Principal Data Engineer Contracts in London

Principal Data Engineer
England > London

The median Principal Data Engineer daily rate in London is £650, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 19 July 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 355 398 463
Rank change year-on-year +43 +65 +150
Contract jobs requiring a Principal Data Engineer 6 5 13
As % of all contract jobs advertised in London 0.044% 0.029% 0.052%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.047% 0.031% 0.055%
Number of daily rates quoted 2 3 12
10th Percentile £585 £491 -
25th Percentile £600 £514 £663
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £650 £558 £725
Median % change year-on-year +16.59% -23.10% +17.89%
75th Percentile £700 £581 £788
90th Percentile £715 £592 -
England median daily rate £650 £579 £725
% change year-on-year +12.31% -20.17% +17.89%

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 12,718 16,153 23,813
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 93.24% 94.12% 94.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,611 11,527 17,408
10th Percentile £331 £331 £360
25th Percentile £425 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -
75th Percentile £675 £681 £700
90th Percentile £788 £800 £800
England median daily rate £513 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.38% -4.55% +1.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 198 268 267
10th Percentile £17.98 £17.00 £18.30
25th Percentile £22.79 £21.66 £22.95
Median hourly rate £30.90 £31.61 £39.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.22% -18.96% +11.43%
75th Percentile £50.38 £50.06 £65.00
90th Percentile £63.75 £70.03 £82.50
England median hourly rate £27.45 £40.33 £44.00
% change year-on-year -31.93% -8.35% +76.00%

Principal Data Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in London

Job postings that featured Principal Data Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in London.

Job vacancy trend for Principal Data Engineer in London

Principal Data Engineer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in London

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Principal Data Engineer in London.

Daily rate trend for Principal Data Engineer in London

Principal 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 Principal Data Engineer within the London region over the 6 months to 19 July 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 +3 3 - - 2
Principal Data Engineer
England

Principal Data Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in London

For the 6 months to 19 July 2025, Principal Data Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the London region featuring Principal Data Engineer in the job title.

1 5 (83.33%) Python
2 4 (66.67%) Azure
2 4 (66.67%) Analytics
2 4 (66.67%) SAP
2 4 (66.67%) Data Strategy
2 4 (66.67%) Containerisation
3 3 (50.00%) Big Data
3 3 (50.00%) Site Reliability Engineering
3 3 (50.00%) Observability
3 3 (50.00%) Web Services
3 3 (50.00%) OLAP
3 3 (50.00%) OLTP
3 3 (50.00%) SAP BW
3 3 (50.00%) Low Latency
3 3 (50.00%) AWS
3 3 (50.00%) SAP BPC
3 3 (50.00%) NoSQL
3 3 (50.00%) SAP Data Services
3 3 (50.00%) SAP HANA
4 2 (33.33%) SQL
4 2 (33.33%) Risk Management
4 2 (33.33%) Social Skills
5 1 (16.67%) Presentation Skills
5 1 (16.67%) Clean Code
5 1 (16.67%) GitHub Actions
5 1 (16.67%) Azure Synapse Analytics
5 1 (16.67%) Amazon ECS
5 1 (16.67%) GitHub
5 1 (16.67%) Azure Data Factory
5 1 (16.67%) Problem-Solving

Principal Data Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in London by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 1 (16.67%) Apache Airflow
Business Applications
1 3 (50.00%) SAP BPC
2 1 (16.67%) Endur
2 1 (16.67%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 4 (66.67%) Azure
2 3 (50.00%) AWS
3 1 (16.67%) Amazon ECS
3 1 (16.67%) Amazon Kinesis
3 1 (16.67%) Azure Data Factory
3 1 (16.67%) Azure DevOps
3 1 (16.67%) Azure Synapse Analytics
3 1 (16.67%) GitHub
3 1 (16.67%) GitHub Actions
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (50.00%) Big Data
1 3 (50.00%) NoSQL
1 3 (50.00%) OLAP
1 3 (50.00%) OLTP
1 3 (50.00%) SAP BW
1 3 (50.00%) SAP Data Services
1 3 (50.00%) SAP HANA
2 1 (16.67%) Amazon Redshift
2 1 (16.67%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 1 (16.67%) SonarQube
General
1 2 (33.33%) Social Skills
2 1 (16.67%) Finance
2 1 (16.67%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (50.00%) Web Services
2 1 (16.67%) Kedro
2 1 (16.67%) pytest
Processes & Methodologies
1 4 (66.67%) Analytics
1 4 (66.67%) Containerisation
1 4 (66.67%) Data Strategy
2 3 (50.00%) Low Latency
2 3 (50.00%) Observability
2 3 (50.00%) Site Reliability Engineering
3 2 (33.33%) Risk Management
4 1 (16.67%) Agile
4 1 (16.67%) Artificial Intelligence
4 1 (16.67%) Change Management
4 1 (16.67%) Data Architecture
4 1 (16.67%) Data Integration
4 1 (16.67%) Data Modelling
4 1 (16.67%) ETRM
4 1 (16.67%) Incident Management
4 1 (16.67%) Machine Learning
4 1 (16.67%) Problem Management
4 1 (16.67%) Project Management
4 1 (16.67%) Scrum
4 1 (16.67%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 5 (83.33%) Python
2 2 (33.33%) SQL
Vendors
1 4 (66.67%) SAP
2 1 (16.67%) Databricks