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 £500, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 29 November 2025.

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

6 months to
29 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 159 114 186
Rank change year-on-year -45 +72 -6
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 292 328 262
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.65% 2.01% 1.28%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.83% 2.18% 1.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 206 208 212
10th Percentile £351 £356 £400
25th Percentile £405 £429 £443
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £560 £575 £613
90th Percentile £625 £641 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £538 £525
% change year-on-year -6.98% +2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 4 3
10th Percentile £27.55 £25.14 £31.33
25th Percentile £29.88 £25.21 £36.69
Median hourly rate £37.50 £26.50 £49.00
Median % change year-on-year +41.51% -45.92% -18.33%
75th Percentile £55.25 £27.91 £58.69
90th Percentile £63.65 £28.19 £62.48
UK median hourly rate £43.50 £50.50 £60.50
% change year-on-year -13.86% -16.53% +4.31%

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 15,959 15,068 19,162
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 89.96% 92.39% 93.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,868 8,671 12,572
10th Percentile £208 £213 £213
25th Percentile £363 £373 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £494 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -1.20% -
75th Percentile £575 £594 £600
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,567 1,012 1,261
10th Percentile £13.80 £15.10 £14.42
25th Percentile £17.30 £20.00 £18.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £33.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -23.79% -25.84% +78.00%
75th Percentile £57.50 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.47 £73.48 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +48.33%

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 29 November 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 29 November 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 29 November 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
Midlands -24 81 £519 +5.82% 33
North of England -41 81 £469 -1.32% 33
West Midlands -20 68 £520 +4.00% 28
Scotland +25 51 £450 -4.76% 17
North West -23 39 £415 -7.78% 21
South West +15 37 £550 +15.79% 10
South East -42 35 £478 -13.18% 107
Yorkshire -25 34 £506 +4.38% 7
East Midlands -6 13 £455 +27.81% 5
Wales -11 12 £425 -15.00% 6
North East -7 8 £425 +13.64% 5
East of England -27 6 £625 +95.31% 9
Northern Ireland -4 1 - -
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 29 November 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.

