.20 £55.50 £35.13
25th Percentile £35.25 £65.00 £49.25
Median hourly rate £43.50 £92.50 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year -52.97% +52.89% -7.28%
75th Percentile £110.00 £97.50 £64.53
90th Percentile - - £71.60
England median hourly rate £43.50 £78.75 £60.50
% change year-on-year -44.76% +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 13,055 13,132 16,961
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.54% 93.51% 93.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,650 8,462 12,244
10th Percentile £350 £338 £325
25th Percentile £425 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £560
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% -1.79% -3.45%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £675
90th Percentile £750 £799 £788
England median daily rate £501 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.67% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 221 143 236
10th Percentile £17.50 £20.00 £16.25
25th Percentile £23.33 £23.80 £20.69
Median hourly rate £32.45 £35.00 £32.60
Median % change year-on-year -7.29% +7.38% -4.13%
75th Percentile £60.00 £53.75 £53.75
90th Percentile £76.58 £80.75 £72.00
England median hourly rate £27.50 £35.00 £43.33
% change year-on-year -21.43% -19.22% +23.80%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 +3 62 £525 -8.70% 48
West London -9 14 £603 +9.55% 7
South London -7 5 £500 -7.02% 11
Data Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 11 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.

1 318 (60.92%) Python
2 308 (59.00%) SQL
3 244 (46.74%) Azure
4 235 (45.02%) Data Pipeline
5 221 (42.34%) Data Engineering
6 212 (40.61%) ETL
7 204 (39.08%) Databricks
8 188 (36.02%) Data Modelling
9 173 (33.14%) AWS
10 164 (31.42%) Analytics
11 149 (28.54%) Data Quality
12 146 (27.97%) CI/CD
13 140 (26.82%) Security Cleared
14 129 (24.71%) Business Intelligence
15 123 (23.56%) SC Cleared
16 121 (23.18%) Data Warehouse
17 109 (20.88%) DevOps
18 107 (20.50%) Power BI
18 107 (20.50%) Power Platform
18 107 (20.50%) PySpark
19 105 (20.11%) Azure Data Factory
20 95 (18.20%) Agile
21 93 (17.82%) Data Science
22 91 (17.43%) Data Governance
23 80 (15.33%) AI
24 77 (14.75%) Data Lake
25 75 (14.37%) Snowflake
26 74 (14.18%) Amazon S3
26 74 (14.18%) Apache Spark
26 74 (14.18%) Data Architecture

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 74 (14.18%) Apache Spark
2 71 (13.60%) Apache Airflow
3 41 (7.85%) Apache
4 12 (2.30%) Confluence
5 3 (0.57%) SAS
6 2 (0.38%) ArcGIS
6 2 (0.38%) Jupyter
6 2 (0.38%) Luigi
6 2 (0.38%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 2 (0.38%) SharePoint
7 1 (0.19%) Apache Pig
7 1 (0.19%) IIS
7 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Exchange
7 1 (0.19%) Oracle Application Server
Applications
1 7 (1.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.19%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.19%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.19%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.38%) Aladdin
1 2 (0.38%) Oracle BPM
2 1 (0.19%) Actimize
2 1 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.19%) Maximo
