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 28 October 2025.

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

6 months to
28 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 98 82 95
Rank change year-on-year -16 +13 +19
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 414 468 515
As % of all contract jobs in London 3.06% 2.99% 2.51%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.31% 3.18% 2.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 304 333 374
10th Percentile £380 £413 £400
25th Percentile £450 £488 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £550
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% +4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £661
90th Percentile £718 £751 £741
England median daily rate £513 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -6.82% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 4 8
10th Percentile £32.23 £62.23 £35.00
25th Percentile £40.50 £81.69 £35.47
Median hourly rate £48.00 £95.00 £61.75
Median % change year-on-year -49.47% +53.85% +22.89%
75th Percentile £74.38 £97.50 £65.75
90th Percentile £110.00 - £73.10
England median hourly rate £48.00 £77.50 £63.00
% change year-on-year -38.06% +23.02% +8.62%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
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 12,516 14,718 19,268
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.47% 94.06% 93.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,313 9,521 14,009
10th Percentile £333 £345 £350
25th Percentile £425 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £545 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -4.35% -
75th Percentile £663 £675 £688
90th Percentile £775 £800 £800
England median daily rate £510 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -2.86% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 219 160 211
10th Percentile £17.06 £17.25 £18.16
25th Percentile £22.25 £24.06 £22.13
Median hourly rate £26.78 £37.50 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.59% -7.41% +24.62%
75th Percentile £47.75 £59.06 £60.77
90th Percentile £68.00 £80.75 £76.25
England median hourly rate £25.15 £42.03 £45.88
% change year-on-year -40.16% -8.39% +58.21%

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 28 October 2025.

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 28 October 2025.

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 28 October 2025. 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 +6 61 £525 -8.70% 121
West London -9 6 £575 +4.55% 2
South London -6 3 £479 -16.78% 1
East London +4 1 - - 4
Data Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 28 October 2025, 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.

1 279 (67.39%) Python
2 258 (62.32%) SQL
3 210 (50.72%) Data Pipeline
4 190 (45.89%) Azure
5 178 (43.00%) Data Engineering
6 163 (39.37%) ETL
7 162 (39.13%) AWS
8 151 (36.47%) Data Modelling
9 149 (35.99%) Databricks
10 129 (31.16%) Analytics
11 117 (28.26%) CI/CD
12 104 (25.12%) Data Quality
13 94 (22.71%) Security Cleared
14 93 (22.46%) Business Intelligence
15 90 (21.74%) Data Warehouse
16 84 (20.29%) Agile
17 83 (20.05%) Azure Data Factory
18 81 (19.57%) Apache Airflow
18 81 (19.57%) Data Science
19 79 (19.08%) DevOps
19 79 (19.08%) SC Cleared
20 74 (17.87%) Power Platform
20 74 (17.87%) PySpark
21 73 (17.63%) Power BI
22 66 (15.94%) Data Lake
23 64 (15.46%) Problem-Solving
23 64 (15.46%) Terraform
24 62 (14.98%) Infrastructure as Code
24 62 (14.98%) Snowflake
25 61 (14.73%) AI

