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 £488, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 7 January 2026.

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

6 months to
7 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 155 100 183
Rank change year-on-year -55 +83 -8
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 303 331 227
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.66% 2.35% 1.18%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.83% 2.54% 1.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 221 220 171
10th Percentile £347 £318 £325
25th Percentile £405 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.41% -2.10% -4.76%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £606
90th Percentile £613 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 4 4
10th Percentile £28.33 £25.14 £38.93
25th Percentile £31.81 £25.21 £55.69
Median hourly rate £51.00 £26.50 £66.25
Median % change year-on-year +92.45% -60.00% -
75th Percentile £71.69 £27.91 £67.50
90th Percentile £76.08 £28.19 -
UK median hourly rate £54.00 £53.75 £60.50
% change year-on-year +0.47% -11.16% -9.02%

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 16,537 13,023 18,043
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.46% 92.32% 93.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,178 7,711 11,644
10th Percentile £213 £213 £213
25th Percentile £375 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.04% -4.00% -
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 1,651 727 1,333
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.30 £14.16
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.28 £18.13
Median hourly rate £25.15 £31.50 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year -20.16% -31.34% +69.89%
75th Percentile £60.00 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £72.60 £76.53
UK median hourly rate £26.78 £32.50 £44.50
% change year-on-year -17.60% -26.97% +36.75%

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 7 January 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 7 January 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 7 January 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
North of England -44 94 £463 - 92
Midlands -21 87 £525 +6.06% 64
West Midlands -20 73 £525 +5.00% 35
North West -26 49 £405 -10.00% 48
Scotland +5 46 £450 +3.45% 16
South West +12 43 £550 +22.22% 53
Yorkshire -46 32 £500 +3.09% 28
South East -60 32 £475 -11.63% 163
East Midlands -17 14 £455 +27.81% 29
North East -12 13 £450 -1.64% 17
Wales -13 11 £460 -8.00% 14
East of England -30 6 £625 +96.54% 54
Northern Ireland -8 1 £430 -13.57% 5
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 7 January 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.