2 1 (0.19%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 244 (46.74%) Azure
2 173 (33.14%) AWS
3 107 (20.50%) Power Platform
4 105 (20.11%) Azure Data Factory
5 75 (14.37%) Snowflake
6 74 (14.18%) Amazon S3
7 67 (12.84%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 60 (11.49%) GCP
9 59 (11.30%) GitHub
10 55 (10.54%) dbt
11 53 (10.15%) Serverless
12 42 (8.05%) Azure DevOps
13 35 (6.70%) AWS Lambda
13 35 (6.70%) GitHub Actions
14 17 (3.26%) Amazon Kinesis
14 17 (3.26%) AWS CloudFormation
14 17 (3.26%) SaaS
15 13 (2.49%) AWS Step Functions
16 11 (2.11%) Amazon EMR
17 9 (1.72%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.77%) Firewall
2 3 (0.57%) SAN
3 1 (0.19%) Internet
3 1 (0.19%) Network Security
3 1 (0.19%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 121 (23.18%) Data Warehouse
2 107 (20.50%) Power BI
3 77 (14.75%) Data Lake
4 63 (12.07%) SQL Server
5 39 (7.47%) Azure SQL Database
6 35 (6.70%) Metadata
7 34 (6.51%) Big Data
7 34 (6.51%) Delta Lake
8 33 (6.32%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 32 (6.13%) Amazon Redshift
9 32 (6.13%) BigQuery
9 32 (6.13%) NoSQL
10 26 (4.98%) PostgreSQL
11 24 (4.60%) Amazon Athena
12 23 (4.41%) Relational Database
13 21 (4.02%) Star Schema
13 21 (4.02%) Tableau
14 20 (3.83%) Hadoop
15 19 (3.64%) Amazon QuickSight
16 16 (3.07%) DataStage
Development Applications
1 69 (13.22%) Git
2 21 (4.02%) Jenkins
3 16 (3.07%) MLflow
4 15 (2.87%) JIRA
5 11 (2.11%) GitLab
6 2 (0.38%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.19%) DBeaver
7 1 (0.19%) ERwin
7 1 (0.19%) GoCD
7 1 (0.19%) Gradle
7 1 (0.19%) Jaeger
7 1 (0.19%) Poetry
7 1 (0.19%) Selenium
7 1 (0.19%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (0.19%) TeamCity
7 1 (0.19%) Visual Studio
General
1 100 (19.16%) Finance
2 84 (16.09%) Social Skills
3 53 (10.15%) Analytical Skills
4 33 (6.32%) Public Sector
5 24 (4.60%) Banking
6 23 (4.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 13 (2.49%) Front Office
8 11 (2.11%) Investment Banking
8 11 (2.11%) Pharmaceutical
9 7 (1.34%) Marketing
9 7 (1.34%) Retail
10 6 (1.15%) Telecoms
11 4 (0.77%) Back Office
11 4 (0.77%) Corporate Banking
12 3 (0.57%) Law
12 3 (0.57%) Military
12 3 (0.57%) Organisational Skills
13 2 (0.38%) Financial Institution
13 2 (0.38%) International Banking
13 2 (0.38%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 107 (20.50%) PySpark
2 59 (11.30%) Kafka
3 18 (3.45%) Pandas
4 12 (2.30%) YAML
5 11 (2.11%) REST
6 10 (1.92%) Apache NiFi
6 10 (1.92%) NumPy
6 10 (1.92%) PyTorch
6 10 (1.92%) XML
7 9 (1.72%) RabbitMQ
8 7 (1.34%) TensorFlow
9 6 (1.15%) Great Expectations
9 6 (1.15%) RESTful
10 5 (0.96%) JSON
10 5 (0.96%) LangChain
10 5 (0.96%) Middleware
11 4 (0.77%) Matplotlib
11 4 (0.77%) Node.js
11 4 (0.77%) OAuth
11 4 (0.77%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 31 (5.94%) Cloud Native
2 17 (3.26%) Data Structures
3 14 (2.68%) Legacy Systems
4 12 (2.30%) Onboarding
5 10 (1.92%) Product Ownership
6 8 (1.53%) Greenfield Project
7 6 (1.15%) Life Science
7 6 (1.15%) Replication
8 5 (0.96%) Genomics
8 5 (0.96%) Linux Command Line
8 5 (0.96%) Reinsurance
9 4 (0.77%) AI Agents
9 4 (0.77%) Algorithms
9 4 (0.77%) Credit Risk