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 (19.57%) Apache Airflow
2 53 (12.80%) Apache Spark
3 39 (9.42%) Apache
4 15 (3.62%) Confluence
5 4 (0.97%) SharePoint
6 3 (0.72%) Luigi
6 3 (0.72%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 2 (0.48%) ArcGIS
7 2 (0.48%) Jupyter
7 2 (0.48%) SAS
8 1 (0.24%) Apache Pig
8 1 (0.24%) IIS
8 1 (0.24%) Oracle Application Server
Applications
1 5 (1.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.48%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.24%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 3 (0.72%) Oracle BPM
2 2 (0.48%) Aladdin
3 1 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.24%) Endur
3 1 (0.24%) SAP BPC
3 1 (0.24%) SAP ERP
3 1 (0.24%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 190 (45.89%) Azure
2 162 (39.13%) AWS
3 83 (20.05%) Azure Data Factory
4 74 (17.87%) Power Platform
5 62 (14.98%) Snowflake
6 60 (14.49%) dbt
7 58 (14.01%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 58 (14.01%) GCP
8 53 (12.80%) Amazon S3
9 46 (11.11%) GitHub
10 34 (8.21%) Serverless
11 28 (6.76%) Azure DevOps
12 27 (6.52%) GitHub Actions
13 19 (4.59%) AWS Lambda
14 14 (3.38%) SaaS
15 11 (2.66%) Amazon EMR
15 11 (2.66%) Amazon Kinesis
16 10 (2.42%) AWS CloudFormation
17 8 (1.93%) Microsoft Purview
18 7 (1.69%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.72%) Firewall
1 3 (0.72%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 90 (21.74%) Data Warehouse
2 73 (17.63%) Power BI
3 66 (15.94%) Data Lake
4 38 (9.18%) SQL Server
5 37 (8.94%) Big Data
6 31 (7.49%) BigQuery
6 31 (7.49%) Hadoop
7 28 (6.76%) PostgreSQL
8 24 (5.80%) Delta Lake
9 22 (5.31%) Metadata
10 21 (5.07%) Amazon Redshift
11 19 (4.59%) Relational Database
12 18 (4.35%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 18 (4.35%) Tableau
13 17 (4.11%) Star Schema
14 15 (3.62%) Amazon QuickSight
14 15 (3.62%) NoSQL
15 14 (3.38%) Azure SQL Database
16 13 (3.14%) Amazon Athena
17 10 (2.42%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 52 (12.56%) Git
2 16 (3.86%) JIRA
3 12 (2.90%) Jenkins
4 8 (1.93%) MLflow
5 5 (1.21%) GitLab
6 3 (0.72%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.24%) DBeaver
7 1 (0.24%) ERwin
7 1 (0.24%) GoCD
7 1 (0.24%) Gradle
7 1 (0.24%) Selenium
7 1 (0.24%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.24%) TeamCity
7 1 (0.24%) Terragrunt
7 1 (0.24%) Visual Studio
General
1 94 (22.71%) Finance
2 84 (20.29%) Social Skills
3 56 (13.53%) Analytical Skills
4 30 (7.25%) Public Sector
5 22 (5.31%) Banking
6 13 (3.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 11 (2.66%) Investment Banking
8 10 (2.42%) Front Office
9 9 (2.17%) Pharmaceutical
9 9 (2.17%) Retail
10 8 (1.93%) Marketing
11 5 (1.21%) Telecoms
12 4 (0.97%) Organisational Skills
13 3 (0.72%) Corporate Banking
13 3 (0.72%) Documentation Skills
13 3 (0.72%) Financial Institution
13 3 (0.72%) Retail Banking
14 2 (0.48%) Legal
14 2 (0.48%) Military
14 2 (0.48%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 74 (17.87%) PySpark
2 52 (12.56%) Kafka
3 13 (3.14%) Apache NiFi
4 11 (2.66%) RabbitMQ
4 11 (2.66%) XML
5 8 (1.93%) Jinja
6 6 (1.45%) GraphQL
6 6 (1.45%) Pandas
6 6 (1.45%) PyTorch
7 5 (1.21%) HTML
7 5 (1.21%) pytest
8 4 (0.97%) CSS
8 4 (0.97%) GeoPandas
8 4 (0.97%) JSON
8 4 (0.97%) NumPy
8 4 (0.97%) OAuth
8 4 (0.97%) PostGIS