1 174 (57.43%) Python
2 165 (54.46%) SQL
3 129 (42.57%) ETL
4 124 (40.92%) Data Pipeline
5 113 (37.29%) Data Engineering
6 108 (35.64%) Azure
7 105 (34.65%) Analytics
8 99 (32.67%) CI/CD
9 90 (29.70%) Data Modelling
10 85 (28.05%) AWS
11 80 (26.40%) Databricks
12 77 (25.41%) DevOps
13 72 (23.76%) Business Intelligence
14 69 (22.77%) Agile
15 66 (21.78%) Data Warehouse
16 64 (21.12%) Data Quality
17 63 (20.79%) Problem-Solving
18 56 (18.48%) PySpark
19 55 (18.15%) Power Platform
20 54 (17.82%) Security Cleared
21 51 (16.83%) Power BI
22 48 (15.84%) Git
23 46 (15.18%) Apache Airflow
23 46 (15.18%) Azure Data Factory
23 46 (15.18%) Docker
24 45 (14.85%) Kubernetes
24 45 (14.85%) SC Cleared
24 45 (14.85%) Snowflake
25 44 (14.52%) Jenkins
26 41 (13.53%) 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 46 (15.18%) Apache Airflow
2 30 (9.90%) Apache Spark
3 29 (9.57%) Apache
4 16 (5.28%) SAS
5 8 (2.64%) Confluence
6 5 (1.65%) Apache Pig
6 5 (1.65%) Oracle Application Server
7 3 (0.99%) IIS
8 1 (0.33%) Apache Synapse
8 1 (0.33%) Jupyter
Applications
1 1 (0.33%) Chatbot
1 1 (0.33%) SPSS
1 1 (0.33%) Stata
Business Applications
1 2 (0.66%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 108 (35.64%) Azure
2 85 (28.05%) AWS
3 55 (18.15%) Power Platform
4 46 (15.18%) Azure Data Factory
5 45 (14.85%) Snowflake
6 30 (9.90%) GCP
7 28 (9.24%) GitHub
8 27 (8.91%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 26 (8.58%) dbt
10 25 (8.25%) Serverless
11 24 (7.92%) Amazon S3
12 17 (5.61%) AWS Lambda
13 14 (4.62%) Azure DevOps
14 13 (4.29%) AWS CloudFormation
15 12 (3.96%) GitHub Actions
16 8 (2.64%) Amazon SageMaker
16 8 (2.64%) Prefect
17 7 (2.31%) Amazon ECS
17 7 (2.31%) AWS Step Functions
17 7 (2.31%) CloudBees
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.65%) DNS
2 4 (1.32%) TCP/IP
3 3 (0.99%) BGP
3 3 (0.99%) DMZ
3 3 (0.99%) Multicast
3 3 (0.99%) SSH
3 3 (0.99%) Structured Cabling
3 3 (0.99%) VPN
4 2 (0.66%) SSL
4 2 (0.66%) Wi-Fi
5 1 (0.33%) Internet
5 1 (0.33%) LAN
5 1 (0.33%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 66 (21.78%) Data Warehouse
2 51 (16.83%) Power BI
3 35 (11.55%) Data Lake
4 30 (9.90%) Big Data
5 27 (8.91%) NoSQL
5 27 (8.91%) PostgreSQL
6 25 (8.25%) Hadoop
7 24 (7.92%) Pentaho
8 19 (6.27%) Amazon Redshift
9 17 (5.61%) Elasticsearch
10 16 (5.28%) Delta Lake
11 13 (4.29%) Azure SQL Database
11 13 (4.29%) Data Mining
11 13 (4.29%) Relational Database
11 13 (4.29%) SQL Server
12 12 (3.96%) Amazon RDS
13 10 (3.30%) BigQuery
14 9 (2.97%) Snowflake Schema
15 8 (2.64%) RDBMS
15 8 (2.64%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 48 (15.84%) Git
2 44 (14.52%) Jenkins
3 26 (8.58%) GitLab
4 25 (8.25%) JIRA
5 8 (2.64%) MLflow
6 5 (1.65%) DBeaver
6 5 (1.65%) Visual Studio Code
7 4 (1.32%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.99%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.99%) Cucumber
8 3 (0.99%) Poetry
8 3 (0.99%) PyCharm
8 3 (0.99%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.66%) Artifactory
9 2 (0.66%) JMeter
9 2 (0.66%) Visual Studio
9 2 (0.66%) Zephyr
10 1 (0.33%) JUnit
10 1 (0.33%) Mockito
10 1 (0.33%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 60 (19.80%) Social Skills
2 40 (13.20%) Finance
3 33 (10.89%) Analytical Skills
4 21 (6.93%) Public Sector
5 19 (6.27%) Banking
6 6 (1.98%) Documentation Skills
7 4 (1.32%) Investment Banking
8 3 (0.99%) Influencing Skills
8 3 (0.99%) Legal
8 3 (0.99%) Manufacturing
9 2 (0.66%) Aerospace
9 2 (0.66%) Health Technology
9 2 (0.66%) Pharmaceutical
9 2 (0.66%) Presentation Skills
9 2 (0.66%) Retail
9 2 (0.66%) Tech for Good
10 1 (0.33%) Games
10 1 (0.33%) Law
10 1 (0.33%) Publishing