9 4 (0.77%) Derivative
9 4 (0.77%) Distributed Computing
9 4 (0.77%) Equities
9 4 (0.77%) Self-Motivation
9 4 (0.77%) Virtual Team
10 3 (0.57%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 9 (1.72%) Linux
2 2 (0.38%) Unix
3 1 (0.19%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 235 (45.02%) Data Pipeline
2 221 (42.34%) Data Engineering
3 212 (40.61%) ETL
4 188 (36.02%) Data Modelling
5 164 (31.42%) Analytics
6 146 (27.97%) CI/CD
7 129 (24.71%) Business Intelligence
8 109 (20.88%) DevOps
9 95 (18.20%) Agile
10 93 (17.82%) Data Science
11 91 (17.43%) Data Governance
12 80 (15.33%) AI
13 74 (14.18%) Data Architecture
14 70 (13.41%) Machine Learning
15 68 (13.03%) Data Integration
16 64 (12.26%) Infrastructure as Code
17 63 (12.07%) Problem-Solving
18 51 (9.77%) Migration
19 45 (8.62%) Data Transformation
20 40 (7.66%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 318 (60.92%) Python
2 308 (59.00%) SQL
3 63 (12.07%) Scala
4 34 (6.51%) Java
5 13 (2.49%) Bash
6 11 (2.11%) C#
7 10 (1.92%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 10 (1.92%) JavaScript
7 10 (1.92%) PL/SQL
8 9 (1.72%) Bicep
8 9 (1.72%) T-SQL
9 8 (1.53%) PowerShell
10 7 (1.34%) R
11 4 (0.77%) Go
11 4 (0.77%) Shell Script
11 4 (0.77%) TypeScript
12 3 (0.57%) Korn
13 2 (0.38%) VB
14 1 (0.19%) C++
14 1 (0.19%) HiveQL
Qualifications
1 140 (26.82%) Security Cleared
2 123 (23.56%) SC Cleared
3 17 (3.26%) DV Cleared
4 16 (3.07%) Degree
5 14 (2.68%) Azure Certification
6 12 (2.30%) AWS Certification
7 10 (1.92%) Computer Science Degree
8 4 (0.77%) Master's Degree
8 4 (0.77%) Microsoft Certification
9 3 (0.57%) BPSS Clearance
9 3 (0.57%) CTC Cleared
9 3 (0.57%) DBS Check
10 2 (0.38%) SnowPro
11 1 (0.19%) MCP
11 1 (0.19%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 149 (28.54%) Data Quality
2 33 (6.32%) GDPR
3 8 (1.53%) QA
4 5 (0.96%) Accessibility
5 4 (0.77%) HIPAA
6 3 (0.57%) MiFID
7 2 (0.38%) Dodd-Frank
7 2 (0.38%) EMIR
7 2 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.38%) SLA
8 1 (0.19%) EU AI Act
8 1 (0.19%) HL7
8 1 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 20000
8 1 (0.19%) NIST
8 1 (0.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.19%) SOC 2
System Software
1 26 (4.98%) Docker
2 5 (0.96%) Virtual Machines
2 5 (0.96%) zsh
3 1 (0.19%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.19%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 71 (13.60%) Terraform
2 28 (5.36%) Kubernetes
3 4 (0.77%) Grafana
4 3 (0.57%) Kubeflow
4 3 (0.57%) Puppet
5 2 (0.38%) Ambari
5 2 (0.38%) Ansible
5 2 (0.38%) EMC NetWorker
5 2 (0.38%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.38%) Tivoli Storage Manager
5 2 (0.38%) ZABBIX
6 1 (0.19%) Argo
6 1 (0.19%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 204 (39.08%) Databricks
2 72 (13.79%) Microsoft
3 25 (4.79%) Google
4 21 (4.02%) Oracle
5 19 (3.64%) Foundry
6 18 (3.45%) Palantir
7 10 (1.92%) Cloudera
7 10 (1.92%) ServiceNow
8 9 (1.72%) SAP
9 8 (1.53%) IBM
10 6 (1.15%) Informatica
11 5 (0.96%) Virgin Media
12 4 (0.77%) Alteryx
12 4 (0.77%) Denodo
13 3 (0.57%) Cisco
13 3 (0.57%) EMC
13 3 (0.57%) Isilon
13 3 (0.57%) OpenAI
13 3 (0.57%) Salesforce
13 3 (0.57%) Splunk