Data Engineer Contract Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Data Engineer
UK > UK excluding London

The median Data Engineer daily rate in the UK excluding London is £469, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 28 July 2026.

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

6 months to
28 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 63 148 120
Rank change year-on-year +85 -28 +34
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 920 254 342
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.40% 1.69% 1.79%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.69% 1.87% 1.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 578 173 255
10th Percentile £363 £324 £170
25th Percentile £413 £410 £206
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £475 £450
Median % change year-on-year -1.26% +5.56% -14.29%
75th Percentile £538 £538 £542
90th Percentile £591 £629 £600
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £510
% change year-on-year - -1.96% -7.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 73 4 28
10th Percentile £19.72 £17.92 £37.50
25th Percentile £35.00 £18.11 £59.69
Median hourly rate £50.00 £48.46 £80.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.18% -39.43% +63.27%
75th Percentile £70.00 £79.03 -
90th Percentile £74.75 £79.61 -
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £75.00
% change year-on-year -4.76% -30.00% -3.23%

All Contract IT Job Roles
UK excluding London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the UK excluding 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 the UK excluding London with a recognized job title 24,939 13,608 17,644
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.20% 90.48% 92.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,169 8,393 10,794
10th Percentile £306 £218 £214
25th Percentile £409 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £600 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £650 £675
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,907 1,180 1,928
10th Percentile £15.05 £13.50 £13.49
25th Percentile £21.14 £16.50 £17.72
Median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +78.93% -41.51% +8.59%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.50 £25.15 £42.03
% change year-on-year +72.96% -40.16% -2.97%

Data Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding 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 the UK excluding London.

Data Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Data Engineer
Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Data Engineer job vacancies in the UK excluding London.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Data Engineer job vacancies in the UK excluding London

Data Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Data Engineer in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 28 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Data Engineer in the UK excluding London

Data Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Data Engineer job vacancies in the UK excluding London.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Data Engineer job vacancies in the UK excluding London

Data Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Data Engineer in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 28 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Data Engineer in the UK excluding London

Data Engineer
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding 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 UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 28 July 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
Midlands +66 392 £460 -0.11% 54
West Midlands +57 341 £459 -0.22% 39
North of England +26 231 £475 - 99
North West +22 135 £525 +10.53% 50
South East +16 127 £469 +10.35% 92
South West +14 87 £525 +3.70% 37
Yorkshire 0 74 £475 - 21
Scotland +25 73 £428 -0.12% 7
East Midlands +21 51 £475 +13.10% 15
East of England +3 34 £543 +70.60% 13
North East -24 23 £515 +21.18% 29
Wales 0 18 £475 +6.74% 11
Northern Ireland +1 3 £410 -18.00% 3
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 28 July 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 UK excluding London region featuring Data Engineer in the job title.

1 430 (46.74%) SQL
2 343 (37.28%) Data Pipeline
3 312 (33.91%) Analytics
4 309 (33.59%) ETL
5 290 (31.52%) Data Engineering
6 281 (30.54%) Python
7 272 (29.57%) Data Modelling
7 272 (29.57%) Security Cleared
8 224 (24.35%) SC Cleared
9 217 (23.59%) Azure
10 201 (21.85%) AWS
11 197 (21.41%) Data Quality
12 178 (19.35%) CI/CD
13 174 (18.91%) Business Intelligence
14 152 (16.52%) Data Integration
15 145 (15.76%) Agile
16 139 (15.11%) Databricks
17 130 (14.13%) Migration
18 128 (13.91%) Problem-Solving
19 120 (13.04%) Data Warehouse
20 115 (12.50%) Oracle
21 112 (12.17%) DevOps
21 112 (12.17%) Power Platform
22 108 (11.74%) Power BI
23 104 (11.30%) Validation
24 103 (11.20%) Talend
25 102 (11.09%) Microsoft
26 99 (10.76%) Data Governance
27 96 (10.43%) PySpark
28 93 (10.11%) Git

