Data Engineering Contract Job Trends in London

Data Engineering
England > London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in London citing Data Engineering skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 29 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

	6 months to 29 Oct 2026	Same period 2025	Same period 2024
Rank	55	93	150
Rank change year-on-year	+38	+57	+18
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering	912	437	261
As % of all contract jobs in London	4.48%	3.20%	1.66%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category	4.99%	3.46%	1.86%
Number of daily rates quoted	636	268	194
10^th Percentile	£400	£383	£413
25^th Percentile	£454	£474	£500
Median daily rate (50^th Percentile)	£550	£550	£575
Median % change year-on-year	+0.05%	-4.35%	-6.12%
75^th Percentile	£675	£688	£709
90^th Percentile	£775	£779	£825
England median daily rate	£530	£525	£575
% change year-on-year	+0.95%	-8.70%	-4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted	4	3	0
Median hourly rate	£57.00	£65.00	-
Median % change year-on-year	-12.31%	-	-
England median hourly rate	£59.95	£65.00	£26.50
% change year-on-year	-7.77%	+145.28%	-66.03%

All Process & Methodology Skills
London

Data Engineering falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies citing process or methodology skills in London.

	6 months to 29 Oct 2026	Same period 2025	Same period 2024
Contract vacancies citing process or methodology skills	18,263	12,619	14,068
As % of all contract jobs advertised in London	89.68%	92.48%	89.28%
Number of daily rates quoted	12,017	8,304	9,085
10^th Percentile	£359	£331	£350
25^th Percentile	£450	£425	£450
Median daily rate (50^th Percentile)	£550	£540	£550
Median % change year-on-year	+1.85%	-1.82%	-4.35%
75^th Percentile	£663	£663	£675
90^th Percentile	£775	£775	£800
England median daily rate	£525	£510	£525
% change year-on-year	+2.94%	-2.86%	-4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted	368	252	169
10^th Percentile	£15.57	£18.01	£17.45
25^th Percentile	£18.75	£25.03	£24.18
Median hourly rate	£32.50	£31.49	£37.50
Median % change year-on-year	+3.21%	-16.03%	-6.05%
75^th Percentile	£58.75	£47.50	£57.50
90^th Percentile	£81.25	£64.98	£79.00
England median hourly rate	£36.38	£25.15	£40.00
% change year-on-year	+44.65%	-37.13%	-10.11%

Data Engineering Job Vacancy Trend in London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Data Engineering relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in London.

Data Engineering Daily Rate Trend in London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in London citing Data Engineering.

Data Engineering Daily Rate Histogram in London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Data Engineering in London over the 6 months to 29 October 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Data Engineering in London

Data Engineering Hourly Rate Trend in London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in London citing Data Engineering.

Data Engineering 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 Engineering within the London region over the 6 months to 29 October 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	+32	121	£600	+8.11%	32
West London	+12	29	£600	-0.41%	21
South London	-3	6	£475	-4.90%	1
East London	-	3	£470	-	6
Data Engineering England

Data Engineering Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in London

For the 6 months to 29 October 2026, contractor job vacancies citing Data Engineering also mentioned 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 citing Data Engineering.

Rank	Skill	Share	Job Ads
1	Python	57.3%	523
2	SQL	56.5%	515
3	Data Pipeline	50.7%	462
4	Analytics	46.2%	421
5	CI/CD	42.9%	391
6	Azure	42.4%	387
7	AWS	39.1%	357
8	Data Modelling	36.2%	330
9	Data Quality	35.9%	327
10	ETL	34.9%	318
11	AI	34.5%	315
12	Databricks	31.0%	283
13	Agile	25.2%	230
14	DevOps	23.8%	217
15	Data Governance	22.4%	204
16	Data Warehouse	21.5%	196
17	Business Intelligence	21.3%	194
18	Stakeholder Management	19.6%	179
19	Machine Learning	19.4%	177
19	Snowflake	19.4%	177
21	PySpark	18.1%	165
22	dbt	17.5%	160
22	Microsoft	17.5%	160
24	Data Transformation	16.7%	152
25	Apache Airflow	16.6%	151
26	Problem-Solving	15.8%	144
27	Infrastructure as Code	15.6%	142
28	Data Architecture	15.5%	141
29	GCP	15.0%	137
29	Terraform	15.0%	137

Data Engineering 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.

Processes & Methodologies

Rank	Skill	Share	Job Ads
1	Data Pipeline	50.7%	462
2	Analytics	46.2%	421
3	CI/CD	42.9%	391
4	Data Modelling	36.2%	330
5	ETL	34.9%	318
6	AI	34.5%	315
7	Agile	25.2%	230
8	DevOps	23.8%	217
9	Data Governance	22.4%	204
10	Business Intelligence	21.3%	194
11	Stakeholder Management	19.6%	179
12	Machine Learning	19.4%	177
13	Data Transformation	16.7%	152
14	Problem-Solving	15.8%	144
15	Infrastructure as Code	15.6%	142
16	Data Architecture	15.5%	141
17	Data Science	14.5%	132
17	Software Engineering	14.5%	132
17	Validation	14.5%	132
20	Decision-Making	14.4%	131