1 177 (60.62%) Python
2 165 (56.51%) SQL
3 126 (43.15%) ETL
4 118 (40.41%) Data Pipeline
5 106 (36.30%) Data Engineering
6 100 (34.25%) CI/CD
7 97 (33.22%) Azure
8 96 (32.88%) Analytics
9 93 (31.85%) AWS
10 87 (29.79%) Data Modelling
11 74 (25.34%) Databricks
11 74 (25.34%) DevOps
12 68 (23.29%) Data Warehouse
13 67 (22.95%) Agile
13 67 (22.95%) Business Intelligence
14 64 (21.92%) Data Quality
15 60 (20.55%) Problem-Solving
16 55 (18.84%) PySpark
17 52 (17.81%) Security Cleared
18 49 (16.78%) Power Platform
19 47 (16.10%) Power BI
20 46 (15.75%) Apache Airflow
20 46 (15.75%) Snowflake
21 45 (15.41%) Jenkins
21 45 (15.41%) Kubernetes
21 45 (15.41%) SC Cleared
22 44 (15.07%) Test Automation
23 43 (14.73%) Azure Data Factory
23 43 (14.73%) Docker
24 41 (14.04%) 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 46 (15.75%) Apache Airflow
2 28 (9.59%) Apache Spark
3 26 (8.90%) Apache
4 16 (5.48%) SAS
5 8 (2.74%) Confluence
6 7 (2.40%) Oracle Application Server
7 5 (1.71%) Apache Pig
8 3 (1.03%) IIS
9 2 (0.68%) Documentum
9 2 (0.68%) SharePoint
10 1 (0.34%) Apache Synapse
10 1 (0.34%) Jupyter
Applications
1 2 (0.68%) Windchill
2 1 (0.34%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.34%) SPSS
2 1 (0.34%) Stata
Business Applications
1 2 (0.68%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.34%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 97 (33.22%) Azure
2 93 (31.85%) AWS
3 49 (16.78%) Power Platform
4 46 (15.75%) Snowflake
5 43 (14.73%) Azure Data Factory
6 32 (10.96%) GCP
7 27 (9.25%) GitHub
8 26 (8.90%) Amazon S3
9 24 (8.22%) Serverless
10 23 (7.88%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 23 (7.88%) dbt
11 17 (5.82%) AWS Lambda
12 12 (4.11%) AWS CloudFormation
13 11 (3.77%) Azure DevOps
13 11 (3.77%) GitHub Actions
14 8 (2.74%) Amazon SageMaker
15 7 (2.40%) Amazon EC2
15 7 (2.40%) Amazon ECS
15 7 (2.40%) CloudBees
16 6 (2.05%) Prefect
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.37%) TCP/IP
2 3 (1.03%) MQTT
2 3 (1.03%) SSH
2 3 (1.03%) Structured Cabling
3 2 (0.68%) DNS
3 2 (0.68%) SSL
3 2 (0.68%) Wi-Fi
4 1 (0.34%) Internet
4 1 (0.34%) LAN
4 1 (0.34%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 68 (23.29%) Data Warehouse
2 47 (16.10%) Power BI
3 30 (10.27%) Data Lake
3 30 (10.27%) PostgreSQL
4 29 (9.93%) Big Data
5 28 (9.59%) NoSQL
6 23 (7.88%) Pentaho
7 22 (7.53%) Hadoop
8 20 (6.85%) Amazon Redshift
8 20 (6.85%) Relational Database
9 18 (6.16%) Delta Lake
10 14 (4.79%) Elasticsearch
11 13 (4.45%) Amazon RDS
11 13 (4.45%) Data Mining
12 12 (4.11%) SQL Server
13 10 (3.42%) Tableau
14 8 (2.74%) Azure SQL Database
14 8 (2.74%) MongoDB
14 8 (2.74%) RDBMS
14 8 (2.74%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 45 (15.41%) Jenkins
2 41 (14.04%) Git
3 26 (8.90%) GitLab
4 25 (8.56%) JIRA
5 8 (2.74%) MLflow
6 7 (2.40%) DBeaver
7 5 (1.71%) Visual Studio Code
8 4 (1.37%) SonarQube
9 3 (1.03%) Artifactory
9 3 (1.03%) Bitbucket
9 3 (1.03%) Cucumber
9 3 (1.03%) Poetry
9 3 (1.03%) PyCharm
9 3 (1.03%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.68%) JMeter
10 2 (0.68%) Visual Studio
10 2 (0.68%) Zephyr
11 1 (0.34%) Deequ
11 1 (0.34%) JUnit
11 1 (0.34%) Maven
General
1 67 (22.95%) Social Skills
2 37 (12.67%) Analytical Skills
3 35 (11.99%) Finance
4 21 (7.19%) Public Sector
5 17 (5.82%) Banking
6 6 (2.05%) Documentation Skills
7 4 (1.37%) Telecoms
8 3 (1.03%) Influencing Skills
8 3 (1.03%) Legal
8 3 (1.03%) Manufacturing
8 3 (1.03%) Retail
8 3 (1.03%) Tech for Good
9 2 (0.68%) Aerospace
9 2 (0.68%) Health Technology
9 2 (0.68%) Pharmaceutical
10 1 (0.34%) Investment Banking
10 1 (0.34%) Law
10 1 (0.34%) Local Government
10 1 (0.34%) Marketing
10 1 (0.34%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 55 (18.84%) PySpark