Data Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding 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 63 (6.85%) SAS
2 52 (5.65%) Apache Spark
3 39 (4.24%) Apache Airflow
4 35 (3.80%) Apache
5 23 (2.50%) Confluence
6 5 (0.54%) Jupyter
7 2 (0.22%) Apache Superset
7 2 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.11%) SharePoint
Applications
1 11 (1.20%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.54%) Notepad++
3 2 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 6 (0.65%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (0.54%) Infor LN
3 4 (0.43%) NetSuite
3 4 (0.43%) Sage X3
4 3 (0.33%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.11%) Aladdin
5 1 (0.11%) FIS Private Capital Suite
5 1 (0.11%) MIS ActiveH
5 1 (0.11%) NEC Housing
5 1 (0.11%) Oracle 11i
5 1 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
5 1 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 217 (23.59%) Azure
2 201 (21.85%) AWS
3 112 (12.17%) Power Platform
4 90 (9.78%) Azure Data Factory
5 77 (8.37%) Snowflake
6 49 (5.33%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 49 (5.33%) GCP
7 46 (5.00%) dbt
8 45 (4.89%) Amazon S3
9 39 (4.24%) Serverless
10 31 (3.37%) Azure DevOps
11 28 (3.04%) AWS Lambda
12 27 (2.93%) GitHub
13 18 (1.96%) OpenShift
14 16 (1.74%) Matillion
15 15 (1.63%) GitHub Actions
16 13 (1.41%) Amazon EMR
17 12 (1.30%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 11 (1.20%) AWS Step Functions
18 11 (1.20%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 33 (3.59%) DNS
1 33 (3.59%) VPN
2 32 (3.48%) BGP
2 32 (3.48%) DMZ
2 32 (3.48%) Multicast
3 8 (0.87%) Structured Cabling
4 6 (0.65%) Firewall
5 5 (0.54%) PuTTY
5 5 (0.54%) WinSCP
6 4 (0.43%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.43%) Wireless
7 3 (0.33%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 120 (13.04%) Data Warehouse
2 108 (11.74%) Power BI
3 83 (9.02%) Pentaho
4 49 (5.33%) Data Lake
5 45 (4.89%) Amazon Redshift
6 40 (4.35%) SQL Server
7 36 (3.91%) Metadata
8 32 (3.48%) Big Data
9 30 (3.26%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 26 (2.83%) Relational Database
11 25 (2.72%) Hadoop
11 25 (2.72%) MySQL
12 24 (2.61%) Delta Lake
13 23 (2.50%) Amazon Athena
14 21 (2.28%) Azure SQL Database
15 19 (2.07%) Tableau
16 18 (1.96%) BigQuery
16 18 (1.96%) NoSQL
17 17 (1.85%) BusinessObjects
17 17 (1.85%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 93 (10.11%) Git
2 56 (6.09%) GitLab
3 45 (4.89%) JIRA
4 33 (3.59%) Jenkins
5 7 (0.76%) Postman
6 5 (0.54%) Artifactory
7 4 (0.43%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.33%) Newman
9 2 (0.22%) Visual Studio
9 2 (0.22%) Yeoman
10 1 (0.11%) ER Studio
10 1 (0.11%) ERwin
10 1 (0.11%) JUnit
10 1 (0.11%) MLflow
10 1 (0.11%) SonarQube
10 1 (0.11%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 143 (15.54%) Social Skills
2 93 (10.11%) Analytical Skills
3 85 (9.24%) Public Sector
4 63 (6.85%) Finance
5 42 (4.57%) Banking
6 22 (2.39%) Marketing
7 21 (2.28%) Investment Banking
8 19 (2.07%) Automotive
8 19 (2.07%) Documentation Skills
9 17 (1.85%) Telecoms
10 13 (1.41%) Manufacturing
10 13 (1.41%) Retail
11 12 (1.30%) Aerospace
12 11 (1.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 5 (0.54%) Billing
13 5 (0.54%) Front Office
13 5 (0.54%) Local Government
13 5 (0.54%) Police
14 4 (0.43%) Legal
14 4 (0.43%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 96 (10.43%) PySpark
2 63 (6.85%) Kafka
3 22 (2.39%) JSON
4 13 (1.41%) Pandas
4 13 (1.41%) XML
5 10 (1.09%) Streamlit
6 8 (0.87%) Apache Avro
6 8 (0.87%) Protocol Buffers
7 7 (0.76%) Apache Beam
8 6 (0.65%) Apache NiFi
8 6 (0.65%) Node.js
8 6 (0.65%) OpenTelemetry
8 6 (0.65%) REST
8 6 (0.65%) RESTful
