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 £475, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 18 October 2025.

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

6 months to
18 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 162 131 178
Rank change year-on-year -31 +47 +1
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 254 307 278
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.58% 1.78% 1.30%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.77% 1.94% 1.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 177 199 231
10th Percentile £336 £318 £413
25th Percentile £402 £416 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £538 £578 £603
90th Percentile £625 £632 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -5.66% -3.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 2 2
10th Percentile £19.43 £28.58 £47.56
25th Percentile £21.90 £33.82 £50.47
Median hourly rate £27.00 £42.59 £57.00
Median % change year-on-year -36.60% -25.28% -5.00%
75th Percentile £54.00 £51.32 £61.84
90th Percentile £69.60 £56.53 £63.74
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £60.00 £61.75
% change year-on-year -12.50% -2.83% +6.47%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
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 14,384 15,852 20,120
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 89.62% 92.16% 94.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,852 9,019 13,429
10th Percentile £209 £220 £219
25th Percentile £363 £373 £385
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,371 1,184 1,270
10th Percentile £13.57 £14.73 £14.16
25th Percentile £16.50 £19.59 £18.00
Median hourly rate £24.62 £41.27 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -40.34% -7.27% +97.78%
75th Percentile £50.00 £66.61 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.65 £73.75 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £40.33 £45.00
% change year-on-year -37.63% -10.39% +68.48%

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 18 October 2025.

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 18 October 2025.

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 18 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
North of England -31 70 £448 -7.73% 113
Midlands -18 56 £475 +6.15% 54
Scotland +24 46 £450 -10.00% 13
West Midlands -20 41 £504 +2.81% 37
South West +23 38 £519 -3.49% 25
South East -35 34 £475 -13.64% 177
Yorkshire -20 33 £513 +5.67% 39
North West -23 29 £425 -10.53% 59
East Midlands -11 13 £460 +22.67% 17
Wales -10 10 £445 -11.00% 7
North East +4 9 £413 -29.49% 16
East of England -17 5 £625 +66.67% 22
Northern Ireland -6 1 - - 3
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 18 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 UK excluding London region featuring Data Engineer in the job title.

1 159 (62.60%) Python
2 147 (57.87%) SQL
3 107 (42.13%) ETL
4 99 (38.98%) Data Pipeline
5 89 (35.04%) Azure
6 88 (34.65%) AWS
7 86 (33.86%) Data Engineering
8 80 (31.50%) CI/CD
9 77 (30.31%) Analytics
10 74 (29.13%) Data Modelling
11 73 (28.74%) Data Warehouse
12 66 (25.98%) Databricks
13 63 (24.80%) Business Intelligence
14 61 (24.02%) Data Quality
15 54 (21.26%) DevOps
16 53 (20.87%) Problem-Solving
17 49 (19.29%) Power Platform
18 48 (18.90%) Power BI
19 46 (18.11%) Agile
20 44 (17.32%) PySpark
21 43 (16.93%) Snowflake
22 38 (14.96%) Apache Airflow
22 38 (14.96%) Machine Learning
23 37 (14.57%) Visualisation
24 36 (14.17%) Azure Data Factory
25 35 (13.78%) GCP
26 34 (13.39%) Jenkins
27 33 (12.99%) Security Cleared
28 32 (12.60%) Data Integration
28 32 (12.60%) Test Automation