2 27 (9.25%) Kafka
3 15 (5.14%) RESTful
4 13 (4.45%) Flask
4 13 (4.45%) Pandas
5 12 (4.11%) NumPy
6 11 (3.77%) REST
7 10 (3.42%) Keycloak
8 7 (2.40%) OpenTelemetry
8 7 (2.40%) Oracle GoldenGate
9 6 (2.05%) Elastic Stack
9 6 (2.05%) HTML
10 5 (1.71%) Apache NiFi
10 5 (1.71%) Node.js
10 5 (1.71%) OAuth
10 5 (1.71%) OAuth2
11 4 (1.37%) FastAPI
11 4 (1.37%) JSON
11 4 (1.37%) PyTorch
11 4 (1.37%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 24 (8.22%) Cloud Native
2 15 (5.14%) Replication
3 14 (4.79%) Hybrid Cloud
4 13 (4.45%) Algorithms
4 13 (4.45%) Product Ownership
5 10 (3.42%) Distributed Systems
6 9 (3.08%) Data Protection Act
7 7 (2.40%) Legacy Systems
8 6 (2.05%) Clustering
8 6 (2.05%) Data Structures
8 6 (2.05%) NHS
9 4 (1.37%) Greenfield Project
9 4 (1.37%) IoT
10 3 (1.03%) AI Agents
10 3 (1.03%) Driving Licence
10 3 (1.03%) Fibre Optics
10 3 (1.03%) Management Information System
10 3 (1.03%) Private Cloud
11 2 (0.68%) Distributed Architecture
11 2 (0.68%) Distributed Computing
Operating Systems
1 19 (6.51%) Linux
2 11 (3.77%) Unix
3 2 (0.68%) Windows
3 2 (0.68%) Windows Server
3 2 (0.68%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 126 (43.15%) ETL
2 118 (40.41%) Data Pipeline
3 106 (36.30%) Data Engineering
4 100 (34.25%) CI/CD
5 96 (32.88%) Analytics
6 87 (29.79%) Data Modelling
7 74 (25.34%) DevOps
8 67 (22.95%) Agile
8 67 (22.95%) Business Intelligence
9 60 (20.55%) Problem-Solving
10 44 (15.07%) Test Automation
11 39 (13.36%) Machine Learning
12 37 (12.67%) Data Integration
13 35 (11.99%) Visualisation
14 31 (10.62%) Data Science
15 30 (10.27%) Performance Tuning
15 30 (10.27%) Scrum
16 28 (9.59%) Continuous Improvement
16 28 (9.59%) Data Governance
17 27 (9.25%) Data Architecture
Programming Languages
1 177 (60.62%) Python
2 165 (56.51%) SQL
3 27 (9.25%) Java
4 19 (6.51%) Scala
5 12 (4.11%) Bash
5 12 (4.11%) PL/SQL
6 10 (3.42%) Go
7 6 (2.05%) R
8 5 (1.71%) Shell Script
9 4 (1.37%) Groovy
9 4 (1.37%) JavaScript
9 4 (1.37%) T-SQL
10 3 (1.03%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 3 (1.03%) TypeScript
11 2 (0.68%) ABAP
12 1 (0.34%) Bicep
12 1 (0.34%) Cypher
Qualifications
1 52 (17.81%) Security Cleared
2 45 (15.41%) SC Cleared
3 11 (3.77%) AWS Certification
3 11 (3.77%) Azure Certification
3 11 (3.77%) Degree
4 8 (2.74%) Master's Degree
5 4 (1.37%) Computer Science Degree
6 1 (0.34%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 1 (0.34%) DV Cleared
6 1 (0.34%) HND
6 1 (0.34%) ITIL Certification
6 1 (0.34%) MCP
6 1 (0.34%) SnowPro
6 1 (0.34%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 64 (21.92%) Data Quality
2 8 (2.74%) GDPR
3 7 (2.40%) QA
4 3 (1.03%) Accessibility
5 1 (0.34%) Disclosure Scotland
5 1 (0.34%) EU AI Act
5 1 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 1 (0.34%) NCSC
5 1 (0.34%) NIST
5 1 (0.34%) WCAG
System Software
1 43 (14.73%) Docker
2 3 (1.03%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.68%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 45 (15.41%) Kubernetes
2 27 (9.25%) Terraform
3 11 (3.77%) Ansible
4 10 (3.42%) Grafana
5 8 (2.74%) NetBackup
6 6 (2.05%) Prometheus
7 5 (1.71%) Kibana
8 3 (1.03%) Argo
8 3 (1.03%) Istio
8 3 (1.03%) Kustomize
8 3 (1.03%) logstash
9 2 (0.68%) Control-M
10 1 (0.34%) Puppet
Vendors
1 74 (25.34%) Databricks
2 38 (13.01%) Oracle
3 34 (11.64%) Microsoft
4 27 (9.25%) Talend
5 15 (5.14%) Denodo
6 14 (4.79%) Informatica
7 11 (3.77%) Red Hat
8 9 (3.08%) Google
9 8 (2.74%) Commvault
10 7 (2.40%) IBM
10 7 (2.40%) Veritas
11 6 (2.05%) Cloudera
11 6 (2.05%) Confluent
12 5 (1.71%) ServiceNow
12 5 (1.71%) Splunk
13 4 (1.37%) Salesforce
14 3 (1.03%) SAP
15 2 (0.68%) EMC
15 2 (0.68%) McAfee
15 2 (0.68%) Sophos