9 5 (0.54%) Great Expectations
9 5 (0.54%) pytest
9 5 (0.54%) YAML
10 4 (0.43%) AngularJS
10 4 (0.43%) AWS CDK
10 4 (0.43%) React
Miscellaneous
1 35 (3.80%) Cloud Native
2 26 (2.83%) Data Structures
2 26 (2.83%) Legacy Systems
3 16 (1.74%) Distributed Systems
4 11 (1.20%) Data Protection Act
5 9 (0.98%) Clustering
5 9 (0.98%) Driving Licence
5 9 (0.98%) NHS
6 8 (0.87%) Management Information System
6 8 (0.87%) Onboarding
6 8 (0.87%) Product Ownership
7 7 (0.76%) Greenfield Project
8 6 (0.65%) Data Centre
8 6 (0.65%) Linux Command Line
8 6 (0.65%) Reference Data
9 5 (0.54%) Hybrid Cloud
10 4 (0.43%) Data Fabric
10 4 (0.43%) Fibre Optics
10 4 (0.43%) iPad
10 4 (0.43%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 39 (4.24%) Unix
2 14 (1.52%) Linux
3 2 (0.22%) Ubuntu
4 1 (0.11%) VMS
4 1 (0.11%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 343 (37.28%) Data Pipeline
2 312 (33.91%) Analytics
3 309 (33.59%) ETL
4 290 (31.52%) Data Engineering
5 272 (29.57%) Data Modelling
6 178 (19.35%) CI/CD
7 174 (18.91%) Business Intelligence
8 152 (16.52%) Data Integration
9 145 (15.76%) Agile
10 130 (14.13%) Migration
11 128 (13.91%) Problem-Solving
12 112 (12.17%) DevOps
13 104 (11.30%) Validation
14 99 (10.76%) Data Governance
15 83 (9.02%) AI
16 79 (8.59%) Decision-Making
17 75 (8.15%) Test Automation
18 74 (8.04%) Data Transformation
19 66 (7.17%) Data Science
19 66 (7.17%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 430 (46.74%) SQL
2 281 (30.54%) Python
3 38 (4.13%) Java
4 37 (4.02%) PL/SQL
5 19 (2.07%) Shell Script
6 16 (1.74%) Bash
7 13 (1.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 13 (1.41%) T-SQL
8 10 (1.09%) PowerShell
9 6 (0.65%) Scala
10 5 (0.54%) Bicep
11 4 (0.43%) C#
12 2 (0.22%) Go
12 2 (0.22%) HiveQL
12 2 (0.22%) JavaScript
13 1 (0.11%) C++
13 1 (0.11%) COBOL
13 1 (0.11%) Perl
13 1 (0.11%) R
13 1 (0.11%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 272 (29.57%) Security Cleared
2 224 (24.35%) SC Cleared
3 20 (2.17%) BPSS Clearance
4 19 (2.07%) Degree
5 17 (1.85%) DV Cleared
6 8 (0.87%) City & Guilds
7 6 (0.65%) Computer Science Degree
7 6 (0.65%) Master's Degree
8 4 (0.43%) BICSI Certification
8 4 (0.43%) CISM
8 4 (0.43%) CISSP
8 4 (0.43%) SnowPro
9 3 (0.33%) Azure Certification
9 3 (0.33%) CEH
9 3 (0.33%) IBM Certification
10 2 (0.22%) AWS Certification
11 1 (0.11%) CCIE
11 1 (0.11%) CCNP
11 1 (0.11%) Cisco Certification
11 1 (0.11%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 197 (21.41%) Data Quality
2 23 (2.50%) QA
3 15 (1.63%) GDPR
4 10 (1.09%) SLA
5 8 (0.87%) FATCA
6 6 (0.65%) Accessibility
7 4 (0.43%) HIPAA
7 4 (0.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 2 (0.22%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 2 (0.22%) Disclosure Scotland
8 2 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 1 (0.11%) GMP
9 1 (0.11%) Government Security Classifications
9 1 (0.11%) NIST
9 1 (0.11%) SNOMED CT
9 1 (0.11%) WCAG
System Software
1 42 (4.57%) Docker
2 2 (0.22%) HDFS
2 2 (0.22%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 55 (5.98%) Terraform
2 47 (5.11%) Kubernetes
3 36 (3.91%) Grafana
4 11 (1.20%) Prometheus
5 10 (1.09%) Ansible
6 3 (0.33%) Control-M
6 3 (0.33%) Rancher
7 2 (0.22%) Apache Ranger
8 1 (0.11%) Kibana
8 1 (0.11%) logstash
Vendors
1 139 (15.11%) Databricks
2 115 (12.50%) Oracle
3 103 (11.20%) Talend
4 102 (11.09%) Microsoft
5 76 (8.26%) Informatica
6 50 (5.43%) Denodo
7 34 (3.70%) Cisco
7 34 (3.70%) F5
8 20 (2.17%) SAP
9 17 (1.85%) Salesforce
10 15 (1.63%) ServiceNow
10 15 (1.63%) Splunk
11 14 (1.52%) Cloudera
12 11 (1.20%) Google
13 10 (1.09%) Sage
14 6 (0.65%) Dynatrace
14 6 (0.65%) Infor
14 6 (0.65%) InterSystems
15 4 (0.43%) Palantir
15 4 (0.43%) SYSPRO