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 10 July 2026.

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

6 months to
10 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 63 135 139
Rank change year-on-year +72 +4 +13
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 889 263 337
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.30% 1.79% 1.61%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.59% 1.97% 1.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 576 187 250
10th Percentile £363 £315 £170
25th Percentile £413 £402 £205
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £463 £450
Median % change year-on-year +1.45% +2.78% -14.29%
75th Percentile £544 £528 £538
90th Percentile £600 £618 £600
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 62 4 31
10th Percentile £19.34 £17.92 £37.50
25th Percentile £36.25 £18.11 £58.75
Median hourly rate £47.50 £48.46 £75.00
Median % change year-on-year -1.98% -35.39% +53.06%
75th Percentile £65.94 £79.03 £80.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £79.61 -
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £67.50
% change year-on-year -4.76% -22.22% -5.26%

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 24,786 13,347 19,336
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.09% 90.93% 92.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,172 8,282 11,640
10th Percentile £303 £216 £213
25th Percentile £406 £363 £370
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £493
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% -1.40%
75th Percentile £600 £575 £595
90th Percentile £688 £650 £675
UK median daily rate £522 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.40% -4.76% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,847 1,095 2,377
10th Percentile £15.24 £13.50 £12.78
25th Percentile £20.77 £16.84 £16.12
Median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% +0.50%
75th Percentile £67.84 £57.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £74.37
UK median hourly rate £43.50 £26.39 £37.50
% change year-on-year +64.87% -29.64% -14.05%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 +51 369 £463 +2.78% 59
West Midlands +42 327 £459 -0.22% 39
North of England +19 225 £475 - 87
North West +21 135 £500 +5.26% 52
South East +18 127 £475 +11.76% 90
South West +19 91 £525 +5.00% 37
Scotland +19 70 £425 -8.11% 5
Yorkshire -9 68 £465 -2.11% 17
East Midlands +12 42 £525 +28.05% 21
East of England -19 26 £543 +70.60% 14
Wales +5 22 £425 -4.49% 8
North East -22 22 £510 +16.57% 21
Northern Ireland +5 3 £410 -18.00% 7
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 10 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.

1 419 (47.13%) SQL
2 332 (37.35%) Data Pipeline
3 316 (35.55%) Analytics
4 309 (34.76%) ETL
5 287 (32.28%) Data Engineering
6 278 (31.27%) Security Cleared
7 274 (30.82%) Python
8 264 (29.70%) Data Modelling
9 229 (25.76%) SC Cleared
10 212 (23.85%) Azure
11 189 (21.26%) AWS
12 187 (21.03%) Data Quality
13 177 (19.91%) Business Intelligence
14 176 (19.80%) CI/CD
15 147 (16.54%) Agile
16 144 (16.20%) Data Integration
16 144 (16.20%) Databricks
17 128 (14.40%) Problem-Solving
18 118 (13.27%) Oracle
19 117 (13.16%) Migration
20 116 (13.05%) Power Platform
21 112 (12.60%) Power BI
22 111 (12.49%) Data Warehouse
23 109 (12.26%) Talend
24 108 (12.15%) DevOps