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 38 (14.96%) Apache Airflow
2 25 (9.84%) Apache
3 24 (9.45%) Apache Spark
4 8 (3.15%) Confluence
4 8 (3.15%) Oracle Application Server
5 7 (2.76%) SAS
6 5 (1.97%) Apache Pig
7 3 (1.18%) IIS
7 3 (1.18%) SharePoint
8 2 (0.79%) Documentum
9 1 (0.39%) Jupyter
Applications
1 2 (0.79%) Windchill
2 1 (0.39%) SPSS
2 1 (0.39%) Stata
Business Applications
1 2 (0.79%) Payment Gateway
1 2 (0.79%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.39%) NetSuite
2 1 (0.39%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 89 (35.04%) Azure
2 88 (34.65%) AWS
3 49 (19.29%) Power Platform
4 43 (16.93%) Snowflake
5 36 (14.17%) Azure Data Factory
6 35 (13.78%) GCP
7 23 (9.06%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 21 (8.27%) Serverless
9 20 (7.87%) Amazon S3
10 17 (6.69%) GitHub
11 15 (5.91%) AWS Lambda
11 15 (5.91%) dbt
12 11 (4.33%) Azure DevOps
13 8 (3.15%) AWS CloudFormation
14 7 (2.76%) Cloud Computing
14 7 (2.76%) CloudBees
14 7 (2.76%) GitHub Actions
15 6 (2.36%) Amazon EC2
15 6 (2.36%) Amazon EMR
15 6 (2.36%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.97%) TCP/IP
2 3 (1.18%) MQTT
2 3 (1.18%) SSH
2 3 (1.18%) Structured Cabling
2 3 (1.18%) Wi-Fi
3 2 (0.79%) DNS
3 2 (0.79%) Internet
3 2 (0.79%) LAN
3 2 (0.79%) SSL
3 2 (0.79%) WAN
4 1 (0.39%) 802.11
4 1 (0.39%) Ethernet
4 1 (0.39%) Firewall
4 1 (0.39%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 73 (28.74%) Data Warehouse
2 48 (18.90%) Power BI
3 27 (10.63%) Big Data
3 27 (10.63%) NoSQL
4 25 (9.84%) Data Lake
5 24 (9.45%) PostgreSQL
5 24 (9.45%) Relational Database
6 22 (8.66%) SQL Server
7 21 (8.27%) Hadoop
8 18 (7.09%) Amazon Redshift
8 18 (7.09%) Delta Lake
9 12 (4.72%) Data Mining
10 11 (4.33%) Azure SQL Database
11 10 (3.94%) Elasticsearch
11 10 (3.94%) Tableau
12 9 (3.54%) Amazon RDS
13 8 (3.15%) Oracle ODI
13 8 (3.15%) RDBMS
13 8 (3.15%) Star Schema
14 7 (2.76%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 34 (13.39%) Jenkins
2 25 (9.84%) Git
3 19 (7.48%) GitLab
4 16 (6.30%) JIRA
5 8 (3.15%) MLflow
6 7 (2.76%) DBeaver
7 5 (1.97%) Visual Studio Code
8 4 (1.57%) SonarQube
9 3 (1.18%) Artifactory
9 3 (1.18%) Bitbucket
9 3 (1.18%) Poetry
9 3 (1.18%) PyCharm
9 3 (1.18%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.79%) Cucumber
10 2 (0.79%) JMeter
10 2 (0.79%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 2 (0.79%) Visual Studio
10 2 (0.79%) Zephyr
11 1 (0.39%) Deequ
11 1 (0.39%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 60 (23.62%) Social Skills
2 35 (13.78%) Analytical Skills
3 28 (11.02%) Finance
4 18 (7.09%) Banking
5 15 (5.91%) Public Sector
6 5 (1.97%) Documentation Skills
6 5 (1.97%) Influencing Skills
7 4 (1.57%) Telecoms
8 3 (1.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 3 (1.18%) Marketing
8 3 (1.18%) Retail
8 3 (1.18%) Tech for Good
9 2 (0.79%) Pharmaceutical
9 2 (0.79%) Presentation Skills
9 2 (0.79%) Retail Banking
10 1 (0.39%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.39%) Financial Institution
10 1 (0.39%) Investment Banking
10 1 (0.39%) Law
10 1 (0.39%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 44 (17.32%) PySpark
2 21 (8.27%) Kafka
3 14 (5.51%) RESTful
4 12 (4.72%) Flask
5 10 (3.94%) Pandas
6 9 (3.54%) NumPy
7 8 (3.15%) Elastic Stack
8 7 (2.76%) OpenTelemetry
8 7 (2.76%) Oracle GoldenGate
9 6 (2.36%) Apache NiFi
9 6 (2.36%) HTML
9 6 (2.36%) REST
10 4 (1.57%) OAuth
10 4 (1.57%) OAuth2