10 1 (0.33%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 56 (18.48%) PySpark
2 30 (9.90%) Kafka
3 17 (5.61%) REST
4 14 (4.62%) Pandas
4 14 (4.62%) RESTful
5 13 (4.29%) NumPy
6 12 (3.96%) Flask
6 12 (3.96%) Keycloak
7 7 (2.31%) Apache NiFi
7 7 (2.31%) Elastic Stack
8 6 (1.98%) HTML
8 6 (1.98%) OpenTelemetry
9 5 (1.65%) JSON
9 5 (1.65%) Node.js
9 5 (1.65%) Oracle GoldenGate
10 4 (1.32%) OAuth
10 4 (1.32%) OAuth2
10 4 (1.32%) pytest
11 3 (0.99%) JDBC
11 3 (0.99%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 22 (7.26%) Cloud Native
2 15 (4.95%) Replication
3 14 (4.62%) Algorithms
3 14 (4.62%) Product Ownership
4 13 (4.29%) Hybrid Cloud
5 10 (3.30%) Distributed Systems
6 8 (2.64%) Clustering
6 8 (2.64%) Data Protection Act
7 6 (1.98%) Data Structures
7 6 (1.98%) Greenfield Project
7 6 (1.98%) Legacy Systems
7 6 (1.98%) NHS
8 4 (1.32%) IoT
9 3 (0.99%) Distributed Computing
9 3 (0.99%) Driving Licence
9 3 (0.99%) Fibre Optics
10 2 (0.66%) AI Agents
10 2 (0.66%) Distributed Architecture
10 2 (0.66%) Legacy Applications
10 2 (0.66%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 19 (6.27%) Linux
2 8 (2.64%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 129 (42.57%) ETL
2 124 (40.92%) Data Pipeline
3 113 (37.29%) Data Engineering
4 105 (34.65%) Analytics
5 99 (32.67%) CI/CD
6 90 (29.70%) Data Modelling
7 77 (25.41%) DevOps
8 72 (23.76%) Business Intelligence
9 69 (22.77%) Agile
10 63 (20.79%) Problem-Solving
11 41 (13.53%) Test Automation
12 40 (13.20%) Data Integration
13 38 (12.54%) Machine Learning
14 34 (11.22%) Performance Tuning
15 33 (10.89%) Visualisation
16 32 (10.56%) Scrum
17 31 (10.23%) Continuous Improvement
18 30 (9.90%) Data Science
19 29 (9.57%) Data Governance
20 27 (8.91%) Data Architecture
Programming Languages
1 174 (57.43%) Python
2 165 (54.46%) SQL
3 29 (9.57%) Java
4 15 (4.95%) Scala
5 14 (4.62%) PL/SQL
6 12 (3.96%) Bash
6 12 (3.96%) Go
7 6 (1.98%) R
7 6 (1.98%) T-SQL
8 5 (1.65%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 5 (1.65%) Groovy
8 5 (1.65%) Shell Script
9 4 (1.32%) JavaScript
10 3 (0.99%) TypeScript
11 2 (0.66%) ABAP
11 2 (0.66%) Bicep
12 1 (0.33%) C#
12 1 (0.33%) Cypher
Qualifications
1 54 (17.82%) Security Cleared
2 45 (14.85%) SC Cleared
3 13 (4.29%) Azure Certification
4 10 (3.30%) AWS Certification
5 7 (2.31%) Degree
6 4 (1.32%) Master's Degree
7 3 (0.99%) Computer Science Degree
8 2 (0.66%) DV Cleared
9 1 (0.33%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 1 (0.33%) HND
9 1 (0.33%) ITIL Certification
9 1 (0.33%) MCP
9 1 (0.33%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 64 (21.12%) Data Quality
2 9 (2.97%) GDPR
3 6 (1.98%) QA
4 3 (0.99%) Accessibility
5 1 (0.33%) Basel III
5 1 (0.33%) Disclosure Scotland
5 1 (0.33%) EU AI Act
5 1 (0.33%) HIPAA
5 1 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 1 (0.33%) NCSC
5 1 (0.33%) NIST
5 1 (0.33%) WCAG
System Software
1 46 (15.18%) Docker
2 3 (0.99%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.66%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 45 (14.85%) Kubernetes
2 29 (9.57%) Terraform
3 12 (3.96%) Ansible
4 8 (2.64%) Grafana
4 8 (2.64%) NetBackup
5 6 (1.98%) Kibana
5 6 (1.98%) Prometheus
6 4 (1.32%) logstash
7 3 (0.99%) Argo
7 3 (0.99%) Istio
8 2 (0.66%) Control-M
8 2 (0.66%) Kustomize
9 1 (0.33%) Puppet
Vendors
1 80 (26.40%) Databricks
2 38 (12.54%) Oracle
3 36 (11.88%) Microsoft
4 25 (8.25%) Talend
5 16 (5.28%) Denodo
6 11 (3.63%) Red Hat
7 10 (3.30%) Informatica
8 9 (2.97%) Google
9 8 (2.64%) Commvault
10 7 (2.31%) IBM
10 7 (2.31%) Veritas
11 6 (1.98%) Cloudera
11 6 (1.98%) Confluent
11 6 (1.98%) ServiceNow
12 5 (1.65%) Splunk
13 4 (1.32%) Cisco
13 4 (1.32%) SAP
14 3 (0.99%) F5
14 3 (0.99%) Salesforce
15 2 (0.66%) Foundry