25 101 (11.36%) PySpark
26 96 (10.80%) Microsoft
27 94 (10.57%) Data Governance
28 93 (10.46%) Validation
29 92 (10.35%) 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 66 (7.42%) SAS
2 52 (5.85%) Apache Spark
3 37 (4.16%) Apache Airflow
4 36 (4.05%) Apache
5 24 (2.70%) Confluence
6 5 (0.56%) Jupyter
7 2 (0.22%) Apache Superset
7 2 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.11%) SharePoint
Applications
1 6 (0.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.56%) Notepad++
3 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 6 (0.67%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (0.56%) Infor LN
3 4 (0.45%) NetSuite
3 4 (0.45%) Sage X3
4 3 (0.34%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.11%) Aladdin
5 1 (0.11%) Elite 3E
5 1 (0.11%) FIS Private Capital Suite
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
1 212 (23.85%) Azure
2 189 (21.26%) AWS
3 116 (13.05%) Power Platform
4 84 (9.45%) Azure Data Factory
5 72 (8.10%) Snowflake
6 48 (5.40%) GCP
7 46 (5.17%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 45 (5.06%) dbt
9 43 (4.84%) Amazon S3
10 37 (4.16%) Serverless
11 28 (3.15%) Azure DevOps
11 28 (3.15%) GitHub
12 26 (2.92%) AWS Lambda
13 18 (2.02%) Matillion
13 18 (2.02%) OpenShift
14 15 (1.69%) GitHub Actions
15 14 (1.57%) Amazon EMR
16 11 (1.24%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 11 (1.24%) Azure Functions
17 9 (1.01%) Azure Storage
Communications & Networking
1 35 (3.94%) DNS
1 35 (3.94%) VPN
2 34 (3.82%) BGP
2 34 (3.82%) DMZ
2 34 (3.82%) Multicast
3 8 (0.90%) Structured Cabling
4 5 (0.56%) Firewall
4 5 (0.56%) PuTTY
4 5 (0.56%) WinSCP
5 4 (0.45%) Wi-Fi
5 4 (0.45%) Wireless
6 2 (0.22%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 112 (12.60%) Power BI
2 111 (12.49%) Data Warehouse
3 85 (9.56%) Pentaho
4 46 (5.17%) Data Lake
5 45 (5.06%) Amazon Redshift
6 35 (3.94%) SQL Server
7 33 (3.71%) Big Data
8 30 (3.37%) Metadata
9 28 (3.15%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 27 (3.04%) MySQL
11 25 (2.81%) Relational Database
12 24 (2.70%) Delta Lake
12 24 (2.70%) Hadoop
13 22 (2.47%) Amazon Athena
14 21 (2.36%) Azure SQL Database
15 19 (2.14%) Tableau
16 18 (2.02%) NoSQL
16 18 (2.02%) Snowflake Schema
17 17 (1.91%) BigQuery
17 17 (1.91%) BusinessObjects
Development Applications
1 92 (10.35%) Git
2 59 (6.64%) GitLab
3 46 (5.17%) JIRA
4 33 (3.71%) Jenkins
5 7 (0.79%) Postman
6 5 (0.56%) Artifactory
7 4 (0.45%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.34%) 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
General
1 142 (15.97%) Social Skills
2 88 (9.90%) Analytical Skills
3 82 (9.22%) Public Sector
4 66 (7.42%) Finance
5 42 (4.72%) Banking
6 22 (2.47%) Investment Banking
7 21 (2.36%) Marketing
8 19 (2.14%) Documentation Skills
9 16 (1.80%) Telecoms
10 15 (1.69%) Automotive
11 14 (1.57%) Manufacturing
12 13 (1.46%) Aerospace
12 13 (1.46%) Retail
13 12 (1.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 5 (0.56%) Billing
14 5 (0.56%) Front Office
14 5 (0.56%) Legal
14 5 (0.56%) Police
15 4 (0.45%) Local Government
16 3 (0.34%) Law
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 101 (11.36%) PySpark
2 63 (7.09%) Kafka
3 23 (2.59%) JSON
4 13 (1.46%) XML
5 12 (1.35%) Pandas
6 10 (1.12%) Streamlit
7 8 (0.90%) Apache Avro
7 8 (0.90%) Protocol Buffers
7 8 (0.90%) REST
8 7 (0.79%) Apache Beam