10 4 (1.57%) PyTorch
10 4 (1.57%) TensorFlow
11 3 (1.18%) Hugging Face
11 3 (1.18%) Keycloak
11 3 (1.18%) LangChain
11 3 (1.18%) LangGraph
Miscellaneous
1 19 (7.48%) Cloud Native
2 16 (6.30%) Replication
3 13 (5.12%) Algorithms
4 11 (4.33%) Data Protection Act
4 11 (4.33%) Product Ownership
5 8 (3.15%) Distributed Systems
6 7 (2.76%) Hybrid Cloud
7 6 (2.36%) Legacy Systems
8 4 (1.57%) Data Structures
8 4 (1.57%) Driving Licence
8 4 (1.57%) IoT
8 4 (1.57%) NHS
9 3 (1.18%) AI Agents
9 3 (1.18%) Clustering
9 3 (1.18%) Data Fabric
9 3 (1.18%) Fibre Optics
9 3 (1.18%) Greenfield Project
9 3 (1.18%) Private Cloud
10 2 (0.79%) Distributed Architecture
10 2 (0.79%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 20 (7.87%) Linux
2 12 (4.72%) Unix
3 2 (0.79%) Windows
3 2 (0.79%) Windows Server
3 2 (0.79%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 107 (42.13%) ETL
2 99 (38.98%) Data Pipeline
3 86 (33.86%) Data Engineering
4 80 (31.50%) CI/CD
5 77 (30.31%) Analytics
6 74 (29.13%) Data Modelling
7 63 (24.80%) Business Intelligence
8 54 (21.26%) DevOps
9 53 (20.87%) Problem-Solving
10 46 (18.11%) Agile
11 38 (14.96%) Machine Learning
12 37 (14.57%) Visualisation
13 32 (12.60%) Data Integration
13 32 (12.60%) Test Automation
14 31 (12.20%) Performance Tuning
15 29 (11.42%) Data Governance
16 27 (10.63%) Data Science
17 26 (10.24%) Data Transformation
18 25 (9.84%) AI
18 25 (9.84%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 159 (62.60%) Python
2 147 (57.87%) SQL
3 28 (11.02%) Java
4 21 (8.27%) Scala
5 12 (4.72%) Bash
6 9 (3.54%) PL/SQL
7 6 (2.36%) Shell Script
8 5 (1.97%) R
8 5 (1.97%) T-SQL
9 4 (1.57%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 4 (1.57%) Groovy
9 4 (1.57%) JavaScript
10 3 (1.18%) Go
10 3 (1.18%) TypeScript
11 2 (0.79%) ABAP
12 1 (0.39%) Bicep
12 1 (0.39%) C#
12 1 (0.39%) Cypher
12 1 (0.39%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 33 (12.99%) Security Cleared
2 23 (9.06%) SC Cleared
3 14 (5.51%) Degree
4 11 (4.33%) AWS Certification
5 8 (3.15%) Master's Degree
6 6 (2.36%) Computer Science Degree
7 4 (1.57%) Azure Certification
8 3 (1.18%) DV Cleared
9 2 (0.79%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 2 (0.79%) SnowPro
10 1 (0.39%) BPSS Clearance
10 1 (0.39%) CTC Cleared
10 1 (0.39%) HND
10 1 (0.39%) MCP
10 1 (0.39%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 61 (24.02%) Data Quality
2 7 (2.76%) GDPR
3 5 (1.97%) QA
4 2 (0.79%) Accessibility
5 1 (0.39%) Disclosure Scotland
5 1 (0.39%) EU AI Act
5 1 (0.39%) ISO 19650
5 1 (0.39%) NIST
5 1 (0.39%) PMO
System Software
1 27 (10.63%) Docker
2 3 (1.18%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.79%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 28 (11.02%) Kubernetes
2 21 (8.27%) Terraform
3 11 (4.33%) Ansible
4 8 (3.15%) Grafana
4 8 (3.15%) NetBackup
5 6 (2.36%) Kibana
6 5 (1.97%) logstash
6 5 (1.97%) Prometheus
7 3 (1.18%) Argo
7 3 (1.18%) Istio
7 3 (1.18%) Kustomize
8 2 (0.79%) Control-M
9 1 (0.39%) FortiGate
9 1 (0.39%) Puppet
Vendors
1 66 (25.98%) Databricks
2 30 (11.81%) Microsoft
3 26 (10.24%) Oracle
4 11 (4.33%) Red Hat
4 11 (4.33%) Talend
5 10 (3.94%) Google
6 8 (3.15%) Commvault
6 8 (3.15%) IBM
6 8 (3.15%) Informatica
7 7 (2.76%) Veritas
8 6 (2.36%) Cloudera
8 6 (2.36%) Confluent
9 5 (1.97%) Denodo
9 5 (1.97%) Splunk
10 4 (1.57%) Salesforce
10 4 (1.57%) ServiceNow
11 3 (1.18%) Cisco
11 3 (1.18%) Greenplum
11 3 (1.18%) SAP
12 2 (0.79%) Foundry