8 4 (0.97%) RESTful
8 4 (0.97%) TensorFlow
9 3 (0.72%) Great Expectations
Miscellaneous
1 22 (5.31%) Cloud Native
2 13 (3.14%) Data Structures
3 12 (2.90%) Legacy Systems
4 10 (2.42%) Distributed Computing
5 8 (1.93%) Algorithms
5 8 (1.93%) Onboarding
6 6 (1.45%) Greenfield Project
6 6 (1.45%) Product Ownership
6 6 (1.45%) Reinsurance
7 5 (1.21%) Linux Command Line
7 5 (1.21%) Self-Motivation
7 5 (1.21%) Virtual Team
8 4 (0.97%) Credit Risk
8 4 (0.97%) Derivative
8 4 (0.97%) Life Science
9 3 (0.72%) Equities
9 3 (0.72%) Genomics
9 3 (0.72%) Hedge funds
9 3 (0.72%) IoT
10 2 (0.48%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 8 (1.93%) Linux
2 5 (1.21%) Unix
3 1 (0.24%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 210 (50.72%) Data Pipeline
2 178 (43.00%) Data Engineering
3 163 (39.37%) ETL
4 151 (36.47%) Data Modelling
5 129 (31.16%) Analytics
6 117 (28.26%) CI/CD
7 93 (22.46%) Business Intelligence
8 84 (20.29%) Agile
9 81 (19.57%) Data Science
10 79 (19.08%) DevOps
11 64 (15.46%) Problem-Solving
12 62 (14.98%) Infrastructure as Code
13 61 (14.73%) AI
14 60 (14.49%) Data Governance
15 54 (13.04%) Machine Learning
16 52 (12.56%) Migration
17 50 (12.08%) Data Integration
18 45 (10.87%) Data Ingestion
18 45 (10.87%) Data Transformation
19 39 (9.42%) Data Architecture
Programming Languages
1 279 (67.39%) Python
2 258 (62.32%) SQL
3 40 (9.66%) Java
4 38 (9.18%) Scala
5 10 (2.42%) Bash
6 8 (1.93%) JavaScript
7 6 (1.45%) C#
7 6 (1.45%) PL/SQL
7 6 (1.45%) PowerShell
8 5 (1.21%) T-SQL
9 4 (0.97%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 4 (0.97%) R
9 4 (0.97%) Shell Script
9 4 (0.97%) TypeScript
10 3 (0.72%) Go
11 2 (0.48%) C++
12 1 (0.24%) Bicep
12 1 (0.24%) C
12 1 (0.24%) HiveQL
12 1 (0.24%) Korn
Qualifications
1 94 (22.71%) Security Cleared
2 79 (19.08%) SC Cleared
3 24 (5.80%) Degree
4 21 (5.07%) DV Cleared
5 10 (2.42%) Azure Certification
5 10 (2.42%) Computer Science Degree
6 7 (1.69%) AWS Certification
7 4 (0.97%) BPSS Clearance
7 4 (0.97%) Master's Degree
8 2 (0.48%) SnowPro
9 1 (0.24%) DBS Check
9 1 (0.24%) MCP
9 1 (0.24%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 104 (25.12%) Data Quality
2 19 (4.59%) GDPR
3 10 (2.42%) QA
4 7 (1.69%) Accessibility
5 3 (0.72%) HIPAA
5 3 (0.72%) NIST
5 3 (0.72%) SLA
6 2 (0.48%) Dodd-Frank
6 2 (0.48%) EMIR
6 2 (0.48%) ISO/IEC 20000
6 2 (0.48%) MiFID
7 1 (0.24%) EU AI Act
7 1 (0.24%) HL7
7 1 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 1 (0.24%) SOC 2
System Software
1 15 (3.62%) Docker
2 5 (1.21%) zsh
3 4 (0.97%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.24%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 64 (15.46%) Terraform
2 20 (4.83%) Kubernetes
3 4 (0.97%) Puppet
4 3 (0.72%) Ambari
4 3 (0.72%) Grafana
4 3 (0.72%) ZABBIX
5 2 (0.48%) Ansible
5 2 (0.48%) Kubeflow
6 1 (0.24%) Argo
6 1 (0.24%) NetBackup
6 1 (0.24%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 149 (35.99%) Databricks
2 48 (11.59%) Microsoft
3 27 (6.52%) Palantir
4 25 (6.04%) Foundry
5 23 (5.56%) Google
6 21 (5.07%) Oracle
7 13 (3.14%) Cloudera
8 9 (2.17%) Informatica
8 9 (2.17%) SAP
9 3 (0.72%) Denodo
9 3 (0.72%) ServiceNow
9 3 (0.72%) Teradata
9 3 (0.72%) Virgin Media
10 2 (0.48%) Alteryx
10 2 (0.48%) MicroStrategy
10 2 (0.48%) Salesforce
10 2 (0.48%) Splunk
10 2 (0.48%) Talend
10 2 (0.48%) Workday
11 1 (0.24%) Red Hat