9 6 (0.67%) Node.js
9 6 (0.67%) OpenTelemetry
9 6 (0.67%) RESTful
10 5 (0.56%) Apache NiFi
10 5 (0.56%) Great Expectations
10 5 (0.56%) pytest
10 5 (0.56%) YAML
11 4 (0.45%) AngularJS
11 4 (0.45%) React
12 3 (0.34%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 35 (3.94%) Cloud Native
2 23 (2.59%) Data Structures
2 23 (2.59%) Legacy Systems
3 16 (1.80%) Distributed Systems
4 14 (1.57%) Data Protection Act
5 9 (1.01%) Clustering
5 9 (1.01%) Driving Licence
5 9 (1.01%) NHS
6 8 (0.90%) Greenfield Project
6 8 (0.90%) Product Ownership
7 6 (0.67%) Data Centre
7 6 (0.67%) Linux Command Line
7 6 (0.67%) Onboarding
8 5 (0.56%) Hybrid Cloud
9 4 (0.45%) Data Fabric
9 4 (0.45%) iPad
9 4 (0.45%) Life Science
9 4 (0.45%) Public Cloud
9 4 (0.45%) Renewable Energy
9 4 (0.45%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 41 (4.61%) Unix
2 12 (1.35%) Linux
3 2 (0.22%) Ubuntu
4 1 (0.11%) VMS
4 1 (0.11%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 332 (37.35%) Data Pipeline
2 316 (35.55%) Analytics
3 309 (34.76%) ETL
4 287 (32.28%) Data Engineering
5 264 (29.70%) Data Modelling
6 177 (19.91%) Business Intelligence
7 176 (19.80%) CI/CD
8 147 (16.54%) Agile
9 144 (16.20%) Data Integration
10 128 (14.40%) Problem-Solving
11 117 (13.16%) Migration
12 108 (12.15%) DevOps
13 94 (10.57%) Data Governance
14 93 (10.46%) Validation
15 83 (9.34%) AI
16 77 (8.66%) Test Automation
17 76 (8.55%) Decision-Making
18 75 (8.44%) Data Transformation
19 67 (7.54%) Scrum
20 64 (7.20%) Data Science
Programming Languages
1 419 (47.13%) SQL
2 274 (30.82%) Python
3 39 (4.39%) Java
4 36 (4.05%) PL/SQL
5 17 (1.91%) Bash
5 17 (1.91%) Shell Script
6 12 (1.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 10 (1.12%) PowerShell
8 9 (1.01%) T-SQL
9 6 (0.67%) Scala
10 5 (0.56%) Bicep
11 4 (0.45%) 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
1 278 (31.27%) Security Cleared
2 229 (25.76%) SC Cleared
3 20 (2.25%) BPSS Clearance
3 20 (2.25%) Degree
4 16 (1.80%) DV Cleared
5 8 (0.90%) City & Guilds
6 7 (0.79%) Computer Science Degree
7 5 (0.56%) Master's Degree
8 4 (0.45%) BICSI Certification
8 4 (0.45%) SnowPro
9 3 (0.34%) Azure Certification
9 3 (0.34%) CISM
9 3 (0.34%) CISSP
9 3 (0.34%) IBM Certification
10 2 (0.22%) AWS Certification
10 2 (0.22%) CEH
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
1 187 (21.03%) Data Quality
2 22 (2.47%) QA
3 15 (1.69%) GDPR
4 10 (1.12%) SLA
5 8 (0.90%) FATCA
6 4 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 3 (0.34%) Accessibility
7 3 (0.34%) HIPAA
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 44 (4.95%) Docker
2 3 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.22%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 52 (5.85%) Terraform
2 48 (5.40%) Kubernetes
3 38 (4.27%) Grafana
4 11 (1.24%) Prometheus
5 10 (1.12%) Ansible
6 3 (0.34%) Rancher
7 2 (0.22%) Apache Ranger
7 2 (0.22%) Control-M
8 1 (0.11%) Kibana
8 1 (0.11%) logstash
Vendors
1 144 (16.20%) Databricks
2 118 (13.27%) Oracle
3 109 (12.26%) Talend
4 96 (10.80%) Microsoft
5 77 (8.66%) Informatica
6 53 (5.96%) Denodo
7 36 (4.05%) Cisco
7 36 (4.05%) F5
8 18 (2.02%) SAP
9 17 (1.91%) Salesforce
10 15 (1.69%) ServiceNow
10 15 (1.69%) Splunk
11 14 (1.57%) Cloudera
12 10 (1.12%) Google
12 10 (1.12%) Sage
13 9 (1.01%) Alteryx
14 6 (0.67%) Dynatrace
14 6 (0.67%) Infor
14 6 (0.67%) InterSystems
15 4 (0.45%) IBM